This article is excerpted from Tom’s recent book, The Stress-Reduction Pyramid: A Guide to Managing the Greatest Threat to Employee Health and Productivity. Part 1, Entitled Do You Have a Culture of Stress? Here’s How to Find Out published Thursday.)…
Workforce
Do You Have a Culture of Stress? Here’s How to Tell
This article is excerpted from Tom’s recent book, The Stress-Reduction Pyramid: A Guide to Managing the Greatest Threat to Employee Health and Productivity. ∼∼∼∼∼ It’s Monday morning, and you’re standing at the edge of a swamp. Looking out, you see…
Keep Your Rock Stars Without Busting the Budget
Here’s a thought bubble: Say you have a “rock star” employee, highly satisfied with his/her job, who came in young and hungry, growing into a superstar over several years with incremental raises, and one day gets woke to the fact they’re…
Corporate Culture Today Extends Beyond the Office and Factory
Edward Stack, CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods one of the largest United States sporting retailers took a bold stand a couple months ago when he decided the chain would no longer sell assault rifles. In addition, he also announced Dick’s would only…
If Your Office Is Dim, So Are You
“Dim lights are producing dimwits” – Joel Soler, American psychologist Do you find a dimly-lit workspace preferable to a brightly-lit office? Some people do. Perhaps you find it calming and relaxing; or maybe the setting makes you feel comfortable at a…
Why Not Let People Form Their Own Teams?
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” — Michael Jordan Hiring the right talent is not enough to build a high-performing team. Team dynamics affect overall performance; they are like undercurrents that can carry a boat in a different direction than…
Don’t Fight the Robots, Embrace Them
We’ve all heard doom and gloom reports of the coming AI revolution. Some forecasters predict a very grim future indeed: Robots take over and humans find themselves unceremoniously kicked to the curb, suddenly unable to provide for themselves and their…
What Facebook’s Data Issues Mean for Your Employee Data
With the news that a data firm was given access to the personal information of 87 million Facebook users, the ramifications were widely felt. For many, this was a wakeup call about how easily social data can be accessed without…
How Are You Valuing Your “Most Valuable Asset”?
Note: This article is part of an occasional series dedicated to exploring the contribution of human capital assets (people!) to the valuation of a business. Welcome to The New ROI: Return on Individuals. If you’re just joining us, welcome. In this article we discuss the value…
None of Us Are Rational, So Smart Leadership Means Learning to Deal With Emotions
Emotions drive behavior in the office, often much more than we’re aware of. To be more effective leaders, we need to become more attuned to our own emotions as well to those of the people around us. This may come…
Use Co-op Programs to Discover What Your Workforce Is Missing
It’s time to take a critical look at your talent and start asking the tough questions. Is the talent that you have today ready to meet your business needs of tomorrow? It’s not an easy question and it’s fairly subjective,…
Here’s How to Conquer the Hard Conversations You’d Rather Avoid
Hard conversations may be a fact of business life but that doesn’t mean we look forward to them. Just the opposite. We avoid them to avoid causing even more problems, to avoid hurt feelings, and mostly, as Nick Doctor says,…
Workplace Compassion: A Trend Driven by the Changing Workforce
When I first started working in HR in the ‘90s, care and compassion in the workplace were almost foreign concepts to business strategy. Now, for those that practice them, they’re a chief competitive advantage. I’ve seen this in the way…
It’s Not Failure. It’s a Way of Discovering What Doesn’t Work
Thomas Edison once said, “I have never failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” While I hope none of us has such an enormous ego we claim to have never failed, I would also hope over a long…
When the Going Gets Tough, Here’s What to Do
Every business and staff member go through tough times that might lead to distractions, a drop in motivation or a change in priorities. The only certainty is that all businesses must be ready to face uncertainty. Difficult situations will arise…
Speaking Truth to Power: HR as the Employee’s Advocate
Once upon a time, the Human Resources Department was known as Personnel. Now it has changed again and is being called things like Talent, Talent Resources, Human Capital and a dozen other things. The problem is that it is all…
Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
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…
Why Teams Need to Be More Like a Jazz Band Than a Symphony
The ability to deal with uncertainty can make or break a team. Famous jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald made her biggest career mistake on a German stage back in the 60’s. That performance earned her two Grammy Awards though. Ella started singing…
Make Workforce Planning Real by Dumping Position Management
Given that people costs make up the largest chunk of the operating expenses for a typical organization, getting the workforce plan right is fundamental to good corporate fiscal health. Yet most finance departments still develop budgets for people the same…
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…