5 Reasons to Hold Regular All-Hands Meetings

When executed properly, all-hands meetings have the potential to drive a level of transparency and alignment within your team that will make your business stronger. 

What are All-Hands Meetings? 

It is widely known across industries that transparency within an organization drives success and business strength. One of the best ways a company can foster that sense of transparency and trust with their employees and teams is through the use of all-hands meetings.  

All-hands meetings are regular, company-wide meetings where all employees gather with leadership to discuss company matters. The general objectives of an all-hands meeting are to: 

• Share the business updates of the past month, quarter, year, season, etc. 
• Drive alignment around the company’s mission and strategy 
• Celebrate company milestones and recognize the individuals who made them possible 
• Give everyone in the company a chance to ask questions and clarify any concerns 

Any and all organizations can stand to benefit from holding regular all-hands meetings, regardless of company size or age, or the scope and level of the all-hands meetings you choose to conduct.  

Why are All-Hands Meetings Valuable? 

Company-wide, all-hands meetings have the potential to bring your teams together in an incredible valuable way. It provides perspective on the state of the business at team and department levels, and can highlight the importance of every employee’s contribution and effort of moving towards company goals. 

Here are several key benefits to holding regular all-hands meetings for your organization: 

1. Keeps your team updated and improves alignment.

All-hands meetings are one of the best opportunities you have to ensure all your team members are on the same page about everything business-related. This goes beyond simply sharing organizational and people updates, which can be done in much less expensive ways. By emphasizing company mission, strategy, and objectives, all-hands meetings provide you with the chance to accurately align your employees on the company goals, pointing them in the right direction and ensuring success down the line. 

2. Celebrates people and uplifts team spirit and morale.

Company achievements cannot exist without consistent efforts from the people involved. Celebrating your team members’ successes and recognizing their hard work is just as important as keeping them in the loop on business updates. Especially when your employees are feeling overwhelmed or discouraged, one of the best ways to boost their morale is to review the highlights of their efforts and give shout-outs to the individuals who helped achieve them.  

A good way to do this is to involve your team members in the recognition process. Have employees think of one team member who went the extra mile for them or performed exceptionally well over the past month or quarter. Generating a word cloud of the results and projecting it on screen is an excellent way to have several top players feel valued and appreciated, while still shouting out the exceptional performers. Another activity could be to crowdsource company highlights from the employees during the meeting itself. As opposed to having speakers reviewing the highlights, invite attendees to share their personal high points with the people sitting near them, then submit them into an open text poll using their phones and acknowledge the top ones on screen.   

3. Gives a voice to everyone.

An all-hands meeting is one of the best places to generate a forum for employee questions, and address employee concerns from every corner. Holding an open Q&A with leadership may be useful in helping you uncover the most hot-topic issues in the organization, encouraging workplace transparency. A good rule of thumb is to allow for at least 20% of your all-hands meeting time to be dedicated to Q&A. It may be helpful to collect questions in the days leading up to the meeting as well, allowing executives and panelists to prepare thorough answers beforehand and have a general sense of the areas of topics the employees will want to discuss. 

4. Fosters a healthy company culture.

All-hands meetings are one of the best places not only to show your company culture, but to grow it as well. Demonstrating and strengthening your company culture by involving the people that the meeting is first and foremost about is critical. Let them contribute to the agenda and co-create the program and run activities where attendees enjoy themselves. At the end of the day, all-hands meetings are for your employees, so give them good reason to be excited about being there in the first place.  

5. Connects remote teams and workers with executives.

While imagining company-wide in-person gatherings is difficult right now, understanding the value of connectivity that they present is just as important as ever. All-hands meetings are a unique chance to connect your remote workers with headquarters, and truly make them feel part of the company and the organizational community as a whole.  

Certain companies even have the majority, if not all, of their workers working remotely, meaning they run their all-hands meetings fully online. We will investigate best practices for holding all-hands meetings remotely later but understanding the value of connectivity they bring beyond the regular virtual check-ins you may hold with your team is critical. 

Best Practices for Running All-Hands Meetings 

One of the biggest benefits of holding regular all-hands meetings is the opportunity it presents for productive interactions within teams and between employees and leadership. This intermingling can spark new connections, inspire new ideas, and can drive your company forward while keeping everyone aligned and on-track. 

But, not all all-hands meetings are created equal by nature. If you want to get the most out of your all-hands meetings, ensure their effectiveness, and have everyone who walks away feeling included and excited about the future of your organization, there are a few best practices you should follow: 

Prep Your Team

Especially if your organization is not used to holding regular all-hands meetings, worrying your employees during the scheduling process is the last thing you’ll want to be doing. Critical to the success of any all-hands is its establishment as a neutral event beforehand. 

While sending out meeting invitations, include the all-hands agenda, and clearly outline what it is you are going to be discussing. Provide attendees with some idea of what to expect, especially if this is your company’s very first all-hands meeting. Otherwise, people will only be able to speculate, and you risk having your employees assume a worst-case scenario.  

Keep All-Hands Meetings Short and On Time

Especially for larger companies, having every individual in the organization in one room can be daunting, especially when it comes to the challenge of keeping each and every one of them engaged. This is why you should aim to keep your all-hands meetings short and to the point where you can, ensuring they remain effective creating a lasting impression on its attendees. 

Depending on how much ground you need to cover, and how much you have outlined in the agenda, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour should be plenty. If you have plotted out a day’s worth of events, ensure you break it up with engaging activities and events that will keep your team focused and participating. In addition, it is important that you start and end the meeting on time. Everyone has busy calendars, and you have asked your entire company to step away from their responsibilities to attend this meeting, so it is critical that you demonstrate your respect for their time.  

Focus on the Right Content

Keeping your all-hands meeting attendees engaged and attended is your biggest responsibility, but it can also be your biggest challenge if you waste too much time on the wrong topics. While you may be inclined to share every last detail about certain updates and projects, aim to focus the majority of your time on the content that is relevant and interesting to the entire company. 

Keeping all-hands meetings relevant to the organization as a whole can be difficult, but a good rule of thumb to follow is the three-category strategy: first, discuss the critical information, then dive into present-day business and updates, and end it off with something fun, social, or interactive. If you have a full day planned, try to organize the content and scheduling around this pattern.  

When it comes to the present-day business, avoid going too deep into the minutiae of things. Your presentation or discussion should aim to provide a general overview of what’s happening within your company, and if certain employees want to learn more, they can follow up directly with the appropriate contact person or team.  

Switch Things Up

For companies that have already gotten into the habit of holding regular all-hands meetings, it can be tricky not to fall into the trap of it digressing into an hour-long lecture from your leadership. While keeping leadership input at the forefront is important, you should still aim to keep the meetings interesting and engaging for everyone in attendance. 

Your employees likely don’t want to hear from the same handful of executives every month. Switching up the presenter roster is a great way to keep the audience excited about what they will be hearing and provides them the opportunity to learn more about other teams that they may not have the opportunity to work with on the day-to-day.  

Share Successes and Opportunities for Growth

Involving presenters from specific teams is a great strategy, but it is important to stress transparency in what they present to the wider organization too. It is likely that they are going to want to put their best work at the forefront, and while all-hands meetings are one of the best places to share successes and provide recognition where it is deserved, it’s also an excellent forum for sharing learning opportunities and tips for growth and improvement. 

Celebrate the accomplishments of your team, and recognize their progress and successes, but ensure that people also have the chance to hear what others in the company have learned, and what hasn’t worked well for them. When asking a team to present at an all-hands meeting, ask them to share both their successes and their challenges, and the same rings true for the leadership team. By keeping everyone in the organization informed on team-specific challenges, and the strategies they used to overcome them, those learning opportunities that were only accessible to a single team or leader are then opened up to the entire organization. 

Aim for Interactivity

Employees won’t be very engaged if all-hands simply involve someone standing at the front of the room and talking at them for an hour. Keeping the entire team engaged is essential, so aim to seek out new ways to make your all-hands meetings more interactive. We have already discussed the value of holding Q&A sessions and implementing real-time interaction from meeting attendees. Open the floor regularly for Q&As, and have live questionnaires and responses from meeting attendees, but also consistently seek out inventive activities and events that can promote engagement at your meetings.  

