The IKEA Effect in the workplace A research team Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School, Daniel Mochon of Yale, and Dan Ariely of Duke, first named the IKEA effect in 2011. They described the IKEA effect as “labor alone can be sufficient to induce greater liking for the fruits of one’s labor: even constructing a…

LinkedIn’s new feature with “Homemaker”, “Stay-at-home Mom,” ” Stay-at-home Dad,” or “Stay-at-home Parent,” are now approved as recognized job descriptions on LinkedIn to avoid employment gaps on your profile. This is supposedly to support anyone who was a COVID casualty and made redundant during the pandemic. The option is especially designed to allow women who are badly…

Social distancing is going to change the way our organisations are structured and by default the career and job search landscape. In 2016, I identified an emerging trend which I call a “cluster career.”  This is a series of diversified revenue generating professional activities, operating sequentially or simultaneously. This not be confused with a career…

Unskilled or low value work A skill set hierarchy based on economic demand has always been impacted by technology and innovation. Think the plough.This impacts the way we value different jobs which has shifted over time. But today the pace of change has accelerated. Jobs which historically carried a higher value in the skill set…

Technology conferences have a ton of buzzwords, but two stood out at this year’s Unleash in Paris last month. These were “journey” (digital, employee, candidate) and “experience” (people, talent, employee, HR, brand.) The conversations also focused on the constant shift in workplace relationships between employer and employee which have led to the creation of a…

Unleash is always something of a brain fry. There is so much to take in and much of it is overlapping, outwardly contradictory and nuanced. It would seem that in a digital self-service world within an organisation, HR is in danger of assuming the role of full-service digital process “nanny.” This carries the same message as…