The new Jurassic World movie envisions a time when dinosaurs have started to reintegrate themselves as an ordinary part of our modern wildlife. Velociraptors stalk the woods like wolves. Men on horseback herd Parasaurolophus like cattle. The premise raises interesting questions, such as what impact reintroducing dinosaurs into the wild will have on our ecosystem.

Reintroducing dinosaurs into our ecosystem

Prof Steve Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh and an advisor on Jurassic World Dominion, does not think introducing dinosaurs into the wild would be a good idea. There have been many cases where a predator is introduced to an ecosystem and wreaks havoc. Introducing, for example, a T. rex could lead to some mammals going extinct. Giant herbivores like Brontosaurus could have a profound effect on crops or other important plants.

Problems living alongside dinosaurs

Prof Steve Brusatte states that the vast majority of dinosaurs would never have seen a flower. Dinosaurs like Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, and Brachiosaurus lived in the Jurassic when there were no fruits or flowers. So, whether they could eat most of the food of today would be a big question. Then there's our climate. There's much debate over whether dinosaurs were primarily cold-blooded or warm-blooded. The answer would greatly affect how easily dinosaurs could adapt to our environment.

Whether dinosaurs could survive long enough in our modern world

In Jurassic World Dominion, the toothy ones have integrated into society…

history

History

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Jurassic World: Could we live alongside dinosaurs? | BBC Science Focus Magazine

What’s the biggest opportunity for human resources this year? In a recent survey of 500 HR leaders, our peers had a definitive answer: engagement. It’s one of many reasons the Great Resignation or the Great Reevaluation has evolved into the Great Reengagement. It’s a more proactive approach to minimizing the impact that nearly 5 million people quitting their jobs are having on the workforce and, quite frankly, the world.

The Great Reengagement

Every manager and department should have the autonomy to set their team meetings and run them as they wish. This necessary autonomy, however, could result in varying meeting cadences, formats, and goals. An easy way to provide some consistency—to ensure everyone is making the most of this valuable engagement opportunity—is to provide sample schedules and topics teams can meet about.From there, managers should have the freedom to tailor their meetings to their team’s culture.

Go To The Source

One of the biggest risks to engagement is an employee feeling disconnected from the wider group and/or broader company initiatives. When employees feel that they are the last to know about something, morale suffers. Many successful employee-experience (EX) programs are a dual effort of HR and marketing.

Team Up With Marketing

One HR and marketing initiative that is proven to increase employee engagement and even a company’s brand and employer awareness is an employee advocacy program. By having a portal—or one from a vendor that provides the software—employees can see all the company’s news and content and have pre-written social captions to use for their own social posts.As a result, employees feel connected, and the employer grows its brand.

The Employee Advocacy Program

Engagement Teams don’t only manage internal communications to ensure employees are well informed, they can also identify the best training programs, onboarding paths, wellness initiatives, benefits communications, contests, surveys, and performance review processes. An engagement team is invaluable for training the entire company on the importance of employee engagement and truly live it each day. If there was ever a time to make the case for an engagement team, it’s now.

Create An Engagement Team

Often referred to as <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90715052/how-to-conduct-a-stay-interview-with-your-employees-and-why-you-should">stay interviews</a>, engagement interviews can help managers have open conversations with their team about what’s working and what’s not. Run completely outside of performance reviews and formal processes, engagement interviews are candid conversations between a manager and their teammate to identify areas of opportunity, areas of concern, and areas each person can improve on to have a successful relationship and career trajectory.

Engagement Interviews

To properly use engagement interviews for engagement—and not a bureaucratic ploy—HR (or an engagement team) can arm managers with the types of questions that work well in these engagements such as:<ul><li>What do you look forward to when you come to work each day?</li><li>What do you like most or least about working here?</li><li>What keeps you working here?</li><li>If you could change something about your job, what would that be?</li><li>What would you like to learn here?</li><li>What motivates (or demotivates) you?</li><li>What can I do to best support you?</li><li>What can I do more of or less as your manager?</li></ul>

The Engagement Interview Questions

One of the reasons for resignation and reassessment is people want to feel that their work matters—in their lives, in their communities, in their companies. With all the health, economic, and political turmoil of the last few years, this reassessment came from employees taking stock of what matters most to them. Employers need to address those questions proactively through the lens of reengagement.

Connect with Core Values to Encourage a Greater Sense of Belonging

A <a href="https://www.isolvedhcm.com/resource-center/collateral/voice-of-the-workforce-what-employees-say-they-really-want">third of employers</a> don’t give employees the opportunity to connect to the causes they care about, despite employees looking favourably upon companies that do. At its core, engagement is about providing a sense that someone belongs. By giving employees the opportunity to show the types of groups and causes to which they belong—through corporate giving and volunteering programs—they could feel like they belong at work as well.

