Among all the documents that HR in an organization handles –make no mistake, they are innumerable –documentation relating to employment is a very important. Any faulty employment documentation will automatically make it indefensible in a legal claim and can land the organization in a spot of bother. If this is to be prevented, what should HR do?

For employment documentation has to be of high quality, it has to be defensible

In the same way in which there are best…

Why is employment documentation important as an HR function? Simple: it is what decides whether the organization is living up to its commitment or not. When organizations don’t deliver what they promise, they are not held in high esteem. This is as true for business as for employee relations.

Defensibility is a hallmark of high quality employment documentation

Employment documentation seems to be governed on the adage, verba volant, scripta menant. This simply…

One of HR's core functions is documentation. There are documents for simply everything, from employment offer to termination. Obviously, if HR were required to keep each and every document relating to each and every employee forever; the office would be left with no space for anything other than documents!

Care should be taken to make employment documentation defensible

This is where HR has to be discrete and knowledgeable about employment documentation. Some documents…

One of the most important functions of HR is documentation. Typically, there are zillions of documents an organization produces or maintains. There are documents for about every activity that the HR undertakes, and that is saying a lot about the documents, because we may count the drops of the ocean, but not the documents that HR gets or handles!

This is where the problem begins. This is a typical case of more numbers meaning more trouble. By any standards, keeping and maintaining…

Chances are we’ve all heard the quote from Albert Einstein: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Except some days I’m less convinced it’s insanity and more just a part of human nature.

When we separate ourselves from the outcome, when we don’t see the part we play, when we don’t ask questions (What could I do different?) we see no reason to do anything different. So we don’t. After all, it’s someone else’s…

Appraisals are annual events in any organization. For the HR professional, it is a challenge to make the right appraisal of any candidate. A positive appraisal, which results in a good pay hike, will surely be welcome by the employee receiving it, but is envied or even contested by other employees who are not on the same level, giving way to ill feeling and perhaps even sabre rattling.

Appraisals are not given for performance alone

More often than not,…

Uncomfortable reading for HR people this week in the shape of new research which shows they are largely viewed as ineffective and not fast or flexible enough to adapt their strategies to the changing world of work.

This serious ‘image’ problem is revealed in the KPMG/Economist Intelligence Unit report …

If the latest research is to be believed, companies are still struggling with two of the most fundamental people management issues – keeping employee absence under control and getting the best from their teams.

A …

Your best people jumping ship and going to a competitor is every company’s worst nightmare.  But in the rush to get a key person replaced, how often do we pay any attention to finding out why a particular employee has chosen to head for the hills?

A series of recent …

In February I was lucky enough to attend an event called Unconventional Strategies, one of a series of events organised by …

The concept of "intention and perception" and the related issue of "context" is one which has been brought to the forefront of debate recently by the Luis Suarez affair. For those who missed it, Suarez is a Uruguayan footballer playing for Liverpool, who was accused of racially abusing Patrice Evra, a French player for Manchester United. Suarez admitted describing Evra as a "negrito" but argued unsuccessfully that in Uruguay the term did not carry the racially charged overtones that it does…

You may have heard of Engage for Success, a government backed and Industry led initiative led by David MacLeod and Nita Clark to look at how we can improve overall levels of engagement within organisations and turn…