The Only Shortcut Is Hard Work

In a world obsessed with quick fixes and instant gratification, the truth remains unchanged: the only real shortcut to success is hard work. While technology, strategies, and resources can make the journey smoother, nothing replaces the discipline, persistence, and effort required to achieve meaningful results.

Hard Work Builds Mastery

Whether it's in business, sports, or the arts, the most successful individuals dedicate countless hours to refining their craft. Behind every "overnight success" is a backstory filled with failures, sacrifices, and relentless practice. Hard work transforms raw talent into mastery, making excellence a habit rather than a lucky break.

Shortcuts Often Lead to Setbacks

Many people seek shortcuts—quick money schemes, crash diets, or skipping steps in skill development. However, these often lead to temporary gains followed by long-term setbacks. True progress comes from consistent effort and the resilience to push through challenges.

The Rewards of Hard Work Are Lasting

Success achieved through hard work is sustainable. It builds character, confidence, and the ability to handle future obstacles. When you earn something through perseverance, you value it more, and it stays with you longer.

Instead of looking for ways to cut corners, embrace the process. Hard work is not just the only shortcut—it’s the surest path to real and lasting success.

#MentorChacko

4 Effective Incentives for Employees

by Erin Nelson / Human Resources Today
https://www.humanresourcestoday.com/edition/daily-wellness-compliance-training-2020-04-14?open-article-id=13500559&article-title=the-4-most-effective-incentives-for-employees&blog-domain=fond.co&blog-title=fond

Motivation in the workplace is more important than ever. In a time when working from home is increasingly common (especially with the rapid onset of COVID-19), it’s essential to create effective incentives for employees and keep them engaged on the job, even when they’re working from their living rooms or home offices. 

There’s some debate in the HR world about how similar recognition and incentives are. The major difference between the two is that an incentive is something created before the required outcome, whereas a recognition is given after the behavior has already occurred. However, you can use rewards as a component of your incentives program and easily tie it to your recognition program. Here’s how:

4 Effective Incentives for Employees

Tying incentives for employees to your recognition program doesn’t have to be difficult. Let’s discuss the four most effective incentives for employees. These incentives were selected because of their results, impact on employees, and effectiveness. They also seamlessly integrate incentives with recognition, uniting these two critical components of employee engagement.

1. Offer Extra Vacation Time for Hitting Goals

Lack of vacation time is the number one factor that leads to employee burnout. Burnout is dangerous because it drastically reduces productivity, leads to more mistakes, and causes disengagement among employees. This means your employees are more likely to search for other job opportunities and jump ship when you need them most.

If you notice that a particular team member is demonstrating symptoms of burnout, try incentivizing them with extra vacation time for hitting their goals. For example, you can offer one extra day of vacation to your team if they finish an important project ahead of schedule, which will motivate them to complete the work and give them more time to relax afterward. 

Extra paid time off is one of the most effective incentives for employees, and it can be good for business, too. Not only does this incentive provide a much-needed break for hard working employees, but it also boosts productivity for the long-term. Even SHRM advises that paid leave is an important tool to retain your current and future workforce.

2. Set Up Department-Wide Competitions

Competitions are a great incentive for employees (especially sales teams) because they bring out the competitive natures of your employees. But be careful: certain types of competition can bring more bad than good, so keep reading for advice on how to set this up effectively.

Here’s the trick: your competition should be structured in a way that encourages team-building and collaboration, not an all-for-one attitude. The goal should be to engage your entire team, not just the people who always hit their numbers. This way, you foster collaboration and competition without turning employees against each other.

An example that doesn’t cost any money is letting a team out early on Friday if they achieve their weekly goals. If your team closes 10 tickets in one day and the goal is 9, let them leave for the day and come in an hour later on Monday. Using this strategy encourages your team to work together to achieve shared goals and boosts efficiency.

Another more individualistic example is setting up a gift swap for participants who hit their goals. The rules are simple: when someone makes a sale or renews a customer for over a certain dollar amount, they open a gift from the pile. After the first gift has been opened, anyone else who makes a sale over this amount can either open another package or steal one that had already been unwrapped.

3. Put Together a Team Outing for Top Performers

One way to create an effective incentive for employees is setting up a company outing for employees who meet all their quarterly goals. Invite these high-achievers to a company outing at quarter-end, like an exclusive dinner or a group activity. This can range from a trip to your favorite sushi restaurant or a night out at an upscale downtown bar to a bowling night or a team trip to the movies.

One great way to send out invitations to this event is to recognize these employees publicly for their efforts. Host a company-wide awards ceremony every quarter to announce the winners and praise those who have gone above and beyond to hit their goals. Knowing they have the potential to be recognized in front of the entire company is one of the most effective incentives for employees.

The best part: not only does this incentivize your team to hit their numbers, it provides a great team-building opportunity for your employees as well. When employees feel connected to each other, they are more productive, innovative, and collaborative.

4. Provide Custom Rewards

Rewards — especially those meant to incentivize your employees — should be customized to the individual. No person will be satisfied with exactly the same reward, so it’s essential to provide plenty of rewards options for your employees.

We recommend implementing a formal rewards and recognition platform that can easily integrate with your incentives program. For example, if your sales team meets their quota for the week, managers can use this platform to send the team points for their hard work that employees can use to redeem for thousands of items and experiences. This method encourages team members to work together toward a shared goal and customize their rewards experiences to meet their individual needs.

Remember to Follow Up

It’s essential that your employee incentives program is closely linked to your rewards and recognition program. After you have created great incentives for employees, make sure you recognize them for a job well done and reward any outstanding behavior you saw while they were pursuing their goals. Recognition is the most impactful type of motivation for employees because it’s emotionally fulfilling. Emotional fulfillment is at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and when an employee feels emotionally satisfied on the job, they are likely to stay at your company longer, do better work, and be more productive. Keep all of this in mind when creating effective incentives for employees.

5 Facts You Need To Know About The Modern Learner

by Steve Penfold

1. They Want To Learn
The desire to learn is deeply ingrained in the modern learner, with 94% of employees reporting that they would remain at a company if it invested in their professional development.

The great news is that providing access to relevant learning will also benefit you as a business. Research from Brand Learning shows that learning is vital for business growth since it is a key factor in increasing employee engagement and performance.

