Meghan M. Biro, Author at TalentCulture

5 Ways Leaders Empower The Social Enterprise

We have all seen the power of social and community. People come together and the result is something unified and powerful and greater than the sum of its parts. I’m always inspired when I see the dynamic things a strong community can accomplish. It’s a force leaders must create in their enterprises. Community is about people communicating and bonding, pooling their strengths and talents to deliver amazing performance. To make it happen, leaders have some exciting new tools in the form of social media, digital networks and big data. The question becomes: how do I harness these tools to build the right kind of

#WorkTrends Recap: Heart-Centered Leadership

Improving employee engagement is a constant desire for leaders. But instead of looking to employees for answers, the key might be to look at themselves first. Leaders who develop emotional connections with employees often see better performance and engagement. This heart-centered leadership style is centered on the concept that ethical leadership must start from within; it’s based on principles that promote trust, authenticity, caring and transparency. On today’s #WorkTrends show, we talked with Susan Steinbrecher, leadership expert and co-author of Heart-Centered Leadership, about the seven principles of heart-centered leadership and why this philosophy has proven successful. Here are a few key

HR: It’s Time to “Level Up” with Gamification

Gamification – using game-play elements in a nongame activity – is trending across a range of industries. For a while, HR professionals were excited about its potential to improve employee engagement and training, but adoption rates have been slow. Isn’t it time for HR to “level up” with gamification? Consider this. In January 2016, U.S. employment engagement rates remained sluggish at 32.5 percent, and 67.5 percent of employees were not engaged or were actively disengaged from their work. And the numbers on engagement have largely remained the same since 2012. Gamification might just hold the key to improving corporate culture, commitment,

HR: Itâ€™s Time to â€œLevel Upâ€ with Gamification

Gamification â€“ using game-play elements in a nongame activity â€“ is trending across a range of industries. For a while, HR professionals were excited about its potential to improve employee engagement and training, but adoption rates have been slow. Isnâ€™t it time for HR to â€œlevel upâ€ with gamification? Consider this. In January 2016, U.S. employment engagement rates remained sluggish at 32.5 percent, and 67.5 percent of employees were not engaged or were actively disengaged from their work. And the numbers on engagement have largely remained the same since 2012. Gamification might just hold the key to improving corporate culture, commitment,

Employee Engagement: Every Leader’s Imperative

I had to call my technical support contact last month about a simple billing question. When I finally got a live person, after enduring five minutes of Yanni’s greatest hits, her boredom just radiated through the phone. I guess I caught her mid-yawn. When I told her about my issue she asked me to wait while she pulled up my records. The silence between was broken only by her quiet sigh. Then I said, “Thank you for your help.” And something amazing happened – she warmed up. She said, “You’re welcome” and we quickly got to the bottom of my issue.

5 Habits Of Leaders Who Create Workspace Culture

When I was a student (once upon a time I thought I was to be a clinical psychologist), and broke, and spending time in New York City (also about the time I decided I was not to be a performing artist, choreographer for my career after spending years here doing so), I used to make extra money volunteering for psychological studies at Columbia University. I arrived one day and was told to wait in a small room for the study to start. The room started to fill up with other people, also waiting, until it was jammed and people were sitting

#WorkTrends Preview: Heart-Centered Leadership

Encouraging emotional connections between managers and employees is the key to better performance and improved employee engagement. Heart-Centered Leadership is centered on the concept that ethical leadership must start from within; it’s based on seven principles that promote trust, authenticity, caring and transparency. We are excited to talk with Susan Steinbrecher, leadership expert and co-author of Heart-Centered Leadership, on this week’s #WorkTrends show. We are looking forward to hearing her explanation of the seven principles and why this leadership philosophy has proven successful. Heart-Centered Leadership: Leading & Living Well Tune in to our LIVE online podcast Wednesday, May 18 — 1

5 Ways To Smash The Generational Stereotype Trap

Want to know a deep dark secret? There’s some truth in the stereotypes about Gen Xers, Gen Yers and Baby Boomers and other emerging generations. That’s why they became stereotypes in the first place. Want to know another truth? Stereotyping people is a career- and leadership growth-killer. To thrive in today’s competitive world of work, individuals and organizations need all the help they can get. Be it out of the mouth of babes or ancient wisdom. French playwright Moliere said it best, “I take my good where I find it.” We all know the labels. Gen Yers are lazy and entitled,

#WorkTrends Recap: Rethinking the Candidate Experience

In recent years, the recruitment process has become increasingly impersonal–for both candidates and recruiters–and it’s obvious both sides are less than satisfied with the experience. Several suggestions have been made to fix the issues but, more often than not, solutions overcomplicate the existing problems. On this week’s #WorkTrends show, we talked with Rebecca Macek, Director of Recruitment at CareerBuilder, about simple and effective tactics any business can use to get back to the best recruiting basics. Here are a few key points Rebecca shared: The worst thing a recruiter can do is forget that they are dealing with humans Candidates need

