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Human Resources: Most Popular Articles

These articles are the most popular over the last month.
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. Use this format for writing your own candidate rejection letters.
Human Resource Management
Want to know what Human Resource Management is? HRM is the function within an organization that focuses on people. Human Resources Management is also performed by line managers. Find out more.
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.
HR Job Descriptions
Interested in what Human Resources managers, generalists and directors do? You can get the latest information about their new and changing roles as employee advocates, change champions, and business and strategic partners. See more about the role of HR staff in organizations. Perhaps Human Resources is the career for you?
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.
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.
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.
Reasons to Quit Your Job
Are you feeling increasingly unhappy about your job? Then, it may be time for you to quit your job. Or, 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. It may be time to quit your job.
Sample, Simple Resignation Letter
Here's a sample letter of resignation written like a letter that an employer would like to receive. Burn no bridges when you resign. The resignation letter is placed in your personnel file - forever. Here's a sample resignation letter that you can use to craft your own when you resign.
Applicant Rejection Letter
Do you need a sample applicant rejection letter? Here is a sample rejection letter for the applicants you didn't choose to interview for the job. Use this sample applicant rejection letter to develop your own rejection letters to politely and kindly, yet definitely, turn an applicant down. This rejection letter is your standard applicant rejection letter for the resumes and applications you receive from applicants who are less qualified than those you decide to interview.
Job Interview Tips
Want job interview tips to help you select employees? These job interview tips will help you assess the skills, experience, and cultural fit of your potential employee. The job interview is a powerful factor in the employee selection process in most organizations. While the job interview may not deserve all of the attention that it receives, the job interview is still a powerful force in hiring. Use these job interview tips to help your team select superior employees.
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.
Job Offer Letter
Need a free, sample job offer letter that is suitable for most employee job offers? 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.
Difficult People
Are you looking for tips about how to work with difficult people? You can't get away from them. Difficult people exist in every workplace. But, you can get better at diffusing the trouble they cause. Here's how.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Hiring Checklist
A systematic process for hiring employees will bring your organization a talented, superior workforce. Use this hiring checklist as a guide to a systematic process for hiring quality employees - every time you make a job offer.
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.
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.
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.
Employee Introduction
This sample new employee introduction letter welcomes the new employee and introduces the new employee to his or her new coworkers. A nice touch for the employee introduction to the company is to schedule an informal time, with food and drinks, for coworkers to greet the new employee.
Teamwork Interview Questions
The following sample job interview questions about teams and team work enable you to assess your candidate’s skill in working with teams. Feel free to use these job interview questions in your own candidate interviews.
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.
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.
Human Resources Manager Job Description
Interested in what a Human Resources manager does? This is a sample job description for a Human Resources manager. While all Human Resources manager job descriptions need to be customized to meet the needs of the organization in which they serve, this sample Human Resources manager job description will give you ideas, job content options, and sample phrasing. See and use this sample Human Resources manager job description in your organization.
Dealing With Difficult People
Want tips for dealing with difficult coworkers? Difficult coworkers do exist at work and the better you get at dealing with them, the happier you'll be at work. Here are ten great tips for dealing with the difficult coworkers in your workplace.
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.
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.
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.
Interpersonal Skills 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
HR Definition
Human resources are the people that staff and operate an organization. Read this definition of Human Resources.
Business Casual Dress for the Business Casual Workplace
A collection of images featuring different options about how to dress in a business casual workplace in a business casual environment, including a variety of images of business casual attire for both men and women.
Bad Bosses
Want tips about how to deal with a bad boss? The first kind of bad boss doesn't realize that he is a bad boss. He may provide little direction and no feedback, but he doesn't know that he's a bad boss. Find out how to deal with the unwitting bad boss.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
HR New Roles
Three new roles of the human resources professional are discussed: strategic business partner, employee advocate and change champion.
Smart Casual Dress Code
A collection of photographs displaying smart casual dress for work, including a variety of different options for men and women in smart casual clothing for the workplace. You can develop a sense of what is appropriate in a smart casual work environment.
