Meghan M. Biro, Author at TalentCulture

Employee Benefits in 2016: Perks or Expectations?

Are employee benefits today considered perks, or are they expected? It’s a question many ask these days. Not surprisingly, the history of employee perks involves World War II, the burgeoning tech industry and women. I say not surprisingly because these same key elements like a reduced workforce, new technology and women in the workforce are still driving factors in why many businesses today are upping their game when it comes to employee perks. But let’s back up a minute. When World War II broke out, Hewlett-Packard’s David Packard, at the request of the War Department, stayed behind to run HP’s test

How To Be A Good Leader? Get Real

Labor Day’s coming up. To me, national holiday not only reminds me of honoring the workforce (which we’ve been doing as a nation since 1894), it also signifies the start of a new season. I may have left my school days behind, but that feeling of sharpening my pencils for some serious buckling down has never left. What’s on the curriculum? In the university of HR, celebrating the workforce is more important than ever — and celebrating them every day. That requires good leadership, with a human face. I’ve been spending a lot of airtime on Talent Acquisition’s need to keep pace with the

Is Your Brand Telling Meaningful Stories?

Authentic storytelling in the workplace (and outside of it in social media channels) is an amazing way to impact talent strategies. It’s part science: apparently, we respond to storytelling with a change in brain chemistry. It’s part social: a great way to build trust and confidence, and to increase your audience. It seems like a soft skill — it’s called storytelling after all. But companies and leaders that don’t explore their own authentic stories face a hard lesson when faced with more candid competition. Storytelling is about sharing goals, expectations, and experiences. For an organization’s talent strategy, storytelling has a multi-tiered payoff: It’s an ideal way

How to Stop Your Bad Hiring Decisions

I’ve heard it said before that if you end up with a bad employee, you’ve probably made a bad hiring decision. Now, please understand, I’m not excusing an employee’s poor work ethic or a “less than engaged” employee, but more often than not, there’s a good chance that person wasn’t the right fit in the first place. Bad hiring decisions are costly. Beyond how an under-functioning employee affects team morale, workload, and deliverables productivity, the wrong hire also hits hard from a financial perspective. How costly? Take a look at these turnover costs as percentage of actual salary: Position Type Percent

#WorkTrends Preview: Meaningful Communication’s Impact on Happiness and Morale

Meaningful communication has a dramatic impact on happiness and morale in all facets of life. Join us for this #WorkTrends podcast and Twitter chat as our guest Mike Lindstrom discusses some powerful communication tips and tools to help you better understand the impact of your words on others. We will also cover why engaging people around you on a deeper level actually triggers happiness in the brain and creates a strong rapport. Get out of your own way and join us to discuss this very important topic with Host Meghan M. Biro and Guest Mike Lindstrom on 8/31 at 1pm ET.

Doing Good Work Matters More Than Your Personal Brand

There’s still a lot of chat on the topic of personal branding. Particularly for people just entering the world of social media, there’s major pressure to create a distinctive personal brand now more than ever. For those in a career flux, there’s major pressure to catch up with the sexy branding thing and seize the new networking and career opportunities that social media can offer. For someone looking to jumpstart their way into a new career adventure, crafting a new personal brand can seem like a shortcut to appearing to already fit there. But I’m going to dispense some advice here: regarding the issue of

#WorkTrends Recap: Be Your Customer’s Hero

Too many organizational leaders are scared of employee empowerment, often coming from cultures of command and control; fearing what can happen if they give up that control. However, the greatest customer experience companies empower their teams to solve issues in real-time, resulting in more satisfied customers and fewer escalated issues. On this week’s #WorkTrends show, our special guest, author and customer service expert, Adam Toporek spoke about customer service examples from Starbucks, Ritz Carlton and his own experience as a small business owner. Here are a few key tips Adam shared: It is crucial for employees to remove the hassle from

What to Do Now About the Widening Gap in Data Skills

With the rise of our technology driven, increasingly mobile society, as well as the steady march forward of the Internet of Things, big data is everywhere. And when I say big — I mean big. And many people are wondering just what to do about the widening data skills gap. Here are some eye-opening stats: Big Data is big news:There has been more data created in two short years than in the entire history of the human race, and 73 percent of companies have already invested or plan to invest in big data this year. Big Data means big money:For a typical

You’re Hired And It’s Mutual: 5 Ways Employee Culture Is Great For Leaders

In the world of work, there’s a new type of relationship agreement to be forged — a win-win built on trust between employer and employee that reflects a clear shift in workplace and social media culture. It’s mutually productive, an entirely different way of viewing work, and it should form the core of your new talent strategy. I’ve come to this conclusion based on two disparate poles in talent strategy making news: one encouraging, one discouraging. I’ve been accustomed to this wacky weekly swing lately. On the plus side is The Alliance, the groundbreaking new book by Reid Hoffman (co-founder and CEO of LinkedIn), Ben

