Free Human Resource Articles - Workplace Stress, Employee Evaluations, Personality Tests, Employee Motivation

2008

June 2008 - Stop the Brain Drain

The alarm that has been ringing in the ears of senior managers and business owners lately has become louder and more painful as they see retirements and job-hopping drain their organizational “brain power.”

May 2008 - Make Lemonade: Managing the Gen X and Gen Y Workforce

They have been called the Millennials, Generation Y (and WHY), iGeneration, Net Generation, and the Children of the Rising Dow. So who are these young people knocking on your digital doors and electronic mailboxes looking for jobs?

April 2008 - Are Teams Dead?

So here I am thinking, “Dead? Teams dead? Are you kidding me? Teams dead?” With all the talk in the media about globalization and partnering and virtualization and collaboration, teams can’t be dead. Or can they? So, with a simple 3-word question, this month’s column was born: “Are Teams Dead?”

March 2008 - HR is Not a Fixed Cost

For most employees, management announcing that fifty new hires will join the organization in the next six months is sign of job security. That brings a sigh of relief especially when all the economic news cries recession, economic downturn, and layoffs. There is one exception however: the HR manager.

February 2008 - The One Reason You Have a Workforce

To improve performance managers everywhere, From boardrooms to blogs, are talking about performance management. The discussions are long overdue. The reasons are obvious. Performance management is the heart and soul of execution.

2007

December 2007 -Hiring Competent Jerks or Lovable Fools

Imagine you hired a manager who consistently exceeded his goals but also treated his peers and reports with contempt. He rarely did anything for your company unless it directly benefited him. Do you consider this person a good hire or a bad hire? When faced with the choice between hiring a competent jerk or a lovable fool, who would you choose? You might be surprised how most people answer.

November 2007 -4 Indicators of Employee Capability: PICK your employees

Many workforces today are filled with loyal, dependable, hard working employees whose skills don’t match the needs of the organization anymore. It’s been reported that the skills for over 60% of all jobs are held by less than 20% of the population. In 1950, 60% of jobs required unskilled labor. Today, less then 15% of these jobs are unskilled and the number is falling fast.

October 2007 -High School Dropouts: A Silent Epidemic

Pennsylvania’s schools are continuing to make progress toward ensuring that every child receives the high-quality education they deserve,” Education Secretary Gerald L. Zahorchak said recently following the release of a new report on the quality of education in our state.

I guess that’s one point of view.

September 2007 - Big Fat Liars: Managing Fictional Resumes

Employers these days must be asking themselves, "What's Next?" when it comes to finding qualified and reliable employees. Little white lies and lapses of memory on resumes and during interviews are thinning out an already depleted supply of skilled workers.

August 2007 - Make Performance Reviews Perform

One of the biggest mistakes companies make, according to Matt Angello, is delegating performance management exclusively to human resources. “Sure, HR has a role to play,” he says, “but arguably performance management is an executive-level function, managed by HR but led by the CEO – tone from the top with downstream enabling processes.

July 2007 - Snakes in Suits: Workplace Jerks

Many of you will likely have the same reaction as I did when I picked up a copy of a new book, "Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work"- you're thinking serial killers and stalkers or picturing Hannibal Lecter, Freddy Krueger, and Dr. No. Reality however paints a far different picture. Psychopathic behavior is not illegal. It is not in fact even classified as a mental illness. But most troubling is how many managers confuse psychopathy, a personality disorder, with success attributes.

June 2007 - Predicting Violent Workers: To Use or Not To Use Personality Tests

In the aftermath of Cho Seung-Hui’s mass killing of 32 people at Virginia Tech, the question that is dominating discussions from the water cooler to the halls of Congress is: How could this have been happened and what can we do to prevent it from happening again?

May 2007 - Profit Per Employee - Can HR Be Trusted By Management to Get The Job Done?

Whether you are the executive of a large cap company, the head of a family owned business, or a staffing executive you must be asking yourself: “Is the Sky falling?”

“The talent shortage is real and getting worse,” says Lou Adler, president of the Adler Group and noted recruiting industry expert. For those skeptics who feel all the commotion about worker shortages is mostly hype, there is way too much wind in the Perfect Labor Storm sails to ignore what is happening. The numbers speak for themselves. The real-life situation is that unemployment is down. Wages are exploding for skilled workers.

April 2007 - Generational Diversity: Trust No One Under 30!

A funny thing happened this week on the way to writing this column.

Laura, the executive director of a national sports association, called me. Laura was frantically looking for a keynote speaker for their upcoming meeting. When she first described the topic, I immediately thought “The Perfect Labor Storm.” Unfortunately they already selected another speaker who was presenting workforce trends and demographics. Laura had another subject in mind.

