Employee Experience by the Numbers Top 5 Concerns

Employee Experience by the Numbers: Top 5 Concerns

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In recent years, employee experience has taken center stage as a primary indicator of organizational success. As a result, HR and business leaders increasingly want to understand which employee experience concerns are top of mind for today’s workforce.

Gone are the days when a stable job with a reasonable salary was the only key to employee satisfaction and retention. Now, employers recognize that a more holistic approach yields numerous benefits. For example:

  • Satisfied employees tend to be more productive, innovative, and loyal.
  • Employees who are committed and engaged, become powerful company advocates, not just internally, but among public circles, as well. This kind of support leads to a more positive employer brand.
  • A strong employee experience helps attract and retain top performers.

Recently, we conducted a survey to explore today’s biggest employee experience concerns and their underlying factors. Based on input from more than 10,000 employees at nearly 100 technology companies, this employee experience report paints a comprehensive picture of how people feel about their jobs and work environments.

Whether you’re an HR professional seeking to improve your organization’s talent strategy or a business leader aiming to provide a more fulfilling work environment, these findings can help you drive positive change. Specifically, the survey revealed 5 issues that deserve more attention…

Top 5 Employee Experience Concerns in 2023

1. Compensation is Lacking

Fair, competitive salaries are essential to attract and retain top talent. However, many organizations don’t seem to meet expectations. In fact, 46% of survey participants told us they deserve a salary increase.

If financial constraints make it difficult to offer direct salary increases, creative alternatives may fill the gap. Strategies like these may help:

  • Expand Benefits Choices

    Adding more options can make a significant difference. For instance, practical perks such as meal vouchers, childcare discounts, and transportation subsidies are highly appealing to some staff members. Diverse choices add flexibility to your compensation framework while helping more employees feel valued and supported.

  • Emphasize Intangible Benefits

    Quality of life is deeply important to many employees. You can appeal to their interests with solutions that address post-pandemic work-life challenges. For instance, develop a formal remote work or hybrid work program, try implementing a 4-day workweek or flexible work schedule, or offer extra vacation time as a company-wide bonus option.

  • Manage Private Healthcare Coverage More Effectively

    Healthcare coverage is the cornerstone of a holistic compensation package. It promotes employee health and wellbeing, while serving as an attractive incentive for job candidates. However, as healthcare costs continue to rise, access to quality care is at risk. Negotiating better insurance packages on behalf of your staff can position your company as an industry leader.

  • Facilitate Training Scholarships

    Many employees recognize the value of continuous learning and skill development. Adding subsidies for professional development and continuing education to your compensation scheme encourages professional growth while preparing team members for the future of work.

  • Encourage Performance-Based Bonuses

    Does your organization have a well-defined bonus program? Fair, equitable financial incentives are a dynamic mechanism that motivates people and reinforces achievement. By linking goals to rewards, you inspire employees to excel while advancing your organization’s agenda.

In summary, salary remains a critical concern. However, because employee experience is complex, a multifaceted compensation strategy makes sense. Think of creative ways to circumvent internal constraints so you can keep your workforce motivated, satisfied, and engaged.

2. Stress is Overwhelming

Persistent stress erodes physical and psychological wellbeing. As a result, unrelenting work stress drains employee motivation, productivity, engagement, and performance.

Remarkably, 33% of employees told us they suffer from work-related stress. Employers can’t afford to ignore this issue. But what actions are helpful?

  • Invest in Wellness of All Types

    Employee wellbeing touches all facets of life, including mental, physical, emotional, financial, social health, and beyond. Ideally, all these dimensions work together to support people throughout their professional lives. By offering a variety of wellness programs, you can help employees build the strength and resilience they need to adjust and move through personal and professional challenges.

  • Promote Awareness and Education

    If people don’t understand what causes work stress, they’re likely to struggle. Raising awareness about warning signs and skills to deal with these challenges helps people act on their own behalf. For instance, you can offer classes and resources about mindfulness and stress reduction, as well as time management, communication, and delegation techniques. By developing skills like these, employees learn how to recognize and respond to factors that trigger stress.

  • Establish Channels for Open Dialogue

    Healthy cultures foster open communication. This includes opportunities to acknowledge employee issues and actively address those concerns. Collaborative conversations about stress and its causes not only lead to better solutions but also strengthen the bonds between employees and the organization.

The ramifications of chronic stress transcend the individual experience, casting a shadow over workforce productivity and morale. By fostering a culture of wellness, you can ease stress for individuals and create an environment where employees thrive.

3. Work-Life Balance Doesn’t Exist

Healthy work-life integration drives employee commitment, motivation, and performance. At the same time, it relieves work stress, which can increase job satisfaction.

Our survey revealed that 26% of employees think work encroaches on their personal life. That’s not ideal. How can employers reduce this statistic?

  • Commit to Flexible Work Solutions

    There are many viable possibilities. Flextime, remote or hybrid work models, and 4-day workweeks can help steer employees toward a more harmonious work-life coexistence.

As heated return-to-office debate continues, post-pandemic organizations have reached a critical crossroads. Standard work models may seem “safe,” but many employees no longer think they’re realistic.

In terms of work-life balance, flexibility helps people thrive professionally without compromising personal priorities. This can reduce work stress and elevate job satisfaction. If your company is still on the fence about return-to-work mandates, carefully weigh the potential consequences of ignoring work-life balance.

4. Employers Impose Too Many Needless Rules

Managing internal mandates consumes valuable time. Even worse, they can undermine your team’s ability to perform at its best. At least this is what we heard from 25% of employees who say their company enforces too many rules that serve no purpose.

Clearly, this gap needs attention. A possible solution is to involve employees in decisions about policies and procedures. By actively seeking input, you’re more likely to uncover redundant or needless standards. In addition, you can confirm which rules are crucial to operational excellence and gain broader support for enforcement.

When streamlining processes, constructive feedback is a powerful tool. It can help improve organizational efficiency. At the same time, it cultivates a sense of ownership among employees, which can foster a culture of continuous improvement.

5. Recognition is in Short Supply

When people aren’t recognized enough for their effort and results, their motivation and satisfaction levels suffer. And unfortunately, too many employers are missing the mark. In fact, 31% of respondents told us they prefer more frequent recognition.

Overcoming this challenge requires proactive measures. One strategy is to develop a formal process that encourages managers to share more meaningful recognition on a more consistent basis.

For example, programs that incorporate gamification techniques have proven highly effective. Some organizations also include peer recognition in their programs. This adds a dimension of mutual appreciation while reinforcing a sense of teamwork and camaraderie.

By prioritizing interpersonal workplace dynamics, recognition programs can boost morale and strengthen organization-wide engagement and performance.

Employee Experience Concerns Matter

Today’s post-pandemic workplace is shifting in multiple ways. Employee expectations and career aspirations are changing rapidly. It’s essential for companies to understand and respect these dynamics.

As you consider the 5 employee experience concerns we’ve outlined, what should you keep in mind? Organizations that prioritize these issues and respond thoughtfully are better equipped to attract and retain talent. Also, they’re creating cultures that thrive on adaptability, appreciation, and wellbeing. In short, they’re preparing now for continued success.

If you build your workplace on this foundation, you can look forward to being much more successful in the years ahead, as well.

Organizational Transparency is the New Normal - How Open Are You?

Organizational Transparency is the New Normal: How Open Are You?

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Imagine this: You’re attending one of your company’s senior staff meetings. The CEO nods and smiles when one executive shares a KPI chart with an upward-trending graph. Clearly, the CEO appreciates seeing how performance is improving. It confirms the management team’s commitment to excellence and its ability to deliver. But these results don’t really surprise anyone. That’s because your company embraces organizational transparency.

In today’s complex business landscape, a culture of transparency is not just a nice-to-have option — it’s a strategic necessity. Why? Because open communication is a catalyst for engagement, accountability, and success at all levels of a company.

What Makes Transparency Tick?

CEOs never aim for mediocrity. They want teams that are highly motivated, engaged, and productive. This is why organizational transparency is so powerful.

Leaders who champion open communication ignite employee trust, commitment, and motivation. In transparent cultures, success isn’t just about hitting the numbers. It’s about creating an environment where people are all in — where team members know they matter and their efforts make a valuable difference.

Who’s Responsible for Organizational Transparency?

The answer to this question isn’t always clear. Certainly, openness starts at the top. But kickstarting the process and keeping it moving requires a partnership between senior leaders and People Operations.

C-suite leaders bring the company vision and goals into focus, while People Ops teams conduct daily tasks that turn that vision into a reality. Their responsibilities include onboarding new hires, managing the employee experience, and supporting workforce growth and success — all efforts that strengthen an organization’s backbone.

By working together, executives and People Ops can keep employees in the know, so their mindset and contributions align with the company’s vision, values, and objectives.

3 Ways to Enable Organizational Transparency

Here’s how People Ops can partner effectively with the C-suite to foster a transparent work environment:

1. Give Employees a Voice

A culture that welcomes feedback is a cornerstone of transparency. Employees deserve a say in how their organization operates, and leaders can promote this behavior by proactively seeking input.

Regularly inviting employees to express their insights, ideas, and opinions creates an environment where communication is accepted as a norm. By working hand-in-hand with executives, People Ops can develop, promote, and manage multiple feedback channels — both open and anonymous.

For example, you can conduct periodic focus groups or town hall forums with employees who are willing to participate in an open dialogue. And for those who prefer confidentiality, you can initiate private interviews and 1:1 conversations.

Also, to calibrate broader sentiment, insights, and trends, you can conduct periodic anonymous pulse surveys and employee net promoter score assessments.

When mapping a strategy, it’s worth noting that 47% of employees aren’t totally honest when sharing feedback with HR. But 56% of those employees are more likely to be honest when their anonymity is assured.

Although managing employee feedback channels may seem complicated, it’s worth the effort. For instance, organizations that listen and act on these findings are 3x more likely to reach their financial targets.

In addition, when you’re receptive to feedback, you build a sense of connection and trust across the organization. Ultimately, this can elevate workforce wellbeing by reducing stress, disengagement, and even burnout.

Bottom line — it pays to offer various feedback options and keep employees in the loop about how you’re responding to their concerns.

2. Share Information Quickly and Consistently

It’s essential for leaders and People Ops to agree on how to treat sensitive company information. Striking the right balance between transparency and confidentiality prevents misunderstandings. This is especially important when communicating about decisions or events that directly affect employees — for instance, when you’re dealing with layoffs, salary changes, or restructuring plans.

Leaders who care about transparency insist on timely, accurate communication. This preserves trust and positions your company as a reliable source.

For example, publishing pay scales and compensation guidelines helps avoid ambiguity and clarifies career advancement paths. Actually, pay transparency laws already cover more than 25% of the U.S. workforce — and this figure could soon rise to 50%. But this is just one reason why transparency is essential in the modern workplace.

3. Make Company Information Accessible

Ready access to information is critical for the kind of awareness and understanding a cohesive culture needs. Partially informed employees can’t be expected to contribute fully to an organization’s success. This is why a variety of communication channels can help you reach team members where they’re at and keep them up-to-date.

Platforms such as town halls, executive “Ask Me Anything” sessions, online chat forums, and email newsletters can play a pivotal role by adding context to announcements about company priorities, programs, and performance. In addition, these channels give employees an opportunity to share direct feedback with decision-makers and discuss their thoughts with peers.

To take full advantage of these channels, you’ll want to provide clear, consistent messaging across the board. Using an integrated People Ops platform, you can gather, track, and analyze internal communications activity data, and map it to broader organizational objectives.

4. Let Go of Lazy Labels

Most employees want to be seen as people. Yet, only 45% actually think their organization views them that way. Transparency can bridge this gap, so you can build a more unified, empowered workforce, where individual strengths and aspirations contribute to a collective success story.

That’s why it’s time to trash stereotypes — especially negative buzzwords. Terms like “lazy girl jobs” and “quiet quitting” aren’t constructive.

This kind of workplace shorthand may seem harmless, but it doesn’t serve anyone well. In fact, it only undermines employees who value work-life balance over work-at-all-cost expectations.

So make no mistake. Transparency isn’t about mindless judgment or brutal honesty. It’s about intentionally creating an environment where people feel like they belong and they can flourish.

This mindset fuels trust, confidence, and commitment through communication that empowers people to contribute their best. Other benefits include:

  • Heightened job satisfaction
  • Enhanced collaboration
  • Increased engagement
  • Strengthened leadership credibility
  • Improved problem-solving

At its best, organizational transparency aligns everyone with shared objectives. From Gen Z to your most seasoned team members, everyone can work more happily and productively when they’re part of a culture based on open communication.

But be prepared. Developing this kind of relationship takes time, consistency, and persistence.

The Case for Transparency

“The Great Resignation” began in 2021, when nearly 48 million people quit their jobs. But experts say the “Real Great Resignation” actually happened last year, when resignations reached nearly 51 million.

What caused so many employees to leave? According to research, 40% of former employees could no longer tolerate a toxic work environment.

Contrast this with people who feel their work culture is transparent. Their job satisfaction rate is 12x greater than others. That’s a key point because satisfied employees are much more likely to stay on board longer.

It’s no secret that employees want to feel supported, respected, and motivated to do their job well. This starts when top-down transparency is baked into your culture. With a genuine, ongoing effort, business leaders and People Ops can cultivate the kind of transparent workplace that attracts great talent, respects them as individuals, and gives them a powerful reason to stay.

Business Innovation Isn't Easy. Here's How Leaders Can Help

Business Innovation Isn’t Easy. Here’s How Leaders Can Help

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TalentCulture Content Impact Award Winner - 2023In recent years, digital transformation has been one of the hottest topics in leadership circles. Technology is central to this kind of complex, large-scale endeavor. But success requires more than tools, alone. Operating models and processes must also change. And for continued improvement, business innovation should be part of the mix, as well. Why?

Because technology is constantly moving forward, ongoing innovation can keep your organization ahead of the curve. However, this depends on your ability to anticipate, adjust, and adapt. And that’s where your employees can make all the difference. Your workforce carries a wealth of information, expertise, and creativity. Unlocking that potential is key.

By combining the right technology with effective leadership strategies, you can transform your organization from a static monolith to a dynamic talent magnet, where innovation is a way of life. For more insight, let’s look closer at the relationship between digital transformation, agile leadership, and business innovation…

4 Ways Digital Transformation Fosters Business Innovation

Organizations can benefit in many ways from adopting game-changing tools and processes. These are just a few outcomes to expect from digital transformation:

1. Improved Efficiency

The best next-level tools are designed with efficiency in mind. For example, systems that rely on AI-driven automation and customization make it possible to dramatically reduce workflow bottlenecks and other inefficiencies. By empowering individuals and teams to operate more productively, the entire organization can focus more fully on higher-level tasks and creative challenges.

2. Enhanced Collaboration

Workforce collaboration is essential for business innovation. But it’s not easy to achieve in today’s hybrid and remote work environments. This is where transformative solutions are making a tremendous impact.

By relying on systems that help people directly communicate, coordinate, and stay up-to-date with projects at their convenience, distributed teams can operate even more effectively than they would in person. This makes it possible to include people from around the globe, which means more diverse input for problem-solving, ideation, and other creative activities.

Digital transformation can even improve collaboration among people who work in person at a single location. A myriad of digital applications are available for team scheduling, meetings, and project management so everyone can stay better connected and more productive.

3. Scalability

The ability to scale resources is a serious challenge, especially for younger or smaller companies. When staff workloads are full and growth reaches a peak, how can you continue to scale effectively, while also making business innovation a priority?

Digital transformation helps break through these barriers. By streamlining workflows and activating new pathways that help people bring more creativity to their day-to-day tasks, they can allocate more time to strategic problem-solving and other business priorities.

4. Adaptive Learning

The famous physicist, William Pollard, once said, “Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think what you did yesterday will be sufficient tomorrow.”

This rings true for any business that wants to unlock the full potential of its workforce. Unless employees are continuously learning, they won’t have the inspiration or skills to drive innovation. And that means your organization won’t move forward.

But as many organizations discovered during the pandemic, digital learning tools can help make learning more convenient, continuous, engaging, and effective. Now, AI-driven tools are elevating everything from personalized training content and upskilling experiences to online knowledge-sharing forums and performance support at the moment of need.

How Agile Leaders Build a Culture of Business Innovation

In industries where change is a constant, digital transformation is no longer just an option. It’s an imperative. That’s because these organizations face unique issues:

  • How can they adapt quickly?
  • What can they do to stay ahead of the curve when that curve is always changing?
  • How can they attract, engage, and retain high-quality talent over the long term?

The answer to all these questions is business innovation.

The innovation process helps companies continuously adapt, stay ahead of competitors, and engage employees. Yet, merely asking employees to do their jobs differently is not enough.

Instead, ongoing innovation requires a culture shift. And that starts with a serious, top-down commitment. This is where agile leadership methods can help. Agile methods encourage innovation in a way that traditional leadership moves can’t touch. 

What is Agile Leadership?

Agile leadership is a model that values flexibility, adaptability, and continuous improvement above all else. Agile practices stimulate organizational innovation and encourage a culture where people strive to achieve better results by working smarter and more efficiently.

Developing agile leadership and integrating it into your organization takes time and effort, but the benefits are well worth the investment. These are the cornerstones:

1. Ensure Dedicated Time

Integrating top-down agility into your organization requires sufficient time for people to apply these practices on a consistent basis. When you establish specific time blocks for leaders and employees to step outside their normal scope of work, they can shift their focus to identify broader issues, generate creative ideas, and explore various possibilities. This lets business innovation blossom where it otherwise wouldn’t have space to emerge.

Also, with dedicated time for training, employees can develop the skills and mindset they need to be more inventive and push boundaries in their current roles. It’s equally important for leaders to devote time to meeting with team members, checking in, and discussing their future. This encourages a more open, collaborative, innovative culture across the board.

2. Emphasize Flexibility

Agile leaders are characterized by their flexible behavior, which in turn, permeates the organization. That doesn’t mean structure is nonexistent. Rather, it’s about being willing to adapt and change your existing structure to better align with market conditions, workforce needs, and your organization’s objectives.

Flexibility is a massive factor in keeping employees happy and encouraging an optimal work-life balance. When people don’t feel overwhelmed by stress or anxiety, they are much more likely to be engaged, productive, and motivated to support business innovation.

3. Empower Employees 

Agile methodologies were developed specifically with employee empowerment in mind. While traditional leadership models focus heavily on the authority and regulatory power of leaders, agile focuses on team building and working alongside teams to create better solutions.

It’s about establishing common goals and supporting employees as they work on projects and initiatives that matter to them. As a result, empowered employees are more passionate about their work and more creative in framing operational solutions.

The Benefits of Business Innovation

Innovation can be a difficult concept for organizations to quantify and justify. Rather than generating immediate cost savings or revenue, innovation typically is an investment in the future. Regardless, that investment can lead to impressive, long-term impact — especially if your culture is stagnant or your competitive position is slipping.