Ask for Feedback

All-hands meetings are pointless if your employees aren’t getting what they need to out of them. One of the most important components of effective all-hands meetings is the mechanisms in place that ensure their continued effectiveness, and there is no better source for that than employee feedback.  

Following each all-hands meeting, follow up for feedback. Ask them what it is they enjoyed about the all-hands, what they think could be improved upon, and what they would like to see changed for the next meeting. Take the time to read through all that feedback and use it as criterion for improvement that will drive the planning and execution of your next all-hands meeting. Taking employee feedback and using it to improve and evolve how you run your all-hands not only increases their effectiveness and impact, but it also makes your team feel respected and heard.  

How Can You Hold Regular All-Hands Meetings Remotely? 

It is likely that many companies are facing the need to shift all their in-person events online for the next while and possibly indefinitely, but keep in mind that running an all-hands meeting in a virtual space can still have as much impact as if you were sitting in the same room together. They key is smoothing out all the wrinkles beforehand. Here are the three general stages to holding your regular all-hands meetings virtually: 

Tech Setup

Choosing a reliable video conferencing tool is the first step. A popular choice currently is Zoom, but other strong platforms include GoToMeeting, Skype for Business, Join.me, Roundee, Adobe Connect, and Google Hangouts. If you plan on presenting slides, ensure they run seamlessly on the platform, and test out any interactive features such as running live polls and Q&As beforehand as well.  

Preparation Phase

Like you would for an in-person all-hands meeting, the next stage is the assign specific roles to members of your team. There should be multiple speakers present at the meeting, since switching speakers helps break monotony and brings in multiple perspectives from different corners of your organization. Introducing a moderator can also be useful, which means having them greet your teammates as they join the call, deliver a kick-off speech, and keep an eye on the agenda. Especially for online interactive activities, assigning someone the role of discussion facilitator to field incoming questions and steer the discussion according to employee input can help keep the Q&A sessions running as smoothly as possible.  

One of the most important parts of the planning phase is to raise awareness of the meeting’s date and time. Aim to put out a calendar invitation well in advance so as many employees can make it as possible, and ensure you attach all the important details to that invitation, such as a link to the conference call, a link to the interactive features, and a brief agenda outline. 

Finally, conducting a dry run of your all-hands is essentially, especially if you are running it in a virtual setting. Test out the technology, review the agenda several times with all the key players (speakers, moderator, facilitators), and rehearse the content as much as you can. 

Delivering Content and Facilitating Interaction

A strong start to your virtual all-hands meeting will set the tone for the rest of the meeting, so make sure your introduction is as punchy as engaging as possible. Have your moderator welcome attendees and dedicate the first few minutes to ideally an icebreaker that can include all. Remote workers across the country are all facing challenges of loneliness and isolation, so spending some time to socialize before the meeting starts can help put your employees at ease. In addition, encourage your colleagues to turn on their cameras for the meeting. It is likely that many of their virtual calls and meetings have been voice-only, but having employee faces on screen can make the virtual all-hands meeting feel much more personal and interactive. 

When it comes to slide presentation, keep in mind that attending virtual meetings demands much more attention than in-office meetings. They are much more prone to distraction when in their home environment, so don’t overwhelm your audience with a too-heavy presentation or daunting visuals. Simplify your presentation slides, keeping them captivating and easy to look at while the essence of the content is in what you are saying. 

Presenting creative ways to deliver content and inviting employee’s participation is also important. You can conduct live polls, gauging employee satisfaction and crowdsourcing their ideas and opinions, or you can turn company stats into interactive quizzes where colleagues can have a guess at how well the organization is doing. Not only does it transform the more mundane topics into something fun, but it helps re-engage your virtual audience in case they have started to tune out. The Q&A also remains just as critical. It can be difficult for teammates to interrupt the presenter and ask questions on a virtual meeting, so setting up a Q&A tool online is an excellent solution. Attendees will be able to send in their questions as they come up throughout the meeting, and your facilitator can build a discussion around the top questions during the Q&A session.  

In Summary 

Running all-hands meetings regularly can be the key to strengthening your business, and now that you know how to optimize your meetings and yield the most successful results from them, all that’s left to do is get all hands-on deck and start planning for your next one.  

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The Pros and Cons of Paid Time Off 

Offering separate paid time off benefits according to an employee’s reason of absence sounds unnecessarily complicated, but it was the norm for employers not too long ago. Today, however, more and more organizations have adopted the newer, more flexible approach to absence benefits by incorporating a paid time off (PTO) system that encompasses all absence policies into one all-inclusive plan. 

What is Paid Time Off? 

A paid time off policy combines vacation, sick time, and personal time into a single bank for employees to use when they take paid time off from work. In essence, as opposed to having the employer differentiate between various benefits according to the employee’s reason for not being at work, a PTO policy creates a pool of days that the employee uses at their own discretion.  

When an employee needs to take time off from work, regardless of the reason, the PTO policy allows for a certain amount of that time off to be paid hours. That way the employee uses their PTO hours is up to them, whether it be saved for doctor’s appointments, kid’s school conferences, childcare, or sick leave. Other examples of PTO can include maternity/paternity leave, jury duty, holiday pay, or disability leave. The key is that the use of the paid time off is no longer the business of the employer.  

Is Paid Time Off Different from Regular Vacation Time? 

While the terms paid time off and vacation tend to be used interchangeably by employees and employers alike, they are not actually the same thing. PTO describes any time an employee is getting paid while being away from work, meaning it is much more encompassing than “vacation”. Essentially, all vacation is Paid Time Off, but not all Paid Time Off is vacation.  

Protecting the Employee and Employer 

Before implementing a PTO policy in your workplace, there are a few things you will need to do first to ensure the protection of the company’s workload and customer service quality. Requiring employees to request paid time off with ideally one-week prior notice whenever possible is a good practice, unless the employee is truly sick. Aim to establish any other guidelines as needed, including setting parameters for employee sickness, vacation, and personal time, before adopting a firm PTO policy. 

The Pros and Cons of Paid Time Off 

The Benefits of a Paid Time Off Policy 

Well-constructed PTO policies can offer several benefits to employees and organizations alike. By giving employees flexibility to the use of paid time off at their own discretion, managers are not put in the position of having to police their employees’ usage of their benefit, and employees are not put into disclosing what are sometimes very personal situations. Other key benefits include: 

• Paid time off gives the employer some control over unscheduled absences, which can become a serious problem not planned for or scheduled properly. When employees schedule their time off in advance through a PTO system, it assists with work coverage costs and planning. 
• Employees value the flexibility offered to them by a paid time off policy. Rather than having to follow the guidelines of sick leave or vacation leave policies, it provides them the option to use their paid time off for when they most need it. 
• When a company uses a paid time off policy, employees are much more likely to be transparent about their reason for absence. In the past, they may have been less willing to share about why they needed time off from work because they either wanted to preserve their privacy or were concerned about the optics of their absence. With a PTO system in place, employees can make decisions for themselves, cultivating a more transparent employer/employee relationship. 
• Employees and the Human Resources department only must track one bank of paid time off hours, as opposed to having to manage separate tracking systems for vacation, sick, and personal days.  

When a company incorporates a paid time off policy, it is common for them to start seeing much more vacation time booked from their employees, and much less unplanned sick days in scheduling. This benefits employers significantly. Firstly, employers receive much more notice about scheduled vacations, and can plan for work coverage accordingly and in a timely manner. Second, employees who take vacation time are much more likely to return to work feeling more refreshed and productive, which may in turn reduce the over sick time taken. 

The Disadvantages of a Paid Time Off Policy 

While the benefits of paid time off policies are numerous, no work policy is immune to downsides. Some disadvantages of adopting a PTO policy can include: 

• Employers who implement a PTO policy sometimes fall into the trap of giving their employees fewer overall days off than they had previously, and/or new employees start accumulating paid time off days more slowly than longer-term employees. 
• Employees also run the risk of not distinguishing PTO from vacation and begin treating paid time off as vacation time and come to work even when they are sick. It is possible to discourage this practice by optimizing absenteeism management practices, but it is the employer who is responsible for setting the pace and expectations surrounding PTO and modeling the appropriate behaviour for their employees.  
• In some regions, accrued paid time off is required to be paid to the employee upon their last day of work at the company, but unused sick and personal time does not have the same regulations. This runs the risk of employees banking up their unused PTO and costing the organization much more upon their separation than if they were to have banked up regular sick and personal time off.  

