John Hollon

John Hollon is Vice President for Editorial of TLNT.com, and the former Editor of Workforce Management magazine and workforce.com. An award-winning journalist, he has written extensively about HR, talent management, and smart business and people practices. Contact him at john@tlnt.com, and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnhollon

Articles by John Hollon

HR Management

The Many Ways You Can Spot a Liar in the Workplace

by on Apr 19, 2012, 12:30 PM  |  No comments yet
lying_1

If you have spent any time in management or HR, you know this to be true: dealing with liars is simply part of what you do.

It’s not a pleasant part of the job, mind you, because no one likes to deal with deception, but just about everyone who supervises people in the workplace deals with a litany of lies, both large and small, every single day.

People concoct all sorts of deceptions in the office, from fibbing when they haven’t even started (much less finished) that pending report, to co-workers lying to cover up an inappropriate office romance. Read more…

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HR Management, Leadership

What a Baseball Manager Can Teach Us About Letting People Go

by on Apr 18, 2012, 11:55 AM  |  1 comment
Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter (26)

One of my leadership pet peeves is about wanna-be managers who take the title, the pay, and the goodies, but then go out of their way to avoid handling the tough stuff — like having to fire someone.

No decent person ever wants to have to let someone go (and anyone who does shouldn’t be managing people in the first place), but as I’ve said before, it’s one of those unpleasant duties that comes with the territory.

Yes, Donald Trump seems to have no problem firing people, but then, he’s doing it each week as entertainment with B and C-level celebrities who aren’t taking it all that seriously anyway. For most managers, however, firing someone is difficult, sometimes emotional, and always best done face-to-face. Read more…

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Benefits, HR News & Trends

Benefits Trends Survey Digs Deep Into What Employees Really Want

by on Apr 17, 2012, 12:10 PM  |  1 comment
metlife10-annual-ebts_page_01

Every year, the Metlife Study of Employee Benefit Trends cracks open a window into what employees really want from their job and employer.

The 2012 survey — MetLife’s 10th annual — is no different, and as the introduction to this year’s report notes, “Year-over-year, the Study shows what strategies are working and with what results – highlighting how employers might want to shift strategies in light of the findings and enabling them to make informed decisions.”

Yes, how employers might change their strategy is certainly important, but for me, the really critical information in this research is the the insight it gives into what your workforce is thinking, needing, and wanting. For example, this year’s MetLife Employee Benefit Trends report says that your workers are: Read more…

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HR News & Trends

Overusing Email: A Workplace Issue, But Not Something We Need to Ban

by on Apr 16, 2012, 10:42 AM  |  No comments yet
Banemail

Email is the workhorse of the workplace. Despite the talk that Millennials and younger workers are moving away from it, email continues to be a powerful and widespread business tool.

And, that’s why when I read a story about some company banning the use of email among its employees, I sit up and take notice.

Late last fall, French information technology company Atos focused on getting rid of internal emails between its 74,000 employees because, according to this ABC News report, “only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam. ” Instead employees would be encouraged to communicate internally using “via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.” Read more…

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HR News & Trends

Weekly Wrap: What Do You Do When Your Non-Smokers Smoke?

by on Apr 13, 2012, 11:37 AM  |  No comments yet
123RF Stock Photo

Here’s an HR dilemma. See if you can figure out the correct response.

Under your organization’s health plan, your company gets better rates if more of your workers are non-smokers. How do you ensure that employees who say they don’t smoke — and get nearly a $500 per year annual discount as a result — really are non-smokers?

If you’re managing public workers in Maricopa County, Arizona, you make the workers submit to a controversial saliva test. And you’re not surprised when you find that, lo and behold, a lot of those non-smokers getting discounts have been fibbing about their tobacco use all along. Read more…

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Classic TLNT

How to Get a Job: A Classic Cover Letter You’ll Never Forget

by on Apr 13, 2012, 10:30 AM  |  No comments yet
HunterSThompson

Editor’s note: Sometimes, readers ask about past TLNT articles that they have heard about but may have missed. That’s why every Friday we’re republishing a Classic TLNT post that some of you have asked about.

It’s a tough time for job seekers, especially for those who have been out of work for some time.

But, it’s not much fun for hiring managers and HR either. Even if you aren’t actively recruiting and looking for candidates, you’re probably flooded with resumes from all those out-of-work people looking to get back in the game. If you ARE looking for people, well, my apologies because you’re surely overwhelmed with desperate job seekers clawing to find any kind of paying gig.

It’s at times like these — when both job seekers and hiring professionals are at their wits end — that we step back and remember a job seeker who crafted probably the single greatest cover letter for a job ever. It comes from the late, great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, and it reflects a simpler time when all it took was a heavy dose of attitude and some zippy writing to get your foot in the door of a new job. Read more…

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HR News & Trends, Legal Issues

California Court: Employers Aren’t Liable If Workers Don’t Take Breaks

by on Apr 12, 2012, 2:51 PM  |  No comments yet
123RF Stock Photo

Chalk this up as another one of those trend-setting legal rulings that come out of California and then ripple across the country.

The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that although employers “must make it possible for workers to take scheduled breaks,” they “cannot be held liable if employees decide to work instead of rest,” according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

We conclude an employer’s obligation is to relieve its employee of all duty, with the employee thereafter at liberty to use the meal period for whatever purpose he or she desires,” Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote in the unanimous decision, “ but the employer need not ensure that no work is done.” Read more…

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HR Management

Lines the Boss Should Never Cross? There’s No Good Advice in THIS List

by on Apr 12, 2012, 12:12 PM  |  No comments yet
123RF Stock Photo

Here’s a story that I came across this week at Forbes that caught even my cynical and jaded eye — Six Lines Your Boss Should Never Cross.

Ok, I’ll bite. I’ve managed and supervised a lot of people over the course of my career, and I’ve worked for some bosses, who were, to put it gently, real pieces of work. So I wondered: does this Forbes list of those uncrossable managerial lines jibe with my own hard-earned experiences?

Here’s the Forbes list; you take a read and decide: Read more…

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HR News & Trends

Best Jobs List: Who Knew Working in HR Was So Good (and Well Paid)?

by on Apr 11, 2012, 10:30 AM  |  3 Comments
HR at work

I’m always a little skeptical of best and worst jobs lists because it always seems that the actual data behind these lists seems, well, a little bit squishy.

So, take this one for what it’s worth, but would you believe that Human Resources Manager was named one of the best job for 2012? Yes, HR manager came in at No. 3 on CareerCast.com’s 2012 Jobs Rated Report, right behind Software Engineer (no surprise that is No. 1) and Actuary at No. 2.

Here’s the complete list of the best jobs of 2012, according to CareerCast: Read more…

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Culture, HR News & Trends

Weekly Wrap: Many Employees Feel They Don’t Know ‘What’s Going On’

by on Apr 6, 2012, 10:49 AM  |  No comments yet
disengaged-workers

Surveys, surveys, surveys — wow, do I get sent a lot of research and surveys.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing because surveys provide a snapshot in time and a marker that we can use to measure how things are, how they may have changed, and, where they might be going in the future.

Yes, it’s a little peek into how things are — even if we don’t always like what we see.

Here’s a good example of that: a survey released this week by AMA Enterprise, a specialized division of the American Management Association, found that “as many as two-in-five employees feel they hardly ever know what’s going on at their organization. … Furthermore, a majority are in the know just some of the time.” Read more…

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