HR Works: The Podcast for Human Resources

Welcome to the second weekly episode of HR Works: COVID-19 Update. Going forward, will be publishing these shorter episodes every week with the goal of covering employment law issues surrounding COVID-19. For this second episode we are pleased to have our returning guest, employment attorney Jonathan Mook, of DiMuroGinsberg PC, with us. We discuss more details about the Families First Coronavirus...

Welcome to the first weekly episode of HR Works: COVID-19 Update. We will be publishing these shorter episodes every week with the goal of covering employment law issues surrounding COVID-19. We are pleased to have employment attorney Jonathan Mook with us today to discuss the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, or the FFCRA for short. Jonathan is an attorney at DiMuroGinsburg PC, attorneys a...

When HR professionals and hiring managers need to fill a slot, what do they do? They go to LinkedIn and job boards. According to the guest of this episode, such an approach may not be going far enough. In fact, they might be a big waste of time. This episode features Michael “Batman” Cohen. He is the Founder of Wayne Technologies, a contract sourcing and recruitment training organization. His uniq...

Rare is the HR professional that was formerly a firefighter paramedic and hazardous materials engineer. One such individual found that much of what he learned in his former careers gave him the tools he needed to meet the many challenges that he faced as an HR professional. Taylor Bradley is the Director, HRBP of Global Product Development at Datto (https://www.datto.com). As mentioned he was also...

In this episode of HR Works we tackle the so-called résumé black hole: the place where job applicants’ resumes vanish to without hiring managers ever seeing them. What is this mysterious place? Why does it exist? And most importantly: is it really doing anyone any good? We have two experts with us to speak about this. The first is Liz Wessel is the Co-Founder & CEO of WayUp (https://www.wayup.com)...

If you want to combat sexual harassment in a meaningful way, you have to get comfortable having uncomfortable conversations. In fact, a major reason sexual harassment in the workplace still takes place has to do with the culture of silence that surrounds it. Additionally, if your employees are not trained to handle situations as they are happening, an opportunity to stop harassment in its tracks o...

What are your training roadblocks? Perhaps you don't have the time or resources to roll out the training you need. Maybe you can't get buy-in from leadership. It could be that your training never sticks, so why bother. In this episode of HR Works Podcast, our guest believes that such roadblocks are far from insurmountable. We are pleased to have Diane Sadwoski-Joseph, Director of Facilitator Devel...

In this special episode we address the so-called coronavirus. With cases numbering in the tens of thousands across dozens of countries, and hundreds of deaths, this poorly understood disease has created no small amount of chaos and fear. Some of those fears are justified and some not. The U.S. currently has around one dozen confirmed cases. What does this mean for HR? HR is often the department th...

Tackling training can be quite challenging. Other than getting training sticky and making sure it reaches the right people, another major concern concerns how training for one employee might not work so well. In this episode we to discuss an approach to training that takes those differences into account. And, we talk about birds. Merrick Rosenberg co-founded Team Builders Plus in 1991 and Take Fli...

Workplace investigations are very serious, usually resulting from unfortunate or unpleasant events. Furthermore, the entire process can easily end up under the scrutiny of a number of legal professionals including employment lawyers and judges. It is very important that HR professionals get their investigations right. This episode's guest specializes in workplace investigations and is here to help...

Whatever your aims, be they improving retention and engagement, upskilling your employees, encouraging innovation, or improving inclusion; training your employees is a critical tool. Everyone wants to know: how do we make sure that training is effective, that it lasts, and that employees engage the training process? This episode’s guest has been part of a unique training effort at Liberty Mutual I...

With limited resources and time, it can be challenging for employers to initiate annual Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) training programs for their managers and supervisors. However, the Department of Labor routinely reports that supervisor training is a top area of non-compliance for employers. If organizations don’t properly train their front-line em...

As an HR professional you know how important diversity and inclusion are. This episode's guest is a leader of the conversation surrounding these efforts. We are pleased to have Claudia Chan, CEO of S.H.E. GLOBL, a coalition+content+convening platform that helps companies unlock a diverse and inclusive workforce to transform both its culture and its communities. She is the founder of their award-wi...

