Benefits May 24, 2002

Disability Seminar Info on EEOC Web Site

May 24, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has posted information regarding its ongoing series of small business seminars on hiring the disabled to its Web site.
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Users can access:

  • a seminar schedule,
  • a program overview,
  • a list of regional EEOC staff contacts, and
  • articles and press releases about the government anti-discrimination agency’s public awareness campaign on disability hiring

According to the EEOC, the seminars are customized for businesses that have between 15 and 100 employees, and even smaller companies that expect to expand. The agency said many of these employers don’t have a human resources department or staff with expertise on equal employment opportunity laws.

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Workshops typically address such topics as:

  • permissible questions during job interviews,
  • reasonable accommodations allowing the disabled to perform a job,
  • recruitment resources, and
  • tax incentives

In some cases, EEOC is partnering with the US Department of Justice to offer information about Title III of the ADA, which covers public accommodations and commercial facilities.

Employers interested in working with EEOC to arrange a workshop in a location not already listed should call (202) 663-4963 or send email to NFIworkshops@eeoc.gov .

Visit the EEOC Web site .

Benefits May 23, 2002

Boredom Can Be Fatal

May 23, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Bored workers may soon be dead workers.
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The was the bottom line of a new study, which found that employees given little chance to affect their work tend to die earlier than those allowed more leeway to make their own workplace decisions, according to a Reuters news report.

Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston found that people who spent their working lives in jobs where they had to make few decisions were 43% more likely to die than people in jobs with a lot of decision-making opportunities, and the increased risk continued for up to 10 years after they left their jobs.

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People who spent their working lives in passive jobs, described as those with low demands and low control over what work they do and when, were also 35% more likely to die up to 10 years after the job ended.

According to researchers, many jobs giving workers little control can be highly repetitive with little variety of needed skills – making it that much harder for workers to become engrossed in their workplace tasks.

If a worker’s assigned task are so passive that he or she has to struggle to stay awake, researchers said, that could trigger the damaging release of stress hormones.

 Encouragingly, the researchers found that people with jobs that offered only a certain amount of decision-making opportunities were less likely to die early than those given no control.
 
The findings are based on surveys of the physical and psychological working conditions of members of 5,000 households from 1968 to 1991. Jobs were classified according to decision-making opportunities, psychological demands, security, support, and physical demands.

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