Navigating Performance Reviews During Long-Term Leave: Essential Tips for Employees and Employers

Natasha JeshaniNews

As a fractional HR consultant at Career Contacts, I often encounter employees and employers uncertain about how to handle performance reviews during long-term leave. Whether it’s parental leave, medical leave, or other extended absences, ensuring that your performance is evaluated fairly and comprehensively can significantly impact your ongoing career success. If you’re planning to take long-term leave this year, it’s essential to address how your company will manage your performance review in your absence. Key Questions to Address Before Taking Long-Term Leave: Will You Miss Your Performance Review? Long-term leave often coincides with the time when annual or bi-annual performance reviews are conducted. If you’re not present for the review, it’s essential to understand whether the review will be postponed, skipped, or conducted in your absence. Missing out on this crucial feedback session can leave you without valuable insights into your performance and areas for improvement. How Will Your Performance Be Evaluated? Evaluation criteria can become complex when an employee is on long-term leave. It’s important to clarify with your employer how your performance will be assessed during this period. Will they consider the work you’ve done up until your leave? Will there be any adjustments or special considerations given …

The No Update Update

The “No Update” Update – Revising Your Recruitment Process

Natasha JeshaniHuman Resources Tips, Recruitment

If you spend any time at all on LinkedIn, you have seen the barrage of candidates who continue to feel ghosted in the recruitment process. They spend hours of their time and energy to research and apply to positions only to get nothing in return. In a recruitment firm, the goal is to keep candidates informed as much as possible on the progression of a recruit. The challenge for recruitment professionals is that because they work on behalf of a client, there are so many parts of the process that are out of their control. This is not an excuse. LinkedIn has a lot of stories that point fingers at candidates for ghosting too – this isn’t an excuse either. That’s why at Career Contacts we are passionate about setting up our clients and our candidates for success by guiding them step by step through the hiring process. We believe that with the right steps in place, the recruitment process can be a positive and rewarding experience for everyone, from start to finish. Step 1: Don’t start until you are ready In order to keep your timelines candidate-centered, ensure that you have all your internal processes sorted before posting the …

Lamya blog pic

My Journey to Recruitment

Natasha JeshaniJob Search

The moment I landed at Career Contacts, I was excited that this was a place where I was free to share my story, my journey, and hopefully help others who are still searching for their “dream job’ or looking for their own career path. Having studied Real Estate, I thought that I knew from a young age what direction I envisioned my career going in. I had worked for my mom’s real estate company since I was 16, and so I thought it seemed like a smart fit to follow the road she had gone down. I mean, it seemed like such a great idea – we both loved people, sales, marketing, and hard work. And I really liked being my mom’s administrative assistant. Many of the valuable work skills I have now were built on the solid training that she gave me. However, after finishing the course and working more closely in the Real Estate industry I realized that this was not going to be a long-term fit for me. Sure, I enjoyed meeting new people, hearing their stories, and wanting to help them in a monumental decision like buying their next home. However, there was less focus on …

Checking in with your teams; a message on mental health in the workplace

Natasha JeshaniNews

Checking in with your teams is really about starting from a place of authenticity, genuine care and compassion. As many companies feel the uncertainty of the world and how their teams are doing, it is so important to take the time to check in with your teams to determine how they are coping, what they need, and how you can support. The worst thing we can do as leadership is to make assumption. One employees’ paradise is another employees’ battleground. After months of supporting our clients and teams both onsite and remotely, we worked together to come up with 5 tips on how to effectively check in with your teams: 1. Be proactive When approaching your employees, the number one thing we would tell you, is that employees feel most supported when they don’t need the help, but know it’s available if and when they do. This means that you don’t wait for the forest to burn down, you reach out before the kindle even begins. This holds true for everyone on the team; from your internal and external teams, remote and onsite, and the most junior employees right through to c-suite. This is the time to make everyone feel …

Human Resources

HR

Natasha JeshaniNews

What is HR? What does HR mean? The acronym HR has endless possibilities.  HR definitions can include Heart Rate, Human Respect, High Roller, House Rules and of course Human Resources.  For Recruiters, HR represents the Human Resources of an organization. According to Wikipedia, the definition of Human Resources is: the people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, or economy. “Human capital” is sometimes used synonymously with “human resources”, although human capital typically refers to a narrower effect (i.e., the knowledge the individuals embody and economic growth). Likewise, other terms sometimes used include manpower, talent, labour, personnel, “associates” or simply people. A human resource person or a human-resources department (HR department) of an organization performs human resource management which includes overseeing various aspects of employment, such as compliance with labour law and employment standards, administration of employee benefits, organizing of employees files with the required documents for future reference as well as , some aspects of recruitment. The activities of the Human Resources team can be broken down into staffing, development, compensation, health and safety, and employee and labour relations.  Some examples of this are: Determining the needs of staff and management Recruiting and training the best employees for an organization Hiring for permanent …