The Hiblog

4 ways to transform your company’s culture of feedback

Keep your people engaged and motivated by encouraging feedback at every level of the organization, and not just at prescribed moments like a quarterly or annual review.

Prioritizing DE&I in 2021

2021 is the year we prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). We’re going to build inclusive and equitable cultures that honor all of our people and their diverse backgrounds; redesign our recruiting policies to make sure they’re built to support equitable hiring; stamp out structural inequities from our compensation structure, and support employees in their unique journeys. Throughout 2020 we explored diversity, equity, and inclusion in HR. These are our most important learnings. 1. Investing in DE&I pays off Diverse teams perform better. They make better decisions, collaborate more effectively,…

5 tips for increasing retention

Great businesses are built by and with great people. If you can't hold onto your talent, you'll feel it in your bottom line. With the world in flux and the future uncertain, we need to keep our people as happy as possible. Employee retention is a key concern for HR, especially while working remotely during a plague. Here are five tips that will help you increase retention, starting now. Five tips for retaining top talent 1. Encourage friendliness across ranks A friendly hello, especially from an unexpected (and higher-up) colleague,…

Remote holiday party ideas for 2020

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to Zoom Zoom Zoom Zoom Zoom. Hey! Not nearly as catchy as the original—I know. But in this weird world of sweatpants and all Zoom everything, we need to redesign the holiday season to fit our social distanced reality. Let’s look at this as an opportunity to reimagine the holiday season and spirit. How can we make our company celebrations more inclusive for everyone? The boozy Christmas parties of seasons past were fun, sure, but for those…

What’s organizational network analysis?

Are you in the 70% of companies naming people analytics and organizational network analysis as a high priority? If so, congratulations! It’s a discipline that’s receiving a lot of interest due to its huge potential to transform the way organizations manage their people resources. Somehow, however, only 9% of companies report understanding what drives performance in their organization. It seems that while we recognize the impact of investing in organizational network analysis, we're still not willing to do anything with the insights gleaned from these analytics. Why? Paul Leonardi and…

A-Z of employee communication

Strong communication practices have always been important but now that we're all working remotely, they can be the make-or-break factor for successful team dynamics. To help you keep your managers and teammates up to speed with your organization's communication culture, we put together a fun A-Z list of best practices for good communication. A is for actions Words are good, but actions are better. Make sure your people understand the value (and impact) of their actions and non-actions. None of us are working on an island; to succeed, we need…

3 reasons you should prioritize employee recognition

When your focus is building successful teams that work together as a seamless unit, it might feel counterintuitive to single out employees for their accomplishments. But to keep every part of your team moving, you need to address each of them individually. Employee recognition is the act(s) of publicly and privately acknowledging individual achievements, and it's critical to increasing your business' bottom line. Here's how. Recognition and engagement are tied Engagement is known to be an important element of culture, productivity, and ultimately bottom-line results for your business. How does…

3 company best practices for increasing remote work productivity

Staying productive in the age of distraction is a constant struggle—especially when the kitchen is a few steps away. How can we get anything done when we are always being interrupted by push notifications and barking dogs? It's possible, but to get everything done we have to become more aware of how to structure our time. To help your remote teams stay productive, you can work on a company level to create a more supportive culture. Adopting these three practices will help your people across the organization stay motivated, engaged,…

10 ways managers can build culturally-safe teams

As organizations around the world increasingly recognize the importance of engendering healthy culture in the workplace, cultural safety has become a vital part of the conversation. For employees to be motivated and productive, they must feel recognized and valued for their unique and diverse identities.  Cultural safety enables employees to flourish, regardless of race, religion, gender, physical or intellectual differences, or sexuality, and creates opportunities for each member of an organization to put their best foot forward, every day.  Managers are the gatekeepers of cultural safety, and, by extension, of…

How COVID-19 impacted employee wellness

Across continents, genders, and seniority levels, it seems we’re all feeling the same thing: we’re having a hard time. We checked in with 2000 workers across the US and UK about their mental health at work and how it’s been affected by the pandemic. To get the full picture we surveyed full-time employees from all walks of life, spanning different industries, seniority levels, and genders, and talked to them about how their lives have changed since COVID-19 took over the world. We discovered that, across the board, we’ve all been…

5 tips for dealing with stress while working from home

I’ve been working from home for years, no problem. But working remotely during a pandemic? Oooooh boy. That’s a tough one. Government-enforced solation, health-related concerns, a constant stream of negative news, plus the stress inherent to working from home, have combined to form a big mushroom cloud of anxiety. Due to those immediate modifications including isolating workers due to social distancing, existing stress have been magnified alongside the new ones that have popped up. Many of the stress-busters we know from regular office life don’t apply to WFH, especially for…

How to keep your extroverts happy while working from home

Whether working from home is your dream finally come true or your worst nightmare, it seems like we’ll be working from home for a while. With the light at the end of the tunnel slowly dimming, how can we keep our passion, our interest, our thirst to succeed alive while sitting on the couch in a tiny apartment? It’s not always easy, to say the least, but it’s possible. Here are some useful tips for keeping your extroverts happy while working from home. Keep your face-to-face game on When no…

Vacation Shaming:The Phenomenon is Real

Vacations. There’s no better way for working people to get clear, rejuvenate, and appreciate what’s important in their lives. Sadly, colleagues and superiors are increasingly using peer pressure and guilt trips to discourage people from taking time off. This alarming workplace phenomenon is known as ‘vacation shaming’ and it’s one reason that one-quarter of all workers will quit their jobs this year. For HR, actively encouraging its people to step away periodically from the workaday world is a must. But, what’s the most effective way to combat vacation shaming?  Managers, leave…

How HR Leaders Can Enrich High EQin Their People

Some may say emotional intelligence is a desirable trait in a partner. Others will argue that it’s crucial to raising a child, or that it far surpasses the value of IQ (intelligence quotient) due to its connection of logical and emotional reasoning or understanding. All of this and more might just be true - but, EQ is hardly recognized as a favorable characteristic in one place where emotions, human relationships, and sound reason-making meet at one busy intersection: the workplace.  High EQ belongs in the workplace for one very simple…

Hey, HR! Wanna Pull Your People Out of that Summer Productivity Dip?

Sublime once said it best. “Summertime… and the living’ s easy.” Except, not for anyone who has a full-time job with deadlines and quarterly goals to meet. Luckily for us, though, the modern office has made great leaps into the future of work and so far, we’ve been able to meet new accommodations that make the Summer season easier to enjoy. As HR professionals and managers, the trick is still striking that perfect balance between optimal employee productivity and allowing them to submerge their toes in the beachy sand worry-free. …