#bottom quartile management

[ai-for-recruitment]

  Promoting Diversity in Hiring

Due to the growing interconnectedness and interaction of the world which is driven by the advancements of technology, diversity in the workplace is more important. The traditional employment process which used to focus on the resumes which had perfectly fit with the job or to say a perfect fit for all sizes is long gone. 

The question is whether diversity , which is the crucial step towards building a balanced workplace, is recognised by companies or not?

The answer to it is yes, many Indian companies are not only recognizing the importance of diversity but also taking initiatives which are aimed at promoting it across the corporate landscape. Few examples are Tata Consultancy Services who has launched programs like ‘Diversity and Inclusion’, ‘Maitree’ and ‘I excel’ wherein they foster diversity related activities, similarly Infosys’s ‘Infosys women inclusivity network’, Wipro’s ‘Person with disabilities’ initiatives which focuses on creating an inclusive workplace environment for the employees with disabilities.

Next question is what does it do?

 It creates an environment wherein each and every employee feels respected, valued and empowered irrespective of various dimensions such as gender, age, race, disability and sexual orientation so that they can bring on a different perspective to the table by sharing unique stories and experiences and contribute their best towards the company.

Diversity in recruiting offers numerous benefits. Enhanced creativity and innovation, better decision making, a larger talent pool, increased employee performance, market competitiveness. When team of employee has a different view and experiences it can approach the solving of a problem in various ways which a group of homogenous employees might miss hindering them from creating an innovative outcome like My Black is beautiful campaign which address the needs of black consumers Procter and gamble's this campaign connected deeply with the targeted consumers and showcased the creative power of a diverse team.

Imagine a group of companies having different genders in their top management teams while others do not have as many who will make more money?

 McKinsey’s 2020 report says the top quartile companies like IBM, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Accenture, Procter & Gamble who have a good mix of men and women in their top teams were 25% more likely to make more money than those in the bottom 25% where there is very less gender diversity .

Looking from different angles helps in making better and smarter decisions plus it avoids the situation called groupthink where without really thinking about the possibilities that are pros and cons of the  situation everyone just agrees with one another. 

Everything in interconnected Diversity increases the performance of employees which happens to build the strong brand image of a company leading to a better customer connection which helps to understand and cater diverse needs to the clientele. By embracing the diversity both human and organisation can reap immeasurable rewards.

To promote diversity in hiring companies have to strategies by crafting and ensuring inclusive job description. Being a human unconscious bias in job posting activities can happen using tools like ‘textio’ can help avoid such mistakes.

 In 2018 Starbucks closed all its stores for an afternoon so that it could eliminate unconscious bias by training sessions to spread awareness among its employees demonstrating the company's commitment to counteract their own bias. Companies should keep in mind that interview panels during the recruitment process should be as diverse as possible ensuring fairer assessment for candidate selection.

For instance, you want an outfit for an important party. You would not just go to one shop and buy your outfit, right? You would visit different shops to buy the perfect dress which fits you well and will make you shine in the party. Similarly, when organisations are hiring, they should not just stick to one location to find employees they should use multiple channels like Company Google used by partnering with black colleges and universities and attending conferences focused on women in computing like grace hopper celebration to improve the workforce diversity. As we can see, casting a wide net was not a bad idea for tech titan Google which revolutionises the world with innovation.

It is evident that promoting diversity in hiring is not just a strategic move but a commitment to embrace diversity of individuals in an organization. Empowering them and valuing their thoughts, making them feel that they are also being heard to unlock a journey towards the workplace environment free from bias, more inclusive, even-handed, and dynamic where everyone has equal opportunity to flourish.

[halcyonknightsaus]

Anticipating the Future: Recruitment and Executive Search Trends for 2023

We have entered a new era of talent acquisition. While the focus on attracting top talent will continue to be a necessity, the acquisition of that talent is a different ballgame.

As hiring managers there are lot of things we should consider while executive search to source and recruit, what does this mean for individuals looking for work?

In this blog post, we’ll examine some trends in the market that could affect your next job search experience.

Evolving Talent Landscape

The talent landscape is changing at a faster pace than ever before.

The talent landscape is changing because of technology, economic conditions, and workforce demographics.

In the past, it was common for employees to work for one company their entire career. Today, workers are more likely to switch jobs throughout their careers than ever before. This is especially true for Millennials and Generation Z who have grown up in an era where technology has made it easier to move from one job to another.

Technology and Automation

Automation is a trend that will continue to grow in the future. It's affecting all industries and all roles, from front-line employees to executive leadership teams. Advancements in AI, machine learning, and automation are helping companies find the right talent at scale while also changing how we work; and recruiters need to be prepared for this shift.

There are many ways technology is revolutionising talent sourcing, screening and assessment:

Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion are two of the most important trends in executive search and recruiting. The benefits of a diverse workforce go far beyond simply making your organisation more inclusive, they also have a positive impact on business success and profitability.

Diversity contributes to innovation, creativity, problem solving, productivity and other key factors that contribute to organisational success.

Inclusive workplaces boost employee engagement which leads to higher performance levels.

A study by McKinsey found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely than their competitors (those in the bottom quartile) to report financial returns above their national industry medians.

Remote Work and Hybrid Workforce

Remote work is on the rise, and it's a trend that will only continue to grow. The benefits of remote work are many: reduced costs, increased productivity and efficiency, better employee engagement and retention. But there are also challenges that come with managing a remote team--from ensuring that communication is clear and consistent across time zones to ensuring that every member of your team has access to the tools they need for success.

To attract top talent as well as retain existing employees who may be looking for new opportunities outside your organisation, you'll need strategies for attracting flexible candidates while also evaluating job candidates from afar.

Conclusion

As you can see, the talent landscape is changing and evolving. The recruitment industry needs to adapt with it or risk being left behind. The key takeaway here is that companies need to think strategically about their executive search needs and not just focus on filling positions with whoever happens to apply first. Proper planning will lead to better results in the long run!

Source :- https://recruitmentagenciesau.blogspot.com/2023/05/anticipating-future-recruitment-and.html

[performance-enablers]

Excellence at the top I guess it goes without saying that an organization is most impacted by its executive team. All the same, let me share some stats so that this view does not look like my personal opinion alone. Great Place To Work US (2021) research shows that companies that score in the top quartile of executive team effectiveness, enjoy 5 times the median, year-over-year revenue growth, compared with certified companies in the bottom quartile. Compared to other teams, top teams are 42% more effective at managing complex initiatives, 30% more effective in attracting talent and score 230% higher on key performance measures (Russell Reynolds Associates survey, 2018; Bain & Company 2021). The Global Leadership Forecast 2023 by DDI | Development Dimensions International has found development of the next generation of leaders as the 2nd highest priority of the CEOs, the 1st being to attract and retain top talent, that again is significantly liked to the quality of leadership in an organization. Despite all of this, a recent survey of senior executives by Centre For Creative Leadership (2023) found 65% of them saying their executive teams experienced clash between functional and enterprise accountabilities, and only less than 1 in 5 said that their executive teams were effective. Ask #chatgpt about the percentage of top teams that are effective, it puts it at 50%. Ask the same proportion for India, it says ‘cannot answer’ -:) . The CEOs and the organizations would obviously gain substantially if their executives teams brought their A game to the table. There are structured diagnostic tools available, besides the 1 -on-1 discovery sessions. However, here are a few questions to reflect on that can give you a sense of where does your top team stand: 1. Are your top executives as driven by the purpose / vision for the organization? 2. Do they demonstrate the same level of engagement and participation whether a question relates to their respective verticals or to the enterprise as a whole? 3. Do you see them drawing upon others members’ resourcefulness while dealing with their challenges? And there are a few more. If your answer to one or more these questions is a 'no', obviously there is an opportunity waiting to be leverage.    It’s an area that possibly has the highest ROI for an organization. Love to hear our thoughts.

[bpo-interview-tutorial]

Every industry uses a measurement system to categorized its employees performance by quartiles . In BPO or call center and few other industries this measurement system is known as BQM (Bottom Quartile Management) or BQ Management . The bottom 25% Employees are categorized as bottom quartile.

This BQM system helps to identify the poor performers in specific KPIs and further to work on their skills to improve the performance. We can classified the Quartile Management system in to 4 categories.

    1 Top Quartile

    2 Middle Quartile-1

    3 Middle Quartile -2

    4 Bottom Quartile 

How to Improve BQM

As a coach or Team leader you should work on the agents falling under BQM .Though it depends ot he specific KPIs for which agent is in BQM but Below are some common tips to improve the performance of  BQM agents . 

