Many larger businesses have professionals who manage the administration, training, and management of employees: the human resources department.

Small businesses, on the other hand, most likely will not even a human resources professional on staff. They’re lucky to even keep their HR files in order. Handling HR tasks can present a challenge for small business owners.

The human resource department of large companies may be generalists, or focus on specialized areas such as employee benefits, payroll, training, and management efforts. They may handle common human resources processes include the staffing, hiring, satisfaction, development, and retention of employees. Human resources departments must also stay abreast of important employment and accounting laws. However, small business owners may have no training in these areas and may be especially vulnerable. Nevertheless, small business owners should try to keep up-to-date with changes in payroll and employment laws, and look to a mentor when questions arise.

The field of human resources continues to evolve with new technology for recruitment and employee screening, personality and skills testing, training and development, ...

(Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by our friends at SilkRoad, whose passion is creating a world-class employee experience. I just returned from their annual users’ conference – three days of networking, education and fun. I wrote a post about their great event over on the SilkRoad blog. Hope you’ll check it out here!)

According to SilkRoad’s TalentTalk Research Program, the most popular way companies measure employee engagement is via their annual employee survey (59%). Since employee surveys should never be done haphazardly, this puts the development, implementation and communication of an employee survey front and center.

Employee opinion surveys are used for a variety of reasons. I’ve always looked at them as a way to converse with employees about the workplace. They provide a tremendous amount of data. But I believe it’s short-sighted to view them as a report card about how things are going. Because while there’s a lot of data that is gleaned from surveys, it’s never the whole story.

Surveys offer the ability to receive feedback at every level:

Organizationally, a survey can identify company ...

A few weeks ago I wrote about how important it is that we offer awards that have some substantive value to them, in order to “put our money where our mouths are” and ensure proportion and fairness.

A few weeks before that, I wrote about how mistaking “pointsification” for gamification could backfire on employers, and how important it is that we be thoughtful when we gamify a solution, and not get caught up in bells whistles and leaderboards.

Ordinarily I don’t get all self-referential, but when I saw the Dilbert comic below from this Sunday’s paper, I was pretty tickled at how it segued with those two posts. I wanted to give Scott Adams a high five. (Click the image to see it larger.)

© DILBERT 2013 Scott Adams. Used By permission of UNIVERSAL UCLICK. All rights reserved.

Not only does Adams reference the current problems with outdated performance reviews, but he also gets right to the heart of the need for meaningful recognition and reward.  Adopting any solution simply because it is trendy is a grave error that will likely backfire on a company.

Now don’t get me wrong. Gamification has its place. I wrote all about that ...

Recognize This! – Strategy can only be executed by those who intimately understand strategic objectives and their role in it.

Strategy is one of my passions. I’m fortunate that helping clients formulate strategy is also my job. Indeed, my title is Vice President, Client Strategy and Consulting. I greatly enjoy my work helping organizations of all stripes develop a strategy for proactive management of their company culture. Yet, I also believe that everyone is (or should be) strategist in their organization.

Two pieces on strategy I read last week helped me coalesce my thinking. First, from Strategy + Business comes the ideas of Cynthia Montgomery, Timken Professor of Business Administration and former chair of the strategy unit at Harvard Business School. The article describes Montgomery’s approach to strategy this way:

“When you look at strategy as a frame of mind to be cultivated, rather than as a plan to be executed, you are far more likely to succeed over the long run… To Montgomery, a business strategist is not primarily an analyst of position, or of resources; nor is the strategist purely adaptive, responding reactively to the vagaries of ...

(Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by Allied Van Lines, a leader in the moving and storage industry with more than 75 years of experience. For a second year, they are championing a research project, Allied HRIQ, aimed to provide business professionals with data on current workforce trends. I’m honored to be working with Allied again and hope you find the information interesting.)

A few months ago, Yahoo! President and CEO Marissa Mayer banned telecommuting. The response uproar backlash was swift. Experts from everywhere said telecommuting is essential to employee satisfaction and engagement. Some said this was the first sign of the apocalypse. All right – you caught me. No one really said that … but you would have thought the world was coming to an end given all the media attention.

Let me toss an idea out there. Maybe telecommuting isn’t the utopia we think it is. Or that it’s been hyped up to be.

By definition, telecommuting is when employees do not travel to a central place of work. Telecommuting is also referred to as telework or remote work. Typically when a person telecommutes, they’re working from home. So ...