Bye Bye 2018 - Our top 5 posts

Today's post is submitted by Joyce Maroney, Executive Director of the Workforce Institute.

This has been a roller coaster of a year from lots of perspectives. Since the perspective we focus on here at the Workforce Institute is how things affect workers and their workplaces, let's take a look at what issues have engaged our readers the most in 2018. And let's say bye bye 2018 and hope that it's onward and upward for 2019.

This year brought us record low unemployment in the US (3.7% most recently), which in turn drove organizations to focus on strategies to retain employees. This was our #1 prediction for 2018, and three of our top 5 posts of 2018 reflect employers' interest in creating workplace cultures where employees will choose to stay.

We also predicted that artificial intelligence in the workplace would become increasingly mainstream, as employees demand more accessible and applicable data to do their jobs. An AI post shows up in our top 5 as well.

Read on to see our top 5 posts of the year. And it's never too late for you to comment and let us know what we got right - or not.

• Number one was a post by Sharlyn Lauby, the HR Bartender, in which she shares strategies for Employee Self-Care: 10 Ways Organizations Can Be Supportive.
• Number 2 was by our board member Neil Reichenberg,
  Executive Director of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources (IPMA-HR) in which he poses answers to the question of How Can HR Move from Transactional to Transformational?
• Third on our list is a post by John Frehse, Senior Managing Director, Ankura Consulting Group, LLC. In Looking Forward to the Biggest Labor Issue of 2019: A Hiring and Retention Crisis, John discusses 5 keys to winning at hiring and retention in a booming economy.
• In fourth position is our post Can Artificial Intelligence Make Work Better? In this summary of global research we conducted, we found that four out of five workers can see the potential benefits in AI to improve their workplace experience, but have concerns due to a lack of strategy and/or communication on the part of their leaders.
• My podcast with our CEO, Aron Ain, also received a lot of attention. You can listen in to hear Aron's thoughts on how to create a culture where people "work inspired" inspired every day. Aron has been a frequent flyer on the Glassdoor best CEO's list, and has also published his strategies in a book, Work Inspired should you want to learn more.

I hope you'll take the time to check out these top posts of 2018. And if you'd like to be ahead of the curve in 2019, please subscribe to the Workforce Institute to receive notifications of new posts.

Happy New Year to you all!