The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has been widely used for decades to assess personality. But there is very little, if any, science behind it. Merve Emre, associate professor of English at the University of Oxford and fellow at Worcester College, delves…
Performance & Personality
The Problem With Incentive Plan Cliffs
Triggers and hurdles and cliffs, oh my! To be clear, I’m talking about pay plan mechanics and in particular about the kind of cliff that plays an unfortunate starring role in many pay programs. Specifically, the incentive plan with the…
How Keeping Notes Makes Performance Conversations More Effective
Successful teams are made up of individuals with unique ambitions, strengths, and personalities. The secret to being a great leader is the ability to identify and leverage these differences to create a complementary and motivated workforce. In the last few…
What Do You Do When They Complain About Pay?
Salary disappointment is common across employees all over the world. As per a survey by Indeed, only 19% of employees in USA are satisfied with their current pay and 60% of those surveyed would want an extra $6,000 a year…
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…
Autonomy is Key to Building an Entrepreneurial Culture in a Large Enterprise
The great paradox of success is that as enterprises get bigger and more established, they have a natural tendency to lose the very entrepreneurial edge that made them successful in the first place. It’s a tendency that leaders in large…
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…
This Vendor Crowdsources Skills Tests
No matter how good we are at finding applicants for a job we can’t truly succeed in making a good hire if we can’t identify the best ones. One core tool we use for assessing candidates, the resume, isn’t so…
The Importance of Resilience
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. Previous articles in the series can be found here. ∼∼∼∼∼ The ability to bounce back…
Your Execs Are Fooling Themselves When It Comes to the Feedback Office Workers Want
Think your office workers are satisfied with the level of performance feedback they receive? Think again. New data suggests that if you’re still conducting the traditional annual or semi-annual performance reviews, there’s a good chance your employees are not happy…
“We Have a Pay-For-Performance Program” Not!
My business career has spanned a long time and working from both sides of the desk. First as a compensation practitioner filling out survey questionnaires and working my way up the ladder, and then (much) later as a global compensation…
How One-on-Ones Can Make the Difference Between Loving and Leaving
It’s a well-known cliché in HR circles that employees quit their bosses, not their jobs. However, having run many employee surveys and regularly studying analytics on employee engagement, I’ve found that the root of the problem goes much deeper than…
10 Must-Have Features For Your Performance Management System
HR departments across nearly all industries are constantly trying to improve systems and processes to help increase employee engagement, recruit and retain talent, and operate on a more efficient and cost-effective basis each day. Performance management software is one of…
The 3 Dimensions of a Job: Style, Pace, Risk
I’ve spent over 25 years in human capital management and I’ve gotten 10 certifications in the space. Through the use and study of various assessments and workforce analytics, I can tell you that every job at any company contains some…
Do Your Subcultures Align Or Undermine Your Company Values?
It can be surprising when you first see the signs of an organizational subculture forming When the company is small, employees are much closer to the central embodiment of its mission, vision, and values, because everyone is working closely together….
7 Talent Assessment Myths and Why They’re Wrong
Talent assessment is all about managing people, that is, evaluating and screening candidates, hiring the right person for the right job, and managing and developing work teams. Though companies have been using talent assessment tools for many years, some are…
Build a More Engaged Workforce These 4 Ways
Companies are becoming increasingly concerned with the internal culture of their company these days – and for good reason. Gallup has famously studied and reported on the American workplace reporting that the level of engagement among employees has a huge…
What It Takes For a New CEO to Make a Successful Transition
There is nothing more exciting than the moment a new leader is announced. Employees Google the new CEO while wondering what they will do to change the organization. A new leader brings new ideas. She or he offers a new…
10 Questions to Ask To Select the Right Assessment Tools
Assessments can help you evaluate candidates, develop employees, and give you confidence and accuracy in the selection and development of talent that you depend on to make your company successful. However, assessments come in many different forms, and not every…
Being Smart Isn’t Enough to Succeed
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. Previous articles in the series can be found here. ∼∼∼∼∼ Why do some…