How Mobile Technology Impacts the HR Industry

We use mobile devices for nearly everything, from shopping and researching to scheduling our daily lives. In fact, more than 85 percent of U.S. Millennials own a smartphone and use it frequently throughout the day. Businesses are already optimizing their use of mobile technology to reach their customers, and to make their employees work lives more efficient, but there’s one area where they’re overlooking a huge opportunity: Human resources. Mobile Use for HR Needs Considering how tethered many of us are to our smartphones, it should come as no surprise that employees appreciate mobile access to information as much as customers. A recent

5 Attributes Of A World-Class Workforce

Thereâ€™s a technology-driven revolution happening in HR these days. Itâ€™s called self-service and it gives employees more power over their careers. In a nutshell, self-service gives people control over many functions that used to be handled by HR. With a private log-in, employees can now manage their own payroll and retirement plans, request time-off and other schedule adjustments, book on-line courses and other learning and development tools, engage and be social with colleagues on intranets, and just generally manage their own work lives to an extent that wasÂ previouslyÂ impossible. This leads to more engaged, empowered and productive teams. Self-service is a key

HR Technology: A Revolution For The World Of Work

HR (specifically talent management) is an art and a science. Achieving the right balance between the two should be the goal of every global leader. HR is an art because, at its heart, itâ€™s about people â€“ in all their messy glory. Itâ€™s about hiring the right people, and then inspiring and enabling them to deliver stellar performance. HR is a science because there are ways to measure talent, skills and compatibility that can take some of the guesswork out of the process and dramatically increase the odds of success. The science side of this equation is where you find most

Smart Leaders And The Power Of Collaboration

Collaboration is the keystone of leadership success. Donâ€™t believe me? Â Google â€œsequestrationâ€ anyone? These days we are seeing infantile exercises in acting out. Driven by rigid ideology, inflated egos, and a desire for revenge that put party above country, potentially serious damage was self-inflicted on our economy by a stubborn few. This is not a political rant as much as it is a leadership call to action. This is what leadership failure looks. And it happened because some people donâ€™t know how to â€“ or refuse to â€” collaborate. Thereâ€™s a silver lining: we have an object lesson in howÂ notÂ to run

#WorkTrends Preview: Rethinking the Candidate Experience and Making Better Hires

The recruitment process has become increasingly impersonalâ€“for both candidates and recruiters â€“ and itâ€™s obvious both sides arenâ€™t satisfied with the experience. The challenge? Each side has very different ideas about what makes the other side tickâ€“and what needs to be done to improve the experience. At its surface, finding a job or a new employee is a high-touch, personal, and interactive processâ€“much like dating. And akin to the dating world, over-complicating an interaction between two parties is not always the most effective approach to make a successful match. In fact, simplification is really where connections between candidates and employers begin

The New Rules Of Leadership

Spring is in the air, the days are getting longer and the crocuses are poking up their hopeful heads. Yet, these remain bleak times for too many job seekers, even leaders and managers with impressive resumes. The reason? The demands of a collaboration-based, talent-hungry, global, wired economy are evolving so quickly that success depends on nothing less than continuous learning. Fall behind and you may find yourself disqualified from the race. A while back, I had the eye-opening experience of reading a report written by the analyst Josh Bersin of Bersin by Deloitte, in which he made his predictions for the

Tweet Naked: Using Social Media to Build Your Brand

Social media is one of the best marketing tools available when it comes to building and a brand. However, people and companies are missing an opportunity to connect with consumers by not utilizing it effectively. Todayâ€™s #WorkTrends guest, Scott Levy, author of “Tweet Naked”, shared tips and tricks to help you get the most from your investment of both time and resources in social media marketing. Scott also touched on the brands that have mastered social media marketing and why we need to emulate what they do. Here are a few great takeaways shared by Scott: If you want to continue

How Big Data Drives HR in 2016

Big data has helped earn human resources a seat at the tableÂ (or so we hope, as we move beyond buzzword phrases)â€”an active part of the business planning process, supported by the deep insights and predictive analytics that this gold mine of information provides. But a lot of HR departments are still trying to figure out what to do with all that data. A report from Oxford Economics and SAP found that few HR departments are without business analytics altogether, but many still struggle to use what they have in a way that matters. Thereâ€™s good news for the coming year. As

