HR Tip of the Week

HR Tip of The Week: Dealing with workplace bullies

• Speak Up Early On!
One of the best things that you can do for yourself is the minute somebody mistreats you, that you speak up in the moment right then and squash it!
•Document the Abuse and Your Performance.
Keep a journal of the who, what, when, where, why of things that happen. If you decide to report the bully later, you’ll want to be able to give concrete examples of the behaviors you’re describing.
•Take Care of Yourself Outside of Work!
•Talk to HR

HR Tip of The Week

HR Tip of The Week: 5 great ideas to engage employees who are still working remotely (and might continue to!)

• Regular check-ins

  • The best practice is to have a daily team or department check-ins, weekly coordination meetings and monthly all-hands meetings. Make sure your team leaders also keep their regular one-on-one meetings as well.

• Online knowledge sharing sessions

  • Knowledge sharing in the workplace is the process of sharing expertise, information and skills among employees in a company. This process happens relatively spontaneously when employees are working side by side, but when employees are working remotely, you need to put in some effort to structure it.

• Online recognition ritual

  • It is essential that you institute an online recognition system for your remote employees. There are many different ways to do it, but I suggest you start with something very simple and absolutely free. Create a kudos channel on the Slack or any other messaging chat you use. Lead by example and start using it to celebrate wins and recognize good work.

• Friday close-off meetings

  • When we work on-site, leaving the office symbolizes the end of the workday and workweek. However, when you are working and chilling at the same place, it isn’t so easy to maintain boundaries between working and resting. Thus it comes as no surprise that a comprehensive State of Remote Work 2020 research conducted by Buffer found that the third biggest challenge of remote employees is unplugging from work. This is a very serious problem because staying plugged in means your employees aren’t able to rest, which will eventually lead to burnout. To prevent it, I suggest instituting company-wide so-called Friday close off meetings. At the end of the workday on each Friday, gather your team for a short, half an hour video meeting. Use it to acknowledge the work you have done during the week, celebrate your wins and share plans for the weekend!

• Engagement surveys

  • Building and maintaining strong employee engagement can be challenging when you have remote employees – especially if they’re not used to remote work. Your remote employees might be facing different challenges, but you won’t know about them unless you ask. It is not likely your remote employees will feel your daily stand up meetings are an appropriate place to address their concerns. Since face to face time is relatively rare and valuable in the remote working setting, you won’t have the opportunity to see if your remote employees are dealing with some work-related issues. The most important part of conducting employee engagement surveys is to act on them! Check in with your remote employee who is experiencing challenges and make a plan to successfully tackle those challenging issues.

Source: Talentlyft

HR Tip of The Week

HR Tip of the Week: Tips to help provide a framework for opening and guiding productive conversations about race and inclusion in the workplace.

•Start with yourself. A good place to begin is by acknowledging your personal biases as well as what’s taking place in our country and demonstrating empathy for those experiencing hurt, anger, sadness or disappointment.
•Recognize different perspectives.
•Teach empathetic listening and de-escalation skills to your entire workforce.
•Arrange for company-sponsored listening sessions.
•Provide counseling support.
•Strengthen inclusion efforts, don’t pause them.

 

Source: SHRM

HR Tip of The Week

HR Tip of the Week: Top 5 Resume Mistakes!

•Listing unrelated skills – Identify transferable skills and experience.
•Using the same resume for every job – use key words from the job description to tailor every resume.
•Proofreading only once – best practice to have several people look over your resume.
•Writing in paragraphs – use bullet points to list job duties and accomplishments.
•Utilizing various fonts and sizes – be consistent throughout resume.

For more information on this weeks tip, contact Seth Bunn our Recruitment Advisor!
877-894-0202 ext.6
seth@hradvantageweb.net
#HRTipoftheWeek

HR Tip of The Week

Tip of the Week: A large amount of employees wish to continue to work from home! Here are some tips to best help them in their new environment!

Government officials say there will be enough COVID-19 vaccine supply to vaccinate every adult in the United States by the summer, but some CEOs are pushing return-to-work dates into the fall or refusing to commit to specific dates, signaling to workers that 2021 may be another year of working remotely.

New research from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) shows that 27 percent of organizations plan to bring all employees back to the worksite when the COVID-19 vaccine becomes more widely available. Thirty-four percent of organizations are unsure when they will bring all employees back; 18 percent do not ever plan to have all employees return; and 5 percent of respondents reported that a return-to-work date has already been set.

Another concern is polls that show many workers don’t want to return to the way things were before the pandemic. SHRM found that over half (52 percent) of 1,000 U.S. workers would choose to permanently work from home on a full-time basis if given the option.

Of those who would choose to work permanently from home, 35 percent would accept a reduction in salary to do so, and 66 percent would still choose to work from home full time if the majority of Americans got the COVID-19 vaccine and herd immunity was achieved. Below you will find some helpful tips to best help your employees with their new at home work spaces, if they continue to work remotely!

