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Picture of TalentCulture Team

TalentCulture Team

We're a group of passionate thinkers, writers and commentators who love the world of work. Our team is always open for a discussion with the TalentCulture community about leadership, HR, organizational culture, technology and the human side of business.
Picture of TalentCulture Team

TalentCulture Team

We're a group of passionate thinkers, writers and commentators who love the world of work. Our team is always open for a discussion with the TalentCulture community about leadership, HR, organizational culture, technology and the human side of business.

Why Virtual Career Fairs Are a Hot Trend in Hiring

Joe Milner, the talent acquisition manager at educational publishing and assessment giant Pearson, was at a campus event in Northern California when a company executive broached the idea of bringing in some of the promising students to the company’s primary locations in other states for interviews. “We started to do the math on airfare, hotels, all that stuff, and it starts getting expensive,” Milner says. It’s a common problem. How to scale up and diversify entry-level hiring across multiple college campuses is a conundrum that is front and center for many organizations as the labor market continues to tighten. Recognizing this

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3 Ways Employee Benefits Will Change in the Next 5 Years

As the future of work continues to rapidly evolve and organizations across every industry battle for top talent, cookie-cutter benefits packages just aren’t going to be enough to attract the best and brightest workers. Smart organizations are turning to technology to reduce costs and deliver better benefits that lead to happier and more productive employees. Let’s take a look at how some of these trends are likely to unfold over the next few years. Predictive Data for Health and Wellness Wellness benefits have been on the upswing for several years now, but companies often blindly choose health and wellness programs based

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floating balloons

How to Hire Based on Values

A well-defined culture is the key to uniting your company and scaling to new heights, says author and high-growth company culture expert Brett Putter. Then why is hiring for culture fit so difficult? Putter, who is the founder and CEO of CultureGene, a culture consultancy helping prepare startup and high-growth companies for scale, says your company culture is essentially the way your organization works. That means as you develop your business and it grows, your culture will change with it — making hiring for culture fit a tricky, if not impossible, task. Hiring for well-defined values, on the other hand, is

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What Generation Z Expects from the Candidate Experience

Generation Z is moving into the workforce, causing more disruption in the job market. They’ve arrived during record-low unemployment and when the search for talent at all levels is extremely competitive. These workers, the oldest of whom were born in the mid-1990s, may be the first digital natives your company hires, and the role of technology during their candidate experience will be crucial. It’s also something that many employers get wrong. “When thinking about what Gen Z expects from the candidate experience, the first thing that comes to mind is ‘not much,’ ” says Kendall Hill, co-founder of Job Society. “I

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time peices

How Knowledge Workers Really Spend Their Time

Despite the lip service organizations give to reducing productivity-killing emails and unnecessary meetings to help workers focus on what matters, the problem of workplace distraction may be getting worse. U.S. workers say they spend only 40 percent of their workday on their primary tasks, and that they’re often distracted by emails, meetings and administrative tasks, according to the fascinating 2019 The State of Work report released by Workfront, a provider of cloud-based work management solutions. According to the survey, emails and pointless meetings topped the list of things that keep knowledge workers from getting work done. And 63 percent of respondents

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how to manage a remote team

How to Manage a Remote Team

The age of everyone physically commuting to work is slowly coming to a close. Instead, employees are now assuming that remote work will constitute at least some of their workdays. But what about teams made up solely of remote workers? Studies have shown that remote workers can be happier and more productive. And with increases in HR tech programs that aim to support remote teams, many companies — in the U.S. and worldwide — are choosing to go office-free because they see the benefits. Here’s how some people and some companies are managing this no-longer-uncommon work setup. Company Culture and Creativity

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globe

The Future of Work Is Global: 3 Tips for Hiring a Global Team

As they look for solutions to the talent crunch, U.S. employers increasingly are turning to international labor pools to fill critical workforce needs — even as political uncertainty surrounding immigration continues to grow. A report released last year by immigration services firm Envoy said that most U.S. organizations were still actively sourcing foreign talent. The survey found that about 70 percent of employers indicated that having a global workforce was very or extremely important to their talent strategy. However, the Trump administration has imposed tighter restrictions on individual visa applications, including the popular H-1B program that allows U.S. employers to temporarily

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Colleges Aren’t Preparing Students for Work– What Employers Should Do

Danny Iny dropped out of school at 15 to start a business. He also got an MBA at a top business school in Canada. Guess which decision he considers the mistake? “My own experience was that quitting school was a great choice. I had a ton of opportunities, experimented with things that I never otherwise would have been able to,” says Iny, author of “Leveraged Learning: How the Disruption of Education Helps Lifelong Learners, and Experts with Something to Teach.” “The MBA was a huge waste of time and money, and I can’t get that time or that money back.” Research

