News from the VA’s Office of Human Resources and Administration

What’s Inside:

1. Four Critical Global Workforce Diversity Strategies
2. Five Rules of Style for the Business-Casual Workplace
3. 11 Habits of the Worst Boss I Ever Had. 
4. Proactive Approaches Can Ease Workplace Stress
5. Motivated Employees Key to Productive Environment
6. Refreshing a Stale Job
7. Building a Better Team
8. The Humane Workplace
9. Dealing with “It’s All About Me” Syndrome
10. Helping Employees Who Find Themselves in the Hole

1. Workplace Flexibility: A Guide for Companies
2. Four Critical Global Workforce Diversity Strategies.  Identify, attract, and retain the best people; create a workplace where they can perform at their best; assess and understand the diversity of your marketplace; and contribute to the elimination of disadvantage.
3. Five Rules of Style for the Business-Casual Workplace.  Today’s business-casual workplace would seem to be a world without rules.  Of course, there are rules, they’re just more subtle—which makes them even harder to follow.
4. 11 Habits of the Worst Boss I Ever Had.  What does it take to be a really bad boss?  David Silverman reveals all in a timeless collection of how to confuse, intimidate, and generally exasperate employees.
5. Proactive Approaches Can Ease Workplace Stress.  Work can be stressful.  Even happy news, such as a well-deserved promotion, can take a toll if it means long hours while you learn the new job.  To stay sane and healthy amid the stress, get plenty of exercise and sleep each day.
6. Motivated Employees Key to Productive Environment.  The lack of understanding about individuals’ values, beliefs, and work styles can create an unconscious lack of support and an environment of disrespect, stress, and inefficiency.
7. Refreshing a Stale Job.  Even the most exciting position can lose its zip over time.  Whether the honeymoon lasted for two months or two years, the question is what to do about it now.
8. Building a Better Team.  Companies know that great teams can improve employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention—as well as the bottom line.
9. The Humane Workplace.  A manager can do a number of things to make the workplace more fit for human beings.  This brings a nice bonus, too, by helping employees become more productive.
10. Dealing with “It’s All About Me” Syndrome.  Narcissists show a pervasive need for attention and admiration and a lack of concern for others.  But are they dangerous in the workplace?
11. Helping Employees Who Find Themselves in the Hole.  Research suggests that about one third of workers are facing some sort of personal financial crisis.  The initial reaction by many employers is, “that’s not my problem.”  The reality is that employers should be concerned with the issue.
12. Workday Trends Blur Overtime Rules.  In an evolving, always-on workplace where employees routinely put in extra hours and shoot off e-mails late at night from mobile devices, where the workday begins and ends has become an issue for employers of all sizes.
13. Preparing for Retiring Boomers with Strategic Succession Planning.  Organizations that have been used to seeing minimal turnover in senior positions are now looking ahead at the prospect of managing a much higher number of senior positions turning over.
14. From Womb to Work: Educating the Millennials.  This latest generation is already changing the workplace with its reliance on and comfort with all things technological.  But members of this new generation also enter the workforce with a new philosophy of both optimism and entitlement.
15. The Role of Executive Coaching in Talent Management and Succession Planning.  Executive coaching has emerged in recent years as a topic of great interest for several reasons, and employers should be cognizant of what those reasons are.
16. Paul Light’s Government Score Card.  Paul Light, a professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, has written about government performance for 25 years.  His new book, A Government Ill Executed, analyzes what he calls a crisis in government performance.
17. Bush Taps New OPM Director.  President Bush has nominated Michael Hager, assistant secretary for human resources and administration at the Department of Veterans Affairs, to be the next head of the Office of Personnel Management.
18. Diversity Alters P&G Marketing.  Employees who belong to minority groups often want to see their own concerns for their communities reflected inside their companies.  If those concerns come at critical junctures, it can mean the difference between keeping and losing a career-long employee.
19. The Myth of the Opt-Out Revolution Among Professional Women.  When considering the issue of whether to opt-out of a high paying professional career at some point, the big elephant in the room is the “have” rich husband vs. the “don’t have” rich husband distinction.
20. Sociologists Explore Emotional Labor of Black Professionals in the Workplace.  Black professionals make extra efforts in the workplace to fulfill what they believe are the expectations of their White colleagues, according to recent research.
21. GAO: VA’s HealtheVet Needs Plans.  The Veterans Affairs Department needs a project management plan and a governance structure to implement its HealtheVet program successfully to modernize its medical information system, the Government Accountability Office has reported.
22. Behaviors That Undermine a Culture of Safety.  To assure quality and to promote a culture of safety, health care organizations must address the problem of behaviors that threaten the performance of the health care team.
23. U.S. Congress Apologizes for Slavery, Jim Crow.  The U.S. House of Representatives issued an unprecedented apology to Black Americans for the institution of slavery, and the subsequent Jim Crow laws that for years discriminated against Blacks as second-class citizens in American society.
24. AT&T Loses Lawsuit Filed by Black Employee.  AT&T, named one of the 40 "best diversified" companies by Black Enterprise magazine, has been ordered to pay $411,339 to one of three African-American employees to file suit accusing the company of racial discrimination.
25. New Bill Would Protect Contract Employees From Discrimination and Harassment.  Legislation introduced by nine House Democrats would extend discrimination and whistleblower protections to employees who work for contractors and federally funded health care facilities.  It also would increase the financial liability of agencies in those cases.
26. Ms. Wheelchair America Fights Bias in Houston, Elsewhere.  Michelle Colvard, executive director of the mayor’s office for people with disabilities in Houston, was recently crowned Ms. Wheelchair America, a position that will have her touring the nation to challenge stereotypes about women with disabilities.
27. People with Disabilities Say Yesterday’s Terms Can Cause Offense, Pain.  They are not "victims" but "survivors;" not "brain damaged," but "brain injured;" not "crippled," but "persons with disabilities," says Gina Biter-Mundt, a Kaiser Vallejo physical rehabilitation specialist.
28. ERG Registry Company List.  Out & Equal Workplace Advocates is proud to display their ever-increasing list of corporations who support LGBT workplace equality by encouraging and fostering their own employee resource groups (ERGs).