Retiring boomers, nomadic millennials and the rise of the gig worker mean there’s about to be a lot of new faces at work. Companies need to find new ways to get them up to speed — quickly. The world of…
Tips & Tricks Archives
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…
Are You Inviting Everyone to Dance?
“Diversity and inclusion.” As often as we hear this term, you’d think the two words are synonymous or inseparable. They are neither. What’s more, when people lump them together, they usually end up focusing on the former. The problem is,…
7 Ways to Make Your Project Fail and 7 Ways to Prevent That
Wonder why some projects fail while others are successful? Like the 7 deadly sins, this article from Toledo Solutions lists 7 of the most common ways to ensure a project fail — and they all come down to people and…
The Employee Experience Is Even More Important to Your Visa Workers
There’s a lot to think about when you’re tasked with handling your organization’s immigration: compliance, filing deadlines, keeping up with changing policies. But it’s crucial that you also keep sight of the employee experience of the foreign national workers you…
3 Simple Ways to Combat the Talent Shortage
If you’re experiencing a talent shortage, you’re not alone. Manpower’s 2018 Global Talent Shortage Report found that 45% of employers globally are struggling to fill positions. As difficult as that statistic suggests, it doesn’t mean you need to compromise and…
Have You Considered Using Videos to Educate Employees About Benefits?
Does your employee benefits education program consist of handing out dusty benefits manuals and sending a single novel-length email from HR? If so, you could be severely missing the mark when it comes to truly educating your workforce. In fact,…
Train Them the Way They Want to Learn and You’ll Keep Them
Over one-in-three American workers today are millennials, officially making this the largest generation in the U.S. labor force. Millennials also happen to be the most likely to job-hop, with 21% telling Gallup researchers in 2016 that they changed jobs within…
Stop Telling Us the End of Your Story First
I’ve just put a bow on my busiest season, the late spring and summer months when I work with companies to put together the best possible submissions for next year’s Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list. In other words, I…
Want to Spark Innovation? Start by Changing How You Listen
With millions of messages bombarding us every day, the ability to listen is becoming a lost art. As leaders, we need to be able to hear what can move our businesses forward. After all, none of us is as smart…
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,…
Narcissists Become Leaders. What Do You Do If You’re Not One?
Do you work closely with executives? If you do, you’ve probably run into a few surprising aspects to leadership that don’t get talked about much. For instance, what’s with the common occurrence of charming, good looking executives moving quickly up…
The Modern 401(k): Options You Didn’t Know You Had
Navigating the constantly evolving 401(k) landscape while trying to meet employee expectations can be daunting for HR (especially when 401(k)s are only one piece of the HR puzzle). What’s more, the war for talent makes it more important than ever…
Green Card Sponsors Planning a Reorg Need to Handle It Carefully
When sponsoring foreign national employees for employment-based “immigrant visas” or “green cards” (which grant lawful permanent residence in the US), there are many factors an employer must consider, particularly when restructuring, relocating or downsizing its operations, to avoid the consequences…
Five Easy Cures for Information Overload
“Our brains would melt if they tried to process and store even a fraction of the information they are exposed to.” Tim Pollard, American communications professional Face it: we’re drowning in information. There’s too much to do and see every…
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…
Your Hourly Workers May Be Stealing From You
Every day, thousands of hourly employees are stealing from their company. They are not literally stealing money, but getting compensated for work they didn’t actually do. Time theft does not stem from the modern workplace. It may have existed ever…
Gaps In a Resume Could Mean Wonder Woman Was Temporarily Out Of Costume
Meghna Singh’s career was well underway until she had children. She earned a MBA in HR after getting a bachelor’s in physics; began her career in comp and benefits, then moved halfway around the world to metro New York as…
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 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…