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What Are Your Workers Thankful For?

What do you think workers are most thankful for this holiday season? Having friendly colleagues beat out supportive managers, according to a recent survey. The OfficeTeam survey asked respondents, “Aside from salary, what are you most thankful for at your current job?” Here are the top five responses:       Friendly coworkers—24%     Good benefits […]

Be Your Own Advocate: A Short Guide to Self-Promotion

Rabbi Hillel the Elder is credited with saying, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?” I mention this to students who are about to enter the workforce, and it applies as well to readers of our newsletter. The Harvard Business Review tells us as much in “How to Self-Promote (When […]

Employee Confidence Levels High Entering 2016

According to the 2015, Q4 Randstad US Employee Confidence Index (ECI), more than one-third of workers (34%) believe more jobs are available and nearly six in 10 (55%) indicate they are confident in their ability to find a new job.

Faces of HR: Britta Mühlenberg—Building Bridges Between People and Potential

Britta Mühlenberg, COO at Acrolinx, isn’t your typical HR leader. Her path to the C-suite started not with textbooks but with a deep-seated desire to connect with people on a global scale. This wanderlust, coupled with a fascination with human behavior, led her to an unexpected first step: the world of hospitality. “University confirmed my […]

The Companies Embracing Remote Work for the Long Haul

As companies like Starbucks and Amazon roll back their remote work policies, others are doubling down on flexibility, proving that work-from-home isn’t just a pandemic experiment—it’s a new way of working. Contrary to their approach, other companies like Allstate, Instacart, and Spotify, are choosing instead to embrace remote work. Their focus is on meeting employees […]

team

13 Characteristics of a Great Teammate

We all have worked side by side with people we have enjoyed and respected—the type of teammates who make work fun. And we all have worked with people whom, well, we didn’t enjoy or respect—the type of teammates who suck all the joy out of work for everyone around them. So, there’s obviously people who […]

Pension

LIMRA Data: Pension Buyouts at Highest Q1 Level in 15 Years

Single-premium pension buyout sales as part of the “derisking” of defined benefit (DB) retirement plans for the first quarter rose 31% from the same period in 2016, totaling $1.4 billion—the highest first-quarter results in 15 years, according to the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute.

AI

Robotic Process Automation

Automation and technology have been hugely important in generating efficiencies and, therefore, profitability in businesses for centuries. From the steam engine to the assembly line to robotics, automating tasks traditionally performed by humans can often lead to advantages in quality, consistency, and speed. But automation may not always be the answer!

Getting management right: What’s HR’s role?

Few would argue that managers play a large role in attracting the best employees and keeping them engaged and productive. An effective manager keeps the team strong. The trick is learning how to improve managers and figuring out whether, or even if, the human resources department has any control over manager effectiveness.  Pete Smith, a […]