Sarah Ratekin

Today is NOT Employee Appreciation Day – making it the PERFECT time to express appreciation to the people around you. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Errrr… I mean… Nobody expects spontaneous appreciation! 😉 Why does this matter? I’m glad you asked! ,Gratitude improves retention. 53% of people say they’ll stay longer if they feel more appreciated by their boss. ,Gratitude enhances productivity. 81% of employees say they’re motivated to work harder when they are appreciated by their boss. ,Gratitude is crucial for belonging. When people feel... Continue Reading

(Part 2 of a 5-part Series) Most people do not regularly experience gratitude at work, either as recipients or as an active intentional practice of their own. And yet we know that just generally, when we feel appreciated, we feel and do better. What would happen if we purposefully made gratitude a regular part of the “ways of working”? This question had been nagging me since I first started down the path of focusing on employee experience, and now I had the great fortune to partner with an organization who had already dabbled in a gratitude challenge for their employees, and they were interested... Continue Reading

(Part 1 of a 5-part Series) At its core, gratitude is an excellent antidote for the isolation which has become such a problem for so many of us. While the COVID-19 pandemic put a painfully bright spotlight on the problems that are caused by isolation, the truth is most of us are more functionally isolated than our predecessors in both our personal and professional lives, and this has been a growing concern for decades. When I talk about gratitude, I’m speaking about a feeling of appreciation to someone or something that has benefitted you. It can be large, small, life-changing… and it can be... Continue Reading

White privilege shows up in the weirdest places. Very long story distilled radically: My dad retired to Mexico and remarried (briefly) several years ago, and I have a half-sister who is 15. Her mother is Mexican, and my hermanita (little sister) grew up and still lives in central Mexico with her older sisters. They are beautiful, strong, brilliant women, all of them. (Runs in the family.. ha! I digress…) I hadn’t taken the opportunity to visit in person for a zillion and one (mostly lazy) reasons. We’ve managed to form relationships mostly over the internet, the girls and I,... Continue Reading

“I didn’t know you were gay. I thought you were in the military!” I’m actually not going to write about my complicated relationship with that comment from a former colleague but suffice it to say it stopped me in my tracks, made my blood run cold, and if I had a “panic meter” on my forehead it for sure would have pegged out at MAXIMUM DANGER DETECTED. Back then I was working for a company deeply steeped in the “Good Ole Boys” approach to life, business, and everything else. Sexual innuendo was normal. Sexual harassment was, too. Gender roles were still seen as “natural”. I... Continue Reading

His skin was SO black, and SO shiny, I was convinced he was a robot, and I was scared. I was about eight years old, and my dad was a non-traditional student at the university in the nearest big city (Green Bay), and being a consummate People Person, he was always inviting people to our farm, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in large ones. My dad’s also been a strident advocate for the underdog my whole life, and when he found out that the Muslim students at the university couldn’t find halal meat (not a common grocery option back in the early 80’s… at least not in Wisconsin!)... Continue Reading

“Dang, Mom… you have a ‘work voice’!” I like to think of myself as pretty authentic at work. I don’t hide my tattoos, I don’t hide my ~thoughts~ (this isn’t always a bonus, by the way…) and I think I usually bring my “full self” into my professional pursuits. So I was caught off-guard when my 21 yr old made this observation, quickly endorsed by her 19 yr old sibling. I have teased my kids for a while now about “The Retail Laugh.” If you’ve ever worked retail, you _know_ what I’m talking about. That annoying customer says something absurd and you “laugh”, and... Continue Reading

Caveat: Mindfulness should NEVER be proposed as a band-aid for getting people to suck it up when dealing with toxic situations, even though it can help us as individuals deal with those situations in the short term. If you notice somebody doing this, call them on that shit. It’s unethical and speaks volumes about their character (and none of it good). You may have heard of mindfulness and thought it was only about being calm or helping us deal with stress. Did you know that mindfulness can help us lift our mood and become a happier person more of the time? Happiness isn’t the goal, of course,... Continue Reading

“Do you see any changes in organizational culture since COVID?” Uh. Yes. 😉 I get asked this a lot – I’m not entirely sure why – and my answer is almost always the same. Yes, there are actually a lot of truly transformational changes, some fantastic, some less so, and a really big one is that in so many cases, leadership simply can no longer hide the fact that they have very little trust in their employees, and despite slogans about “Our Employees are Our Greatest Asset”, they haven’t put the employee at the center of ~any~ decisions for a... Continue Reading

If you didn’t see our recent update, our #HRDudeLennon has moved on to new adventures as the Executive Vice President of Mischief and Mayhem at a new organization (translation: My daughter moved out, and her cat went with her – this is all positive, btw. ) When this happens in organizations, it’s pretty common for the workload to land on the desks of people who were probably already super busy AND are now dealing with the emotional impact of change. Even if they’re glad the person is gone (and let’s be honest, that’s a real situation many times), it’s still change, and we, as... Continue Reading