Should You Drug Test Your Employees

Should You Drug Test Your Employees One of the most complicated and contentious issues for HR professionals today is the question of drug testing employees for marijuana use. Because many states across the country have now legalized either medical marijuana use (33 states thus far) or even recreational use (10 states thus far), employers are unsure if this is still a consideration they need to take into account. Though all companies reserve the right to drug test employees, the consistency of drug testing in the workplace is changing, as some industries continue to regularly drug test where others have ceased the practice altogether. Drug testing has been a standard in the American workplace for decades now, beginning in the mid-1980s under the Reagan administration and the War on Drugs. Beginning in 1988, Drug-Free Workplace regulations were in place, which required all federal companies with large enough contracts to drug test all employees. Though this began in just the public sector, many privately-owned companies noticed the benefits of drug testing employees and began to implement the practice themselves. Even today, around 90% of Fortune 500 companies drug test their employees, and 62% of all employers across the country have instated mandatory drug testing programs. However, some high-profile companies have publicly declared an end to drug testing their employees. These companies include names such as Google, Whole Foods, Red Bull, Twitter, and NPR. Industries that do continue to regularly drug test are those where safety is a much more pressing concern. Transportation and construction employees are usually tasked with the operation of heavy machinery or vehicles, and anything affecting their judgment could be dangerous to themselves and the public. Members of the military are also rigorously drug tested for obvious reasons, as they are also operating heavy machinery and granted the use of deadly weapons. Even members who are not on active duty are often participating in strategic operations that deal with the safety of the nation, and they need to be thinking clearly. Other industries that continue to test for marijuana are medicine and athletics. Doctors and nurses obviously cannot be under the influence in order to perform their jobs, and athletes are tested to make sure they are not using any performance-enhancing drugs. All companies have the right to terminate employees for being under the influence at work, even in states where recreational use is legal or for employees that hold a medical marijuana card. However, laws are in place in certain states which protect employees or potential employees from retaliation against medical marijuana use. These states include Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. A recent study shows an interesting generational gap between Millennials and the older workforce on how they perceive marijuana use affecting the workplace. One out of four Millennials surveyed stated that they would decline a job offer if they knew that the company drug tested its employees. It’s important for hiring managers and recruiters to understand drug testing best practices today, as the perceptions and expectations of today’s employees and future prospects are dramatically shifting. In contrast, the study revealed that 46% of employees over the age of 30 stated that they would lose confidence in their coworkers’ ability to produce high-quality work if they found out they used marijuana outside of work. This was true even in states where recreational use has been legalized. This study has interesting implications for HR professionals and recruiters and how much they should reveal about potential positions, as well as how to best satisfy the needs of workers from different generations. Take a look at the graphic below to learn more about the study, or visit the original study, A Look at Drug Testing in The Workplace. About the author:  Heidi Thiel is a writer and content marketer. She has created content in a variety of industries including job recruitment and HR, cybersecurity, travel, and vegan living. You can take a look at some of Heidi’s current projects by visiting her company  Twitter.

How to Improve Presentation Skills

How to Improve Presentation Skills If you want to improve presentation skills, here is one thing you need to know, you have to be confident. Whether you are on track or missed out on something whilst doing your presentation, never go back or bring anyones attention to it. Just move on and you will have mastered one key secret of the presentation. This is an infographic by CareerFolio.Net: Employee Hiring Solution. To improve presentation skills, heres what CareerFolio advices you on: Be confident Always Do proper homework First slide should be eye catching When presenting if you make a mistake dont panic For positive impact, keep smiling and be confident 8

