Acknowledging and appreciating employees is essential for a more positive, productive, and profitable organization. Over the years, there has been more and more evidence and data that links employee appreciation with customer satisfaction, and organizational growth.

Few of us could have imagined 25 years ago how much the internet would change the way we work. Today’s globally connected labor force works whenever and wherever thanks to technology that has all but made the corporate office obsolete in certain fields. And thank goodness we have the technology and infrastructure set up as we face this global pandemic together, forcing so many employers to go 100% virtual practically overnight. While there are many great benefits of being virtual or remote, especially considering the safety and health of your team, it's not necessarily a cakewalk. The challenges with telework and virtual teams are real and require managers to think strategically and creatively.

Buzzwords in business are overused to the point of becoming fads at times. We hear phrases daily such as “culture”, “engagement”, “wheelhouse”, “synergy”, “incentivizing”, “strategic”, and the list goes on and on. When these buzzwords become so common in our workplace, it shouldn’t be surprising to hear so many managers and executives misusing these terms to suit their own agendas, while confidently speaking as experts on achieving each.

One KPI You Should Be Tracking! Now that the first quarter is almost over, it is time to focus on how the strategic goals set for 2017 are tracking to last year's results. Organizations spend an immense amount of time and resources tracking revenue and retention of clients, as well as the value of each client in terms of spending. Since payroll is the largest controllable expense on almost every company’s P&L, why then aren’t more leaders also tracking the value of their employees?

We all accept that good leadership requires a balanced, equilateral approach to our team members. Of course, we should never have a favorite employee; HOWEVER as human leaders, every one of us has had that one superstar team member that we rely on greatly and yes, even like a whole lot. It is not hard to prefer “Sally” as the employee who happily volunteers to fill in and rarely demonstrates even the slightest bit of stress. So while we would never have favorites, it is difficult to not favor Sally when her counterpart, Jimmy, is hiding the fact that Facebook is now his home page on the company laptop and that his longer and longer breaks are due to him hunting Pokemon in the back parking lot.