ACCESS CONTROL from NPA Globalby Thomas FuhrmanBespoke Solutions for the Modern Office At NPA Global, we understand that your need for absolute security isn't an option, but a necessity. With our state-of-the-art ACCESS CONTROL systems, we go beyond conventional security measures to protect your assets and ensure peace of mind.How ACCESS CONTROL Works to Secure Your PremisesOur ACCESS CONTROL mechanism employs cutting-edge technology to regulate the ingress and egress within your premises. It meticulously verifies each individual's credentials before allowing them access. Only authorized individuals can enter, ensuring a hostile-free environment.The NPA Global Difference: Comprehensive, Controlled, CertainUnlike traditional security systems, ACCESS [...]

Digital businesses are becoming a larger and larger part of every company's pie. Often, the planning and growth of digital businesses are the domain of chief digital officers or chief information officers. Yet upper management, especially chief executive officers, need to know how the digital business is developing and being implemented as part of their business leadership. How can CEOs make sure they are asking the right questions about digital business? According to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, CEOs should focus on five questions. Questions to Obtain an Overview The first is to ask how broad the [...]

The technology industry is very much associated with young people. Corporate wunderkinds Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg were quite young when they were working in the iconic garage where Apple was started and greeting Facebook investors in a hoodie. Many engaged in the tech industry are young, having grown up surrounded by technology. Many tech people exhibit a very strong personal bias preference towards youth, and equating it with intelligence and talent. Zuckerberg, after all, told an audience at Stanford University 10 years ago that young people were much smarter than older people. However, there is definitely a place in the tech world [...]

Change is increasingly necessary as organizations must adapt to new market forces, globalization, and new processes, including those stemming from the digital, robotics, and artificial intelligence worlds. "Change management" refers to the overseeing of the transition from a company’s current organization and processes to the desired ones. While change is all around us, the majority of change efforts — from 50% to 75% — fail. As a recent Harvard Business Review points out, the causes of failure are: not identifying which changes need to be made, or what objectives need to be met to get there. Those are relatively easy to fix. [...]

For the last four decades, gender disparities have been a focus of the U.S. workplace. Pay and promotion of women often lag behind that of men. Salaries and child-care responsibilities are often cited as the most obvious reasons. The solution advanced is higher pay for women and more flexible child care arrangements. The digital workplace has only made these differences clearer. It is increasingly obvious that this pattern exists for multiple reasons, and that the reasons may vary by position and industry, to name just two variables. More granular information is needed to explore the reason for gender disparity [...]

According to the Wall Street Journal, management is responsible for motivating, communicating with, and developing their employees, in addition to setting goals, organizing, and measuring progress. These tasks were delineated by management guru Peter Drucker many years ago.The first three can take some doing. Not all managers are clear on how to motivate, communicate, and develop. These three tasks sometimes take a business strategy back seat to tasks more likely to directly result in revenues or profits. But leadership depends on them. Fortune has a list of five important leadership tasks that can increase motivation, communication, and development. Here’s what they are.No. 1: [...]

Today’s workers carry smartphones, tablets and laptops that connect them with colleagues and job tasks wherever they go. Collaboration apps have exploded in recent years, and now even most basic business software — to make spreadsheets, documents and presentations — has become cloud-based and portable.The result is a truly mobile workforce that can accomplish virtually anything without setting foot in the office.Yet many organizations are not keeping pace and their managers are stuck in an old style of management thinking. They’re still living in the 20th century.In her research on the “smart workplace,” Trina Hoefling sees three top concerns of today’s managers:1. [...]

How much time do you devote to onboarding your new employees? The duration of a couple of presentations? A day or two?The process for hiring new team members should not end with receiving a signed offer letter, nor should it be over after the Day-1 orientation. Management and organizational experts suggest that successful onboarding processes can last as long as 6 months. Now don’t think of this as an intense, daily program. While this process is, indeed, long-lasting, it can simply consist of regular check-ins, communicating expectations and giving feedback to your new hire over a period of months.Read this [...]

Senior management in a digital workplace can become concerned about time management when important goals are not being met, yet their people are clearly working. Some employees are even working late, yet rollouts and shipments have both been delayed.A recent article in the Harvard Business Review explores whether this scenario might be a result of focus challenges among the staff, not time management per se. The focus on time management, in fact, may be masking systemic focus issues that need to be addressed with upper management’s leadership skills.Distraction costs about $1 trillion every year. It detracts from more sophisticated knowledge work, such [...]

Whether you have to approach an employee about needed improvement in job performance or softer skills such as team play, it can be difficult to truly engage the person. No one likes to hear criticism. Even constructive criticism can cause an employee to tune out and not hear what's being said. They may focus more, in the conversation and on the fact of the criticism itself, not on the issue and its resolution. How do you have an improvement-related conversation that is heard? It's a key part of leadership skills. Generate an Open-Ended Question About Solutions A recent article [...]

Many managers and employees keep track of hours expended on the job as a guide to productivity and engagement. Hours expended rather than tasks done, or quality of tasks, become major metrics in business operations. Many observers believe, however, that managing energy is a better alternative. There are several reasons for this. First, clocking hours can become too much of a goal in and of itself. Hours expended do not necessary equate to productivity or quality. Second, hours are finite. There are only 24 in every day. Energy, on the other hand, is elastic. It can be increased or [...]