At its best, innovation can transform your business from the inside out by engaging your employees, revitalizing your work processes, and giving rise to a sustainable competitive advantage. Even if today’s effort falls short, it can still prepare your organization for future success. How? Because you can:

1. Enrich the Employee Experience

When team members feel uninspired or they don’t feel challenged, they’re likely to leave. In fact, these are two of the most common reasons why people quit.

But this isn’t a problem in cultures that welcome new ideas and encourage people to find better ways of getting things done. Companies that encourage innovation at all levels see a noticeable improvement in work culture. That’s because employees become more invested in an organization’s mission, vision, and values when they’re actively contributing to its success. And as employee ideas take root, engagement grows stronger. It’s a virtuous cycle.

2. “Future-Proof” Your Organization

Even if your business is thriving today, it’s impossible to guarantee this will continue. Industries change, market preferences change, and business fortunes can suffer. That’s why business innovation is so important. It could be the key to sustainable success. Why?

When organizations embrace change, employees are more likely to identify and share internal and external issues as they arise. They’re also more willing to work toward solutions that address these challenges.

No business lasts forever. No idea lasts forever. However, committing to continuous business innovation is the key to staying at the forefront of your industry, even through disruption. It can help you keep a leg up on competitors and strengthen your current offerings, while simultaneously improving employee commitment, engagement, and retention.

A Final Note

Talent is called talent for a reason. Indeed, great ideas don’t always come from upper-level management. That’s why leaders should create an environment where team members play an active role in business innovation. It engages team members more deeply. It strengthens your culture. Plus, it brings frontline voices to the table, so you can generate better ideas and implement better solutions.

At first glance, the connection between digital transformation, agile leadership, and business innovation may not be obvious. But if you follow the logic, their interdependent relationship becomes clear. Ultimately, when technology, people, and processes come together for a common cause, the benefits are often much greater than the sum of the parts.

What Does the Voice of the Employee Say About Your Culture?

What Does the Voice of the Employee Say About Your Culture?

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Sponsored by WorkForce Software

Employers, you know the story. For years, organizations have been struggling to engage and retain employees, yet few have really moved the meter. So, how do the best employers succeed? Some say the answer lies in listening more closely to the voice of the employee. Why?

Here’s what statistics say:

  • 90% of workers told Achievers they’re more likely to stay at a company that seeks feedback and acts on it. Yet 67% rate their organization as only “okay” or even “horrible” at doing this.
  • According to a Gallup survey, 52% of people who resigned say those in charge could have done something to prevent them from quitting. But only a third actually discussed their disenchantment with their manager before they left.

It is time to lean in and listen to the voice of the employee more closely and more continuously. But what should that look like in a modern work environment? This question is super important. And that’s why we’re talking about it today with an expert in the psychology of work…

Meet Our Guest: Angelina Sun

Today, we welcome back Angelina Sun, PhD, WorkForce Management Solutions Director at WorkForce Software. With extensive experience in multiple industries, she is deeply interested in innovative ways to build and sustain healthy organizational cultures.

In her current role, Angelina focuses on helping leaders more effectively manage and communicate with employees – especially deskless workers. Angelina’s finger is clearly on the pulse of modern workforce challenges and opportunities. That’s why I asked her to join us earlier this year to discuss the state of today’s deskless worker experience.

But this topic is much bigger than just one podcast episode. So I invited Angelina to return so we could dig deeper. Here are some highlights from our latest conversation…

Defining the Voice of the Employee

Welcome back, Angelina! What is the voice of the employee, and why is it so valuable in organizations?

People often think of the voice of the employee in terms of responses to staff surveys. But it’s more than that.  It encompasses all their feelings, perceptions, and experiences. And it includes all communication channels.

There are so many ways you can tap into the voice of the employee. For example, you can learn by paying attention to team meetings, one-on-ones with managers, service sentiment, and information sharing at company gatherings, interviews, focus groups — anywhere you gather feedback.

The Need to Feel Heard is Universal
You’re so right, Angelina. This extends far beyond employee surveys…

Everyone wants to be heard and valued. Whether we are office-based, remote, hybrid, frontline hourly workers or shift workers, we all want to feel like we’re doing meaningful, purposeful work.

But for deskless workers, the voice of the employee has a unique operational focus. Because these workers are closest to production or customers, their feedback is crucial. It helps identify what’s really happening in the workplace or with the customer experience, so we can take action and improve.

Technology’s Role

How can technology, especially mobile, help create a more seamless communication flow between employees and employers?

You know, smartphones are an essential tool for managing our day-to-day lives. This is why organizations really should employ these powerful, pocket-sized supercomputers to connect with frontline workers.

In fact, our research reveals that 45% of employees would prefer to receive training and information on their mobile phone. Yet only 20% of them actually have this option.

Improving the Communication Process

What are some of the best ways employers can select a communication vehicle and make it work for everyone?

The biggest obstacle is adoption. Why? Because deskless workers don’t sit or stand in front of a computer all day to check email and respond.

So if you want a successful solution, it must integrate into the technology deskless workers are already using in the field or on the shop floor.

We are not just talking about a simple chat system. It should be workflow-driven. It should help people get their job done and make it easier to manage schedules and work-life balance, while also helping managers have the right conversations with the right people at the right time…

 

Learn More About the Voice of the Employee

For more insights about how your organization can benefit from listening to the voice of the employee, listen to this full #WorkTrends episode on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or wherever you tune in to podcasts. And while you’re there, be sure to subscribe, so you won’t miss future episodes.

Also, visit WorkForce Software anytime for details about the company and its modern workforce management suite.

And whenever you want to continue this conversation on social media, follow our #WorkTrends hashtag on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Let’s talk!

11 Successful HR and Work Tech Trends to Adopt

11 Successful HR and Work Tech Trends to Adopt

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In recent years, we’ve seen an explosion in new and improved digital tools for HR and work activities. But with the landscape changing so rapidly, how can organizations decide which tech trends deserve serious attention and investment?

For useful advice, we asked HR and business leaders these questions:

What emerging HR or work tech trend is making the biggest impact on your organization? Why is this the case?

In response, we received excellent feedback from a variety of business professionals — from HR Directors to CEOs. And I’m sure you’ll agree as you skim this list, their recommendations make sense for employers everywhere:

  • Simplify Your Tech Stack to Enhance the Employee Experience
  • Enhance Recruitment Success With AI-Driven Hiring
  • Propel Real-Time Feedback With AI
  • Leverage People Analytics for Data-Driven HR Decisions
  • Automate Background Checks to Improve DEI
  • Boost Company Image With Employee Advocacy
  • Adopt AI to Transform HR Processes
  • Personalize the Hiring Experience With Video Interviews
  • Improve Compliance and Decision-Making With AI
  • Tap Into a PEO for Sophisticated HR Services
  • Streamline Repetitive HR Tasks With Automation

To learn more about how these tech trends are redefining organizations large and small, check the responses below…

11 Ways to Benefit From Top HR and Work Tech Trends

1. Simplify Your Tech Stack to Enhance the Employee Experience

One trend we’re tackling is the simplification of our tech stack to enable a seamless employee experience. As a result, we’re being more thoughtful about the systems we choose to enable key programs. Our goal is to offer an intuitive, natural employee journey from hire to retire. We also hope to benefit from improved data and integrations.

In conversations with other HR tech leaders, we’re finding many larger, established organizations that are also facing this issue. For some, shifting to a connected set of systems that matches a connected experience will be a multi-year process.

This can feel like fixing an airplane while in flight. Actually, it is. But when this is done in the right way, you’ll feel the net reward through improved employee productivity, reduced HR technology spending, and the opportunity to influence vendor roadmaps.

Tiffani Murray, Director, HR Tech Partners – Global Talent Organization, LinkedIn

2. Enhance Recruitment Success With AI-Driven Hiring

One of the most impactful HR tech trends our organization has adopted is AI-driven talent acquisition. With streamlined candidate screening and predictive analytics, we’ve reduced turnover rates and increased employee satisfaction.

Recently with the help of AI, we identified a top-notch senior developer that we subsequently hired. This led to a 20% increase in project completion rates and stellar client feedback. Going forward, we expect AI in recruitment to continue accelerating our company’s growth and success.

Vikas Kaushik, CEO, TechAhead

3. Propel Real-Time Feedback With AI

One HR tech trend that has made its way into our organization is an AI-backed app for real-time feedback. From helping us interact “anytime, anywhere,” to customized notifications that ensure we never miss feedback requested or received, this app is strengthening our organization’s feedback culture.

Its most powerful feature is an innovative feedback generator with a simple process that helps individuals produce, amend, and share feedback in less than 2 minutes. It also helps senders and receivers schedule and conduct private one-on-one interactions with end-to-end encryption.

We’re seeing numerous positive outcomes. For example, this ensures feedback focuses on competencies that align with our organization’s vision and values. Also, detailed reporting makes it easy for leaders to track team engagement while helping individuals understand how their contributions advance our feedback culture.

Manvika Jhala, Principal Consultant, Projects, NamanHR

4. Leverage People Analytics for Data-Driven HR Decisions

People analytics is a growing tech trend, and it’s making a notable impact on our organization. With timely access to relevant, useful data, we’re able to make better decisions about our employees. We can thoroughly analyze personnel performance from multiple angles, with insights we would have otherwise missed or misinterpreted.

For example, we used people analytics to make sure our pay structure is fair and equitable across various employee groups, regardless of an individual’s personal background. This has had a positive effect on overall employee morale because people feel their contributions are appreciated and compensated fairly.

Michael Alexis, CEO, teambuilding.com

5. Automate Background Checks to Improve DEI

As a company that provides background checks, automation helps us filter for specific candidate criteria, focus on unique company needs, and avoid bias in the process. This has helped us significantly level up our recruiting and hiring game. We now offer these services to companies that are striving to reach ambitious DEI goals.

Max Wesman, Chief Operating Officer, GoodHire

6. Boost Company Image With Employee Advocacy

Our employee advocacy program is making a big difference at our company. When our satisfied workers speak positively about us online, it elevates our company image.

For instance, when we had a job opening, we asked our people to share the job with their friends and colleagues online. This kind of outreach worked really well. As a result, we hired a great candidate who fit in with our company and immediately started contributing in a meaningful way.

This program also helps us get more customers. People looking to buy our products trust what our workers say about us more than what we say about ourselves. So the employee advocacy program isn’t just about hiring. It also helps our business grow in other ways.

Martin Potocki, CEO, Jobera

7. Adopt AI to Transform HR Processes

Although artificial intelligence is one of today’s hottest tech trends, some employers still aren’t sure what their adoption path should be. However, we are integrating artificial intelligence across multiple HR processes, from recruitment to employee engagement.

For instance, we’ve implemented an AI-powered recruitment tool that streamlines the hiring process. It automates tasks like resume screening and interview scheduling, which saves significant time and reduces bias in the candidate selection process.

This has improved our recruitment results and enhanced the candidate experience, as well. Also, in addition to improving HR operations, AI is helping us make better-informed decisions and improve business outcomes.

Madhurima Halder, Content Manager, Recruit CRM

8. Personalize the Hiring Experience With Video Interviews

Video interviewing is one of today’s biggest HR tech trends. It can provide a more personalized hiring experience that improves the applicant experience and helps employers extend their hiring reach in more inclusive ways.

For example, employers can use video tools to conduct non-traditional interviews with applicants who aren’t able to travel, or who speak languages that aren’t common in the employer’s geographic location.

With platforms that make it easier for skilled people to connect with potential employers, this opens up opportunities beyond traditional face-to-face interviews. It also ensures no candidates are left behind because of geographical or physical limitations.

Julia Kelly, Managing Partner, Rigits

9. Improve Compliance and Decision-Making With AI

Recent technological developments have altered nearly every facet of human resources, from sourcing to performance management. Artificial intelligence is now streamlining administrative duties like reviewing applications and setting up interviews. This not only benefits the company financially but also frees up HR personnel for more important, strategic tasks.

Employment law, health and safety regulations, and data privacy are just a few examples of HR’s responsibilities. By providing consistent, accurate record-keeping and reporting, automated HR processes can help ensure compliance with these critical requirements.

Also, with the help of data and analytics tools in automated solutions, HR professionals and business leaders can make better decisions. For instance, AI is helping HR teams more quickly and easily spot issues with employee absences and turnover.

Aleksandar Ginovski, Career Expert, Resume Expert and Product Manager, Enhancv

10. Tap Into a PEO for Sophisticated HR Services

As a startup executive since 2012, I’ve relied on Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) as a fairly common fixture in my work life. These organizations make it possible for smaller companies to tap into core HR packages that include payroll, benefits negotiation, and a suite of other HR capabilities.

Working with a PEO is an easy decision if you don’t have sufficient resources or admin staff to deal with HR logistics and other technicalities. So, not surprisingly, the number of PEO providers and levels of service have grown significantly over the years.

In our company’s case, the HR apparatus is much more sophisticated than you would typically expect for a company of our size. This makes it possible for us to offer everyone more and better benefits.

Trevor Ewen, COO, QBench

11. Streamline Repetitive HR Tasks With Automation

Artificial intelligence is making a massive impact on the HR function. AI technology is redefining the human resources department, streamlining many of its work processes.

Today, HR leaders apply AI to a wide range of tasks, so they no longer manually manage functions like payroll, recruitment, onboarding, and performance management. It can help employers find the right talent, identify skill gaps, answer employee questions, analyze survey data, and more.

The most positive and profound impact of AI technology is the automation of repetitive, boring tasks. It saves manual HR labor, while simultaneously improving process efficiency and accuracy. This frees HR team members to focus on more strategic, creative tasks.

Although some organizations are quickly embracing HR automation, it may be more beneficial to adopt it incrementally over time, so teams can adjust and adapt to the change.

Saikat Ghosh, Associate Director of HR and Business, Technource

How to Improve Leadership Communication - TalentCulture

5 Steps to Improve Leadership Communication in Your Company

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In our constantly changing business environment, one thing remains the same — employees want to hear from their organization’s leaders. People naturally look to decision-makers for answers, direction, and context. Fortunately, most leaders understand and embrace their central role in organizational communication. But some struggle with keeping people aware, informed, and motivated. In these situations, it helps to establish an effective leadership communication program.

What does this kind of endeavor look like? Every organization faces unique challenges and requirements, but these 5 strategies can help you move in the right direction:

An Action Plan For Better Leadership Communication

1. Establish Communication Roles

Effective leadership communication programs have a clear purpose and well-defined roles for leaders at every level in an organization. To start, specify roles for your CEO and members of the senior management team.

Typically, CEOs provide a company’s overall direction, while senior leaders translate abstract, high-level concepts and strategies into concrete, meaningful information. For example, the CEO will share annual business priorities. Then members of the senior leadership team articulate what those priorities mean for their business unit or functional group.

HOW TO GET STARTED:
Help leaders get invested in your program’s success by facilitating a workshop to ensure that everyone understands their specific communication role and how to fulfill it.

2. Make Your Company Strategy Memorable

When we measure employee knowledge of a company’s strategy, we often find that staff members are aware of the strategy, but aren’t sure how they contribute to it. Because leaders spend so much time working with peers to develop, refine, and update business strategy, they may have a blind spot when it comes to employee awareness.

HOW TO GET STARTED:
First focus on helping leaders see your company’s strategy from an employee’s point of view. Then work with them to package the message and connect the dots so employees better understand how they can contribute. Try these steps:

  • Simplify: Distill the primary concept into a few words or a phrase that will resonate.
  • Design: Bring the strategy to life by creating a one-page visual overview that leaders can use to illustrate this concept in meetings, events, and other forums.
  • Collaborate: Encourage employees to participate in discussions about your strategy. This builds awareness, interest, understanding, and buy-in.
  • Distribute: Share a printed version of your short-form strategy statement so employees can display it in their workspace. Make it especially memorable by printing the phrase on swag items people appreciate such as mouse pads, mugs, notepads, thermos bottles, or cell phone cases.
  • Reinforce: Using predefined roles as a guide, ask leaders to refer to company strategy during everyday conversations. For example, suggest that department managers add clarifying statements like, “Here’s how this work supports our overarching strategy…” when they introduce new projects or request process improvements.

3. Leverage Channels That Drive Dialogue

Employees are always interested in opportunities to interact with leaders — from asking questions of the CEO to sharing ideas with the department heads. But tools that work well for desk-based employees may not be ideal for those in labs or manufacturing facilities. So, as you facilitate two-way communication between leaders and employees, be sure to choose a channel that aligns with your organization’s realities.

HOW TO GET STARTED:
Here are 5 dynamic channels that can help you foster interaction:

  • Microblogging: Think of short narrative posts without titles, like long-form posts on Instagram and LinkedIn, or tweet threads on Twitter. Invite employees to add questions or comments to these posts.
  • Coffee chats or snack breaks: Invite a small group of employees for an informal roundtable conversation over coffee or snacks like ice cream, popcorn, or energy bars/drinks.
  • Medium-size meetings: Facilitate a group exercise that solves a known issue, featuring a higher-level leader as a participant.
  • Large group forums: Showcase several leaders if possible, who can offer their unique perspectives on key challenges and interests. Build in polls and provide plenty of time for Q&A. Also, don’t forget to document the discussion and follow up on open items as well as any next steps. It may even be appropriate to redistribute all or part of the content from this meeting with others who didn’t attend in person.
  • Internal social media platforms: Encourage employees to submit questions or suggestions whenever it is convenient for them. It may also be helpful to offer employees the option to participate anonymously. Monitor this online forum to ensure that appropriate leaders respond on a timely basis.
  • Impromptu huddles: Host a five-minute conversation during a shift change or at the start of a day. (Even 5 minutes of casual face-to-face interaction can go a long way with employees!)

4. Develop Content Employees Crave

The best way to create meaningful content that employees want is to learn about their interests. Using easy measurement tools such as an online survey or a poll, ask people to identify topics they want leaders to explore. Then assign topics to appropriate leaders and channels as you develop communication plans.

HOW TO GET STARTED:
For example, when we conducted an intake survey for one of our clients, half of the employees said they wanted to hear more about issues and trends affecting their industry. So, the company added an “industry trends” segment to its town hall meeting agendas.

For topics that may not make an employee’s wish list, encourage leaders to weave in a personal connection with the subject matter, explain its relevance, and underscore its importance. This moves content beyond mere facts and descriptive information. It adds interesting context that employees can’t get anywhere else.

For instance, ask leaders to share:

  • Their unique perspective on the topic
  • A personal story that illustrates a key point. This can be about their work experience or career path, or it could be inspired by their family, hobbies, or community activities
  • Reflections on experiences and conversations that influenced key decisions
  • Lessons learned

Studies show that this type of insight is very inspiring and helpful to employees. Plus, hearing a leader open up and speak from the heart conveys authenticity and builds trust.

Also, remember to continuously assess the impact of this kind of communication via surveys and polls and adjust content accordingly. And when content is particularly successful, be sure to repackage it and redistribute it in other ways.

5. Celebrate Milestones and Successes

It’s no secret that employee engagement levels improve when people know their work is valued. Sincere recognition also has a direct impact on job satisfaction and workforce retention. However, busy leaders may unintentionally overlook opportunities to show appreciation. Internal communicators can close this gap by embedding recognition moments into existing leadership communication channels.

