Tag: e-pinion

By BLR Founder and Publisher Bob Brady (Readers: A funny thing happened on the way to my writing today’s column. Another 800 email requests for my “perfect performance appraisal” engulfed us after last Friday’s column on the subject… that’s more than 1300 so far! So facing the possibility of an exploding in-box, we decided to […]

By BLR Founder and Publisher Bob Brady Last week’s column about our “perfect” performance appraisal form generated an unprecedented response. As I write this early in the week, I’ve received nearly 500 requests for a copy of the form, and they are still coming in. We have attempted to respond to everyone. If you asked […]

By BLR Founder and Publisher Bob Brady BLR practices what it preaches by adapting one of its own books (with a little help from Jack Welch) to evaluate its employees. You’ve heard of surfers whose lives revolve around finding the perfect wave, or the golfer in search of the perfect round? Well, one of my […]

BLR founder Bob Brady’s look at manager training may be tongue-in-cheek, but there’s a really important principle behind it. There was a wonderful article by author Amy Sutherland in The New York Times recently. She wrote about how animal training technique helped her train her husband. The article could help us train managers and supervisors, […]

By BLR Founder and Publisher Bob Brady Just as in private industry, government HR managers need to understand their organization’s core strategy, and then hire people and build policies that match. Several weeks ago, I wrote about how strategic HR decisions flow from what kind of company you are. If you depend on product creativity […]

By BLR Founder and Publisher Bob Brady Preemployment Testing: BLR’s founder discusses whether it actually does lead to better hires. In the last 30 years, I’ve hired a lot of people as BLR has grown from an idea to its present 250 employees. Hiring people is about the hardest thing to get right that there […]

By BLR Founder and Publisher Bob Brady TV relationship expert “Dr. Phil” McGraw, reminds our boss of what employees most want from their bosses. As this is written, I’m attending the National Convention of the YMCA, in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m proud to serve as a ‘Y’ volunteer. This organization is the largest provider of daycare […]

By BLR Founder and Publisher Bob Brady BLR’s publisher on why he loves … and hates … doing performance appraisals. Writing performance appraisals is something I love doing! That’s because every time I struggle through one, I repeat the wisdom that I’ve heard again and again (and truly believe) that says, “Here’s a chance to […]

By BLR Founder and Publisher Bob Brady Our CEO (and Chief BlackBerry User) wonders whether the time nonexempt workers spend checking in with BlackBerry-type devices might eventually be considered legally compensable under FLSA. Wherever you go, from the canyons of Wall Street to the canyons of our national parks, you can depend on one thing: […]

By BLR Founder and Publisher Bob Brady Why great HR ideas don’t work. BLR founder Bob Brady explains why a good idea in one company “lays an egg” in another. HR policies and practices are not “one size fits all.” We’ve all tried ideas that work great for a colleague but laid a total egg […]