Time Away from Work is Beneficial 

Regardless of the vacation, sick, personal, or paid time off policy you implement into your workplace, your primary goal should be to encourage your employees to use it. The benefits of employees taking time off from work are tremendous, and a company culture that supports time off hinges upon its managers leading by example and taking vacation and PTO days themselves. Aim to eliminate the guilt factor that was previously associated from work absences and demonstrate a true interest in how your employees have spent their time off.

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Top 12 Manager Best Practices 

Being a great manager is about much more than simply keeping a group of employees engaged. A great leader is someone who knows how to motivate their team, and who can follow the business management best practices in the right way, driving their organization towards success.  

Business management can be described as the process by which an organization gets its employees to produce the greatest results while leveraging those skills and talents made available to them. While every corporate culture is based upon a different philosophy and driven by a unique set of goals, beliefs, and core values, there are some universal truths about effective management that any manager can employ into their practices to obtain that ideal optimized workforce. By following the 12 manager best practices listed below, any business leader can transform even the most struggling organization into a streamlined system, in which employees are inspired to produce their best work, and processes work in such a way that ensure long-term, sustainable success.  

1. Engage Workers 

An alienated or bored worker will not care about performing their job at all, let alone performing it to their highest ability. The very first step to becoming a great leader is identifying how to engage employees in the company’s vision. Engaged workers are not only more enthusiastic about their efforts and productive in their work, but they also become less passive in how they perform their job. They take more responsibility and accountability for their performance and can also help attract fresh talent to the organization. 

2. Reward Effort 

Recognition of an employee’s effort, and rewards for achievements, makes workers feel much more valued in the organization. While it may seem like an obvious practice to instill into your managerial plan, many business management training programs overlook the positive impact that appreciation can have on a company. Some managers may even feel that being too close and friendly with employees undermines their authority. However, recognition and reward for great work motivates people to work harder and achieve more themselves and helps to build company loyalty.  

A good practice for rewarding effort is to give credit and acknowledgement publicly. If recognition is due for outstanding work, everyone should be made aware that their contributions to the organization will be acknowledged if they show the same level of work ethic.  

3. Be Vulnerable 

 When the leader is open and honest about their sentiments regarding business efforts, employees will also feel comfortable speaking openly and sharing their ideas. Transparency affords increased levels of trust and even respect between a leader and their team members.  

4. Stay Committed 

Distrust within a team drains valuable resources and time, with team members focusing more on avoiding conflict rather than airing their real opinions and working to find a common ground. When distrust is prevalent, it transforms the workplace into a state of permanent ambiguity, meaning clear goals and strategies rarely emerge from group discussions. By staying committed to the organization’s initiative, a manager can foster a work atmosphere where conflict is welcomed, not feared, since differing perspectives can help to shape a clear and robust goal.  

5. Practice Consistency 

Perhaps one of the most important manager best practices, remaining consistent in how you treat employees is critical for maintaining a productive working environment. Effective management relies on having leaders in place who treat all team members with a fair, consistent and equitable approach where zero favouritism applies. 

6. Seek Clarity 

An issue many organizations face is a lack of alignment among managers.  Aiming for alignment in managerial practices is critical and can only be achieved when clarity is at the forefront. Aim to ask, and answer, the following six questions to clearly outline the company’s vision: 

• Why do we exist? 
• How do we behave? 
• What do we do? 
• How will we succeed? 
• What is most important? 
• Who must do what? 

When leaders can develop and share a clear sense of the organization’s vision, values, strategic goals, and delegation of responsibilities, the company can obtain the clear sense of purpose and direction it needs to succeed.  

7. Create Cultural Cohesiveness 

Company culture is one of the biggest driving forces in how well a company operates, and how well-equipped it is for the future of business. It encompasses the shared values of an organization that, with the right level of engagement, can lead to the development of productive and efficient outcomes. A strong manager best practice is to ensure that all new hires are in alignment with those core values and visions, since workers with shared values are much more likely to work well together. Diversity in race, gender, socioeconomic status, and more, is beneficial to an organization, since it increases collective insight. But diversity in company values should be avoided. 

8. Encourage Teamwork 

Cultivating team spirit is extremely beneficial to any organization, and one of the best ways to do so is to introduce frequent opportunities for projects that move away from a department-centered focus. Employees are much more likely to learn and appreciate the importance of collaboration when they are regularly given a the line of sight between the value-add work they perform to that of driving the organization forward. 

9. Focus Team Effort  

Many managers believe that their efforts to focus teams starts and ends with the introductory period, hosting retreats to boost solidarity, and being attentive to new ideas when they first come out. However, it is critical for managers to keep an eye on ongoing team dynamics, ensuring team members don’t get distracted down the line by individual activities that will lead them off track. In order to achieve the best result for the company, there needs to be consistent reassessment and realignment of team goals. Conducting a teamwork fitness survey is a great way to gauge and monitor key elements of team success such as change compatibility, cohesiveness or team meeting skills. 

10. Hold Regular Meetings 

Meetings are one of the most critical components to an organization’s success. It could even be argued that no other action, activity or process is more integral to the creation of a healthy organization than meetings. In order to be fully successful in how you plan and run your meetings, and in order to leverage them in the best way to achieve success, aim to do the following: 

• Hold separate meetings for tactical and strategic business planning. 
• Assess tactical agendas only after teams have reviewed their progress against their goals. 
• Ensure sufficient time is allocated for clarification, debate, and resolution of major issues. 
• Meet occasionally outside the office to review industry changes, as well as anything else significant happening within the company and the team. 

By providing teams with a regular forum to discuss core values, and measure their progress against their goals, members can realign their principles and gain perspective on the best business practices for the future of the company.  

11. Lead by Example 

A manager’s behaviour should always be reflecting how they expect their team to behave. A core manager best practice, but one of the most important, is demonstrating and role modelling the values and expectations you are expecting of your people. If you are on time, your employees will be on time too. If you are consistent, they will be consistent too. As a manager, it is critical to model the ideal behaviour, so your employees will have something to follow and emulate themselves.  

12. Practice Transparency 

The importance of transparency in business goes beyond its legal implications. A transparent business leader is one who inspires trust and respect among team members on the day-to-day, and not just on bigger picture issues. Team members will be much less willing to follow a leader who has lied or kept important information from them, so remaining transparent and honest is critical. Of course, the essentials of good judgement apply as some information can be sensitive in its nature. 

Final Thoughts

In order to succeed in the field of business management, you first need to ensure your own core values align with your organization’s goals. If you are not true to yourself, you cannot expect to have a meaningful impact on the organization you are representing. While there are several manager best practices you should always be incorporating into your leadership efforts, the best and most significant ones are those that focus on fostering authentic connections between yourself, your employees, and the organization.  

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The Difference Between Reward and Recognition 

In order for your employees to feel fully satisfied in their jobs, they will need much more than just a pay check. While offering competitive pay is critical to recruiting the top talent in your industry, it is important to have a program that covers both rewards and recognition if you wish to attract and actually retain high performance employees.  However, many professionals fall into the trap of assuming these two terms are interchangeable. In order to glean the best results from your organization’s employee reward and recognition program, it is important to first de-couple these two terms, and identify their key distinctions.  

What is the Difference Between Reward and Recognition? 

As you develop your reward and recognition program, aim to first thoughtfully consider and understand the key differences between these two areas of employee incentives. Once you have a clear picture of how they differ, both in nature and in practice, you will be able to accurately assess where and when the deployment of each is most appropriate. 

