Meghan M. Biro, Author at TalentCulture

Think Like a Workplace Futurist

In the first quarter of 2015, Millennials finally overtook Generation X as the largest cohort in the workplace — there are more than 53.5 million of them working today. Their massive size and economic power has had marketers and business leaders tracking the “Millennial mindset” for years. And yet, nipping at their heels, here comes Generation Z, the oldest of who are just starting to come of age. The U.S. Census estimates that Generation Z will include close to 80 million members — a number that eclipses the conversation-dominating Millennials. It’s time to stop thinking in terms of generations; such thinking

#TChat Recap: Why the Best Recruitment Means Smarter Workforce Marketing

Last week we talked about how to create the ultimate hiring experience; this week we discussed why the best recruitment means smarter workforce marketing. Today’s hiring economy is highly complex and competitive and finding top talent is harder than ever. In fact, attracting candidates and retaining current employees is a lot like attracting and retaining customers. Abby Euler, Talent Acquisition Evangelist at IBM Smarter Workforce, joined us and shared a wealth of wisdom, sharing a wide variety of insights on technology, branding, recruiting and more. It was a lively #TChat podcast and Twitter conversation on a topic that’s very relevant to

Performance Reviews are Dead: Use Technology to Develop Employees

If the thought of performance reviews makes you cringe, you aren’t alone. Research supports the fact that performance reviews are pretty much universally viewed as ineffective. So it generated a lot of attention, if not a ton of surprise, when GE—recently named by Forbes as the ninth largest company in the world —announced it was scrapping annual performance reviews in favor of more frequent engagement with employees. HR professionals, recruiters, and organizational change experts have been forecasting the demise of the performance review for years, not just because research says we don’t like them, but because they’re all but irrelevant for

4 Ways To Be A More Resilient Leader

Sundays are “Breakfast with Music Time” (Could be Arcade Fire, or Keith Urban, or Tamar Braxton, or Mogwai, or any variety of other eclectic stuff I listen to every day, but those are stories for another day). This week I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to be a resilient person, a resilient leader. Sunday morning, there was Ringo from the Beatles, belting away “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends”. What song could be a better anthem for resiliency? Why resiliency? Last year I wrote about employer brand and candidate experience. Subsequent conversations with friends, family

Don't Believe The Hype: Unlabeling Millennials

Ever since the CoBies — Google’s multidirectional Conference Bikes that transform going for lunch into a team-building exercise — the image of millennials in the workplace has turned into a kind of perpetual second-guessing. So young, so self-possessed, so smart, so not into phone calls! So what else do they want? This kind of approach is both fascinating and frustrating to HR in general and thought leaders especially (Ahem). It’s also beside the point. I’m not one to place labels on people. The “new generation” customarily befuddles the older; the older generation usually wants to take it upon themselves to school

#TChat Preview: Why the Best Recruitment Means Smarter Workforce Marketing

The TalentCulture #TChat Show is back live on Wednesday, January 13, 2015, from 1-2 pm ET (10-11 am PT). Last week we talked about how to create the ultimate hiring experience, and on January 13 we will talk about why the best recruitment means smarter workforce marketing. Today’s hiring economy is highly complex and competitive and finding top talent is harder than ever. In fact, attracting candidates and retaining current employees is a lot like attracting and retaining customers. Candidates want to be valued and have an engaging and transparent experience and how you treat them has a direct impact on

The Rise Of Marketing And Transparency In Recruitment

As we dive into the new year, top of mind for a lot of us are questions of need and want. One of which is the need for marketing and transparency in recruitment. And, if we could have anything we wanted in terms of HR Tech, what would it be? To better push employee engagement — with some kind of magical Big Brother-like metrics that ping us when employees start to lose interest? To finally relegate those creaky file cabinets in Storeroom B to things of the past, by allowing us agile and responsible access to the Cloud? What about big picture

#TChat Recap: How To Create The Ultimate Hiring Experience

This week the TalentCulture community talked with writer and filmmaker Heath Padgett about how to create the ultimate hiring experience. Heath has a very interesting story and it made for a great jumpstart to 2016. While still figuring out what he wanted to do with his life, Heath Padgett quit his software sales job and convinced his new bride to hit the road on their 2014 honeymoon and work a different job in all 50 U.S. states. They called their quest Hourly America and they filmed the entire journey for a documentary that will be released later this year. During his

How the Biggest Trends of 2015 Have Impacted HR and Recruitment

It’s safe to say that 2015 truly became “the year of digital technology.” Yes, we’ve seen a rapid evolution in technology over the last decade or so, but 2015 was definitely the year where those advancements made a huge impact on the workforce, especially when it comes to HR and recruitment. According to the latest Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, the Millennial workforce (adults ages 18 to 34) is close to 54 million strong and rising, surpassing the Boomers in 2014, and this year toppling Gen X as the biggest cohort in our modern labor force. This

