Tag: workplace
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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
It seems to me that much of the focus of HR in dealing with workplace issues is often punitive. It’s all about investigating incidents, collecting evidence, formulating allegations and searching for breaches of the code of conduct or xyz policy. It’s about hitting people with some sort of sanction for not following procedure, issuing a…
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EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IS PROBABLY NOT THE PROBLEM
Many organisations conduct annual employee engagement surveys to track the level of ‘engagement’ in the workforce. The metrics will be based on a range of survey questions asking how people feel about their supervisor, their career development prospects, the recognition they get, the organisational mission, vision and values, and the performance of the executive team. …
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OKAY… NOW WHAT DO I DO?
There is a statistic floating around the internet that we make around 35,000 decisions a day. Seems like a lot doesn’t it? These include unconscious decisions that we don’t even think about, like which hand will I use to brush my teeth this morning? Will I turn right or left out of my driveway this…
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DO WE NEED TO MEET OR IS AN EMAIL OK?
These days we tend to communicate online a lot of the time. Anyone with a young person in the family will know that the portable supercomputer they call a phone and keep on them at all times of day and night is NOT for making phone calls. It is for tweeting, snapping, gramming, TikTok, WhatsApp,…
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ARE YOU TAKING HOSTAGES?
Do you know where Stockholm Syndrome comes from? In August 1973 a bank robbery at the Sveriges Kreditbank in Stockholm didn’t go as planned. The bank robbers held four employees hostage in the bank’s vault for six days. A weird thing happened over those six days. The hostages began to form a bond with their…
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WHAT GOT YOU HERE…
A few years ago I was working with a CFO who had come to me for advice on how to deal with her direct reports. She felt that they were not meeting her expectations, that she had to closely monitor them and their work, that she couldn’t trust them to do it her way, that…
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HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR COFFEE?
The office has a coffee machine for anyone to use, its one of the perks (pun intended) of the workplace. We want everyone to be on their A game, and a caffeinated team is a productive team right? That’s a theory anyway. The coffee machine is one of those that has the water reservoir at…
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HOW LONG IS TOO LONG IN THE ONE JOB?
One of the biggest issues for employees is “lack of career advancement” opportunities in their organisation. Almost every employee engagement survey will score poorly on this metric. Most people want to be able to progress and advance within their own organisation. It’s understandable, this is the place where they are building their expertise and technical…
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BECOME MORE PRODUCTIVE BY DOING LESS…
Do you ever feel like you have just got too much on your plate? Every time the phone rings, or you check your emails, or someone from your team walks into your office, you end up with more things to do. You find yourself working back late or taking work home. Your sleep starts to…
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WHO DOESN’T NEED A COACH?
It’s a trick question because almost everyone will benefit from coaching and often the people who benefit the most are the ones who don’t really need it. You see most people think of coaching as a remedial process, as something that is required to ‘fix’ a problem or address a deficiency. And while coaching can…
The Workplace Coach 