I’ve always had a passion for giving back and caring for others, but I always struggled with the idea of choosing to go down that path as my career. I never wanted it to lose the meaning by becoming a job that I was required to do. So, I made the choice early on in my career to give back to my community in parallel with my career and that idea has never felt more supported than it does at Achievers.→ Read More
Welcome back. We’ve been discussing how company culture is everyone’s responsibility—from leaders at the top of the organization, to HR who facilitates the employee experience, to all managers and employees. In this blog, I want to speak directly to the managers because every manager has a responsibility to create and sustain a positive company culture. Listen, I get that you are busy juggling multiple tasks and responsibilities at once, but the truth is, we need to do a better job at cultivating a culture that inspires performance, and that means ensuring you are balancing all those management responsibilities with your leadership ones.→ Read More
Several years ago, I worked for an HR director (I’ll call her Susan) who loved to talk as much as she loved her job. Susan was passionate about solving problems and building interdepartmental relationships. She had a sense of humor and could connect with just about anyone. Here’s the “but”: When Susan met with managers and employees during monthly team meetings, she did most of the talking. Anyone observing would describe these as a 90-minute, one-way conversation from Susan to whomever paid attention.→ Read More
In my last blog, I talked about how culture is no longer an HR thing, it is a business thing. This means that every owner, executive, and manager needs to make culture a priority and make decisions that support the desired culture. But this is not to say that HR doesn’t play a critical role in culture. HR owns many of the mechanisms that influence the employee experience, and is an important part of facilitating the company culture. So, what does HR need to do to ensure a healthy company culture?→ Read More
When I talk to business owners and executives about wanting to improve their culture, their typical response is that culture is something that HR is responsible for. This response is a clear indication that those at the top are still disconnected from what truly matters. When will business owners, executives, and managers realize that each of them is responsible for shaping and managing company culture each day? Maybe this lack of ownership is because the idea of culture is vague to them, so instead of trying to understand their role in it, they simply pass the responsibility over to HR.→ Read More
Paid Time Off (PTO) Is More Than a Privilege
Hard work and determination are as American as Jersey Shore reunions and bacon-topped desserts. And to make ends meet in our highly competitive, ultra-consumerist society, U.S. employees often find themselves putting in long hours, taking fewer lunch breaks, and even getting side-gigs to keep pace. Well, worth it or not, thou who burneth the candle at both ends burneth out entirely. That begs the question, is all the tenacity balanced with sufficient PTO and the ability to stay home when you’re sick?→ Read More
Companies are trying to find a workspace setup that increases employee productivity. Meanwhile, the employees are hoping that they will be allowed to concentrate or collaborate as needed and still escape unnecessary distractions. Getting the design of an office right can be hard – it is clearly a moving target. Let’s take a look back at the history of office design. In 1964, a Herman Miller executive, Robert Propst, came up with the idea of the office cubicle. It was a reaction to the open office setups of the 1950s which were felt to be too noisy and lacking in privacy.→ Read More
News of one company buying another one makes for splashy headlines, broadcasting rising stock prices and the overall cost of the deal. Just look at the headlines Disney garnered for its recent $52 billion bid to acquire most of 21st Century Fox, as well as all of Sky News. However, what really counts after the dust settles is how you help your employees adjust to the cultural shift. Author and management consultant Mark E. Mendenhall writes that “cultural and psychological sides of M&A are often overshadowed by the financial side,” and SHRM notes “studies consistently show that most mergers and acquisitions fail, mainly because of people and culture issues.” As an HR professional, your participation is crucial during each step of the transition, but the most significant contribution you can make is probably in the area of employee engagement.→ Read More
Ever since people started working for each other, supervisors have tried to figure out the best way to reach their performance goals and keep workers on task. Too often in human history, this meant that people with less power were simply compelled to work, and incentives — if they existed — consisted merely of being allowed to survive. After several evolutionary waves, we have a deeper insight into what truly motivates people, and today’s incentives are about far more than compensation.→ Read More
On the inside, you’re full of warm-hearted gratitude for the loyalty of employees who stick around for the long haul. The question to ask yourself is whether your team knows how much you appreciate their efforts. They can’t read your mind, so celebrating employee milestones and work anniversaries is a way to showcase your positive energy and spread it around. It’s also a way to strengthen your company’s financial position, because a stronger work culture leads directly to stronger employee engagement.→ Read More
Leadership structure, office environment, core mission and values, interpersonal relations, team engagement and communication style—these are just some of the many organizational details that shape company culture, something that is becoming more and more important to businesses of all kinds. A strong company culture improves:
What’s more, more people rank “workplace well-being” over monetary or “material benefits,” according to the Harvard Business Review—and that well-being is created through a positive company culture.→ Read More
A company’s mission statement is the driving force behind its company culture. It’s what ignites passion and motivation in employees.
