Author: Ida Martin

Hot List: Wall Street Journal’s Bestselling Hardcover Business Books

The following is a list of the bestselling hardcover business books as ranked by the Wall Street Journal with data from Nielsen BookScan on October 11. 1. StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths by Tom Rath. Are you unsure where your true talents lie? […]

Self Interest or Team Effort?

I was in a meeting yesterday and our discussion centered around how we could really engage certain people within an organization. We weren’t long into the discussion when someone said, “I always think that people are motivated by self-interest.” My first thought was that his comment was a bit cynical. But as I thought about […]

The Play’s the Thing

Litigation Value: A jug of wine, and thou. Unless the bottle nicked by Michael Scott (and shared with some of his coworkers) contained a vintage beyond the norm for community theater events, we could limit our legal discussion to petty theft. But how instructive — or fun — would that be? With the most recent […]

Note to Supervisor: Consult HR before Approving FMLA Leave

We all know that an employee need not specifically state that she requires a leave of absence under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). What we don’t know is how much (or how little) an employee has to say in a particular situation to put the employer on notice that she is seeking FMLA […]

OSHA’s Enforcement Push: 27 Separate Cases with $100,000-plus Fines

By Jim Stanley, President, FDRsafety Big fines make big news as was evident when OSHA recently proposed $16.6 million in penalties in a deadly explosion at a Kleen Energy Systems construction site in Connecticut. But day-in, day-out announcements of OSHA fines may be just as significant because they illustrate the depth of the agency’s enforcement […]

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

Sarah Hulsey, PHR, reviews Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh’s book Delivering Happiness and finds it uplifting and motivating but not necessarily belonging in the business section of the bookstore. You’d have to be living in a cave to not have heard about Zappos and the work CEO Tony Hsieh is doing to improve customer and employee […]

Blowing Holes in Collective Agreements

by Emilie Paquin-Holmested and Dominique Monet The Supreme Court of Canada, in Québec (Procureur général) c. Syndicat de la fonction publique, recently struck down a clause in a collective agreement. The clause in question prevented certain employees from challenging discipline through grievance arbitration. The Court declared the clause void because it contravened a statutory minimum […]

Hot List: Bestselling “Organizational Behavior” Books on Amazon.com

Amazon.com updates its list of the bestselling books every hour. Here is a snapshot of what is hot right now, this Monday morning, October 4, in the “Organizational Behavior” section of the “Business and Investing” category. 1.Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The authors of Made […]

Decisionmaking 101

Have you ever considered that more of your difficulties at work come from decisions that are NOT made than those that are? How often do you wait for a decision to come from “on high” only to discover that by the time it does the opportunity has passed you by? My guess is that if […]