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Business Success and the Role Employee Engagement Plays

When it comes to business profitability and growth, business leaders are focusing on employee engagement like never before. Why? Employee engagement affects many things, not the least of which is employee retention, productivity, customer satisfaction, and more.

But tracking, monitoring, and measuring employee engagement, that’s where it can get creepy. Big companies like Deloitte and IBM are developing software that allows the tracking of sentiment in employee communications. So, not only can an employer access and read emails (nothing new in the business world), they can analyze the sentiment in those emails, Slack messages, and likely other internal collaboration platforms, and use data to figure out if you’re happy in your job, likely to stay, productive as a member of an internal team, providing good customer service, you name it.

The reality is that happy employees are engaged employees, and engaged employees are productive employees. Productive, engaged employees play a big role in business profitability and success.

Why Engagement

Companies with high levels of employee engagement see measurably increased levels of business success. Results include 2.3 percent to 3.8 percent greater stock returns annually than competitors, 22 percent higher productivity, “38 percent more likely to have above average productivity”, and increasing investment in employee engagement by 10 percent can yield $2,400 per employee in increased profit.

The Engagement Disconnect

Most employees are not engaged despite the priority leaders claim it to be. Research conducted by the Harvard Business Review found that while 71 percent of managers considered high levels of employee engagement to be a key factor in their organization’s success, only 24 percent of those managers described their employees as “highly engaged.” Gallup tracks levels of employee engagement monthly. In March of 2016, engagement hit a new high of 34.1 percent. By May it slipped back down to 32.7 percent.

Increasing Engagement

Not only do high levels of engagement improve business results, low levels of engagement can increase costs to employers in the form of increased turn over, and hiring difficulties. Given the bottom line benefits to organizations, how can employers successfully measure and increase employee engagement?

Many companies measure employee engagement through surveys. These surveys, however, often developed and administered by outside consultants, can be long, cumbersome, and infrequently completed. As a result, organizations are increasingly turning to new ways of measuring engagement.

One way of simplifying and speeding up employee surveys is to frequently ask one question. For example, John Deere added a motivation question to the review process at the end of two-week development cycles. This approach has allowed John Deere to identify disengagement and make corrections before an employee’s performance suffers.

Another single question measurement is a Net Promoter Score (NPS). This customer satisfaction metric is said to be the only number companies need to track to achieve growth. Similarly, organizations have started to use this methodology to quantify employee satisfaction.

New technologies are also enabling employers to track employee engagement continuously rather than waiting for annual check-ins. Impraise allows workers and managers to provide each other with real-time feedback. A tool called Vibe from Tokyo-based software company, AIR, allows companies to scan digital communications in the workplace by monitoring conversations on chat platform Slack. If sentiment analysis of those messages indicates a drop in employee morale, managers receive alerts so that they can address issues immediately.

Single question surveys and big-brother monitoring of employee questions can identify problems but by themselves they cannot build engagement and monitoring could even damage trust by the intrusive nature of the practice. How then can employers actively boost employee engagement.

Approaches that have proven effective include organization-wide communication, ensuring employees at all levels understand how their work is aligned with company goals, and providing frequent recognition. Former Campbell Soup Company CEO, Doug Conant, wrote more than 30,000 thank you notes to employees at all levels recognizing a specific contribution they had made. U.K.-based hardware company, Screwfix has created a 360-degree feedback culture that ensures their staff understands the company’s business goals and has a voice in achieving them.

Although legal, creepy surveillance software might seem like a quick tech fix for boosting employee engagement when almost 70 percent of employees remain checked-out, but a comprehensive, proactive strategy is necessary. Companies with happy, productive, engaged workers pair measurement with action. Oh, and if you want to explore that, we can help!

Photo Credit: recursosjuridicos Flickr via Compfight cc

A version of this was first posted on xvalabs.com

Women as Business Leaders: Advice from the Top

How can women, as business leaders, help ourselves get ahead? You might wonder how studying exemplary business women translates to applicable lessons for executives in the field. Well, there are some female business leaders inspiring change—and they’re working in a wide variety of industries and roles. We can follow their lead and keep up the momentum they’ve started to continue to make progress in areas that need attention, for women in the business world. There are also some behaviors and habits we can cultivate, according to female leaders who have already done the hard work of climbing to the top.

