SPOKANE, Wash. - Washington workers will now pay higher premiums in 2025 for paid family and medical leave.

One of the big questions many leaders are facing now is: how can we meaningfully communicate, collaborate, and connect in a hybrid (or remote) environment?

The number of people with autism entering the workforce in the next 10 years and beyond is on the rise

“When you call 988, you’re talking to a clinician, they do a suicide assessment, they triage what services you need,” said Washington Democratic Rep. Tina Orwall.

In December 2021, several months after this article was originally published, Governor Inslee and legislative leaders announced that changes will be made to the long-term care program and that the Employment Security Department will not be collecting long-term care premiums from employers at this time in order to provide the legislature time to make these changes.

...you might consider instead characterizing any no call, no show actions on the part of an employee as job abandonment.

Remote interviewing is here to stay, as the pandemic and its evolving offshoot, the Great Resignation, continue to reshape the modern workplace. Here are some tips for employers seeking to master the medium in order to identify top talent from a distance.

“I’m the most tenured person on my team,” my friend Joyce, a senior marketing manager, told me. “But I feel like a new hire.”

How do those rejected employees respond? They respond poorly, at least in the short term. After all, no one wants to be turned down for a job, and the sting is often greater when you are told “no” by your current employer. Studies have shown that internal rejection leads to reduced job satisfaction and reduced commitment to the organization. Rejection can also engender feelings of envy toward the workers who “beat them out” for the job or lead employees to engage in counterproductive work behaviors, such as stealing from their companies. If employees stick around a few months after rejection, however, these negative attitudinal effects tend to fade away.

Living in a perpetual state of disruption, uncertainty and grief can test anyone's mental health. And events of the past 16 months have delivered all of those in spades thanks to a steady stream of horrors, including but hardly limited to the deadly pandemic, George Floyd's murder, the January 6 Capitol insurrection and attacks against Asian-Americans. They've also catapulted employee mental health to the top of many employers' list of concerns and priorities.

Starting Jan. 1, employed Washingtonians will start paying about half a percent of their wages into the program through an automatic deduction from each paycheck. The median wage in Washington is $52,000 a year. Veghte says the typical worker will pay about $28 a month or $14 a paycheck.

If an organization truly wants to support women transitioning back into the workforce, use the interview process as a chance to learn what potential candidates bring to your team, including creativity, problem-solving skills or independent judgment. These skills will be particularly useful as government organizations continue to be challenged to innovate. Instead of treating the interview process as a tool to reinforce the status quo, consider the following,,,

Labor and Industries is responsible for keeping the workplace safe. Their guidelines say employers must confirm the vaccination status of employees before allowing them to take off their masks and no longer socially distance. While the employer doesn’t need to keep a copy of the vaccination card or an attestation letter, they do need to keep a record that it was checked, and use the same method for all employees.

Our latest research, in Nature: Human Behavior, explores one reason for why noble intentions only go so far: Gender inequities are baked into the structure of the informal recruitment process.