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5 Questions Hiring Managers Should be Asking About Modern Personality Tests

Charles Schwab CEO Walt Bettinger has said one of his methods for finding the right job candidate is to arrive early for a breakfast interview and ask the restaurant manager to purposely make a mistake with the candidate’s order. He says the tactic lets him see how the potential hire reacts to conflict and adversity. Of course, hiring managers and human resources professionals don’t have the time to take every candidate out for breakfast, so they have to find other ways to determine whether she or he is the right fit, not only in professional competency but in the organization’s culture

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The Future of Recruitment: How Manufacturers Are Evolving to Recruit and Engage New Talent

How Manufacturers Are Evolving to Recruit and Engage New Talent

While smart companies of all types are investing more resources in worker engagement and development than ever, many manufacturers remain a step behind. In fact, Lisa Ryan, an employee engagement and retention expert with a background in the manufacturing and welding industries, says she still encounters manufacturers who are skeptical about the value of these worker-friendly concepts. “In some places there is this mentality of, ‘The guys come to work, why should I thank them for doing their job?’ — but I’m seeing a slow change,” Ryan says. “It’s starting, but it’s not as fast as other industries. You can connect

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downside open offices

The Downside of Open-Concept Offices

Once touted as a powerful tool to encourage collaboration and creativity, cubicle-free open workplaces have taken a hit in the business world as research indicates that they often discourage face-to-face interactions and harm productivity. “The neuroscience is becoming very clear: Open floor plans are not good,” says Jonathan Denn, “chief thinking partner” at Drumbeat Productivity in Dennis, Massachusetts. “Walking for five minutes an hour is good, and having a door you can close for 90 minutes twice a day is good.” Denn, the author of “Drumbeat Business Productivity Playbook: How to Beat Goals and Disorganization,” has been preaching the necessity of

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HR tech stack

How to Build a Better HR Tech Stack

With the HR tech marketplace expanding at record pace and offering innovative solutions for every part of the talent life cycle, it’s easier than ever for organizations to implement meaningful HR transformations. “With the availability of so many cutting-edge tools and apps, HR teams can easily build an impressive tech stack to meet the 360-degree needs of employees,” says Mike Hicks of Igloo Software, a Canadian-based company that develops online communities and social software for businesses. “Identifying the leading applications used to collaborate, engage and inform employees will lead to greater innovation down the line.” But with so many new offerings,

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talent management

Talent Management Is Dead; Long Live Employee Experience

Human resources is having a moment. OK, let’s be honest. HR has been having a moment for a while now. Not a good moment, per se, but not a bad one either. It’s undergoing some pretty big changes. It’s no longer busy only pushing papers and filing promotions; it’s also being asked to do more work. Bigger work. Talent Management Is Dead The war for talent created an atmosphere of competition. It’s no longer enough to simply staff your organization. Talented people know their value and want a bigger buy-in. They don’t just want a job — they want to be

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How to Help Employees Who Are Grieving

Mindy Corporon was CEO of a successful wealth management firm, traveling around the country meeting with clients, garnering recognition as a high-profile woman in finance and mentoring emerging leaders — all while raising two boys. Everything changed on April 13, 2014, when her father and oldest son were murdered by a white supremacist in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas. The tragedy would eventually prompt her to take action to spread kindness, encourage productive interfaith dialogue and promote healing in the workplace. Corporon started the Faith Always Wins Foundation and organized an annual community event,

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Take a Peek at 3 Real Corporate Well-Being Programs That Work (1)

Take a Peek at 3 Real Corporate Well-Being Programs That Work

Companies are investing more resources in creative wellness programs. Why? The evidence is mounting that the physical and emotional well-being of workers is intrinsically tied to the performance of organizations of all sizes. Still, statistics suggest there’s much room for growth. The U.S. Labor Department says only 39 percent of private industry workers had access to wellness benefits in 2017, although the number was 55 percent when only professional jobs were considered. Experts say the companies that are investing in employee wellness are getting more creative and adopting new technologies and approaches as they seek better ways to help their workers

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building community HR

Community! Why It Matters and How to Build One Around Your Brand

Your customers are bombarded by messages from marketers. Every brand is trying to reach them, connect with them and sell to them. The same goes for your employees — there’s no shortage of companies trying to attract the best talent through competitive pay, positive culture and unique benefits. Instead, smart leaders are looking for more sustainable, authentic ways to connect with customers and employees — like building community. Why Community Matters More Than Ever The concept of community isn’t new. “Communities, in the traditional sense, have been important for a very long time — from traditional communities like a church to

