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To Retain Your Best Employees, Invest in Your Best Managers

Managers are really having a moment. Between the Great Resignation, a lingering pandemic, employees demanding flexibility, skyrocketing mental health challenges, a looming recession, and general uncertainty, more and more employees are turning to their direct supervisors for direction and support. Unfortunately, managers aren’t always prepared to meet their moment because they’re woefully under-trained and overworked while tasked with leading their teams during heightened turbulence. To retain your managers — and the employees who report to them — you need to invest in their development. The author presents three ways to do it.

How To Create Powerful Workplace Rituals

Rituals can make your workplace more human, further employee engagement, foster a sense of belonging, and help workers connect with one another and their work. Erica Keswin, a workplace strategist and author of Rituals Roadmap: The Human Way to Transform Everyday Routines into Workplace Magic, has spent years researching rituals and helping companies connect their teams and create a more human-centered workplace…

The Hidden Power of Workplace Rituals

Employees rightly expect to be able to bring their feelings — big and small — to work. One important way to provide that support is through rituals. The author defines rituals using two important benchmarks. First, rituals go beyond their practical purpose, moving participants beyond transaction and into meaning. For instance, lighting a candle when the lights go out isn’t a ritual, but turning off the lights and lighting a candle at sundown is. Second, rituals are sorely missed when they’re taken away. The author presents a case study from a company that took a risk in real time and created a successful response to a tragedy, and over time, that response became a ritual. Here’s how they did it, and how leaders can better understand their own rituals — both current ones and those that have yet to be discovered.

3 Ways to Boost Retention Through Professional Development

People’s lives and priorities are changing in dramatic ways before our very eyes. While increasing compensation, promoting from within, offering flexible schedules, and making remote work easier are always good talent strategies, there’s one lever leaders can pull that’s highly accessible, doesn’t have to be expensive, and gives employees something they really want: on-the-job professional development. The author offers three ways for leaders to prioritize learning and development in their organizations. First, incorporate learning into onboarding and give employees time for it regularly. Second, make learning a ritual. Finally, offer coaching to all your employees — not just executives.

Onboarding Rituals Help Employees Feel Connected

In light of the Great Resignation—or as some call it, the Great Reshuffle—the stakes have never been higher for talent development, because companies likely will be conducting a lot more onboarding in the future. Thus, it is the right time for TD functions to improve the effectiveness of their onboarding process, which comes down to fostering a greater feeling of connection to the organization from day one….

In the Hybrid Era, On-Sites Are the New Off-Sites

If your goal is to bring people together in real life at work — sometimes, all the time, or anytime — you need to design a day employees won’t want to miss. At the very least, it’s critical to be intentional about how you plan your company’s days in the office, not only to add incentive, but also to make it worth your employees’ and your company’s time. The author recounts her experience working with a company to design in-person, monthly “Superdays” and presents three elements of a successful on-site.

Staying Human While Working From Home with Three Teenagers is NOT an Oxymoron

Welcome to Keswin Family Quarantine. Like many people, my husband and I are both working from home. Our girls, Julia and Caroline, are 17-year-old juniors in high school, navigating both online school and the college process. Daniel is a freshman in high school. And who could forget the family favorite, Cruiser, our labradoodle…

We Used to Hide Behind Our Screens — and Now They’re a Lifeline

My brother-in-law is a Rabbi. Two weeks ago, he held a zoom meeting with his team to update everyone on policies, protocols and how they were going to proceed in light of the coronavirus. They all did the work they needed to do, but also connected on a human level, sharing…

Remix: Generational Magic at Work and Around the Table (Ok, Boomer)

I know Thanksgiving is a couple days away, so you’re probably already obsessing about your menu, your travel plans, your hostess gifts or your nap. Or maybe you’re worrying about everyone getting along. As if political divisions aren’t enough, there’s this old-as-the-hills generational divide that’s taking on new life lately….

Sometimes Connecting Is More Valuable Than Cash: Bringing Our Sports Rituals To Work

Monday, August 26th.  Thursday, September 5th. Maybe these dates don’t mean much to you. But to our family they signal some of our favorite things—this year the US Open started on August 26th, and September 5th was the kickoff of football season. We’re big fans of rituals of every stripe, but sports rituals have a special place in our hearts….

The Welcome Wagon: Onboarding That Helps People Feel Connected

I remember getting ready for the first day of school like it was yesterday: Going shopping for my first pair of Jordache jeans. I thought long and hard about what I was going to wear on that first day, then I laid it out on my bed the night before while I packed my pencil case and lunch box….

11 tips to help you move on from a job rejection

It’s hard not to take job rejections, like any other form of rejection, personally. But separating yourself from the situation is the key to moving on after a job rejection says Erica Keswin, workplace strategist and author of “Bring Your Human to Work.”

3 Tips on How to Bring Your Human to Work, Every Day

Erica Keswin’s “Aha!” moment happened a decade ago on a Bermuda beach. She signed into work with her Blackberry, in a lounge chair and said out loud “This is the life!”. The ability to leverage technology – and in some cases leave it behind- in order to bring more personal meaning and human purpose to work is essential.

Taking Professional Development Personally: 3 Strategies for a Better ROI

When most managers think of professional learning and development, they think of opportunities for their direct reports to improve skills that will help them in their current jobs. After all, the company’s paying the bills, so it makes sense that managers will want to see results when the class is over or the conference attendee returns to his or her desk.

How to Use Technology at Work the Right Way

Ever gotten a Slack message from someone sitting 10 feet away and wondered why he couldn’t have just walked over? Or been in a meeting and caught colleagues surreptitiously tapping away at their phones under the table? Or, worse, found yourself getting distracted when your phone buzzes during a meeting, then being completely unprepared when your boss asks you a question?

Going To The Extreme: Gathering As An Art With Priya Parker

Are you the type of person who obsesses over guest lists for parties, girls’ weekends, or meetings at work? Are you losing sleep over who to invite, worried about alienating new friends or colleagues, but hesitant to mess with the tried-and-true dynamics you’ve grown to love/hate?