Entries categorized as ‘Trends’
Economic uncertainty seems to remain in the air, but it’s also clear that the job picture must be improving, at least in the macro, from some recent things I’ve been reading on certain career-focused Web sites.
This recent post from Career Builder advises companies how to attract and win over ideal job candidates. The list includes lots of perks that range widely:
- Offering a healthy work/life balance
- Having flexible or alternative work schedules
- Corporate volunteering groups and efforts
- Cross-training opportunities
- A “Green” facility
- Tuition reimbursement
- Health benefits for an employee and his/her family
- Casual dress
- Dogs in the office
- Employee trips
- Candy at the reception desk
- Free yoga
- In-house massage
- Learning opportunities
- Fun contests to promote recognition
- 15 days off during the holiday season
- Profit sharing
Missing from this list, arguably, is the key strategy of engaging current employees and offering them a tangible system that helps them set, achieve and celebrate goals. Employees under your roof now are your greatest asset, and best advertising tool to boost your ranks with top-performing people. Best to start the year right by setting a policy and agenda toward employee engagement for a sustainable organization.
As discussed in this recent post from Jo Confino, executive at the London-based Guardian, employee engagement is not really rocket science, but more a matter of communication. Says Jo:
“We are delighted that our most recent employee survey has shown that our staff engagement programme has led to a dramatic uplift in the scores on sustainability, compared with the same survey the previous year.”
According to Career Builder, the job forecast for the upcoming period is improving. It’s probably a good time to shore up employee engagement to build a truly sustainable and productive workforce.
Categories: Thank You Power · Trends
Tagged: Employee engagement, employee rewards, job picture, Sustainable workforce
In case you’re wondering about the power of Thank You and appreciation in the workplace, consider the loads of information being shared on creating workplace happiness and the importance of this concept in achieving productivity.
Peter Warr and Guy Capperto’s new book “The Joy of Work?” is among the work being presented on this hot topic. We spend one quarter of our lives at work, so it’s important to make the best of it, says Warr, emeritus professor a the UK-based Institute of Work Psychology. It’s important, Warr explains in a New York Times article, to focus on job satisfaction or finding meaning in your work, describing nine necessary elements of happiness in work and life. These include: having some sense of empowerment, using and expanding your skills.
There’s more:
- Consultant and author Alexander Kjerulf (self-dubbed Chief Happiness Officer) offers 10 reasons happiness at work is the top productivity booster. Among the benefits of workplace happiness Kjerulf cites: less complaining, more energy, higher optimism, increased motivation and fewer sick days.
- Performance Coach Arvind Devalia chimes in with his 12 steps to workplace happiness. He cites a UK survey that found that two out of three people are dissatisfied with thier jobs and encourages workers to “See your work as a game. Life is meant to be fun and if you are going to spend a third of it at work, you might as well enjoy the game.”
This offers more proof that employees, and companies, gain from thankfulness and appreciation.
Rick Kiley is President of gThankYou, LLC, based in Madison, WI. gThankYou® Certificates of Gratitude™ are one way savvy companies demonstrate commitment to valued employees. The company is best known for its Turkey Gift Certificates, Ham Gift Certificates, and Grocery Gift Cards.
Categories: Showing Gratitude to Employees · Thank You Power · Trends
Tagged: Alexander Kjerulf, gratitude at work, Gretchen Rubin, Guy Capperto, Institute of Work, new york times, Peter Warr
The emails just kept coming from our local community center, which usually collects food, assembles and distributes 1,000 plus Thanksgiving Baskets a year to needy area families. Last weekend, they were still shy a few items – more like hundreds of tin roasting pans and boxed pie crust mix. This year, demand was higher and more food needed.
It hit home. People this year and are in need of basics. Being able to provide a Turkey Dinner with all the fixings is a real gift. That’s why today I’m thankful for generosity that has filled family’s tables across the country this Thanksgiving. A special Thank You to those who use ingenuity to get Turkeys on tables this year, like one gThankYou customer that used employee cash donations to purchase gThankYou Turkey Gift Certificates for its food drive benefiting families of a local school.
Writes Wendy Stane, Star-Telegram Special Events Coordinator, 
“…employees’ generosity in cash donations far exceeded previous year’s contributions. These turkey certificates will go to all families in need who submitted an application for assistance compliments of YOU, the Star-Telegram employees. Thank you! In the past, actual food donations required a bob tail truck loaded down and several volunteers to load and unload. With fewer resources this year, we were still able to provide 80 families with a turkey certificate and 31 with a complete dinner kit.”
