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  Guest Post by Patrick Del Rosario It can be tempting to turn a blind eye to pesky employee squabbles and hope they simply work themselves out. Unfortunately, though, workplace disputes rarely work themselves out on their own, and even the smallest disagreements can escalate into more serious problems if left to fester for too long. According to recent research, between 24 and 60% of management time is spent on dealing with conflicts and anger in the work place. While it may seem like all this time would be better spent on some other aspect of running a business, it is important to keep in mind that employees are the very thing that keep a company going, and in order to keep your workforce productive, happy and stress-free, interventions are often necessary. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when settling conflicts in the workplace. 1. Stay neutral and listen to both sides of the story When dealing with conflicts amongst your employees, it is important that you stay neutral an...

Adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace. Interesting research work showing how higher rewards not always leads to higher or better performance for knowledge workers.  Makes you wonder if we need to review and redesign performance management philosophy and Organizations reward approach. Higher performance need not always be driven by higher rewards, economic behavior is also a function of purpose of work and inherent satisfaction which a job provides. I am reminded of Herbert Simon's Satisficing approach where he pointed out that human beings lack the cognitive resources to maximize: we usually do not know the relevant probabilities of outcomes, we can rarely evaluate all outcomes with sufficient precision, and our memories are weak and unreliable. A more realistic approach to rationality takes into account these limitations: This is called bounded rationality .  These observations ...

Tom Malone, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of the HBR article "The Age of Hyperspecialization," explains why breaking jobs into tiny pieces yields better, faster, cheaper work -- and greater flexibility for employees.

Changing times needs different strategies to engage and retain key employees. Organizations adopt different approach towards managing talent and working towards improving deliverables for business profitability.  Mckinsey study shows that too many companies approach the retention of key employees during disruptive periods of organizational change by throwing financial incentives at senior executives, star performers, or other “rainmakers.”The money is rarely well spent. Many of the recipients would have stayed put anyway; others have concerns that money alone can’t address. Moreover, by focusing exclusively on high fliers, companies often overlook those “normal” performers who are nonetheless critical for the success of any change effort. Some of the key observations are: Find the “hidden gems” Once HR and line managers have generated a thoughtful and more inclusive list of key players (usually 30 to 45 percent of all employees), they can begin to prioritize groups and individuals ...

As organizations spread across globe and set operations in different parts of the world, organizational culture is acquiring a whole new meaning. Growing decentralization and growth in no of various units and function means each unit is given the scope to define its scope of operation within the broad organizational framework.Structural changes have been made to allow flexibility of approach and decision making has been decentralized to enable organization scale the challenge of growth and diverse business requirement. All this means organization culture becomes the critical enabler in facilitating a cohesive and well knit unit. Bain & Company’s recently released the Results of Bain & Company’s Management Tools & Trends 2007 study also suggests that Culture continues to be the most important strategy for business success. The top 5 management trends as described in the report are: 91% agreedCulture is as important as strategy for business success 87% agreed that Informati...