One of my pet peeves in HR is the “overuse” of hiring freezes. All too often, senior managers respond to a minor budget crisis by immediately putting on a hiring freeze. In some companies the freeze seems to be a predictable practice that is repeated once or twice a year, …

A lot of professionals are missing the boat when they look at retention as a single issue.

Most employment systems were designed in the “dark ages” when business moved at the “speed of rock.” In the past when people resigned, a requisition was created and after a relatively long lag time, another person was hired. If the new hire required initial training at the time of their …

HR people are constantly looking for new tools. Attached is a list of proactive HR planning tools that might help you to improve your companies competitive advantage. Share it with your VP HR.

I often find HR people (and recruiters in particular) with an insufficient understanding of the business that they are recruiting for. One of the ways to avoid that pitfall is to talk directly to the senior managers in order to identify their expectations. If you want to get an idea …

I know dozens of employment directors that claim they want their function to be world class or to become “an employer of choice” but talk is heap and few seem to have a plan on how to get there. If you are wondering why you are having difficulty recruiting talent …

In these times of low unemployment, recruiters are constantly on the lookout for the best talent to fill open positions. We put tremendous resources into external sourcing and recruiting, but most of the time we fail to actively seek out some of the best candidates in the world-those that are …

Don’t let CEOs read this, they might want answers! Most HR measurements miss the boat! Many HR departments say they are a “business partner” but few can provide any real evidence that they are having a strategic business impact. After years of studying CEO expectations of HR I’ve compiled a …

As I enter the HR department I notice it’s distinctly different than when I retired as a VP of HR way back in 1998. It was quieter, smaller and had much less people than I had remembered. There were only a few HR staff people in the office – there …

Increased feedback and multi-source feedback results in a change in management behavior and an increase in performance. Theoretically, anonymous feedback is more open and honest then one-on-one feedback. The assumption is that honest feedback changes management behavior faster than restricted feedback.