GreatWork Blog

Building better workplaces through compliance, culture, connection

As employers continue to struggle to attract and retain employees, more and more are looking at their benefit programs and are getting creative. When Cascade started digging into this topic, a recurring question kept coming up: How can employers provide better support not only for current leaders and employees but also for employees who are brand new to the organization? 

The journey of pay transparency is a buzzing topic online these days with articles, including news briefs, thought pieces, opinion articles, and more. Pay transparency as a mandate has rapidly expanded into new local and state legislation, organizational best practices, and more in the last five years or so.

In the dynamic landscape of the modern workplace, feedback plays a critical role in fostering growth, enhancing performance, and nurturing a culture of continuous improvement. The exchange of feedback between managers, leaders, and employees is instrumental in unlocking untapped potential, aligning goals, and cultivating a collaborative environment.

The 2023 National Executive Compensation report is now available to purchase! A great source of national compensation data for executives across the United States, this report is a valuable resource for HR and compensation professionals in organizations with multiple locations or recruiters searching nationally. With employees being able to work remotely across the country and with the large hiring market, it is more important now than ever to make sure your compensation packages are not just competitive locally, but nationally too.

I was a participant in a coaching workshop the other day where the facilitators, while encouraging skill-development and coaching, kept referring to High Potential Leaders. You know, the HIPO folks, those with ability, engagement, and aspiration to rise up and succeed in more senior, critical positions. Are you targeting your HIPO people for growth and development? We certainly hope so.

You may be asking, “How can we spot and measure high potential? Do these HIPO employees look and act differently?”

Here are a few characteristics that you may observe:

• Require little direction.
• Produce high-quality work.
• Seek leadership responsibilities.
• Take initiative.
• Are invested in company goals.
• Have positive relationships.
• Are highly adaptable.
• Exhibit a competitive attitude.

Welcome to the final week of Membership Appreciation Month! Our Membership Trivia activity is just one of many ways you can earn entries in our month-end drawings, including a Grand Prize of a two night stay at The Atticus Hotel, a luxury lifestyle hotel in downtown McMinnville (a valued Cascade member), plus $100 Gift Certificate to Nick's Café.

The 2023 Northwest Employee Benefits Survey is here, and it is time to participate! Previously known as the Regional Benefits Survey, this Cascade survey is an in-depth review of organizations’ benefits and policies.

With the continued challenges related to recruitment and retention, access to reliable benefit data is more important than ever to make sure your benefit packages and organization policies are remaining competitive in a market where employees are expecting more.  

Welcome to week two of Membership Appreciation Month!

Our Membership Trivia activity is just one of many ways you can earn entries in our month-end drawings, including a Grand Prize of a two night stay at The Atticus Hotel, a luxury lifestyle hotel in downtown McMinnville (a valued Cascade member), plus a $100 Gift Certificate to Nick's Café.

This is the second of four weekly trivia activities. All answers can be found on our website (just a bit of hunting involved). As a bonus, here is a link to help you find the answer to the first question. Good Luck! 

Welcome to week two of Membership Appreciation Month! Our Membership Trivia activity is just one of many ways you can earn entries in our month-end drawings, including a Grand Prize of a two night stay at The Atticus Hotel, a luxury lifestyle hotel in downtown McMinnville (a valued Cascade member), plus $100 Gift Certificate to Nick's Café.

Welcome to week one of Membership Appreciation Month! Our Membership Trivia activity is just one of many ways you can earn entries in our month-end drawings, including a Grand Prize of a two night stay at The Atticus Hotel, a luxury lifestyle hotel in downtown McMinnville (a valued Cascade member), plus $100 Gift Certificate to Nick's Café.

The answer is simple: by belonging to Cascade Employers Association, or another HR consulting association, those in HR and leadership roles gain an advantage over others in the same roles elsewhere, because they have access to ongoing expertise and accurate guidance when they need it: in real-time, from familiar consultants, on a variety of subjects, and from a perspective that takes into account their specific industry and location(s) of doing business.

The 2023 Regional Pay Survey reports are now available! This year, 318 organizations participated from across Oregon and Washington, representing data for 24,353 employees.  From that data we were able to report on 377 positions overall.  Of the 318 participants, 113 were nonprofits, which resulted in 113 positions being reportable in the Nonprofit Report.

Members are the reason that Cascade Employers Association has existed for over 75 years. As a “thank you” for the ongoing support of over 600 Oregon and SW Washington employers, we are dedicating June to OUR MEMBERS! We have set aside the entire month of June to show our appreciation with free webinars, prizes and more!

Is your workplace inclusive for the LGBTQ+ communities?  What does that even look like?  Join us on May 16^th to find out.  Yee Won Chong’s mission is to increase organizations’ ability to fulfill their purpose by creating inclusive, healthy and holistic work cultures that allow everyone to thrive.  Yee Won is bringing his expertise and experience to explore the challenges LGBTQ+ communities face in our society and institutions, how dominant messages about sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender shape us, and the actions anyone can start taking.

