ROWE is dead and I am sad
The Happy Employee made a post about the new book about Results-Only Work Environment and mentioned that absolutely zero HR bloggers had mentioned it. Count me as one of those people who are unsurprised by this revelation.
I know that this is a hard thing to swallow from someone who has very much advocated ROWE in the past. There are some things holding people back from advocating ROWE and I want to address them here:
- HR people don’t trust the system - HR people in general don’t trust employees or managers to do the right thing so they’d rather not rock the boat and expose their weaknesses as an organization. They believe by keeping people at work, they can compensate by being able to monitor what a person is doing every minute of the day.
- Managers don’t trust their employees - Instead of seeing the benefits in recruiting and retention that this program would bring, managers focus on how their lowest performers would do. Instead of admitting their weakness in developing their own employees, they would rather compensate by punishing their best workers.
- Managing by results scares everyone (except your high performers) - This is the big one. If you don’t feel confident that you can manage people by the results they bring to the organization, then what are you managing them by? I can tell you but you’ll never admit it: attendance and keeping busy. If you can’t manage in a results-only way, that’s what you’d prefer to manage by.
Look, ROWE is radical because it is something that is common sense based but is hard to wrap old school (and even some new school) minds around. If you ask a business person what they are hiring a person to do, 100% of the time they should say “to do [insert something].” Yet almost all of those business people will also manage not based on whether someone is doing that something but also on a litany of non-related criteria (whether or not you’re chained to the desk properly). If a person is successful at doing their job well and can do it working from home, on a schedule they dictate, isn’t that better (especially if that person is happier)?
I almost always get an e-mail or comment insinuating that I’d just rather work at home all day and not come into the office. No, I’ve done that already. I want to be in the office (if at least for a little bit).
I’d like to believe ROWE is going to be adopted on a large scale but I am not that foolishly optimistic. I am guessing that ROWE will get implemented at progressive large corporations and smaller companies that are looking for that competitive edge.
Flexibility is low cost and it is absolutely stunning to me that people can’t see the huge low cost opportunity that is standing right in front of them.
DHS asks: How dare you question us!
In one of the most insulting posts I’ve read in a while, the Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary to Policy writes a scathing critique of SHRM’s lobbying to delay federal requirements to require E-Verify for certain employers.
I have a problems with SHRM and I’ve disagreed with their lobbying in the past but on this issue SHRM is right on and our government is trying to use its bully pulpit to shut down one of the legitimate arguments against mandatory use of the E-Verify system.
What is E-Verify
E-Verify is a DHS sponsored program to help employers verify whether a person is legally able to work in the US. Right now, this is a voluntary program but DHS wants to extend the program to include all federal contractors. Sounds good, right?
There are major problems with E-Verify as it stands right now. [1] [2] [3] [4]
The biggest one right now is that studies have indicated that at least 4% of the records are inaccurate. That’s inaccurate as in people who are currently okay to work in this country would be incorrectly identified as being ineligible. What could these inaccuracies lead to? Oh, nothing too big besides losing your job or being unfairly rejected for employment. But the good news is, once you actually do get your records fixed so that you show up as verified, someone will probably already have the job you lost.
DHS Says “Like the System or You Are Advocating for Hiring Illegal Aliens”
I love that an Assistant Secretary in one of the most powerful executive branches has to resort to name calling and straw men as responses to SHRM’s legitimate effort to at least delay an errant program. If there are significant issues with the database being used and it is going to hurt our hiring efforts by denying legitimate employees opportunities, why shouldn’t SHRM be arguing against a program like this? Even if the number was only 1%, that would still involve the lives of around 1.5 million American workers not being able to obtain employment. Only the size of a major American city.
I don’t understand how anyone can be okay with error rates like this and to shift the burden of proof and correction from the government to the employee. Bring in your passport or social security card but if the system rejects you, it is now your responsibility to go correct an error that DHS made with your file. Oh, and while you’re correcting it, you can’t receive a paycheck. Good luck!
Arrogance Leads to Dismissal of Outside Experts
Assistant Secretary Baker’s arrogance cannot be understated and he acts like a typical career bureaucrat in his entire message. The best part about this whole story though is that DHS never once met with the largest organization representing HR professionals in the development of E-Verify. Must I even mention that HR professionals will be the only people who use this system and DHS thought they knew better than us.