5 Ways To Break Up Your Work Day

5 Ways To Break Up Your Work Day Todays post is written by Kelsey Hennegen, a 3rd year political science student at UCSB and PR/Writing Intern at FindTheBest. As one who had held only part-time jobs and summer internships throughout school, my history of intermittent employment hardly prepared me for the transition to the workplace. That which I expected to be most daunting at my new jobimpressing my bosses, consistently and quickly producing quality work, and understanding the jargon of the internet start-up industrywas superseded by an unexpected challenge: simply working at a computer for 8+ hours per day. In adjusting to these expectations, I’ve discovered 5 ways to stay engaged through a long work day: 1. Take a Stand When you’re tired, you may find yourself inclined to slouch deeper into your chair. This sort of poor posture only furthers feelings of exhaustion, often negatively impacting productivity. To break up a long day, I work at a standing desk for at least a few hours. Taking this active stance forces me to be more alert, a simple change that can be quite invigorating. So, before reaching for another cup of coffee, try standing at your desk. 2. Switch it Up If you have a monotonous project that will consume most of your day, add a few incentives to help complete the task. Break up your dense data analysis or endless editing by answering work-related emails or completing quick side projects every few hours. These allows you to take a break from a tedious project, while remaining productive. Also, set one or two benchmark goals for the day, then reward yourself upon completion. The important thing is to reward yourself after you accomplish a certain amount of your project, not after a particular amount of time. That way, you’re pushing yourself to finish, rather than watching the clock tick. 3. Get Active As I walked into the office for my job interview, I was surprised to see a ping pong table in the back of the room. Since starting my job, I’ve come to appreciate it, for it presents a welcome break from work and an opportunity to get my heart pumping. If you don’t have the luxury of a ping pong table in the office, take a quick walk around the office or the block. Some brisk movement, even for a few minutes, can help you feel more awake and alert. Reep twice the benefits by doing the best exercise  activities to burn calories, helping you stay fit and maintain focus at work. 4.   De-stress with Deep Breaths The power of closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths should never be underestimated. Just as a project feels insurmountable and the pressure unbearable, take a moment to shut out the stress. Sit up, relax your shoulders, and roll your neck or massage your temples as you take a few slow, deliberate breaths. This helps me feel calm and centered, even during the most chaotic days.  5. Keep from Crashing A fatty breakfast or sugary frappuccino will leave you depleted mid-morning when your blood sugar crashes. Instead, eat balanced meals and bring a few healthy snacks to work. If you’re going to eat fruit, have a good fat or protein with it to lower the glycemic index. A handful of raw almonds will keep the fruit from being metabolized as sugar, providing more sustained energy. Be mindful of the sugar  in  soda and the sugar  in  energy  drinks, for these will also spike your blood sugar, causing it to crash a few hours later. To help you decide the best meals to get when headed out to lunch, consider the following nutrition information: Fast Food Calories Nutrition EMBED Embed Code: Use these tips to maintain energy and attention throughout a long day at work.  Good luck! How do you break up your work day?

How a Road Trip Makes You a Better Leader

How a Road Trip Makes You a Better Leader What’s the difference between a leader and a manager? The two words often get mixed up but can be extremely different. Many people argue managers are focused on business operations and leaders are centered on team members. Finding a balance between manager and leader can generate the most revenue and highest employee retention rate for a business.   Could something as sedate as a road trip help in that quest? Today, women are leading businesses across the world and making lives for themselves as mompreneurs. What’s their secret? Some would say it’s a combination of management and leadership. Leadership lessons can be learned from theory and everyday moments such as road trips. Read on for a few of the leadership lessons we can take away from the wide-open road! Set Challenging Goals Picture this: you’re planning an annual family summer camping trip. It’s likely one of the first things you do is choose a destination. This is similar to goal setting in the business world. Goals are what keep people motivated and focused. Consider setting one master goal and a variety of mini-goals along the way to track your progress. Furthermore, setting goals helps you understand what skills and people you need for a project. Foster Open Communication Now that you’ve packed the car for your camping trip, it’s time to hit the road! Sometimes conflicts arise during long-distance traveling with groups. This can be stressful for you and everyone else in the car. From a leadership perspective, organization issues can develop due to bad communication. Ensure your team feels comfortable and knows how to communicate efficiently with you. Whether you utilize a feedback form or group messaging app, there are a variety of communication tools that help you clearly communicate with followers. Goal setting and clear communication are two of the many leadership lessons we can learn from the road. Visit the CarRentals   blog for 6 more tips from business professionals and travel bloggers on how to become a better leader. Eight Leadership Lessons Learned From a Road Trip

