November 2013

your parents don’t belong in your workplace

If you hoped that the helicopter parenting trend was on the wane, you won’t be happy to learn that last week LinkedIn launched “Bring Your Parent to Work Day,” an initiative to encourage workers to bring their parents to the office to give them “a glimpse into where their kids work.” LinkedIn says they created […]

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my coworker constantly cc’s our managers on her emails to me

A reader writes: I’m a supervisor with not much experience and still learning. I do make mistakes, but I’m pretty good at taking responsibility and rectifying my mistakes. There is a customer service supervisor who constantly cc’s my department director if she disagrees with the answers I give to the customer service reps. Instead of […]

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the salary I was offered was a bait and switch

A reader writes: I have been talking to another department about an internal move. When I first talked to the hiring manager, he told me the pay would be $83K with 10% bonus. (I am currently making $54k.) When I saw the offer letter yesterday, it was for $70K with 4% bonus. The explanation I […]

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the top 6 ways managers demotivate employees

An employee’s relationship with his or her manager is the single most important factor in how happy that employee is at work – which means that managers have a huge amount of sway over the mood on their team. Here are the top six ways that managers mess up and end up demotivating employees who […]

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should I lend my knowledge to my jerky coworker?

A reader writes: I’m a researcher specialized in a certain research methodology, and I recently completed a consulting contract for a small firm that had a large project that needed my expertise. I was part of a team being lead by a research lead who was also the firm’s recently hired practice manager. This was […]

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why are there so many terrible managers?

If you’re like most people, you’ve had your share of bad bosses – managers who couldn’t delegate well, or were terrible at giving feedback, or were just plain jerks. And you’ve probably wondered why there are so many bad managers out there – why do companies hire them and how do they stay in their […]

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