I haven’t met an HR professional that wants to hire illegal aliens. Whether it be for the embarrassment, the fines or their own sake, I think any HR person would love to have a system that would verify whether a person was legally able to work. It is one less thing we would have to worry about.
I guess it is easier to sit at your desk and never have to speak to people or businesses that are impacted by your product (i.e. the best thing available because it is the ONLY thing available). While it is nice to have a government blog (one that is even open to commenting), sometimes I wish I was more in the dark about what our bureaucrats spend their time and energies on. If only this sort of passion led to a better system, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Brett Favre, Green Bay and Losing Your Best Guy
If you haven’t been following the Brett Favre unretirement story, bless your heart. From the perspective of an HR person, it is a gut wrenching affair that I hope I never have the pleasure of dealing with. Here is the scenario from my demented HR side:
- Your longest serving and best employee (and one of the best employees the industry has ever seen) is on contract with you.
- He has been mulling retirement for several years.
- He finally decides this year is it for him. You understand but you need to move on as a company.
- Right before the busiest season of the year, your retired employee wants to come back to work for you and he wants all of his old accounts back.
- You tell him that you’ve given them to the journeyman who replaced him in March.
- He asks to be released from his contract so he can go work for your direct competitor.
- You say “No, you can come back but you’re going to have to earn your accounts back.”
- He doesn’t like that and goes to the biggest industry magazine and gives an interview saying that he doesn’t feel welcome back at his old company and that because of his years of service, he should simply be released.
What do you do as a manager?
Oh, and by the way, the stockholders are well informed of the entire situation and are closely watching your every move. No pressure.
Brett Favre is inarguably the best player on his team even at retirement age. He also has a legacy with Green Bay and the shareholder fans of Green Bay absolutely love him.
That being said, the Packers are a business and he needs to understand that it would be absolutely foolish to release him to a competitor without getting something back in return. As a contracted employee, Favre is in the inenviable spot of being subject to management’s discretion regarding him playing in the game, being traded or allowing him to be released unrestricted.
Now the Packers, to my understanding, have allowed Favre the opportunity to list teams that he would rather be traded for and they could easily get a high draft pick for Favre. And ultimately, they’d love to ship him out of their conference in order to lower the possibility they would be playing against him the next couple of years. It would be the equivalent of saying that in order to release you from the contract (which both parties mutually agreed to), you have to sign a non-compete agreement to not play in our division. I think that would be pretty reasonable.
I am glad the Packers have taken a stand even though I think they killed themselves on the PR side of this. They have to stand up for the employees and they can’t let one person (even if it is the best employee) dictate their entire operation. It has been 11 years since they have won a Superbowl and they aren’t going to do it in the next two years whether or not Favre is playing for them. If Green Bay shareholders can come to accept that, they should be able to see the logic in finding an amicable way to trade or release him without hurting themselves.
Balancing Work, Another Job and a Life
As many of you know, I am big into work/life balance. I have also been lucky enough to work for employers that have valued that as well. Now though, it seems that I am running into a little conundrum because that work/life balance has turned into work/work/life balance and I didn’t even take on a second job! At least not deliberately. Let’s list the issues:
- I have a day job. It runs 8-5pm with little (if any) overtime. Some travel involved but not enough to really get excited over. No the job isn’t super sexy. But yes, lucky me: I have a life.
- I am now essentially moonlighting as a blogger. Two independent sites going (this one and HRM Today), a blog on Vault.com, as well as exclusive sponsorship of a social network (HR Bloggers). My monthly income from blogging is roughly half that of my day job. It could be more if I worked harder at it (sponsorships, advertising, etc) but again, work/life balance.
- Then life. My routine has been to come home and spend the first couple of hours focused on my wife, have dinner and talk about what is going on. Then she wants to watch a little TV or read and I get online and do my blogging. Until when? Sometimes 1am. Then to bed and up again at 6:30. The good? Weekends are intact. I rarely touch the computer on the weekend and if I do, it isn’t usually more than an hour.
How do I resist the urge to check my blog stats every five minutes or stay on my cell phone? How does my wife not want to kill me every night (she still may want to on occasion)? I think I do it by following some easy steps:
- Set your computer boundaries - I want to be either on the computer being productive or off it doing something else. No computer games, not much in the way of personal blogging, no chat, no twitter.
- Set your phone boundaries - I check my emails on my phone in the morning before work and after work on the way home. I can worry less about email when I want to spend time with my wife.