HOW TO GET STARTED:
Here are a few examples that work for our clients:

  • Allocate time to recognize recent staff achievements at every department or team meeting.
  • When a senior leader writes about a business win or key milestone, be sure the article mentions appropriate individuals or teams by name.
  • To honor a significant business achievement, your CEO can send a timely, company-wide email message celebrating this success and encouraging others to congratulate everyone who contributed.
  • When marking a major milestone in any employee’s professional or personal life, your CEO can send a handwritten note to the individual’s home.

A Final Word on Effective Leadership Communication

You can help leaders deliver consistent, high-impact communication when you commit to proven strategies like these. As a result, your organization can expect to benefit through increased organizational alignment, engagement, and productivity. And I guarantee that leaders and employees, alike, will appreciate your efforts.

What's your best management advice? 13 senior business leaders share useful lessons learned.

What’s Your Best Management Advice? 13 Top Leaders Reply

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Management advice is everywhere. But how do you know which guidance to trust? To find truly useful answers, we asked business executives to answer this question:

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice for how to become a better manager, what would you say?

In response, we received excellent management advice from 13 experienced leaders — including company CEOs, founders, and C-level executives. And I’m sure you’ll agree, the collective wisdom they shared reads like a playbook for any aspiring manager who wants to level up:

  • Prioritize Leadership Skills and Embrace Vulnerability
  • Conduct Regular Check-ins and Learn from Errors
  • Practice Active Listening
  • Master the Art of Delegation
  • Respect Individual Ambitions
  • Create a Psychologically Safe Team Space
  • Seek Team Feedback
  • Plan for Contingencies and Create Transparency
  • Foster Open Communication and Employee Understanding
  • Uplift Others and Practice Humility
  • Listen More and Trust Your Team
  • Develop Strong Relationships and Set Clear Expectations
  • Understand Your Management Style

To dive deeper into these responses, read on…

13 Senior Leaders Share Their Best Management Advice 


1. Prioritize Leadership Skills and Embrace Vulnerability

Reflecting on my own professional journey, I would tell my younger self to prioritize the development of leadership skills over technical expertise. Through the years, as I ascended to the C-suite, I realized my role was less about nitty-gritty details and more about guiding the team toward our shared vision.

For instance, when I was a manager, I was deeply involved in the technical aspects of our projects. I prided myself on my ability to solve complex problems. However, as I moved up the ladder, I found that, although my technical skills remained important, they took a backseat to my leadership abilities. It’s essential to inspire my team, manage people through change, and build a strong, inclusive culture.

My unique advice to aspiring leaders is to embrace vulnerability. It might seem counterintuitive, but showing your human side can actually strengthen your leadership. When I started sharing my own challenges and failures with my team, I noticed a significant increase in their engagement and trust.

Johannes Larsson, Founder and CEO, Financer.com

2. Conduct Regular Check-ins and Learn from Errors

I would advise my younger self to become a better manager by checking in with my team. Humans commit mistakes. Smart humans learn from those errors.

I’ve learned that checking in regularly with each employee makes a difference in our business. Talking with people about their short-term and long-term plans and how to achieve them helps employees feel valued. It improves retention, for sure.

Regular conversations give you a chance to gauge employee satisfaction when it comes to workload. Then you can make adjustments if needed. Early on I failed to do that, which caused us to lose people with strong potential. However, I’ve learned from experience, and am doing better now.

Eli Pasternak, CEO, Liberty House Buying Group

3. Practice Active Listening

If I could go back in time, I would practice active listening. Initially, I focused on sharing my ideas more than understanding my team. Now I recognize the value of listening. It’s important to seek feedback and create an environment where people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Regular one-on-one meetings and open forums encourage dialogue and collaboration. These practices improve engagement, productivity, and satisfaction.

That’s why I urge mid-level managers to prioritize communication and active listening. Encourage people to engage in meaningful conversations and open dialogue. This unlocks team potential and opens the door to innovation and overall success.

Josh Amishav, Founder and CEO, Breachsense

4. Master the Art of Delegation

I would tell my younger self to accept the fact that I can’t do everything myself. Delegation is a critical skill both for maturing as a team leader and growing a business.

When I was just starting to get the company off the ground, I had an intuitive desire to handle every process myself. Finance, marketing, client management — I spent half of my working time trying to touch areas where I lacked expertise.

Eventually, I saw how unproductive and ineffective that approach was, so I began handing off small tasks. But team members couldn’t see the big picture, so small-scale delegation didn’t help either.

Finally, I realized how important it was to trust my team and rely on their expertise without trying to interfere with their work. Today, I’m lucky to have a team of professionals by my side who let me focus on activities that will yield the highest returns and grow the company.

Tatsiana Kirimava, Co-Founder and CEO, Orangesoft

5. Respect Individual Ambitions

As a driven leader, I used to project my ambition onto my team, expecting everyone to have the same level of commitment and desire to progress professionally. But over time, I realized not everyone aspires to be a C-suite executive — and that’s okay.

It’s crucial to respect the unique ambitions of each team member instead of imposing your own aspirations on them. When I made this mental shift, I saw improved team dynamics and productivity. Moreover, it alleviated unnecessary frustration, allowing me to find greater satisfaction in my work.

Remember, demanding too much from your team can lead to dissonance. Ask people about their goals and ambitions, and you’ll unlock a more harmonious, effective working environment.

Rafael Sarim Öezdemir, Founder and CEO, Zendog Labs

6. Create a Psychologically Safe Team Space

If I could turn back time, I’d tell myself to create a safe space for the team. I never aimed for psychological safety, but it happened. Team members have confided they feel safer than at previous jobs.

Once, a member of our marketing team spotted a software issue. She spoke up without fear, and we fixed it together. Another time, a new guy from the UX team suggested that we add an automation process. Despite being new, he didn’t hesitate to share.

It’s hard to calculate the financial impact of this but I’m sure that psychological safety makes a difference between failure and a team that prospers.

Vladislav Podolyako, Founder and CEO, Folderly

7. Seek Team Feedback

If I could go back in time, I would actively seek more feedback from my team. I used to be close-minded. I believed I had all the answers. However, I soon realized that true growth and improvement come from embracing diverse perspectives and valuing input from others.

By creating an open, safe environment where my team feels comfortable sharing their ideas and concerns, I’ve been able to foster more collaboration and innovation. Also, I’ve gained valuable insights that help me make better decisions and ultimately become a more effective leader.

Chris Muller, Vice President, Money Under 30

8. Plan for Contingencies and Create Transparency

I would encourage myself to make contingency plans a priority. Although planning for success is obviously critical, having backup strategies in place can help address unexpected obstacles that arise.

Effective contingency plans help decision-makers recognize that their leader has fully evaluated the situation and taken appropriate measures to adjust and move forward.

By nature, I am an organized person, so I tend to anticipate potential obstacles and map out other options. But earlier in my career, I wasn’t always transparent about this.

Failing to communicate about contingencies sometimes made my staff uneasy, so I missed opportunities to gain their trust. However, over time, I learned to take proactive steps to support staff through change and reassure them that a Plan B was available.

Tasia Duske, CEO, Museum Hack

9. Foster Open Communication and Employee Understanding

In the past, I’ve seen many problems come from miscommunication and thoughts left unsaid. I know top talent left the company when they felt unheard and underappreciated because their opinions did not receive enough attention. This is why my management advice would be to foster more open communication and listen more closely to employees.

For example, it’s important to conduct satisfaction surveys so you can understand staff concerns and take action to make the work environment better. This reduces employee turnover, as well as the cost of training new hires. It also builds a positive company culture that attracts great people and keeps them on board.

Jeff Moore, CEO, Everyday Power

10. Uplift Others and Practice Humility

“Talent doesn’t give you license to be an a**hole.”

I was both blessed and cursed with many natural gifts and talents. I was creative, charismatic, a born salesman, and a spotlight hog.  When I got the chance to be “the boss,” I assumed I had a responsibility to share my awesomeness with everyone and prove that I could do their job as well or better than they could.

What a jerk I was!

Through the words and actions of various true leaders, I’ve come to realize that great leadership requires humility, patience, and the ability to lift others up to levels they never thought possible. I’m so grateful to those who were patient enough to give me the latitude to figure it out on my own. Today, as a sales and leadership trainer, I’m “paying it forward” by helping others avoid the mistakes I made.

Bill Guertin, Chief Learning Officer, ISBI 360, LLC

11. Listen More and Trust Your Team

When I think back, I remember times when stress was high. People on my team were feeling disconnected and lost trust in me because I communicated much more than I listened.

But leadership is not about being in the front of the team, always speaking or telling people to execute tasks and ideas. Effective leaders do just the opposite.

By practicing saying less and listening more, I stopped believing I needed to carry everything on my shoulders. I learned that people want to feel like they are heard and their contributions matter.

Listen first and believe that your team can add value and succeed. Nurture them so they feel you trust their decisions. Right or wrong, we can learn from our mistakes and create better solutions.

So speak less, inspire those you lead, and trust that your direct reports will rise and deliver great results.

Michele Delgado, CEO, Hartmetrics

12. Develop Strong Relationships and Set Clear Expectations

One piece of advice I would share with myself is to have the courage to step out of my comfort zone and take the time to develop strong relationships with my team.

Strong relationships are key to being a successful leader. Before taking any action, it’s important to understand the motivations and viewpoints of each team member, so you can make informed decisions based on their unique needs. So encourage people to express themselves openly. And when they share ideas, listen actively.

Also, make sure expectations are as clear as possible. Setting expectations up front makes it easier to develop an environment conducive to collaboration and innovation.

Leadership is about inspiring and encouraging your team to do great work. Ensure you acknowledge their efforts, offer guidance, and provide constructive feedback to help them grow. By providing reinforcement and support, you can foster a culture of respect, trust, and appreciation.

Nataliia Tomchyshyn, Marketing Manager, Relokia

13. Understand Your Management Style

Early in my career, I didn’t recognize my management style. Although this is not a necessity, it helps to know your style and how it works in a real-world environment.

For instance, if your approach is more participative, take time to understand the steps involved and their implications. For example, talk with managers who’ve used this approach and learn about its impact. This discovery process doesn’t need to be lengthy, but it can be revealing.

I planned to manage my team based on my predecessor’s advice. Although this helped, it took a long time to develop and test my approach. Fortunately, everything eventually worked out. But the sooner you can get a grasp of your style, the better.

Marco Andolfatto, Chief Underwriting Officer, Apollo Cover

 

Why is great leadership like a Fine Watch? - TalentCulture Article

Why Is Great Leadership Like a Fine Watch?

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A fine mechanical watch is exquisite in its own right. But if you look closer, you’ll see more than just a special timepiece. It is also useful as a framework for leaders who want to improve the quality of their organization’s performance. What does that leadership framework look like? Here’s my perspective…

I’m continually amazed at how unrelated things in life tend to line up with almost perfect timing. Nearly a year ago, I decided I wanted to own a “real watch,” so I began researching popular brands. Around the same time, I was recruited to run Birkman International. Birkman is a 72-year-old company that provides businesses with a roadmap that helps teams work better together and drive operational performance.

These two unrelated events have allowed me to witness the elegance and intricacies that both watches and companies need to run well.

What Do Watches Teach Us About Great Leadership?

Imagine opening the case back of a mechanical watch. Inside you’ll find what seems like a highly complicated collection of gears and wheels. Most of us only open our watch when there’s a problem with its function. The same holds true for businesses — we never seem to look inside until we detect an issue.

In a properly functioning company, each individual, department, and team knows its role. They work at the right pace to accomplish their respective tasks. It is all about coming together at the right time to achieve success. Just like clockwork.

Look Inside

When you open the back of the case and look carefully, you’ll see that it is powered by a mainspring. Without it, the entire mechanism won’t work. The same is true with any company.

The mainspring of the business is the CEO who provides the power needed to drive the business forward. As the mainspring, a CEO is responsible for keeping the organization under a kind of tension that creates motivation, movement, and results over time. However, to ensure consistently high performance, this tension must be released in a regulated way.

This is where the Chief Operating Officer (COO) steps in to serve a critical function. The COO is an organization’s balance wheel. This leader is responsible for distributing the power generated by the CEO, releasing it to the rest of the organization at a steady, reliable pace, like the hands of a watch.

However, unexpected things happen sometimes. For example, what if you accidentally drop your watch? The balance wheel absorbs the shock and ensures that the movement keeps spinning at the right rate. Similarly, unexpected things will happen at work. Regardless, the COO ensures that daily business operations continue to run smoothly and reliably.

A Fine Watch at Work

Once a watch’s power is being created and released at the correct pace, it’s up to the gears and wheels to do their job. But first, these components must be positioned in all the right places. Likewise, employees must be placed in the right position before they can move your organization forward effectively.

For any watch (or any company) to perform well, the real trick is to make sure every “right wheel” works with all the other “right wheels.” This is when the elegance of a great organization reveals itself. It is also when underperforming teams require careful attention. Leaders may need to open the “case back” of their organization and diagnose issues by investigating two questions:

  1. What is stopping us from achieving the desired results?
  2. How do we get things running the way they should?

The good news is that, often, new parts aren’t required to fix a broken watch. The same is true in business. Throughout more than 30 years as an executive, I’ve found that organizational problems aren’t rooted in individual employees, but in the friction between all the moving parts. This is why great leadership can make a significant difference.

Making Everything Run Like Clockwork

If you take a watch apart, clean the pieces, reassemble it, and oil it, you end up with a wrist piece that runs properly. Likewise, if we take sufficient time and care to work with our people, we’re likely to find an effective solution to any problem.

In business, “oil” is the understanding of ourselves and others’ needs. This helps us communicate well with people so they can overcome the friction that arises from misunderstanding and mistrust. This gives us the ability to move forward in unison.

To maximize business results, leaders must take time to break down what their organizations are doing at their core. When we define our company’s purpose, bring it into focus with laser-sharp clarity, and provide a psychologically safe environment for team members to communicate, we build a foundation for truly remarkable results.

When we add oil to watch components, the mechanisms come to life. The same holds true for businesses. The latest technologies may increase efficiency, but they cannot reduce human friction within a team. Similarly, a modern smartwatch may be a reliable way to keep track of time, but it does not compare to the craftsmanship of a fine watch.

Effective Leadership Endures

The tagline of luxury watchmaker Patek Phillipe is, “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.” In other words, if you properly care for one of their watches, it will last hundreds of years.

This aligns with my approach to leadership. I believe executives are merely caretakers for their successors. As the leader of a business now entering its third generation, I take heart in knowing that if we do the work to improve ourselves and better our organization, our impact on the world will be an enduring legacy.

I hope leaders everywhere share the same vision. The future of business depends on it — as does the future of work.

Are you turning into THAT boss? 4 red flags that indicate you need to improve

Are You Turning Into THAT Boss? 4 Red Flags

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We often hear that people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. We all get what that means. But what does it mean for those of us who take on broader roles? As we rise through the ranks, we silently vow never to become THAT boss. You know the one. It’s the manager employees fear and avoid — the one they talk about in hushed tones or in private Slack messages.

How do you know if you’re morphing into the very kind of leader you swore you’d never become?

At a time when companies are struggling with an uncertain workforce, high turnover, and a lack of employee engagement, leaders must stay focused on talent retention. This means you’ll want to be extra careful not to become your employees’ worst nightmare.

But what kind of signals indicate that you’re the kind of boss no one wants? And how can you steer clear of this fate? Let’s take a closer look…

4 Signs You’re Becoming THAT Boss

1. THAT Boss Replaces Flexible Work Options With Rigidity

The pandemic dramatically changed our work environments. Now, after working remotely for more than three years, many leaders are eager to see an office full of employees. But some are moving too swiftly and going to extremes.

Rather than retaining some of the flexibility that became the norm when many of us were working from home, some leaders are intent on forcing employees to return to pre-COVID office standards. Yet according to multiple studies, employees prefer flexible work options. In fact, research shows that productivity and collaboration don’t need to suffer when team members work from various locations.

For example, according to The Hackett Group, professionals want to work remotely 60% of the time and in the office 30% of the time. This clearly indicates that employees want the flexibility to work on their own terms. This study also found that employees who can choose their work location are more engaged. Specifically, engagement increased among 58% of those with work flexibility. Also, these respondents indicated greater willingness to remain with their current employer, rather than look elsewhere.

Some leaders are concerned that employees who aren’t working in the office may not feel connected or engaged with their team. This has prompted them to implement hybrid work policies. But the Hackett Group found no change in collaboration or engagement when comparing hybrid and work-from-home models. In fact, respondents who are free to choose a flexible work model said they feel more connected with team members and with their organization’s values, mission, and culture.

2. THAT Boss Needlessly Cuts Pay and/or Benefits

Budgets are tighter — and inflation and economic upheaval aren’t making the situation any easier. In this kind of situation, leaders may be tempted to reduce compensation and benefits. After all, payroll is usually an organization’s biggest overall cost.

But unless your company is truly in dire straits, these cuts can be a serious morale killer. It sends a message that you undervalue employees. Even worse, it suggests that you aren’t willing to invest in keeping exceptional talent onboard. This can leave some of your most critical employees feeling overworked, under-appreciated, and frustrated. Ultimately, they may even become burned out.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that although salary is a key issue for employees, it’s not the only factor they consider when deciding whether to stick around.

According to recent Forbes Advisor research, 40% of employers say employees leave because they’re attracted to better benefits elsewhere. In other words, today’s workforce places a high priority on health insurance, life insurance, retirement plans, mental health support, paid time off, and other employer-sponsored programs.

This may seem obvious, but as a leader, you need to ensure that your team’s basic needs are covered. This starts with fair, competitive pay. But if you also offer diverse benefits that support employee wellbeing, people will be much more inclined to stay onboard and do their best, even during difficult times. 

3. THAT Boss Doesn’t Show Appreciation

Don’t ignore the efforts of your greatest asset — your people. Attitude costs you nothing, and an attitude of gratitude goes a long way toward helping people feel they’re valued and they belong. In fact, workplace surveys consistently show that employee appreciation and recognition programs help boost productivity, reduce absenteeism, lift engagement, and drive better business results.

There is actually science behind this. Genuine recognition and appreciation meet employees’ basic psychological needs. This is why several studies equate consistent work recognition with higher pay in terms of providing a fulfilling employee experience.

We also see this in data at my company, CardSnacks. We offer electronic greetings and gift cards for holidays of all types. However, our business category is driven by ongoing employee recognition and appreciation, not just specific calendar events like Employee Appreciation Day or Administrative Professionals’ Day.

It’s easy to send someone a quick note or a gift card along with a heartfelt thanks. Even that small investment in time and resources strengthens your connection with employees in ways that boost their commitment and productivity.

4. THAT Boss Flubs Communications

Employees look to managers for leadership every day. Good leadership requires strong communication. Don’t just focus on your team’s mistakes and what hasn’t been done yet. Instead, speak with empathy, communicate clearly, and try to inspire others. As a manager, make it your mission to act like the person you’ve most enjoyed working with in your career.

