| If you are having difficulty seeing this mail or images in it, you can view it in your Web browser. |
|
| Volume 6, Issue 9 |
|
In This Issue:
 No satisfaction at Toyota
 Holiday pay practices: Do you know your legal requirements?
To drink or not to drink?
Why sexy isn’t better: How sexual behavior can submarine your career
My favorite interview tips
Preventing predictable decision making errors
Stop being miserable at work
 Photo’s: 2006’s (10) worst political mishaps
 Smashing the clock
Hey! That was my idea
 What’s to be done about performance reviews?
How important is quality of labor? And how is it achieved?
Three perspectives on team learning
 Caring ourselves sick
Are parents killing their kids careers?
Bogus bonuses
Give presents, not offense
Surprisingly healthy foods
Hottest star hideaways
 Your fired! But why?
Your fired: How not to terminate an employee
Strong social relationships increase productivity, job satisfaction
Creating an employment brand for your organization
Doing Town Hall meetings better
|
|
|
 |
No Satisfaction at Toyota
|
Without any fanfare at all, Toyota is confounding, if not defying, conventional wisdom about the current state of the U.S. economy. |
|
 |
| In the Works - Toyota's Georgetown, Kentucky, assembly plant is its largest outside of Japan. It makes a half-million cars a year--one every 27 seconds. |
- Toyota's sales gain in 2005 from three years before: 34%
- Its profit per car: $1,587
- Share of cars it sells in North america that are made here: 60%
|
What drives Toyota? The presumption of imperfection--and a distinctly American refusal to accept it.
Deep inside Toyota's (NYSE:TM) car factory in Georgetown, Kentucky, is the paint shop, where naked steel car bodies arrive to receive layers of coatings and colors
before returning to the assembly line to have their interiors and engines installed. Every day, 2,000 Camrys, Avalons, and Solaras glide in to be painted one of a
dozen colors by carefully programmed robots. Georgetown's paint shop is vast and crowded, but in two places there are wide areas of open concrete floor, each the
size of a basketball court. The story of how that floor space came to be cleared--tons of equipment dismantled and removed--is really the story of how Toyota has reshaped
the U.S. car market. It's the story of Toyota's genius: an insatiable competitiveness that would seem un-American were it not for all the Americans making it happen.
Toyota's competitiveness is quiet, internal, self-critical. It is rooted in
an institutional obsession with improvement that Toyota manages to instill in each one of its workers, a pervasive lack of complacency with whatever was
accomplished yesterday. The result is a startling contrast to the car business.
At a time when the traditional Big Three are struggling, Toyota is thriving.
Just this year, Ford (NYSE:F) and GM (NYSE:GM) have terminated 46,000 North American employees. Together, they have announced the closing of 26 North American factories
over the next five years. Toyota has never closed a North American factory; it will
open a new one in Texas this fall and another in Ontario in 2008. Detroit isn't being bested by imports: 60% of the cars Toyota sells in North America are made here...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
Holiday Pay Practices: Do You Know Your Legal Requirements?
Questions and Answers About Holiday Pay Practices.
The end of the year is a good time to review your company’s holiday pay practices.
This article answers common questions regarding holiday pay-related issues in the United States. Must an employer provide employees time off on holidays?...
Read the article. Back to top
To Drink or Not to Drink?
With this week and next week the top business-sponsored holiday party weeks of the year, I thought it was timely to broach the topic of safe and career-conscious party drinking.
In a recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, not only were these the key holiday party weekends of the year, but approximately 94 percent of
companies surveyed sponsor a holiday event of some type. Alcohol is served at approximately 60 percent of these holiday events, either provided by the employer or from a cash bar.
To drink or not to drink at work related events is a question
almost every employee has to ponder for one occasion or another. Whether the business occasion is lunch during an interview, the company holiday party, or a staff
networking event on Friday afternoon, alcohol is usually an option...
