Has the pandemic created two classes of employees – those who can work from home and those who can’t? Separate and unequal?
For those who had an option to work from home, video calls quickly became the norm, and for many, so did keeping the kids occupied and helping with homework in between calls. This new arrangement offered opportunities and challenges they never anticipated.
Tags: Employee Engagement
Call it the "Great Resignation,” “Tsunami Turnover,” or “Big Quit.” By any name, it describes the unprecedented shift companies are experiencing due to a staggering transformation of the American workforce.
And as recent data shows from multiple studies, as well as our experience with clients, it’s a workplace issue.
Read MoreTags: Employee Engagement
Welcome to my weekly round-up of the best-of-the-best recent leadership and communication blog posts.
Tags: Weekly Round-Up
When words and actions don’t match as we’re listening; when we have a sense that something’s not quite feeling right in a conversation, there’s a common formula known as the 7-38-55 rule that might be helpful. It indicates only 7 percent of meaning is conveyed through the words we speak, and the remaining percent of meaning is informed by tone of voice (38 percent) and body language (55 percent). When there’s incongruence, a vast majority of the information shared is gleaned from what is NOT being said.
Read MoreTags: Listening
Business leaders across the globe are coming to an unexpected—and undesirable—realization: Their work cultures suck.
Of course, we can’t and shouldn’t label all company cultures as toxic. But the odds are good they’re not ideal and are less than inspiring. In many organizations, poor company culture is the root cause of low employee engagement, poor retention rates of key employees, low productivity, and many more undesirable outcomes.
Read MoreTags: Employee Engagement, Guest Bloggers, Leadership Effectiveness & Planning
Difficult questions. We all get them. Particularly in this challenging period, there’s no shortage of tough questions on people’s minds, with employees wondering whether and when they’ll go back to the office or about safety protocols and childcare once they’ve returned.
In my latest book, Heart First: Lasting Leader Lessons from a Year that Changed Everything, I devote an entire chapter to leader tips for answering tough questions. I often find that with just a little preparation, leaders can accomplish a lot just by educating employees and putting some of their concerns to rest.
Being prepared and practicing these three tried-and-true techniques can help you field with ease that challenging employee question (or reporter who’s looking for a compelling angle).
Tags: Leadership Effectiveness & Planning, Heart First Leadership
Email can be a wonderful tool, if used properly. You likely use email as a communication channel in the workplace even more now that more employees are working remotely, but it’s important to consider its limitations and not overload your employees’ inboxes. Email is typically a form of one-way communication—meaning it does not allow for an immediate exchange of ideas like calls, in-person, or online virtual meetings do. Aside from using email as a logistics and project coordination tool, it’s best used as follow-up to meetings to recap concepts, agreements and gain alignment between groups.
As with all communications, emails must be planned and considered to get the action you want. Estimates show that there will be 319.6 billion emails sent and received globally each day in 2021. If we’re using it more frequently, we may as well be better at it.
Tags: Email In The Workplace
Every company deals with difficult problems and issues each day. Starbucks’ issue of racial profiling in one of their stores; United Airlines forcibly removing a passenger from a flight; countless companies having issues with data breaches; leadership teams finding themselves in the hot seat for not following through on diversity and inclusion pledges, to name a few.
Over the past year and a half, the COVID-19 pandemic proved that no industry or organization is free from the risk of a crisis. As companies worked their way through workplace and workforce implications of the pandemic, we all learned more about the critical importance of communicating during crisis. So, how can corporate leaders apply these lessons when something goes wrong?
Tags: Communicating Change
Welcome to my weekly round-up of the best-of-the-best recent leadership and communication blog posts.
Tags: Weekly Round-Up
Employees are on the move. A recent US Pulse Survey from PwC found that 65% of employees are looking for a new job. What’s more, 88% of executives surveyed said they are seeing higher turnover than normal.
The top four reasons, in order, that employees say they’re looking:
Tags: Employee Engagement, Leadership Communication, Heart First Leadership
