We can all use a little ongoing development.  There are certain skills that few people can master and never think about improving.  One of those skills is the art of negotiation.  I admit, there are people who seem to ooze confidence when it comes to wheeling-and-dealing to achieve the result they want.  However, for the majority, being able to negotiate a quality resolution is sporadic at best. When thinking about negotiating, you could be facing a multi-million dollar deal on the table, a choice between vendors on a...

  Anyone who has struggled with time management or procrastination knows the definitions of these terms all too well.  They bring to mind incidences of felt laziness, guilt, inadequacy, anxiety or just the failure to get things done.  Removed from all of the emotional negativity, procrastination refers more simply to the avoidance of things that need to be accomplished. Conversely, time management is the effective use of resources to achieve tasks in a reasonable time-frame. In today’s workplace, the use of the internet and technology...

40 percent of workers would forgo a wage increase to keep their current health coverage    Five years after it became law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) continues to generate debate. One aspect of the law is currently under review by the U.S. Supreme Court, and many organizations are still weighing the act’s potential impact on health care expenses for their employees. Most research has shown that employers have no plans to eliminate health coverage in the near term. A joint survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) from...

This book has been Approved for Recertification Credit. After reading this approved book, you must complete a quiz on SHRM’s E-Learning platform. When you purchase this book from the SHRMStore, you will receive a code that you can use to cover the cost of the quiz. Receive a 70% or better score on the quiz and you will then receive a certificate of completion with the program ID that entitles you to 3.0 PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CREDITS for SHRM Certification and 2.5 GENERAL credit hours for HRCI. Use the corresponding Program IDs to log your credits. For a complete list of the...

  We’re saturated. We’ve overwhelmed. The technology that was created to make our lives easier also generates more work. It has also given rise to new channels of communication that have further divided our attention—at the office and at home. Thanks to smartphones, "work/life balance" now means you can take your work with you wherever you go—including on vacation. There’s too much information, too many assignments, too many meetings and conference calls. We’re always on and live in a 24/7 workplace. In his blog...

    A few years ago I was at a seminar where the speaker highlighted some of the worst things he heard over the course of his extensive career as a business consultant.  I got my popcorn ready because I figured some salacious stories were coming my way.  Instead I learned more about failed accountability than you can ever imagine.  I took the stories shared by Dale Henry (the speaker) and reflected upon the catchphrases I hear all the time.  Dale had two that stood out—"It’s not my job" and "It’s not personal, it’s business."  He highlighted these as two...

  Later this month I have the privilege of being one of the MCs for SHRM’s 2015 Talent Management Conference. Every year I look forward to this conference - to meeting recruiters and HR professionals from around the U.S. and the world - who are responsible for their company’s greatest asset - their people. Being a reformed recruiter, I love the energy and enthusiasm that these folks bring to this event. So here are the top three things that I am most looking forward to when I head to San...

On April 8, @shrmnextchat chatted with jobFig CEO Ravi Mikkelsen (@RaviMikkelsen) about "Our Overwhelmed Workforce." In case you missed it, here are all the great tweets from this interesting chat:   [View the story "#Nextchat RECAP: Our Overwhelmed Workforce" on Storify]  ...

  I work as a part of a remote team. While the employees I support are all based in Chicago and Minneapolis, my boss and colleagues are spread throughout the country. We have set team calls every week and we talk almost every day, whether through email, text, video chat or good old fashion telephone. All of these forms of communication are great in keeping us informed and help in our continual relationship building, but nothing replaces the level of productivity we are able to achieve when we are together. If you manage a remote team, make every effort you...

  Welcome to the dog-eat-dog world of recruiting: a place where employers meet for battle in the talent pools to find the best candidates to join their staff. Okay, maybe recruiting isn’t that dramatic, but shouldn’t it be? National unemployment rates soared during the economic recession aftermath, so many educated and experience employees found themselves out of work and desperate for a job. Therefore, employers had an abundance of talent to choose from for their open positions. Today, national unemployment rates paint a different picture.  Employers...

Dad died June 25, 2012. This morning, I miss him. Dad was a dairy farmer from Maine. He didn’t need applause for taking care of his wife and children. He humbly got the job done, day after day. He read books and took courses all his life, but never flaunted what he knew. Even when he knew more than me, which was most of the time, he asked questions and listened. Love for learning lives in my bones because of dad. 12 ways to be humble: Ask questions. After falling short, get...

  "Workflex and manufacturing don’t mix," is a comment I constantly hear from manufacturers during my travels across the country promoting When Work Works, the joint project of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the Families and Work Institute (FWI). The project explores ways to reinvent work and create more effective and flexible workplaces — or workflex for short — and my job is to get the message out about how to make workflex work. From Hawaii to Maine, no matter...

