Join MIT and Valence for our 2024 Report: Reimagining L&D in the GenAI Era

Announcing Valence's upcoming research report with MIT.

How to Make a Great Team

Teams are the backbone of any modern organization. When they function optimally, they increase efficiency, innovation, and overall business performance. According to a study by Deloitte, teams that work well together can outperform individual contributors by over 50%

Automation, Augmentation or ReInvention - The choice we face in L&D

How was the first computer used? To Automate the typewriter. How was the first cell phone used - to augment the landline, making it mobile. But the true impact of technology comes when the potential of it allows creative leaders to re-invent old ways of doing things. Gen-AI will be capable of giving creative talent execs that power to re-invent leadership development and learning at work. 

QUIZ: Has Your Organization Mastered Team Effectiveness?

Behind the Scenes: How Companies like Nestle, Wells Fargo, and Vanguard Enable Managers and Teams to Be More Effective

When a group of the world’s best talent & development leaders come together to share ideas, it’s not something you want to miss. This group of HR and talent leaders walked through some of their approaches to enabling teamwork, and the surprising impact that has had on employee growth and retention. Something most companies are striving for in turbulent markets.

Diving into Audience Questions from State of Teams Webinar

Discover the thrilling answers to the questions we weren’t able to answer during our State of Teams Webinar with top talent & HR leaders. Covering manager burnout, recruiting, and different styles of coaching this Valence blog has all your answers.

Valence Raises $25M to Help Enterprises Build Stronger Teams and More Productive Workplaces at Scale

Valence, the leading teamwork platform, today announced its $25 million Series A fundraise led by New York-based private equity and venture capital Insight Partners with additional investments from existing investors. This round of funding will be used to meet growing market demand and attract premier talent.

The Elephant in the Zoom: How Hybrid is Impacting Managers and Teams

Teaser: Annual State of Teams Report

Where is everyone going after they quit?

As January inches closer, talent leaders are holding their breath in anticipation of the possible flood of resignations to follow year-end bonuses. For organizations already feeling the effects of the Great Resignation, another spike can feel untenable.

Don’t ditch resolutions, set (and keep) them as a team

One of the reason’s resolutions fail is they tend to be solo missions, and often ones that don’t affect or impact others. But when we set resolutions as teams, we all shoulder the weight of that commitment together.

Bonuses, pay raises and extra time off may be fueling your retention problems

As leaders scramble to retain top talent, many have found their typical levers - pay, perks and vacation - are ineffective. In some cases, these benefits are even making things worse. Top talent is now searching for meaningful interactions, not transactions.

Why we're changing our name to Valence

Our brand is a reflection of who we are, so inevitably, as we evolve, so too does our brand.

There’s no right way to do hybrid - and that’s okay.

Hybrid. Return to work. Flex. We’ve talked to many leaders about how their organizations are handling “what comes next” in the way their teams work. What strikes us is the variety of solutions on how to best support teams: some are sending people back into the office based on task, by day of the week, or others by manager discretion. This variety suggests two things: firstly, that there is no ‘right’ way to tackle hybrid; and secondly, that what is more important is finding what is ‘right’ for your organization.

Why we are believers in a pre-employment work experience

Recruiting the right people for any business is hard - especially with the complexities of the last year at work. We’ve found that a pre-employment work experience - working alongside a potential hire on a challenging, time bound project - has changed how we gauge the right fit well before day 1.

Building psychological safety: It takes values first, then a village

Before teams can truly be psychologically safe in the workplace, there needs to be a change in thinking to how we support it. And we’ve found it’s in the adoption of a core set of values first, before anything else.

Team swarming requires standard norming

The way we work is changing more rapidly than ever before. The old wisdom about how to nurture successful teams no longer applies. Teams are coming together and disbanding faster than ever. This phenomenon requires new norms, resources, and ways of working.

4 Ways To Boost Team Morale That Don’t Include Another Zoom Wine-down

Even the most motivated and driven among us have struggled with massive swings in our energy and morale. During this time of upheaval and crisis, how you help your team rediscover their motivation will be the top indicator for their long-term effectiveness, satisfaction and contributions.

Don’t Be A Hero

This crisis and upheaval has demanded a lot of managers. But those hero managers who jumped in headfirst, kept their teams afloat, and made sure nothing was dropped, are now burning out. Turns out, even heroes need a break. Instead, conductor managers and their teams are thriving. Here’s how to make the change.

