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The Workplaces of Tomorrow Are Winning Today By Frank Wander | Posted 03-20-2014
The Workplaces of Tomorrow Are Winning Today
By Frank Wander
Corporate America is slowly being reinvented. Winning companies understand they must unlock the full talent potential of their workforce in order to efficiently turn ideas—this era’s most important raw material—into products. They innovate to win; they are nimble, because people are encouraged to think and given the freedom to do so; these companies know professionals are assets, not expenses, and therefore seek out the best and embrace and nurture them; lastly, they are not burdened by an accumulation of legacy systems and legacy thinking, the last being the largest hindrance. Getting the human factors right will be what differentiates the workplaces of tomorrow, a pattern that is increasingly visible in today’s best companies.
In contrast, traditional corporations struggle to innovate as they are weighed down by legacy infrastructures, outmoded people practices, and dependent on financial innovation to boost their balance sheets and earnings per share. Although their quarterly results may please Wall Street, they mask a worrisome reality: The world of work has changed. With 70 percent of American workers disengaged, per Gallup, pressure is building for a giant shift toward improving and nurturing the human side of business. As this shift occurs, traditional hierarchical management structures will slowly loosen their grip, relinquishing more power and control to the knowledge workers, the “machines” that power the innovation economy forward. The companies that fail to embrace this change will die untransformed, eaten alive by high fixed costs, a continual brain drain and unproductive management practices.
In the best workplaces, high-performing cultures and human understanding are the engines of workforce productivity. Unfortunately, the leadership skills to leverage these talent management practices are too often in short supply. Corporate leaders know a great deal about their processes, technology, marketing, sales, finance and product development, yet they know almost nothing about their organization’s primary source of competitive advantage: their employees.
Traditional corporations remain steeped in the mindset of the industrial era where employees are expenses—and are treated by management as little more than interchangeable parts. Such organizations are blind to the re-humanization of work that is transforming the competitive landscape, so they seek outside advice on how to improve workforce productivity and unleash innovation. The correct answer: “Look inward. Your people are your factory. Learn to free the large, untapped pools of talent potential you are already paying for, and innovation will begin to flow.”
Today’s winning companies understand this simple truth. They have relied on informed people practices from their founding, and view the workforce as mostly assets, not expenses. These companies are repeatedly cited amongst the best places to work; they have track records of success built on innovation and employ a workforce that possesses the ability to flex and change with the market. Also, they invest time to find and hire individuals who are a cultural fit, then nurture, grow and retain them.
Understanding the human factors that unlock workforce productivity and innovation has become an undeniable source of competitive advantage. As Irish author and philosopher Charles Handy has said, “Karl Marx would be amused. He longed for the day when the workers would own the means of production. Now they do.” Read more…
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13 Job Interview Tips That Will Help Land Your Dream Job Posted on March 31, 2014 by Brazen Careerist
You’ve worked hard on your resume, and you finally networked your way to the right person. This is your chance: you’ve got an interview!
What now? Wing it and hope for the best? Google for interview tips—and end up with the same template as everyone else? No, you’re smarter than that—and you need to stand out from the crowd.
Here are 13 tips on how you can do just that… and land your dream job:
1. Acknowledge Your Weaknesses
“What are your weaknesses?” is one of the most common interview questions, yet few people answer it honestly. They try to sidestep it or frame it as a positive thing—which is what most career counselors advise.
But we all recognize what this tactic really is: a facade. A better way to approach this question would be to acknowledge weaknesses that have nothing to do with the job you’re applying for. And tell the hiring manager what you’re doing to improve on them.
For example, it doesn’t matter if you’re not great with numbers if you’re applying to be a graphic designer. Or that you need to work on your presentation skills if you’re applying for a role that doesn’t require it, like a copywriter, consumer support, over-the-phone sales, etc.
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Employers Want Workplace-Ready Grads, But Can Higher Ed Deliver? | From the Bell Tower
By Steven Bell on March 19, 2014 1 Comment
A new survey reveals a wide gap between provosts and business leaders when it comes to judging college students’ readiness for the workplace. What can academic librarians take away from the controversy?
As the cost of college tuition has skyrocketed in the past decade, students and parents expectations for a graduate’s state of career readiness have grown. And as the job market continues to offer limited opportunity for college graduates, students look to build any and every personal advantage. These factors find their way into the curriculum in many ways, from writing intensive courses that address business correspondence to the development of specialized certificates that students can tack on to their diplomas to show they have workplace skills. While there is pressure on colleges and universities to do a better job of readying students for the workplace and job placement, there is a fine line between a college education and vocational preparation. If the results of a new survey of business leaders is an indicator, then higher education if failing quite spectacularly at preparing students for the workplace. Read more…
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Avoiding Career Cardiac Arrest
Have you heard of the new tag on the Internet? It’s tl;dr – which is Web-speak for “too long; don’t read.” While it’s most often used to describe an article that challenges today’s gnat-like attention span, the critique actually reflects a much larger challenge. As one columnist recently described it in The New York Times, “The problem is one of limited time and energy meeting limitless content.”
We all know that we have to keep up with our professional reading, but in today’s high demand work environment, there’s never enough space to fit it in. As a result, it is, to use a pre-Web acronym, almost always OBE or “overtaken by events.” Like a New Year’s resolution, we start out with good intentions and then life – or rather work – gets in the way. Read more…
Stephanie L. Gross, MSLIS 