When starting up a new business, one important consideration is whether or not to hire any employees right away. Most businesses cannot be run by the owner/manager alone, so learning how to find a good first employee is crucial to the initial success of the new company. A good employee can be define...

Alcohol abuse treatment is a good idea in many cases. As an employer you know the effects that alcohol abuse can have on employees in the workplace. Alcohol abuse leads to impaired work, poor performance, and absenteeism. Ultimately as a person in management you will have to decide whether or not to...

Hopefully it is not new news to you that using air filtration in the office can reduce employee sick days. You should know that air-born contaminants are a leading factor for common illnesses that can make your employees feel ill and call in sick for work. Obviously, indoor air quality is a serious ...

Today is an office day.   I'm sitting at my desk at home, listening to the hum of the furnace and watching my cats wrestle with office supplies on the floor.  (Perhaps this is a hint of some kind?)   I'm putting together an employee development program for one o...

Achievement should always be awarded in all aspects of life. When you award someone for achieving greatness they strive harder to do even better. When you give a child money for getting good grades they will strive to get good grades all the time. When you tell your spouse that you love the new reci...

An employer should always have the goal in mind to improve his or her staff. Improvement comes from constant coaching and analyzing the work that has been done. Let your staff understand that the good work they do today should not be the good work they do tomorrow. The work should always improve. Pu...

Everyone has something they are good at. You have to exploit the strengths of the people who are working for you. When you are a manager you need to let your employees know their strengths and their weaknesses. They need to know their strengths so that they can work to keep on doing a good job. They...

Is your organization good at retaining high performers?  Often in management we talk about the 80/20 rule, which says that the bottom 20% of our workforce takes up 80% of our time.  If we follow this logic, we have limited time for our performing employees and even less time for our s...

management, Internet, people Gregory T. Huang wrote: I had a good chat on Monday with Hillel Cooperman, founder of Jackson Fish Market, a Seattle-based startup that builds interesting websites. I had come across Cooperman’s blog last week in which he argued in favor of “bottoms up”...

My opinion:  annual performance reviews are hammers looking for nails to pound, and hurting employee engagement, productivity and health in the process.  If you have any say in the matter, please throw out your performance review process. Here's why I believe that, and some alternatives yo...