Brightside Advisors

Congratulations, City of Seattle! From regional Sounder Trains to Seattle's local Link Light Rail lines, Sound Transit's service consistently and safely gets visitors and Seattleites where they need to go, when they need to get there. Seattle's voters gave their rail transit safety and access a big YES this year! They chose to allocate $115mm to improvements and access to Light Rail and $9mm to passenger safety. These upgrades are expected to get more people safely to transit hubs, reduce transit delays, and their rail system is less likely to fall into costly disrepair. With this voter decision, Seattle can expect its transit system to continue to be a significant factor in retaining talent and business in the region. Brightside Advisors sponsored Seattle's 2025 Full Membership to Railtowns to support the city's efforts to increase safety and accessibility. Through this sponsorship, Seattle now has access to Railtowns' resources, best practices, and direct support. Brightside Advisors is a nonprofit consulting firm that helps organizations create an environment where your people can thrive in an innovative work culture and do their best work. The firm has expertise in strategic planning and goal setting, effective operational structures, HR strategy, and change management. Client results include enduring organizational systems and processes that propel significant change and foster continuous learning and improvement. All Brightside Advisors' services are offered through individualized partnership and a constant focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Thank you, Brightside Advisors, for sponsoring Seattle! #RailInfrastructure #RailSafety #PassengerRail #railroad #railtowns

“Ruminating about work, replaying the same thoughts and worries over and over again, significantly disrupts our ability to recover and recharge in the off hours.” Here’s how to make sure you leave work at work:

Organizational change—be it a merger, restructuring, layoffs, or new tech implementation—can create uncertainty and stress among employees. To navigate this effectively, real-time insights into employee experience and sentiment are crucial, and that's where pulse surveys shine. Employee pulse surveys are short, frequent surveys designed to gauge employee sentiment and engagement. Unlike traditional annual surveys, pulse surveys are conducted regularly—often monthly or even weekly. They focus on a few key questions that allow organizations to quickly assess the mood and morale of their workforce. Why Do Pulse Surveys Matter During Organizational Change? ✅ Real-Time Feedback: Quickly identify and address emerging issues before they escalate. For example, if employees feel unclear about their roles post-restructuring, a pulse survey can highlight this concern early, enabling leaders to address it promptly. ✅Enhanced Engagement: Show employees their feedback matters, boosting trust and morale. When employees see that their feedback leads to tangible actions, their trust in leadership grows, and their engagement improves, even during turbulent times. ✅Impact Measurement: It’s one thing to implement change, but it’s another to ensure that the change is effective and beneficial. Leaders can compare pre- and post-change survey results to determine whether the change has had the desired effect on employee morale and productivity. The period following organizational change is just as critical as the change itself. Employees need time to adjust to new processes, leadership, or organizational structures. Pulse surveys continue to play an important role during this phase by: ✔ Monitoring Employee Adaptation: Frequent surveys can track how well employees are adapting to new circumstances and identify ongoing challenges. ✔ Sustaining Engagement: Keeping a pulse on employee engagement levels helps ensure that any negative impacts of change are quickly mitigated. ✔ Driving Continuous Improvement: Feedback from pulse surveys can guide further refinements to the changes implemented, ensuring continuous improvement and alignment with employee needs. Employee pulse surveys are a powerful tool for navigating change, providing leaders with the insights needed to support their workforce, maintain engagement, and drive positive outcomes. By prioritizing employee feedback during and after organizational change, companies can foster a culture of openness, trust, and resilience—key ingredients for thriving in today’s dynamic environment. #PulseSurveys #EmployeeEngagement #ChangeManagement

Have you ever led or been part of a stay interview? Stay interviews are proactive conversations between managers and employees aimed at uncovering what keeps an employee motivated and what might drive them to look for a new job elsewhere. Unlike exit interviews, which happen when it's too late to retain an employee, stay interviews provide insights while there's still time to make a difference in that employee’s engagement, experience, and workplace retention. More detail on what stay interviews are, how to prepare for them, how to run them, and what do after them, is included in the attached presentation. I used this process with a previous team I led and found it really enlightening for me as their manager to understand ways that I could better support their experience on the team and in the organization. Stay interviews can be a game-changer in talent retention and employee satisfaction. By investing time in these conversations and the needed follow-up, you're not only showing your employees that you care but also building a stronger, more cohesive, and motivated team. #EmployeeEngagement #TalentRetention #StayInterviews #HRStrategy #WorkplaceCulture

Have you heard of the "glass escalator?" It refers to the fact that men in female-dominated occupations often experience a faster and smoother rise to top leadership positions than women. In the nonprofit sector, where approximately 70% of staff are women, the following disparities exist between men and women in leadership: - Male CEOs are paid 27% more than women CEOs. - Men tend to lead larger nonprofits. The average male CEO oversees organizations with over $11 million in revenue, while women CEOs lead organizations with less than $6 million in revenue on average. - As organizational revenue increases, the % of white male leaders steadily increases while the % of BIPOC women leaders steadily decreases. How do you ensure that your organization eliminates bias in its hiring and promotion decisions?

Raise your hand if you've ever spent too much time in meetings. ✋🏻 Meetings have been rated the number one office productivity killer. So, what can we do about it? 1) Stop using meeting attendance and participation as a proxy for organizational commitment. 2) Respect other people's time by not inviting them to meetings that they don't need to attend and by taking into account their schedules when scheduling meetings that can't be avoided. 3) Cancel meetings, particularly recurring ones, when there's nothing new to cover. 4) For recurring meetings, regularly ask attendees if their time is being used well and, if not, how they'd change that. What tips do you have?