Introducing My Not-for-Profit: Mobility Service Dogs
I’m fortunate to be a Board member of this outstanding [...]
Humor
Free Will*
I really can’t control the things I do Because, you see, I haven’t got free will That’s why what’s old can seem to be quite [...]
Why You Need MORE STRESS at Work
Stress researchers have long known that the right amount of stress is not zero. We humans (like most prey animals) have a stress-driven mechanism for [...]
Crypto Crashes, Celebs Quake
The recent cryptocurrency meltdown has brought its share of troubles for investors and for trading firms like FTX and its techbro CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. But [...]
The Leadership Secrets of Elon Musk
Twitter has had an interesting few weeks under the leadership of Elon Musk. Among other initiatives, Mr. Musk has cleared out the C-suite, laid off [...]
Is Your Manager a Minotaur?
How would you describe your boss’s management style? Is her or she: Autocratic – Wears a crown and scepter to eliminate any doubt Visionary – [...]
Sorry Malcolm – I Can’t Go Back to Work
Malcom Gladwell, famous writer, may recently have experienced his own tipping point of opinion. He suggested that working with others in an actual office (as [...]
Violent Exercises to Do While Working Remotely
Doctors, personal trainers and Peloton salespeople often suggest exercise as a way to battle the loneliness and depression that result from work-at-home isolation. But what [...]
Do You Work with a Bunch of Animals? A Guide to Your Workplace Menagerie
I spent several decades working with animals. My workplace was a combination safari park and Noah’s ark. I discovered that, if you want to truly [...]
Create Your Annoying Personal Brand
Your personal brand encompasses the attitudes and behaviors you consistently demonstrate to your colleagues at work. You might, for example, become known as “Ms. Collaborative,” [...]
Behold the New Workplace Human: Homo Keyboardiens
Is humankind still evolving? Despite evidence to the contrary (yes, your boss is a Neanderthal), humans continue to adapt to the forces of our [...]
Want to Spy on Employees? Big Brotherware is for You
With so many people working at home, how are you supposed to micromanage them? If that’s your question – and if it’s not, it should [...]
10 Extreme Ways to Destabilize Your Next Zoom Call
Zoom Fatigue is the signature workplace ailment of the 21st century. But there’s a cure. Use these ten techniques to enliven up your next video [...]
Consumer-Driven HR
The Great Resignation Has Increased Employee-Consumer Power
The last 110 years have brought us a Great War, a Great Depression, a Great Recession and now, a Great Resignation. We’ve experienced this [...]
Human Resources and the Emerging Employee-Consumer
By Thomas O. Davenport and John M. Bremen, Willis Towers Watson What is the best way to describe the relationship between employers and employees? [...]
The Impact of Consumer-Driven HR
Over the past decade, there has been a growing trend among global organizations to treat their employees as internal consumers. The most innovative of these companies have gone a step [...]
Treat Your Employees as Consumers
Designing total rewards based on employee preferences can mean a more highly engaged workforce … and a better return on total rewards investment. In their [...]
Culture
We Need a COVID Bill of Responsibilities
The Founding Fathers created many historically important, country-defining documents. Think: Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Rules of Baseball (which established our national pastime, granting it [...]
Active Empathy is Key to a Fulfilling Employee Deal (Part 2)
In the chemistry of an organization’s culture, empathy is the catalyst that energizes a motivating, mutually beneficial deal between individuals and their companies. Relationships based [...]
Active Empathy is Key to a Fulfilling Employee Deal (Part 1)
Empathy, that uber-noble source of human connection, is really about other people’s shoes: standing in them, walking a mile in them, commiserating with the cobbler’s [...]
Five Ways to Build Trust Between Employees and Gig Workers
How is interpersonal trust like a butterfly’s wings? It’s compelling and functional: beautiful to behold and good at providing uplift. It’s also difficult to create [...]
Six Ways Executives Shaped the Culture of Their Organization
Imagine you work in a small high-tech company, and this is what the CEO says about his ideal workplace culture: “Fire people who are not workaholics. [...]
Do You Have a Culture of Stress? Here’s How to Tell
It’s Monday morning, and you’re standing at the edge of a swamp. Looking out, you see many hazards: dark, dangerous water; patches of earth [...]
