Category: human resources

the great stay

Some parts of the world currently have so-called great HR problems. The great resignation. The great reset. The great reshuffle. Just to name a few great issues or opportunities, depending on how you look at them.

Even though we live in a globalized world, extrapolating trends from one continent to another isn’t always as straightforward as it may seem. Minor, nuanced differences make for an entirely different job culture altogether.

In Belgium, only 8,1% of people changed jobs in 2021, according to Securex.

If there is a problem, let alone a great one, it would be “the great stay.”

With so few people changing jobs, there are a couple of things we can do.

Incentivize them to switch jobs more (often). 

On the other hand, we could make the great stay, an actual great stay. By maximizing employees’ potential, engagement, and productivity.

Companies should choose the latter, in any case.

levels of love

Bernard de Clairvaux, the twelfth-century French monk, described “four levels of love.”

The first level is loving yourself for your own benefit.

The second is loving others for your benefit.

The third level is loving someone else for their benefit.

The fourth is loving yourself for the benefit of others.

From an HR point of view, the fourth level is where you want to be with your company. Suppose a company makes a deliberate choice to actively contribute to the well-being of its employees. When that company provides them with perspective, recognizes their value, and aligns its jobs with their expectations (or vice versa), that’s when individual employees thrive.

If I shine, you shine. When individual employees are at their best, their positive vibe(s) rubs off throughout the company, boosting engagement and productivity.

professor jerk

Years ago, when I was diagnosed with a benign tumor in the face, the professor was an absolute jerk about it. The way he relayed the diagnosis was terrible. Sadly, I’ve seen cats communicate better.

What that man lacks in social skills, he makes up for in medical and surgical skills — a brilliant professor, without a doubt.

If that’s the communication style this doctor applies with his patients, how does he communicate with his colleagues? What’s worse, this professor, in particular, is no exception.

We can’t all be communication gurus, but there is room for improvement in many cases.

Bad interpersonal communication styles in healthcare can literally have fatal consequences.

Mapping professional expectations and soft-skills in healthcare can be leveraged to provide learning & development trajectories and build better teams.

In the end, engaged healthcare teams save more lives.

storm brewing

Thinking ahead for a couple of decades is tough for humans. If it weren’t, our climate would face fewer challenges today.

When a storm is coming, measures to limit damage are taken (relatively) fast. After the storm has blown by, few measures are taken to anticipate the next storm better.

HR has been weathering many storms lately. Solving employee engagement issues as they occur, on the one hand. Unfortunately, by then, it’s usually already too late. Fixing retention issues by hiring, on the other hand. The list of storm-combatting directives goes on…

The initiatives above are legitimate, short-term ways of combatting an HR storm today. However, the (hr) climate crisis will not fix itself without a strategic plan, spanning multiple years even.

Employee engagement is a proactive game.

attitude uncertain

“We don’t want to overload our candidates with tests or assessments.” That sounds like a sensible approach. How many tests are too many? The answer is usually unclear.

The rationale behind this sensible thought is often fear. Companies don’t want to introduce extra hurdles. Struggling to find talent, why make it even harder?

Statements I’ve heard many times throughout the last couple of weeks; whoever wants to work with us, we’ll hire them. We hire based on attitude, and we’ll train them on the job. Not a bad approach per se, but something is lacking.

Without assessing attitude, there is no certainty if the candidate will thrive.

communication failure

Poor standards of communication and collaboration are the main cause of more failures in work, according to Bernard Marr.

How do we look for good collaborations without the ability to identify and then clearly express our preferred communication style? Subsequently, without understanding the communication styles of the people we work with, there will be misunderstandings. Misunderstandings that could potentially be avoided.

It takes less than fifteen minutes to gain insight into communication & collaboration styles. What’s a good argument for not doing it?

ridiculing innovation

The first phase in accepting innovation is usually ridiculing it.

When the iPhone first came out, Microsoft claimed that people would never consider buying a phone without buttons… Take NFT’s, for instance. Some people are quick to dismiss the technology altogether, making fun of it in the process. An estimated 70% of the world’s population doesn’t have an enforceable claim to the land they own. For the use case of demonstrating ownership alone, there is a lot of intrinsic value in the technology driving NFT’s.

HR managers are no different. Often reluctant to embrace innovative technology. After all, it’s a people business, so people will know best, right? Regardless, there is a tremendous opportunity to have technological support.

Be wise, don’t ridicule.

when results are checked

Results are checked on two occasions — not to be confused with the hit record of The Deele — either when things are really bad or really good.

When things are bad, it’s a matter of assessing the situation and knowing when to brace for impact. When things are good, it’s more of a morale boost and a quick affirmation that things are peachy.

The middle somehow seems less appealing.

With an abominable retention rate, HR managers kind of know what’s going on. With an incredible company culture that oozes out employee engagement, HR managers might even go on a keynote tour sharing their story with the world.

The middle is, however, where it gets at least equally interesting.

Monitoring average results in the middle enable you to anticipate. For better or worse. Chance favors the prepared mind.

elephant outside the room

Suppose you know your way around an Eisenhower matrix. In that case, you’ll know that when you never make it out of the urgent and important quadrant, you have no long-term strategy.


Some HR departments are close to panicking. Their employees are quitting faster than they can hire them. As a result, they have no choice but to do urgent and important tasks, day in and day out. The elephant isn’t even in the room. It didn’t get invited and it’s waiting outside.


Without looking into the future, strategically, you’ll be stuck in the urgent and important quadrant forever. Understanding employee retention, or why people are actually leaving your company isn’t killing your pain today, but it’s alleviating it for tomorrow.

gaslighting talent

Are companies (and their recruiters) gaslighting their candidates?

When people quit after six months because the job doesn’t align with their expectations the way they thought it would, who is to blame? The company or the candidate?

If the company can’t adequately describe what’s expected for the job, blaming the candidate seems unfair.

If the candidate, on the other hand, isn’t able to clearly express their expectations of the job, blaming the company might also seem unjust.

Both companies and candidates need help expressing job-content and (team) role expectations.