Month: February 2014

10 Most Common Errors in Performance Rating

Pay for performance is the order of the day, but you can’t have pay for performance if you can’t measure performance in a meaningful way. Unfortunately,  there are significant pitfalls to avoid when conducting your performance reviews. In today’s Advisor, we’ll get tips from expert Armstrong on how to make performance appraisals more meaningful for […]

Mind over matter: lessons on mental toughness from the Olympics

by Dan Oswald When I flipped on the television yesterday to check out the Olympics, I found myself watching the men’s Super-G Alpine skiing. By the time I had tuned in, the celebrated American skier Bode Miller was safely at the bottom of the slope and sitting in first place. This is believed to be […]

Performance Management: Do’s and Don’ts in the Real World

Makris, senior counsel at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, and Rhoma Young, of the HR consulting firm Rhoma Young & Associates, offered tips for ensuring that performance appraisals are used legally and effectively. Their suggestions came in a recent BLR®/HR Hero® audio conference. From a legal perspective, performance appraisals are important because they can help defend […]

Volkswagen’s Chattanooga workers reject UAW representation

by Bart Sisk, David Jaqua, and Valeria Gomez The votes are in, and the wait is over. In what can only be characterized as a major setback for organized labor, Volkswagen’s Chattanooga employees have voted to reject union representation by the United Auto Workers union (UAW).   Eighty-nine percent of Volkswagen’s Chattanooga employees participated in the […]

Employee Reimbursements for Uniforms: When Must a Company Provide?

According to most state laws, all employees must be reimbursed for reasonably incurred business expenses. This includes employee uniforms in some cases, which is an area some employers like to push as an employee’s responsibility. Read on for more information on when it is the responsibility of the employer to either provide the uniform or […]

healthcare

ACA Play-or-Pay Safe Harbor: Will It Benefit You?

Employers with more than 50 full-time employees must offer health insurance to their employees, as mandated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Failure to do so will result in the assessment of an excise tax penalty. This dichotomy is commonly known as the “play or pay” rule under the ACA. The penalty is assessed for […]

ACA Play or Pay: Who is an Applicable Large Employer?

While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains many provisions, perhaps one of the most discussed is the “play or pay” provision. The ACA’s play-or-pay provision mandates that employers with 50 or more full-time-equivalent employees must offer group health benefits to full-time employees working, on average, 30 or more hours per week, or potentially pay a […]

Do You Train Supervisors to Think Critically?

The goals of a training session on critical thinking skills should include helping trainees: Understand what critical thinking is and how it can help on the job. Use the critical thinking process effectively to improve job performance. Understanding what critical thinking is leads directly to discussion of how it can strengthen a supervisor’s work performance. […]

The cost of not providing references

By Louise Béchamp Many employers’ policies preclude them from providing reference letters. Other employers have no policies. And yet others have policies but do not consistently apply them. The Court of Appeal of Québec’s recent decision in Arsenault (Succession de) v. École Sacré-Cœur de Montréal (available in French only) should give Canadian employers pause for […]

Tips for leveraging inclusiveness for a more productive workforce

Employers are always searching for ways to empower their employees to do their best work. They invest in training to help workers gain skills, and they develop policies designed to keep the workplace running smoothly, but other components—cultivating cultural intelligence and fostering an environment of inclusiveness—may be overlooked.   Simma Lieberman, a diversity and inclusion/culture change […]