Read the article. Back to top
Why Sexy Isn't Better: How Sexual Behavior Can Submarine Your Career
Women who wear short skirts that display a lot of leg may be overlooked for promotion and pay increases.
So says a recent study conducted by Tulane University. Overt sexual behavior at work, whether men and women are consciously aware of it, or not, can submarine your career.Tulane professor Arthur Brief and colleagues Suzanne Chan-Serafin, Jill
Bradley and Marla Watkins searched recent studies and literature and found little about the consequences of sexy dressing and sexual behavior at work. (Most available
research studied sexual harassment.) So, they conducted their own study that will be presented at the Academy of Management annual meeting.
The study sought to measure whether sexy dressing and sexual behavior negatively impacted the careers of women - and the researchers found that they did...
Read the article. Back to top
My Favorite Interview Tips
Today, I am presenting a session on interviewing.
I believe that interviews give you a good feel for the
"cultural fit" of the candidate.
They are not particularly accurate for predicting job performance, however. I spend a lot more time on background and reference checking to
determine what the candidate has actually done in contrast with what he tells me he will do when he comes to work for me.
But, interviewing can
tell you a lot about the person you are thinking about hiring including how he may fit in your work group. Here are my favorite interview tips to help you conduct the best possible interviews...
Read the article. Back to top
Preventing Predictable Decision Making Errors
Find Your Go Point.
All in all, our decision-making equipment is pretty sound. We don’t follow the lead lemming over a cliff. We can’t be fooled into thinking that a 99-cent lure is a meal.
We don’t try to catch car fenders with our teeth. Then again, it wasn’t a dog who launched New Coke. So there are a few bugs – little design flaws of the mind – that
can have big consequences. People are clinically overoptimistic, for instance, assigning zero probability to events that are merely unlikely (such as a massive iceberg in
the path of a really big ship). We see “patterns” in the random movements of stocks the way our ancestors saw bears and hunters in the scatterplot of the night sky. We
make choices that justify our past choices and then look for data to support them. Not only do we make these errors; we make them reliably. That’s the good news.
Predictable errors are preventable errors. And a few simple techniques, like those below, can help you steer clear of the most common wrong turns...
Read the article. Back to top
Stop Being Miserable at Work
Quote of the Week - More Quotes
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
--Henry David Thoreau
|
|
 |
It is hard for me to imagine doing work I hated every single day.
Or, going to a workplace that hurt my self-esteem or made me participate in constantly negative self talk with coworkers. Yet, many people do this every day.
Henry David Thoreau is a favorite of mine and today's quote of the week seemed particularly apt for the new article I wrote this weekend.
Are you miserable at work? Do you never feel good about getting up and heading to work on Monday? Do you feel unchallenged, unhappy, or not in control? Is your boss
the worst? Do your coworkers engage in unjustifiable complaining all day long? Is no contribution ever good enough? If you continue to participate in any of
these situations, you will ensure that you will continue to hate your job. And, hating your job is the centerpiece for a miserable life. Why go there? You don't have
to be miserable at work...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
Photos: 2006's (10) worst political mishaps
No 10: Representative Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) plays Mrs. Robinson with a college reporter.
Soon-to-be-former Congresswoman Katherine Harris made a name for herself as
Florida's Secretary of State during the controversial 2000 presidential election. Characterized by outlandish statements about religion, abrupt staff
shakeups, tight-fitting shirts, and questionable colors of eyeshadow, Rep. Harris was considered a longshot indeed in her (unsuccessful) bid to unseat Democratic
Senator Bill Nelson this year. But she never lost her campaign trail spirit--or her charm, as was evident when photographer Stephen Elliott snapped some photos of
the Senate hopeful conversing intimately with a college newspaper reporter this
past April. According to political blog Wonkette, Elliott recounted to Majority
Report Radio that Rep. Harris "sat (the reporter) down, sat next to him, and her foot was brushing...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
Smashing The Clock
No schedules. No mandatory meetings. Inside Best Buy's radical reshaping of the workplace.
