As human capital consultants, we receive a lot of calls from CEOs asking us if we can help with Employee Engagement. And we, of course, love working with our clients to identify ways to get their employees wanting to come to work every day and thinking of retention strategies for the long term. It’s important to note though that employee engagement can have several different interpretations depending on who you are talking to, so let’s address the first question.

Deciding to expand your business to international markets can be both exciting and intimidating. In this three part article series, we will discuss topics organizations need to consider when venturing outside their country of origin for business. For Part 1, let's discuss why organizations decide to expand internationally.

At Helios, we often talk about 'building a culture of intention'. We coach our clients on being more intentional, we honor and award organizations who do (i.e. The Helios Apollo Awards), and we even wrote a book compiled of interviews we had with local leaders on how they build these 'cultures of intention'. We were delighted to read a blog post by our friends at Inspirion today that shed light on giving feedback intentionally. Here's CEO Misti Burmeister's advice: “If your intention in giving someone feedback is to judge or criticize, you’ll fail to inspire a shift in their behavior.” — Misti Burmeister

The Washington, DC market has been particularly focused on the impact of pending sequestration outcomes. In October, I participated on a panel addressing preparations for sequestration and our conversation then included topics like triggers of the WARN Act (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification), ensuring you have a budget prepared that takes into account program losses, determining the impact on employee compensation and benefits, and conducting scenario based planning to mitigate your risk.

Providing employees with a sense of involvement in decision making and an ability to drive results for final outcomes has been proven to increase employee satisfaction. The concept of "employee empowerment" is often defined simply as allowing employees at all levels of the organization to have a part in making business decisions. For instance, share information and give employees the opportunity to make decisions that solve problems, improve service and performance. Empowerment is based on the idea that giving employees skills, resources, authority, opportunity, motivation, as well as holding them responsible and accountable, will contribute to their competence and satisfaction, ultimately leading to achievement of organizational goals.

As we launch into a new year, my practice is to reflect on the year past and focus on the future. While no longer participating in the exercise of “making resolutions,” I do, however, identify goals. Goals that help ensure I execute on those priorities of importance to me.