20 Most Recent Ideas
Improve HR with a Rotational Onboarding Program and Peer-to-Peer Hiring
One important initiative at ING has been a new three-week onboarding program, also inspired by Zappos, that involves every employee spending at least one full week at the new Customer Loyalty Team operations call center taking customer calls. As they move around the key areas of the bank, new employees quickly establish their own informal networks and gain a deeper understanding of the business.
We have … [ Read more ]
Authors: Bart Schlatmann, Deepak Mahadevan, Peter Jacobs | Source: "ING’s agile transformation" | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources, Training | Company: ING
Give Your Employees Meaning to Improve Turnover
At Zumasys, in addition to the typical corporate benefits, every employee gets three to four weeks of vacation, complementary access to the company’s two-bedroom Vegas loft, and the opportunity to qualify for a tenure-based international travel program that, each year, gives four to six employees a week off with pay and a $4,000 stipend to travel to the destination of their choice. The open-book financials … [ Read more ]
Authors: Paul Giobbi, Susan Cramm | Source: "Strengthening Your Cultural Fortress" | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Social Responsibility | Company: Zumasys
Institutionalize an “Astonishment Report”
At the end of their induction period (generally three months), new hires are required to write (and discuss with their boss) a short report documenting anything and everything that they have found interesting or surprising since joining the company.
Author: Jean-Francois Manzoni | Source: "How to institutionalise dissatisfaction" | Original Publication: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior
Getting a Fresh Look at Your Products and Services
Every three months, a group of people from the organization—younger people, junior people, but never the same people—sits down and looks at one segment of the company’s products, or services, or process or policies with a question: If we didn’t do this already, would we go into it the way we are now? Every four or five years, that company has systematically abandoned or at … [ Read more ]
Author: Peter Drucker | Source: "Retool Your Business With a Clean Sheet of Paper" | Original Publication: Time | Subjects: Best Practices, Management, Strategy
A Better Employee Suggestions System
AT&T has built a digital infrastructure enabling all employee suggestions to be logged online. A small, dedicated team regularly reads and triages the suggestions, sending each promising one to a designated leader or expert who is obligated to consider it and respond. Employees can see the progress of each suggestion and log comments. Other companies have developed systems that enable employees to “vote up” or … [ Read more ]
Author: Rob Markey | Source: "The four secrets to employee engagement" | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: AT&T
Why You Should Interview People Who Turn Down a Job with Your Company
Successfully competing for top talent involves both selling jobs to the best candidates and retaining the highest performing incumbents. In order to be seen as an employer of choice with a compelling value proposition for employees, many companies measure turnover and conduct exit interviews with departing employees to gather feedback about the experiences people had working there and the reasons why they’re leaving. But a … [ Read more ]
Author: Ben Dattner | Source: "Why You Should Interview People Who Turn Down a Job with Your Company" | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources
One of the best ways to find out where consumers’ pain points (and thus your opportunities) are is to talk to your frontline people. Your retail and call center people have heard it all; once every quarter, spend half a day asking them what challenges your customers face, and then focus your innovation investments on findings ways to address those issues.
Author: Catherine Palmieri | Source: "Boost Your Innovation Confidence" | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Customer-Related
Weekly Coffee Break with the CEO
We started a weekly coffee break with our CEO where six people get to sign up to informally discuss a specific topic with her. Not only does this give employees valuable face time with her, but it's also been fantastic for Julia because it’s a new way for her to talk to a broader cross-section of the team and get their thoughts on topics that … [ Read more ]
Author: Terra Carmichael | Source: "Staying Connected is Key to Your Startup’s Survival — Here’s How to Nail Internal Comms" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management | Company: Eventbrite
Provide Regular Guidance for Managers
We’ve rolled out a weekly(ish) email for leaders at Eventbrite that summarizes all the things they need to be thinking about in terms of managing and messaging to their team. We break it down into a few sections: things to know, things to do, things to share. It sounds simple, but let’s be real, leaders are an important and expensive investment, so you want to … [ Read more ]
Author: Terra Carmichael | Source: "Staying Connected is Key to Your Startup’s Survival — Here’s How to Nail Internal Comms" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Eventbrite
ipd Company, a small auto parts company in Portland, Oregon, pays its employees to read. And, not just business books, but a wide range of self-improvement books. And, not just books, but also tapes and audio/video seminars.