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.
Rejection Letter Sample
Do you need a sample rejection letter to send to unsuccessful applicants for your jobs? Here is a simple, standard rejection letter for applicants you choose not to interview. As a courtesy and to emphasize your position as an employer of choice, you want to send a rejection letter. While many employers skip this step, this rejection letter sample should make applicant rejection simple. This sample rejection letter gives you a template for your rejection letters.
Sample Letter of Reprimand
This sample reprimand letter will serve as a guide as you prepare reprimand letters. Use this sample reprimand letter when the performance of your employee warrants a formal, official, documented employee reprimand. Here is a sample reprimand letter.
Rejection Letter After a Job Interview
Are you looking for a way to reject job candidates who won't be invited back following their first interview? This job rejection letter gives you a sample that you can adapt for your needs. Use it to notify a candidate that he or she did not make the cut for a second interview.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Communication 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.
Why Use a New Employee Welcome Letter
Need a welcome letter for a new employee? A welcome letter confirms the employee's decision to accept the position and helps the employee feel wanted and welcomed. Here's why you want to send a welcome letter and a sample.
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.
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.
Written Reprimand Sample
This sample written reprimand is issued to a non-performing employee so that he or she understands the gravity of the problem that the failure to perform is creating. In a role that requires consistent attendance, this written reprimend corrects the behavior of a tardy employee. See the sample written reprimand.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Motivation: Wants From Work
Some people work for personal fulfillment; others work for love of what they do. Motivation is different for different people. Some people 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 motivation reasons too individual to assign similarities to all workers. Learn more about motivation.
Rejection Letter to Job Applicants
Job applicants who are not selected for an interview deserve a rejection letter. As a job applicant, nothing is worse than hearing nothing from a prospective employer. Here is a sample job applicant rejection letter for the people you don't select for a job interview. Use this sample job applicant rejection letter as a template to develop your own job applicant rejection letter.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Phone Screen Best Practices
The phone 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 phone screen saves managerial time and eliminates unlikely candidates. While I recommend developing customized phone screen questions for each position, these phone screen best practices will guide you. Find out more about how to conduct a phone screen.
Resignation Letter Example Personal Reasons
Personal reasons drive many employee decisions to resign from employment. These employee resignations are often for private reasons and employee confidentiality is essential. This is an example of a resignation letter that is proffered for personal reasons. Use this resignation letter example to resign from a job for personal reasons.
Cultural Fit Interview Questions
Do you hire employees based on your assessment of their cultural fit? If not, you should be, based on their responses to interview questions like these. You want to hire the job applicant who, in addition to the required job skills and qualifications, exhibits the best fit within your organization's culture. The most successful hires fit both the job and your workplace culture. Use these interview questions to determine fit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Icebreaker: My Best One Word Ice Breaker
Need a quick, no preparation ice breaker that works like a charm to break the ice in a meeting or training session? Highly adaptable, this ice breaker leads the participants right into the content of your meeting or training class. Take a look at my one word ice breaker and my suggestions about how to endlessly adapt this ice breaker to your participants' needs.
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.
Exempt Employees
Are you an exempt employee? If so, you have special workplace standards and expectations. 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.
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.
Salary Negotiation
You have a salary negotiation window from the time you make a job offer until your chosen candidate accepts your job. A win-win agreement is the outcome of a successful salary negotiation. Here are tips for a win-win salary negotiation.
Photographs of Business Formal Dress Code Attire
A collection of images that showcase a variety of Business Formal clothing options, including Business Formal clothing options suitable for a formal work environment, for men and women.
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.
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.
Discipline
Definition of discipline for the human resources glossary of human resources related terms.
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.
How to Change Your Culture
Are you ready to change the culture that exists in your organization? Your assessment of your organizational culture may make you happy or 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.
Identify and Live Your 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.