5 Things You Should Avoid While Hiring - CareerMetis.com

5 Things You Should Avoid While Hiring Day by day the number of small and large companies is growing. It happens because of the development of many business areas.Moreover, small firms are starting to work harder to become better than their competitors. Small businesses In this case, the enterprise continually needs new, qualified personnel. HR-managers are in search of them every day, every hour.But it is challenging to hire the right person who is entirely suitable for the company and will not cause problems. Nearly three in four employers are affected by a bad hire,according to a recent CareerBuilder survey.On the path to successful engagement you face endless questions and make many mistakes. Do not forget that every fault has a number of consequences, so it’s better to avoid them. But how?You will have to reconsider your strategy and find flaws in it. At this rate, you will be able to foresee the error at the very beginning of the path.In this article, I have mentioned five of the most common mistakes while hiring. I hope it will help you in one way or another.1. Are you sure that you need a new employee?evalThis is probably the most common mistake among all enterprises. Especially typical for large firms with big teams.The problem lies in the fact that it is difficult to distribute duties in a large team, and it is often done incorrectly. If so, then it seems like more workers are needed. Although you can not precisely say what role should play a new employee.evalAfterwards, you will not be able to find assignments for the new employee, or draw up his work schedule correctly. As a result â€" company will suffer from such hiring decision. And you run the risk of losing a lot of time and money.To avoid this, think carefully whether you need a new employee at all. Think about the purpose of his work and the result that you want to get.Also, you should hold a meeting on this topic. Learn from their subordinates what they think about hiring a new employee. Perhaps you will be able to share the ta sks that you wanted to entrust the new person between yourselves.evalTogether it is easier to decide what tasks and prospects you can offer a new person. Start looking for a new employee only after the final decision.Do not ignore this critical point, because it is followed by a number of consequences.2. Do not narrow your searchMost of the recruitment managers are trying to find the perfect candidate for all points. This is not quite the right approach. Thus, you significantly narrow your search and risk missing a very talented person.It is not entirely correct to think that if a person has enormous work experience or good resume, then he is ideal for you. In many cases, the opposite happens.A person who is trained to do work in a specific way will not be able to perform it differently. Sometimes it is easier to teach than to retrain.Accordingly, if you do not focus on your “ideal”, and you will consider candidates without experience, or with minimal work experience the search will expand and the chance to find a good worker will increase.Also do not be afraid to invite many people to interview, perhaps in live communication, they will reveal themselves better.It is better simply to look for an employee and make a final conclusion only after an interview or probation period. Remember that everyone is capable of surprises.3. Everyone can have skeletons in the closetSupposedly you have already found a suitable candidate and are ready to send him an offer. Make sure that this person does not hide things that can affect the success or reputation of your company adversely.evalYou can not fully trust the resume or the results of the interview. There is always something that a person tries to hide. In order not to hire a fraudster into your team, it is possible to conduct a small investigation.For example, check the availability of a license, insurance, medical book and verify that all of this is veritable.Some check candidate profiles in social networks. Most often people are not afraid to write the truth and to divulge their secrets. This happens because people on the Internet have a sense of “security”. Many believe that no one can reach them in the network or harm in any way. Therefore, people behave uninhibited in the net.Employee background check serviceshelp perform such an investigation. Background checks contain the necessary data about criminal records, marriage and divorce records, previous addresses, court judgements and bankruptcies.Moreover, you can use phone number lookups. Such services allow to find an email address, location, social media profiles, and even criminal records by the phone number of the owner.evalAccording to Society of Human Resource Management more than two thirds The next step after a successful interview is in most cases a probationary period. After it, the company is already able to make a final decision. But twenty percent employees fail to pass probation period.So what to do next if your ideal ca ndidate fails the probationary period? You’ll have to start searching from the very beginning. With this approach, you will lose a lot of time for nothing. Fortunately, all this can be avoided.You should try to change your strategy a little bit. Instead of one suitable candidate, select several. Maybe it will take a little longer, but at the final stage, such an action will be worth it.After you have selected a few applicants, equal in experience and skills, you can send them on probation. Make an individual schedule for everyone, so you can easily monitor their work.It is difficult to hire the right person because only 14% of employees understand their company’s strategy and direction.It is very important to give them the same or the most similar tasks. So, in the end, you will be able to objectively assess the results of each and make the right choice. Only after the comparison, you can find out who is more suitable for your team.To sum up, we can say that startup companies ar e always in search of new employees. The hiring process becomes more complicated because of many different factors. HR-managers allow mistakes that lead to unpleasant consequences.All the faults are hiding in the strategy, so the first thing you need to do is revise it. Perhaps you will find them and make corrections. If you do not get to see in what you are wrong, then I propose to look again at the most common mistakes.As already mentioned, first you need to define a clear goal for your hiring. Decide what role in your team will play a new co-worker, develop a work plan and schedule for him or her .Try not to create ideals. It is also worth giving a chance to inexperienced people who have a great desire to work. In this case, the circle of your search will be more significant, and the percentage of the successful hiring will also increase.Remember that every candidate should be checked. Employee background check services and phone number lookups will help you in this.Do not rush d uring the search. Make sure that you have enough time for your work. Be attentive to detail and try not to miss something important.Choose several persons for probation, so then you will be able to hire the best one.So, take your work seriously. Do not make such faults as I described above. It is better to learn from other people’s mistakes. I hope that this article was useful for you and you found here what you were looking for.

