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Businesses have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to improve their employee engagement scores. Yet Gallup who has measured engagement scores since 2000 has seen little if any change. Engagement has been defined a number of ways including employees who consistency give discretionary effort and have a desire to remain employed at their company. Gallup defines engagement as employees who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace. Engagement is directly linked to performance thus profit. Performance and engagement are both results of cultural, technological and physical environments. Performance consultants agree that workplace performance is affected […]

Drama in the workplace costs $350 billion per year in the United States according to Gallup research. Add it up; blaming, backstabbing, bullying and sabotage leading to absenteeism, turnover and negative company reputation. It is all non-productive work time! Workplace drama is not simply a diminishing force on productivity. It’s a lost opportunity to harness inevitable workplace conflict. Well-managed conflict at work results in improved solutions, innovation and enriched co-worker relationships. Managing conflict is a key leadership skill. Understanding the elements of workplace drama is critical to turning a potential drain on productivity into a positive outcome. Charlie Sheppard, author […]

Employers can increase employee engagement by tying individual contributions to the company’s overall performance. Aligning people with purpose requires clarified expectations and a trusting relationship between the employee and supervisor. Traditional performance appraisals undermine this trust. Honest constructive feedback violates social norms according to the NeuroLeadership Institute. Feedback sounds like judging. Neither the giver nor the receiver is comfortable with judging. That is why people judge high, and judge nice. More than 400 large companies have removed ratings from their performance appraisal processes and have abandoned the traditional review of previous performance. There is a lot of convincing evidence that […]