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people analytics Microsoft

Microsoft Reveals the Secret Sauce in the Digital Transformation of HR

With unemployment at a historic low, companies are grappling for ways to attract and manage workers, and HR’s role has never been more important. People analytics could revolutionize the way HR thinks about talent and overcomes those people challenges. We asked someone who knows a lot about talent and technology how she’s using people analytics to drive better business outcomes. Dawn Klinghoffer is general manager of HR business insights at Microsoft, and she shared why data is so important to the HR function. How Microsoft Uses People Data to Answer Questions Klinghoffer has been working in people analytics at Microsoft for

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small business more diverse

How the Small-Business Community Is Becoming More Diverse

The small business community appears to be growing more diverse, according to a new survey by BizBuySell, an online marketplace for buying and selling small businesses. BizBuySell’s president, Bob House, says there are demographic shifts between the current generation of business owners and the next generation of owners (the would-be business buyers). “Both groups (owners and buyers) skew white and male at pretty consistent levels, although there are more women in the buyer group,” House says. There are also more millennials in the buyer segment. “There’s also more more ethnic diversity as well, with increases in the number of buyers who

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open workspace

Do Open Offices Kill Collaboration?

Open workspaces may actually decrease face-to-face interactions, according to a new study by Harvard researchers on how open workspaces affect human collaboration. In the study, employees wore sociometric badges that measured their actions. The findings showed that in open workspaces, face-to-face interactions decreased by about 70 percent, while electronic interactions increased. The point of open offices is to remove barriers and foster a collaborative environment, but does all that open space actually produce the opposite effect? Defining Open Office Spaces Not everyone is convinced you need to rush to build walls in your open offices based on these findings. “I hate

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Inclusion

How to Intentionally Create a More Inclusive Culture

Inclusion is a popular buzzword, but are companies doing more than just paying lip service to the idea? Some organizations truly want to create an inclusive culture, but many leaders don’t fully understand what that entails. If you’re working on making your workplace more inclusive, consider these four steps. Define an Inclusive Culture There’s some confusion regarding the definition of an inclusive culture. Just because your company has some racial and gender diversity doesn’t mean you can check the inclusion box. “In an inclusive culture, everyone has the opportunity to do their best work no matter who they are, what they

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Career

5 Ugly Myths About Changing Career in Your 30s

Traditionally, being in your 20s is seen as a time to be footloose and fancy free, to conclude your education, to explore your career options and to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life. But by the time you turn 30, it’s generally expected that you’ll be working on ways to advance on your chosen career path. However, if you find in your 30s that your career isn’t fulfilling, you don’t have to spend the rest of your life dreading the sound of your alarm clock — there’s still time to shift gears and go

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summer productivity

How to Stay Productive, Even During the Summer

Research shows that kids experience a “summer slump.” When they’re out of school, they’re not actively focused on learning, and their brains check out. But they’re not the only ones susceptible to summer slumps. Adults seem to channel their inner child during the summer, making it hard for them to be productive at work. A 2012 study by Captivate Network reveals that workplace productivity drops 20%, workers are 45% more distracted, and it takes 13% longer to complete projects in the summer. Also, 53% of workers who leave early on Friday report a decline in productivity. People often work longer Monday

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employee communication during vacation

Should Your Employees Have to Check in With the Office During Summer Vacation?

Your business doesn’t stop when an employee goes on vacation. There are still products and services that need to be sold, questions that need to be answered and day-to-day tasks that need to be handled. But when employees are on vacation, should business stop for them? That’s the question we posed to Debra Corey, corporate HR director of Reward Gateway and co-author of “Build it: The Rebel Playbook for World-Class Employee Engagement.” Corey shared her operating instructions for communicating with employees while they’re on vacation. “Should” Is the Operative Word Research reveals that employees are already thinking about work when they’re

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What Every Leader Needs to Know About Retaining Millennials

What Every Leader Needs to Know About Retaining Millennials

By 2025, millennials will make up 75 percent of the global workforce. While it’s tough to assign broad characteristics to an entire generation, millennials are generally known to be technically savvy and focused on growth, looking for new opportunities and frequent feedback. So it’s no surprise that traditional management styles fall flat for millennials. For employers, updating management practices isn’t just a nice thing to do — it’s absolutely necessary in order to develop and retain the next generation of leaders. Here are three important factors that employers should consider in order to retain millennial talent. Rethink Feedback Based on a

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soft skills

What Soft Skills Do Employers Want?

Most jobs have specific requirements. But beyond technical skills, employees also need more general soft skills to get the job done. According to the Job Outlook 2018 Survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, problem-solving skills and the ability to work in a team are the top two soft skills that employers seek in job candidates, followed by written communication and leadership skills. Why do companies rank these skills so highly? Let’s take a closer look at the most important soft skills. Problem-Solving We hire people to solve problems, so it’s no surprise that problem-solving is at the top

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