Time for Some Straight Talk About Returning to Onsite Work
As employers move people back to onsite work, it’s important to consider that this is an employEE’s market, not an employER’s. Swimming against the tide of the asserted will of the labor force will hurt recruiting, retention, and Employee Engagement.
Childcare = Infrastructure
As much as businesses depend upon electricity, reliable digital signal, mail, roads, bridges, and airports to do our thing, we also rely on the availability of talented labor in sufficient quantity to do whatever it is we do. For too long, much of our workforce has seen its availability tightly constrained by reliance on a […]
5 Ways Leaders Can Catch Lightning In a Bottle Via the Power of Positive Surprise
What workers commonly expect to happen in a job/from their boss: There will always be a few stars, a bunch of mediocrity, a few slugs, and at least one a-hole. I’ll be working for somebody who is more concerned about their agenda than my interests. Chances are, no one will be willing to listen to […]
Getting Serious About Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, corporate America has professed fresh interest in the subject of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). I’m heartened by that, and especially so to see former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns lending her considerable voice in this regard https://fortune.com/2020/09/29/ursula-burns-black-women-corporate-boards-bdaa-diversity-inclusion-xerox-ceo/ . Among other things, DEI emphasis has driven renewed calls by […]
Unjobbed
Bill Catlette 8/7/20 • memphis Bored, Scared, Angry In 2+ decades as a coach and advisor to business leaders, the very worst workplace situations I’ve encountered have almost always been those punctuated by boredom and bad leadership, usually in tandem. That stands to reason as most often, bad leaders concern themselves more with accumulating […]
Employee Engagement: Two Reasons Why ‘Getting Sticky’ Matters
(This piece generally represents the text of a letter sent to some of our firm’s leadership coaching clients this week.) Too often I see HR professionals and the organizations they are apart of throwing around the expression, “employee engagement” like medical terms used by healthcare professionals, without first clarifying what the term means, and why […]
Never Stop Recruiting!
My friend, business partner, and co-author Bill Catlette is passionate about many things, not the least of which is fishing. And he’s good at it. One reason for his success may be something he told me the first time he took this novice out for a day on the water: “I’ve never had a fish […]
Yes, Organizational Fit Still Matters
In the work world, “Culture” represents the values, norms, aims, customs, rules, the way of life if you will of an organization. It is an amalgam of the non-talent ingredients required to be happy, productive, and successful in that organization at a particular time. For nearly 30 years, I have been one of the louder […]
Improve Your Talent Hunts… Get Good With Crayons
Much has been written and said recently about the incidence rate of job candidates’ outright refusal of job offers, and the unprecedented ghosting of interviews and start dates. Anecdotal evidence suggests that one central cause of this behavior rests outside the terms of the deal. Rather, many candidates are balking because they’re not particularly wowed […]
Eagles Don’t Flock… Retuning Your Talent Hunt for a Tight Labor Market
Earlier this week, we completed a 4-part webinar series on “Finding Great People” for the management and ownership team of a Florida-based business.The webinars focused on ways to counter the headwinds faced by businesses in an ever-tightening labor market. Here are three quick takeaways from these programs: Recruiters Can’t Do It Alone – In the […]