Regular coaching and feedback 

Regular Audits

One o one training session 

Daily performance reviews

Barging of Calls (live and Regular)

A tenured mentor should be allotted for these agents

Seat planning to be adjust accordingly

and other exercised can be initiated as per the case history 

Despite of all the efforts if these BQM agents are not able to improve the performance that post giving the time of 30 days as per the company policy they should be asked to leave or removed from a particular process 

[coochiequeens]

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, the performance of companies with a high share of women at all levels correlates well with that of indices focused on environmental, social and governance factors. So it’s likely we are also picking up the positive impact on share prices from recent large flows into ESG funds.”

Having women in the workplace, and in higher positions in the workplace, are good for companies.

[theculturedmarxist]

Randall Lane is a fucking bastard capshit shill that should shut his idiot cockholster.

I was in the library the other day and sitting on a shelf was a stack of Forbes magazines, the facing issue featuring some dickhead grinning smugly at me beneath the headline

Reimagining Capitalism: How The Greatest System Ever Conceived (And Its Billionaires) Need To Change

I knew that I was going to hate whatever I found on those pages, but I had to read it anyway. It was intriguing for two reasons: capitalists actually acknowledging the fact that systemic changes need to be made is something in itself, something which should make people extremely nervous, and it’s never a bad idea to read enemy propaganda. Of course Forbes is capprop par excellence, and I was morbidly curious in regards to what they thought needed to be changed and how. The most surprising thing about its suggestions was just how unsurprising they are in their tepidity and belief in their own perverse self-assured reaction, with the usual capitalist mythologizing mixed in.

Sitting in a modest room in New York’s ­immodest Peninsula Hotel, the richest person in the world for most of the past 20 years ponders an existential question suddenly in vogue among the left’s confiscatory set: Should he even exist? “It is fascinating,” says Bill Gates, “that for the first time in my life, people are saying, ‘Okay, should you have billionaires?’ ”

Dispassionately, he begins to unpack that thesis. “I’m afraid if you really implemented something like that, that the amount you would gain would be much less than the amount you would lose. Now, that sounds self-interested, so who’s the neutral witness on this one? … We need somebody who’s not wealthy to say that in some cases allowing people to be wealthy is okay.”

Allow me to raise my hand. For the past year, I’ve had one-on-one discussions with no fewer than two dozen billionaires, including face-to-face meetings with the three richest people in the world—Jeff Bezos, Gates and Warren Buffett—touching on various aspects of capitalism’s future. It comes at an urgent moment: You’d have to go back to the 1960s, or maybe even the 1930s, to find a time when the primacy of the free market system was so widely questioned.

Just 56% of Americans say they have a positive image of capitalism, according to a Gallup poll last summer, compared with 37% who said the same thing about socialism. In a Fox News poll during the same period, 36% of adults approved of a shift in the U.S. “away from capitalism and more toward socialism”—a huge increase from 2012, when just 20% said so. Among Millennials and Gen Z, free market skepticism is actually the majority view. In Gallup’s poll, 51% of those 18 to 29 had a positive view of socialism—albeit the largely fuzzy Scandinavian/Bernie Sanders version rather than the Soviet/Berlin Wall hard stuff—compared with 45% for capitalism. That finding was echoed by a Harvard survey of young adults in which 51% said they did not support capitalism and only 19% said they “identify as a capitalist.” These sentiments come amid an economy that by all traditional measures is booming, with full employment and 3% growth. So far, 2019 has offered only reinforcement of these views, as tech companies have continued to bleed credibility, Howard Schultz turned himself into a cartoon and a slew of tax-the-very-rich proposals garnered surprisingly high support. “This has been brewing for years, accelerating in the last few months and again in the last few weeks,” says Steve Case, the AOL founder who now runs an investment firm, Revolution. The hedge fund titan Paul Tudor Jones adds: “I think we need to acknowledge that we’re at a crossroads, with massive social fissures.”

And those were just some of the billionaires willing to speak on the record. Virtually everyone I talked to acknowledged the need for change. Some incremental and many systemic; some spoke in whispers, many in full-throated pleas for “reform” or “a reboot.” The rock star Bono had perhaps the most poetic suggestion: a reimagination.If such a term conjures Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, two of capitalism’s visionary saints, so be it. Entrepreneurial capitalism remains, objectively, the best system ever invented to create and distribute prosperity, and if you look at the billion-plus people in China, India and elsewhere who were lifted from extreme poverty in the past two decades, it remains easy to sing its praises. The dynamism remains true in the U.S., too. Of The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, 67% are self-made and 11% are immigrants. “America works, and it works now better than it ever worked,” Buffett says.

Since too many Americans don’t feel that way, the time is ripe to reimagine a system that addresses them. Pick the brains of some of the greatest-ever manifestations of the American Dream, and an AAA-version of capitalism emerges, one more authentic, accessible and accountable—and perhaps, in an age of uncertainty, one that’s built to last. The stakes couldn’t be higher, as forces gather to threaten the greatest prosperity engine ever built.

Reimagining Capitalism as...Authentic

The French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville’s travels across America in the 1830s coincided with the emergence of socialist theory back in Europe, a movement he presciently and stridently criticized. For Tocqueville, the balanced capitalism he witnessed compared favorably to the options back home, such as ceding power to the government or a more feudal system “managed by a few rich and powerful individuals.” “The inhabitants of the United States almost always manage to combine their own advantage with that of their fellow citizens,” he observed. Tocqueville’s musings inspired Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and filtered into the very first issue of Forbes, printed during Russia’s Revolution, when the magazine’s founder, B.C. Forbes, famously declared that “business was originated to produce happiness, not to pile up millions.”

Milton Friedman was another 20th-century admirer of Tocqueville, particularly for his focus on political equality as a driver of prosperity. But Friedman famously held that among all the constituents of business—the customer, the employees, the community—just one ultimately mattered, the shareholder. The only social responsibility of business, he declared, was to maximize profits. If shareholders wanted to spend their profits on altruistic projects, great, but that was at their sole discretion, with the assumption they were buying something of value—perhaps social approbation or the assuaging of guilt.

This maxim gave us LBOs, private equity deals and employee buyouts. And to many of the world’s most successful capitalists, it also created many of the current ills. “How wrong I was about Milton Friedman—most of us were,” says Jones, who built a $5 billion fortune exploiting market opportunities, including shorting the 1987 market crash. “It came at great cost to other corporate stakeholders and eroded the trust on which companies, and civil society, depends.”

In an era when consumers crave authenticity, the Tocque­ville version, which sees profits as a by-product of business rather than its singular mission, offers a natural strain of capitalism that’s already hugely popular, especially among younger Americans. For Millennials, according to a massive Deloitte survey in 2018, the bottom three priorities for a business should be profits, efficiency and sales. The top three? Generating jobs, improving society and innovation.

Authenticity explains why Americans, while disliking Wall Street and big business, continue to love entrepreneurs (87% approval, per Gallup) and small business (96%). And why purpose-driven companies like Patagonia and Warby Parker are wreathed in halos, no matter what they’re selling or how rich the founders get.  

“When we’re acquiring companies, one of the things I look at very closely is ‘Are the founders of a company missionaries or mercenaries?’ ” Jeff Bezos told me several months ago, before revealing the answer with his famous braying laugh. “It’s actually very easy to tell—missionaries make better products and ser­vices.” They also engender the one authentic trait that’s ultimately the most profitable: trust. That word, says Bezos, “is what allows you to expand the business.”

Of course, trust is a double-edged sword. As Facebook treats user data as a chit rather than a covenant, the company’s reputation—and Zuckerberg’s—has tanked. (In the realm of extremely unlikely outcomes, it’s now easier to envision him in the Big House than in the White House.) It’s also why Wall Street remains about as popular as big tobacco.

But even in finance, roots of authenticity shoot up. Impact investing, long dismissed as a niche for do-gooders, has emerged as a growth area, with some $35 billion committed in 2018 to fund businesses that carry societal benefits without sacrificing returns. “We’re talking about solving problems using innovation and entrepreneurship,” says Nancy Pfund, who founded DBL Partners and has raised $625 million in three venture funds. Her flagship, with investments in Tesla and SolarCity, has ranked in the top performance quartile across this decade. “When you just look at the super-short-term shareholder, you’re not taking advantage of innovation—and you’re cheating the future.”

