Ahh, employee assessments. That time of year that everyone loves to hate. While employee reviews are scorned by staff far and wide, statistics show that many companies have no inclination of getting rid of them. They are, and potentially always will be, a workplace standard. Yet, in a recent study nearly one quarter of people polled indicated they were afraid of these reviews. So how to improve upon an age-old tactic?

Diversity is a hot topic these days, it seems like everywhere you look issues of race, culture and equality are popping up. Yet the numbers tell a different story. In corporate America, most offices are populated by white males with very little resources allocated to hiring people of color or women. Harvard Business Review reports that diverse hiring practices have only increased less than 5% in the last 20 years.

The statistics are in and the results are shocking. 87% of employees feel disconnected and unhappy at work. Forbes magazine details that unhappy employees outnumber happy ones by two to one, worldwide.

The new now in office culture is a team-based reality. Teamwork has taken hold in today’s corporations, accounting for more than 50% of all time spent on the job. While this has a promising future, the downsides are bombastic. Performance can suffer while employees spend overt amounts of time communicating with others and creating strategies to collaborate.

Today’s work force includes a myriad of job-hoppers, those that flit from company to company, trying everything on for size. It’s a symptom of the millennial generation, who are steadily creating a world where opportunity abounds.

Establishing trust should be a highly prioritized function of any team working today. Collaborative effort is a challenging task that takes continual fostering of respect and boundaries.

Defining your boundaries ultimately makes life easier. Nowhere does this hold more power than in the workplace.

A successful business is one where you are able to see and feel progress. An environment where efforts are collaborative and goals are achieved regularly. In today’s startup culture, many companies exert maximum effort to simply stay afloat. If performance has taken a downward turn, perhaps profound change is necessary.

Company culture is a hot topic these days, with every office starting to understand that workplace happiness boosts engagement. But many work environments often separate their ideas of culture with their strategy missives. What would happen if the two were combined?

Employee performance optimization – the practice of analyzing and improving individual workers, has long been the norm when it comes to improving productivity. However, more and more companies are electing for team-based operations these days. The Harvard Business Review reports that the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50 percent or more.