Jason Lauritsen

Jason Lauritsen is a former human resources executive turned consultant, leadership trainer, and keynote speaker. His company. His company, Talent Anarchy, helps organizations become faster and more innovative by accelerating their talent.He is the co-author of the book, "Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships," and is a frequently published writer and blogger on talent and leadership topics. You can follow him on Twitter, find him at JasonLauritsen.com, or email at jason.lauritsen@gmail.com.

Articles by Jason Lauritsen

HR Management, HR News & Trends

Cyberloafing at Work? Maybe It Really Just Shows a Lack of Leadership

by on Mar 5, 2013, 10:20 AM  |  No comments yet
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Turns out, people waste time at work on the Internet.

Shocked? Probably not, because it’s likely that most of us do it (at least a little).

According to a research study soon to be published in the academic journal, Computers in Human Behavior, it was estimated that “between 60 and 80 percent of people’s time on the Internet at work has nothing to do with work.” They call this behavior “cyberloafing.”

Since in many of our work environments, employees use a computer for most of the day and have ready access to the Internet, this data point is a little unsettling. Read more…

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Talent Management

Here’s Why Your Employee Engagement Survey Isn’t Paying Off

by on Nov 14, 2012, 8:10 AM  |  6 Comments
survey

It seems like most organizations these days are spending significant time, money and energy in an effort to drive up employee engagement through surveys or other efforts. But, is that investment really paying off?

The engagement survey is a seductive mistress for leaders and human resources professionals. After all, who doesn’t want to have engaged employees?

Most employee engagement experts speak with great assurance in their voice when they tell you that engagement drives improved performance. And even better, the employee engagement survey is finally a way quantify the impact of the “softer” work we do in human resources on talent development and motivation. Read more…

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HR Management, Talent Management

Discretionary Effort: Is It Really the “Holy Grail” of Engagement?

by on Sep 4, 2012, 8:10 AM  |  3 Comments
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A lot of my work lately has been focused in the area of employee engagement.

In fact, I’m speaking at a number of conferences this fall, sharing my presentation, “Employee Engagement is Broken” with human resources professionals.

One of the things that is fundamentally broken about the practice of employee engagement is that lack of a clear definition of the concept. Every employee engagement survey provider in the country has designed a tool that measures engagement in a different way based on their own definition.

That’s good business practice for engagement survey providers, but bad news for the leaders and HR professionals who want to do some meaningful work to leverage engagement within their organizations to drive results. Read more…

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Talent Management

The Two Keys to Making Employee Engagement Truly Matter

by on Aug 16, 2012, 7:00 AM  |  3 Comments
Engaged Employee

This week, I had the opportunity to sit on a panel discussion about employee engagement at the Southwest Learning Summit hosted by the Dallas Chapter of ASTD (American Society for Training and Development).

The panel discussion was tuned to help training and development professionals understand the role they play in employee engagement. The discussion touched a lot of different topics, but it kept coming back to two main themes:

  1. Definition; and,
  2. Business impact. Read more…
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HR Insights, HR Management

Can HR Gain Strategic Influence? Only If It Gets Real Skin in the Game

by on Jul 19, 2012, 6:55 AM  |  1 comment
skin-in-the-game

Human Resources has become the red-headed stepchild of the business world.

It breaks my heart, but despite the fact that our role is to facilitate the management of the organziation’s most potent resource, we still aren’t taken seriously in far too many organizations.

It’s not that we aren’t needed, because we are and we feel needed for things like payroll and staffing. We just aren’t usually as involved in the high stakes decisions making within the organizations as we should be (assuming we really know our stuff). Read more…

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HR Management, Talent Management

Flipping the Script on Feedback: Teaching Employees How to Take It

by on Jun 19, 2012, 8:15 AM  |  3 Comments
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Once upon a time, I was charged with implementing talent management for the company where I worked.

I eagerly took on the task and, with the help of a crafty consultant; we built an elegant competency-driven program.

As with any good talent management program, this one required managers to engage in a competency assessment for each of their people. And, as you probably know, talent assessment requires feedback discussions.

Since this was the first time we’d ever done anything like this at the company, we decided to do the logical thing (he says jokingly) and start with the executives. Our thinking was that surely the executives, with all of their years of experience, would be masters at giving feedback. Read more…

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HR Management, Talent Management

Feedback Power: It’s Not About How You Give, But How Well They Get

by on Jun 18, 2012, 8:15 AM  |  1 comment
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I’ve been getting a little twitchy lately about a few things. And most of them come back to a general conclusion that we seem to have lost all common sense when it comes to how we treat each other at work.

One thing in particular has been really getting to me lately and it’s all of this talk about feedback.

It seems that I have been seeing endless articles out there about the importance of giving people feedback as a manager. Really? Do we honestly need to be reminded that talking to the people we supervise about their work is important? Read more…

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HR Insights, Talent Management

Managing For Engagement: It Won’t Work Unless Performance is the Goal

by on Jun 14, 2012, 8:15 AM  |  4 Comments
Darts

My 4-year-old daughter recently took up playing her first team sport, soccer.

As any parent who has had a young child in soccer knows, it’s quite a spectacle to behold when you turn loose six youngsters on a soccer field.

They play three-on-three games, no score kept. It’s all about teaching and getting the kids some experience playing on a team and learning about soccer.

Being someone who works with employee engagement for a living, I found some really interesting parallels between engagement and my daughter’s experience with soccer. Read more…

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Talent Management

Work-Life Balance: A Bad Concept That Ignores The Real Problem

by on Jun 4, 2012, 8:20 AM  |  14 Comments
Photo illustration by Dreamstime

Work-life balance is one of those concepts I love to hate. Here’s why:

The notion of work-life balance is artificial at best, and at worst, it’s a false way of describing a very serious problem that exists in our workplaces.

Work is part of life — no work, no money, and no money, no food or roof to live under or (insert other necessity of survival here). Work and life aren’t separate; they never have been.

Work is part of who we are and what we do. We spend more time working than we do any other activity in our life except sleeping. So, to suggest that work is separate from life is ridiculous. Read more…

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HR Management, Talent Management

4 Steps to Make Sure You Aren’t Making Engagement Optional

by on Apr 24, 2012, 9:32 AM  |  7 Comments
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Employee engagement is big business.

In fact, the recent research done by the Society for Human Resources Management and reported on here at TLNT revealed that employee engagement is the number one concern among HR professionals. Clearly, we have become convinced that employee engagement should be a primary outcome of our management and leadership practices at our organizations.

When you ask most of the experts to define employee engagement, some part of the definition will include the application of discretionary effort by the employee. Translated to normal language, that means that employees are so into their jobs that they are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty on a regular basis. Read more…

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