Friday April 22, 2011
Looking for applicant red flags and other opportunities to derail your hiring process? Throughout the hiring process, multitudes of ways to go wrong exist.
One of the most serious errors an employer can make is failing to give adequate consideration to the cultural fit of a potential employee within your organization. In fact, when I think back over the employees that client organizations have fired over the years, cultural fit - or lack thereof - was almost always a factor in the employee and the organization parting ways.
The cultural fit that a manager exhibits is especially important. A manager who leads people by micromanaging, questioning every detail, and nitpicking each employee action is not a cultural fit for an organization that professes to empower people and trust employees. In fact, such a poorly fitting manager can disrupt the employee morale of an entire department.
I've put together a resource that emphasizes many of the red flags and other events and activities that might - and maybe should - derail your hiring process. From resume review to background checks, opportunities to make a bad hire never cease.
Heed these issues to make better hires, qualified employees who add value to your company and fit your company culture.
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Thursday April 21, 2011
What's your vision of the HR role? Please vote in my poll. You can select multiple answers in this week's poll. Like my suggestions - or not - please comment.
Discussion in recent years about the role of Human Resources in today's organizations rages on. Over the years of writing this site, I have heard about almost every possible iteration of the role.
From traditional personnel and administrative functions to major company executive committee members, HR serves many and divergent roles.
The challenge is always to provide seamless administrative functions such as benefits enrollment and changes while having the time and energy to do the equally important, but more time and thought consuming, strategic tasks.
Too many people in HR and management roles are hung up in the administrative aspects of the business while the more challenging, and one might argue, more important aspects of the business, are given short shrift.
Many reasons exist: busy work tasks are important and urgent versus tasks that require thought and planning are important but not urgent. An immediate employee need usually trumps longer term planning, too.
A site visitor wrote an article with her ideas for how HR can reinvent itself from the classroom to the boardroom and I wonder how your voting will bolster these thoughts?
If you have roles I missed, that you believe deserve mention, please post your comments.
More Reading About the HR Role
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Wednesday April 20, 2011
Reader Question: "An employee with a tremendous amount of knowledge is bitter and angry all the time. She is very good at her job. She also believes that everyone else is incompetent at theirs. This person used to have a leadership position but no longer does. She was very harsh and critical and used her authority to bully people on her team. She used security cameras to make personal records of everyone's activities. No one knows of any practical reason for this. In her reduced capacity she apparently still keeps records of anything anyone does that she does not approve of. She is very unhappy with the person who took her old job, and her new supervisor as well.
"She has been spoken to about her constant gossip on the floor and negative attitude. The result of those talks is that she only complains when her supervisor is not around to hear. She is (nearly) always polite to
everyone while they are in front of her, but that stops when they walk away.
"So, this angry and negative person does a very good job. She is always at work, always on time. She is careful not to be too critical when supervisors or managers are around. She is also quick to spread rumors, to go 'over' her lead with issues. Despite her skills, I believe that her attitude is poisoning the team. Is this a reason to fire someone? How would you go about letting such an employee go? If you would keep her, what tactics could be used to contain the venom?"
If you have thoughts for this reader, please respond in "comments" below.
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Related to Poisonous Attitude
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Tuesday April 19, 2011
Are your employee benefits costs increasing? Several client companies received increases this year as high as 37% for healthcare premiums for employees.
Since cost increases like this are not sustainable by the employer for any length of time, something has to give. Employers don't want to deprive employees of benefits that they and their families want and need, so a cafeteria plan for benefits makes a lot of sense.
In a cafeteria plan, the employer provides a certain number of dollars for a comprehensive employee benefits package that includes healthcare coverage. But, in a cafeteria plan, the employee has the opportunity to select certain of the benefits and to determine the level of coverage that he or she is willing to pay up to, depending on family member needs.
So, a single, healthy employee in his 20s with no dependents, might opt for the employer's basic health insurance plan and put more money in a retirement plan. A married employee with three children would probably opt to pay up to obtain a more comprehensive plan to cover the needs of a family.
A cafeteria plan provides these options. What else have you done or considered to get a handle on the spiraling cost of employee benefits?
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Related to Cafeteria Plans and Employee Benefits
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