•Sustaining business agility
•Maintaining an engaged, motivated and unified culture.
•Ensuring alignment on priorities and key objectives. “Simply put, everyone has a line of sight to how they contribute and are performing against the top priorities.”
•Supporting the workforce with empathy and open communication.

Source: SHRM

HR Tip of The Week

HR Tip of The Week

HR Tip of The Week: Workplace Romance- What’s your Policy?

Does your company have a policy on workplace romance? Romantic relationships, particularly those between leadership/managers and their subordinates raise concerns about potential power imbalances and conflicts of interest in the workplace. An anti-fraternization policy sends a message against sexual harassment, mitigates legal risk, avoids subsequent toxic work environments, and provides a notice of consequences for employees’ actions. However, it may not be in your best interest to forbid any and all types of workplace romance, as research shows romantic relationships are quite common in the workplace and employees may resort to hiding their relationships. A workable policy approach might be:

1. Outline the company’s concerns with respect to workplace relationships
2. Require employees to report close personal relationships through designated channels.
3. Prohibit romantic relationships between supervisors and their direct (or proximate) subordinates, as well as between sensitive business functions dealing with quality or financial controls.
4. Access additional resources to assist in developing a workplace relationship policy for your organization.

HR Tip of The Week

HR Tip of The Week: Tips for Balancing Concentration and Collaboration for Remote Workers

How can organizations help remote employees stay focused and collaborate with team members via apps? Here are some suggestions:

1. Audit your apps. Complete an analysis of the platforms, apps and systems your organization is currently using, said Kerry Wekelo, chief operating officer at financial services firm Actualize Consulting. Make note of the uses for each one to see if there is overlap or unnecessary features that could be eliminated. 

2. Cull the (app) herd. Know the difference between support and micromanagement. Overwhelming your team with apps and tools is not a good way to support them, said Jessica Lim, HR manager at MyPerfectResume. In fact, it has the opposite effect. Have an open discussion about the number of tools you have in place, ask your team which tools are the most helpful, and remove those that don’t bring any real value. 

3. Turn off the apps (for designated times). Work blocks are one of the most effective strategies for finding the right balance between employee concentration and collaboration, as is leadership communicating the need to be respectful of “do not disturb” time. By blocking off your calendar, you are creating time for uninterrupted work (shutting off the apps), or providing available times for colleagues to schedule meetings with you or for you to be active on whatever collaboration apps you use, said Amy Mosher, chief people officer at human capital management software provider isolved.

4. Consolidate apps/tools. If possible, seek one app that gives everyone access to the same information, eliminates silos so employees can reach and connect with anyone else in the company, creates a channel for collaboration, and integrates all other workplace systems into one hub so employees use a single sign-on for all work communication, Willoughby-Petit said.

5. Leverage asynchronous video communication. Sending asynchronous communication (like e-mail or text) enables the recipients to access it whenever they choose, said Sean Gorman, chief operating officer at video management system Panopto. Recorded meetings and on-demand video are effective options when real-time communication isn’t necessary or possible and written correspondence isn’t enough to communicate messages clearly and efficiently. Although employees may still need real-time solutions for remote communication, asynchronous solutions allow employees to plan their workday and focus more deeply on work. 

6. Close the trust gap. If a manager is pinging an employee and then not hearing back, the manager might assume the employee is slacking off, said Karen Mangia, author of Working from Home: Making the New Normal Work for You (Wiley, 2020). Consider using a collaboration platform where an employee can alert team members and his manager that he is going to take 90 minutes to immerse himself in a task.

From SHRM.

HR Tip of The Week

HR Tip of The Week: FFCRA Paid Sick and Family Leave Expires, Tax Reimbursement Continues

New legislation passed by congress in December will not extend employer mandated emergency paid sick and family leave provided by the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which expired December 31st. Employers are no longer required to provide paid sick and family leave under the previous guidelines of the FFCRA. However, employers who voluntarily continue to offer FFCRA qualifying sick and family leave will continue receiving payroll tax credits until March 31, 2021.

It is important to note there is no new or additional allotment of time. Employees who have used all available leave under the FFCRA are not granted additional time off as a result of the December legislation.

Employers should contemplate COVID-19 related leave scenarios and decide whether they will continue offering COVID-related sick and family leave and consult with tax specialists for information on receiving tax benefits.

If not extending FFCRA leave, employers may wish to review their own leave policies to avoid potential spread of illness.

Stay tuned for additional guidance as implications of the new legislation unfold.

Source: SHRM

HR Tip of The Week

HR Tip of the week: Can an Employer Require its Employees to be Vaccinated for COVID-19?

Yes, with some exceptions. The employer should (1) have an up to date Infectious Disease and Vaccinations policy, (2) be able to demonstrate that the required vaccines are job-related and consistent with business necessity (i.e. does failure to vaccinate constitute a direct threat to other employees) and (3) have an established process for the vaccinations (i.e. consider asking employees to seek vaccinations outside of workplace while showing proof or employer contracted).

There are exceptions to this including certain employee held disabilities or sincerely held religious belief.

Visit the EEOC to learn more about vaccination requirement, exceptions and reasonable accommodations related to employer mandated vaccinations.