It’s December and the holidays are upon us, so that means it’s time for our annual HR’s Favorite Things survey! This year’s edition of the survey gives you an opportunity to have your say on your favorite things, with a holiday spin. When you participate in the survey, you’ll be entered in a draw to win a Flip Mino Camcorder.

Back in July I had the pleasure of meeting Donna Wright at the NNSDO (National Nurse Staff Development Organization) conference. Donna wrote “The Ultimate Guide to Competency Assessment in Healthcare” and is a well known consultant and expert in the field. As a former nurse, she knows first hand the challenges of the job and the common pitfalls healthcare facilities fall into when conducting competency assessments, as well as the consequences of an ineffective or inefficient process. She’s also a very warm, funny person, who helps you laugh at yourself.

Around this time of year, most of us are either in the middle of our annual employee performance appraisal process, or gearing up for the start of our process early next year. I don’t know about you, but it always makes me stop and ask if we’re doing things the best way. I find myself paying closer attention to articles, blogs, books and other reference materials on performance appraisals and managing employee performance.

Michael Krupa’s post a little while back titled, “Is HR afraid of Technology” highlighted something that really resonated here – HR generalists, managers and executives don’t tend, as a group, to be overly excited or concerned about the inner-workings of the HR technology that they are using.

On November 18th, David Hofstetter, Learning and Development Manager at the New England Organ Bank, will be presenting a webinar hosted by HR.com called Making Performance-Based Learning a Reality in Your Organization.