HR Strategy

The Overlooked Productivity Killer in the Office: Noise

July 27, 2026 by Ananth

July 27, 2026

The Overlooked Productivity Killer in the Office: Noise

By Todd Marshall, CEO, Versare

As organizations continue to refine their workplace strategies, conversations about productivity often center on technology, leadership, employee engagement, and flexible work policies. While these factors certainly influence performance, one workplace issue is frequently underestimated despite affecting employees every day: noise.

The modern office is expected to support many different types of work at once, often within the same shared environment. While open layouts encourage communication and teamwork, they also create a level of background noise that can make sustained concentration increasingly difficult, especially during video calls and focused work.

For HR professionals, workplace noise is more than a facilities concern. It directly influences employee productivity, cognitive performance, workplace satisfaction, and even overall well-being. As organizations look for ways to create healthier and more effective work environments, acoustic comfort deserves a place in the conversation.

Not all workplace distractions are created equal. Interruptions such as emails or instant messages are visible and easy to recognize, while background conversations are often treated as simply part of office life. Yet surrounding speech is especially difficult to ignore. Even when employees are not actively listening, the brain continues processing nearby voices, making it harder to concentrate on mentally demanding tasks.

Knowledge workers spend much of their day solving problems, analyzing information, writing reports, developing strategies, or making decisions. These activities require sustained attention. Each nearby conversation or loud meeting across the room creates another interruption, pulling employees away from deep work.

The challenge isn’t simply the brief moment lost to a distraction. Regaining focus can take much longer, creating a cumulative effect throughout the workday. Multiple small interruptions can leave employees feeling mentally exhausted while accomplishing less than they intended.

Over time, excessive workplace noise contributes to frustration, increased stress, lower engagement, and reduced team efficiency.

Hybrid work has changed the rhythm of the office. Rather than rows of employees quietly working at individual desks, today’s workplace often functions as a hub for collaboration. Employees come into the office specifically to attend meetings, brainstorm with teammates, and connect with colleagues. At the same time, many meetings now include remote participants.

It’s now common to see several employees participating in video calls from the same open workspace. Nearby teams may be holding impromptu discussions while others conduct client presentations or training sessions. The result is an environment where multiple conversations overlap throughout the day.

Ironically, efforts to encourage collaboration can also create distractions and undermine productivity for everyone sharing the space. This doesn’t mean collaboration is the problem. Rather, it highlights the importance of designing workplaces that support different types of work instead of expecting one environment to serve every purpose equally well.

One of the biggest misconceptions about office design is the assumption all employees work under the same conditions. In reality, employees shift between different modes of work throughout the day.

They may spend one hour collaborating on a project, another preparing financial analyses, followed by a performance review with a direct report or a virtual presentation with clients. Each activity requires a different level of privacy, concentration, and interaction.

A workplace optimized exclusively for collaboration can make focused work difficult. Likewise, an office designed only for quiet individual work may discourage teamwork and spontaneous problem-solving.

Instead of viewing workplace design as an either-or decision, organizations should consider how different environments support different activities. Quiet areas for focused work, collaborative spaces for team discussions, and semi-private areas for virtual meetings can coexist within the same office. Providing employees with choices allows them to select the environment best suited to the task at hand.

The conversation around workplace noise often focuses on productivity, but employee well-being is equally important. Constant background noise contributes to cognitive fatigue because employees must continuously filter out competing sounds while trying to focus. By the end of the day, this ongoing mental effort can leave employees feeling drained, even if they haven’t completed physically demanding work.

Persistent distractions may also increase stress levels. Employees who struggle to find quiet places for concentrated work often compensate by arriving early, staying late, or taking work home to complete tasks requiring uninterrupted attention. Over time, these patterns can contribute to fatigue and disengagement.

Creating work environments that support concentration demonstrates respect for employees’ time and mental energy. It signals that organizations recognize productivity is not just about asking people to work harder, but about creating the conditions people need to perform at their best.

Improving workplace acoustics doesn’t always require major renovations or expensive redesigns. Many organizations can make meaningful improvements by evaluating how existing spaces are used and making thoughtful adjustments.

For example, creating designated quiet zones allows employees to complete focused work without constant interruptions. Reserving certain spaces for phone calls and virtual meetings helps reduce overlapping conversations in shared work areas. Adding sound-absorbing materials—such as acoustic ceiling panels, wall treatments, rugs, upholstered furniture, or other finishes—can reduce echoes and improve overall sound quality throughout the office.