Give Employees Opportunities To  Flourish

A single system for all work functions is the top technology <a href="https://www.isolvedhcm.com/resource-center/collateral/voice-of-the-workforce-what-employees-say-they-really-want">employees say</a> they are missing to do their jobs most effectively. While all of the engagement initiatives described here are proven to be successful, they will all fall flat unless employees are given the tools to access what they need in a single system without requiring myriad passwords and having to log into this system for this and that system for that.HR and business leaders must think and re-think how to consolidate siloed systems into a single source of truth for employees.

Provide a Single Source of Truth

The biggest opportunity for leaders this year has evolved out of the Great Resignation.


corporateculture

Corporate Culture

humanresources

Human Resources

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Leaders: Get ready for the ‘Great Reengagement’

Most workplace wellness programs focus on supporting self-care, such as gym memberships, meditation apps, or paid time off. Researchers who study employee well-being applaud the genuine concern but are also increasingly concerned that the emphasis on self-care may undermine, rather than support, employee wellness.

Workplace wellness programs

The problem with programs supporting self-care is that it fails to take into account that we are social animals. Our psychological health is grounded in attachment to and acceptance by others. When we feel disconnected from others, it poses a significant health risk. Human connections are critical for addressing the effects of stress, anxiety, and burnout. When organisations focus on individual solutions, it conveys a message that employees are left to manage their pain alone. A real solution requires an entirely different approach to workplace suffering.

Human well-being is not achieved alone

Research shows that when teams framed setbacks as if they belonged to the whole team, even if only some members were affected, they increased their communication and acknowledged and helped one another. This improved their function as a group. By contrast, teams who tried to cope with adversity individually became isolated, stopped communicating, and became physically and socially distanced. Team functioning declined, leading to errors and increased stress.

Frame adversity as belonging to the collective

A relational pause is a temporary, often brief, break from ongoing task work, where people are invited to ask and answer the question, “How is our work affecting us as human beings?” This pause aims to foster sincere and genuine connections between employees that enable individual well-being. It does not require people to be friends but instead to actively help group members engage productively.

Create and foster relational pauses

When adversity is framed as collective, individuals experience themselves as part of a joint struggle. Everyone can look at each other with compassion and empathy. They come to see each other as having both strengths and weaknesses. This helps the group as a whole engage in more mature interactions.

Struggling together creates well-being for all

When the team is in the grip of anxiety, it is difficult to think clearly or regain composure. The act of describing an emotional experience, and receiving compassion, in turn, cause each team member to shoulder some of the burdens.

Hightened emotions are dispersed and processed

As teams practice relational pauses, they learn to understand their own dynamics. They start to know each other and the difficulties in more nuanced ways and recognise when emotions triggered by adversity may lead them astray. The team learn to pause so they can reflect and make a deliberate choice about their path forward and how they will struggle together.

The team learns to recognize and reflect on their behavior

Individual distress is a collective problem.

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

health

Health

Stop Framing Wellness Programs Around Self-Care

Being replaceable—a concept various company executives and business management books have promoted over the years—isn’t as precarious as it sounds; it just means that someone else at your workplace can do your job. That doesn’t mean the work isn’t important, or that you aren’t the best person for the role. But if you want to move on, you’ll have more luck getting promoted if there’s already a successor able and ready to take on the role.
Being considered irreplaceable on a team might sound good on paper—but it can actually put your career in a rut and stifle your opportunity to advance. Plus, it doesn’t actually benefit the company if you’re the only person who knows how to do your job.

Replaceable Doesn’t Mean Redundant

Being replaceable means that you’ll share knowledge and skills related to your role with other employees, which ultimately benefits the company and demonstrates to supervisors that you have leadership skills. 
Conversely, thinking of yourself as indispensable can be dangerous if you’re overestimating your worth to the employer.

Assuming You Are Indispensable Is Dangerous

If you’re a micromanager that’s always checking in, you’re telling the team that they don’t have the same level of skills as you to do the job. 
You might think you’re being indispensable and securing your role in the organization, but you’re likely demonstrating that you’re not a very good boss, which in the end makes your job less secure. You’re also more likely to burn out.

Micromanagement

<ul>
<li>Put everything in writing: Every process, task, or policy related to your job should be written down and stored in a drive where others can access it (ideally with a date or version number). </li>
<li>Support and train your colleagues: If no one else can do your job, flag it as a concern with your supervisor. </li>
<li>Delegate: Avoid the trap of thinking you need to sign off on every last task, especially when a colleague or direct report clearly has the skills needed for the job.</li>
</ul>

How To Be Replaceable

Why You Actually Should Make Yourself Replaceable at Work

Think of it as the opposite of an exit interview: Instead of asking why an employee is quitting, a stay interview focuses on what motivates the employee to stick around, what could be better about their work experience and how they envision the next stage of their career within the organization.Stay interviews aren’t new but are coming up more often as employers dial up retention efforts during record turnover.

