HR News

Top 5 HR Articles for August

"We live in an era where just about any product or service can be tailored to fit customers’ needs and desires. Organizations are frequently doing the same for employees, providing customized work arrangements, or what are often called idiosyncratic deals or i-deals."

1) The 17 Things Employees Care About Most At Work by Jacob Morgan

Employees want to work for an organization that is respected and where they can feel good about their contributions, but what does this actually look like?

To design great employee experiences and to create a place where employees truly want to show up, organizations must focus on a Reason for Being (to be explored in another article) followed by 17 attributes that are abbreviated as ACE technology, COOL physical spaces, and a CELEBRATED culture.

2) How to Successfully Work Across Countries, Languages, and Cultures by Tsedal Neeley

The number of people in the global labour force will reach 3.5 billion by 2030 — and yet there will still be a shortage of skilled workers. The result is likely to be intensified global competition for talent. Rather than assuming we’ll work in one location, in our native culture, we will need new skills, attitudes, and behaviours that help us work across cultures. Our ways of thinking about careers, colleagues, and collaboration will need to become more flexible and adaptable.

This type of orientation can be incredibly valuable to cultivate for anyone working for multinationals or in other global careers, and can also be used by managers to develop employees. It consists of five key actions.

Embracing positive indifference.
2. Seeking commonality between cultures.
3. Identifying with the global organization rather than your local office.
4. Seeking interactions with other, geographically distant subsidiaries.
5. Aspiring to a global career.

3) How to Allow Flexible Work Without Playing Favorites by Elise Marescaux and Sophie De Winne

We live in an era where just about any product or service can be tailored to fit customers’ needs and desires. Organizations are frequently doing the same for employees, providing customized work arrangements, or what are often called idiosyncratic deals or i-deals.

It was originally used to describe unique work arrangements negotiated by employees and tailored to their individual needs. The key word is unique, as these deals by definition apply to only one person within a team or the larger work environment and might include unique financial arrangements (bonuses, benefits), flexible work arrangements (flexible workhours, working from home), and changes in workload.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself:

-What is the employee asking for and why?
-Do I feel comfortable communicating this deal to other team members?
-Are there any structural barriers?

4) What One Company Learned from Forcing Employees to Use Their Vacation Time by Neil Pasricha and Shashank Nigam

Something different from the norm, read the article to find out how you can change up your vacation system!

There were two points of constructive feedback:

-Frequency was too high. Employees found that once every seven weeks (while beautiful on paper) was just too frequent. Its competitive advantage is agility, and having staff take time off too often upset the work rhythm. Try adjusting it to every 12 weeks. But with employee input, we redesigned it to once every eight weeks.

-Staggering was important. Let’s say that two or three people work together on a project team. We found that it didn’t make sense for these people to take time off back-to-back. Batons get dropped if there are consecutive absences. We revised the arrangement so that no one can take a week off right after someone has just come back from one. The high-level design is important and needs to work for the business.

Read more here: https://hbr.org/2017/08/what-one-company-learned-from-forcing-employees-to-use-their-vacation-time

5) Infographic | The Problem With Burnout by SHRM

This one is unique as it is not exactly at article but an infographic.

It includes some statistics on how people feel about stress, top reasons for burnout cited by HR leaders, what are some signs of stress and the top 5 contributors to employee satisfaction.