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Human Resources: Most Popular Articles

These articles are the most popular over the last month.
Work Dress Code
Your Company's objective in establishing a business casual dress code, is to allow our employees to work comfortably in the workplace. Yet, we still need our employees to project a professional image for our customers, potential employees, and visitors. Because all casual clothing is not suitable for the office, these guidelines will help you determine what is appropriate to wear to work. Business casual dress is the dress code standard. Learn more about business casual dress in this dress code.
Twelve Tips for Team Building
People in every workplace talk about building the team, working as a team and my team, but few understand how to create the experience of team work or how to develop an effective team. Here are twelve tips for building successful work teams. You can use these tips for effective team building every day.
Human Resource Management
Human Resource Management is the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment, management, and the direction of the people in the organization. Human Resources management is also performed by line managers.
HR Job Descriptions
Human resources are the people that staff and operate an organization. Learn about the people who work in Human Resources do. Specifically, learn about the job description of the HR Manager, the HR Generalist and the HR Director. There is considerable overlap depending upon the size of the organization and the job description of the HR Manager, the HR Generalist and/or the HR Director.
Candidate Rejection Letter
Looking for a sample candidate rejection letter? Your candidates appreciate receiving official notification from organizations in which they invested the time to apply and interview. Use this sample candidate rejection letter as a base for developing your own.
Job Interview Tips
The job interview is a powerful factor in the employee selection process in most organizations. While the job interview may not deserve all the attention that the job interview receives, it is still a powerful force in hiring. Other background checking and work history references provide much less personalized and more factual information, and hopefully, you have also added these checks to your hiring decisions, too. But the job interview remains key to assessing the candidate's cultural fit.
Your Strategic Framework
Both people and organizations need to establish a strategic framework for significant success. Identifying your vision, mission statement, values, strategies, goals and action plans will fuel your future accomplishments. Want to know how?
Policy Samples
Looking for policy samples, sample checklists, sample procedures, sample forms, and examples of Human Resources and business tools? You've found the site for policy samples, sample checklists, sample procedures, sample forms, and examples of Human Resources and business tools. These samples are provided for personal use, if you cite the source. Contact the Human Resources Guide to inquire about use of the samples for publication or any other use.
Management Interview Questions
The following sample job interview questions about management and supervisory skills enable you to assess your candidate’s skill in the management and supervision of employees. Feel free to use these job interview questions in your own candidate interviews.
Job Offer Letter
Looking for a sample job offer letter? Your candidates appreciate the job offer terms spelled out in detail. Use this job offer letter as a base for developing your own employment offer.
HR Director Job Description
This is a sample job description for a Human Resources Director. While all Human Resources Director job descriptions need to be customized to meet the needs of the organization in which they serve, this sample Human Resources Director job description will give you ideas and sample phrasing, too.
Job Interview Questions
The job interview is a powerful factor in the employee selection process. While the job interview may not deserve all of the attention that the job interview receives, it is still a powerful force in hiring. The job interview questions used are critical in magnifying the power of the job interview to help you select superior employees. Job interview questions matter to employers. Here are sample job interview questions for employers to use.
Sample Resignation Letter
Sample letter of resignation or a resignation letter for the human resources policy, checklist, procedure, and samples directory.
Employee Recognition Letters
A simple thank you letter, that recognizes specific employee contributions, goes a long way in helping employees feel recognized and rewarded. In fact, an employee recognition letter that accompanies a bonus check or a gift magnifies the recognition an employee experiences. Some employees experience such gratification that they post the thank you and recognition letter in their cubicle, office, or workstation for years.
HRIS
The Human Resource Information System (HRIS is a software or online solution for the data entry, data tracking, and data information needs of the Human Resources function within a business. Normally packaged as a data base, hundreds of companies sell some form of HRIS and every HRIS has different capabilities. Pick your HRIS carefully based on the capabilities you need in your company.
Performance Checklist
Performance management is a hot topic in business these days. This Performance Management Process Checklist will help you do the right things right to create an effective employee performance management and development system in your company for your employees.
Difficult People
Difficult people do exist at work. Difficult people come in every variety and no workplace is without them. How difficult a person is for you to deal with depends on your self-esteem, your self-confidence and your professional courage. Dealing with difficult people is easier when the person is just generally obnoxious or when the behavior affects more than one person. Dealing with difficult people is much tougher when they are attacking you or undermining your professional contribution.
HR Definition
Human resources are the people that staff and operate an organization. Read this definition of Human Resources.
How to Ask for a Pay Raise
Want more money than you're currently making? If your goal is to stay in your current job, working for your present employer, you'll need to ask for a pay raise. Planning and preparation are key when you ask for a pay raise. So are timing, your employer's pay practices, and the market-based pay rates for your job.
Interview Questions
The following sample job interview questions about interpersonal skills enable you to assess your candidate’s skill in interpersonal and work relationships. Feel free to use these job interview questions in your own candidate interviews.
