Expanding Workforce Development

Businesses benefit from workforce development programs for disadvantaged and underrepresented populations

by RaeAnne Marsh

A hot topic these days is businesses’ difficulty in filling open positions. Creating a pipeline or directly supplying workers are organizations who contribute to workforce development through their focus on serving disadvantaged or underrepresented populations. Disadvantaged Bring Unexpected Strengths Phoenix-based One Step Beyond, Inc. is a private, nonprofit organization … [More]

The Secret to Productive Meetings? Fewer, Faster, Focused

Remote and hybrid workforces are additional challenge

by Aleksandra Sulimko

Meetings, for many businesses, are a necessary part of the workday. They provide a platform for team members to share information, align on strategy and make important decisions. However, they can also be a significant drain on time, energy, and creativity, with data revealing that many employees spend nearly 24 hours per week in meetings. Long meetings with unclear agendas, … [More]

Feedback: April 2023

by Kendra Eberhart, Angela Homco, Robert Smith

Q: You’ve included intellectually challenged individuals in your workforce. What are some of the highlights of the experience?  Kendra Eberhart  President and CEO Royal Oaks Sector: Senior Living The One Step Beyond participants who have been assigned to Royal Oaks are a delightful group of people who have filled a critical role in our food service department. They are … [More]

Foolproof Hiring

by Mike Hunter

In their book Foolproof Hiring, business leaders and hiring experts Brad Smart and Chris Mursau give readers an easy-to-follow instruction course in Topgrading. This nationally known and time-tested hiring methodology has been a proven winner in finding A players for thousands of businesses for more than 30 years. Smart and Mursau distill the key tenets of Topgrading—a … [More]

7 Ways HR Gives Bad Job References without Giving Bad Job References

inbusinessPHX.com

Have you ever heard the following mantra, it is repeated so often it almost sounds like a truism? “Former employers direct all reference checks to their Human Resources departments, and those people won't say anything negative about me.” Not only does this statement frequently prove untrue, it sometimes misrepresents what HR can – and will – divulge about former … [More]

Increase the Odds of Improving Your Organization’s Performance: 4 Approaches to Building Employee Trustworthiness

by Yoram Solomon, Ph.D.

Building trust in your organization greatly benefits the employees, the culture and the organization’s performance, which are all tightly related. Building trust is undoubtedly important for a company, and increasing the level of trust could have a transformative effect. Building trust would be easy only if two conditions are met. First, that trust would be absolute. In … [More]

How Can Business Leaders Show Up for Their Employees Who Get a Cancer Diagnosis?

A survivor’s experience, from the day of her diagnosis and how she shared that diagnosis with her manager and with the wider executive team

by Sarah McDonald

After I returned to work, two work friends of mine asked me if I would be willing to talk about my cancer diagnosis at a management training day they were hosting. They hoped that by my speaking publicly about what could be an awkward work situation, they could challenge these people managers to think deeply about how to lead with empathy and human-ness.  I was so excited … [More]

Leaders: Ready for a Bold Answer to Service Fatigue? 3 Ways to Avoid the Epidemic of Quiet Quitting

by Laurie Guest

Everyone’s all heard of it by now: “quiet quitting” is the freshly coined phrase to describe the age-old behavior of not quite leaving one’s job entirely but rather opting to no longer go above and beyond. It’s Service Fatigue to the extreme, risking not just customer satisfaction but staff loyalty and your business’s bottom line, too. While the idea of “quiet quitting” may be … [More]

Experts Offer a Plan for Raising the Bar on Workplace Safety

inbusinessPHX.com

Compliance with OSHA and industry safety standards should not be the ultimate goal for an organization; it should be the baseline, say workplace safety experts Ken Chapman and Tony Orlowski. In their new book, Safety Beyond the Numbers: A Path to Principled Leadership, Chapman and Orlowski address the “what now?” question when a company has a robust safety compliance program … [More]

HR Pitfalls and the Dangers of ‘Quiet Promotion’

Giving responsibility or taking advantage?

by Kelli Mason

Thanks to all the talk of “quiet quitting” hitting the news cycles recently, many managers are newly suspicious of their employees’ intentions. As it turns out, the suspicions may go both ways. According to a new JobSage survey, a whopping 78% of American workers report receiving a “quiet promotion” — an increased workload without increased pay. And most of them are not happy … [More]