Culture not working? Make a change

Sometimes it feels like your team or organization is running beautifully. Other times, it feels like the team is a little off track. Or a lot off track! What should you pay attention to when evaluating the health of your team’s culture? We might gain some insights from recent Major League Baseball moves at the end of the season here in the U.S.

Manager Bobby Valentine was fired by the Boston Red Sox after his team finished a dismal 69-93 (their worst season performance since 1965). Valentine was brought in only a year ago to get the Red Sox “on track” following the team’s collapse at the end of the 2011 season.

Unfortunately, the benefits the owners hoped for did not come to fruition under Valentine’s management. Here are a few key metrics that showed how the Red Sox culture was operating — and some thoughts to consider when analyzing your own team or organization.

Read the full story: http://smartblogs.com/leadership/2012/10/23/culture-not-working/

The Puzzle of Motivation

6 in 10 employees don’t trust their senior leaders

Six in 10 (61 per cent) of Canadian employees don't trust their senior leaders, according to a survey by the Canadian Management Centre and Ipsos Reid.

Only 39 per cent of Canadians trust what their senior leaders say and less than four in 10 feel that senior leadership is doing a good job of communicating what is happening in their workplace, found Build a Better Workplace: Employee Engagement Edition, which surveyed 1,200 Canadian workers. 
Less than one-half (44 per cent) of Canadian employees have confidence in the senior leadership of their organization.

The confidence that employees have with senior leadership varies considerably by industry. Those in transportation (32 per cent), government (35 per cent) and retail industries (39 per cent) exhibit the lowest levels of confidence in their senior leadership. The highest levels of confidence were reported by employees in high tech/IT (55 per cent), found the survey.

Read the full article.

Handmade Desks, “Breathing Rooms,” And Gross Happiness: Take A Look Inside Etsy HQ

Beyond just quirk, crafty marketplace Etsy offers employes a green (B Corp certified) place to work where happiness is measured and learning is encouraged (two words: therapeutic doodling).

Seven years into its existence, the online handmade and vintage marketplace Etsy is such an Internet cultural staple that its most distinctive superficial parts--the twee aesthetic of many of its shops, the earnestness of its mission (“to change the way the global economy works”)--have become fodder for popular parodies. But those straight outta Portlandia aspects of Etsy’s Brooklyn headquarters are also what make it a stimulating place to work.

Read the full story: ttp://www.fastcocreate.com/1681695/handmade-desks-breathing-rooms-and-gross-happiness-take-a-look-inside-etsy-hq#1

11 Things That Make Workers Happy

Happy Workers

Forget raises and big bonuses, there are much simpler and cheaper ways to keep your employees happy. From offering benefits to giving them flexibility, companies can find a number of creative ways to keep their employees happy and productive. Here are a few to get you started.

Read the full story: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3132-keep-employees-happy.html

The 9 Habits of Highly Engaged Managers

Based on our normative Employee Engagement database, there are a number of factors that have a powerful influence in building job satisfaction and engagement, including:

•     The level of reward and recognition
•     The opportunity to learn new skills and grow on the job
•     The opportunity to make suggestions (which we see as an "empowerment" measure)
•     To what degree their work is respected by their employer
•     Satisfaction with the resources available to do their job
•     Agreement that their job makes good use of their abilities and skills
•     The effectiveness of communications within the organization
•     Their opportunities for advancement

Click here to read the full article and learn the 9 habits that engaged managers exhibit to create positive cultures.