Flexible dividers and movable partitions can also help separate collaborative spaces from quieter work areas without permanently changing the office layout. These solutions can create acoustic zones, giving employees clearer choices about where to take calls, collaborate, or focus. Because workplace needs continue to evolve, adaptable solutions often provide greater long-term flexibility than fixed construction.

Before making changes, organizations should first identify where noise is creating the greatest disruption. Look for areas where noise levels fluctuate throughout the day or where team movement and conversations frequently overlap. This assessment can help determine whether the best response is a change in space usage, furnishings, or physical separation.

Although workplace design is often associated with facilities or real estate teams, HR leaders have valuable insight into how office environments affect employees. HR professionals regularly gather employee feedback, monitor engagement, oversee workplace policies, and help shape organizational culture. This broader perspective makes HR well-positioned to identify when physical workspace challenges are affecting morale or productivity.

Employee surveys and workplace observations can reveal recurring concerns about ongoing distractions or difficulty concentrating in open workspaces. Including questions about the physical work environment alongside engagement initiatives provides organizations with a more complete understanding of the employee experience.

Cross-functional collaboration between HR, facilities, and leadership teams can help ensure workplace decisions reflect both operational goals and employee needs.

The future of work isn’t about choosing between open offices and private offices. It’s about creating workplaces designed to support the different kinds of work employees move through each day.

Collaboration remains essential for innovation, relationship building, and organizational culture. Equally important, however, is providing opportunities for uninterrupted focus when employees need to think deeply, solve complex problems, or complete important projects. Organizations that intentionally balance these needs create environments where employees can do both effectively.

As companies continue investing in employee experience, acoustic comfort should be viewed as part of a broader workplace strategy rather than an afterthought. A thoughtfully designed office makes room for communication, concentration, and teamwork without allowing one to undermine the others.

Noise is not just a background issue. It shapes how employees focus, collaborate, and experience the workplace each day. For organizations focused on productivity and well-being, acoustic comfort is a practical investment in people. When the office supports both connection and concentration, productivity becomes less about pushing through distractions and more about giving employees the environment they need to succeed.

About the Author

Todd Marshall is the CEO of Versare, where he leads the company’s growth in flexible, design-forward space solutions for workplaces, schools, commercial environments, and more. With a background spanning McKinsey & Company, Target, Patterson Companies, and Shutterfly’s Lifetouch division, he brings deep expertise in scaling operations and translating customer needs into practical, high-impact design solutions. At Versare, Todd focuses on helping organizations adapt spaces quickly without costly renovations by using flexible walls, room dividers, and other reconfigurable solutions. He is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Reimagining Talent: Transforming Workforces for a Dynamic World

July 24, 2026 by HRSAdmin

July 24, 2026

Reimagining Talent: Transforming Workforces for a Dynamic World

How shifting to skills-based models and fluid structures enables organizations to thrive amid uncertainty and a shrinking talent pool.

By Joe Sagrilla

For decades, large organizations have been trapped in a destructive antipattern: swelling staff during economic upswings only to resort to mass layoffs—sometimes in the thousands—when downturns hit. This boom-and-bust cycle is not merely a symptom of economic volatility but a consequence of outdated organizational design. Static roles, rigid hierarchies, and a lack of visibility into workforce capacity create inefficiencies that harm companies, shareholders, and employees alike. As technological and geopolitical disruptions reshape the global business landscape and a new generation of talent faces unique challenges, organizations must act decisively to break this cycle. By transitioning to skills-based models, rethinking organizational structures, and fostering outcome-driven cultures, companies can build resilient, agile workforces capable of thriving in an era of constant change

Traditional organizational models, defined by fixed roles and rigid hierarchies, are ill-suited for today’s dynamic business environment. Employees are hired to fill specific roles, often sized for peak workloads—such as during annual budgeting cycles, when resource demands spike across departments. Yet, these peaks are temporary, and average workloads are often significantly lower. This mismatch leads to overstaffing, with some estimates suggesting that administrative roles in US companies are overstaffed by as much as 30%. During lulls, employees may engage in “make-work” projects to maintain the appearance of busyness, obscuring excess capacity from executive leadership. The result is a toxic cycle: overstaffing during good times, followed by abrupt, large-scale layoffs when economic pressures mount. This approach erodes trust, disrupts continuity, and undermines long-term performance.

Two converging forces amplify the urgency to rethink workforce strategies: a shrinking, less experienced talent pool and accelerating disruption.