Exemplary Women in the Business World

There are many prominent leaders in the business world whom we can look up to, as examples. Shonda Rhimes is a writer at ABC for shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, where she writes about controversial subjects and casts a good number of women in dynamic roles. Kara Swisher and Debbie Sterling are two women related to the tech industry who are making an effort to change the status quo. Swisher is an investigative journalist who has pointed out glaring gender and race gaps in Silicon Valley; and Sterling is encouraging young girls interested in STEM by creating engineering-related toys for girls via GoldieBlox, helping to narrow the gender gap in the engineering field. Lastly, Marissa Mayer, President, and CEO of Yahoo, is well known for increasing the length of maternity leave and fighting for more transparency in the NSA’s data collection policies.

Another woman making great strides in the business world is Lisa Petrilli, founder of C-Level Strategies. According to Petrilli, executive leaders should create and maintain a vision—and, moreover, they should have a passion for that vision! She emphasizes the importance of communicating and explaining your idea clearly, so people understand it. Also, don’t feel the need to go it alone: make an effort to hire and promote those who share your vision and understand their role in realizing that vision. Because of the specificity of your goals, it’s also important to implement some way to evaluate your employees’ work. That way, you have a system for measuring your progress, and you’ll be able to develop ways to help your staff to improve, if necessary.

Traits & Habits of Successful Business Leaders

In a recent Forbes article, Lisa Song Sutton discusses a few ways women can become fearless leaders, starting with getting rid of any fear you might have about being “the only female in the room.” In the business world, being the sole woman in a roomful of men will probably be a frequent occurrence. However, you should realize that the only thing you can control is how you choose to react to negativity; it’s possible for a positive attitude and strong performance to assuage and largely eliminate your colleagues’ doubts.

Surprisingly enough, more often than you might expect, some of the most critical members may include other women. There has been substantial research examining why women compete with each other—including a literature review by Tracy Vaillancourt in 2013 that found women express mostly indirect aggression toward other women in the form of both self-promotion and derogation of rivals. Rather than choosing to compete with your female colleagues, however, it would more greatly benefit all parties involved if, instead of participating in cutting other women down, you chose to mentor each other. Sutton argues that mentoring other women “supports a social revolution and the realization that we aren’t in competition with each other, but more so with ourselves.”

In Competition With Ourselves

Speaking of being in competition with ourselves, sometimes we truly are our own worst enemies. Pat Olsen wrote a piece in Diversity Woman recently about ways women can be more assertive and overcome the tendency to apologize, and the first tip she gave was to believe in your self-worth. Quickly following on the heels of her call for doing “self-work,” however, was the reminder that it’s more important to be respected than to be liked. In other words, you should focus more on liking yourself than in trying to get others to like you.

If you’re concerned about others’ opinions of you, you may hold yourself back from speaking your mind during meetings or introducing an innovative idea during a presentation. The importance of speaking of your mind assertively and genuinely, without fear, can’t be stressed strongly enough. It’s an extension, of sorts, of the adage, “Fake it till you make it.”

If you come across as impressive and carry yourself with confidence, you will earn your colleagues’ respect. If you come across as impressive and carry yourself with confidence, you will earn your colleagues’ respect.

However, beyond a positive attitude, it’s crucial to network with influential colleagues and senior-level leaders who have influence in your company. If that necessarily denotes male counterparts at the management level, so be it. “Don’t be afraid to be a pioneer,” says Kerry Doyle, CEO of the Heart Foundation. Of course, it can be scary to find oneself in the front of the line without any other women with whom you can relate, as a peer; however, the potential gains and opportunities usually outweigh the risk. And if you consistently find yourself along at the top of the ladder, make an effort to pull other women onto the ladder with you. Studies have shown that a ‘pipeline’ of female managers, rather than merely a female CEO, is necessary in order to help more middle management-level women attain executive positions in the business world.