Also, remember to maintain an even keel. Organizational life is a continuous cycle of highs and lows. Effective leaders know a steady hand is essential to navigate the storms of business life. If you create an environment where people feel they’re lurching from crisis to crisis, it won’t be long before valued team members start jumping ship.

So stay calm, pick the right words, and set the right tone. The better you communicate, the better your results will be as a manager, and the more people will want to work with you.

Don’t Become THAT Boss

No one needs you to be the worst kind of boss. Instead, you can choose to listen to your staff, show empathy and gratitude, and ensure that everyone receives compensation and benefits that outshine your competitors.

You can create a work environment that encourages your employees to be successful on their own terms. If you do this, I guarantee, you’ll never need to look in the mirror and see the boss you never wanted to be.

Why It Pays to Lead With Purpose - TalentCulture Article

Why It Pays to Lead With Purpose, Especially Now

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These days, any employer that doesn’t lead with purpose is fighting an uphill battle. Why? Take a look at recent headlines. They’re filled with news about troubling workplace trends. Specifics vary, but the coverage points to a common underlying theme — hiring and retaining skilled workers continues to be a monumental challenge.

The problem stems from a confluence of factors. For example:

How can employers turn this situation around? It seems the solution begins when we focus on purpose.

Can Purpose Really Reverse Tough Work Issues?

Although the recent surge in employee resignations has cooled, workforce satisfaction and disengagement remain alarmingly high. As a result, other disturbing trends are emerging — from “quiet quitting” and “bare minimum Mondays” to “resenteeism,” and “rage applying.”

None of this reflects well on the state of today’s workforce. In fact, multiple studies indicate that more than 50% of employees are actively looking for a new position. No wonder employers are still struggling to figure out how to re-engage existing employees, attract qualified new hires, and create a work culture where people flourish and feel a sense of belonging.

To address these challenges, smart leaders are leaning into the power of purpose. This isn’t a quick or easy solution. But when business decisions reflect a genuine desire to lead with purpose, it opens the door to organizational transformation.

Today’s workforce is attracted to companies that genuinely care about tough societal issues and take action to resolve these issues. In other words, employees are interested in organizations with strategies that reach beyond revenue and productivity, alone. They want to work for companies that are committed to more meaningful metrics.

How to Lead With Purpose

What can leaders do to embed purpose into business strategies? For answers, we recently surveyed more than 1000 senior executives from U.S. companies. The findings underscore how purpose is gaining influence in The Future Workplace. Here are four key leadership recommendations:

1. Integrate Purpose With Talent Strategy

Start by prioritizing purpose in the battle for talent. Why? Our survey confirms that sustainability and purpose are top of mind for employees, with 75% of leaders agreeing that a business strategy built on purpose is essential for talent recruitment and retention. In addition, 86% of respondents say this strategy should play a central role when evaluating employee performance.

Younger people are deeply concerned about this. In fact, Deloitte research indicates that 39% of Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and 42% of Gen Z employees (born between 1997 and 2012) are prepared to leave their jobs if they aren’t satisfied with their employer’s commitment to sustainability.

To build purpose into workplace culture, it’s important to align your vision and processes with employee and stakeholder feedback, ensuring all voices are heard and everyone has a seat at the table. As a leader, you can do this by consistently focusing on these action items:

  1. Invite employees to regular meetings where business decisions are discussed, and encourage them to share concerns and ideas.
  2. Pay attention to employee feedback. Gather and analyze input from surveys and other internal forums that encourage dialogue.
  3. Develop and implement process and policy improvement plans based on employee concerns and suggestions.
  4. Host regular “town hall” meetings to share information about organizational priorities, goals, and progress, as well as the path forward. This helps ensure that all staff feel welcome to come along on the journey.

2. Put Purpose at the Heart of Value Creation

Beyond improving talent recruiting and retention, what else can you do to lead with purpose? Consider everything you do to create business value.

58% of our survey respondents say it’s essential for companies to create value in ways that benefit all stakeholders — employees, partners, customers, and communities, as well as shareholders. This extends to “earning profits in a sustainable way,” which includes minimizing any harm the business may cause to society.

Another 17% said organizations should “contribute to solutions for challenges confronting people and society as a means of earning profits and generating long-term stakeholder value.”

It should be easy for anyone to see how your business creates value and ensures sustainability across its extended ecosystem. Operational efforts that support sustainability should be clear and transparent. This includes everything from budgeting and office design to workplace culture and how you champion change.

To prioritize value creation and sustainability efforts, generate an open dialogue about how your organization can embrace a mission that puts people and the planet first. As you move forward, invite employees to assess their own societal and environmental impact. Also, be sure to ask employees and other constituents for feedback on an ongoing basis.

3. Openly Define Your Purpose

Transparency is also essential in how any organization defines and demonstrates purpose. Creating a purpose statement combines two key elements: setting goals and identifying intentions. This helps leaders and employees accomplish short-term tangible goals, while they simultaneously consider long-term aspirations and potential actions that can more broadly impact society.

Interestingly, 80% of our survey respondents say their company already has a formal statement of purpose that is “well-established and integrated with our strategies,” or they recently developed this kind of statement and they intend to use it as a guide for future culture change.

Only 1% do not have a statement of purpose beyond generating shareholder value, and they don’t expect the status quo to change.

It is also worth noting that business leaders assign real value to these statements. In fact, more than 75% told us they “strongly agree” that a statement of purpose is an effective guidepost. What’s more, a majority also strongly agree that a defined purpose is central to their business success.

4. Weave Purpose Into Your Employee Experience

Effective leaders recognize the connection between purpose and workplace dynamics. This includes supporting individuals who want to work remotely at least part of the time. After all, the future of work is not about working from home or in the office, per se. It’s about having the flexibility to work effectively wherever, whenever and however you choose.

Clearly, if employers want to remain competitive in the future, they need to offer flexible work options that align workforce preferences with business realities. Research indicates that this is especially true for employers in the tech, retail, telecom, manufacturing, and energy sectors.

That said, smart employers are moving beyond strict RTO mandates that force people to work on-site. Instead, they’re proactively making their office environment more inviting and productive. For example, 98% of our survey respondents are taking steps to improve the in-office experience. This includes adding direct rewards and benefits for on-site work, training managers in “soft skills” such as emotional intelligence, or investing in workplace diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Purpose Leads to Lasting Business Benefits

Businesses can no longer afford to discount or ignore changing workforce dynamics. As you navigate these changes, be sure to remember the increasingly pivotal role purpose plays in your company’s ability to recruit and retain talent. This includes new ways to attract and engage job candidates, as well as ways to develop and motivate people once they’re onboard.

Ultimately, this approach can create broader opportunities to strengthen and advance your organization’s position in the global marketplace. Companies that do this effectively are rewarded with improved productivity, profitability, and a brand that represents an enduring sense of purpose.

So, if you want to stay ahead of the pack in the years to come, start answering this question today: “How will we lead with purpose in the new workplace?”

Where Does Workplace Diversity Belong Now? Meghan M. BIro takes a close look at key trends in diversity, inclusion and belonging since the early days of the pandemic and beyond.

Where Does Workplace Diversity Belong Now?

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Are you disturbed by news about organizations backtracking on workplace diversity and inclusion commitments? I certainly am. For example, a recent Wall Street Journal article declared “The Rise and Fall of the Chief Diversity Officer.” Is this just hyperbole, or is it cause for serious concern? Either way, we can’t brush it under the rug.

After all, only 3 years ago, employers were scrambling to advance DEI initiatives. For many, this included new C-level positions with sweeping responsibilities. According to LinkedIn, from 2019-2021, demand for senior workplace diversity executives grew nearly 170%. This easily outpaced hiring for every other C-suite role.

But now, the pendulum is rapidly swinging in the opposite direction, and workplace diversity leaders are taking the hit. In fact, C-level DEI hiring actually shrank last year at a rate of -4.5%. And DEI positions are the only ones moving in a negative direction.

Why such a swift, dramatic shift? Multiple factors are driving these decisions. But sadly, HR is getting caught in the middle. As a former Chief Diversity Officer at a major U.S. hospital system says, the hiring spree now feels like a “knee-jerk reaction” that didn’t create much impact and left both sides feeling disillusioned.

DEI at Work: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back?

So what’s really happening here? Is DEI frozen in time — or worse, losing ground? Here’s another top DEI executive’s opinion:

“Some employers may have neglected or even paused their diversity and inclusion programs. In the short term, this may seem understandable given the extraordinarily challenging circumstances. Long-term, however, it will come back to haunt you when the economy improves and you need to compete for talent again.”

Given current workplace DEI issues, this may seem like a recent statement. But surprise — it’s actually from a July 2020 article by LaFawn Davis of Indeed.

At the time, LaFawn was VP of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (DIB), where she led efforts to remove bias and barriers in the company’s products and its work culture. Since then, her role has expanded. She now serves as SVP of Environmental, Social & Governance, and her commitment to DIB is just as resolute.

Timeless Insights From a DEI Leader

With all the mixed news about workplace diversity lately, I decided to revisit a conversation I had with LaFawn late in 2020 on the #WorkTrends podcast. If you want a reality check, I invite you to join me. Despite different circumstances three years on, I think you’ll agree LaFawn’s wisdom still rings true today…

 

Lessons for Today’s Leaders

Here are several takeaways that continue to resonate:

1. DIB Isn’t Just One Standalone Thing

Too many companies attempt to lump diversity, inclusion, and belonging into one category, separate from other business functions. As LaFawn says:

Companies are trying to silo off diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Or they make one of the terms synonymous with the others.

2. How to Unpack DIB

What should we understand about the distinct elements of DIB? According to LaFawn:

Diversity is the belief that teams with different work styles, problem-solving techniques, life experiences, backgrounds, perspectives, and skill sets truly make innovation possible.

Inclusion is about actions and behaviors that create a culture where employees feel valued, trusted, and authentic.

And belonging is a feeling of community. It is the people and our culture that make us feel connected.

3. An Integrated View

When these three distinct elements of DIB are combined, we feel valued. LaFawn explains:

It’s not about looking like me or coming from where I come from. It’s about those common threads that pull us together in a broader work context.

4. The Pandemic Exposed Many DIB Weaknesses

Even now, we see Covid fallout that disproportionately affects some members of the workforce. For example, frontline workers endured extraordinary stress during the lockdown. This has led to a severe talent shortage in the services sector that is likely to continue.

But by exposing this and other issues of workplace bias and inequality, the pandemic has underscored fundamental changes organizations must make to ensure that marginalized people feel like they belong.

The Business Case for Workplace Diversity

Of course, business leaders must focus on business performance. So I asked LaFawn to share her thoughts about DIB’s impact on the bottom line. Not surprisingly, she served up some compelling statistics:

Will we be a better company 10 years from now? 15?

This question should keep every business leader up at night.

We know that businesses with a more diverse workforce are 36% more likely to be in the top tier of their industry. We know that firms with greater gender diversity are 25% more likely to be at the top in financial returns, market share, and retention.

So diversity, inclusion, and belonging do affect your bottom line!

That’s not all from LaFawn. For more of her DEI guidance, check this article: “How Belonging Differs From Diversity and Inclusion — and Why It Matters.”

Workplace Diversity Belongs With Us All, Especially Now

Like LaFawn, I believe DEI still belongs, today and in the future of work. And we’re not alone by any means.

Earlier this year, an in-depth Pew Research study of nearly 6,000 U.S. workers revealed some valuable insights about the state of workplace DEI. For example, while only 33% of respondents said their employer has a dedicated DEI leader onboard, 61% feel their organization’s policies ensure fairness in hiring, pay, and promotions.

Workplace diversity progress poll - TalentCulture July 2023That’s encouraging. But it’s not the whole story. Consider this small slice of DEI life from TalentCulture’s world:

Several weeks ago, we asked our community to tell us if their work culture has become more diverse and inclusive since the pandemic. Interestingly, only 37% told us the situation has improved at least somewhat, while 63% said it’s the same or even worse.

Clearly, there’s still work to do. But building a culture around workplace diversity is not about platitudes. That’s not a sustainable strategy. DEI is a process. And that process is not a sprint. It’s a marathon.

DEI Leadership Action Items

If you’re a leader who remains committed to creating a workplace around fairness and opportunity for all, keep moving forward. I’m right there with you. And if you’re uncertain about how to move forward, I suggest revisiting other ideas that have stood the test of time.

For example, consider practical advice DEI leaders shared in 2020 with one of our blog contributors, Laura Sabattini. Laura is another DEI expert on the move. In 2020, she was a Principal Researcher at The Conference Board, and she’s since joined Honeywell as Director of Inclusion and Diversity.

Clearly, Laura isn’t just passing along interesting ideas. She is actually walking the talk every single day. I think you’ll agree, the suggestions she curated are worth another look:

1. Create a Common Vision

Enhance communication and drive consistent messaging across the organization. Focus on helping leaders and colleagues understand how DEI improves the work environment and increases resilience during times of change.

Tips from DEI Leaders:

  • Define DEI in ways that directly align with your organization’s culture and values.
  • Identify measurable behaviors and clear expectations to hold people accountable for those behaviors.

2. Encourage Participation and Collaboration

Leverage trends and events to build awareness among those who haven’t been involved with DEI, to ensure that ownership doesn’t fall solely on underrepresented groups.

Tips from DEI Leaders:

  • Provide resources to help people engage, participate, and take action at work and beyond.
  • Build trust by encouraging dialogue over conflict and giving people latitude to make mistakes.

3. Invest in Developing Leadership Skills

Inclusive cultures don’t just happen by chance. They require intentionality and willingness to improve how we work and interact with others. This may require leaders to “unlearn” some management standards before they embrace new skills. The good news: This can improve leadership effectiveness and business results.

Tips From DEI Leaders: 

  • You don’t need to start from scratch. Leverage existing inclusive leadership models.
  • Work with formal and informal DEI champions to identify meaningful behaviors. Some organizations may focus on decision-making, while others may focus on innovation. The key is to align DEI skills with your business and culture.

4. Emphasize Accountability

To build buy-in, hold people accountable for their role in building a more inclusive culture. This includes specific team or leader behaviors as well as managerial metrics (for priorities such as engagement or representation among teams).

Tips From DEI Leaders: 

  • Gather input from leaders and regularly follow-up to discuss their accountability and progress.
  • Engage human capital analytics to identify DEI patterns, trends, and impact. (For example, compare promotion and attrition rates across functions and teams.)
  • Periodically assess what is and isn’t working, and provide stakeholders with updates.
Managers need a toolbox for the "post-everything" era. Here are ideas for elements that organizations should include - by Ron Ricci of The Culture Platform

Managers Need a Toolbox for the “Post-Everything” Era

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TalentCulture Content Impact Award Winner - 2023
Sponsored by The Culture Platform

What tools actually help managers manage their people? That’s the most important question every organization needs to ask itself as the workplace enters the “post-everything” era. Post-pandemic, post-work-from-home, post-boomers, post-engagement-software’s-failure-to make-a-difference, post-wondering-if-AI-will-affect-work. You get my drift.

I believe this new era will be defined by how well organizations adapt their approach to managing people, as well as the responsibilities they put on managers’ shoulders.

Inside the “Post-Everything” Manager’s Toolkit

“Post-everything” has created a new starting line for managers. Expectations have changed. Most importantly, the number one reason why individuals leave a job today is a lack of growth opportunities. In fact, more than any generations in history, Gen Z and Millennials are ready to quit their current job for another role that promises better opportunities.

This is why managers need to focus on setting clear expectations. But here’s the catch — it requires human-to-human communication.

I’ve managed about 5,000 people in my career. My on-the-ground experience taught me that no two people are exactly alike. Career planning is a process of ongoing communication. It’s a give-and-take conversation about strengths and weaknesses, about roles and responsibilities, about goals and metrics, about performance and results.

As every manager knows, it’s remarkably easy to make mistakes when setting expectations. Being consistent is hard. But it’s even harder if your organization is also inconsistent.

Think for a moment about your career. Ask yourself this question: Have you ever seen an employer dedicated to providing a single, consistent, unified process that helps managers set expectations about career opportunities for team members? Is this happening where you work now?

The “Post-Everything” Process

Of course, a toolbox is only as good as the process it uses.

I’ve spent a decade talking to hundreds of organizations around the world about the role of the manager. Along the way, I’ve repeatedly heard that if we want to help managers set clear expectations, inconsistency is the biggest problem to solve.

Inconsistency comes in many forms. It may come from a lack of formal goals or goals that are continuously changing. You may see it in a failure to establish metrics or metrics that mean different things. It could be about reorgs or reductions in force, weak communication, managerial changes, or language differences. The list goes on and on.

At its heart, inconsistency breeds distrust in management’s ability to be accountable and follow through on an employee’s career growth. These triggers cause people to move on in search of better opportunities. And that’s why I think organizational inconsistency is failing managers today and is the real reason employees are so disengaged at work.

3 Steps For Success

I’ve come to believe that every unified process to help managers consistently set clear expectations must include three essential steps. Individually, each step is helpful. But linking all three end-to-end is the key to empowering managers, especially at scale. So this is my call to action for leaders:

1. Embrace a Common Vocabulary

Communicate with common terms. Think of company-specific languages like V2MOM from Salesforce or standardized vocabularies like OKRs. A common organizational vocabulary eliminates communication gray zones or ambiguities. What words do people use in running your business? You need to define the meaning of those words. For example, what does strategy mean to your organization? How do you distinguish a priority from a program? What is an initiative, and how does that differ from a project?

2. Emphasize Shared Goals

To be clear about which activities matter to operational execution, develop and publish shared goals. These goals are the way people can connect their job role to what will be rewarded. Shared goals serve the important role of distinguishing what’s important from what’s urgent when communicating. Do we care about growth? Or do we care about efficiency? Shared goals help managers align job roles to what the organization actually values.

3. Focus on the Standard Metrics

Are you measuring everyone’s success the same way? A single taxonomy of metrics sets up what employees really want — a consistent accountability system. If people can’t communicate with facts about their performance and results, it leads to an insidious way of getting ahead: relying on who you know. And we all know what that leads to.

Alignment Matters in the “Post-Everything” Era

A common vocabulary, shared goals, and a single system of metrics. Together, they form an end-to-end process that minimizes inconsistency when setting expectations.

Yes, this process is more difficult than buying a software tool. It requires leaders and managers to do the hard work of agreeing on specific elements of the process. But that said, it’s no different with Six Sigma or Lean/Agile methods. And the results are worth the effort.

The “post-everything era” is defined by what the best employees want — growth and advancement. This era demands end-to-end alignment. That means every employee in an organization should be able to align their job role to current and future opportunities. It is hard work for any manager, but it’s the new “post-everything” reality.

Want to Manage Well? Alignment is the Answer

End-to-end alignment requires human-to-human communication up and down the organization. It’s why I believe employers have been getting engagement wrong. It’s upside down. Instead of being engaged, employees want their leaders and managers to be engaged in conversations about their individual career success.

The core premise of The Collaboration Imperative, which I co-authored about Cisco’s best practices, centers on the idea that any great productivity leap forward or new strategic direction requires the alignment of process, culture, and technology. In other words, it may be tempting to depend on a tool for this, but technology alone cannot substitute for a complete process.

