Transforming healthcare -- 65 global experts on 'What Works'

Challenges facing the healthcare sector are well known, yet governments and private sector organizations struggle with how to make meaningful change that will deliver sustainable healthcare – high quality care at an affordable cost.

To create a foundation for meaningful change, KPMG International brought together 65 healthcare leaders, from 30 countries across six continents in a unique forum to identify barriers and review factors for success in achieving effective healthcare transformation. Insights from the forum are captured in a new report: Staying Power, success stories in global healthcare

Read more on MarketWatch

A winning recipe -- lessons from restaurants on engaging your team

Lack of employee engagement is a real problem facing businesses in all industries. Gabriel Stulman shows how innovative leadership techniques from the restaurant industry can help other companies succeed.

Why Allowing Dogs At Work Will Make Employees More Productive

What if a walk into work every day felt like a personal welcome?

Luckily, you don't have to roll out the red carpet to achieve this; you just need some furry friends around. We have a pet-friendly policy in our office, and it's been a huge success. Visitors feel more comfortable and get the sense of an approachable culture, and employees enjoy higher morale and lower stress levels.

As a small business owner, you can increase your applicant pool and employee retention by creating an accepting culture that allows employees to combine passions — their pets and their work.  Read more on Business Insider

A similar article at Inc.com shares the same view. Is this the beginning of a new way to build employee engagement?

How Technology Can Help Work/Life Balance

Smartphones have made it more difficult than ever for people to separate their jobs from the rest of their lives. It doesn’t have to be that way.

They’re convenient. They let us work anywhere and anytime. But they also play on our anxieties and insecurities and leave us much more bound to work than we used to be.

My research shows that people use their smartphones so much outside of business hours—reading and responding to streams of messages from the office—that many end up putting in 13 hours or more a day. But they’re not doing that extra work because they want to. They’re doing it because they feel compelled to, and because the smartphone makes it so easy. Read more on WSJ

Five ways to avoid burnout at work and find inner peace

Most people seek some degree of inner peace at work, and it can be difficult to obtain. Work is stressful, and most of us tend to either overwork ourselves or we are, for other reasons, negatively affected by things happening at work.

The struggle to maintain one's inner peace and avoid burnout has become a standard ingredient of modern working life. Many of us attend seminars on work-life-balance, we see therapists, we meditate, or we seek advice on how to handle stressful careers.

The balancing of one's personal life and work life is a challenge to all of us who aspire to be successful - by whatever relevant metric. It is not surprising that so much is being said and written on the topic. Read more on The Telegraph

The Link Between Corporate Culture and Performance

Who Are We? What Do We Do? What Do We Stand For?

What is “corporate culture” and why it is important? Is it a predictor of corporate success?

In the simplest sense, “culture” refers to a system of values and norms that are shared by a group of people and gives its members a framework for thinking, planning and behaving. In this context, “values” represent the shared assumptions of what “ought” to be or, in other words, what the group believes to be right and desirable, while “norms” are the guidelines that define the expected behavior of group members in various circumstances.  Read more on the 4CS Blog

Employee Engagement 101

“A superior leader is a person who can bring ordinary people together to achieve extraordinary results.” 

 

I learned this a few dozen years ago at Wharton, from an entrepreneur who had enjoyed tremendous success. He was right.

 

Employee engagement is not about hiring brilliant people who are uniquely talented. It is about bringing human beings together so that they magnify each other’s strengths. Read full article on Forbes

Work/Life Balance for the Generations

In honor of National Work and Family Month, I wanted to talk about an unprecedented phenomenon occurring in today's workplace. For the first time ever, three generations are working together. Work/life balance is certainly not the same for each of these segments of the workforce. Employers need to take into consideration the unique work/life balance needs of each generation. It's much trickier than in the past and the lines have certainly blurred.

This is definitely not a "soft issue" as numerous studies have shown that one of the keys to U.S. competitiveness is work/life balance and a link between balance-friendly nations and low unemployment. A report by Accenture published in early 2013 found that two-thirds of respondents felt they could have it all. However, half felt they could not have it all the time, with 52% globally saying they had turned down jobs due to concerns about the impact on their work/life balance. Read more on Huffington Post

 

 

THE REAL REASONS WHY BOSSES AREN'T GIVING FEEDBACK

Despite the fact that millennials, hard-to-retain workers, and a large percentage of employees at all levels are screaming for more frequent feedback from their bosses, they’re not getting it.

