Engagement
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Communicating with a Millennial (Part 3: Getting to Know You)
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This wasn’t supposed to be a series. Both the Recruiting Animal and “Ryan” have brought up interesting points that I’d like to comment on. Is it possible that all of this “adjusting” going both ways (to the Millennials and for them to work) is really just workforce entry angst? Recruiting Animal: If that’s true, it…
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Communicating with a Millennial (Part 2: Dubs needs friends)
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There was a fair amount of conversation regarding this “millennial” generation last week, some of it controversial and with minor disagreement. There doesn’t seem to be differences in that we all agree that each generation has it’s own quirks in terms of preferences that can be stereotyped, as well as communication methods that might be…
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Employee Morale and Uncertainty
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The other day I was visiting a client site and was struck by how recent financial difficulties experienced by the client had impacted the workforce. As part of my job, I had to interview personnel at different levels, and as a result was able to get some great insight into the morale level of the…
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Who will own performance management?
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Dave Lefkow asks “who will own performance management?” I have several responses. Finally, a talent acquisition guy who realizes that talent management is not just recruiting. For ages, the talent acquisition vendors have been calling themselves talent management. Sure, it’s a component, but you don’t see companies like SuccessFactors suggesting that their performance product is…
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The Most Critical Jobs
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Why is it that the jobs that are really important are always the ones that are overlooked? Either they are overlooked, pushed aside, or when times get tough, are the first to go. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a couple of weeks. Recently a friend of mine head that his job was…
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Required Skills for HR Transformation
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I had a bit of a humorous moment as I was reading this article from Mercer.com. While besides the point of this post, the Mercer page starts out saying: The survey reveals that despite some progress, nearly 60% of finance executives still view HR as a cost rather than a strategic partner; and 80% of…
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Myths of Employee Engagement: Part 3
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Over the last couple days I posted some basic reactions to WorkUSA’s research on employee engagement. Today, I’d like to continue with some reactions to the rest of their “key findings.” Engagement is a leading indicator of financial performance. Companies that increase their engagement levels can expect to significantly improve their subsequent financial performance. ((Watson…
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Myths of Employee Engagement: Part 2
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Yesterday I posted some basic reactions to WorkUSA’s research on employee engagement and manager communications. Today, I’d like to continue with some reactions to the second half of their “key findings.” Some of you may thing “Does Dubs always have to disagree?” Well, I don’t always. But I do like to put my particular spin…
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Myths of Employee Engagement: Part 1
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I found on the Watson Wyatt site a WorkUSA research paper that WW looks to have sponsored. In the “WorkUSA® 2006/2007: Debunking the Myths of Employee Engagement, Executive Summary,” WorkUSA attempts to identify some myths and ascertain what actions might be most important in driving engagement. (I should note that I didn’t purchase the full…
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Employee Morale and Stress
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A lot has been written about the connection between low employee morale and stress. In fact, Melissa Bushman even claims it to be “The most common cause of low employee morale.” On the face of it, this sounds reasonable. If I’m stressed at work, I’m probably not happy at work. Take a deeper dive on this…
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HRIT and Communications Strategy Overlap
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I think it’s apparent that I love talking about portal. Much of what I talk about is fairly theoretical and visionary considering not all the technologies are actually fully capable of delivering what I’d like to see, but we’re getting closer. Part of portal is easy for HR technologists. Making sure that the functional technologies…
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Employee Morale and the Company Car
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Do a Google search on “employee morale” and you will get “about 1,020,000 hits”. Evidently, it’s a pretty hot topic! Actually, after I went through all the million plus hits, I found that there are actually 748,639 non-duplicative hits. Still quite a few, and definitely a hot topic. I found out all kinds of things…
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Universum Survey of New Graduate Preferences
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There’s a lot more to the Universum survey that I have time to go into or interpret including top employer brands cut into multiple categories and such. What I found most interesting was their cut on the new graduate goals for work. Easily, the highest ranking career goal was the desire for balance between personal…
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Employee Morale and the Boss
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The other day, I came across an interesting graph a client of mine had copied from a BusinessWeek article. I’ve been trying to find it online, to no avail. I found reference to it here, on another blog, NumericLife. Everyone has a boss to deal with When employees were polled to pick New Year’s…
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Prosperity Growth and the Satisfaction Gap
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Your grandfather probably worked to live. Your mother and father most likely fired to make a living. Your children will be working to define a life. – Jeff Hunter, 2006 ((Hunter, Jeff. October 31, 2006. “Economics to Identity.” Retrieved from http://www.talentism.com/ on November 12, 2006.)) There’s really no argument that the industrialized world has gotten…
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“Dreamworks” as a perfect brand
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A while back I wrote about UBS’s employer brand (employee value proposition). UBS is a great example of putting the external marketing brand to good use in the internal employer brand. But lately I’ve been noticing another brand that I consider now to be the perfect brand: Dreamworks. In terms of what your employees want…
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Motivation versus Transformation
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I often hear managers asking how they can best motivate their employees to do better work, be more productive or have better attitudes. What most managers (and maybe people in general) don’t understand is that they are asking the wrong questions. Employee engagement is not about motivation. Employee engagement is about TRANSFORMATION. What’s the difference…
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Engagement Insights From a Dumb Little Man
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Hey… Dumb Little Man is the name of his website, ok? Coming from a non HR practitioner he has some great insights about retaining engaging employees. In fact, I’d be impressed if some of these ideas came from HR practitioners too. Here are some nuggets, but then go read the whole thing for yourself: I…
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The Best Places to Launch a Career
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Andrew from Resourcing Strategies wrote this a while back in September of 2006, but then again, I’m about that far behind on my reading. Why do I get excited about where a great place to work and “launch a career” would be for a new grad? Because it gets down to the core of your…
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Attracting and Holding People
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It is highly desirable to have specific objectives for manager supply, development and performance, but also specific objectives for major groups within the non-managerial workforce. There is need for objectives for employee attitudes as well as for employee skills. ((Drucker, Peter F. “The Daily Drucker.” HarperCollins, 2004. Page 118)) Do we see managing our talent…