According to a recent GBTA study, more than a third of North American business travelers have extended a business trip to add on a vacation. More than half those taking these bleisure trips bring family members or a significant other…
Tips & Tricks Archives
Leadership’s Secret Sauce: Take Care of the People Who Take Care of the People
When the door opened a young man walked in buried into his phone. He did not look up, which I thought strange because in the outer office there were 3 customers and 4 of his workmates. He proceeded to his…
5 Communication ‘Best Practices’ That Aren’t
No matter the topic, there’s always the flipside. Politics? The liberal view versus the conservative view. Religion? Scores of interpretations. How to build the better app? Fee versus free, with imbedded links. So when it comes to communication, the same…
What Do You Do When Your Preliminary Data Comes Back to Haunt You?
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where someone (usually your boss or a higher-up) makes an announcement or a decision using draft or preliminary figures that you had given them some time ago? Only today the correct figures are different…
HR In a Union Shop: Here’s What Your Supervisors Need to Know
The job of supervising employees in a unionized environment has its own unique set of rules and challenges. HR professionals need to provide supervisors with the knowledge and tools necessary to succeed in this special framework. This applies to both…
6 Lessons From My Journey to a Transparent Culture
Fear has become, unfortunately, a regular emotion at work. How often do you feel afraid of sharing your thoughts because of what might happen to you? Have your colleagues stopped sharing their ideas after being censored over and over? I…
Use This Checklist to Onboard Your Remote Workers
It can be easy to think of telework as a silver bullet for engagement – what’s more appealing to an employee than rolling out of bed and walking across the hall to work in their pajamas? However, telework is just…
Improve Your Recruiting By Knowing What Your ATS Knows
According to a Boston Consulting Group study, the ability to deliver on recruiting has a larger impact on revenue growth than all other HR areas, including onboarding and retaining new hires, managing talent, and developing leadership. Yet despite the importance…
4 Steps Before Employees Can Bring Their Pet to Work
Without a doubt, pets have become true members of the family. No longer just “man’s best friend”, but “fur babies” that we love, care for and protect. A Fortune-Morning Consult Poll reported that 76% of pet owners consider their animals…
Facing a Misclassification Claim? Here Are Some Ways to Get Your Insurance to Pay
Most businesses, and startups in particular, need to keep costs down. Workers either cannot or do not want to work traditional hours. So begins the boom of the independent contractor model, or the so-called “1099 economy.” But when a startup…
21 Of the Worst Ways to Give ‘Constructive’ Feedback
If you’re like most managers — and most people in general — giving feedback is one of your least enjoyable experiences. It is also one of the weakest links between managers getting the output and outcomes they want and what…
Is Your Unlimited PTO For Real?
I’m part of the 2 percent. I work for the tiny fraction of U.S. companies that offer unlimited paid time off (PTO). That’s right, I get to watch The Price Is Right live as much as I want! Or something like that. Are you…
The Traditional Organizational Culture Is Doomed To Fail
In my previous article dated titled “Is Workforce Optimization the Missing Piece To Your Organization’s Success?” I wrote about how and why this shift in how organizations work with their employees is critical for future success. Now, let’s delve into…
Dr. Seuss, Retention and the Mission
Short takes on onboarding, retention and mission statements from the Humetrics blog: The 6 question retention survey Here are six questions you can ask your best people to help keep them engaged and on board: Where do you want to be in your…
4 Ways to Shape Your Culture So It Matters
Can we blame people for judging companies on their culture? We all spend such a high proportion of our lives at the office nowadays, that it’s unsurprising that we care about our working environment. Most conversations on culture inevitably end…
How a Birthday Cake Helps to Build a Positive Culture
How did the Golden State Warriors build a championship culture? They ate a lot of cake. In what has become a Warriors tradition, players receive custom-designed cakes on their birthdays from Alison Okabayashi, a trained pastry chef in the Bay Area. (What else…
It’s a Mistake to Overlook Overqualified Candidates
Overqualified candidates often pose a difficult challenge: experience, knowledge and self-sufficiency can be a big draw, but potential risks of boredom in the workplace and high turnover are enough to put any employer on edge. One out of every four…
This Bank’s HR Is Now Spending Time Analyzing Instead of Compiling
As HR analysts, we face the challenge of harnessing data to produce reports on everything from short-term incentive plans, benefits, hiring and compensation, to external auditing and compliance requests. Compiling this data is not always simple, since it’s often trapped…
Are You Investing In Your Career?
“I don’t read this crap. When someone gives me an article to read, I just say yes I will. I don’t read anything anymore. When I leave work, the last thing on my mind is HR.” This was from one…
Stop Hiring for Cultural Fit and Start Hiring For Cultural Fitness
Culture is the glue that brings a team or organization together. But if the glue is too sticky it can make them stuck instead of making them stay together. Cultural fit can become a limitation rather than a strength. Which takes…