Teryl @ Work

Feeding the Right Wolf This Cherokee story resonated with me (see below).     Like many business people, I get caught up in managing details, instead of focusing on strategy and growth.   Measuring myself against the Good Wolf concept has become a way of thinking for me. Feeding the good wolf - focusing on the right stuff! In a previous article on this topic, I commented that the message is simple, the wolf you feed is the one that grows. The good wolf attributes in a business are where we ideally should spend our time, that good old 80 – 20 rule focusing on our   engaged employees, improving client experience and quality of product,   to name a few. Creating a Good Wolf Environment While we have many different tools – appraisals, customer and employee surveys – to try and understand the temperature and levels of entropy in our businesses – the truth is that it is really difficult to explain to people that they are not seen as feeding the good wo...

Sharing your last salary – re-enforcing the gender pay gap… The interview process is never easy.   Whether you are actively searching for a new position or being head hunted, selling yourself effectively can go against ingrained social habits. As a potential employer, there is significant risk in hiring the wrong people, too. So both sides have a lot to lose if the interview process is ineffective. While we frequently hear that people do not leave jobs because of money, very few candidates are looking to drop their salaries … Interviewers have a number of tools at their disposal enabling them to align the right candidate with the role on offer: ·        Psychometric testing ·        References ·        The face to face interview process ·        The CV / Resumé ·        Social media profiles However, the prev...

Being an agile worker is still a work in progress… Is flexibility now a reality in the workplace?    And is it really working? We keep renaming it – remote, activity based and agile work being some of the current terms. The assumption of control over one’s own time and deliverables does look like a great way to work and live, and it seems to be is a high priority for those entering the business world. There is also the development of the agile work space, where people come to the office each day, but don’t have a fixed work area.   We used to call it hot desking back in the day and it met with mixed success.    Today, office designers have started to create work spaces which are intended to encourage innovative thought, cross departmental collaboration and improved productivity. My research indicates that the mix of engaged and disengaged employees in an open plan workspace does not always have the desired effect of the positive workers influencing...

Job Hunting – Are you the buyer or the seller? It’s important to know.   And it does change.  While certain roles always seem to be in high demand, our rapidly evolving world is continually redefining key skills. As a job seeker, you might feel that you are the buyer, and it may be that you are one of the fortunate people whose unique attributes give them superior negotiating power.  Most of us, though, have to sell ourselves to the employer.   Experience plus formal qualifications definitely give an employee the edge and can change the buyer/seller dynamic. Why is this even a discussion? For a number of reasons: ·        Complimented if approached, some people accept the new job because it sounds like a good idea  or use the offer as a negotiation tactic with the current  employer, never really intending to resign. ·        Others accept a position, but would really pref...