Listed below are the 10 key distinctions you should draw between reward and recognition: 

Creating an Employee Reward and Recognition Program 

Once you have gained a thorough understanding of how rewards and recognition differ in their nature, you can begin crafting an employee reward and recognition program that ensures your response to employee achievements and results is always appropriately directed. The first step is to understand just how the distinctions we have laid out will interact when put into action: 

• Tangible vs. Intangible – an individual can be recognized without being given a reward, but a reward should never be doled out without being coupled with recognition. 
• Transactional vs. Relational – rewards are useful for attracting top talent to your organization, and recognition is mandatory for retaining that talent.  
• Consumed vs. Experienced – carefully balancing how often you reward vs. recognize an employee ensures that the way in which the employee receives compensation for their achievements is appropriate and measured. 
• Transferrable vs. Non-Transferrable – aiming to focus on recognition, and teaming it with reward where appropriate, will help your employees feel valued for their individual contributions. 
• Conditional vs. Unconditional – blending rigidity in rewards, with the flexibility in recognition, and applying them either on their own or in combination over time at your discretion is critical. 
• Expected vs. Unexpected – an individual should never be let down by being deprived of a well-earned reward, but you should also be spontaneous enough in your attitude to be able to celebrate and appreciate your employees each day. 
• Economical vs. Emotional – performance and fixed outcomes of success are important to keeping employees motivated, but it is feelings (that is, satisfaction in being recognized) that rule the retention aspect of the employee experience. 
• Fixed vs. Free-Flowing – fixed rewards allow for employees to have a clear picture of the expected behaviours they should be working towards, but a free-flowing culture of recognition will help keep them on their toes and productive on the everyday level. 
• Impersonal vs. Personal – the impersonal nature of rewards can be remedied by always combining the dealing out of rewards with personal recognition for the employee. 

Now that you have a clear sense of the key differences between the concepts of reward and recognition, and how they may interact when put into action in your program, it is important to understand some general tips for creating and implementing an employee reward and recognition program. Listed below are some of the key best practices you should follow when utilizing your program: 

1. Identify What to Recognize

Outline and map out all of the behaviors and actions you will be looking for from your employees, and ensure everyone in the company has equal opportunities to receive recognition. 

2. Make It Timely

To ensure the effectiveness of the reward or recognition you deal out, you need to act immediately when success is identified. Providing recognition or a simple reward as soon as you notice behavior you want to see repeated helps employees pinpoint what exactly you are looking for, and how they can go about receiving recognition themselves. 

3. Do It Often

Employees crave recognition, so seeking out small and unique ways to regularly recognize their efforts and achievements keeps them satisfied. 

 4. Make it Genuine

Don’t stick to e-mail templates or automated responses when your employees are performing well. A sincere thank you, or a personalized recognition coupled with a reward, will go further. 

 5. Personalize It

As we have already mentioned, personalizing how you go about giving rewards or recognition to your employees is critical. If you are recognizing their achievements, praise them in a way you know the employee will be comfortable with. If the employee is shy and uncomfortable with loud, public recognition, be genuinely thankful and demonstrate your appreciation in a one-on-one discussion. If you are giving out a reward, select something that you know will be meaningful or impactful to that specific employee.  

6. Aim for Collaboration

Including everyone in your employee recognition and reward program incentivizes them to keep up the good work even when you are not looking. Employees love being recognized, but they also enjoy recognizing the work of their peers. Encourage your team to praise one another often, and consider implementing a peer-nomination system into your rewards program. 

7. Make It A Habit

By setting yourself a standard of regular recognition, it is much more likely to get ingrained into the company culture as a whole, and will transform into something every employee wants to be a part of. 

8. Be Transparent

Doling out recognition and rewards is a great tool for demonstrating the type of behaviors you want all employees to exhibit.  

9. Be Fair

Don’t just reward the same rotating roster of your top performers. Keep an eye out for the underdogs of your team, whose work is of high quality but may not be quite as obvious. In addition, never create company rewards that are only achievable by a certain group of employees or certain departments. 

10. Include Remote Workers

Your employees working remotely are just as important as your in-office team members, but they can often feel disconnected from the office. Providing recognition and rewards to them as often as you do your in-person employees, and encouraging employees to engage in recognition with their remote peers, helps to keep them engaged with the wider team. 

11. Be Creative

Your rewards and recognition program does not have to be boring and dry. Have fun with your ideas, finding ways to recognize and reward different groups, departments, and employees in unique ways that apply to their specific accomplishments, wants, and needs. 

12. Separate Recognition and Criticism

Constructive criticism is essential, but when it comes to your reward and recognition program, avoid the “compliment sandwich”. Do not leverage recognition just to soften the blow of harsher criticisms. Feedback is integral, but you should have those discussions separately from your recognition process. 

In Summary 

The term ‘Rewards and Recognition’ are often used interchangeably by professionals, but recognizing their key differences is one of the most important steps to ensuring your employee program keeps your employees feeling satisfied and engaged with their work.  You do not need to be excessive with rewards to keep your employees feeling appreciated. When giving out meaningful recognition, and coupling it with tangible, earned rewards where appropriate, your employees will feel their individual contributions will never go unnoticed by you. 

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What is Strategic Agility?

In a fast-paced business world, being able to adapt to sudden changes in market conditions or customer needs is as important as ever. Regardless of the source of a business disruption, the ability to respond quickly and rework your organization to suit the new environment is a valuable asset for any modern business today. This asset is referred to as strategic agility. 

What Is Strategic Agility? 

Strategic agility refers to a company’s ability to quickly and appropriately respond to, or drive, change, while maintaining flexibility and focus. It is a complicated practice, and it requires a significant amount of work and continuous effort to maintain strong strategic agility. 

At its core, it relies on the intentional efforts from a company’s leaders and managers to design and construct an organizational structure in which information can flow seamlessly throughout the company. The key to adapting quickly is communicating quickly, so an ease in communicative flow throughout all levels of the organization is equally vital. In addition, it requires efforts in teaching employees at all levels to think strategically, keeping one eye on the future of the business while the other remains focused on what needs to get done today. 

Strategic Agility vs. Operational Agility 

The term “strategy” in management and Human Resources is contested territory, and so too is the term “Agile”. Used differently by various practitioners, writers, and thought leaders, there is no one clear sense of strategy that is universally correct. However, there is a clear distinction that can be drawn when it comes to agility in business.  

Oftentimes, strategic agility and operational agility are noted as the two areas in which adaptions to market and business conditions are driven. Operational agility refers to the review of currently existing products to provide a better, faster, and cheaper way for quicker release to customers. Strategic agility, as we have already discussed, refers to the adaption to new market environments / conditions. Meaning, in some case, it involves the creation of entirely new markets, with new products, that will reach customers. 

Operational agility is beneficial, and in some cases, essential to business growth. However, it does not yield significant financial gain for companies. The modern marketplace is one where competitors are quicker than ever in matching their product improvements to existing services. Power in the market has shifted from brands to customers, making it difficult for organizations to monetize the improvements they put out. Amid rampant competition, consumers have a vast array of choices and access to reliable data that informs those choices, meaning they are much more likely to demand that quality improvements be forthcoming at lower cost, or even no cost at all. While operational agility is still critical in some senses, this shift in market dynamics makes it nearly obsolete in efforts to produce higher profits for organizations. 

Laying the Foundation for Strategic Agility 

Simply put, if a company wants to make a lot of money in the modern marketplace, it needs to pursue market-creating innovations. In other words, it needs to pursue strategic agility. Laying a solid foundation for this type of approach to organizational structure requires three key components: 

1. Clarity 

Cultivating strategic agility begins with attaining clarity of what success will look like. Without a clear picture of winning on the vision board, employees and organizations as a whole risk running in several different directions, especially when encountering unexpected changes.  

Imagine someone asks you to describe and define what the end of the next year will look like for business when your company has been successful. Most leaders will probably have an idea of the financial objectives in place, but what else? Employees don’t make moment to moment, or reactionary, decisions based on the organization’s core financial objectives. Defining and describing what success looks like with specificity across as many aspects of the business as you can is critical.  

When you paint a picture of success rooted in clarity, there is little room for interpretation. Everyone in the organization has an aligned understanding of the company’s ideal trajectory, and thus will have the ability to make the best possible decisions day to day and moment to moment, helping the organization reach its destination. Keep in mind that when you communicate the rationale behind the destination, you need to stipulate how It will benefit customers and employees as well. Maintain a vision of success that your employees and clients will understand, making it much easier to keep everyone working on the same page over time. 

