I recently got two reader e-mails. One was from a 20-something marketing professional who was frustrated by the lack of an organized chain of command at her company.
The other was from a 45-year-old who was thrilled that after more than 20 years in corporate America, he was at last working in a so-called “open environment.” No more offices, no more cubicles.
These messages really got me thinking: Are hierarchies dead? Check out the full discussion in my post over at the AMEX OPEN Forum.
Posted at 12:00 PM in Daily Life, Employment Trends, Life in the 21st Century, Office Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Did you know that there’s another baby boom on? Since the mid 2000s, the fertility rate in the U.S. has been at its highest since 1971, meaning that the generation preliminarily known as Generation Z is actually larger than its predecessor, the mammoth Generation Y.
The new boom is thought to be caused by a confluence of factors including a greater number of procreating immigrants and a high population of childbearing-age women – including those who have put off having children until their 40s.
Generational expert Neil Howe coined the term “Homelanders” to describe today’s children, stating that they are growing up in a time of “greater public urgency and emergency, both at home and around the world.”
For more about the Homelanders and what they'll be like as workers in 2030, check out my post on Intuit's Quickbase blog.
Posted at 12:00 PM in Employment Trends, Entry Level, HR Issues, Life in the 21st Century, Work | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Gamification is defined as the use of game design techniques to engage audiences. Gamification encourages players to engage in desirable behavior by dangling the carrot otherwise known as “winning.”
The reason we like online gambling so much is that apparently, human beings have a psychological predisposition to gaming. And many organizations are jumping on the gamification bandwagon in order to motivate employees and combat disengagement.
What's gamification all about? Find out what I uncovered over at the AMEX OPEN Forum.
Posted at 12:00 PM in Best Practices, Creativity & Innovation, Culture, Daily Life, Employment Trends, Games, HR Issues, Life in the 21st Century, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
I don’t follow baseball.
So I was surprised when I got sucked into a recent Harvard Business School article by Carmen Noble detailing Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein’s two-year campaign to acquire star performers with extraordinary multimillion-dollar, multiyear contracts.
The piece describes one of the most expensive talent hunts in baseball history, starting with the signing of veteran pitcher John Lackey from the Anaheim Angels. Other high-profile hires followed, and baseball aficionados hailed the 2011 Red Sox as one of the greatest teams of all time.
To say the team didn’t live up to expectations would be an understatement. In September 2011, the Red Sox lost 18 of its last 24 games and lost a shot at the playoffs. The glittering, star-studded team was a failure.
The fall of superstars is common in business too. Just look at the number of CEO departures last year, like Leo Apotheker at HP, Carol Bartz at Yahoo!, Ernest Lieb at Mercedes-Benz and Tom Williams at Reader’s Digest, to name a few.
This year is not looking much better. According to placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, CEO departures are up 17 percent from a year ago, with a total of 227 departures tracked through the first two months of 2012 compared to 187 at the same point in 2011.
The most common reason cited is disappointing performance, which, in most cases, came as a surprise. The star, after all, was hired because he had a track record of extraordinary contributions at previous organizations. Why wasn’t he able to replicate that success here?
Find out in my recent AMEX OPEN Forum Culture Beat column, in which I discuss why hiring a superstar might not improve your business.
Posted at 12:00 PM in Best Practices, Culture, Employment Trends, Entrepreneurship, HR Issues, Interviewing, Management | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Whether you’re a small business owner or an employee in a cast of thousands, you may find yourself working overseas at some point.
According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a major uptick will occur in the number of cross-national business assignments in the next 10 years. This is an exciting development for some people, and intimidating for others.
But working in a foreign culture is not so different than simply taking on a new role in your country of origin. You have to hone your general business acumen and your communication, language and problem-solving skills.
Check out my post at the AMEX OPEN Forum for four steps to help ensure that you can assimilate effectively.
Posted at 12:00 PM in Best Practices, Career Change, Communication, Culture, Current Affairs, Discovering Your Passion, Employment Trends, Entrepreneurship, Job Satisfaction, Life in the 21st Century, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
My good friend Lindsey Pollak recently released a terrific new edition of her well-loved book, Getting from College to Career. In the midst of the craziness of having a new book and baby, she generously shared some thoughts about what college grads can do to improve their careers in 2012:
What made you decide to do a new edition at this time?