5 Lessons In Learning And Leadership

Here in the Boston, Cambridge we are lucky, there’s a college around every corner. Harvard, M.I.T., Wellesley, Boston University, the list goes on and on. Our streets, libraries and local coffee shops are clogged with passionate students shelling out 40k (plus extras) a year for the privilege of earning those coveted diplomas. I hate to be a bubble-burster, but some of them may be overpaying. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge proponent of education, and a degree from a top-flight school still counts. But we’re seeing a sea change in the kind of learning the marketplace is demanding. That

Influencer Marketing Gone Wrong—Avoiding the Most Common Mistakes

Are you responsible for managing campaigns to roll out a new product or service? Or are you one of the essential cogs in the HR machine with a job that includes finding top talent? In either scenario (and in many others) influencer marketing may be exactly what you’re looking for. As I’ve said before, I am a brand champion for talent, and I think it’s important to understand how influencer marketing is reshaping the way businesses market and sell their products. I also think it’s important to understand what to and what NOT to do when you’re considering working with an

Let’s Redefine Employee Engagement in 2016

Disclosure: This post contains a quote and link to one of my clients, TinyPulse. If you feel like you’re in a rut at work, you aren’t alone. A recent Gallup poll found that 67 percent of workers aren’t engaged—or worse, they’re actively disengaged—a number that’s been pretty stagnant for the past 16 years. Somehow, despite the best of intentions, corporate culture has taken a misstep. That’s why it’s time to ditch those well-used annual engagement surveys and redefine how you view and measure employee engagement. Where The Traditional Approach to Employee Engagement Goes Wrong When a company gets employee engagement right,

The Devil At The Desk: Destructive Bosses

The onus is on leadership to improve employee engagement. It’s part of that magical workforce trifecta: a terrific candidate experience, a high level of workplace engagement, all resulting in retention. But what about when the leadership is toxic; when it’s more problem than solution? That’s a whole different ballgame. We’ve all dealt with a boss or manager that just somehow turns everything into a losing proposition: Never satisfied, or mysteriously withholding the recognition we know that we — or our colleagues — deserve. Or do we? A certain click of engagement involves a clarifying moment when we ditch that, “maybe it

The Secret Formula for Exemplary Leadership

As the landscape of business continues to evolve, we not only see changes outside the organization, we see changes inside the organization as well. That means different communication styles, different individual work style preferences, different motivators and incentives, different corporate cultures—and as a result, leadership styles must also evolve. In today’s corporate world, leaders who take a more relational approach to management find success. Why? Because the traditional world of work that existed in the past—largely dictatorial and autocratic, is no longer an option if your goal is on not only creating a great corporate culture, but also inspiring optimal productivity

Let’s Be Honest About Diversity: Age Matters Too

The conversation about diversity is finally opening up. We have a long way to go, but gender and ethnic equality are firmly on the agenda. From the law to the notoriously homogeneous tech industry, leaders are taking notice and working to create change. But there’s a gaping oversight in the conversation that’s too often ignored: In the push to improve diversity, we have to recognize that age matters, too. Nearly ten years ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg—then 23 years old—told a startup event: “Young people are just smarter… Young people lead simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may

Managing By Influence: How To Lead In The New Workforce

Influence is everywhere: we’re in the midst of an election displaying the best and worst. Have at it, talented people, enjoy the show. Meanwhile, from where I’m sitting, it’s a game-changing year in talent management, too. What we’ve been speculating about isn’t in future tense anymore. It’s now. So let’s talk about telling people what to do. If you winced at that phrase, I agree with you. Effective management, particularly in the realm of talent, is no longer about the ability to directly convey an order and have it spread and waterfall from Point A to Departments B through Z. And

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Meghan M. Biro

Meghan M. Biro

#WorkTrends Recap: Heart-Centered Leadership

HR: It’s Time to “Level Up” with Gamification

HR: Itâ€™s Time to â€œLevel Upâ€ with Gamification

Employee Engagement: Every Leader’s Imperative

5 Habits Of Leaders Who Create Workspace Culture

#WorkTrends Preview: Heart-Centered Leadership

5 Ways To Smash The Generational Stereotype Trap

#WorkTrends Recap: Rethinking the Candidate Experience

How Mobile Technology Impacts the HR Industry

5 Attributes Of A World-Class Workforce

HR Technology: A Revolution For The World Of Work

Smart Leaders And The Power Of Collaboration

#WorkTrends Preview: Rethinking the Candidate Experience and Making Better Hires

The New Rules Of Leadership

How Big Data Drives HR in 2016

Influencer Marketing Gone Wrong—Avoiding the Most Common Mistakes

Let’s Redefine Employee Engagement in 2016

The Devil At The Desk: Destructive Bosses

The Secret Formula for Exemplary Leadership

Let’s Be Honest About Diversity: Age Matters Too

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Meghan M. Biro

Meghan M. Biro

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