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
Whether you’re headed out the door for an interview, starting your first day of work or wanting to move up in your career, what you wear (and what you don’t) can be an important factor in success. Although the workplace has become more casual than it once was, it’s important to know the different cues in order to dress for success. Here are three tips to identify what to wear: 1. Look around you. What the majority of people are wearing around you is probably what is the unspoken norm of acceptable. I walked into my first interview for a
In a leadership training class on communication in the workplace, I had one participant tell the group that meetings at his company were the biggest waste of time. When probed as to why, the basic gist of it came down to two reasons: 1. No one knows why the heck a meeting has been called and/or why they need to be there 2. Nothing results from the meetings Because of this dialogue as well as other feedback we had received, we started incorporating a segment on effective meetings into our standard Communication Outline lineup. Whether you are dealing with these two
Do you know the number one reason why people quit a job? It’s not for more money or better benefits or advancement opportunities. People may cite these factors as a reason for leaving in an exit interview or casual conversation, but what most likely led them to look elsewhere in the first place is because of a bad boss. As a Harvard Business Review article stated, “Studies have consistently shown that having a bad manager or a poor relationship with one’s manager is a top reason an employee quits.” Yep, most likely your number one reason for turnover is bad
Over Memorial Day weekend, my family spent some time at the river. Trying to stay true to actually getting some exercise, even while on vacation, I was pushing my kids in the stroller down a windy and hilly river road when we came upon a man chopping firewood, transporting in on a wheelbarrow, and putting it in a spot beside his house to store. It’s May in Alabama. Even at 9 am it was approaching 90 degrees with the humidity level about that high. It was hot, and it will be hot for a while, most likely until at least