In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of what we used to know even two years ago isn’t necessarily true in today’s changed business climate. How many outdated ideas do you have about the employment world? Read each question in bold to decide if you think it’s true or false before reading the answer below.

Employees [...]

What Does Employee Disengagement Cost You?
By Juan Kingsbury, TTI Solutions Specialist Manager
In Jim Haudan’s book “The Art of Engagement,” a neighbor describes his understanding of engagement based on a brief experience with their two guests at a Major League Baseball game. These guests simply wanted “hot dogs” just as the biggest game in the Cleveland [...]

For many organizations it is critical that top management focus on re-engaging their employees.  The past five or six years of negative attitudes have taken their toll on our employees.
The workforce has been bombarded by the media with many value-based issues, such as healthcare, taxes, the war in Iraq, unemployment, the recession, etc., etc.  These [...]

“Commitment” and “accountability” are two words that are sure to pique the interest of anyone in human capital management. But when asked, most managers and employees don’t know for what each position is accountable and therefore lack commitment within the team. Lack of commitment can lead to job confusion, dissatisfaction and eventually, disengagement.

Recent studies [...]

How Awareness and Communication Improve Team Dynamics

In Patrick Lencioni’s best-selling book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, he tells a tale of a firm’s executive team struggling with utter dysfunction. Ineffective communication, multiple egos, fear, office politics and judgmental attitudes were all contributing to the absence of dynamics and poor performance.

Does this sound familiar to you?
Have you experienced a dysfunctional team in your career?

If yes, you are not alone. Most everyone has either been a part of, observed or even faced the challenge of leading a dysfunctional team like the one Lencioni describes. In fact, he says, “Teams, because they are made up of imperfect human beings, are inherently dysfunctional.”

Lencioni’s interrelated model of team dysfunction outlines five areas that prevent success in every team:
• Absence of trust
• Fear of conflict
• Lack of commitment
• Avoidance of accountability
• Inattention to results

But don’t be discouraged. There is hope for all of us experiencing a dysfunctional team. As Lencioni states, “In fact, team building is both possible and remarkably simple. But is also painful.” TTI strongly believes in two fundamental team building basics that help teams overcome each of these dysfunctions: awareness and communication. [Read More]

How It Heightens Disengagement and Costs You Millions

Dysfunction in a team will usually result in poor performance and inadequate productivity, but the effects of team dysfunctions on the employees themselves just might be far more serious and much more costly.

When a team becomes dysfunctional you can expect disengagement to follow as individuals may lose sight of team goals, not understand their role in the team and wait for direction to make any progress. Statistics say that the average employee is disengaged two hours each day. Could dysfunctional teams be contributing to disengagement in your organization? If so, just how does it affect your bottom-line? [Read More]

“Everything, then, must be assessed in money; for this enables men always to exchange their services, and so makes society possible.”
– Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Even though Aristotle made this point over 2000 years ago, it couldn’t ring more true today. Almost everything involved in transactions today are based on a price and assessed in money.

What about Talent Management?
Beyond salary and sales, there are many important aspects of talent management that are often not tied to the bottom line. Yet, “dollarizing” the value of talent management initiatives is vital to bottom-line analysis. Whether you are placing a value or cost on your current status, or calculating the ROI of your next talent management strategy, metrics that assess the monetary value will help you see the true effect on the bottom-line.

Bottom Line Statistics
Knowing the bottom line results of talent challenges will help you implement strategies with a proven ROI that you can see on your balance sheet. Find out how much you already know by asking yourself questions like:
• What is disengagement costing the bottom line?
• What was the ROI on your last training? What can be expected of future training?
• How are your team-building initiatives impacting your bottom line?
• What was the cost of your last bad hire?
• What is your overall turnover percentage? How is it related to tenure?

In a study on over three million employees, Gallup found that over 70% of Americans who go to work are not engaged. [Read More]

Controlling Turnover and Addressing Disengagement with a Complete System

Turnover alone may be costing you millions, but what about the employees you still have? Is their disengagement costing you even more?

Fortunately, turnover and disengagement stem from job fit, and you can reduce costs associated with both by using a complete hiring system. With a process that looks at hiring from the very beginning to the very end, you can consider the job, the talent, professional development and performance management. However, with reduced budgets and overwhelming responses to job ads, many companies are finding themselves skipping a system all together. Unfortunately, a move like that doesn’t come without a hefty cost, as doing nothing to ensure job fit will cost you more than implementing a complete hiring system to start controlling turnover and disengagement costs now.

With a solution for future turnover and disengagement costs, let’s turn our focus to the disengaged employees on your payroll now. Can you determine the underlying issue? It may be decreased morale, lack of direction, little job satisfaction or no motivation. Whatever the case, you need to start by using the same complete system. [Read More]