people's inability to quit their current roles had little to do with the perceived riskiness of their new professions, their financial situation, or general economic conditions. The real barrier for most of us is not external. It's our own psychology: We overthink decisions, fear eventual failure, and prioritize near-term, visible rewards over long-range success.
Getting these programs to work, though, is tricky. Management experts say it is all well and good to send employees to classes, but to get the lessons to stick, employees need to apply them to their daily work lives. Employees often take a class and "say, 'Gee, this is great,' and go back to their jobs and do the same old thing," says Professor David Bradford, director of the executive program in leadership at Stanford University.
Google thinks it has found a way to make its learning stick. It has become more exacting about when it offers classes and to whom. It uses employee reviews of managers—similar to the instructor reviews that college students fill out at the end of a semester—to suggest courses to managers. Ever data-obsessed, Google uses statistics gathered from current and former employees to recommend certain courses to managers at different points in their career, say after a move to a new city or joining a new team.
Chatter, which was launched two years ago, is not the only company working on a metric for influence within organizations. Yammer and National Field, other enterprise social networking tools, are also taking a stab at the problem.
The most progressive organizations have always realized that the informal connections employees make with others and the amount of knowledge and expertise they share outside of prescribed work responsibilities contributes mightily to the bottom line. But until now, they haven't had an empirical way of measuring that activity.
It was always much less about how I could become a better engineer and much more about my need to improve my visibility among other managers.” Ed McCahill, who worked at Microsoft as a marketing manager for 16 years, says,
The perils of creating a culture where your staff compete with each other instead of against the competition.
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-stev...
... There are benefits to rudeness … that is, for those who perpetrate it. In a study conducted by a trio of American universities last year, it was discovered that rude men earn 18 per cent more than “agreeable” men, while rude women earn 5 per cent more than nice women.The study comprised 10,000 workers over a period of 20 years, and it concluded that one explanation for the salary difference is that rude people tend to be more forceful during salary negotiations. The result? They get what they want.
Sure, rudeness might offer an advantage to some people, but it creates a stack of problems for others. Research released in 2011 by Baylor University in Texas found rude people at work create a negative impact not only on their unfortunate colleagues, but also on their colleagues’ partners.
Read on over at smh.com.au to find out how.
A combination of transparency, skill, pride and fun has seen OBS named among the nation's 10 most desirable workplaces each year since the BRW awards began in 2009.
First place ... the chief executive of OBS, Brian Cook, plays 'Happy birthday' on his guitar for two employees. Photo: Arsineh Houspian
A great read on employee satisfaction - how to measure it, achieve it and the correlation to customer NPS.
In our view, too many companies try to raise engagement by launching disconnected initiatives like wellness programs. Such initiatives might improve employee morale slightly and serve other purposes, but they’re detached from customers’ priorities. They lack the specific mechanisms that lift employee engagement the most over a long period and link directly to customer advocacy. ...
Companies that have substantially raised employee engagement act differently. They go beyond the basic prerequisites of employee satisfaction, which include an emotionally safe environment, the right tools to get work done and fair compensation. These trailblazers manage to instill an extraordinary sense of purpose and autonomy, as well as strong affiliation with the company and its offerings. They take a systematic approach, focusing on a few key areas.
Measure employee engagement just like customer engagement and tightly link the two
We were talking "innovation" at work so I thought I would pull out this article. Innovation is such a buzz word it seems, to me at least; it loses its meaning each time it is uttered. But it's meaning is concrete.
"innovation is more than just the generation of novel ideas or the dissemination of knowledge, it is about making a change or doing something in a new way."
This distinction is crucial. Novel ideas by themselves have no impact on society. It is their implementation that separates invention from innovation.
In other words, good ideas are not enough. In my day job as Fairfax's resident mad professor we have a battle cry of "Demo or Die!" which I feel sums up the sentiment accurately. If we can't demonstrate implementation, then the idea doesn't have legs.
published in the SMH September 24, 2011: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/innovation/blogs/smoke--mirrors/australia-a-nati...
A new survey from Human Resources vendor NorthgateArinso claims that Australians are actually getting better at saying "no" to work. According to the survey results;
- Fewer workers make work-related calls from home this year (24%) than last year (36%)
- Fewer workers check emails at home this year (38%) versus last year (46%)
- Fewer workers feel that work is intruding on their personal life this year (39%) versus last (52%)
- Fewer companies are providing employees with laptops this year 24% versus last (35%)
I'm quite surprised by these results, except for the last figure because more organisations are encouraging staff to use their own laptops for work. NorthgateArinso's ANZ managing director David Page thinks the shift could partly be to cultural change within organisations, as they realise that "online fatigue" can actually make workers less productive rather than more. This might be the case with some enlightened bosses, but I expect they're in a minority.
No new facts or research in this article. Just more evidence of a trend to discourage long working hours to promote productivity.
There's been a flurry of recent coverage praising Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, for leaving the office every day at 5:30 p.m. to be with her kids. Apparently she's been doing this for years, but only recently "came out of the closet," as it were. What's insane is that Sandberg felt the need to hide the fact, since there's a century of research establishing the undeniable fact that working more than 40 hours per week actually decreases productivity.
... nobody should be apologizing for leaving at work at a reasonable hour like 5:30 p.m. In fact, people should be apologizing if they're working too long each week–because it's probably making the team less effective overall.