2. Their Spare Time Is Limited
The modern learner is really busy, so it can be hard to gain their attention. Typically, an employee is interrupted 56 times a day (Atlassian), spends 25% of their working day on emails, and checks their phone a whopping 150 times! (IMPACT 2018).

In comparison, employees only put aside around 20 minutes a week for L&D—that’s just 1% (Bersin & Forbes)! Take this into account when creating your learning and considering the length of your content; are you respecting your learner’s time?

3. They Don’t Want To Feel Like "Just A Number"
Today’s learner wants content to be tailored to them. In fact, 70% of people will look elsewhere after 5-10 seconds if the content isn’t obviously personalized (Bersin by Deloitte).

This desire is reflected in Google search trends. For example, in the last 2 years, mobile searches that include the phrase "best" and "___for me" have risen by 80% and 60% respectively.

Take this into account by making your learning personal, timely, and of high quality.

4. They Learn When And Where It Suits Them
Research into learning behavior by Towards Maturity found that:

48% of learners asked to choose to learn in evenings and weekends
41% learn at their desk
28% learn on the way to or from work
30% learn during breaks and at lunch
Profile of a modern learner in 2018

There’s no set time and place for learning. Just one individual can choose to learn in a variety of different locations at various times of the day; it’s important to take learning context into account.

5. They Rely On Their Phone
It’s no surprise that mobile plays a big part in learning. After all, the average person spends 2 hours a day on their smartphone (Time To Log Off). In today’s culture of immediacy, it also takes only 7 seconds for someone to decide if the content is for them, with 70% of users will leaving if the content isn’t properly optimized.

Don’t make the mistake of isolating your mobile learners. Take into consideration factors such as whether to use vertical or horizontal content and adjust for different devices, not forgetting about the desktop, as 41% of people still learn at their desk (Towards Maturity). Although, perhaps this stat would be different if all learning was fully mobile-optimized.

Nine Key Emerging Trends in HR

by Robin Throckmorton

With a new political landscape and continuous changes in our demographics, the year ahead is going to be a rapidly changing year for the HR world.  HR is going to have to stay on the forefront of legislative changes and may even need to get more engaged in influencing those changes.  Plus, with the continuous evolution of our workforce, what has always worked may not work anymore whether it be recruitment, compensation, or even workplace policies.

So what’s keeping HR up at night and on our toes during the day????

TREND 1 – Retiring Baby Boomers
For years, the work force has been dominated by the Baby Boomers.  The masses of Baby Boomers in the workforce have dominated the other generations by sheer numbers.  Slowly this is changing.  As of April 2016, the Baby Boomers are no longer the largest generation in the workforce as the Millennials surpass them.  Currently, around 10,000 Baby Boomers turn 65 every day according to PEW Research. Some Baby Boomers are retiring while others are plunging into their next career.

Considerations: With a mass exodus of Baby Boomers, whether to retirement or a new career, how will your company manage this loss of wisdom, knowledge, and experience?  What can your organization do to retain the Baby Boomers at some level to minimize the loss?  What steps can you implement to transfer this knowledge to the younger generations?

TREND 2 – Entrance of Generation Z
Welcome Generation Z (born 1991 to present) to the workplace.  According to Bruce Tulgan’s research on the “Great Generational Shift,” Gen Zs grew up “over supervised, coached, and constantly rewarded by their parents.”  As a result, this generation has high expectations for themselves, their boss and the company.  They have a lot of wants and want to know exactly what they need to do to attain those wants including clear goals, precise timelines, and acceptable rewards.  While some feel this is the trophy generation where everyone was a winner, truth be told, it was the parents that did not “keep score”, the kids certainly did.  They are competitive and they know how to keep score.

Considerations: This generation does not “trust” the system and wants clear goals tied to rewards.  HR is going to be challenged to create an environment that will accommodate these workers including new programs such as training managers, creating clear milestones, developing incremental rewards, ensuring open and regular communications, and more.  Gen Z won’t be appeased with “if you work hard, here’s where you’ll be in 3-5 years”.  They want to see more immediate rewards – next week, next month, 6 months out.

TREND 3 – Workforce Flexibility
To begin with, flexibility in the workplace is no longer a request by moms and/or Gen Xers.  Both genders and every generation are looking for workplace flexibility for their own reasons.

Considerations: To stay competitive, organizations will need to figure out how to accommodate these requests for flexibility such as flexible starting and ending times and options to work from home as needed—perhaps even adjusting the normal work day to a 5 – 6 hour day.

TREND 4 – Gig Workforce
An even bigger challenge is going to be the emergence of the Gig Workforce.  It’s not really new but according to Freelancing in America more than 55 million Americans do freelance work, and 79% of them prefer freelance work to a traditional job.

Considerations: To attract and retain the gig workforce, you’ll need to make shifts in how you handle these freelancers all while staying in compliance with the laws around employee versus contractor.  An added complication can be determining whether this individual is truly a contractor, or should they be classified as an employee.  It’s a fine line and the Department of Labor has been watching closely.

TREND 5 – Tight Labor Market
The labor market continues to get tighter and tighter.  It is becoming more and more challenging to find talent let alone technical talent (STEM).  Plus, a tight labor market means it is a candidates market and candidates know it.

Considerations: Companies will need to continue to partner with education institutes to develop candidates with these skills.  They will also need to be willing to grow the skills internally rather than expecting to find them on the street.  In addition, companies will need to begin focusing on the candidate experience.  It will be critical to break down the journey a candidate may take from beginning to end with your organization and ensure it is very positive in the eyes of the candidate.  Timeliness will also be critical.  If you think a candidate is great, so does someone else.  Lastly, hiring is just taking longer, and costing more – from resources to the time to fill.  Keep an eye on your metrics, so you’re not caught off guard.

TREND 6 – Return of the Performance Review
In the past, the buzz was to abolish performance reviews.  But, guess what?  They aren’t going away.   The reason organizations were eliminating the reviews was because an annual discussion was not effective, which was no surprise.

Considerations: Discussions with employees on performance and development need to be happening more regularly, at least monthly or quarterly, if not more often.  An informal or formal approach to ongoing discussions with employees has to be established.  The Millennials (Gen Y & Gen Z) are looking for these regular conversations and the other generations are jumping on the bandwagon. What tools can you provide your managers and how do you hold them accountable for ensuring these regular discussions are taking place?

