What’s Keeping Employees Engaged in 2021? One might think that employee engagement would have taken an irrecoverable blow thanks the additional hardships brought on by 2020, yet the opposite seems to be the case – according to the latest polling data from Gallup engagement is stronger than ever, and in many ways stronger than it was before. So, what exactly is keeping employees engaged in 2021? Not-So-New Normals If you’ve been following the development of employee motivators over the last decade or so, it’s easy to see that many of the work/life adjustments made over the last year that have b ..read more

Why Are Employee Satisfaction Surveys Important? Gathering direct feedback from employees in the form of surveys is a great way to improve your engagement and satisfaction efforts. In some ways it’s the most trustworthy method for reading the pulse of your culture. In a more practical sense, identifying areas of dissatisfaction is required before you can begin to diagnose it. However, the feedback you get from employees is only as good as the employee satisfaction survey questions you ask them. Uncharted Engagement Territory 2020 gave us a lot to reconsider about the way we work, and one could ..read more

With all that’s happening in the world and everything being far from “back to normal”, it’s okay to feel a bit of apprehension about what lies ahead as we push toward the end of a bewildering year. Nonetheless organizations are trying to make sense of it all and identify the big employee engagement trends for 2021. But employee engagement levels have fluctuated with seemingly no rhyme or reason since the pandemic began, and all the metrics we used to rely on are harder than ever to predict. The Obvious Stuff Some of the lessons 2020 taught us about how work has changed were obvious. For insta ..read more

World Gratitude Day, established by the UN in the seventies and celebrated each year on September 21st, is around to remind us how being mindful, showing compassion to oneself and others, and practicing gratitude daily does wonders for not only your mental health, but that of your family, friends, and coworkers too. Healthy Gratitude Studies have shown that practicing more gratitude is associated with positive mental and physical benefits like greater happiness, more positive emotions, fewer aches and pains, better sleep, and improved self-esteem, just to name a few. The person receiving grat ..read more

Black Friday and Cyber Monday get a lot of hype as the end-all be-all shopping days the holiday season, but they pale in comparison to the real busiest shopping day of the year. The final Saturday before Christmas Eve (Dec 21st this year), also known as “Super Saturday”, consistently logs higher online sales and foot traffic than Black Friday or Cyber Monday combined. Super Deals One of the reasons behind that may be shoppers know they are more likely to find better sales, deals, and steals the closer it gets to Christmas as holiday stock is cleared out and priced to move at lower marg ..read more

May 21 is National Waitstaff Day, a great day to raise the profile of a very unique workforce segment that reports an astonishing 73% turnover rate and high amounts of workplace stress. Coupled with notoriously low wages that depend heavily on tips and a glut of part-time seasonal employment tides, it can be a bit of a challenge to keep it all running smoothly. But the food service and restaurant industry always manages to soldier on, and it might be because the nature of the work is just very amenable to turnover. Waiting tables was the original “side gig” before millennials made the “g ..read more

April 7-13 is National Volunteer Week, an annual event celebrated by the Points of Light organization, the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service. It’s a good time to talk about why it’s always a good idea to offer employees volunteer opportunities at least once in the year. Here are the three key benefits: Mental health – Volunteering counteracts the effects of stress, anger, depression, and anxiety, and is associated with greater longevity and reduced risk of heart disease, even slowing the progression of some types of dementia like Alzheimer’s. Physica ..read more

Even the best-engineered reward, recognition, and incentive programs will be in trouble if employees aren’t connected, informed and aware of the benefits and features they bring. With segmented and remote workforces becoming the norm, effectively communicating and marketing employee rewards is increasingly important, especially when launching or relaunching a program for the first time. Important areas to consider are: Developing effective program names and branding – The name you give your program and what it communicates to the workforce matters.Choosing appropriate channels – In this da ..read more

No matter what, Gallup and all the other top firms report that only 30-35% of employees are ever engaged. Year after year we wake up to the news that only one third of employees in America actually enjoy going to work, and it is pretty much becoming the norm for the 21st Century. Am I the only one who finds this incredibly depressing and unacceptable? If I may, what is the big holdup with the employers of the other 65-70%? This three-part blog series is meant to get all of us back on track by focusing in on the three big secrets to employee engagement. They may not seem like big secrets when y ..read more

No matter what, Gallup and all the other top firms report that only 30-35% of employees are ever engaged. Year after year we wake up to the news that only one third of employees in America actually enjoy going to work, and it is pretty much becoming the norm for the 21st Century. Am I the only one who finds this incredibly depressing and unacceptable? If I may, what is the big holdup with the employers of the other 65-70%? This three-part blog series is meant to get all of us back on track by focusing in on the three big secrets to employee engagement. They may not seem like big secrets when y ..read more