2. Focus 

If getting clear on success represents the starting point for strategic agility, it is keeping your people focused on the goal that is the driving force behind getting there. Employees who are responsible for delivering your product or service day in and day out can easily lose sight of the bigger picture the organization is working towards. Helping them remain focused on the goal by constantly communication the organization’s definition of success in several different ways, and with as much specificity as possible, is critical. 

Some examples of practices that will keep your employees focused include: 

• Beginning every meeting by reviewing the company’s top three strategic goals as standing agenda items, and how they will benefit everyone. 
• Posting visual cues or “brain prompts” throughout the office that will remind employees of the destination, and what it looks like when you have arrived at your goal. 
• Ensuring individual employees understand how their jobs and work are contributing to the organization’s efforts in achieving the goals. 
• When changes occur, communicating how the company will still succeed and why. 

3. Connection 

An employee cannot buy into your vision of success if they don’t feel connected to the organization as a whole. Fostering connection begins with having a powerful vision that your people can believe in and feel good about, and also requires giving honest performance feedback on a regular basis. An essential ingredient of high-performing teams is clear, constructive feedback, regardless of employee generation. When feedback is delivered in a timely and constructive manner, it helps keep employees aligned with organizational progress as a whole.  

Strategic Agility as The Next Big Thing in Modern Business 

The rate of change in today’s business market is not going to slow down any time soon. As the world responds to unprecedented circumstances, and as companies adopt newer technologies and inventive management and work practices by the day, making strategic agility a top priority is as important as ever. With it under your belt, you will be able to respond to it, rather than react, and never lose the focus necessary to keep your organization on track to success.  

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Clear Goals Help Remote Workers

By: Tony Kerekes

The post Clear Goals Help Remote Workers appeared first on SpriggHR.

Tips & Guidelines for Giving Effective Employee Feedback

Giving feedback to others in your workplace may seem like a tricky task, but becoming adept at offering both praise and constructive criticism doesn’t have to remain a pain point for you and your employees. Delivering constructive criticism isn’t always comfortable, but it is part of the responsibilities involved in people management, meaning it is unavoidable no matter how difficult it may seem. 

One of the key objectives for any business leader is to yield the most productivity as possible from employees, and this can only be done when those employees are receiving feedback on their work efforts in a timely and helpful manner. The problem is, many leaders today have never received the proper training necessary in giving constructive and helpful feedback, and are thus much more reluctant to deliver any sort of feedback. The key is to recognize feedback not as a negative, but rather an opportunity to provide your employees with the necessary information they need to adjust their performance and improve wherever necessary. 

In a hurry? Take our Tips & Guidelines for Giving Feedback infographic to go!

Tips for Giving Feedback 

Feedback should be designed to be constructive, not corrosive. In order to provide feedback to your employees in a constructive manner that encourages them to improve, consider the following tips and guidelines:

Use a Professional Tone 

Not all employee slip ups will keep you calm and collected, and while a team member’s carelessness or poor judgment may cause you to get upset, delivering that feedback when angry will do nothing to remedy the situation. Before giving feedback, ensure your temper is in check and that you are calm enough to deliver it in a careful and measured way. Employees are much less likely to be open to criticism if the meeting opens with blaming or shouting. 

Focus on the Facts 

While your own frustrations should be acknowledged, the point of feedback is to focus on addressing the problem itself.  

For example, if an employee is consistently missing their deadlines, rather than telling them about how you’re sick of their behaviour, spell out calmly how their actions are negatively impacting the team as a whole. 

Remain critical, but emphasize the facts with specific examples rather than your own feelings. Then, offer action-oriented suggestions to help the employee solve the issue. 

Watch Your Words 

More often than not, your employees are going to know when they have made a major mistake. When communicating about how to best address it, ensure you are not using demoralizing statements that call the employee’s intelligence or capabilities into question. They don’t need any help feeling embarrassed about their error, so the language you use when addressing it needs to be carefully thought out.  

Aim to avoid subjective statements and assessments (e.g. “You’re not showing enough passion about your work”), or sweeping generalizations (e.g. “You never contribute creatively during team brainstorming sessions”). 

Be Direct 

Ignoring or avoiding serious situations or minimizing the impact are easy outs for having difficult conversations with your employees. But, withholding constructive criticism actually harms your underperforming employees even further, since it is depriving them of the key information they could be using to improve in their work.  

When delivering negative feedback, aim to be professional and factual but still candid in what you are saying, stating the specifics in a tactful yet straightforward way. Just as you should avoid being overly harsh and demoralizing, you cannot afford to sugar-coat the harsher truths. 

Make it a Two-Way Conversation 

Feedback sessions do not have to be a lecture-style discussion of an employee’s behaviour. Regardless of the type of feedback you are giving, ensure you are receptive to what the employee has to say as well. Give them the opportunity to explain their perspective of their own actions and behaviours. 

When an employee feels comfortable to openly converse with their leader, they are much more likely to own up to shortcomings and ask for help. In addition, a two-way discussion presents the opportunity for an employee to bring your attention to any legitimate extenuating circumstances you otherwise might not have been aware of. 

Focus on Solutions 

Talking through the issue at hand is important, but the ultimate objective of giving feedback is to ensure that if an issue exists, it is rectified as swiftly as possible. 

Have possible solutions worked out for assisting the individual in their efforts to improve, and discuss them with the employee openly. Whether you need to provide them with additional training, offer more frequent check-ins on their progress and direction, or work out the kinks in a flawed system, do whatever you can to best help the employee get back on track and remedy their issue. 

Balance Criticism with Praise 

A skill any and all leaders need to have is knowing how and when to provide criticism. But this can be a slippery slope for inexperienced or untrained managers, with many running the risk of transforming into leaders who only comment when employees slip up. 

Ensure you are offering kudos for good work consistently, and recognizing both publicly and privately the accomplishments of your employees. This is an excellent way to boost their morale, reinforce positive behavior, and develop a good rapport with your team members that will make the difficult conversations easier to manage. 

At its core, employee feedback is about past behavior, delivered in the present, which has the potential to influence an employee’s future performance. Surprisingly, very little managers have actually received the proper training in giving feedback the right way, though the majority state that they want to improve in how they give feedback. 

Guidelines for Giving Feedback 

We have already discussed several key tips to delivering feedback, both positive and negative. Now, let’s have a look at some more general guidelines that you should keep in mind when planning out your feedback strategy moving forward: 

• Positive feedback can be offered in public and/or private. It is recommended however, that if planning to provide even positive feedback in public, that the employee doesn’t feel uncomfortable – know your audience.  Negative feedback, however, should only be given in private.  
• Feedback needs to be delivered in a timely manner. A best practice is to give it as close as possible to the occurrence, behavior, or issue that you intend to address. 
• Remain clear, thoughtful, and respectful regardless of the nature of the feedback or your personal sentiments about the employee. Ensure everything you say is accurate, specific, and limited only to the behavior you are intending to address and remedy. 
• Limit your feedback to areas that the employee has the ability to change. Providing feedback that is irrelevant or unchangeable will be rejected, and can be detrimental. 
• Use the word “I”, rather than “we”. Say “I observed you…”, rather than “we observed you…”. 
• Remain non-judgmental, and never personalize your feedback. Focus only on the behavior you want to address, and not on the qualities of the person you are giving feedback to. 
• Avoid “over-dumping”. Oftentimes, a receptive employee only needs one behavioral example to recognize the issue and understand where they need to improve. 
• Always identify next steps. A feedback session with no clear action plan is demoralizing, and erodes the opportunity for improvement into a discouraging lecture.  

Take our Tips & Guidelines for Giving Feedback infographic to go!

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40 Meaningful & Effective Self-Appraisal Comments

With the arrival of your company’s performance appraisal season, there also comes an increased focus on self-evaluation and reflection on your own work. Self-appraisals can be tricky but are a critical component to the overall appraisal process as they communicate directly to managers and supervisors how their employees are perceiving their own performance within the organization.  

