How many of your employees know how or are willing to pull that fire extinguisher off the wall to fight a small fire?  Probably not many. So they’re not intended for employee use. Choosing to evacuate the workplace rather than providing fire extinguishers for employee use will most effectively minimize the potential for fire-related injuries to employees, according to OSHA.

If fire extinguishers are in the workplace, they still must be inspected, tested, and maintained. For more information, see OSHA’s “Fight or Flee?” page.

Employees who take Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave can’t be disciplined for work that goes undone while they are out. To avoid confusion, always adjust deadlines or find backup to meet inflexible deadlines while the employee who is usually responsible for the work is away.

Case in point: Carlos worked as a project manager for Carestream Health. The company wasn’t entirely satisfied with his leadership and placed him on a performance improvement plan.

Then Carlos developed medical problems. He took about a month off under the FMLA.

Before going out on leave, his supervisor sat down with Carlos to discuss how Carestream and his team would meet their deadlines in his absence. The team managed to meet most of its deadlines, but was about a week behind on one project.

About eight months after returning, Carlos got a poor performance review and was terminated. The review did note that during his FMLA leave, some tasks were reassigned to meet deadlines.

Carlos sued, alleging he was fired in retaliation for taking FMLA leave and that his time off had been counted against him in the review.

The court disagreed, based on the company’s clear records that it worked with Carlos to adjust deadlines for the team and get extra help. Plus, nothing in the review indicated that the one late project was counted against him. (Gonzalez v. Carestream Health)

Online resource: Learn more about how the FMLA protects employees at the DOL’s website.

Employees sometimes don’t want to give their bosses personal details about an illness or condition that may be covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Instead they just call in sick. When confronted about the absence, they may even lie about the real nature of the absence.

You’re entitled to take those employees at their word. But if you find out they lied about the nature of their health problems, you can fire them for violating your honesty policy. Whether the absence was for a serious health condition is irrelevant.

Case in point: Former Bethlehem municipal employee Catherine Hughes has diabetes. She scheduled a vacation to Las Vegas and while there, arranged to have her eyebrows and lips permanently tattooed for cosmetic reasons apparently related to her diabetic condition.

Because she was scheduled to work the last two days of her absence, she called in sick.

When she got back, she was called into a meeting and asked about the days. Hughes told her boss that she had been sick and confined to bed at her boyfriend’s house. Later, she admitted she had lied, but continued to claim that she had been absent from work because of her disability and serious health condition. The city fired her.

Hughes sued. The court tossed her case, reasoning that the city was justified in firing her for lying. (Hughes v. City of Bethlehem, et al.)

Q. We have a strict dress code policy requiring all machine operators to wear pants while working. Can we discipline a veteran machinist who claims that she has converted to a religion that requires her to wear dresses? — S.J., North Carolina

A. If you prove that your dress code is for safety purposes, you will win in court.

Long before the Occupational Safety and Health Act or Title VII, there was a hard and fast industrial rule: no loose clothing around moving machinery. An operator who wants to wear a dress under such conditions had better start looking for a new job. There is no court that would require a manager to give such an accommodation.

For more on dress codes and safety, read “Not just a matter of style: Factor safety, liability into dress code.”

Q. We’d like our retail staff to wear uniforms. Can we charge them for the uniforms? — E.L.J., Massachusetts

A. As is so often the case, the answer lies in the Fair Labor Standards Act. Under the FLSA, you may require employees to buy uniforms as a condition of employment.

But if you require employees to buy uniforms, you can’t deduct the purchase price from their paychecks if it would reduce their wages below minimum wage or cut into overtime pay. Clothing is considered a uniform if you prescribe a specific type, style, color or quality. Employer-prescribed ordinary “street clothing” would not be considered a uniform.

There’s nothing worse than a cup o’ joe that’s heading for room temperature. You can keep your mug hot, or even your favorite beverage cool with the power coming from your computer.

The USB Beverage Cup Cooler and Warmer will heat a drink up to 140 degrees or cool one down to 55 degrees with the flip of a switch.

If recent security breaches have you wondering just how safe your Twitter account is, then you need to think about protecting your Twitter feed the same way you do for any other online account, advises Hayley Tsukayama, The Washington Post. She says the first step is to use a unique, strong password. And don’t use the same one for all of your online accounts.

“Another important step: Be on the lookout for odd emails,” Tsukayama says.  

If it’s legit, you should see twitter.com in the address bar. If not, delete it. And if you get an email from Twitter that says your account has been hacked, immediately delete the email and change your password.

If you feel extra protection is necessary to keep those tweets safe, Katie Gatto, TechNews Daily, offers seven tips on how to stay safe on Twitter:

1. Forget about putting personal information on Twitter.
2. Take a look at what’s on your account when you’re not signed in. This is the information that’s available to the public. If you don’t like what’s there, sign in, go to Settings, click the icon at the top right, select Profile and adjust it accordingly.
3. Change your account to private, which allows only followers whom you approve to read your tweets. Go to Settings, select Account, Twitter privacy and then Protect my tweets.
4. Make secure browsing your default mode. This gives you a secure connection each time you log into Twitter. Go to Account page, scroll down to HTTPS only and check Always use HTTPS.
5. Watch out for unknown links. Those shortened URLs conceal a website’s true destination, so only tweet them to your followers if you know where each one goes.
6. Don’t give away your location. You don’t want malicious people knowing your whereabouts. Also, turn off the location services on your smartphone. Third-party apps can broadcast where you are.
7. Keep direct messages to strangers simple. Don’t divulge personal data or your location.

The MacBook Pro 13 was named best performing Windows laptop because “every Windows installation on it is clean,” reported PC services company Soluto. Soluto’s metrics include crashes per week, hangs per week, Blue Screens per week and average boot time. The top 5:

1. Apple    MacBook Pro 13
2. Acer Aspire    E1-571
3. Dell     XPS13
4. Dell     Vostro 3560
5. Acer    Aspire V3-771

— Adapted from “MacBook Pro declared ‘best performing’ Windows laptop,” Brooke Crothers, cnet.

An effective document management system depends on knowing not only what to get rid of, but also when it’s permissible to get rid of the document.

While you might not be tasked with personally retaining all of the documents listed below, it doesn’t hurt to know the required retention periods of those documents you may reference.

• Accommodation requests: one year after record is made.
• Applications for employment: one year from date of submission.
• Basic employee information: four years after record is made.
• Dates Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave is taken: three years from end of leave.
• Demotion records: one year from date of action.
• Job advertisements: one year after record is made.
• Job descriptions: two years after record is made.
• Job evaluations: two years after record is made.
• Layoff, reduction-in-force, recall records: one year from time of request.
• Merit, incentive, seniority system records: two years from the date record is made.
• Pre-employment tests: one year from date of test.
• Promotion records: one year from date of action.
• References: one year after record is made.
• Résumés: one year after submission.
• Termination records: one year after termination.
• Time cards/sheets: two years after record is made.
• Transfer records: one year from date of action.