If you look around the business world today, you will find that all companies are changing and evolving whether it is implementing an integration of digital transformation plans, DEI programs, company culture initiatives, remote worker programs, or changes in organizational structure. You name it – there is a plethora of other changes occurring as well.

2.5 million people retired during the pandemic and experts estimate that of those,1.5 million would not have retired had it not been for the pandemic. Were you ready for these resignations?  To compete in today’s marketplace, you need to build your leadership bench, invest in attracting top talent, and develop a culture of succession.

Agile: The ability to move quickly and easily; relating to or denoting a method of project management that is characterized by the division of tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans.  Agility has been working its way into areas and functions from product development to manufacturing to marketing—and now it’s transforming how organizations hire, develop, and manage their people.

Is your organization prepared for the worst-case talent scenarios? Do you have a plan to transfer knowledge of your leaders at all levels? Have you identified high performers who can move into these roles? If not, you need a succession plan. 

Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing new leaders who can replace old leaders when they leave, retire or die. It increases the likelihood of having internal, experienced and capable employees that are prepared to assume these roles as they are vacated. Succession planning is crucial in order to avoid an organizational crisis when someone in a key role leaves.

Productivity, collaboration and innovation is a difficult proposition for many employers.  For those employers that have telecommuters, many have used and/or developed internal tools from Instant Messaging to blogs to internal LinkedIn type pages to encourage teamwork, camaraderie, and innovation within the workplace.  However, the tide appears to be turning.

In the Fall 2016 Edition of Training Industry Magazine, Marshall Goldsmith, Alan Mulally and Sam Shriver challenge the old paradigm of leaders as experts.  The article states that: “Historically, leadership has largely been considered a top-down function. Leaders were masters of their crafts that doled out their knowledge over time to eager apprentices aspiring to gain wisdom. Enter the ‘Knowledge Worker.’”

An October 3rd Wall Street Journal article may provoke some controversy within organizations. As you might guess from the title, "Why the Best Leaders Want Their Superstar Employees to Leave," this article runs counter to conventional wisdom. The author, Sydney Finkelstein, may prompt us to consider whether targeting retention may be the wrong focus for organizations. Instead, we might be better served becoming talent magnets and talent developers. 

Is your learning and development (L&D) function tactical or strategic? In a September 2016 Chief Learning Office article, titled "The Cultural Revolution," Dan Pontefract makes a compelling case for moving the L&D function from order takers to culture leaders.

Empathy is hard to learn and nearly impossible to teach.  It’s a skill that is part of the national workforce’s soft skills gap that is continuing to widen.  But some companies, like Ford, are developing new creative ways to bridge this skills gap.

The Talent Symposium on August 11th was a resounding success. There were about 200 attendees in total, including exhibitors, presenters and ASE colleagues. The registrants represented HR leadership, HR business partners, generalists, and talent specialists. Attendees collectively rated the experience a 4.5 on a scale of 5. Most importantly, there was high energy and great sharing of ideas in the sessions and on the ASE app.  We’ve compiled a summary of each session with some key...

After weeks or months of sometimes agonizing recruitment efforts, your new hire is finally starting!  You are excited to welcome them on their first day, and the team can’t wait to meet them.  But now they need to get up to speed in order to be a productive member of the team.  This is not only important for the business, but also in the retention efforts which should already be commencing.   Successful onboarding is key to successful retention.

In order to win more in our respective marketplaces, and to engage employees so they contribute their best, it may be time to rethink structures. A recent article in The Economist makes a compelling case that there are significant opportunities to improve organizational results by working more as teams, instead of the traditional technical silos.

In a recent speech Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of People Operations at Google, made the case that taking power away from managers may be a good thing. In a recent Business Insider article, we learn that Google is increasingly relying on peer feedback for employee performance evaluations and less on the manager. This is because Bock believes coworkers are generally less biased than managers. In his book, Work Rules, Bock writes that peer evaluation is a key part of performance...

Fast Company posted an article this week titled “Former Googler Lets Us In On The Surprising Secret To Being A Good Boss.” The author, Kim Scott, an accomplished coach, tells us that the single most important thing a boss can do is focus on guidance—giving it, receiving it, and encouraging it. Guidance, which is fundamentally just praise and criticism, is more commonly called feedback. But the term “feedback” has come to sound screechy and make us want to put...