News — Tips for Managers

While the reasons for distributing recognition awards throughout your office may be bountiful, many managers don’t know where to start when it comes to selecting the right award for an accomplishment or event. While the selection can be overwhelming at first, here are a few starting points to help you narrow down what you’re looking...

We’ve talked on this blog before about the importance of recognizing achievements and growth in your company and company culture. However, we only touched on a few different programs – and there are a few others out there we should talk about. Whether your goal is improving the overall value of your employee years of...

The word philanthropy originated in ancient Greece from the playwright Aeschylus in his drama Prometheus Bound. The play revolves around the idea of meager, primitive creatures that were created to be human but since lacked basic knowledge, skills, and any culture. Prometheus was a man that provided the creatures with the gifts of fire and optimism in order to create enlightened beings, improve the human condition and aid in their progress toward a civilized society.

As the holiday season quickly approaches employee morale can significantly wane. Combine daylight–saving time, dreary weather and long-hours leaves commuters to endure grey skies in the morning and darkness when they return home. Combine this with company stressors like deadlines, increased responsibility due to staff reductions, and impending salary reviews and you could have a significant portion of your employees suffering from the winter-holiday blues. The good news is, this is the perfect time of year to perk up your employees. We will feature some bright ideas after a few disturbing statistics about employee appreciation.

From 1981 to 2001 Jack Welch was the Chairman and CEO of General Electric.During those twenty years, GE’s company value soared by 4000%. Welch started at the bottom in 1960 and plotted his way through the ranks, eventually leading him to a vice president position in 1972. Nine years later he became GE’s youngest CEO and began to stir up GE. Welch began to dismantle much of the management put together by previous CEOs and led an aggressive simplification and consolidation initiative. In fact, during the early 80s he was nicknamed “Neutron Jack” due to his tactic of eliminating employees and leaving the building intact. He was renowned for his annual firing the bottom 10% of his managers and awarding the top 20% with bonuses and stock options. While his hard-nosed managerial style has been criticized throughout the years, Welch’s and GE’s overwhelming success consistently muffled the middle-class outcries to mere whimpers.

What’s his secret to managing employees OTHER than firing the weak and rewarding the strong? Well, Welch recently spoke about this at New York’s World Business Forum this past June. The main takeaway was this: “This whole game of business revolves around one thing. You build the best team, you win.”