10 signs it's time to let an employee go

Everyone has done it – held on to an employee too long. For whatever reason (the person is family, a friend, or you just fear the whole process), you just can't seem to muster up the courage to get rid of that one particular employee. For some managers/owners, it's a simple process. For others, the prospect of releasing an employee is a gut-wrenching experience they'd rather avoid. It doesn't have to be. Not when you have telltale signs it's time to let that employee go. Sometimes, he or she is practically asking for it.

Use these as tips for how and when you should release an employee.

1. Apathy
2. Disappearing acts
3. Arguments
4. Productivity decline
5. Secrecy
6. Disaffection
7. Pot-stirring
8. Unreasonable demands
9. Redundancy
10. Internal affairs

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25 Business Lies To Dump In 2016

We are all stepping into the new-millennium workplace together. It’s a very different place from the traditional working world.

Long-term employment is a dim memory. We are all entrepreneurs now. The old rules are dropping by the wayside. You won’t retire from the job you have now, unless you are very close to retirement already or work for the government.

The rest of us will fend, bob, weave and maneuver our way from here to our retirement date – if there is such a thing as retirement at all when we get to that point.

We are firmly rooted in the Knowledge Economy now. The Machine Age is behind us. The only fuel that powers our organizations is the commitment of our teams, but many leaders haven’t gotten that message yet. They are still leading with an Industrial Revolution mindset.

They manage through fear instead of trust. That’s why so many working people are fed up and cynical. They’re tired of being treated like disposable parts by their employers, while company slogans and plaques on the wall talk about Team Values. That’s a huge disconnect.

Working people are tired of employers who talk the talk but can’t walk the walk.

The old business world was constructed on a set of beliefs that are no longer true, if they were ever true to begin with. Here are 25 of the most prevalent and ready-for-the-dustbin business lies to dump in 2016.

How many of these lies have you been taught since childhood — and how many of them still rule the day in your workplace?

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Goodbye annual appraisals, IBM embraces 'Checkpoint' rating system

During a townhall at one of IBM's largest centers in Bengaluru on Tuesday, chief executive Virginia M "Ginni" Rometty asked the employees to answer some questions with a show of hands.

"How many of you here have worked at IBM between one and five years," asked Rometty, according to at least three employees present at the meeting. A bunch of hands went up in the auditorium that was packed with 5,000-6,000 employees.

"Five to 10 years?" A few more hands went up.

"Over 10 years," she asked next, and that was when largest number employees raised their hands.

To those experienced IBMers, Rometty stressed on the need to reinvent and transform themselves at a time when the global technology industry is undergoing tectonic shifts with the emergence of cloud computing, Internet of Things and cognitive computing.

"Just because you started your careers in a certain role, let's say hardware engineering, does not mean you'll end your careers in hardware," said Rometty, according to the people ET spoke to.

Amid the push for employees to re-skill and reinvent themselves, Rometty on Tuesday announced a string of new employee appraisal measures for the India operations, including a new appraisal system called "Checkpoint."

IBM India has also abolished the company's previous yearly appraisal assessment methodology, according to the sources.

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16 employee engagement trends that will shake up IT in 2016

Employee engagement trends for 2016

In an era of Glassdoor-driven transparency, every corporate decision can now be put on public display for all employees and potential employees to view and consider. This kind of exposure is pushing organizational culture and employee engagement into the spotlight and making engagement a major competitive advantage, according to a recent Bersin report by Deloitte, "Culture and engagement: the naked organization."

To grasp how this emphasis on employee engagement will affect organizations in 2016, survey and peer-to-peer recognition platform TINYpulse reviewed data from the more than 400,000 employees worldwide that use their solution. We spoke with TinyPulse leadership teamto find out what this data means, highlighting 16 trends to watch for in the employee engagement space for 2016.

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Employees Rate the Top Ten Tech Company CEOs

It takes a special breed of person to succeed as a tech company CEO. They must stay on top of the dizzying pace of technology change, while constantly making a solid business case for innovation. They need to lead a workforce of intelligent, distinctive and often nonconformist employees by demonstrating a unique vision for IT. They must find ways to sufficiently reward (either through pay, perks or satisfying job challenges) the most valuable of these team members. And they have to exude a sense of cool, collected confidence, no matter how their company is faring in a fickle, topsy-turvy marketplace. 

Given all of this, the following list of the top 10 tech company CEOs represents a best-of-the-best ranking of IT industry leaders who excel at these challenges. 

The list was compiled based on a "50 Highest Rated CEOs in 2015" report recently released by Glassdoor. IT companies rose to the occasion here, as three of the top 10 tech CEOs ended up in the top five overall CEO ranking of companies in all industries. The list is based on CEO approval ratings submitted on Glassdoor.com by employees, with each CEO needing to receive at least 100 reviews. 

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