HR Made Simple   

I heard from a journalist last week who was writing a follow-up story about the man fired from Whole Foods for removing a tuna sandwich from the garbage that he said he’d planned to eat.  Our conversation quickly turned into one about company policies and whether they do  more harm than good.  And while I am a big believer in organizations making explicitly clear what is  and is not acceptable behavior at work, I couldn’t help but feel that something was just not right.  Apparently, Whole Foods has a “No Theft,” policy.  No issues there.  Understandable.  But do they also have a policy that says, “Employees may not remove foo...Read More

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It’s one of the “uncoolest” things companies do in the workplace when they fire someone for performance issues without giving him or her any preliminary information leading up to it.  I’m always surprised when I hear of cases where a company plans to fire an employee because it is not satisfied with that employee’s performance, but also has not told the employee that there were problems in the first place.  It makes no sense.  Why not just let the person know what needs to improve and then terminate if there is no response to the feedback?  At least it gives the employee a chance.  Otherwise, the truth is that the performance proble...Read More

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I find it utterly baffling.  Granted, perhaps I’m a bit more sensitive now than ever after having just finished writing a book about difficult conversations in the workplace.  Over the course of a few months, I spent day and night consumed, thinking, writing and thinking some more about the ins-and-outs of communicating effectively at work in general, and during dreaded conversations specifically.  And even after all of those hours of thought, consideration and analysis, what continues to perplex me most is the way so many people tend to be paralyzed by the need to say something that needs to be said.  I just don’t get it. 

But then, when you come across columns like today’s ...Read More

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The most unbelievable thing happened to me that I couldn’t even begin to explain.  It happened on my blackberry and now, not only am I afraid of it, but I am also convinced that it’s possessed.  See, I was in a difficult situation with a colleague that only went from bad to worse during a “conversation” on email wherein we consistently managed to either miscommunicate with, an/or misunderstand one another.  

I was getting frustrated and I could tell that he was too.  Plus, we were in two different time zones, which made the possibility of a call-for-clarity impossible.  So I started over, “doing over” what I wanted ...Read More

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You gotta love it.  I saw this sign hanging in a deli near my office and could totally relate, especially after spending years on various retail floors where one is arguably exposed and subjected to some of the nastiest people on earth.  In fact, every time I heard the saying, “The customer is always right,” I always thought it was a little crazy to unilaterally assert such a statement, because the truth is that sometimes the customer is flat out wrong. 

What I found interesting about the way this motto spread so universally was that companies didn’t see that if they all...Read More

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I’ve heard it a million times and it drives me nuts.  “Donna, you’re not normal.” I heard it in school, I hear it at work and I hear it in my personal life all the time. Heck I just heard it again this week - twice! But what does that even mean? 

Years back, I used to think that “different” meant “bad,” as most children do.  But as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realize that we use the term loosely without even really understanding it. Case and point: I do a lot of speaking about learning disabilities in the workplace due to my own personal experience with dyslexia.  And it was while I was res...Read More

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Whether we like to admit it or not, we all know that there are always two sides to every story, and sorting them out between parties is probably one of the biggest time eaters across all aspects of management and organizational life.  We see it manifest in unions, politics and our legal system.  Typically, it takes two sides duking it out in order to meet somewhere in the “middle.”  To me, it seems reasonable enough an approach.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.  That’s life.

But this weekend I found myself in an interesting position, with one half of me being on one side of an issue and the other half being on the other side.  Suddenly, as the debate was now happening within me, it drove home how difficult it can be to find any...Read More

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