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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Co-written with: Lee Neagle of Certa Scientia, LLC & Kevin Baxter of Advanced Network Service, LLC One of the unintended consequences of working from home during the pandemic is that employees often use their own personal electronic devices—cell phones, laptops,...