Your Employees Are Crying at Work Because They Feel Unappreciated
If you've ever cried at work, it turns out you're not alone. In fact, you're in the majority. According to Monster, 80 percent of us have cried at work. But why are so many of us shedding secret tears? According to a new survey from my company, enterprise gifting platform Snappy, a lack of appreciation may be to blame. Employees should feel good where they spend nearly half their lives,...
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Feeling Alone and Undervalued, Almost Half of Managers Are Heading for the Exit
We all know it's a tight talent market out there, but retention conversations often revolve around employees. HR pros and organizational leaders are pouring a lot of time and energy into keeping top performers engaged and on board. That's an important initiative, but it often overlooks the company's managers — the very people responsible for keeping talented workers happy. As it turns...
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How to Spread Holiday Cheer Across a Distributed Team (Without Breaking the Bank)
The popularity of remote work has skyrocketing in the United States. From 2005 to 2017, the number of remote workers increased by 159 percent according to FlexJobs. Modern professionals are looking for remote work for a multitude of reasons, but they all generally boil down to a desire for flexibility and work/life balance. While remote work may make employees happier, employers should...
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How to Help Your Employees With Anxiety Feel Motivated
Wellness and performance go hand in hand, so it makes sense that employee well-being has become an increasingly important part of regular performance discussions. Your employees need the support of their managers if they are to perform at their best, and this is especially true for any employees who may be dealing with mental health challenges like anxiety or depression. Your employees...
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Dispelling the Myth of the Superstar Entrepreneur: Most Innovations Actually Come From Employees
By now, we all know the story: The lone entrepreneur arrives on the scene, ready to shake up the industry with his brilliant innovation. He heroically battles naysayers and the risk-averse to bring his new idea to fruition. It's a smash hit that radically transforms his industry — and the way we live. Except, that story isn't really true. Sure, it happens occasionally, but according to...
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The 3 Keys to Making Continuous Performance Management Work — and Why You Should Care
As anyone in recruiting will tell you today, hiring is tough. The competition for candidates is fierce, as evidenced by a Conference Board survey that found one-third of senior leaders believe finding talent is their most significant managerial challenge It stands to reason, then, that companies should be investing heavily in retention efforts. The more top-tier talent you retain, the...
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Breaking the 'Safe Silence': How to Build a Culture Where People Share Their (Good) Ideas
Does your company have a positive culture of conversation — a culture where employees are free to voice ideas, find solutions, and innovate? Many employers believe they do and are often confused by the lack of problem-solving ideas coming from their teams. Why the disconnect? The answer may surprise you. According to our recent research in conjunction with the University of Northern...
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The Most Serious Workplace Hazard No One Talks About
Suicide is a global crisis. According to the World Health Organization, someone dies of suicide every 40 seconds. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that between 1999 and 2016, suicide rates increased in every state in the US; in more than half the states, suicide rates rose more than 30 percent. A Montreal Children's Hospital study found emergency room...
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How to Keep Employees Engaged in the Digital Era: Run Better Meetings
Organizational design is a key issue for every business leader. While there may be differences in approach to that design, all tend to agree on one thing: the right strategy and work structure are critical components that shape everything from company culture to the day-to-day experiences of employees. It's common knowledge: When employees are engaged, they are happier, more work gets done,...
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The Age of Uncertainty: Why Skills Training May Be the Next Big Competitive Differentiator
It would be natural for employers to think that feelings of job security are on the rise. The unemployment rate has declined over the past two years, and many job seekers can now afford to be more selective in their searches. Data scientists, for example, are in such high demand that employers are offering a variety of incentives, including flexible and remote work arrangements and more than...
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Here and Now: Why Continuous Performance Conversations Are More Effective Than Annual Reviews
Employees like feedback. In fact, 96 percent would like to get feedback from their managers regularly, rather than have to wait for an annual performance review. And as it turns out, sitting down once or twice a year to discuss goals, behavior, and advancement isn't an effective method of performance management anyway. Instead, a continuous performance management process is a much...
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A Silver Lining to Student Debt: 5 Advantages of Offering Your Employees Student Loan Benefits
The employment paradigm is changing. The old notion that an employee is just a cog in the company machine is no longer accepted at face value. Now, the best employees are looking for organizations with people-first orientations, organizations that emphasize the value they can provide their employees. While it's not a crazy concept that employees want to be seen as humans, it does mean...
