Parallel HR » Employee Retention

Do Employees Want the Boss’s Job? All Signs Point to: Not Likely

Amy Chulik — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:42:58 +0000

Earlier this week, employees everywhere helped bosses celebrate National Boss’s Day. Some gave flowers, or left a handwritten card on their boss’s desk. Others took their bosses out to lunch at their favorite little bistro, or treated them to that pedicure their toes had been screaming for. Still others just wished their boss a heartfelt [...]

Time for An Office Makeover? 5 Changes Employees Want to see Now

Amy Chulik — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:30:28 +0000

What do employees want? Oh, that's such a loaded question! I'm sure many of us could make lists the length of the office hallway detailing our opinions on what we believe makes employees happy. One thing do we know for sure is that employee morale isn't a trend, but an ongoing effort. Within that ongoing effort, though, how do we know what's on our employees' own wish lists? Well, a Staples.com survey released in observance of “Improve Your Office Day" has come along, peeled ink-stained paper out of the Trapper Keeper (where I have just decided all employee wish lists are stored), and shared their ~~M.A.S.H. results~~ survey findings with the world. Let's take a look. The survey, which asked employees about their likes/dislikes at work, as well as their suggestions for improving the office environment, found many employees aren't too pleased with their technology -- or their humble surroundings: More than half (52 percent) of the more than 300 workers surveyed gave their office furniture and office décor a "C" grade or lower, and 41 percent gave their office technology the same grade. Also on their lists? Politics, the right to work at home (or lack thereof), and privacy.

What is on employees' office-improvement wish lists?

Eliminating office politics (44 percent)
Allowing or encouraging telecommuting (41 percent)
Upgrading computers and other office technology (37 percent)
Getting nicer or more comfortable office furniture (35 percent)
Providing more private work areas and more flexible work hours (tied at 34 percent each).

Though it's true that some employees do think they can do a better job than their boss, employees seem happy overall with their superiors. Nearly half (47 percent) of respondents gave their boss a solid “A” grade, with a combined 78 percent rating their boss an “A” or “B.”

The snack dilemma

Problem Employees: Worth Saving? Author Talks ‘Managing the Unmanageable’

Mary Lorenz — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 21:10:51 +0000

Anne Loehr is a nationally recognized management coach and author of the award-winning book, A Manager's Guide to Coaching: Simple and Effective Ways to Get the Best of Your Employees. I recently spoke with Loehr about her new book, Managing the Unmanageable: How to Motivate Even the Most Unruly Employee, a collaboration with workplace communications expert Jezra Kaye. She discussed some key takeaways from the book, including how to identify when an employee is worth holding on to and when it's time to walk away.

How do you define an “unmanageable employee”? We call an unmanageable employee (UE) an employee who exhibits constant, repeated, unproductive behavior. Everyone has a bad day, a bad week, sometimes even a bad month, depending on what’s going on in their life. But we’re talking about someone who’s constantly, repeatedly - on a fairly long-term basis - unproductive. This book is about helping managers uncover what they need to put UEs back on track. The majority of organizational challenges are because the goals, the roles, and the processes are not clear. So people will say, for example, “Gosh, Mary’s driving me crazy, do something about Mary.” And I’ll go in, and I’ll do some work and then I’ll say, “Well, you know what? It’s not actually Mary – it’s never Mary – it’s Mary’s behavior that’s not working, for one. Two, she’s doing this because she actually thinks it’s her job, and you think that’s your job, and that’s the problem there.” Do you find this happening a lot more now, with the economy and people taking on bigger workloads now, or is that always how it’s been? I think that’s always how it’s been. You’re right – we have a lot of downsizing, a lot of reorganizing. Also what’s contributing to this is you’ve got a lot more virtual teams. So you’ve kind of lost that face-to-face feeling, which I’m not saying is a bad thing at all, but it’s just harder to have those kind of conversations to say, "What’s going on?" and it’s harder for a manager to spot a challenging, unmanageable employee until maybe it’s too late. What makes managing the unmanageable different from other management books?

