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Happy New Year folks!!
I hope you all had an awesome start to your year, coz’ I sure did! This was the year that I realized staying in for NYE was a smarter idea than going out. I didn’t have to get dressed up, or wait in line to get into a party, or worry about reservations for dinner, or wait for hours to get a drink, and the list could go on. Instead, I got to hang out with my family, enjoyed a delicious dinner, had an open bar all night, had my favorite play list blaring and the best part, I got to stay in my jammies!! Yup, 2014 will be an amazing year!
But the start of a new year isn’t complete until I make a few resolutions, which is why I’m going to share my three HR resolutions for 2014.
HR Resolution #1: Embrace holacracy
At Wagepoint, we’ve always considered Zappos our role model company. It’s the company we aspire to become, especially for our employees. And why not! They have made the ‘Forbes 100 Best Companies to Work for’ list since 2009. So it came as no surprise when I saw the recent announcement that Zappos is embracing a holocratic company structure in the new year, making them the largest company to date to implement this among their 1,500 employees.
Holacracy is a radical organizational concept that distributes authority across the organization and where everyone becomes a leader in their own roles while being followers to other’s roles. I would recommend checking out Holocracy.org, which is an excellent resource and gives you three different options to implement a holocratic structure in your organization.
And, while it maybe difficult to implement such a dramatic change instantly, what is more important is to take away key concepts that you might be able to apply on a smaller scale at first.
HR Resolution #2: Create a fun work space
Workplace design is becoming an extension of compensation for employees. At a time when working remotely is becoming a norm, the shared office space is still important. This is simply because people need other people, technology and a space to bring it all together.
Here are a few office design tips to inspire productivity – let your employees make their space personal in a way that appeals to their creative style, consider using standing desks so that people aren’t being sedentary and they can move around the office, finally, create buzz in the office, with background music for example, so that people can interact freely and get some privacy.
And if you want to create a fun workplace from scratch or renovate your existing space, you could think about hiring the folks at Geremia Design.
HR Resolution #3: Focus on employee experience
The last resolution on my list is focusing on employee experience. Technically, this resolution ties into the two HR resolutions above.
There was a lot of chatter around employee engagement and experience in 2013, and chances are that companies will continue to focus on this well into 2014. Happy employees are more productive, engaged and invested in the success of their company, which is why a positive employee experience is so important.
And at Wagepoint, this boils down to four simple things:
– Provide clarity so that everybody is clear on what needs to get done,
– Create purpose by sharing and shaping the company vision as a team,
– Give feedback often to applaud success, and finally,
– Encourage everybody to have fun at work.
That’s a wrap up of our resolutions! If you have any HR resolutions you want to share with us, we’d love to hear back from you.
This post is featured in the January 8th edition of the Carnival of HR. You can check out the complete round up of articles over at the HR Tact blog.
