Employees have shown up sick for work. Can you send them home and require that they use their sick leave? Yes, you can. If you do send them home, reassure them that you want them to take the time to recover and that you will help to ensure their work gets done. Remind them that sick leave is offered so that they will stay home when they are sick. And if they are worried about lost wages, try to identify ways for them to make up the time once they return to health.
Affinity HR Group is BSCAI's endorsed HR partner, providing HR support, recruiting and employee engagement services. For a link to our menu of services for BSCAI members, go to www.AffinityHRGroup.com/BSCAI
We are very good, generally, at identifying and pointing out behavior that we want to change – otherwise known as corrective feedback. Most managers spend little to no time giving positive, behavior-reinforcing feedback. We love to recommend the Ten Penny Challenge. Ask your manager(s) to put 10 pennies in a right-hand pocket. Tell them that their job is to give their direct reports positive feedback. Each time they do so, they place one penny from the right-hand pocket into the left pocket. Tell them that at the end of each day, it is your expectation that they will have worked all of the 10 pennies from the right pocket into the left one, thereby forcing them to focus on giving positive, supportive, and effective feedback to employees. You may want to start out with just five pennies if they’re not in practice to give positive feedback. But if they are true managers and managing people is their core responsibility, then working through 10 pennies a day should be their primary objective each day!
While the First Amendment protecting free speech exists for public companies and government agencies, it does not generally extend to private companies. And while some speech is protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), such as discussions about pay and working conditions, political conversations are not protected under federal law at all.
If you would like to establish a policy keeping politics out of conversations at work, you can do so. Should you choose to do this, you may want to establish that you are doing so to prohibit conversations that may become aggressive, threatening, disrespectful, or worse. You may choose to prohibit public-facing employees from wearing political paraphernalia. And you should remind employees of your policies around code of conduct and workplace safety such as non-harassment and discrimination.
Affinity HR Group is BSCAI's endorsed HR partner, providing HR support, recruiting and employee engagement services. For a link to our menu of services for BSCAI members, go to www.AffinityHRGroup.com/BSCAI.
Ever wonder why a floor can sometimes look worse after it has been cleaned? This is called “rapid re-soiling,” a fairly common occurrence and the result of the operators using too much chemicals during the cleaning application and not properly rinsing the floors afterward. The residual soap left behind will attract soil quickly.
The solution? Make sure your floors are properly rinsed. Water, with a PH neutralizer, is a great way to remove residual soap and prevent future re-soiling after cleaning.
If one of your best people is out looking for another job, consider this: there is probably something in the current work environment that is unsatisfactory. It's perfectly normal for unhappy high performers to seek opportunities that offer better status, growth, challenge or pay. Listen to your employees. Schedule one-on-one check-ins to hear from them. Study after study shows that employees want to be informed, challenged and supported by colleagues and supervisors that care for them and given the resources to do the best job possible. Money is rarely the true reason for employee turnover. For more on this topic, here are two book recommendations: 12 - The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner & James K. Harter and The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly.