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Employees typically spend much of their time at their desks working. I often joke that I spend more time at my desk than I do in my apartment. If we are spending so much time at our desks, what is the least we ask from our employers? How about the ability to add a few personal touches. Continue Reading →
Guest blog author: Maggie Coffey, marketing intern for Hireology
Inc. magazine recently published an article about improving employee morale. The author, Suzanne Lucas, suggests feeding your employees does just that – by boosting morale and making them happy. Continue Reading →
Recent news about a controversial proposal by James W. Vaupel (a Danish professor who is the head of the new Max-Planck Odense Center on the Biodemography of Aging) that a 25 hour work week would be a better alternative to the 40 hour work week has stirred up conversation within the working world. This idea reflects on efforts to improve employee work-life balance while capitalizing on patterns of work productivity. Continue Reading →
There are countless resources in existence for those who hope to increase employee engagement within their organization. Many are general and vague that can be applied to many different industries. For example, to increase engagement, one might try improving the quality of feedback given to employees regarding their performance. In many situations, this broad advice can be helpful, but what happens when an industry has a unique problem that is not as prevalent in other industries? Continue Reading →
The hospitality industry is a unique one that exists to serve customers in their recreational time. This time is often spent in the form of lodging and travel, amusement parks, cruises, and more. To best serve customers’ needs, there are a vast variety of employees that staff businesses in the hospitality industry from entertainers, to customer service representatives, to maintenance staff. Unfortunately, these employees tend to have a high turnover rate that has long been unexplained (Hinkin & Tracey, 2000). Continue Reading →
To develop a plan for organizational change to improve work-family balance, one might want to target the antecedent of insufficient time for the effective completion of one’s responsibilities for both work and family roles.
First, managers within the organization would want to honestly evaluate the current state of affairs regarding the amount of time employees are expected to work. If they realize that many employees feel as if they are expected to work overtime or back-to-back shifts in order to remain in good standing with the organization, this may be a large contributor to the problem especially if these perceived expectations are not actual benchmarks for performance according to the supervisors. Continue Reading →
Today’s workplace utilizes working in groups more than ever. Organizations have realized that part of working with a lean number of employees is group work. Employees depend on one another and make the most of each other’s skills and abilities. Continue Reading →
One might think that working in the hospitality industry is an experience that is more positive than working in other industries because many individuals work directly with happy people in their leisure time in attractive physical environments. For example, as a person who has not vacationed much, I would expect that working at a desk in a beautiful hotel would be a vastly positive experience compared to working in a loud manufacturing plant. However, some report that working in the hospitality industry can actually be quite stressful due to the high demands of serving customers’ and mangers’ high expectations (Ross, 1995).
While both constructs are very similar to one another and are often used interchangeably in psychological research, there are important differences between organizational climate and culture that would affect one’s success in attempting to manipulate them.
While organizational culture is considered to be the lens through which employees interpret their organizational environment, organizational climate can be described as how the employees tend to evaluate these interpretations (Neal, Griffin, & Hart, 2000). Continue Reading →
Organizations are constantly trying to finds ways to remain competitive with other organizations, especially in times of economic hardship. Leaders within these organizations also invest a great deal of time and money into more trendy efforts that may not even work for their organizations. I think that the key to remaining competitive in the future is to develop a culture as a “learning organization.” Continue Reading →
Guest Author: Maggie Coffey, marketing intern for Hireology
Before you know it, the job market will be replenished with the latest set of recent college graduates. We’re eager, we’re dedicated and we’re picky. Even with a bleak job outlook and the impending repayment of student loans, millennials aren’t going to settle. Continue Reading →
If I were to ask someone to name 10 brands, it would likely be an easy task. Brands are all around us and so deeply engrained in American culture (as well as many other cultures) that naming 10 brands would be simple for most. Not only can many individuals name multiple brands but describing attributes and key characteristics of those brands comes easily as well. People like easily recognizable brands and can even feel attracted to organizations and products because of the feeling they get when associating with the brand. Moreover, individuals are more likely to be attracted to companies and products that are consistent with how they perceive themselves. For example, if I wanted to buy a new car, as an eco-friendly individual that values preserving the environment, I would be more likely to buy a car that fit with that self-concept than a car that did not. Continue Reading →
The demand-control model is focused on the balance of job requirements and autonomy. This model, developed by Karasek (1979), states that those who experience high demands at work with little control are more likely than other employees to feel stressed. According to this model, those who experience low demands with high amount of control should be those who are the least stressed. For example, someone who works in a busy coffee shop would have high demands in that they must make coffee in the correct way every time and within a very small time frame. This person would also have low control because he or she would not have the freedom to make choices about how or when the coffee is made. Those who adhere to the demands-control model would expect this person to be much more stressed than someone with more control or fewer demands. Continue Reading →
http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=1254522
The previous research on the effectiveness of groups and teams is, not surprisingly, quite vast. Many psychologists have worked to better understand how groups function and in what situations they are most useful. However, as Allen and Hecht (2004) point out, groups are not always as productive, effective, or miraculous as some sources suggest. The authors mentioned the famous acronym attached to the word “team” in which “Together, Everyone Achieves More.” This common assumption has led many people to view teams romantically, in that they should be the key to optimal performance in many situations, particularly within organizations. Continue Reading →
Written by guest bloggers Tom Wooldridge, PsyD and Caroline Mok, PhD
Bullying in the workplace is a silent epidemic that is costing organizations millions of dollars. Even worse, it is wreaking havoc on employees in the form of psychological and emotional turmoil. While workplace bullying impacts half of the United States workforce, it is relatively unknown by the other half. Furthermore, in most cases employees that experience workplace bullying receive no assistance from their employers, and thus suffer silently.
