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March Madness is pounding its way down basketball courts with a second weekend of big games commencing today, and while some employers embrace it as an engagement tool and way to build company camaraderie, labor lawyer D. Albert Brannen warns that -- much like the round-ballers playing defense -- employers shouldn’t let their guard down.

Nobody thought intermittent leave would be a problem when the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was enacted 20 years ago, on Feb. 5, 1993.

“The intent behind the law is very good,” noted John Bauer, an employment attorney in Littler Mendelson’s Melville, N.Y., office. But it’s become employers’ No. 1 headache, particularly for small employers, he told SHRM Online on Feb. 1, 2013.

The background-screening industry is facing greater scrutiny over the accuracy of its reports, according to industry experts. In 2012 some job seekers claimed that inaccurate criminal background checks prevented them from finding employment.

Accuracy of background-check-report information and greater scrutiny of the screening industry are the No. 1 trend for 2013, said attorney and background-check expert Lester Rosen.

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared to struggle over the question of who qualifies as a supervisor under federal nondiscrimination laws. Hearing oral arguments in a case from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Nov. 26, 2012, the high court addressed the issue, left unanswered in previous Supreme Court decisions, of when a “supervisor” includes an employee who oversees and directs other workers’ daily tasks, but has no authority over their formal employment status, (Vance v. Ball State Univ., No. 11-556).

Unusually severe storms like Hurricane Sandy can result in unusual working arrangements that raise out-of-the-ordinary wage and hour questions.

Suppose employees volunteer to perform recovery services for employers. That may sound nice, but “the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not permit employees to volunteer unpaid time to the employer under any but the narrowest of circumstances,” Lawrence McGoldrick, an attorney with Fisher & Phillips in Atlanta, told SHRM Online.

Among the mistakes employers sometimes make when investigating workplace misconduct: waiting too long to get started, limiting the scope of the investigation, failing to take interim measures to curb bad behavior and selecting a biased investigator.

During a July 2012 webinar, Allison West, SPHR -- an employment attorney who specializes in training, conducting workplace investigations, and coaching executives and managers -- said she evaluates several over-arching issues:

With most laws, employers have less difficulty meeting the laws’ mandates as time goes by and they become more familiar with the requirements.

Not so with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), where lawsuits have multiplied as the law has increasingly fallen out of step with the modern workplace, according to Paul DeCamp, an attorney in the Washington, D.C., area office of Jackson Lewis, and former administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division.

More Department of Labor (DOL) investigators are showing up unannounced at worksites and seeking to conduct immediate wage and hour investigations, according to Alfred Robinson Jr., acting administrator of the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division during President George W. Bush’s administration and now an attorney with Ogletree Deakins in Washington, D.C.

Employers should not assume that their employment practices liability (EPL) insurance excludes any cost related to a wage and hour claim, according to Barry Buchman, an attorney with Gilbert LLP in Washington, D.C.

It is very common these days for an EPL policy to have an exclusion for claims arising under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), he acknowledged. This has been partly in reaction to the rise in FLSA litigation over the past 10 years.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) wage and hour enforcement has become markedly more aggressive under the Obama administration, according to Paul DeCamp, former administrator of the Wage and Hour Division under President George Bush and now an attorney at Jackson Lewis’ Washington, D.C., regional office.

Telling employees where and why cameras are being used in the workplace is the best way to avoid legal problems, according to Lisa Guerin, co-author of "The Essential Guide to Federal Employment Laws" (Society for Human Resource Management/Nolo, 2011).

There is implied consent if an employee continues to work in an area where a camera is visible, said Ginger McCall, director of the open government program at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C.