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If you are having difficulty seeing this mail or images in it, you can view it in your Web browser. Volume 8, Issue 3      In This Issue:   Simple ways to salvage 'below-standard' employees   Choosing a recruiter? Steer clear of these 4 deadly sins   When romance goes bad: Protecting the company from the fallout   Termination meeting should include open door, easy exit   Are you the pointy-haired boss?   Padlocking the revolving door on turnover   Communication for managers 101   'Most admired companies' pay less for talent, groom employees better   Good HR really can improve performance   Helping co-workers cope with loss   Meet the bosses who could win the ‘Awful’   Compensation and benefits for generations X and Y Simple ways to salvage 'below-standard' employees Every manager faces employees who exhibit below-standard performance. These aren’t terrible employees who should be shown the door, but they’re not achieving the quality or quantity of work they’re capable of. Unless the performance issue is addressed directly, it’ll only get worse. Too many managers try to deal with such employees by sending subtle signals. Not smart. According to an OnPoint Consulting report, here are the five best ways to give below-standard workers a performance boost... Read the article.  Back to top Choosing a recruiter? Steer clear of these 4 deadly sins Say you needed to fill a key executive position, so you brought in a recruiting firm. But the process took forever, broke the bank, resulted in a small, inferior candidate pool—and the new hire jumped ship after three months. You could have bypassed most of those headaches by avoiding four common mistakes... Read the article.  Back to top When romance goes bad: Protecting the company from the fallout Ants in His Pants—But Can You Fire Him? The Internet has created a whole new pond for employment lawyers to fish in. But you’re not powerless to act against employees’ embarrassing activities. You can discipline employees who go over the line. When office romances sour, scorned lovers often use Title VII to allege that their former lover was a sexual harasser. And even if the lovers are happy, workplace romances can cause problems in the office or on the shop floor. If co-workers feel a love affair results in favoritism, the relationship may lead to charges of conflict of interest, harassment, retaliation or discrimination... Read the article.  Back to top Termination meeting should include open door, easy exit The setting for a termination meeting can be crucial in preventing an unexpected charge—false imprisonment. To avoid unfounded false imprisonment charges, make certain termination meetings are private, yet open. Allow the employee to sit by the door, with nothing blocking her exit... Read the article.  Back to top Are you the pointy-haired boss? Here he comes again. In Dilbert cartoons, you know him as the pointy-haired boss. He will parade up to your cubicle to dispense self-serving advice. His logic is as arbitrary as his deadlines. He may sprinkle his language with the latest acronyms, but you know the truth. He is oblivious to day-to-day operations, like Mr. McGoo wandering through a minefield. Behind your corporate Pollyanna, you resent him sometimes. Still, you follow the drill: stroke his ego and don't make waves. You may have started to tune him out, but he still holds sway over your career. It may be dispiriting, but you have come to accept your situation: your boss is not equipped to help you and you are on your own. Demonizing then Becoming the Boss In the cubicle culture, it is easy to caricature or demonize the boss. The dizzying speed of business sometimes makes corporate decision-making seem capricious. When you step into management—and become responsible for the livelihoods of others—your words and actions become instantly magnified. Your world accelerates and expectations are high. Your credibility is constantly on the line. In this environment, you can quickly become overwhelmed. Some managers choose to insulate themselves; others overcompensate. Either way, you may morph into that person who once made you snicker. You may not even realize it. Then, like a blinding light on the road to Damascus, it hits you... Read the article.  Back to top Padlocking the revolving door on turnover Getting Started with Strategic Talent Management Company loyalty and long-term job tenures often seem like relics from a bygone era, but does constant turnover necessarily have to be the status quo for most companies? Not at all, says Peter Handal, chairman, president and CEO of Hauppage, N.Y.-based Dale Carnegie Training (dalecarnegie.com). On the contrary, Handal says there are certain steps businesses can take to ensure their employees stay engaged and loyal. These include the following... Read the article.  Back to top Communication for managers 101 Employees Stressing Out While it's no secret that stress contributes to overall worker well-being, what is surprising is that many employers are likely to do little about it. Harvard Business Publications recently confirmed what many have always known: effective communication is the number one skill for executives to develop. But this skill is neglected when it comes to employee development. Companies send their managers and executives to all types of continuing education programs. And yet, communication development goes highly overlooked. Managers and executives need to be acutely aware of their communication within the organization. A Gallup poll of more than 1 million U.S. workers concluded that the No. 1 reason people quit their jobs is because of problems with their immediate supervisor. Also, surveys show that over 80% of work-related problems are due to a breakdown in communication (Felber 2002). So how can managers and executives improve their interpersonal communications with their employees? Here are five easy steps that can be taken:... Read the article.  Back to top 'Most admired companies' pay less for talent, groom employees better Hay Group, a global management consulting firm, and FORTUNE magazine released today the eleventh annual rankings on The World’ s Most Admired Companies list and Hay Group also conducts supplemental research each year to identify business practices that distinguish companies on the lists from all others. This year’ s analysis focused on how these companies manage their employee reward programs, and found that they do a much better job of leveraging their reward investments than their peers. “We know from previous research that companies on these lists actually manage to pay less for talent than their peers – about 5% less; they tend to have less of a need to hire expensive outside talent for jobs, because they are better at grooming people internally and retaining employees. The lower costs of recruiting and training new people have a ripple effect across an organization,” said Hay Group Vice President Mel Stark. “In addition, these companies do a better job of rewarding top performers – delivering the best pay increases to those who are truly deserving and holding the line on pay for marginal performers. Over time, this results in a compounded effect of top performers earning appreciably more than others.” Stark noted, “These companies also do a much better job of engaging and leveraging their managers to reinforce with employees the total value of what the organization provides, encompassing both the tangible and the intangible nature of rewards.”Other notable gaps between companies on America’ s Most Admired Companies list and The World’ s Most Admired Companies list and their peers include: 79% regularly provide employees with total reward statements, versus 53% of peer group respondents 82% regularly... Read the article.  