March 2007 -Motor Mouth Managers Miss The Mark On Interviews

A few weeks ago a client asked me to be an observer in a series of candidate interviews.

The first interview began promptly at 9 AM. Michael was the hiring manager. After everyone exchanged handshakes and the customary introductions, Michael started talking. At 9:25 AM, Michael was still talking. With the exception of a few words at the beginning of the interview, the candidate hadn’t spoken another word. It’s not that she didn’t want to; she wasn’t given the chance. From his very first words, Michael took over the interview. I was amazed how long he could talk without taking a breath.

2006

December 2006 - Are They Really Ready to Work?

The future U.S. workforce is here. The alarm bells are ringing: our future workers are woefully ill-prepared for the demands of today’s (and tomorrow’s) workplace. That is the ominous message from the recently released landmark survey of over 430 employers sponsored by The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management.

November 2006 - Screening and Testing Employees: A Bottom Line Process for Matching Candidates with Jobs

Employee testing is a growing phenomenon. Some companies use testing as a way to select candidates in; others use it screen candidates out. Others use it for training, development or succession planning. For a whole host of reasons, pre-employment has become the norm, not the exception.

October 2006 - 360 Degree Feedback: Mistakes Managers Make and How to Avoid Them

Call them performance appraisals, reviews, or evaluations … the truth is that most employees dread receiving them almost as much as managers hate giving them. That fact is, the performance appraisal system in most organizations is broken.

September 2006 - Helicopter Parents and Boomerang Kids

For some parents, you've completed the marathon only to find out they've moved the finish line. For employers, the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be a locomotive. Much has been written about Generation X, those born between 1964 and 1980. The Xers challenged managers with their independent attitudes, demanding meteoric career paths while securing a healthy dose of work-life balance. To make matters more difficult, this generation of replacement workers numbered less than half of the preceding Baby Boomers.

August 2006 - Pandemic Flu - A SPECIAL REPORT!

July 2006 - Different Points of Views: Generational Values

Differences in points of view if not understood lead to conflicts. What is interesting, although not necessarily surprising, is that the same risk taking and reckless abandon the fans adored and teammates respected about Ben on the playing field is now being criticized as careless and stupid.

June 2006 - Competent Chaos: Creating High Performance Teams

Where manufacturing managers rush to improve productivity, they often find themselves lunging full force into a brick wall called quality. When sales managers are directed to increase sales, they find themselves at odds with manufacturing. Even non-profit social agencies get into the act: finding new and creative ways to raise money without losing sight of the mission, or worse, holding back services because resources aren’t available.

May 2006 - Sales Personality Tests - What Makes Salespeople Tick

What is it that differentiates the top producing salespeople from the Willys that go through life working very hard to eek out a paycheck and the Romas who would sell their mother out for a buck? Is
it experience? Is it sales knowledge? Is it personality? Is it values?

April 2006 - Growing Customer Commitment
The great writer Robert Frost once said, "Isn't it a shame that when we get up in the morning our minds work furiously - until we come to work." I can't help thinking that Mr. Frost must have been the victim of a really bad customer experience when he said this. I wonder what he'd say today! The contrast between exceptional and horrible service is just remarkable these days

March 2006 - Zzzzzzzzzz
Think napping is for kids? Winston Churchill did it. So did Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison. Yet, caught in the cross-hairs of productivity and profits, employers who catch employees grabbing a few zzz's on the job jump to the conclusions of laziness or goofing-off.

February 2006 - Labor Storm Watch
Let the celebration begin. Hayley Mills, Sally Fields and Patty Duke turn 60 this year. (Tell me it can’t be true.) So does Presidents Bush and Clinton, Donald Trump and Cher. Joining them will be the front edge of millions of aging Boomers who are anticipated to retire or change careers in unprecedented numbers. Partying will continue for years to come!

2005

December 2005 - Resume Lies Leave a Paper Tale
Resignations and terminations occur so often today you hardly expect to read about them in the newspaper, much less as headline copy. What gives when this normally inconsequential human resources story gains such prominence? It’s a matter of degrees, so to speak.

November 2005 - Must-Read: What Workers Want
Apparently over 1500 hundred job seekers and seventy-plus businesses and organizations in Lancaster County didn’t get the message. Resumes in hand, these job seekers strolled up and down the rows of booths filled with recruiters at Clipper Stadium for the 2005 Lancaster County Chamber of Commerce Job Fair in late September.

