Jasmine Gartner Consulting

There are two opposing forces in the workplace when it comes to difficult conversations. The first is a version of our individual will to survive, to do well, to get what we need. And the second is what we've all been socialised to do: get along, don't make waves, don't stick your head above the parapet. Difficult Feelings Make for a Difficult Workplace The result is that when people feel they're in a difficult place, they don't feel comfortable expressing what they're really

Does Employee Engagement Work?! Employee engagement has hovered at around 33% for many years now. So many people are working at it, so much of our budgets are dedicated to it. We try all the latest trends and technology – employee surveys, apps, and so on. Nothing works. And yet, for a lot of business people, engagement is a key strategy for simultaneously improving morale and the bottom line. Many organisations have people dedicated to implementing engagement. Let's Talk abo

It's My Way or the Highway A couple of years ago, I was training a group of employees who were about to go through a restructure. One of them banged his fist on the table, saying, "I'll only leave on my own terms!" If only life were so simple. But as in life outside the workplace, life in the workplace is not always - even often - within our control. I've noticed this in a number of companies. When change is announced, both sides dig their heels in - for example, management m

Men make their own history, but not under circumstances of their own choosing. Change, by its very nature, is hard for most people. So how do you talk to senior managers about changes that might be affecting you adversely, whether it's redundancy or a shift change? First, focus on potential outcomes - given the hand you've been dealt, realistically, what outcomes can you work toward? Second, ask questions to examine the quality of your senior management team's decision-making

I had a conversation with David Zinger back in 2012. If you’d like to hear it, it’s here: Employee Engagement and Anthropology: A Dialogue with Jasmine Gartner. #EmployeeEngagement #Anthropology

It's Not Fair Recently, the guttering on the flat above ours has become obstructed. My husband contacted our upstairs neighbour to let him know that something needed to be done, as when the rain comes down, it's now ending up in our flat. The neighbour basically wants us to sort it out. My reaction was to say: "It's not fair! We always have to take care of everything. If it were left up to him, the whole house would fall down. We should just wait and see what he does." My hus

Overcoming Resistance to Best Practice Often, when I enter a room of employee forum representatives who I'm going to be training on Best Practice in organisational change, I'll get a bit of resistance from a small number of people. "The people I represent only care about what happens to them: it's about their jobs, and their wages," someone will say. "I just tell it how it is," growls someone else belligerently, their arms crossed. Actually, a lot of the time, it's the same p

I remember the first job that really engaged me. My mother was a bookkeeper, and she often worked from home. She would clear the dining room table, and spread out her things: books, pens and so on. If I came into the dining room, looking listless, she would say, "would you like to help me?" And I did want to help. She would let me type up the envelopes to send out cheques or invoices. And I felt really lucky. I was engaged. So how did she engage me so well? I think she did a

“You’re a – what?!” - The response I often get when I tell people that I’m an anthropologist is: “do you dig up dinosaurs?” Yet, there are many corporate anthropologists out there and we have a lot to offer the business world. So, I thought I’d explain a bit about what corporate anthropology is and why it is such a useful tool for implementing employee engagement. Any kind of anthropological endeavour involves looking at what people say and do in order to unearth the values t