Training picks up where procedures leave off, and they should work together to make sure employees are doing the job the way you want it done. Much training can be done on the job, but sometimes it is worth putting together materials to make the process go more smoothly. Training … Read More
When should you write job descriptions? When: Tasks keep falling through the crack or being duplicated. You hear “It’s not my job” more than you like. You are hiring and need to explain the job to candidates. Hand-offs between employees make tasks more complicated than they need to be. Before … Read More
When should you develop an employee manual? When: You keep making the same decision about maternity leave or how to handle complaints. Employees keep asking the same questions. High turnover makes consistent training hard. Employees respond with “I didn’t know” when disciplined. The goal is to create a handbook so … Read More
Some people seem to think that generating paper is a goal in itself, but the only good reason to write documents is to help you manage your business better. If it doesn’t help, you won’t use it and it will gather dust. So how can documents help? Any time you … Read More
When you are putting together a Return to Work program, one useful item is a set of functional job descriptions. These differ from the job descriptions you might already have by focusing solely of the physical requirements of a job rather than on the tasks; instead of “store packages on … Read More
If you live in a community that hosts a National Guard or Reserves post, you may end up with a service member as an employee. You may not know about it when you hire them (among other things, it is a bad idea to ask candidates if they are a … Read More
One question that often comes up in audits, whether ISO-9001, AS-9100, or food safety, is whether or not your people are qualified to do their job. How do you know that they are qualified to turn out a quality product every time? How do you know that they know how … Read More
People generally join nonprofit boards because they believe in the organization’s mission, but that doesn’t mean that they understand what it takes to be a good board member – that is one of those things we all have to learn by practicing. One way to make on-the-job training of new … Read More
If you hire younger people (and you will probably have to sooner or later), you have to deal with tattoos. A decade ago you could usually ignore them because very few good candidates or employees had one, but they are increasingly found on very bright and motivated young people who … Read More
Once you have successfully recruited new board members, you can help them by doing more to orient them to their new role than just handing them the by-laws and policies to read. You absolutely want to give them a binder with all the information they need to be a good … Read More