HR U Can Trust Blog

You are a small employer and have never had an employee handbook and don’t really see the need for one, right? You may want to re-think this philosophy. Although there are disadvantages to having an employee handbook, in general the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.  …read more

We all have baggage. Some have unpacked that baggage and gone through it, but many have not. And even if you have unpacked and gone through it, you still have baggage. Let me be clear – when I say you’ve unpacked your baggage, I mean you or your insurance company has spent thousands of dollars working through your baggage with a licensed therapist. One result, if you went to a good therapist, is that you now have a lot less baggage to carry. You’ve worked through it and tossed a lot of it; you didn’t need it any longer. Another result is that for your remaining baggage you now have a better idea of what buttons push your baggage open.  …read more

In a recent blog I suggested that being a person of integrity gets you on the way to being a model employee. So what gets you the rest of the way there and keeps you there? Pure and simple, it’s your performance. Integrity influences your behaviors in the workplace. Your performance shows your ability to do to the job.  …read more

The approach I took in yesterday’s blog was for the most part the approach of protecting the company and the manager against legal risk. The politically correct answer. But here is my real opinion – the approach I wish we could get back to in our culture and in our work environment.  …read more

Your direct report has just shared with you that they have been diagnosed with a serious medical condition, a life threatening condition. The employee then proceeds to tell you the diagnoses and all the details surrounding it. How do you handle this as a manager?  …read more

Merriam-Webster defines integrity as “the quality of being honest and fair; the state of being complete or whole; firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values.” Do you consider yourself a person of integrity?? Being a person of integrity has much to do with being a model employee. Employers must be able to trust their employees to be people of integrity.  …read more

As an employee, you have certain rights. Most of us are familiar with the federal laws that protect employee rights and prohibit employers from discriminating against someone based on certain protected categories – such as race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.  …read more

I love working in Human Resources – probably because I really do care about people. I know that sounds cliché because every HR person would say they care about people. Unfortunately I sometimes see HR “not practicing what they preach”. This is not always completely their fault. Part of it is due to the direction of the HR focus over the past 10-15 years. HR has become much more focused on the business, being a part of the business, having a seat at the table, influencing the strategic pieces of HR as they relate to the business. These have all been necessary, positive, right changes. But I fear the focus on the employee has been lost in the shuffle. Employees see HR engaging with management and automatically believe that HR is therefore siding with management in all the decisions. In some cases this is true depending on the HR person. Some HR professionals are able to separate themselves from the business and still make good decisions around individual employees. But the bottom line, no matter how you cut it, is that the HR professional’s first obligation is to the Company, not to the employee. Their first obligation is to protect the company against litigation or charges of discrimination/harassment. The U.S. has become a culture full of lawsuits, some legitimate but many frivolous. A Company expects its HR professionals to help protect them from both.  …read more