Does your company have an employee ideas program? Are you getting any? And more importantly, are you getting ideas that are showing a return on time and investment? Unfortunately, too often organizations start ideas programs with good intentions, only to see participation and idea volumes fall off a cliff. This results in resentment and frustration.

Unless your leadership team is committed to a drastic change in approach, your best bet may be to simply cancel the program as quietly as possible and walk away. By failing to operate the program in good faith, you could be doing more harm than good (essentially saying, “we really don’t want input from our employees”).

It is becoming more and more common to remove excess layers of leadership in most organizations. However, one risky experiment by online megastore Zappos.com proved that at least one layer of management is necessary for happy and successful employees.

The current landscape of the business world is tough: employees expect more from their jobs relative to benefits, compensation and recognition and employers in turn want more out of their staff. Longer days and increased demand are two common expectations of most companies, and often this is to the determent of other factors - like long-term happiness and engagement. New research, however, suggests a middle ground, where employers can find greater productivity without the expense of unhappy employees. . . 

The shift from engaged and energized employees to clock punching 9-5ers can be a tough trend for any leadership team to curb. Many managers may turn to micromanaging or docking points on annual performance reviews to stir up more buy-in from their team. Instead, read our blog on motivating employees through a shared vision to find better tactics to take your team from phoning it in to all-in.

2015 has been a big year for the Vocoli team. We have helped our clients to increase collaboration within their teams, become better at problem-solving and boost innovation within their company. After a really solid 2015 we also realized that we've come up with a lot of great blogs on everything from communication and employee evaluation to management and motivation. So, as our gift to you we've compiled the best of our best blogs into one easy-to-access page. Click here to brush up on these topics (and more) so 2016 can be a great year for your company too!

Despite best efforts to save a long-standing staple of iconic sports brands, Boston's City Sports will be closing its doors for good after a 30 year run. But what steps could have been taken to save this business, and other small businesses like it, from going under?

The concept of innovation has long been thought of as coming up with the best new and market-shattering idea first. However, plenty of companies have found success not as the creator of the next best idea, but being the first to implement. Knowing when and how to implement your team's best ideas can often mean the difference between success and missing the boat.

Technological advances have made it possible to communicate with someone on the other side of the world with the click of a button. Messages that used to take days or weeks to send back and forth, can now be accomplished within a matter of seconds. This has opened many doors to organizations seeking to have employees in various geographic reasons. But, while technology has made communicating with widespread teams easier, one problem still remains - how to easily manage and integrate teams that are thousands of miles apart.

Most companies depend on the conveniences of technology to help increase productivity, communicate and stay ahead of industry trends. But, being a truly successful organization in the digital era means more than just having top of the line laptops, smart phones and the fastest internet speeds. Read more to see what tools your team is missing to be truly successful.

When an organization is small, it is easy to communicate information throughout the team. This is one of the many reasons why small companies are able to move so quickly and efficiently. However, as a compact organization begins to transition from small to medium, or medium to large, there can be a lot of growing pains in keeping communication running smoothly. Read our 4 tips to help your growing team communicate like a small business.

It has long been thought that the primary reason why people go to work every day is for one thing: money. But successful organizations have begun to realize that employees are motivated by more than just fiscal drives. . .

Being a great manager goes beyond understanding your business and knowing how to inspire and guide others, it's also about knowing when to be involved and when to step back and let your employees take the reins.

With the job landscape tipping strongly in favor of candidates over employers, the risk of losing top talent is higher than ever before. What can your organization do to keep your highest performers from seeking better opportunity elsewhere?

Disruptive innovation can be scary, companies that are successful and relevant today can easily be forgotten by tomorrow. So how can companies that want to remain relevant stay ahead of the wave of disruptive change and not drown in the undertow?

"Employee engagement" has long been thought of as an HR issue - how to make employees happy, productive and focused on their work. But as the idea of engagement has shifted from focusing on individual employees, to bettering the organization as a whole, it is no longer just the responsibility of Human Resources to foster better engagement.

Long ago the idea of the annual performance review was introduced, but as companies have begun to shift the way they view leadership and people management, discussing employee goals, performance and career pathing only once a year seems antiquated. More large organizations are seeing the light in changing the way they evaluate performance, is yours?

Annual performance reviews have been long dreaded by management and employees alike. Is it time to do away with the archaic once a year, backward-focused progress report in favor of something new?

Although it doesn't take away the sting, one hard truth every competitor realizes sooner or later is that you learn more in defeat than you do in victory. This is a lesson no harder learned than for companies like Kodak, who blatantly ignored the direction of the film industry following overwhelming success.

Ask any business executive what is hot these days and they will sum it up in a word - "innovation." Innovation is the recognized force behind the new technology powering the stock market to all-time highs. And while Innovation seems hotter than ever before, it's important to keep a few things in mind to prevent your innovation boom from going bust . . .

The world watched in amazement when, in December of 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed into 15 separate countries. The great social experiment's failure marked the triumph of capitalism and the free market over socialism and central planning. But, looking at many American companies today, over 20 years later, and one can see the Soviet command-and-control management style is alive and well. . .

While having "Experts" is crucial to any organization's success, it is important to make certain that they are not the only driving force behind the creation of the systems and processes of the company. Front-line employees, who will actually be utilizing the tools being created, should always have a hand in the development.

Think your employees are happy and would never jump ship? You might want to reconsider that notion. Recent survey data from Indeed Inc. indicated a full 65% of people look for other jobs within the first three months of starting a new job.

Prior to Lou Gerstner taking over for IBM their outlook was dismal - they were losing market share daily to less expensive PC providers, and their company culture was quickly waning. However, through a seemingly basic concept, Gerstner was able to take the nearly bankrupted brand back to the strong organization it had once been.

Hiring, on-boarding and training new employees can be highly expensive and can quickly diminish productivity of your other employees during the first 30 days. However, there is a way to easily leverage your new team member's unique vantage point by challenging them to analyze your organization and empower them to make recommendations for your company's success.