Log in to your account
 
Professional Development
  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 01/18/2013 • 3 Comments

    Engaged Employees Have Healthier Lifestyles

    U.S. workers who are engaged in their work have healthier lifestyles compared to those who are not engaged or actively disengaged, according to a recent Gallup poll. 

    "Engaged employees are deeply involved in and enthusiastic about their work," said Daniela Yu and Jim Harter, who wrote the report. "Those who are not engaged may be satisfied, but are not emotionally connected to their workplaces and are less likely to put in discretionary effort. Employees who are actively disengaged are emotionally disconnected from their work and workplace and jeopardize their teams' performance."

    Past Gallup studies have show that how a leader manages workers can affect employee engagement, which affects the bottom line and employees' health. Furthermore, Gallup research shows that engaged employees are 21 percent more likely than disengaged workers to join company wellness programs.

    "Taken together, the data showcase the link between being engaged at work and leading a healthy lifestyle," Yu and Harter said. "It is not clear though which way the relationship between engagement in the workplace and healthy behaviors goes. It is possible that workers without healthy lifestyles are more prone to illness, which then reduces their chance for being engaged at work, or that those who are actively disengaged are less likely to take part in healthy behaviors, perhaps due to time or a depressed outlook on life.

    "Regardless, since engaged employees are more likely to lead a healthy lifestyle, workplaces that actively improve engagement may end up seeing an added benefit of better employee health—the potential benefits of which include reducing healthcare costs for a company in the long term and increasing energy and productivity in the near future."

    To learn how you can help create a more engaged workplace environment, please read "The Art of Real Recognition" from the October issue of One+. And please let us know in the comments how you either keep engaged in your job or how you help your employees stay engaged.



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 12/17/2012 • 1 Comments

    3 Building Blocks for Employee Engagement

    The National Conference Center recently released news about the value of employee recognition, training and development and developing credible leadership.

    “For every employer, being ‘engaged’ could translate into any number of different things,” said National Conference Center General Manager Kurt Krause. “When we analyzed our top accounts at The National Conference Center, we saw a trend in training and development—78 percent of the programs from our top 30 accounts focus on training.”

    The organization offers three building blocks of an engaged workforce.

    Employee recognition—According to Fred Lang, a former chief learning officer for the U.S. Department of Commerce, “Valuing [an employee’s] skills and talents is one of the greatest retention tools.” Employees receive a confidence boost from in-person coaching that enables them to improve their skills and develop new ones. When managers recognize skills that employees aren’t utilizing, training can be offered to improve and develop those skills that boost employee engagement and, as a result, can increase company financial performance.

    Training and development—On-going training throughout an individual’s career provides them with the tools they need to succeed. Margie Kersten, a learning leader at Ernst & Young, says one long-term company benefit is that participants who receive training feel more connected to co-workers who are also in training. As a result, they are more engaged in their work, invested in the company and much more likely to stay. 

    Credible leadership—What makes a leader credible? Someone who is trained on business policies, ethics and has the skills to lead the organization to success. Every senior-level executive needs the skills and leadership abilities to be an effective manager, and in turn, ensure satisfied and engaged employees. While identifying future leaders within the organization is an important practice Lang believes in, he explains that you cannot identify people for high-level leadership positions and expect them to automatically possess the skills and leadership abilities required of them. Lang insists, “You have to start lower. Leaders are leaders, but some of the leadership skills can be learned from other organizations that do it well.”

    How are you creating an engaged workforce at your business? Please let us know in the comments.

    (Story materials from the National Conference Center.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 10/16/2012 • 2 Comments

    A Job is Valued if it Aligns With One's Signature Strengths

    Character strengths can be defined as morally positively valued attributes, such as self-control, teamwork and friendliness. Strengths that are peculiar to a person and frequently used by individuals are called signature strengths. Each person typically has three to seven. For the first time, Claudia Harzer and Willibald Ruch from the Department of Personality Psychology and Diagnostics at the University of Zurich have shown in two studies that a job is particularly valued if it aligns with one's signature strengths. In fact, employees will have a more positive work experience due to enjoyment, sense of purpose and satisfaction.

    In the first study, Harzer and Ruch surveyed more than 1,000 workers about the expression of their character strengths, whether they are able to apply these strengths at work and how positively they experience their work. In their second study, besides self-assessments the scientists also analyzed how the test subjects' colleagues rate the applicability of the character strengths.

    The degree of positive experiences increases with the number of signature strengths applied. In both studies, people who are able to apply four or more signature strengths at work have the highest values in terms of positive experience. They enjoy work more, are more wrapped up in it, perceive their work as more meaningful and are more satisfied with their job. These people also perceive their work more as a calling than people who are able to apply three signature strengths or fewer in the workplace.

