News
What Story is Your Workplace Telling Others?
Founder, Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is honored to be featured in this month’s issue of
Women With Know How Magazine. The full article (with permissions) is available here:
Successful companies have more than great products and services. Their performance stems from a clear vision, established strategic priorities, and the ability to act on objectives rapidly. World-class organizations, large and small, go beyond. They cut through an overcrowded marketplace with a distinct competitive differentiator: their people.
Every connection that is made with customers, clients, and relevant stakeholders extends the story of your workplace. How your associates communicate, care, and connect with customers reflects their innate talents and leaves a lasting impression. It can also make the difference in whether co-workers invest more discretionary energy, creativity, and extra effort or simply submit the minimum.
An energized leader recently shared with me: “I can’t ever imagine leaving this company. I love working here.” After many years of working in health-care technology, this Generation X leader discovered his hidden talent potential, refocused his work/life priorities, and made a decision to align his values with the technologies that he found most intriguing and with which he felt he could deliver the highest customer return.
Smiling, he proceeded to share the many ways in which his new workplace was knocking his socks off by enabling him to connect with customers and collaborative colleagues to come up with new approaches to solving business challenges with leading-edge design technology solutions that far exceeded anyone’s expectations. As a result, his company is blazing new trails in helping its clients achieve extraordinary results.
Before the shift, the narrator inside this Generation X leader’s head was playing the role of “Passionate Geek.” Imagine if he continued to listen to the old narration that said, “You don’t have what it takes to be a relationship-builder in IT. You’re a techie.” If he had stayed tuned to that, he would have delivered far inferior customer outcomes and possibly passed on contributing valuable ideas, energy and innovation that could help his company’s clients achieve success.
As women business owners, you have a unique opportunity to create more empowering workplace stories by following four intuitive steps:
- Become aware of your current stories. Tune into the commentary that runs through your mind as well as your workplace conversations. Often, leaders are moving in a number of directions and miss the story entirely. It’s especially important to be tuned in when you’re experiencing adversity and significant change.
- Assess the stories that are being told. Are the stories representing the reality of your workplace? Or are the stories offering insight into past perspectives that may be based in fear? Are these past perspectives holding your workplace back from connecting with clients, customers, and co-workers?
- Decide to act on truth. As leaders, you can continue to live based on past experiences, or you can bring people’s talents together and collectively move closer to those stories that reflect current truths.
- Create a new story. You can be active participants in your workplace stories, and you can let go of those that hold you back. The words of your employees, your choices, and your collective actions matter — they mean more to your clients (and employees) than you think! They can affect the outcome, remarkably.
Reflecting on the differences between the Generation X leader’s new workplace and his former employer, I was curious what his perspective might be. His reply? “My new workplace provides me with the support and tools to care for our clients, while trusting me to make the decisions that can create and deliver the best story (and solution) to help them be more successful.”
©2011 All rights reserved. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the founder and president of The Infusion Group™. A trusted partner in creating new possibilities in talent management and workplace culture design to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, and society. The Infusion Group™ brings together a portfolio of workplace services to achieve personalized business strategies for clients in the new world of work. For more information on achieving greater workplace potential, please visit www.theinfusiongroupllc.com.
It Still Pays
Co-Founder’s Jerk-Free Policy Gives Employees and Clients Something to Celebrate
In today’s evolving workplace and uncertain economy, finding reasons to celebrate can sometimes seem like a stretch. But even in hard times, one organization that knows the importance of talent and people offers plenty to celebrate by maintaining a jerk-free workplace.
Photo Courtesy: iStockPhoto
The concept goes back many years, to when Frank Moran, co-founder of what’s now the nation’s 12th-largest CPA firm, Plante & Moran, PLLC, was adamant that the firm wouldn’t hire or tolerate jerks. Managing Partner Gordon Krater, who was hired at Plante & Moran in 1980, right out of college, recalls being intrigued by the “jerk-free” policy in the firm’s employee manual. To this day, the concept of a jerk-free work environment infuses Plante & Moran’s hiring practices.
As more companies seek ways to create a winning workplace culture and build toward the future, they see the value in ensuring a positive environment in which collaboration helps foster people’s best work. This is often achieved by establishing clear expectations in people-management practices about the desired behaviors that support organizational values. A collaborative leadership structure that upholds these standards is key to creating such an environment.
Common attributes of a jerk-free policy may include:
- Purpose Statement
- Core Values (including Respect for Individuals)
- Outline of Applicable People-Management Practices
- Behavior Expectations Written in Clear Language
- Reporting and Investigative Process
- Benefits
Does It Pay?
