Fraser Marlow

A synopsis of the insights and best practices of Energage, based on 12 years of Top Workplaces research and the surveys of 17M employees from 50,000 organizations.

Based on a global survey of 1,800+ employees & managers and an analysis of 3,700 manager assessments, The Coaching Conundrum 2016 is BlessingWhite’s latest analysis of the opportunities and challenges of building a coaching culture. Building on previous reports it provides best practice and practical guidelines to help organizations craft an effective coaching strategy.

Coaching is a skill that is best developed by experiencing it oneself, and having a manager model what effective coaching looks like. Managers who report receiving coaching themselves will, in turn, spend more time and see greater returns from their own coaching.

Performance management is business process which appears stuck in a bygone age is that of performance management. This activity remains broadly disliked, cumbersome, often demotivating, and a major time drain. Moreover, it most often falls short on what it was designed to do, which is to manage performance. Individuals, managers and executives alike have little faith in the process when it comes to improving individual performance.

Today, a number of pioneering companies have decided to… Show more

Performance management is business process which appears stuck in a bygone age is that of performance management. This activity remains broadly disliked, cumbersome, often demotivating, and a major time drain. Moreover, it most often falls short on what it was designed to do, which is to manage performance. Individuals, managers and executives alike have little faith in the process when it comes to improving individual performance.

Today, a number of pioneering companies have decided to take a new approach, returning to the roots of the process: set expectations around individual contribution, track performance, then provide guidance and support (and occasionally remediation) for improving performance over time. Rather than lean on forms and assessments, these companies are relying on coaching, development and forward-looking approaches to achieve high performance across teams. Show less

Organizations are looking for maximum contribution from each and every employee. Employees are looking to achieve maximum satisfaction at work. This much we can take for granted. And when both of these are achieved at the same time, we find a highly engaged workforce and a thriving organization.

Good leaders keep a cool head even when the situation provokes an emotional reaction. Great leaders also help everybody else stay calm and contribute to the team with rational and objective input rather than emotionally laden statements. They achieve this through self-awareness and active listening skills, both of which can be developed though practice.

In today’s knowledge economy, competitive advantage is no longer secured purely through the access to capital or information – but by having employees come up with creative and novel ways of solving clients’ problems. To achieve this, organizations are increasingly dependent on the passion, creativity, energy and engagement of the workforce, and in particular on expert employees in fields such as finance, engineering, design and technology.

Insights on the challenge of leading technical professionals.

A comparison of the British and German approaches to employee participation from 1970's to today.

B2B Marketing teams are under pressure to deliver results on many fronts: Search Engine visibility, thought leadership, generating high-quality leads, creating de novo content that makes the sales force look good in front of clients, get invites to conferences, or creating pull-marketing where clients invite you in to discuss a topic close to their heart…

Any organization with a keen sense of marketing today is promoting itself through social media, and the field is very crowded. Social… Show more

B2B Marketing teams are under pressure to deliver results on many fronts: Search Engine visibility, thought leadership, generating high-quality leads, creating de novo content that makes the sales force look good in front of clients, get invites to conferences, or creating pull-marketing where clients invite you in to discuss a topic close to their heart…

Any organization with a keen sense of marketing today is promoting itself through social media, and the field is very crowded. Social media feeds on fresh newsworthy content, but often the effort to generate that content results in little traction because of social media’s short shelf-life. Many of the ‘shortcut’ approaches such as outsourcing your online visibility to a content-farm will not get you far: your competitors are all doing this, too. Only high-quality, original and compelling content will cut through the noise: content your clients want, will actively look for, and are willing to share with their peers.

There are few activities that can help you tackle all of these fronts at once, but adding proprietary research to your portfolio of activities might achieve just that.

In the following chapter, I will share with you an approach to using research (and published research reports) as part of your marketing efforts. I will highlight where we saw the biggest returns, and some of the pitfalls we have avoided (or failed to avoid) along the way. If your firm has never turned to research as a way of galvanizing clients around a topic in which you have (at least some) expertise, then this chapter should give you a road map to think this through. Show less

In the Employee Engagement Report, we share a brief overview of engagement levels worldwide, the engagement-retention connection, key drivers, and the ways that behaviors of managers and senior leaders influence engagement.

We also explore the specific roles and responsibilities of the workforce in building a more engaged organization. Our focus: individual employees, managers, and executives. These three roles are incremental, depending on someone's level in the organization.

In previous reports we observed how in North America and Europe gender was not a strong predictor of engagement (i.e., women and men had the same overall engagement levels and patterns). Elsewhere in the world, however, there are geographies with significant gender differences...

Most senior executives understand the importance of culture, but many remain dubious — both about its importance and an organization's ability to change.

Could disengagement be putting your organization at risk of exposure?

Why diversity of thought and inclusion is key to getting business results.