The certificates were a big hit, according to this from Cynthia Monsevalles, a counselor at Hubbard Heights Elementary:
“The Turkey Certificates to be redeemed at any store were a great idea. Every family got one. Thanks. Through our PTO, a special teacher fund and Star-Telegram we were also able to provide a food box for every family.”
The story is the same, I suspect, most every place. When times are tough, people take the opportunity to shine with acts of gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at gThankYou!
Lynn Welch is a contributor to gThankYou, LLC, based in Madison, WI. gThankYou® Certificates of Gratitude™ are one way savvy companies recognize employees’ great work at Holiday Time. The company is best known for its Turkey Gift Certificates, Ham Gift Certificates, and Grocery Gift Cards.
Categories: Gratitude · Thank You · Trends
Tagged: great ways to say Thank You, Thanksgiving, the art of "thank you"
It’s rare to gain insight to employee happiness in the workplace.
Australian psychologist Timothy Sharp, of the Happiness Institute recently asked 50 people what they consider to be the top three things that contributed to happiness at work. Their answers provide very valuable information to HR managers.
While I won’t rehash all five things Sharp outlines as steps to happiness at work, number three in particular struck me as relevant: Give Thanks
Says Sharp:
“Employees want to be valued as members of a team and organization. But they also want to be told, frequently and appropriately, that they are valued, as people. They want to be thanked and appreciated for their accomplishments. When managers and colleagues openly congratulate employees for their wins or efforts, it makes everyone happier.”
Sharp explains that this response is consistent with a great deal of research into what he terms the “social and emotional benefits of gratitude.” University of California-Davis psychologist Robert Emmons discusses this concept in his book, Thanks!.
He explains gratitude as a way of life, and provides tips on how to practice it in our everyday lives arguing that it enhances our sense of self-worth, while at the same time strengthening social ties. Emmons continues his study of expressing thanks, which he calls the “forgotten factor” in happiness research, saying that it increases the happiness of both giver and receiver.
Sounds like required reading for anyone interested in boosting workplace happiness…and maybe the rest of your life, too.
Rick Kiley is President of gThankYou, LLC, based in Madison, WI. gThankYou® Certificates of Gratitude™ are one way savvy companies demonstrate commitment to valued employees. The company is best known for its Turkey Gift Certificates, Ham Gift Certificates, and Grocery Gift Cards.
Categories: Gratitude Research · Thank You Power · Trends
Tagged: gratitude at work, Happiness Institute, Robert Emmons, Timothy Sharp
Thankfulness has been said to be a key component in happiness and an important tool to up your satisfaction with life – and work.
Thanks to the positive psychology gurus at the University of Pennsylvania, you can measure your level of gratitude. In six simple questions, Dr. Martin Seligman – often credited as the father of positive psychology – offers a tool to test your thanks. (An easy registration is required for this quiz.)
Thanks is key to happiness.
In his own words, Seligman says gratitude amplifies good memories of the past. He offers an exercise in expressing gratitude. Think of it as a way to throw out bad memories to make room for the good.
How does this apply to the workplace? Writing on happiness on the job in her HarvardBusiness.org blog, London-based executive coach Gill Corkindale explains it this way:
“It all comes down to choice, and this is where I believe happiness lies. In choosing — as far as you are able — what you want to do and how you will do it. While not all of us can choose our work and colleagues, we can all choose how we approach things — with an open, optimistic, and positive outlook or with a frustrated, irritated one. To this end, I suggest you look at the work of positive psychologists such as Martin Seligman and Tal Ben-Shahar, whose course on happiness at Harvard has been inspirational for many students.”
It’s important, today more than ever, to recognize the importance of tools like gratitude to amplify the happiness we all have in our work. This is happening in the most unlikely of places. In England, the British government has appointed economist Richard Layard to the post of “Happiness Czar” to bolster the happiness of its citizens. It’s certainly worthwhile, in our own lives, our own work, and our own organizations, to look at how to be thankful and boost our own happiness quotient.
Categories: Gratitude Research · Thank You Power · Trends
Tagged: gratitude at work, harvard business school, Martin Seligman, Richard Layard, Tal Ben-Shahar
There was a campaign this summer that encouraged companies to plan a recess period at work as a way of thanking and engaging employees. Here’s more about the program:
“It has been proven that breaks are essential for satisfaction. But what does this mean to an employer? Well according to Rich DiGirolamo, Founder of Recess At Work Day, it’s simple……..Breaks lead to satisfaction; and satisfaction easily transfers to increase morale, reduced employee stress, more engaged and healthier employees; ultimately having a positive impact on productivity, absenteeism and profits.
