Inspirus Blog

By Kelley Briggs
Mandates can be daunting. When a mandate centers around something that is seemingly subjective or intangible — like “culture” — the challenge seems especially complex. After all, history shows us great cultures don’t just happen overnight, they evolve over time (often long, long periods of time).

Employee Appreciation Day is the first Friday in March! Did you know that 85% of employees are satisfied with a simple ‘thank you’ for their efforts? This simple acknowledgment proves that expressing gratitude strengthens employee engagement and retention. Here are a few ways to say ‘thank you’ and then some — both remote and in-person — to show your appreciation and help spread cheer and gratitude.

By Terri Moore
Media reports and social media channels these days are full of data and stats related to the “great resignation” of employees of all ages, and across all types of jobs. Much of this exodus has been reported to be related to employees’ experiences during the pandemic. Working from home has provided many employees with more control over their work/life balance, as well as the opportunity to re-examine their work/life values.

By Kelley Briggs
During ‘normal’ times, employees leave their jobs for many reasons, chief among them: they’re burned out, they feel undervalued/underappreciated, they are under-challenged, or feel they are poorly compensated for the work they’re doing. Now layer in the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, where morale is low and there are significant pauses in new hiring; employees are burning the candle at both ends to fill in and burn out.

the widespread understanding among organizations of all kinds that the employee experience is directly related to, and has a significant impact on, the customer experience.... The term “employee experience” has become a very popular buzzword over the past several years. Do a quick Google search and you’ll come up with 7.8 billion results. Even putting the term in parentheses yields almost 2.5 million results.

By Lindsey Lyons
Trying to complete a project or task at work when feeling unwell, tired, stressed, or unhappy can be challenging. Those feelings can also disrupt team culture as they negatively affect how a person interacts with others. With the global pandemic in its second year, we are seeing more and more people struggling with these feelings. So, how do you address your employees' physical, mental, emotional, and social needs? Incorporating wellness into your employee engagement strategies and using an engagement platform like Inspirus® Connects, are two ways to accomplish this.

By Sean Mayo
The most successful organizations recognize the value of engaged employees and understand that engagement is driven to a large degree by recognition and rewards — not just from managers, but from peers, customers, and others. However, the challenge companies face is that the more they grow. The more challenging it becomes to recognize employees consistently and appropriately for the contributions they make. Employing the right employee engagement strategies can make a big difference.

By Kelly Briggs
The downtime during the pandemic shutdown of 2020, coupled with this past summer, gave us all a lot of time to catch up on our reading. We explored new books, re-read old favorites, and exchanged picks with our friends and co-workers, all with the purpose of enjoyment, enlightenment, and continuous learning.

By Kelly Briggs
It’s been a rough time for all of us since COVID-19 emerged and changed the work world forever. Just as employers thought they would be soon getting back to some semblance of normalcy, the Delta variant surfaced causing many to shutter or shift plans to call employees back to the workplace and attempts to go back to “business as usual.” Many have accepted the likely reality that business will never be back to usual — business leaders will need to learn to navigate, lead, and inspire in a workplace where some employees (and managers) will be on site and others will be working remotely.

By Kelley Briggs
Diversity and inclusion are at the forefront of all kinds of business conversations these days. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that diversity, equity, and inclusion are key considerations impacting organizations ranging from retailers to manufacturers and everything in between.... diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts into nine key focus areas. Here we take a look at how companies are doing this and the steps your organization can take to become more mindful about diversity, equity, and inclusion to drive business results. Shen recommends getting to the bottom of why inclusion hasn’t been more prominent in the past.

By Kelley Briggs
Peer-to-peer recognition from peers is a powerful way to build our relationships and tie together that social cohesion that everyone appreciates. Whether employees work from home, or at the company headquarters, they want to feel valued and respected by others around them.

By Patti Traglio
Things change. We have only to look back on the past several months of disruption related to the pandemic to understand how true this is. And, while change is usually not quite so sudden or severe, companies are always being impacted by changes that can make legacy systems no longer as effective as they may initially have been.

By Lesa Blakey
We’ve been hearing these labels for years: “Baby Boomers,” “Gen Xers” and so on. Ever since the concept of generational groups was developed in the early 90’s as a marketing tool to identify and understand potential customers, we’ve been grouping people into specific age brackets for many reasons. It’s generally believed that those who grew up under a similar time and circumstance often share similar attitudes and behaviors like work ethic, technological adaptation, worldviews, and opinions on authority (i.e., Boomers offer solid work principles, Gen Xers have great personal initiative, Millennials strive for cultural diversity, Gen Z are natural technology whizzes).

By Kelley Briggs
What makes an employee recognition communication plan succeed? What makes one fail? A successful employee recognition program is characterized by widespread adoption, employee engagement, and satisfaction. Conversely, the failure of such a program looks like spotty involvement, lack of buy-in, and lackluster response.

By Guest Contributor
If you want to take your business to the next level, one of the best ways to do it is to focus on your company’s culture. The culture at your business can have a positive impact on everything from work environment to productivity to employee morale.