My 3 interesting things for you this month…
1. Taking time to pause and plan
Summer is whizzing by! We’re right into August now, when most teams take time to rest and recover from a busy year.
Here are a few quick thoughts on some good things to do with your August:
Plan a good team day offsite: spend some time thinking about what’s important to the team and what the future will look like. Get everyone involved, and finish the day with a fun activity (escape room anyone?).
Hackathon: take a couple of days away from the usual work and use a technique that software engineers adopt to build all kinds of new and interesting ideas. Split up in to small teams and focus over two days on an idea that is new or different, or something you wouldn’t usually get to. Great things can come from this time away from the day to day.
Plan your learning and development needs: what do your teams need to focus on this year? When’s the best time to fit it in? How can you get helpful input on what people need?
Dust off your own development plan: what do you need to focus on? Does your CV need a facelift? What skills do you need to focus on this year? What are your new goals?
If you want any help with the above, get in touch! I love a good planning session.
2. Should I stay or should I go?
What are the factors affecting workplace attrition at the moment?
Well, McKinsey have launched a new report centred around the great resignation. You can read the full report here.
There are some interesting concepts, but some may be harder to practically adopt than others 🙂.
I always like to highlight a chart that shows a concept in a different way to bring more clarity, and today is no different!
The X and Y axes represent factors influencing attrition (people leaving jobs) and retention (people staying in jobs). The variance away from the mid-line represents factors either more likely to drive people away or keep people.
I assume that ‘Adequacy of caring and inspiring leaders’ includes bad managers – it is the second furthest from the centre line.
Bad bosses make people leave. Only poor career advancement is worse (think I keep getting skipped for promotion, or there is no opportunity to learn something new’).
The takeaway: in your workplace or team, how strong are these factors? How would you rate them currently and how could you or your leaders improve them?
Get in touch if you want to discuss.
3. If you want a pay rise, get a new job
I love Chartr’s emails. So while we’re talking about jobs, this is a great graphic from a recent mail about growth in wages.
Two big takeaways here:
- It almost always pays to switch jobs for a better pay rise
- Wage growth is at its highest for nearly 20 years
If you would like some help either thinking about switching jobs, or more importantly, negotiating a pay rise, get in touch. I’ve helped my past clients increase their new job offer salaries by an average of 11% over the last 4 years 🙂.
