by K. Baker With more companies struggling to stay profitable, employers have increased their efforts to build stronger teams. While a capable team isn’t made overnight, it can be created…
Category: Human Resources Management
On Baseball, Long Hair, Married Priests, HR, and the "Department of No"
The sports press was abuzz this week about something that didn’t involve balls, strikes, birdies, or 3-pointers. Rather, it was about hair, specifically the prolific red locks belonging to NY Yankees rookie…
It's Not About the Phones
If I hear this question one more time… I won’t be surprised. “How do we get these people to get off their phones and get their work done?” First point: it’s…
All Millennials Are...Different
Years ago, I participated in a diversity workshop that featured an exercise called “All Iowans are Naive”, the object of which was to expose the fallacy of stereotypes. And fallacious…
Dealing with Bullying in the Workspace
Bullying seems inescapable in modern life, whether the context is school-aged children, adults in the workspace, or newly elected politicians behaving badly. The associated consequences and handwringing prompt us to…
A Few Words on Workplace Feedback for Millennials
Over the last few years I’ve had the pleasure of providing professional coaching for a diverse group of a dozen or so Millennial professionals, managers, and executives in the workspace.…
Should We Stop Doing Performance Reviews?
For the past few years there has been a hue and a cry, joined of late by large numbers of HR professionals, suggesting that companies need to stop doing traditional…
Work-Life Balance… Learning to Like and Live With Chocolate Milk
In a presentation last week for a group of healthcare industry managers, I was asked to comment on “work-life balance.” My remarks were prefaced with the admission that I’m fairly…
Getting Beyond the Rehearsed Blather in Recruiting
Last week I had a short, informal coaching conversation with an experienced, level 2 retail manager. Soon to be involved with staffing a new store, he was concerned about the…
Bad Apples
Recently, in preparation for a long, 1200-mile road trip (nasty winter weather coupled with living in a high airfare market causes one to do things like that), I shopped for…