It’s time to get honest about recruiting
I think we can all agree the hiring process can be frustrating. For the employer, the pressure is on to find the “best talent,” but it’s flat-out hard to tell who’s the best during interviews. Even then, there’s the risk that those “best” people won’t like our culture and leave quite quickly, and that’s expensive […]
Tips to make your budget more transparent
Many people often support the idea of transparency in organizations — but not as much when it comes to financial information. We don’t want to share salary levels, or we don’t want to share our budget information with other departments. For some reason, when it comes to money, we tend to get very traditional in […]
Want a more effective staff meeting? Try this
Most internal staff or team meetings follow a similar pattern that includes one basic element: Each person reports what they’ve been working on to update the rest of the group. We take this for granted as a good thing. After all, what could be wrong with people sharing information with each other? Well, let’s dig […]
Why secrets are bad for business
Organizational transparency isn’t a very new idea in the business world. Whole Foods, for example, shares all of its salary and bonus data internally with everyone. Yes, everybody knows what everyone else makes. When I tell people this, they usually freak out. Don’t worry — you don’t have to share your salary if you don’t […]
Why you should connect performance management with culture
I know it would be hard to just get rid of performance reviews, as I’ve suggested in an earlier post. In the back of our collective minds, we’re still thinking “yeah, but the truth is I want to make sure the individuals in this organization are doing the right things and doing them well, so […]
4 tools to improve performance management
It’s pretty clear most people don’t like their performance review systems (lots of companies are actually getting rid of them entirely). Of course, we do like the basic idea behind the systems: Measuring and improving performance. So instead of getting rid of them, let’s improve them, right? Okay, so where do we start? When I […]
Why You Should Get Rid of Your Performance Reviews
Some really big companies (like GE, Adobe, and Deloitte) have recently eliminated their performance reviews, with a bit of fanfare and media coverage. We all kind of hate the performance review process, so I think it felt a little liberating to know that these huge companies could just let them go. And for companies that […]
THE MYTH OF THE “BEST PLACE TO WORK”
Okay, I know some of you reading this probably won a “best place to work” award, and are quite proud of it. I get it. Your people filled out the survey and it scored really “well” and that’s something to be proud of. I obviously don’t know anything about your workplace, but clearly there is […]
What employee engagement surveys aren’t telling you
There’s a lot of talk in the business world about employee engagement, much of which centers around Gallup survey data. They’ve been measuring employee engagement, both in the U.S. and abroad, for about 10 years. The definition can get a bit squishy, but it’s ultimately about giving discretionary effort. An “engaged” employee is one who […]
3 tips to engage millennials
As a Millennial expert, I get this question a lot: How can we get millennials to engage at our association? I remember presenting at a direct marketing conference and getting a similar — and almost desperate — question from the audience about how to get millennials to listen to their marketing messages. My answer was […]