If Your Employees Aren't Happy, Your Organization Isn't Reaching Its Potential
Historically, happiness was only associated with weekends, spare time, and simply not being at work. However, recent research has uncovered a clear connection between happiness and improved employee performance. That makes sense: The more we feel as though our needs are being met in the workplace, the more likely we are to be engaged in delivering high-quality results. In light of the...
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The Future of Engineering Is Global: Unlocking a New Talent Opportunity
CTOs across many types of organizations are rethinking how they hire staff now that remote work has proven to be effective. Apple, Zillow, and Google are among the many technology-driven companies that plan to be fully remote through 2021. People have gotten used to more flexible workdays, with Slack and Zoom reporting increased usage even during evenings and weekends, paving the way for...
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Destigmatizing Mental Health in the Workplace Is Critical as Schools and Workplaces Reopen
Earlier this year, our house was fumigated for termites. If you've ever had this done before, you know what an ordeal it can be. We had to find alternate housing, seal all our food, and uproot our work and school schedules to make it happen. This would have been a burden in a "normal" environment, but it took on a whole new level of stress in the midst of a pandemic. As a full-time...
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7 Reasons Your Employees Don't Trust You — and What to Do About It
A number of benefits come from building trust within an organization. Companies with higher levels of trust generally see increased productivity, improved morale, better teamwork, and more efficiency in operations overall. This is great, but let's be honest — trust isn't easy to achieve and maintain. Trust can be hard to nurture, particularly between managers and employees. So, how...
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How to Align HR and Finance to Drive Company Success
At most companies, there's at least a baseline level of collaboration between HR and finance people. Without some coordination between the two, it would be difficult to operate. But the times demand that HR and finance go deeper and engage in a true strategic partnership. I've seen how it can work firsthand: with modern planning technology, HR and finance can team up in new ways that drive...
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Isolation Getting to Your Employees? 4 Ways to Help Them Stay Happy and Healthy
Without a strong company culture in place, remote workers can easily feel isolated. Add in the pressures of COVID — the constant Zoom meetings, noisy households as kids go to virtual school, and the general stress of living through a global pandemic — and it's not exactly an optimal environment for living your #BestLife. Especially as colder weather, shorter days, and flu season...
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Establishing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Programs Is a Business Imperative
The killing of George Floyd in May brought bias front and center in the national conversation, to the point at which its existence could no longer be denied by most. A movement arose in response, one looking for social justice and lasting change and refusing to quietly accept condolences, thoughts, and prayers. This movement has opened the eyes of many, including candidates who list...
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The New World of Work: How COVID-19 Is Changing Employee Benefits
As more employers and employees embrace remote work out of necessity and convenience, employee benefits technology will only become more important. In the new normal, with so many teams working under distributed models for the foreseeable future, organizations will need ways to both strengthen employer-employee relationships and support employees through this difficult period from afar....
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COVID-19 Upended Work/Life Balance. Why Are We Surprised?
The rosy picture of remote work that has been painted for the past six months of the COVID-19 pandemic is starting to fade. As the Wall Street Journal notes, projects are dragging on, collaboration is becoming increasingly difficult, and training is growing more complex. Perhaps most concerning of all, however, is the fact that many of us are experiencing the collapse of work/life balance....
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How Much Should You Pay Your Remote Workers? That Depends.
Remote work was growing in popularity before 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic has catapulted it right to the center of workforce planning and talent strategy. Organizations may not realize it yet, but this major shift will fundamentally change how top talent is sourced, hired, rewarded, and retained. When your talent pool is no longer restricted to a 50-mile radius around your office...
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Short Breaks Are the Key to Productivity, But the Pandemic Has Us Working Overtime
Nothing is simple for business leaders or job seekers in 2020. We're frazzled by the many challenges we must navigate and problems we must solve on any given day. Many of us feel our productivity plummeting thanks to COVID-19. Our emotional states are directly connected to our ability to focus. Stress, anxiety, and fear — all common responses to the pandemic — elevate cortisol levels in...
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Welcome to the Era of Continuous Learning: Udemy's Shelley Osborne on Democratizing Corporate Training
"We've entered an era of continuous change, and there's no way for us to exist or thrive without continuous learning," says Shelley Osborne, vice president of learning at Udemy. It's hard to argue with Osborne on that front. Between the COVID-19 pandemic's radical restructuring of the work world, the growing demands for social justice in the private and public spheres, and the breakneck...