One afternoon last year, Chap Achen, who oversees online orders at Best Buy Co. (BBY ), shut down his computer, stood up from his desk, and announced that he was leaving
for the day. It was around 2 p.m., and most of Achen's staff were slumped over their keyboards, deep in a post-lunch, LCD-lit trance. "See you tomorrow," said Achen.
"I'm going to a matinee." Under normal circumstances, an early-afternoon departure would have been totally un-Achen. After all, this was a 37-year-old corporate
comer whose wife laughs in his face when he utters the words "work-life balance." But at Best Buy's Minneapolis headquarters, similar incidents of strangeness were
breaking out all over the ultramodern campus. In employee relations, Steve Hance had suddenly started going hunting on workdays, a Remington 12-gauge in one hand,
a Verizon LG (VZ ) in the other. In the retail training department, e-learning specialist Mark Wells was spending his days bombing around the country following
rocker Dave Matthews. Single mother Kelly McDevitt, an online promotions manager, started leaving at 2:30 p.m. to pick up her 11-year-old son Calvin from school. Scott Jauman, a Six Sigma black belt, began spending a third of his time at his
Northwoods cabin. At most companies, going AWOL during daylight hours would be grounds for a pink slip. Not at Best Buy. The nation's leading electronics retailer
has embarked on a radical--if risky--experiment to transform a culture once known for killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for "results-only
work environment," seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours...
Read the article. Back to top
Hey! That Was My Idea
Few things are as maddening as a colleague swiping your suggestion. Here's how to deal with it—and prevent it from happening again. Has this ever happened to you?
You're in a staff meeting, poised to share your latest brilliant suggestion, when a co-worker suddenly jumps into the conversation and says: "I have a great idea."
Your colleague then goes on to offer the very same thought that you, in a meeting that you considered private, shared with her just yesterday. You feel terrible when
that happens. First you think: "Hey! That was my idea!" and a bolt of righteous indignation surges through your body. Next, you wonder: "Am I being petty? Does
it really matter whose idea it was?" Then from deep in your limbic nerve comes a voice saying: "Yes! It does matter! It was MY blinkin' idea!"...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
What's to Be Done About Performance Reviews?
It's the season for many employee performance reviews.
Why do they seem to rank alongside root canal dental work on our list of things we
look forward to as managers and employees? And what are we doing about it? If we
assume that the basic purpose of employee evaluations is to build better-performing organizations, then this has to be one of the most important things we do as
managers. But if formal evaluations weren't required, would we even provide them? Much of this season's debate has centered around whether a forced ranking system works
in such efforts...
Read the article. Back to top
How Important Is Quality of Labor? And How Is It Achieved?
Over the past thirty years, several of my colleagues and I have tried to figure out why a handful of organizations are able to achieve true excellence.
One of several things they all do is hire for attitude and train for skills. By "attitude," they typically mean the ability to identify with and "live" core
values of the organization such as respect for others, being customer-driven, etc. Their managements have concluded that it is too difficult and costly to try to
change the attitudes of adults. As a result, they release those unable to work and manage according to the organization's values and replace them with those who can...
Read the article. Back to top
Three Perspectives on Team Learning: Outcome Improvement, Task Mastery, and Group Process
Organizations increasingly rely on teams to carry out critical strategies and operational tasks.
How do teams learn, and what factors are most important to team learning? This paper reports on current perspectives and findings that address these questions,
looking at empirical studies on team learning from three areas of research: outcome improvement, task mastery, and group process. Overall, Edmondson and coauthors characterize the nature of research to date and assemble what is known and
unknown about the theoretically and practically important topic of team learning...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
Caring Ourselves Sick
Sixteen years ago, Adrienne Giannone began a job that has made her position as owner and CEO of a $50 million distributor of electronics components seem easy by comparison.