Plante & Moran has been on Fortune magazine’s “Best Places to Work” list since 1999. Back then, the firm’s staff numbered 900. Now it has 1,600 employees and has opened several more offices in the U.S. and overseas.
The value for many organization’s achieving Fortune’s “Best Places to Work” recognition is often high, ranging from increases in employee and client satisfaction, reputational capital, better shareholder returns and volume of highly qualified talent pools.
Despite growing continuously and expanding service offerings, the firm has preserved its professional-leading staff retention rate and unparalleled client satisfaction levels. In recent surveys, 100% of clients said Plante & Moran staff were competent in their fields of discipline; further, nearly 100% of clients said Plante & Moran could use them as a reference and that the firm was proactive in meeting their needs, according to a press release.
Plante & Moran and a growing number of organizations, including Success Factors, Red Door Interactives, and others, are demonstrating a commitment to jerk-free practices and a healthier workplace culture.
It look’s like taking a bold action on having jerk-free workplace has allowed Plante & Moran employees and leaders to stay focused on doing what matters most, and doing it well.
For additional resources on how to optimize your workplace in the new world of work, visit our new community, become a member – - by registering here, it’s FREE!
© 2011 All Rights Reserved. The Infusion Group LLC. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group, LLC, a people management consulting and coaching firm located in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina. Optimizing workplace solutions, www.theinfusiongroupllc.com Follow: @TheInfusionGrpLLC To request reprint permission, please contact the Infusion Group™
Honoring and Remembering 9/11
Paying Tribute: Slideshow - America Remembers
Finding Freedom In The Middle Of The Minefield
General Norman Schwarzkopf decorated military hero and strategist during the Gulf War has been reported by observers serving on the fields alongside Schwarzkopf as the epitome of leadership. 
One story reminds us of a such a time. While Schwarzkopf was visiting U.S. Troops in Saudi Arabia(1990) he received word that men under his command had encountered a minefield on the notorious Batangan Peninsula. Rushing to the scene by helicopter, he found several soldiers still trapped in the minefield. Schwarzkopf urged them to retrace their steps slowly. One of the men tripped a mine and was severely injured but remained conscious. As the wounded man flailed in agony, the soldiers around him feared that he would set off another mine. Schwarzkopf, also injured by the explosion, crawled across the minefield to the wounded man and held him down so another could care for his leg injury. Infested with landmines, Schwarzkopf’s discernment and resolve eventually, led his surviving men to safety. His act of courage to find freedom for his troops and a nation meant he would have to lay down his own life.
Finding Freedom
For many of us, we may never have to demonstrate that level of bravery and courage like our forefathers, military service men and women have done, but each day management faces a unique set of situations in an uncertain world that can raise the question as to whether freedom remains in our nation and is possible to achieve in workplaces for the future.
The new reality reminds us that the status of our lives personally and professionally has been changed forever. Aside from regulation, trends in global competition, slow workforce population growth rates, impending retirements of baby-boomers, and increasingly flatter organizational structures have contributed.
How do you find freedom in the new workplace amid rapid change? Intuitively, we know that freedom is never free, that it comes with a high price. Therefore, when we honor the gift by accepting personal accountability, we find our freedom. For leaders this means accepting your stewardship role ~ including your success.
How you define success at work has direct impact on the freedom you’ll ultimately experience. Below are several tips leaders can take to renew freedom in the changing world of work:
- Acceptance. Be willing to accept the responsibility that comes with stewarding talent in the new workplace. Understand the investment that it will require to be leaders and developers of a multi-generational workforce and the sacrifices, demands and changes it will require. What might you need to adjust in order to meet these responsibilities?
- Develop strengths and build your capabilities. Many CEO s keep a running list of new learning experiences they strive to accomplish each year. Brush off your strengths list and grow the talents you already have. Identify a list of development opportunities that you would find challenging and intriguing; aimed for personal and professional growth.
- Understand your worth. Reflect on day-to-day emotional reactions and determine if there are behaviors undermining your overall effectiveness as a leader or contribute to building a healthy sense of self-worth. Vision yourself as achieving respectful success by building others. You’ll not only find freedom, you’ll help your organization navigate through any landmines.
- Re-evaluate your monetary value. As employers continue to flex their workforce while navigating economic uncertainty through the use of contingent professionals and free-agents, conduct an honest skills inventory and ensure it remains current with organizational shifts, competitive with market competition and aligns with your long-term financial objectives. Freedom comes by taking the responsibility to close any gaps rather than rely only on a company’s ability to meet these needs.
The road to freedom requires focus and the intrinsic passion to be free. Imagine if you were able to achieve success in one or all of these areas mentioned?
