This man could really use some extra money. That’s why what he did is even more remarkable.

Thomas Liedtke, an employed construction worker, found a package filled with 16,000 euros (approximately $25,000) in cash and gold jewelery beside a busy German road.

He promptly turned it over to police.

Liedtke could really use the money.

His son is disabled, and his family relies on state unemployment benefits of about 600 euros (approximately $900) per month.

“It would have come in handy for the heating bill,” Liedtke said. “But my conscience got the better of me. It was a hard decision to go to the police.”

No one has claimed the money which means no reward for Liedtke’s honesty.

Is one of your HR duties building teamwork? It might be easier if employees spent more time with each other. Well, that’s exactly what’s happening in Japan, where corporate dormitories for young, single workers are making a comeback. Japanese companies started the tradition of offering dormitory accommodations for young workers back in the 1950s. The practice fell off during the country’s economic slump in the 1990s.

But now companies are bringing them back, finding that cutting the dorms during hard economic times a decade earlier hurt attempts to build corporate culture, according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal.

Mitsui & Co. has eight dorms — six for men, two for women —  for about 430 unmarried employees. They can live there for their first several years with the company.

And the rents are cheap! For less than $185 a month, the dorms offer a private bedroom, a large cafeteria and communal bathrooms, just as college residence halls do in the U.S.

Back to tradition

Japanese companies credit the dorms with building corporate cultures based on loyalty, dedication to hard work and identifying the company as family.

And dorms aren’t the only benefit the firms are using to attract younger employees and build teamwork. They’re also offering all-expenses-paid travel with colleagues and in-house cafeterias.

When some companies closed their dorms, they decided to emphasize Western-style work ethics such as individual competition and performance targets. Mitsui, among others, found this didn’t work as well as the previous teamwork style.

Aren’t young Japanese workers tired of dormitory life by the time they finish college? Not a problem: Many Japanese commute to college.

So dorm dwellers are happy about their living arrangements. “I have friends all around me now,” a 26-year-old Mitsui employee told the WSJ.

Can you imagine starting employee dormitories as a benefit at your company? Is your company offering any benefits to appeal to younger workers? What does your company do to build teamwork? Let us know in the comments section below.

How did this HR nightmare happen? One thing to note: Incapacity Benefits (IB) pay more than unemployment — called Jobseekers’ Allowance (JA). Those on JA face more pressure to find work than people collecting IB.

When did these numbers balloon? They exploded in the 1980s when old heavy industries suffered major closures in the north of England and Wales, according to the Daily Mail.

Changes to IB are coming this fall. Checks on how sick or disabled claimants really are will be introduced, along with programs to find out what kinds of work they may be fit for. But these rules will only apply to new claimants and are expected to take no more than 20,000 people a year off the benefit lists.

How much does this cost the British government? About 16 billion pounds a year, which is about $32 billion. 

Probably not.

For Italy’s paramilitary police, the Carabinieri, it’s apparently fair game for the employer to not only know about affairs but to also put a stop to them.

Italy’s highest court has ruled the Carabinieri must not have affairs so that the force’s name isn’t besmirched.

A member of the special police had appealed a lower court ruling sentencing him to four months in jail for insulting and threatening to throw a desk at his boss, who’d asked him to break off an affair with a married woman, according to wire service reports.

The ruling said the Carabinieri are called to “exemplary conduct and could not bring discredit to the armed forces with extra-marital relationships.”

By the way, the motto of the Carabinieri is “Faithful through the centuries.”

Has HR at your company been lambasted over growing payroll? Has there been baaahhcklash?

Now, you can show ‘em that when it comes to keeping costs in check, no one can pull the wool over your eyes!

Hire sheep to eat grass on your property, instead of having it mowed. They’ve done it in Turin, Italy.

The city has hired two herds of sheep at city parks to eat grass instead of hiring landscapers to mow it.

The sheep are expected to save the city nearly $50,000 a year in lawn-mowing fees.

This isn’t Turin’s first attempt at using livestock for landscaping.

Last year it tried a herd of cows at one park.

The cows had to be fired because they produced too much manure.

