It is what it is – Granular. Out of pocket. The 10,000 pound gorilla. What do these phrases have in common? They are reader submissions to the Boston Globe for the worst workplace jargon.
Sesame Street School of Management – Some of our finest life lessons are straight from the pages of Sesame Street so we enjoyed Molly DiBianca’s post at Delaware Employment Law Blog on whether your Boss a Bert or an Ernie. By way of intro, she suggests, “If you want to manage your workplace (or other) relationships better, try starting with a personality analysis. And Muppet Theory may be the analysis you’ve been looking for. Muppet Theory, in short, proffers that everyone can be classified as either a Chaos Muppet or an Order Muppet.”
Sample HR letters – Susan M. Heathfield of About.com Human Resources offers some handy tools in the form of guidance for common letters. Get help writing job offers, letters to rejected job candidates, employee recognition acknowledgements, and more.
Follow the experts – Daniel Schwartz of Connecticut Employment Law Blog offers his pick of the Top 10 Employment Lawyers To Follow Online. He offers both Twitter handles and blog links – a good list!
You’re Fired! – Speaking of Employment Law Attorneys, we like Philip K. Miles feature Fired for What!?, a roundup or top termination stories from around the web. You can see his prior postings here. There are many good “what not to do” lessons here!
Just sitting around – Fiona Gathright of Corporate Wellness Insights notes that employees who want to increase longevity and boost health will reduce sitting around at work. She offers these tips for employers: “Embrace standing desks, treadmill desks, and mid-day exercise breaks. Make stairwells bright, appealing, and accessible so employees opt out of taking the elevator. Bring in wellness consultants to transform the culture of health at your workplace. You will not only see the instant effect of more productive, focused employees (who cost the company less), you will also effectively help individuals add years to their lives.“ Related: Jon Coppelman of Workers’ Comp Insider posts about a case involving a sedentary, overweight worker in Annals of Compensability: Sedentary Worker in the Garden.
Going Boss-less – Spurred on by a recent Wall Street Journal article that suggests a boss-less office, Sharlyn Lauby at HR Bartender looks at the question of whether managers are really necessary. She says that “there’s a fine line between removing managerial roadblocks and creating organizational anarchy” and suggests that you should be looking to ensure that they indeed do add value.
Workers comp and horseplay – Roberto Ceniceros of Business Insurance reminds us that horseplay is often grounds for a rejected comp claim. A recent Pennsylvania court ruling rejected an employee’s appeal for benefits after having been injured on a forklift. Ceniceros makes the point that the case offers lessons to other employers because the basis for denial hinged on “a solid set of rules that the employee disregarded,” one being that employees are not supposed to drive a forklift without the proper certification for operating the machinery.
News briefs
- Top Reasons Why Employees Don’t Do What They Are Supposed to Do—as reported by 25,000 managers
- Women in Law Enforcement Still Face Gender Bias
- When an employee throws a temper tantrum
- The season of the witch? The ADA and seasonal affective disorder
- Labor force impact of new Obama [immigration] policy will be large
- Workplace Violence: TOP 5 Phrases to AVOID when Dealing with an Angry Person
- To ‘minimize risk,’ Penn State expands background check policy
- Top 10 Most Popular HR Daily Advisor Issues of 2012
- The Value of Games in Work and Life
- 10 personal things employees do at work