How the Pandemic Changed Employer Attitudes Toward Redeployment, Severance, and Workforce Transitions
The economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic triggered widescale workforce restructurings across all industries, leading the unemployment rate to skyrocket to nearly 15 percent during the height of the crisis. As millions lost their jobs, organizations became the subject of intense public scrutiny regarding how they conducted layoffs during this tumultuous time. Employers realized that how...
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Why Employees Don't Know the Company Mission — and How to Fix It
The modern-day workforce is mission-driven. In fact, more than 80 percent of American workers rate meaningful work as a top priority in their careers. But how many employees can accurately describe their company's mission? Can you? According to the 2021 Mission Alignment Index (MAI) from my company, Gtmhub, about one-third of the world's largest companies fail at mission alignment....
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What's Next: How the Lessons of the Pandemic Will Steer the Future of the Workplace
While many of us are more than eager to shake off the weight of the pandemic, many of the lessons we've learned throughout the past year and a half will prove incredibly beneficial as we grow into the post-pandemic future. Now that companies are quickly shifting to hybrid and in-person environments, leaders must not forget everything they learned during their brief but transformative...
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Most Leaders Lack Visibility Into Their External Workforces. Here's How to Get It.
While businesses have long acknowledged the importance of the external workforce, COVID-19 shone a spotlight on that workforce's remarkable capacity to lend businesses flexibility in times of profound disruption. External workers — often referred to as "contingent workers," "gig workers," "freelancers," "contractors," and "temporary staff" — constitute a growing portion of the overall...
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The Power of Putting People First: How to Win C-Suite Buy-In for Employee Training
In the words of Richard Branson, "If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients." Proving that fact to the rest of your organization might be challenging, but it will pay off — literally — in the long run. Research from the Association for Talent Development (ATD) found companies that spend the most on employee training have 218 percent higher income per...
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Paying Your Employees in Crypto? It's Not as Weird as It Sounds.
Cryptocurrency is one of the biggest trends in the world right now, and many workers are interested in how cryptocurrency can be used in their lives as both a medium of exchange and a potential investment. On the employer side, paying in cryptocurrency could actually make compensation easier, especially if you hire employees from around the world. Here are a few things to think about as...
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3 Reasons Why Coaching Shouldn't Be Reserved for the C-Suite
As we start to navigate a post-pandemic world, businesses are asking, "How do we build winning teams that last?" As a population, we've just experienced perhaps the most transformative year of our lives. The pandemic has forced us to weather storms we never imagined. While it impacted all of us in different ways, the youngest generation has arguably borne the brunt of this tumultuous...
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Sexual Harassment Prevention That Actually Works: Recurrent, Specific Training
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, many companies have taken steps to establish or update their sexual harassment policies. However, these efforts are by no means coordinated or nationwide. In fact, only 17 of the 50 US states have legal mandates in place that require employers to provide employees with sexual harassment training. With so many companies in the US still treating sexual...
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What Can Mushrooms Teach Us About Leadership? A Lot, Actually.
Mutually beneficial relationships form the backbone of highly evolved ecologies, like the communities found inside anthills and beehives. And these relationships form the foundations of healthy organizations, too. When business leaders look to nature for inspiration, they'll often find lessons on how to run a thriving company in some of the most unexpected places. For example, consider the...
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Getting Hybrid Work Right: Listen to What Your Employees Really Need
For companies around the world, the shift to hybrid work is just beginning. As employees head back to the office part-time, business leaders and HR teams must be intentional about their hybrid work strategies in order to monitor and adapt to new challenges as they arise. Right now, employee engagement is the main challenge for many organizations launching their hybrid workplaces. How can...
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How Organizations Can Support the Success of LGBTQ+ Talent in Corporate America
2020 threw us all for a loop. As the workforce went virtual overnight, traditional approaches to attracting and retaining talent were upended. There were no more in-person interviews or on-site visits, no more face-to-face meetings, and definitely no more water-cooler conversations to get to know your colleagues. Over the past 18 months, we've also witnessed the escalation of conversations...
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What Working Moms Want: 6 Must-Have Benefits
There's no denying the importance of a gender-balanced workforce. From greater profitability to access to a wider talent pool, companies that strive for gender diversity can reap a host of powerful benefits. However, thanks to the pandemic, many women — and working mothers in particular — have left the workforce, and they're not necessarily anxious to return. In fact, when TopResume...
