HR Thoughts…Week Ending 4.19.2024
We’re at the end of another week, so I’m sharing some HR Thoughts…
Regular, consistent check-ins can be incredibly powerful for employees.
When employees can count on meaningful, well-planned, consistent check-ins with their manager, it can completely change the way they work. It can enhance productivity and lead everyone across the organization to better alignment on and tracking of their goals. The keys here are meaningful, well-planned and consistent. It’s not just a timeslot thrown on the calendar with no structure. It’s time where managers can connect with their team members individually and also where those employees contribute to setting the agenda and topics to be discussed. It’s follow up on what was discussed the prior check-in, and what may need to shift in order to better track toward goals. Maybe a performance issue is just a simple fix, and maybe it’s not. But either way, establishing a system of check-ins can help managers figure it out. If you implement a system like this and do it well, your employees will appreciate it. Trust me.
Are you properly classifying your team members?
Exempt, non-exempt, contractor… Are you making decisions on how you classify your employees based on legal standards or are you just making a guess? My firm recommendation is that you audit how you’ve classified your team members based on the role they are actually performing and the legal standards on the federal and state level. Sometimes it’s easy, while other times it’s a little more nuanced. There can be some hefty fines associated with the misclassification of workers. Hopefully that gives you a little more reason to review.
You’ll eventually run out of luck if you just keep doing with what you’ve always done even when it’s not working.
Things change. The people in your organization change. What works may no longer be effective. Despite all of this, are you still following the same practices you’ve always followed from a people perspective? Are you still requiring everyone to come into the office for the Friday all staff when Friday is actually the day most people on your team would prefer to work from home? Have you considered an alternative approach? Sometimes it’s easy to gloss over these type of things because you’re operating in business as usual mode. But it’s so important to pause and take stock so that you can get ahead of what needs to be changed or re-envisioned and take early action.
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