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…
Tips & Tricks Archives
Keep Your Employees Happy and You’ll Keep Your Employees
March 20th was International Day of Happiness. Those celebrating had one united goal in mind: to create more happiness in the world around them. In today’s America — where happiness is dropping — it’s more important than ever to take…
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…
Don’t Let ‘Meaning’ Be Missing From Your Engagement Strategy
Meaning is one of the five keys in building employee engagement and it may be the most powerful of the keys. The power in meaning comes because it is self-determined. Meaning is found when your work has purpose beyond the work itself. How…
5 Ways to Make New Hires Wish They Turned You Down
When it comes to the employee lifecycle, no period of time is more important than those first few days and months in a new job. Both the employee and the organization want to start off on the right foot, making…
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…
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….
How to Use Data to Improve Customer Service Performance
The relationship between increased employee engagement and a company’s revenues are strong. Multiple studies, including research from Gallup, have found that the odds of success were nearly double for those workers in the “engaged” group versus the “disengaged” and the…
Hiring Whys You Need to Be Able to Answer
Note: As you begin your week, here are some tips from the Humetrics blog to help you recruit and hire more effectively, and some questions to ask yourself so when you hear them from a strong prospect you’ll be ready with…
10 Communication Habits That Ruin Relationships
Few people admit to bad communication habits—much less habits that can cost them a job or a contract. Yet, we all see some of the following habits in people we interact with in the workplace on a daily basis. A…
‘Entry-Level, Experience Required’: Seriously?
For recent college graduates, nothing is more frustrating than applying for entry-level jobs that require experience. With degrees in hand, an eagerness to perform and a willingness to learn on the job, these prospective hires could be making a significant…
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…
3 Simple Steps to Avoid Fighting With Hiring Managers Over Pay
Even though they are our daily bread and butter, recruiting and hiring remain very inefficient and time consuming processes. Because they take so much of our time and involve so many people, just the idea of making improvements feels stressful….
The Top 10 Reasons Why Networking Events Are a Waste of a Jobseeker’s Time
It is certainly true that “who you know” has an impact on getting a great job but it’s a time-consuming mistake to assume that attending most networking events will result in you knowing “more of the right people.” In fact,…
Everyone’s Got HR Metrics. It’s What You Do With Them That Matters
When Google Analytics debuted in 2005, the ability to look under the hood, and see who was viewing your website (and for how long), was all at once foreign and exciting. In fact, it was so exciting there was a…
Flex Work: Good for the Employee , Good for the Business
The traditional 9-to-5 spent in the confines of the office is becoming less and less common. As the needs of both employees and customers change, employers are now having to become increasingly flexible to accommodate these through the provision of…
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…