Ask Right to Hire Right
Looking for a simple, yet effective way to immediately improve your interviewing and staff selection process? There's a way to ask questions that will help you hire employees that will ensure you hire people who will contribute positively to your organization.
Develop Job Descriptions
Develop job descriptions to help you articulate the most important outcomes you need from an employee performing a particular job. Develop job descriptions as a communication tool that tell coworkers where their job leaves off and the job of another starts. Develop job descriptions to tell an employee where their job fits within the overall department and the overall company. Learn more about how to develop job descriptions.
HR Generalist Job Description
This is a sample job description for a Human Resources Generalist. While all Human Resources Generalist job descriptions need to be customized to meet the needs of the organization in which they serve, this sample Human Resources Generalist job description will give you ideas and sample phrasing, too.
Illegal Interview Questions
The job interview is a powerful factor in the employee selection process. You can use behavioral-based job interview questions to help you select superior candidates. Ask interview questions that help you identify whether the candidate has the behaviors, skills, and experience needed for the job you are filling. Review sample job interview questions, both legal job interview questions and illegal job interview questions.
Work Dress Codes
A work dress code is a set of standards that companies develop to help provide their employees with guidance about what is appropriate to wear to work. Work dress codes range from formal to business casual to casual. The formality of the workplace dress code is normally determined by the amount of interaction employees have with customers. See sample work dress codes.
Candidate Rejection Letter
Looking for a sample candidate rejection letter? Your candidates appreciate receiving official notification from organizations in which they invested the time to apply and interview. Use this sample candidate rejection letter as a base for developing your own.
Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment occurs when one employee makes continued, unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, to another employee, against his or her wishes. Here are examples of sexual harassment, recommendations about sexual harassment complaints and investigations, and sexual harassment prevention in the workplace.
Nonverbal Communication
Is there ever any doubt in your mind as to the mood of a coworker upon their arrival at work? Nonverbal communication is the single most powerful form of communication. More than the voice or even words, nonverbal communication cues you in to what is on another person’s mind. The best communicators are sensitive to the power of the emotions and thoughts communicated nonverbally. Find out more about nonverbal communication.
Human Resource Development
Human Resource Development (HRD) is the framework for helping employees develop their personal and organizational skills, knowledge, and abilities. Human Resource Development includes such opportunities as employee training, employee career development, performance management and development, coaching, succession planning, key employee identification, and organization development.
Motivation Interview Questions
The following sample job interview questions about motivation enable you to assess what motivates the candidate you are interviewing. Feel free to use these job interview questions in your own candidate interviews.
Employee Thank You Letters
A formal thank you letter, that recognizes specific employee contributions, goes a long way in helping employees feel recognized and rewarded. In fact, a formal employee recognition letter that accompanies a bonus check or a gift magnifies the recognition an employee experiences. Some employees experience such gratification that they post the thank you and recognition letter in their cubicle, office, or workstation for years.
Hiring Checklist
Want to recruit and hire a superior workforce? This checklist for hiring employees will help you systematize your process for hiring employees, whether it's your first employee or one of many employees you are hiring. This hiring employees checklist helps you keep track of your recruiting efforts. This hiring employees checklist communicates both the recruiting and the hiring process to the hiring manager. Your feedback and comments are welcome to improve this checklist for hiring employees.
Employee Recognition
Employee recognition is not just a nice thing to do for people. Employee recognition is a communication tool that reinforces and rewards the most important outcomes people create for your business. When you recognize people effectively, you reinforce, with your chosen means of recognition, the actions and behaviors you most want to see people repeat. An effective employee recognition system is simple, immediate, and powerfully reinforcing.
Build a Teamwork Culture
Team building is creating a work culture that values collaboration. In a teamwork environment, people understand and believe that thinking, planning, decisions and actions are better when done cooperatively. People recognize, and even assimilate, the belief that “none of us is as good as all of us.” (High Five) It’s hard to find work places that exemplify teamwork.
Behavioral Interviews
Behavioral interviews are the best tool you have to identify candidates who have the behavioral traits and characteristics you have determined are essential for success in your open position. As you read my tips in How to Conduct an Effective Behavioral Interview below, please note that the actual behavioral interview is preceded by behavioral trait identification and a job description. Learn more.
Rejection Letters
Do you need sample applicant rejection letters? Here are sample rejection letters for the applicants who did not get the job. Use these sample rejection letters to develop your own letters to politely and kindly turn a candidate down.
Icebreaker: Commonalities
I've used this successful team building icebreaker for so many years that I don't remember where it originated. This team building icebreaker is fast, easy, and fun. Try out this always successful, laughter-generating, team building icebreaker.
Inspirational Quotes Index
Looking for an inspirational quote or a business quotation for your newsletter, business presentation, bulletin board or inspirational posters? These quotes are useful to help motivation and inspiration in business and at work.
Job Analysis
A job analysis is the process used to collect information about the duties, responsibilities, necessary skills, outcomes, and work environment of a particular job. You need as much data as possible to put together a job description, which is the frequent outcome of the job analysis. Learn more about the job analysis.
