Rock Star employees make a huge positive impact and help to increase the valuation of the business. That’s why finding a Rock Star is the goal of every hiring manager. But is that really a good strategy? Should organizations be focused on the…
HR Insights
Your Merit Pay Program Has a Fatal Flaw
It’s likely that your pay-for-performance program has a fatal flaw built into it; an inadvertent side effect of the design that, if ignored by management will almost certainly guarantee failure. But no one wants to talk about it. Instead, what…
Is Your Data Digging Turning Up Fake News?
I was reading a description of different advanced analytics methods and I felt there was something quite wrong. I had hard time putting my finger on it. Technically the descriptions were accurate, but at a more subtle level there was…
Stop Trying to Solve Today’s Problems With What Worked Yesterday
Here’s a fun, and enlightening DisruptHR video that at first glance seems to have nothing to do with HR. But stick with it and you’ll see why “Stop Blaming Millennials for the Death of Retail” is worth your five minutes….
Can Culture Be as Simple as Just 19 Words?
It’s well understood that culture can make or break a workplace. Understanding what “culture” means, however, is a whole other matter. As a working concept, culture can’t be easily defined or measured. Merriam-Webster offers six different definitions (and even named…
‘Immigration Adjacent’ Perks Are Important For Foreign Workers
Every year, we survey U.S. employers about the status of their employment-based immigration programs. This year, the Immigration Trends report revealed that more than half of employers plan to increase their foreign national headcount and that 7% consider international recruitment…
Your Workforce Tools Are More Strategic Than You Might Think
This is not a typical article about attracting talented job candidates or retention — while a rich topic, it has become a little tired. There are volumes of research on employee retention – some focus on affirmative strategies; others on…
Your Teams Need ‘Boxing Rings’ and ‘Campfires’
Senior leaders were asked to estimate how much “wasted time” had cost their companies. Their average answer was nearly $15.5 million! It seems that our abundance of unproductive meetings, dysfunctional workplace dynamics, bungled opportunities and mishandled people problems are cumulatively…
5 Reasons Why Working Too Many Hours Is a Bad Idea
24-year-old copywriter Mita Diran’s last Tweet, several hours before she lapsed into a coma and died. One thing most millennials figure out faster than workers of older generations is that work/life balance isn’t just important, it’s crucial. While exceptions like Miss…
With Workers Coming In From the Sidelines, Hiring Could Get a Little Easier
If there’s one thing you can count on in a conversation with talent acquisition leaders, it’s hearing how hard it is to hire people. Last week, at the spring ERE Recruiting Conference, anytime two people would get together, the talent…
For More Productive Meetings, Do a Mindset Check-In First
“Bring the mind into sharp focus and make it alert so that it can immediately intuit truth, which is everywhere. “ — Bruce Lee We live in a distracted society. Having focus is a scarce currency. No surprise distractions are taking a toll…
Three Practices Every HR Team Needs to Adopt
An HR team can make all the difference in the internal success and versatility of a business. From hiring the most qualified talent to maintaining a strong and healthy company culture, HR reps play an integral part in thriving organizations….
Harness These 3 Drivers to Change Your Culture
There are several approaches to changing cultural norms in an organization, however, the actual transformation comes from its people doing something unique, adopting new behaviors, changing the way they solve problems, and the way they communicate and interact with each other. To change something, we must understand the way it’s created, formed and influenced….
How HR Can Build a Better Relationship With IT
In its 2018 digital workplace predictions report, Gartner notes that while IT can lead the charge during the digital workplace evolution, it will be more successful working closely with adjacent business units, particularly HR. Even though in an ideal world…
What’s a Mentor and Why Don’t More People Mentor?
The March (Cincinnati) HR Roundtable dipped its toes into a more personal side of professional development to discuss the topic of mentoring. There are countless recommendations about mentoring and encouragement to either have a mentor, be a mentor yourself, or…
What Exactly Is Employee Engagement?
Have you ever wondered why there were so many definitions of employee engagement? Organizations around the globe are striving to build a culture of engagement, yet the various definitions often cloud their efforts. Rewards and recognition, learning and development, health…
HR’s Role When Divorce Impacts Performance
Despite the general pattern of the divorce rate declining, there are still plenty of married couples who untie the knot. Doing so is obviously life-changing, but it can also have a severe impact on your career and ability to work…
Most Turnover Is Voluntary and Commute Time Is One Reason
Understanding and managing workforce turnover is becoming more scientific. This is great news because turnover – especially voluntary turnover – has real consequences for an organization. Hiring and training new workers, addressing declining morale, managing through temporary skill, productivity, and…
For the Good of the Organization You Need to Be a Little Machiavellian
In our workplaces, as in society at large, we try hard to create open, transparent, meritocratic structures. Our increasing success can blind us to some nagging obstacles. We can persuade ourselves that we are creating new utopias: workplaces in which…
When Money Isn’t Enough: 4 Drivers of Motivation
Most existing recognition and incentive programs have been designed utilizing traditional economic theories which suggest: People tend to act rationally and in their own best interests when making decisions Money is the most effective motivator This conventional approach (that rewarded…