Archive for HR Strategy

Post-Pandemic Benefits: Employers Are Changing Their Benefits Priorities

The pandemic has changed everyone’s lives in so many ways.  We likely will not realize all of those changes for a long time.  Work life has changed for nearly everyone during this time, and our relationships to work, and how they relate to our personal lives, have been…

The 5 Key Ingredients of a Successful Team, According to Google

Back in 2012, Google (in classic Google fashion) sought to identify a formula for creating the most successful workplace team.  They called this experiment “Project Aristotle,” named after the philosopher credited with the remarkable notion that “there exists a whole that is greater than the sum of its…

Better Together: Mentor Matchups as a Buffer for Employee Retention

As an employer, there is nothing more disheartening than finding the “perfect employee,” and then losing that employee and having to start the hiring process back at square one.  Recently, Forbes contributor Robert Sher delved into this issue and put forth a solution:  mentorship.  By pairing new hires…

COVID-19 Provides A Chance to Hit the Reset Button on Everything, Including HR

The ongoing global pandemic has invaded nearly every aspect of our lives.  Perhaps most notable is the way in which COVID-19 has reshaped the working world.  No matter what your industry, chances are it looks starkly different now as compared to the pre-COVID era.  Forbes contributor Susan Galer…

Transitioning To A Permanent Remote Workforce? Here Are A Few Things To Consider

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of everyone’s lives.  Many of the major changes have taken place at the workplace.  Employers were forced to scramble to create systems to allow employees to work remotely.  Initially, this was a huge challenge for many employers, particularly those that had…

How to Prevent WFH (Work from Home) from Becoming BFH (Burnout from Home)

When you’re working from the comfort of your own home (and perhaps – no judgment here! – your pajamas), and sparing yourself the hectic mornings of the past (think alarm snoozes and jam-packed highways), one would assume that you’re doing your mental health a favor, right? Wrong.  A…

The “How” and the “What” of Crisis Communication

Let’s face it:  the global health crisis brought about by COVID-19 isn’t going away anytime soon.  Here in California, we are almost 6 months into “shelter-in-place,” with no signs of any major changes coming.  For most companies, the earlier steps taken in response to the crisis were, understandably,…

Mandatory Sexual Harassment Training Materials Now Online

On May 10, 2019, we blogged about the updated requirements for California employers providing sexual harassment training to their employees, as defined in SB 1343.  You can read that blog post here.  SB 1343 requires that all employers who have 5 or more employees provide a minimum of…

Schoolyard Bullying Minus the Schoolyard: How to Mitigate Toxicity in the Virtual Workplace

As an employer, you may think that, during this time of indefinite virtual work, the lack of a shared workspace would mean less bullying amongst your employees.  With no common space to congregate, and with less colleague-to-colleague face-to-face time, the sample size for toxic workplace culture would have…

Unusual Times Call for a New Approach to Company Reorganization

The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath have created a whole new world of challenges for employers.  Many companies are facing the necessity of cost-cutting and the inevitability of reducing their workforce. A recent article in Harvard Business Review suggests an alternative approach to cost-cutting, rather than the typical…