At Achievers, our mission is simple: to change the way the world works. We aspire to do that by aligning everyone with business goals and company values, driven by recognizing shared victories every day. In short, we aim to make success a way of life.
Creating a mission-based culture is crucial for employee — and ultimately, company — success. In fact, according to our latest report, 76 percent of North American employees cited a positive corporate culture as the single most important quality in an employer.→ Read More
Team meetings are renowned for being boring and, to many employees, a waste of time.
In fact, one survey shows that over 75% of meeting participants are annoyed by meetings they deem unnecessary, and many more will agree they find them boring, even if it’s just from time to time.
So, as a meeting host in your business, it’s up to you to spice things up and bring a spark that will keep everybody engaged. To help you get started, here are seven techniques you can use.→ Read More
We’ve all been there. Your coworker Sam is moving on to a new opportunity. Goodbyes are being said. Personal email addresses are being exchanged so everyone can “stay in touch”. Sam’s cardboard box is filled with the usual suspects: family photos, a mousepad with the Dallas Cowboys logo, the chrome stapler he secretly lifted from the supply closet and a Ziplock bag full of client business cards he has gathered over the years.
Now, here is where the real fun begins.→ Read More
Traditionally, a six-figure salary and 401k options were enough to attract and retain top talent. We no longer live in a traditional world—and the modern workplace has come a long way from what it used to be. While these benefits are still important to employees, they’re not prioritized like they once were. Today, employees are more focused on finding a company that has a positive, strong company culture revolved around learning and growth.
To cater to the “modern” employee and remain competitive in your respective industry, you have to focus on the development of a strong company culture that supports learning and employee growth.→ Read More
Helping companies and employees feel more connected, Limeade and Achievers have joined together to create a seamless, simplified employee engagement experience. Read more about the partnership announcement here.
At Limeade, we believe true engagement happens when people feel good and have a sense of purpose.
We define employee engagement, or “Big E” engagement, as the extra energy and commitment that comes from this sense of purpose and connection. We look at engagement through the lens of well-being because our research shows that well-being is a precursor to engagement — and how your organization supports well-being is a critical part of the equation.→ Read More
The importance of employee recognition and engagement cannot be overstated. Companies everywhere are shelling out billions every year for HR programs designed to enhance their office culture and improve employee productivity. Yet, according to Gallup’s 15-year study, the percentage of American workers that are “actively engaged” at the workplace remains fairly stagnant, with an average of just around 32%.
This begs the question: why are some employee engagement programs working while others aren’t?
Designing an engaging office culture requires more than just planning birthday parties or patting a worker on the back for a job well done.→ Read More
In a recent survey of millennials, more than 30 percent said that they’d like their workplace to be “more fun” – and this element seems to be in short supply. Survey respondents noted that “fun and humor” were job aspects for which daily reality fell far short of their wishes. In order to entice and retain the most talented workers in today’s competitive job market, it’s important to come up with company perks that will add fun to your environment. Here are 10 amazing possibilities that could make your employer brand sparkle in the new year:
1.→ Read More
Keeping employees engaged is vital for the health of your company, but it’s not a simple task that you can just scribble at the bottom of your to-do list. Your employees respond in complex emotional ways to the culture of your company, and the more positive and well-defined that culture is, the more they will feel they belong. Missions and values articulated through mission statements define a company’s identity right from the moment of its founding. When shared widely, these expressions of an organization’s purpose are an incredibly powerful tool for creating and focusing employee loyalty.→ Read More
You likely know that people don’t perform as well when they’re feeling disengaged or distracted, but you may not realize how pervasive a problem this is in today’s workplace. How happy are your employees? Is employee happiness at a low or a high? The latest Gallup poll (collected from over 80,000 workers) on employee engagement tells a dismal story. In 2015, only 32 percent of workers say they’re “engaged” at their jobs. Over 50 percent say they’re “not engaged,” while another 17 percent state that they are “actively disengaged.” Furthermore, this data has shown no significant change since Gallup first started this annual poll in 2000, so the problem is persistent.→ Read More
Are you ready to transform your company’s culture? In Part 1 of this series, I discussed the process for a successful culture transformation. In this blog, I’ll discuss key tips and reminders to help you through the process. Let’s start by understanding that although this is not a quick and easy process, it can be done.
