Weekly Wrap: Disney Dress Codes, Pay While in Prison, Lying About Salaries

There’s always a lot more going on in the world of talent management and HR then I can possibly get to over the course of a week. So, here are some recent items I found incredibly interesting, highly readable, and intensely thought-provoking during this third week in June. Maybe you will too, or at least, you may find a few of them helpful with some of the daily challenges you’re dealing with:

Can you keep your job and continue to get paid while in prison? Here’s a Chicago Sun-Times report on how a city worker was able to cobble together “a combination of sick days, vacation days and personal days” to cover the fact that he was serving a two-month prison sentence for DUI. The indisposed worker “was also able to maintain taxpayer-funded medical insurance valued at $1,500 while behind bars,” too. Ah, you gotta love the government work ethic in Chicago.

Just in time for summer, female workers are getting a break at Disney theme parks worldwide – the Mouse House is relaxing the dress code so ladies won’t be required to wear panty hose when wearing skirts, the Los Angeles Times says. This will mainly apply to female staff who work in offices or behind the scenes. One exception: “except where the leg wear is part of a particular costume … such as Tinker Bell … or Alice in Wonderland.” It’s a nice change — especially for the managers and HR professionals who had the joy of monitoring this kind of stuff.

As Father’s Day approaches, it’s important to note how tough life has gotten for so many working Dads. A CareerBuilder survey found that “Leaner staffs are creating more demands at the office, making it more difficult for working fathers to achieve a healthy work/life balance. Sixty-three percent of working dads said they work more than 40 hours per week. Three in ten (31 percent) working dads who take work home reported they typically bring work home five days a week or more. Thirty percent bring work home on the weekends.”

Is it okay for people applying for jobs to lie about their previous salary? A New York book editor says it is , and she was taken to task by another editor/journalist – who then retracted what she wrote in response . Clearly, lying to HR about your previous salary is a lot more complex issue than it would immediately appear.

Remember Consumer Directed Health Care? It was the big health plan trend that was pushed so hard during the Bush years. Well, Grace Marie-Turner over at Kaiser Health News says that although these “plans have been useful in controlling the rise of health costs over the last several years… the survival of these plans is threatened by the new health overhaul law.” Another unforeseen consequence of Obamacare?

Want to know how much health care premiums will increase next year? According to the Sacramento Bee, “the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) approved an average increase of more than 9 percent in health premiums next year for its state and local government members,” and “private industry is expected to face similar increases.” That’s a lot more than the 3 percent increase so many employers were expecting. It’s probably not the last of the surprises we’ll see coming out of health care reform. Buckle up and stay tuned for more.