What’s the sexiest tech acquisition of the past five or six years? You probably just had “Instagram” somewhere near your lips, but what if it were a time and attendance suite? Like it or not, some HCM acquisitions are notably…
Workforce
A Merger Is the Time For Workers to Double-Down
Mergers are a fact of working life. They can be very good news for organizations as they offer opportunities for increased efficiency and scale. When managed well, they can bring about efficiency in the workplace and economy. Yet mergers cause…
How Change Agents Helped These Companies Transform Their Culture
Changing an organization’s culture is considered one of the most difficult challenges for leaders, and those with experience will confirm that it can be a massive undertaking. Whatever challenges the organization is facing — low morale among staff, bad behavior…
Here’s a 4-Step Recovery Plan for Meeting Addiction
We have a love-hate relationship with meetings. Most of us want to get rid of them — they drive frustration and waste our time. However, when we don’t invite someone to a meeting, that person feels left out. Sounds familiar?…
No One Works There Because You Have a Foosball Table
Ping-pong tables, nap-pods, endless snacks and beer on tap are the hallmark perks of trendy start-ups, tech companies and creative agencies, but what value do they really hold? Sure, they rank high on the cool meter, but how tangible are…
How Productivity Analytics Tools Are Making a Difference
Imagine my surprise when I started receiving emails from Microsoft last summer that included descriptions of my Office 365 activity, like how much time I spent multitasking in meetings, who is my “top collaborator,” how much “focus time” I had,…
7 Culture Insights for Positive Change and 3 Reasons Change Fails
This post is a salute to passionate and experienced culture and performance change agents. You understand the power of culture in organizations and the challenge, frustration, restlessness, and exhilaration inevitably linked to intentional culture-related action. We’re living in the absolute…
Overcome Your High Performer Bias to Improve Your Whole Team
Everyone loves high performers — hot shots who deliver exceptional work on a regular basis are unique. However, there’s a problem I frequently observe when facilitating team offsites and workshops. Our obsession with top performers can backfire. Managers’ quest for…
Using Job Embeddedness Theory to Improve Employee Turnover
A common concern across all industries is employee retention. Though various factors may contribute to turnover among personnel, recent research may shed new light on practical means of improving retention and reducing the costs associated with excessive employee turnover. Human…
The Good, the Bad and the Not-So-Ugly Reality of Group Chat in the Workplace
Email may be the veteran of communication in the workplace, but rookie platforms for instantaneous group chat, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, have changed how employees correspond at work. Digitally-savvy workers of all ages have started replacing email with…
How to Overcome 5 of the Worst Hits to Productivity
Productivity at its most basic, signifies the rate of output per unit of input. The phrase echoes an era where people were seen as elements in a production line, measured by the amount of time it would take them to…
A Data-Driven Guide to Dealing with Toxic Employees
Imagine the workplace as an ecosystem and at its heart, lies a community of living, breathing organisms. In an ecosystem, how you work is just as important as the work you do because even seemingly small actions in this environment can have…
How the ‘D’ Word Can Improve Performance
Sometimes saying that you are “disappointed” is a very powerful statement. Several years ago, I watched a hospital president speak with employees who messed up. It could have been a med error, tardiness for a shift, or poor treatment of…
5 Steps to Improving Engagement in Meetings
The interview for that new job you’re hoping to get. The coffee date with your personal hero, and hopefully, future mentor. The make-or-break sales demo with that perfect-fit client. The last-ditch attempt to mend a broken partnership. When you are…
Don’t Let Uncertainty or Trust Keep You From Adopting Flex Work
Flexible working has been a corporate buzzword for years. Yet, despite how often the extensive benefits of flexible working are touted by human resource specialists and demonstrated by multiple studies, it has not enjoyed the kind of wide-spread adoption predicted…
Your Next Contractor Could Be a Digital Nomad
According to new estimates from MBO Partners’ 2018 State of Independence in America research, 17 million independent workers aspire to someday become digital nomads — a term referencing workers who embrace a location-independent, technology-enabled lifestyle that allows them to travel…
Five Things You Can Expect of Generation Z
“Generation Z only knows a world that is hyper-connected, where by the tap of a smartphone, a pair of shoes can be delivered to their doorstep via Uber or a drone in less than an hour. To Generation Z, a phone will…
5 Steps to Making Your Workforce Planning Strategic
HR leaders are often perceived by line managers and senior executives to deliver the most value when they are firefighting (a.k.a. dowsing “talent fires”). Quick HR fixes, like filling a vacancy with a pricey new hire or instantly meeting demands…
What Your Suitcase Says About How You Manage Time
You can tell a lot about people based on how they manage their time. The ones who are notoriously late are the same people who are consistently a dollar short. They possess neither a mastery of time nor money. Oftentimes,…
Changing Culture Starts With Changing Behavior
A man and his wife entered a deli together late one afternoon. They were the only customers in the place. “May I help you?” asks the server behind the counter. Before either can reply, the other person behind the deli counter,…