I had a reader send me a suggestion for a blog post a little over a month ago. It said: “With the terrible shooting in VA yesterday, maybe an article on how HR can better handle identifying, coaching, counseling & later termination of disgruntled employees if coaching is not effective. I am sure HR departments are concerned about their own employees. Just thoughts.” With all our content written for the month, I told him I’d add it to the roster even though this shooting would be old news. The sad thing, though, is that I silently thought there will be
I’ve been rambling on this month about how to drive employee performance. If you missed the run-down so far, you can check out the posts here: What You Pay Does Matter 3 Steps to Winning A Best Place to Work Award 3 Steps for Driving Employee Engagement through Personalization But why does it matter? Why would you or any organization want to pay competitively, win a great place to work award and/or drive employee engagement through personalization. We’d argue first that it is simply the right thing to do. But this reason alone won’t keep you in business. However, doing
Remember the wind chime, the umbrella, the party, snacks and bonus check in our last post? Well during the corporate foray of employee rewards and recognition efforts, everyone in the department, regardless of their level of involvement in the project, got the wind chime and the umbrella and the party and the snacks and, yes, the bonus check. In addition to the one size fits all approach whether earned or not, although an umbrella at some point is going to come in handy, and the wind chimes do actually still hang in my backyard almost ten years later, no one
A wind chime. An umbrella. A large corporate hooray party. Office snacks on demand, at anytime, for free. A bonus check. One that at the age of 23 was a shockingly large one. All are things I’ve experienced in my career during a corporate change management project that constituted employee recognition and perks. Despite the fact that the umbrella was expensive (for an umbrella) because of its cute designer label and the bonus check as I mentioned was large for the context of my 23 year old, living paycheck to paycheck mind (so much so that my new husband and I
“$11.32 an hour,” she said. “That’s what many people can earn sitting on their couch. How am I supposed to encourage them to get off the couch when many of the jobs they qualify for don’t pay that?” This statement came from a frustrated state career center worker tasked with getting individuals off federal and state assistance through a job placement program. I could turn this conversation into a political post, but I won’t go there. Instead, I’d like to focus on how it illustrates a basic premise of motivation. I’m going to spend the next few weeks talking about