Month: May 2013

Pay for Performance Requires SMART Goals

Yesterday’s Advisor offered success factors for pay for performance. Today, consultant Diana D. Neelman, CCP shows why pay for performance can fail, and we introduce you to a unique 10-minutes-at-a time training system for supervisors. Making Sense of Goals and Objectives Neelman offers the following suggestions for making goals and objectives truly helpful: Make performance […]

PBGC May Exempt Most Companies, Pensions from ‘Reportable Events’ Rules

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., in a policy reversal, has agreed to exempt most companies and their pension plans from sweeping “reportable events” requirements first proposed in 2009. This news should be a relief for the many small or financially sound companies with defined benefit plans that had expressed concern about reporting relatively minor business […]

Strategies for Coping With a Wage and Hour Audit

Thousands of employers get a figurative knock-on-the-door each year from an investigator from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. WHD is the agency responsible for enforcing the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Davis-Bacon Act and the Service Contract Act, among other laws. A visit from WHD […]

Turnover Armageddon? Could Be Heading Your Way

If your organization is like most, workers have been patient about compensation for several years of low or no raises. They understood that their organizations were squeezed by economic pressures, and they were also held back by general insecurity about changing jobs in tricky times. But patience is wearing thin, and indications are that as […]

Teach Your New Supervisors How to Train Effectively

Training employees is a big part of any supervisor’s job. Whether it’s formal classroom training, safety meetings, on-the-job training, or coaching, teaching employees how to do their jobs properly is an important part of your supervisory responsibility. Training improves worker performance and productivity. Formal and informal training should build skills and competence as well as […]

Database hazards: What’s safe when conducting background checks?

No one wants to get burned by hiring a bad apple, so it’s common for employers to conduct background checks to lessen the chance of bringing a dishonest employee into the workplace. But as hazardous as it is to have shady employees, it also can be dangerous to step out of line when checking people […]

What’s More Distracting: A Loud Coworker or Office Drama?

Distracted employees can lead to a host of problems, from low productivity to costly mistakes. So what’s more distracting, a loud coworker or office drama? According to the CareerBuilder survey, loud colleagues beat out office drama when it comes to disturbing the workplace. The most common distractions are non-job-related conversations with colleagues and Internet searches. […]