To get to a more utopian, gender-balanced version of the corporate world, in the U.S. don’t be afraid to dream big. Studies show, in fact, that there’s reason to be optimistic about the future of business models when it comes to a more philanthropic, socially-conscious corporate world: Jean Tang reports in a recent Forbes article that “compared with men, women are doubly likely to create social impact ventures.” Therefore, women should embrace their tendency to want to “do good” and use the instinct to their advantage, when searching for entrepreneurial inspiration.

Encouragingly, Tang reminds us, the Dalai Lama said, “The world will be saved by Western women.” This bodes well for the future of corporate America, which is sure to be populated by more women than in the past. Furthermore, business leaders, more than ever, are striving toward socially conscious causes that exist to benefit humankind, rather than simply to make profits. As women, we should be optimistic about this trend, and be bold in our visions as leaders. We have plenty of good company when it comes to other women who can serve as role models and examples to us of what we can do when we put our minds to it. Let us go forth, then.

Image credit: StockSnap.io

Live from #SHRM15: The Brilliant HR Profession of Today and Tomorrow

SHRMWe’re very excited to announced that the TalentCulture #TChat Show will be live from the 2015 SHRM Annual Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas, NV on Wednesday, July 1, 2015, from 1-2pm ET (10-11am PT). We’re going to talk about the brilliant HR profession of today and tomorrow.

Get this: The enterprise executive whose traits are most similar to those of the CEO is the CHRO.

Did you get that? The CHRO (42 percent of which are high-performing females), not the CFO, CMO, or CIO. This all according to “counterintuitive” and groundbreaking research based on data from executive recruiting firm Korn Ferry and the work of Dave Ulrich, a University of Michigan professor and a leading consultant on organization and talent issues.

This research also clearly revealed that a CEO’s people skills, strategy, flexibility, energy and empathy (and many other business-centric attributes) closely align to the CHRO.

The HR profession has never looked brighter and HR leaders are now powerful change agents, amplifying talent engagement and driving business outcomes. And according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), HR professionals are feeling more confident about the job security and growth opportunities than ever.

Sneak peaks:

We hope you’ll join the #TChat conversation on July 1, 2015, and share your questions, opinions and ideas with our guests and the TalentCulture Community.

Thank you to all our TalentCulture sponsors and partners: Dice, Jibe, TalentWise, Hootsuite, IBM, CareerBuilder, PeopleFluent, SmartSearch, Predictive Analytics World for Workforce and HRmarketer Insight. Plus, we’re big CandE supporters!

Sneak Peek:

#TChat Events: The Brilliant HR Profession of Today and Tomorrow

TChatRadio_logo_020813#TChat Radio — Wed, July 1 — 1 pm ET / 10 am PT

Join TalentCulture #TChat Show co-founders and co-hosts Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman as we talk about the brilliant HR profession of today and tomorrow at #SHRM15 with this week’s guests: Chanel Jackson, HR Business Partner, Honda of America Mfg., Inc.; Callie Zipple, PHR, HR Rewards Analyst, Zebra Technologies; and Steve Browne, SHRM-SCP, SPHR, Executive Director of HR, LaRosa’s, Inc.

 

Tune in LIVE online Wednesday, July 1

#TChat Twitter Chat — Wed, July 1 — 1:30 pm ET /10:30 am PT Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin, Chanel, Callie and Steve will move to the #TChat Twitter stream, where we’ll continue the discussion with the entire TalentCulture community. Everyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as we gather for a dynamic live chat, focused on these related questions:

Q1: How confident are HR pros about their job security and growth? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q2: What top skills do HR pros need to have a successful career? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q3: How can HR help with tech adoption and create a better employee experience? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Until then, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed, our TalentCulture World of Work Community LinkedIn group, and in our TalentCulture G+ community. So feel free to drop by anytime and share your questions, ideas and opinions. See you there!!!

Subscribe to our podcast on BlogTalkRadio, Stitcher or iTunes:

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Join Our Social Community & Stay Up-to-Date!

The TalentCulture conversation continues daily on Twitter, in our LinkedIn group, and on our Google+ community. Engage with us anytime on our social networks or stay current with trending World of Work topics through our weekly email newsletter. Signing up is just a click away!

