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...

Critical thinking remains the top of the list of needs for employers today.  An American Management Association survey that asked 768 managers and executives found 72% of respondents agreeing that critical thinking skills are critical to the success of their organization, but half (49%) responded that their employees’ critical thinking skills were average at best.  Why is critical thinking important and how can you improve your critical thinking skills? Employers...

Organizations are beginning to invest in management development again, recognizing it is a “force-multiplier” for employee engagement and organizational productivity. At the same time, many organizations hesitate to make that investment because they are not yet sure they have the right people in management roles. Let’s take a step back to consider how HR might help managers determine for themselves whether they are right for management or not. If you can help them ask the...

A new study of college graduates in the workforce suggests that certain college experiences correlate with different levels of employee engagement later on. Some of the findings seem intuitive and therefore not surprising. But there are a few surprises as well as implied hints at strategies employers might consider in vetting potential new hires. Employee engagement is one of those phenomena that is far easier to recognize than it is to understand. Ours is an age when business leaders...

You might believe it if you read the latest research data by Deloitte Consulting in the Human Capital Trends 2014 report. Seventy percent of companies surveyed indicated they are in the process of, or will be soon initiate, revamping their once-a-year process of assessing employee performance using a rating or ranking scale. In the same report, only 8% of companies reported that their performance management process drives high levels of value. Conversely, 58% of companies reported their...

According to a recent study published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin found that older workers are more consistent and reliable than workers in their 20’s.  Not only will this be welcomed news by our readers who are getting on in years, but this research may also have some important implications for HR and OD professionals. What the study revealed was that older people (those over 65 years old)...

Ever wonder if you are more manager than leader, or vice-versa, or a combination of both? Is there a difference between a manager and leader in the first place? We often use the terms interchangeably, wanting our managers to lead and our leaders to manage and assuming they will do both. But is that a valid assumption? Are they really the same or are they different?   Dictionary Definitions To inform this argument, let’s examine the official definitions of leader and...

Most research about Millenials in the workplace today is conducted, interpreted, and reported by Baby Boomers and Gen Xers. Why should it surprise anyone, then, that Millenials usually do not come off well in press reports? Sometimes it seems that the business press sees Millenials as a kind of new species to be studied scientifically, under glass. You could not blame Millenials for feeling at least mildly put out by those reports, assuming they pay any attention to them at all. Which,...

According to a report by the Right Management and the SHRM Foundation, half of all hourly workers leave new jobs within the first 120 days.  Additionally, 90% of new employees make the decision to stay or not to stay at a company within those first six months. Research also suggests that new employees typically get about 90 days to prove themselves in the new job.   In his book The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, Michael Watkins...

A recent University of Phoenix® survey uncovered the disturbing fact that 55% of employees have an interest in changing careers. Even more disturbing is the data that shows just 14% of employees are in their dream careers. Consider for a moment that second number. If your employees are like those surveyed, it means that 86% of them are in jobs they don’t actually want to be in.  Hold that thought and then add this to the mix: Gallup's 2013 State of the American...

Father’s Day has come and gone for another year. But in reality every day is Father’s Day (and Mother’s Day) since every day working men become fathers for the first time or more. For Father’s Day 2013, the Boston College Center for Work & Family has released its summary report, The New Dad: A Work (and Life) in Progress. This is the fourth in a series of annual reports put out by the Center that focuses on the changing role of fathers today. Recent research...