Tag: Dan Oswald

HR Department Survey Results–How Does Your Department Compare?

For years, BLR® has surveyed HR and compensation/benefits professionals to find trends in policy and practice. We appreciate your participation in our series of brief, targeted surveys. Today’s survey topic: Employee Leave Survey. We’ll publish the results in a future issue, and we’ll also send you a PDF report. (Be sure to include your contact […]

HR Departments in Flux—What Are Best Practice Companies Doing?

For years, BLR® has surveyed HR and compensation/benefits professionals to find trends in policy and practice. We appreciate your participation in our series of brief, targeted surveys. Today’s survey topic: Your HR Department. (We’ll publish the results in a future issue.) Please participate in this brief survey and together we’ll get answers to these questions […]

Critical HR Policies—What Are Best Practice Companies Doing?

For years, BLR® has surveyed HR and compensation/benefits professionals to find trends in policy and practice. We appreciate your participation in our series of brief, targeted surveys. Today’s survey topic: HR Policies. (We’ll publish the results in a future issue.) Please participate in this brief survey and we’ll determine what employers are doing with this […]

Star Performer Benefited Most from Being Fired

Today’s epinion comes from business and leadership blogger Dan Oswald (CEO of BLR) in a recent edition of The Oswald Letter. It might seem surprising, says Oswald, for a college football player to say being kicked off the team was the best thing a coach ever did for him—it wasn’t receiving a scholarship, which provided […]

Six Lessons on Employee Communications from Gov. Christie

The other day, I read about a confrontation New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had with the state’s firefighters. It occurred on September 17 of last year. Gov. Christie was scheduled to address the firefighters at their annual convention. As the governor entered the convention center and made his way up to the stage, he was […]

What It Takes to Be a Team

I’ve been reminded lately about the value of teamwork and how amazingly powerful it can be at work. I’ve watched as some very impressive teams have formed and begun to work together. This experience has led me to consider what the elements of a successful team are. Here’s what I’ve come up with: T-rust. The […]

Experience: What You Get When You Don’t Get What You Want

I saw a sign the other day that read, “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” It sounded pretty true to me. Sure, you get experience when you succeed, but if you think about it, the truly valuable lessons are learned when we don’t get what we want. This short […]

Self Interest or Team Effort?

I was in a meeting yesterday and our discussion centered around how we could really engage certain people within an organization. We weren’t long into the discussion when someone said, “I always think that people are motivated by self-interest.” My first thought was that his comment was a bit cynical. But as I thought about […]

Words of Wisdom

Each week, I sit down at my computer to write. Sometimes I’ve been tossing an idea around in my head for the better part of the week and the words just flow. Other times, I’m racking my brain for something I feel is worthy of writing about. In one of those moments when the latter […]

Why Companies Aren’t Hiring

The headlines have been full of stories about unemployment, the so-called “jobless recovery,” and lately we’ve been hearing about a potential double-dip recession. So when a colleague suggested I tackle the subject of why businesses aren’t hiring, I figured I could throw in my two cents. First let’s talk about unemployment. As of July 2010, […]