Around our house, nothing signals the end of summer more than helping our kids prepare for their return to the daily school routine. The arrival of the end of summer also means that companies are now returning to full strength with most of their employees having finished their vacation time away from work.

While taking a vacation break can provide us with the benefit of recharging ourselves and allowing us to clear our focus, there can be some feelings of ambivalence surrounding those first few days back on the job over what we may find awaiting us upon our return. This is especially true for employees who return to work after a prolonged absence from taking a maternity, paternity or sick leave.

Of course, returning to work after a prolonged absence can provide its own share of challenges to employees, issues which may not be obvious to the organization’s leadership or their fellow team members. Indeed, unlike employees returning from a holiday break, these employees have to contend with concerns over unexpected additions to their workloads or changes made to their role within the organization while they were away. Such issues can have a dramatic impact not only on their productivity, but also on their ability to ease back into their role as a member of your team.

With this in mind, here are three steps leaders can take to help their employees with the transition of returning back to work after a prolonged break. Click here to continue reading »”Helping Employees Regain Their Productivity After A Prolonged Absence”

With the latest edition of the Winter Olympics soon approaching its end, much of the focus right now is on tallying up medal counts and reviewing the performances of the various athletes in their particular events. However, this is also a good opportunity to look at some of the concepts leaders and businesses can learn from the Olympic Games.

While there are some obvious ones, like the importance of teamwork and understanding interpersonal dynamics, there are other valuable lessons businesses can learn from this international event. To help illustrate these points, let’s take a look at these three memorable stories from the Olympics:

Collaboration goes beyond borders

At the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics, Canadian skier Sara Renner encountered a situation I’m sure she never imagined would happen. In the middle of the cross-country team sprint race, one of her ski poles was accidentally broken by another skier, leaving her with only one pole to continue the race with. That is, until one of the ski coaches rushed out onto the track to give her his ski pole so she could keep going without any difficulty. Thanks to the quick response of this coach, Renner and her teammate Beckie Scott went on to win the silver medal in this event.

While it was a proud moment for Canadians, what really made it incredible was that Click here to continue reading »”Olympics Lessons On Improving Our Approach To Business”