TREND 7 – Bonuses versus Raises
With a tight labor market and robust economy, wages are increasing too.  More and more companies are shifting to a compensation structure of bonuses based on performance over the annual merit raise.

Considerations: Employers are trying to get more creative to handle this increased cost by offering bonuses to employees in lieu of pay increases.  For example, an increase of 1 – 4% doesn’t have a huge impact on an employee’s salary on an hourly, weekly or monthly basis.  However, a bonus of $500 – $10,000 will have a bigger and immediate impact.  To do this, employers need to start with a competitive base pay and then create formal incentive plans to help employees know what they need to do in order to get what amount of bonus.

TREND 8 – Parental Leave
Work / Life benefits continue to be top of mind as well.  One of the key ones is “parental leave,” meaning both maternity and paternity leaves.  Big or small, we are beginning to see organizations taking steps to offer time off for both mom and dad for the birth or adoption of a child.  Some companies are offering very generous plans (i.e. 12 weeks paid) that are the same for both, while others are starting out by offering a paternal leave at a different amount than maternal.

Considerations: To be competitive, what will your organization do with regards to parental leave?  While there was a lot of buzz on paid leave in the election, Congress is unlikely to act any time soon.  That doesn’t mean your company can rest on its laurels, when so many other companies are stepping up to offer paid leave.

TREND 9 – Compliance Issues
With any new presidential administration, we can expect a great deal of change to workplace compliance such as:
• Fair Labor Standards Act – exempt/non-exempt and overtime requirements
• Paid Time Off – Time off for sick, maternity, and other leaves of absence
• Affordable Care Act
• Equal Pay
• Immigration

Considerations: To effectively help our organizations, we need to stay on top of issues. Some of these changes will be for the good of a company and others may not.  Be sure your voice is being heard on these issues by connecting with your local congressman, and pay attention.  It seems that changes are happening daily, if not hourly.

Finally, we’ve talked about the customer experience and the candidate experience; both of these are directly tied to the employee experience.  We don’t often step back and evaluate the interactions an employee goes through while employed with us.  The best place to start is to create a map of the journey an employee navigates including such points as onboarding, expectations, feedback, recognition, communication, growth and development, workloads, and more.  Now more than ever, it’s critical to consider what you are doing to keep your current talent.

This is just a sampling of some of the key trends we have in store for us.  As HR professionals, it is going to be imperative for us stay alert and informed about the continued changes to our workforce, recruitment, policies, and legalities in order to be competitive and in compliance.

10 Ways to Build a Winning Culture

by Martin Zwilling

If an entrepreneur can’t build a culture of excitement and commitment at a startup, the chances of long-term success are negligible. It simply doesn’t matter how great your solution is. Every investor knows this. That’s why they insist on spending a day with your team as part of the due diligence process. A winning culture is easy to see, and a culture of fear and desperation is hard to hide.

As a mentor to entrepreneurs, I often get asked what you can do to build the right culture. The simple answer is effective communication and leadership. Here are 10 specific recommendations that I believe will help every founder put this into practice.

1. Don’t hesitate to verbalize your dream to team members daily.
Written mission statements and a passionate quarterly pitch to the team is not enough. Team members have to hear from you daily and see your enthusiasm during individual discussions, to the point that they are repeating your story to others. That’s how a culture is solidified.

2. Demonstrate a consistent set of personal values and priorities.
People believe what they see more than what you say, and they tend to imitate what you do. Thus investors look for consistency between you and your team on values and priorities. If there is no consistency, there is no culture.

3. Customize your organizational structure based on individuals' strengths.
There is no rule that marketing needs to report to the founder, or that every startup needs a chief operating officer. Some of the best startup cultures have no hierarchical reporting, yet everyone knows who drives each of the initiatives. Culture is not defined by job titles.

4. Focus on hiring the right people, and deal quickly with mismatches.
Skills and experience are necessary in hiring, but finding a match in values and culture is equally important. Mentoring and training programs need to be put in place early. Entrepreneurs who are too busy for people never get the culture they envision.

5. Foster innovation in process as well as products.
Technology can be used to facilitate customer support and sales, as well as enhance your product. Investors look for innovation in all areas of the business and all levels of the organization, from top to bottom. Winning cultures incent and reward innovation as well as business results.

6. Visibly link your standards to industry best practices.
By default, teams look only inside the organization, and tend to compare their performances to their own previous records or other internal groups. Comparisons should always be with competitors and customer expectations of excellence. Cultures that excel measure only against leaders.

7. Create opportunities for continuous learning.
A winning culture is filled with people who love to learn. They need opportunities to do new work and try out new roles, as well as have access to training updates in their current positions. Successful leaders are good coaches and mentors, as well as being on the lookout for personal learning opportunities.

8. Sponsor internal events to build team synergy.
Events need to be inspirational as well as directional. These will build the culture you need, but also give you an opportunity to observe where you need more focus. Make sure each one highlights your values, recognizes the right team members and involves customers and outside experts.

9. Make your startup a winning place to work.
Promote your culture and innovations through social media and the press to make the team proud of their jobs. This pride will be sensed by customers and vendors, since everyone wants to buy into a winner. Winning in business is all about building momentum, and capitalizing on that progress.

10. Define a legacy for yourself and your company.
A legacy is a larger purpose than improved business growth or profits. As team members buy into that legacy, day-to-day slights and issues become less critical, and maintaining the culture and focus becomes the priority. This focus has the potential to double or triple your business growth.

The right culture doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s especially hard to change once it is set. Thus it’s especially important to start early, long before that first investor schedules a visit, and long before your first customer puts the team to the test. Your business's growth and success depends on it.

Tips to Avoid a Toxic Company Culture of Office Politics

by Michael O. Church.

Well, the first question to ask is: Where do office politics come from? They come from systems that provide incentives for people to play political games.