Passive-Recruiting

Image Credit: Big Stock Images

Better Communication: Sharing Yourself

There’s a repression that still runs deep in the way we communicate, even in our relatively open and liberated age. We fear that what we think doesn’t matter; that we are less right or less valuable in our opinions than the other people around us.

But this isn’t humility. It isn’t a careful, diplomatic silence that will advance our careers. It’s something that will hold you back, in work and in finding satisfaction in your own life.

Oh Captain My Captain

Many of the people we most admire as leaders are the most outspoken. Whether it’s a real life figure such as Abraham Lincoln or Steve Jobs, or a fictional leader like the plethora of upstanding captains who fill pop culture, those who use communication to stand up and are counted draw our praise.

Sharing your views with the world, even with your co-workers, can be daunting. But it can also show people that you have integrity, that you stand for something, that you are a leader worth getting behind.

Escaping Obscurity

One of the most valuable lessons to come from recent changes in the publishing industry is the importance of attention. Like musicians before them, authors at first feared that e-books piracy would damage their sales and so their income.

The reality is that the opposite is true. Independent authors have found that giving books away for free is one of the best ways to increase their audience and so their income. Award winning author Neil Gaiman saw a sharp rise in sales in Russia after his books were pirated there.

The broader lesson is clear – few things are as damaging as obscurity. Even if your idea is not followed, even if people disagree with your opinions, someone will value what you have to say and come back to you in future. Make your voice heard or have it forever ignored.

Stopping The Rot

Hiding your opinion doesn’t just hold you back, it can be bad for others and for your relationships with them.

We often hold back from offering our opinions because we fear that they will hurt others’ feelings. Perhaps you need to give negative feedback to someone you manage. Perhaps a project isn’t going ahead and you dread telling the team who’ve poured their hearts into planning for it.

But putting it off won’t make the news any easier to hear. In fact it will make it harder, allowing false hope to grow and then be crushed, or fostering an uneasy atmosphere through the discrepancy between what you say and what you know. Walking on eggshells does no-one any favors, so be tactful in speaking up on difficult subjects, but also be prompt.

Think About Your Words

This isn’t to say that you should just blurt out the first thing that comes into your head. You should plan what you intend to say, where possible grounding your opinions in a sound basis of facts and trial and error.

Nor should you make the talking all about you. Self-centeredness, trying to make every word and every situation about you and your achievements, is a toxic sort of leadership that’s ultimately self-defeating. You should speak up, but that should be as much to support others in their opinions as to put forward your own, and far more to sing the praises of others than to flaunt your own worth.

As long as you think about what your communication, as long as you balance your own interest with that of others, then there is no reason to hold back your opinions. Be loud, be proud, be yourself, and watch as others follow.

Image credit: pixabay.com

HR Conversions Stick To The Ribs And Souls

By the time she met with me, her discomfort and exhaustion were evident. She was vulnerable and it showed: her tired eyes avoided direct contact and her hoarse voice betrayed her disgust. She slowly slid my paperwork in front of me.

“Mercy me,” I said. She nodded and closed her eyes.

We were all vulnerable that fateful day, our proverbial hearts on our sleeves, each and everyone wondering what we were going to do next, severance packages in hand. Earlier that afternoon, our HR director’s mood had been much more upbeat and empathic when she embarked on processing layoff after layoff, nearly the all the remaining 75 employees. At our height just a few months prior, we were just shy of 200 employees with nothing but blue sky ahead.

“I’m sorry, Kevin,” she said.

“Don’t be. This was my choice,” I said.

“Well, your only alternative is to stay on commission only to try and prevent this dot.com ship from sinking.”

I shrugged. “It’s sunk; not an alternative for me. I just feel sorry for those who didn’t have a choice, who have families.”

She feigned a smile. “Yes, I know.”

“Your job sucks.”

“Yes, I know.”

A lifetime and another incarnation later, I heard these words:

“I’m in HR because it’s fun.”

Wait, what?

This time from a VP of Human Resources at a local credit union. One of her staff members, an HR generalist specializing in recruiting, echoed the sentiment. In fact, they positioned their brand and roles so eloquently, they practically had me convinced to finally convert to CHRO-nity and become a real HR pro (which of course could never happen in a million years, me only playing HR on TV and radio to date).

