During Pride Month, we celebrate the diversity, resilience, and authenticity of the LGBTQIA+ community. It's a time to uplift their voices, lived experiences, and the ongoing journey toward true equality and inclusion. As allies, our role is to listen, learn, and take meaningful action in supporting the LGBTQIA+ community year-round.  

World Health Day, on April 7th, is a global call to action for prioritizing well-being. In our constantly connected world, self-care is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity. By making small, sustainable changes to your daily routines, you can significantly improve your physical and mental health. Here are three self-care shifts that can help you develop habits to support a more fulfilling life. 

International Women’s Day (IWD)is kicking off with local and global celebrations dedicated to the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. This year’s theme is “Inspiring Inclusion,” and it gives us an opportunity to recognize how everyone everywhere can take steps to inspire inclusion.  

Recent globalincreases in employee engagementhave been music to the ears of hard-working, mindful leaders. But here’s the thing about a good thing – it merits vigilance. 

In today’s workplace, it’s easy to wake up and find ourselvesin a funk. A short break, chat with a mentor, or bit of self-care usually does the trick! But what happens when an entire team gets in a funk? The solution is less clear, and the impact can strike a long-term blow to performance and engagement.  

Mark your calendars, because January 24 is National Compliment Day! Now before you run around tossing generic "you're awesome" comments, let's talk about effective compliments. Research shows that people feel uncomfortable receiving direct praise at work. So, this year, try complimenting what someone does instead of who they are.  

At ALULA, our love for animals isn't just a quirk—it's a shared bond that shapes our culture. Although we focus on the human side of business, our shared affection for furry, winged, speckled, or finnedfriendsis strong, and it creates a unique camaraderie. Given this common bond, we can’t pass up the opportunity to celebrate National Dress Up Your Pet Day this January 14!

Your company’s culture: strategic asset and competitive advantage

Your company culture is what employees say and do every day, how they work together (or don’t), what leaders reinforce (or don’t), and all the habits, practices, processes, and customs of the workplace.

Before you can drive positive engagement behaviors, it's critical to understand what those look like for your teams. As companies forge ahead with new work environments, new communication tools and new technologies, it's more important than ever for everyone in the organization to have clarity.

What 'good' looks like may be different depending on what part of the organization you are engaging. So if working with accounting the desired behavior may look different than working with customer service.

Having clear definition, consistency and reinforcement is an important step for leaders to further positive engagement in an organization.

In this video ALULA's Danielle Geissler, Ph.D., provides steps leaders can take to help drive positive engagement behaviors throughout the organization.

Being successful in complex and chaotic times takes a leader who understands it's the environment created that is the driving force. One of the most challenging parts of this crisis is that there is no perfect plan to help guide and reenergize an organization.

However, leaders who remain focused on their teams and finding the right balance between engagement and results will be best positioned to be successful.

In the following video, ALULA's Danielle Geissler, Ph.D., suggests important steps for leaders to take in order to engage their teams, while still driving success for the organization.