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 […]
Where Survey Data and Open-Ended Employee Feedback Meet
How do you make sense of employee feedback from open-ended survey questions? And does this kind of feedback really help pinpoint key engagement drivers? After all, it’s not uncommon for an employee engagement survey to rack up hundreds of pages of comments. And having someone from your organization toil through massive numbers of text responses across nine or […]
What Does Career Development Look Like In a Flat Organization?
Retaining valuable employees is a challenge in the modern workforce. A lack of employee engagement is a potential cause for increased “job-hopping,” especially amongst younger talent pools. It poses critical issues for employers, but an effective employee recognition program is a low-cost solution that helps increase engagement and makes employees feel their contribution to a […]
The Human Age of Employee Experience
Lessons from Progressive Organizations It seems the Human Age has finally arrived in the Western world of business. Hello to “employee experience,” the trending mantra of today’s progressive thought leaders. Mismatched supply and demand in the talent market seems to be the catalyst for this trend. Well, that and the fact that early adopters of employee […]
Engaging Employees in the Safety and Health of their Workplace
This year on April 28 the International Labour Organization’s World Day for Safety and Health at Work is linking forces with the World Day Against Child Labour in a joint campaign to improve the occupational safety and health of all employees, regardless of age. Every day 6,300 people die as a result of occupational accidents or work-related diseases […]
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 […]
Mental Health, the Formidable Workplace Foe
What we can do to promote employee well-being Mental illness is slowly eking its way out from under the long-casting shadow of stigma. Very slowly. Especially in the workplace. Despite recognizing how employee well-being can help or hinder productivity and improve employee engagement, the sad fact is few organizations really pay attention to mental health or know […]
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 […]
15 Tips for Employee Survey Customization
Themes around employee engagement are well documented. All survey vendors have some version of standard survey questions that fall under those 12 or 15 umbrella categories (compensation, professional growth, leadership…you know the shtick). Yet strategic objectives and corporate cultures vary. Internal corporate-speak and external industry jargon differ. Geography, language and literacy rates compound differences. Sometimes employee survey customization is required or […]