NextGen Talent Challenges

The incoming generation of workers is smaller than its predecessors, with fewer individuals available to replace retiring baby boomers, who are exiting the workforce with decades of critical experience. Compounding this, the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted educational and early-career opportunities for younger workers. Many were unable to gain critical experience as baby boomers delayed retirement to rebuild depleted savings. Additionally, the rise of hybrid work environments has hindered the development of essential soft skills—collaboration, communication, and relationship-building—further limiting the readiness of emerging talent.

Disruptive Forces

Technological advancements, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI), are fundamentally reshaping the skills organizations require. AI is not only transforming how work is executed but also redefining the organizational capabilities needed to remain competitive. Simultaneously, geopolitical instability—evidenced by tariffs, supply chain challenges, and currency fluctuations—signals the start of a decades-long cycle of disruption. Organizations need agile, skilled employees capable of navigating these complexities with precision and foresight.

To break the boom-and-bust cycle and prepare for an era of disruption, organizations must adopt a forward-looking approach to talent and structure. Three imperatives stand out.

1. Transition to a Skills-Based Talent Model

The traditional role-based model locks employees into rigid job descriptions, limiting adaptability. A skills-based approach, by contrast, focuses on the competencies needed to address a spectrum of business challenges. Research indicates that 55% of organizations worldwide have already begun transitioning to skills-based talent models, with an additional 23% planning to start in 2025. Moreover, 81% of leaders agree that this shift drives economic growth by enhancing productivity, innovation, and agility. As of 2023, 70% of companies have adopted skills-based hiring methods, signaling a broader trend toward flexibility.

To operationalize this shift, organizations must invest in robust management systems for skill development. Self-service training platforms, flexible budgets for employee-driven learning, and results-focused mentorship programs can empower workers to acquire and refine skills as needs evolve. By prioritizing skills over roles, companies can better align talent with strategic priorities, reducing the risk of overstaffing and enabling rapid redeployment when disruption inevitably occurs.

2. Rethink the Organizational Chart

Static organizational charts, with their fixed roles and reporting lines, are relics of a less dynamic era. Organizations must reimagine their structures as fluid ecosystems of projects, where resources are allocated dynamically based on issues or opportunities. This requires identifying the skillsets needed for each initiative and establishing governance processes to reconfigure resources efficiently. To signal a commitment to leveraging breakthrough technologies, AI should be explicitly integrated into the resource pool or organizational chart—not as a peripheral tool but as a core enabler of operations.

Additionally, organizations must mature their approaches to sourcing external talent. Stronger partnerships with large consulting firms for major projects, combined with the ability to integrate solo advisors or specialized consultants into project teams, can address hard-to-fill skill gaps effectively without permanent headcount increases. Leading firms will configure teams to ensure internal employees learn directly from outside advisors, unlocking talent development value alongside expert advice and execution support.

3. Underpin with a Results-Driven Culture

A skills-based model and dynamic organizational chart will require a profound cultural shift in many organizations. Too often, managers prioritize inputs or the appearance of “busyness” over measurable outcomes. Leaders must refocus on business results, dismantling fiefdoms and territorial behaviors that hoard resources. A culture of collaboration, where skillsets are fluidly reconfigured to meet project needs, is essential. A shared foundation of beliefs and values enables employees to rapidly coalesce into new teams and collaborate effectively, delivering results through membership in multiple teams throughout the year. This cultural transformation is perhaps the most challenging imperative. It requires leaders to model accountability, reward outcomes over activity, and foster an environment where adaptability and collaboration are non-negotiable. Only then can organizations fully realize the benefits of a skills-based, project-driven model.

Organizations face a critical juncture: they must rethink talent strategies to navigate a one-two punch of retiring baby boomers and a smaller, less skilled younger workforce unprepared to fill the gap under outdated organizational models. The boom-and-bust cycle of hiring and layoffs is merely a symptom of organizational designs that have not evolved to match the dynamism of today’s business environment. By shifting to skills-based models, companies gain the flexibility to build evergreen skills that remain relevant amid severe, discontinuous disruptions, unlike role-specific skills that are vulnerable to rapid obsolescence. Streamlined talent models that leverage outside advisors not only enable dynamic project execution but also upskill internal resources through collaborative learning, maximizing long-term value. This transformation positions organizations to turn talent scarcity and disruption into opportunities for innovation and sustained competitive advantage.

About the Author

Joe Sagrilla is an independent management consultant and business advisor, top business school faculty, board member, writer, and speaker. His specialties include business strategy, transformation, technology, process improvement, and organizational performance. He currently lives in Austin, TX.