Find support and resources to help you take freedom even further. Become a member of our new community – - by registering here, it’s FREE!
© 2011 All Rights Reserved. The Infusion Group LLC. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group, LLC, a people management consulting and coaching firm located in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina. Optimizing workplace solutions, www.theinfusiongroupllc.com Follow: @TheInfusionGrpLLC To request reprint permission, please contact the Infusion Group™
Is There a Leak In Your Talent Pipeline?
Before calling for repairs, consider whether it might be time to build a pool.
Effective leaders know both the obvious and hidden consequences of losing top talent and the direct impact on those left behind. But while keeping pace with change and managing the day-to-day, leaders often find themselves falling back on people practices that served well during an era that has passed, when workforce supply and demand represented a more stable economic era.
Today, as organizations are becoming flatter, more diverse, and more mobile in the midst of rapid change, the need to identify tomorrow’s talent has become a key business imperative. Recognizing that even with steady unemployment, critical talent is in high demand and short supply as generational and workforce population shifts begin to take hold, some leaders are finding a few leaks in their talent pipeline. How can you tell if your pipeline has sprung a leak?
Consider this actual scenario:
During a facilitated talent review session for a U.S. company, a room of executives listened intently as each of the senior directors described their division’s critical roles and discussed their identified successors, development progress, and succession readiness. Using established criteria, the talent review session provided key insight into the availability of their internal talent and the additional development decisions needed in order to build the leadership qualities necessary to achieve long-term business objectives.
After lengthy discussion, the talent review began to reveal a few leaks. For example, only a few successors were identified for multiple positions. While on the surface this represented highly adaptable individuals who demonstrated cross-boundary competency and were valuable to the organization, it also revealed that the pipeline was insufficiently growing a pool of likely talent for their pivotal and important roles.
Rather than merely patch the leaks, these executives were determined to understand their root causes. Research into various workforce segments revealed several reasons for the leaks; however one of the key discoveries found that a significant percentage of high performers had different long-term ambitions and non-management career objectives. The false assumptions that high performers are high potentials was eye-opening and helped these executives to revisit high-potential strategies and direct the investments and resources to address the gaps and create the developmental experiences that would build broader pools of future leaders.
Forward-looking organizations that are deliberate in cultivating a talent culture design clear plans that attract, retain, develop, and deploy talent across the organization. As talent stewards, they work collaboratively toward a holistic understanding of their talent portfolio and critical skills and then determine a course of action that will develop and deploy capabilities within the organization.
Generating a talent pipeline requires a strategic approach that demands an investment of focus and resources by talent stewards and executive leadership. Executed well, talent development is an investment that pays huge dividends in business performance, adaptability, and competitive differentiation. The question for savvy leaders is this: Are you building highly effective pools to stop leaks from becoming an organizational gush?
Take-Away Message
- Taking proactive measures to understand your organization’s talent portfolio is the first step toward discovering your true potential.
- Making the decision to plug talent gaps turns pipeline leaks into growing pools of new skills and critical qualities that can shape your organization’s future capability impacting strategic, financial and operational results.
Learn how we can help you solve retention issues and optimize workplace solutions by visiting www.theinfusiongroupllc.com or by clicking here.
© 2011 All Rights Reserved. The Infusion Group LLC. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group, LLC, creating new possibilities in people management consulting and coaching located in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina. To request reprint permission, please contact the Infusion Group™.
Photo Credit: iStockphoto
The Joy of Understanding Your Workforce
When it comes to having information, many agree that there is often too much of it and not enough knowledge. This is often the case when business leaders try to make important talent decisions that will impact their organization’s future. While companies have amassed significant amounts of workforce information from their enterprise resource planning (ERP) and human resource management information systems (HRIS), leaders are often faced with reviewing reports that lack relevant wisdom.
Harnessing the power of workforce data can enable business leaders to make more effective talent-
related decisions in areas such as talent planning, acquisition, compensation, rewards, development programs, and especially deploying critical talent.
Well-defined, high-quality information can provide richer insights into critical segments of your workforce while increasing the level of transparency in communication and highlighting specific trends that help pinpoint the focus on actionable solutions. Listening to your employees by meeting face-to-face and/or through other organizational feedback methods ensures that you know what’s on their minds; what they want, what they need, and their motivations. When these factors are infused with holistic approaches to your talent portfolio, as leaders you can begin to discover possibilities to enhance dialogue with employees and together tackle marketplace priorities.
The new workplace, with its growing diversity in a global economy, presents opportunities to adopt new solutions. Imagine, for example, leading a successful startup as your workforce quickly expands from eight, to 150, to 1,100. How would you plan to stay connected? Or imagine leading merger and acquisition activities in a mid-size to large organization. How would you gain access to critical experts and rapidly deploy talent?