The stay interview

The stay interview should be informal and conversational. Workers will only share how they feel about work honestly if they feel a sense of psychological safety, or that they can speak freely without fear of retaliation and knowing their feedback will be fully accepted.That requires managers to be vulnerable. You’ll want to know from your employee what they enjoy about work, but also what could be better — including some areas where you as a manager can improve.It should also be more of a two-way dialogue rather than an interview.

Stay interviews are informal conversations

Stay interviews should focus on how your employee feels about the work they do every day, the value of their contributions and how they feel within the organization.Send workers a few starter questions to prepare for the conversation ahead of time.Some common questions are:<ul><li>What excites you to come into work?</li><li>Do you feel good about the impact of your work?</li><li>What do you want to do more of at work? Less?</li><li>Do you see a future for yourself at the company? How are things the same or different?</li><li>If you were manager for a day, what would you do differently?</li></ul>

What to ask in a stay interview

Perhaps most importantly during the Great Resignation, managers should ask their employees what it would take for them to leave the company.As a supervisor, it’s your job to bring this feedback to the larger organization to see how you can provide the tools, resources or opportunities your employee isn’t currently getting, such as a clear sense of purpose, stretch assignments, fair wages or greater flexibility.Don’t be surprised if your employee initiates a stay interview conversation if you’re not proactively doing so.

Ask what would make your employee leave

Having a stay interview doesn’t mean anything if you don’t act on the feedback you get from your employee.Follow a few simple steps to close a stay interview on a strong note: Thank the employee for their time, summarize the feedback you’ve heard, relay what your next steps will be and provide a clear sense of what the employee can expect will be different following the discussion.

How managers can stay accountable

Get clear about what will help your best employees stay, and what could make them quit.

business

Business

Why the 'stay interview' is the next big trend of the Great Resignation

The right to disconnect is becoming more challenging to define as employees and employers alike struggle to determine what “working hours” should look like in today’s digital work landscape. When remote work is the norm, the office is always within reach.

The Right to Disconnect 

<ul>
<li>Normalize asynchronous communication. Make it clear that getting an immediate response from a coworker should be the exception, not the rule. Provide a maximum response time frame to keep projects moving forward.</li>
<li>Have employees list their working hours (and time zones) on their Google Calendars. </li>
<li>Embrace a “schedule, don’t send” policy. Once it’s clear when everyone is working, coach employees to schedule Slack messages or emails for the following morning instead of sending them when the recipient is “off the clock.”</li>
</ul>

Adjust Communication Expectations

<ul>
<li>Employees need to know exactly what working remotely entails in order to determine whether it would be something they enjoy.</li>
<li>Working hours. Is the company offering a flexible working schedule, standardized work hours, or something in-between?</li>
<li>Production goals. Have employees been provided with written instructions on how much work they’re expected to complete weekly.</li>
<li>Benefit usage. Are you clearly communicating to employees all the benefit offerings available to them? If employees feel like they can’t or shouldn’t use their benefits, they won’t.</li>
</ul>

Encourage A Healthy Work/Life Balance

A generous time-off policy isn’t just a nice thing to offer—it can also help avoid productivity slumps.If you want your employees to return to work refreshed and inspired, you have to enable them to enjoy time away from work with no interruptions.

Respect Vacation Time

Eliminate the need for anyone to contact employees when they're outside their working hours by creating a system where information is accessible company-wide. Use a formal knowledge base tool to centralize this content for your organization.

Set Up A Knowledge Base

Here are four simple changes to make that will empower your employees to unplug after hours without fear, while protecting their right to disconnect.

The Right To Disconnect: How To Help Your Employees Unplug And Why It Matters

Talent mobility means making it easy and encouraged for people (especially high-performing ones) to move around your company.
In companies run this way, people jump laterally between departments, applying their skills in new and different ways. They might be joining different teams within their own department as needed. They might even be relocating to other subsidiary companies, or to different geographic locations.

Talent Mobility

Profitability, innovation, customer satisfaction—no matter what, these are important business goals, and they’re ones that talent mobility can support. 
But there’s another reason talent mobility is so important right now: letting people move around your company creates agility, and that’s pretty much essential to thrive in today’s fast-paced business world.

Mobility Now

Start With Managers: If you have something good, it’s human nature to want to hang on to it. That’s why, despite good intentions, managers are the greatest barrier to cultures of mobility. 
Promote Transparency: If you want your people to move around, you need to show them what’s out there: bring all your opportunities for internal job-hopping, recruiting, and promotions right out into the open. 
Leverage Data: From internal talent marketplaces to upskilling platforms to career pathing software, data can revolutionize how employers engage with their people.

