HR News Roundup: Mis-hires, Performance Evaluations, Failure & the Lighter Side

HR News Roundup

5 Hidden Costs of Mis-Hires and How to Avoid Them
Magi Graziano, TLNT

You know that a mis-hire carries with it a financial impact that can last for months on end. But there are other more subtle costs associated with mis-hiring that many, even in the HR field, don’t consider or don’t put enough weight into. In fact, these can last for years, long after the financial impact is absorbed.

Let’s Not Kill Performance Evaluations Yet
Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, Adam Grant – Harvard Business Review

At Facebook we analyzed our performance management system a few years ago. We conducted focus groups and a follow-up survey with more than 300 people. The feedback was clear: 87% of people wanted to keep performance ratings.

Yes, performance evaluations have costs—but they have benefits, too. We decided to hang on to them for three reasons: fairness, transparency, and development.

5 Signs It’s Time to Fire Your Employee (And How to Do It with Respect)
Suzanne Lucas, Rework

Every manager and every HR person has to fire someone at some point. It’s generally unpleasant—and rarely similar to the movies, where the employee has done something so spectacularly wrong, you can just yell “You’re fired!” and everyone feels good about the decision.

Instead, the signs of an unfit employee are often more subtle, making it hard to know when to take that final step. If you’re thinking an employee isn’t working out, here are five signs that it’s probably time to let the person go.

In the Wake Of Tragedy
Susannah Levine, Risk & Insurance

The first story in a three-part series on catastrophic care looks at the crucial steps to be taken in the direct aftermath of a severe injury.

How Can I Overcome My Fear of Failure?
Evan Asano, Lifehacker

What is failure? The only true failure is the one you don’t learn from. Facebook has failed repeatedly and publicly with huge initiatives like Beacon and Poke. It’s because they fail that they succeed. A common motto among Silicon Valley startups is ‘Fail fast, fail forward.’ Facebook knows the biggest failure would be not evolving and not pushing boundaries. If Facebook isn’t evolving, building, and taking risks, then they’re slowly dying. In sales, there’s the aphorism, “every ‘no’ is one step closer to a yes.” Failure often isn’t what you think it is. So embrace hearing the no’s and just keep trying during your ‘drills’. The no’s will come, and so will the yes’s, and you’ll move forward incrementally and inexorably.

This Is How To Resist Distraction: 4 Secrets To Remarkable Focus
Barking Up The Wrong Tree blog

Your lazy brain is happy to just react to that relentless bombardment of stimuli coming its way. But when you just react, you don’t usually make the best choices. And while you’re definitely doing something, you’re rarely achieving your goals.

That’s because when you’re reacting, you’re not in control of your life. In fact, reacting is the opposite of control. You see something fun and you chase it. You see something scary and you run away. Either way, your environment is determining your behavior.

Trump’s So-Called “Locker Room Talk”: Would It Count Towards a “Hostile Work Environment”?
Daniel Schwartz, Connecticut Employment Law Blog

I’ve always tried for this blog to be apolitical. That doesn’t mean I don’t have political views — I obviously do — but I don’t think that they should play into how we look at certain legal issues.

But we need to talk about the recorded comments from Donald Trump because I think employers need to understand that a workplace that tolerates or condones those types of comments — particularly on a regular basis — is just allow a foundation for a sexual harassment “hostile work environment” lawsuit to be established.

Free Webinar: FMLA Abuse Got You Down? Best Practices for Using FMLA Medical Certification as a Tool to Deter FMLA Misuse – November 15, noon to 1:15, central time – Jeff Nowak, FMLA Insights

More HR news of note