Management Training

It’s not too late to get your team’s momentum going, so they’re invigorated by 2011's new year's goals. Here are 10 steps blogger Terry Starbucker recommends:

If an employee has a disability it’s like they become untouchable, right? Wrong! As one court recently noted, following your policies consistently can be a lifesaver against claims of discrimination—even when terminated employees are in protected categories…

As a management professor at Stanford, Robert Sutton heard many tales of woe that led to his business best-seller, The No Asshole Rule, whose thesis was simple: Don’t hire jerks. Beyond jerkdom, however, Sutton has a few suggestions about how to behave and how not to behave as a leader:

If Angie Fuller hadn’t discovered the Standard Operating Procedure manual her predecessor left, she wouldn’t have known how to do her job. Once she’d settled into her new position, she began updating the SOP manual to accurately reflect her evolving role. Follow Fuller’s tips to create an SOP manual for your role.

The biggest problem with e-mail, according to Scot Herrick, is that most people only use the tool as a way to manage to-dos, collaborate and move work along. Herrick believes that’s a problem because we should be thinking of e-mail as a personal branding tool, not merely as a workhorse.

You'd be wise to align yourself more closely with your organization's chief financial officer. Why? CFOs are feeling increasing pressure to show how "people assets" are being managed in their organizations. Being friendly with the finance team can help secure funding for your projects.

As employees' duties change, make sure you regularly update their job descriptions to reflect realities on the ground. Then use those job descriptions to see if they are still properly classified under the FLSA. Don’t rely on an analysis that’s even a couple of years old. As this case shows, even an analysis provided by the DOL isn’t safe.

In another example of the complex interplay between social media and HR, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reached a settlement on Feb. 7, 2011, in the closely watched “Facebook Firing” case.

Here’s how to recognize if you’re not giving direct reports the feedback they need to step up their game, adapted from The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave:

The National Labor Relations Board has settled with a company that fired an employee for posting negative comments about a boss on her Facebook page. The case seems to signal that employee communications that happen via social media constitute protected activity under federal law. Does your social media policy go too far?