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Communication

HR Specialist Editors Bring You the Best from SHRM Chicago

06/24/2008
For a week each year, the Society for Human Resource Management’s Annual Conference becomes the center of the HR world. HR Specialist editors have joined 13,000 of our peers in Chicago this week for four days of professional development covering HR’s hottest topics and presented by the profession’s  leading experts. Here’s some of the best from the world’s biggest HR conference.

The New Rules on Hiring – The Legal Way to Handle I-9s and No-Match Letters – Audio Conference

06/12/2008

Are you prepared for the coming crackdown? Have you taken the necessary steps to stay in compliance?

Wellness Rx: Help Employees Spend Less on Prescriptions

06/10/2008
Prescription drug costs account for a huge chunk of employer-provided health care insurance premiums—and those costs are rising fast. Don’t run the risk that your workers won’t fill needed prescriptions because they can’t afford to. They’ll stay healthier if you teach them how to hunt for bargains on prescribed drugs.

9 steps to negotiating any workplace conflict

06/04/2008
Conflict happens in all corners of the workplace. But if issues aren’t settled, bad things can happen: Good people quit, morale can plummet and, sometimes, violence can erupt. But you don’t need to become a certified mediator to settle disputes. Here are nine tips for understanding human behavior and resolving conflicts with co-workers, employees and even customers.

Keep employees by defanging a bully

06/01/2008

The turnover rate is high at your company. You’re even conducting exit interviews with every departing employee to find out what’s going on, but nobody talks. Chances are you’ve got some bad bosses. Maybe even some bullies. Only recently have scientists started looking at why cruel bosses thrive.

Do Men and Women Speak Different Languages at Work?

05/28/2008
Women have 11% more neurons in their brains for emotion, feelings and communication. So when it comes to communicating at work, women prefer to build rapport and tell a story. Men prefer the headline and to report. How to bridge the gap?

Are workers fully engaged? Ask right questions to find out

05/22/2008
Many organizations conduct periodic employee engagement surveys to check the  pulse of their work forces. Surveys can accurately measure engagement, but only if they include the right questions. If you’re creating your own survey, use some of the following 17 questions that go to the heart of the issue …

How to measure an employee’s ‘intangible’ traits

05/22/2008
As part of the performance-review process, supervisors are typically called upon to evaluate employees on the basis of intangible factors, such as cooperativeness, dependability and judgment. The higher up the organizational chart, the more important those traits become. Yet most supervisors find intangibles the most difficult factors to evaluate, probably because they seem so personal. […]

Job conflicts are major cause of lost sleep

05/22/2008
Common job-related problems—such as conflicts with bosses or co-workers—are more likely to cause poor sleep than even long hours, night shifts or job insecurity. That’s the conclusion of a new University of Michigan study of 2,300 adults who were followed for a decade …

17 Questions to Determine if Workers are Fully Engaged

05/22/2008
Don’t think you can pick out disengaged workers from a lineup. Employees usually check out mentally long before you spot the obvious signs—poor productivity, absenteeism, lousy customer service. Find out whether your employees are fully engaged in their work by asking them these 17 questions.