The Old Ways Of Working Are Not Working

The future of talent has arrived. Today’s businesses are competing for the most innovative and the brightest, and it is time to step up to the plate or step aside. What does it take to recruit, evaluate and retain a 21st century workforce? Well, here are some things you need to consider: 1) The Old Ways Won’t Work: Cultivating top talent is essential if you want your business to adapt and thrive. According to a recent survey just 34% of executives believe their talent acquisition efforts are up to the job of preparing the workforces their companies will need in the future. They’re right. Executives need to

Listen Up, Leaders: We Are All Millennials

A lot of digital ink has been spilled regarding Millennials and how they are reshaping and reordering the workplace. I’m happy to report that ink has not been wasted. The influx of Millennials into the workforce tops virtually any short list of today’s business trends. No doubt, Generation Y is poised to make a big impact on the world of work. But are the supposed differences of the most tech-savvy generation in history all they are cracked up to be? Even more importantly, how will generational differences play out when it comes to leadership development, workplace culture and recruiting? Here are a few points worth

#WorkTrends Preview: Be Your Customer’s Hero

Too many organizational leaders are scared of employee empowerment, often coming from cultures of command and control and fear what can happen if they give up that control. However, the greatest customer experience companies empower their teams to solve issues in real-time, resulting in more satisfied customers and fewer escalated issues. Our special #WorkTrends guest Adam Toporek will speak about customer service examples from Starbucks, Ritz Carlton and his own experience as a small business owner. Come learn these tips about how to Be Your Customer’s Hero: How smart empowerment does not mean giving a blank check or giving up all

Shine Your HR Tech Talent Torch Even Brighter

Lately there has been a lot of noise about the rapid rise of technology in HR, and its impact on the traditionally very human face of recruitment. Conjectures fill the webisphere on whether or not HR Tech will ever completely replace human-driven hiring and recruiting altogether, some are drawing such parallels between the relationship of HR to new tech as akin to that of the traditional job search to the emergence of the ole Internet itself. But tech’s scope and speed should be no-brainers by now. Tools like automated outreach turn recruiting into a constant, global two-way street. The oft-cited LinkedIn and

#WorkTrends Recap: Build a Rich and Successful Life

So many of us lose sight of our dreams and what really makes us happy as we go through the mundane parts of life. How can we shift our outlook and remind ourselves of our dreams? On this week’s #WorkTrends show, we were joined by Christopher Cumby, author of The Success Playbook, to discuss how to build a rich and happy life. Chris shared what he defines as the fundamental basics to moving the needle in life. He also discussed the keys to understanding who you are and how to identify the greatest opportunities. Here are a few other key points

How HR Can Recruit for IT Departments of the Future

I’ve written a lot about Millennials and the massive impact they are having on the future of work. The largest generation in today’s workforce, they are the generation perfectly matched to ride the wave of digital technology and mobility that came of age more or less at the same time they did, and they’ve helped turn traditional business practices on its ear. One of the areas in which these two “change makers” are having the biggest impact when it comes to the future of business is in IT. IT departments, and the professionals that staff them follow old school stereotypes no

LinkedIn Aiming to Power Social Sharing + Lead Gen with Elevate Offering

For many, LinkedIn has long been the underdog in the social media space. The kid who gets picked last for sports. The red-headed step-child. When I hear that LinkedIn is an individual’s least favorite social network, I know that they view the world of business in general and lead generation in particular very differently than I do. That’s because for me, and for our B2B clients, LinkedIn is where our customers and prospects are. Daily. Don’t take my word for it, though. A 2014 survey from IDC showed that 75 percent of B2B buyers used social media to make purchasing decisions, and when you factor in

Reconsidering Millennials: They’re Not That Different From You

Is it time for leaders to wake up and smell the coffee? Translated into the world of work, it means Wake UP and reconsider the millennials. Are they really a scary new narcissistic band of selfie-takers and obsessive texters with the attention span of a tweet and enormous expectations in terms of compensation and reward? Are they really so entirely different from the rest of us, as in, anyone over the age of 30? Um, Not. To me, it feels like we are getting lazy. Maybe there is something called social, mobile, cloud adoption that is standing between us here. Yes, “they” use language

Left Brain, Right Brain: Does HR Have A Split Personality?

Imagine a big desk. It’s loaded with two huge stacks of work, one on the left side, one on the right. Left side: the administrative pile, dense with data — numbers, stats, metrics, talent analytics. Right side: the strategic side — a yea-high stack of CVs and digital resumes, people strategies, some highlight pens poking through, paper clips, notes like — topics for C-suite. Chances are, you’ve faced these two teetering sides of your role at some point, weighing the administration versus strategy. You might even see it as a metaphor for both sides of your brain (many of us do). Traditionally, HR —