Richard Gordon, president of ipd, started the "Learn and Earn" program in 1988 when he began to wonder, "what would it be like if our people read the same … [ Read more ]
Author: Richard Gordon | Source: "Learn and Earn" | Original Publication: InnovationNetwork | Subjects: Human Resources, Training | Company: ipd Company
Make Your Remote Team Members First-Class Citizens
If a benefit, perk or experience is created for your in-office team members, find a way to create parity for those who aren’t in person. That means mailing items given to your in-office team to remote workers — or if you cover lunch for your in-office team, send your remote team a gift card or stipend for food delivery. […] If your leadership team has … [ Read more ]
Author: Bob Moore | Source: "This Founder Built Startups in 2008 2016 and 2018. Here’s What He’s Learned About Resiliency" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior
When George Halvorson was chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente, he instituted a “rule of two” to encourage diversity and help avoid the “just like me” bias that’s prevalent in many promotion decisions. For appointments at the VP level and above, Halvorson encouraged leaders to bring three candidates, and no more than two of them could have a similar demographic profile—for example, sex or race. … [ Read more ]
Authors: George Halvorson, Lareina Yee | Source: "Fostering women leaders: A fitness test for your top team" | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Human Resources | Company: Kaiser Permanente
A Living Archive of “Introduce Yourself” Emails
As outlined in the [company's] Day One Document, a hire sends an “Introduce Yourself” email at the end of the first day. It’s a scripted greeting to the company from the new hire sharing a bit of background and trivia. “Everyone who starts with the company sends one out. It also includes a photo and a link to three questions on Barista, Percolate’s internal Q&A … [ Read more ]
Author: Noah Brier | Source: "Our 6 Must Reads for Onboarding Tactics That Help New Hires Succeed (and Stay)" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior | Company: Percolate
Encourage Learning Experiments
Ongoing learning and experimenting are key to personal and corporate growth. Whether this is formal or informal, it should be encouraged throughout the organization. One way to do so is to regularly ask employees what they have learned recently and how they have attempted to apply that learning in their work. Then share these experiences with the rest of the organization. Be sure to share … [ Read more ]
Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
Peter Drucker’s thirty-year-old concept of creating a “manager’s letter” probably remains the best performance-management technique to use with senior executives. Each executive writes an annual letter to her superior, spelling out the objectives of her own job and those of the superior’s job as she sees them. She then sets down the performance standards she believes are being applied to her. She lists the goals … [ Read more ]
Authors: Dick Grote, Peter Drucker | Source: "Passing Judgment" | Subject: Management
Because you may have a long list of candidates, you should batch calls as often as possible. For example, set aside 15 minute segments in a 3 hour block daily. In a first-pass, I always ask:
- “Walk me through your resume”, to understand if the candidate is actually interested in a startup via a clear story, or just shotgunning their resume;
- “If you left a
Author: Tim Chen | Source: "How to Hire Entry-Level at an Early Stage Startup" | Original Publication: Medium | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources
There are many ways to invest in employees you fear may be looking to leave: pay increases, promotions, special projects, etc. One technique is to use what are called “stay interviews.” Instead of conducting only exit interviews to learn what caused good employees to quit, hold regular one-on-one interviews with current high-performing employees to learn what keeps them working in your organization and what could … [ Read more ]
Author: Timothy M. Gardner | Source: "13 Signs That Someone Is About to Quit According to Research" | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Human Resources
As you think about building out a team, you’ll want market data to ensure you’re making hires within the right salary bands. It’s much easier to have a conversation with a candidate when you have market data vs. what you’ve just heard from your peers. Creating salary bands with multiple seniority or experience levels early on will help navigate tricky internal equity discussions down the … [ Read more ]
Source: "Compensation at Startups" | Original Publication: Homebrew | Subject: Human Resources | Company: Homebrew
Why is it so important to have a philosophy around compensation early on? As a company is growing and establishing its culture and values, it needs to make sure that its compensation philosophy is aligned with the company’s overall mission and values. For example, a company that identifies with “transparency” as a value, needs to make sure that its compensations practices are transparent. Anyone involved … [ Read more ]
Source: "Compensation at Startups" | Original Publication: Homebrew | Subject: Human Resources | Company: Homebrew
External Talent Needs Management, Too
The corporate use of external talent across sectors and geographies is more common than ever. Talent can provide companies with access to new capabilities and technologies; it can enable faster and more agile response to markets; it can be used to test new opportunities before making major investments; it can be used to respond to demand peaks and to attain scale quickly; and, perhaps most … [ Read more ]
Author: Theodore Kinni | Source: "External Talent Needs Management Too" | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior