22% percent of workplace homicides involve former employees but 43% involve current employees.* An important part of reducing the risk of workplace violence it to train employee and supervisors on how to recognize and respond to the five signs of escalating behavior: Confusion Frustration Blame Anger Hostility This chart describes the emotional and physical behaviors [...]

Workplace violence is conduct which causes an individual to reasonably fear for his or her personal safety or the safety of his or her coworkers, family, friends and/or property.  Workplace violence includes: Physical assaults with or without weapons Bullying and intimidation Stalking Coercion Domestic violence in the workplace A widely held misconception is that most [...]

Dealers have embraced social media as a way to sell cars and gain new revenue in the service drive, now it’s time to harness the power of social media to recruit and hire the best employees for your dealership. There are three things you need to get started using social media effectively to hire great [...]

Determination of worker classification can be complicated but is essential to ensure proper wage and tax payments.  Improper classification can result in governmental fines and wage and hour lawsuits. The IRS and the Department of Labor have both stated their intent to reinvigorated enforcement efforts to end misclassification of employees as independent contractors. On September [...]

March is a great time to “spring clean” your personnel files.  It isn’t fun but it is necessary if an employer wants to ensure compliance with record retention regulations.  Annual “spring cleaning” or audit also provides an opportunity to correct any issues prior to an external audit by the government or as part of a [...]

A BMW Dealership in Chicago did something that most of us think makes sense: They fired an employee for violating a company policy. An employee had used his personal Facebook account for two questionable posts. The first made fun of a company event; the second was a mocking account of an accident at the dealership [...]

72% of substance abusers are employed.  If you don’t have a comprehensive drug and alcohol testing program and a drug free workplace policy in place it is highly likely you are one of the employers they are working at. While many employers have a written policy in place regarding substance abuse they don’t always   enforce [...]

Working with dealerships on a daily basis I find that most want to hire and retain high quality employees and really don’t want to end up on the wrong side of an employment lawsuit or governmental audit but rarely consider that having standardized processes is critical to achieving those goals.  Every aspect of the employment [...]

If you are one of the 70% of employers that the Department of Labor (DOL) estimates is not in compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) get ready to have employees be much more proactive in questioning their pay and potentially reporting you for violations thanks to a new free smart phone application. The [...]

Engaged employees are more productive.  Engaged employees take better care of customers. Engaged employees look for new and better ways of doing their job. There is a proven direct correlation between stock performance, profitability and employee engagement.  Yet many companies still can’t answer the question are our employees engaged or disengaged?  Sure you may think [...]

Unless you are running a program specifically designed to hire convicted felons (and there are some great tax credits available to employers who do) you wouldn’t put the statement “only convicted felons need apply” in your job posting.  But if you aren’t doing background checks then you are known as the employer where convicted felons [...]

Are you ready to get past the pat answers to the standard interview questions and really understand how a person will perform in a certain situations?   Would you consider using a very simple technique to your hiring process that allows the candidate to present themselves truthfully but effectively?  Stop asking those tired old standard interview [...]