Conflict Resolution
As an organization leader, manager or supervisor, you are responsible for creating a work environment that enables people to thrive. If turf wars, conflicts, disagreements and differences of opinion escalate into interpersonal conflict, you must intervene immediately. Conflict resolution, with you as mediator, is essential. Conflict resolution is an immediate priority for your organization.
Leadership Interview Questions
The following sample job interview questions about leadership enable you to assess your candidate’s skill in leadership. Feel free to use these job interview questions in your own candidate interviews.
Business Women
Tired of reading about Carly Fiorina, the former Chairman of the merged Hewlett-Packard - Compaq? Fiorina and other successful women such as Condoleezza Rice, Sherry Lansing or Martha Stewart are the poster faces for the 'You've come a long way, baby' spin doctors. I applaud and laud the work success of these business women and hope all people learn from their wisdom and achievements. However, what is happening for the rest of the women in the workforce now? For the future?
Job Description
Job descriptions are written statements that describe the duties, responsibilities, most important contributions and outcomes needed from a position, required qualifications of candidates, and the reporting relationship of a particular job. Job descriptions define an employee's role. Use care in developing job descriptions.
Show Employee Appreciation
Looking for ways to show appreciation to your coworkers and employees? Employee appreciation and recognition need not be expensive or time-consuming. Even if employee appreciation is, and you can afford to spend, it's often money well-invested for the potential paybacks in more positive employee morale and employee motivation. A happier, more productive workplace is promoted through employee and coworker appreciation and recognition.
HR Assistant Job Description
This is a sample job description for a Human Resources Assistant. While all Human Resources Assistant job descriptions need to be customized to meet the needs of their organization, this sample Human Resources Assistant job description will give you ideas and sample phrasing, too. The job description of the HR Assistant can range from clerical to responsibilities that cross over into those of a Human Resources Generalist.
Sample HR Letters
These sample Human Resources letters provide guidance for common letters you encounter in business and human resources. Use these sample human resources letters to make job offers, thank rejected job candidates, resign from your job, review resume cover letters, review interview thank you letters, and provide effective employee recognition. Find sample human resources letters.
360 Degree Feedback
360 degree feedback is a method and a tool that provides each employee the opportunity to receive performance feedback from his or her supervisor and four to eight peers, reporting staff members, co-workers and customers. Read more about 360 degree feedback and how it can affect your organization.
Quit Your Job
These are the top ten reasons why you might want to quit your current job. These are difficult, if not impossible, work problems to solve. You need to look out for your best interests. Your job consumes too many hours of your life for you to stay where you are if you're miserable. No excuses, now. If these problems exist in your current job, make a plan, and quit your job.
How to Develop a Policy
You want to have the necessary policies and procedures to ensure a safe, organized, convivial, empowering, nondiscriminatory work place. Yet, you do not want to write a policy for every exception to accepted and expected behavior. Policy development is for the many employees not for the few exceptions. Learn How to Develop and Write a Policy.
How to Change Culture
Are you ready to change the culture that exists in your organization? Your assessment of your organizational culture may make you happy; your organizational culture assessment may make you sad. Whatever your organizational culture assessment teaches you about your culture, though, your culture is what it is. To change your organizational culture, to enhance your organizational culture, to benefit from your organizational culture, you need to see and understand your culture. Take the first step.
Develop an Employee Handbook
Looking for ideas about the content of a comprehensive employee handbook? Here’s a list of the policies, procedures, and professional behavioral expectations found in many employee handbooks. This sample employee handbook table of contents also covers pay, benefits, performance expectations and legal issues. When additional resources are available on the site about a particular employee handbook item, I have linked additional articles, policies, checklists, and forms.
Employee Job Descriptions
Effectively developed, employee job descriptions are communication tools that are significant in your organization's success. Poorly written employee job descriptions, on the other hand, add to workplace confusion and hurt communication. Here's why effective employee job descriptions are so important.
Cell Phone Policy
You can make this cell phone policy the basis for your work place cell phone policy. This cell phone policy sample is not to be construed as legal advice.
Sample Attendance Policy
Excellent attendance is an expectation of all employees of Your Company, Inc. Daily attendance is especially important for hourly employees whose customers and coworkers have the expectation of on-time product shipping and delivery. Emergency personal time is made available to employees for such unscheduled events as personal illness, immediate family member illness, and doctor appointments. See a sample attendance policy.
Personal Values
Values are traits or qualities that are considered worthwhile; they represent your highest priorities and deeply held driving forces. When you are part of any organization, you bring your deeply held values and beliefs to the organization. There they co-mingle with those of the other members to create an organization or family culture.
Formal Dress Code
Your Company's objective in establishing a formal dress code is to enable our employees to project the professional image that is in keeping with the needs of our clients and customers. Because our industry requires the appearance of trusted business professionals and we serve clients at our site on a daily basis, a more formal dress code is necessary for our employees. See a formal dress code.
