"Beyond the Basics: How HR and Supervisors Can Manage the Absent Employee," Second Annual Seminar for HR Staff and Line Supervisors, Davis Wright Tremaine, Portland, Ore.

This half-day workshop gave tools to better manage your employees, with a special focus on absences from work. We covered planned or unplanned absences, occasional days, partial days, and absences due to on-the-job injury, serious health conditions, ill family members, disability, or a combination of the above. The workshop helped ensure you are in compliance with the law, adhering to reasonable expectations regarding performance and production, and managing discipline and terminations so as to minimize the potential for litigation.

We used "real life" scenarios to illustrate every step along the way:

• The initial absence: what laws are in play?
• Tracking the absences in all appropriate categories
• Overlap between laws
• Managing the communication to and from the employee and others
• Understanding and documenting the Interactive Process and Performance
• Managing the fallout with co-workers who might have to pick up extra work
• Discipline and termination decisions