The numbers are getting larger: Breakthrough Energy Ventures, backed by a consortium of billionaires such as Gates, Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson and Jack Ma, has pledged $1 billion for startups that promise radical solutions to carbon emissions. A similarly platinum-plated tycoon cohort, including Bono, Laurene Powell Jobs and Jeff Skoll, has backed the Rise Fund, an arm of private equity giant TPG that has deployed $1.8 billion in 25 investments they think will have significant impact on society. “People are rightfully asking, ‘Is the system working?’ ” says Bill McGlashan, the CEO of the Rise Fund. “We believe that capitalism is a better servant than master.”

Reimagining Capitalism as...Accessible

For those who rightly still believe in America as the land of opportunity, a Fox News survey from just a few weeks ago should offer pause: 42% of Americans do not think “the way capitalism works in the U.S. these days” gives them “a fair shot.” Even more troubling: In a country that has always held true to the premise that you could make it through hard work—or at least your children could—18% thought that the American Dream is out of reach for their family.  

And there are ample stats to back up the sentiment. In the U.S. the top 1% of workers, collectively, earn vastly more than the bottom 50%. “The market system as it gets more specialized pushes more money to the top,” Buffett explains. “The natural function of a more specialized market economy is to divert more and more of the rewards to the top. That’s something I don’t think we’ve fully addressed in this country.”

But the situation is actually far worse than yawning income disparity. Americans have historically viewed the superrich as heroes, not villains, for a simple reason: “We all thought we could be like them,” Jones says. It’s the accelerating lack of upward mobility that’s fueling much of this populist anger. For all the anecdotal success stories, if you’re born in the wrong Zip code, to the wrong parents, the road to The Forbes 400 has never looked longer or narrower.

Take venture capital, the clearest starting point to a billion-dollar fortune over the past 20 years—a door the vast majority of Americans have no way of opening. Just 15% of VC money goes to women founders, 1% to black entrepreneurs and less than a quarter to anyone who lives outside California, New York and Massachusetts. Yes, a far more global, diverse pool now has access to those funding meccas, but that’s little comfort to a parent whose kid goes to a so-so public school in a city or region that’s been left behind.

“It needs to be a national priority to level the playing field,” says Case, who for the past few years has conducted a Rise of the Rest bus tour, traveling the country and putting millions into more than 100 companies that aren’t in Boston, New York or the San Francisco Bay Area. To Case, it’s both civic duty and opportunity, as brilliant minds lie fallow in low-cost areas desperate for high-growth hope.

Pfund actually counts women leaders before investing in a firm—almost two thirds of the companies in her funds have a woman at the CFO level or higher. She also pushes her portfolio to spread the opportunity, through profit-sharing plans, living-wage commitments and encouragement to hire in underserved areas.

All these efforts are on the margin, short of a commitment to create educational opportunities for those with ambition and then a track for them going forward. “We will have the resources,” Buffett says. “The question is, will we in effect pull everybody in who’s able-bodied and willing to work 40 hours a week so they can make a decent living, raise a family?”

Reimagining Capitalism as...Accountable

Something unusual happened a few hours after my sit-down with Bill Gates. Fresh off pondering the future of billionaires, he went on Stephen Colbert’s eponymous show with his wife, Melinda, to a crescendo of cheers. In accepting his new role as the world’s second-richest person, he quipped, “We’re trying to give it away faster”—and the audience swooned. From their call for higher taxes on the superrich to the obligations of the successful to the empowerment of women, the applause kept coming. By the end, Colbert was playfully goading the Gateses to run for political office.

Compare that with the Bronx cheer that echoed through New York later that week, when Amazon announced it was pulling out from its HQ2 plan in Queens. The math-challenged politicians who killed the deal took justifiable heat from pretty much everyone except their base. But Bezos was bloodied just as badly. He’s worth over $130 billion (at least until his divorce settles), and Amazon is worth $800 billion. Why extract a measly $3 billion in corporate welfare from New York? In the truest Friedman sense: because he has shareholders—and he could.

The dueling reactions underscore an American truth as timeless as Astor and Cooper and Rockefeller: Americans expect their meritocratic royalty to remain accountable to the public that helped create them.

Traditionally, that means philanthropy, an aspect of extreme success (there are now 137 deca-billionaires in the world) that no longer feels optional, albeit one that still engenders cynicism. Says Gates: “The attack that ‘Why should you even have a say in setting the agenda?’ That has a certain resonance to it.”

For Gates, who within our lifetime will likely be regarded as the greatest philanthropist ever, accountability starts with framing the role: “picking novel ideas” or “off-the-wall theories,” as he says, and then proving that the concepts work, or don’t, taking the kinds of risks that no taxpayer-funded government—or shareholder-dependent corporation—could justify.

But in this era, Gates also recognizes that motives will be questioned. “If we come and improve math class,” Gates says, “then people are like, ‘Hey, you didn’t do the band.’ ” For this reason, Gates tries to hold himself publicly accountable through transparency, including a public letter from the foundation that he and Melinda write each year. It’s also the driving reason for the Giving Pledge, in which 189 of the world’s wealthiest people have affirmed, for all to see, that they will give away at least half of their fortunes, most much more.

A Giving Pledge signatory, Salesforce founder Marc Ben­i­off has similarly shifted from anonymous giving to putting his name on two hospitals, in part to be a role model for emerging tech billionaires and in part because “it sent a message that we’re supporting the community in a tangible way.” And he does the same thing with his company, which pioneered a “1, 1, 1” model that placed 1% of the company’s equity in a trust, along with a pledge to donate 1% of its software products and 1% of his 35,000 employees’ time to volunteer work. It’s a combination that’s generated $260 million in grants and 3.8 million hours for civic causes.

Rather than rely on such voluntary munificence, Jones, who cut his philanthropic teeth founding the innovative Robin Hood Foundation in New York, has focused for the past several years on holding corporate America directly accountable for better capitalism. He founded Just Capital, which has surveyed more than 80,000 Americans in order to get a precisely calibrated take on what makes a good corporate citizen. America’s older workers, it turns out, aren’t so different from its youngest, desiring companies to pay and treat their employees well, put out good products that have integrity, and care about the environment and the community.

Just Capital ranks every major public company across its 36 criteria, from best to worst, proffering a Good Housekeeping-like seal to the top companies, in order to spur better corporate citizenry. (Disclosure: I’m on the Just Capital board, and Forbes publishes the annual Just 100 list each fall.) “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” says Jones, who also helped Just launch a $200 million ETF in June 2018 that has so far outperformed the S&P 500.

Measurement has also been driving McGlashan at the Rise Fund, which has a hard time justifying billions in investments in social good when no one can define what “good” is. To that end, Rise incubated and then recently spun out Y Analytics, a firm devoted to measuring this impact—a key step in making capitalism still more solutions-oriented.

Such remedies are urgent. “Unless we find a market-based solution to the exponential growth in inequality, we will end up with populist legislation that creates a hammer to go after every nail,” Jones says. He’s right. Alexandria Ocasio-­Cortez’s much-touted 70% income tax bracket displays a stark lack of understanding how fortunes in this country are built—through ownership, not earnings. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth surcharge would require an army of appraisers. “Here’s the problem with all of those,” says the venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. “There is international mobility.”  

Virtually every billionaire I spoke with acknowledged that higher taxes on the billionaire set are inevitable; most even saw them as beneficial, if correctly applied. According to Gates, Buffett, Khosla and others, the correct way to levy taxes on the superrich is at a transaction point. Either an estate tax without the loopholes that currently render it useless or a higher capital gains tax applied only on extreme fortunes, to avoid suppressing growth.

And better yet, the tax code can be refined to encourage growth and spread it around more evenly. The launch of opportunity zones, engineered by the Facebook and Spotify billionaire Sean Parker, has already been put in motion, offering tantalizing tax breaks in needy areas of all 50 states. Adjusting corporate tax rates based on jobs created—more jobs, lower taxes—is another worthy idea.

The eternal beauty of the free market is its ability to evolve. Leave it to the most admired capitalist in the world, Warren Buffett, who has lived through more than one third of this country’s history and who bought his first stock in 1942, at a moment when it was conceivable the U.S. could lose World War II, to make a prediction: “The luckiest person that will ever be born in the world to date will be a baby being born in the United States today.” Bet against Buffett, and capitalism, at your peril.

