When a staff member requests extended leave, in many cases due to an impending childbirth or adoption, a manager can find him or herself at a loss as to how to proceed. There are several simple steps one can take in this situation to get the ball rolling.

Once an employee has indicated they need to take extended leave, a business owner has several decisions to make regarding how to handle the news as well as the leave itself. There are several things one should not do in this circumstance.

In our last post we discussed how personal lives can affect professional lives, sometimes despite our best efforts. While some people may be able to better compartmentalize these sections of their lives, there are a few things managers and employers can do to help employees succeed.

On occasion, an employee’s personal life can completely overwhelm their professional life. Some examples of this include dealing with the loss of a loved one, taking care of a sick relative and welcoming a child into the family.

In a perfect world, human beings would be able to perfectly compartmentalize their lives and never experience any sort of bleed through. Unfortunately, the world is far from perfect and the brain simply doesn’t work that way. No matter how hard they may try, eventually all employees will experience something in their personal life that […]

Sometimes despite a manager’s best efforts, an office can become an extremely tense environment. Or perhaps a newly hired manager discovers a preexisting culture of animosity on his or her first day. While such situations can be intensely difficult, there are several steps a manager can take to alleviate the negativity in the atmosphere.

Last time we discussed how tension can gain a foothold in a business, directly affecting employee productivity and job satisfaction. Now let’s look at some things an employer can do to prevent tension from beginning or increasing among his or her staff.

There are a number of factors potentially affecting an employee’s level of productivity, which can vary from person to person. These factors can be external or internal and may have nothing to do with work at all. Employers can do little to nothing to prevent outside factors from affecting staff, however he or she can […]

A considerable amount of space in the business world is allotted for lists of reasons why it’s important to be a good employer, supervisor or manager. Good leadership affects every aspect of a business, but it should go without saying that everyone in that role wants to do a good job.

We've discussed in previous posts (linked) some of the potential pitfalls of choosing specific gifts for customers and clients. Gift giving is a veritable minefield of potential faux pas with the increasing internationalism in modern business. Is there a way to simplify the whole process? Of course there is. Let them select their own gift.