98 Posts Found

Managers need to create incentives that will encourage employees to reveal their true levels of motivation. One such strategy is to offer employees money to resign voluntarily — the so-called Pay-to-Quit strategy. Zappos, the online shoe and clothing retailer, was the first to employ the strategy, making what has become known as “the offer”: a bonus for new hires to quit following a four-week training … [ Read more ]

Author: Uri Gneezy | Source: “How a ‘Pay-to-Quit’ Strategy Can Reveal Your Most Motivated Employees” | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Human Resources

Ask new employees to keep a diary of observations from each meeting and each day during their early employment period. Then set up a time for them to make a presentation to you, or perhaps you and your leadership team, about what they’ve learned, what didn’t make sense, what they have seen done differently in previous jobs, and so on. This gives the new person … [ Read more ]

Author: Ron Ashkenas | Source: “Is Bad Onboarding Stifling Your New Senior Leaders?” | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Access to social capital is a sticking point for employees… To increase access, business leaders must first understand who has it—and who doesn’t. Advanced analytics can make it easier than it’s ever been to provide that understanding.

One electronics company, for instance, is using HR, facilities, and operations metadata (calendar invitations, email, HR information systems, and so on) and advanced analytics to map knowledge flows and … [ Read more ]

Authors: Bill Schaninger, Brooke Weddle, John Parsons, Taylor Lauricella | Source: “Network effects: How to rebuild social capital and improve corporate performance” | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Acknowledging emotions and understanding how individual factors influence change aversion may be as important as factors inherent to the initiative itself. Yet we find that leaders often miss this critical component. Identify ways to capture how people are feeling and coping before, during, and after a change program. Building the institutional muscle to gain real-time insight into employees’ emotions through pulse checks and manager check-ins … [ Read more ]

Authors: Adriann Negreros, Julia Dhar, Martin Reeves | Source: “How Change Aversion Can Derail a Transformation” | Original Publication: Boston Consulting Group | Subjects: Change Management, Human Resources, Organizational Behavior | Company: Ubiquity Retirement + Savings

Google appears to have discovered a way to pay people for being helpful without making it transactional. The company invites employees to nominate colleagues who have been helpful to receive small cash rewards. By making the rewards a product of peer nomination, Google converts a cash payment into a symbol of appreciation. As a result, people are less likely to see the reward as cheapening … [ Read more ]

Authors: Madan Pillutla, Nirmalya Kumar | Source: “Pay for Performance: When Does It Fail?” | Original Publication: Management and Business Review (MBR) | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior | Company: Google

Before candidates join for the interview round, Peoplism sends a thorough prep guide to sketch out expectations. “We tell the candidate most of the interview questions in advance. While it is a unique approach, I don’t understand why it’s that controversial and why other companies don’t do the same,” says co-founder Liz Kofman-Burns.

There are plenty of behind-the-scenes factors that contribute to someone being a … [ Read more ]

Authors: Amber Madison, Liz Kofman-Burns | Source: “Why Now’s the Perfect Time to Retool Your Hiring Process and Get Creative” | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources | Company: Peoplism

Whether they’re stepping into an existing pair of shoes or carving out a brand-new role, new leaders often face a dose of skepticism from the org. “Whether we intend it or not, a lot of people have a wait-and-see approach. We’re excited about them, but is this going to work out? Versus having a vested interest in helping make that person successful,” says Anne Raimondi, … [ Read more ]

Author: Anne Raimondi | Source: “The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2021” | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

companies are starting to be more intentional about hiring for a candidate’s future potential, not their past history. But it’ll be a long road. Our traditional recruiting processes still place an emphasis on certain types of education, experience, or personal referrals that can lead to a homogenous workforce.

Start by rethinking your job descriptions. Focus on the results you’d like to see, rather than the type … [ Read more ]

Author: Ryan Roslansky | Source: “You Need a Skills-Based Approach to Hiring and Developing Talent” | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources

Performance reviews tend to be more heavily weighted to focus downward. (“I’m your manager, and here is what I think of your performance.”) There may be some mechanism for subordinates to provide feedback upward, but it often doesn’t carry the same importance. And that’s how bad bosses often stay in their roles.