October 2005 - Leadership Lost in the Big Easy

As the roar of the winds from Hurricane Katrina died down and the torrential rush of water into New Orleans proper slowed, a huge sucking sound was heard loud and clear. At first it sounded familiar but we could barely believe our ears. So we watched and waited. Finally we recognized it: it was that all-too-familiar leadership vacuum coming from the offices of elected and appointed officials responsible for rescue and recovery and protecting thousands of lives.

September 2005 - The World is Flat
Just a few weeks ago, I was working with a client who sits just across the street from a McDonald's in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. As you approach the exit, its trademark golden arches reach high above Interstate 55 in the heart of the Bible Belt. Ironically, I just read about this McDonald's a few days earlier in the book The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman.

August 2005 - Boomers Turn Gray, Health Care Experiences Aches and Pain
The future of health care in the U.S. as well as in most developed countries, is unknown. Three irrefutable trends are stacking the odds against a quick and affordable fix: The graying of America; the scarcity of health care providers trained to care for older Americans; and an explosive demand for access to the most sophisticated and advanced care regardless of the ability to pay. These intertwined but independent trends have profound implications for the way employers can and will conduct business.

June 2005 - Second Careers: How to Jump Ship without Drowning

My neighbor just retired after 42 years of working for the same government agency. A human resources manager just celebrated 30 years with the same employer and she's only in her early 50s. A dentist keeps on drilling and cleaning teeth after 50 years. Just a decade or two ago, lifetime careers like these were not only the norm, but the expectation. Loyalty, job stability and financial security were revered and considered more valuable than holding the winning lottery ticket. Changing a career in your 30s, no less your 40s and 50s, was deemed irresponsible and immature behavior.

May 2005 - Does Job Stress Drive Executives to Drink?

George liked his life and went to great lengths to maintain his job and image. Sadly, that included hiding his dirty little secret. George, you see, was an alcoholic. Like many other addicts George was quite skilled at disguising his destructive behavior. Sober at work, when off the clock, George went home and drank himself to into a stupor. Soon, the all-night binges made him nervous. To quiet his anxiety, he began popping prescription drugs during the day.

April 2005 - How to Hire The Million Dollar Salesperson
The crucial first step for hiring top performing salespeople boils down to this: Understand the type of salesperson who can sell to your customers. Why? Because you must be able to size up talent to find that "million dollar baby."

March 2005 - A Primer on Personality Tests

Robert dreads the upcoming workweek. His campaign to recruit 12 sales people and a national sales manager goes live in three days. Display ads scheduled to run in the Sunday classified sections of major metropolitan newspapers and e-recruitment on several major job boards guarantees a virtual avalanche of faxes, phone calls, and email. Robert goes cold with dread when he thinks of sifting through several hundred resumes and cover letters.

February 2005 - Customer Rage
We all know that keeping customers happy is the key to a successful business. Sure, sometimes it's a challenge. One of the key areas of complaint is actually how the complaint itself is handled. It's one thing to have an unhappy customer. It's another to get the customer even more upset by not handling the complaint in a "satisfactory" manner. A recent survey of customer households by the Customer Care Alliance found that an increasing number of Americans (73 percent of those with a product or service problem) are extremely upset about how "serious" complaints are being handled by companies.

January 2005 - The Perfect Labor Storm Revisited

In my first column, I introduced the concept of impending worker shortages to B2B readers. "The Perfect Storm: Navigating the Bermuda Triangle of Job Futures," warned about an impending worker shortage. Soon after the column was published, the economy tanked and the unemployment rate approached six percent. “What happened to this ‘Perfect Labor Storm' you predicted?” asked managers.

December 2004 - One Flu Over The Employer's Workplace

So it begins. Sniffles and a scratchy throat. You feel like you're burning up, and then the fever breaks and you start to shiver. Your muscles ache. You have the flu. You want to burrow under the covers with a quilt pulled up to your chin. Instead, you chauffer the kids, running errands in between pick-ups and drop-offs. Staying at home, in bed, isn't an option. Your sick days went to taking care of ailing children. Missing work means losing vacation days to the flu.

November 2004 - Full Employment Nightmares: What is Keeping HR Awake at Night?
It's 3 AM . Patti Martin, human resource manager at Union National Community Bank in Mt. Joy , stirs from a deep sleep and groggily reaches for the paper and pen on her bedside table. "I can't fall back to sleep unless I write down what I was thinking," says Martin. What keeps human resources managers such as Martin awake night after night? In a nutshell, the increasingly difficult job of assuring their employers have enough skilled staff to deliver products and services on time and in a manner that assures excellent customer satisfaction. These days that's a tough job, and it gets more and more difficult.