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Attract Top Talent With These 5 Essential Modern Office Features
Offices are changing. Gone are the days of cubicles and water cooler networking. Corner offices are passé, and old coffee makers just don't cut it anymore. The evolution of the office is about more than just design trends. Our office environments affect our health, well-being, and productivity. They change the way we work. As recruitment and retention grow more competitive, job seekers...
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For a Better Employee Experience, It's Time to Rebrand HR
The world of work evolves continuously, introducing new HR practices and methods into its landscape almost daily. Because of these changes, startups and established companies alike are beginning to reevaluate the role of HR, the importance of company culture, and the impact one has on the other. In a nutshell, the current wisdom is that culture and HR should work in tandem to enhance the...
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When Innovation Gets Stifled: An MBTI-Based Approach to Bringing Big Ideas to Change-Averse Companies
You're starting an exciting new job, and you've been hired to bring a new perspective to your new employer. During the interview stage, everyone seemed excited about how your ideas differed from the company's standard way of operating. You can't wait to get started so you can make big, transformative changes to prove your worth and take this company to a new level. Fast forward to a...
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Eeeeeek! Beware of These 9 Creatures From the Culture Crypt
It's the time of year when we all try to scare each other silly, so why not add a dose of fearsome reality to our Halloween horror-scape? We present to you some monstrous traits that can creep into any organization's culture, all the more frightening because these characteristics are oh so real. But fear not: We also have some culture charms to keep employees, no matter what their job stage,...
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Embrace Difference: Diversity Begets Creativity Begets Innovation
The simple truth of the matter is that teams composed of people from varied backgrounds frequently enjoy better business outcomes. Numerous studies show that bringing together a variety of perspectives helps inform better decision-making and problem-solving. People of different genders, races, nationalities, and personalities tend to bring out the best in one another when working together....
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The Entrepreneur's Guide to Pinching Pennies: 7 Ways to Save on Common Business Expenses
According to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a small business needs about $30,000 in funding to get off the ground. As the business grows and expands, operating costs will grow right along with it. However, there are ways you can significantly reduce your expenses and save money. By being flexible, keeping an open mind, and considering innovative solutions, you can cut your...
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Corporate Social Responsibility That Works: Focus on Clients, People, and Community
Businesses of all sizes and across industries spend billions of dollars a year on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. CSR varies widely from company to company and can be anything from eco-friendly office practices to charitable giving and volunteering, but regardless of the form it takes, it's a critical part of succeeding in the current economy. In fact, reports show that as...
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5 Effective Ways to Keep Your Team Happy
Work is a big part of our lives. In fact, many of us probably see our colleagues more than we see our own families over the course of an average week. It makes sense, then, that employees want to feel respected in the workplace and to truly enjoy their jobs. If you're going to spend so much time at the office, you might as well be happy while you're at it. But employee happiness isn't...
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When Pay Is Transparent, Employees and Employers Win
Life may not be fair, but employee compensation should be — and employees need to be confident it is. If not, you can expect increased turnover and a breakdown of trust between your employees and the company. The old approach to compensation, with closed-door negotiations and MI6-level secrecy, is hardly fair. This is important, because unfairness at work drives employees away. In fact,...
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How to Start a Mentorship Program That Actually Delivers Results
Keeping your team engaged and thriving has never been more important than it is in today's hypercompetitive business world. Enter workplace mentorship programs: Done right, they can bolster everything from employee retention to productivity. Mentors and Mentees Both Benefit For the Mentee: According to executive leadership consultant Natasha Sistrunk Robinson, having an experienced...
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Companies Must Embrace Organizational Agility to Survive — and Continuous Performance Management Can Help
As the world of business grows increasingly complex and volatile, it has never been more important for companies to embrace organizational agility. Doing things because "it's the way we've always done it" no longer works. Instead, to find success in the current economic landscape, organizations must follow the lead of Apple, Philips, ING Bank, and other companies that have traded...
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TIME'S UP for the Pay Gap: Why We Won't Wait Another 200 Years to Achieve True Pay Equity
TIME'S UP, an advocacy organization "working to create solutions that cross culture, companies, and laws to increase women's safety, equity, and power at work" hosted a closed-door session last month in New York City to brainstorm ways to push for more equitable public policy and coach businesses on addressing pay equity. This convention brought together a diverse set of leaders from...
