HR Management Blog

“Pet perks” is usually considered a “niche” benefit. In today’s highly competitive market, where critical positions go unfilled for weeks or months, it may be the difference between “best candidate” and none. The classic example, from a company with huge recruiting needs, is Amazon. At the Seattle campus, there are […]

Based on “hiring intentions” of employers, a new survey of 1900 employers indicated that nineteen percent of employers plan to increase staffing levels, and seventy-seven percent plan to leave staffing unchanged (in other words, no reductions.) This is in line with economic forecasting and bodes well for the job market. […]

With power personalities such as Elon Musk advocating 100-hour weeks — and many real-life examples of 100-hour work weeks, notably amongst software developers — HR managers have to be careful not to literally “work their teams to death.” Chances are, if you are a manager, you are one of the […]

Of all the HR management tasks, perhaps the most complicated issue in the workplace is absenteeism, especially the unavoidable — and difficult-to-plan and manage — medical leave. While many absentee team-members may have challenging scenarios and legitimate reasons for absence, this does put a significant burden on the remaining workers […]

Part 1 of a 3-part “Triage Productivity” series Triage Productivity (TM) is designed around prioritizing workflow as if your life depended on it — modelled somewhat after Triage field hospitals. (We’re being colourful to make a point. Bear with us.) In Triage, particularly in field hospitals or war zones, the […]

Since the advent of smart phones, the human attention span in the workplace has dropped to eight seconds — now shorter than that of a goldfish (at nine seconds) — according to a Microsoft Corp study of 2,000 participants. The main cause of the drop in attention — and resulting […]

The HR Fishbowl wrote an interesting piece titled, “Annual Reviews…Who Needs Them?”  It explores the perspective shared by Carol Bartz in a New York Times article regarding annual performance reviews and her general dislike for them. I have the puppy theory. When the puppy pees on the carpet, you say […]

We could call them “pivotal” moments, or paradigm shifts in the job market. Past technologies such as automation, robotics, green technologies, cloud computing and smartphone radically reshaped the job market. The next big non-economic “game-changer” influencers in the job market will be more diverse. (For the purposes of this feature, […]

A robust job market — with even high-paying career positions going unfilled — appears to be pressuring employers to seriously negotiate both monetary and non-monetary compensation and perks. Although more people had searched for jobs in February — in a month that saw 56,000 new hires — the unemployment rate […]