As you move away from basic reports, which offer limited value, and toward workforce analytics, consider the following:
- How well are you able to understand the generational differences and diversity in your workforce and their impact on workplace culture and business strategy?
- How do you know which talent investments to prioritize?
- What retention risks exist across the organization, and what are the trends behind them?
By gaining a deeper understanding of your workforce, you can enjoy the benefits that actionable insights provide. No more guessing about the capabilities of one division over another or relying on employee surveys that no longer represent the faces of your evolving workplace.
As you look to build a healthy culture and drive growth strategies for the future, one of the greatest joys can be in truly understanding your changing workforce.
Given the importance of talent in today’s environment, it’s time to move beyond making talent decisions based on what’s in traditional reports and rely instead on robust information. Gain a competitive edge and drive your culture and talent decisions further by discovering the joy in understanding your people and the many scalable options that actionable insights can provide.
If you would like to learn more about ways to improve your talent decisions and build long-term value with the data you have available today, please contact and/or visit.
©2011 All rights reserved. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group ™ LLC, a next generation people management consulting and executive coaching firm based in the Raleigh/Durham, NC area. How can you become a community member? Discover Here.
For reprint permissions, please write to: contact@theinfusiongroupllc.com
Photo credit: iStockphoto
What’s the buzz on Google+
The long awaited announcement from Google is here. Introducing it’s newest addition to social media services, Google+ .
Business Insider, an on-line news channel, recently published this article and provides a “Google+ 101″ view of this new social media enhancement. You can read the article here, http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-google-plus-2011-6
We invite you to join The Infusion Group™ on this additional channel, here,
Lead Your Workplace Where It Is Afraid To Go
Rules of Engagement
When was the last time you can recall hearing people excited to be at work? There is something to be said about a positive work environment. You know it the moment you walk into it. The same can be said of the opposite. Which of the two environments best describe your workplace?
Imagine what it would sound like as people arrived to work in the morning powered up and on-fire to take on the challenges of the week. Their energy levels high and their attitudes are at the top of the charts. What are the possible ramifications? Could you expect greater attention to detail, strategic ‘what box?” thinking, and even positive feedback from your internal and external customers and vendors? Wouldn’t it be refreshing to deliver some good news to your company?
So, how do we make this a reality? The answer depends on where you decide to focus your efforts. What is it going to take to help your workplace feel connected, valued and energized to leap over tall buildings and spread explosive effort?
Lead With Conviction
While change fires up most of us, sound leadership principles and discipline ground us. By the time your CEO becomes aware of the extent of dysfunction, the issues have often become so ingrained into the company that it takes extraordinary leadership to turn things around. Demonstrate extraordinary by finding your inner conviction for a positive and healthy work environment and begin to move forward with the first successful key:
1. Determination – Make the vital decision that cultivating a healthy environment really matters. Communicate the rules of engagement and the importance of respecting new behavior expectations by presenting them to the organization. To avoid any misunderstandings of these new behavior expectations, demonstrate first by your sound discipline and leadership.
Lead With Accountability
Learn from the valuable lessons of the past and why practices may have lead to dysfunctional behavior and take the actions necessary today to instill a more positive workplace environment for the future. This means a healthy balance of recognizing positive employee behaviors and actions, while remaining open to receiving feedback that might identify opportunities for organizational improvement. Begin restoring workplace integrity and build trust step-by-step. Consider success key #2:
2. Practice the Discipline of Accountability – Cultural stewards are tenacious not tyrannical in their approach to creating a positive work culture. Focus on the better qualities of people first and move like “your hair is on fire” when the new rules of engagement are broken. Respectfully enforce firm consequences if violations occur and consistently recognize productive behaviors.
Start Today!
Root out any dysfunction that might be chipping away at your culture by ensuring everyone is clear and held to the new rules of engagement, before it takes your customers, employees, and profits to the doors of your competition.
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©2011 All rights reserved. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group ™ LLC, a next generation people management consulting and executive coaching firm based in the Raleigh/Durham, NC area. To receive the latest tips and resources for building thriving workplaces – Infusing Solutions @Work!, sign up here. For reprint permissions, please write to: contact@theinfusiongroupllc.com @InfusionGrpLLC
Tackling Workplace Bullying With a Wealth of New Resources
Over the last several years a plethora of information, advice, and resources have become available on the national topic of workplace bullying. More recently career sites, hosted media spotlights, and columns have attempted to offer advice to targets of workplace bullying. Often well-intended to help targets, however, the dispersed advice is often given in a narrow context and/or is more harmful than helpful, sadly inflicting greater injury upon those involved due to a number of factors found in the depth of this issue. It is for this very reason that we support the resources available at the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Washington.
