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volume III issue VI June 2015 |
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What Comes First: Employee Engagement or Great Work? If you’re managing a team, you might wonder what comes first: engaged and personally invested employees or productive, great work? Is an employee doing great work because they’re engaged? Or will the employee become more engaged after doing great work? Let’s start at the beginning. Most employees will start any position engaged and ready to work. As time goes on, either the employee will stay engaged, re-engage at a deeper level, or pull away to do minimal (or less than) work. What happens at the moment of re-engagement? What’s the difference between an employee who produces great work and one who doesn’t?As a long time manager, I think the difference is how a manager recognizes their employee and motivates their everyday work. Your proactive actions can engage employees, which will produce personal investments that yield great work. This engagement isn’t dependent on the challenges the company faces. Every company has its challenges: resources, regulations, compliance, market, and even questionable leadership. What every manager can do, despite company challenges, is recognize and reward great work when they see it. Read on.Why Onboarding is Crucial to Retaining Employees Finding the Right Companies to Benchmark It seems like a simple enough question. “What companies should we benchmark ourselves against?” This question was asked in a Facebook group I belong to. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s an easy answer. Benchmarking is the process of comparing something (i.e. process, performance) against what someone else does. The process of choosing that “someone else” to compare yourself to isn’t always obvious. Years ago, I worked at an airline. During that time, there was another airline that was always in the news for their “fun” work environment. This particular airline was very successful and very profitable. Whenever people suggested that we benchmark ourselves against this other airline, my vice president would always decline. And if people asked the reason, she would say it was because we weren’t trying to be like them. The first criteria for selecting companies to benchmark is finding companies that have something you aspire to obtain. Read on. Importance of Succession Plans Question: Are succession plans really essential in the workplace? Answer: ABSOLUTELY! Regardless of how “formal” your plan is, succession planning is essential! These plans, or even identifiers, allow organizations to establish the groundwork for the training and development of potential successors in the organization for roles left open due to retirement or attrition. Effective use of a succession program in conjunction with the performance management program will allow for:
New FLSA "White-Collar" Exemption Regulations The U.S. Department of Labor's proposed regulations dramatically reducing the number of employees who qualify for the white-collar overtime exemptions to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act are expected to be announced publicly in June. So far, no specifics have been provided by USDOL as to what the proposed regulations will say, but two changes are widely anticipated: (1) a new annual salary threshold in the range of $50,000 (more than twice the current salary threshold), and (2) a quantitative primary duty test requiring an employee to spend more than 50% of his or her time on tasks deemed exempt. We also believe the proposed regulations will preserve or increase the current complexity, subjectivity, and vagueness as to exempt criteria, contrary to President Obama's directive to the Secretary of Labor to "simplify the regulations to make them easier for both workers and businesses to understand and apply." Read more. FCRA Fueling Latest Wave of Class Action Suits Many employers have third-party services run background checks on applicants, new hires, or existing employees. Many of these employers utilize these services to minimize the risk of claims of negligent hiring or discrimination. Even if a reputable service is used, there are challenges and significant legal risks involving the failure to comply with the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Employers that violate the FCRA may be liable for actual damages sustained by individual applicants, statutory damages ranging between $100 and $1,000 per individual violation, punitive damages, and plaintiffs' attorneys' fees and costs. As a result, the FCRA is the source of one wave of class actions sweeping the country, a wave fueled by statutes that favor both plaintiffs (who need not even show they were harmed by a violation in order to file a lawsuit) and their attorneys, and recent headlines announcing million-dollar settlements. Read more. |
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>FEATURE ARTICLE What Comes First: Employee Engagement or Great Work? > TIP OF THE MONTH Finding the Right Companies to Benchmark > Q & A Importance of Succession Plans > LEGAL UPDATES New FLSA "White-Collar" Exemption Regulations FCRA Fueling Class Action Suits Area Temps, Inc. 1228 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, OH 44115 Toll Free: 1.866.995.JOBS www.areatemps.com |
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