New Media Calls for New Recruiting Strategy | Free Webcast

Mary Lorenz — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:25:37 +0000

Do you realize…

…one in two job seekers want to find and engage with companies in social? …80 percent of companies use social media to recruit? …12 percent of job searches are done via mobile devices? …54 percent of job seekers are more likely to apply to your job at your company after they follow you on social media?

Yesterday, CareerBuilder’s Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Branding, Jamie Womack, along with CareerBuilder Area Vice President Andrew Streiter discussed these very findings in the featured webcast, Going Social: How to Leverage Social Media In Your Recruitment Strategy. In addition to these findings, they also gave practical tips for employers on the best ways to leverage emerging media to strengthen employment branding and recruiting efforts, including…

…the latest tools, trends and techniques for attracting top talent …what emerging media are and what they mean for your business …how to integrate emerging media into your current recruitment strategy

Missed the webcast? Download it now at www.careerbuilder.com/GoingSocial.

Keep the conversation going – use #CBGoSocial on Twitter… During the webcast, participants were urged to join in the conversation by following and posting the hashtag #cbgosocial on Twitter! Visit Twitter and search #cbgosocial and put in your own two cents! Related articles:

Recruitment Lessons, Straight from the Navy Recruiting Command

Amy Chulik — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 22:06:09 +0000

“Diversity is included in everything we do – it’s a critical part of our mission. It’s so ingrained in what we do that we don’t even really see it.” These were some of the words spoken by Cmdr. Brent Mitchell, Director of Marketing and Advertising for the Navy Recruiting Command, on day two of the [...]

How NOT to Break Bad News to Employees: Lessons from Netflix’s CEO

Mary Lorenz — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:57:28 +0000

This morning, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings issued an apology on the company's blog for failing to show “respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming, and the price changes.” For those who haven’t heard, Netflix recently announced it was going to start charging its streaming and DVD-by-mail services separately (now, the latter service will be named Qwikster). Now, Netflix customers who want only DVDs or only streaming can pay less for the one service, but will end up paying more if they want to keep both. Not surprisingly, the veiled attempt to charge customers more while pretending that they’re charging them less made for some unhappy customers. To add insult to injury, most customers didn’t even get the news directly from Netflix itself, but through stories leaked on various blogs and news sites. (I myself didn’t get so much as an email to make me aware of this change, and had to find out through Twitter.) To say the company lacked respect and humility is an understatement: Netflix had no regard for their customers whatsoever in this situation. As a result, the company will – and already has – lost a great deal of customers and business from the ordeal. Now, as Hastings desperately attempts damage control, not only do businesses have the opportunity to learn from about what not to do when it comes to customer service, but leaders could also apply these lessons to handling bad news- and correcting mistakes - with their employees.

5 Do’s and Don’ts for Communicating Bad News - and Righting Wrongs

DO: Own up to Your Mistakes. “I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation,” begins ~~Captain Obvious’~~ Hastings’ blog post. Well done: straight and to the point. Some leaders frown on admitting wrong, but in Netflix’s case, the admission was necessary. So overwhelming was the backlash from customers, that for Hastings to do anything less than apologize would be an even bigger insult – and more fuel for unhappy customers’ fire. Sometimes, all customers want is to know they’re being heard, and Netflix finally took the time to acknowledge their customers’ feelings. And while many will see Hastings’ post as too little, too late, it’s at least start in a long way to winning back customers.

The Myth of the Work-Life Balance

Mary Lorenz — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:34:43 +0000

More than two decades and countless discussions after the term “work-life balance” entered the workforce lexicon, we don't seem to be any closer to figuring out how to achieve it. Author Matthew Kelly believes he knows why.