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5 Things You Can Start Doing Today to Combat Employee Burnout
Characterized by "emotional exhaustion, cynicism, ... ineffectiveness in the workplace, and chronic negative responses to stressful workplace conditions," employee burnout is quickly becoming a pervasive phenomenon companies are struggling to address. Burnout triggers a downward spiral for both the employee and the organization, and workplace stress causes additional healthcare...
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To Get More out of Your Employees, You Have to Give Them More
Productivity is a topic that comes up a lot when I speak with CEOs and business leaders about their companies. Whether they operate in B2B, B2C, or even the social sector, nearly every leader I know spends a significant amount of time worrying about how to help their employees get more done. Higher productivity is such a common pain point because it's so hard to achieve: How can you...
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Take a Balanced Approach: 3 Tips for Developing Your Organization's Talent
There is a lot of pride to be had in recruiting a top worker for your company. A new hire — especially one with a great background — can be a badge of honor for an HR professional. If this person lives up to their promise? Even better. But even if everything seems to go amazingly well, a new employee may still decide to leave relatively quickly. We all know this. Sometimes your...
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The Power of Formal Policy: Employees Want Autonomy — and Autonomy Requires Structure
Talent is a company's most valuable resource, and losing high-performing employees can really take a toll on a company's bottom line. But the time, money, and manpower organizations put into making sure their employees are engaged enough to stay can be just as costly. Employee engagement is a complex issue. Many different factors can lead workers to disengage, and what works to keep one...
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8 Best Practices for Stronger Skip-Level Meetings
Defined as meetings between an organizational leader and a lower-level employee who does not report directly to that leader, skip-level meetings give executives the opportunity to get to know the people in their companies better. As such, these meetings are particularly helpful in resolving organizational issues, increasing engagement, and gaining new perspectives and insights. Like any...
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Do You Have the Language You Need to Describe Your Company Culture?
Could you accurately and succinctly describe your company culture right now? If you asked a sampling of random employees the same question, would you get consistent answers? For many organizations, the answer to these questions is no. Organizational culture is often vaguely defined and poorly communicated. Even if your company has a great culture, you may not know how to articulate that...
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A Successful Merger Requires a Universal Understanding of Shared Values
Mergers and acquisitions too often start on the wrong foot because your workers, uncertain of how changes will affect them, are in self-protection mode, prone to seeing what's missing. This attitude will lead to making circumstances and/or people "wrong." The disease of wrong will turn your merger into a them-against-us proposition that drains productivity and replaces it with the political...
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How Quantum Mechanics Can Help You Turn Job Hopping Employees Into an Asset
Many executives might view the job-hopping reputation of millennials as a cause for frustration. When they look at the issue, these executives mainly see the high costs of employee turnover. But there is another side of the coin: Millennials are more savvy than past generations when it comes to seeking job opportunities that they find rewarding. Executives of best-in-class companies...
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Confront Microaggressions at Work Before They Destroy Employee Morale
You would be forgiven for thinking of microaggressions as a relatively new concept, but the term was first coined in the 1970s by Harvard professor Chester M. Pierce, and the topic has been the subject of more than 5,000 academic studies over the past decade alone. Despite all the research, a great deal of confusion still surrounds the concept of microaggressions, and the topic certainly...
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Be Yourself: 5 Principles for Creating a Company Culture Around Your Organization's Unique Values
Today, company culture is a major factor in attracting and retaining the right employees. To differentiate themselves in the eyes of workers, many companies are investing heavily in efforts to create engaging work environments. For inspiration, employers often look to companies like Netflix, Google, and Zappos, all of which have reputations as exciting, highly desirable work...
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What Makes Mergers and Acquisitions Fail? Culture.
Some of the most intriguing stories in business media are about mergers and acquisitions (MAs). Unlike your average corporate news story, reports of MAs — like telenovelas — exude a sense of drama. Who will be in charge? Will they live happily ever after? Who will leave, and who will remain? There's no shortage of material to cover, either. By September of last year, MA...
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Contractors Are People Too: 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Using Freelancers
Your contractors may not be employees, but if you don't treat them well, your company could suffer long-term consequences. You treat your vendors and full-time workers with respect, so why not include freelancers in that treatment? Moreover, you should consider the power freelancers have to help (or harm) your reputation. Great freelancers frequently talk to their professional circles...
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Overcoming HR's Engagement Barrier: A Simple Formula for Effective Internal Communication
Every day in HR departments, failures of communication and engagement stymie our best efforts to be the conscience of the organization. The benefits, programs, and support we strive to offer fall on deaf ears or never reach their intended audiences. We can capture this dilemma with a formula from the Six Sigma world: Quality x Acceptance = Effectiveness (Q x A = E) "Quality" refers to...
