Reducing Turnover: How to Keep Quality
Employees from Jumping Ship
It’s hard enough to find good help, but it’s even harder to watch a great employee walk out the door, especially when you’ve invested time and money developing him into a key staff member. Jumping from job to job is fairly common these days. From the employee’s perspective, it’s easy to see the upside: greater […]
Rules of Engagement: Strategies for Handling
Conflict in the Workplace
If you’re like most people, you probably dislike confrontation and avoid it whenever possible. When you mix a variety of personalities in an office environment, you’re bound to have people who clash, and confrontations will likely occur at some point. Avoiding conflict is one solution, but you may eventually be known as the office doormat, […]
Reverse Mentoring: What It Is and Why It’s
Valuable
Reverse mentoring is an idea that’s been around a while now, but it’s still a somewhat unfamiliar and under-used concept in most companies. Basically, instead of the traditional mentoring structure where a seasoned employee takes a young upstart under their wing and teaches them about the business, reverse mentoring flips the script. In this case […]
The Five Year Plan
It’s that classic interview question that everybody dreads: Where do you see yourself in five years? Most people attempt to craft the perfect answer based on what they think the interviewer wants to hear. Forget that. When you take the question out of the interview framework and set aside all notions of what your answer […]
Workplace Whiners: Tips for Dealing with Negative Co-Workers
At some time or another we’ve all worked with that certain type of co-worker who’s just never happy. Maybe they hate the boss, or the job itself, or maybe the whole company is out to get them. No matter what their gripe-of-the day is, one thing is for sure: they’re going to complain about it […]
An Open Letter to New Job Applicants, Explaining
What You’re Doing Wrong
Dear Applicant, Thank you so much for your recent interest in joining our organization. Regretfully, we are unable to offer you the position at this time. As part of our screening process we like to provide feedback to our applicants, which we hope you will find helpful. Here’s a fun fact, Corndog: Employers nowadays often […]
Brand and Deliver: The Importance of Establishing Your Organization’s Identity
If you think “branding” means coming up with a catchy slogan and a pretty logo, you’re kind of wrong – but you’re also kind of right. Logos and tag lines are key components of an overall branding strategy, but branding itself is a broader process. Branding is better described as: establishing an identity in the […]
Job Searching in the Modern Age: Using
Technology to Up Your Game
Your resume is updated. Your suit is pressed and ready to go. So if you think the next step is to buy a copy of the Sunday paper and flip to the “Help Wanted” section, then you would be absolutely correct, in 1985. Don’t get me wrong, the eighties were spectacular; they brought us parachute […]
Good Leadership: The Key Ingredient for Creating a Positive Workplace
Are employees more motivated and productive when they are happy, or unhappy? Stupid question, right? Although it seems obvious that happy employees are better employees, it’s easy for bosses to lose sight of this fact. If you supervise or manage people in any way, it might be time to power down and reboot your approach […]