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How to Pick the Absolute Best Employee Benefits
Bits and pieces of the Affordable Care Act continue falling, like shrapnel, around employers’ ears, with no end in sight. But while business owners can’t anticipate everything they’ll have to do to conform to the new laws, there are some steps they can take to put...
Employee Performance and Your Strategic Plan
Quick Quiz: Can you articulate how your sales or fundraising staff’s performance goals contribute to your strategic plan or mission? Okay, that was too easy. How about your operations department? How is their performance tied to the strategic plan? Or your accounting...
How to Make Age a Non-Issue for IT Jobs
Last week I talked about some of the subtler reasons why older IT workers struggle to get hired, such as being intimidating to younger managers. But since objections like that really aren’t in anyone’s best business interest, this week I want to offer some practical,...
Why Older IT Workers Get Passed Over
Let’s just get it out in the open: There are a lot of reasons why older IT workers have trouble finding jobs. And It’s not just because younger people discriminate against them or because older IT workers refuse to adapt to the current environment, although both of...
Employers: There’s Still Time for 2012 Tax Breaks !
Employers: It’s not too late to snag some significant tax credits for your business. There are certain exclusions and deductions that can make a huge difference to your tax bill, whether you’re a big company or a small one. For example: A tax exclusion for...
Are You Ready for EEOC, Strategic Enforcement 2013?
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has given employers a heads-up about what its focus is going to be from 2013- 2016. The agency’s Strategic Enforcement Plan focuses on six main initiatives: Eliminating Barriers in Recruitment and Hiring Protecting...
How to Make Telecommuting Work
The recent announcement that Yahoo is calling in all of its telecommuters highlights the fact that all kinds of romantic mythology has , developed around the practice. One view holds telecommuting as the panacea whereby companies save money on office space, people...
Yahoo, Marissa Mayer and How to Run a Meeting
Really, there are so many things to say about Marissa Mayer’s insistence that Yahoo employees start coming to the office every day instead of telecommuting. There’s the question of whether she’s setting working mothers back 30 years. And whether she’s going to finally...
How to Hire Your First Employee
So you’re ready to hire your first employee! Awesome! This is cause for celebration. Sadly, a lot of people are too busy being terrified to celebrate. It’s understandable. An employee means payroll and taxes and legal obligations. An employee is a commitment. So a lot...
The Fine Art of Icky Employee Conversations
One thing many managers may not appreciate about being a manager is the necessity of having icky conversations. What is an icky conversation? It might be telling the associate, driving with you to the sales call, that his breath could stop a rhinoceros in full charge....
How Hiring is Like Dating
This week I’m reflecting about meeting “the perfect person.” In this case, the perfect employee. The fact is, if people were as picky about their dates as they are about who they hire, most people would be single. People who use dating websites are generally open to...
Google’s Data: Trained, Skilled Middle Managers Make Companies Work
It’s generally considered a bad idea to condemn large groups of people on the basis of a single characteristic. Unless they’re middle managers. Since the 1980s middle managers have been fair game for every kind of disparagement. They’ve been called Dilberts, labeled...
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