As I think back on my career and recall the times I had the best work experiences—where I was connected and engaged the most—it almost always involved a crisis or a pressure-filled project. I can vividly remember working on a big Chrysler account or a huge GM Parts incentive program. We worked 24/7 for weeks. In one case, we slept …
LinkedIn is Democratizing Engagement – Do You Have a Playbook for That?
If you’re one of the many LinkedIn users who noticed an uptick in your post engagement over the last month, you’ll be happy to know that democracy is alive and well in America (and everywhere else you can access LinkedIn). In a recent blog post, the social networking and recruiting/marketing/now learning giant shared that they recently made updates to their …
The Ultimate Answer to Employee Engagement is Self-Direction
I’m not going to do my usual screed on why employee engagement is a Sisyphean effort, and almost every intervention is at best a short-term fix to a long-term problem. I believe 90% of the interventions we talk about are like handing out sandwiches to starving people and thinking you’ve fixed their food-acquisition problem. Employee engagement has never been a …
Is Employer Branding Killing Corporate Culture and Employee Engagement?
In the context of the real world “employer branding” is fairly new. According to Wikipedia it was first defined in the Journal of Brand Management in 1996 as an attempt to connect consumer brand management techniques to human resources. The first book on employer branding was published in 2005 (The Employer Brand, Bringing the Best of Brand Management to People …
Why Businesses Should Do An Opening Day Every Year
Yes, I am a diehard baseball fan. And the best day of the year, hands down is Opening Day. Last Thursday was Opening Day for most teams in Major League Baseball and I bet many of you tuned in to watch or listen if you weren’t at the ballpark. Talent and HR executives can learn some valuable lessons from Opening Day and …
How Much is Too Much When It Comes to Relationships with Your Direct Reports?
You know that side-job you have as the informal HR Advisor for any/all of your friends? It can be enlightening at times, even uplifting, when you hear some of the ridiculous sh*t people are forced to put up with in their workplace. For the situation to reach the “Mind if I run something by you?” stage, it usually entails the …
Can You Be Selfless & Lead A Culture Of Engagement? No.
I’m not a great Catholic; decent I’d say. Decent enough to go to Ash Wednesday service after several months’ absence. Better late than never. I was inspired by the sermon, which gave the congregation some perspective on Lent, including how to personally reflect over this time. The sermon also touched on themes of forgiveness and selflessness. The sermon got …
The Honeymoon Is Over, AKA “The Employee Experience”
“Candidate experience.” Google that term and you get just over 11 million hits. I’m guessing a fair percentage of those can be traced back to the contributors on this site, myself included, as sharing the gospel of the candidate experience is a pretty cool thing to do, don’tcha know? Here’s my concern about the avalanche of material you find about …
You Already Have AI in Your Company – Time to Energize It!
This post will be both intellectually deep and shallow. It will follow the rules of the quantum world – it will take both paths simultaneously – blog quantum superposition if you will. It will be intellectually deep because I’m pulling from a piece that was posted recently on the Edge.org which describes its mission as: “To arrive at the edge …
New Generations Are Spawning! Birth of the Nano-Generation
Just when we thought the hype about millennials might die down to a dull roar so we could get back to treating people like, well, people, some consultant needed to make another yacht payment and created a “new” generational cohort. One they could ride for a couple more years until they create something new for corporate HR to feel stupid …