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Everyone Learned AI. That’s the Problem.

May 22, 2026 by HRSAdmin

May 22, 2026

Everyone Learned AI. That's the Problem.

By Maryia Fokina, Content & Insights @ JobLeads

For the last three years, the message to every professional has been the same: learn AI or get left behind. And to their credit, millions of workers listened. They opened ChatGPT, took the courses, added the line to their resume, and started experimenting with Copilot in their workflow.

The market got the workforce it asked for. It just didn’t get the salary curve everyone expected.

New research by JobLeads features the analysis of 110,000 US job postings that explicitly required AI literacy in some form between January 2024 and December 2025. The headline number is staggering: demand for AI skills grew 1,300% in twelve months. By the end of 2025, the market was producing roughly 36,700 AI-related job postings per quarter, up from a few hundred at the start of 2024.

And yet the median salary for those jobs slipped about 4% year over year.

That gap between the demand explosion and the wage drop is the story of AI as a skill in 2026. It’s not that AI knowledge stopped being valuable. It’s that it stopped being scarce.

There’s a useful historical analogy here. In 2010, being proficient in Microsoft Office was still a meaningful bullet on a resume. By 2015, it was assumed, and writing it down made you look slightly out of touch. AI literacy is making the same journey, except compressed into about eighteen months instead of five years.

Generative AI now appears in 21% of all AI-related postings. Natural language processing follows at 20%, computer vision at 15%. These aren’t specialist requirements anymore; they’re baseline expectations. Prompt engineering shows up in only 7% of postings, ChatGPT proficiency in 6%.

When everyone has the same skill, that skill stops paying a premium. That’s labor market mechanics.

The averages hide a much more interesting story. Five industries saw salaries for AI-literate roles rise: Bio, Pharmacology & Health led the pack with an 18% jump (from $90K to $106K), followed by Sales (+15%), Consulting (+11%), HR (+4%), and Management & Operations (+2%). Engineering held perfectly flat at $140K.

Then there are the losers. Marketing & Media took the worst hit, with median salaries falling 7.5%. Legal dropped 4%, IT & Technology nearly 2%, Finance just under 1%.

The industries where AI pay rose are the where AI knowledge is expected layered on top of deep regulatory expertise, scientific training, or client-billable judgment. Healthcare and life sciences will pay for a computational biologist who can talk about both protein folding and machine learning. They will not pay extra for a generalist who can use ChatGPT, because everyone can use ChatGPT now.

There’s another assumption worth retiring: that becoming “the AI person” on your team is a fast track to leadership. The data says otherwise.

About 74% of jobs requiring AI literacy are individual contributor specialist roles. Only 14% are team leads. Heads of Department, Vice Presidents, and Managing Directors combined account for around 11% of the market. The Managing Director slice alone is 0.8%.

The pattern is the same one we’ve seen with every prior technical wave: the technology gets distributed across many specialist roles, but leadership positions remain limited by the size of the company, not the size of the skill pool. AI literacy is necessary to get into a $100K-$200K specialist role, and 52% of postings sit in that band. It is not, by itself, sufficient to get you into the C-suite. Strategic judgment, team-building, leadership skills, and business acumen still are.

AI is the most digital work imaginable. It’s done at a keyboard, against APIs, with collaborators who could in theory be anywhere. And yet 57% of jobs requiring AI literacy are fully on-site. Only 17% offer full remote work. Hybrid covers another 26%.

Marketing & Media is the most remote-friendly category at 25% fully remote. Engineering, the sector most associated with distributed work, sits at just under 16%.

The companies investing most heavily in AI tools are, on average, asking workers to come to the office to use them. Anyone who learned AI hoping it would unlock location independence should look at the listings before making that bet.

If AI literacy is the new baseline, the next question is obvious: what’s the new differentiator?

Three things are pulling away from the pack.

The first is depth in a specific domain that AI is actively changing combined with the ability to apply AI inside that domain’s real constraints. Generalists cluster at $80K-$125K. Specialists with domain depth move into the $125K-$200K range. Executives who combine both with leadership skill hit the $200K+ tier, which still represents roughly 12,000 active postings.

The second is judgment about when not to use AI. Anyone can generate output. The scarce skill is recognizing when the output is wrong, when human taste is irreplaceable, and when a process should stay manual. We are heading into a market that rewards people who can validate AI work more than people who can produce it.