October 2004 - The Truth about Workplace Stress

Workplace stress has been on human resource professional's radar for years. But management considered the solution as soft stuff. A few execs threw HR a bone and agreed to offer "warm and fuzzy feel-good" training as long as it didn't interfere with business or cost too much. Others expected employees just to tough it out.

That is until recently.

September 2004 - Like Bad News, Negative Employees Hit Fast....and Hard

Question: Why is a negative employee's attitude like a dangerous hurricane?

Answer: Because where ever they land, devastation results.

While listening to the news about Hurricane Charley ripping through Florida , I was reminded of a recent consulting gig. I was called in to diffuse a bad workplace environment caused by one negative employee. Let's call her Meg. You know Meg. Maybe she works for you. Meg and Hurricane Charley have this in common. Wherever and whenever they touch down, they leave a path of destruction. With Charley, it was a mass of battered homes, twisted wire and steel, shattered lives. With Meg, it is employee turnover, workplace disruptions, and one conflict after the other.

August 2004 - 7 Secrets for Hiring Success

Traditionally, employees use an interview to confirm the assumption a person is competent and to look for compatibility with the company. To check for competence and compatibility, most employers do four things, in this order: make a list of the attributes necessary to do the job and be a team member, conduct an interview, check references, and trust gut instinct. Sounds good, up to a point. The rub comes when you make the final decision. Trusting your instincts leads to hiring decisions that have as much chance for a successful outcome as flipping a coin.

July 2004 - Cheating, Lies, Employee Fraud and Other Workplace Ethics

Employee fraud is on the rise, soaring from $400 billion in lost revenue for U.S. businesses in 1996 to over $600 billion in 2003. It seems the American public is cheating at everything. How can it be wrong if everybody is doing it? Studies show that employees are spending approximately one-hour or more each day sending and reading personal emails, planning vacations, making medical and dental appointments, chasing down their parents and children, making arrangements for childcare and eldercare, and even surfing the web while on the clock.

June 2004- "Which Intelligence Should People Have?"

The implications of cognitive skills and an aging workforce for businesses has serious concerns for business. Employers may have no choice but to replace their talent. The workforce is aging. At the stroke of midnight, January 1, 2004, the youngest of the Baby Boomers began turning 40, the official entrance to "middle age."

May 2004 - "Resu-mess" - Online Recruiting Reduces Time to Hire

Just like the neighbor attending an open house just to get a peek how the people on the other side of the street live, an increasing number of job candidates are just "shopping". The result is creating a massive influx of resumes is creating - an administrative nightmare named the "resu-mess".

April 2004 - Why Performance Reviews Fail

Ask any manager what he hates most about his or her job and you'll likely hear "performance reviews". For many reasons, these periodic employee evaluations have been done poorly if at all in the past. But there is a runaway train barreling down the track called global competition, coming right at you. The engine of this train is fueled by productivity; the cars that follow determine the profitability. Effective performance reviews are crucial managment tools.

March 2004 - Managing Value, Valuing Results

When people are hired, they come with personalities - individual preferences to think and behave in certain ways. And yet many managers still downplay the impact that personalities has on performance (or the lack of it) and continue to rely on experience, education and "gut feeling" as the primary rights of passage for hiring the "right" people. The influence that personality has on the performance of an employee has no greater truth than in the search for employees with the "right" values.

February 2004 - 7 Steps to Analyzing Your Talent

How good are human resource professionals doing at demonstrating human capital metrics? All you need to do is ask them. You'll likely hear about the cost to hire, time to fill jobs, and turnover rate. While important to know, these HR functions don't necessarily have any strategic importance. In other words, they don't create new value, they manage costs.

The first thing any executive, manager, or owner responsible for the development and execution of its organization's strategy must ask is: How do our employees create value in our organization?

January 2004 - Get Ready to Tweak! - What's in Store for 2004?

Productivity in the U.S. is up 9.4 percent. What this means is that workers in this country have produced in 2000 hours what it used to take 2188 hours. That increased productivity is equivalent to 24 fewer days needed to produce the same product or service as it did before all the layoffs, downsizing, and business closures. But that doesn't mean the demand for workers won't increase.

December 2003 - Beware of Turkeys That Fly and Top Performers Who Walk on Water

The life cycle of employees like Randy is repeated day after day in thousands of businesses every day. What takes place when a potential super-star gets drunk with his own success? How and why does this happen? Was Randy, with all his talent and smarts, a victim of the organizational culture or was his behavior predictable and inevitable?