She became the caregiver for her elderly mother, who has both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Although Giannone has an aide stay with her mother during
the workday, she is always available to answer her mother’s calls because she never knows what might happen. And at times her mother’s calls can be troublesome.
“Sometimes she hallucinates, and she’ll call and say something like, ‘My hands are all red. This towel is making my hands blood red,” and I tell her, ‘It’ll be OK.’”
Phone calls aside, Giannone manages her mother’s care fairly well through the workday when the aide is on duty. But evening meetings and business travel require more planning. Sometimes she has to miss business functions if she’s unable to find a
sitter. Going out at night for pleasure--unless her mom accompanies her--has become practically a thing of the past. “I am trying to avoid having to place her in a home--which I guess eventually I will have to do, but it is going to break my
heart--so this is how I am managing in the meantime,” she says. “But it’s extremely stressful.”And that’s not all. At times, Giannone adds, the stress makes her
physically ill. “I was having dizzy spells, so I went to the doctor. I thought it was my sinuses, but he said, ‘Your sinuses are fine. Everything’s fine. I think it’s
totally stress-related. Do you have a lot of stress in your life?’ I started to laugh.” Giannone is one of an estimated 50 million Americans--mostly women,
not surprisingly--who care for a family member who is elderly, chronically ill or disabled. In fact, 33% of working women decreased work hours due to caregiving.
Clearly, Giannone is not the only one feeling the stress. Caregivers are 46% more likely than noncaregivers to report...
Read the article. Back to top
Are Parents Killing Their Kids' Careers?
As an executive recruiter for healthcare consultancy Stockamp and Associates, Kate Carson is used to talking to plenty of job applicants.
What she’s not used to is talking to their parents. But that's exactly what she’s doing more of these days. Recently she received a call from the mother of a
24-year-old graduate student who wanted to know why her daughter didn't receive a job offer with the Oregon-based company. "I was a little taken aback," says Carson.
And then there was another call from the parent of a college undergad who called Carson to let her know that her daughter was sick and wouldn’t be able to make her
scheduled job interview. In some human resources circles, these over-involved moms and dads are known as helicopter parents. They've hovered around their children
(the Millennial generation) their whole lives, over-scheduling their childhood and pushing them throughout college. With graduation comes the next step: the job
search. Now, more than ever, career counselors and recruiters say parents attend job fairs, accompany their adult children to job interviews and even make their
interview appointments. Rather than ridicule the behavior, companies like Merrill Lynch, Office Depot and others are...
Read the article. Back to top
Bogus Bonuses
 |
Along with Christmas music and sugar cookies, the holiday bonus is an end-of-year staple. And on Wall Street, bonuses are thriving like never before.
On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs announced net earnings of $9.4 billion, a 68% increase over last year's $5.6 billion profit. It was reportedly the most money ever earned by
an investment bank, and enough money to make even a banker giddy. This year, traders and investment bankers at Goldman Sachs can expect bonuses in the tens of millions.
But you can expect zilch. According to a study by Hewitt Associates, only 34% of employers will offer holiday bonuses this year, down from 41% last year. Most
of the Scrooges have never had a bonus program, but some have dropped their plans. According to Hewitt, two-thirds of the companies who have eliminated bonuses did
so in the last five years. The quick and dirty infusion of holiday cash is "almost an extinct species," says Fred Crandall, a senior compensation consultant at Watson
Wyatt. Those who do offer bonuses don't always give cash. About 27% will give...
Read the article. Back to top
Give Presents, Not Offense
The Matrix Group, a Web design company in northern Virginia, prides itself on its fun and relaxed atmosphere.
Throughout the year, employees are encouraged to let their pets spend the day in the office, and the annual company scavenger hunt has employees scouring for odd and
obscure things like the UPC code from The Matrix DVD and pictures of clients' office buildings. But there's a line, and it was crossed during the firm's holiday
gift exchange. One employee's idea of a gag gift: a pair of plastic fake breasts. "We tossed them in the garbage," says Joanna Pineda, founder of the Matrix Group.