Back to top Good HR really can improve performance Human resources (HR) often takes a lot of flak from managers for being up its own ivory tower - often with some justification. But, as a new British report suggests that firms with a comprehensive approach to people management report higher profits per employee, profit margins and productivity, do we need to start being nice to our personnel function once again? The two-year government-backed research project by the think-tanks Work Foundation and the Institute for Employment Studies has also outlined 12 core measures that, it argued, any organisation can track to assess the impact of their people management practices on business performance. The People and the Bottom Line study involved developing and testing a framework of people management practices with nearly 3,000 employers to assess their impact on organisational performance. Data was collected from each organisation and performance assessed across the framework of measures. This suggested that organisations that adopted a range of people management practices [including...] Read the article.  Back to top Helping co-workers cope with loss If there's something I can do for you, let me know." When people are hit with a tragic loss and it throws them for a loop, don't believe for a moment that they're leaving their personal lives at the door. Debilitating diseases, divorce or the death of a loved-one are among the most stressful events anyone can experience. The human mind demands time to process such events, and as much as some believe otherwise, we can't turn that processing on or off at will. Processing personal grief takes time, and it can take its toll, too. Quite often, the person experiencing grief is distracted. Attention to detail can suffer. Safe work practices can get ignored. Emotions can run the entire spectrum from angry outbursts to total withdrawal. Perhaps the most egregious error we can commit in the workplace is expecting someone who's recently experienced loss to be "back to normal" within a few days. Frankly, it's an unrealistic - and unreasonable - expectation. If it's not your loved one that passed away, two weeks after a funeral can seem like a long time. But to the person who experienced the loss, even a month later, "normal life" will probably still feel out of reach. In what might be the classic work on grief, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's book "On Death and Dying" outlines five phases a person goes through after experiencing the loss of a loved one. [Lots of advice for helping people cope with loss is available. The following are some tips from a variety of grief counseling resources, mental health practitioners, and writers on the subject. The list is by no means complete, but as someone who's been on both sides of this issue recently, I see this list as a good starting point...] Read the article.  Back to top Meet the bosses who could win the ‘Awful’ When bad boss behavior occurs, it generally happens in an atmosphere in which the law is ignored, company policy is ignored and the line separating good business practices from boorish conduct—and often unlawful conduct—is crossed. A dose of stupidity, mixed with a larger dose of arrogance—that’s the formula for winning an Awful Award. Dressed in their Sunday best, everyone leaned forward to hear the words: “The envelope, please.” Anticipation grew. Who would win and who would lose? The room was hushed. The envelope loomed large in the announcer's hand. "And the winner is ..."This could be a scene from the Academy Awards. Or it could be a scene from any courtroom in the country, any day of the week. Actors who receive an Oscar are honored for their behavior on-screen. Employer-defendants who receive a jury verdict in favor of a plaintiff are also recognized—for their bad behavior in the workplace. Here, in no particular order, are this year's nominees for the Awfuls—my Bad Boss Behavior of the Year Award. First: American Apparel CEO Dov Charney, noted for his role in the lawsuit Mary Nelson v. American Apparel, Inc., et al. Mr. Charney often referred to women as... Read the article.  Back to top Compensation and benefits for generations X and Y "Are you ready for this generation and the next?" It's a question on the minds of any executive wanting to capture the talent of Generation X and younger employees to maintain a competitive edge. But determining the best benefits and compensation solutions to motivate prospective employees can be a challenge. The gap between the 20-somethings of Generation Y and the 30-somethings of Generation X demonstrates more than a difference in age. It represents distinct differences in taste and priority. The 30-somethings of Generation X, for instance, are known for having increased the number of mothers in the workplace since the 1990s. The 20-somethings of Generation Y are thought to be "demanding, impatient and bad at communicating" by some (2007 survey of business owners in Australia). Paper-laden processes and defined benefits plans may have worked for the baby boomer generation, but younger employees expect online access and greater compensation options for themselves and their families as they mature. Therefore, information about a company's current and prospective workforce becomes even more important as talent managers look to secure their organizations' competitive futures. Executives must stay current on expected workforce composition, employee benefits options and preferences, and competitive offerings to determine the best plans for their organizations and "sell" them effectively to managers and employees. They also must look beyond health insurance and dental plans to the way information is communicated... Read the article.  Back to top Forward to a Friend: Do you have a friend that would like to receive HRWatchsm? Perhaps you know a peer within your organization, or associate at a partner company that would benefit from applying to receive this publication. Inviting a friend to experience the benefits of joining the BusinessWatch Network is easy! Just FW: this newsletter to the person you know who may have an interest and ask them to click here http://www.businesswatchnetwork.com Your friend will be glad you did! If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from HRWatchsm simply change your status, or send a letter requesting opt-off to: The BusinessWatch Network Privacy Mailbox, 1321, Marblehead, MA. 01945 DISCLAIMER: HRWatchsm and the BusinessWatch Networksm are service marks of DMS. 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