The third is the ability to integrate AI into operational workflows: what employers in JobLeads’ dataset called “AI integration,” which appeared in 13% of postings. Not prompting. Not using. Integrating. Designing how an AI system fits inside a real team, with real handoffs, real liability, and real downstream consequences.

Learning AI was absolutely the right move but it’s also no longer enough. The professionals who treated AI literacy as the destination are now competing in the crowded middle. The ones who treated it as the entry ticket and built something rarer on top of it are pulling ahead.

That’s where the next decade of career advantage gets built.

About the Author

Maryia Fokina is part of the Content & Insights team at JobLeads. Her focus is uncovering data-driven insights that can help job seekers understand and navigate the modern challenging job market.

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The Impact of H-1B Visa Changes on Corporate Mobility

May 20, 2026 by HRSAdmin

May 20, 2026

The Impact of H-1B Visa Changes on Corporate Mobility

By Kelly Cruse, Vice President, Human Resources and Chief Diversity Officer at Atlas Van Lines

The H-1B process has always been complex, but recent changes have made it more difficult, confusing, and in some cases, significantly more expensive.

A Presidential Proclamation issued on Sept. 19, 2025, noted that certain H-1B petitions “filed at or after Sept. 21, 2025, must be accompanied by an additional $100,000 payment as a condition of eligibility.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) later clarified the $100,000 fee does not apply to most H-1B filings, such as extensions of stay or transfers. Rather, it is for a segment of cap-subject H-1B hires “who are outside the United States and will seek consular processing for an H-1B visa or those already in the U.S. who cannot obtain a change of status or extension of stay.”

Even with clarification, the hefty price tag has already directly impacted most companies’ relocation budgets. With remaining questions and pending litigation, this is far from a compliance issue – it is fundamentally changing how companies budget, plan, and justify global talent mobility.

Each year, Atlas Van Lines conducts its Corporate Relocation Survey to gauge talent mobility trends and corporate relocation policies and practices. The 59th annual survey was conducted between Dec. 15, 2025, and Jan. 16, 2026, with 549 decision-makers across 20 industries who are responsible for relocation at small, medium, and large companies globally.

The survey found that the H-1B visa fee had some level of impact on the relocation budgets of 94% of companies that relocate employees internationally. In response, 82% of those companies also adjusted their relocation policies in 2025 and anticipated further impact on company relocation policies in 2026.

Among external factors impacting relocation, political/regulatory considerations showed the largest increase from 2024 to 2025 at 9%. Relatedly, over half of companies surveyed (53%) agreed that economic conditions were the top external factor that impacted relocation in 2025.

H-1B changes present challenges across companies’ operations. Not only does it impact cost and compliance, but it also affects talent acquisition and retention. H-1B visas are typically reserved for highly specialized roles that cannot be fulfilled by American workers. The snowball effect of an increased cost burden can slow hiring timelines and result in an unwillingness to relocate – for employees and employers.

For employees, shifts in hiring and visa status can reduce access to career-advancing opportunities that come with geographic mobility. Meanwhile, for employers, it introduces added friction in securing highly specialized or international talent, especially in industries where those skills are already in short supply.

Global talent mobility plays a crucial role in addressing labor shortages across essential industries. Corporate relocation serves as a lever for accessing this international talent pool, and even modest changes to visa policies can have an impact on this pipeline.

Key industries such as manufacturing, IT/technology, and business services rely on international talent. Manufacturing, for example, is in need of 3.8 million new workers by 2033. Nearly half of those jobs are at risk of going unfilled, putting additional pressure on HR teams already working to secure specialized talent. This demand reinforces why international mobility remains a necessary tool for workforce planning.

Therefore, HR professionals find themselves at the center of visa confusion by representing both the employees’ and employers’ best interests. How they budget for relocations is an indicator of the balance they try to strike.

Rather than adjusting relocation budgets as a reaction to markets, HR teams should pursue proactive policy changes to stay ahead of employees’ needs. Increasingly, that means shifting away from rigid policies in favor of flexibility, or risk losing employees. When asked, 52% of companies agreed that they lost good employees due in part to a relocation policy. Perhaps relatedly, 51% of companies also said they almost always or frequently make exceptions to relocation policies.

Cost-of-living adjustments were also the most common nonstandard incentive companies provided In addition to fixed and flexible benefits. Additional targeted nonstandard incentives included bonuses and housing benefits. They proved effective: In 2025, 89% of companies said nonstandard incentives frequently or almost always convinced an employee to relocate.