Such incentives might be:

- Severe disparities in outcomes that appear to come more from popularity than actual contribution

- Job insecurity

- Work allocation protocol that doesn't adequately match people with work they'll find interesting, forcing people to gain control of the division of labor (i.e. become managers) if they want work relevant to their career aspirations

- Large "ball of mud" projects that make employees' architects and leads look good while grunts do all the work, and because individual performance is often hard to demonstrate, receive little to no recognition

- Importance attached to job titles and position in the organizational hierarchy

- These are just a few of the toxic elements that foster political nastiness, but there's one big one that runs through all of them: Companies, even small ones, have a tendency to hire before they trust. This is bad.

Trust has degrees, of course, and I'm not saying that new hires should be trusted with the whole business. However, many companies get into a mode where the default attitude toward the average worker is one of distrust. You have the higher-ups and managers who are trusted and given autonomy, and the "everyone else" category, which isn't really in the club. People don't want to be in this latter category and will do all kinds of nasty things to lift themselves out of it.

These aren't "big company" illnesses exclusively. In fact, large companies have more experience dealing with this kind of thing than do small firms. These problems can appear in five to 20-person companies easily; they can occur in a two-person company if the relationship is one-sided and toxic.

So how does one prevent this devolution from happening? Below are a few suggestions.

Open allocation. There are some great explanations of this concept here: Software Development Methodologies: What is Open Allocation?. In short, as long as people are working on things that benefit the company, let them work on whatever they want. If someone wants to transfer to a different team, let her move her desk to their section that afternoon. Once the division of labor is no longer a political favor to be "allocated," people don't have to play politics to get good projects — so they don't. They just work on the things that interest them, and are too busy to screw around or gossip.

The main stakes should be doing something cool. A lot of startups think their profit-sharing programs are progressive, while employee #106 gets 0.04% when a VP hired at the same time is offered 1%, or 25 times more. People always find out about these inequities, and it's really bad for morale. Compensation shouldn't be uniformly distributed (that itself would be unfair), but it should be allocated in a way that's reasonable, and so that climbing the corporate ladder doesn't improve a person's compensation that much. Pay for achievements, not positions, and keep the main motivation to do cool work, not to reach X title in Y years. Pay for achievements, not positions, and keep the main motivation to do cool work, not to reach X title in Y years. Corporate ladder-climbing is the source of most politics; that's the bulk of what provides the incentive for them. If you reduce the benefits of climbing, you're more likely to get real leadership instead of narcissistic game-playing.

Never cold-fire. You may have to fire people. In fact, you will need to do it at some point because, if nothing else, you'll have to fire toxic people to protect your environment. Give them a generous severance (enough to get to their next job) that includes a good reference (unless they're awful; then stick to name and dates) and the right to represent themselves as employed. Even if you hate writing severance packages (out of some emotional aversion to "rewarding failure"), just do it. Severance isn't a reward: It buys you insurance against litigation and disparagement, and gives your company a reputation of treating people well even upon termination. If people aren't worried about getting thrown out on the street, there's less anxiety and they can focus on their work. If you write severances, chances are people will never find out that a firing occurred (a win-win face-saving).

Take mentorship and career growth seriously. Everyone should feel as if they are learning more from their work than they would if they were given a comparable amount of money, but left to direct their own time. The work should be additive to their educational process, not subtractive. When people start to feel like they're falling behind, educationally speaking, they start to get nervous and suspicious. If people feel like they're learning more working with you than they would elsewhere, they tend to be happy. Career coherence is taken care of, and they can focus on the task at hand.

Grow slowly, hire selectively and hire honestly. Don't hire a person if you aren't ready to trust that person with, at least, full autonomy over her own time. Don't grow so fast that you have a different company every week. Don't grow so fast that you have a different company every week. Finally, be honest about the culture you have and want to maintain when you hire, and especially make it clear to executives that they'll probably have less power than they're used to (they can't just intimidate people into doing stuff). Hiring is the most important thing to get right when it comes to preserving a culture, and it's hard to reverse.

Everyone participates in belt-tightening. HP, in its glory days, would cut salaries 10% across the board instead of laying people off, and compensate by offering non-executives one day off every two weeks. People trust and like the executives more if this is how difficult economic times are handled.

Keep projects small. If you're a software company, make the programmer-to-program relationship one-to-many instead of many-to-one. Everyone should be able to own something, even if it's small, in order to have a sense of real contribution. This keeps the impostor syndrome and suspicions of, "Just what does he do here?" at bay.

Encourage workplace friendships. I tend to think that extravagant outings (team trips to Hawaii) are expensive and don't do much for team-building — everyone is still on guard, and most people would rather go on vacation with family than officemates. Encourage cheaper, smaller and voluntary workplace outings, to baseball games and museums, etc., or even just hold board game nights. The goal is to make it possible for real companionship to form. People are less inclined to play underhanded political games when colleagues — whose opinions they actually value — are watching.

Avoid "managerial mystique." In many companies, managers make decisions and don't explain them. Avoid this. Explain sensitive or difficult decisions, especially if they affect the way people work. Managerial mystique creates bilateral distrust that leads to the two-class company.

Having a great culture is unlikely to happen by accident, because bad cultures aren't always a result of bad people. You have to actively manage it to prevent people from falling into old patterns, and there's no formula for this, but I hope that the above advice is a good starting point.

Acid Ball

by Jim Woodard

Life is like an acid ball.

Many people in today’s world feel overwhelmed with the complexities and stresses that seem to invade their lives. Some feel they’ve reached that insurmountable wall, and give up on life. Others manage to look beyond immediate problems and see ways to turn negatives into positives.

A good analogy is a huge acid ball, designed and constructed by the Boise Cascade paper mill in Salem, Oregon. It’s a 10-ton tank, with a diameter of 26 feet. Its purpose was to hold acids used in cooking wood chips into pulp.

But in time, the company abandoned the cumbersome tank. It was stored away for years. Finally the ugly and deteriorating ball was scheduled for demolition. Then something very interesting happened.
When a group of citizens learned of its planned destruction, they rallied to its defense. The group, headed by former Salem mayor Roger Gertenrich, came up with a highly creative idea to recycle and convert the eyesore acid ball into an artistically embellished globe where school kids could see and marvel at the great world in which they live. It’s now standing tall and proud in Salem’s Riverfront Park -- a world of cartographic icons, 200 of them, strategically positioned to help onlookers learn more about their world.