We’re living in a time of such rapid change in the world of business and careers that five years ago, when the first edition of Getting from College to Career was published, feels like “the old days.” At that time the economy was good and we were at the very, very beginning of social media and smartphone usage. I decided to write a revised edition of the book to make sure that readers would have the most up-to-date, relevant and forward-thinking advice for their job searches and careers.
What's the most important piece of advice readers should take away from the new edition?
The most important piece of advice in the new edition is the same as the original edition: take action every single day to find a job and build your career. More now than ever, the people who succeed are the people who take consistent action. Momentum matters.
The good news is that today’s job seekers have so many more tools they can use to take action – LinkedIn and Twitter have both grown tremendously over the past five years, more organizations are providing job postings by social media and text messaging and Meetup.com and other technologies make networking opportunities more plentiful.
How has job hunting changed in the five years since you launched the original edition of Getting from College to Career? What new tips have you added?
The two biggest changes since Getting from College to Career was published five years ago relate to the economy and technology.
In 2007, there were plenty of available jobs for recent grads, so my advice focused on figuring out what you wanted to do and taking the steps to get hired into a full-time position. Since 2008, job openings are much more scarce so I added a lot more advice on alternatives to full-time employment, such as freelancing, post-college interning and taking on project work.
The recession has also meant that job seekers have had to become much better at marketing themselves to employers. I don’t think the phrase “personal branding” appeared once in the original edition and now it’s everywhere. Job seekers need to be able to tell a clear story of what makes them unique and how that uniqueness will benefit an employer. Generalists are out; specialists are in – even at the entry level.
In terms of technology, Twitter didn’t even exist when I wrote the first edition and now it’s a crucial tool for career research and networking. In this edition I also include recent grad-specific advice on using LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Apps, Skype and other tech-based tools for job seekers. Of course, technology is moving so fast (just look at the skyrocketing growth of Pinterest!) that job seekers need to keep an eye out for new tools that could help them stand out and get hired.
You interviewed a number of successful professionals and asked them to share what they wish they'd known before starting their careers. What answers most stood out to you?
I was really struck by the number of people who credited their success to two things – their relationships and their passion. Yes, a lot has changed over the past five years, but these are two elements of a successful career that are timeless: build and maintain authentic professional relationships and find a career where you’ll be doing work you love. I expect I’ll be giving that exact same advice five more years from now and fifty years from now.
In addition to being an author and speaker you serve as a global spokesperson for LinkedIn. Can you share your top LinkedIn tips for recent grads?
Absolutely! LinkedIn is a very important tool for recent grads and far too many of them are still not aware of how valuable professional online networking can be at the beginning of your career. Here are my top five LinkedIn tips for recent grads:
Agile’s six-member team is paid the same share of the company's profits, regardless of title or role. Apparently, there are big advantages. First, since it impacts them directly and equally, all team members are constantly looking out for the bottom line. Everyone wants to do what they can to support the sales director, because it’s the customers who are paying for dinner that night. “Even those of us who would normally have no customer contact are more aware of our clients and their needs,” says Agile co-founder Chris Sims. “This helps the business.”
Digging in the dirt
Despite the increased loyalty, personal investment and productivity that profit sharing engenders in staff, the decision to move to this model was not made lightly. Every member of Agile’s team researched existing models and contributed ideas. The sales director based his concept on Eliyahu Goldratt’s theory of Throughput Accounting, and the novelist creative director wrote a narrative describing the company’s environment under a new profit sharing model a la Pat Lencioni.
Agile claims that the logistics of the chosen model are simple and elegant. Because his team was small, Sims wanted to avoid a structure that was too top-heavy and required loads of administrative time. Here’s how it works.
This system still pays out a low-end base salary to everyone–no change here. The profit share is calculated once per month and is paid as a bonus in the next pay period. The company has retained an accountant and HR firm to vet its practices and ensure that it is operating according to state and federal employment laws.
Not for the faint-hearted
For risk-averse individuals like me, however, profit sharing is a bit nerve-wracking. Sims admits that outcomes are variable. “When we start the month out, we can’t predict what the payout will be. In our few months' experience, it has ranged from fair to excellent. So far the average is acceptable, but there's always the possibility of a slump,” he says.
