Companies, especially startups, are notoriously asking more and more seemingly ridiculous questions to assess a candidate’s cultural fit. However, without a clear universal definition of the term ‘cultural fit’, commentators have suggested that it might be a veil for discrimination in the hiring process.

Does salary secrecy breed suspicion and misconceptions that demotivate employees? Or is ignorance bliss? We search for a common ground.

As a manager, one of the key ways you meet your employees’ needs is by focusing more on mentoring – what retired Harvard Business School professor David Thomas refers to as building a ”developmental relationship”.

The management qualities and the processes required to make flexible working a success, are little different to those that keep a team running efficiently on any schedule.

Ensuring your team is making the biggest impact with their work, while avoiding stress and eventual burnout, shouldn’t be an either/or battle. The planning skills that will help you meet your goals are also the best way to ensure employees enjoy creative, productive and happy work lives.

Meaning comes from an alignment between our talents, and the impact we hope to make. This simple framework will help you increase how meaningful employees find their work.

There should be no doubt about the importance of recognition. Research from Bersin by Deloitte shows that companies with a ‘recognition-rich culture’ have 31% lower voluntary turnover rates. Yet to get employee recognition programmes right, requires some very serious considerations.

Google attributes its incredible growth to the technique, which engages employees through the brainstorming process and helps them to see how their personal contributions impact the company’s overall strategy.

Setting clear goals is essential to motivating employees and ensuring their efforts are aligned with an organisation’s overarching objectives. SMART is a useful framework for constructing effective goals.

70% of employees are unable to identify their company’s strategy given a choice of six options. This makes communication essential to strategic planning.

Goals give us something to work towards, helps us to organise our thoughts, allows us to consciously engage in the most productive behaviours at the right times, and remain motivated as we accomplish things that will that final goal to fruition.

There is a certain joy that comes with receiving a bonus at work. Despite our inclinations towards bonuses, however, there is now a growing body of research that shows this form of reward can cause adverse effects or even be detrimental to our motivation.