Emphasize These 3 In-Demand Skills To Boost Your Career

Emphasize These 3 In-Demand Skills To Boost Your Career 3 In-Demand Skills Youll Want To Emphasize (or develop) Employers have raised the bar on what they expect from new employees. Youve seen those job postings requiring everything but the kitchen sink. So how can employers get away with this? Because they can, thats why.   Perhaps it has something to do with the increasing number of college graduates (many, not all, have learned about these in-demand skills). Or it may have something to do with the overqualified candidates who filled lower-level jobs after the recession. As long as companies can find candidates with the mix of skills they are looking for, youll continue to see these demanding job requirements. This is the standout stat for this post: 71% of in-demand skills are required across two or more job categories [click to tweet] according to analysis by Bentley University and labor market analytics firm Burning Glass, which identified skills with the highest demand. Employees need to develop  cross-functional skills and must demonstrate deeper and broader competencies to be marketable said Susan Brennan, associate vice president of university career services at Bentley University, in an interview with Fast Company. The skills companies are requesting today were once isolated to a specific department or role. For example, not long ago, social media skills were only required by employees working in marketing. But now we see social media skills required in many other roles within organizations, like  human resources. So what are the skills you want to focus on? (Be prepared to re-evaluate this annually) 3 In-Demand Skills Youll Want To Emphasize (or develop) Check out the interactive infographic by Bentley University here. Business Development Skills So what are business development skills exactly? Bentley University listed list these as the most important business development skills: strategy sales relationship-building Honestly, these are skills every employee needs. Every employee has internal customers, so learning how to improve how you work together and communicate will benefit you and your career. Pitching your idea to a team is all about sales and relationship building. You cant just shove your idea down the team members throats and expect them to buy into it. Theres an old acronym WIIFM, which stands for whats in it for me. Its based on the idea that people need to know how theyll benefit before they are ready to support a new plan or idea. If you havent read Daniel Pinks To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others (affiliate link) pick up a copy now and learn why sales skills are necessary for every career in any industry. Pink walks the reader through why and how sales skills are so predominant in todays workplace. In short, everyone is  selling  something. I wrote about it here. Making Sense Out Of Big Data Do you know how to compile, analyze and apply pieces of data into meaningful summaries or strategies? Pulling together data and drawing conclusions, also referred to as data analytics, is a responsibility found across departments. It doesnt matter if you are in the accounting, human resources or marketing department. You are going to have to learn how to interpret the meaning behind all that data. Once youve analyzed the data, you must learn how to communicate the findings to other departments or show how the data fits with shared business goals. Writing and orally communicating this information requires business writing skills, which are much more concise than academic writing. You will need to understand how to extract information from the software that collects the data, like enterprise resource planning software, called ERP software. This software is an integrated system used to organize and maintain the data necessary for operations across an organization. You will also benefit from learning the most current version of analytical software to help analyze the data. Software changes frequently and organizations use different tools, so it is up to you to stay current with the newest and most popular systems. Not-So-Soft Skills Companies seek candidates who can demonstrate success collaborating, decision-making and mentoring, according to Bentley Universitys study. As you participate in internships and hold entry-level roles, look for opportunities to grow these soft skills. Collaborating is a no-brainer.  