Workplace

Current data from Owl Lab’s ongoing study on working patterns indicates that 25% of workers are still opting for remote work. Hybrid working setups have increased by over 15%. Traditional office work has decreased by almost 25%. When a new employee joins any organisation these variations in working patterns lead to a key question. How can they all be successfully inducted in ways that accommodate these variations?

The origin of the phrase ‘Hire for attitude. Develop skills’ has been attributed to Sherry Phelps of Southwest Airlines. It’s been used repeatedly by many others since. And it certainly led to Southwest’s well-documented success story, due in large part to their employees having a ‘Warrior Spirit’. So their leaders and other employees all had to have the resilience to constantly fight the industry battles.

Too much talk at work kills productivity. This is one of the findings from a recent study at Currys, the UK retailer, where the main distraction to productivity seen by over a fifth of workers (23%) was talkative colleagues. In his excellent new book Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg identifies three types of productive conversations. Here’s how they can become productive in a work context

What’s more important for success – IQ or EQ? Do you need one or both; and what’s the right mix? There’s no doubt that leaders, managers and employees are all being judged by a new yardstick. Not just by how smart we are, our training qualifications or years of experience. Increasingly it’s about how well we handle ourselves and other people. Until quite recently people used to think intelligence was just about IQ.

Modern businesses invest time and expertise in shaping future strategies. Many go on to invest effort in communicating the chosen direction to employees. But often, when you talk to an individual staff member, team or department, you find they’re unaware of the strategy and clueless as to how they can help the organisation achieve it. People turn up to do their daily work but don’t much care about the broader outcome.