Your Role Isn’t To Diffuse Conflict But Promote It

Professional instinct has conditioned us to avoid conflict with the age old saying “It’s bad for business.” Fast forward to today’s world of work and we’ll be the first to tell you that difference is what’s fueling outperforming teams. To lead your team in this direction, you’ll need to keep tension at the centre of your strategy.

Check Your Rearview Before Claiming A Crisis Is Over

We recently checked in with some of our senior clients and heard a variation of the phrase, “The crisis is over.” But after speaking with our users in middle management and on the frontlines of organizations, different experiences were left behind, far from it.

Your Feedback Is Going Nowhere. So Now What?

Remote work is hindering your ability to offer constructive feedback even though you’ve built social license to be candid with your team. Team outings and workplace comradery are no longer at play when it comes to effectively delivering critical comments. Alas, your feedback is being hidden behind screens with nowhere to go.

You Might Be Failing At Feedback, Here's Why

From retros to 1 on 1s, your ability to give feedback is what makes you a good leader. But simply giving constructive feedback often isn’t what’s going to help you effectively lead and improve team performance. If you think it’s about how often you coach, mentor, advise or opine, think again.

The Tips To Onboard (And Keep) Your New Hires

For the first time since Q1, many companies are ramping back up hiring. And while most have navigated the how to’s of interviewing and hiring remotely, a majority are struggling to effectively onboard those new hires.

The Secret Sauce To High Trust Remote Teams

Although swift and sudden, many teams have adjusted to working remotely. But as remote work drags on, team trust can easily fade if not purposefully maintained. Our research found 3 secret ingredients for what it takes to build high trust teams.

What Holds People Back From Being Vulnerable At Work?

We looked at our Align tool reports since the pandemic started to understand how the employee experience has changed. Between April-June, we saw a dramatic spike in teams who said they struggled to be vulnerable in front of their colleagues.

Career Development Can't Stay On The Back Burner Much Longer

Career development and mentorship opportunities have largely stalled. We asked young professionals about how they’re feeling and coping with the dearth of mentorship and development opportunities at what would typically be a high growth and learning stage of their careers.

How Employee Burnout Became Managers’ Top Fear

Despite the early pandemic headlines of employees thrilled to work from home and prominent companies declaring it their new long-term normal, our Return to the Office survey told a different story - remote work isn’t the reset we all hoped for.

You don’t need another Pulse Survey

Since Covid hit, our clients are telling us that they’re seeing an influx in Pulse surveys asking how they’re doing. While executives and HR leaders may like the data, we hear from staff and our users that they don’t see benefits from more frequent surveys and they simply don’t want to answer them anymore. 

3 Valence insights we shared at PwC’s Rise Up

Last week, Valence was invited to PwC’s Rise Up Summit, a global event that showcased innovative approaches to helping companies get through the pressures of the pandemic. 

Pick Your Team's Journey Through the Pandemic

To the surprise of most, the first weeks of the pandemic saw a boost in productivity. But two months in, the road is getting bumpier and teams are reaching an inflection point. 

New Issues Emerge As Remote Work Drags On

Over the last few months, we have all experienced a dramatic shift in work in response to the COVID pandemic. Our new reality doesn’t respect the boundaries of work and life. Many of us are stuck at home, faced with isolation, distraction and uncertainty.‍

A letter from our CEO

The future has rarely been more uncertain. How our lives - our family lives, our working lives, our social lives - will look one month, three months, or even a year is unpredictable.

A letter from our CEO: Helping Make Remote Work, Work

Many of our clients are asking how we can support the swift and urgent shift to remote work. This blog post outlines our initial thoughts and how Valence's tools might help.

A Manager’s Guide To Working With A Newly Remote Team

The sudden and rapid movement to remote working has been jarring and disruptive to many teams. At first, many of our clients talked wistfully about a couple of weeks at home and the chance to skip their commutes. But as the honeymoon period wore off, excitement dwindled and struggles to adjust and thrive in the new normal started to emerge.

Communications During the Coronavirus Crisis

In times of crisis, leaders are often faced with questions they don’t know how to answer. This problem is especially acute in the case of the covid-19 pandemic, a crisis that leaders couldn’t have anticipated, yet are now expected to have all the answers and chart a steady course.

Remote Working is Easier Said Than Done: Lessons from China During COVID-19

In a bid to stem the spread of Covid-19, approximately 200 million people in China made the sudden switch to working from home by mid-January. Many companies cited rapid declines in productivity, while employees struggled with changing employer expectations and juggling work with homeschooling kids.