Some socialists poo-poo periodicals like Forbes or The Economist for being bourgeois rags, and they’re right. This whole piece is trash not fit for wiping one’s ass. It’s nothing but a puff propaganda piece for capitalists to tell other capitalists about how great they are, how essential they are, how right they are by virtue of being billionaires and how the jealous little people should just bootstrap themselves into wealth and plenty like they did.

It’s thanks in part to pieces like this that make class warfare and violent revolution ultimately necessary. These cretins delude themselves in a comfortable fantasy, a narrative myth about their own greatness meant to reassure themselves that the innumerable interlocking apparatuses which produce and secure their wealth are in fact benign, that the human suffering it produces is incidental rather than inherent. Randall Lane, this stupid fucker, praises Benioff for doing nothing. Nothing! He himself doesn’t do anything for charity except give away a tiny fraction of other people’s stolen money and forces his employees to do “volunteer work.” But that’s praiseworthy in their degenerate minds. Other people do the work, and they get all the credit.

“Opportunity Zones.” Reading the words made me want to vomit. Orwell, who these bastards have the temerity to quote in the back of the magazine, sandwiched between Sappho and Ayn Rand, would have a field day.

Forbes is a valuable resource for any socialist. We should thank the capitalists for being so considerate in compiling in one place so much information on these criminals and their crimes. All in all, a tremendous compilation of evidence for each of these loathsome worms’ cases before the people’s tribunal. Masturbatory passages will be read aloud to the millionaires and billionaires and their subhuman frontmen like Randall, and will be the last thing they hear aside from the hissing sound of metal on metal before the People’s Razor delivers the results of their “market-based solutions.”

[field-promax]

Sustainability in Field Service: How Digital Tools Can Help You Reach Your Goals

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Taking initiatives for minimizing the environmental impact of human actions has become imperative more than ever before. The sustainability initiative may have started out with the sole focus of “doing good” for the environment, but it has now emerged as an important economic performance metric. The trend is no different in field service management either.

Today, little doubt remains about the correlation between improved sustainability practices and better financial results. Companies that are committed to sustainability are increasingly efficient, use fewer resources, create less waste to generate a unit of revenue, and produce higher returns on investment. Likewise, consumers have also shown they are more likely to buy or use the services of a company that supports sustainability. And if the economic performance metrics and customer acquisition weren’t reason enough, sustainability also enhances brand reputation, customer loyalty, retention, employee retention, and overall efficiency.

Given the importance of sustainability in economic operations, more and more service-related businesses are also focusing on developing a sound sustainable strategy. Companies with stronger Sustainability DNA are more likely to deliver financial value and a lasting positive impact on society and the environment. Recent research shows that the EBITDA margin of top-quartile companies on the index is 21% higher (+3.4 percentage points) compared with the bottom quartile. Their sustainability performance is also 21% higher (+9.2 index points).

In the light of the growing urgency and value attached to sustainability concerns, every business should contemplate its sustainability strategy and take action. The first step towards this goal, however, is to identify how your operations align with the goal of sustainability. So, do you have an effective strategy in place? Is your business sustainable? If the answer is yes, you are doing a commendable job.

But if you don’t have one, or are not sure whether your organization is going in the right direction, fret not. We are here to help you. While incorporating environmentally friendly practices across daily tasks is necessary to drive this goal, it is far more important to leverage the right tools and technologies to execute those practices. For service delivery businesses, field service software could be the ultimate weapon in this regard.

In this blog, we will explain how the traditional paper-based business model is insufficient to deliver the desired results for a sustainable business model and how, riding on the advantages of automation, software solutions have become the driving force to attain sustainability goals. At the same time, how this revolutionary digital tool helps small businesses grow in potential. So, are you ready to begin the next chapter of your business growth? Dive in!

Table of Contents

1. Limitations of Current Business Structures

2. Field Service Management Software as a Tool to Build a Sustainable Business Model

3. Reducing the Use of Paper across the Field Service Lifecycle

4. Reducing Carbon Footprint through Cloud-based Software

5. Conclusion

1. Limitations of Current Business Structures

The business landscape in today’s world is rapidly changing. Many traditional ways of running a company nowadays are seen as obsolete or even damaging to society and the environment. The business has to be ethical, sustainable, and socially responsible. And that’s not only a nice promise but a way to gain investments and future financing.

More than any abstract ethical issue in business, the one thing that has become the primary obstacle in the path of sustainability is the paper-based business model. Paper and paper waste account for more than a quarter of the space in landfills. Each year, paper consumption is growing exponentially, which causes mass deforestation and excessive energy consumption.

A field service business also needs a lot of paper for workforce management and administrative work, but that’s not always the best choice for a growing company that seeks to embrace more environmentally friendly practices. Rather, it potentially limits your business growth. Slow and ineffective processes, difficult paper distribution and logistics, information safety, and customer data privacy issues are only a few significant disadvantages of using paper. Besides, Traditional business administration tools increase the need for additional human resources, raising risks of human error, losing documents, and of course, extra costs. Often the quality of information filled in paper documents is so poor it becomes impossible to identify data. Furthermore, storing and archiving such documents takes a lot of storage space and requires special security measures.

The situation seems complex and daunting, However, the solution is fairly simple. All you need to do is automate your processes. And the easiest way to do that is to employ software for field service operations.

2. Field Service Management Software as a Tool to Build a Sustainable Business Model

As digitization matures across all industries, organizations will move away from a ‘take, make, consume, dispose’ mentality and move towards ‘extending asset life by reusing, refurbishing, and recycling resources. When this happens, sustainability will become second nature because it will be the de-facto side effect of mature, digitized service delivery.

In light of this assumption, let us take a quick look at how software solutions can accelerate green initiatives in field service.

3. Reducing the Use of Paper across the Field Service Lifecycle

Field service management (FSM) software provides the opportunity to service providers and their customers to completely eliminate the use of paper across the field service lifecycle. Any form of paper documentation such as invoices, work orders, or time schedules can be digitized and automated providing always-on access from any device while eliminating the use of paper. Customers stay up to speed with their request’s progress through live updates on the dedicated Customer Information Center apps regardless of their location. Through a field service management app, technicians are able to work completely paper-free while being independent as it provides all necessary task-related information such as date, place, contacts, description, additional documents, and report task completion by collecting all relevant documentation in one place.

4. Reducing Carbon Footprint through Cloud-based Software

This is probably one of the most unintentional ways of making the environment greener. By selecting a field service management software that is cloud-based vs on-premise, businesses profit from a multitude of benefits such as faster user capacity and cross-device accessibility, while saving the environment from unnecessary carbon emissions. On-premise infrastructures produce a much larger carbon footprint than a cloud-based setup, as cloud-based solutions can optimize the utilization of idle times. Shared cloud infrastructures do not need individual redundancies like dedicated data centres which lead to less hardware and ultimately less energy consumption.

Furthermore, you can cut down your carbon footprint to an extensive degree by using a simple dispatch software. With this tool, you can view all your technicians’ schedules in one place and assign them jobs as per their location, so that they need to travel the shortest routes to get to the job site.

5. Conclusion

When you decide to embrace more sustainable practices, it’s essential to know why and how you are doing this. Only when you have the foundation can you build an environmentally friendly business. So think about how sustainability could complement your practice, where you stand and how you practice it. When your business is built with a sustainable vision in mind, it’s easier to implement such practices along the way.

We need more sustainable businesses and entrepreneurs embracing restorative practices. But many, especially established companies, are afraid to make the transition. They are worried about losing money or customers. But you don’t need to transform your business in a night. When trying to achieve sustainability, even baby steps matter.

It is clear that field service can do more as the world grapples with environmental crises, from global warming to extreme weather events. And the right field service management software solutions could play a key role in shaping the future of the field service industry.

If you too want to be part of the next generation of green businesses, settle for nothing but the best. With Field Promax, join the movement of making the world a better place, all the while taking your business growth to the next level.

Originally Published on our website - https://www.fieldpromax.com/blog/sustainability-in-field-service-how-digital-tools-can-help-you-reach-your-goals/

[biworldwide-employee-engagement]

Employee Engagement Strategy - Biworldwide

Global Employee Engagement Program - Employee engagement is all the talk. Whether it's discussions among HRs trying to crack the winning formula to employee engagement or watercooler conversations among employees whining about the lack of the same.