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Unlocking Opportunities for Black Software Engineers
Interviews unlock opportunities and change lives. Unfortunately, the data indicates that Black software engineers have been mostly kept out of the highest levels of tech and not afforded access to the career opportunities that interviews create. Many access gaps prevent aspiring Black engineers from entering the tech industry, including limited access to technology and interview...
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Listen and Learn: How to Support the Mothers and Caregivers in Your Workforce Post-COVID
Even before COVID-19, women were disproportionately shouldering caregiving responsibilities — and that situation has only worsened since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a survey of 500 HR leaders conducted by Lattice, nearly 80 percent of respondents said they saw women take time off or reduce their hours to help with homeschooling and childcare. By comparison, only 60 percent of...
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Can't Get No Respect: Study Reveals the Most and Least Valued Company Departments
Most companies say that all employees and departments are valued equally – but is that really true? Research suggests the answer is: not exactly. A recent study from Skynova looked into just how valued certain departments feel. The survey of 1,010 employees from various organizational departments asked participants about how they think their superiors and peers view them. The results...
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New and Old Normals: Finding a Common-Sense Balance for Post-Pandemic Operations
We didn't know it at the time, but March 2020 was a tipping point in the history of work. The COVID-19 pandemic hit, and public health mandates and social distancing requirements forced many offices to shut down and switch to remote work. Though this wasn't the first time people had worked from home, never had so many people collaborated from outside the office before. More than a year later,...
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Employee Relations Aren't Just HR's Problem: How to Empower Managers to Help
Many companies do a great job of upskilling their leaders and managers so they can function effectively — but managers don't always receive training in employee relations. That can cause trouble, as employees don't always turn to HR when issues arise in the workplace. In fact, many employees go to their managers first. According to HR Acuity's 2019 Employee Experience Survey, 67 percent...
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How — and Why — to Track Your Employee Training Program
Training is a vital part of any business's long-term growth plan. In fact, a study from the American Society for Training and Development found that organizations that invest the most in employee training have 218 percent higher income per employee. And to make matters even better, employees actually want to be trained. In a 2017 Randstad US survey, 82 percent of employees said lifelong...
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Great Customer Service Starts in the HR Department
Good customer service is like art: We know it when we see it. And we instinctively return to brands that promise — and deliver — frictionless, consistent, and positive experiences. The businesses that do this usually bear the hallmarks of a solid service culture: responsive leadership, accountable call-center representatives, and an overall sense of trustworthiness at every...
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FOMO, Burnout, and the Hybrid Workplace: 3 Things Managers Need to Know About the New World of Work
As US vaccination rates continue to climb and states lift restrictions and mandates, companies are starting to bring employees back to the office. But at the same time, employees are leaving the workforce in droves. Four million people quit their jobs in April, looking for better pay and work conditions. Many others are saying "YOLO" – "You only live once" – and quitting their careers...
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8 Ways to Lighten Your HR Department's Load
Your HR department works hard. Maybe too hard. Business leaders often look to their HR teams to make work more efficient for the rest of the organization, but it's very likely that your HR department is itself crying out for ways to lighten its workload. You need to listen. Here are a few tips to help your HR department help the rest of your workforce: 1. Upgrade Your Payroll...
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Learning to Trust Your Remote Employees: 7 Routines That Help
Let's face it: COVID-19 has changed the relationship between offices and knowledge workers forever. Companies that think they're going to force employees to revert to pre-pandemic work arrangements really need to think again. Of course, an employer can choose to be heavy-handed and reinstate mandatory office attendance — but those that do will experience a lot more turnover. And if your...
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How to Build a Great Virtual Team, According to Behavioral Science
In-person interactions are a critical aspect of team-building, yet face-to-face contact is one thing that today's virtual workplaces simply cannot replicate. The lack of these interactions has a direct impact on team cohesion at both the individual team and companywide levels. As a result, organizational structures are changing from traditionally hierarchical models to looser and more...
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The Office Isn't Dead, but It Must Be Reborn
Over the last 18 months, the way we work has changed almost beyond recognition. We have gone from spending eight hours a day in an office to answering emails in bed — and many have found the latter suits them better than the former. Now that the world is reopening, many workers have little desire to go back to the traditional office environments. In light of this, flexible work...
