You don’t have to go far to read about why taking a break — a walk, a moment to meditate — is good for you. Even your Apple Watch reminds you to stand up every hour. But what about at the office? Is your break good for your team’s productivity? And are the breaks your employees take good for your company? Absolutely. Rigorous research and a wealth of experience demonstrate not only why, but how!
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In a recent article for the New York Times, Charles Duhigg takes a close look at Project Aristotle, a Google initiative that sought the answer to one burning question: what makes a good team? As Duhigg explains – and employees everywhere know – modern worklife is a series of collaborations and interactions. Your ability to work on a team can make or break your success in an organization, while team productivity directly affects companies’ ability to deliver on their goals.
According to Duhigg, employees in Google’s People Analytics division sifted through decades worth of research on team productivity, while analyzing 180 teams throughout their organization.
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Books@Work helps your employees take a break from work—together.
Even as I write these words, having learned what I have from hundreds of participant interviews, I cringe a bit–worried that they will somehow be misunderstood. After all, do employers really want large groups of employees taking a break from work together? We have overwhelming support that Books@Work helps people connect with each other at a deeper level, to explore ideas they rarely get to share and to create a culture of respect, inclusion and openness to diverse perspectives. The benefit of these outcomes to the workplace is not hard to understand.
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A few years ago, my wife, Ann Kowal Smith, facilitated an education initiative in Northeast Ohio. She shared with me many an idea. One night she came home quite excited. She had observed that everybody focuses on increasing college attainment rates and on reducing high school dropout rates, but nobody thinks about the rest of the adult population – the nearly 60% of American adults who have a high school degree (and even some college) but no BA. They most likely have kids and a job and a full slate of responsibilities. That many of them may find the time and the money to go back to college is a pipe dream. By creatively engaging this group to become life-long learners and critical thinkers who grow personally and professionally, might we have an opportunity to help shape and nurture the learning environment for their children and their communities?
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