Job Rejection Letter Sample
Following a job interview, all but one candidate must receive a job rejection letter. Sooner is better to send a job rejection letter to help your job applicants get on with their job search. Sending a rejection letter in a timely manner marks you as an employer of choice, too. Here is a sample job rejection letter that employers can send to candidates who were rejected following the job interview.
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.
Termination Letter
Need a sample termination letter? Employers will want to write a termination letter when they fire an employee. The termination letter confirms the details of the firing and summarizes the information that the now former employee will need to know. Find a sample termination letter.
Application Acknowledgement
Do you need a sample applicant rejection letter? Here is a sample rejection letter for the applicants you didn't choose to interview for the job. Use this sample applicant rejection letter to develop your own rejection letters to politely and kindly, yet definitely, turn an applicant down. This rejection letter is your standard applicant rejection letter for the resumes and applications you receive from applicants who are less qualified than those you decide to interview.
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.
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.
How to Deal With a Bully
Think you work with a bully? Do you regularly feel intimidated, dread to work anywhere near a particular coworker, or you’re yelled at, insulted, and put down? Does a coworker talk over you at meetings, criticize your performance, or steal credit for your work? If you answer yes to any of these questions, the chances are good that you’re one of 54 million Americans, 37% of the workforce, who have been attacked by a bully at work.
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.
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.
Behavioral Interview
Are you aware of the power of a behavioral interview? When you ask interview questions that the prospective employee must answer with examples of his past performance, you are leading a behavioral interview - the best. Find out more.
Empowerment
Interested in your own personal 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. Find out more about what empowerment is and is not.
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.
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.
Employment Verification Letter
An employment verification letter confirms the current or former employee's employment status. The employment verification letter is a response to a request for information from a potential employer, government source, or bank, for example. See a sample employment verification letter.
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.
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.
Tips to Encourage Meaningful C
Believe it or not, conflict is necessary for effective problem solving and for effective interpersonal relationships at work. Here's how to create and manage healthy work conflict that will be beneficial to your organization.
Employee Motivation
Employee motivation is a continuing challenge at work. Particularly in work environments that don’t emphasize employee satisfaction as part of an embraced and supported overall business strategy, supervisors and managers walk a tough road. On the one hand, they recognize their power in drawing forth the best employees have to offer; on the other, they feel unsupported, rewarded or recognized themselves. My word to managers? Get over it. Employee motivation is always possible.
Five More Resume Red Flags
Do you know the resume and cover letter red flags that should catch your attention as you review applicant resumes? Earlier, I identified five red flags in resume review. These red flags are the mistakes, errors, and indicators that give you a great deal of information about your applicants. Employers ignore these red flags at their own risk. They are early indicators that your potential employee may not be whom you expect. I’ve identified five more red flags for employer resume review.
Feeling Weary?
Are you weary? No matter how much you love your job, love your employer, and love your life, sometimes you just feel weary. In recent years, work has expanded as fewer employees work harder and longer. Employer expectations have escalated as competition increased. The pace of change is relentless and growing. You struggle to maintain work-life balance while increasing your job satisfaction and efficacy. These tips will help you combat weary.
Provide Feedback That Has Impact
Want to know how to deliver feedback that has an impact? 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. But, it will only make a difference if you can avoid a defensive response.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Employee Resignation
The reasons are endless for an employee resignation. But, each employee resignation poses the employer with a series of questions. How do you announce the employee's resignation? Who needs to know what about the employee's resignation? When do you tell your employees about the employee's resignation? Here are answers to the questions you may have about employee resignation.
Get Along With Your Boss
At one point or another in your career, you will report to a manager, the person you fondly - or not - call boss. The relationships that you create and manage, with both your immediate supervisor and other employees who have managerial or leadership responsibility in your company, are critical for your work success and career progress. And, face it, whether you like it or not, you're in charge of your relationship with your boss.