Severance Pay
Severance pay is money that an employer might want to provide for an employee who is leaving their employ. Normal circumstances that might warrant severance pay include layoffs, job elimination, and mutual agreement to part ways for whatever reason. Severance pay usually amounts to a week or two of pay for each year of service to the company. In some instances, a severance package might include extended benefits and outplacement assistance.
Job Specification Sample
This sample job specification for a human resources director provides an example of a job specification. See a sample job specification for a human resources director that describes education, experience, characteristics, skills, knowledge, and an overview of the job requirements.
Performance Improvement Plan
The Performance Improvement Plan (PDP) facilitates constructive discussion between a staff member and the supervisor and clarifies the work performance to improve. It is implemented, at the discretion of the supervisor, when it becomes necessary to help a staff member improve performance. The supervisor, with input from the affected employee, develops an improvement plan; the purpose of the activities outlined is to help the employee to attain the desired level of performance.
Sample Email Policy
This is a sample simple, straightforward email and Internet policy. Please utilize to form the basis for your work email and Internet policies. This policy sample is not to be construed as legal advice.
Candidate Evaluation Form
Interested in a consistent candidate evaluation form so that various people conducting interviews can easily compare notes? This candidate evaluation form will help your interviewers target specific skills and behavioral characteristics during their interviews. It will assist your hiring managers to compare candidates and select the best candidate for your available job.
Job Specification
A job specification describes the knowledge, skills, education, experience, and abilities you believe are essential to performing a particular job. The job specification is developed from the job analysis. Ideally, also developed from a detailed job description, the job specification describes the person you want to hire for a particular job. Learn more about the job specification.
HR New Roles
Three new roles of the human resources professional are discussed: strategic business partner, employee advocate and change champion.
New Employee Welcome Letter
A welcome letter to a new employee who has accepted your job offer confirms the employee's decision to accept the position. The new employee welcome letter helps the new employee feel wanted and welcomed.
Com Interview Questions
The following sample job interview questions about communication enable you to assess your candidate’s skill in communication. Feel free to use these job interview questions in your own candidate interviews.
Organizational Culture
People in every workplace talk about organization culture, the mysterious word that characterizes a work environment. One of the key questions when employers hire an employee explores whether the candidate is a good “cultural fit”. Culture is difficult to define, but you generally know when you have found an employee who appears to fit your organizational culture. Learn more about organizational culture.
HR OneStop Center
Looking for information about any aspect of human resources, work force management and development, self development, or business management for your business or organization? You've found the right resource. Here are all the resources you'll need to effectively start, manage and develop your human resources department and all aspects of your business. Find information about human resources, management, and working with people at work.
Team Building Success
Team work, effective work teams, and team building are popular topics in today’s organizations. Successful teams and team work fuel the accomplishment of your strategic goals. Effective work teams magnify the accomplishments of individuals and enable you to better serve customers. Here is the information you need to develop team work and effective work teams in your organization. Use this information for team building.
Performance Appraisal
Performance appraisals, or performance reviews, as they have traditionally been approached in organizations are fundamentally flawed. The adoption of a performance management system instead will improve both employee performance and employee motivation.
What Employees Want
Every person has different reasons for working. The reasons for working are as individual as the person. But, we all work because we obtain something that we need from work. The something obtained from work impacts morale, employee motivation, and the quality of life. To create positive employee motivation, treat employees as if they matter - because employees matter. These ideas will help you fulfill what people want from work and create employee motivation.
Personal Vision Statement
Your personal vision statement guides your life. Your personal vision statement provides the direction necessary to guide the course of your days and the choices you make about your career. Your personal vision statement is the light shining in the darkness toward which you turn to find your way. Your personal vision statement illuminates your way. Find out how to develop your personal vision statement.
Make Meetings Work
People spend so much time in meetings that turning meeting time into sustained results is a priority for successful organizations. Actions that make meetings successful require management before, during, and after the meeting. If you neglect any one of these meeting management opportunities, your meetings will not bear the fruit you desire from the time you invest in meeting. Take these twelve meeting management actions to guide meeting attendees to achieve expected, positive outcomes.
More Retention Tips
Key employee retention is critical to the long term health and success of your business. Managers readily agree that their role is key in retaining your best employees to ensure business success. If managers can cite these facts so well, why do they behave in ways that so frequently encourage great employees to quit their job? Here are ten more tips for employee retention.
Discipline
Definition of discipline for the human resources glossary of human resources related terms.
Work Needs and Wants
Some people work for personal fulfillment; others work for love of what they do. Others work to accomplish goals and to feel as if they are contributing to something larger than themselves. The bottom line is that we all work for money and for reasons too individual to assign similarities to all workers. Learn more.
Reward, Recognition, Award,...
Looking for convenient, appreciated, reasonably cost-conscious ways to provide rewards and recognition, demonstrate your appreciation and say 'thank you' for contributions that people make at work? These ideas for rewards and recognition will help.
Human R esource FAQs
Want basic information about human resources including a human resources definition? Career planning, a career outlook and more? I've answered some of the questions about human resources that I receive most frequently in email. I trust the responses to these human resources questions will be useful to you, too.
