Leadership & management

Remote work comes with emotional, societal and environmental benefits. Employees aren't tied to city centers with high costs of living, and reduced travel will lower greenhouse gas emissions. There are also benefits to firms, with research suggesting that remote workers are more productive. Yet challenges exist. How do we navigate this new normal?

Black police officers can be a model for how employees can do anti-racism work in the workplace, even in institutions historically entrenched in systemic racism. Any employee can learn to challenge racialized behavior, recruit and promote for representation, and go above and beyond outside of an organization.

Communication strategies: Whether an organization is responding to a complaint, communicating about a crisis, or notifying employees about downsizing or a change in policies, individuals need to know how to deliver bad news to internal and external audiences. Leaders must focus on three goals: Convey the news, gain acceptance and maintain goodwill.

As a culture, we applaud proactivity. Just glance at job boards and you’ll see plenty of postings looking for “self-starters,” “innovators” and “go-getters” to join workplace teams. But are highly proactive people always a positive force in groups? Does loading your team with hustle help?

Worker hotlines have long been used to identify and address grievances in the workplace. However, these complaint mechanisms can often suffer from a multitude of inefficiencies related to both the operation of the hotline itself and the usage by the workers. Research explores four central causes of the problem and potential solutions.

Something happens on the way from a strategy’s creation to its execution: the unpredictable, which can leave many a carefully crafted plan in tatters. Eastern philosophy offers paths to confronting inevitable uncertainty.

Too often, the world sees mega-threats: violent events that target marginalized identity groups and see with massive media coverage. These events arise from racism, bias and systemic oppression. How can one be a supportive ally if one is not part of the identity group that’s been attacked?

You’ve stepped into a leadership position, and leading diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) efforts is a priority. Where do you begin? How do you set yourself up for success? How do you effect positive change and tackle DEIB challenges?

For more than 50 years, organizational scholars have been documenting why employees are disengaged, why they “quit on the job,” and why they actually do quit. Only 32 percent of employees reported feeling engaged with their work in 2022. One way to improve the trend? Call “quiet quitting” what it often is: “calibrated contributing.”

Darden Ideas to Action insights draw from faculty expertise, books, research, cases and white papers. Here: the most read stories of 2022. How can one build a brand? What happens when buzz turns to backlash? How does a strategist prepare for the unforeseeable? What inequalities to women face in feedback? And why is storytelling an essential skill?