On either side of the 60’ long lanes are gutters. To help beginning bowlers avoid rolling a ball into a gutter—also known as rolling a “gutter ball”—bowling alleys install retractable guide rails which can be set up at the request of the bowler. When guide rails are used, the primary goal of knocking down pins is almost always achieved. The guide rails make this possible. The relationship between the coach and the employee is somewhat like that of the guide rail and the beginning bowler, with the coach being the guide rail and the employee being the bowler.  

We need you! Cascade’s quarterly HR Trends Survey of 2023 is now open for participation. This survey collects data on key workplace issues related to compliance, recruitment and retention, compensation, DEI and leadership, which we track and report on throughout the year. In our latest edition, we are also asking about how organizations are offering coaching as an employee benefit and women in leadership training.

Employers in Oregon must file their Quarter 1 combined payroll report by May 1, 2023, which for the first time will include Paid Leave Oregon data. The report may be filed through the Frances Online system, which has replaced the Oregon Payroll Reporting System (OPRS) and the Employer Account Access (EAA) portal, or may be filed by paper.

You’ve probably heard your colleagues talking about microlearning, but you may be wondering what all the buzz is about.  Microlearning is an approach to learning that involves delivering content in small, bite-sized units that learners can consume quickly and easily. This style of learning better aligns with the shifts in how individuals currently consume information. In the workplace, lengthier training sessions are broken down into smaller bite-sized modules which has been shown to improve comprehension and retention. These small and narrowly focused modules are typically 3-10 minutes and are usually offered in an online and on-demand format.  This allows learners to participate at their own time, pace and place, unless their employer says otherwise. 

While making a mistake at work can be a difficult and uncomfortable situation to navigate, it is something that people can overcome in most cases. 

The March 31^st deadline for the 2023 Regional Pay Survey is fast approaching! Make sure to participate in Oregon’s largest compensation survey soon! 

Collecting compensation data on over 600 positions from Oregon and Washington organizations, this survey is an excellent resource for HR and compensation professionals looking to attract and retain great talent.

Ever try this exercise? Envision a work world where there are no meetings. None.

What might that be like? Freeing? Awesome? Isolating? Troublesome?

In a no-meeting world would team members just float about without direction, chasing random shiny things or would we be OK? Would problems get solved anyway or would we drift rudderless through the workweek?

We routinely hear from organizations about how hard it is to find candidates.  It’s a tight market, and now is a good time to re-evaluate your approach and where you are looking, especially if your organization has made a commitment to improving its diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

Role clarity and accountability in the workplace are essential to ensuring that everyone understands their roles, responsibilities, and expectations. Having clear roles and expectations helps to create a work environment that is organized, productive, and efficient.

Role clarity means that everyone knows what is expected of them. It involves assigning specific tasks to people and providing them with clear instructions and guidelines. This allows everyone to work together efficiently and understand the expectations of their role.

The 2023 Regional Pay Survey is here, and it is time to participate in Oregon and Washington’s largest compensation survey! Collecting compensation data on over 600 positions from Oregon and Washington organizations, this survey breaks out the final data by several demographics (e.g., industry, size, revenue) to ensure you can compare your data to similar competitive organizations.

Cascade’s Q1 HR Trends Survey was conducted in January and ended with 106 participants.  A big thank you to all organizations that participated!

This survey was the third in our now quarterly series, collecting data on key workplace issues related to compliance, recruitment and retention, compensation, DEI and leadership. Cascade uses this data to make sure our members have the resources they need to address how these trends may impact their workplace.

As human beings, we can expect to face challenges, adversity, disappointment, and even failure at times in our lives.  As leaders, we often face these events with an audience, with people who depend on us to see them through to the other side, and with the knowledge that our attitudes, choices, and actions will likely set the tone for all who follow us.  

Have you ever planned a meeting, a retreat, or all-staff event only to learn later that it was a special religious or cultural holiday?  To be a more inclusive organization it’s helpful to be mindful of those special days and cultural events that some of your employees might be observing. 

We need you! Cascade’s first quarterly HR Trends Survey of 2023 is now open for participation. This two-minute survey collects data on key workplace issues related to compliance, recruitment and retention, compensation, DEI and leadership, which we track and report on throughout the year. In our latest edition, we also ask about how organizations are covering remote workers’ monthly electronic communications expenses and individual/group coaching plans for 2023.

Are you familiar with the adage that employees should "leave their personal lives at the door" when they come to work?  The general idea is that this is a place of business and personal issues do not belong here.  But seeing that humans are living, breathing, and feeling life forms that exist in more than one dimension, life can get pretty messy sometimes.  Stress is part of life and employees will inevitably face personal challenges that could negatively impact their productivity, focus, and even attitude at work.  As leaders, we must be better prepared to address these challenges and provide support and assistance while still holding employees accountable for their performance.