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Home » Archives for Barb Manning Grimm
HIRING & FIRING

Employees who ask to be fired: A new trend to obtain a strategic advantage

September 29, 2022 by

By Lynne Curry At first, you think you’re imagining things. Your employee, “Kevin,” seems to want you to fire him. It started with Kevin not showing up for two critical team meetings in a row. When you sent him a text asking, “what happened” after the first, he responded, “It wasn’t on my radar.” You sent him an individual meeting request to ask him about this, but he was a “no show.” You planned to ask him to stay after the second team meeting, but he didn’t show up. In the meantime, your hear a complaint from another staffer: “He treats me with total disrespect. Maybe it’s that I’m a woman, or Hispanic, but I don’t plan to take it anymore.” This cascade of problems tells you need to act… . . . read more

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Your work honeymoon is over: What now?

September 22, 2022 by

By Lynne Curry The job that was so exciting when you landed it now bores you. A year ago, you would have joined the throngs of employees exiting their employers in the Great Resignation. Now you hesitate. What if media accounts about the looming recession result in any shiny new job you accept evaporating within months if you’re laid off as “last hired, first let go”? Maybe you need to hunker down, and breathe new life back into a job that’s more secure, even if it has grown stale. Except—can you? Or will you have as much success as when you pour water on dehydrated food on a camping trip, and it still doesn’t taste fresh? If you’re caught in this bind, what’s happened to you is predictable and you… . . . read more

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Job market for 2021 law grads one of the strongest ever

September 13, 2022 by

The job market for the 2021 law school grades was one of the strongest on record. The National Association for Law Placement, Inc. (NALP) has released its Employment for the Class of 2021 — Selected Findings, a synopsis of key findings from the upcoming annual Jobs & JDs: Employment and Salaries of New Law School Graduates. The release of the full Jobs & JDs report is anticipated in October 2022. This year’s selected findings, available at www.nalp.org/classof2021, show that the employment outcomes for the Class of 2021 were some of the strongest that NALP has ever recorded, as the U.S. economy recovered from the COVID-19 related disruptions that impacted the Class of 2020. “Driven by extraordinary demand for talent at the largest law firms, a healthy private practice market propelled… . . . read more

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MANAGING STAFF

Quiet firing meets quiet quitting

September 12, 2022 by

By Lynne Curry Quiet quitting, the employee behavior pattern that swept through the nation this summer after a viral TikTok video in July, has met its match—quiet firing. Employers, disgusted by employees that consider it justified to do the bare minimum at work, are blessing these employees out the door. Managers take action In September 2022, 91% of 1,000 managers surveyed reported taking action against quiet quitters or firing them (1 in 3 managers have responded to ‘quiet quitting’ with ‘quiet firing’ – ResumeBuilder.com). One in three of the surveyed managers reported firing quiet quitters; 75% of the 1000 managers described firing quiet quitters as justifiable. Managers that didn’t outright fire quiet quitters took other actions. 27% of them denied raises to quiet quitters; 23% denied promotions to quiet quitters…. . . . read more

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HIRING

College…no longer the golden ticket for employers or employees

September 8, 2022 by

By Lynne Curry College was once the “golden ticket” to the American Dream of greater job security and higher lifetime wages. In the last decade, however, college enrollments have declined. According to a recent Harris poll, 51% of U.S. adults report that skyrocketing college costs have decreased their ability to pursue a post-high school education.1 Although 62% of U.S. employees 25 or older lack a college degree, some employers still use the college degree as gatekeeper when assessing which candidate to hire or promote.2 Does this work any longer, or are employers missing out on skilled employees with talent and drive because the best potential hires lacked the time and money to attend college? No longer the only path Some employers, perhaps forced by the Great Resignation to seek out formerly… . . . read more

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MORE PROFIT

The art of delegating to increase firm revenues

September 6, 2022 by

By Elizabeth Miller Law firms are unique in that unlike most other businesses which sell a product, lawyers sell time. Their time is, for a better description, “their stock in trade”. Based on this concept, to be profitable and generate sufficient revenues to carry the firm, lawyers should be spending their valuable time doing client billable work. The exception to this are contingency cases and hybrid cases which consist of a part contingency/part billable hour retainer agreement. Contingency cases, however, have to be profitable for a law firm also. With this in mind, the key to profitability and work product efficiency in a law firm is to assign legal tasks to the lowest paid but most qualified person to complete a task. When partners spend their time doing work that… . . . read more

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HIRING

3 things to know about background checks

September 1, 2022 by

 By Paul Edwards “No, we didn’t do a background check on her before we hired her. She seemed like such a nice person.” “Well, I just ‘Googled’ him, and it looks like he has some sort of criminal record, but I can’t see what it is.” These are things we occasionally hear from our CEDR members on the topic of background checks. Although nobody wants to think the worst of every applicant, it just makes good business sense to look into a person’s background before you make them your employee. This is especially true when you are hiring someone who will have access to your company’s financial records and/or to client financial information such as social security and credit card numbers. A call that we hate to get, but we… . . . read more

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PRODUCTIVITY

Quiet quitting: The new ‘just say no’ employee pushback

August 20, 2022 by

By Lynne Curry Gone are the days when employers could count on employees competing to go “above and beyond” to rise faster in their organizations. Employers now face “quiet quitting,” a trend that emerged in July 2022 from a viral TikTok video to become a phenomenon noted on Wikipedia and discussed in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. Quiet quitting is more than employees setting boundaries or intentionally putting a hard stop to their work day or work week so they can create a work/life balance. Checked-out quiet quitters simply slack their way through their workweek by doing the bare minimum needed to keep their jobs, overloading their coworkers, frustrating their supervisors, and draining productivity from their employers. According ResumeBuilder.com’s August 2022 survey of 1000 U.S. employees, 21% of surveyed… . . . read more

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RISK MANAGEMENT

What you should know about new COVID-19 guidance

August 20, 2022 by

CDC is streamlining its COVID-19 guidance to help people better understand their risk, how to protect themselves and others, what actions to take if exposed to COVID-19, and what actions to take if they are sick or test positive for the virus. COVID-19 continues to circulate globally, however, with so many tools available to us for reducing COVID-19 severity, there is significantly less risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death compared to earlier in the pandemic. “We’re in a stronger place today as a nation, with more tools—like vaccination, boosters, and treatments—to protect ourselves, and our communities, from severe illness from COVID-19,” said Greta Massetti, PhD, MPH, MMWR author. “We also have a better understanding of how to protect people from being exposed to the virus, like wearing high-quality masks,… . . . read more

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MANAGING STAFF

Workplaces slow to get well from COVID-19 damage

August 20, 2022 by

By Lynne Curry You’ve heard that “long-haulers,” individuals with long COVID, suffer persistent COVID-19 symptoms that erode their quality of life. Anyone scanning the workplace soon realizes that some employers suffer from “long COVID”. A few refuse employers treatment, expecting to get well on their own. Three symptoms signal an employer suffers “long COVID”. Difficult to fill vacancies and continual turnover Job openings outnumber available workers by 5.46 million. So many potential employees have left the labor market to become self-employed, or gig and contract workers, that employers with vacancies continue to fight talent wars. Desperate to fill their positions, long hauler employers hire hastily, hoping the “best of the worst” will work out. Some new hires don’t last a day. Others leave without notice within their first four months,… . . . read more

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