And what happens when the company gets bigger? How can everyone receive an equal share of profits when the firm grows to 100 or more employees? Fortunately for Agile, Sims has already thought that through. “We may restrict the model to the core team at some point, but right now we’re experimenting with extending it to some of our independent contractors and it’s working well,” Sims says. “We intend to revise our methods as we go.”
Getting down to business
If profit sharing sounds palatable to you, there are a few things you’ll want to consider. The U.S. Department of Labor recommends that you first decide whether to set up the plan yourself or to consult a professional or financial institution. Then, you will want to create a written document that outlines how the plan will work day-to-day, arrange a trust fund for the plan’s assets, develop a record-keeping system and provide plan information to participants.
Sims suggests figuring out the simplest model that could possibly work and give it a try, remembering that the primary benefit of profit sharing is a sense of shared investment in the health of the business–not the cash. “Once you have that kind of buy-in, where people feel like pulling together in lean times as much as they do celebrating the flush times, the cash will begin to take care of itself,” Sims says. “And don't make instituting a profit sharing plan a cumbersome project, because then it will either never happen or you'll design something no one can understand or administer.” Sounds like good advice!
This post was originally published at the AMEX Open Forum. Have you checked out my Culture Beat column yet?
Posted at 12:00 PM in Attitude & Motivation, Compensation, Creativity & Innovation, Culture, Employment Trends, Entrepreneurship, Management | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Our special feature on forecasting sheds light on how to choose the right model, offers advice from Jack Stack and more.
Get startedI see it every day. Employees at all levels—especially women—are stepping away from positions that will pay them the highest salary, and moving into ones that provide them a better quality of life.
A friend of mine, Lucy, was a talented fifth-year associate at a Top 5 law firm in Manhattan. She made so much money that her husband didn’t have to work, ever. But just as her partner was getting ready to buy a new set of golf clubs, Lucy quit. She went to work as internal legal counsel for a company that manufactures environmentally-friendly home products. Lucy makes $100k less in this new position, but her office is sunny and collaborative and her colleagues respect her personal time. She loves it.
A caring culture is tops
Lucy’s story is in line with the findings of a recent Monster/Unum study of job seekers, which determined that, over everything else, 87 percent of employees want a company "that truly cares about the well-being of its employees." By contrast, only 66 percent of respondents rated a high base salary as very important.
Another 2011 Unum survey with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services solicited human resource executives’ opinions on this issue, with similar results. This research found that corporate culture is critical to driving engagement, recruitment and retention of a quality workforce.
A company’s values and focus on employee fulfillment are apparently the most important factors in attracting and engaging quality employees, and being a company that cares about the well-being of its staff was twice as likely to be viewed as very important in attracting and retaining staff as providing a high base salary.
Money doesn’t buy satisfaction
You may be skeptical of these results. After all, with retirement funds still dwindling as a result of an economy that has been in the dumps for several years, why wouldn’t employees want all of the money they could get? Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert provides some clues in his book Stumbling on Happiness, suggesting that money increases happiness only when it lifts people out of objective poverty and into the middle class. Once you’re in the middle class and your basic needs are met, income increases don’t positively impact your level of happiness or quality of life.
This idea has been supported by global surveys that ask people how satisfied they are with their lives on a scale from 1 to 7 (1 being "not at all satisfied with my life" and 7 being "completely satisfied with my life"). Among American multimillionaires, the average happiness score is 5.8. Want to know who else had a score of 5.8? The cattle-herding Masai tribe in Kenya, which has no electricity or running water. Interesting.
It will cost some money
Since readers of this column obviously care about creating and sustaining a great workplace culture, this is good news. It’s even better for those who are small business owners, as while your salaries may be lower, it’s also easier for you to develop the meaningful one-on-one employee relationships that lead to a positive culture.
What everyone should remember, though, is that great culture is about more than having donuts for breakfast and being nice to and supportive of one another. To be really competitive in the culture department, Unum says you have to pony up for things like health, lifestyle and retirement benefits. While this won’t always be 100 percent doable, hopefully research like Unum’s will prompt you to consider culture-boosting perks more seriously than before.
This post was originally published at the AMEX Open Forum. Have you checked out my Culture Beat column yet?