In many cases, kids see for the first time the positioning of the world’s nations, islands and oceans, and their relationship to each other, as they gaze at this fantastic creation. It now has the classy name of Eco-Earth.

It all happened when a group of visionary citizens saw a great artistic and educational opportunity in an ugly acid ball set for demolition.

Like that ugly old once-doomed acid ball, people can rise from their despair and frustration and reshape their lives into one of beauty and productivity, making a positive contribution to fellow travelers down the road of life.

5 Ways to Use Next Generation Learning Tools Now

by Didi D'Errico

In the 1990s, technology helped chief learning officers streamline and scale learning, moving time-consuming and costly in-house programs from physical classrooms online. The biggest value proposition: huge company cost savings, making e-learning a big win for the executive team, if not for employees.

Today, technology is changing the game again, but this time the driving force behind it is no longer the CFO working to cut costs. Today, it's being propelled by millennial employees looking to connect, share and deliver innovation using the mobile, social and video tools they've seemingly used since birth.

Learning leaders have gotten hip to the potential of technology. A survey released this week sponsored by Saba revealed that HR leaders in the U.S.and U.K. are very tuned in to digital tools that support "always on" learning and development. In the study, 83 percent of HR executives say a modern company cannot compete effectively without its workforce using talent management tools, and development is a key tool.

HR execs and chief learning officers are actually ahead of their employees in envisioning what's next. The survey shows that 54 percent of HR executives think it's highly likely their people will work remotely and work primarily on smartphones in the near future. By contrast, only 36 percent of employees think this is likely.

With this in mind it makes sense to try and engage millennials, the biggest portion of today's employee base. The survey uncovered a number of insights learning leaders can use to derive maximum benefit from the new generation of employees. For instance:

1. Help them learn to stop the churn.
Millennials are one of the highest flight risks in an organization. Many businesses have tried to combat this by juicing up their culture with foosball tables and all-you-can-eat sushi lunches. But, as the study found, 86 percent of millennials are more inclined to stay at their current company if they're given access to quality learning and development. That's higher than Gen Xers and baby boomers, who are less likely to stick around even when they are given quality development. This means companies that want to thrive in the future must embrace new tools. The study bears this out: 72 percent of all U.S. employees agree that modern technology tools are very important to effective communication in the workplace, especially when it comes to younger employees.

2. Open your ears and act.
Employees today demand to be listened to. Therefore, employers need to tune in - and respond - to their workers faster and more often. However, the survey found 59 percent of U.S. employees think when asked for their feedback that their concerns won't be addressed in a timely manner. And 52 percent feel their concerns will be dismissed outright. Asking for feedback and downplaying or ignoring it is a business mistake that can cost you your best people. Technology can help connect the dots. Imagine linking an always-on survey tool for easy intuitive feedback with a talent management system that could recommend developmental actions to help address that feedback?

3. Mind the gender gap.
When organizations don't heed feedback from employees it creates a listening gap that causes workers to disengage. You don't listen, so they don't talk - especially women. The survey found 63 percent of female employees are rarely asked for feedback, versus 54 percent of male employees. Not surprisingly, women are therefore less comfortable giving their input. The survey showed only 58 percent of women are comfortable giving feedback, compared to 65 percent of men. This is a potentially damaging disconnect that requires immediate attention from HR and learning teams.

4. Embrace modern learning tools.
Employers should welcome social, mobile and video learning tools to create a platform for a collaborative exchange of ideas. In the survey, mobile was ranked the "most important" tool by 68 percent of U.S. employees, followed by social (67 percent) and video tools (64 percent). Employees don't want canned classes. They do want access to "in the moment" learning, such as a GoPro how-to video by an internal expert or a real-time video stream from a small group meeting. But they're not getting what they want. Right now only 52 percent of employees think their company is effectively engaging and empowering them and their coworkers. It's time to arm your multigenerational workforce with tools that provide continuous learning, easy collaboration and informal knowledge sharing, and that allow workers to develop their skills and constantly grow.

5. Don't overlook "native genius."
One of the best performance drivers is social capital from in-house subject-matter experts, otherwise known as native genius. But organizations are not tapping into it. The study found 66 percent of HR executives and 60 percent of employees in the U.S. believe a significant amount of knowledge goes unshared with colleagues who could use that information. The onus is on the organization to draw out this social capital and communicate it to people who can use it. To do this, companies need a better way to track those conversations, shared blogs and articles, and connections to internal subject matter experts. Learning is no longer about employees taking the required class and checking off a laundry list of compliance requirements. It's about bubbling up all the smarts that reside within the organization - unlocking and sharing native genius.

Personalized skills and leadership development will be key for learning leaders and their companies to succeed in the years ahead. The more you enable employees to explore the content, contacts and context that are most interesting to them, the more engaged employees across all generations will be.

Attributes Of Leadership: BE, KNOW, & DO

Respected leaders concentrate on Be, Know, and Do (U.S. Army, 1983):


◦who they are [be] (such as beliefs and character)
◦what they know (such as job, tasks, and human nature)
◦what they do (such as implementing, motivating, and providing direction)


BE a professional. Examples: Be loyal to the organization, perform selfless service, take personal responsibility.


BE a professional who possess good character traits. Examples: honesty, competence, candor, commitment, integrity, courage, straightforwardness, imagination.


KNOW the four factors of leadership — follower, leader, communication, situation.


KNOW yourself. Examples: strengths and weakness of your character, knowledge, and skills.


KNOW human nature. Examples: human needs, emotions, and how people respond to stress.


KNOW your job. Examples: be proficient and be able to train others in their tasks.


KNOW your organization. Examples: where to go for help, its climate and culture, who the unofficial leaders are.


DO provide direction. Examples: goal setting, problem solving, decision making, planning.


DO implement. Examples: communicating, coordinating, supervising, evaluating.

3 Ways to Fuel Innovation Through Social Media

by Andrew Goldberg

Despite the widespread use of social media among all age groups in our society, many business leaders are still figuring out how to make the best use of the rapidly changing tools available.

Many of the clients we work with find it especially challenging to integrate social technologies inside the firm and to encourage their use throughout the enterprise. In past articles we have advocated social media as a major force for stimulating creative discussions and fueling innovation.