The Myths and Reality of the Workplace Generational Divide

There’s no dearth of information about the workplace generational divide–in fact, you’ve no doubt seen countless articles, blog posts, whitepapers, and case studies about how millennials are ‘taking over’ or altering the American workplace. While there’s some truth to that, there are many myths as well. Among the myths: Millennials need constant attention, lack decorum, and don’t seem to to know how to navigate basic tasks. There’s no question that a generation 80 million strong will make an impact on work culture, and marketers are paying close attention to them because they will control a vast portion of American wealth in

Maintaining Workplace Culture with Free-Range Employees

Did you know that one in three Americans currently engage in freelance work? That’s almost 54 million people, and that number is expected to rise significantly by 2020. Those freelancers, often called “free-range employees” are in many respects the future of work. And smart companies are focused on creating a workplace culture that can adapt to a workforce comprised of not only full time employees, but a cadre of freelance talent as well. So what gives? Why is there such a large increase in freelancing? In part, the answer lies in a changing work culture. Technology aside, the desire for increased

Using Data to Link Talent Decisions to Business (Webinar)

The HR industry talks a lot about analytics and data. Yet are we using data to link talent decisions to business? Not as much as we could be. There are many things to measure and a whole host of ways to measure them. The connection between the people in our organizations and the success of the business are so intertwined that it’s hard to believe that we ever separated the two. But even with powerful data readily available, are the majority of organizations using applicable information to their advantage? Maybe not. Are most HR departments just skimming the top of the

4 Ways To Cure Meeting Nausea

In terms of talent management, the term “meeting” may be the antidote to all the things we’re trying to improve. I’m talking about engagement, retention, productivity, ownership, collaboration. Is there even one of us who hasn’t been reduced to a state of what a waste of my time in at least one meeting in the past month? An MIT study on meetings found that we hold some 11 million meetings during one typical workday in the U.S. alone. And the next time you’re doing that surreptitious under-the-desk Googling on your smartphone, search for the annual “time wasted at work” survey. In

5 Powerful Career Drivers For The Future of Work

Have you come up with any worthy New Years’ resolutions yet? Are they already broken? If not, or if so, relax and stay positive. It’s never too late to make a few career-focused resolutions. I’ll be bold and propose that 2016 be the year to resolve to take charge of your career, your destiny and your life story. If it sounds like a real stretch, it is. I’m encouraging everyone to take action. Take heart, though – like all resolutions it’s a process, a combination of problem identification, ideas/ideation, search for solutions, and actions. Resolutions aren’t absolutely binding, so it’s not

The Real Millennial Challenge: The Skills Gap

A recent study by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) (link to study) found that U.S. Millennials lag behind their global counterparts in a way that creates real on-the-job problems for them, their colleagues and teammates, and managers: They show a genuine lack of hard and soft skills. According to the ETS Report, U.S. Millennials “…consistently score below many of their international peers in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments. Equally troubling is that these findings represent a decrease in literacy and numeracy skills when compared to results from previous years of U.S. adult surveys.” In real terms, this means

Facebook: When Trust Is Exploited

In 2014, Facebook came under fire after a study was published revealing that the social network was doing research on some users that use its platform. It was not only ugly the way in which Facebook conducted the research, but the assumptions the researchers made about the average user’s willingness to be emotionally manipulated were chilling. In the study, “Experimental Evidence Of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks”, researchers Adam Kramer, Jamie Guillory and Jeffrey Hancock manipulated the news feeds of nearly 700,000 Facebook users. The goal was to see if manipulating news feeds could lead to what the researchers termed

Dealing With Feelings: Be An Emotionally-Aware Leader

A leader can fall too easily into the trap of seeing the people who work for them as employees first and people second. Yet, it’s the people who determines whether or not your company will be successful. How can leaders better understand what drives employees and how to deal with their feelings? It isn’t easy but the payoff can be huge. Being emotionally aware lets you balance your workforce to meet new challenges, get day-to-day work done and innovate. Plus, emotionally-aware leaders build engagement with employees. In turn, these employees are more committed to the organization, deliver better results, please customers

Leadership: It's All In Your Head

We call it vision when it works. But what possessed the leadership of Volkswagen to systematically falsify emissions reports? What drives a magnate with unruly hair (so much so that it has its own meme) to toss his pompadour in the ring and make a loud bid for the presidency? Why would the CEO of a BigPharma company think a five thousand percent price hike on a medication was justifiable? Is it really the same impulse that prompts a smiling, trailer-dwelling CEO to transform his online retail site into a model of the workplace 3.0? I’m of course referring to Tony