Workplace Culture and Stress
A career in banking can seem very attractive: high salaries (for some anyway), good working conditions and prestige. But beware. Employees in corporate banking jobs across 26 countries experience higher stress levels than people in other finance careers, according to a recent study.¹ One person described a job in banking this way: “You will be required to work very [...]
Thriving at Work: How Organizational Culture Affects Workplace Fulfillment
Edgar Schein, one of the leading academic theorists on corporate culture, defines culture as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that a group has learned as [...]
Managers and Manager Behavior
The Good Stress Strategy: How Managers Can Transform Stress Into Fulfillment
For many of us who toil in the modern workplace, it sometimes seems the main exercise we get comes from aerobic stress. Much like a session on the [...]
Good Managers Are Your Best Employee Wellness Strategy
Relying on a corporate wellness program as the main strategy for improving employee health is like throwing a drowning person a DVD on how to [...]
Want to Reduce Health Care Cost? Improve Manager Performance
The work environment created by first-line supervisors and managers has a direct effect on employee well-being and, consequently, on health and health care cost. A [...]
The Manager Paradox
Lion tamer, U.S. president, inner-city high school teacher, air traffic controller. To this list of stressful jobs, add one more: manager . The headline on a tech [...]
The New Manager Manifesto
Management and leadership have been integral parts of business since humans invented work. For most of the last two decades, though, the manager position has been [...]
Stress and Well-Being
Break the Social Media Addiction Using Nudges
Social media – we love it! Worldwide, upwards of 4 billion people (more than half the humans on the planet) use some form of social [...]
Improve Well-being to Reduce Hard and Soft Health Costs – Part 2
Part 1 defined employee well-being, described the effect of job demands and resources and made the case that diminished well-being takes a financial toll. What [...]
Improve Well-being to Reduce Hard and Soft Health Costs – Part 1
As we navigate our way through the COVID-19 pandemic, we have entered a new workplace, one that both differs from and resembles the old work [...]
Thriving When Work is Remote (Part 2)
In Part 1, I suggested some requirements for a fulfilling job, whether remote or at a traditional work site. That’s half the equation for a [...]
Thriving When Work is Remote (Part 1)
In 2020, work has taken on a Gertrude Stein sort of feeling, a sense of distance from our old work sites. These lines from [...]
Thriving In The Virus Time
Three Ways to Help Employees Thrive During the Virus Time COVID-19 threatens almost all of us, endangering our individual well-being and imperiling the collective health [...]
Three Reasons Why You Need to Laugh…RIGHT NOW!
During the coronavirus sequestering, all jokes will become…inside jokes. I got that gag off the internet. Feel free to reuse. If that dad joke didn’t [...]
Channel Your Inner Sisyphus
You think your work can be boring? Right now, as you read this screen and sip your coffee, the mythological king Sisyphus is in Hades, [...]
Three Ways Humor Reduces Workplace Stress
When the American Psychological Association studies stress in the U.S., their findings routinely identify work as one of the top three sources of elevated anxiety. [...]
Humor at Work
When the American Psychological Association studies stress in the U.S., their findings routinely identify work as one of the top three sources of elevated anxiety. [...]
Stress and Digital Media Use – The Light Side and The Dark Side
Not long ago, I found myself in a client meeting, sitting opposite a senior manager from the overseas parent company. Before him at the conference [...]
What Should Organizations Do About Workplace Stress?
For many of us who toil in the modern workplace, it sometimes seems the main exercise we get comes from aerobic stress. Much like a session on the treadmill, stress fires up our cardiovascular systems with adrenaline, gets our hormones pumping [...]
Employers Use Stress Diagnostics to Define Strategy and Guide Action
Investing time and effort to uncover and mitigate today’s stressors for employees can help employers avoid tomorrow’s more damaging and expensive consequences. A [...]
Employee Stress and Workplace Culture—How are They Linked?
By Thomas O. Davenport, Senior Consultant, Willis Towers Watson Imagine you work in a small, high-technology company. This is the how your CEO describes [...]
To Sustain Employee Engagement, You Must Manage Workplace Stress
It’s Monday morning and time to make your to-do list for the day. Following time management advice you found on the Internet, you aim to [...]