One of the biggest keys to success in any career is mentorship.  Research over the last 30 years suggests that finding the right mentor can serve as a true lever for career success.  In HR, the role of mentoring can be absolutely pivotal in preventing faux pas and learning the virtues of leadership and navigation, a core competency.  Each time I think of mentorship I recall the impact my mentors have had and key incidents where I learned the most.  Take for example one of the greatest lessons learned from my graduate mentor, Vish Viswesvaran.  I was early in...

Happy SafeDay 2015 April 28th is SafeDay - the World Day for Safety and Health at Work.  A national occupational safety and health culture is one in which the right to a safe and healthy working environment is respected at all levels, where governments, employers, and workers actively participate in securing a safe and healthy working environment through a system of defined rights, responsibilities and duties, and where the highest priority is accorded to the principle of prevention. In putting together our not-so-best-selling book, The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention, we did a lot of research on human...

  The 2015 SHRM Talent Management Conference & Exposition is underway, and shortly after the engaging speaker series and effective networking concludes, the National Football League (NFL) Draft will be kicking off. An NFL franchise, like any other high-performance organization, must leverage talent as a source of competitive advantage. Whether it's competing for a Super Bowl (and fans) or for the Fortune 500 ranking (and customers), an organization's ability to acquire top talent plays an integral role in getting them to the top. ...

On April 29, @shrmnextchat chatted with Executive Editor of RecruitingDaily.com @MattCharney about the State of the Candidate Experience. In case you missed it, here are all the great tweets from the chat:   [View the story "#Nextchat RECAP: The Candidate Experience" on Storify]  ...

  What do employees want? When Work Works, the joint partnership of SHRM and Families and Work Institute (FWI) can help you answer this key question. Here are our top five hints. They want 1) work-life fit, even on factory floors, 2) advice on how to speak with managers about flexible work options (workflex), 3) companies that create effective and flexible workplaces, 4) employers who walk the talk when it comes to workflex, and 5) help, particularly male employees, dealing with family caregiver responsibilities. 1. Work-Life Fit,...

Keeping your boat afloat (and headed in the right direction) I have often heard the phrase "whatever floats your boat" and never gave it much thought.  During a recent period of reflection I gave the boat metaphor some more thought and found that it might be a good way to describe each one of us in our lives and our careers.  Let me take a few moments today to describe what I know about boats and keeping them afloat and headed in the right direction.  By adopting this kind of mindset I think each one of us might have a...

  "If you have innovative employees, but a workplace culture that doesn't support them, they will fail." ~ Ben Casnocha   Today’s super-talented employees are fired up by the desire to transform themselves, their companies and the world, and they want an employer that will allow them the freedom to do this. Without a supportive workplace culture that encourages experimentation, the innovators will fail-and eventually move on. At the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2015 Talent Management Conference & Exposition, closing general session speaker, award-winning Silicon Valley entrepreneur ...

Since 2006, I have interviewed hundreds of leaders and surveyed more than 6,000 employees about toxic leadership. Ultimately, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the topic. Many have asked about my findings, so I’m writing a series of short posts describing what I learned. I’ll start here by describing what toxic leadership is, then I’ll discuss why toxic leaders get promoted to begin with, why they survive in leadership roles, and what employees can do about their toxic bosses. Since many articles use the term "toxic leadership" in different ways, I conducted...

  Are your employees holding your company hostage? Of course not- you’re the manager, right? Your employees don’t determine the functionality or success of your department- management does… Or do they? Hopefully, toxic employees at your company are few and far between, but even one toxic employee can contribute to the catastrophic One-Layer-Deep Effect. The One-Layer-Deep Effect occurs when only one employee is knowledgeable or responsible for doing a task that is essential to the day-to-day activity of the business. For instance, I have consulted a company that had a very experienced, very knowledgeable account representative that had been on staff for...

Similar to Brigadoon—the magical Scottish village of Broadway musical fame that appears for only one day every hundred years -the SHRM Annual Conference & Exhibition bustles with activity for 4 days once a year.  And then it’s gone. In Brigadoon, all citizens are forbidden to leave the town or it will disappear forever. It’s the opposite with Annual Conference. Everybody has to leave on July 1—when the applause for the last concurrent session has faded, the SHRMStore has packed up the last box, and the Exhibit Hall is just a big empty space. ...