Employers

Taming the Difficult Employee

Difficult employees are a huge drain on an organization in terms of wasted time, reduced productivity, greater inefficiency, increased employee turnover and—in extreme cases—customer loss. Employees who work with difficult coworkers suffer from low morale, a declining commitment to their work, decreased job satisfaction and greater levels of stress and frustration. Read on to learn what motivates difficult employees, and how you can effectively manage them.

Selecting Winners – Part 2

Six Steps to Selecting a High Performance Employee This article is the second in a two-part series

Selecting Winners – Part 1

What constitutes a good employee – a real “winner”? Many people think there’s one profile for a position or one set of criteria cast in stone: “This is a winner.” But that’s just not the case. Winners are unique to your organization. Here are six steps to selecting a high-performance employee.

An Introduction to Human Resource Management

With employee loyalty at an all-time low, really savvy companies recognize that people have never been more important to business success than they are today. One very practical means of emphasizing and maintaining our people as a valued resource is to establish, as most organizations have, a function known as human resources management to represent the best interests of our employees and thereby of management as well.

Introductory Thoughts on Strategy in an Organization

What is strategy? Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes in “Exploring Corporate Strategy” define strategy as follows:

“Strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over the long-term which achieves advantage for the organization through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment, to meet the needs of the marketplace and to fulfill stakeholder expectations.” This practical article contains an overview of how strategy can be adopted and implemented within your organization to give you a competitive edge.

What is Company Culture?

A company’s culture is its personality. It tells people how to do their work. It takes its signals from leaders. It underlies motivation, morale, creativity, and marketplace success. How do you manage it?

The Basics of Writing a Good Job Description

When you are asking someone to perform a task, what you want done and what he or she thinks you want can often result in two totally different outcomes. This is easily compounded when brought in to the workplace. However, once a job description is in place, it offers both the employer and employee the clarity, focus and expectations for any position and, in doing so, eliminates this problem. Of equal importance, clear job descriptions help employees to work smarter and become more effective, thus increasing an organization’s effectiveness.

11 Common Mistakes Employers Make

Let’s face it—as employers focusing in on business, we can too easily lose sight of the rocks and potholes that can come our way with our employees. We think things are moving along well and WHAM! someone shares his or her distress over something or someone in the organization. These types of issues arise from a vast array of reasons, many resulting from a lack of clarity or focus within various areas of human resources. Below are some mistakes employers make that only expand and exasperate the people-problems within an organization. Being aware of these bumps in the road may help you avoid them and keep your organization on the right track.

The Top 10 Things Employers Do to Get Sued

To adapt a quote from the well-known 18th century literary critic Samuel Johnson, the road to being sued by an employee is oft paved with good intentions. Whether it’s agreeing to an employee’s seemingly reasonable scheduling request, simplifying the payroll, or just saving a little money, an employer’s good intentions easily can lead to lawsuits.

Here’s a list of the top 10 things employers often do with the best intentions, along with the reasons employers are likely to get sued for doing them.