  Q:  My daughter is pursuing a career as a programmer and hopes to work for a company such as Google.  I’m proud of her talent and aspirations.  However, I have some concerns about the technical industry’s record regarding women. First, they’re under-represented and then women seem to leave the industry after only working an average of 10 years.  What advice would you give her? A:  You are correct, women are terribly under-represented in the tech field making up less than 20% of employees, and the big firms (like Google, Apple and Twitter) are trying hard to correct that through...

SHRM CEO, Hank Jackson According to the latest annual report on human capital trends by consulting firm Deloitte, there is a "gap between what business leaders want and the capabilities of HR to deliver." In the report, HR leaders rated their teams a C-minus, showing almost no improvement over the past few years. Business leaders rated HR even lower—a D-plus. Whether you accept all of the report’s findings or not, there appear to be significant opportunities to enhance our profession. The report is a less than optimal reflection of the value...

  The United States Congress created the Days of  Remembrance as our nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust.  This year, Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) starts on the evening of April 15 and ends on the evening of April 16. http://www.ushmm.org/remember/days-of-remembrance During the Holocaust, more than 11 million human beings were systemically murdered.  That includes 6 million Jews, 2/3 of the European Jewish community at that time. But the numbers would have been even worse were it not for the countless "righteous gentiles." The term "righteous gentiles" is used to refer to those who are not Jewish and who risked...

  Going to a conference can be intimidating especially if you are first-time attendee. Not knowing where to go and not knowing another soul at an event can be lonely so here are some tips that will not only make your conference experience more enjoyable but also hopefully less stressful! 1.       Have a Plan. To make the most of your time at a conference it is important to have a plan for example, what sessions do you want to attend and/or what exhibitors do you want to talk you. ...

  "He’s dead, Jim" is the error message you might see from Google when your computer doesn’t have enough memory to run a tab. It could also be used to describe the resume-and other ineffective and outdated hiring processes in the new era of job seeking.  Talent management in 2015 is still about finding the best candidates with the right skills, experience and personality, but it’s no longer about hiring people who are actively looking for a job. The brightest and...

A recent San Francisco Fed research report illustrated what those of us in the hiring and recruiting process have known for some time - jobs need to find talent in today’s "candidate market," and not the other way around. Researchers behind the report uncovered that 75 percent of workers with new jobs over the last three months hadn’t actively applied for a job - meaning they were either poached or referred. Again, this isn’t uncharted territory. Previous surveys have noted that 83 percent of recruiters believe candidates...

Every time I think I have seen everything, something new comes along.  I will share a few thoughts to those of you out there today who are candidates, or who may be candidates, for future opportunities.  I don’t pretend to have all of the answers, but I want to share a few tactics that will not endear you to client firms if you end up being someone they consider hiring. The search process is a dance and in most cases the client leads the dance. ...

No, it’s not just the day before Tax Day. Interestingly enough, today is another day with relevance to HR. According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, April 14th is called "Equal Pay Day" in order to raise public awareness around the importance of compensation equity in the workplace. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2013 women who were full-time workers had median weekly earnings of $706, which is about 82 percent of the median weekly earnings of male full-time workers ($860)....

  This week at Brandon Hall Group, we’re taking the first step in researching one of the most fundamental problems facing hiring organizations today. Talent shortage, skills gap, skills shortage - call it what you will, there are a lot of hiring organizations struggling to find qualified candidates for their open jobs. My question (simplified for the sake of this post) is "Why?" Our latest research survey - which you can participate in right here - undertakes some serious data gathering in order to get to the bottom of this. It’s no secret that competition for talent is...

  The theory behind performance management is simple enough: Align the personal and professional goals of your employees with the strategic goals of your organization, and you'll be in a far better position to achieve ongoing success. Performance management encompasses the setting of these goals, and the monitoring of employees and departments to ensure that objectives are being met in the most effective way possible. At the end of the day, no company can succeed without committed, dedicated employees that understand their role in the organization. A good performance management strategy can give these individuals context, and provide them with...

High-tech entrepreneurship, the health care industry and a resurgent manufacturing sector are just a few of the important elements of the Chicago region’s economy. Among some of the well-recognized Fortune 500 companies headquartered here are Motorola, Boeing, McDonald’s and agricultural processor Archer Daniels Midland. Internet marketing company Groupon calls Chicago home and employs more than 2,000 people at its local offices, and online review website Yelp is also growing its operations in the Windy City. Chicago economic development officials are also trying to create homes for some lesser-known...

Tacit Knowledge Helps to Differentiate the Brightest Organizations We can know more than we can tell - Michael Polanyi The rise of the internet, advances in mobile technologies, online communications and collaboration tools have revolutionized the way we work, who we work with, and the way we serve our customers. Michael Polanyi, in his book Personal Knowledge[i], suggests that human’s intellectual superiority over animals is due to our linguistic capabilities…" What’s left he called tacit knowledge - information that’s difficult to transfer to others. Examples of tacit knowledge include things like experience, perspective, and intuition. What...