- Set your hours - I don’t want to be blogging at 1am but sometimes I am. I do very well on the weekends but I need to do a better job on work days.
- Set up an end game - Is there a breaking point with having essentially two jobs? I know there is because I’ve worked with employees who have dealt with it. It is critical to understand where your break point is and to have a plan to go one way or the other.
This post started out as a gripe post but I realized that it would seem silly to gripe about the opportunities I have and to complain about coping with it. I am grateful that I have abundant opportunities and I do get tired of people saying “Agh, I am so busy and life isn’t fair.” So turn it into a positive: being busy is either a function of having lots of opportunites (yay!) or inefficiency (something that can be easily fixed!).
Job Hopping Still Sucks
If people must know one thing about my blogging pet peeves, it is that I hate when people do not read through the entire post. There is one post in particular that often gets wrongfully credited to me even though it is a blogswap post (first sentence) and the person introducing herself is clearly a lady while I am clearly a guy (who has his name posted all over the site).
So what happens when a supposed lawyer misses the first two lines of a post and then goes on a long rant about how I hate employees? Chris says:
Background: I am a labor lawyer who is THRILLED by HR Guy’s comments. As Gen Y dominates the workforce, they will face a brick wall from management (e.g. HR Guy) regarding work-life balance, mentoring, etc.
Gen Y will get mad and leave their job.
And? Tons of people leave their jobs every day for the same reasons from all generations. Only they are being passed up for promotions and pay increases instead of work-life balance and mentoring.
So What? Well, why not file a lawsuit and get $50 to $100K out of the company that treats you like dirt. Most young people are not only changing jobs but - this key - also industries. I predict Gen Y will be an untapped market for employment related lawsuits.
Based on what? No mentoring opportunities? Are you kidding me? You’re going to sue over work/life balance?
Scenario:
I am a young buck with an overbearing middle manager who barks commands at me all day. After 9 months I had enough - I am going to move back home, apply for the Peace Corp and go to Zimbabwe.
The manager I hate is ill-trained and one day makes an off-colored joke about women - BAM! EEOC complaint. But, like most EEOC complaints this one will not come to fruition. However, I now have this poor, ill-trained, arrogant, middle manager in a trap. He’s mad at me, and starts treating me worse and worse. I document and document until a retaliation suite comes to fruition. The company, fearful of elongated litigation, settles for $50K. I get $20,000 after legal costs, my lawyer’s cut, taxes.
Outcome: I’m happily in Zimbabwe with a nice chunk of change in my bank account.
A far reaching scenario with an overly generous payout. This is the sort of nightmare scenario you see in a HR textbook to prove a point, not the run of the mill discrimination or retaliation case.
It is irritating that this (supposed) lawyer has dreamed up this fantasy to prove his point. What’s next Chris? Protecting our employees from wild unicorns? What potential legal liabilities are involved there?
Look, the reason that companies don’t want to hire job hoppers who lack a legitimate excuse for job hopping is the same reason many people avoid temp to hire work: there is an implied lack of commitment. Employees who wildly decry employers who cut people loose on a whim seem to have no problem with an employee’s lack of commitment. Let me be as clear as possible:
I have a problem with both bad employees and bad employers. Job hoppers hurt organizations and irresponsible employers hurt employees. In times of either high or low unemployment, the practices become nearly impossible.
Employees shouldn’t put up with bad employers but the solution isn’t to job hop and hurt yourself. That is dumb. The solution is to leverage your experience into a better job (where you can build up experience and time) or bide your time while you work into another career path (both of which ultimately stick it to a bad employer much worse than being a job hopper). People hate biding time so instead of doing this, they switch jobs (into another crappy job where they’ll want to move on) and perpetuate the cycle. It sucks, I’ve seen people fall into it.
Of course there are going to be exceptions. For the average worker though, you end up digging yourself into a hole by being a job hopper. In that way, you give the employer all of the power. The power the employer has over you when perception that your love of changing jobs every six months overshadows your performance. When you aren’t in charge of your destiny, you have just given your career over to others. You have lost power.
And I know that this trait gets assigned to Gen Y but I have seen it across many generations. Job hopping sucks. Bad employers suck too but that shouldn’t take away from the fact that job hopping hurts the good employers as well.
HRM Today Announces Sponsorship Deal
This is a repost from my HRM Today site. Good enough news to share in both places!
