First Comment

When employees leave your organization, a lot of information tends to leave with them. As much as they document their everyday activities and hand off work to co-workers, there's always something that they forgot to leave behind. Most of the time the employee who leaves says "contact me for anything you need", and although this is just said as a courtesy, there may be times when contacting that employee for a quick question is absolutely necessary. But how much is too much and how long is too long to contact an old employee?

The question comes after I read an article from Ask a Manager about an employee who was being harassed by their old boss 16 months after leaving their old job. This is an extreme circumstance (it seems like the boss is an extra vindictive person) but it should prove a point that while it's okay to contact an old employee a few times, it should be done sparingly and it should be done with a great deal of gratitude.

In one of my old jobs, my predecessor left for another job within the company (at a new location). He was a really nice guy and had a hard time saying no to anyone so he let everyone know that he was available to help when he left for his new job. Well the problem was that everyone wanted to contact him and they wanted to contact him all the time. It not only made him feel that he really had never left his old job, but it also was really frustrating for me because--correct or not--it always made me feel that no one had trust in me to make the right decisions in these situations.

It's always nice to have old employees who are readily available to help, but it's always worth understanding that the person who left is under no obligation to actually help you--and it could be doing a lot of damage to the confidence of the people left behind. It's okay to contact old employees but, as they say in alcohol commercials, if you choose to do so, do so responsibly.

Let's start out on this Tuesday with The HR Capitalist who talks about the most-talked-about head coach in the NFL so far this week, Bill Belichick (picture on right from same article) who was under fire across the country for a decision to make a non-convential decision in a big spot (and to be fair, some agree with his decision). The blog defends Belichick saying that unconventional decisions like that are what you need to do to win and how Tom Brady, the New England Patriots' quarterback, backed up his head coach.

The truth is that you do have to make big decisions that leave yourself open to second-guessing if you are to be a successful leader, but when the move doesn't work out, you can't always hide behind the loyalty of your "team" as Belichick clearly has done. But then again, Belichick wouldn't have that loyalty unless he had some success.

Other articles:

About.com has some advice for creating a stress-free holiday season in the office

Some great articles from Human Resource Magazine including:

• How to become an HR contractor 

• The top 5 retention tools

• And; top 10 equal pay questions for employers

Enjoy!

It'll be interesting to see the fallout in the job market from the current financial crisis, but some effects are already seen...

The first article is from the New Jersey Law Journal and probably won't work for most of you...but the important part is just to read the title and then find a way to get your hands on the article: Pru Appeals in Suit Charging it Paid Off Plaintiffs' Lawyers: click here

Next, an interesting lesson from Yahoo! News via the AP on what can happen with mergers/takeovers and job layoffs as HP surprises Wall Street in this article: click here

(H/T to Wendy for those)

The Wall Street Journal (with a nice, new look) continues with an article sure to cause a little head scratching to most of America...the Executive job market is still healthy: click here and a video here

Next from the Journal is a very interesting article about trying to get Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's employees to stay as the mortgage giants go through some difficult times: click here

Going quickly to the Boston Globe's, Boston.com Monster.com HiringHub HR Center HR Blog, word that this isn't your father's job fairs--something new is in the air: click here

Lastly, in an article form the Journal, we learn that GMAT scores are being canceled...a lesson to employers that sometimes test scores aren't really all that reliable: click here

We've also added a great new feed from the WSJ on our right: click here

If you're thinking of banning social networking from your company, you may be making a very costly mistake according to employee evolution: click here

If you're thinking of skipping those MBA recruiting sessions, you should read this Wall Street Journal article about more and more people who are doing just that: click here

If you're getting ready to retire, you should read this Journal article about planning your exit strategy: click here

If you're worried about whether you need to have a required lunch break, read this Q&A from the Human Resource blog: click here

If you're wondering the best way to leveraging talent into your company's competitive advantage, read this book review from the HR Practitioner: click here

If you're trying to figure out what the role of Human Resources should be in employer branding, read this PUREcommunications article: click here

And if you're looking for an HR job, who are we to ignore social networking after we talked about it's importance, so here's a LiveJournal entry on a website for HR jobs: click here

So, here I am. My very first blog post! I hope it goes well. Drumroll please...

Internet retail giant Zappos has an amazing policy called “The Offer.” This policy is basically a tool the company uses to weed out any potential employees who aren’t 100% committed to the company. Zappos has extensive training courses for all employees that runs four weeks long. After the first week is when “The Offer” is, well, offered. An employee is given two options:

1) Stay

2) Get paid for their first week here (these trainees receive full salaries) PLUS $1,000 bonus to quit.

Yes, you get bought out to QUIT. This is definitely a unique tool to use, but also a very effective one. The company has grown exponentially the past five years, and shows no signs of stopping. This kind of growth must be, at least in some part, related to the company retaining only the best of the best (and the most loyal of the best). You can check out a full article about Zappos’ organizational culture here.

Somebody's got a case of the Mondays!

Here's a list of seven employee complaints for this Monday:

1) Your employer is watching over you...even as you work at home (an article about telecommuting surveillance from the Wall Street Journal's Career Journal): click here

2) Your former employer is delighting in your layoff (well this Workforce Management article says that if they do, they're going to hell -- Management hell): click here

3) Your former employer is suing you (this may turn out really, really poorly according to the Laconic Law Blog): click here

4) My employer is making me copy on both sides of the paper among other money-saving operations (Fistful of Talent talks about Budweiser's integration into InBev...a good article also about combining cultures in company's and HR's responsibility in that): click here

5) The superstar employee on my team is getting $20-$25 million in severance (while this is probably not your company, this article is an interesting view on the Brett Favre situation in Green Bay from the HR Capitalist and how they blow the term "Golden Parachute" totally out of the water): click here

6) My young co-workers are hopping from job to job and making more money than me (Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 has an article confirming job hopping among Gen Y/The Millenials): click here

7) I just have lots of complaints (well About.com's Human Resources blog compiled a list of the top ten employee complaints): click here