Now in its 6th year; Recess At Work Day is the perfect complement to any Health and Wellness or Employee Engagement Initiative.”
This initiative hits a couple of HR goals, covering both praise and motivation as well as the continued movement toward corporate wellness programs and team building.
How can a game of Dodgeball provide engagement? Consider this from Dale Sweetnam, an Army public affairs specialist who worked at Google’s office in Washington, D.C as part of a training program. While there, Google put on a “Recess at Work” day that included “square pizzas, chicken nuggets, juice boxes, four square and dodgeball.”
“I can’t remember ever having that much fun at work. The whole office got into it. A computer and speakers were set up on the side of the room and a projector displayed YouTube Michael Jackson videos while we pelted each other with dodgeballs. The event was a huge success. I really felt like it was recess. I was still attending recesses in grade school when Michael Jackson came out with “Bad” and it had probably been that long since I’d last played dodgeball. It was a blast. The event led straight into the weekend. As far as I’m concerned, weekends don’t start out much better than that.”
There seems to be a mini movement toward this idea of corporate recess as a reward. There *are* lots of creative ways to say “Thanks” and engage employees.
Stay tuned!
Rick Kiley is President of gThankYou, LLC, based in Madison, WI. gThankYou® Certificates of Gratitude™ are one way savvy companies recognize employees’ great work at Holiday Time. The company is best known for its Turkey Gift Certificates, Ham Gift Certificates, and Grocery Gift Cards.
Categories: Fun with Gratitude · Gratitude · Management & Leadership · Showing Gratitude to Employees · The Art of Thank You · Trends
Tagged: Google, Recess At Work
This whole idea of using rewards to strengthen relationships with employees is nothing new. But employers are continually inventing new ways to implement this form of relationship marketing all the time to keep customers and – more and more – employees engaged and coming back – or in the case of great workers sticking around.
Back in the day, engaging employees used to mean providing nice perks. I think it started with dress-down Fridays and pizza lunches bought by executives as a fun way to end the week. When the economy was chugging along at a breakneck pace, the stakes were raised. Companies felt compelled to offer free food every day, ping-pong and foosball tables and even, in at least one instance I know about, build elaborate facilities with a full-scale gym with free fitness classes, weight room, an indoor track and Olympic-size swimming pool!
Now that most companies are looking for ways to both trim costs and keep valuable employees, the focus has changed again.
Now, engagement is more about making employees feel valued when a big bonus and annual raise is out of reach and economic jitters are widespread.
There’s a new meaning to value proposition for employees in corporations. This new value proposition bears out in study after study. Right Management, the talent and career management expert arm of Milwaukee-based Manpower Inc., found in a survey of company leaders and HR professionals earlier this year that employee engagement is the most important practice to reach goals in this economy.
“Leaders must manage this situation very skillfully or they are likely to see those remaining either start looking for another job, disengage from the company attitudinally, or simply ‘quit and stay’ while waiting until the air clears,” explains Right CEO Owen Sullivan.
Yikes! Start looking? Disengage? Stay-and-quit? Just when we think it’s all about customers-customer-customers, the experts come along and tell us our best employees are in danger of apathy!
How do you engage now? Sullivan advises leaders to:
- Spend time with employee and executives (what management guru Tom Peters refers to as “the talent”);
- Answer their questions to the best of your ability;
- And, most importantly, continually reinforce each employee’s value to the company.
This isn’t a difficult as it sounds, simple measures work in reinforcing employee value.
They key is to keep engagement and value at the top of mind each and every day.
Rick Kiley is Presidnet of gThankYou, LLC, based in Madison, WI. gThankYou® Certificates of Gratitude™ are one way savvy companies demonstrate commitment to valued employees. The company is best known for its Turkey Gift Certificates, Ham Gift Certificates, and Grocery Gift Cards.
Categories: Management & Leadership · Trends
Tagged: engagement, Manpower, Right Management
WorldatWork is a leading human resources professional association with more than 30,000 members worldwide. WaW sees itself as the “Total Rewards Association”, and draws the the premier companies and practitioners in this realm to its annual Total Rewards Conference, held recently in Seattle.
One of the really fascinating presentations in Seattle earlier this month in Seattle revealed the results of a new study on reward programs by Hay Group and WorldatWork. The study: “Reward Next Practices: The future of reward programs” finds that in the next two to three years 57% of firms plan to increase focus on employee engagement in measuring reward programs. Also, 64 percent will increase focus on the “motivational value of reward programs” in the future.