In a deal scratched over a couple hours of e-mailing (including a quip about someone’s grandma), I am pleased to announce a sponsorship deal with Laurie Ruettimann’s HR Bloggers group (www.hrbloggers.com). This is a deal that makes a lot of sense for both parties but let me outline some of my goals with the sponsorship of the group:
- Grow a social network for HR bloggers - I like writing blogs, I don’t like running social networks. That being said, I think the benefits of social networks are huge. Upping the level of conversation between HR people is something I think blogs and social networks both accomplish.
- Grow the number of HR bloggers - There needs to be more of us and we need to stop being wimps about blogging. I have learned a ton about recruiting from dedicated, grassroots recruiting communities like recruitingblogs.com, recruiting.com and the multitude of recruiting bloggers having robust conversations about their trade. HR needs that now more than ever.
- Grow my site - Usually a sponsorship involves money so I made a calculation that this will help build HRM Today into a better site with more visitors and a better product for readers. With more visitors and better product, we can start talking about revenue opportunities as well as rev share opportunities that reward people for posting content to the network.
The best part about this deal is the hope that each will continue to do what each does best (social networking and blogging) and that the changes made will be ones that increase the number of users and increase the quality of the respective sites. The optimal goal from my end is that if an HR pro wants to get plugged in to the online HR community, they can become a part of both HR Bloggers and HRM Today and they instantly have a network of other HR professionals.
Is this an idea that resonates with you? If so, do two things:
- Sign up for accounts on HR Bloggers and HRM Today
- Invite HR colleagues to join both with you
That’s it! Instant community.
Gen Y is Seen as a Joke for Good Reason
And honestly, it breaks my heart a little bit each day to read stories like the one I am posting below. I know that it really doesn’t affect me or my abilities to be successful but it still makes me sad that people cannot see why others have problems with Gen Y
Obama Supporters Take His Name As Their Own (NY Times)
Just a couple choice quotes:
Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.
“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.
Ooh, not Facebook!
Jeff Strabone of Brooklyn now signs credit card receipts with his newly assumed middle name, while Dan O’Maley of Washington, D.C., jiggered his e-mail account so his name would appear as “D. Hussein O’Maley.” Alex Enderle made the switch online along with several other Obama volunteers from Columbus, Ohio, and now friends greet him that way in person, too.
Credit card receipts, e-mail signatures and online profiles too? Revolutionary!
“My name is such a vanilla, white-girl American name,” said Ashley Holmes of Indianapolis, who changed her name online “to show how little meaning ‘Hussein’ really has.”
Wait, so because you have a vanilla, white-girl name, you are going to piss on the Hussein name because you think it has no meaning? Who cares if millions of people around the world embrace the name as part of their heritage, ancestry or anything else? I want to make a lame political point!
The movement is hardly a mass one, and it has taken place mostly online, the digital equivalent of wearing a button with a clever, attention-getting message. A search revealed hundreds of participants across the country, along with a YouTube video and bumper stickers promoting the idea. Legally changing names is too much hassle, participants say, so they use “Hussein” on Facebook and in blog posts and comments on sites like nytimes.com, dailykos.com and mybarackobama.com, the campaign’s networking site.
And there we get to the real issue: Gen Y’ers (at least in this case) are too lazy and care too little about it to actually follow through and make a real impact on the debate at hand. It is too much of a hassle but I can change my Facebook profile, e-mail signature and give my buddies high fives for doing something incredibly insignificant. It really makes me long for the days where boomers were, you know, getting arrested and actually standing up for causes they believed in to elicit real change.
What Gen Y truly lacks is execution. They don’t think it is important. They’d rather have clever ideas and not have to work too hard in actually making it happen. While the idea may have been solid (even if it is a little to cult of personality for me), nobody was willing to do the difficult thing and turn the idea into a real social commentary on race and religious bias. By being unwilling to step up to the plate, this phenomenon is laughed at by other generations because it confirms many of the stereotypes about Gen Y.
And you know what? They are right. Bummer.
Four Great Resources for HR and Recruiting Professionals
While you are enjoying your patriotism fueled short week (at least in the US and Canada), here are a few networking resources to make your life easier. I am just a *tiny* bit biased about these but you’re just going to have to deal with it!
- RecruitingBlogs.com - With almost 10,000 members, it has been great to see people use this resource so well. Jason Davis has done an outstanding job developing a community of cooperative, friendly people in an industry that is often seen as hypercompetitive and cut-throat.