(HRB Readers, insert your own joke about firing employees who produce too much manure, here.)

Keith McNiffe was on disability after an operation left him unable to walk. That was legitimate.

But collecting benefits while officiating at 67 soccer matches? That’s another story.

McNiffe was also mayor of his town in Wales and initially stepped down to fight the fraud allegations against him.

Later he admitted failing to notify authorities of the change in his condition, according to wire service reports.

A court handed him a suspended four-month jail term, ordered him to complete 200 hours’ unpaid work and pay 75 pounds (about $150) in costs. He also has to repay 9,000 pounds ($18,000) in disability benefits he collected.

The chief fraud officer for Wales had this to say about the case, “Magistrates gave him a yellow card which sends out a clear message to everyone out there. Any other offense and the result will be a sending off.”

As long as your company is consistent, you can give benefits to whomever you want, right? A recent court ruling took that decision away from public employers in one state.

Public employers in Michigan aren’t allowed to offer health insurance benefits to domestic partners of their employees, according to the State Supreme Court.

Reason: The state constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage approved by voters in November 2004, makes offering domestic partner benefits illegal, according to the court.

After the amendment passed, State Attorney General Mike Cox told the city of Kalamazoo it must suspend domestic partner benefits.

Several city and county governments and state universities in Michigan offered these benefits. A group of 21 people, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, went to court to appeal Cox’s decision.

They won in trial court, lost at the appeals level, and now the state’s highest court has sided with the Attorney General and appeals court.

After the appeals courts ruling, several public employers reworded their benefit plans to comply with the constitutional amendment while still offering domestic partner benefits.

It’s unclear how the high court’s ruling will affect those benefit plans now.

The plans are written in such a way to include gay and straight couples who aren’t married. To qualify, couples must meet certain requirements, including proof of co-residency.

The court ruling doesn’t affect private-sector companies that provide domestic partner benefits.

There are an estimated 375 couples in Michigan who participated in public employers’ domestic partner benefit programs.

Different rulings in other states

The Michigan ruling has been unique among states where the question of domestic partner benefits provided by public employers has been raised.

In nine other states, courts have ruled that similar defense-of-marriage constitutional amendments or laws don’t affect public employers’ domestic partner benefit plans. Forty-one states have some sort of anti-gay-marriage amendment or law.

(Those nines states with court opinions contrary to Michigan’s are Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, Washington, Illinois, Maryland, Colorado, Massachusetts and California.)

The public employers weren’t the pioneers in domestic partner benefits. Private businesses took the lead.

Emerging research is showing this to be a cost-effective strategy for attracting and retaining high-quality workers. Currently, more than half (at least 269) of the Fortune 500 companies provide domestic partner benefits.

Private companies offering these benefits also aren’t limiting them to same-sex couples. A study shows 58% of these policies extend to same- and opposite-sex non-married couples.

We’d like to hear from you on this issue. Does your company offer domestic partner benefits? Drop us a note in the comments box below.

One of the perks at HR Blunders’ first part-time, high school job at a restaurant was half-price food – and free leftovers when working the closing shift. It didn’t cost the owner much to provide this special benefit, but it went a long way toward keeping employees happy.

Turns out, some of the companies voted 2007 California’s Best Places to Work have similar, but even more creative, employee benefits. Some examples:

• Veterinary Cancer Group offers its employees discounted vet services for pets and pet food at cost.
• The Motorcycle Industry Council provides free motorcycle and ATV rider training, discounts on parts and accessories and an employee-motorcycle-maintenance program completely covering the cost of bike upkeep.
• Altura Credit Union offers discounted loan rates, no/lower fees and increased savings rates for its workers.
• Sun Microsystems promotes work/life balance for its employees with a program called Open Work in which 56% of employees choose not to have an assigned office. Instead they work from anywhere, anytime, using any device.
• PFF Bank & Trust provides interest-free loans to buy computer equipment and attractive mortgage loans for first-time buyers.
• Peartrees Catering offers its employees a free lunch every day.

HRB’s next assignment is to research whether the local Porsche dealership has any special benefits.