Communication

Team dysfunction: Why it happens and how to fix it

01/27/2012

Managers can bring the most intelligent, creative people to their departments, but if the employees aren’t able to work as a team, the department’s productivity will suffer. If your team isn’t firing on all cylinders, it’s important to identify the reasons why … and what you can do to overcome the dysfunction.

Step by step: Becoming a great manager, the Google way

01/25/2012

Google, the king of search engines, recently set out on a search of its own—to identify the qualities that make the highest quality managers at Google Inc., and then to replicate those qualities across the entire company. The end result: a simple, yet elegant, list of eight management practices that the best Google managers consistently do.

How to become a great manager, the Google way

01/23/2012

Nontraditional benefits set ‘best and brightest’ apart

01/23/2012

Health insurance and flextime aren’t the only perks employees consider benefits. Most of the companies that won “Best and Brightest” awards from the National Association for Business Resources earned accolades from their employees for these offerings:

How to help employees understand the value of their benefits

01/17/2012

Boosting your benefits communication during lean economic times can help your organization retain good employees and ease their worries so they can focus on work. The key: Show employees the value of their benefits.

How to manage employees who are grieving

12/29/2011

When an employee experiences the death of a family member or close friend, it’s tempting for supervisors to take a hands-off approach to the employee’s grief. However, silently waiting for the employee’s emotional recovery isn’t the best strategy. Take the following four steps to sensitively manage grieving employees and their impact on co-workers.

Manage health, retirement spending with employee education

12/19/2011

As benefits continue to become a bigger portion of labor costs, employers are responding by offering more health education and financial advice to employees. According to a new report by WorldatWork, 45% of surveyed organizations report that senior executives consider turning employees into educated consumers of benefits a “very high” priority.

5 tips to cut flab from your business writing

12/01/2011

In business writing, you don’t receive extra credit for slathering your sentences with fancy phrases, the way you did in college. Do that in a memo or e-mail, and you can expect eyes to glaze over. Here are five “less is more” tips for writing more effectively at work.

That’s not fair! Equity requires more than fair pay

11/10/2011

Conventional wisdom says that paying employees well goes a long way toward making them feel like they’re treated fairly. Not necessarily. Employees don’t consider pay or salary increases as the top factor in determining whether they are rewarded fairly, according to a new study.

The art of giving negative feedback: A 7-step approach

10/28/2011

Giving feedback is an important management task but certainly not an easy one—especially when the feedback isn’t all sunshine. Fortunately, it’s a skill that can be learned.