Everything Ice Breakers
Ice breakers, energizers, and activities heighten the effectiveness of training sessions when targeted to the training, speaking, or facilitation topic and the needs of the learners or participants. Ice breakers are also useful to start out meetings and encourage interpersonal communication.
Leadership Values
Leaders know what they value. They also recognize the importance of ethical behavior. The best leaders exhibit both their values and their ethics in their leadership style and actions. Your leadership ethics and values should be visible because you live them in your actions every single day. Learn more about ethics and values.
Provide Feedback That Has a...
Make your feedback have the impact it deserves by the manner and approach you use to deliver feedback. Your feedback can make a difference to people if you can avoid a defensive response.
Ways to Be Happy at Work
Working at Google sounds very cool. I'd be the first to tout Google as a motivating employer: free food, engineers who spend 20 percent of their time on their own projects ... Google and other Fortune magazine top 100 employers provide best workplaces. At the same time, perks that enable employees to spend all their time at work exploit people and destroy work - life balance. So, even the best employer may not be best for everyone. These are factors that will help you find happiness at work.
Achieve Goals
Don't let your goals and resolutions fall by the wayside. Chances are that to achieve your dreams and live a life you love, those goals and resolutions are crucial. Goal setting and goal achievement are easier if you follow these six steps for effective and successful goal setting and resolutions.
Bereavement Leave Policy
This is a bereavement leave or funeral leave sample or example policy. Use this bereavement leave or funeral leave policy as a starting point to write your own bereavement leave or funeral leave policy.
Rejection Letter
Do you need a sample rejection letter? Here is a sample rejection letter for the applicants who did not get the job. Use this sample rejection letter to develop your own letters to politely and kindly turn a candidate down. This rejection letter is for an applicant you’d like to hire in a different position.
Training Needs Assessment
Want to quickly learn the training needs of a group of employees who have similar jobs? Yet, you don't want to develop and implement a survey, put the questions in a computer program, or run analyses on demographic information you collect. This training needs assessment works best in small to mid-sized organizations. It will give you a quick assessment of the training needs of an employee group. This training needs assessment helps find common training programs for a group of employees.
Gift the Boss
It’s an age-old dilemma and it comes up several times each year. What do you do for that special boss or coworker on their birthday, their company anniversary, their engagement, the birth of their child, or to celebrate the holiday season. Gift-giving occasions are endless – and endlessly challenging. Learn how to gift your boss or a special coworker.
Phone Screen
The telephone interview or candidate screen allows the employer to determine if the candidate's qualifications, experience, workplace preferences and salary needs are congruent with the position and organization. The telephone interview saves managerial time and eliminates unlikely candidates. While I recommend developing a customized interview for each position, this generic interview will guide you.
Team Building Quotes
Looking for an inspirational quote or a business quotation for your newsletter, business presentation, bulletin board or inspirational posters? These team building and team work quotes are useful to help motivation and inspiration. These quotes about team building and team work will help you create success in business, success in management and success in life.
Bad Bosses
You're weary. You're frustrated. You're unhappy. You're demotivated. Your interaction with your boss leaves you cold. He's a bully, intrusive, controlling, picky and petty. He takes credit for your work, never provides positive feedback and misses each meeting he schedules with you. He's a bad boss, bad to the bone. Dealing with less than effective managers, or just plain bad managers and bad bosses, is a challenge too many employees face. These ideas will help you deal with your bad boss.
Sample Paid Time Off Policy
The purpose of this Paid Time Off (PTO) policy is to provide staff with the opportunity to take paid time away from work that can be used for such needs as vacation, personal illness, family member illness, personal time, doctor appointments, school or philanthropic volunteerism, and other activities of the employee's choice. The company's goal, in providing PTO, is to reduce unscheduled absenteeism, reduce the need for supervisory oversight, and provide employees with flexible time off.
Ten Toughest Questions
Regular emails from readers ask hundreds of questions each year. Patterns emerge about the toughest situations you face in your organizations. These are the ten toughest, but most frequent questions you send my way. I’ve written a how-to piece to answer each question you’ve asked. These articles address and answer your toughest questions.
Dealing With Difficult People
Difficult coworkers. In every workplace, you will have difficult coworkers. Dealing with difficult coworkers, bosses, customers, clients, and friends is an art worth perfecting. Dealing with difficult situations at work is challenging, yet rewarding. You can increase your skill at dealing with the difficult people who surround you in your work world. These tips will help you in dealing with difficult people at work.
Motivating Employees
Successfully motivating your employees can bring a lot to your organization. Read about motivating employees during times of change, including the advantages and disadvantages of employee motivation, employee motivation tips, and an employee motivation check list.
Hiring an Employee
Hiring the right employee is a challenging process. Hiring the wrong employee is expensive, costly to your work environment, and time consuming. Hiring the right employee, on the other hand, pays you back in employee productivity, a successful employment relationship, and a positive work environment. Hiring the right employee is rewarding for employees. Hiring the right employee enhances your work culture and pays you back a thousand times over. These steps are key to hiring the right employee.
