Human Resources is not your friend.

That is not cynicism. It is the job description. HR exists to manage risk for the company, and when your interests and the company's interests diverge, they are not neutral, and they were never supposed to be.

Nobody tells employees this. So people walk into meetings believing they are talking to an advocate, sign things they should have questioned, and find out too late that the only record of what happened is the one the company kept.

"It starts with the hard hitting truth: human resources is not your friend. Then it points out how important it is to document everything, since in court it comes down to your word against his. Guess who the court is likelier to believe?"
Eric Engle, review from Amazon

This book is what twelve years inside HR taught me that employees do not know.

Not how to be a better employee. How to protect yourself while being one. What is actually in your personnel file and how to ask to see it. What happens when you sign a write-up, and what to write on it before you do. How time gets rounded on your timesheet and when that stops being legal. What a documented pattern looks like from the other side of the desk, and why the person with the record usually wins.

"I found it very interesting to learn about the contents of an employee's file and the 7-minute rounding rule, which was something I had no idea about."
Eva, review from Amazon

What you will learn

Why HR's actual job is not the one employees assume, and how to work with them anyway
What your employee file contains and how to request it
What to do when a write-up lands on your desk
How to document an incident so that it holds up months later
The wage and timekeeping rules most people never learn until they have already lost money
What your rights actually are, in plain language

"A clear and practical guide for anyone trying to understand their rights at work. I especially appreciated the honest reminder that employees need to protect themselves before problems get worse."
mama 2 3, review from Amazon

"The author insists that employees should be very careful when documenting work-related incidents or signing reviews and write-ups. I greatly recommend this book to all workers."
Mario Malivert, verified purchase, review from Amazon

Written for anyone who has a boss. Also available in paperback.

You can find this book on Amazon. The tools that come with it, you can't.

What's included

Work Smart · the complete book, EPUB and PDF
The Incident Record · a template for documenting a single serious event so it holds up later
Documentation Log: Read This First · how to keep a record, and what makes one credible

Work Smart: Complete Toolkit