Tag Archives: Free Resources

Employee Development Ideas: A Free eBook

Recently I had the opportunity to participate in a project to collect some employee development ideas for a free eBook. It launched recently, and I’m excited to share it with you today. Click the link below to download this guide full of actionable tips and strategies relating to employee development ideas. I have published a piece of my contributed article below for you to see the kinds of topics the free guide includes.

The Development Scale – Leading the Right Shift to Self and Organizational Development

Employee Development Ideas: Encouraging Development

employee development ideasCongratulations! You’ve picked a development goal for yourself. It’s big, but that’s okay, because the important thing is that you’re focusing on your development and setting goals for yourself. Now let’s sit back, relax, and enjoy the happy feelings associated with setting a personal goal.

Or not.

See, the problem that I consistently see with employees making development goals is that they don’t give enough thought to the actual completion of the goal. It feels good to set a goal and declare our intentions, but when you’re mired in the “everyday” tasks, the goal is the furthest thing from your mind.

The important thing here is that we all need some encouragement to pursue those stretch developmental goals — they don’t just happen accidentally.

And research shows that employee development may have a larger impact on their overall work and results than previously believed…

Click here to check out the guide and read the rest of my piece, along with content from some of the other highly intelligent development ninjas in the space! A big thanks to my pal Chris Ponder for putting this guide of employee development ideas together!

Free Stuff

It’s the giving season around these parts, and I wanted to take a minute to remind everyone of some of the great (free) resources that have been published here over the years.

  • Building your HR department-some of the key tips and tricks for getting the HR function up and running, how to gain credibility, and how to manage it all without help!
  • Employee performance management guide-great content on managing employee performance in a way that doesn’t make them run screaming from the building
  • Employee retention eBook-great ideas on retaining your best and brightest
  • Employee engagement eBook-this was the handbook on engagement before engagement was cool :-)
  • New hire orientation and onboarding guide-If you want to shake up your new hire process (or develop one, if it doesn’t exist?), then this guide is for you. I’ve had dozens of “thank you!” comments on this over the past few years.
  • HRYP guide for young professionals-this short guide for young professionals touches on some of the key aspects of a solid career development plan
  • Rock your SHRM chapter-if you volunteer in the SHRM space for your chapter or state council, this guide is a phenomenal tool for helping to generate new ideas and drive engagement with your volunteers and members.
  • PHR Study Series Free eBook-as always, I am helping those preparing for the PHR/SPHR exams by providing guidance and insight on the exam. This was my first guide, so the writing style is more coarse; however, it gets the job done!

I appreciate each and every one of you, and I hope you are looking forward to an exciting 2014!

Building Your HR Department (Free Guide)

Nearly a year ago I put together a post about starting or working in a new and/or small HR department. It’s a different world, and I quickly learned that this community works to share resources, pool knowledge, and generally help each other with facing the daily HR challenges.

building hr departmentThat post was very helpful to the HR community, and I wanted to give it a little more staying power, so I formatted it into an eBook in order to help share it with others more easily. Without further ado, click the link below to download the guide.

Building Your HR Department: Establishing a foundation for success

This short guide includes:

  • tips on what to focus on for long-term success
  • how I got started as a solo practitioner
  • advice from others in the trenches
  • additional resources to consider

If you find the guide helpful, please share it with other professionals in the space. That’s all I ask. My goal is to help as many of us as possible, and with your help, that range will be extended greatly. Thanks, and enjoy!

Employee Performance Management (Free eBook)

Get the Free Employee Performance Management Guide!

So you’ve been thinking about your staff lately. Namely, employee performance management. When you work with people, there is never an easy answer for handling performance issues, negative feedback, etc. It’s just one of the more difficult parts of being a leader.

employee performance management coverBut you aren’t in this alone.

I work with managers every day who are dealing with employee issues surrounding talent. Some are looking for ways to get their staff to improve or leave. Others are working to align their top performers more closely with organizational goals. It’s a complex topic.

So I reached out to a few contributors to help me develop the guide: Employee Performance Management-How to align goals, leverage talent, and avoid an organizational train wreck. 

In this guide you’ll find great conversations on employee performance management, and you’ll learn a thing or two as well. If you’ve been searching for fresh ideas on the topic, you’ve come to the right place. A few concepts covered inside:

  • Do A players really exist? Is it worth our time to segment our employees that way?
  • Can music impact employee performance? How?
  • The one word you must avoid in performance discussions
  • Can you “hire” performance as a shortcut?
  • And more!