Speed Meeting Icebreaker
Looking for an icebreaker that will quickly allow your training session participants to meet fellow participants? Need an icebreaker that will warm up the group with action and movement? You’ve found the right icebreaker. This speed meeting icebreaker will accomplish both of these objectives.
Goal Setting
Once upon a time, in a business management world that seems more remote with every passing day, SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based goals) supported business success. No more. Goal setting is the foundation for personal and business success. It is time, however, in the business environment existing today, to expand the meaning of SMART goals. And, perhaps, one word per letter is no longer enough to define a useful acronym. Read more about goal setting..
Trust Rules
Without trust, you have nothing. Trust forms the foundation for effective communication, employee retention, and employee motivation and contribution of discretionary energy, the extra effort that people voluntarily invest in work. When trust is present, everything else is easier. Learn more about how to build trust in your workplace.
Sample Welcome Letter
Here's a simple, sample welcome letter for new employees. This sample welcome letter serves just one purpose. You are welcoming your new employee to your organization.
Leader Tips for Motivation
You can make their day or break their day. Your choice. No kidding. Other than the decisions individuals make on their own about liking their work, you are the most powerful factor in employee motivation. As a manager or supervisor, your impact on employee motivation is immeasurable. Learn more about employee motivation.
Meeting Ice Breakers
Want to know more about creating quick, fun ice breakers for training and team building sessions and regular meetings? I am a proponent of ice breakers that reinforce the content and goal accomplishment of a team building or training session. At the same time, there is a place for a fun ice breaker whose only purpose is to help session attendees know and appreciate each other. Here is an ice breaker that requires some time in preparation, but is quick and fun to carry out at your meeting.
Business Casual Dress Code
A collection of images featuring different options to fulfill a Business Casual Dress Code in an office environment, including a variety of images of business casual attire for both men and women.
Work Quotes
Looking for an inspirational quote or a business quotation about work for your newsletter, business presentation, bulletin board or inspirational posters? These work quotes are useful to help motivation and inspiration. These quotes about work will help you create success in business, success in management and success in life.
Holiday Pay Practices
The end of the year is a good time to review your company’s holiday pay practices. This article answers common questions regarding holiday pay related issues.
Workplace Harassment
Most employers are aware of problems related to and have adopted policies prohibiting sexual harassment. An employer who limits its anti-harassment efforts to claims of sexual harassment, however, does so at its own risk. Both the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) have taken the position that conduct constituting harassment on the basis of any protected class is unlawful.
Employment Ending Checklist
Employees leave your organization for good reasons and bad reasons. On the positive side, they find new opportunities, go back to school, retire or land their dream job. Less positively, they are fired for poor performance or poor attendance or experience a layoff because of a business downturn. In each instance, you need an employment termination checklist to help the employee exit process go smoothly. Here's a sample employment termination checklist.
HR Recruiter Job Description
This is a sample job description for a Human Resources Recruiter. The Human Resources Recruiter is responsible for delivering all facets of recruiting success throughout the organization. This will be achieved through the development of local and national recruiting plans, employing traditional sourcing strategies and resources as well as developing new, creative ideas. The Corporate Human Resources Recruiter will play a critical role in ensuring we are hiring the best possible talent.
Exempt Employees
Exempt employees are employees who, because of their positional duties and responsibilities and level of decision making authority, are exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Learn more about exempt employees.
Resume Cover Letter
Resume cover letters ought to matter to employers. As an employer, you are seeking the resume and resume cover letter that describe the candidate who will best fill your position. A thoughtful resume cover letter tells you that the candidate took the time to customize his application to fit your needs. Perhaps the applicant with a superior resume cover letter, will make a superior employee.
Employee Empowerment
Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, take action, and control work and decisionmaking in autonomous ways. It is the state of feeling self-empowered to take control of one's own destiny. Empowerment rules as a development strategy. Learn more about what empowerment is – and is not.
PDP Process
Are you looking for the process that provides the heart of your performance management system? You've found it. The Performance Development Planning (PDP) process enables you and the people who report to you to identify their personal and business goals that are most significant to your organization's success.
Human Resource Department
Departments are the entities organizations form to organize people, reporting relationships, and work in a way that best supports the accomplishment of the organization's goals. Departments are usually organized by functions such as human resources, marketing, administration, and sales. But, a department can be organized in any way that makes sense for the customer.
Demonstrate Respect
Ask anyone in your workplace what treatment they most want at work. They will likely top their list with the desire to be treated with dignity and respect. You can demonstrate respect with simple, yet powerful actions. These ideas will help you avoid needless, insensitive, unmeant disrespect, too. Read more about how to demonstrate respect.
Positive Employee Recognition
Prioritize employee recognition to ensure a positive, productive, organizational climate. Provide employee recognition to say “thank you” and to encourage more of the actions and thinking you believe will make your organization successful. People who feel appreciated are more positive about themselves and their ability to contribute. These beliefs about employee recognition are common among employers - if not commonly carried out. Why then is employee recognition so closely guarded at work?
