Five Charlotte are team building activities that Groove Management can help you organize and facilitate.

How does your office environment and community impact productivity?

Unlike in sports where the competitions are scheduled, in business the competition never stops, unless your team calls a TIMEOUT.  When was the last time your team called a timeout.

Are you “always recruiting” for your company, and are you asking your team to do the same?  The best people can be found in the most unlikely places.

I have worked for three companies in my career that had Ping-Pong (Table Tennis) tables in the offices.  The Motley Fool,Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner operation and Doosan Infracore International.  The existence of a Ping-Pong table in each of those environments was very telling about the type of culture that each company wanted to foster.

"Experience builds wisdom and while it is possible to be wise beyond one’s years, there is no substitute for experience."  Age diversity is the most interesting form of diversity to me, because it is the only form of diversity where each of us will experience being the majority and the minority at different points in our life.

Earlier this year the image below was posted on Tumblr with the tag, “Is the dress white and gold or black and blue?”  That single post led to marital discontent, celebrity arguments, news channel mayhem and millions of views and shares on social media.  While the rough statistics showed that about 78% of people saw the dress as white and gold, the 22% who saw it as black and blue were actually correct.  The real dress is in fact black and blue.

here is a lesson here.  While we think we are all quite similar, we truly see the world through different lenses. 

Cost cutting has become a standard operating procedure for many organizations, but there are hidden costs in cutting costs.  Culture suffers the most and the cost to a culture might be ireparable.

Stop trying to block the exit door. Instead, focus on getting your employees engaged in opening new doors within your organization.

One of the biggest issues facing many our Groove Management’s clients is employee retention.  Turnover is up across the board.  Voluntary attrition rates continue to climb because the job market has heated up.  Employees are recognizing that there are a lot more opportunities in the marketplace than have existed during the past eight years.  With the aid of LinkedIn and other socialrecruiting tools, recruiters are doing a better job of identifying passive job seekers.  The end result is that companies are struggling to hold onto their top talent.

Most companies have come to recognize that there is a direct correlation between employee engagement and financial results.  Employees who are engaged give discretionary effort and do the right things for their employers.  That translates into better business results.  However, too many companies fail at effectively measuring employee engagement.  In working with several clients on their culture and employee engagement, we have found that companies often confuse employee satisfaction with employee engagement.  The two terms are used synonymously, yet their definitions are quite different. 

An engaged workforce can dramatically improve an organization's performance and conversely disengaged employees can be the poison that ruins an organization.  Many organizations, especially large ones run an annual or bi-annual employee engagement survey to measure the level of engagement in their organization.  If designed properly and administered well these tools can provide a good gauge of employee engagement.  

Similar to starting a new job or a new school, the Panthers entered the 2014 season feeling good about themselves.  They had completed a winning season the year before despite being eliminated in the first playoff game.  This season got off to a decent start with a 2-0 record.  The fans were on board and everyone had high hopes.  Then the Panthers hit a wall.  It was as if someone had cast a spell over them.  They won only one of their next nine games; well they did have a tie in there.  Entering December with a record of 3-8-1, the fans and everyone else had counted them out.  Maybe next year they would get their act together. 

Smartphone icebreaker for team meetings.  Easy to setup and a fun lesson on the importance of perspective.

A few employment branding ideas,  each one serves the purpose of building a stronger employment brand.  The products connect your employees to your brand in a unique and fun way.  Even more importantly they connect your employees family to your company and your brand.

Recognizing employees for a job well done is a key to being a great manager. Positive recognition brings out the best in people and it can be equally rewarding for the manager doing the recognizing.

A paradox exists in most large companies.  The larger the organization the more risk averse it becomes.  This makes little sense, but it is commonplace.

5 interview questions regarding generational diversity that were posed to Brian Formato, CEO of Groove Management.

Workplace culture is like a living organism constantly evolving. The introduction of a new employee or the departure of an employee can change the dynamic of an office culture. Too often the leadership of companies overlooks the importance of culture to organizational performance. Work styles and personal preferences have been studied for ages. 

By providing a daily visual, the leaders could see that they were being measured against their colleagues.  This graphical view of response rates translated into a 97% response rate for one business unit and helped push the enterprise response rate over 90%.