Welcome to the HR Policies and Practices blog

Introducing Canadian HR Reporter's new blog devoted to employment policies and best practices in human resources management

Brian Kreissl

By Brian Kreissl

Welcome to Canadian HR Reporter’s new HR Policies and Practices blog. As the title suggests, my intention is to cover issues surrounding HR policies and best practices. While this seems like a pretty broad mandate – one that could potentially cover just about anything related to human resources management – the discussion here will focus on topics other than those covered by my fellow bloggers elsewhere on this site.

I suppose some might say I’m really attempting to cover what could be described as employee relations issues. However, we actually decided against calling this an employee relations blog for three reasons: (1) employee relations is a pretty nebulous concept that means very different things to different people; (2) the term could likely encompass employment law, and my intention is to steer clear of pure employment law issues since we’ve already got that covered (darn, I really like employment law); and (3) I wanted to cover some of the “softer” issues in HR that are not really compliance-driven (unlike many topics related to employee relations).

Therefore, you could also say I’ll be discussing what some would classify as talent management issues. I’ll also be covering some other types of HR-related issues that are near and dear to my heart.

On occasion, I’ll be handing over the reins to a guest blogger. Readers’ comments are always encouraged (feel free to respond anonymously if you wish). Ideas for future blogs are also welcome.

But before I go any further, please allow me to introduce myself. I’m the managing editor of Consult Carswell, a comprehensive online information resource and work tool for Canadian HR professionals (Carswell is part of Thomson Reuters, the publisher of Canadian HR Reporter). My team is responsible for the content in Consult Carswell and several other publications and services. We also work pretty closely with the Canadian HR Reporter team.

I’m not a journalist by training (although I do play one on Canadian HR Reporter TV). On the other hand, I am an HR professional with about 12 years of relevant experience, a Certified Human Resources Professional (CHRP) designation and educational backgrounds in law, HR and business management. In the past, I’ve worked in HR at a large financial institution and a leading HR business process outsourcing firm. I’ve also worked as a headhunter in a boutique search firm specializing in IT recruitment.

Now that you know a bit about me, I thought I’d outline some of the issues I’m going to cover in future blog posts. My intention is to cover the following areas and more:

  • resolving workplace disputes
  • employment policies/employee handbooks
  • best practices in human resources management
  • employee communications issues
  • conducting workplace investigations
  • employee terminations (especially the practical considerations of how to actually go about terminating one or more employees)
  • performance management
  • attendance management
  • employee motivation, retention and engagement
  • recruitment and employer branding

As mentioned, I’d be thrilled to get some ideas from you. Feel free to leave a comment with some of your ideas for future blog posts, or things you’d like me to cover in general. To start with, I’m also interested in hearing how you personally define terms such as employee relations and/or talent management.

Brian Kreissl is the managing editor of Consult Carswell. He can be reached at [email protected]. For more information see www.consultcarswell.com.

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