Youve been doing that throughout school. But a key measurement is how your teammates or collaborators would describe working with you. Are you overly dominant or an absent contributor? Are you a first choice or regularly chosen last for team projects? Successful collaboration means more than getting the project done. People have to enjoy working with you. Decision-making skills have to do with how you evaluate choices. Instincts alone are not enough to constitute valid decisions. Have you used a methodology or system to walk through a complex decision? Are your decisions ethical? Who have you brought in to help you formulate the best decisions possible? Early in your career, tapping into other experts for advice or recommendations would show maturity and add credibility to your decision. Anyone can mentor. It doesnt have to be in your stated job duty for you to help others learn. New hires can mentor other new hires. Reverse mentoring between a junior and senior employee is also a thing today. Mentoring requires self-awareness, openness to feedback and learning new things. It also requires initiative, and someone who mentors may be perceived as a natural leader. Its important to remember that professional development and skill development are your responsibility. Staying on top of trends and knowing what skills and technology other companies use will help you stay in demand. Developing any of these skills will take more than reading a book or taking a single class online. Practice what youve learned and continue to build on what you know in order to stay relevant and in demand in tomorrows marketplace. This post originally appeared on US News World Report On Careers

The Top 10 Trends For Resume Writing

The Top 10 Trends For Resume WritingHere are 10 trends for resume writing. Once you have an idea of what type of resume to write, you need to find out how to do it properly. You have to know the proper format, proper grammar and proper punctuation. No matter what you do, you will have problems.When you start off with a resume, you need to be able to determine whether it is supposed to be easy to read or difficult to read. This is a very important concept. It is true that most people have trouble with resumes. So, you need to know how to improve this problem.Learning how to write a resume does not take long at all. It is much like learning to play an instrument. It only takes a few days or a week or so to get your fingers in motion. In fact, you can learn how to read a resume in less than a day. What makes this easier is that there are templates that you can use, so you can check on a resume without even reading it.You can learn how to write a resume by simply using your keyboard. The re are free ways of doing this. For example, all you need to do is type the first page of a resume and then follow that up with the next page. Follow the same process on the next page, and so on.The next tip is that you should write each section of your resume in the correct order. Some people simply assume that the last thing on the resume has to be the most important thing. But, that is wrong. You want to make sure that the first paragraph on the resume is the first paragraph, because that tells the reader what is happening.The next tipis that you should never be afraid to use the word 'yes'yesterday.' It is acceptable to use these words as long as you make sure you spell them correctly. Also, avoid using small words like 'so'so be it.'Never use the term 'resume.' Never use the phrase 'you should write.' This is not true and can give the impression that your resume is not serious.Always make sure you use short sentences and very simple and easy to understand language. This will ma ke it clear that you are serious about your job search. And, remember that when you are writing a resume, you need to be able to think fast. When you do that, you will not need a full-time job writing resumes.