Articles tagged 'Management'

Talent Management

The 9 C’s of Engagement, and Why Everything is About Communication

by on May 10, 2012, 12:15 PM  |  No comments yet
www.123rf.com/photo

R. “Ray” Wang, Principal Analyst and CEO at Constellation Research Group, shares this warning in the HBR blog about attempts to communicate with and engage today’s customers.

Most customers now ignore targeted marketing campaigns, avoid responding to offers, and provide minimal feedback when asked. Instead, potential customers interact with each other, bypassing sanitized corporate messages devoid of meaning or value.”

Switch out the word “customer” for “employee,” and I think the same warning and observation could apply to our efforts to communicate with our workforces about rewards and our efforts to solicit their involvement in and buy-in to our reward plans. Read more…

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Talent Management

Increasing Employee Engagement: Empower Them to Make a Difference

by on May 10, 2012, 9:27 AM  |  No comments yet
Empowerment

Second of two parts

In the first part of this article (Increasing Employee Engagement: You Must Give First, Then Receive), we started off with Simon Senik’s admonition:

“If you want your employees to be completely devoted to you and your cause, you need to be completely devoted to them.”

We then began to explore what Jerry Bannach, President and CEO of Custom Disability Solutions, and his team did to foster employee engagement when he took the helm at CDS. Rather than exhort employees to show commitment and drive for results, he first focused on “embracing and then empowering” employees.

Today, we’ll continue to explore how Bannach and his team created an environment that laid the foundation for an engaged workforce. He went on to say how they made sure they did what many well-meaning — but busy and preoccupied — leadership teams know they should do, but don’t. Read more…

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Leadership, Recruiting and Staffing

When Recruiting Executives, You Want People Who Ruffle a Few Feathers

by on May 10, 2012, 8:35 AM  |  No comments yet
steve jobs

When employers look for senior people — and 31 percent will be, a new survey says — the evidence is they’re all looking for the same qualities. Industry experience is important; so is proven problem solving.

Nowhere on the list of qualities a CareerBuilder survey reported as important to employers was craziness listed. Perhaps that trait was covered by the “Is creative” characteristic that 43 percent of the respondents look for in a new executive.

But I don’t believe crazy creative is what the surveyed hiring managers and HR pros were intending. I suspect that what the 31 percent of them who expect to be filling executive positions in the next several months will look for, will be the disciplined creativity of a Norman Podhoretz. Read more…

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HR News & Trends, Legal Issues

Appeals Court Expands New Jersey Law Against Workplace Discrimination

by on May 8, 2012, 10:32 AM  |  No comments yet
New Jersey

By Gregg Salka

A recent decision by New Jersey’s Appellate Court substantially broadens the scope of the state’s Law Against Discrimination (LAD) to permit any employee who is subjected to any discriminatory comments, even if the comments do not relate to that individual’s actual protected characteristics, to assert a hostile work environment claim.

The New Jersey LAD prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, creed, color, ancestry, national origin, sex, age, marital status, domestic partner or civil union status, actual or perceived disability, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, atypical cellular or blood trait, genetic information, veteran status, liability for service in the Armed Forces of the United States, perceived inclusion in any of the aforementioned protected categories, or the fact that an employee engages in legally protected conduct.

The court decision also provides guidance confirming the steps that an employer can take to avoid liability. Read more…

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HR Management, Leadership

Judgment Calls: 4 Trends That Will Define Future Decision-Making

by on May 8, 2012, 7:20 AM  |  No comments yet
Judgmentcalls

By Thomas Davenport and Brook Manville

A sea change is under way in many organizations today, as we observe where and from whom judgment is valued, and how it gets exercised in contemporary decision making.

The changes — decision-making more among frontline workers, more distributed, more team based, and so fort h— are consistent with the decline of the Great Man and the rise of the Great Organization and good organizational judgment. At least four major trends are beginning to shape a new pattern that we think will define good decision making in the future:

  • The recognition that “none of us is as smart as all of us.” Social media, prediction markets, involving customers in product development—all of these are evidence that leading organizations want to tap the wisdom of the crowd, as Jim Surowiecki put it in his seminal book.15 While involving multiple people in decisions can be unwieldy and doesn’t always yield a better outcome, it is often both possible and likely to yield a better result. Read more…
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Talent Management

Young Workers Need to Up their Quid to Get the Quo

by on May 7, 2012, 8:35 AM  |  1 comment
The recession has changed the attitude of many members of the Millennial generation when it comes to work.