The ultimate objective of the self-appraisal process is to ensure that the employee and the management team are on the same page regarding the employee’s performance. However, many employees fall into the trap of thinking of the self-appraisal process as an opportunity to widen the scope of evaluations and go overboard when citing their own accomplishments. A good, thorough self-appraisal is one in which you are able to highlight your positives, but also honestly mention your points of weaknesses too. The areas in which you need to improve upon should be accompanied with a clear sense of your own willingness to proactively work on improving them. Simply put, your self-appraisal comments need to be open, honest, and believable. 

Recognizing the appropriate phrases to use when drafting your self-appraisal comments is critical to ensuring they are as effective as you wish them to be. When your self-appraisal comments are strong, your supervisor can better evaluate your performance, opening the door for the coveted promotion you’re after or the raise in your salary you’ve been working towards. 

In order to help you project yourself well in your self-appraisal process, and set yourself up for success down the line, here are some examples of key self-appraisal phrases you can incorporate during the next evaluation season. 

In a hurry? Take these self-appraisal comments to go!

Communication Self-Appraisal Comments 

1. I clearly communicate my expectations and goals to my team members. 

2. I effectively communicate with all levels of our organization by maintaining contact with department heads and corporate meetings consistently. 

3. I tactfully provide difficult feedback and approach sensitive situations with skill and compassion. 

4. I present my ideas to groups of all sizes in a skillful, effective, and professional manner. 

5. I frequently share relevant information and updates with my peers and supervisors so that our team as a whole can benefit and stay on track and informed.  

6. I proactively communicate changes that consider the stakeholders, coworkers, and customers they will affect. 

7. I frequently acknowledge the successes of my peers both publicly and privately and commend them for a job well done. 

Job Performance Self-Appraisal Comments 

8. I take pride in my work and value doing my job to the best of my ability. 

9. I frequently volunteer to participate in projects that extend beyond by job responsibilities. 

10. I have exceeded my performance goal this year/quarter/etc. by [insert specific number]%. 

11. I have decreased my job costs and customer churn rates by [insert specific number]%. 

12. I frequently challenge myself to perform better. 

13. I am happy to answer any questions my peers may have, and often provide guidance on the subject areas I am most skilled in. 

14. I promote a team-oriented work environment by remaining collaborative and seeking out opportunities to work with my peers on projects I need assistance on. 

Customer Experience Self-Appraisal Comments 

15. I effectively handle difficult or hostile customers by communicating with them respectfully and trying my best to accommodate their needs and wishes. 

16. I actively listen to the customer to better understand their point of view. 

17. I go beyond what is required to ensure that are customers are educated and informed on the topics that may concern them. 

18. I have received [insert specific number]% on my customer satisfaction survey this year/quarter/etc. 

19. I am continuously working towards improving the customer experience by strengthening my outreach with key clients and ensuring my follow up strategy is consistent and effective. 

20. I am mindful of my own interactions as a customer outside of my work so I can better understand our customers’ perspective. 

Innovation and Creativity Self-Appraisal Comments 

21. I regularly look to streamline and improve our work processes in new and innovative ways. 

22. I am committed to my professional growth and have taken training courses specific to the skills in which I recognize a need for improvement. 

23. I regularly seek out opportunities to connect and learn from others in my field. 

24. I stay current on developments in our industry and regularly read up on any new innovations or disruptive projects or companies that may be a source of inspiration for our own. 

25. I have a long-term vision for the future of my career and continually take steps toward achieving it. 

26. I learn quickly and am able to adapt to change in an efficient manner. 

27. I value learning and regularly seek out opportunities to learn something new and of value to my work efforts. 

Performance Improvement Self-Appraisal Comments 

28. I understand that because I remain intensely focused on the task at hand, I may appear to be blunt at times towards my colleagues. I am working towards strengthening my interpersonal skills and easing tensions between me and my peers. 

29. I am aware that not all of my peers may be comfortable with my style of communication. My intent and focus is always to get the job done in a timely manner, and with good results, so I will aim to eliminate circumstances in which my coworkers may interpret my actions as a personal attack. 

30. I have been questioned by many regarding my style of work. I believe that I have been able to successfully deliver results despite working in a manner which is different from others. 

31. I am aware that time management is not one of my core strengths, so I will consciously and consistently work towards managing my time better and prioritizing my tasks more efficiently. 

32. While I am comfortable with written communication, I recognize that there is scope for improvement in my verbal communication skills. 

33. I recognize that while I am able to complete projects within the stipulated deadline, this is not enough to contribute to my career growth. I will need to work on my soft skills to view the true progress of my job. 

34. I have realized that I am much more practical than I am creative in how I approach my work. This sometimes hinders me from offering innovating solutions during challenging situations or brainstorming sessions with the team, so I will continue to make a genuine effort to take more positive risks in my job and consider more creative, outside-of-the-box solutions as and when I can. 

35. I realize that I rely a lot on group effort to get my tasks done. However, I am working towards ensuring that I am able to participate equally, or even more, than my team members in group situations to aid my individual working efforts. 

36. I understand the value of communication with management as well as my colleagues, and I am working towards improving the same in order to avoid any instances of miscommunication with either group. 

37. While I am skilled at delivering results on time, I recognize that I sometimes fall short of following up with my key clients. I am working to improve my follow up activity with clients. 

38. I have realized that I am finding myself uncomfortable with dealing with negative feedback from clients. As time goes on, I hope to teach myself to handle such situations better. 

39. I may not be the strongest in customer relations, but I will continue to work towards reducing the instances of negative customer feedback. 

40. I typically have a very positive mindset and struggle with holding difficult conversations that need to take place, which I will aim to work on in the future. 

Get Started with Your Self-Appraisal Process Today 

The self-appraisal process may sometimes seem daunting, but with the right tools and templates, it does not have to be an intimidating process. Self-evaluations are about much more than simply how you are viewing your own performance. It is an opportunity to look at things from another point of view, reflecting on how others may be perceiving your actions and recognizing the areas that need improvement. 

A great way to collect this type of performance feedback is through the use of SpriggHR’s 360-Degree Feedback Tool, which allows you to request feedback from anyone within your company at any time. Feedback can be given and received anonymously or with full transparency, and templates and suggested action verbs are provided to help you write stronger self-evaluations, make the improvements necessary in your work efforts, and strengthen the relationships you have with your peers and superiors. 

If you’re looking for appraisal comments suited for others, check out this article!

Take these self-appraisal comments to go!

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The Top HR Challenges to Overcome in 2020

Managing people has never been an easy task, but the digital age and this year’s unprecedented circumstances has undoubtedly complicated this effort extensively. Human Resource management in 2020 has gained even more complexity, with its professionals having to face many unique challenges. However, spending the time, money, and effort to identify and overcome these key HR challenges is still resources well spent, since one of the greatest assets your company can boast is your employees. 

What are HR Challenges? 

Regardless of whether you are a small company or a much larger enterprise, you are likely to encounter some amount of challenges when it comes to managing your people. HR challenges emerge every year in response to changes in the economy, political climate, and social context and circumstances. Recently, a renowned focus has been placed on issues such as minimum wage increases, workplace wellness and safety, violence in the workplace, and updating HR policies on substance use.  In 2020 especially, Human Resource departments are facing even newer, and more unfamiliar, challenges to tackle and manage. 

HR management encompasses the ability of your organization to identify, understand and remedy the needs of your employees – an ability that will ultimately impact how your business competes for talent, both now and in the future. The first step to curating your workplace culture and business values to best suit the needs of your employees, while maintaining productivity and success, is to recognize the key modern HR challenges business owners and HR managers are dealing with in today’s workplace.  

The Top 7 HR Challenges in 2020 & How to Best Deal With Them 

1. Attracting Top Talent 

Not a new HR effort by any means, the attraction and retention of top talent has always been a focus for any business seeking sustainably high results. However, in 2020, attraction and retention require more discernment, time, and work than ever, making it one of the most important, and arguably daunting, tasks of Human Rresources altogether. 