The expert work of Dr. Gary Namie and Dr. Ruth Namie is unparalleled. It is an issue that they experienced firsthand. As a result, they have conducted extensive research and counseled over 6,000 individuals. Using their proprietary methodology that directly addresses and eradicates this workplace behavior, they seek to enable employers and individuals to understand, recognize and confront workplace bullying.
On a personal note, the course of my own life has been forever changed by the loss of an industry colleague due to workplace bullying Though I have partnered for many years with people and forward-thinking leaders in creating extraordinary workplaces, that life changing experience …that loss, followed by other subsequent events called us at the Infusion Group to a higher purpose ~ Building the future workplace designed with new possibilities where people can achieve a new level of excellence.
Help is Available!
If your workplace is contending with this issue and/or is interested in additional training,
WBI is offering a comprehensive; research based intensive training beginning in July. Doctors Gary and Ruth Namie will be hosting the:
Workplace Bullying Institute University
Training for Professionals
Small Group Intensive Training
July 8 – 10, 2011
Bellingham, Washington
They will be joined by leading Suffolk Law Professor, David Yamada, author of the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill.
Registration is now open to both workplaces and individuals. For more information or for future dates, please call 360-656-6630.
A host of valuable resources including relevant research, articles and materials can be found on their website at www.workplacebullying.org
©2011 All rights reserved. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group ™ LLC, a next generation people management consulting and executive coaching firm based in the Raleigh/Durham, NC area. To receive the latest tips and resources for building thriving workplaces – Infusing Solutions @Work!, sign up here. For reprint permissions, please write to: contact@theinfusiongroupllc.com
A Whole New Meaning to Office Repairs
An employee’s face looks up as his iPad slowly slips from his fingers; crashing on the floor below. 
Scattered, plastic remnants are all that remain. Can it be fixed?
A manager and an employee look across the table at each other, stunned into silence by the bitter and harsh words exchanged during a review. Can it be fixed?
Many things in the workplace can be fixed and repaired. But some wounds may be laying deep, some setbacks too shattering and some rifts too wide to be infused back together. Experiences such as ethical dilemmas, unsettling turnover, a betrayal, and even physical and psychological abuse can leave management and workers permanently wounded. As resilient professionals, people live and go on with their work; forever changed.
One high powered executive discovered this in the course of preparing for a divisional transformation. Before her time in that division, a colleague had died (six months earlier) leaving behind many who were still in the grieving process. Managers no longer knew how to manage their team, for their team was changed by the loss of their friend, colleague and boss. The executive quickly acknowledged that a different change approach was vital, and that the division would need time as they went through the grieving process. Instead of driving her initial approach, she assessed and embraced the reality that her newly acquired division was profoundly changed by the death. She chose to embrace them for who they had become.
Meeting them where they were, she offered resources for support, encouragement, and time to heal and discover meaning through a new beginning for themselves and their division. Can it be fixed? In this instance, no, but other alternatives to finding new workplace meaning can be found in the intangibles – impacting the quality of people’s life can be achieved, resulting in growth.
In the U.S. alone, 53.5 million workers1 have been impacted by workplace bullying. Though outwardly moving on, for many there remains an internal fear for their physical and emotional safety. It takes an intuitive and emotionally intelligent leader to embrace the people side of transformation to help their organizations restore security and achieve renewal.
Healing and growth can be found and nurtured under the right leadership. When leaders and employees come together and establish high-quality relationships, create open lines of communication and take responsibility for cultivating and upholding a culture of trust, individuals witnessing unethical behavior that may have even led to a colleague’s suicide can gain the courage to contribute vibrantly.
There is no “quick fix” strategy that will produce a viable, emotionally healthy workplace. However, like this executive discovered, the strategy for shattered equipment and lives and souls in the new workplace is not about a bandage. It’s about being granted the honest and secure gift of starting over, investing in relationships, learning and becoming anew.
As transformational leaders, in what ways do you extend security in your workplace?
To learn more about cultivating a thriving workplace, please visit.
©2011 All rights reserved. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group ™ LLC, a next generation people management consulting and executive coaching firm based in the Raleigh/Durham, NC area. To receive the latest tips and resources for building thriving workplaces – Infusing Solutions @Work!, sign up here. For reprint permissions, please write to: contact@theinfusiongroupllc.com
1 The Workplace Bullying Institute – www.workplacebullying.org
Photo credit: iStockphoto