Organizations already put significant weight on managers’ shoulders. In the “post-everything” era, it’s time to lighten the load. It’s time for leaders to carry some of the weight by giving managers what they need — a process that consistently and systematically eliminates inconsistencies in expectation-setting. Let’s give managers the toolbox they really deserve. Your people are depending on it.

I want to give you a head start with this process. Send an email request to me at TheCulturePlatform@gmail.com and I’ll send you a PDF of Chapter 4 from The Collaboration Imperative: Creating Commitment to Shared Goals.

What's new about working remotely - and employers are you listening? #WorkTrends podcast with Robert Graham of Poll Everywhere

What’s New About Working Remotely?

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Sponsored by Poll Everywhere

Working remotely is nothing new. Yet somehow, it has changed. Wait. Weren’t we just (finally) getting comfortable with Zoom meetings and 4-day workweeks? What exactly is different? And why should leaders be paying much closer attention right now?

Well frankly, the stakes are getting higher. Even during today’s economic headwinds, the market for qualified talent remains remarkably tight. And let’s face it — if you lose strong people because you don’t see eye-to-eye on remote work, replacing them will be costly, time-consuming, and may even end the same way.

How Can Working Remotely Succeed, Going Forward?

Maybe it’s time to shift your work structure. Maybe not. But here’s the bigger question: Whatever you do, how will you know if you’re moving in the right direction?

Every company is unique — no matter what the work structure may be. The tradeoffs you need to consider are specific to your team. So it makes sense to engage people in honest, open conversations about how to map their work expectations with your organization’s mission and business realities.

How can you make that happen? Let’s talk with someone who understands this process from the inside out…

Meet Our Guest: Robert Graham

Please join me in welcoming Robert Graham, CEO of Poll Everywhere — a SaaS company that offers live online polls and other interactive feedback tools that help organizations gather and act on valuable insights from employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

Robert is a software engineering expert and serial solo entrepreneur who is passionate about empowering his team — all of whom are working remotely. He’s also interested in helping other leaders grow their teams personally and professionally, while building successful companies. I’m interested in that, too, so let’s get started!

What People Want From Work Now

Welcome, Robert. To set the stage, tell me your perspective on the modern workplace. What are you seeing?

We see people being more interested in a relationship with work that is tied to a mission, especially for Millennials and Gen Z. And these expectations are defining what employers need to provide.

There’s a video by Simon Sinek that talks about how we all used to be more involved with “third places.” People were members of a church or a softball team or community groups.

But now we spend a lot of that time online or watching Netflix. So we’re looking to work to fulfill more aspects of our lives.

Motivations Haven’t Changed

You recently published a LinkedIn article about engagement and working remotely. What should employers consider about these issues?

Key features of the modern workplace haven’t changed much. However, our relationship to them has changed a lot, and our context has also changed a lot.

For example, you and I are able to do this podcast remotely. A lot of our work can be done remotely now. And that’s mostly about new tools and processes that make it possible.

But as Daniel Pink says, people are motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Those things haven’t changed much, even though the environment has changed quite a bit.

So if you want people to feel engaged while working remotely, you need to get them connected to those intrinsic motivators. How do you build a remote culture and teach managers to be effective in that setting? There are so many trade-offs.

The Value of Continuous Listening

How can organizations respond to these changes?

Doing this really well requires curiosity and consistent listening. Because when you try new things you’ll make some mistakes. Or sometimes the context will shift, so what worked previously may no longer be right for your organization or your people.

It’s important to find ways to build systems that encourage new ways of working, and promote people who work effectively when things are changing. That’s especially important if your organization is growing.

Where Listening Fits In

Whether people are working remotely or not, how can listening help improve employee engagement?

Start by asking yourselves if your organization has a clear purpose. Have you communicated it? And do your people believe in it?

And another part of that journey starts with asking your team what motivates them. Do they feel they have autonomy? How can you enable them to be more autonomous? Do they feel they’re able to grow and develop mastery over their work? Do they feel connected to a purpose?

Every organization is going to start in a different place with those questions. And that’s why this process depends on listening.

Learn More About Working Remotely 2.0

For more insights from Robert about how organizations can adjust to today’s changing workplace, listen to this full podcast episode. And be sure to subscribe to the #WorkTrends Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

Also, to continue this conversation on social media anytime, follow our #WorkTrends hashtag on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Let’s talk!

9 Ways Organizations Can Become More Inclusive This Year - TalentCulture

8 Ways Companies Are Becoming More Inclusive This Year

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Is your organization striving to create a more inclusive work culture? If so, you’re not alone. Many HR and business leaders are committed to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). But some strategies are more successful than others. What methods are actually moving the meter these days?

To understand what works in the real world, we asked eight business executives to tell us about effective DEI changes they’ve implemented during the past year. Their collective answers read like a best practices playbook:

  • Improve Meeting Policies to Support Wellbeing
  • Review and Revise Job Offers
  • Establish Employee Resource Groups
  • Share Diverse Employee Experiences
  • Shift Pay Structure to Base Salary and Bonus
  • Introduce Mental Health First-Aid Support
  • Prioritize Leadership Paths for Women
  • Intentionally Redesign Teams for Diversity

For details about these ideas, read the responses below…

How to Become More Inclusive: 8 Examples

1. Improve Meeting Policies to Support Wellbeing

As part of our commitment to workforce wellness, we addressed recent employee feedback about excessive meetings and pandemic-related burnout. Specifically, we emphasized the importance of taking small actions to reduce meeting frequency and duration, so we could ease stress for everyone. For example:

  • We send regular calendar blocks so everyone can conduct brief “meeting audits.” This is when employees use our Meeting Decision Tree tool to review upcoming meetings and determine the necessity.
  • We’ve recommitted to scheduling meetings only within core business hours (9:00 am – 4:00 pm) to promote reasonable work-life balance and family time in the evenings.
  • We’ve designated Friday afternoons as meeting-free time. This enables people to focus on creative assignments, catch up on projects, and prepare for the week ahead.

Our new practices and resources are improving wellbeing. They’re also facilitating better collaboration, problem-solving, productivity, and innovation.

Natasha Miller Williams, VP, Head of Diversity and Inclusion, Ferrara

2. Review and Revise Job Listings

During the past year, we have intentionally revisited the way we write job ads. We’ve always made sure our offers are inviting, clear, concise, and accurate. However, we felt it was time to address other details so we could hopefully increase diversity among candidates.

The results are visible to the naked eye. Now, I am super happy to look at our diverse teams, knowing that our attention to rephrasing may have made it easier for people to join us.

These were our priorities when reviewing and improving job listings:

  1. We used truly gender-neutral language.
  2. We highlighted the importance of skills, so it’s clear that this is the decisive factor in our hiring decisions.
  3. We listed job requirements only if they were absolutely necessary. You never know if needless demands are unintentionally excluding people.
  4. Finally, we reviewed job titles and descriptions to ensure that they are truly inclusive and free of biased language.

Piotrek Sosnowski, Chief People and Culture Officer, Life And My Finances

3. Establish Employee Resource Groups

Our organization has been attempting to improve inclusivity by enhancing our approach to diversity and inclusion training. For example, we have created employee resource groups (ERGs) to provide a safe space for employees based on their identity or shared experiences. 

These ERGs serve as proactive networks that help members build communities, collaborate professionally, and work together on initiatives that promote inclusivity across the organization. They also help our organization understand uncommon experiences and points of view, while ensuring that everyone is respected at all times.

Michael Alexis, CEO, teambuilding.com

4. Share Diverse Employee Experiences

For any organization that wants to build a more welcoming culture where everyone feels they belong, raising awareness about inclusivity is vital. However, it’s not always easy to understand the difficulties that other people face — especially when those difficulties aren’t highly visible. 

This is why we’ve been providing opportunities for employees from across the organization to share their unique stories. Specifically, we invite everyone to discuss the unique difficulties they face, along with advice on how peers and managers can be more helpful. They also answer questions from others in the organization.

By sharing employee experiences, we’re spreading empathy across our organization. This helps team members build stronger bonds and creates a more positive, inclusive work environment.

Max Wesman, Chief Operating Officer, GoodHire

5. Shift Pay Structure to Base Salary and Bonus

Although our industry traditionally pays employees on a commission-only basis, we’ve adopted a compensation package that includes base salary plus a performance bonus. This gives employees better financial security and peace of mind. Also, we feel it helps ensure our clients receive the best impartial advice from every agent.

What’s more, this move promotes more inclusivity. That’s because sponsorship and mentorship are integral aspects of mobility for people of color and other underrepresented employees. But commission-only pay can derail vital team relationships and breed a culture of competition that further divides people.

We encourage our people to collaborate in establishing performance metrics that will promote better team cohesion and move us collectively toward our DEIB goals.

Anthony Martin, Founder and CEO, Choice Mutual

6. Introduce Mental Health First-Aid Support

During the last year, our organization has focused heavily on promoting employee mental health. In particular, we’ve focused on making our workplace safe for people with any kind of neurological difference, such as ADHD, dyslexia, or autism.

As part of this effort, two of our staff members completed mental health first aid training. Now, people across our organization know that if they’re struggling, they have somewhere to go where they will be heard and supported but not judged.

This effort has been very well received. In fact, it’s been so successful, we’ve recently trained two more mental health first-aiders.

Matthew Stibbe, CEO, Articulate Marketing

7. Prioritize Leadership Paths for Women

People expect modern organizations to provide an inclusive work environment. And this responsibility for creating a welcoming work environment for all falls on the management team. This is why we’ve essentially created a women in leadership program designed to help women from all backgrounds achieve their professional aspirations.

Unfortunately, many businesses don’t promote single mothers into leadership. That’s because they assume women won’t have the time or commitment to succeed. But in my experience,  these women tend to be more driven than average.

Long ago, I started my company as a single mother. I understand firsthand just how hard it can be to juggle personal and professional life. But I also know how committed women in this situation are to keeping their promises to customers, employees and family members.

Our organization wants to reward this kind of commitment. That’s why we assist women of all ethnicities and backgrounds as they work towards a degree or a leadership position in our company. We want to help women in our company shoot for the stars and reach them.

Kathy Bennett, CEO and Founder, Bennett Packaging

8. Intentionally Redesign Teams for Diversity

We recognize the value of diverse perspectives and experiences in driving innovation and fostering a more inclusive work environment. So, one action we’ve taken this year to enhance diversity involves remixing our teams.

Specifically, we deliberately redefined the composition of teams across departments and projects. Our goal was to better represent the diversity of our workforce within smaller groups. Therefore, when reassigning team members, we considered factors such as gender, ethnicity, age, and skill sets.

By intentionally rethinking the composition of our teams, we’ve aimed to break down silos, encourage collaboration, and promote the cross-pollination of ideas. By bringing together individuals with different perspectives, expertise, and life experiences, we hope we’re better positioned to harness the collective intelligence and creativity of our workforce.

Kimberley Tyler-Smith, VP of Strategy and Growth, Resume Worded

Belonging Where Does it Fit Into Your Work Culture - TalentCulture

Belonging: Where Does It Fit Into Your Work Culture?

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We all share a deep desire for belonging. From Abraham Maslow to Brené Brown, experts agree that this “indescribable feeling of being welcomed” is a fundamental need. Even the earliest behavioral scientists recognized that the need to belong is an integral aspect of the human experience. 

Cut to today. The year is 2023, and the state of the global workplace is … confusing. For example, in the United States, people spend a massive portion of each week at work. And increasingly, we’re questioning the way we manage our careers.

All around us, full-time employees are shifting to part-time work, office workers are becoming digital nomads, and teams are dissolving. The apple cart has been tipped. And frankly, no one is really sure where all these changes will lead.

Despite this season of flux and indecision, employers can help people find clarity. By prioritizing an inclusive work environment, leaders can create an authentic culture of belonging that attracts talent from all walks of life.

Belonging is not just a powerful talent acquisition strategy. It’s also an effective way to engage people, whatever their values may be. It appeals to everyone, from full-time employees to contingent workers, no matter whether they work onsite, offsite, or in a hybrid capacity.

How Inclusion Impacts Employee Retention

Workforce inclusion and retention are deeply intertwined. According to a Deloitte survey, 80% of full-time employees consider inclusion an important factor when choosing where to work. It also remains significant throughout the entire employment relationship. In fact, 23% of respondents told Deloitte they’ve quit a job where inclusion was lacking.

These statistics speak not only to inclusion’s influence on recruitment, but retention, as well. When people feel included, they’re naturally more engaged. And although engaged people care more about their work, they’re less likely to suffer from anxiety or burn out.

A genuinely inclusive work environment promotes a sense of belonging. And a sense of belonging lifts team morale. As a result, businesses benefit in multiple ways. For example, inclusive organizations tend to be more productive and more profitable. This means fostering an inclusive work environment is not just a good thing to do. It’s also a good business move.

All of this ties back to people who feel included and engaged. So the message is clear: If your culture is inclusive, people will feel more connected to your organization and invested in your success throughout their relationship with you.

How to Foster an Inclusive Work Environment

What strategies and practices help build a culture of inclusion and belonging? Focus on these fundamentals:

1. Educate Around Diversity

Diversity and inclusion are closely linked. But diversity alone is not enough to move the needle. After all, what’s the point of creating an inclusive environment only for one kind of person?

Instead, ensure every member of your workforce is welcome to bring their authentic selves to work. This starts by consistently communicating your commitment to diversity, and illustrating that commitment with action. In other words, look for ways to openly support and celebrate different skill sets and abilities, backgrounds, accessibility needs, gender identities, and ethnicities.

Leaders can also educate employees by raising awareness and encouraging people to interact in appropriate ways with co-workers. For example, neurodiverse team members may need noise-canceling headphones to stay focused and productive at work. Or on Zoom calls, hearing impaired participants may need to rely on captioning. Educating teams about these adaptations and how to apply them will help everyone feel more receptive and comfortable.

2. Prioritize Inclusion, Even in Stormy Weather

In this time of reshufflings and resignations, your commitment will be tested. Maintaining a culture of inclusion and belonging is essential, even when your business is facing a downturn.

In times of crisis, many leaders may default to outdated practices, especially when managing reductions in force and communicating about these decisions. But remaining open and intentional about layoff practices can help you keep your inclusivity promises.

Above all, insist upon treating all employees with an equal level of respect and appreciation throughout disruptive organizational changes. This tells everyone that the way you let go of team members is just as important as how you hire and retain them.

3. Offer an Environment of Care

Inclusion not only means people feel welcomed at work, but also that your organization cares about the quality of their employee experience. Demonstrating care can take numerous forms. For example, you could:

  • Reserve time each day for wellbeing check-ins or social activities that promote team care and bonding.
  • Reward employees for inclusive, caring actions toward others.
  • Ensure that everyone receives training on how to develop emotional intelligence skills and put them into practice at work.

The possibilities are limitless. But whatever mix you choose for your organization, keep in mind that creating an environment of care reinforces a sense of belonging. So the sooner you craft this agenda, the better. Also, the sooner employees experience a sense of caring, the better.

Start with the onboarding stage, or even earlier. Think about how you can help applicants and news hires understand how much your company values and prioritizes inclusion. Then consider how you can keep checking in periodically to ensure employees’ needs are being met and they’re actually developing a sense of belonging.

A Final Note on Inclusion, Belonging and Employee Retention

For better or worse, the nature of your work environment directly influences workforce recruiting and retention. If you learn how to foster a culture of belonging, you’ll attract, engage and retain people who appreciate sharing their talent with an organization that makes them feel wanted.

Making a meaningful impact on your culture may require you to invest more time, attention and funding to inclusion. But, as many employers have discovered, it is well worth the effort.

Leading Through Change: What Have We Learned?

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Leaders, how are you doing? If you’re feeling weary, I get it. Leading through change is hard. Of course, no one promised it would be easy. But no one saw the pandemic coming, either. Suddenly, it just crashed into our lives and shook us to our collective core.

Covid disrupted everything everywhere all at once. And the virus was only the beginning. Three years later, shock waves continue to roll through the world of work, and we still feel massive reverb. In 2021, it was the Great Resignation. Last year, it was Quiet Quitting. Now, it’s about finding a viable path through the push-pull struggle between return-to-office policies vs. remote work preferences.

On that note, let’s take a brief pulse check. Employers, whatever your current remote work standards may be, how’s that working for you? Moreover, how’s it working for your people?

If you’re ambivalent, you’re not alone. Plenty of organizations are still unsure about committing to long-term flexible work options. But if you think remote work demand is just a passing phase, think again. Just check this chart from Google Trends:

Leading through change - remote work - search interest 5 years - google trends

In short, it means U.S. interest in remote work has never been stronger than today – as measured by the volume of Google searches people conduct each day. In fact, we’ve just reached peak historical interest – 100 on a scale of 0-100. And global interest is growing at a similar rate. Surprised?

But I digress. This really isn’t about remote work, per se. It’s about a deeper issue. Namely, how can we lead through change that’s beyond our control? How can we engage and motivate employees, even in the most difficult circumstances?

Recently, I hunted for some answers to these questions by rewinding the #WorkTrends podcast time machine to June 2020. Three years ago, the world seemed at a low ebb. We were living in isolation. Life seemed sad, volatile, and bleak. Change management felt more like crisis management. But that was the perfect time to compare notes with Doug Butler, who was CEO of Reward Gateway – an employee recognition platform provider.

Doug has seen firsthand how mission, values, and engagement can build or break businesses and work cultures. So I asked him to share some of his best advice. Looking back, his leadership suggestions are still just as useful today…

Leading Through Change: 5 Takeaways

1) Aim for a balance of caution and optimism

When things are tough and circumstances are changing rapidly, communication is everything. Remind yourself and others that you’ve been through serious challenges in the past, so you’ll find a way through this, as well.

Sometimes, the process may be painful. You need to be willing to make mistakes and keep going. But be sure people know that you’ll share what you know, when you know it. Then follow through on that promise.

2) Rebuild and reinforce connections

Be more visible. Show up regularly and be accessible to people, whether it’s virtually or in-person, or a combination. Encourage others to do the same. Video technology helps, but there are two kinds of video to consider:

Virtual meetings are common at Doug’s company. But more importantly, he writes a weekly blog for employees. And during the Covid lockdown, he started including a video summary with each update. People responded well to that personal touch. So all of the company’s leaders began adding a video to their written messages.

3) Make it your mission to sustain engagement

While you’re figuring out how to adjust, it’s important to prioritize team morale and emotional wellbeing. Change naturally takes a toll on people, especially when what’s ahead is unclear. This is another reason why open, honest communication and deliberate action are key.

Doug says this management style is actually very liberating. It’s also the best way to put trust at the center of your culture during difficult times.

4) Recognize the upside of change

Ironically, when things are changing, leaders often see new opportunities. It can open the door to doing things better or doing entirely different things. But Doug cautions leaders not to become distracted by too many opportunities.

You need to prioritize. That’s where listening to others helps. People need to feel like they’re part of the conversation. Listening is another aspect of communication that is essential for the health of your culture and your business.

