Employment laws can be exceedingly difficult to administer — especially when they change approximately every 0.3 seconds as they have so far this year.

To help ensure that we’re giving you the information you need, each quarter we ask you to identify the employment law area that is giving you the most trouble. Here are the results of our latest poll.

What employment law issue gives you the most headaches?

  1. Medical Issues (43%)
  2. Wage & Hour (13%)
  3. Terminations (11%)
  4. Investigations (10%)
  5. Hiring (8%)
  6. Litigation (6%)
  7. Immigration (5%)
  8. Union Issues (4%)
  9. Technology (2%)

Behind the Numbers

In past polls (particularly during the Recession), “Terminations” almost always topped the list. “Medical Issues” jumped to #1 late last year and is now far and away the hottest issue. Based on the e-mails we get from Blawg visitors, HR and business professionals are more confused than ever by the interplay among the ADA, COBRA, ERISA, FMLA, GINA, health care reform, workers’ comp and other medical-related laws. 

“Wage & Hour” is now the solid #2, which makes sense given the plethora of class actions and government enforcement in that area.

I also find it interesting that “Technology” barely registered on the radar screen. With all that’s being written about the impact of Facebook, Twitter and everything else techno on the workplace, you would think that more people are struggling with it. That appears not to be the case.

Need Help?

For those of you who are confused by the alphabet soup of employment laws, I suggest checking out our Tools & Tips on the left side of the Blawg. We have cheat sheets on every major employment law, a glossary of legal acronyms, a comprehensive legal library and all kinds of other helpful (and free) stuff.

We’ll use the results of our poll to guide the content we create here on the Blawg, as well as future webinars. As always, thanks for expressing yourselves!