People with mental health challenges, no matter the severity, can thrive in the workplace and be valuable team members. Allies play an important role by helping to provide the empathy and compassion they need to overcome key challenges. Our collective will, empathy, and compassion can break down the formidable barriers...
Knowing when and how to engage with someone who may be struggling with their mental health can be difficult. Talking about mental illness isn’t easy, particularly at work and particularly for people with a mental health condition. You don’t want to jump to conclusions about someone or seem judgmental. You...
Education on mental health issues is the foundation for helping people be better allies. If you’re a leader, encouraging or instituting better education at your company is a big-picture way you can be a mental health ally. You will likely experience a mental health challenge at some point in your...
What is the best way to drive innovative work inside organizations? Important clues hide in the stories of world-renowned creators. It turns out that ordinary scientists, marketers, programmers, and other unsung knowledge workers, whose jobs require creative productivity every day, have more in common with famous innovators than most managers...
Multiple studies have shown that simple productivity measures are not enough to guide the transition to hybrid work. Employees do not necessarily have to do more to be successful. Our personal lives have always bled into our professional lives. Even when we worked at the office, phone calls from home...
Even before 2020 imposed the remote work model on organizations, many viewed the concept as attractive. Work from home appealed to the productive professional who could see the advantages that this methodology could bring to undisturbed concentration in a peaceful environment that contributed to focus. Whether we desired it or...
As 2021 takes off, HR has certainly embraced a variety of measures to deal with the new sensibilities brought on by the events of the past year. As they transformed into a model that can support the well being and stability of organizations through a difficult period, they have established...
2020 is over and we are all still here. As we look back at the year defined by a worldwide pandemic, it's an understatement to say that that we have transformed as individuals, families, corporations, and industries. HR found itself in a crossroads of either transforming to a new reality...
According to a recent study conducted by CreditWise, finances are the number one stressor for nearly three-quarters of Americans. When these issues come to work, productivity suffers, and employees feel less satisfied with their employment. Research has consistently shown that employee financial stress causes businesses $500 billion in lost productivity...
The coronavirus pandemic has forced many of us into constant and relentless triage of tasks and assignments. It could be shifting to a remote work experience with our teams, struggling to retain and acquire customers, or ramping up to meet an explosion of demand. And this is only work. On...
Employers want to help employees meet their short-term financial needs during the COVID-19 pandemic first. Employees are seeking financial guidance to help them navigate the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and take control of their finances. Nearly 60 percent of workers say that they or a close family member...
Some of us are still in work-from-home bliss; some of us are sooo ready to get back to the grind of the office… Mixed emotions seem to have been the staple of 2020. Still, business continuity and team engagement have largely depended on virtual conferences for the past 4 months,...
While a majority of employers believe that their employees will return to their workplaces after COVID-19’s impact diminishes, working from home isn’t going to disappear. The reality is that a huge number of people were already working from home (almost 10 million workers in the U.S. in 2019); that number...
After being called out for manifesting what to you is unconscious bias, what should you do to maintain quality of life and relationships in the workplace? In the community? Even in your family? How do you apologize after you’ve committed a microaggression? How and when should you try to make...
To foster healthier communities, businesses are taking a holistic approach – understanding the interconnection between the community, their employees, and health outcomes. Despite the dramatic changes experienced globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic, companies and brands of all sizes and industries are still leading the way with innovative concepts for...
As the world navigates the new workforce landscape, the demand for talent will only grow. Modern industry has received a drastic jolt in 2020 and, as digital interphases have become a critical need for some business, it's imperative that companies (across many more industries) act aggressively to close the tech...
In early March, there were fewer than 100,000 cases and 4,000 deaths globally. Now, not quite three months later, infections exceed 5.5 million and employers face a whole new set of questions as they consider how to reopen the workplace after weeks or months of restrictions. As always, employers must...
Many have suffered profound losses during the pandemic and have not had sufficient opportunity to grieve. Almost all of us have experienced loneliness. There will be more cases of anxiety and depression, and some survivors and their families will have post-traumatic stress syndrome. Access to mental health services was often poor before...
Jessica Nguyen was hoping to find one activity that could involve all 450 client services associates during her company’s annual community service day. But she soon realized it wasn’t a realistic goal with a workforce that’s spread over five states.“Each location has an interest in different activities, so I decided...
The tech skills gap has been a problem for a while now, and as the world navigates the new workforce landscape, the demand for talent will only grow. Now more than ever, tech skills are needed in every industry. Companies will need new tech support to enable efficient remote work. Waves of innovation spurred from...
When volleying between two candidates, what qualifications determine the final cut? Every hiring manager has interviewed Paul and Sam, but not every Paul and Sam has been hired for the same reason. Meet Paul. Paul is one of the final candidates for a marketing coordinator position at a budding tech startup....
You started your company with a mission that you believed in, and today it is incredibly humbling to see your staff truly take pride in the work they are doing. You have built a dream team that you can rely on, and now you are ready to start utilizing them in new ways to grow your...
While a staggering 20.5 million jobs were lost in April with 33 million Americans seeking unemployment benefits since the start of the pandemic, many businesses continue to hire--and not just Instacart or Amazon. Industries including technology, health care, and financial services continue to bring on employees. Glassdoor even created an...
As COVID-19 struck businesses, most of which were completely unprepared for this type of situation, topics as essential as inclusion and diversity in the workplace were pushed to a realm of secondary, non-essential items. As workplaces shut down and employees moved to work from home, the reality and dynamics of...
Life is hard for working parents — and you don't need to be one to know it's the truth. Several industry surveys consistently report that a majority (60%) of North American parents have experienced burnout at work. Top symptoms cited by researchers included such colorful descriptions as "extreme frustration," "constant exhaustion"...