One example of an effective model comes from Aron Ain, the CEO of Ultimate … [ Read more ]

Authors: Adam Bryant, Aron Ain | Source: “Do you manage up or down?” | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG)

There’s some debate over the best way to do exit interviews and how valuable they are. But there’s one kind of interview that most organizations fail to do — stay conversations. The concept is simple: Identify your top performers who you hope will stay with you the longest, and ask them why they stay. They may say things like:

• “I have the best manager I’ve ever

… [ Read more ]

Authors: Nate Dvorak, Ryan Pendell | Source: “Culture Wins When You Listen to Your Top Performers” | Original Publication: Gallup Management Journal (GMJ) | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Molly Graham does a look back, look forward every month or two, or at the end of a project — whatever milestone that makes the most sense for an employee’s role. She asks them to look back on a project that they just finished and run through these questions:

Look back:

• What did you like about that? What felt good?
• What did you hate about it?

… [ Read more ]

Author: Molly Graham | Source: “6 Counterintuitive Rules for Being a Better Manager — Advice from Lambda School Quip & Facebook” | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

But people still leave. Some want to try other things at other companies, or the fit isn’t right, so we have to let them go. It’s the natural cycle of business.

What’s never been natural at companies, though, is how these departures are handled. So at Basecamp we’ve created a ritual for when someone leaves: We tell everyone in the company why. Not just that person’s team, … [ Read more ]

Author: Jason Fried | Source: “The Best Way to Tell Employees When You’ve Fired Someone” | Original Publication: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Basecamp

Most have done a 360 and found that personal feedback may differ among supervisors, peers, or subordinates. We advocate a 720 for employees who have contact with people outside their organization. Customer contact employees may be more or less gifted at managing customer relationships. By asking customers their views, employees learn what they do well and not so well.

Authors: Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood | Subject: Human Resources

Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball pits the collective old-time wisdom of baseball players, managers, coaches, scouts, and front offices against rigorous statistical analysis in determining which players to recruit. Analysis wins, changing the game forever. Could the same be true for recruiting top talent?

When the National Bureau of Economic Research looked into this, it pitted humans against computers for more than 300,000 hires in high-turnover jobs … [ Read more ]

Authors: Mary Meaney, Scott Keller | Source: “Attracting and retaining the right talent” | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources

Organizations looking for outside talent pay an extraordinary amount of attention to resumes. […] Once people are inside, it’s almost as if some of kind of reset button is pressed: The details of their backgrounds seem to get dumped onto a far-off slag heap, and they become known only for what they do at the new organization. I call this phenomenon resumenesia — a malady … [ Read more ]

Author: Eric J. McNulty | Source: “The Search for Hidden Talent Treasures” | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

San Francisco startup Weebly invites job candidates to work on site during a “trial week,” paid at fair market value. Why? Simple: it’s very hard to suppress values-incongruent behaviors when working closely with others for that long. As their CEO says: “Assholes can hide it in interviews, but for whatever reason, they cannot hide it for a whole week. I don’t know why, but it … [ Read more ]

Author: Cameron Sepah | Source: “Your Company’s Culture is Who You Hire Fire and Promote” | Original Publication: Medium | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources | Company: Weebly

Jay Desai has FOMU. As a first-time founder and CEO of health technology startup PatientPing, he’s got a healthy fear of messing up. This anxiety especially bubbles to the surface when it has to do with his team — now over 100 employees — and particularly the seven who report directly to him. He’s seen too many immensely talented and productive teams stall because of … [ Read more ]

Author: Jay Desai | Source: “The Indispensable Document for the Modern Manager” | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: PatientPing

In the summer of 2011, Facebook announced it would use the social performance platform Rypple (now part of Salesforce.com) for internal reviews and communications.  Rypple allows employees to create and compete in challenges, receive recognition from colleagues, see what others are working on, and find where needed skills may exist within an organization. But Rypple is not a game. It doesn’t even look like a … [ Read more ]

Author: Doug Palmer | Source: “The engagement economy: How gamification is reshaping businesses” | Original Publication: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior | Companies: Facebook, Rypple

Intermittent “extras” are more powerful than constant bonuses that are predictable. Say that a manager wants to reward employees. A good way to do it is with a lottery system. You could set it up so one would have to maintain some level of performance to be eligible for the lottery. The hope of entering the lottery will keep workers going at a higher level … [ Read more ]

Author: Joseph LeDoux | Source: “Management Wisdom From a Neuroscientist” | Original Publication: Gallup Management Journal (GMJ) | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Spanning’s Jeff Erramouspe likes to hire salespeople in pairs. “You spend the same energy training one sales rep as two,” he says, “and it promotes healthy competition from the start.” It’s also a hedge against high turnover: “You don’t want to spend all that effort and be back where you started.”

Authors: Alix Stuart, Jeff Erramouspe | Source: “How Many Salespeople Do You Really Need?” | Original Publication: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources, Marketing / Sales, Training | Company: Spanning