Good Morning, HR

When intentional or unintentional road blocks are unnecessarily set in front of employees in the workplace, the entire organization suffers. And when those roadblocks are based upon physical or cultural issues unrelated to an employee’s ability to thrive in an organization, our whole community suffers. What ought an employer do to ensure that they are recruiting, selecting, onboarding, and profess...

The 1983 movie War Games introduced the concept of “hacking” to the general public. And in the ensuing four decades, we’ve seen massive online breaches of security involving both personal and business information.  Once considered a unique event, data breaches have become commonplace but many companies still don’t have adequate safeguards to protect their information. Our guest today says that pro...

Performance management in many organizations has evolved beyond job descriptions, annual reviews, and performance improvement plans. And, as the pandemic continues to push physical distance between employees and supervisors, many businesses are looking for new ways to incentivize, motivate, and grow their employees in a new and ever-changing environment. Today’s guest says that many of the current...

Before ending her twenty-year management career as a C-level executive and beginning her career speaking, consulting, and training, Pam Boyd was a well-seasoned, backstabbing, corporate-hating, finger-pointing, excuse-making, and pathologically negative middle manager.  After a proactive boss changed her trajectory, she vowed to help alleviate the suffering that comes from working in high-drama en...

There was once a time when a leaders’ style was the blueprint for every interaction. Subordinates were expected to modify their own behavior in order to work successfully with that leader. But in the 25 years since the publication of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, many businesses have recognized that a successful team dynamic necessitates first understanding one’s own motivations, behavi...

Social justice warrior. Racist. Snowflake. White privilege. Over the last few years and particularly the past 18 months, conversations around race, gender identity, religion, and a host of other physical and personality traits have become more and more heated. Even once commonly-understood terms like “racism” have evolving meanings rife with opportunity for disagreement. Well beyond the widely-hel...

For as long as I’ve been in and around HR, I’ve heard HR professionals bemoan the fact that they don’t have a seat at the table. But when I look around, I see plenty of strong HR leaders driving change and moving their organizations forward, both inside and outside of the C-Suite. Is it just a matter of competency or personality that determines who ends up in positions of leadership? On today’s ep...

Do employers have responsibilities to employees beyond the explicit terms and conditions of employment and whatever statutory or regulatory requirements might exist? And, if there is an implicit unstated agreement between employees and employers, how can leaders ensure that they uphold their side of the agreement whose details may not be fully understood by the parties? On this week’s episode Mike...

Over the last year, many leaders have been wondering when business will get back to “normal.” But now the fact that a large portion of the population have yet to get vaccinated and the resurgence of Covid-19 through the Delta variant have many leaders wondering what’s next and what their workplaces will look like next month and in years to come. This week's guest, Steve Peglar, says that although...

As the pandemic wanes and employees across the US begin to return to the office, there is a lot of talk about the business lessons learned from the pandemic. Mike Coffey and Terri Swain explore an issue that existed well before the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed in North America. This issue is the topic of countless business books, scholarly articles, and conference presentations. To put it suc...

In his July 9th "Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy," President Biden encouraged the Federal Trade Commission "to curtail the unfair use of non-compete clauses... that may unfairly limit worker mobility." Once primarily limited to executives or salespeople with strategic customer relationships or highly-technical positions with access to intellectual property, more an...

HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passion...