"The question has always been framed in the wrong way," Kelly told me in a phone interview last week. "The term itself is fatally flawed." He says the term implies that work and life should be separate, when in reality, they are intertwined. “Most people spend the majority of their lives working. So when you tell them their work isn’t a part of their life, they don’t respond very well to that.” In fact, prior to the early 1990s, when Fortune 500 companies started addressing the topic in their employee surveys, Kelly believes employees didn't give much thought to having a work-life balance at all. After interviewing more than 3,000 people as research for the book, Kelly and his colleagues found the same holds true today: workers don’t truly care about balance at all. What they want is satisfaction in both areas of their lives - personal and professional - at the same time. An internationally renowned speaker and business consultant, Kelly has built a career around a core principle he developed as a first-year business school student: “becoming the best versions of ourselves.” Today, as president of Floyd Consulting, Kelly helps organizations and people become the best versions of themselves on a daily basis. In his new book, Off Balance: Getting Beyond the Work-Life Balance Myth to Personal and Professional Satisfaction, Kelly refocuses this core principle to help others become the most satisfied versions of themselves. When I spoke to Kelly last week, he discussed how employers could use the insights from his book to tap into their employees’ needs and create a more satisfied - and more productive - workforce.

One Last Summer Fling: A Longing Glance Back at August’s Workplace News and Trends

Amy Chulik — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 11:30:27 +0000

Well, September's arrived, in all its changing leaves and apple picking and perky back to school-ness. But while we're eyeing fall hayrides, relationships, report cards, or menu overhauls, let's savor the last of the warm summer breezes, sit on the porch swing with a cool drink, and take a moment to enjoy August's workplace news, trends, and gossip. After all, quite a lot happened in the last month -- let's take a look: Klout is getting more and more buzz -- but when it comes to your recruitment, what kind of impact should Klout have on your decisions (if any)? We took a closer look at the pros and cons. While you trying to improve your real-life clout by rubbing elbows with Michael J. Fox or Tony Hsieh at 2011's SHRM conference, you just might have missed SHRM's best presentations. Don't worry, we've got some of them for you here. And hopefully you didn't miss our monthly #cbjobchat, but if you did, you missed a lot of great exchanges about tough interview questions -- not to worry, though, you can catch the next one on Monday, Sept. 12 at 7:00 p.m. CST. Join us! Speaking of interviewing, we went ahead and created an entire ebook dedicated to the subject, From Q&A to Z: The Hiring Manager’s Complete Interviewing Guide (PDF). It's free, it's all for you, it's all about interviewing... go nuts. And while interview questions can run the gamet from great to horror-inducing, resumes have their fair share of memorable moments, too, from statements about the Moonwalk to deadly animal bites. While we're on the subject of deadly things, have you thought about your personal brand as a recruiter -- and how not having one may actually be really damaging for your business? If not, it's a good time to start -- there are some really easy ways to get your name out and legitimize you with interested candidates.

Managing the Older Worker — Why It’s More Vital Now than Ever

Amy Chulik — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:17:48 +0000

"Ask your neighbor what they do," said Peter Cappelli to the room full of us in the Managing the Older Worker session at 2011's SHRM conference. Most people in the room complied. "Then," he continued, "ask them how old they are." People laughed nervously; no one moved. That was how Cappelli, the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at The Wharton School and co-author of Managing the Older Worker: How to Prepare for the New Organizational Order, started his discussion on older workers -- and as he went on, he explained the current surge in older workers we're seeing, shared his thoughts on ways in which older workers are better hires than their younger counterparts, discussed how employers can best engage the older generation, and more. Why the big workplace shift? The workforce is getting older -- and it's causing a lot of age-related changes in the workplace that many companies are ill-equipped to deal with. Why? Well, first of all, said Cappelli, we’re living longer -- babies born in 2010 will live 10 years longer than those born in 1950. If your parents are 65, he added, there is a 50 percent chance that at least one of them will live to the age of 90. Second of all, we're also living healthier, and the percentage of older workers who need to work (to support living longer) is growing. And even they don't have to work, many older people are healthy and want to keep busy; 84 percent say they would work even if they were set for life -- not to work for the money, but to stay active. As more people are increasingly working full-time and baby boomers are getting older, the workforce is also getting older. Basically, Cappelli said, longer life, baby boomers, and people working longer are the three main factors driving an older workforce. What do older workers want?

Post-Recession, What is the Current State of Worker Finances?

Amy Chulik — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:00:44 +0000

As many of us keep a close watch on the latest stock market news, CareerBuilder’s just-released survey on worker finances (PDF) shows the financial situation for some workers is actually improving (albeit slowly). Forty-two percent of workers in the survey of more than 5,200 workers say they usually or always live paycheck to paycheck, an [...]