I’ve seen this up close and personal in my role as an organization consultant for companies of diverse sizes, industries, and geographies. Over the last 25 years, I’ve interviewed more than 2,100 individuals, supervisors, managers, and executives and tracked the supply vs. demand for feedback from bosses. The conclusion: A growing gap between the amount of feedback employees want and how much bosses deliver.

Employee engagement surveys bear this out. Gallup’s massive longitudinal study shows there is no more important indicator of satisfaction and willingness to stay on the job than whether or not “someone in their workplace (usually a manager) has talked with them recently about how they’re doing on the job.” Over sixty percent of global employees report receiving too little feedback and a quarter of them report that they received no feedback at all from their supervisors--a major factor in their workplace dissatisfaction.  Continue reading on Fastcompany.com

The Economics Behind Employee Happiness

Happiness is a valuable strategic asset for an organization’s entire ecosystem.

Happiness. For many, it is hard to achieve and even more difficult to define. Psychologists, social scientists, and even economists have studied happiness for years. One recent study conducted by University College London found that it matters less whether things are going well for an individual than whether things were going better than expected.

Happiness has also been elusive in the workplace, particularly in recent years as headcounts have been kept low and corporate leaders remain focused on driving higher rates of productivity and profits. Yet studies have shown that employees who are happy and engaged in their work are more successful and are more likely to deliver satisfying customer experiences.

What can organizational leaders do better to drive happiness throughout the enterprise? Jenn Lim is CEO and Chief Happiness Officer at Delivering Happiness, an off-shoot of Zappos.com. Here, she shares her views on the obstacles to achieving happiness in the workplace, along with steps that senior executives can take to drive change.

Read the interview with Jenn Linn on Teletech.com

Managers can boost creativity by 'empowering leadership' and earning employees' trust

Managers can promote creativity in employees by "empowering leadership" and earning employees' trust, according to a new study by Rice University and American University.

The researchers investigated, for the first time, the complex effect of the interaction among empowering leadership, uncertainty avoidance and trust on creativity. They collected supervisors' ratings of employee creativity in two separate studies in China: one with employees of an energy-saving light bulb design and manufacturing company and the other with the employees of a nonferrous metals manufacturing company.

"Our results reveal an interesting phenomenon," said Jing Zhou, the Houston Endowment Professor of Management at Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business.

Read full article on Phys.org

What's Troubling Tech Pros At Work?

In today's competitive hiring environment for technology professionals, how can executives retain their top talent? Keep them engaged with a defined career path, achievable goals and training opportunities, suggests a new Robert Half Technology survey. Forty-five per cent of information technology (IT) workers polled said being stuck in a job with few opportunities for professional advancement would cause them the most frustration on the job. Closely following were an unmanageable workload (43 per cent) and limited ability to learn new skills (39 per cent).

The survey, developed and conducted by Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of IT professionals on a project and full-time basis, includes responses from more than 2,300 IT workers in North America.

Technology professionals were asked, "In general, which three of the following situations would cause you the most frustration on the job?"  Read their responses on Yahoo Finance

How would your workforce answer these questions?

HOW TO GET EMPLOYEES TO CARE ABOUT THEIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Jim sits in front of his workstation with a grin on his face as he prints off his training certificate. It’s proof that he completed a compulsory four-hour online course on workplace safety; in reality, it only took Jim 18 minutes to click through the videos and pass the assessment with educated guesses.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s typical of many companies’ approach to professional development, which is scary when you consider that U.S. companies spent more than $70 billion on corporate training in 2013.

To employees, training is often irrelevant, dull, and compliance-oriented, and leaders sometimes make the mistake of thinking training is a waste of time and money when they don’t see dramatic results right away. But when professional development programs work, they help companies attract and retain top talent, increase employee engagement and satisfaction, and boost innovation. Most importantly, when your team is excited about professional development, your employees are more likely to gain and retain knowledge that they can translate into real business results.

So why do so many hate professional development? It’s not the training itself, but how it’s executed. Here are a few pitfalls of ineffective professional development…READ IT ON FAST COMPANY

The Case For Quitting Your Job

When it comes to your work, is it time to move on?

Millions of Americans in their 50s and 60s are delaying retirement and holding on to jobs they have done for years. Many, of course, need the money. But many others say they simply enjoy—even love—what they do. And if that’s the case, why not stay?

The answer: Because jumping ship—even if jumping would seem to make little sense—could be the best way to remain productive, happy and healthy into old age.