The two HR professionals and I had been on a local career panel together speaking to high school students about their career futures, whatever those may be. We shared our backgrounds, our wisdom and our diverse realities of what the world of work may have in store for them, and how to plan for it all and take ownership of it all, through business busts and booms.

Back to the part about HR being fun. I wanted to tease her about that comment and the fact that HR has never really been viewed as fun from a mainstream world of work perspective. They’re responsible for the not-so-fun compliance enforcement, benefits administration, performance reviews and outplacement work, among other slightly more glamorous employee-related responsibilities.

But I didn’t tease her, because the students immediately lit up and started asking all sorts of career questions about working at the credit union, and about what it’s like to be an HR pro and how to become one.

Lit up as in excited. Motivated. Dreaming of their future beyond high school where they could make a difference in their communities and businesses where there families and their friends lived and worked.

Dreaming of work that could be fun, like in HR.

And why not? The human resource profession is involved in every single aspect of a business, every single department and division, and every single applicant, employee, alum, contractor, and vendor – you name it. HR pros are the go-to folk in organizations big and small. They humanize the brand and help workforce communities thrive.

The world of work revolves around people and that’s what makes business buzz with capitalistic reverence. I’m fortunate because, while not a practitioner by trade, I’ve had the opportunity to recruit, hire, train, develop, evaluate, promote (and terminate when necessary) – based on “performance” and the needs of the business.

Not an enviable position by any stretch of the imagination. In a recent Human Resource Executive Online article by Susan R. Meisinger, former president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management, she talks about HR’s perception problem, writing:

Simply stated, what human resource managers do on a daily basis is personal to each and every employee. And not every employee likes what we do.

And neither do the other business leaders. That’s the conundrum of converting to HR and CHRO-nity. HR professionals spend a lot of time taking care of the people within their organizations. They drive people performance that propels the business performance and empower the “propellants” these include these nurturing activities – engagement, collaboration, communication, mentoring and learning.

But beyond certification (controversial as it is now), HR pros don’t take enough time to do the same, to network and help one another, when they can and should.

Again this summer I witnessed thousands of HR pros learning, networking and “certifying” together at the 2014 SHRM Conference where we heard American journalist, columnist and author Tom Friedman say these words so matter-of-factly:

“No one cares what you know. They only care about what you do with what you know.”

This is why the benefits of HR conversion are in the communion and the collective commiseration, but so many still fall short on supporting themselves and others with the HR space, which is again, why mentors are so important.

Hey, let’s keep it unstructured as well and go hang out for happy hour, right? Happily we learned on the TalentCulture #TChat hour about the Whine & Dine Human Resources Networking Group, founded in 2003 the Northeastern U.S. on a simple premise – to advance professional and social networking for Human Resources professionals without the burden of membership fees, event fees or excessive rules or requirements and to support the HR community everywhere.

It needn’t be the last supper when your professional peer group gathers to talk shop and knowledge swap. No, as long as we’re all paying for our own food and drink, we’ll see you next week, and the week after that, and the week after that. That’s where the fulfilling HR conversions stick to the ribs and the souls.

Although since I just had knee surgery, someone’s gotta come pick me up.

Anyone? C’mon, I’m feeling vulnerable.

photo credit: greg westfall. via photopin cc

TalentCulture’s Greatest Hits: 2013 Edition

Lists! Lists! Lists! As we close the chapter on 2013, there’s no denying — the “best of” list season is in full swing.

And who can blame blogs for sharing top picks from the past year? After all, lists are incredibly easy to create, and there’s a certain seductive power in a headline that promises to deliver all the goods in just one single round-up post.

But for me, picking “best” blog posts is like picking “best” children — an impossible task. I’ve spent hours helping to envision, edit, implement and promote every one of the 200 posts we produced last year. And to me, each is uniquely relevant and valuable in its own right.

