Effective & Inexpensive Ways to Motivate Your Staff
After the holidays, there seems to be a dull roar in the office, a sense of apathy and melancholy can sometimes prevail as the weather gets colder, and the holiday cheer has been blown out of everyone’s sails. Motivating your staff is a yearlong predicament, and one that can be approached from different strategies. Do you offer performance bonuses? Commission for your sales team? Incentives for high-achieving employees each month? #motivate #employees #bonus While all of these are great ways to motivate your staff, we’d like to offer a few simple solutions as well. These will be easy on your [...]
Don’t Tip the Scales: Creating a Work/Life Balance
It seems like an elusive idea that people work toward but very rarely ever find! Perhaps the problem is that the idea of it is so simple and people expect that having it will be just as simple. In reality, work/life balance is something that must be worked at continuously. Just because you have it one week doesn’t mean it is going to be there next week! So how do we take steps to start balancing our time better? First, define what that balance looks like. This is going to be different for every person. If you have a target [...]
Shiny New Toys: Attracting Your Next Millennial Stars
Like moths to the flame, millennials are attracted to shiny new objects. Right? Isn’t that the perception for our younger generation in today’s workplace? But shockingly, the one thing that attracts millennials to your organization more than a new cell phone, a company car or the latest in Apple technology on their desktop, is something that used to be much more prevalent. It has since fallen to the wayside as priorities seem to have shifted for many companies, and budgets become more constrained for those “extra benefits” that used to be more present. What is it that millennials are searching for in their next company? Are [...]
Unlimited Vacation – Moving Away from Attendance and Towards Production
In recent years, several companies have moved to “unlimited” or “flexible” vacation plans. The old way of earning vacation time based off of hours worked has gone by the wayside. Employers are embracing the idea of having better work-life balance and fostering the trust-relationship between employer and employee. When these plans first started surfacing, there were several skeptics and many people assumed that the policy would be abused. The reality, however, has shown that this simply isn’t true. There’s something to be said for allowing employees to act professionally and make sound decisions on when they take vacation and how [...]
Time Off During the Holidays
It can be an employer’s nightmare – how do you manage all these vacation requests and deliver on business needs? Some industries like hotels and retail have no choice, they MUST be open for the holiday season while other industries have the option of shutting down or offering work-from-home options. No matter where you fall in that spectrum, you will still be faced with a slew of time off requests. What do you do? Set the expectation early If you’re in an industry that is open during the holidays, you may consider a blackout policy or a ‘this or that [...]
How Not to Present During Open Enrollment
Presentations may not be your favorite thing, but as an HR professional or a business executive, you’ll have to put on your fair share of presentations in the workplace. As the close of 2015 comes closer, we wanted to give you a few tips on how NOT to present during open enrollment for benefits this coming year. However, these tips can be applied for any business presentation – all of which we happen to be experts at doing! Contact us today to schedule your new hire orientation, sexual harassment training, yearly company training, open enrollment planning, managerial training and much [...]
What do the Proposed New Overtime Rules Mean?
It’s been talked about in the news a lot lately. The Labor Department has made recommendations to raise the threshold on the salary rate that would makes employees exempt from being paid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Currently under the FLSA, employers are not generally required to pay employees overtime premiums (time and a half) if they earn more than $23,660 per year. (NOTE: In California the Minimum Wage is higher than the federal rate) The proposed change is to raise that threshold to $50,440 per year. This plan also proposes raising the rate each year to [...]
Nickels & Dimes: Examining Your Wage Practices
“There has been a 77% rise in lawsuits tied to wage-and-hour disputes since 2004.” – Replicon.com Wage and hour lawsuits continue to be the hot ticket for employment related litigation. It is critical for employers to provide specific and concise guidelines for overtime, clocking in and out, and meal and rest periods to name a few! Without these policies in place, employers open themselves up to liability and potential for astronomical amounts of money and time lost due to costly legislation. Conducting a self-audit and analyzing the “nickels and dimes” of it within your organization can really help to beef [...]
Latest Trends in Telecommuting
As you can see, many of our posts revolve around social media and digital natives and technology. Why is this the case? Well, to be honest, technology is what makes the world go ‘round in the 21st century. So in order to stay present and relevant in our world, human resources professionals must adopt these strategies and skills in order to successfully provide services to our clients and ensure that our presence in the industry is known. According to the HR Daily Advisor online, business analysts predict that up to 30% of workers in industrialized countries will be telecommuting within [...]
7 Things Great Employers Do
How do you get your workforce engaged in the work they are doing? This is a question that comes up quite a bit, as employers are attempting to get their employees involved, productive, and enthusiastic about their work. There are 7 things great employers do that creates a “feel good” approach to getting your employees engaged and creating a work culture that others will envy! [tweetthis]There are 7 things great employers do that creates a work culture others will envy![/tweetthis] 1. Start with your leaders – Choose involved, creative leaders who want to make a difference and get others excited [...]