A number of executives share with us a common concern: Having invested in technologies and strategies for using social media with employees and customers, the usage turned out to be less than desired. What can be done?

The first step lies in understanding how social media differs from other forms of expression in the workplace. Unlike email, social media has opened up a wide array of opportunities for sharing your personal expression through words, sounds and images with selected people. Consequently, it stands in opposition to what most employees still view as the nature of their firms, which is top-down, mandated and regulated.

When employee perceptions of their firms are of control and scrutiny, it is natural that many employees shy away from using internal social media tools provided by their firm, such as Yammer, because of a lack of trust: Are my ideas acceptable and valuable or will they be disruptive and met with hostility by my bosses or other departments?

The external challenge of social media for companies is a bit different than internal, because it relates to the specific customer frameworks and sales models of the firm.

Take, for example, the case of one large home products retailer. Its marketing and sales teams wanted to build more personal connections with consumers.

The challenge: It was difficult to validate whether store traffic was directly attributable to enhancements in social media activities, and the data technology for capturing customer behavior at the store level was not linked to the insights captured from social media analysis.

Hence, two systems were talking past each other to no common effect. Moreover, multiple departments were operating in parallel. IT had responsibility for the CRM systems. Marketing and public relations for steering the social media interaction. Sales had a third social media system.

Not surprisingly, it took considerably more work to reverse-engineer the integration process than if it had been started collaboratively, with a holistic system in mind.

For companies still figuring out the best way to actively exploit social media, the following steps have proved useful:

1. Find the Innovation Ambassadors Within the Firm

Within every organizational system there are individuals who are idea generators or idea carriers. They tend to be individuals who have trusted relationships, the people one seeks for advice, or who seek others out to share ideas. Finding them is not a top-down exercise; most CEOs or top executives would be hard-pressed to name or locate these informal networks of people. But they are important both as early adopters of technology and as a source of ideas for their use.

A simple survey among the employees that asks, "Who is your trusted source of ideas?" and "Who do you go to share your ideas?" or similar trust-based questions tend bring those individuals to the surface.

2. Cross-Fertilize Your "Social Media Teams"

Having motivated leaders is only part of the solution. You must get to the right mix of skills and connections. For example, a team that wants you to link employees within the firm to customers and stakeholders outside, may want to include a sales person for front-line experience, a human resources representative to see how employees can be rewarded for being a stakeholder social ambassador, and someone from IT to make sure that any data collected from the social interaction is looped into a secure CRM platform.

3. Experimental Leadership

Senior executives must get comfortable with, and be encouraging of, employees using social media in a variety of ways. Employees should operate within the bounds of propriety and clearly expressed legal policies around civility and protecting company secrets. Individuals and teams should make the most of social media as a means of sharing product ideas internally and with trusted suppliers. They should be allowed to form trusted relationships with customers to build up loyalty and repeat demand for the firm's products.

Social media, when used with enthusiasm, can be a channel for creativity within the firm. And those are powerful triggers for a competitive enterprise in what is still a challenging economic environment.

Effects of Training on Employee Performance

by Jerry Shaw

Companies can reap the rewards of providing training for their employees because well-trained workers help increase productivity and profits. Investing in employee training should improve worker retention rates, customer satisfaction and creativity for new product ideas. Effective training saves labor by reducing time spent on problem-solving and saves money in the long run by producing a better workforce.

Saving Time and Costs
Investment in training can improve a company’s financial standing. Poor performance often results when employees don’t know exactly what they’re supposed to do, how to do their jobs or why they need to work a certain way. Training can help solve these performance problems by explaining the details of the job. This should reduce duplication of effort in the workplace, the time spent correcting mistakes and the problem solving necessary to correct bad performances. Improved performance from employee training can reduce staff turnover, lower maintenance costs by reducing equipment breakdowns and result in fewer customer complaints. Better performance from employees typically creates less need for supervision and brings increased worker output.

Employee Satisfaction
Job satisfaction generally increases and self-esteem improves when employees better understand the workings of the company. Training can also enhance morale on the job and loyalty to the company. Workers who believe their company offers excellent training opportunities are generally less likely to leave their companies within a year of training than employees with poor training opportunities, according to Howard Community College in Maryland, which points to a poll of employees by Louis Harris and Associates.

Expectations and Needs
Training plays a key role in employee commitment, according to Scott Brum of the University of Rhode Island. The training program must meet expectations and needs of the employees, though. Companies are more likely to retain employees who view their training as relevant to their jobs and subsequently have a positive commitment to their company. A successful training program consists of management providing employees with accurate information and communication about the training as well as a program that ensures that training is relevant to their jobs.

Turnover Costs
Keeping well-trained employees pays off significantly for companies because the cost of employee turnover can be high. Costs include separation costs, such as exit interviews, administrative functions related to termination, severance pay and unemployment compensation. Replacement costs consist of attracting applicants, entrance interviews, testing, travel and moving expenses, pre-employment administrative expenses, medical exams and employment information. A study by the University of Wisconsin found that 75 percent of the demand for new employees was related to replacing workers who left the company.

Training Factors
Many factors determine whether a training program will be effective for a company that has lost employees, depending on how many workers are leaving. For example, using temporary workers to fill in for former employees on occasion might actually save costs. Management can determine if a training program will work out by looking at the increased workloads for employees caused by vacancies, the stress and tension from turnover, declining employee morale and the decreased productivity that results from high loss of employees.

An Olympic Lesson In Motivation

The saying goes: The expert in anything was once a beginner in everything. Truer words were never spoken.

But this isn't what we see. This isn't what we feel when we watch these Olympians. It isn't what we think when we watch any expert or great success.

We see the finished product, shining brightly in designer packaging. We see triumph and achievement, not training. We see the riches, not the rags.

And this, as much as anything else, is why motivation - that inner drive that carries us toward all we desire - continues to escape us.

Today that comes to an end. Today I will open your eyes to a new way of viewing the changes you wish to carry out and the challenges that are attempting to stop you.

The Olympians we admire might possess unique physical talent and natural gifts, but that inner fire that compels them forward is within us all. It's time to set it free.

Authors Don't Write Books
Whether it's a a friend who lost forty pounds or a track star streaking across the screen, our eyes can only see what is in front of us.