Make Your Job Work
Are you feeling increasingly unhappy about your job? Then, it may be time for you to quit your job. Or, alternatively, address the issues that you dislike about your current career. Without leaving your job, you may be able to solve the problems. Take a look at these reasons to determine whether it's time to quit your current job. Perhaps you can identify adjustments that will re-invigorate your job and career.
Casual Dress Code
Your Company's objective in establishing a relaxed, casual, and informal work dress code is to enable our employees to work comfortably in the workplace. Yet, certain standards are established so employees are not confused about the meaning of the terms: relaxed, casual, and informal dress. Because no customers or clients are served in person at our company location, our chief concern is the comfort of our employees. See a casual work dress code.
Implement Strategic Framework
Strategic planning implementation is at the heart of how to make change of any kind happen in your organization. Start by answering why your organization might want to embark on a strategic planning process and implementation. Want to be one of the organizations, in which employees understand the mission and goals? They enjoy a 29 percent greater return than other firms. Find out how.
Staff Motivation
Want to keep your staff motivated about learning new concepts? The quality and variety of the employee training you provide is key for motivation. Reasons for employee training range from new-hire training about your operation, to introducing a new concept to a workgroup to bringing in a new computer system. Whatever the reason for conducting an employee training session, you need to develop a comprehensive, ongoing and consistent employee training program.
Reference Checking Format
Checking job or employment references is time-consuming and frequently unsatisfactory, as many employers, despite recent legislation, refuse to offer more than dates of employment, salary history and job title. Here is the format I use to check references. Take a look; it provides a format for reference checking that you'll find helpful.
Minimizing Negativity
Your workplace is seething with negativity and hostility. No matter where the bad vibes came from, it's your reponsibility, to help make the atmosphere less negative and more positive, productive, stress-free and supportive.
Negative Coworkers
Some people exude negativity. They don’t like their jobs or they don’t like their company. Their bosses are always jerks and they are always treated unfairly. The company is always going down the tube and customers are worthless. You know these negative Neds and Nellies – every organization has some – and you can best address their impact on you via avoidance.
Icebreaker: Five of Anything
Looking for a winning team building ice breaker that you can use for meetings, training classes, team building sessions, and company events and activities? My five of anything ice breaker makes group cohesiveness and cooperation a natural extension of these team building ice breakers.
Employee Satisfaction Surveys
Employee satisfaction surveys and focus groups help the employer to identify areas of employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction. For accurate, reliable results, employee satisfaction surveys or focus group questions need to be ...
Tips for Employee Orientation
Want to know what modern organizations are doing with new employee orientation? It's not your traditional signing of policy acknowledgements. Find out what's new in employee orientation.
Salary Negotiation
A salary negotiation window exists from the time you offer a job to a candidate to the acceptance of the job by your selected candidate. The results of this negotiation can leave a candidate feeling wanted or devalued. The results of this negotiation can leave the employer excited to welcome the candidate or feeling as if he lost. A positive employer and a positive employee are the result of a successful salary negotiation. Here are some tips for conducting a successful salary negotiation.
Goal Setting Triumph
When you begin your new year with desired outcomes and goals in mind, you set yourself up for awesome success. The new year is a beginning, so new goals and resolutions, new plans, new dreams and new directions fuel your thoughts. Whether it's your fiscal year, your budget year, your religious year or the new calendar year, these tips will help you achieve your goals and live your resolutions.
Keeping New Employees on Board
New Employee Orientation is a critical factor in helping a new person develop a productive, lasting relationship with your organization. Here are tips, tools, and examples for new employee orientation processes that promote longevity and loyalty.
Recognition Quotes
Looking for an inspirational quote or a business quotation for your newsletter, business presentation, bulletin board or inspirational posters? These reward and recognition quotes are useful to help motivation and inspiration. These quotes about reward and recognition will help you create success in business, success in management and success in life.
Recruiting Candidates
Looking for talent? The smartest employers, who hire the best people, recruit a pre-qualified candidate pool of potential employees before they need to fill a job. You can develop relationships with potential candidates long before you need them. These ideas will also help you in recruiting a large pool of candidates when you have a current position available. Read on to discover the best ways to develop your talent pool and recruit employees.
Careers in Human Resources
Many people are eager to start a career in Human Resources, as it is a fast-growing career field with many lucrative opportunities. Career analysts expect the number of Human Resources jobs to increase in the future and the median annual income for careers in Human Resources is above the national average. For these reasons and more, you are probably wondering how to start a career in Human Resources of your own. You will find some useful information below that will guide you through the process.
Work Tips Index
Use these work relationship tips, leadership tips, and management tips to become an effective, successful employee, business leader, and/or management professional. These work relationship tips, leadership tips, and management tips convey best workplace and business leadership and management practices.
