If you’re like us, you’ve struggled at times to understand the best way to respond to negative Glassdoor reviews. Follow this link to The HR Capitalist for a primer on the best way to engage when problematic reviews come your way. Kris DunnKris Dunn is a Partner and CHRO at Kinetix, a national RPO firm for growth companies headquartered in …
Why I Am No Longer Saying “Culture”
About 15 years ago, I was sitting at an office dinner party, and the company president was giving an emotional speech about the importance of company culture. The speech was inspiring, revolutionary, and confusing. Confusing because I was unsure what he meant by culture. Did he mean the behaviors he would like to see in the organization? The camaraderie and …
Do Activist Employees At Google Represent The Masses?
If you’re an HR leader, one important thing to get your head around is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its connection to the mission of your company and the market choices your company makes. Welcome to the new world. You can’t simply chase a profitable line of business that exists on the fringes without considering CSR. At no place is …
Employee Relations Moment of Truth: We All Fail
Do you know how I got into HR? I wanted to work with people. Every time I think about that sentence these days, “I want to work with people“, I can’t believe how naive I was. Does anyone say they don’t want to work with people? I imagine there are some, but really, how often does that happen? Part of …
Dear Staff, Just Because It’s Legal, Doesn’t Mean You Can Smoke It At Work – Sincerely, HR
I have known that distinct smell of marijuana ever since I was in middle school. The year was 1975, and I was spending the night at my very popular older brother’s house (known for his infamous parties). I happened upon that plate beneath to sofa that contained, among other things, a pack of funny little thin papers, little round seeds, …
Throwing out the Bad Apples
Everyone’s heard the phrase “a bad apple spoils the bunch,” but in my work experience, this hasn’t been true. In my experience, it isn’t the bad apple that spoils the bunch; it’s the semi-bad apple. That apple that you think is just as good as the rest (or pretty close), until you realize it’s not just as good, and that …
Just Leave Us Alone
I read a quote last week that I would surely butcher if I tried to recall word-for-word, but the overall theme of the quote was this: People are not required to be constantly available to you, or you to them. And yet, there I sat at 8 AM on a Thursday morning with 57 notifications on my phone. By 7 …
Dispelling HR Police Mythology
It was 5 minutes until 5:00 pm on a Friday. I was at my desk holding court about where the Sales team was going for happy hour when suddenly the “personnel” lady appeared with a figurative summons for me to appear in personnel court along with a fellow Account Executive. “Why,” you ask? Two weeks prior while in Sedona, Arizona …
Fire With Grace
Grace is a word not often used in a business context. It should probably be used more. And even less so, grace is not something we typically associate with firing someone, taking away someone’s source of financial security, involuntarily. But we should. Because when it comes to firing someone, grace on the part of the employer is what’s needed most. …
5 Hard Lessons I’ve Learned About Being a Better Manager and Boss
I’m a sucker for anything that tries to answer a question that I almost never hear anyone ask, much less answer: How can you be a good boss? Notice that I say anything that “tries” to answer because I usually find that most advice on how to better manage people usually goes one of two ways — it’s either very …