The phenomenon of delayed retirement is well documented. Average retirement ages are climbing, and nearly half of baby boomers say they expect to work until age 66 or beyond, according to Gallup Inc. polls. Read more on WSJ

How to Communicate With Your Employees

How many times have you read: "Employees are our most important asset"? How can you say that employees are our most important asset and yet not be open and inclusive in the process of obtaining buy-in on critical and basic decisions? Some companies even make it difficult for employees to understand quarterly financial results when those same employees are stockholders. Why is it that if employees are truly so important to the success of most modern enterprises, they are frequently the last audience considered for important announcements and the first audience targeted for cost reductions? It is a dilemma that you will face regularly.

 

Read full article on HuffingtonPost.com

 

Communicaton is one of the critical 4Cs of Insightlink’s 4Cs employee survey. How well are you communicating what’s important to your employees?

A Fun Way to Boost Employee Engagement

While it might seem like a lot of work, implementing a rewards program for your employees is essential if you want to maintain a happy and productive workplace. Don’t believe us? A Gallup estimate shows that unhappy workers are costing employers $300 billion annually due to a loss in productivity.

This productivity loss manifests itself in a number of ways, from an increased number of sick days taken to a general slower work progress pace. The lack of productivity also results in a loss of work creativity and reduces overall drive to succeed within the company.

To foster a work environment that boosts happiness, productivity, and morale, you can certainly offer perks--in theory, these are great motivators, they won’t automatically boost employee engagement or foster brand advocacy. These perks need to be implemented as a part of a larger rewards and recognition program.  Read the full article on Entrepreneur
 

You can measure your current engagement levels with Insightlink’s acclaimed 4Cs Employee Survey

Can Employers Fire Over Facebook Postings?

Firings for Alleged Social-Media Infractions Sometimes Backfire on Companies

Facebook gaffes that can cause trouble in the workplace aren't unique to drunken college students anymore. As more companies and their workers tap into the world of blogs, Twitter and Facebook, employers are tripping over legal potholes in social media.

Next week a National Labor Relations Board judge will consider whether a medical-transportation company illegally fired a worker after she criticized her boss on Facebook, in the federal agency's first complaint linked to social media.

In another case, workers sued a restaurant company when they were dismissed after managers accessed a private Myspace page the employees set up to chat about work.

Job seekers and employees have long been warned that risqué revelations on Facebook can jeopardize career prospects. But now companies are facing their own challenges for alleged blunders in dealing with social media.

Read more on WSJ

 

 

America's Worst Companies to Work For

For the second year in a row, 24/7 Wall St. has identified America’s worst companies to work for. While company management can improve employee satisfaction, most of the companies on our list continue to make workers miserable.
 
In order to identify America’s worst companies to work for, 24/7 Wall St. examined employee reviews at jobs and career community site Glassdoor. Based on the reviews, Glassdoor scores companies on a scale of one to five with an average score of 3.2 for the over 250,000 companies measured. 24/7 Wall St. identified the nine publicly traded companies that received scores of 2.5 or lower.

Certain industries appear more likely to have lower employee satisfaction than others. Four of the companies on this list — Dillard’s Inc. (NYSE: DDS), Sears Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHLD), Dollar General Corp. (NYSE: DG) and RadioShack Corp. (NYSE: RSH) — are in retail. The majority of the others provide services that require installation and repair. These include companies like home security system provider The ADT Corporation (NYSE: ADT), transaction technology company NCR Corp. (NYSE: NCR), and satellite television provider DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ: DISH).

 

See the full list on Yahoo

10 Signs You Respect me as an employee

Does “management” still mean anything in this century?

Companies today realize they need to change their mechanistic, make-the-numbers management, but many struggle to find practical ways to humanize their management styles without losing hard-nosed productivity. Yet, in a fast changing society all agree that employee engagement and creativity are the keys to satisfied customers--and therefore, profits.

Throughout the latter part of the past century, one company has explored a different path. Toyota a small, struggling, automaker in the 1950s discovered a different route to growth based on what Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz describes as seeking dynamic gains rather than static efficiencies.

Read full article

Why Employee Engagement Is Critical to Corporate Success

Why engagement matters

As the stats add up, the picture of how disengagement threatens companies continues to sharpen.

·         Only 30% of employees in a recent Gallup poll said they felt engaged by the work they do.

·         Less than half (49%) of the employees surveyed by ADP said they felt their company's executives created an environment that drove high performance.

·         When disengagement leads to employees leaving a company, the cost of training new replacements can represent 48% – 61% of the position's salary, according to the ADP study.

Given those statistics — and the stakes that come with them — it's clear that workplace engagement is key for any corporation looking to stop loss and foster progress.

For some, getting to that goal means revisiting the way workers are empowered and encouraged. With that in mind, let's look at four key strategies for putting engaged employees back at the center of the corporate mission.

Read More on Mashable.com