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Company Culture Is How We Make It Through the Crisis
Throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, business leaders have had to find innovative ways to cope with the health and economic challenges faced by their customers, employees, and bottom lines. Companies have adopted new strategies with record speed, invested in advanced digital technologies, and solved supply chain issues in the midst of an unparalleled global crisis. Many have also...
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4 Tips to Strengthen Your Company Culture — Even at a Time Like This
It has been a rough year for companies around the world. Some have been upended entirely, others severely shaken and forced to furlough or lay off employees. Even those that have remained relatively healthy have had to navigate the challenges of COVID-19, racial justice struggles, and a polarized political environment. In the midst of these challenges, however, organizations can find...
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Employers Can't Take Meaningful Action on Social Justice Without Active Listening
A whopping 82 percent of Americans report that it is "very" or "somewhat" important to them that companies work to make a positive difference in matters of racial equality, according to The Harris Poll. Unfortunately, only 21 percent of Americans say companies have actually made a "very positive" impact. How can employers prove they're serious about the causes their employees really care...
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Fold Gig Workers Into Your Remote Workforce to Increase Enterprise Agility
There has been enormous growth in the gig economy over the last several years, driven by the rise of powerhouse companies offering services that largely rely on a flexible hourly workforce, like ridesharing, on-demand task assistance, and restaurant delivery. While the popularity of these services has brought much attention to the workforces fueling them, the organizational gig economy —...
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Upskilling in a Pandemic: Why Training Is More Important Now Than Ever
Unlike any other crisis in modern history, the coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we think and work. That's not necessarily a bad thing. With more and more companies transitioning to remote work, employers and employees alike have found ways to cope and keep moving the needle. One of those tactics is upskilling, which has gained renewed relevance in the COVID-19...
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Only the Efficient Survive: 4 Ways to Optimize Team Performance
Efficiency is the foundation of organizational survival. In tough times like 2020, optimizing your team's performance is all the more crucial. Optimizing a team is tricky business, though. Even the most cohesive of groups contain a variety of personalities and work styles, and leaders cannot simply ask their employees to "work harder" and expect everything to go well. It's not short-term...
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How HR Can Keep Employee Morale High Through These Trying Times
While the COVID-19 pandemic has affected every area of our lives, its impact might be most keenly felt in the world of work. Beyond everyone going remote and the now-standard Zoom meetings, your organization may have also noticed a decline in morale. Employees may have gone from enthusiastic and optimistic to concerned and distracted. In fact, a recent study from SHRM found 65 percent of...
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What Black Professionals and White Professionals Really Think About Race in the Workplace
Flashback to New Year's Day 2020. Perfect vision was the predominant celebratory theme — and this year has certainly been eye-opening. As if the global pandemic, widespread deaths, and massive job loss weren't enough, the world watched as George Floyd was murdered before our eyes. This tragedy sparked global protests and a barrage of emotions. As a Black woman, I felt the event trigger...
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Preparing for the Road Ahead: Reskilling the Workforce to Fill Current and Future Needs
Evolving technologies and methodologies have been transforming jobs and the skills needed to do them for years, and this process has only been amplified in the current situation. As we all try to navigate the new way of working imposed by a global health event, many organizations have had to pivot out of necessity, reprioritizing the work itself and requiring different or enhanced skill...
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Before You Head Back to the Office, Consider a Hybrid Work Model
Before the pandemic, most organizations prioritized their physical sites. Companies expanded operations and market reach by opening new offices in new locations and staffing those offices with people who came in every day. The pandemic, however, triggered the world's largest remote work experiment. Practically overnight, millions of people started working from home — and they found they...
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Embracing Diversity, Increasing Inclusion: 3 Ways to Make Your Organization More Welcoming to All
Article by Karima Mariama-Arthur People often speak of diversity and inclusion as if they were interchangeable words, but the truth is they're very different concepts. When we speak of workplace diversity, we're talking about the presence — or absence — of people from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, age brackets, geographical locations, and religious traditions...
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Reboarding: How to Prepare Your Organization for a Return to the Office
The coronavirus pandemic has forced huge swaths of the American workforce into furlough or remote work arrangements. Now, as lockdown restrictions slowly and unevenly begin to lift, employers are starting to think about how to bring employees back into the office. The return to normal is likely to be a long path with plenty of ups and downs. To makes things as easy as possible, company...