For companies that ultimately need to reduce costs, 30% said they planned to offer short-term, extended travel, or commuter arrangements in 2026 instead of relocating employees. Alternative assignments are also an effective way to lower costs, with 36% of companies using them to meet strategic business goals.

Finally, remote work is still a desirable perk for employees. The ability to work remotely (15%) or an employer’s policy limiting remote work (10%) were both cited as reasons employees declined a relocation. Alternative assignments and remote work could both be effective ways of working with international prospects when visas may be more difficult or expensive to obtain.

The impact of H-1B changes on relocation budgets underscores a longer-term shift in how companies are approaching global mobility from a routine function to a strategic advantage. Companies are being forced to weigh global access to specialized talent against budget constraints caused in part by evolving visa requirements. Yet, a majority are still choosing to expand their budgets and devise more tailored relocation packages to entice top talent. Corporate mobility is more about precision than volume in this environment, reserved for roles where cross-border relocation is essential.

Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to corporate relocations. Companies that adapt their mobility strategies to promote flexible policies will be better positioned to compete for skilled workers and be better equipped to handle future policy changes.

About the Author

With over 20 years of experience in human resources, Kelly Cruse serves as Atlas Van Lines’ Vice President, Human Resources and Chief Diversity Officer. She oversees the development and implementation of HR strategies, policies, and programs that align with the company’s vision, mission, and values. Cruse has a strong background in employee benefits, performance management, talent acquisition, and employee relations.

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The ‘Cockroach’ in Your Break Room Is Why Your Top Talent Is Quitting

May 15, 2026 by HRSAdmin

May 15, 2026

The ‘Cockroach’ in Your Break Room Is Why Your Top Talent Is Quitting

By Tim Whitt

On paper, your team looks fine.

Revenue is steady, trucks are rolling, and nobody’s flipping desks or screaming in meetings. And yet, quietly, your best people are leaving. Not with a dramatic blowup, but with a polite two weeks’ notice and a vague “I found a better opportunity.”

You probably do what most owners do: blame the market, remote work, or “kids these days.” But there’s a good chance the real problem isn’t coming from the outside. It’s in your own building.

More specifically, it’s in your break room. Sitting at the same table. Drinking the same coffee. Doing the same bare minimum they’ve done for years.

I call this person the cockroach.

Just like real cockroaches, these employees don’t usually cause a big, obvious scene. They don’t scream at customers, they don’t steal trucks, and they don’t do anything spectacularly wrong. They just survive. They show up, contribute as little as possible, and retreat back into the shadows when things get tough.

Everyone knows they’re dead weight—except, apparently, leadership.

Here’s the hard truth: your top performers aren’t quitting because of one big disaster. They’re quitting because they’re sick of living in a house where cockroaches are allowed to roam the halls.

Let’s talk about how to spot a cockroach, why they’re so toxic to your best people, and what to do about it before you lose anyone else you’d actually fight to keep.

Real cockroaches don’t strip your pantry bare; they contaminate everything they touch. The same is true in a business.

Your cockroach employee usually looks like this:

They’ve “always been here” and are treated as untouchable.
Their production is barely acceptable, but never quite bad enough to trigger formal action.
When something goes wrong, they somehow weren’t responsible for that account, that route, or that file.
When things go right, they’re standing in the group photo taking the credit.

They don’t rage. They don’t openly sabotage. And they rarely break rules in a way you can easily document. That’s what makes them so slippery. If you challenge them, they’ve got excuses ready: “The office messed that up,” “Dispatch didn’t tell me,” “The system is glitchy,” “The customer was unreasonable.”

From a distance, you may think, “Is addressing this really worth the headache? We’re busy. He’s not that bad.”

But your team sees something very different. They see a person who contributes the least and suffers the least. That gap between effort and consequence is what starts to poison your culture.

To find the cockroach employee, take these steps:

Over the next 30 days, carefully review employee metrics. Don’t just check gross production. Check the following:

Average daily workload compared to peers.
Callback rate, complaints, and rework others had to absorb.
How often this person is somehow “not involved” when there’s a problem.

If the data confirms what your gut already knows, congratulations. You’ve found your cockroach.

Your high performers can live with hard work. They signed up for that. What they won’t live with is unfairness.

When your best techs, sales reps, or administrative staff see someone like the cockroach skate by for years, a few things happen:

They start to question your judgment.

“If the boss can’t see this, what else is he missing?”

They start to question the point of excellence.

“Why am I beating myself up if Carl makes the same paycheck doing half as much?”

They start to question their future with you.