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Engagement Worth Reading About: 3 Behavioral Design Principles for a More Motivated, Productive Workforce
It feels like half the stories on workplace trends lately have been about some form of employee engagement: "Create an Enjoyable Work Culture." "Giving Employees the Meaning They Need." "A Guide to Engaging and Motivating and Making Everyone Happy, Productive, Rich, and Not Checking Facebook All Day." There are a lot of interesting ideas out there, but I'm struck by how many of these...
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Is the 4-Day Workweek Really Feasible?
Moving to a four-day workweek sounds like a nice idea, but does it make business sense? There's little doubt that employees would enjoy better work/life balance, which could help reduce stress levels. Meanwhile, businesses could benefit from the increased productivity four-day workweeks may drive. But are these benefits enough to make up for losing a full day's work every week? Then...
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Leadership in a Digital World: 5 Tips on Managing Borderless Teams
Managing teams across time zones and languages is a complex feat, but now that 70 percent of workers around the world work remotely at least once a week, this mode of operating is quickly becoming the new normal. There are pros and cons to this development. Employing remote workers allows organizations to hire the best talent no matter where it happens to be located geographically. In...
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5 Simple Ways to Give Employee Morale and Job Satisfaction a Boost
We all know that high morale and job satisfaction drive excellent employee performance. What is more of a mystery is how to create a company culture that promotes the levels of morale and satisfaction that lead to high performance. The answer turns out to be simpler than you might think. If you follow these five tips, you should see improvements in morale, job satisfaction, and — by...
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11 Ways to Keep Overtime Costs Down
When it comes to the cost of doing business, labor takes the cake. Every business owner knows salaries are one of the most significant expenses on the spreadsheet, but each employee is worth more than a regular paycheck when you factor in insurance, hazard pay, health benefits, retirement, and more. Adding unnecessary overtime to the mix only pushes labor costs higher, and that bump...
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3 Reasons Why Tuition Assistance Is the Hot New Workplace Perk
As many as 44.7 million Americans are dealing with student loan debt. If you add up all of the money owed, you'd reach an alarming total of $1.56 trillion dollars. Even in the face of this unfortunate reality, employees still prioritize continued education and professional development opportunities. Employers value employee education, too: To succeed in a rapidly shifting business...
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For a More Agile Enterprise, Start by Redesigning Your Performance Management Process
According to Korn Ferry's 2018 report on the "World's Most Admired Companies" (WMACs), agility is the top priority of today's leading businesses, with 95 percent of WMACs saying it is a "critical" or "very important" focus. "Agility" refers to how companies successfully deal with the constant changes of 21st century business by becoming more adaptable and innovative. Instead of a...
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Student Debt Roundtable: How Organizations Need to Adapt
In June, I met with Gradifi CEO David Chang, Broad Institute CPO Andy Porter, and Suffolk Construction Senior Manager of Total Rewards Jackie Crain at the Gradifi offices in Boston to discuss the student debt crisis. As people operations leaders, Chang, Porter, and Crain had a lot of interesting things to say about the mounting issue of student debt and the role employee rewards...
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Companies Have a Responsibility to End Sexual Harassment. Here's How They Can Do It.
Shining a spotlight into the dark, hidden corners of a social problem will help us eliminate it, which is why movements like #MeToo can be so beneficial and exhilarating. However, the fact these movements exist in the first place can also be disheartening, particularly as we grapple with the overwhelming scope of sexual harassment in the workplace. Furthermore, work interactions in the...
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Introducing 'Summer Cleaning': A New Reason to Update Your Employee Handbook
Everyone is familiar with the concept of spring cleaning; maybe you even organized a few closets or cleaned behind your refrigerator last season. Those chores are good for your home, but did your spring cleaning efforts benefit your organization? Probably not. That's why we'd like to introduce the concept of "summer cleaning." Its purpose? To remind you to update your employee handbook...
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Reshaping Leadership: The Future of Work Demands Complementary Leadership Models
Strong leaders have always been essential to guiding organizations through periods of growth and transition, but today they are increasingly challenged to make the right decisions to drive business performance. Issues like digitalization, managing employee expectations, environmental sustainability, and diversity and inclusion efforts now demand leaders' attention, but facing these...
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