Difficult Conversations
If you manage people, work in Human Resources, or care about your friends at work, chances are good that one day you will need to hold a difficult conversation. As an example, people dress inappropriately and unprofessionally for work; personal hygiene is sometimes unacceptable. These steps will help you hold difficult conversations when people need professional feedback.
candidate pool
Do you select new employees based largely on an attractive resume and the candidate’s performance at the resultant interview? If so, you are missing the opportunity to use additional recruiting and screening methods that will ensure a superior hire. Learn how a recruiting planning meeting can ensure you hire candidates who will perform successfully in your work place.
Values in an Organization
"Our people are our most important asset." You’ve heard these words many times, if you work in an organization. Yet how many organizations act as if they really believe these words? Not many. These words are the clear expression of a value, and values are visible through the actions people take, not their talk.
Success Quotations
Looking for an inspirational quote or a business quotation for your newsletter, business presentation, bulletin board or inspirational posters? These quotes are useful to help motivation and inspiration at work. These quotes about success will help you create business and management success.
Fire With Class
Assuming that you have taken all possible steps to help an employee improve their work performance, it may be time to fire the employee. These are the legal and the ethical steps in how to fire an employee. Ensure that the company's actions as you fire an employee are above reproach. How you fire an employee sends a powerful to your remaining staff - either positive or negative. So, always fire an employee as a last resort. How you fire an employee matters.
Coaching Tips
The human resource professional plays an important role as coach to executives and managers. These tips will help the HR professional succeed at coaching.
Best Practices in Interviewing
We all know how litigious our society has become in the area of employment-related issues. Every recruiter, hiring manager, executive, and department manager needs to realize how important the correct interviewing techniques are. Here's how to interview effectively and legally.
Exit Interview Questions
The exit interview with a terminating employee is your opportunity to obtain information about what your organization is doing well - and, what your organization needs to do to improve. Exit interviews are key to organization improvement since rarely will you receive such frank feedback from current employees. The exit interview questions you ask are key to obtaining actionable information. This is how to conduct an exit interview. Read on for sample exit interview questions.
Discipline Record
Disciplinary action is sometimes necessary when an employee's behavior is negatively impacting his or her work, his or her coworkers' work, or the workplace. This disciplinary warning form documents the discipline warning. This disciplinary warning form also documents and records the coaching or counseling discussion that accompanied the discipline warning.
Holiday Season Tips
You can thrive, not just survive, and create a wonderful holiday season this year. You just need to do four things: keep your expectations rational, take care of yourself, take control of your time and limit your commitments, and embrace your family and friends. Best wishes for a happy holiday season.
New Employee Onboarding
In the talent management universe, the new employee orientation and mainstreaming process is known as “employee onboarding.” Keeping in mind that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, your business should make absolutely sure that new hires feel welcomed, valued, and prepared for what lies ahead during your new employee orientation or onboarding process. Learn more.
Paid Vacation Days Policy
Paid vacation days are time off work an organization provides employees as a benefit. The number of paid vacation days is generally accrued by employees based on years of service to the organization.
Training Transfer Tips
How much money did your organization invest last year in employee training that failed to provide the results you sought? You are not alone if employee training classes rarely resulted in the transfer of immediately useful information to your workplace. Real employee behavioral change, based on the training content, is even harder to demonstrate. Discouraging? You bet. So what's an organization to do to ensure employee training transfer to the workplace?
Unusual Interview Questions
Are you interested in a new trend in job interview questions - or perhaps an old trend newly revived? Lynne Sarikas, director of the MBA Career Center at the Northeastern University business school, believes that more and more businesses are asking unusual job interview questions as part of their candidate job interview process. See how unusual job interview questions fit with behavioral interview questions to select the best candidate.
Leadership Success Secrets
Key leadership success secrets set great leaders apart from so-so leaders in organizations. Leadership style is learned from mentors, learned in seminars and exists as part of a person's innate personal leadership skill set developed over years, and existing, possibly from birth. Nature or nurture is a question often asked about leadership. I answer, "yes," because I believe the combination of natural leadership skills and nurture through leadership development defines leadership style.
Holiday Diversity
Want to develop effective working relationships with diverse people at work? Start with similarities, not differences, among people when you build relationships. Diversity in the workplace adds a special richness, but also special challenges. As a human resources professional, manager, supervisor, coworker, staff member or business owner, effective diverse work relationships are critical for your success.
Interviewing Styles: Tips f...
Interviewing is often just as stressful for the interviewer as it is for the job seeker. Knowing the different types of interviews, and why and when they are successful, can help make your interviews more comfortable for both parties.
Office Romance
What's love got to do with dating, sex, and romance at the office? Plenty! Get tips for addressing dating, sex, and romance at work.
HR Training Jobs
Human resources are the people that staff and operate an organization. Learn about the people who work in Human Resources. Specifically, learn about the job description of a Training Manager, Training Director, or Training Specialist.
Improving Performance
Looking for a step-by-step coaching approach you can use to help an employee improve his work performance? This approach avoids discipline and produces great results.
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