And more often than not, that picture of success is daunting.

It's overwhelming, to see ourselves reaching those heights. No, it's more than that. It's unbelievable.

When we view success at its peak, we feel separated from it. We see ourselves as incapable of doing something similar.

Take a book, for instance.

Seeing a novel on a shelf leads to the same conclusion in the minds of anyone posed with the question: 'Oh, I could never write a book.'

This view is all wrong. The reason? Authors don't write books.

What Do Authors Write?
Authors don't write books; authors write words.

This is one of the most important ideas to understand. I know it sounds simple, but it separates those who progress from those who wish and wait.

We've already said that most see the finished product and feel overwhelmed by the prospect of achieving the same goal.

If this only occurred when watching an Olympic athlete, there would be little issue. But that's not how it works. We get that same sense of inability when viewing any worthwhile achievement.

Losing weight, finding a new career, starting a business or new relationship, overcoming personal debt - these are outcomes millions wish to pursue but don't believe they can achieve.

They can't see past the finished product.

To get motivated, to truly ignite your drive, you must see your goals as achievable. You must believe in yourself and your abilities. You must see success, not as a matter of unattainable greatness, but merely as a matter of time.

Losing weight begins with a single decision. Finding the job you love begins with a single Google search. And starting a new relationship begins with a single look.

The world is built upon blocks, not one massive stone.

One step, one movement, one decision, one action. These are the things that feed success. These are things that you can do today.

7 Incredible Tips To Help You Succeed In Running A Business

by Jack Dawson

Creating a successful business empire is challenging but possible.

As much as finding a unique idea can be daunting, executing the idea is what separates dreamers from entrepreneurs.

Use the following effective tips to ensure your business runs successfully:


1. Enjoy what you are doing
Starting and running a business entails plenty of hard work. It requires a great deal of time. Therefore, you better enjoy it. Richard Branson, one of the most successful entrepreneurs, did not set out to create a business empire when he was starting his company. Actually, he started Virgin in his basement flat. All he wanted to do is start something he enjoyed and which would also pay the bills. Over the years, because of doing something he enjoys, Virgin is one of the leading airlines in the world today.

Starting and building a business should involve doing something that you are proud of. It should be about assembling talented people together with the aim of creating something that will make a real difference to their lives. Always remember that entrepreneurs are like artists. When starting your business, what you have is a blank canvas, which you must be willing to fill. Just like an artist has to get every single detail right on a blank canvas, you should also be willing to do the same if your business is to succeed.

“When you enjoy what you do, work becomes play.” – Martin Yan


2. Create unique products and services
Whether your business provides services or products, surviving in the highly competitive and modern market is not easy. Actually, for your business to make a mark today, you must strive to do something completely different. Just look at the most successful companies in the recent past – the likes of Apple, Google, or Microsoft. They shook up the entire sector by doing unique things. They are continually innovating. Today, these companies are dominant forces in the technology field.


3. Be an excellent leader
Good leaders are great listeners. You must know your own mind from the inside out. Nonetheless, do not impose your personal views on others without debate. No one enjoys monopoly on good ideas or advice.

Be in the field, listen to what your employees say, draw them out, and learn from them. As the leader of your team, you should be in the habit of praising your team. Refrain from openly criticizing people. Avoid losing your temper. Always lavish praise on your team members whenever they perform exemplary.

Your team will flourish when praised. Mostly, your team members do not need to be told when they have done wrong because in most times, they know it. If a team member is not performing well, do not automatically throw her or him out. Your company should be a family. Therefore, see if there is a position in the company that suits the members the best. In most occasions, you shall find something for every kind of personality.


4. Always be visible
Great leaders do not let their desk become their homes. They get out and about. Meet people – jot down good ideas, concerns, and questions. Surprisingly, your employees have the best ideas. If you don’t write them down, chances are high that you will not remember any of the great suggestions. Write the suggestions down, get their names, and email addresses. The following day, make sure you respond to them.

When building a company from scratch, “survival” should be the keyword. Due to the many challenges businesses face, surviving can be tough. However, with the right strategies as a leader, you can make it.


5. Be honest
Currently, you hold yourself to some ethical plane. However, when dealing with your employees, you must raise the ethical plane bar even higher. Both your business and its employees are a true reflection of yourself. Therefore, if you make honesty a key value of your organization, your team will definitely fall suit.

Promote a great and healthy interoffice lifestyle. Encourage your team always to live by these standards. By emphasizing and displaying these standards yourself, you will definitely influence the office environment to become a helpful and friendly workspace.

“Honest is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” – Thomas Jefferson


6. You must be willing to delegate some tasks
As a business leader running your company, you must finesse your brand vision. It is extremely important in creating an organized and efficient business. There is no doubt about that. Nonetheless, if you do not learn to trust your employees with that vision, then you will never progress to another stage. It is extremely important to trust your team with your idea. Contrary to what most people think, it is a sign of strength and not weakness.

Delegating tasks to the relevant departments is an important skill you should possess. You can develop this skill as the business grows. Over time, as the company expands, the tasks and emails shall begin to pile up. The more you stretch yourself thin, the more you compromise with the quality of service or product you provide. Additionally, the less you shall produce.


7. Be an excellent communicator
Having a picture of all your accomplishments might seem very clear in your head. Nonetheless, if you try to share it with another person, you might be slapped with a blank expression. If this happens, then there is a problem. You should hone your communication skills day in day out.

As a leader, ensure you are able to succinctly and clearly describe exactly what you want. It is very important in running a business. If you cannot relate and make your team understand your vision, then all of you will be working towards a totally different vision and goal. Creating a highly productive work environment all depends on the healthy lines of communication. This does not matter if it stems from an open door policy or making it a point to talk to your team members on a daily basis.

Proper communication makes your team not only trust you, but also depend on you. It also helps them learn to work hard. Clearly, communication is of great importance in running a business.

Right & Wrong

by David Hulme

According to one author, we've seriously lost our way. He says we are like men adrift at sea without a compass. As a result, moral dilemmas plague us as we look ahead to the 21st century.

Something has gone terribly wrong. Many of us know it, but what to do about it evades us.

Is there any way to know the difference between right and wrong? Does religion have anything left to offer? From time to time we hear that the established churches are in confusion—that too often their leaders have nothing to say that's practical and helpful. Where does the truth on these matters lie?