    The researcher's findings provide insights that might be useful for the selection of personnel, human resources development and workplace design.

    "If it is clarified which character strengths are central for the job before a position is filled, a person can be recruited based on these strengths," Harzer said. "Employers and employees only stand to benefit from this.

    (Story materials via the University of Zurich and AlphaGalileo.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 08/10/2012 • 0 Comments

    Happiness is a Better Motivator than Money

    A sense of belonging and attachment to a group of co-workers is a better motivator for some employees than money, according to a new study by University of Iowa (UI) researchers.

    “We found that self-managing teams exhibit increased performance when they are highly cohesive,” said Greg Stewart, Henry B. Tippie Research Professor of Management and Organizations in the UI Tippie College of Business. “Peer pressure is a strong motivating force, and workers’ willingness to please people who mean something to them is often a stronger motivating force than financial rewards.”

    Stewart’s group studied how members of self-managed teams allotted pay raises for other members of their team. They studied 587 workers in 45 self-managing teams at three factories in Iowa. In each of the 45 teams, teammates were allowed varying degrees of input into how much their teammates should be compensated for their work, and the researchers studied those compensation decisions.

    Using questionnaires, they asked the workers about their level of attraction to the team and their compensation, and asked their supervisors about the productivity of both individuals and teams.

    “In high functioning teams the group takes over most of the management function themselves,” said Stephen Courtright, assistant professor at Texas A&M University who recently received his doctoral degree from UI and was a member of the research group. “They work with each other, they encourage and support each other, and they coordinate with outside teams. They collectively perform the role of a good manager.”

    He says it makes sense that the team would make sound compensation decisions because they’re the ones who work with their team members, after all, and are in the best position to observe their performance.

    Stewart says the study confirms what prior research has found, that pleasing other people is a powerful motivating factor. In other words, Courtright says peer pressure is an important social force beyond junior high school. In this case, workers don’t want to disappoint their team members, so appealing to team spirit is more effective even than money as a motivating tool.

    “We all have a social need to be accepted, to identify with a group and be a part of it,” Stewart said. “So much so that peer pressure from team members is more effective than money in prompting strong performances from workers.”

    However, this works only when team members get along. When they don’t, then self-managed teams perform worse than cohesive teams. When team members don’t much care for each other, Courtright says appealing to team spirit as a motivating factor won’t work because there is no team spirit to appeal to, so money becomes the primary motivating factor to improve productivity.

    “Teams perform better when there is social pressure from peers to perform well than when peers wave a carrot and stick,” Courtright said. “However, the carrot and stick method works pretty well when team members just can't get along.”

    (Story materials via the University of Iowa.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 08/06/2012 • 0 Comments

    The Workplace Arrogance Scale

    Much like the character Peter Gibbons in Office Space, you may be dealing with an arrogant boss. And much like this industry, you probably want a measurement tool. Have no fear, your wishes have been answered.  

    Developed by researchers at The University of Akron (UA) and Michigan State University, the Workplace Arrogance Scale (WARS)—interested acronym, by the way—can help organizations identify arrogant managers before they have a costly and damaging impact.

    Arrogance is characterized by a pattern of behavior that demeans others in an attempt to prove competence and superiority. Stanley Silverman—dean of UA's Summit College and University College and an industrial and organizational psychologist—says this behavior is correlated with lower intelligence scores and lower self-esteem when compared to managers who are not arrogant.

    "Does your boss demonstrate different behaviors with subordinates and supervisors?" Silverman asks. He says a yes answer could mean trouble. Silverman warns that yes replies to these other questions raise red flags and signal arrogance.

    • Does your boss put his/her personal agenda ahead of the organization's agenda?
    • Does the boss discredit others' ideas during meetings and often make them look bad?
    • Does your boss reject constructive feedback?
    • Does the boss exaggerate his/her superiority and make others feel inferior?

    It sounds to me that a yes answer to any of those questions means the person is much more than arrogant; that person's a jerk (and that's being polite).

    Silverman and his colleagues Russell Johnson, assistant professor of management at the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University, and Nicole McConnell and Alison Carr, both Ph.D. students in The University of Akron's Industrial and Organizational Psychology program, published details of the Workplace Arrogance Scale in the July 2012 issue of The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist.

    Left unchecked, arrogant leaders can be a destructive force within an organization, Silverman says. With power over their employees' work assignments, promotion opportunities and performance reviews, arrogant bosses put subordinates in a helpless position. They do not mentor junior colleagues nor do they motivate a team to benefit the organization as a whole, contributing to a negative social workplace atmosphere.