Icebreaker: Fun and Funny Ice Breakers
Looking for laughter generating funny ice breakers? Some ice breakers are fun and funny and their goal is to help your participants enjoy meeting each other. Fun and funny ice breakers generate laughter which contributes to a genuinely relaxed meeting environment. See sample fun and funny ice breakers for meetings and training sessions.
Employment Terminations
The decision to terminate an individual’s employment carries with it the risk of a possible legal challenge. Depending upon an employer’s policies or whether an employee has an employment contract, an employee may, for example, have a breach of contract or “wrongful discharge” claim. Learn the right questions to ask before you terminate an employee's employment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Employee Empowerment
Looking for real management advice about people? You want to create an environment in which people are empowered, productive, contributing, and happy. Don't hobble them by limiting their tools or information. Trust them to do the right thing. Get out of their way; watch them catch fire. These are the most important principles for managing people. They reinforce employee empowerment, accomplishment, and contribution. These management actions enable the people who work with you / for you to soar.
Positive Employee Recognition
Want to know how to make employee recognition as positive and successful as possible? These tips will help you recognize employees in the best possible way - to reinforce and make the recognition more powerful. Find out how.
Training / Development Options
One key factor in employee motivation and retention is the opportunity to continue to grow and develop job and career enhancing skills. There are a couple of secrets to what employees want from training and development opportunities, however. Plus, training and development opportunities are not just found in training classes and seminars. Learn more about what employees want in training and development opportunities.
Trust Rules
How important is trust in your organization? 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.
Human Resources Careers
Many people are eager to start a career in Human Resources, as it is a fast-growing field with many lucrative opportunities. Career analysts expect the number of Human Resources jobs to increase in the projected future and the median annual income is above the national average. For these reasons and more, you are probably wondering how to start an HR career of your own. Find out more about breaking into a career in Human Resources.
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.
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.
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.
Difficult Bosses
Nothing is more destructive in the workplace than difficult bosses. Every employee has a series of bosses over their working career. Hopefully, most of your bosses are competent, kind, and even, worthy of your trust and respect. Unfortunately, too often, employees have difficult bosses who impact their desire to engage and contribute at work. It is no surprise that employees who quit their job are most frequently leaving their bosses, not necessarily the company or their job. Find out more.
Letters of Reprimand
Letters of reprimand are written by the supervisor to provide an official statement of a performance problem that an employee must improve. Letters of reprimand are often a step in the formal disciplinary action process that can result in additional disciplinary action for the employee up to and including employment termination if the employee fails to improve. Learn more about letters of reprimand.
Fire an Employee
When you fire an employee, the meeting is stressful for all parties – not just for the employee. No matter how well you’ve communicated about performance problems with the employee, almost no one believes that they will actually get fired. Employees convince themselves that you won’t fire them. But, none of their reasons or your feelings matter when the employee is not performing his or her job. You can make the meeting less stressful. These are the top 10 don'ts when you fire an employee.
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.
Dress Code
A 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. 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. Learn more about dress codes and standards for business attire.
Self Evaluation
Want to encourage more participation in performance evaluation and career planning from your employees? Does your company use a traditional performance appraisal system? Or, does your company pursue a forward thinking performance management process? Whatever method your company uses for employee performance development, consider making an employee self evaluation an integral component in the process. The self evaluation will ensure a conversation at the performance evaluation meeting.
Negativity Causes
The typical workplace has its ups and downs in terms of employee negativity. Many workplaces are trying to be employee oriented. But, even the most employee oriented workplace can shudder under the weight of negative thinking. When employers understand the causes of employee negativity and put in place measures to prevent employee negativity, negativity fails to gain a foothold in the work environment. Learn the five key causes of employee negativity.
Job Description Template
Need a job description template to simplify the process of developing a job description? This job description template provides a guide for you to use to develop your own job descriptions for your organization. Find a useful job description template.
Employee Evaluation
Interested in why organizations do employee performance evaluation? Employee performance evaluation is both an evaluative process and a communication tool. Done traditionally, employee performance evaluation is universally disliked by supervisors and employees.

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