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Maturity and Joy: the Neuroscience of Effective Leaders
Our country is experiencing a maturity crisis. A rampant lack of emotional and relational maturity is having a devastating impact on culture, families, and the workplace. In a Harvard Business Review article simply titled "We Need More Mature Leaders," Richard Davis wrote, "At a time when we need solid, grounded leadership more than ever, we seem to be in short supply of adults who act...
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The Influencer Leader: A New Approach to Management for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The world is in the midst of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, robotics, and other cutting-edge technologies are transforming how we work, which in turn is changing the profile of the workforce. As technology becomes more of a horizontal that affects every industry vertical, the workplace evolves in lockstep. The future of work will be...
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Forcing Employees Back to the Office Could Spur a Retention Crisis. Do This Instead.
Companies need to think carefully about the decision to bring employees back to the office full-time. The flexibility of remote work is driving employee satisfaction and a healthier work/life balance. Take that away from employees, and it could have far-reaching impacts on everything from recruiting and retaining talent to employee productivity and innovation. Instead, HR executives and...
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COVID-Induced Income Volatility Is Hurting Worker Productivity. This 4-Point Plan Can Help.
More than a year into the global public health crisis, questions remain about the scope of the economic recovery. To what extent has the pandemic exacerbated financial fragility among Americans? How are workers weathering COVID-induced financial disruptions? How is income volatility affecting the US workforce? Prudential recently released its Financial Wellness Census, which gauges the...
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Succession Plans That Work: Follow These 3 Principles
When a C-level executive resigns from their post, it can cause widespread disorganization unless your company already has a succession plan in place. If we've learned anything from the last year, it's to expect the unexpected. Putting together a blueprint for the next in line is somewhat like hedging your bets. That's never a bad thing, and especially not when we're talking about executive...
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Culture Makes Us Human: 3 Lessons for Building a Vibrant, Adaptive Company Culture
What knowledge and skills do you need to build a strong, vibrant, agile, and adaptive culture where people achieve extraordinary results for your organization? During our combined 75 years' worth of research, teaching, consulting, and training, we have learned a few fundamental lessons about what makes a culture healthy: Lesson 1: Success Begins and Ends With Culture Most culture-building...
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Employers, Let's Not Abandon All the New Habits We Picked Up During the Pandemic
I don't think anyone will be surprised when I say the coronavirus pandemic made us dramatically change how we work at Doodle. As a software-as-a-service company with offices around the world, we already had a good handle on virtual meeting culture. But even with this head start, moving to a completely remote work model came with new challenges. Thankfully, it looks like we might finally...
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Are You Using Employee Resource Groups to Their Full Potential?
Organizations widely utilize employee resource groups (ERGs) as tools to amplify the voices of underrepresented employees. By creating empowering spaces for people of shared, marginalized identities, these groups can become positive forces for female, BIPOC, disabled, LGBTQ+, and veteran employees. As businesses increasingly focus on scaling the impact of their diversity, equity, and...
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What Remote Work Can Teach Us About Keeping In-Office Employees Engaged
Nearly a third of all workers would rather take a pay cut than return to their office. This tells us a couple of things. First, it turns out employees really enjoy working from home, which suggests companies have succeeded in creating positive experiences for their dispersed workers. Second, it reveals opportunities for organizations to reimagine how they approach in-office engagement, for...
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The Pipeline of Women in Leadership Is Shrinking. Here's What Businesses Can Do to Change That.
The shift to remote work at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic put the spotlight on the incredible pressures working women face both in their careers and at home. Businesses more clearly saw the load of a "second shift" of family responsibilities that many women shoulder once their day jobs end, with working mothers especially bearing the brunt of childcare and eldercare...
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Why German Workers Outperform Americans While Spending Less Time at the Office
The struggle to achieve work/life balance has taken on a new urgency in the pandemic. Now that more employees than ever have tried working from home, we can expect flexible hours, child-friendly policies, reduced overtime, more holidays, and remote work to be among job seekers' key priorities going forward. The most successful businesses deliver value to all their stakeholders: customers,...
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Why — and How — to Build a Wellness Program That Caters to Millennials and Generation Z
We're in the midst of a key generational shift, and employee wellness programs aren't keeping up in the job market. By 2025, millennials and Gen. Z-ers will comprise the majority of the global workforce. For better or worse, these individuals didn't come of professional age in the 20th-century workplace. As a result, these younger workers were never conditioned to withstand the rigors...
