HR Tip of The Week: How to Survive Your Office Holiday Party 

• Provide rides.

David Lewis, president and CEO of the Norwalk, Conn., HR outsourcing and consulting firm Operations, Inc, agreed that shorter parties are better. He also suggested that company executives think about ways to get employees home safely. Lewis said some of his clients pay for Uber drivers to shuttle all workers to the party and then home. 

• Lose the mistletoe.

And forget about party games that involve revealing personal secrets or require body contortions [or] physical contact or any sort of disrobing. In fact, party games in general pose all sorts of unknown risks. 

• Limit alcoholic beverages.

Have you come up with a plan to ensure that you’re not providing alcohol to people and then sending them on the road where you absolutely could find yourself in the position of some measure of responsibility for their condition and [the] results? 

• Create a ‘respect’ memo.

Remind employees, in writing, of the company’s policies on harassment as well as the dress code, suggested Philippe Weiss, managing director of Seyfarth Shaw at Work, a law firm dedicated to compliance services and training subsidiary. Weiss is based in Chicago. 

• Monitor behavior.

Sharlyn Lauby, SHRM-SCP, president of Miami/Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based HR consulting firm ITM Group Inc., agreed that it is important that somebody monitor the party to stop problems, but she says that person needn’t be from the HR department. 

HR Tip of The Week

5 Actionable Ways to Improve Your Employee Relations

• Go Digital

  • Technology. It needs to be the first move you make when refocusing your strategies to put employees above numbers (and just so we’re clear, when you focus on employees, those numbers will increase.) A mobile team communications app is a demonstration of trust, transparency, and inclusion. Read on to see why a digital workplace can be a game changer for your organization.

• Build a Centralized Employee Relations Oversight Team

  • As you begin to implement strategies to prioritize employees, determine the team that will oversee their implementation, manage conflict resolution, and track the analytics of employee feedback and engagement.

• Establish Complete Transparency and Open Communication

  • Here’s what employees want from internal communications: a voice and transparency. Create circular communication economy within your company with a workforce app. Give everyone access. Encourage open communication through a digital workplace and let every employee participate and contribute.

• Resolve Issues Quickly

  • An inevitable element of employee relations is conflict resolution—from discrimination complaints to conflicts between workers. It’s essential to have a process and protocols in place to handle issues swiftly and fairly.
    • For conflict resolution make sure to:
      • Create an environment where employees feel safe to speak up.
      • Resolve issues in a timely manner to lessen the impact to workflows and productivity. Lingering issues can also lead to an air of distrust in the workplace that can spread like wildfire.

• Hand Over the Reins

  • When you hire an employee to fill a specific role, give them space to own their title. Let employees make decisions, and let them set goals for accomplishing tasks. Equip them with the freedom, the tools, and information to be self starters. Build a rapport that encourages them to seek guidance without micromanaging them. They’ll gain confidence, expand their capabilities, and work harder when they see what they can accomplish.

HR Tip of The Week

HR Tip of the Week

HR Tip of the Week: Do’s and Don’ts When an Employee is at Risk of Self Harm

1.Do follow your gut.

Contrary to common belief, people at risk of suicide rarely “just snap.” Significant behavioral changes and warning signs nearly always accompany the possibility of self-harm. Pay attention to indications like increased alcohol use, lack of motivation, lack of communication, attendance issues, increased aggression or agitation, changes in performance, a disheveled appearance and inability to concentrate. Keep an eye on significant emotional shifts as well, especially depression, tearfulness and mood swings.

Overall, trust your gut. If you sense a major change, ask the employee what’s wrong. If you have a strong suspicion, it’s even OK to ask the employee if they are contemplating suicide. “[For] most people, it feels very embarrassing, it feels very awkward, and there’s a lot of resistance to that.” I will say that many people who are contemplating suicide would like to be asked. That gives them an opportunity to open up.

2. Don’t just send the employee home.

For employers who are hesitant to get involved with their employees’ personal lives, it might be tempting to simply send a troubled employee home for the day — or a longer period of time — and hope for the best. This can be a big mistake, according to the panelists.

“The first thing you need to do is to make sure that person is safe.” Look up the employee’s emergency contact and let that person know the employee is thinking about or has threatened suicide. Wait until that person can come and pick up the individual. If the employee is working remotely, employers can involve the emergency contact, or in an emergency, call the police and ask for a welfare check.

But if you know the emergency contact to be outdated and no longer on good terms with the employee — an ex-wife in a bitter divorce, for example — don’t release the at-risk employee into this person’s care, if possible. Try to find an alternative contact.

3. Do call for help, if the employee appears ready to take immediate action.

In the most serious cases — when a threat of self-harm is not only known, but imminent — call 911, an emergency contact, or if known, a treating therapist. Ask to have the employee taken directly to the hospital for evaluation and treatment.