"I sat down with the person and said, 'Not a good idea.'" There's no way of telling how many office-present faux pas are committed each holiday season. To avoid becoming
part of your firm's hall of shame, remember that when shopping, be nice, not naughty. Whether your office is doing a company-wide gift exchange or you're buying something
for a colleague, let the fake breasts be a lesson: Gifts shouldn't be offensive. Unfortunately, even innocent intentions can be misinterpreted. That was the case
with one of Marjorie Brody's male colleagues. He knew his administrative assistant liked a certain brand of body lotion, so he figured it was a thoughtful gift. "Her
reaction was...
Read the article. Back to top
Surprisingly Healthy Foods
What you didn't know might help you.
Eating healthy may be virtuous, but it just doesn't seem like that much fun.
Truth is, most of us prefer the taste of French fries over that of oat bran. A
glass of Burgundy sounds more tantalizing than a cup of wheat grass juice. And
while a nice piece of fruit is no punishment, chocolate is exceedingly more
tempting. The good news: Not all of those seemingly unhealthy choices actually are...
Read the article. Back to top
Hottest Star Hideaways
Signing autographs, swilling champagne and wearing the latest designer duds: The daily lives of celebrities aren't half bad.
And you should see where they go on vacation.
Take the South Pacific island of Fiji, where the exclusive Turtle Island resort hosted a honeymooning Britney Spears
and Kevin Federline, as well as Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey. The resort accommodates just 14 couples at a time, and each private bure, or thatched-roof cottage,
has an outdoor verandah and four-poster bed. Staff can arrange everything from private champagne picnics to horseback riding on the beach, and room rates start at...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
You're Fired! But Why?
So You Say
HR managers and former employees disagree about dismissal practices. |
| Was the employee informed of reasons for dismissal? |
| HR managers who said yes |
94% |
| Employees who said yes |
74% |
| Could the dismissal have been handled better? |
| HR managers who said yes |
63% |
| Employees who said yes |
74% |
| Would the employee recommend the organization in the future? |
| HR managers who said yes |
50% |
| Employees who said yes |
31% |
| Source: The Five O'clock Club |
When employees are let go, they often don't get an explanation.
Donald Trump may be good at firing his apprentices, but most companies do a poor job of terminating employees. A recent survey by The Five O'clock Club, a New
York–based job-outplacement firm, found that in many cases, employees don't understand why they are being let go. While 94 percent of human-resource managers say
they gave reasons for dismissals, only 74 percent of employees say they received an explanation...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
|
You’re Fired: How to Not Terminate an Employee
The phenomenon has many names: downsizing, reorganization, termination, layoff, rebalancing, letting go, firing.
No matter what you call, it, though, it is a given in the business world — once hired, employees are not guaranteed to stay at an organization for life, and sometimes
the choice to leave is not theirs.
There are ways to minimize the negativity that has the potential to arise when an employee is fired, and Terry Terhark, president of The RightThing Inc.,
said it boils down to treating the person with respect. “At the end of the day, a person, a human being is being affected and losing their employment, and
that’s why I think that needs to be done personally,” he said. “My personal opinion has always been that the decision to terminate someone — whether that’s due to
performance, or whether it’s due to a business condition — that a personal conversation in a highly ethical way is the way to do that. And you have to do that in a very private conversation, one which requires ultimate care in terms of how you’re discussing
that with the employee to be let go.” Terhark said The RightThing, an HR outsourcing company, has worked with more than 200 companies in regard to their hiring needs,
and through that experience, he has witnessed instances of the right way to fire an employee...
Read the article. Back to top
Strong Social Relationships Increase Productivity, Job Satisfaction
Laughing with a colleague over a shared joke or discussing problems with a trusted co-worker can make the office a more relaxed and enjoyable place.
