While modern work life is often considered a stress, a lot of people overcome this quite easily. One of the ways of doing so is imbibing empathy as a part of work. In order to do so, one must begin by showing self-compassion. For this, one needs to truly understand, care and acting for oneself. One must restrain the urge to overwork. The person must also never punish himself/herself needlessly. Alongside self-compassion, professionals must practice showing empathy. As a first step, friendships must be forged with like-minded people at the workplace. Instead of trying to find the right work companion, colleagues must get valued for what they really are. It is a well known fact that coaching is one of the most effective ways of management training. Thus, professionals must start taking time out to coach others who are in need of some skills. Ultimately, all work depends on the interactions with clients and customers, thus they need to be paid maximum importance in the person’s worldview.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/05/prevent-burnout-by-making-compassion-a-habit?

Uploaded Date: 16th May 2017

During the process of talent recruitment, it has been observed that large numbers of women make it to the biggest of companies. The gap between men and women isn’t high at this stage but keeps getting worse for women as the levels rise up. This is due to three main reasons. One of them is that the playing field isn’t equal as men tend to get the meatier assignments at the start of their careers as opposed to their female counterparts. The performance management systems are still not gender neutral especially as women are usually subjected to working long hours managing household or family requirements in addition to office pressures. A lot of companies are found guilty of just providing lip service to the concept of gender-equality but not actually implementing it. Instead holistic change is required where culture, systems and behaviours get altered.

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/lbsbusinessstrategyreview/2017/03/08/three-reasons-why-leaning-in-is-not-enough/#7968a4a7336c

Uploaded Date: 16th May 2017

There exists a massive pool of talented workers looking not enter the nine-to-five grind but to work in an agile environment as freelancers. This is a huge pool of talent that mustn’t be let go of. In order to get the best out of them talent management abilities of the leadership are of utmost importance. Teamwork needs to be fostered accordingly. The onboarding process must be a very well designed component of the management training module. Each such part timer must be allotted tasks specifically suited to their skill sets. Also, the work allotted must be in line with a consistent schedule so they get properly engaged. There must be timely communication with them so that proper coordination may take place. The ‘gig’ workers mustn’t feel left out but indeed part of the overall team. This sort of recruitment must not be restricted to national borders as a lot of the work will be internet based, so overseas sources must be tapped. A mutual understanding has to be set in place on benefits accrued to both parties.

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/04/12/eight-ways-companies-can-tap-into-the-power-of-part-time-staff/#10484e7c66e4

Uploaded Date: 13th May 2017

A lot of companies with genuinely positive intentions try to add temporary monetary incentives in order to induce employees to adopt good practices. However, these often fall flat and instead rebound back once the contractual period gets over. This is because a lot of employees consider the positive intent as greater and so monetizing it feels an undervaluation. Or it can also be the other way round where once the minimum financial agreement gets over, employees lose the interest. This failure is known among academicians and management consulting experts as the crowding-out effect. Instead, peer pressure works much better. The moment, team members organically imbibe these traits, a certain pressure is exerted on the others to follow suit.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/03/incentives-dont-help-people-change-but-peer-pressure-does? 

Uploaded Date: 30th March 2017

Motivation is one of the principle tools of talent management. Team leaders try to motivate their reports in order to eke out the best of results from them. It also acts favourably to their commitment levels with the company. However, researches have proven that in more cases than not, employees’ motivation levels decline post their interaction with managers. This is because most managers usually do not have any approach towards this, but simply follow their gut instinct. Instead of following their instincts, managers must instead adopt a data-driven approach. Most motivational practices fail due to several reasons such as the goal-setting approach being too simplistic. Or performance evaluations could be biased. In some cases, if employees find the nature of the job as boring, no amount of coaching or mentorship is going to motivate them. Finally, most feedback rounds do not cause the intended impact as they do not focus on the positives but on fault-finding missions. HR practices need to imbibe more of data backed business analytics tools to foster greater levels of motivation.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/02/if-you-want-to-motivate-employees-stop-trusting-your-instincts 

Most researches have proven the fact that employees prefer working at places which rank high on diversity. This trend is all the more exacerbated among the younger professionals. That is why companies across the board are consciously trying to set up talent recruitment practices that are free from bias and encourage diversity. In order to design such an ideal “values fit”, companies must advertise existing trends on career pages or on social media handles. Specific corporate trainings can be set up such as the ones by Facebook and Google to eliminate unconscious biases. The entire company leadership must hone in on this support by demonstrating how such values are encouraged across the organization. Technology can play a huge role in making recruitment fair or unbiased. Cloud technologies are being leveraged to scan through enormous quantities of data and analyze trends accordingly. Even Artificial Intelligence is being used to identify specific skills while chat bots exist which can conduct the first round discussion before the face-to-face interaction takes place. SAP for example has put in a programme to consciously recruit people suffering from autism. This also helps the company gain goodwill in the talent market.

Source:http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2017/02/01/how-high-tech-leads-to-more-fair-hiring-practices/#17d9a5f13750

As per research carried out by Kronos, a staggering ninety five percent of employees at most corporations suffered from burnout. A few of the factors are obvious and perhaps beyond control. They are excess workload, unfair compensation or after-hours work. Other factors that emerge on deeper scrutiny of the data available are poor management and a lack of connect with the corporate strategy. In addition there exist some secondary problems which more proactive an HR strategy can easily solve such as employee engagement or talent management. A lot of companies are faced with this dilemma of which aspect to give greater importance to – talent retention or fresh recruitments. While the former is always desirable, fresh injection of talent is also necessary to any organization. Also, budget plays a part in such decision making especially the part allocated to technology. A burnout prevention strategy needs to be put in place. The right mix of consistency and agility are needed to devise such solutions.

Source:http://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2017/02/01/the-biggest-workplace-challenge-employee-burnout/#32a9eb2260ae