Employee Engagement Strategy: What Makes Them Tick and Stick Around

Employee engagement is all the talk. Whether it's discussions among HRs trying to crack the winning formula to employee engagement or watercooler conversations among employees whining about the lack of the same. Need you be concerned about how you walk the talk with your employee engagement solution? The latest research studies certainly say so. Insync Surveys reveal that engaged employees display 18% greater productivity and 60% higher quality, while an Aon Hewitt survey shows that companies in the top quartile of engagement scores enjoy a 50% higher shareholder return. Bottom line, employee engagement affects your business' bottom line. Here are some things you need to know about fostering an engaging environment for your employees.

It starts from day one

Statistics show that the expenses a company bears to replace an employee during their first year is almost 3 times their annual pay. It's interesting how much damage employers can cushion and sponge up by upping their engagement strategy. Often, organisations mistake employee engagement as a quarterly or once-a-year affair, where they take their team out for a fancy lunch or hold an annual celebratory event inviting employees and their families. Barely and rarely does that suffice. Engagement needs to start from day one. Bring in on-boarding activities that are geared at training and communicating the role requirements to new joinees and make sure you appreciate them as they master their roles. Employees who have a faster time to proficiency are naturally more connected and engaged with their organisation.

Managers who engage

The need of the hour isn't just managers who lead, but managers who can also engage. Employees who are engaged are on the same page as their employers when it comes to the organisation's roadmap. Statistics show that employees who are engaged in meaningful work i.e. understand how their work is playing a part in business success display greater commitment and productivity by up to 60 percent and 73 percent respectively.

How do you let your corporate vision and mission trickle down from boardroom conversations to everyday decisions of the average employee? Middle management is instrumental in this effort, and your job here isn't done just as yet. Be sure to train your managers so they understand organisational goals and behaviours that matter, reinforce behaviours in their team through timely recognition and rewards, and connect their efforts to the purpose of the organization. While you're at it, be sure you recognise managers for keeping the culture of recognition alive in the organisation.

Level Up your game

Keeping your employees engaged is so much about turning the mundane into something magical, and gamification can be a great way to realise this motive. Structure your gamification and employee engagement strategy with points, bonuses, and rewards to keep employees engaged and locked in on their goals. As a study from Harvard University shows, employees are highly engaged when they know how well they are progressing at work. What's more, is gamification allows employees to pick their own learning goals and at their own pace. 

Read More - Employee Engagement Solution Providers in India

[sharecreators]

3 Examples of How HR Digitization Leads to Organizational Success

Easier HR processes = happier employees = increased profitability

The human resources (HR) department is responsible for hiring, managing, and caring for the people who keep the business running and can be considered the beating heart of the business. Today, the role of HR is exponentially greater than ever – to be a prominent voice and to keep employees engaged and motivated during times of disruption for employees, the business, etc.

While HR’s function has traditionally tended to be business-centric (enforcing policies, managing payroll, maintaining compliance), recent events have highlighted HR’s ability to be more employee-centric than ever before. More and more companies are recognizing that it’s not efficiency that gets them through tough times – it’s a happy, resilient workforce.

Companies in the top quartile of workplace ratings are typically 25% more profitable than their competitors in the bottom quartile

-Deloitte

So, how do you build a resilient and happy workforce? For many companies, the first step is to empower your HR department.

Case 1: Eliminate Paper

In order for HR to focus on improving the employee experience, your HR professionals can’t afford to spend most of their time on paperwork. Tracking, filing, and managing paper forms takes up a large part of the day – while manual and paper-based processes pose significant compliance and security risks. In an ever-changing work environment, HR needs to be able to work efficiently – even remotely.

For example, for Kwik Trip, a retailer with 640 locations in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, HR was overwhelmed by paper documents and manual processes to provide centralized shared services to 21,000 employees. HR staff struggled to keep up with paper documents, including 98 different file types. These documents were taking up expensive office space in the office.

After digitizing these documents into one ECM, HR staff can now easily access complete employee information from anywhere. “Before, these sub-functions were very siloed. Documents could sit on someone’s desk for four days before anyone knew about them. Digital resources management systems like Share Creators Orange file management system gives employees a clearer view of documents in a better time frame,” said Sarah Jilk, administrator. At the same time, simple and standardized online forms simplify employee requests such as mileage reimbursements and status changes. This eliminates cumbersome paper forms and provides a seamless experience that meets the expectations of employees in today’s digital world.

Digitizing HR processes also improves data security. Share Creators Orange solution contains an impressive 2 million HR documents containing sensitive employee information, but with built-in role-based security, those documents are not accessible to people without permission.

“I have 100 percent confidence in the security of our information,” says Jilk.

Any HR professional knows that document regularity is the difference between meeting compliance requirements and heavy fines against the business. With automated document retention and document management capabilities, HR staff no longer need to worry about manually tracking compliance for each document.

“When we updated our system, we were finally able to do our normalization work efficiently,” says Jilk. “Now we can create document retention rules that help us automatically purge documents before their termination date.”

Case 2: Time is the greatest gift to employees

For MetroHealth – an integrated health system in Cleveland, Ohio, that includes an 861-bed major medical center, a rehabilitation hospital, two long-term care/skilled nursing centers, an outpatient surgery center, and a network of community health centers — Eliminating paper is only the first step. To truly optimize the enterprise’s processes, a solution was needed that would seamlessly integrate with existing applications.

So this healthcare provider turned to ECM to integrate with the enterprise’s legacy systems including electronic medical records (EMR) Epic, etc. MetroHealth was able to eliminate manual data entry, automate indexing and data validation, and make up-to-date information available to users who needed it, anytime, anywhere. This has been invaluable to their HR department.

“ECM frees up 80 hours a month for HR to do things other than filing, so our staff can get more done in less time. With the click of a button, we can save half a day,” says Dennis Murray, director of Metrohealth.

Case 3: Exiting the data center business

Forth to 25 percent, opening four new stores. But the number of organizations doing grocery chain Heinen’s, “getting rid of paper” has been key to its growth.

“From 2020 to 2021, the company grew by 20 this work in HR remains the same,”

Walters said, with the grocery store managing more than 90 types of digital HR documents for each employee, Heinen’s needed a faster, more secure way to store, access, and share employee files. The business also knew it didn’t want to run out of IT resources by managing local servers. “We’ve hosted solutions before, and we knew we didn’t want to be in the data center business. It was both expensive and difficult,” Walters said. “Managing servers is a job in itself. What if something happens and the server is compromised? We wanted to know with certainty that the data was being taken care of.”

Heinen’s chose a cloud-based storage ECM service to keep sensitive information, and storage, safe. This allows employees to focus on what’s important, such as providing excellent customer service.

“Having ECM allows us to better serve our customers,” Walters said. “We’re a chain of superstores, and now we can focus on our strengths.”

Even Though these three businesses are very different, by digitizing HR, they are all able to focus more on a common goal: success.

[quantummf]

Parameters to Compare Mutual Funds

How do you decide to buy an outfit? You would decide in terms of brand, fit, cost, etc. If selecting an outfit takes so much effort, how much more effort should one put in when it is a question of our investments? It is essential that you monitor your investments in such a way that it leads to take informed decisions.

Let’s understand the parameters to assess when investing in mutual funds in India.

Risk profile: The first step is to know yourself, understand your risk appetite, how you intend achieving your financial goals and then decide your investment. Keep in mind that income from mutual fund returns in India are taxable in the hands of the investor.

If you prefer diversified investment you may consider to invest in a hybrid fund. If you are looking for short term investment, you can consider to invest in a debt fund. However, if you aim at building your wealth over long term and are willing to take risks, you can consider to invest in equities.

Mutual fund Returns Comparison:

Past performance is no guarantee to future mutual fund returns; however, do evaluate the performance of a mutual fund on consistency parameters to determine the type of fund.

You can evaluate the performance of a mutual fund against its benchmark via the fund factsheet.

Studying the fund's quartile ranking is also useful to find a scheme.

For mutual funds returns comparison; funds with the highest mutual fund returns in the particular period are placed in the top quartile, whereas the lowest mutual fund returns are placed in the bottom quartile. If a fund has figured in the top quartile for 4-6 quarters consistently it means that the fund is outperforming its peers.

You can use a  investments return calculator to calculate the amount of estimated  mutual fund returns for specific investment periods.

Portfolio allocation:

While comparing mutual funds, study where and how much the mutual fund invests in any asset/sector/stock to evaluate if the mutual fund is adequately diversified. For this, study the fund’s   portfolio

Expense Ratio

Scheme’s expense ratio is another parameter to compare mutual funds. Asset management companies levy asset management fees for handling your investments. This affects the performance or mutual fund returns provided by a fund as it factors in the expense ratio. With other parameters remaining same, you can consider to choose funds with lower expense ratio. You should also look into the exit load levied on the scheme before you redeem it.

