I recently asked a room full of managers representing dozens of organizations if they actually liked their own company’s performance management system. What do you think they said? Some of us may think of Performance Management as a rubber stamp on an annual review. We often don’t think of it as a living, breathing, system. Others of us may think of Performance Management as monitoring what we’re doing wrong. We may not think of it as monitoring and developing what we’re doing right. When an organization thoughtfully designs, implements, and continuously improves a performance management system, it should look like
Organizations have been extra creative lately with new benefit offerings and retention strategies. Is it working? Are employees utilizing those new perks and sticking around? Yes and no. SHRM explored the issue nationally, and our team has some local insight from the 2021 and 2022 North Central Alabama Wage & Benefit Survey. Aon reported in April that enrollment in voluntary benefits increased 41% from the previous year. Most of the increases were tied to medical benefits, as to be expected, but some may be surprising: The fastest-growing voluntary benefits employees enrolled in amid the COVID-19 pandemic include supplemental health insurance
This week, I had the great pleasure of facilitating in-person training with a group of junior managers who are working diligently to improve team and unit dynamics among their direct reports. They quickly identified the teams they lead that are functional vs. dysfunctional, and we had some deep discussion about why some teams work and some don’t. Patrick Lencioni is a subject matter expert on organizational health and team dynamics, and his model of the “5 Dysfunctions of a Team” is embedded in most training about how and why teams work or don’t. The foundation for the model is Trust,
Two weeks ago, Taylor kicked off our new series on Growth Mindset: what is it?! Today we’re exploring a growth mindset in training & development. The Neuroleadership Institute (NLI) defines growth mindset as …the belief that your skills and abilities can be improved, and that ongoing development is the goal of the work you do. However, creating a growth mindset culture isn’t just about having optimistic employees, but creating a space where employees strive to learn, enjoy being challenged, and feel encouraged to develop new skills. Let’s look at a case study of NLI’s work with Microsoft. A few years
One year ago this month, Mary Ila published “4 Exercises to Enhance Your Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Efforts” and featured the Encounter Group Model. This blurb stuck out to me the most: “When we engage in these types of activities, we get to know people. We build relationships. And when we know people it makes it much harder to hate them, or people that are ‘like’ them.’” Since then, our team has partnered with a client to pilot Encounter Groups with about 50 people in an organization of thousands. And it’s working. We define Encounter Groups as “a group of