Want to Motivate Sales Professionals? Applaud Their Resilience

There’s a whole lot of psychological know-how behind managing people directly responsible for gross revenue. Be it inside or outside sales (or fundraisers – the non-profit synonym for sales) these career professionals are the first to admit they’re a breed unto themselves. To master the art of sales team motivation, the first rule of engagement […]
Uniting Unions in Support of Employee Engagement

Like cilantro, it’s an either-or kind of thing. Either your organization and unions like one another and get along palatably. Or you don’t. Many of us have had a first-hand (or maybe arm’s length) experience from one side of the fence or the other. For unionized organizations intending to introduce or raise employee engagement levels, […]
The Powerful Relationship of Engagement to Performance

Thirteenth-century Persian poet and Sunni mystic, Rumi, once ruminated, “Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.” Unlocking the heart’s desire is at the very core of employee engagement. But engagement isn’t just a warmhearted, convivial sort of thing. Engagement is part of […]
Turn March Madness Into April Advantage: Engage the Hearts and Minds of Sport Enthusiasts

It started with Super Bowl Sunday. This year roughly 103.4 million people watched the Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots. Seemingly some 16.5 million people or one in ten Americans skipped work the next day, according to CNBC, costing employers somewhere in the vicinity of $3 billion. Then crossing oceans and time zones, for […]
Skilled Labor Shortages Threaten Growth: How to Gain the Upper Hand with Employee Engagement

It’s midway through 2018. The economy continues to expand. The talent pool continues to contract. Skilled labor shortages are prolific. No sector is immune. Employers predict wage increases. They say this elevated demand for labor is constraining growth. They report losing out on business. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, as an example: A […]
Millennial Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Expectations Fuel Employee Engagement

Millennials are the dominant force in today’s work world and their drum-call for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) keeps getting louder and more persistent. Business pundits and scholars point to growing evidence between CSR and employee engagement. One of those studies, out of IBM Global Services, found 44 percent of young professionals wouldn’t consider an employer with a bad […]
Measuring Up: Tools of the Employee Engagement Trade

Landscape masters Claude Monet and JMW Turner surveyed the lay of the land and painted what they saw, each with their own interpretation and style. Likewise, your organization’s senior leaders look at their employee landscape, interpret what they perceive, and paint a mental picture with broad sweeping strokes. While interpretive creative license has a place […]
Managing Generational Gaps in the Workplace

Do Age Differences Really Matter? Check out some of the online genealogy sites that help trace family lineage and history. The generally accepted time between generations averages 20 to 25 years (from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child). With good health extending our life expectancies in North America it’s not inconceivable our […]
Links Between Employee Engagement and Organizational Success

“People create organizations, therefore the concepts and systems of any organization must reflect the diversity and complexity of the people who comprise it.” What a great quote. Altruistic, yet oh so true; employee engagement stripped to the bare bones. Kevin Fong, a proponent of Eastern traditions and philosophies, offers this golden nugget in his paper, The […]
Leave it to Self: Unleash Engagement through Empowerment

When you do an internet search and look up employee engagement tips or employee engagement ideas what you’ll find is the majority, in fact almost all the topics are what executives can do or what managers can do. Very few ideas or suggestions look at what employees can do to drive engagement. At a talk […]