Spring means a few things for me but especially spring training for professional baseball and geeking out over how to get the most out of the talent on my favorite team (both on the baseball diamond, and in my office).  Baseball performance metrics have changed over my lifetime.  I watch expectantly at the promise of equivalent change in non-baseball employers as I read articles like “The Performance Management Revolution” in the Harvard Business…

Sherlock Holmes is hot at the moment: movies, television shows on both sides of the Atlantic, and way too many deerstalker hats and large pipes over Halloween. Kareem Abdul Jabbar has now added a new (and very good) novel to add to Holmesian canon: Mycroft Holmes. Plus, the Holmes-Watson dynamic is a trope played broadly across the arts. The question of course is why is Sherlock Holmes so popular now. Holmes himself instructed us on…

If Valentine’s Day leads to many office hookups, then April Fool’s Day can be considered the traditional day of mourning for imploded relationships. HR professionals fear April 2: the annual day of harassment complaints arising out of imploded workplace romances. Is there a solution to this cycle? The answer could lie in the admittedly unromantic “love contract.” Here is one example of this type of agreement: Tom Jones is employed by RomCom (the “Company”) as…

Many employers have matching programs for charitable contributions. Under such policies, the employer donates dollars equal to each employee donation to any 501(c)(3) organization. This is American capitalism at work; this is precisely and exactly what Andrew Carnegie advocated in his epochal book The Gospel Of Wealth in 1889. But, business life is riskier 125 years after Carnegie’s encouragement of corporate philanthropy. When employees have given to a variety of charities, corporate headquarters should feel…

It’s iconic Americana – the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday walk down an empty main street in Tombstone for their showdown with the Ike Clanton gang. But, can you refocus and replay that scene one more time but now with the viewpoint of business owner or business manager. What image do you see? That’s right – not a single person in town is working. Now let’s turn to today. Worker productivity has skyrocketed, growing by…

There is a myth that buyers are protected from employment liabilities arising under prior ownership if there is a broad disclaimer and if it is an asset purchase. Not so. Sure, the “general rule” is that a purchaser of another company’s assets does not assume the seller’s liabilities.* But, employment law is the exception to that general rule: For employment issues, courts impose liability on successors “when necessary” to protect and vindicate employment-related policies arising…