Ten Corporate- Culture Clues to Spot in a Job Interview

Most people when they appear for interviews, do not manage to sense the workplace as they are often too stressed in trying to put on their best show and please the interviewers. However, this is not an ideal attitude, as hours of business analysis on Glass-door will not prepare one for the work as much as the day in the office for the interviews. One must look out for signs of the prevalent work culture among the existing employees. Is the interviewer too formal? Is there respect for the candidate’s time? Is the process well organized and are the company requirements made clear? These kind of clues need to be gauged from the day’s experiences. 

The Importance of Engaged Employees to Growth

According to business research carried out by Gallup, only 13% of the world’s workforce feels truly engaged at work. With the global economy altering and organizations facing newer challenges, it is imperative that firms get the best of talent. Also talent management and retention becomes crucial. For this, employees need to be selected from diverse profiles and set meaningful challenges. The incentive mechanism must be devised appropriately. Management consulting giant PwC has claimed that the most innovative firms will rise by more than 60% over the next few years and that is where engaged employees can most help.  

What Startups can teach us about Financing

Without possessing the long lines of hierarchy, startups can mentor larger firms about number of processes and business innovation. Due to the close knit unit which startups are bound to possess, decision making is a quick process and changes can be implemented quickly. Rachel Pautler, the founder of Suncayr, speaks about the growing trend in Canada for startups to flourish. Flexible hours and social activities are encouraged in order to boost talent recruitment. Malorie Brodie of Bridgit also stresses on the importance of remote working as a crucial cog. Denzil D’Sa of PPLCONNECT, Mikael Chow of Crew and Jeff Booth of BuildDirect are other small business founders who are thriving in the present environment. 

Airbnb & Uber: How the Sharing Economy is changing Travel

The sharing economy has impacted across the board but its greatest imprint can be found in the travel and tourism industry. Airbnb and Uber are the best examples who have disrupted the market. The former has around 650,000 rooms across 192 countries in the world and just to demonstrate the scale, it took Hilton 93 years to reach 610,000 rooms. This has severely impacted tourism jobs with calls for greater regulation being experienced in several markets. While these players have grown exponentially, there is a cause for caution due to impending regulations. Also in certain cultures, travel is often seen as a status symbol and that is where some of the traditional players have an advantage.

5 Business Innovation nightmares and how to avoid Them

Business innovation is usually a buzzword for all positive changes, yet these same disruptions can destroy other firms. Failure to recognize market trends which can impact business is a common fault. Borders failed to see the rise of e-books and closed shop while Barnes & Noble continues to flourish. Some firms such as Blackberry fail to balance product portfolio. Blackberry ignored signals that consumers rather than business professionals will drive the smart-phone segment. Often a bigger firm can succeed by simply buying off a smaller one which offers breakthrough technology. Netflix survived the phase and now sits as chief market disruptor. While Nokia developed a smart phone decades ahead of time, it failed to recognize its own smart risk and instead lost market share once the same became mass market. Customers’ needs keep evolving and it is critical for the brand to recognize the same to tailor the products accordingly. The customer must be involved in advisory boards, ethnographic research, open platforms and social networks.

How to Develop a Trans-organizational Mindset to lead your Organization

A trans-organizational mindset is one where the top management has built in a holistic understanding from across the sector and other industries as well. This eventually seeps down to the rest of the firm. This form has particularly worked in the health industry and has led to increase in cross-organization collaboration. Management training programmes these days are integrating this sort of learning in action by involving different stakeholders. Thought leaders such as Samuel Culbert, David Boje, Thomas Cummings and Kurt Motamedi have been at the forefront of this paradigm shift.  

How Pinterest works for Travel & Tourism

Pinterest is slowing creeping in as one of the important platforms to conduct digital marketing. Unlike several other channels, Pinterest does not seek to recreate the real world, and thus magical connotations work well here. A strong avatar image is quintessential and then the user needs to build around ten attractive boards in order to evoke interest. Among corporate users, the perfect example would be that of the Four Seasons Hotel or that of Azamara Cruises.

5 Business Leaders reveal the secrets to an amazing Company Culture

Designing an organizational culture is a lot about what is feasible and quite a bit about how it is executed from the very top. A management consulting publication has provided us with certain stellar examples where organizations have fostered excellent company culture. Better-Works from California works with the motto of ‘hire for sparkle’ and thus their entire recruitment and appraisal policy is built around rewarding employees for the zest and vigour they bring to the job. FlexJobs based in Colorado has a virtual office space called Sococo and company message board called Yammer which helps the remote working process. Team-Snap also from Colorado goes by the maxim of trusting employees and treating them well in order to promote company culture. Atlanta based Mail-Chimp have a system by which employees’ corporate training is well taken care of and they can plan ahead to their respective careers. Hub-Spot from Massachusetts meanwhile has a culture whereby employee happiness is gauged and changes implemented accordingly.