A recent Forbes article told the sorry story of a manager losing a top employee out of the blue. One of those “everything seemed OK and then he quit” examples every manager has endured. I have to wonder how effectively the manager in our story asked about the employee’s interests and needs.
I spent part of Thanksgiving reading about poverty, recognizing the irony when most of us are noting our abundances. My reasons were my natural interest stemming from an undergraduate degree in sociology, along with a specific drill-down on how can…
Few sentences produce more HR loneliness than the dreaded direction we receive after turnover or engagement reports are analyzed, specifically, “HR, go fix it”. One way to end that loneliness is to ask Finance to help with solutions, especially your…
I’m flying home from delivering a keynote address on employee retention to executives of Reser’s Fine Foods in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. After the address one of the group gave me a Reser’s hat, the baseball kind. I’ve never…
I was a strong high school student but faked my way through the sciences. While decades ago, my memory of walking into sophomore biology class is frighteningly clear, seeing a foreign-looking five-syllable, science-like word on the board, followed by its…
About 20% of the executives we talk with say something like this: “We understand why you want our leaders to have retention goals, but that’s difficult here because our employees report to more than one supervisor.” The background is this…
Almost every type of manager/employee meeting is a one-way street. We have many names for these meetings…project updates, status checks, performance reviews of course, and in call centers they are called monitoring meetings. That’s when employees sit with their managers…
Let’s look at a shockingly stark contrast that applies to all of us in Human Resources and Recruiting. Here is a summary of what CEO's say they need most from a few recent studies and publications: • SHRM: Top challenge…
Often people ask how can a manager who hasn’t built trust do so by conducting Stay Interviews. We usually then rattle off the four skills we train managers to use: listen, probe, take notes, and take responsibility. They wonder what…
Companies large and small pour dollars and sweat into solving engagement and retention for millennials by hiring consultants, sending HR to conferences, and conducting focus groups… all trying to find the secret sauce to motivate these alien creatures. Here’s a…