Posted at 12:00 PM in Attitude & Motivation, Compensation, Culture, Current Affairs, Employment Trends, Job Satisfaction | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I’ve always been an admirer of Sergey Brin, a Russian Jew like myself who landed in Maryland. Just a few years older than me, Sergey co-founded one of the largest technology companies in the world: Google. But what started as a garage project is now a multi-billion dollar global organization employing nearly 20,000, and it has been interesting to see how Google’s culture has evolved.
Google corporate headquarters, known as the Googleplex, is the center of the Google universe. It’s located on an enormous campus in Mountain View, Calif.—or Silicon Valley—to which employees from the San Francisco Bay area are bussed daily via a free, Wi-Fi enabled and environmentally-friendly shuttle.
Google Feeds Its Brains
The Googleplex takes employee benefits to a whole new level. For one thing, there’s the food. Google provides its employees with three gourmet, all-you-can-eat meals a day, in various cafes around campus. At one, Pintxo 47, employees can select from tapas-style entrees including steak tartare, rabbit confit and Porcini mushrooms. Googlers sit at whatever table has an opening and enjoy lunch as a time to meet new people and discuss their projects with members of other teams.
Work Made Easy
After lunch, going back to the office is a pleasant experience. There are very few closed doors, as Google favors shared cube areas and huddle rooms. If your laptop is acting up, there’s a Tech Stop on every floor that will fix it on the spot. Management has decreed that 20 percent of employee time can be spent on a personal project. You can bring your dog to work and ride a bicycle or scooter to a meeting in another campus building.
Recreation Abounds
When you’re not working, there’s no real reason to leave. At the Googleplex, you can work out, swim, play pool and volleyball, get a massage, go to the doctor or get your hair cut. You can drop your children at daycare or get assistance with financial planning, adoption or nonprofit initiatives. There are employee interest groups for everything, including meditation and salsa dancing, and—to peak your intellectual curiosity—Google sponsors lectures from visiting authors, professors, scientists and politicians.
A Startup Vibe?
On its website, Google says that it maintains a small company feel. Every employee is a hands-on contributor, and everyone wears several hats. No one hesitates to pose questions directly to Larry or Sergey in weekly all-hands meetings. Google claims to be aggressively inclusive in its hiring, and it publicly favors ability over experience.
As Chief Culture Officer Stacy Savides Sullivan told CNET a few years back: “Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stuff done.”
It’s easy to see how the Google culture might be ideal for a twenty-something employee, because the environment is very similar to a college campus. So concurs an ex-Googler who now works at Microsoft: “These kids don’t have a life yet so they spend all of their time at work. Google provides everything they need, even clothes (clean tee-shirts are placed in bins for people to grab)!”
The downside of Google is its lack of career development and progression. Like a startup, the organization is very flat, and it’s not common to be promoted from an individual contributor to a manager. A good review might result in a salary increase and a higher title, but responsibilities don’t necessarily change. However, as long as you know what you’re getting into, the Googleplex perks are hard to pass up.
This post was originally published at the AMEX Open Forum. Have you checked out my Culture Beat column yet?
Posted at 12:00 PM in Best Practices, Culture, Current Affairs, Daily Life, Employment Trends, Life in the 21st Century, Productivity | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
According to a recent global survey conducted by Regus, a provider of flexible workspaces, one in two workers in the U.S. work well over eight hours a day and more than half regularly take work home with them.
The study polled more than 12,000 business people in 85 countries and found extended working hours to be the new norm. Regus attributes this to a tight job market with fewer resources at employees’ disposal, and employees’ desire to keep and excel in their jobs. Some of the more interesting findings included:
This study finds a clear blurring of the line between work and home,” claimed Regus. “In the U.S., where the American Institute of Stress reports that coronary heart disease is much more frequent in individuals experiencing high levels of job related stress, the long-term effects of this over-working could be damaging both to workers’ health and to overall productivity as workers drive themselves too hard and become disaffected, depressed or even physically ill.”
Although the study found that remote employees worked longer hours, telework has been shown to produce higher job satisfaction, higher productivity, and lower stress levels. Therefore, one might conclude that by allowing your team members to work from more convenient locations and operate more independently, you might mitigate the negative impact of a longer work day.
This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.
Posted at 01:00 PM in Culture, Current Affairs, Employment Trends, Flexible Work, HR Issues, Life in the 21st Century, Management, Productivity, Project Management, Time Management | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
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