Transparency Is the Key to Recruiting Young Talent

When you were searching for jobs in the early days of your career, was “transparency” something that even crossed your mind? For many of us, the whole process was a dance–an art form where both the candidate and the recruiter put their game face on and sold themselves. The job search has changed, and if you’re still trying to impress candidates with a sales pitch that’s anything less than 100-percent authentic, you will fail. Millennials expect transparency, and can spot a fraud pretty quickly. In June at a Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference, one takeaway was obvious: “Gen Y values authenticity, transparency

#TChat Recap: The Power of Relationships from Bedroom to Boardroom

Most of us understand that trust is the one of the most important elements of strong relationships at home and at work. But how are we fostering trust in organizations today? This week, The TalentCulture community talked about the power of relationships with our guest, Tamara McCleary, an internationally recognized expert on relationships and conscious business. The community had a lively discussion about building trustworthy relationships and their role in workplace culture. Tamara gave us all a lot to think about. The TalentCulture community was rocking and rolling with ideas about how we can create more trustworthy work environments, and how

Addressing Your Employees’ Holiday Stress

It’s that time of year again: Fourth quarter results are almost finalized, companies are wrapping up contracts, evaluating the successes of the past year, and developing strategic plans for the coming year. This means it’s a busy time for your employees. When you add to the equation busy social calendars, kids getting out of school for holidays (and working parents scrambling as a result), along with holiday financial commitments—stress levels for your employees inevitably rise. What can you do as an employer, a manager, or even an HR pro, to help ease that holiday stress? Let’s discuss. One study in the

Revamping The Status Quo In 2015: 4 Trends In HR Technology

What have we seen as the hot trends in HR technology this year? It’s a rhetorical question: put another way: what aren’t the trends? HR technology in itself, having profoundly changed the game, is the hot trend: it’s heated up our field in ways that allow us to leverage talent on an entirely different level, regardless of the size or scope of an organization and irrespective of the end goals, from short-term to future-casting. We saw further evidence of just how far we’ve come in October, during the HR Technology Conference and Exposition in Las Vegas. Once we might have all discussed the concept of

The 2 Things Brands Must Do to Edge Out the Competition

We all choose to trust someone: our recruiter, our employer, our friends and family and the loosely connected peer groups we have built online. Besides these closely held and trusted relationships, we also look to online influencers – everything from shopping sites and corporate websites to journalists and columnists to sites like Yelp, Angie’s List and Care.com – as credible and reliable sources. But do we trust these new influencers or do they merely exist to replace the role of advertisers, recruiters and newspapers? “Influencer” is a role, a responsibility and a form of advocacy — both from an individual’s and

#TChat Preview: The Power of Relationships from Bedroom to Boardroom

The TalentCulture #TChat Show is back live on Wednesday, December 16, 2015, from 1-2 pm ET (10-11 am PT). Last week we talked about a few of our favorite #TChat shows, and this week we’re going to talk about the power of relationships—from the bedroom to the boardroom! One of the most critical elements of any relationship is trust. Couples who build a strong sense of trust are happier than those who don’t. Following the same concept, people in trustworthy work relationships have proven to be more productive and have better connections with their co-workers. Business leaders, including HR, must inspire

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Meghan M. Biro

Meghan M. Biro

Think Like a Workplace Futurist

#TChat Recap: Why the Best Recruitment Means Smarter Workforce Marketing

Performance Reviews are Dead: Use Technology to Develop Employees

4 Ways To Be A More Resilient Leader

Don't Believe The Hype: Unlabeling Millennials

#TChat Preview: Why the Best Recruitment Means Smarter Workforce Marketing

The Rise Of Marketing And Transparency In Recruitment

#TChat Recap: How To Create The Ultimate Hiring Experience

How the Biggest Trends of 2015 Have Impacted HR and Recruitment

The Myths and Reality of the Workplace Generational Divide

Maintaining Workplace Culture with Free-Range Employees

Using Data to Link Talent Decisions to Business (Webinar)

4 Ways To Cure Meeting Nausea

The Real Millennial Challenge: The Skills Gap

Facebook: When Trust Is Exploited

Dealing With Feelings: Be An Emotionally-Aware Leader

Leadership: It's All In Your Head

Transparency Is the Key to Recruiting Young Talent

#TChat Recap: The Power of Relationships from Bedroom to Boardroom

Addressing Your Employees’ Holiday Stress

Revamping The Status Quo In 2015: 4 Trends In HR Technology

The 2 Things Brands Must Do to Edge Out the Competition

#TChat Preview: The Power of Relationships from Bedroom to Boardroom

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Meghan M. Biro

Meghan M. Biro

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