- HR Bloggers - A growing group of current and aspiring HR bloggers. Laurie Ruettimann of PunkRockHR put this group together and it is quickly expanding. HR is tough enough, we shouldn’t have to blog alone too, right?
- HR Professionals - Put together by Gautam Ghosh, I just found this group of over 200 HR professionals. Not surprisingly, this group has a nice international flair but I’d love to see it grow a la RecruitingBlogs as well.
- HRM Today - I am not hawking this because it is my website! Okay, I lie. Still, we’ve had a great response to our initial request for bloggers to participate. We are consistently getting two to three really great posts a day (and growing) from some really great bloggers including Alexandra Levit, Samrah Jamil, HR Minion, HR Wench, Mark Stelzner, James Morrissey, Laurie Ruettimann, Breanne Potter, Susanna Cesar Morton and (coming soon) Dan McCarthy. Great and aspiring to be great bloggers are always welcome (e-mail for more info: lance (at) hrmtoday (dot) com)
So if you are going to slack this week, slack on something that actually helps you and your career!
Generation Envy
How petulant Generation Y haters can be worse than the “Gen Y is Better” crowd.
It is a sunny day and I am inside. While I long for the outdoors, I am reminded that the flexibility to let me go outside and play is embedded in my GDNA (that’s short for Generational DNA). Ah, the life of Generation “Why can’t I go out and play? I’ll work on my homework later.” My ultimate plea doesn’t work and I sit here, occasionally looking out my window ready to go.
Scenes like these flash through my head every nice day here in the Pacific Northwest. While it is easy to come in and work when the days are five hours long and the rain never ends, it becomes impossibly difficult to convince me I should be wearing something other than my shorts and sandals. While generations before me may have been used to waiting for the work day to come to an end, my generational based desire to be out there now and work at night is undeniable.
I have been writing on this blog for over two years and in that time I have discussed Gen Y in both positive and negative ways. I feel like my negativity about Gen Y overshadows the fact that I don’t like absolutely loath knee jerk Gen Y haters.
Yes, I do think generational issues are overstated. I think there is a lot of hype about them and I am lucky enough to have become self-aware before the hype took hold of us all. Sometimes I feel surrounded by zombies and question my own membership to the very group that I belong to (by birth, not by virtue). That being said, it is unfair to castigate the entire generation based on the (often times overstated) actions of the entitled whiners with helicopter parents that have come to represent Gen Y.
They Are Jealous, But Not For Those Reasons
There is this common perception that other generations are jealous of Gen Y. While that may be true, it isn’t because “we are so ambitious”, “we do better at our jobs”, or “we ask for things in the workplace that they had to work for”. That may make some members of Gen Y feel better about the jealousy but it doesn’t make sense. The boomers started and led employee friendly companies like Southwest and Starbucks, Gen X had huge entrepreneurial surges and workplace improvements typically benefit everyone.
In talking with other generations, it seems like the greatest amount of envy comes from the amount of opportunity many generation y’ers give up to act like complete babies about workplace issues. Looking at the numbers, it is hard to argue that our generation is the best educated and the most politically, socially and economically prosperous of any of our previous generations. We have technology at our finger tips that just blow everything from the past 20 years out of the water. I went from playing Oregon Trail on Apple IIe’s to creating web pages on the internet in the span of seven years of education. The environment for innovation has never been stronger. The small business environment is as good as it has been. With all of this going for us, we can’t even figure out how to get along while working or when interacting with other generations without coming off as complete pricks. Demanding that workplace rules secede to our needs is just a cherry on top.
The problem with that view is that many in Generation Y aren’t like that, never will be like that or don’t do it in the disgustingly offensive way many outside of our generation portray it. I think it is amazing the opportunities I have and because of that genuine appreciation, I make the best of it every day. I know many in Gen Y who do the same. And while it is understandable that Generation Y has this rose tinted view of the world (we are young and dumb), what isn’t understandable or excusable is the blanket that Gen Y haters have often thrown over our fire. Honestly, you’re older and should know better. These actions only help to further alienate people in my generation who also seek to bring generation y back to reality. Using grandfather colloquialisms like “When I was your age…” doesn’t help you either. These sorts of actions make people feel like you’re the one entitled to make people go through the same steps in life you have gone through. That isn’t any more right thansaying that Gen Y is entitled to skip past you and go straight to CEO.
