May and June always put a spotlight on parents, as we celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Many of our co-workers are parents, and we all realize that although their children don’t generally come to work with them, they are still parents during their work-days. Our policies, practices and work-place culture matter to these employees.

According to the BLS, 34.5 million families in the U.S. in 2010 had children, and 87 percent of them had an employed parent. Seventy-one percent of mothers with children under 18 were in the labor force, and 64 percent of those had children under the age of 6. Both parents were working in 58 percent of the families. These statistics demonstrate that parents are clearly a factor in our workplaces! read more »

April Fool’s Day. What does it mean to you? Do you have a favorite workplace prank that you pull out each year to spring on your unsuspecting co-workers? My father always looked forward to April 1st. He’d put a spool of thread in the inside pocket of his suit coat and, with the help of a needle, he would pull the thread so that it poked out through the front of his jacket. All day long, unwitting well-meaning people would pluck the thread off his coat, attempting to help him with his grooming, only to find themselves pulling and pulling at a never ending piece of thread. My dad never tired of his prank. read more »

Many of us running businesses today are members of the Baby Boomer generation (born between 1946 and 1964). In our younger years, we believed that we were going to change the world. Our huge presence in the workforce and the marketplace has indeed caused many changes. And as of 2011, the first of our generation turned 65, officially hitting retirement age. For years, researchers have been trying to predict how the aging of the Baby Boomers will impact the workplace. read more »

Shortly after moving here in the late 1980s I interviewed for a job with a small business. The owner’s wife had several questions for me. Was I married? Did I have small children that might need my attention during the workday? Did I plan to have more children? Did I have any health issues that might cause me to miss work? When I got home I told my spouse there was no way I’d work for someone who asked so many illegal questions! However, I actually ended up taking the job and helping the business create policies and procedures to keep them from crossing over into this illegal territory in the future. read more »

Hardly a day goes by without hearing a news story about a child who was bullied at school. Many of these stories have tragic endings. The increased public discourse on bullying has resulted in heightened awareness by parents, increased coping education for children and new rules for classrooms and playgrounds.

But what about the workplace? Do bullies exist there? You may be able to mentally run through your own work history and think of a coworker or boss who may have been a bully. Or was that coworker just not a team player? That boss just tough and demanding? Is there such a thing as a workplace bully, and if there is, what can, or should, be done about it? read more »

Your company has an opening for an administrative assistant. You’ve interviewed several candidates and have narrowed it to three. They all say they have the skills and abilities you’re seeking. How do you verify their claims, and select the final candidate who will best fit the job and your company?

Many companies today are using pre-employment tests to assist with this. They are a great resource when added into the selection process, as long as you understand what tests to use, and how to use them.

There are several types of pre-employment tests that businesses may utilize in their selection process: read more »

Last year, my longest tenured employee’s father passed away, and she suddenly found herself becoming the caregiver for her elderly mother as well as her elderly mother-in-law. These responsibilities were so demanding that she was forced to resign. During that same time period, another employee became the caregiver for her elderly father-in-law, and also had to resign due to the strenuous demands this placed on her. I now have a third employee struggling in a similar situation with her own ailing father-in-law. Clearly, the working caregiver is becoming the norm in today’s workplace! read more »

The benefits and cost-savings of allowing employees to work from home have received much attention — it cuts down on commuting expenses for staff as well as overhead within your own office, and provides your employees with morale-boosting work-life flexibility. In my own company, we’ve allowed several employees to telecommute for a variety of reasons — physical disability, an ailing spouse who couldn’t be left alone, a new baby, a severe allergy to fragrances. In all of these instances, we were very pleased with the success of our work-from-home arrangements. But telecommuting also comes with risks — chief among them, security issues and liability issues, on top of the issues that naturally crop up when managing someone who isn’t physically in the same location as you. read more »

“There can be no doubt about our commitment to ethics and integrity,” Rupert Murdoch recently said. Sadly, he’s probably right. If perception is reality, most of us have little doubt about the ethics involved in Murdoch’s business scandal that we have watched unfold.

This is certainly not the only example of a surprising lack of business ethics that we can think of, but it’s probably the most notorious recent example that comes to our minds. Many pundits have wondered how these things went on so long within Murdoch’s companies, why good employees didn’t speak up, and what happened to the ethical managers in all of this? read more »