For those of you who follow my blog posts, you know I love top 10 lists. So here is my top 10 list of take-aways from last week’s Cornell HR in Hospitality Conference:
- Consider training service employees to always respond with an “absolutely” or an “of course.”
- Figure out ways to publicly praise your best employees to give others something to strive for.
- Provide employees with a “total rewards” statement upon hire and every year thereafter so they understand the value of benefits provided (employer contributions to health care, employer matching for 401k, parking, etc.)
- Simplify performance evaluation forms and make them more future leaning; be sure to list accomplishments, goals (met or not), and areas for growth.
- Make sure performance reviews do not reference medical issues or leaves-of-absences, and that performance is still fairly measured even if protected time off is taken.
- Clarify exempt status in offer letters, and even consider stating which exemption applies due to the DOL’s view that employees have a “right to know” how they are being classified and why.
- Add e-cigarettes to your nonsmoking policies in employee handbooks.
- One under-publicized impact of a minimum wage increase is the upward pressure it creates on other wage rates to maintain some differential.
- For many HR practitioners, figuring out how to measure HR results with metrics is a daunting task. Advice on that issue included starting simple by figuring out one key HR goal (such to decrease turnover) and some way to measure it. Then consistently refine your methods to come up metrics that are most useful.
- Many HR departments are adding a person designated to do metrics and analysis; these are the skills HR professionals are going to need to be competitive going forward.