5) Share your vision for the future

This isn’t about making unilateral decisions and delivering a roadmap. It’s about recognizing that people have a vested interest in the future and inviting them to participate in that discussion. That’s why Doug’s team continuously let people know what was in front of them and what they were considering.

Whatever you plan to do, always frame it with the organization’s mission and values. No one wants to change things just for the sake of change. But with the right context, change can become a powerful way to bring people together.

Leading Through Change: Top 10 “To Dos”

After revisiting that podcast with Doug, I found another source of leadership advice from 2020 that deserves renewed attention. Mark Zuppe, a serial business founder, shared a brilliant article on our blog about how to sustain employee experience during tough times.

In many ways, his advice echoes Doug’s. And I think his recommendations are just as relevant now as they were three years ago. Don’t you?

Tips to Stabilize Employee Experience During the Pandemic

  • Foster transparent communications
  • Keep communications positive and helpful
  • Offer employees ways to relieve stress
  • Adjust your internal processes to the “new normal”
  • Be empathetic and patient with your team
  • Proactively seek employee input
  • Expand inbound feedback channels
  • Promote new safety protocols
  • Help your team recalibrate expectations
  • Recognize the small things

Leading Through Change: What’s Next?

We’ve all had to find ways to keep moving through unrelenting change, for better or worse. We’ve made mistakes and we’ve learned some leadership lessons we never expected to have on our plate. It’s been overwhelming at times. But we’re all better prepared to navigate uncertainty in the future.

Now the question is, will we hold on to those lessons, or leave them behind with our supply of Covid masks? And when the time comes to demonstrate agility again, how will we apply that experience to whatever lies ahead? I hope you’ll share your leadership lessons with me on LinkedIn, or perhaps even in an article or podcast here at TalentCulture.

Does your HR strategy leverage organizational competencies? Find out why it pays to link link company strengths with human resources efforts - and how to get started

Does Your HR Strategy Leverage Organizational Competencies?

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In today’s ever-shifting talent landscape, companies large and small are searching for more effective ways to attract, recognize, and retain their workforce. These opportunities come in various forms — new or improved systems, strategies, platforms, and processes. But one smart move is to double down on organizational competencies. In other words, it’s worthwhile for companies to identify, prioritize, develop, and more fully leverage their unique strengths.

What Are Core Competencies and Why Should We Care?

Organizational competencies are a combination of the essential capabilities, knowledge, and skills that create value and fuel a company’s success. They define “how” an organization accomplishes its goals.

Although core competencies are deeply rooted in an organization’s DNA, they don’t materialize on their own. Instead, they’re established and reinforced through years of business experience and cumulative institutional knowledge, along with ongoing training and development. And although competencies are fundamental, they aren’t necessarily rigid and fixed. Just as any business grows and evolves, core competencies can shift over time.

Examples of organizational competencies include:

  • Customer focus
  • Innovation
  • Integrity
  • Partnering
  • Quality
  • Resilience
  • Resourcefulness/problem-solving
  • Teamwork/collaboration

By investing in their core competencies, businesses can improve performance in ways that create and sustain a competitive advantage. In fact, recent McKinsey research concluded, “Companies that focus on their unique strengths and leverage them across the organization are more likely to outperform their peers.”

Linking Organizational Competencies With HR

The concept of leveraging core strengths is not new. However, it’s gaining renewed attention, as employers struggle to address the challenge of attracting and retaining talent in today’s post-pandemic world. In this increasingly complex, fluid global business environment, employers must find ways to differentiate themselves.

One approach is to recognize and support the symbiotic relationship between business strengths and HR. In other words, it pays to ensure that organizational competencies are an integral dimension of HR strategies and operations. For instance, a company could emphasize the importance of improving HR’s ability to:

  1. Build and expand the workforce by attracting and retaining exceptional talent
  2. Identify and address workforce challenges and opportunities
  3. Empower leaders to measure, communicate, and proactively improve staff performance
  4. Better understand, measure, and coach people based on their functional role, team mission, and broader organizational needs

By strengthening these competencies, employers can expect to see improvement in workforce performance as well as overall business outcomes. Why? Here’s what experts say…

4 Ways Organizational Competencies Elevate HR Results

1. Recruitment and Talent Attraction

One way organizations can improve HR outcomes by leading with strengths is through recruitment. Employers that clearly articulate their core competencies and differentiate themselves from competitors are better positioned to attract top talent.

According to LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner, “When companies focus on their unique strengths, they are able to attract talent that is aligned with their values and culture.” In fact, research indicates alignment with culture is one of the most powerful ways to drive retention.

2. Employee Learning

Training and development is another area where organizational competencies can help HR make a significant business impact. Companies that create a culture of continuous learning and improvement are directly shaping organizational competencies.

This kind of investment not only addresses an organization’s existing knowledge and skills gaps, but also demonstrates a long-term commitment that resonates with staff. As John Doerr, author of Measure What Matters, says, “Companies that invest in employee development are more likely to retain top talent and see a positive impact on their bottom line.”

3. Performance Management

Organizational competencies can also play an integral role in performance management. By clearly defining strengths and expectations, employers can provide people with a roadmap for success.

This also helps managers provide targeted feedback and coaching to support employees as they strive to define and achieve their goals. According to Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, “When managers are able to clearly define expectations and provide feedback that is both kind and direct, they can help employees develop their competencies and reach their full potential.”

4. Performance Support and Coaching

Finally, organizational competencies can help HR teams more effectively identify and support high performers, while also coaching up people who are not performing at their best. By relying on clearly defined competencies, HR practitioners can more confidently create a framework to evaluate performance and identify areas for improvement.

This can also help managers provide targeted coaching and support to help employees develop additional competencies and reach their full potential. As Marcus Buckingham notes in his book, First, Break All the Rules, “Companies that focus on developing employees’ strengths are more likely to see improvements in performance and engagement.”

Final Notes on Core Competencies and HR

In today’s challenging business environment, sources of competitive advantage are hard to find. This is why more employers are leveraging organizational competencies to inform and improve their strategic HR efforts. By linking their unique strengths to talent acquisition and retention, employee learning, performance management, and coaching capabilities, they’re seeing improved workforce metrics. What’s more, they’re seeing better business results, as well.

How do you design internal communications for remote teams? Check these ideas from an employee communications leader - on the TalentCulture blog

How to Design Internal Communications for Remote Teams

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A strong internal communications function is essential for every company, both culturally and operationally. It helps keep employees aware of relevant news and updates, excited about how they contribute to the organization’s mission and success, and committed to continued progress.

Keeping everyone on the same page is tough enough when employees work at the same location. But now with the rise of remote work, internal communications is even tougher to manage. Distributed teams must remain connected, informed, and engaged. But how can you ensure that people are aligned and productive when they’re located in different cities, regions, countries, and time zones?

Avoid the Easy Solution

Many companies have adopted a “lift and shift” approach to internal communications. However, this is risky. You can’t assume whatever works in a physical office location will make sense in a virtual environment. For successful results, carefully consider your organization’s unique situation, issues, and needs.

As the manager of internal communications and events at a remote-first company, I understand how challenging it is to keep employees in 70+ countries connected and in the loop. Here’s what I’ve learned about leveraging internal communications to take far-flung teams to the next level of engagement, effectiveness, and wellbeing.

The Power of a Smart Internal Communications Strategy

My daily activities focus on coordinating events and communications that showcase company news, updates, and policy changes. But at a more fundamental level, I’m responsible for developing strong connections and community within the organization.

Why is this so important? According to Gallup research, 85% of the global workforce is either not engaged or is actively disengaged at work. This gap translates into a sobering $7 trillion of lost productivity.

The good news is that an effective internal communications strategy can move the meter on engagement and productivity. This is especially important in a remote or hybrid work environment, where you can’t rely on casual office interactions to facilitate social connection and cohesion. With a viable approach you can:

1. Unlock Valuable Insights

From an operations perspective, improving information flow between departments and functions breaks down information silos. This gives people clearer visibility into work priorities and progress across the organization. It also means people can work together more efficiently and productively without needless duplication of effort.

2. Separate Signal From Noise

Solid internal communications also cuts through organizational noise. This gives employees better access to essential company information. It also clears the path to resources people need to perform their job, so they aren’t overwhelmed by Slack messages and email threads. Ideally, it helps everyone feel more supported and empowered to succeed in their work.

3. Connect Critical Dots

From a culture and engagement perspective, internal communications is uniquely positioned to foster connection and community in multiple ways, by:

  1. Facilitating connections between employees, so people develop a sense of community and belonging.
  2. Linking people with work that is happening across the company. This helps them understand the organization’s collective progress and impact.
  3. Connecting people with the company’s mission and vision, so they feel they’re contributing to something meaningful and purposeful. That’s the ultimate goal — to give people a sense of belonging and purpose through their work.

Designing Internal Communications for Virtual Teams

When remote-first companies rethink internal communications with inclusion in mind, employee wellbeing and engagement follow. But what does it mean to be intentional and inclusive? Here’s an example:

Imagine you’re launching a new company-wide program. You’ll want to think carefully about the purpose behind your communications. What outcome are you seeking? What kind of response do you anticipate? What’s the ideal timing and structure for your message? Putting intention behind your plan helps you determine the who, how, when, where and why of information you’ll need to share.

Also, where does inclusion fit in? It ensures everyone has equal access to the information you share and equal opportunity to participate in events. For example, you could launch your new company-wide program by announcing it at an all-hands meeting. Then you could follow-up by sharing a video recording and a written summary. This reinforces the message for attendees, while helping those who couldn’t attend come up to speed.

After the initial announcement, people are likely to have additional concerns and questions. So you may want to set up a dedicated Slack channel where employees can ask questions openly or anonymously.

These are just a few ideas to illustrate how multiple communication tools and channels can help people quickly find, consume, and respond to new information at their convenience. It gives individuals more choice and autonomy. And because they’re in control of when and how they engage, it supports workforce wellbeing. In short, it shows that your organization cares about employees.

Building a Sense of Community and Belonging

Increasingly, we hear about an “epidemic of loneliness” that is eroding workforce health and wellbeing. The impact on organizations is steep. Related absenteeism costs employers $154 billion a year, not to mention the cost of poorer job performance.

Employers can’t afford to ignore this issue any longer. Investment in promoting deeper workplace social connections makes sense, especially for remote team members who don’t see colleagues face-to-face each day.

Virtual organizations can reimagine communications and events in ways that enhance a sense of community. This contributes to a stronger, more unified company culture that spans locations, language differences, and time zones.

Paradoxically, it may actually be easier for remote-first organizations to foster social connections than their traditional in-office counterparts. That’s because working on a distributed basis levels the playing field, bringing everyone together on the same virtual terms.

For instance, think about your regular all-hands meeting format. Is it a one-way broadcast where leaders outline business updates? How could you transform this forum into a fun, engaging event people actually want to attend?

What if you set a lively, upbeat mood by playing music while people join the call? How about weaving interactive elements into the agenda, like polls or game-based challenges? Or you could ask employees to suggest topics prior to each meeting. Then you could develop content and programming based on their interests.

Imagine an all-hands that’s not just about business, but about coming together as a team to celebrate the people who make your business special. What would that look like? Intentionally redesign that event. Then start experimenting so your vision becomes reality.

Virtual community building can also happen through online spaces focused on common interests, values, or identities. For instance, you could offer informal social Slack channels where people can discuss pets, parenting, travel, mental health, and so on. When people get to know each other based on personal interests that cut across departments and geographical boundaries, it builds familiarity and trust. Ultimately, this leads to stronger, more productive work relationships.

3 Tips to Optimize Internal Communications

Essentially, internal communications professionals are marketers, responsible for keeping employees aware, interested, involved and enthusiastic about all the meaningful work happening across an organization. With that in mind, here are three tips for optimizing remote team  communications and events:

1. Be Intentional

Think about the purpose of each communication campaign, event, or experience, so you’ll use employee time and attention efficiently and effectively. Keep inclusion top of mind, so people can engage and consume information when it’s best for them.

2. Build for Your People

Design and create with your audience in mind. Proactively listen and work with stakeholders to develop content and programming that resonates and enhances the employee experience.

3. Focus on Your Company’s Specific Needs

Every organization is different. What works for one won’t necessarily work for another. Consider your unique challenges, goals, and context. Then design custom solutions that are purpose-built for your organization and your people.

Internal Communications: Looking Ahead

Remote work may not be for everyone, but it is here to stay. In this new environment, organizations can elevate the employee experience by reimagining internal communications. If we do this well, employees will connect around a common purpose, regardless of their work location. And because they’re more informed, engaged and excited about work, they’ll hopefully be happier to show up and contribute each day. Now that’s something worth striving for!

What drives innovation management at successful companies? Check these tips and examples from an innovation expert.

What Drives Innovation Management at Successful Companies?

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In today’s fluid, fiercely competitive business environment, many organizations continuously strive to stay ahead of the curve. They know success requires an ongoing commitment to creativity and innovation. But breathing life into an innovation management strategy can be a complex, time-consuming challenge. What helps market leaders sustain an edge? Let’s take a closer look…

Too Often, Innovation Goals Don’t Match Reality

Why is innovation so crucial? It enhances productivity and profitability. What’s more, it can translate into significant long-term cost efficiencies. For example, according to McKinsey, innovative companies generate 2.4 times more profit, on average, than their less innovative counterparts.

But despite these promising statistics, most companies face a significant gap between innovation aspirations and reality. In fact, more than 80% of business leaders say innovation is one of their top three priorities — yet only 10% are satisfied with their current level of innovation performance.

What can organizations do to close this gap? Effective solutions depend on the people behind the innovation management process.

Managers Are the Secret

Fostering a culture of innovation involves more than just lofty aspirations. It also requires managers who are equipped with the right skills and resources to empower others. As the fundamental link between senior leadership and staff, managers are naturally positioned to foster creativity and innovation.

6 Keys to Innovation Management Success

At leading-edge companies, employees are empowered to experiment with new processes, tools, and services. They may explore a new product line, enhance the customer experience, or develop a tool to improve operational efficiency.

Regardless of the challenge at hand, people must feel ready to respond and supported in their efforts. This is where managers play an integral role in shaping innovation culture. Here are six innovation management steps that make a measurable difference:

1. Set the Right Tone

Innovation thrives when teams feel confident and competent enough to experiment, challenge the status quo, and embrace new ideas, processes, and technologies. This requires functional expertise and awareness of the organization, as well as a spirit of discovery. It also requires a nurturing environment that fosters psychological safety and encourages the free flow of ideas.

But perhaps most importantly, innovation demands a certain appetite for risk — with the reassurance that people can fail fast, learn from experience, and build on that foundation. Managers can set the tone by emphasizing each of these success factors.

2. Ensure That Employees Have Time to Contribute

Time is another consideration. No one can engage in innovation if they’re juggling endless to-do lists and reacting to requests that constantly come their way. Managers can make innovation a priority by allocating sufficient time for team members to stay on top of relevant trends, challenge tradition, investigate core issues, generate ideas, and explore solutions with others.

This is the case at 3M, a company known for its game-changing products. 3M’s long-standing culture of innovation encourages all employees to spend 15% of their work week proactively cultivating and pursuing “innovative ideas that excite them.”

3. Develop Strong Skills

Managers must come to the table with solid innovation management capabilities. After all, motivating employees to reach outside of their comfort zone isn’t easy. It requires emotional intelligence, empathy, and exceptional communication skills. Effective coaching skills are useful when encouraging people to innovate throughout their careers. And entrepreneurial skills come into play when spotting promising opportunities and helping employees find the determination and resourcefulness they need to push the envelope.

Smart companies know the breadth and depth of skills their managers possess. But many employers lack this kind of comprehensive insight. If you need a clearer, more complete view of manager skills across your organization, an inventory can help. First, identify and prioritize skills that matter most to you. Next, audit managers and document their skill sets. Then analyze this data to look for patterns that can help you find strengths and weaknesses.

Skills-Based Development in Practice

Although skills mapping is an important part of the planning process, innovation really comes to life when managers and their employees put these skills into practice. This is why organizations like Unilever and IBM have adopted a skills-based approach to workforce development, planning, and decision making. These companies rely on skills to guide key all kinds of workforce decisions, including hiring and promotions. This frees them from focusing too heavily on limited roles and job-specific siloes. It also enables them to adapt and innovate more swiftly than industry counterparts.

At Unilever, this skills-based approach takes various forms, including a talent marketplace where both permanent employees and “U-Workers” can participate in projects and tasks across the organization, based on their skills. U-Work is a contract work program that provides participants with a guaranteed minimum monthly retainer and enables them to work in a flexible way they prefer.

Meanwhile at IBM, half of its U.S.-based roles no longer require a degree. The company is also investing in upskilling veterans and neurodiverse individuals to develop high-demand skills the company needs.

Results from early adopters of skills-based strategies are promising. For instance, among companies that rely on skills to match people with work opportunities, 26% are better able to anticipate future disruptions, 26% have a more agile workforce, and 26% are more innovative.

4. Let Data Lead the Way

Many organizations are already sitting on a wealth of employee skill data, so implementing skills-based approaches is faster and easier than ever. This data is also an invaluable source of information for managers who are building innovative teams.

Skills data is available from HR, learning, and recruitment systems, as well as work-related platforms like project management tools and document systems. By combining and analyzing data about the work and learning people complete every day, along with their resumes, skills assessments, performance reviews, and feedback from others, managers can get a comprehensive view of their team’s skills and potential.

This kind of skills intelligence makes it possible to identify candidates who could complement a cross-functional innovation team, or expose gaps that may hinder future innovation. In short, it helps managers lead innovation with better insight, conduct career conversations with greater precision, and understand how disruption is shaping their team’s talent requirements.

5. Ensure Everyone is Onboard

Developing a culture of innovation requires buy-in at every level. Celebrating successful solutions and their impact on the business can boost everyone’s enthusiasm for future innovation.

Recognition from managers is particularly powerful. However, it doesn’t need to include a tangible or financial reward. Simply being acknowledged by a senior leader makes a memorable difference, especially if you spotlight employee innovation efforts at team or company meetings. Also, to motivate particularly strong contributors, senior leaders could offer mentoring support. This, in turn, stretches employee innovation skills and experiences that can pay-off in the future.

Enabling team members to share ideas and suggestions can be a highly effective “grassroots” way to support innovation culture. It can be as simple as adding several minutes to your team’s standing meeting agenda.

Or you can schedule standalone brainstorming or knowledge-sharing sessions. In this case, you’ll want to establish a process to ensure that all ideas are heard and acknowledged. Using a “yes, AND” tactic tells employees that their input is welcome and leaders will seriously consider its potential to add business value.

6. Clarify Your Agenda With an Innovation Framework

Interesting ideas are everywhere. But smart organizations don’t blindly pursue all possibilities. Instead, they build a blueprint that helps teams generate ideas, evaluate their potential, and implement solutions that deliver the best benefits for your organization.

This blueprint is also called an innovation framework. By consistently following these guidelines, you can keep resources focused on results that matter, rather than creating distractions.

