Working with difficult people is a built-in business hazard, but it is a part of human nature. Four sources make recommendations for dealing with them. (JOW)

Denying the considerable differences between men and women only emphasizes them. Men and women tend naturally to have dissimilar goals, priorities, values, and communication styles. Those differences, unaddressed, forecast failure for both sexes in establishing effective roles in business and family life. (JOW)

Due to demographic changes, businesses will become increasingly reliant on the skills and capabilities of older workers. Companies can no longer afford to use economic arguments against employing older workers. (SK)

Because of today's increasingly complex business environment, decision makers in business need to use a process that takes into account and balances various forces--economic goals, personal values, and explicit values of the corporation. A process model provides a systematic method for ethical decision making. (Author/JOW)

In the 1960s, companies were required to hire "different" workers. Trainers must understand what difference is and is not; they must be able to relate to it and to serve as role models on how to teach and live it. Knowing how to work with difference comes from personal experience and is generated by emotions and thoughts. (JOW)

The balance of power in the United States has begun to shift from youth to older age and will not soon return to a more familiar proportion. Human resource development professionals need to help their companies respond to the needs of older workers and older customers. (JOW)

Balancing consulting work with other life roles requires deciding how much one wants to work, how effectively and how often, what percentage of time to allocate to different elements, how much and how far one wants to travel, and how efficiently one manages the work environment. (SK)

Training plays a key role in the development of work teams. Seven components of successful work teams are clear goals, talent, understanding of roles, efficient procedures, good interpersonal relations, active reinforcement, and constructive external relations. (SK)

This special report looks at the new economy from the point of view of the worker. It examines the impact of changing competitive standards and emerging organizational structures on knowledge and skill requirements in the U.S. work force. (Author)

An increasing number of free agent or self-directed learners are getting their education outside their companies. As a result, they demand more of their corporate training departments and expect more from their jobs and companies. (JOW)

Discusses the role of human resource development professionals in managing learning resources. The author examines learning resources that exist in a corporation, resources that optimize human growth and development within the system (such as line supervisors, printed materials, work groups), and the use of learning contracts to make learning…

The author claims that excellence will return to the workplace when every organization, corporate and bureaucratic, and when academia and associations offer professional, technical, and skills training for their own members. Discusses the quest for professionalism, and why accountability should be considered an element of professionalism. (CT)

This is a detailed guide to developing an acquired deficiency syndrome (AIDS) policy. It contains seven essential elements of the nation's most successful AIDS policy. (Author)

The author discusses various aspects of training and development: formal job-related training and development, the behavioral/cognitive split in informal learning on the job, workplace training inside and out, costs and benefits of workplace learning, and forces accounting for growth and decline in the training and development function in…

Two articles discuss successful transfer of training. In the first, Arty Trost recommends focusing on needs assessment, training design, and program delivery. Dana and James Robinson, in the second article, suggest eliminating barriers in the work environment--in learners, supervisors, and the organization--to guarantee that new skills are used on…