Workplace bullying is costing organizations tremendously. Bullied employees experience long periods of leave due to physical and emotional distress. Their productivity decreases and interventions by company managers, human resource departments, and health care centers are required. In fact, as much as $100,000 dollars per year are lost for each bullied employee; a survey of 9,000 employees, cited by Dr. Michael Harrison in the Orlando Business Journal, estimated a cost of more than $180 million in lost time and productivity. Clearly, workplace bullying is a financial problem that leaders cannot continue to ignore.
by guest blogger Kyle Lagunas, HR Analyst of Software Advice
While there are many potential benefits of tuition assistance programs (or TAPs), the challenge for business leaders is to manage investments in employee education in a way that maximizes returns–both for the employer and the employee. Not only does a TAP need to encourage the development of specific skills in your workforce, it also needs to empower employees to pursue their educational goals.
For companies who want to launch a new TAP—or revamp an existing one—it’s hard to know where to begin. To that end, I connected with John Zappa, CEO of EdLink to identify a few key steps to get you started.
1. Identify Goals, Support with Investments
Work with your senior management team to set quantifiable, measurable goals. Address the question of cost early on, using your goals as a guiding compass. The more critical a goal, the larger your investment in a TAP. Alternatively, you can follow industry standards for less-than-critical goals.
You might consider breaking qualifying coursework into groups. Here is an example:
Have you ever felt that your organization’s human resource department lacked a certain human quality? If so, you aren’t alone. Especially since the enormous trend toward social media as a major communication tool, human resources departments (as well as most other departments, to be fair) have become very technologically based in an attempt to expedite and streamline processes. As busy working adults, we spend so much time trying to utilize our vast technological resources to our advantage that developing personal relationships can often fall by the wayside.
A recent TNS global survey data revealed that only 55% of workers felt that their supervisors cared about them as individuals. This tells us that many employees feel undervalued as people within their organizations. Clearly, this disconnect between supervisors and their employees should be remedied in order to help workers feel valued, respected, and engaged. But how?
Sometimes all it takes is a very small personal gesture to establish a positive interpersonal connection. If you manage a group of employees, take the time to ask a staff member how his or her day is going and really listen. Tell an employee how much you appreciate the work he or she completed that day (but only if you mean it). Deliver a hand-written note to someone’s desk as a thank you. These types of simple, but absolutely essential, behaviors could make the difference between an employee staying or leaving an organization. Establishing solid connections with coworkers is also a great way to build morale and engagement.
Regardless of how you go about it, consider holding off on your next tweet until after you take a moment to talk to a coworker face-to-face to build a real connection. In a technology driven society, a little compassion in the workplace goes a long way!
The TNS Employee Insight Employee Engagement Model serves as tool for understanding employee engagement at different levels. One of the basic areas that is often underestimated is the environment. The environment is often thought of as the physical characteristics that make up a workplace. These are important aspects of the work environment, but they are certainly not the only that should be given attention. Continue Reading →
What is sick building syndrome? Sick building syndrome is defined as a variety of symptoms that occur when employees are in the workplace. The symptoms include: nausea, fatigue, headache, nasal and chest congestion, eye problems (dry eye, blurry vision), sore throat, chills and fever, muscle pain, neurological symptoms, and dizziness. The problem with an employee complaining of any one of these symptoms is that it is not easy to pinpoint what the reason would be. An employee stating that they have a headache is not out of the ordinary. How, then, do we know if a workplace has a case of sick building syndrome? Continue Reading →
Wellness programs have been all the talk recently as organizations have discovered the true advantages to promoting healthy decisions in the workplace. Healthy employees contribute quality work and experience a higher level of satisfaction. Continue Reading →