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The 7 Common Success Traps, Part 3: Measuring Success in the Wrong Way
The "seven common success traps" are the traps I've learned about over the course of my career working with clients and collaborators from some of America's top organizations, including Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies. These traps are based on both my personal experience and the stories shared by my clients and collaborators. These success traps can and do happen to the best of us....
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New Rules, Risks, and Opportunities: 10 Things US Companies Need to Know About Brexit
When the UK formally left the European Union at the end of January 2020, it marked a key point in the long and painful "British exit," or "Brexit," saga. But in practical terms, what does it mean for US companies doing business with the UK or considering a transatlantic expansion? Here are 10 of the key challenges and opportunities for the post-Brexit era: 1. Supply Chain Brexit means that...
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Why Performance Management Might Be the Most Important Part of Your Post-COVID Company Plan
This past year has been chock-full of ups and downs. Between reduced hours, the move to remote work, forced adjustments of goals, furloughs, and even layoffs, COVID-19 has changed how businesses operate. In response, your organization has had to adjust performance management strategies. This has likely affected how you communicate with remote workers, how much you compensate each team member,...
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How to Unleash Your Team's Creativity: 4 Easy Steps
Creative people are great at solving problems. They can view challenges from different perspectives and find solutions regardless of constraints. Plus, creative people will often solve these problems without being told to; the relationship between creativity and proactivity is well established. Who wouldn't want a team full of these superstars at their disposal? No wonder some business...
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Spring Clean Your Business: 5 Ways to Refresh and Reenergize Your Company This Season
Spring is here. The weather is warming up. For many, that means it's time to clean house, get rid of the clutter, and make room for what's to come. Carrying that spring cleaning ritual into your business is also a good idea for many reasons. And I don't just mean tidying up the office. For a business, spring cleaning can go a lot deeper. Here are five ways to give your business the spring...
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The 7 Common Success Traps, Part 2: Lack of Long-Term Employee Training and Development
The "seven common success traps" are the traps I've learned about over the course of my career working with clients and collaborators from some of America's top organizations, including Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies. These traps are based on both my personal experience and the stories shared by my clients and collaborators. These success traps can and do happen to the best of us....
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3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Digital Employee Experience
Working from home has completely transformed the employee experience for millions of workers over the past year. Companies have found it challenging to create and maintain productive work environments in the absence of once common workplace norms like face-to-face meetings and team events. However, COVID-19 is not entirely to blame. The issue was simmering long before the pandemic arrived....
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Adopting New Benefits to Win the War for Talent: How Small Businesses Navigated the Pandemic
Just before COVID-19 arrived, unemployment hit 50-year lows, creating steep competition among employers looking to attract the best talent. That all changed when the pandemic hit. Unemployment soared beyond 14 percent in April 2020, with more than 18 million unemployed or furloughed. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) have been hit the hardest by these fluctuations in the economy, as...
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In the New Future of Work, the American Employee Must Be Versatile
Just a little over a year ago, it was business as usual for the American workforce. Companies were prepping for the next decade of digital transformation, adding to their technology stacks while encouraging employees to develop new skills for the digital, automated workplace. With close to half of American businesses adopting robotics over the last five years, the path ahead to the future of...
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The 7 Common Success Traps, Part 1: Overreliance on Technology and Automation
The "seven common success traps" are the traps I've learned about over the course of my career working with clients and collaborators from some of America's top organizations, including Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies. These traps are based on both my personal experience and the stories shared by my clients and collaborators. These success traps can and do happen to the best of us....
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5 Rules for Engaging, Motivating, and Recognizing Employees in a Post-Pandemic World
The pandemic has challenged us — as individuals, professionals, and organizations — in ways we could never have imagined. As the light at the end of the tunnel glows brighter and we take our initial steps towards recovery, business leaders can start to examine the impact the pandemic has had on both their organizations' bottom lines and the morale of their people. In the wake of the...
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Reconnect With Your Company's Core Essence to Come Out of the Pandemic Stronger Than Ever
As we continue adapting to some of the biggest and fastest changes our country has seen to date, it can be hard to maintain a stable sense of what your company stands for. Despite all the new developments and obstacles, an organization can rise up stronger and more secure than ever before. Yes, I really believe that — and I believe it starts with redefining or recommitting to your...
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