So you are now ready to understand ‘what’ and ‘how to’ go about comparing mutual funds. If you are a prospective investor an investment returns calculator helps you in your financial planning based on the estimated investment  returns.

However, if you are still hesitating, either reach out to an AMC or consult a financial advisor to help you build a right mutual fund portfolio.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here in this Article / Video are for general information and reading purpose only and do not constitute any guidelines and recommendations on any course of action to be followed by the reader. Quantum AMC / Quantum Mutual Fund is not guaranteeing / offering / communicating any indicative yield on investments made in the scheme(s). The views are not meant to serve as a professional guide / investment advice / intended to be an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial product or instrument or mutual fund units for the reader. The Article / Video has been prepared on the basis of publicly available information, internally developed data and other sources believed to be reliable. Whilst no action has been solicited based upon the information provided herein, due care has been taken to ensure that the facts are accurate and views given are fair and reasonable as on date. Readers of the Article / Video should rely on information/data arising out of their own investigations and advised to seek independent professional advice and arrive at an informed decision before making any investments. None of the Quantum Advisors, Quantum AMC, Quantum Trustee or Quantum Mutual Fund, their Affiliates or Representative shall be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, consequential, punitive or exemplary losses or damages including lost profits arising in any way on account of any action taken basis the data / information / views provided in the Article / video.

Mutual Fund investments are subject to market risks, read all scheme related documents carefully.

[webmarket01]

Best Weight Loss Tips That Lower Your Diabetes Risk | Eat This Not That

New Post has been published on https://weightlosshtiw.com/best-weight-loss-tips-that-lower-your-diabetes-risk-eat-this-not-that/

Best Weight Loss Tips That Lower Your Diabetes Risk | Eat This Not That

Having diabetes is a lot like being in the middle of the ocean and dying of thirst. You’re surrounded by something your body desperately needs, but ingesting it will kill you. With diabetes, that toxic substance is sugar.

Sugar—derived from the various healthy fruits and vegetables we eat—is what our bodies run on; we can’t function without it. But when you suffer from diabetes, that very same substance can wreak havoc.

Your digestive system turns brunch into glucose—the form of sugar your body uses for energy—and sends it into the bloodstream. Zap! You got energy. But glucose is actually toxic when it lingers in the bloodstream, so when the glucose hits, your pancreas—a large gland located near your stomach—produces insulin, a hormone, and sends that into the bloodstream as well. Insulin is your body’s air traffic controller: It takes command of all your glucose and directs it into your cells, where it can be used for rebuilding muscle, for keeping your heart pumping and your brain thinking, for exercising, or even singing or dancing.

But overeating on a consistent basis—or taking in too many calories too quickly, like when we eat sweets or drink sweetened beverages—turns insulin into the boy who cried wolf. Eventually your body’s insulin receptors—the docking stations where insulin parks glucose—begin to ignore insulin’s instructions. That’s a condition known as insulin resistance. After several years, the pancreas gets fed up with producing all that ineffective insulin and begins to produce less than you need. This is called type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes.

Glucose builds up in the blood, turning toxic and damaging the blood vessels, which is why diabetes can result in blindness, impotence, amputation, and other horrible afflictions. But remember, the body needs that glucose, which is now overflowing from the bloodstream and passing out through the urine. So at the same time too much sugar is killing you, you don’t have enough sugar in your cells to keep your body functioning. You feel fatigue and unusual thirst, and you begin losing weight for no apparent reason. You get sick more often, and injuries are slow to heal because your body is losing its ability to maintain itself.

More than 10% of the American population has diabetes, and more than a third of us have elevated blood sugar levels. Several studies indicate, though, that belly fat is strongly correlated with risk factors such as insulin resistance, which sets the stage for type 2 diabetes. Reducing belly fat via exercise and a healthy diet are two of the best ways to prevent and manage the disease.

To help you out, here are the best weight loss tips that will help lower your diabetes risk. And for more healthy changes, try out any of these 21 Best Healthy Cooking Hacks of All Time.

There’s a reason why omega-3 fatty acids are one of the core nutrients. Considered “essential” because the body does not produce them naturally, omega-3s boast a number of health benefits, including helping to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. A study by the University of Eastern Finland found that men with the highest intake of omega-3 fatty acids had a 33% reduced risk for this type of diabetes, compared to men with the lowest intake. Oily fish like wild salmon, rainbow trout, sardines, and mackerel are among the best sources of omega-3s. The American Heart Association recommends eating two 3 1/2-ounce servings of fatty fish per week.

Circuit train your belly away.

Aerobic exercise is known to prevent type 2 diabetes, and combining a heart-pumping cardio session with muscle-strengthening exercises is even better. A study published in the journal PLOS Medicine found that women who engaged in at least 150 minutes per week (about 20 minutes per day) of aerobic activity and at least 60 minutes per week (three 20-minute sessions) of muscle-strengthening activities reduced their risk of diabetes by 33% compared with inactive women.

Get your Greek on.

A Mediterranean diet may help to guard against obesity and consequently reduce your risk of diabetes by up to 21%, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 63rd Annual Scientific Session. The researchers’ conclusion comes from the analysis of nineteen original research studies that followed more than 162,000 participants for an average of five and a half years. While there is no set Mediterranean diet, it commonly emphasizes fresh fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts, fish, olive oil, and even a regular glass of red wine.

Hit the trail mix.

A study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that people who consumed the most magnesium from foods and from vitamin supplements were about half as likely to develop diabetes over the next 20 years as people who took in the least magnesium.

Large clinical trials testing the effects of magnesium on diabetes risk are needed to determine whether a causal relationship truly exists, but researchers have found that as magnesium intake rose, levels of several markers of inflammation decreased, as did resistance to the effects of the key blood-sugar-regulating hormone insulin. Higher blood levels of magnesium also were linked to a lower degree of insulin resistance.

So what should you stock up on? Pumpkin seeds and dark chocolate are two of the best food sources of magnesium.

Eat the whole thing.

Simply choose a whole apple instead of a glass of apple juice, and not only will you dodge a ton of added sugar and additives, but you may also lower your risk for diabetes, according to a study by the Harvard School of Public Health. Researchers found that people who ate at least two servings each week of certain whole fruits—particularly blueberries, grapes, and apples—reduced their risk for type 2 diabetes by as much as 23% in comparison to those who ate less than one serving per month.

Conversely, those who consumed one or more servings of fruit juice each day increased their risk of developing type 2 diabetes by as much as 21%. Swapping three glasses of juice a week with three servings of whole fruit was associated with a 7% risk reduction! The high glycemic index of fruit juice—which passes through the digestive system more rapidly than fiber-rich fruit—may explain the results.

Don’t load up on acid.

A study of more than 60,000 women found that an acid-promoting diet, one that includes more animal products and processed foods than fruits and vegetables, causes a number of metabolic problems including a reduction in insulin sensitivity. According to the study, women with an “acid load” in the top quartile had a 56% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with the bottom quartile. Foods that promote an alkaline body environment—vegetables, fruits, and tea—counter acidity.

Bad news for people who love going back for seconds at the cookout: Researchers at the University of Singapore found that a small increase in red meat (we’re talking half a serving per day) was associated with a 48% elevated risk for type 2 diabetes over the course of four years. The good news is that you can undo some of the damage by reducing your red meat intake. (And for more help getting you lean for life, try out this 14-day flat belly plan.)

This content was originally published here.

[worklabournewsresearch]

How Private Equity Can Catalyze Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace

“[I]n the current moment of upheaval—private equity (PE) has the ability and imperative to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in the workplace; and in so doing, provide additional levers for financial outperformance. Our long-running research on diversity across industries shows that companies with greater diversity in leadership ranks are more likely than those with less diverse leadership to perform better than industry average on margin growth. Applying this analysis to PE suggests an additional lever for value creation within firms’ portfolios. Improving DE&I will not only provide an additional opportunity for financial outperformance, but DE&I commitments may also help firms raise capital. By focusing on DE&I, the PE industry can create more equitable and inclusive places to work, attract better talent, redefine corporate culture, and set a standard for businesses everywhere.”

