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Another Step Towards Engaging Millennials

When writing previously about employee engagement, I discussed how companies can encourage employees to be engaged by taking steps to connect them with the organization.  We also know that, as a group, millennials tend to look for ways to connect with their employers...

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Higher Minimum Wages and Success in the Hospitality Industry

The state of California and several of its cities have been on the forefront of raising the minimum wage.  The arguments for (people cannot live on the current minimum wage) and against (it will cost jobs because business will need to lay people off) it are familiar. ...

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Our Love/Hate Relationship With Meetings

Coming across this today, I can only imagine that every editor of a business section of any published content has a yearly reminder to put in an article about meetings. What it comes down to are several sometimes contradictory feelings that employees have: I want to...

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When Even Tech Job Training Lags Behind Need

In any employment market there are going to be jobs in high demand and those that go unfilled.  In our tech driven economy, the jobs that are hard to recruit for range from utility lineman (long hours, hard work, and fabulous pay) and, strangely enough, cyber...

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While I am Likely to be Wrong, Allow me to Continue

Interviews are worse predictors of job success than you think.  And I do not care if you don’t think very highly of them as you read this, it’s still lower.  Yet, there is an insistence that they are better than they are and no company I know of is willing to give...

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He Knows When You Are Working, He Knows When Are Logged Out

As long as there have been workers, management has looked for ways to manage performance.  In the case of piece work, it was mostly used to provide incentives for productivity.  As the economy became more service oriented, performance was also measured so that...

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When the People in High Potential Programs Aren’t

At a recent professional conference I attended there was a lot of talk about high potentials.  Specifically, how to best measure potential versus actual performance (good luck getting managers to understand the difference).  The idea of identifying high potentials...

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Recruiting and Customers

When a consumer brand, especially a national one, looks for new hires, they are doing more than acquiring talent. They are making an impression on their customer base as much as any other piece of advertising.  That in and of itself is not a revelation (or, at least...

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Putting Tech Diversity Puzzle Pieces Together

I am going to write about an issue with political ramifications while doing my best not to be political, so please accept these thoughts in that light. One thread going through the proposed ban on legal immigration to the U.S. is the effect it will have on the tech...

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Does Your Vacation Policy Work?

I’m always curious to hear of innovative (or, crazy, depending on one’s viewpoint) methods of increasing employee engagement and productivity.  I wrote about a year ago about a company in Seattle where the CEO increased the minimum wage to $70,000 (and they are still...

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