“If this is the standard here, maybe this isn’t where I want to build my career.”

That’s how you lose people who actually drive the business.

From the cockroach’s perspective, survival is the game. From your top talent’s perspective, the game is rigged. When they decide to leave, it rarely has anything to do with the last straw; they’ve been collecting straws for years while you were looking the other way.

Your next steps:

Have an honest, off–the–record conversation with one or two of your strongest people. Ask them one question:

“Who here gets away with the most while contributing the least?”

Don’t defend, and don’t explain. Just listen. If the same name comes up more than once, you’ve just witnessed how your culture actually feels from the inside.

Cockroaches thrive in the dark. They love vague expectations, fuzzy metrics, and leaders who prefer “not rocking the boat.”

So, flip the lights on.

You don’t need to shame people, but you do need to make contributions visible. That means:

Clear standards: For every role, define what a full day of work looks like, the minimum that’s acceptable, and what true excellence looks like.

Shared scoreboards: Production, callbacks, rework, and attendance shouldn’t live in a private spreadsheet that only you see. Your team should know where they stand relative to one another, not only to fuel competition but to make patterns obvious.

Documented follow‑through: When someone consistently underperforms, there should be a visible sequence: coaching, written expectations, and real consequences if nothing changes.

Cockroach employees are masters at hiding behind ambiguity. The moment you define specific expectations and track them consistently, their cover starts to crack. Either they step up—unlikely, but possible—or their lack of contribution becomes undeniable.

Your next steps:

Pick three metrics that clearly define “pulling your weight” for one role, say, a field technician:

Number of completed stops per day (adjusted for route complexity).
Callback rate over a 90–day period.
On time start and completion rates.

Share these with the team, start posting them weekly, and commit to talking with anyone who consistently falls below the line. You’ve just made the environment much more hostile for cockroaches.

One reason cockroach employees survive so long is fear. Leaders are afraid of what will happen if they’re gone.

“They know all the legacy accounts.”

“No one else understands that software.”

“They’re the only one who knows where that information is.”

So you tolerate low effort, bad habits, and quiet resistance because losing them feels risky.

Here’s the reality: you’re already paying a steep price to keep them. You’re paying in morale, turnover, and trust. You’re paying every time a strong performer shoulders their work while cockroach employees coast. You’re paying every time you find yourself thinking, “I can’t let them go; they know too much.”

Your next steps:

Start a 60‑day “knowledge extraction” sprint:

Have the cockroach document key processes, logins, and client details.
Pair them, at least temporarily, with a stronger employee to cross‑train.
Move any critical information out of their head and into your systems.

You’re not threatening them; you’re reducing the hostage value of what they know. Once that’s done, you suddenly have options: coach them up with clear expectations—or coach them out. Either way, they no longer hold your culture hostage.

Eventually, you’re going to have to make a decision about your cockroach.

You can keep nudging, coaching, and hoping they magically transform into a high performer. Or you can accept that their greatest skill is survival and ask yourself a better question:

“What message am I sending everyone else by keeping this person here?”

When you finally remove a cockroach employee—even if it’s uncomfortable, even if there’s short term disruption—you send a shockwave through the team. And it’s not the shockwave you fear.

Most high performers don’t think, “Wow, that could have been me.” They think, “Finally. The boss sees what we’ve been living with.” Trust goes up, not down. People breathe a little easier. Standards make more sense. The house feels cleaner.

You don’t build a strong culture by giving big speeches. You build it with a few decisive moments where you prove, through action, what you will and will not tolerate.

Your next steps:

Look at your roster and ask: “If I were starting this company from scratch tomorrow, would I rehire this person?” If the honest answer is no, that’s your signal. Either start a real improvement plan with clear deadlines, or start planning their exit. Keeping them “because it’s easier” is exactly why your best people are polishing their resumes.

If you find a cockroach in your kitchen, you don’t debate how bad it is. You call it what it is and deal with it. Your business deserves the same urgency.

“If you won’t evict the cockroach in your break room, don’t be surprised when your best people decide to find a cleaner house.”

About the Author

Tim Whitt is an entrepreneur with 45 years in pest control: 30 in corporate leadership and 15 building Pied Piper Pest & Lawn from the ground up. A speaker, coach, and author, he offers field-tested wisdom and practical tools that help both new and established businesses. His newly released book is Infested: End Workplace Drama, Stop Toxic Employees, Build a Thriving Small Business. Learn more at TimWhitt.com.