4. Don’t drive the employee to the hospital in your own car.

A caring employer may want to drive the employee to the hospital themselves, but this could put both the employer and employee at risk. “You don’t want to put the manager in that kind of risk … that the employee en route to the hospital [is] going to, for example, swing open the car door in the middle of a busy highway.”

5. Do follow up.

Maintaining mental health is a continuous journey; if you’re concerned about an employee, or if an employee has already had a crisis and is back at work, do more than check in once and move on. “It’s not enough just to send them to the [employee assistance program] or to say, ‘How’re you doing?’ and you have a nice conversation.” “Follow up with them. See how they’re doing.”

But “ask a genuine question that’s going to get a genuine answer.” A perfunctory “How’re you doing?” may feel like it’s an adequate check-in, but it’s likely to get just as perfunctory a response. “You have to do a little bit more in terms of communication.” “Ask something more specific. ‘COVID-19 has been really hard on everybody, working from home. How has it impacted you?’ And then actively listen.”

6. Do create a workplace emergency plan that includes suicide risk.

Employers can take plenty of actions right now to reduce the risk of suicide scenario. Hold all-staff meetings that destigmatize talking about mental health. Provide workers with work-sponsored “wellness” time off and look into expanding mental health benefits. Talk to employees about what to do if they’re concerned about a co-worker. Ensure employees know about everything their existing benefits can provide, from EAPs and free counseling to telehealth. Share the contact information for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800-273-8255) alongside benefits information in the employee handbook.

Finally, build suicide awareness and prevention into your workplace emergency response plan. In a crisis, it’s common to freeze or make the wrong call. Ensure managers and other employees are prepared and understand what to do if they recognize an imminent suicide risk at work.

HR Tip of the Week

HR Tip of the week: 5 tips for writing a fair and appropriate employee dress code

Encourage Employees To Dress As If Clients Are Coming In

It doesn’t matter whether your role is client-facing or not. If a client came into the office, your employees should be dressed in a way that they would feel comfortable meeting them. Encouraging people to dress well at work generally has a positive impact on morale and performance. It doesn’t have to be suits.

Let People Be Comfortable

Unless your employees are customer facing, I don’t believe in a dress code. Wear what makes you comfortable and wear what makes you do your best work. For some this will mean a suit, for others it could mean sweatpants. As long as good work is being done, it doesn’t matter.

Be Tolerant Of Today’s Social Standards

A successful dress code policy will take into consideration the needs of the organization, but cannot escape today’s reality that many workers have tattoos and piercings. An organization has to determine what would be acceptable for its customer base versus the ability to recruit talent. Overly strict dress codes policies may impede an organization from hiring or retaining the best employees.

Write A Dress Code That Mirrors Your Culture

You can’t say you have a relaxed culture and then implement a formal dress code. Whatever you do, make sure it matches the culture you want for your organization. In healthcare, obviously there are required dress code for good reason but for the office staff, it’s okay to allow a more casual dress.

Worry About More Important Things

I have been doing HR for 15 years in the Bay Area, I can remember only one time in which a dress code issue has reared its ugly head. Modern HR leaders know that today’s workforce is about individuality, inclusivity and personalization, all at the same time. Let’s focus on creating policies that drive acceptance, appreciation and understanding within our organization.

HR Tip of the Week

HR Tip of the Week: Measures of Recruiting Effectiveness

A basic tenant in talent acquisition is that what works for one organization may not apply to another and what is effective in one country may be ineffective in other areas of the world. Consider the general suggestions below and how they may work for your organization in boosting recruitment effectiveness.

• Be Proactive
• Brand
• Use Realistic Profiles
• Automate
• Innovate
• Interact
• Promote
• Adapt
• Champion Diversity
• Be Judicious
• Be Vigilant

HR Tip of the Week

HR Tip of the Week

HR Tip of the Week: Specialized Project Management Approaches

Alternative project management approaches have evolved from the needs and conditions of different industries. HR professionals should be aware of these approaches and the extent to which they are used in their organizations. There is overlap in these methods, but distinctive characteristics of each include the following:

•Lean Project Management focuses on eliminating waste by:

⁃Maintaining a tight focus on the intended value of the project.

⁃Empowering the team to make decisions.

⁃Analyzing and solving problems rather than working around them.

⁃Emphasizing continuous learning.

•Six Sigma project management derives from quality principles. “Six sigma” refers to a level of quality so high that very few errors occur. It emphasizes focusing on projects with a quantifiable return of value, encouraging team commitment to quality and involvement in problem solving, measuring results in a manner that allows empirical analysis, and fact-based decision making.

•Agile project management is used when the assumptions on which a project is based are unclear or may evolve as project work proceeds. The project focuses on iterations of the deliverables- completing one iteration and then using customer input to plan the next iteration.

•Critical chain project management is used when resources can’t be increased to meet deadlines. For example, an HR department may be able to allocate no more than 10 hours per week of staff time to do project work. Project activities are scheduled both to account for dependencies and to allow some room for variance for the estimated task requirement. Once the buffers are set, however, they are strictly enforced.