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HR Shouldn’t be Scary
Why You Need HR in your Business The nature of business is competitive. What are you doing to put yourself, your business, your product, and your employees above the others in your same market? I have been in HR long enough to grow a thick skin – and to know that the average business owner does […]
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One-to-Ones: They Aren’t Scary
This time of year people are beginning to think about pumpkin spice, Halloween costumes and year end performance reviews. Oh you aren’t? That’s just me? And here I thought I was “normal.” I am a huge Pumpkin Spice fan, but that isn’t what I want to talk about. Year-end performance reviews don’t need to be […]
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How to Create a Positive Work Environment
Some of my business clients are struggling. The employees who worked through the pandemic are feeling overworked and underappreciated. No one remembers what a true vacation feels like. I know I don’t and as a business owner it feels I can’t take a vacation. After interviewing my client’s employees, they feel the same way. Here […]
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Understanding Onboarding: Helping Your New Employee Find Their Forever Home
During new employee one-to-ones I ask the employees how their Onboarding process went. I often clarify that I do not mean the handbook review, the paperwork, or even the facility tour – I mean the first 30 days in general. The fact that I have to explain what I mean is enough to show me […]
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Maintaining a Healthy Work-Home Balance
I was lucky and I had an office to hide in during the pandemic. However, for many of my clients, remote work is here to stay. Yes, working from home has become the norm. When the pandemic started, I reminded businesses that it was important to maintain a healthy work/home balance and to respect people’s […]
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If Your Workers Can’t Make Decisions, Teach Them How
Some days I feel really old. I know I am not that old, but now that I am, well, the age that I am, I often feel challenged by the younger generations. I now work with business owners my kids’ ages (late twenties and early thirties), and their employees are even younger—my step-kids’ ages (late […]
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Whiny Wednesdays: Letting Your Workers Vent—Strategically
Once upon a time, employees were expected to put up and shut up, to fulfill their jobs with unquestioning obedience. If they had a problem—with the job, with the boss, with clients, with co-workers—well, that was their problem. They needed to fix it on their own, with no fuss, and if they couldn’t do that, […]
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Making Remote Work Work for you
When the pandemic started in early 2020, most employers and employees had no idea what working from home was all about. We knew about video calls, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Webex, but we had rarely used them. We had to learn as we went, a crash course in scheduling virtual meetings, turning cameras and microphones […]
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Limit Gossip in the Workplace to Improve Your Business Culture
We humans are a curious bunch and very social. Talking to the people we work with all day is natural and healthy. It’s great for camaraderie and team bonding and helps us feel engaged and connected. But when healthy conversation turns into gossip, it can have the opposite effect, distracting us from doing good work […]
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From Dining Room Workstations to Zoom Backgrounds: What Business Leaders Learned in 2020
I have seen the memes floating around social media about how March didn’t behave last year – do we really want it back? That made me think – WOW. It really has been a year since everything hit the fan. Everything being, of course, COVID-19. Remember when we thought everything would be back to normal […]