Transformations Take Time
The transformation of habits and attitudes does not occur overnight, especially when employees have been allowed to operate in a certain way or in status quo for a long period of time.→ Read More
How strong is your work culture? Are you in need of a successful culture transformation? With 21% greater profitability from engaged business units, a strong work culture can be the key to your business’ future success. It’s important to navigate your new culture shift with the right approach. SGEi has led transformation processes over the years to improve the culture of organizations, large and small, across multiple industries. From our experience, there are some important ideas to keep in mind and an approach to be followed for any cultural transformation to be successful.→ Read More
While you may do your best to spread seasonal cheer and appreciation, it’s important to keep in mind that this time of year is not all sparkles and snowflakes for your staff. Many of them will be trying to balance holiday schedules and family complications while feeling added stress due to end-of-year work tasks. Furthermore, absences and vacations often leave big holes in staffing right when the duties are most intense. With only 34.1 percent of employees engaged at work without the distractions associated with the holidays, don’t be surprised if the holidays bring a decline in productivity and a decrease in employee engagement.→ Read More
In the sharing economy era, technology not only influences our lives at all levels, it reshapes our workplaces completely.
Digitalization, creative disruption, and automation are here to stay. In The Economist’s special report on Artificial Intelligence it shared:
“Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicted that by 2025 the “annual creative disruption impact” from AI could amount to $14 trillion-33 trillion […] Far from killing every job on the planet, such disruption is expected to transform the way we work.”
The workplace is constantly evolving and instead of focusing so much on the future of work, I am curious more about the ever-changing now of work.→ Read More
Hourly workers are among the most unhappy employees in the workforce. They often take fewer vacations, have worse benefits, and are passed over for promotions compared to their salaried counterparts. This isn’t surprising. When most companies hire hourly workers, they often focus solely on the dollar amount they must pay to attract qualified candidates, rather than the perks and benefits that can set them apart from other potential employers.
Don’t be MOST companies.
With hourly rates climbing in most major cities, it can be hard to make your job look enticing.→ Read More
If you’ve ever touched the recruiting process, you’re well aware that hiring can be expensive! However, you probably also know that making a bad hire is even more expensive. According to Forbes, a bad hire can costs an employer “thousands of dollars”. So what are the best ways to hire with different levels of budget? We’ve helped compile some top tips and tricks for those hiring on any budget.
Under $50
If you only have $50 to spend on hiring you’re largely limited to free options which is not necessarily a bad thing. → Read More
Since publishing my new book, Culture Hacker, a couple of months ago, I have had some great conversations and brainstorming sessions with Human Resource leaders and Executives across organizations about how to hack their culture and improve their overall employee experience. One outcome has been the development of my ‘Four C’s’ that I believe highlight the required direction of Human Resource leaders and their departments in the future. The 4 C’s refer to the HR leader and department being a Catalyst, Coach, Conductor, and Consultant within their organization.→ Read More
How many of us have ever been out to dinner and looked around to see that every person at the table is on a mobile device? Or observed a group of young people hanging out “together” while barely lifting their eyes from a screen? When we see technology being used this way (or are guilty of too much screen time ourselves) it can be easy to assume technology is pushing human beings apart.
And while internet addiction is a real thing (as one psychologist put it, we’re “carrying around a portable dopamine pump”) there is little evidence proving that technology as a whole is hurting our ability to communicate or empathize.→ Read More
What are the five steps to finding an emotional balance in the workplace? I’ll tell you. But first, let’s dive into where we, as employees, are currently situated in the workplace. The emergence of the millennial generation in the contemporary workforce has led to a greater need for companies to emphasize an employee-centric workplace. The importance of organizations understanding the expectations of an employee is greater than ever before, leading to stronger ties between corporate and private life. This phenomenon is not just limited to human interactions.→ Read More
Do you encourage employees to take vacation time? You should. Taking time off is the secret to increased productivity. If you ask a job candidate about his or her biggest flaw, chances are good they’ll say that they tend to work too hard. This isn’t just a convenient way to elude a difficult question; it’s probably the absolute truth. Furthermore, even though it might seem like this excessive diligence will contribute to your company’s productivity, the truth is that such excess work habits are harmful to employee happiness and to your company culture as well.→ Read More
According to the 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report, 78% of Executives see diversity as a competitive advantage. People with diverse experiences are better prepared to offer insights and come up with better solutions. They make diverse teams smarter.
