Tag: HR Insight

Wasting Time at Work: Do You Try to Stop the Madness or Just Go with It?

It’s March — the culmination of a long and productive season for the country’s top college basketball teams. It’s also the beginning of a less productive season in the workplace. March Madness may serve to sharpen the focus of the athletes playing in the college championship tournament, but the Big Dance often has the opposite […]

How Texting Can Get You into Trouble at Work

Has texting grown up enough to become a corporate communications tool? Are your employees using their company-provided phone, PDA, or smartphone to send text messages? HR professionals, IT leaders, and other executives are pondering the above questions at the moment. Text messaging is becoming more mainstream. Workers who came to maturity in the age of […]

iPhone Apps Break into Human Resources

by David Kaufman In April, a Connecticut teenager downloaded the billionth application from Apple’s iTune App Store. An “app” is an application or program that allows a user to play a game, surf the Web better, keep track of caloric intake, or tens of thousands of other things. In just nine months, Apple has created […]

Take a Vacation from Smartphones and Overtime Laws

by Sarah McAdams Do you keep your personal Blackberry or iPhone on your bedside table, yanking yourself from deep sleep every time a new message dings in? You’re not alone, sad addict. I, for instance, am typing this on a Saturday at a picnic table in my backyard. For years, employers have most frequently issued […]

How to Handle the Younger Boss / Older Worker Dilemma

By Carol A. Hacker If you are a younger manager with responsibility for managing people who are older than you, you know what a challenge it can be. One of the biggest challenges for younger managers lies in how they are going to supervise people who are older than them, have more experience than they […]

Coffee with a Conscience: 5 Ways to Make Break Time Greener

by Sarah McAdams The average office worker in America uses about 500 disposable cups every year, according to the Clean Air Council. If 10 million of them used their own mugs, it would eliminate about 312,500 miles of trash every year. Launching a “green coffee” program at your company can be as simple as changing […]

Reducing Personnel Costs and Helping Workers Have Work-life Balance

by Sarah McAdams For some companies, layoffs will be inevitable. If your company is part of that “some,” of course you’ll do everything you can before conceding that a workforce reduction is the only option. Just make sure that “everything” includes exploring a potential work-life balance solution. That’s right, even in this bleak economy when […]

Downsizing: 7 Steps to Help Employees Cope

by Carol A. Hacker The November 2008 U.S. job loss report was staggering. More than 500,000 jobs shed in one month, the worst one-month job loss since December 1974. That brings the 2008 job loss total to 1.9 million.And according to a New York Times report on the job loss situation, deeper cuts will probably […]

Perils of Sending Political Emails at Work

by David Micah Kaufman “Oh my!” my lunch colleague exclaimed after glancing at her Blackberry (R) during a break in the conversation. “I am being invited to Candidate X’s fundraiser by my boss. Why does she think I support him/her?” ‘Tis the season — election season — when perfectly normal people who usually would never […]