This is the story of how one fundraising team boosted their weekly productivity by 400 percent.
It wasn’t due to pay rises or catered lunches – or even an inspiring or well-trained manager giving staff the motivation to do their work better. So what was it?
Almost half of all Australians work through their lunch break. And more than a quarter of us – 3.8 million Australians – don’t take a lunch break at all, according to the Australia Institute. But while it might outwardly appear that your lunch-break-skipping staff are admirably committed to their work – and that’s good for your team and your organisation – the real impact is more insidious.
It’s been widely panned as a waste of time, ineffective, and straight-up BS – so why do so many organisations still make their staff participate in brainstorming sessions?
There’s a quieter alternative that research shows is better at yielding more and better ideas.
What makes a good team?
It’s a hard question to answer, and one that’s becoming more and more important given the increasingly collaborative nature of work. But if anyone can provide a valuable answer, it’s Google – and the tech giant has some fascinating insights on what makes the best teams.
If you’re a manager in an Australian NFP, it’s quite likely you haven’t received any formal leadership training. Indeed, one study found that leaders on average only received leadership training a full decade after they started managing people.
But what if there was one simple thing you could do now that would dramatically increase your success as a manager and leader?
Ongoing workplace boredom can impact your team in a way that’s comparable to chronic stress.
If not addressed, a staff member’s boredom can quickly transform into resentment. That can then lead to them ‘checking out’ – beyond being passively uninterested, the staff member becomes bitter and no longer wants to work at an organisation they don’t care about.
Bullying is often called the “cancer” of the workplace. But unlike cancer, bullying is not a disease. Rather, it’s a symptom of poor organisational functioning.
So what can be done about it?
Did you know that up to 70 percent of organisational change initiatives fail?
A new guide to change management can help ensure yours isn’t one of them.
Much has been said on the topic of giving feedback – it’s vital to building an effective team and boosting productivity, among other things.
But what do you do if you’ve given a team member feedback and they ignore you? Or get defensive? Or even begin to evade discussions involving feedback?
Australian workplaces are facing the most significant demographic shift in modern human history. In 1990, just 15.9 percent of the Australian population was aged over 55. Today, that figure sits at one in four – which looks set to increase even further to around one in three within the next decade. But are we ready?