But how can diversity boost engagement in teams?
Having led multi-cultural teams in the Middle-East, Asia, and now in Europe; I can tell blending diversity and engagement gives outstanding results. But experience taught me that you can’t see the best outcomes unless you understand how cultural references influence team members’ expectations.→ Read More
In my last post, I wrote about how the Future of Work is NoW (Now of Work) and it’s time to move away from this notion of some future state of work. If you’re taking your time preparing for this future, you are already left behind.
I hypothesized that the connected generation, technology and the sharing economy have inspired forward thinking companies to fundamentally change the way they attract, engage and retain their top talent.
What I didn’t share were the characteristics of the NoW of work based on my experiences and research and data from the employee experience survey STARFiiSH.→ Read More
Stress is the single worst enemy of productivity. A stressed-out worker is usually not an efficient worker. Furthermore, high employee stress levels can lead to higher rates of employee turnover and absenteeism; who wants to work at a job with constant stress?
Not only is stress an obstacle to productivity, it can work against a business’ attempts to attain key business objectives. We all know that a business must be profitable to survive, but without recognizing the danger of pushing workers too hard, you’ll end up spending more money than necessary to counter mistakes made by tired, depressed, and stressed-out individuals.→ Read More
When your team works in the same building, it’s easy to get to know one another. Since you see each other every day, you’ll likely develop a deeper than surface level relationship based on proximity alone. You might come to know how your colleagues take their coffee, and maybe even buddy up with them when the company heads out on a retreat or outing. However, if the majority of your team works remotely, it can be difficult to maintain a culture of free-flowing communication.→ Read More
If you were asked about your top priorities as a manager, how would you answer? Increasing productivity would probably be first on your list, along with steady company growth, low employee turnover, seamless teamwork, and high employee engagement — after all, most businesses share similar goals.
However, you might not have considered developing an excellent company culture among your top-tier priorities, even though it is the foundation for every one of your key goals. When focusing on creating an amazing company culture, you will discover that other elements of business success fall into place organically.→ Read More
Today’s CEOs, managers, and team leaders understand the importance of keeping employee morale high. The fact that you’re reading this on the Engage Blog — a thought leadership blog meant to define, inform, and help increase employee engagement — means you must have some inkling as to the positive impact engagement can have on an organization. Many organizations try to address employee engagement by providing extra incentives, or “perks.”
When it comes to providing company perks, global businesses like Google, Yahoo!→ Read More
All businesses are comprised of a variety of capital, with human capital being the most critical to sustainability and success. The minds that drive innovation, the behaviors that build culture, and the personalities that forge relationships are all components of human capital. Employee Appreciation Week (or Day, Month, Year; however your organization chooses to celebrate it) provides companies with an annual occasion to be hyper-focused on their employees and express their gratitude in a public manner.
In today’s employee-centric world, where workers have many choices of where to lend their talents, it is important to reaffirm their decision to work for you.→ Read More
No longer a specialist relief pitcher called in to face a tough hitter, or a rarely used bench player padding stats in garbage time, employee recognition has become a widely recognized superstar when it comes to driving employee engagement. And with only 41% of employees recognized at their desired frequency, and 60% feeling their managers don’t recognize them in the moment, a huge opportunity exists for your business to leverage recognition to engage your employees.
While there are a variety of ways to help create an engaged workforce, many experts, including AON Hewitt and the Harvard Business Review, believe that recognition is the most important pillar of any employee engagement program.→ Read More
Mindfulness by definition is, “the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis.” Seems simple enough, right?
However, achieving a state of mindfulness as defined above, while balancing the busy schedule of a working professional seems like another impossible task on the grand to-do list. According to the Global Wellness Institute, the health and wellness industry hit a record high of $3.4 trillion dollars in 2014, and that number continues to grow as more and more businesses seek to launch health and wellness initiatives of their own.→ Read More
Employee engagement, according to Aon, Deloitte, Gallup, and thousands of scholarly articles, is one of the greatest game-changing mechanisms for companies looking to accelerate performance, exceed desired results and outperform their competitors.
The potential for managers to impact employee engagement is massive; Gallup estimates that managers account for at least 70 percent of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units. However, my own research in human services and experience in corporate environments confirms that only the managers who provide a quality leadership experience are the ones that have the most positive impact on employee engagement.→ Read More
Your interviews are probably more unstructured than they should be.