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Expanding Your Anti-Racist Managerial Toolkit: How 'Human Check-Ins' Can Build a Better Workplace
I have started every meeting I have facilitated for my direct staff the same way for the past seven years: with a human check-in. A human check-in gives each attendee an opportunity to share something that is on their mind. In increments of just about a minute each, team members have celebrated a new car purchase or wedding anniversaries; recounted illnesses of pets and family members;...
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What Really Matters: Using Design Thinking to Elevate Your Employee Experience
According to The Predictive Index's 2020 Talent Optimization Report, employee performance is a top concern for executives across industries. This speaks to a widespread awareness of the critical role employees play in delivering on business strategies and brand promises. Given how vital employees are to company success, the employee experience should be treated with as much care as the...
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Managing a Remote Global Mobility and Immigration Program in a Pandemic: 3 Best Practices
With COVID-19 driving unprecedented business disruptions, many companies have begun to adopt long-term remote work policies that meet the needs of their workers while allowing for business continuity. That said, the shift to remote work has not been without its challenges — particularly for HR and immigration professionals. In an environment of social distancing and restricted travel...
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How to Help Employees Fight Return-to-Work Anxiety in a COVID World
While the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, people across the US are returning to work. And they are worried about it. My company, Articulate, recently conducted a survey of employee attitudes toward reopening, and we found that two out of three people in the US are anxious about reentering the workplace. Compounding their anxiety is the fact that they don't know what to expect: Only...
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You Don't Have to Wait for the Government to Tell You How to Take Care of Employees
One of the few silver linings of COVID-19 has been the very welcome, and long overdue, recognition given to workers who were once underappreciated in our society. Unfortunately, this increased appreciation has not always translated to adequate compensation or sufficient measures to keep workers safe, and many workers have had to fight for better protection and/or pay. Nevertheless, the...
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Listening Is Essential Work, Whether There's a Crisis or Not
The common thread in both the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial unrest sweeping America is that both crises happened because leaders failed to do one thing: listen. With coronavirus, the failure was immediate, hobbling what should have been an effective early response. In the case of the racial-justice protests, the failure to listen compounded over decades of police abuses, and the dam...
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Could a 4-Day Workweek Solve Employee Burnout During the COVID-19 Crisis?
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused nearly every aspect of everyday life to come to an unprecedented halt. We have never before had to shutter our entire economy for something that we cannot see with the naked eye. Businesses with in-office workforces were forced to quickly shift to fully remote operations. This sudden and dramatic change has presented us all with a set of stressful...
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Before Using Internal Competition to Improve Employee Engagement, You Need to Answer These Questions
A little healthy competition is a good thing — under the right circumstances and with the right people. In many industries, internal competition has long been used to increase everything from productivity to profits. But what about using competition as part of your employee engagement strategy? Does pitting individual workers against each other really increase engagement across the...
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Keeping a Company Culture Together When Everyone Is Apart
Millions of people have been getting a crash course in working from home during the pandemic, and for all the funny Zoom meeting interruptions by pets and children, we've been getting the work done. The social impact of this crisis will be studied for years, but the impromptu mass experiment in working from home may shape the future of work in unexpected ways. One thing we'll need to...
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Rethink Everything: Finding New Organizational Opportunities During COVID-19
COVID-19 has pushed many of us into remote work situations, something many workers had been asking for long before the pandemic arrived. While roughly 30 percent of employees had worked remotely at least part of the time prior to COVID-19, adapting to this new arrangement has been a brand new undertaking for many. Add all the extra stress of a global pandemic and people sharing space...
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Strong Company Cultures Transcend Times of Uncertainty
At the turn of the decade, no one could have predicted the changes organizations would have to make over the course of a few short months, including digitizing on the fly to maintain business operations. The world of work quickly evolved before our eyes, and now business plans are being put to the test while subject to several factors outside of anyone's control. While this digital...
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Roadmap for Recovery: Tips for Businesses Bouncing Back From COVID-19
Millions of business leaders are wondering how their companies can bounce back from the coronavirus crisis. The pandemic gave rise to a host of major business challenges, and your roadmap to recovery will have to account for all of them if your organization is to emerge thriving on the other side. 1. Extent and Status of the Crisis At the time of writing this article,...