In order to attract the right individuals for your organization, you first need to have a clear understanding of the requirements of the job and the objectives of the company. But as roles and expectations are continuously changing in the modern workplace, modifying your recruitment strategy to your shifting organizational culture can be difficult. A good starting point to grappling with this challenge in 2020 is to first examine how and where your company is marketing its vacancies. Identify the platforms and mediums your target talent is most likely to be frequenting, focusing most of your advertisements there. The preferred platforms will depend largely on your target talent’s skills, industry, and job level, so advertising in the spaces where candidates with those target characteristics will see it will save you a lot of time in the screening stage. 

Once you have gathered a pool of potential candidates from your advertisement efforts, it is now time to screen them. Rather than sticking by the traditional screening method of assessing how well the candidate is fit for the job, it is more critical than ever to focus instead on how well they will fit into the organization. Generate interview questions that gauge their willingness to learn, their readiness for taking on challenges, and their comfort level with change and adaption to the current shifting nature of work itself. By focusing on these essential qualities, you are much more likely to create a team of employees who can remain responsive and comfortable with change, even as organizational needs transform and shift over time. Remaining vigilant to the future of your company, rather than assessing they are a good fit today, is critical to overcoming this HR challenge. 

2. Embracing Change  

Aligning with organizational change is essential, affecting every dimension of the workplace from the working environment, to the nature of competition, to customer interactions. However, whether the change is managerial, structural, procedural, or technological, it is likely to invoke at least some amount of discomfort amongst your employees. Especially today, when so many organizations are forced to change in ways they never have before to accommodate the effects of the pandemic on business, the feeling of uncertainty that change evokes can bring about severe levels of anxiety amongst your team. 

Human Resource departments are typically tasked with managing employee morale, happiness, and cooperation through periods of change.  They now need to be consistently upskilling team members, so they are better prepared to meet the constantly changing needs of the business.  

Grappling with this HR challenge is particularly challenging and will depend largely on the nature of change occurring for your business. While many companies are encountering relatively similar demands for change simply based on the global situation, the ways in which your HR department chooses to best prepare your team members will vary. A good starting point for organizations is to simply aim to communicate frequently and transparently before, during, and after periods of change. Provide significant warning and notice of changes that will be coming and equip employees with the skills and competencies they will need to respond to and overcome it.  

3. Developing Leaders 

According to a 2018 survey, employees with poor relationships with their direct managers are four times more likely to separate from their company than employees who feel their leader is competent and skilled. 

Now more than ever, employees look to their managers as a source of inspiration and motivation. But this can be potentially problematic if those leaders-in-the-making stick around long enough to become leaders. And, in an increasingly millennial-heavy workforce, companies are seeing higher turnover rates from potential leaders than ever. This is what makes leadership development one of the largest HR challenges being faced today. 

How you actually go about responding to this challenge will vary, but at its core, retention is largely linked to motivation. Motivating your employees to stay by providing training that aligns with a clear career path is critical, since it demonstrates to your talented employees that you truly value them, recognize their potential for leadership growth, and are willing to actively invest in that growth.  

4. Fostering a Culture of Continuous Learning 

In today’s workplace, more and more employees are choosing to leave their jobs when there is a distinct lack of development opportunities being offered to them. In fact, offering career training and development programs would keep up to 86% of millennials from leaving their current position, according to this study. Essentially, learning and development opportunities are a critical recruitment tactic for attracting and keeping your team members stimulated, engaged, and loyal to your company. 

But, this hinges on a few key points. Training and development programs will only keep your employees engaged and loyal if it includes engaging content and is available in formats that allow for flexible learning styles. Gone are the days when training was a one-and-done, lecture-style process. Instead, companies that wish to remain competitive need to offer continuous training opportunities. 

But to the modern employee, this may make burnout or boredom all-the-more present. Addressing this HR challenge hinges on your ability to leverage the tools available to you. A great example is to implement eLearning options, or installing a Learning Management System into your company’s bank of resources. With online learning options available to your employees, they can complete their development opportunities from anywhere, and at any time. In addition, the unique features that online learning systems offer are much more likely to keep employees engaged in their training from start to finish. They will appreciate the flexibility of smaller chunks of learning and leverage them at times that are most convenient to them, which generally yields the most effective learning. 

5. Managing Diversity 

Globalization and diversification are affecting business everywhere. Not only are customer reaches extended past the traditional Head Offices, but talent can now be sourced from across oceans and borders.  

However, diversity in the workplace come with a few HR challenges, including managing diverse cultures in localized teams. While adhering to local policies and procedures, the Human Resources department’s principle goal should always be to foster a workplace environment that is comfortable, welcoming, and free of conflict. Implementing cultural awareness programs can be helpful in making employees aware of the benefits of a diverse workplace, drawing attention to the better ideas and innovations a diverse team yields, and the wider customer reach attainable for a diverse business. Another helpful tool for managing diversity in the workplace are team building activities, which can assist in integrating employees of different cultures and uniting them towards a collective business objective.  

6. Monitoring Health and Safety 

Keeping in line with health and safety standards have always been one of the most obvious HR challenges faced by businesses globally. Not only are these concerns governed by regional labor laws, they are also incredibly important to overall employee wellbeing, an area under increased focus as of late. 

In 2020, health in the workplace is about much more than just hygiene and safety. Higher demands and arduous workloads can cause the psychological well-being of your employees to deteriorate or lead to employee burnout altogether. Periods of stress are to be expected, and some employees may even produce their best work under times of healthy pressure, but high levels of stress are simply damaging over long periods of time. 

In response to the pandemic, employee stress levels are resting at an even higher rate than usual. This means being receptive to their individual health during this time and remaining aware of the need for appropriate levels of organizational lenience, is as critical as ever. Keeping a close eye on escalating workloads and stress levels, and checking in with your employees regularly, is a good way to overcome this HR challenge. An open-door policy where employees can freely discuss their anxiety, issues with their working hours, and any unfair expectations with you is critical.  

7. Creating a Quality Employee Experience 

High turnover rates in fast-paced, constantly changing companies are relatively common. While you may be extremely skilled in hiring the right people, it is keeping them around that becomes the next obstacle, and one of the largest and most persistent HR challenges professionals must overcome. 

When employees are satisfied with their role, responsibilities, workplace, and peers, they are far less likely to consider seeking employment elsewhere. In a 2018 Job Seeker study, over one third of job seekers reported leaving a job within 90 days of their employment. 43% stated that their day-to-day role wasn’t what they thought it would be, 34% reported that they were driven away by a bad experience, 32% cited company culture, and 11% said they had signed onto a new job but later changed their minds. 

While a strong recruitment process, and appropriately directed vacancy marketing, is critical, employers of today need to place the same level of focus on retaining that top talent. This can be done by focusing on fostering an employee experience that is above that of your competition. Offer engaging online training opportunities, benefits for gym facility access, flexible working time, remote work arrangements (though many organizations have been forced into this practice regardless), or other incentives you feel would best keep your employees content in their working environment. The best way to combat this HR challenge is to create a culture that solicits the opinions of their employees and that responds, by building sustainable programs and initiatives that both address and support those needs.  

Face Today’s HR Challenges with An Open Mind 

The world is seeing significant changes left and right, and the way we do business is changing along with it. Being able to adapt to those changes, however unfamiliar or daunting, is critical for sustainable business success. Above all, the biggest HR challenge professionals face is identifying and understanding the corporate landscape of the future. As industries and technologies continue to evolve, as new generations enter the workforce, as globalization increases competition, and as the nature of work responds and adapts to environmental influences, it will be Human Resources that will strengthen an organization’s key requirement: its people. 

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Building an Effective Corporate Communication Strategy

Communication issues in businesses are not an uncommon problem. For US businesses alone, Inadequate communication to and between employees can cost up to $4 billion annually. The cost of poor communication may be high, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t effective strategies you can implement into your corporation to reduce its risk. By beginning each project with a clear understanding of what your Corporate Communication Strategy is, you can integrate effective time management into your businesses processes seamlessly.  

What Is A Corporate Communication Strategy? 