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Why Best Practices Hold You Back: When Yesterday’s Logic Meets Today’s Complexity

May 14, 2026 by HRSAdmin

May 14, 2026

Why Best Practices Hold You Back

When Yesterday’s Logic Meets Today’s Complexity

By Kursten Faller and Alan Weiss

Best practices are often viewed as the key to success in the business world. Certifications to prove practitioners are competent in accordance with a best practice make sense at the surface. However, they’ve become psychological cover that create mediocre results at best. It’s reassuring to be able to point at the protocol and say, “I followed the best practice. It’s not my fault.”

Take project management, for example. Most project managers I’ve met (my younger self included) come from technical backgrounds who love best practices. I genuinely thought project management was about following the best practice and forcing people to follow my plan. Spoiler alert: That didn’t work.

With today’s disruption and volatility, “business as usual” means little when there’s no “usual” anywhere in sight. Although Disruption and Volatility would make great names for a law firm, they require an adaptive approach to ensure survival and sustainability.

Best practices bring a false measure of certainty for keeping threats at bay. However, they’re largely irrelevant as they’re developed by looking in the rearview mirror according to what worked under the conditions at that time.

The solution is enhancing critical thinking to navigate complexity in real time.

These days, to be successful, you need to be adaptable. This requires developing the critical thinking skills to solve the unique challenges your situation presents. To do so, follow these tips:

Attending endless meetings, always agreeing with leadership, escalating decisions, and “checking the boxes” that show you observed the best practice are all compliance-based behavior. You feel like you’re providing value but are really providing only superficial benefit. Busy work consumes energy. It moves the needle little in terms of value delivered. This puts your organization and yourself at risk.

Mastery comes from thoughtful distillation to what matters. Condense your work down to its essence — the 1 percent that really moves the needle. This involves having the important coaching conversation to shift the thinking of a team member, sharing the contrarian viewpoint that no one else sees, or carving out time for learning and growth to build new thinking. These are all leverage plays that return far more over time than they consume.

I started my career in engineering and realized early on that the work I did was a “good enough” approximation of the real-world physics my designs operated in. This allowed me to build things that consistently worked at a reasonable cost.

Best practices are an approximation of what works in the real world. However, they’re only a snapshot of what worked at one point in time in the past. The business environment evolves rapidly at an ever-increasing rate of change. Best practices are backward looking and largely irrelevant to the modern environment in which we try to apply them.

This is why we talk of “better” practices and not “best” practices. You should always be getting better in the system in which you operate. Once you think you’ve arrived at the “best,” there’s no point to continue getting better. That leads to complacency.

Understand what the organization you work within truly values. I often find when working with clients that whatever leadership thinks provides value in terms of outcomes are in tension with what leaders actually show they value day to day. For example, they may say the organization needs to be the top innovator in its industry globally. Then, leaders micromanage, reinforce compliance, and criticize mistakes. You can’t get to innovation if you value compliance, shame risk-taking, and make it intimidating for people to pursue efforts that might come up short.

Success comes to those who are brave and can push back against the behavioral norms despite the daily rhetoric. Speak up when it feels uncomfortable. Have one high leverage conversation tomorrow that you’ve been putting off. I rarely meet leaders that don’t value results when you show them you can achieve them.

People who can do this write their own ticket. That means you need to be ready for some social discomfort on your journey to delivering the results your organization truly wants.

Best practices are misaligned with the needs of the modern business environment because they’re rooted in yesterday’s logic and provide convenient psychological cover. In a world that previously rewarded compliance, many professionals were never required to develop strong critical thinking. That world has shifted. Leaders must move beyond the comfort those practices once provided and focus instead on the high leverage work that creates real outcomes.

The willingness to think, question, and adapt is now what separates compliance from true leadership.

About the Author

Kursten Faller is an organizational advisor with more than 25 years of experience helping executives strengthen the human systems that drive performance inside complex organizations. As founder of Centric Business Consulting, he works with leadership teams to improve decision quality, accountability, and execution in environments where technological capability is accelerating faster than leadership adaptation.

About the Author

Alan Weiss is a globally recognized consultant, speaker, and author renowned for his expertise in organizational development and personal growth. As founder of Summit Consulting Group, Inc., he has advised more than 500 leading organizations worldwide including Merck, Hewlett Packard, GE, Mercedes Benz, and the Federal Reserve.

Their new book, The Hidden Project Drivers: Building Behavior that Drives Success (Business Expert Press, April 3, 2026), explores how human behavior, leadership maturity, and decision making determine whether projects deliver meaningful outcomes.

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