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Productivity / Performance

Trend alert: Zoom zone-out

10/04/2022
We’ve all heard about Zoom fatigue, but there’s a new worry for employers: Zoom zone-out. The State of Selling Survey analyzed employees from U.S. organizations and found that one in four say they get more distracted when on video calls vs. in-person meetings.

Where to work: Office, home or in the middle?

09/29/2022
Due to inflation and gas prices, employees spend twice as much going to the office than working from home, a recent pulse check on the current state of work by videoconferencing firm Owl Labs found.

Creating an employee performance improvement plan

09/28/2022
With all involved holding an optimistic mindset, an effective performance improvement plan can help struggling employees take corrective action to rectify work performance issues.

Why onboarding is crucial and how to do it right

09/28/2022
Recruitment and hiring are hard enough. The last thing you need is to lose a new hire within their first few weeks or months on the job. The secret to keeping them is to provide an exceptional onboarding process.

Returning to the office: Is the honeymoon over?

09/28/2022
The flexibility of telecommuting has become the top benefit employees seek, more than salary or health care. Gallup found that six in ten exclusively remote employees are “extremely likely to change companies” if not offered remote flexibility. Here are a few of Gallup’s recommendations to help leaders stay focused on what’s important.

Keep remote workers engaged through creativity

09/28/2022
Telecommuting is a great perk, but employees still need to be engaged. You have a great team you’ve hired and trained to work remotely, but employees still need to feel a sense of belonging to your organization. So, are weekly Zoom meetings enough? Probably not.

Of balls and strikes, discrimination and documentation

09/22/2022
Major League Baseball has an umpire problem this season. However, one umpire has drawn the ire of players and fans for decades—and he has been embroiled in a discrimination lawsuit against Major League Baseball since 2017.

When to pull up or place stakes in the return-to-office debate

09/20/2022
While the percentage of remote employees is certainly lower now than it was a year ago, those who are working from home seem dug in. Inevitably, there will be pushback from employees who don’t want to spend the time and money commuting and dealing with all the familiar office irritations.

Twin perils: ‘Quiet quitting’ and ‘quiet firing’

09/15/2022
Two buzzwords have been making the rounds in HR. “Quiet quitting” describes the practice of employees doing the bare minimum required of their jobs, not caring if they get fired. Then there’s “quiet firing,” which describes the flip-side—when employers passively try to push employees out the door Both practices carry huge risks for employers.

SHRM lawsuit puts spotlight on evaluations

09/15/2022
The best way to defend against a surprise discrimination lawsuit is to conduct accurate, regular reviews that assess a worker’s performance using as many objective standards as possible. Those evaluations then serve to back up any disciplinary action you take, even if the employee files an internal bias complaint and follows up with a lawsuit claiming subsequent discipline amounted to retaliation.