“Don’t let your organization become a cultural museum. Stop emphasizing culture fit; start valuing culture contribution.” – Adam Grant, author of Originals During a recent phone interview I had a candidate ask me how the organization I was recruiting for (who is currently going through a rapid growth period) planned to keep their culture intact as they grow. I explained that the company goes to great lengths to ensure that they are not only hiring the candidate with the right skills, but also the candidate who will best help to carry their culture forward as they grow. Most job interviews
Recently I talked about authenticity during employee hardships. With recent events in the news, including the deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, I wanted to dive deeper into how employers can help employees in need. Mental health is an ever-growing concern in our nation. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness: Approximately 1 in 5 adults (43.5 millions) in the U.S. experience mental illness in a given year. One in 25 of those Americans suffer a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities. 9% of adults
I recently read an article written by Amy Morin, a psychotherapist who lost her husband suddenly at age 26. She talked about how her company provided her with the bereavement leave she needed to grieve, but more so about how they handled her return. She spoke of how her manager let her ease back into work by starting on a Friday and not having too much on her plate her first few days in the office. And she talked about how that manager asked her prior to her return how she wanted the topic of her husband’s death to be
Sexual harassment is not pervasive due to a need to change the law, but instead the need to change cultural values within an organization. This was the message I heard recently at an HR conference. In all the years that I have conducted sexual harassment training and helped organizations to implement policies, procedures, and conduct investigations, I’d never thought about it that way. But it makes sense. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made sexual discrimination, including sexual harassment, illegal. So why over fifty years later is sexual harassment making waves in the headlines? We’ve all heard
“Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” – Sir Richard Branson As another school year comes to a close, my boys have already started getting that end of year fever. To them the end of the school year means a break from learning. To me it means a summer filled with opportunities to teach them things they can’t experience in a classroom. With that comes the opportunity to encourage them to challenge themselves and set personal goals for what they want to accomplish during the summer (besides sleeping in). Performance