Because many people spend almost as much time at work as they do at home, the social atmosphere of the office easily can determine how satisfied employees are with
their job. In a recent poll done by SelectMinds, an organization that develops corporate social networks, 83 percent of the 2,000 employees surveyed rated trusted
relationships with co-workers and suppliers as a critical reason for joining and staying with an employer. Another 23 percent said they had quit a job because of feelings
of isolation. Anne Berkowitch, SelectMinds CEO, said proactively fostering social relationships within a company is especially crucial in now because more employees
than ever are working from remote locations, isolated from the office environment...
Read the article. Back to top
Creating an Employment Brand for Your Organization
When it comes to recruiting, every organization has the same goal: to hire the best and the brightest.
Well, the truth is that these “A players,” those candidates who are truly talented, usually have plenty of choices as to where they can work. Thus, it becomes the
job of the organization to convince them why they should work there and not somewhere else. That’s where employment branding comes in. More leading companies are
recognizing employer branding as part of their main strategic challenges. According to employment branding research and consulting firm Universum Communications,
however, there is a large degree of variance in the amount of effort, seniority of personnel and committed resources companies are placing on their employment
branding efforts.
The pending retirement of many baby boomers and an increased emphasis on “knowledge workers” are forcing companies to become engaged in a war for talent, and
they are driving the need for employment branding programs. “Companies that are not prepared to combat these challenges and that fail to understand the importance
of an increased investment allocation in talent management will almost certainly see diminished performance possibilities in the future,” said Ryan Estis, chief
talent strategist for NAS Recruitment Communications. What is an Employment Brand?...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
|
Doing Town Hall Meetings Better
Town hall meetings enable senior leadership to keep employees informed, engaged and in sync with business goals.
At his company’s quarterly town hall meetings, Adam Rizika enjoys seeing his CEO, Dick Harrison, in action. “He likes people to come out with difficult questions,
and he likes responding to them ad lib,” says the director of marketing, Asia-Pacific, for Parametric Technology Corp., a software company in Needham, Mass. “He can
also talk in incredible detail about what our competitors are doing and how we are approaching them. When you hear him talking, you say, ‘Hey, we are on top of
this.’ ” Outlining important company developments and responses to competitors are just a few of the many benefits companies can realize from conducting town hall
meetings. These meetings also can lead, for example, to greater employee understanding of key business issues and can provide increased employee feedback up the
hierarchical ladder. The resulting boost to employee communication efforts in turn can positively affect an organization in many ways—including potentially boosting
its bottom line. The 2005/2006 Communication ROI Study sponsored by Watson Wyatt, a global consulting firm specializing in human capital and financial management,
found that companies with the most effective communication programs financially outperformed those with less effective programs by 57 percent from 2000 to 2004...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
Forward to a Friend:
Do you have a friend that would like to receive HRWatchsm?
Perhaps you know a peer within your organization, or associate at a partner company that would
benefit from applying to receive this publication. Inviting a friend to experience the benefits
of joining the BusinessWatch Network is easy! Just FW: this newsletter to the person you know who
may have an interest and ask them to click here http://www.businesswatchnetwork.com Your friend will be glad you did!
|
|
|
If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from HRWatchsm
simply change your status,
or send a letter requesting opt-off to:
The BusinessWatch Network Privacy Mailbox, 1321, Marblehead, MA. 01945
DISCLAIMER: HRWatchsm and the BusinessWatch Networksm are service marks of DMS.
All other trademarks or service marks contained in this email are the property of their respective owners.
At the time of publication, all links in this e-mail functioned properly. However, since many links point
to sites other than businesswatchnetwork.com, some links may become invalid as time passes.
DMS Inc. supports the DMA Privacy Promise and
Guidelines for Ethical Business Practice. We are committed to the proper use of
email and to protecting consumers from fraudulent or inappropriate
offers. Privacy Policy
|
|
|
| |