Click here to download the free guide

I want to thank the contributors for offering up some great, useful content: Jennifer V. Miller, Robin Schooling, Trish McFarlane, Steve Boese, Sean Conrad, Tim Gardner, Tim Sackett, and Michael Haberman. You can find links to each of their websites within the guide. Whenever I create one of these tools I reach out to the best and brightest in the industry, and these great folks all answered the call. They want to share their own expertise and insight to make your job easier, but just like me, they are continuously learning as well.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

9 Free Resources, Tools, and Ideas For Better HR

9I run across a large number of resources in my day to day work as an HR department of one. I thought it would be fun to snag the resources I accessed at least once during a week’s time and post them here for you to see. In the past week, here are the sites I’ve visited for something related to work…

  1. This is a free leadership development program template. It’s high quality. Dan puts out an amazing wealth of information on leadership, development, etc. and this is the cream of the crop. If you’re considering some sort of leadership development curriculum, this is a great place to start. Link
  2. This white paper by OC Tanner talks about employee recognition and awards. I don’t agree personally with giving awards to people based on how long they’ve hung around the business, but the ideas for how to present in a meaningful way (backed up by statistical data) were enlightening. Link
  3. I’ve used this quick and easy list of HR laws by company size for years. It’s not a massive guide, just a quick, handy resource. Link
  4. I had to look up an idea on onboarding new employees, and I checked out the free eBook that was published here a while back. Great content on engagement, retention, onboarding, and more. Link
  5. I almost wept with joy when I read the tips and advice on writing well in this presentation by iSight. Some of it is overkill, but we can all use a refresher on writing effective reports in our field. Link
  6. For a laugh, I’ve been checking out TribeHR’s funny eCards for HR pros. This one is my favorite so far. Link
  7. I’ve always been a sucker for the resources at Payscale.com. They have some phenomenal tools and the information is always top notch. Here’s their main resource center with free eBooks and more. Link
  8. I have this hanging up in my workspace and have for the past 3 years. This list should be everywhere. 65 things I believe about HR written by Frank Roche, a gentleman and a scholar. Link
  9. This is good for a laugh (or a cry, if you’re practicing any number of these actions). This pretty much defines cruel and unusual punishment for employees. Link

What’s your favorite from this list? Do you have a go-to resource that you’d like to share?

 

 

How to Save Money on HR Certification Credits (Free Webinar)

In my third and final PHR/SPHR webinar with the fine folks at Dovetail Software, I wanted to offer something to help the 100k+ HR pros who are already certified. I, and many others, often talk about how to pass the HR certification exams. However, the people that already have don’t have any use for that content, so I wanted to create something just for them.

25+ recertification ideas - Click here to sign up for the free webinar on Thursday, August 23rd at 12:30 Central.

The premise

If you have the time and money to pay for dozens of recertification credits for the duration of your career, more power to you. However, I did a little quick math, and the numbers surprised me at the long term cost of recertification.

What does recertification cost?

  • Average cost of one general credit (in my locality): $25
  • Average cost to recertify with 60 credits: $1500/three-year cycle
  • Average cost over a 30 year career: $15,000

What if you could get through one (or more) of those recertification periods without spending a penny (other than the HRCI fees, of course)? That’s what I’m focusing on with this week’s webinar. Let’s look at some of the traditional and not-so-traditional ways of getting credits, including how to use the recertification opportunities to grow in your career.

Join us! It will be a fun finale to a great series of helpful webinars.

A new guide

I’ve been working on a guide for this very topic for a few weeks now, and it’s finally ready to be released. I’ll be covering some of the material in the webinar, but if you are impatient (or you want additional bonus materials that the webinar participants won’t get), feel free to check it out. It’s very inexpensive (though the price will go up soon) and it could potentially save you thousands of dollars throughout the life of your career.

Free HRCI Credits-Webcasts, Webinars, and Podcasts

One of the common questions I’ve heard from people who get their HR certification is how to get free HRCI credits for recertification. I’ve been working on a new guide lately (soon to be released!)(update: the new HR recertification guide is here!), and one of the pieces of information I’m covering is continuing education credits.

In the short time that I’ve been researching, I ran across three solid resources that you can use for getting your PHR and SPHR recertification credits.

Get your hands on free credits

About the guide

The working title is “Rock Your Recertification” (yeah, not too snappy). I’m going to discuss some different topics, but the main purpose will be to provide 50+ ideas for getting recertification credits. I’m hoping to release in early August, so keep your eyes peeled for that one if you are certified and want some solid ideas to get your 60 credits.

Anyone else have ideas for getting free HRCI credits? I’d love to hear what sources you prefer!