In episode 101 of HR Works Podcast, we tackle the performance review: an issue that is sometimes hotly debated. Some organizations still believe in yearly reviews, others on informal discussions, and still others believe that there should be no reviews at all. Today’s guest is an expert on performance reviews, especially the 1 on 1 meeting. We are pleased to have Shane Metcalf, Co-founder & Chief...

HR plays a central role in keeping abreast of the constant change that organizations must undergo to survive. Having a strategy for change is critical, but with so many voices out there on how to do that, one can be easily lead astray. With that in mind, we are pleased to celebrate our 100th episode of HR Works Podcast with legendary expert Dave Ulrich. In this episode, we discuss the latest appro...

How do you qualify employee engagement? This episode's guest, Chris Meroff, is an employee engagement specialist who believes that not all engagement is created equally. While everyone agrees that engagement is important, the execution of engagement is where employers tend to make mistakes, says Meroff. A successful program addresses the employee's need for fulfillment. That means investing in who...

What happens when an HR professional finds themselves in the middle of a high growth phase at their organization? Do you scale up your HRIS? Do you hire more staff to handle the new employees? How do you maintain culture during such a disruptive time? We aim to answer these questions in episode 98 of HR Works Podcast. Today’s guest has a lot of experience surrounding high growth. Greg Brown is the...

We all know that performance and safety issues surrounding substance abuse in the workplace are big concerns. My guests for episode 98 of HR Works Podcast discuss a much wider range of legal and other challenges surrounding substance abuse. For example, working with your insurance company before obtaining Narcan (the anti-drug for opioid overdoses) to make sure you have coverage should administrat...

Even if you onboard the best employees, if you don’t train them well (or at all), everything suffers from the employees right down to the bottom line. In this episode of HR Works, we are lucky to be joined by learning expert Tanya Staples, VP of Product, Learning Content at LinkedIn. Over 10 years ago, Tanya was an author and online video creator at lynda.com, a LinkedIn property. Driven by her pa...

When a workplace lacks civility, it creates fear, anxiety, a lack of transparency, and the whole place descends into a dark place. Our guest in this episode of HR Works specializes in workplace civility training. Colleen Passard is a writer, mediator and coach. She has a Masters in Humanistic Counseling Psychology and is certified in many areas of conflict resolution, circle processes and restorat...

We all have unconscious biases. Without awareness and tools for confronting these biases, organizations will develop or extend major problems. The effects of such bias impact everything in an organization including recruiting and promotion decisions as well as heavily influencing company culture. This episode's guest is an expert when it comes to confronting and eliminating unconscious biases. Bra...

Company culture is the name of the game in HR, but experts wonder how best to create that culture. Is it enough to just announce your mission objectives and print them on the wall? The guests for episode 93 of HR Works would argue that that does not go nearly far enough. They instead suggest implementing a purpose driven culture. What exactly is that? I’ll let our guests explain. We are happy to h...

In this episode of HR Works, we discuss the very serious issue of mental health in the workplace. Mental health discussions have a tendency to focus on mental illness. While mental illness is certainly a critical concern of mental health, everyone is susceptible to poor mental wellness and HR managers need to address the concerns of every one of their employees. Our guest had a first-hand experien...

In Episode 91 of HR Works, we discuss the EEO-1 Component 2 Compensation Data reporting rule, which is due for submission on the 30th of September of this year. We have two attorneys joining us to discuss this: Partner Maggie Spell and Senior Partner Mark Adams of Jones Walker LLP. They both work in the great City of New Orleans in Louisiana in one of Jones Walker’s 15 locations. For more than 30...

Everyone knows how critical employee engagement is for the success of any organization. Despite awareness and vast amounts of money being spent on solving this problem, engagement rates are still low across the United States. Today's guest is a CEO that has won Glassdoor's Top CEO for multiple years, and the New York Times has profiled him in an article titled, "The Incalculable Value of a Good Bo...