by Jason | Jan 22, 2015 | announcements
Spark Toronto is shaping up to be a fantastic 2 days of learning! We’re happy to announce the next batch of accepted sessions: Business Common Sense: Leading on the 21st Century Edge, Ayelet Baron Co-Creating Change:Building Your Future Together, Ellen Grove The Open Organization, Dr Philip Foster Check out how the program is shaping...
by Jason | Dec 5, 2014 | Spark Blog
Calibration. A word that immediately spikes a dose of cortisol into the brain of managers all over the world who are forced to rank employees against other employees at annual performance review time. I remember the last time I worked as an employee in an organization. The first thing my manager said to me at the start of my performance review was: “Well, you’re already near the top of your salary range for this band of job so you won’t get more money and we can only rank so many people as ‘excellent’ so…well, there you go. Let’s start the review. Looking at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, describe where…” Yeah, it really did start out like that. Employee engagement is a hot topic nowadays as employers look for ways to remain competitive by lowering turnover rates through increasing engagement. But is it working? Gallop suggests that 70% of the workforce in the United States is not engaged and 18% of them are actively disengaged. Through a large-scale study, they estimate this costs the US economy between $450 and $550 billion in lost productivity. What’s interesting about that stat is that it’s largely been the same since the year 2000. Makes me think there is something flawed about their survey method. But then again, maybe it’s not a surprise, given what they recommend to fix the problem: use the “right” engagement survey coach managers and hold them accountable for engagement scores focus engagement on enterprise levels by ‘weaving in engagement into managers’ and workers’ performance expectations’ – now, that’s a beauty! select the right managers – OK, they’re on to...
by Jason | Oct 9, 2014 | announcements, Spark Blog
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