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A Strong Remote Work Policy Should Address These 3 Issues
Although remote work is now widely seen as a temporary measure in response to COVID-19, it's safe to assume it will become the norm very soon. Before the pandemic, remote work was already on the rise, increasing by 159 percent between 2005 and 2017. It's a highly desirable perk, especially among millennials, and 85 percent of businesses report remote work can help increase...
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Cut Through the Digital Noise: Strategic Communications in Times of Change
"The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things," journalist Sydney J. Harris once said. "Information is giving out; communication is getting through." A wealth of information is just a click away in our digital world, but the most important and strategic communications for employees often get buried — and this...
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Long-Term Hiring: How Modern Apprenticeships Can Help Close the Skills Gap
Recruiting during the COVID-19 crisis has been gut-punchingly difficult for HR leaders around the globe. The legacy of the pre-pandemic skills shortages lingers on, and new black holes are emerging in the economy as businesses are forced to cut staff or close up shop altogether. At the same time, however, businesses in some sectors are experiencing tremendous growth. Think Amazon, which...
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A Culture of (Healthy) Conflict Can Be a Powerful Engine of Innovation
The word "conflict" often carries negative connotations, but any effective leader will tell you that conflict is necessary for innovation and growth. If you've developed a culture of transparency and accountability, people will feel free to openly exchange views, which inevitably leads to disagreement. However, this is the process by which ideas are vetted and tested, and it's a crucial part...
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Heart and Soul: Why Employee Engagement Is a Top Priority in Unprecedented Times
While it could be said that the backbone of a company is the products or services it sells, its people are truly its heart and soul. Under normal operating conditions, communicating with employees, sharing goals, and keeping them motivated are core focuses for company leaders and HR professionals. During unprecedented times — like the situation we're dealing with now —...
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I Used to Be Hesitant About Allowing Employees to Work From Home. Now, I Feel Differently.
Originally founded in Florida and now headquartered in Jersey City, my company, PuppySpot, has a legacy of bringing people together across distances via connectivity tools and collaboration software. Nobody was totally prepared for this pandemic, but the fact that our first office was in Florida — which has been in the path of many hurricanes — taught us that we should always be ready to...
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What Forensic Investigators Can Teach Business Leaders About Building Trust During a Crisis
According to Hollywood, the most difficult part of an investigation is getting the suspect to confess. In real life, a certified forensic interviewer will tell you the hardest part is really building the trust necessary to encourage witnesses and victims to truthfully share their experiences. Certified forensic interviewers (CFIs) are investigators who have proven their expertise by...
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Build a Company Culture That Prioritizes Social Wellness
The 9-5 office job had been the norm for many years, until the rise of the gig economy, workplace digitalization, and flexible work arrangements disrupted our traditional ways of working. While the shift has clear benefits, including better support of a healthy work/life balance, it also comes with some drawbacks. Key among them is the decline of the social connections which were common...
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Don't Burn That Bridge: Supporting Your Furloughed Workers in the Age of COVID-19
The current global crisis has forced many organizations to furlough at least some of their employees for the foreseeable future. Though a difficult and unpopular decision, furloughs give businesses the ability to offer vital benefits to their employees — and hopefully retain talent until the economy begins to recover. However, companies are battling numerous challenges throughout the...
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Don't Go It Alone: How to Find the Right Ally for Global Expansion
By the end of Q3 2019, Netflix had 158.3 million paying subscribers worldwide, about 62 percent of whom lived outside the US. After expanding into Amsterdam, Paris, Sydney, and Berlin over the last year, the company now has 19 office locations across 14 countries. Meanwhile, Spotify has successfully optimized local music preferences and personalized features to reach 159 million active...
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3 Things Every Business Should Be Doing Now During the Pandemic
The pandemic has devastated huge swaths of American business, from retail to restaurants, airlines to advertising. The thought that companies should now begin to implement rehiring strategies might seem wildly counterintuitive. Actually, this is exactly the time to start if you want to maintain a competitive advantage in the talent market. When we emerge on the other side of the COVID...
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Enhancing Teamwork in a Fully Virtual World: 4 Practical Steps Every Manager Should Take
Never before have we seen such a sudden and complete shift to remote work. Of course, people have been working remotely for years now. But, traditionally, remote teams have been co-located at least part of the time. Fully distributed teams existed, but they were in the minority. Then, COVID-19 arrived. In the blink of an eye, teams became fully distributed, and business operations...
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