    Silverman says that arrogance is less a personality trait than a series of behaviors, which can be addressed through coaching if the arrogant boss is willing to change. He recommends that organizations incorporate an assessment of arrogance into the employee review and performance management process.

    He also emphasizes that cultivating humility among leaders and promoting a learning-oriented work climate go far in reducing arrogance and increasing productive leadership and employee social interaction.

    The 16th-century English bishop John Jewel once said, "If we learn not humility, we learn nothing." I agree. Greatness starts by being humble. 

    (Story material via the University of Akron.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 08/06/2012 • 0 Comments

    Paranoia, Paranoia, Everybody's Coming to Get Me

    Call it self-fulfilling prophecy. People who are paranoid about workplace rejection or sabotage can bring it upon themselves, according to University of British Columbia (UBC) research.

    The UBC Sauder School of Business study reveals that paranoia about negative gossip or being snubbed leads people to seek out information to confirm their fears, ultimately annoying colleagues and increasing the likelihood they will be rejected or subverted.

    “It may be best to ignore impulses that tell you that you’re the victim of office politics,” said lead author and Sauder professor Karl Aquino, whose study was recently published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

    Aquino explains that it’s natural for people to wonder how others view them, especially when social acceptance in the workplace is often rewarded with power and financial compensation.

    “However, our research shows employees should do their best to keep their interactions positive and ignore the negative," Aquino said. "As the expression goes, kill them with kindness.”

    In one of the study’s experiments, the researchers discovered that people who more readily interpret interactions with others as negative are also more likely to try to root it out through such means such as eavesdropping or spying.

    Another experiment showed that individuals who reported wanting information about unfair treatment within a group were more likely to have angered their group members and be the focus of rejection.

    A third experiment measured study participants’ comfort level with a co-worker who is worried about unfair treatment as compared to other types of employees. Rather than be saddled with a worrywart, participants were 3.5 times more likely to choose individuals who demanded feedback on work quality. Participants were 16.5 times more likely to prefer working with others keen to get information on work group dynamics as a whole.

    So, stop worrying so much. It's wasted energy, and it annoys your co-workers. Just remember Joseph Heller's famous line from Catch-22: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you." People may always be after you. Worrying about it won't stop it.  

    (Story materials via the University of British Columbia.) 



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 06/22/2012 • 1 Comments

    Social Media Use Can Help You Get Promoted

    I'm noticing more and more meeting professionals using social media tools every day, and it makes my heart go pitter patter. When used well, these tools can accentuate face-to-face relationships. 

    They can also help you get promoted. 

    According to recent Google research on how social tools are being used in the European business world, 86 percent of frequent users have recently been promoted, with 72 percent saying that they are likely to be promoted. Compare those numbers to 61 percent and 39 percent, respectively, of non-users. 

    Furthermore, more than a third (38 percent) of social media users are very satisfied with their jobs compared to 18 percent of non-users. 

    “It says something about the organisation; often a sign of confidence in the employee that they may make free use of Internet and social media, people thrive better in their environment and they will therefore work faster and more efficiently,” said a junior executive frequent user from the Netherlands in the report.

    Social media is primarily about connections, so it's no surprise that companies encouraging social media use are finding success. 

    "High growth companies are also significantly more likely than others to be using social tools to improve quality of work and enhance creativity and innovation, highlighting the role social tools can play in helping employees to generate new ideas and to take a fresh approach to the way they collaborate with colleagues," the researchers said in the report. "Most organisations now appreciate the need to embrace social media to communicate, market and sell; perhaps now is the time for a similar revolution to take place as regards the use of social tools within the workplace; to grab the opportunity to improve and enhance internal processes and attract and retain the best talent."

    Are you a frequent social media user? How do you use the tools? Does your company encourage social media use? 

    (Hat tip to Mamta Saha at TechRepublic for making known the research.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 04/02/2012 • 2 Comments

    Hotel Work Spaces for New Generations

    While most people demand choice and control to work when and how they want, wherever they are, working remotely doesn’t always offer consistent options when it comes to access, comforts and convenience. Marriott Hotels & Resorts; Steelcase, a workplace experience provider; and global design and innovation consultancy, IDEO, recently announced a collaboration to design, create and test innovative concepts and solutions for the future of work and meetings in hotels. 

    Whether staying at a hotel individually or attending a meeting or conference, business travelers need spaces that offer them choice and control for quiet, individual work in comfortable and inviting public spaces or collaborative settings for group work with colleagues. Leveraging insights from IDEO and Steelcase, Marriott Hotels & Resorts aims to revolutionize hosted work environments in hotels, while opening a dialogue around the evolving needs, desires and mindset of the Gen X and Gen Y global business traveler.

