A concise but detailed overview of best practices for the many roles that HR departments play.
A compact, comprehensive guide to human resources administration in the business world.
In her nonfiction debut, Larocque-Patton draws on her 15-plus years as a human resources representative to offer a thorough guide to the many roles of HR in a workplace setting. These include recruitment, training, employee relations, ensuring a safe work environment and fair treatment for workers, as well as warnings and firings, when needed. Each chapter includes a general discussion of the topic at hand, and many have multiple “Story Time” sections in which the author relates specific examples from her extensive experience. There are also “HR Jail” stories, which take on a far more cautionary tone. In all cases, the book reminds readers that the subjects under discussion are often governed by local and federal legislation. On providing references, for instance, she informatively notes that “In some countries, there are laws that state a former employer can be liable for hindering someone from receiving an offer from another employer. This means you should tread lightly on giving negative references.” Likewise, she examines the delicate task of firing employees, including potential liabilities. Employee engagement surveys are also covered, as are exit interviews; regarding the latter, Larocque-Patton points out that people tend to be more honest “because they will never see you again.” In one of the book’s most entertaining and thought-provoking sections, the author runs through the many differences between employee generations, including baby boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, and the youngest employees of Generation Z (“Want to contribute to the world, will not put in extra time at work as more important things to do…short attention span”). Over the course of the book, Larocque-Patton’s straightforward prose style offers easy reading and clear authority. Along the way, she insightfully urges readers to remember that employees are also customers and ambassadors, so treating them conscientiously will not only benefit them, but also one’s business, in multiple ways.
A concise but detailed overview of best practices for the many roles that HR departments play.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5255-4766-9
Page Count: 186
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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