Quid pro quo (from the Latin meaning “this for that”) is a commonly used term in business negotiations. It’s also the foundation of every employer/employee relationship.

To illustrate, let’s say the quid represents the compensation an employer is willing to part with in exchange for labor they need to operate their business. The quo, then, represents the amount of work an individual agrees to provide in exchange for an agreed compensation.

Our free market economy serves as the fulcrum of the employment teeter-totter. When the economy is brisk, it’s often marked by a labor shortage forcing employers to ante up more quid for the quo they need. When the economy falters, job seekers outnumber opportunities enabling employers to increase the quo for their quid, or to cut back on the quid without affecting the quo they’re receiving. Read more…

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Leadership

Lessons From Most Effective Leadership Practices Competition Winners

by on May 4, 2012, 11:37 AM  |  No comments yet
competitionDetails

The Most Effective Leadership Practices competition was a first in 2012. We started the work on the competition in 2011, and then the winners were announced at the 2012 TLNT Transform conference last February in Austin, Texas.

Now that all the work is done, we have time to go through the data and really dig into what these most effective leaders are doing. In this article I will briefly review the contest process and then summarize a few of the big learnings that are coming out of our research.

At this point, you may be wondering “why one more contest?” and thinking “don’t we have enough?” I too am tired of the “best” this and that competitions that are focused on public relations, so I am with you and understand this reaction. Read more…

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Classic TLNT

The Office Dress Code Debate: How Would You Deal With Katy Perry?

by on May 4, 2012, 9:27 AM  |  1 comment
Pop singer Katy Perry

Editor’s note: Sometimes, readers ask about past TLNT articles that they have heard about but may have missed. That’s why every Friday we’re republishing a Classic TLNT post that some of you have requested.

Who would have thought that pop singer Katy Perry would have kicked open a debate about what is appropriate dress in the workplace?

If you have been awake at all the past couple of years, you have probably seen Katy Perry in action somewhere — at the Grammy Awards, on her “I Kissed a Girl” video, or somewhere else. She’s over-the-top in her actions and her dress, and even her Wikipedia entry says that, “She became known for wearing unconventional style of dress, often combining bold colors and vintage fashion.”

Okay, Katy Perry has a pretty outrageous style. Anyone who has seen her knows that. So why were the producers of the PBS children’s show Sesame Street surprised when Perry showed up and performed as, well, Katy Perry on a segment for the show? And more to the point, why did they get cold feet AFTER it was taped and competed? Read more…

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HR Management

Three Ways to Help Your Organization Accept (and Cope) With Change

by on May 3, 2012, 11:15 AM  |  1 comment
123RF Stock Photo

Communication missteps and a failure to motivate employees to adapt is causing most corporate change initiatives to fall short and, in addition to hurting the bottom line, is ultimately harming employee engagement.

With the rapid pace of change required to succeed in today’s uber-competitive global business environment, the organizations that thrive are the ones that can successfully trigger swift strategic and operational transformations that employees understand and embrace.

Many organizations, however, are failing at this critical business element not because the objectives and tactics haven’t been thought out.

Rather, change management initiatives typically fail because the business managers responsible for enacting the change are not providing the affected employees enough personal motivation. Read more…

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Talent Management

Will They Stay or Will They Go? In This Economy, That’s Up To You

by on May 3, 2012, 10:04 AM  |  2 Comments
Illustration by istockphoto.com

When accounting for the costs (both real costs, such as time taken to select and recruit a replacement, and also opportunity costs, such as lost productivity), the cost of employee turnover to for-profit organizations has been estimated to be up to 150 percent of the employees’ compensation package.

Can you afford that?

The U.S. economy is slowly improving. This is a good thing for companies and job seekers alike, though it’s also positive news for employees – employees who may have felt over worked and under-appreciated during the downturn.

Should you be concerned about retention and loss of employees? Read more…

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