A Corporate Communication Strategy is the framework used by organizations to plan out communication with employees, customers, suppliers, and investors. When leveraged properly, a Corporate Communication Strategy can be the key to better understanding your company and enhancing its reputation with the people whose attitudes and actions influence your success the most.  

Building a Corporate Communication Strategy 

When it comes to constructing your own Corporate Communication Strategy, there is no in-depth one-size-fits-all solution. While you can probably find countless quick-fixes on the internet, creating an effective strategy is not a simple process. If you want your CCS to best suit your organization, and address and solve the communication issues unique to your business, you will need to invest research and time into the process. 

A Step-by-Step Guide to Developing Your Core Strategy 

Regardless of your industry, there are several aspects that remain universal in core corporate communication strategies. Generally speaking, it comes in three phases: pre-drafting information and research, formulating the strategy, and then examining examples of other communication strategies for further inspiration. This process can be broken down as follows to help you construct your core Corporate Communication Strategy: 

1. Identify and Prioritize Your Executives’ Key Goals

Aim to first understand what each of your business executives sees for the future of the company, and what areas they are truly invested in. In order to collect this information, one of the most useful methods is to conduct individual interviews with as many of your top-level management employees as possible. In the interviews, ask them to clearly outline their top priorities for the upcoming year, and ensure everyone agrees on what message they want to put out for the company. 

2. Conduct In-Depth Employee Surveys

Your employee insight doesn’t stop at high-level management. Employees are at the forefront of your business and are the both the backbone and driving forces for your organization. Understanding how your own employees perceive your company and brand is critical to understanding how others perceive it as well. This is how brand ambassadors come to be – while you construct your Corporate Communication Strategy, you need to ensure their voices are heard. How they respond will help you uncover the best way to go about communicating with your team as a whole. Leverage employee surveys to get them involved in the process and gain valuable feedback and insight into what’s working, and what isn’t. 

3. Research Your Stakeholders’ Input

Stakeholders are one of the most vital parts of your organization, so if you notice that they are communicating something that isn’t confident for the success of your business, you need to adjust your communications strategy to address and fix that perception as quickly as possible. Communicating with stakeholders, shareholders, and investors in a way that is most effective for their own interests in critical for sustaining success and alignment with long-term plans.  

4. Review Your Customers’ Comments

The insight your customers have to offer when it comes to their perception of how your organization is delivering on its promises should not be overlooked. Leverage the countless online, and often free, measurement tools to not only take advantage of social researching methods, but also to learn how to start conversations that will get consumers and potential clients talking about your brand in a positive light. 

4. Include Your Suppliers in Your Research

Suppliers and partners that work closely with your brand can also be great resources for gathering useful information about your strategic corporate communication strategy. Ideally, your suppliers and partners should firmly believe that affiliating themselves with your business is beneficial for their business as well. If this is the case, take note of what it is they say they enjoy most about working with your company. Utilize that feedback not only to add structure to your partner relationships, but also to help strengthen your corporate communication strategy. 

Best Practices for An Effective Corporate Communication Strategy 

Conducting the needed research and interviewing processes is critical to cultivating a successful and effective Corporate Communication Strategy for your business. By gaining valuable insight into how your employees, executives, suppliers, and stakeholders perceive your company, and what it is they prefer when it comes to communication, you will understand what it is your CCS needs to set out to accomplish. Once you have a clear understanding of where you should be aiming, and also how your new strategy will fit into the broader framework of your organization, you need to begin setting up an essential roadmap for its implementation. 

However, before you can begin assessing the key diagnosis and guiding policies for your Corporate Communication Strategy, you first need to understand how it is your company will arrive at those ideal concepts. Consider the following tips while drafting your strategy: 

Look at other corporate communication strategies from successful businesses.

Especially if you are new to the field of communications strategies, taking examples from successful businesses can be extremely beneficial. By looking at communication strategies that have worked extremely well for others, you can get inspired yourself, or even use their strategy as a starting template or jumping off point for your own planning. It is important to keep in mind that communication issues, and hence the strategies put in place to address those issues, will be unique to specific companies. Using a carbon copy of another company’s successful strategy will not necessarily work for your own, and additional research will need to be done to ensure its success for your business.  

Identify your key metrics so you can track the best outcome for your strategy.

Your Corporate Communication Strategy will need to be analyzed for success throughout its use, so it is important to first father the basic key metrics that will be able to show you if it is working the way it should. In addition, statistics gathered from your corporate communications can also show you if your employees are actually using the communication tools being provided. If they are, you will be able to identify how they are using the tools, meaning you can pick apart your strategy and identify the aspects and areas that may need more strategic attention.  

Set intuitive and realistic goals and timelines.

By setting goals for your company that make sense for your objectives and are also realistic in scope and expectation, you will be able to properly estimate the level of difficulty and projected time investment that will be required to integrate and establish your new Corporate Communication Strategy. With a clear picture of what will be required, you can plot out more efficient and worthwhile steps towards updating your strategy, leaning on the metrics you have gathered to identify the areas that will make the quickest impact through strategic change. 

Keep in mind that any and all timelines set should be effective. A good way to accomplish this is to ask yourself questions that allow you to identify the information or data that is too excessive or unnecessary for business. Some examples of questions are:

• What do I want our Corporate Communication Strategy to do for business? 
• Which areas are working efficiently and why, and what areas need immediate improvement? 
• How quickly do I want to be able to reach my business goals for the company? 
• Which communication tools, platforms, and existing strategies are available, given the organization’s size, needs, and goals for what employees should be accomplishing? 

Regardless of your answers to these questions, they should aim to provide clarity into what your Corporate Communication Strategy is setting out to accomplish for your business.  

Use collaboration tools.

Juggling several projects within a team can become complicated way too quickly. Often, organizations find strictly email communications between a large amount of team members to be ineffective in project completion. This is why it can be extremely beneficial to introduce collaboration tools that are useful and effective for project and team management. SpriggHR’s SpriggBoard is a great example of a streamlined collaboration tool you can implement into your strategy. While primarily utilized by Boards, it centralizes and manages all team tasks in one location, safely and securely organizing documents that need to be circulated throughout the team. Meeting agendas can be prepared and distributed, and Critical Paths and Action Plans for events can be shared instantly. By integrating real-time communication, it also eliminates the need for repetitive external email communications between your team members, reducing the time lost to sifting through email threads and allowing your team to focus on project development. 

Actively participate in your teams.

While this practice is easier for smaller organizations where all team members know one another personally, larger companies can stand to benefit from this strategy as well. Part of your Corporate Communication Strategy should include your responsibility to communicate effectively with everyone in your company, and the best way to achieve the success rates you are aiming for is to be a part of the team yourself. Employees are much less likely to follow a leader locked away in an ivory tower, and by avoiding your employees and not engaging in rapport with them, your chances of effective communication dwindle rapidly. Aim to understand how your colleagues communicate with one another and make attempts to adapt to that preferred style of communication so you can reach them better. It is possible to maintain your authority amongst your employees and still communicate with your company at the same time.  

Align your Corporate Communication Strategy to company goals and metrics.

When approaching your Corporate Communication Strategy, you need to ensure its implementation aligns well with your existing business goals. Target your communications to foundational employees, leveraging target audiences, managers, and key communicators. This will allow you to facilitate more thorough and engaging employee communications within your company. Similarly, implementing metrics and analytics into your corporate communication strategy that align with your organizational foundations is critical to evaluating the success of your strategy altogether. Methods such as employee surveys are useful, and should be included somewhere in your strategy, but your research should not rely only on them. 

Aim for a company culture of communication.

If you want to improve corporate communications within your business, you first need to set out to create a culture of communication throughout the entirety of your company. This involves committing to transparency at the Executive level and introduce systems and practices that will support continuous and open dialogue between employees and their management teams. Consistent dialogue and conversation can be transformative for your company culture and can produce tremendous financial results for business. When a workforce communicates effectively with one another, they produce better output, and improve the company overall. 

In Summary 

Constructing a Corporate Communication Strategy that is right for your business does not have to be an impossible process. While it does require an investment of research, time, and thorough planning, once you have a complete understanding of where you strategy sits now, you can focus on how to scale your new strategy in the right ways to yield to greatest benefits from your communication efforts.  

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