Evaluating a new idea against your team objectives and business goals ensures that it will have a desirable impact on the top and bottom line. Alternatively, innovating within a need or known constraint can provide solutions to challenges you face.

For instance, the Covid pandemic led to numerous innovations in remote work, education, telehealth, vaccine technology, virtual restaurant services, and more. Now, many manufacturers and retailers are evaluating their innovation pipelines for ideas to tackle the cost of living crisis affecting many regions of the world.

There’s a mistaken belief that innovation is a costly, large-scale endeavor. In fact, it thrives when nurtured from the ground up. Even the smallest pilot projects can yield substantial long-term business impact. So, when planning a pilot project, managers can review team skills to be sure they assign the right people, with the right skills, to the right challenge, at the right time.

Then, managers can move teams forward through this innovation process framework by identifying and addressing one business problem at a time, and building momentum as they tackle subsequent challenges.

Moving Forward With Innovation Management

Every innovation effort begins with a single step. And every small step towards building an innovative business has the potential to create a significant impact in the long-run.

This is why innovative organizations equip managers with all the skills and resources they need to help teams thrive in the face of change.

Want to achieve better business outcomes? Support your managers, so they can embrace a skills-based approach, empower people to experiment, and nurture a culture where innovation is celebrated in all its forms. This will position your organization for long-term success.

 

Change management is tricky. How do you handle it? 9 business professionals weigh in

Change Management is Tricky. How Do You Handle It?

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Change is an integral aspect of every organization — especially in today’s volatile environment. But managing change is challenging. That’s why it sometimes helps to rely on change management specialists for guidance or support. But when? It depends on the situation.

To better understand how leaders tackle change successfully, we asked business professionals to tell us how they approach this process. Nine people shared their recommendations. And despite their diverse experiences, some common themes emerged:

  • Help Employees Adjust
  • Include Employees in Decisions
  • Facilitate a Culture Shift
  • Encourage Two-Way Communication
  • Gamify Change Initiatives
  • Deliver Readiness Bootcamps
  • Involve Everyone in Training Curricula Updates
  • Build Skills for Collective Change
  • Keep Remote Teams in the Loop

To learn more about when and how your organization could benefit from these change management methods, read the full responses below…

9 Ways to Lead Change Management

1. Help Employees Adjust

Our direct managers’ plates are already full, so they don’t have enough time and energy to communicate about every change and seek continuous feedback from across their teams. That’s why we rely on dedicated change managers. They ensure that employees get the kind of support they need throughout any change process, and anyone with a question or idea has access to the right forum where they can speak their mind.

Sometimes, employees prefer to discuss these issues with change management specialists, especially if they’re worried about overloading their direct manager with more work. But the change management team is always available as an employee resource.

Their mission is to ensure a seamless adjustment — whether that includes taking ample time to listen to employee concerns, or to address suggestions that might make the implementation process better.

Jack Underwood, CEO and Co-Founder, Circuit

2. Include Employees in Decisions

Our organization isn’t big enough to require a change management team, so whenever a significant change is required, it’s imperative that we include employees in the process. Change can be daunting, stressful and scary, so it’s essential to mitigate any negative impacts, if possible.

Even if you’re just starting to consider a change, employee input is invaluable. People are much more likely to get onboard with new initiatives if they feel a sense of agency. Plus, they often have interesting insights and ideas to contribute.

And when you do move forward, respecting employees’ feelings and involving them in decision-making means you’ll have a smoother journey. Offering opportunities throughout the process to ask questions, raise objections and make suggestions is crucial.

These actions are not just about supporting change. They also reflect a spirit of inclusion. By seeking input and responding to ideas, you demonstrate that your employees are respected and valued, and they matter to your organization. Working together towards a shared vision and collective responsibility reinforces a sense of teamwork and helps employees feel more in control. This encourages engagement and helps employees embrace change.

Martin Gasparian, Attorney and Owner, Maison Law

3. Facilitate a Culture Shift

Our organization is tiny, so we do not have a dedicated change management team. However, we do have a culture committee composed of members from each department, and this group often helps navigate organizational change.

These representatives can act as liaisons and report on general workforce sentiments that might otherwise go unheard for fear of upsetting management. Members can also help their departments understand the reasoning behind a change decision and model a positive example of embracing and adapting to that decision.

A large part of change management is a cultural shift. So, the culture committee can help employees feel like they’re part of the process and help them view change as an evolution of company culture, rather than abandonment of the status quo.

Grace He, People and Culture Director, TeamBuilding

4. Encourage Two-Way Communication

We have a dedicated change management team at Brosix. That’s because change is an inevitable part of any business, and being prepared for it is crucial. One way we handle change is by empowering employees through communication. But change management communication involves more than just sending out a one-time email notice. It requires ongoing interaction with employees. And that demands dedication, clarity and consistency.

Effective two-way communication techniques like surveys, focus groups and informal feedback gathering give employees a voice in change-related decisions. When leaders involve their team in this process, people feel heard and appreciated. And when people feel valued, they’re more likely to welcome change and participate in making it happen.

Proactive two-way communication has other benefits, as well. Leaders can identify and resolve issues that are likely to cause resistance. And the organization can potentially avoid obstacles and pitfalls before they become a problem.

Stefan Chekanov, CEO, Brosix

5. Gamify Change Initiatives

At TechAhead, we have a dedicated change management team that is highly skilled in collaboration, communication and critical thinking. This team analyzes the potential risks and challenges that come with change and develops effective strategies to mitigate them.

To make the change process more engaging, accessible and effective, we use a unique “Gamification of Change Management” approach. Specifically, we’ve developed a game-based change journey that rewards employees with points and badges for completing challenges such as attending training sessions, participating in feedback surveys and collaborating with team members.

We also offer a “Change Management Cafe,” where we invite stakeholders to openly discuss their concerns, suggestions and feedback about changes we’re planning or implementing. This helps create a culture of transparency and collaboration, which makes the entire change process more inclusive.

Vikas Kaushik, CEO, TechAhead

6. Deliver Readiness Bootcamps

Throughout my career, I have seen many organizations struggle with change management. However, my current employer has implemented highly effective “change boot camps” for employees.

These boot camps are training sessions that focus on teaching people how to accept change and move through it with a positive mindset. They also receive resources and tools to make necessary transitions smoother.

With this structured approach to developing employee change capabilities, our organization is better prepared to handle change more efficiently, while maintaining morale, and ultimately achieving success in the transformational process.

Derek Bruce, First Aid Training Director, Skills Training Group

7. Involve Everyone in Training Curriculum Updates

The healthcare industry is a fast-paced, stressful environment where staying on top of constant change is critical. We don’t have a dedicated change management team, but we do have medical educators whose roles include change management. This comes into play for us when we introduce a new curriculum for medical certifications we offer.

Every two years, we need to incorporate best practice updates into our certification programs for medical skills such as CPR and BLS (Basic Life Support). It is our education team’s job to make sure our instructors and clients (nurses and healthcare workers) are up-to-speed with all these curriculum adjustments.

Because this change process focuses on our curriculum, it’s a business priority. That’s why it’s a central part of our education team’s ongoing responsibilities, rather than a standalone activity.

Brian Clark, CEO and Marketing Director, United Medical Education

8. Build Skills for Collective Change

Change management is central to our organization’s mission. We educate others about the power of facilitation in change management and we equip them with tools to transform the process by replacing traditional methods with facilitation.

Within our organization, we embrace the same philosophy. Rather than relying on a dedicated change management team, we focus on equipping individuals across the organization with facilitation skills to address change collectively.

By engaging stakeholders and empowering them to actively participate in the process, we are fostering a culture of change, adaptability and resilience. Ultimately, this means we can achieve change outcomes that are more enduring and effective.

Douglas Ferguson, President, Voltage Control

9. Keep Remote Teams in the Loop

We don’t have a dedicated change management team because our organization is a relatively small remote team. My partner and I oversee necessary changes. Currently, we’re focused on work to be done so we can boost our sales and generate business results.

However, for change management, we keep our employees in the loop by conducting frequent video calls and arranging online meetings so we can communicate our expectations and discuss any questions people may have.

We ensure that employees are satisfied with the volume and nature of their work, so no one feels overloaded. We also consider their feedback about the company’s operations, so we can incorporate changes they will appreciate and feel comfortable adopting.

Harman Singh, Director, Cyphere

 

Employee satisfaction is an inside job. To understand workers' motivations, check these three key points of view

Employee Satisfaction is an Inside Job: 3 Points of View

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If you lead a business of any kind, it’s essential to understand the factors that influence employee satisfaction in your organization. This kind of insight starts with awareness of needs, wants and desires of people across your workforce. Especially now, when employers are struggling to find strong talent, knowing what motivates your staff can play a central role in attracting and retaining top performers.

That’s what prompted the Agency Management Institute to take a closer look at  employee satisfaction issues in the marketing and advertising realm. Although this research focuses on professional services firms, it can be useful for leaders in other industries to consider, as well.

For example, with 72% of agency leaders saying they want to empower their staff, there’s no more powerful place to start than by learning what interests, inspires, and energizes team members. By leveraging these insights, you can improve internal communication, build individually tailored development opportunities, improve overall team performance, and more.

3 Key Profiles Behind Employee Satisfaction

When employees feel connected, engaged and satisfied with their work, their organizational culture is likely to be built on knowledge of who they are as individuals. When looking at various attitudes and characteristics associated with employee satisfaction, three types of personality profiles emerge:

  • Enthusiastic 27%
  • Self-reliant 45%
  • At-risk 29%

In other words, an employee’s primary profile is highly likely to indicate their level of commitment, work performance and overall workplace satisfaction.

Employee Satisfaction Types Up Close

Each employee segment brings unique characteristics to the table. But responding effectively to these diverse needs requires keen leadership and a strong work culture. So, what makes each group tick? These snapshot descriptions offer helpful guidance:

1. “Enthusiastic” Segment

Only 27% of survey respondents are considered “enthusiastic.” These people tend to give their employers high marks for professional development, career opportunities, work culture, and even compensation. More importantly, they feel that a long tenure with their company is the best way to build a career. They’re loyal, excited, and engaged. In short, any company would consider these individuals dream employees.

Historically, the enthusiastic group is the smallest segment. Naturally, employers want to know if and how they can attract and develop more of these valued employees. The answer lies in recognizing issues that matter to employees in the other two categories.

2. “Self-Reliant” Segment

Representing 45% of respondents, “self-reliant” employees are by far the largest group. Although these employees tend to think of themselves as responsible for achieving their own success, this isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Generally, self-reliant employees believe leaders don’t acknowledge or appreciate their struggles or contributions. In fact, many in this group feel “invisible.” And their discontent extends beyond a lack of recognition. They’re also skeptical about whether employers know how to develop their skills, provide opportunities for advancement, or improve their financial position over time.

Interestingly, 63% of these employees are millennials who tend to work for larger organizations. It’s also worth noting that women are heavily represented in this segment, and they tend to feel their opinions and ideas are heard less often than their male peers.

Although these issues are more of a concern for at-risk employees, high stress, difficult clients, and unrealistic expectations about working outside of conventional hours contribute to employee dissatisfaction in this segment. The same can be said for scope creep, job insecurity, and turnover. For all of these reasons, 22% of “self-reliant” employees have thought about leaving their job for greener pastures.

3. “At Risk” Segment

29% of employees are classified as “at risk.” They tend to work for smaller organizations and rely on their employers to engage with them and support them. They’re also much more likely to be women. In fact, 66% of at-risk workers are women.

It should seem obvious, but “at risk” employees are most likely to resign. In fact, research indicates that 50% of people in this segment have thought about seeking other employment. These individuals are looking for more, whether it’s with their current employer or elsewhere.

What’s driving this restlessness? Typically, at-risk workers are looking for a better (or different) workplace culture. Perhaps their current workplace doesn’t suit them, or company policies don’t align with their principles. These people want their employer to care about their wellbeing, align with their values, and provide more opportunities for collaboration and growth.

“At-risk” employees also crave more collaboration. They care deeply about their work. They’re often at the center of an organization’s activities, because they desire opportunities to collaborate with peers in meaningful ways. However, they’re less satisfied with their career trajectory, compensation, and path for advancement than others.

But these people aren’t operating in the shadows. In fact, they’re often spearheading key roles, including strategy, leadership, project management, and account management. Because these employees are central to an organization’s success, losing them could cause major setbacks and shouldn’t be taken lightly.

3 Steps to Strengthen Employee Satisfaction

With all the responsibilities that come with running a business, it’s easy to forget that employment is a two-way street. Here are a few considerations to help you improve engagement and satisfaction among your team members:

1. Encourage people to invest in their own development

Professional development must be a shared responsibility between company leadership and staff. Individuals can’t develop themselves entirely on their own. They need your active guidance, support, and resources to develop themselves. Giving people an active role in mapping their growth plans and decisions about where to invest their time and energy can make a measurable impact on their commitment and satisfaction.

2. Take time to craft a personalized development plan

Because you’re working with individuals, it’s important to recognize that professional development isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Every employee deserves a growth plan that’s personalized for their unique goals, interests, and aspirations. Without a plan they can “own,” no amount of time or money will improve their engagement, performance, satisfaction, or retention. What’s more, employees who don’t see any promise of growth won’t be employees for very long. Your commitment to their future success can make all the difference.

3. Find ways to push autonomous workers to new heights

Don’t forget to give “self-reliant” employees their share of attention. While they may not speak up often with complaints, “self-reliant” employees can be a tricky bunch to manage and develop. These folks often need a side hustle to feel engaged, creatively. If they’re asked to do additional work or contribute to a new project, they may engage less with their primary work. To better support these employees, consider pairing them with mentors. This way, they always have access to someone who can help them stick to their agenda while moving forward on their career path.

A Final Note

Building workplace satisfaction is as much about striking a balance as it is about understanding what makes people tick. Investing in your workforce’s professional growth and creating a supportive environment are both key. In fact, if you read between the lines of this survey, it’s clear that employees often believe these actions are worth more than money.

How Agile Leadership Can Change Work Culture

How Agile Leadership Can Fundamentally Change Work Culture

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“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This quote is perhaps one of the most familiar business phrases of all time. Yet, while most leaders agree on the importance of culture, surprisingly few actually devote serious attention to shaping workplace culture. Why is this the case? What role should culture play in business success? And how does agile leadership help shape successful organizations? In this article, we’ll explore these questions in detail…

Why Smart Leaders Value Culture

Just how deeply should leaders focus on culture? Edgar Schein is widely considered the father of organizational culture. In his book, Organizational Culture and Leadership, he describes leadership and culture as two sides of the same coin.

In other words, leaders invariably shape culture for better or worse, whether they intend to or not. It starts when they establish organizational policies and practices. Then, through their daily actions, leaders demonstrate their commitment to these standards. Ultimately, they become role models for expected behaviors.

This aligns with Andrea Tomasini’s definition of culture as “the set of behaviors that are accepted and expected.”

Culture Change: A Case In Point

One example of a leadership-driven culture shift comes from a large telecom equipment provider. The company’s culture was highly hierarchical and control oriented. Employees were even forbidden from posting anything on their office walls or windows.

Although the company was a recognized market leader, it was losing market share to smaller competitors. This was when executives recognized the need to build a more innovative, collaborative culture.

Leaders visited directly with teams to ask what they needed to work in more collaborative, innovative, agile ways. They documented the various responses on sticky notes, and then posted these comments on a highly-visible wall in the building’s atrium. But the process didn’t end there.

In essence, this wall of sticky notes became a Kanban board that helped drive organizational change. Leaders started taking action on each request. They began meeting weekly at the board, where everyone would see them moving sticky notes from “To Do” to “In Progress” and eventually to the “Done” section when each action was completed.

Within months, teams began creating their own Kanban boards and collaborating daily. Sticky notes on the walls became a new cultural norm. The leadership team’s visible actions changed employee understanding of behaviors that are accepted and expected.

How Does Agile Leadership Help?

In their book Leadership Agility, Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs offer a well-researched, practical model for leadership development. Think of leadership skills as a series of vertical stages of increasing effectiveness. As leaders develop capabilities, they move from Expert to Achiever to Catalyst.

These stages are like gears in a car’s transmission, letting leaders “shift” into different speeds as needed. In fact, research shows that the most effective leaders have the agility to shift fluidly between leadership modes – as well as the awareness to know which leadership mode is most appropriate in a given situation.

The Leadership Agility Model in Agile Leadership

Most leaders start at the “Expert” stage. Experts are focused on hands-on work that leverages their functional expertise. They tend to focus on tactics and solving immediate problems. However, they tend to lack awareness of their leadership style and have low emotional and social intelligence.

At the “Achiever” stage, leaders begin to rely more on others. They are focused on results and outcomes, and are willing to delegate the “how” to others. They become more invested in influencing others to accomplish their goals. They’re also more aware that they need buy-in to achieve the best results.

When leaders reach the “Catalyst” stage, they develop a broader, more systemic perspective, long-term orientation, strong self-awareness, social awareness, and situational awareness. They realize that goal-setting, alone, isn’t enough to motivate people. Vision and purpose are also essential. And they genuinely believe people are assets — not just “resources.”

How Agile Leadership Affects Workplace Culture

Agile leaders demonstrate multiple capabilities that are vital for shaping organizational culture:

1. Situational Awareness and Balance

Agile leaders are able to shift their approach between expert, achiever, and catalyst modes, as needed. They can operate effectively at a tactical, strategic or visionary level. This means agile leaders are adept at tackling a wide range of problems. By tapping into this broad set of skills, they serve as role models to others in the organization, creating a culture that values leadership growth and development.

2. Long-Term Visionary Orientation

“Catalyst” leaders devote more of their energy to a long-term vision for their organization. They realize the key role culture plays in achieving this vision. And they realize there is no silver-bullet shortcut that creates a positive culture. This is why they move deliberately and persistently to build a better culture. As role models, they help other leaders in their orbit develop a similar visionary perspective.

3. People-Centered Leadership

Catalyst leaders have strong social intelligence and genuine empathy for people on their team. They are willing to invest time in coaching and mentoring people for personal growth. This goes beyond merely setting goals, measuring performance, or demanding results. This leadership style serves as a role model for all in an environment where people feel genuinely valued.

4. Ability to Navigate a VUCA World

Today’s fast-paced global economy is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). In this environment, agile leadership is essential. It frees leaders to let go of the illusion of control and gives them the confidence to help others do the same. Agile leaders frame complex challenges as learning opportunities rather than neatly defined execution tasks. Instead of punishing small failures, they reward learning. This kind of support encourages people to take initiative and tackle complex problems.

5. Concern for Psychological Safety

By combining two agile leadership capabilities we’ve mentioned – social intelligence and willingness to reward learning – leaders can establish a sense of psychological safety. When people feel it’s safe to participate, learn, contribute, and even challenge the status quo – innovation can flourish. By actively promoting an atmosphere of psychological safety, leaders can help their organization evolve and succeed over time.

