The hard part of leading, the part so many business people avoid whenever possible, is dealing with employee emotions and, in particular, conflict. Unfortunately, it is hard to lead well when you ignore something that has such a huge affect on how people act. To get better at leading, Leadership … Read More
If and when an employee comes to you and tells you that they have a disability and need an accommodation, the first thing you need to do is enter into an “interactive process” with the employee. Really, this mostly means talking to the employee about the issues and treating them … Read More
What are Ethics Statements? They are attempts by companies to spell out the ethical standards that they expect their employees to live by. Sometimes they are confused with Values Statements, but a list of values tends to include characteristics such as excellence, compassion, and good humor, in addition to integrity, … Read More
Handling confidentiality during investigations is a moving target while the NRLA is sorted out. The reasons for maintaining confidentiality are clear: maintain privacy for accused and accuser protect witnesses, keep evidence from being destroyed, prevent stories from being synchronized, and prevent cover-ups. The competing interest, which the NRLB takes seriously, … Read More
Like so much about social media, using it to screen candidates is an area in flux. It seems like a good way to learn more about a candidate, but it is easy to learn too much. What you learn may not be true: you may have someone else with the … Read More
When people post to social media like Facebook or Twitter, they usually feel that they are talking to a few friends, but in fact they may be opening themselves and their employer up to potential liability. Companies may be tempted to ignore social media, but there are times when they … Read More
So often an owner is too busy working in the business to work on the business, and a strategic growth plan is one of the first things to get lost in the shuffle. It just takes too long to get all the pieces together: vision statement, mission statement, values, objectives, … Read More
Social media is providing challenges to employers who are concerned about their employees’ posts about their workplace. The immediate instinct is to ban those comments, but this quickly runs afoul of the National Labor Relations Act. The NRLA applies to even non-union workplaces and protects “concerted activity” such as forming … Read More
It is one of the odd truths of life that no matter how well we plan to do everything right, the world doesn’t always listen. Frequently this leads to a small problem, but sometimes it precipitates a major problem for a company. This is where risk analysis comes in: it … Read More
Every major new product takes time to really incorporate into our lives well enough to develop the appropriate etiquette and boundaries. Gin was the problem in 18th Century England, when poor people spent all their money on bottles and ended up in the gutter, mothers neglecting kids and fathers neglecting … Read More