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Employee Relations

Craft strategy to retain your best employees

08/23/2013
It’s getting a lot easier for your most valued employees to find jobs at other companies. And if your retention efforts aren’t better than your competitors’ recruiting, you stand a good chance of losing your star employees.

Swearing at work: Is it ever appropriate?

08/21/2013

Does swearing energize ­employees and demonstrate passion? Or does it cast you as out-of-control and unprofessional? Generally, the answer is the latter.

Dimension Data employees have multiple choices for development

08/20/2013

Employees of Dimension Data Americas have half a dozen ways to develop their skills and further their careers with the Virginia-based tech company. For example, its Dimension Data University is an e-learning platform that allows em­ployees to log on when they have time to take skills-development classes.

Don’t overlook oral warnings in progressive discipline process

08/19/2013
Progressive discipline often focuses on the end of the process—the written warnings that, if unheeded, can lead to firing. But the oral warnings that come at the beginning are just as important.

The distasteful ‘sandwich’: How to rethink your feedback strategy

08/14/2013
Many managers and HR professionals have been taught to “sandwich” constructive criticism between two positive statements. But I think this is a distasteful way of delivering feedback. Here’s why:

What should we do? Employee says he’s allergic to co-worker’s service dog

08/13/2013
Q. After making several accommodations for an em­­ployee who was recently diagnosed with epilepsy and assigned a service dog, another employee is now claiming he is allergic. Can we ask for medical documentation to confirm his allergy? And aside from moving him farther away from the dog, are there other accommodations we are required to make for him?

Recession took toll on workplace collaboration

08/13/2013

U.S. workers are focusing more and collaborating less than they did six years ago—a likely result of the Great Recession and a lagging recovery—according to researchers at Gensler, the nation’s largest commercial interior design firm.

5 tips to help co-workers hear your ideas

08/12/2013
How to get your ideas heard: 1. Build buy-in by “noticing out loud.” 2. Repackage your ideas to sell. 3. Use what you know to connect. 4. Get agreement with repetition. 5. Wear navy blue.

Hypersensitive employee? What’s hostile depends on objective analysis

08/08/2013
Don’t worry too much if a sensitive soul finds the workplace unpleasant. Absent tangible, objective evidence that an environment is truly hostile, her lawsuit won’t go far.

Warn bosses about personal liability risk

08/07/2013
Remind supervisors that the integrity of the performance evaluation process depends on their honest assessment. Providing anything less may mean a court date and personal liability under North Carolina law.