I recently spent the weekend interstate at the house of a friend who had a new garden put in a year ago when she and her husband built a new house. This involved approximately 400 individual plants going into the ground. She is not what you would call an avid gardener so she paid to [...]

Tags: employee engagement, Employee retention, Karen Schmidt, Leadership and gardening, Leadership and management, Leadership skills, Leading is like gardening, New employees, Recruitment, Workplace gardening, www.letsgrow.com.au

So how attached are your people? Watch this short video for some thoughts on the subject. Tweet

Tags: Employee retention, induction, Karen Schmidt, Leadership and gardening, Leading is like gardening, Staff turnover, Workplace gardening, www.letsgrow.com.au

I am always impressed by people who are resourceful. You know the type who can make do or do without, who survive on minimal funding and still manage to produce a great outcome. I come across them all the time in my not for profit and association sector clients and often amongst my small business [...]

Tags: employee engagement, Employee engagement tips, Employee retention, engagement

This picture represents a typical scene in any wine growing area . . . orderly rows of grapes. When I see them it always reminds me of offices full of neat cubicles in a row. Both might appeal to our sense of neatness and order but they are not natural. Plants don’t choose to grow [...]

Tags: employee engagement, Employee retention, flexible working hours, Office cubicles, Organisational culture, Productivity

My recent trip to Dubai reminded me that what we often think of as harsh conditions aren’t so bad when you compare them to a really difficult environment. I’m talking, of course, about the difficulty of working in the Arab world. Running a workshop with people who speak Arabic as their first language not only [...]

Tags: Employee retention, Karen Schmidt, Leadership and management, working in difficult conditions