“Over the past five years, McKinsey has studied the strengthening business case for gender and ethnic diversity: companies with greater diversity within their leadership team correlate to stronger financial results. Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were 25 percent more likely to outperform industry-median EBIT growth than bottom-quartile companies. Similarly, executive teams in the top quartile of ethnic diversity were 36 percent more likely to financially outperform the industry median. If this business case were to hold for PE-backed companies, beyond the increased likelihood of financial outperformance for the portfolio company itself, a PE fund focused on driving significant change across the portfolio would produce significant enterprise value for the fund. While it is still early days for PE on improving diversity, and the correlation remains to be validated for privately held companies, the scale of potential value creation is significant.”

“PE firms can do the following:”

“Make a public commitment”

“Conduct diversity assessments of targets”

“Focus on diversity performance”

“Within portfolio companies, advancing DE&I includes the following steps:”

“Set diversity targets for boards”

“Establish diverse management teams”

“Remove structural racism from all corporate policies portfolio-wide”

McKinsey & Company, March 1, 2021: How private equity can catalyze diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace by David Baboolall, Alexandra Nee, and Lareina Yee

Photo Source: (2019). Group of people sitting [Photograph]. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/faEfWCdOKIg

[wrongdesign]

Dismal Employee Engagement Is a Sign of Global Mismanagement

According to our recent State of the Global Workplace report, 85% of employees are not engaged or actively disengaged at work. The economic consequences of this global "norm" are approximately $7 trillion in lost productivity. Eighteen percent are actively disengaged in their work and workplace, while 67% are "not engaged." This latter group makes up the majority of the workforce -- they are not your worst performers, but they are indifferent to your organization. They give you their time, but not their best effort nor their best ideas. They likely come to work wanting to make a difference --- but nobody has ever asked them to use their strengths to make the organization better. In a nutshell, this global engagement pattern provides evidence that how performance is managed, and specifically how people are being developed, is misfiring. Most of modern business relies on annual reviews to provide feedback and evaluate performance. And yet the new workforce is looking for things like purpose, opportunities to develop, ongoing conversations, a coach rather than a boss, and a manager who leverages their strengths rather than obsessing over their weaknesses. They see work and life as interconnected, and they want their job to be a part of their identity. While this may sound like a tall order, the roadmap to better management is clear. Here are three steps organizations can take immediately to boost engagement: Audit your current performance management system. Dissect which parts support setting clear expectations, making it easy to be an ongoing coach, and holding people accountable in a fair and accurate manner. There are undoubtedly pieces of your current system that align with modern performance development and others that work against allowing productive ongoing conversations to take place. Train your managers to have effective performance development conversations. There are five conversations your managers need to become experts on, from onboarding to check-ins to semi-annual progress reviews. Build a scientific system to make the right decisions about who becomes a manager and who can naturally deal with the idiosyncrasies that come with managing people. Some individuals are more naturally gifted to manage people toward high performance than others. Performance reviews are still important. However, they become much more useful to the employee and organization if reviews follow ongoing conversations where expectations can be reprioritized in real time so that development can happen throughout the year. The review meeting, then, is not a surprise, but rather becomes a discussion about the future. When we get performance management right, engagement will naturally rise. And the potential impact on the bottom line is significant. When compared with business units in the bottom quartile of Gallup's database, those in the top quartile of engagement realize 10% higher customer metrics, 17% higher productivity, 20% higher sales and 21% higher profitability. Organizations at the top achieve earnings per share growth that is more than four times that of their competitors. Clearly, the health of the world's organizations depends on getting employee engagement right -- and that begins with fixing the problems within our performance management systems. Jim Harter, Ph.D., is Chief Scientist, Workplace Management and Wellbeing, at Gallup. Focus on your employees. create corporate engagement. reduce disengaged employees costs.

Read the full article

[jlfmi]

Great (Stock) Expectations

Consumers’ expectations for stock market gains have never been higher — or more assured.

Since the August stock market low, bulls have had it pretty good. Rally participation has been excellent, as has price structure for the most part. Outside of a textbook successful test of The Most Important Level In The Stock Market, it has basically been a parade of new all-time highs in the major averages. So with the stock market hitting on all cylinders, there is little reason not to expect more of the same. That may just be the problem, however.

With stocks up sharply since August, not to mention the past 8 years, it should be no surprise that bullish sentiment has followed suit. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Bullishness is required to attract flow of capital into stocks and, thus, propel the market higher. However, bullishness can eventually become so rampant that there is essentially nobody left to buy stocks — or at least not enough to perpetuate a rally. Identifying those relevant extremes is the tricky part, though.

A case in point can be found in the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers. One of the questions asked of respondents in the survey is their estimation of the “probability of an increase in the stock market in the next year”. Among the various ways that the UM breaks down the data is by taking the mean response to that question. We mentioned in a post last month that the most recent reading (August) saw the mean response register in at 62.7%. As we noted, that was the 2nd highest reading in the survey’s history (back to 2002) behind only June 2015, which, of course, occurred near an important intermediate-term top.

We also stated, however, that it “certainly is possible that the survey reading gets more extreme, and that stocks continue to run higher in the meantime.” And, we followed, “if they loved ’em in August, we can’t wait to see the September reading.” Well, given the continued rally in stocks since the end of August, the mean response has indeed gotten more extreme. In fact, the October reading eclipsed the June 2015 record, coming in at an all-time high 64.5%.

Furthermore, the survey also provides the level of “extreme” responses in addition to the mean. When tallying the survey numbers, the UM breaks the responses down by quartiles (i.e., the % of respondents expressing a probability of a stock market increase between 1%-24%, 25%-49%, etc.). They also provide the percentage of respondents who say there is a 0% chance of a stock market rally over the following year as well as the percentage of respondents saying there is a 100% chance.

As the bottom pane in the chart reveals, in October, the percentage of respondents stating there was a 100% chance the stock market would be higher in 12 months came in at 13%. That was also the highest on record, surpassing the previous high of 12% set in February of 2004, which incidentally marked a 9-month high in the S&P 500.

Again, October’s readings for both the mean and the percentage in the “100% camp” are unprecedented. If we loosen the parameters a bit, we can look for others junctures that saw extremes in both figures. For example, if we search for all months with mean readings above 62% and “100%” readings above 10%, we come up with the following 4 months:

July 2007

June 2015

August 2017

October 2017

Obviously, the first 2 incidents occurred right near a cyclical top (2007) and a serious intermediate-term top (2015). So the potential existence of unreasonably high expectations is certainly a concern. However, I will note that at the time of the 2007 and 2015 occurrences, our models had already detected meaningful signs of internal market deterioration. So an underlying weakening of the market’s foundation had left it vulnerable to the type of correction that followed in both instances. As yet, we have not seen similar signs of deterioration. Thus, the August and October readings have done nothing to slow down this rally.

When will the market destabilize and become vulnerable to realizing the substantial potential risk represented by these measures of extreme bullishness? We don’t have a crystal ball. We do, however, have our objective, quantitative models that gave us a head’s up at those previous tops. So when we see those signs of deterioration start to pop up again, we’ll know that these great expectations may very well soon turn into false hopes.

If you’re interested in the “all-access” version of our charts and research, please check out The Lyons Share. When we begin to see the signs of deterioration and potential market risk, TLS members will be the first to know. Also, sign up by November 27 and save more than 25% off an Annual Membership in our Thanksgiving/Black Friday Sale. Considering this sale price — and the fact that we may well be entering an investment environment tailor made for our active, risk-managed approach — there has never been a better time to reap the benefits of this service. Thanks for reading!

_____________

Disclaimer: JLFMI’s actual investment decisions are based on our proprietary models. The conclusions based on the study in this letter may or may not be consistent with JLFMI’s actual investment posture at any given time. Additionally, the commentary provided here is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as a recommendation to invest in any specific securities or according to any specific methodologies. Proper due diligence should be performed before investing in any investment vehicle. There is a risk of loss involved in all investments.

[suppliertynews]

(via Tips on handling small business growth)

Running a startup is difficult but in a sense freeing.  While it may be hard winning your first contract or two, from an operational stand point your business focus is simply on executing client solutions.  When that startup becomes and small business, and that small business begins to grow, the issue of sustainability and effective growth is a huge challenge for all companies.  According to Fortune Magazine, a few suggestions that can help growing businesses include maintaining company culture, openness, and a focus on hiring and day to day management.

A survey was released highlighting Great Places to Work by Fortune Magazine showed the need for a focus on employees, innovation, and revenue, and the best ways to operate effectively.  Below is a quick summary of the survey results

Surveyed companies in the top quartile for executive effectiveness experienced median year-over-year revenue growth of 26%, three times faster than peers.