Modeling and Shaping Culture

For leaders who want to proactively shape workplace culture, a cultural assessment model can be particularly helpful. At Agile Leadership Journey, we rely on the Competing Value Framework (CVF) by Kim S. Cameron and colleagues. This CVF model focuses on four cultural archetypes: Collaborate, Create, Compete, and Control:

Competing Values Famework in Agile Leadership

 

CVF research indicates that no singular “best” culture exists. Instead, the most successful organizations try to balance the four archetypes. CVF provides a model for assessing an organization’s culture “shape” – the relative strength of each value system and culture archetype. With this tangible assessment, leaders can make deliberate choices about actions that can shift the culture in a desired direction.

Culture Values Framework Agile Leadership

Because culture is so complex, leaders should treat these activities as experiments — assuming the outcome is uncertain, and side effects will be difficult to predict.

Our experience with CVF and culture shaping reveals that these techniques can lead to a measurable shift in culture. However, significant changes often take years to manifest fully. This means organizations need to rely on the strength of “Catalyst” leaders with the agility, wisdom and skills to persist through a complex cultural transformation.

Leaders: How can you keep your cool at the end of the world? Check this advice inspired by The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Leaders: How Can You Keep Your Cool at the End of the World?

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The world of work is a little rough these days, to say the least. Companies large and small continue to scramble in the face of serious economic and cultural uncertainty. Ongoing inflation, workforce automation, post-pandemic burnout, and “The Great Reshuffle” are just a few of the many challenges eroding confidence among employees and employers alike. Every day seems like an exercise in digging deeper to find the patience and strength needed to keep your cool.

Most HR, business and finance leaders are focused on making do with increasingly tighter budgets while bolstering employee retention. This isn’t a viable long-term strategy, but it’s one way organizations can minimize damage while pushing through lean times. No wonder many professionals feel like they’re moving in quicksand.

But don’t lose hope! I’ve been there before and have come through it intact. Here are five proven tips you can use to alleviate some stress and avoid sinking further than necessary…

5 Ways to Keep Your Cool During Tough Times

1. Take Inventory

Imagine you are Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You’re in a strange new place where anything could happen — not all of it good. It’s intimidating to feel adrift in the unknown. But I recommend adhering to the same advice the Hitchhiker’s Guide shares with every wayfarer: Don’t panic.

Take in the situation around you. Make an inventory of what’s happening in your organization, in your industry, and in the world at large. Who is most affected by today’s realities? What are they saying? More importantly, what are they not saying? What kind of ideas are floating around? Which of these ideas seem most useful and actionable?

Document the resources available to you. Specifically, insist on gaining better visibility into your workforce costs. Account for all of your employees, freelancers, contractors, temporary workers, and consultants — everyone who is paid to get work done. Consider not only their salaries, but also related benefits and employer taxes, which can add an additional 30%-60% to your costs.

For most companies. employee costs represent the most significant budget item. However, many organizations lack a comprehensive view of these costs. A single dashboard where you can understand all of these costs can improve visibility and clarity. Both of these are critical to making smart management decisions now and going forward.

With a clearer, more holistic perspective, you can begin to formulate a broader plan. In fact, I recommend that you develop multiple plans. Scenario mapping is a smart strategy that can help you keep your cool as a leader. Prepare for as many “if/then” scenarios as possible. That way you won’t be caught off guard when your ideal plan goes awry. Just look for indicators that Plan A is in jeopardy, and switch to Plan B, or whatever plan aligns best with the changing climate.

2. Take Action

Once you develop one or more plans, do something. Pick your most promising path and act. While it might be tempting to wait out the storm, in my experience, this strategy rarely succeeds. By taking initiative, you can seize the opportunity to exercise some control over the situation at hand.

No doubt, a crisis creates challenging circumstances. But it also presents opportunities for change. Through action, you position yourself to take advantage of opportunities that can ultimately benefit your organization and your team.

For example, as a business or HR leader, you can advocate for more inclusive hiring practices, so your company can attract new sources of talent. Also, you can talk regularly with employees about challenges they are facing. Through these conversations, you can identify small but meaningful changes that will improve operational workflows and work culture.

This proactive approach creates an environment that helps you keep your cool. And perhaps more importantly, it can help you improve the employee experience, rather than allowing it to erode.

Finance leaders can take a similar proactive approach to identify areas where it’s possible to trim overhead and increase efficiency without damaging fragile employee engagement and satisfaction levels.

3. Get Lean

Pack light and pack smart. This is a wise rule of thumb for any adventurer, but now more than ever.

This is a great time to put agile methodologies into practice. With greater uncertainty in day-to-day work, and fewer people actually doing the work, teams need to stay flexible, be adaptable, and adjust when opportunities arise.

Whether it’s too much bureaucracy, an excessive budget, or too many cooks in the kitchen — a glut of resources can actually impede progress, rather than facilitate it. By  streamlining resources and workflows, you’ll be better prepared than a top-heavy organization to recognize and respond to unexpected internal or external changes.

Empower your team to do more with less. Audit your process, considering where you can improve by cutting out unnecessary steps and removing unhelpful roadblocks. Rather than assuming you should continue doing things as they’ve always been done (because they’ve always been done that way), create a culture that actively pursues and rewards improvement.

Ask yourself and your team what your customers really want. Then focus like a laser on delivering precisely that.

4. Question Everything

Crisis creates an opportunity to reevaluate the status quo. You may be tempted to wish for a return to how things were in the “good old days.” But consider this a chance to take a closer look. Were those days really as good as they seem? What actually worked, and what didn’t?

If you’re already rethinking your resources and workflows, you might as well reconsider how everything is done. A holistic approach can help you improve systemically, rather than in a piecemeal fashion.

One of the best ways to learn how something works is to look at all the pieces and evaluate how they work individually and as a whole. You can even apply this to your company’s business-as-usual standards.

Critique your operational best practices. Are these ways of working truly the best way to accomplish specific objectives? Question conventional wisdom. It may not actually be as wise as you think. Put organizational traditions under a microscope. Could your cultural norms be creating more discord than cohesion? Don’t leave any stone unturned. This is the ideal time to expose, examine and resolve underlying issues.

5. Recognize That Talent is More Crucial Than Ever

The four previous tips won’t amount to much if you don’t have the right team in place. It’s easier to keep your cool and act effectively when good people are supporting you. It’s also easier to ask questions and restructure an organization when you’re challenged and encouraged by sharp minds. Now is the time to invest in the kind of talent that will step up to this challenge.

Of course, in a candidate’s job market, this is easier said than done. But a more equitable approach to talent sourcing and a more intentional, streamlined hiring process can tip the odds in your favor.

AI-powered talent acquisition platforms can help eliminate bias associated with ethnicity, gender, age, or education. They can also help identify untapped skilled candidates from nontraditional backgrounds.

Consider how you can improve hiring outcomes by improving your candidate experience. For example, would recruiting results improve if you focused on 1-3 targeted interviews with key stakeholders (people who actually understand the position and the work to be done)?

Also, this is the ideal time to seriously invest in internal talent mobility. For example, what can you do to improve upskilling among existing employees? The more skills each individual develops, the more effective your team will be at adapting to inevitable changes and completing projects successfully.

Keep Your Cool By Embracing a More Stable Today

Although today’s business environment may be unclear, any organization can develop a more resilient foundation that can withstand chaos and change. Leaders can take ownership of this process by challenging past assumptions, rethinking outdated business practices, and channeling resources where they’re needed most.

It may not be easy to keep your head above water — let alone thrive — in the midst of this crisis. But it is possible to keep your cool and carry on without giving in to forces you can’t control. By applying these principles, you’ll be better prepared not only to weather the storm, but to get ahead of it. Just don’t forget to bring a towel!

 

How Can Internal Video Help You Lift Employee Morale

Why and How Can Internal Video Help You Boost Employee Morale?

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For most office-based employees, “work” no longer represents a physical location. In fact, 84% of people who worked remotely during the pandemic said they intended to mix home and office-based work when the lockdown ended. Now, with hybrid and remote work models defining so much of modern work life, employers are rightfully concerned that employees are feeling increasingly disconnected and disengaged. This is why many are turning to technology like internal video to help improve employee communications.

For some time now, savvy HR and marketing professionals have recognized the importance of video communication. And they’re onto something. For example, research says employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than read an email. People have discovered the convenience and effectiveness of video. And they’re not going back.

How Can Internal Video Improve Employee Experience?

This post-pandemic era promises greater scheduling flexibility, improved work/life balance, and happier employees. But it is also introducing a variety of challenges for employers to address.

For example, it’s harder to reach and engage people who work on a remote or hybrid schedule. When left unchecked over time, this distance can erode connections with managers, colleagues, and company culture. Without access to clear, consistent communication and recognition from managers, employees are at risk of feeling increasingly undervalued, disillusioned, and unmotivated to work.

If the pandemic taught us anything about the future of work, it’s that organizations must evolve so people stay connected, even when they’re not at the office. Over the past three years, video has played an important role in filling that gap, connecting leaders and teams through video conferencing, webinars, online learning, and study resources.

Every great company wants to create a positive employee experience and a strong company culture. And one of the most effective ways to achieve this is through enhanced communication. So, in today’s digital world, what better way to ensure that team members stay connected and informed than through internal video?

Benefits of Internal Video

There are multiple reasons why it makes sense to leverage internal video to boost staff morale. For example:

1. Video is highly effective

Whether it’s a company update or new sales strategy, internal video is the best communication format available. But it can be even more effective when combined with the power of email. Email is a great tool — and it’s clearly the most dominant business communication tool. But you can achieve much more by incorporating video.

For instance, instead of writing a hefty block of static text to communicate an important employee update via email, try writing a brief introductory one-liner and embedding a video into the message.

Video is much more engaging than written copy. That’s because people absorb video content more quickly and effectively. You can also convey much more with video than a text-based message. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then as Dr. James McQuivey puts it, a single minute of video is worth about 1.8 million words.

2. Video can illustrate complex information in a simple way

The success of a business is measured by more than just revenue and profit. It’s also about communication. Without effective internal communication, important information can get lost in translation and employees can become frustrated. This is where videos can help to transmit information in a simple, clear, and digestible way.

Studies show that videos can improve a person’s ability to remember concepts and details. In fact, when people watch a video message, they retain 95% of the message, compared with only 10% if they read the same message in written form.

3. Video helps employers connect with employees

Communication is a two-way street. It’s not enough to simply pass information along to team members. Particularly when working remotely, it’s important that staff actively develop trusted working relationships, and feel they are working together toward the same goals.

By sending regular video updates, you can bridge the gap between your onsite team and those who work remotely at least part of the time. When employees feel more connected with each other and your organization, they’ll be in a frame of mind to collaborate and perform well.

When Internal Video Can Help You Improve Company Culture

For internal corporate videos that will improve your company culture and boost morale, you’ll want to build a library of video templates. This can help you jumpstart new content production, and simplify updates whenever they’re required. Here are some recommended types of internal video to help you improve employee morale:

1. Make onboarding easier for new employees

A proper new-hire orientation is a highly effective way to help people feel welcomed and valued. In fact, thoughtful onboarding is proven to help people become more excited about their role, which in turn reduces turnover.

But onboarding can be overwhelming. New hires are typically required to absorb huge amounts of information from Day One. Traditionally, this process involves serious paperwork and in-person training.

This is one reason why induction through video training is gaining popularity. Pre-recorded videos are an efficient, effective way to present orientation information in a reusable format that significantly reduces the need for one-on-one training. By watching and learning at their own pace, employees can quickly get a sense of your company’s culture and what’s expected of them. 

2. CEO messages

In larger companies, employees — particularly newer or more junior staff — have minimal contact with the CEO. This limits opportunities to develop workforce trust and loyalty. However, by broadcasting internal video messages, a CEO can communicate about the organization’s ongoing objectives and challenges in a personal and convincing way.

It can be difficult to achieve this same direct connection with text-based email. That’s because a memo or letter can be written by anybody. Also, many people are better at in-person communication than in writing. A video demonstrates executive leadership qualities in real time, and shows how much your leaders value the opportunity to speak directly with employees about issues that matter to them.

3. Company updates

One thing is for certain — everything changes. But this doesn’t mean people are always comfortable with change. If employees are left in the dark about organizational change, it can damage staff morale as well as productivity. Timely, clear, transparent communication can minimize anxiety about business change. This is why well-crafted internal video content can help.

Internal video can be used not only to discuss the details of any organizational change, but also help employees understand the beneficial impact expected from these changes. Video gives organizations more control over the type of messages you’re sharing, as well as the pace and timing. This can minimize rumors, cut down on speculation, and give employees a forum where they can address common concerns.

4. Training and education

Training employees can be time-intensive. It can take days or weeks to address all the  requirements of a role, and how to perform effectively in that context. But new learning tools make it easy to develop and deliver internal video content for job training, how-to tutorials, skills development, compliance, and more.

Video media is particularly valuable for continuous learning, because it lets people learn at their own pace, without disrupting day-to-day responsibilities. Whenever an employee has a break in their work schedule, they can simply click on a relevant training video and resume watching from wherever they left off in their previous session. It’s a highly convenient option.

What’s more, video can help employers standardize training content and learning experiences in ways that one-on-one or even group training cannot.

5. Team and morale building

Video is a highly personal form of communication. After watching a video, people are more likely to feel a connection with the speaker. By creating this type of personal relationship with employees, they’re likely to feel part of the same team.

To rejuvenate employee connections, create some fun and exciting video updates about what’s happening day-to-day across your company. Did you recently bring on a new client? Did you just close a huge deal? Are sales up from last quarter? Has a team just completed an ambitious new project?

These are things employees want to hear about. Everyone wants to feel they contribute to their company’s success. Seeing these accomplishments highlighted in video honors the moment and reminds employees how important they are to your organization’s achievements.

Final Notes on the Power of Internal Video

Communication is the backbone of any company’s culture. And video media is a highly personal way to reach out to employees, build connections, and strengthen cultural bonds.

Employee-focused videos keep everyone in the know. They offer understanding about rules and standards, shared values, accomplishments and business progress. Now that video communication has become a highly accessible medium for all of us, it’s worth investing time and energy to embed video messaging into every aspect of the employee experience.

Can employee events lift engagement in a post-pandemic world

Can Employee Events Lift Engagement in a Post-Pandemic World?

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Long before the pandemic, many organizations struggled with employee engagement. But now, it’s an even tougher hill to climb. Hybrid and remote work have become a new norm. As a result, the way we relate with colleagues is different. Indeed, the very nature of work culture has changed. So in this new environment, what can employee events do to lift engagement? For specific ideas, read on…

Maintaining work relationships is hard — especially now, as businesses strive to adapt to a post-lockdown world. Finding occasions to connect with peers isn’t easy. Collaboration is often cobbled together virtually. Trust is more difficult to build. And weaker communication makes problems harder to solve.

No wonder relationships among individuals and teams have become stilted. And these weakened workplace relationships are ultimately diminishing organizational productivity, innovation and success. This is a compelling case to revisit your organization’s existing employee engagement strategies.

How Engagement Affects Employee Success

When employees don’t feel connected to their work, they’re less likely to be motivated and engaged. This leads to numerous issues. Disengaged employees communicate less and achieve less. They can have a negative impact on customer experience. Research also shows that disengaged employees cause 60% more errors than their engaged counterparts.

In contrast, highly engaged employees are more likely to show up for work and share ideas. They’re also 18% more productive. Perhaps most importantly, they experience greater job satisfaction. This means they’re less likely to look elsewhere for a different position.

Engagement saves organizations from unwanted talent turnover, unnecessary recruitment costs, lost productivity, and potentially unhappy customers. But in this new era of flexible work, how can reinvestment in work relationships elevate engagement? And how can employee events help?

Where Do Employee Events Fit-In Today?

Many organizations are hesitant to bring back events. Post-pandemic culture may seem to have moved beyond in-person gatherings, but companywide special occasions can be powerful tools for boosting morale. When thoughtfully designed, events can be used to recognize employee achievements, celebrate successes, and create a sense of unity and togetherness.

All these factors help create a culture of collaboration and camaraderie that boosts employee engagement. Employee events can also humanize your organization, not just for employees but also for their families, for customers, and for other stakeholders.

Ultimately, the power of shared experience is just as relevant now as it was in the past. Perhaps more so. After all, we are social animals. And events remind us how to care about each other and unite around a common purpose.

5 Ways Employee Events Help Foster Connection

In the fog of the pandemic, many of us have forgotten how to host events. That’s to be expected. So let’s take a closer look at factors that can help your organization host successful gatherings. And what can leaders do to make events a priority again? Consider these tips:

1. Create a Team-Building Opportunity

Before you think about planning a large-scale event, first focus on helping co-workers meet one another again. In fact, so much time has passed, some newer team members may not have developed strong relationships yet. So, stage a team-building activity to help break down barriers, encourage collaboration, and establish more personal relationships.

The activity could be connected to work. For example, a Lego-building challenge would put team communication and problem solving to the test. But be sure to emphasize fun above all else. Simply socializing for the fun of it will build the kind of camaraderie that can improve employee belonging, trust, and morale.

2. Plan a Social Activity

A team-building event doesn’t have to be packaged that way. Simply getting people together to spend time laughing and bonding can be massively beneficial. You could host a casual social gathering such as a trivia night, happy hour at a local bar, a game night, or a catered lunch. These kinds of events encourage employees to relax and get to know each other in an informal setting.

Try scheduling activities like these regularly — say once a month. A regular pace gives people something to look forward to and lowers the pressure of a one-off event.

3. Host a Networking Event

Informal networking events let employees meet and develop stronger relationships. They also help break down silos and silences that tend to build up over time, especially in remote teams.

Of course, with a networking event, it’s critical not to fall into some traditional traps. Many of us have horrible memories of hierarchical networking events that promoted cliques and inappropriate behavior. Instead, focus on making your event accessible and welcoming. Lower the barrier to conversation — nobody should be left in a circle of higher-ups trying to get a word in.

4. Celebrate Employee Achievements

Celebrations are a great reason to get your team together socially to build connections. Celebrate employee accomplishments, such as promotions, anniversaries, or awards. This not only shines a spotlight on people who’ve earned recognition. It also sends an important signal that says you value people who work effectively and support your organization’s values.

If your main goal in hosting corporate events is to boost engagement, celebrating achievements is a prime way to do that. Feeling genuinely appreciated can have a major impact on a person’s feeling of engagement at work.

5. Try Volunteering Together

Offer opportunities for employees to volunteer together and give back to the community. This is an excellent way to build team spirit and encourage bonding. At the same time, volunteer opportunities reinforce a sense of purpose and remind everyone of your shared values.

Helping others has been shown to support physical and mental wellbeing. In fact, a Stanford Graduate School of Business study found that company-sponsored volunteering has a double impact. It promotes social bonds among co-workers and also boosts their sense of identification and belonging.

Final Notes on Events and Engagement

In today’s work environment, organizations are still grappling with fluid work structures and juggling new challenges and opportunities. All the more reason why we need to rebuild connections that can help people feel engaged. People want to feel engaged in their work. So, start offering events that help people to develop genuine human relationships. I assure you, your team will begin to operate more productively, more happily, and with greater enthusiasm.