    “By 2013, almost 35 percent of the global workforce will be mobile," said Paul Cahill, senior vice president of brand management for Marriott Hotels & Resorts. "We are designing hotels for a new generation that is used to working how, where—and often times—whenever they want.”  

    Having worked together for more than 40 years, Marriott and Steelcase have a history of collaborating to provide business travelers with satisfying work settings.

    “People need environments that help them innovate and inspire them to do great work,” said Mark Greiner, chief experience officer for Steelcase. “With business executives working remotely more frequently, work has to go where they go. By bringing choice and control to a hosted-meeting environment, Steelcase, Marriott Hotels & Resorts and IDEO are delivering an unparalleled proposition for today and tomorrow’s global worker.”



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 02/27/2012 • 0 Comments

    Many Employees Want More Involvement in Company Decisions

    Transparency was the flavor-of-the-month a few years ago until it got pushed out of the way by concepts like collaboration and innovation. Even though executives may not care as much about transparency, it's still important to lower-level employees. 

    In fact, many employees feel their organization’s workplace practices are ineffective—an assertion supported by 44 percent of a recent Fierce Inc. survey of more than 800 corporate executives, employees and educators across a wide variety of industries. Respondents claim that their company’s best practices actually hinder employee productivity and morale. Another 47 percent reported that their organization’s current practices consistently get in the way of desired results, rather than optimize the overall success of the business—a primary function that a company’s best practices are meant to fulfill.

    While these practices are established with the best intentions, it’s clear that most are missing the mark when it comes to supporting the needs of their workforce. When asked which practices hold their organization back, nearly 50 percent of respondents identified a lack of company-wide transparency and too little involvement in company decisions as key areas of concern. In addition, nearly half of survey respondents identified the most beneficial practices as those that encouraged accountability, development and individual empowerment within the organization. It’s clear that in order to implement practices that are beneficial to the individual—as well as the organization as a whole—companies must foster an environment where individual efficacy is encouraged and where communication is both elicited and valued.

    While the survey supports the notion that today’s employees are seeking transparency within their organization, it doesn’t stop there. The results also indicate a widespread desire for businesses to elicit diverse opinions from all members of the organization around which company practices need to be modified or adjusted, such as:

    • 70 percent of respondents said they would candidly approach decision-makers within their organization if they felt that a company practice needed to be re-evaluated or adjusted.
    • Among respondents who reported limited benefits from their organization’s current practices, less than one third felt that their company was willing to change practices based on employee input and feedback.

    “These widely accepted practices are not only ineffective, they are costing our companies billions of dollars, driving away our most valuable employees and customers, limiting performance and stalling careers,” said Halley Bock, CEO of Fierce Inc. “This survey should encourage managers to question the practices in place and actively engage their staff in creating new policies that are geared more toward transparency and employee empowerment.”

    Does your company promote transparency? How are employees empowered at your workplace? Please let us know in the comments. 



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 01/03/2012 • 0 Comments

    More Female Managers, Wage Gap Remains

    A recent Swedish report from the Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation and the Uppsala Center for Labor Studies at Uppsala University concludes that wage differences between men and women do not decrease as more women attain managerial positions. Manager gender is tied to neither wages nor, accordingly, wage differences on the labour market.

    Women held approximately 36 percent of managerial positions within the Swedish employment market in 2008. That female managers are a minority is sometimes advanced as an explanation for the fact that women generally receive lower wages than men. The wage gap between men and women, adjusted for age, experience, education and industry demographics, is approximately 8 percent. A greater proportion of women in managerial positions could serve to reduce the wage gap if female managers set wages differently or, by serving as examples, encouraged a higher level of performance by women.

    Earlier studies have shown that wage differences are smaller in industries and at workplaces with female managers. In her study, however, economist Lena Hensvik found no support for the claim that female managers entail any benefit for women in connection with wage setting. The study encompassed all of the public sector workplaces and a representative selection of private sector workplaces in Sweden during the years 1996–2008.

    “At the first stage, I found that women with female managers receive higher salaries,” she said. “But when I went further and considered individuals who had had both male and female managers and how salary varies with manager gender, I found no significant difference between working for a woman and working for a man. Any differences appear to be tied to the individuals, not their managers.”

    Having more female managers thus seems not to contribute to reducing the salary gap among employees.

    “Earlier studies that found differences between workplaces with and without female managers should be interpreted with certain caution, since these studies did not take account of employee-pool composition differences,” Lena Hensvik said.

    But do women employ more women? Lena Hensvik asserts that there is no evidence that they do. It may be that women employ more high-performing women, but even that appears to be bound up with the character of the workplace or industry, and not with the issue of whether the managers happen to be men or women.

    (Story materials provided by Uppsala University.)



  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. Next Page