So please consider our showcase of 2013’s most popular content more than a “best of” list. It’s also our way of recognizing ALL of the many “world of work” experts who have contributed to our blog, our weekly radio shows, and our #TChat Twitter chats. For example:

Business leaders like Chris Boyce, CEO, Virgin Pulse; Richie Etwaru, Group VP, Cegedim CRM; Todd Owens, President, TalentWise; Dr. Janice Presser, Founder, The Gabriel Institute, and Jason Averbook, Chief Innovation Officer, Appirio.

World of work observers and educators like Josh Bersin, Angela Maiers, Dr. Marla Gottschalk, and Dr. Nancy Rubin

Best-selling authors like Bob Burg, Stan Phelps, Marcia Conner, Jamie Notter and Ekaterina Walter.

To these contributors, and to the many others who participate in our community of purpose, thank you. We’re all better because you share professional insights that are relevant today, and will clearly stand the test of time. Need convincing? Check out the items below, and let us know what you think…

Top 10 TalentCulture Posts (Most Popular)

1) Employees Quit Leaders, Not Companies — by David Hassell, CEO, 15Five

2) Want Engaged Employees? Tell Them Why — by Meghan M. Biro, CEO, TalentCulture

3) Are You a Good Fit? 3 Interview Questions — by Razor Suleman, Founder + Chief Evangelist, Achievers

4) 5 Social Skills Business Leaders Must Master — by Meghan M. Biro, CEO, TalentCulture

5) Considering a Career Change? Take a 360 Snapshot — by Dorie Clark, marketing strategy consultant, branding expert and author, Reinventing You

6) Brainstorming is Broken: Rethinking Group Dynamics — by Razor Suleman, Founder + Chief Evangelist, Achievers

7) Gen Y at Work: Feedback Changes Everything — by David Hassell, CEO, 15Five

8) The Steep Cost of Poor Management — by Tatiana Beale, Achievers

9) Want To Be Your Own Boss? Try This First — by Hans Balmaekers, Founder and Director, sa.am

10) Hiring Culture: Creating A Recruitment Ecosystem — by David Smooke, Director of Social Media, SmartRecruiters

Top 3 #TChat Radio Shows  (Most Popular)

TChatRadio_logo_020813

Listen to #TChat Radio replays

1) How Collaboration Unifies Polarization — featuring Jesse Lyn Stoner

2) The Big Deal With HR Data — featuring Andrew Courtois and Christene Pantalone

3) How Open Leaders Win Employee Hearts and Minds — featuring Dan Pontefract

Top 3 #TChat Event Preview Posts (Most Popular)

Featuring G+ hangouts hosted by Tim McDonald, Community Manager, TalentCulture + Director of Community, Huffington Post.

1) Leadership + Influence, From The Inside Out — featuring Steve Gutzler

2) You 2.0: Reinventing a Personal Brand — featuring Dorie Clark

3) Should Work Be Fun? Really? — featuring Dan Benoni

Top 3 #TChat Recaps (Most Popular)

1) HR Data: What Really Counts? — by Kathleen Kruse

2) Mindfully Managing Your Personal Brand — by Kevin W. Grossman

3) Face-to-Face With Brand Humanization — by Megan Burkett

Of course, this is only a slice from the TalentCulture archives. There’s much more inside — over 500 posts with helpful ideas and guidance on workplace culture, innovation, leadership, learning, career strategy, HR and talent management. So feel free to stop by anytime.

And no matter what your professional interests may be, we hope you’ll continue to bring your ideas and opinions to the TalentCulture table throughout 2014. Because, no matter how “popular” our blog or events may be on any given day, it’s our community’s collective energy that will truly shape the future of work. So, together, let’s discover how we can be even better.

Your Turn

What topics were your favorites in 2013? And what issues would you like to explore in the year ahead? Share your ideas in the comments area — we’re listening!

(Editor’s Note: To discuss World of Work topics like these with others in the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events every Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credit: Stock.xchng

TalentCulture’s Greatest Hits: 2013 Edition

Lists! Lists! Lists! As we close the chapter on 2013, there’s no denying — the “best of” list season is in full swing.

And who can blame blogs for sharing top picks from the past year? After all, lists are incredibly easy to create, and there’s a certain seductive power in a headline that promises to deliver all the goods in just one single round-up post.