Here’s what Tom McMullen, U.S. Reward Practice Leader for Hay Group says about these results: “The global downturn has prompted organizations worldwide to shift to an increased focus on how to engage and motivate employees. However, during times when budgets are tight, maintaining an engaged workforce is more difficult than ever. When times are tough, employers are looking for ways to improve engagement – and it’s essential they remember the motivational power of intangible rewards, the role of the line manager in establishing a great work climate and the importance of communicating effectively with employees.”
The study has stirred up commentary from HR bloggers, some of whom question how to go about measuring effective engagement and rewards. In Compensation Force, Ann Bares calls study findings “an interesting piece of news” calling for “some element of balance in our reward metrics – financial versus non-financial, lag versus lead.”
In his Strategic HCM Blog, John Ingham says it’s essential to be clear about intended outcomes first when measuring a reward program.
How are rewards currently measured? The study of 763 diverse companies in 66 countries found that reward program performance metrics weigh heavy on financial performance (71%) using employee engagement (40%) to a lesser extent. In the future, more companies report they plan to focus more on engagement.
Other key findings:
- Almost half, 44 percent, plan to increase their future focus on using reward to reinforce a culture of creativity and innovation.
- Two thirds, 67 percent, will focus more on improving the ability of line managers to effectively manage the overall pay-for-performance relationship with employees, and on the role of line managers in communicating total rewards to employees.
- Key components of the reward programs of the future will include leveraging important non-financial rewards including career and development opportunities, improving work climate and non-financial recognition.
gThankYou® Certificates of Gratitude™, when given as employee gifts, are a way savvy Human Resource Executives help their company’s say “Thank You” to colleagues. gThankYou, LLC is based in Madison, Wisconsin. The company is best known for its Ham Gift Certificates, Turkey Gift Certificates and Grocery Gift Cards.
Categories: Gratitude Research · Management & Leadership · Trends
Tagged: Ann Bares, employee rewards, Hay Group, John Ingham, Tom McMullen, WorldatWork
Every day there’s a reason to celebrate. There are big ones and small ones. Official celebrations and casual observances.
Today’s celebration is all about the environment as we mark the 39th Earth Day.
As more companies find it’s good business to adopt sustainable practices, Earth Day has come to be a day of celebration at work, too.
Take, for example, clothier Gap Inc, which has activities throughout the week to mark Earth Day. With the theme, “What is your Re:Solution?” Events at the company include a Green Festival and Take a Child to Work Day.
The Re:Solution campaign is part of the San Francisco-based company’s overall environmental commitment, according to the company which notes, “we believe that reducing our impact on the environment can also result in positive business benefits.”
Writing in Grist.com this week, Len Sauers of Procter & Gamble urges companies to celebrate Earth Day with employees, communities, and leading companies what green accomplishments achieved this year with an eye toward planning for the future.
“From a corporate perspective, we are faced with many opportunities to make a tremendous difference. But I would challenge that today’s mission of ‘going green’ is not a bandwagon, it’s a journey. And the deliverables need to not only be real, but long-lasting and sustainable in and of themselves,” writes Sauers, a 23-year P&G vet with a doctorate in toxicology who now leads the company’s sustainability efforts.
Call it food (think salad greens) for thought.
gThankYou, LLC sells Gift Gertificates that savvy companies give to show appreciation to employees and customers. gThankYou® Ham Gift Certificates, Turkey Gift Certificates and Grocery Gift Certificates are its best known products.
Categories: Management & Leadership · Trends
Tagged: Earth Day, green management, sustainability
The gThankYou Team loved, we mean luuuuuvvvved, the article in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune titled “Is g the new W?“.
Tribune writers Nara Schoenberg and Monica Eng explain to us how “W” has been the ultra-hip letter in recent years, fronting for stylish W Hotels and cooler-than-cool W magazine.
Now, you guessed it, “spunky little lowercase g is making headway in the worlds of design and pop culture”.
gThankYou!
The gThankYou Team, with our 100% amateur-developed name, loves hearing the “news”.
The Trib quotes others as saying “‘g” is for green, grow, genuine, global, genius, grace, generous, golly gee” and more. We’d like to add “grateful” to that list, which was our inspiration.
Of course we’ve always thought we’re hip and cool and cutting edge and all that stuff. What we really hope we are is enduring, meaningful and appreciated.
You decide.
In the meantime we’re following the discussion, gleefully.
gThankYou!, again.
gThankYou, LLC, in Madison, Wisconsin, sells Gift Gertificates that lots of savvy employers give to appreciative employees. The company is best known for gThankYou® Ham Gift Certificates, Turkey Gift Certificates and Grocery Gift Certificates.
Categories: Trends
Tagged: Chicago Tribune, gThankYou, Trends, W Hotels, W magazine