November 2003 - Employee Have Feet...and feet are made for walking

Over 700 of the 1000-plus job seekers who attended the September 2003 Lancaster Chamber Fall Job Fair completed a confidential and anonymous survey sponsored by Success Performance Solutions. Employers can learn a great deal about what the future search for workers holds from these job-seeking candidates. The rest of this article reveals the results of the survey.

October 2003 -Top Ten Managerial Competencies

Over 5000 executives were surveyed by Success Performance Solutions. Here are their choices for critical management talents. Effective leadership requires the ability to think analytically without getting bogged down in the details, making timely decisions without reacting impulsively, building consensus without compromising results, and getting people to want to do what you want them to do. These abilities are often times called competencies and nearly every large organization in America is working on building their core competency list.

September 2003 - Beware the Talent Blackout

Just yesterday, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board released its report on NASA's responsibility in the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. They blamed the accident on foam that hit the shuttle's wing, but more implicitly blamed NASA's culture made the catastrophe happen. The cost to America was over one billion dollars and the loss of the seven crew members was unconscionable.

August 2003 - Marching To A Different Bucket

A good employee might want pay that won't cost you anything

Roll the tape. If all your friends jumped off the bridge...would you jump too?

Bring back any memories? These statements when told to us over and over again become beliefs. Based on the outcomes we experience, we learn that all things told to us are not always true. We learn to trust certain beliefs and value them positively and disbelieve others and view these negatively.

July 2003 - "Ethical? Here's What You Think"

How uncanny? On the eve of the release of our "Report on Integrity and Ethics", the longtime chairman and CEO of Freddie Mac, the president and COO, and the CFO were asked to step aside. Why?

June 2003 - See Jack Run
Costly Turnover verses expensive mistakes are the dilemma of an HR executive who undervalues general skills.

May 2003 - C-ing is believing!
Style shock shouldn't cause business culture shock. What matters is whether a job is done effectively, not how.

April 2003 - Job Stress Stretches Bottom Line
Although stress is inevitable and unavoidable, individuals whose work styles are mismatched to a job only increases the risk of job-related absenteeism, illness, mistakes and accidents. Eliminating the stress is impossible but behavioral and personality assessments are becoming an economical and effective way to identify employees who are most at risk and as tools to help coach managers coach them on how to cope with and manage stressful situations.

March 2003 - A Pricey Hiring Mistake. How to avoid interviewing Dr. Jekyll and hiring Mr. Hyde
What other process in business today has such poor reliability and continues to be the tool of choice to screen and promote an organization's most valuable asset, its people? This reliance on the traditional interview creates two very expensive problems for employers: the cost of hiring the wrong employee and the hassles and expense associated with terminating a wrong hire.

February 2003 - The Halo Effect
The termination and subsequent replacement of any employee is painful. And the retention of an under-performing manager, especially a senior manager, is like self-inflicting a wound. There is never a good time and it's always expensive.

January 2003 - The Lessons of High Performance
A Case Study of Loan Officers for Two Regional Banks
Sharon is Randy's manager. Randy is a nice young man. He's a good father, devoted husband, and hard-working employee. But Sharon is beginning to question if Randy is cut out for this job or if she was doing something wrong as his manager.

December 2002 - Why Johnny Can`t Work: A brutal audit reveals critical planning problems ahead for area employers.
With the unemployment rate threatening to blast through the six percent ceiling, the labor shortage doesn't seem so bad anymore. Admittedly hiring has slowed for many businesses, but the shortage of qualified workers has not only not stopped but worsens by the day.

November 2002 - Down A Black Hole
Repulsive Arithmetic: The loss load of a bungling manager
It`s well documented that a manager has more impact upon the retention of an employee than any other individual or any benefits has within an organization.

October 2002 - One is the Loneliest Number
Is honestly always the best policy or are some things best left unsaid? Can there be more than one version of the truth? When is whistle-blowing the right thing to do and when does it break confidence and trust?

September 2002 - When Susan Can't Sell

August 2002 - Pre-cruitment Pre-sells Profitable Prospects

July 2002 - Churn-Over:
How One Company Said "NO" to De-motivated and Unskilled Candidates

June 2002 - The High Cost of Work Deficiency Syndrome

May 2002 - Seven Hiring Myths for Managers to Avoid

April 2002 - Where art Thou Radar O'Reilly

March 2002 - From Human Flare to Great Talent

February 2002 - Test for the Differences Between
Average and Great Performers

January 2002 - Protect Your Toes: Managerial Competence and Turnover

November 2001 - Career Planning: Getting Excited About Life and Career

October 2001 - Business As Usual?

September 2001 - Attitude Virus Hacks Human Capital