Big, Bad Data: How Talent Analytics Will Make It Work In HR

Here’s a mind-blowing fact to spark up the late-summer doldrums: research from IBM shows that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. I find this fascinating. Which means that companies have access to an unprecedented amount of information: insights, intelligence, trends, future-casting. In terms of HR, it’s a gold mine of Big Data. This past spring, I welcomed the ‘Industry Trends in Human Resources Technology and Service Delivery Survey,’ conducted by the Information Services Group, a leading technology insights, market intelligence and advisory services company. It’s a useful study, particularly for leaders and talent managers, offering

#WorkTrends Preview: Build a Rich and Happy Life

So many of us lose sight of our dreams and what really makes us happy as we go through the mundane parts of life. How can we shift our outlook and remind ourselves of our dreams? Join Chris Cumby, author of The Success Playbook, as we discuss how to build a rich and happy life. Come learn what he has named “The Four Pillars of Success.” Chris will discuss what he defines as the fundamental basics to moving the needle in life. Come hear the keys to understanding who you are and how to identify the greatest opportunities. Chris, also known

#WorkTrends Recap: Maintaining Productivity in a Distracting Work Environment

There is a massive trend right now in the enterprise toward open office environments, and understanding how that trend impacts employees is important. IT should understand the distraction challenges that employees face in different environments. In addition, mobile workforces now face distractions in a wide variety of other environments. On this week’s #WorkTrends show we were joined by Jennifer Adams, Head of Global Collaboration Markets for Plantronics. We discussed devices, such as noise canceling headphones, and other emerging technologies that are having a positive impact on productivity, careers, and quality of life. Here are a few key points Jen shared: Managers

Smart Recruiting Strategy Drives Relationships And Conversation

Passive recruiting is kind of like the darker, more mysterious sibling of active recruiting. Because it is so different from traditional recruiting and usually involves targeting people who don’t have a strong desire to be recruited, many HR professionals and leaders are confused about passive recruiting and how it can help them fill job positions. Making passive recruiting work for your organization is very possible, but to do so you need to understand why it works and how it is done most effectively. Using social media channels and forums to start conversations can be an effective method. Passive recruiting can be as simple as

How Facebook Is Recruiting Exceptional Talent Today

Facebook, the largest social network with 1.55 billion monthly active users, is consistently one of the top employers in America. Don’t you wonder how a company with nearly 13,000 employees and 49 offices around the world manage to lure top talent year after year? Let’s examine Facebook’s magnetic appeal and see how we can all learn from it to recruit exceptional talent. Facebook Recruitment Relies on Fit, Unique Tactics, and the Ability to Change Fit comes first at Facebook; if you don’t share common values that drive the rest of the team, it probably won’t work out. “We want to make

The Real-World Implications Of Workplace And Cyber Bullying

I remember my first encounter with a bully – we’ll call him Paul Bugbee. He chased a neighborhood friend of mine home from school for two years, shouting destructive words, despite his parents’ pleas with the school and Bugbee’s parents. What changed the pattern? My brother, who even at the tender age of nine was more than up to the task of making sure Bugbee regretted his impulse to bully. Even with my brother’s help, though, the humiliation of being bullied took years to overcome. Fast forward to 2016, and bullying is alive and well. We’ve all read news stories about bullying,

Dear Leaders: Please Revisit Your Corporate Culture

What makes a great leader? Is it the capacity to inspire loyalty, the ability to articulate a vision, emotional intelligence, or persuasiveness? Does a company need a leader whose values are culture-based, or one whose values are aligned with the needs of shareholders and the marketplace? Maybe it depends, which is why it’s so important for job seekers and future employees to do a bit of digging to ensure the companies they’re interviewing with holds values compatible with their own. Often this boils down to trust. Plain and simple. And yet oh so complex. Searching out the value structure of a company culture is

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Meghan M. Biro

Meghan M. Biro

Employee Benefits in 2016: Perks or Expectations?

How To Be A Good Leader? Get Real

Is Your Brand Telling Meaningful Stories?

How to Stop Your Bad Hiring Decisions

#WorkTrends Preview: Meaningful Communication’s Impact on Happiness and Morale

#WorkTrends Recap: Be Your Customer’s Hero

What to Do Now About the Widening Gap in Data Skills

You’re Hired And It’s Mutual: 5 Ways Employee Culture Is Great For Leaders

Listen Up, Leaders: We Are All Millennials

#WorkTrends Preview: Be Your Customer’s Hero

Shine Your HR Tech Talent Torch Even Brighter

#WorkTrends Recap: Build a Rich and Successful Life

How HR Can Recruit for IT Departments of the Future

Reconsidering Millennials: They’re Not That Different From You

Left Brain, Right Brain: Does HR Have A Split Personality?

Big, Bad Data: How Talent Analytics Will Make It Work In HR

#WorkTrends Preview: Build a Rich and Happy Life

#WorkTrends Recap: Maintaining Productivity in a Distracting Work Environment

Smart Recruiting Strategy Drives Relationships And Conversation

The Real-World Implications Of Workplace And Cyber Bullying

Dear Leaders: Please Revisit Your Corporate Culture

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Meghan M. Biro

Meghan M. Biro

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