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Learn to Manage Your Attention Budget
The reason people find the holidays so completely stressful, at least one reason, is that we all already have so many things to think about. Suddenly in addition to work and family, friends, pets, budgets, whether or not moths are eating our woolen clothes, we also...
Culture Tip 5: Gratitude in the Workplace Trickles Down
There has been a lot of research about the benefits of gratitude: Improved sleep, reduced depression, better physical health and better relationships. Research shows that just saying “Thank you” increases the recipient’s desire to make a further connection with you....
How to Know if the Candidate Has the Right Skills
Last week I wrote a blog about the perils of leaning too heavily on personality profiles for hiring, which bothered some people who are in the industry. Lest I be misunderstood, I don’t think we should ditch personality profiles. They’re a really useful tool as a part...
Don’t Lean on Personality Tests for Hiring
The other night I tuned in to the movie Divergent and was frankly distracted, the entire time, by how much the plot reminded me of how a lot of people hire these days. In Divergent, kids are given a test at 16 which pretty much tells them which post-apocalyptic...
Get Smarter About Hiring Seasonal Workers
Every year around this time, retailers, restaurants and others who are gearing up for holiday traffic start hiring their seasonal workers. Of course they’re not the only ones with seasonal work demand. Tax companies will need folks in a few months and resorts and...
Do You Respect Your Time? Prioritize!
I talk about planning a lot. The reason for that is twofold: One, I’m a consultant and I know darn good and well that when I am in the middle of, say, writing an employee handbook, clients are going to call and need me to address an urgent matter like, “I just found...
The Cure for the Annual Performance Review
Every year, there is at least one book and a spate of articles about the evils of annual performance reviews. Basically it's the same theme – Toss the reviews! Ban the process! These writers think performance reviews shouldn’t exist. They say managers hate them...
On Trust and Chickens
Last week I heard a TED talk by Margaret Heffernan about productivity and chickens. In a study mentioned in the talk, a researcher cultivated several generations of chickens, eventually culling the most productive into one coop and leaving the others in a different...
Why HR’s Gone Paperless
I read a statistic recently that 77 percent of HR professionals say their departments have gone paperless. And I started thinking about the other 23 percent, having people come in and get a piece of paper and fill out all the boxes—oops, mistake? Scratch it out, or,...
The Time To Think About ACA Reporting is NOW!
So here’s the fun thing about the fourth quarter: You’ve only got so much time to get stuff done before the holidays kick in, making everything merry…and complicated. One of those things you really need to make sure gets done is planning for your Affordable Care Act...
Finally Wal-Mart! Train Your Entry-Level Workers
There was a story in the Wall Street Journal recently that I just don’t think got enough play. It was about Wal-Mart’s decision to “upskill” its employees. In other words, it plans to train its entry-level workers. People expect managers to be trained. They expect...
Hire Slow, Fire Fast, Have a Plan
People always say: Hire slow and fire fast, but I don’t think most people understand what that really means. I think it’s construed as “Be careful who you hire and when it turns out they’re not great, get rid of ‘em.” That’s not the point of Hire slow and fire fast....
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