People Dynamics

  This piece is a part of our Going Against the Grain series, which profiles businesses with the guts to defy convention and test out novel concepts. Go here to view the remaining episodes of the series. One of the biggest reassessments of work/life balance since the weekend's inception has been brought on by the pandemic. This month, Prince Harry became the most recent person to emphasise the value of time off when he counselled employers to offer their employees time to concentrate on themselves in order to counter the consequences of burnout and stress. This thought is what motivated Spotify to start a "health week" for its staff. It took place during the first week of November and gave all employees the option to take five paid days off, thereby closing the business for five days. According to Spotify's senior human resources officer Katarina Berg, the purpose of the week was to offer its employees "a opportunity to refresh and focus on themselves." Duri...

  Even if you were successful in keeping your top employees throughout the Great Resignation, chances to hire new talent will inevitably arise. It's time to differentiate yourself, not only to increase engagement but also to find and hire the greatest team members. Even while you can draw people to you with effective engagement tactics, many job seekers will initially come across you through your job postings. My acquaintance recently started looking for a new job. She noticed right away that every listing followed the same prescription as she scrolled through posting after posting. Every organisation would specify the qualities they were looking for in a candidate, lay out the fundamental standards and expectations, and include a long list of all potential duties related to the position. Despite the specifics of the job, it was tedious and repetitive. Eventually, we stumbled upon a posting that adopted a completely different strategy and altered the mood and vigour of the job sear...

Believe in people, not rules. Reward honesty. And discard the conventional playbook. Through Patty McCord One of the most significant documents to ever come out of Silicon Valley, according to Sheryl Sandberg. On the internet, it has received more than 5 million views. However, when Reed Hastings and I (along with a few other colleagues) developed a PowerPoint presentation outlining how we influenced the culture and encouraged performance at Netflix, where Hastings served as CEO and I served as chief talent officer from 1998 to 2012, we had no clue it would become so popular. We came to the realization that several of the talent management concepts we had pioneered, including the idea that employees should be permitted to take as much vacation time as they saw necessary, had been viewed as a little odd (at least until other companies started adopting them). However, we were somewhat aback by how influential a simple set of 127 slides would become with no music or animation. There are a...