Creating Cultures Of Mobility

As the business world has become more complex, competitive, and data-driven, smart management has increasingly become about giving power and autonomy back to a company’s people. 

Talent Mobility: Why You Should Let Your Top Performers Move Around The Company

It's the process of identifying the key roles on your team and figuring out how you’ll fill them when they’re left vacant (whether that’s because of turnover, promotions, restructuring, or something else).Think of it as future-proofing your team. Rather than staring slack-jawed at your org chart when one of your team’s managers moves to a director position, you’ll have at least a loose plan in place for how to move forward.

Succession Planning

<ul>
<li>Understand what the future could look like. There are aspects of the future that you can plan for.</li>
<li>Dive into the details of each position. You’ll be surprised by how many responsibilities are flying under the radar.</li>
<li>Identify your options: Hire a new employee, move an internal employee, divide responsibilities among team members, outsource work to external vendors, eliminate the position._</li>
<li>Make your tentative plan. You’ve determined where you're headed, who does what, and what choices you have to fill role gaps. Now, all that’s left to do is figure out what your ideal plan looks like.</li>
</ul>

Tips For Succession Planning

<ul><li>To make succession planning even more manageable, start with roles that have oversight, such as leads, managers, and directors.</li><li>Have honest career development discussions early on.</li><li>Making documentation a staple of your culture and processes will make everybody’s life so much easier.</li></ul>

Best Practices To Have In Your Back Pocket

It’s important to note that succession planning isn’t only about identifying replacements—it also involves adequately preparing people to assume those roles or fulfill those responsibilities when the time comes, so nobody is left in a panic-inducing bind. 

productivity

Productivity

A Manager’s Ultimate Guide To Effective Succession Planning

Your employer brand is your company’s reputation as an employer and reflects the values that make up your culture. Employer brand also describes the added value your company brings to employees, such as great benefits, career development, and work-life balance.It is what current and prospective employees think about your company as a place to work. It encompasses how you market your company to job seekers and how you frame your messaging and culture to internal employees.

Employer branding

They will:
<ul>
<li>Project a positive image of the company.</li>
<li>Promote core values: your business’ fundamental beliefs and guiding principles. </li>
<li>Create a sense of identity. Your employer brand helps you create a company culture and identity that unifies your diverse workforce.</li>
<li>Boost employee morale. Employer branding is about making your company a great place to work. </li>
<li>Outline a clear employee value proposition (EVP). Your EVP is the rewards and benefits employees receive when working at your company. </li>
<li>Align the employer brand with the public company brand.</li>
</ul>

The best employer brands

Employer branding is good for employees and good for business. Employer branding affects multiple aspects of your business including<ul><li>Recruitment</li><li>Engagement</li><li>Retention</li></ul>The stronger your employer brand, the better you can attract, retain, and engage your people, and the more competitive and profitable your business will be.

Why employer branding is important

Turnover, attrition, and retention are good indicators of a company’s overall health and how the company is doing on its employer brand.Once you understand how your employer brand is performing, build out your employee value proposition and align your employer branding efforts with your company branding strategy.

How to improve your employer brand

Assess your policies and offerings and compare how they stack up against competitors’ offerings. Survey your employees to uncover benefits or cultural values they would like to see. These insights can help you identify gaps between what your employees want and need, and what your company currently offers.Things to consider for your EVP include:<ul><li>Compensation</li><li>Employee benefits like health care and parental leave</li><li>Perks</li><li>Career development and opportunities.</li></ul>

Improve your EVP (employee value proposition)

Recruiting top talent involves showing how they might fit within your company. Learn how to improve your employer branding to improve your talent strategy.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

What is Employer Branding and Why Does It Matter

Employee engagement includes four elements and can be thought of as the degree to which an employee:<ul><li>Feels committed to an organization</li><li>Identifies with an organization</li><li>Feels satisfied with their job</li><li>Feels energized at work.</li></ul>

Employee Engagement

<ul><li>Connect what employees do to what they care about. Revise your organization’s mission statement to connect with employee values. Show how an employee’s work is related to the organization’s purpose.</li><li>Make the work itself less stressful and more enjoyable. Offer employees the flexibility to try new work tasks so they can discover their intrinsic interests. Grant employees more autonomy. Autonomy is critical to fostering intrinsic motivation. Boost employees’ sense of confidence.</li><li>Create time affluence. Reward employees with time in addition to money. Encourage employees to ​​invest in time-saving purchases. Implement tools that discourage after-hours emails.</li></ul>

Jurassic World: Could we live alongside dinosaurs? | BBC Science Focus Magazine

Leaders: Get ready for the ‘Great Reengagement’

Stop Framing Wellness Programs Around Self-Care

Why You Actually Should Make Yourself Replaceable at Work

Why the 'stay interview' is the next big trend of the Great Resignation

Peyton M.