Month: May 2014

Communicating with Employees—Don’t Shove It onto the Back Burner

Ask employees what they like least about their jobs, and they typically cite a problem with communication. In fact, in many national employee attitude surveys, participating organizations across the board were rated lowest on questions related to communication, while at the same time employees who took the survey said communication was very important to them.

State Regulators Find Inconsistencies in Broker-dealer Disclosure Practices

A survey by an association of North American state and provincial securities regulators that found numerous inconsistencies in how broker-dealers disclose fees to customers adds weight to calls from federal regulators for service providers to furnish fee guides to employer retirement plan sponsors. “[W]ide disparity among firms in the way fees were disclosed” was reported […]

Have Your Leaders Learned These 6 Leadership Lessons?

A recent Gallup poll shows that only 30 percent of Americans are actively engaged at work. According to Gallup’s chairman and CEO, fully 20 percent of American employees are actively disengaged because they have “bosses from hell that make them miserable.” In turn, these employees “roam the halls spreading discontent.” But wait—there’s good news. According […]

Real Estate Company Makes ‘Brand’ Permanent

Have you ever had so much pride in your company that you were willing to get a tattoo of your company’s logo?  Tattoos are becoming ever more popular in the workforce as younger generations are getting more career-oriented jobs.  One real estate company, Rapid Realty, in New York, is taking the tattoo idea to a […]

Creating a Sales Compensation Philosophy

“When we’re talking about sales compensation objectives, we define them as the five ‘rights.’ We want the sales people to sell the right product to the right customer at the right price at the right profit and at the right time. Unfortunately, many companies don’t get this right.”

Age discrimination or legitimate termination? Firing a 65-year-old can be tricky

What should an employer do when faced with a longtime manager with stellar performance reviews who doesn’t adhere to company policy, misses deadlines, has been written up for sexual harassment, and may be responsible for committing fraud? And does it complicate the situation if that manager is 65 years old?  Those were questions recently put […]

X-Men playing catch-up on genetics–the real-life wave of the present

Remember when the study of genetic information was deemed to be the purview of those in the medical field or reserved for films and television shows that were classified as “futuristic science fiction”? Not anymore. Today we live in a world where everyone is fully aware that their own genetic code and family history could […]

Include Customer Harassment in Your Harassment Training

According to a recent article on HR.BLR.com, you might want to incorporate a recent court case, which involved accusations of ongoing sexual and racial harassment by a customer, into your training on harassment. For the details of the case, click here. What the court said The appeals court majority reversed on the hostile work environment […]

Gaming the System—PA Sin Number Seven

Yesterday’s Advisor featured the first 6 of our 10 sins of performance appraisers; today, we present the rest of the sins.    [Go here for sins 1 to 6.] Sin #7. Gaming the system “John’s work is just OK, to be sure, but I need to give him a big raise to keep him, so […]