Yearly Archives: 2014

Transforming the lowly employee handbook: Design for communication not litigation

Posted on , by Greg Gast
Transforming the lowly employee handbook: Design for communication not litigation

 

Give me about three minutes with your employee handbook and I can tell you how it was created.  The most popular way: cut and paste.  Human Resource managers retrieve handbooks from their former employers, borrow a few examples from colleagues and extract the sections that apply to their firm.  The results:  generic choppy language, uneven flow from section to section and missing pieces that didn’t happen to appear in any of the examples they selected.  The second most […]

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What New Managers Need to Know… and How We Educate Them – (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on , by Greg Gast
What New Managers Need to Know… and How We Educate Them – (Part 2 of 2)

 If you recall, our previous blog post (Part 1) described the frustration and high failure rate associated with managers who have been magically transformed from staff person to manager by internal promotion or who have been hired externally and lack familiarity with your organization’s culture and procedures.  I suggested that to combat this chronic problem a low cost management orientation and education program can be designed and presented entirely in-house.  While the Human Resources and Organizational Development function can […]

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What New Managers Need to Know… and How We Educate Them – (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on , by Greg Gast
What New Managers Need to Know… and How We Educate Them – (Part 1 of 2)

When you hire a new manager in your organization how do you prepare them to actually manage people in your unique environment?  Is it the same process whether you hire from the outside or promote from within or whether they have some supervisory experience or have never managed a person in their life?  Often we mistakenly assume that because someone has survived the interviewing and assessment process and been selected for the job that she […]

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A Delicate Management Task – Managing Upward

Posted on , by Greg Gast
A Delicate Management Task – Managing Upward

Have you ever been completely exasperated when you couldn’t convince someone above you, senior management, a board or a direct supervisor, to approve an action or authorize resources that you needed to get your job done?  When I was the Director of Human Resources in a large teaching hospital with staffing as one of my responsibilities, all requisitions to hire staff had to be approved by the COO.  So it was my job to get positions filled as quickly […]

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Your Extreme Weather Response…Resignation or Resilience?

Posted on , by Greg Gast
Your Extreme Weather Response…Resignation or Resilience?

The eastern United States and other parts of the country have been pummeled by winter weather and it’s not over yet.  Harsh weather is demanding on us physically, emotionally and economically.  Most of us are prepared for a couple of days of a difficult commute or a few hours without power, but this year is ridiculous.  Unless you are working for the electric company or are in the snow plow or tree removal business, the weather has […]

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