The Coronavirus has upended just about everything. We all want to see our lives get back to normal, but what will that mean? The future is murky, and we all agree there will be some permanent changes to the world. These are bound to alter our working environment. Here are...
Although there's been some debate about whether workplace health promotion programs, more commonly known as wellness programs, work, there still companies exerting their best efforts to develop innovative programs to suit the wellness need of their teams. Asking if CWPOs work is similar to asking whether reviews, training programs, employee...
Hiring friends into your startup is a mixed blessing. The good part is that you know your friend's strengths and weaknesses and whether they share your values. If, on top of that, your friend brings a skill your startup needs, bringing a friend into your startup can be great. Still,...
From posting live workouts online via social media to using virtual class vendors, teams are continuing to serve their staff by keeping them engaged in health and fitness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Virtual Group Exercise Class Schedule The fitness center staff at a national insurance company is offering Take a Stress Break...
Workplace wellness programs typically include focus areas such as eating healthy, exercising, seeking preventive screenings, and dealing with stress, but has your organization addresses emergency preparedness thoroughly? Emergency preparedness is an often overlooked area of health and wellness but is an important subject that your team needs and would likely...
If you are like most people, you think of trust as this fuzzy, feel-good thing. "I like somebody, therefore, I trust them," is how Joel Peterson, author of The Ten Laws of Trust, puts it. In reality, trust is the operating system upon which relationships function. In the absence of trust, there is no workability. Think...
Teamwork is part of what makes companies successful. If your team isn’t getting along and feels disjointed, morale goes down, quick. Studies have shown that up 87% of employees are not engaged at work. As we know, disengaged employees are also less satisfied, less productive, and more likely to leave...
Burnout has reached such high levels in the workplace, the World Health Organization declared burnout as an official "occupational phenomenon." Employers will not want to ignore its prevalence. In fact, they may want to enact preventative measures and solutions in order to mitigate and alleviate the adverse effects of burnout. While burnout is...
Companies tend to pursue two kinds of approaches to diversity and inclusion. The first is costly and highly visible; think days-long all-expenses-paid events or ambitious efforts to offer every employee coaching and training. The second is perfunctory and performative, with one or two full-time employees running a barebones and mostly...
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the world upside down, and staying home has become the new normal. Whether to comply with a local stay-at-home order or to heed public health social distancing guidance, countless businesses have sent their workforce home—to telework. For some businesses, this was relatively painless due to...
The turnover rate for hourly employees has always been, and continues to be, extremely high. Retail, for example, has a turnover rate of around 60 percent, and other sectors can be even higher than that. This is a real problem for businesses since replacing an employee costs on average upwards of $5,000, according...
HR leaders may snag the C-suite's attention and make the business case for addressing burnout by presenting research from the numerous studies that demonstrate workplace wellness programs' effectiveness, she said. HR professionals can also poll employees, she added; Instead of conducting an engagement survey, conduct a burnout survey. As companies...
Several years ago, an HR friend invited me to visit him at work. He was the head of recruiting for a national company that makes uniforms. I was geeked to get a look behind the scenes of this well-respected employer. I knew I had crossed into another organizational dimension when...
It may be time to review your organization’s compensation policies. As business leaders focus on closing the gender pay gap and states enact broader laws covering fair pay for more workers, HR professionals may want to review their organization’s compensation policies and practices. “We’re seeing an explosion of new equal-pay...
Servant leaders are a revolutionary bunch—they take the traditional power leadership model and turn it completely upside down. This new hierarchy puts the people—or employees, in a business context—at the very top and the leader at the bottom, charged with serving the employees above them. And that's just the way...
With employee turnover higher than ever despite innovative company policies (from unlimited vacation to paternity leave to generous stock option plans) becoming commonplace, it can be challenging to keep talented team members productive, engaged, and happy. In fact, according to a recent Gallup poll, only 34% of American workers feel...
In the corporate arena, interior designers have the goal and responsibility to create functional, practical, comfortable space. It goes well beyond the need for beautification or even branding. When it comes to office design, we should focus more on how to influence employee behaviors through the design of space, with...
In HR, being a generalist requires you to wear somewhere between 10 to 1,000 hats at once: Take open requisitions, source candidates, interview them, extend a job offer—repeat. Every. Single. Day. Variety is the norm, and it isn’t always your friend. It’s very easy for the pace of a “regular”...
If you broke down an HR person into components, you might find a mix of 60 percent psychologist, 20 percent paralegal, and 20 percent administrator/compliance officer. Yet some people spend more than 40 percent of their time and effort on the legal and compliance items. This isn’t right or wrong,...
New parents returning to work face many daunting logistical hurdles. In addition to navigating the complexities surrounding daycare drop-off and pick-up and sick days, they’re also reengaging with their jobs after time away. Amidst these challenges, there’s a pervasive one many women face that’s less openly discussed: pumping breastmilk while...
Many companies, even in more traditional industries like law and banking, are aiming to have more casual spaces, including ping pong tables or video game consoles that encourage frequent communication and interaction. It’s not uncommon to see community spaces like the one above that look more like a bar or...
The corner office has long been coveted real estate in the workplace. It affords privacy, often features a window and sends a clear message about status. When you hold the keys to the corner office, you've made it to the top. So why are some CEOs and other executives turning in...
Ready to reap the great benefits of team building? Here are some great ideas to get you started. Escape Room - Participants who love high-pressure challenges will get a kick out of escape room challenges. Players are placed into a physical adventure game where they must solve puzzles and riddles...
Have you ever wondered what’s the driving force behind the success of today’s biggest megastars? What’s the root of their success? Is it their drive, talent, beauty, innovation or business know-how? Although these qualities attract media and create high visibility, all megastars have one common thread that is fundamental to...