The Individual, Not The Generation
When it comes down to it, we are all generations of different people. While it is easy to look at statistics about generations and say “This generation believes this, this generation believes that,” but that doesn’t mean anything when considering a person individually. I work in a place that is 5% Gen Y (I’ve run the age analysis) and I do really like (many of) my co-workers. We have a lot of shared values and a shared course for success. Knee jerk Gen Y haters are as unwelcome here as knee jerk haters of any other group. We all need each other to be successful.
That whole part about me wanting to go outside and finding a flexible work arrangement has nothing to do with my generation. It has to do with me and my utter inability to stay focused when I see sunshine (reasons why I can’t move to places with nicer weather until I can be a bigger slacker). I love being outdoors. That’s me. That’s my Dad. That’s my uncle and my Gen X cousin. And I just bought my first iPod. That flies in the face of the generational stereotype.
The message for me is clear: in almost all instances, the individual is more important than the generation. The labels are meant to elicit a certain response (that I understand, as I’ve just abused the hell out of them). But that’s all it is, a label. It is a statement of fact based on when you were born not onwho you are or what you can accomplish or where you can get hired or how you get things done.
Supervisors Need All of the Help They Can Get
I know you may be tired of me hawking this supervisor handbook software from Gradience but you have to understand: this software seriously saved me about a weeks worth of time (40 hours) working on something that I absolutely loath. The problem is, I can put it off more and more but that only creates more work for me as the supervisors don’t know what’s going on.
So this is my review of the software as I plunked out the manual. Here a screenshot from the final product in Microsoft Word:
So here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.
Pros:
- Great interface. It is very intuitive and needs little instruction.
- Includes almost everything you can think of (and more). The only thing it doesn’t include are those specific company policies
- Industry and state customizable. It is preloaded with all 50 states, a couple handfuls of industries and a wizard interface to determine whether you qualify for FMLA coverage or Affirmative Action.
- Exports into Word or PDF format. Exporting into Word is especially helpful.
- Lots of little things you don’t think of. Like inserting the HR manager’s name, phone number and e-mail address in every instance if you want it.
- Save a ton of time trying to get information from a bunch of places into one tidy manual
- Written in an easy to read format. Less legalese for our supervisors to interpret.
Cons:
- Difficulty adding company specific policies outside of the pre-selected areas. The software is robust in its coverage but I did have some company specific sections I wanted to add. I know the software is capable but it was easier to just add it to the exported product
- Formatting of the final product is basic and plain
- For multi-state companies, you have to make complete handbooks specific for each state
The cons were pretty much fixed by the fact that you can export it to Word and add and format to your heart’s content. For the multi-state issue, I made a non-state specific supervisor’s handbook and took the necessary elements from each state and added it to a state supplement that would go along side of the supervisor manual.
Overall, the software is a great time saver. The content is generic (though customizable based on industry/state) and the formating basic but this is obviously to appeal to their wider audience. In my case, I was just happy to save myself 40+ hours of content creation in favor of a half to full day of editing and adding bits and formatting it to my heart’s content. In the HR software world, there are a lot of applications for employee handbook creation but one for supervisors is hard to find.
So now that I have saved myself from the nights and weekends of working to complete this, I can blog at you more often. Lucky you!
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About
Your HR Guy is a Human Resources Generalist practicing in the field. But don't let that fool you, this isn't a boring blog. I seek relevance and humor in a place we will spend much of our lives. Everything from workplace issues, job seeking and terrible bosses. Read more...
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- Recruitment Spotlight: How to Check ReferencesMost people have to check references in some shape or form, whether it’s for a candidate or a babysitter. I don’t know about you, but until I wrote Success for Hire I never really knew how to do it. Here’s what I learned: While you can e-mail a reference initially, connect either in person or by [...]Alexandra Levit
- Woman’s Leadership Programs – No Boyz AllowedCompanies will often use external, university-based programs as a way to develop their high potential senior leaders. These programs typically are 1-2 weeks in duration and offer an intense (and expensive) learning experience. According to Iris Marchaj, Director of Smith Executive Education, “99% of leadership development programs offered by elite business schools are male-oriented…which is precisely [...]Dan McCarthy
- Sink or swim? Do you trust your employees/co-workers?If you are like me, you have a hard time delegating. You like having control over a process and have a hard time letting go. Luckily, I have learned to combat this initial reaction of mine and trust the people around me. At least initially. If you screw up it takes quite a bit to [...]HR Minion
- Why Your HR Department Needs a Blog