Back in the days just before the Second World War, things were different. The Western world was dominated by a particular value system.

In a book titled 1938: A World Vanishing, Brian Cleeve wrote about the difference between Britain as it was entering the war and the way it had become about 50 years later. He said: “There really was, as nostalgia remembers, an air of greater contentment. Of a sturdier confidence in the future. [People] had a greater stock of moral certainties. Right and wrong were not matters for debate.”

Since then much has changed, of course. Now right and wrong are matters for debate.

The end of the Second World War was a turning point. And while the morality of the '30s was not perfect, Cleeve noted that “to exchange a false morality for no morality at all is not necessarily an exchange for the better. And if, as a survivor of pre-war years, I were to offer an opinion as to one difference between then and now that is for the worse, I would have to choose morality.... the morality of believing that there are real and objective standards of behaviour, that there are such things as virtues, and such things as vices; that certain things are unarguably good, and others unarguably bad.”

What has happened in contemporary Western society is the promotion of democratic ideas beyond reason. It's often been noted that democracy carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

“In our modern eagerness to be tolerant,” Cleeve stated, “we have come to tolerate things which no society can tolerate and remain healthy. In our understandable anxiety not to set ourselves up as judges, we have come to believe that all judgements are wrong. In our revulsion against hypocrisy and false morality we have abandoned morality itself. And with modest hesitations but firm convictions I submit that this has not made us happier, but much unhappier. We are like men at sea without a compass.”

He continued: “In 1938 in Britain the average man and woman still possessed a keen notion of what was right and what was wrong, in his and her own personal life, in the community, and in the world at large. When the war was finally begun it was clearly—and rightly—seen as a moral war by the ordinary people who were being called on to risk their lives in it.”

Has the time arrived again when ordinary people must make moral standards a personal crusade? Has the time come to stand up and be counted for the difference between right and wrong? We all know what's been going on around the world. Our leaders have been unable to stem the flow of violence, the corruption and the many evils of modern life. Why?

Could it be that the answers do not lie with leaders—that they are found somewhere else, such as in the realm of personal responsibility?

There was a time in the Western world when we could recite the Ten Commandments. They were taught in school. There was a time when our parents led the way in disciplining us for bad behavior.

Much of our morality was based on the Book of books, the Bible. Sadly, today it's thought by many to be no more than a piece of great literature.

One of our purposes at Vision is to help readers begin to understand the Bible's practical relevance to today's moral dilemmas. We believe that in its pages God has revealed the way that leads to true success and happiness in human society.

Soft Skills List 2 – People Skills

by Lei Han

People Skills address how to best interact and work with others so you can build meaningful work relationships, influence others perception of you and your work, and motivate their actions.   I have split them into two sections – Conventional and Tribal

"Conventional" – List of people skills you can find in most job descriptions and you will be assessed on some or all of these in your performance reviews depending on your level.

1. Communication skills – Being able to actively listen to others and articulate your ideas in writing and verbally to any audience in a way where you are heard and you achieve the goals you intended with that communication.
2. Teamwork skills – Being able to work effectively with anyone with different skill sets, personalities, work styles, or motivation level to achieve a better team result.
3. Interpersonal relationship skills – Effectively at building trust, finding common ground, having empathy, and ultimately building good relationships with people at work and in your network.  This skill is closely related to Communication Skills.  As Maya Angelou said “I have learned people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you make them feel.”
4. Presentation skills – Effectively presenting your work results and ideas formally to an audience that captivates their attention, engage their input, and motivates them to act in accordance to your desired outcome.  While presentation skills is a form of communication skills, I decided to list it separately given the ability to present plays a huge role in any business profession especially as you move up in your career.
5. Meeting management skills – Leading a meeting to efficiently and effectively reach productive results.  At least 50% of meetings today are a waste of time.
6. Facilitating skills – Being able to coordinate and solicit well represented opinions and feedback from a group with diverse perspectives to reach a common, best solution.
7. Selling skills -  Building buy-in to an idea, a decision, an action, a product, or a service.  This is not just for people in sales.
8. Management skills – Creating and motivating a high performing team with people of varied skills, personalities, motivations, and work styles.
9. Leadership skills – Defining and communicating vision and ideas that inspires others to follow with commitment and dedication.
10. Mentoring / coaching skills - Providing constructive wisdom, guidance, and/or feedback that can help others further their career development

"Tribal" –  List of people skills that you will not find in any job descriptions.  They are also essential to your career success.   I call it tribal because they are more “insider knowledge” that you gain from work experience or from mentors.  Some people can go through their entire career and not be aware of some of these skills.

11. Managing upwards – Proactively managing your relationship with your boss, his expectations of your work, and his perception of your performance.  Whether you are challenged, given opportunities, or recognized at work heavily depends on your ability to communicate, manage expectations, and build a good relationship with your boss.
12. Self-promotion skills – Proactively and subtly promoting your skills and work results to people of power or influence in your organization and network.  It is not enough that your boss knows you do great work.  You need to subtly build your reputation with all key people that can influence your performance review.  This is because hard work alone does not guarantee success.
13. Skills in dealing with difficult personalities – Being able to still achieve the work result needed while working with someone whom you find difficult.
14. Skills in dealing with difficult/unexpected situations – Being able to stay calm and still are effective when faced with an unexpected or difficult situation.  This includes being able to think on your feet and articulate thoughts in an organized manner even when you are not prepared for the discussion or situation you are in.
15. Savvy in handling office politics – Being able to understand and proactively deal with the unspoken nuances of office and people dynamics so you can protect yourself from unfairness as well as further your career.  Office politics is a fact of life.  If you don’t choose to play, it can play you.
16. Influence / persuasion skills - Being able to influence perspectives or decision making but still have the people you influence think they made up their own minds.
17. Negotiation skills - Being able to understand the other side’s motivations and leverage and reach a win-win resolution that you find favorably, satisfies both sides, and maintains relationships for future interactions.
18. Networking skills - Being able to be interesting and interested in business conversations that motivates people to want to be in your network.  The bigger and stronger the network you have, the more easily you can get things done (e.g., find a job, get advice, find business partners, find customers, etc…)