Businesses in the top quartile for innovative behaviors—another area where scores tend to drop with increased size—reported 23% median revenue growth. That’s also three times faster than peer companies.

On an index gauging whether organizations offer a great place to work for all employees, regardless of who they are or what they do, the top quartile for fairness grew revenue 3.6 times faster than companies at the bottom.

In the end, when it comes to growing a company, creating an open and inclusive culture is the key to success.  Turnover is expensive and, for small and medium enterprises, can be the deciding factor for revenue growth if not handled properly.  “Employees at businesses with fewer than 100 co-workers were 63 times more likely to plan a long-term future at their companies if they described them as a great place to work.”  Keeping employees included in decisions can do wonders in keeping talent and growing the way you need to.

[servicescore]

5 Ways to Discover Drift in your Customer Experience

What’s the difference between a good and bad Customer Experience?  

I was thinking about this after a small (but unwelcome) change at a sandwich shop I visit often.  After coming four days a week for the past year, something was different.  When I tapped my phone on the card reader to pay, a new message asked me to select the amount of “tip” I wanted to add.  Suddenly, I had to decide with a line of customers behind me. Even though I believe in great tips for great service, I was annoyed that I was now being asked to pay extra for service after I stand in line to order, pay at the counter, fill my own drink, get my own chips, clear my own table and toss out my own trash. In other words, am I now expected to pay a tip like I’m at a full-service restaurant when I’m not getting any of the same services?  And since I’m there often, do I really want to add $10 a week to my lunch budget for the same meal and service?

Here’s what bothered me the most: it felt like the rapport I had built with the cashier over many months seemed to evaporate when I hit “none” to the Tip Amount question and her eyes dropped and shoulders slumped.  So, within a few seconds, I went from feeling like a good customer to Ebenezer Scrooge.  Is it just me being “cheap”?  I began to notice that I wasn’t the only one that seemed to feel annoyed when that tip message appeared. Especially with older customers, there was frequent face twisting when they hit the “none” button and our cashier, again, looked crestfallen.  I’m guessing the change happened because the chain started working with delivery services, like Uber Eats and GrubHub, and had to make a change for driver tips.  But I wonder if they considered how this might impact the experience for customers paying at the counter.

All of this got me thinking about “drift” – small changes upon small changes that can add up to a big gap between a customer’s expectations and reality.  I was first introduced to the concept of drift early in my restaurant career as I was being promoted to Director of Operations, when our CEO gave me outstanding direction: “You have one job now – prevent drift in my restaurants”.  Over the years, as a student of Customer Experience, I’ve looked at ways to identify these small, potentially harmful changes. The old rules of strategic advantage don’t apply anymore – we can’t wait for customer complaints or sales declines to know we have unhealthy drift. We have to define, then proactively protect, the core elements of the customer experience that customers value most.  Here’s 5 ideas on how to get it done:

1.    Define the Critical Few

In discovering drift, it’s important to first make sure your team knows what’s non-negotiable in the delivery of your customer experience. You can’t monitor everything, nor should you.  Understanding those critical few aspects of your service delivery that creates loyalty is the key.  Start from the perspective of your customers: where can you be so truly great that your customers will pay – and continue to pay for your services?  A resource we love is the book, “Uncommon Service”, where Frances Frei and Anne Morriss show how service must become a competitive weapon, not a damage-control function. That means weaving service tightly into every core decision a company makes.  This includes deciding on where your brand will be truly great and where you will be intentionally bad compared to competition (such as letting the other guys be great at self-service or low-price).  The most important part of defining these critical few is building a process culture that ensures zero tolerance for “drift” in these core elements of your brand.

2.    Who’s Responsible for the Customer Experience?

As the old saying goes, “If it’s everyone’s job, it’s nobody’s job”.  Insights from the 2019 Annual Franchise Marketing Report, just published by Franchise Update Media, shows that in franchised brands, responsibility for the Customer Experience is most often shared, based on a national survey of franchisor marketing leaders.  Specifically, when respondents were asked which department manages the “Customer Experience”, 45% shared that it is managed by multiple departments (with 35% stating that Operations manages and 15% stating that Marketing oversees).  Having clear accountability for measurable aspects of the customer experience is a key to making sure your critical standards are vigorously protected.

3.    Seek and Act on Customer Feedback

Once you’ve defined the core processes that deliver your differentiated customer experience and defined accountability, it’s time to build the mechanisms to help make sure they’re being delivered.  Of course, you can look at sales trends, call volume and product mix, but if these lagging metrics are decreasing, you’re probably too late to easily make improvements.  Seeking customer feedback in ways that make it easy for customers to share is important; outreach surveys via phone, email and mail are great, as are surveys in your brand app and on websites.  Social media listening and monitoring online reviews are also key to both learning consumer sentiment as well taking the opportunity to join the conversation.

4.    Consider the Root Causes

It’s easy to blame poor training or bad hiring when staff members take shortcuts or make changes that can impact the customer experience, but these tweaks can also be made by leadership, well-intended to benefit the business.  Managers that cut service staff, ignore employee credential gaps or skimp on ingredients might see a fast benefit to the bottom line – but, over time, they’ll see their customer loyalty erode. So, part of preserving a stellar customer experience is to understand the pressures that might lead employees to drift – with the support of managers or owners:

·     Franchise Satisfaction:  Franchise Business Review (FBR) recently shared powerful insights gained from 23,604 franchisee satisfaction surveys completed in 2018.  They found that brands with high satisfaction dramatically outperform brands with lower satisfaction on every key financial metric for a brand, including unit growth, turnover and – most importantly – franchisee income.  In fact, highly satisfied franchisees (top quartile) had almost double the income vs. less satisfied franchisees (bottom quartile).  Knowing this can tell you about your operation’s potential for drift in many ways.  Most obvious is economic – simply put, if the business is making a good income, there is less financial pressure to cut corners in any area, including customer experience.  More broadly, highly satisfied franchisees are less likely to allow drift.  As FBR’s CEO Eric Sites puts it, “Engaged franchisees participate, are passionate about the business and feel a deep connection to the brand.” 

·     Recruiting Pressures:  What impact can a great economy have on drift?  With unemployment rates nearing a 50-year low, recruiting and retaining qualified staff is a challenge.  Being able to merely fill shifts is difficult enough, but finding those stars with the core values the brand needs to deliver a special customer experience is extremely tough when candidates are scarce.

·     Cost Pressures: tougher recruiting often leads to higher wages.  Combine this with other rising costs of insurance, regulation and commodities and the economic incentive to find faster, cheaper and easier ways to serve customers heats up.

·     Competitive Pressures:  Moves by others in the industry to charge new fees, reduce service aspects or modify products can seem like justification for managers and owners to make their own changes – even if their brand leaders are trying to hold firm on core aspects of the service delivery.

5.    Outsource your Eyes and Ears:  

Yes, most brands have customer service supervisors, trainers and field consultants charged with preventing drift.  These internal roles are important, but have limitations because their perspective is just that – internal.  Their impact grows exponentially when they have the benchmarking data, industry insights and technology tools that make their jobs more efficient and effective. For example, online audit platforms can help onsite visits result in uncovering small, but potentially catastrophic examples of drift in your customer experience.  The leading online audit platform, FranchiseBlast, recently published “59 Customer Service Audit Questions Your Franchise needs to Know.” These questions, from a variety of types of businesses, help auditors focus on items that directly impact the customer experience (such as speed of service, staff offering friendly greetings to guests) as well as less direct, but still impactful elements of the overall experience (each crew member wearing a clean uniform, background music sound quality, saying thank you after every transaction).  At ServiceScore, we review recordings of actual phone call inquiries to thousands of businesses so that we can provide brands with real-life call conversion metrics, brand compliance concerns, ideas for new products/services and more – all from listening to (literally) the voice of the customer.  

If drift is when identified early, these small changes can usually be reversed through great coaching. Even better, it can be the spark of an idea that leads to positive changes in the customer experience. Knowing what’s truly important to your customers and leveraging the right tools can help identify these opportunities – and take the lead in protecting those critical aspects that create customers for life.

References:

Franchise Blast Customer Service Questions: franchiseblast.com/customer-service-audit

Uncommon Service:  https://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Service-Putting-Customers-Business/dp/1422133311

Annual Franchise Marketing Report:  https://afmr.franchiseupdate.com/

Franchise Business Review:  https://tour.franchisebusinessreview.com/the-importance-of-franchisee-satisfaction-and-engagement/