Too many recruiters and hiring managers ask interview questions that reflect their biases, increasing the likelihood that they don’t fairly compare candidates. Even worse, many recruiters just “wing it” when conducting interviews because they claim that’s the best way to, “get a real feel for the candidate.” However, when discussing why Google turned to structured interviews, Google’s VP of People Operations Laszlo Bock made clear his thoughts on “winging it,” stating, “Typical, unstructured job interviews were pretty bad at predicting how someone would perform once hired.”
You may not be so unstructured as to totally wing it in an interview, but think of all the small talk you probably make over the course of interviewing someone.→ Read More
Does anyone truly look forward to their annual performance review? Leaders don’t enjoy preparing them and employees dread attending them. According to HR analyst and industry thought leader Josh Bersin, “More than 70% of all organizations dislike the process they have, and I have yet to talk with an employee or manager who likes it at all (one client calls it a ‘soul-crushing’ exercise).” That’s why many leading organizations such as Accenture, Adobe, Gap, GE, Goldman Sachs and Microsoft all recently announced that they are remodeling this “soul-crushing exercise” and moving to something altogether new.→ Read More
Look up from your computer and take stock of the colleagues working around you, they might not be at their desks much longer A recent Gallup study reports that approximately 51% of them [U.S. workers] are either actively looking for a new job or keeping an eye out for openings.
Some say it’s a people or a hiring problem, others chalk it up to the natural employee lifecycle. However, this career transience can be more properly understood as a consequence of poor company culture.→ Read More
With a steady increase in employable candidates, and the continued exodus of baby boomers, millennials are now in a position to have a major influence on their workplaces. But according to a recent study by Gallup, only 29% of millennials are engaged at work. This shouldn’t come as a surprise; millennials make no secret as to what they feel makes a workplace engaging. They want challenging, rewarding work in a team-oriented culture. Based on the knowledge above, it doesn’t hurt to ask: Are you actively molding your team dynamics to meet millennials’ expectations?→ Read More
Office workshops break up the day, boost employee loyalty, and reduce turnover because they communicate the message that each individual contributor is more than a number. The key is in choosing the right workshops; the less they feel like a chore for employees, the more effective they’ll be. According to management training and leadership experts at Mind Tools, ineffective workshops can bring more problems than they actually solve: “Done wrong, they can be a huge waste of time and money.→ Read More
Are you one of those bosses who feels their employees should simply be happy to have a job at all? Unfortunately, some supervisors really do feel this way, particularly when the job market is tight. However, it’s an expensive point of view to maintain, especially in an economy that is nearing full employment: Discouraged employees are 87 percent more likely to quit, and you’ll spend a minimum of 21 percent of an employee’s annual salary on a replacement. To avoid this unnecessary expense, follow these five simple tips on keeping employee morale high:
1.→ Read More
“Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
You’re looking to expand your team. Congratulations on your company’s growth spurt! Now you want to find candidates that fit your company culture and bring the right expertise to the job. While you could just post to one of the huge job sites like Craigslist or Indeed, there are a number of other unique and creative ways to grab the attention of your future colleague, and here are a few…
Offer Rewards: Offer a financial incentive to your current employees to assist with finding their new office buddy who will go the distance.→ Read More
“We’re trying to build a culture of recognition.” We hear this all the time at Achievers. The thinking is, if people recognize each other for great work, their behaviors shift towards actions that drive value for the business. And that makes sense – what gets recognized gets repeated. Where companies tend to struggle is with adoption, consistency, and tracking and measuring ROI. But for the sake of this post, I’m going to focus on consistency, and on the importance of making recognition a habit through the use of a powerful psychological tool – triggers.→ Read More
Employee retention is a key goal for every company, but it’s important to drill down into this metric and make sure you’re doing a good job of identifying and keeping your top performers. These employees deliver 400 percent more productivity than the average worker, according to statistics published in Harvard Business Review (HBR). The researchers state, “Our workforce strategy goal should be to double down on retention tactics for high performers,” and further explain that, in many cases, managers aren’t meeting the needs of their top talent.→ Read More
Relocating for your career is the perfect opportunity to explore a new way of life, meet new people, and get to know yourself that much better as you step outside of your comfort zone. A new study shows nearly 85 percent of millennial workers surveyed said they are willing to move to a new city for a job. Despite all this, let’s admit it, moving is rarely enjoyable. However, the idea of a shiny new opportunity awaiting you in your new home should help alleviate some of the stress caused by moving.→ Read More
