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In recent months, many employers have faced increased scrutiny of and challenges to their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, including claims that the programs amount to “reverse discrimination.” In a recent decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit (which covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin) rejected an employee’s reverse discrimination claim under […]
The workplace as we know it has been in a state of constant disruption for the past 2 years. The pandemic revolutionized how office-based teams work, with many businesses going on to make remote and flexible working a core part of their workplace culture. According to McKinsey’s American Opportunity Survey, more than half (58%) of […]
The idea of training employees before you hire them might seem a bit nonsensical at first. For one, there is seemingly no need to train people who aren’t actually going to work for you. Theoretically, they could even end up taking a job with a competitor. But some argue that pretraining may be a valuable […]
Conflict is the fiber of every one of our existing relationships. A day doesn’t pass without conflict – it’s natural. Conflict is unavoidable but it does not have to be calamitous. It can be internal or external – as minor as hitting the snooze on your alarm or a clash of how to resolve a […]
Can positivity really be “toxic”? Isn’t toxic positivity a bit of an oxymoron? Not if you ask some employees. Lighten Up on The Lightness Years ago, the stereotypical boss was a strict authoritarian, quick to yell and criticize. Partially as a negative reaction to this management style, Corporate America developed a business dialect of sanitized, […]
A just-released book called Dying for a Paycheck is getting a lot of attention in the business realm. In the book, Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, unpacks how the modern workplace is causing leading chronic illnesses and stress and how it’s bad for economies and societies and the […]
As organizations become more global, HR leaders face the challenge of how best to reward and protect certain groups of their international staff. Pensions and savings benefits are often tightly bound by local rules and restrictions that can exclude some workers or render the benefits unattractive or insecure. One option is to look at the […]
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, companies were already expanding their use of videoconferencing technologies like Zoom, Teams, WebEx, and Skype. These can be great tools for enabling closer collaboration among colleagues and business partners working in different offices or even on different continents. Of course, the widespread shift to remote work triggered by COVID-19 precautions and […]
Background screening is a step in the employment process that involves analyzing past and present details about a prospective employee before hiring. In the past, a background check was not necessary for the hiring process as companies were more concerned about the skills and qualifications of a potential employee. However, due to the drastic changes […]
LITIGATION VALUE: Two weeks pay. Michael’s theory that a merger is like a marriage is an interesting one. He just seems to have forgotten that more than half of all marriages end in divorce. This week’s “divorce” was with Anthony Gardner, the employee Michael drove away with his crazy antics. Indeed, if it wasn’t bad […]