But for me, picking “best” blog posts is like picking “best” children — an impossible task. I’ve spent hours helping to envision, edit, implement and promote every one of the 200 posts we produced last year. And to me, each is uniquely relevant and valuable in its own right.

So please consider our showcase of 2013’s most popular content more than a “best of” list. It’s also our way of recognizing ALL of the many “world of work” experts who have contributed to our blog, our weekly radio shows, and our #TChat Twitter chats. For example:

Business leaders like Chris Boyce, CEO, Virgin Pulse; Richie Etwaru, Group VP, Cegedim CRM; Todd Owens, President, TalentWise; Dr. Janice Presser, Founder, The Gabriel Institute, and Jason Averbook, Chief Innovation Officer, Appirio.

World of work observers and educators like Josh Bersin, Angela Maiers, Dr. Marla Gottschalk, and Dr. Nancy Rubin

Best-selling authors like Bob Burg, Stan Phelps, Marcia Conner, Jamie Notter and Ekaterina Walter.

To these contributors, and to the many others who participate in our community of purpose, thank you. We’re all better because you share professional insights that are relevant today, and will clearly stand the test of time. Need convincing? Check out the items below, and let us know what you think…

Top 10 TalentCulture Posts (Most Popular)

1) Employees Quit Leaders, Not Companies — by David Hassell, CEO, 15Five

2) Want Engaged Employees? Tell Them Why — by Meghan M. Biro, CEO, TalentCulture

3) Are You a Good Fit? 3 Interview Questions — by Razor Suleman, Founder + Chief Evangelist, Achievers

4) 5 Social Skills Business Leaders Must Master — by Meghan M. Biro, CEO, TalentCulture

5) Considering a Career Change? Take a 360 Snapshot — by Dorie Clark, marketing strategy consultant, branding expert and author, Reinventing You

6) Brainstorming is Broken: Rethinking Group Dynamics — by Razor Suleman, Founder + Chief Evangelist, Achievers

7) Gen Y at Work: Feedback Changes Everything — by David Hassell, CEO, 15Five

8) The Steep Cost of Poor Management — by Tatiana Beale, Achievers

9) Want To Be Your Own Boss? Try This First — by Hans Balmaekers, Founder and Director, sa.am

10) Hiring Culture: Creating A Recruitment Ecosystem — by David Smooke, Director of Social Media, SmartRecruiters

Top 3 #TChat Radio Shows  (Most Popular)

TChatRadio_logo_020813

Listen to #TChat Radio replays

1) How Collaboration Unifies Polarization — featuring Jesse Lyn Stoner

2) The Big Deal With HR Data — featuring Andrew Courtois and Christene Pantalone

3) How Open Leaders Win Employee Hearts and Minds — featuring Dan Pontefract

Top 3 #TChat Event Preview Posts (Most Popular)

Featuring G+ hangouts hosted by Tim McDonald, Community Manager, TalentCulture + Director of Community, Huffington Post.

1) Leadership + Influence, From The Inside Out — featuring Steve Gutzler

2) You 2.0: Reinventing a Personal Brand — featuring Dorie Clark

3) Should Work Be Fun? Really? — featuring Dan Benoni

Top 3 #TChat Recaps (Most Popular)

1) HR Data: What Really Counts? — by Kathleen Kruse

2) Mindfully Managing Your Personal Brand — by Kevin W. Grossman

3) Face-to-Face With Brand Humanization — by Megan Burkett

Of course, this is only a slice from the TalentCulture archives. There’s much more inside — over 500 posts with helpful ideas and guidance on workplace culture, innovation, leadership, learning, career strategy, HR and talent management. So feel free to stop by anytime.

And no matter what your professional interests may be, we hope you’ll continue to bring your ideas and opinions to the TalentCulture table throughout 2014. Because, no matter how “popular” our blog or events may be on any given day, it’s our community’s collective energy that will truly shape the future of work. So, together, let’s discover how we can be even better.

Your Turn

What topics were your favorites in 2013? And what issues would you like to explore in the year ahead? Share your ideas in the comments area — we’re listening!

(Editor’s Note: To discuss World of Work topics like these with others in the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events every Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credit: Stock.xchng