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| Volume 7, Issue 8 |
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In This Issue:
 Create a very merry holiday season
The five causes of employee negativity
How to raise your visibility at work
 Take the quiz: Does your HR job stink?
 Putting an end to end-of-year reviews
 Is your Blackberry lowering your IQ?
Wage wars [overtime]
Managing your boss
How much is too much information at work?
What executives want now
 Boost your presentation performance
Training exclusive: First comprehensive corporate video library
Millennials: Alterior lifeform or fellow prioritizer?
The funny thing About training
Can Facebook help you do a better job?
 Say goodbye to the generation gap
Holiday cheer on tap
 Finding candidates with the right fit
Turning HR data into business intelligence
 How to keep your employees happy
Eight hints for healthier holiday eating
America's most obese cities
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Create a very merry holiday season
You can thrive, not just survive, and create a wonderful holiday season this year. You just need to do four things:
* keep your expectations rational,
* take care of yourself,
* take control of your time and limit your commitments, and
* embrace your family and friends.
These tips will help you reduce stress, relax, and breeze through the holiday season feeling grounded and in control...
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The Five Causes of Employee Negativity
The typical workplace has its ups and downs in terms of employee negativity.
Many workplaces are trying to be employee oriented. But, even the most employee oriented workplace can shudder under the weight of negative thinking. When employers understand the causes of employee negativity and put in place measures to prevent
employee negativity, negativity fails to gain a foothold in the work environment. I’ve written about how an employer can prevent negativity from occurring at work. I’ve also written about
what to do about workplace negativity that already exists. The persistent question I receive from managers is: What really causes employee negativity?...
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How to Raise Your Visibility at Work
Think of the proverbial kid with his or her hand raised to answer the teacher's question in elementary school. The more positive the child is about having the correct answer, the more he or she waves their hand seeking to be noticed by the
teacher. And, because good teachers want kids to be right and enthusiastic about learning, that wildly waving hand was frequently selected. In some ways, we never grow out of this early behavior. We want to be noticed, and we want to matter - at
work. I'm here to tell you that it is okay to continue wildly waving your hand when you seek the attention and approbration of your boss.
Employees ask frequently how they can raise their visibility at work. And, especially people whose jobs are somewhat tedious request alternative activities to break up the monotony of their every day work. No matter the job, it is difficult to
do the exact same work all day long, even if you love the work and the customers. Other employees are underemployed and waiting for their next opportunity that is either not currently available or they have yet to earn the opportunity at a new
employer. Unfortunately, many employees sit back and wait for their manager to give them something new or interesting to do. This is always the wrong approach...
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Take the Quiz: Does Your HR Job Stink?
The Workforce Management list of the 30 highest-paid HR leaders came out recently. You weren’t on it. Neither was I.
Number 30 earned $1.595 million. I think it’s fair to say there is a gap between "them" and "us." I came in at number 1,435,765, up seven spots from 2006. Sweet! This kind of list always makes me think about my future. Good HR people are in high
demand. That’s good to know. However, before you decide to put yourself in the marketplace, you need to determine a way to evaluate the strength of your current HR position, honestly and objectively. Don’t make the rookie mistake of using your
current happiness as the primary measurement related to the quality of your current HR job. Your happiness is driven by multiple factors, including working with people you consider friends, being motivated by your daily tasks, a supportive boss, etc.
Those things can change. They are important factors, but may or may not be reflective of the quality of your current HR position. Determining whether your HR job is a keeper is better illustrated by macro factors that reflect your company’s desire, capability
and commitment to a talent strategy, and as a result, what you do on a daily basis, both now and in the future. The good news is that you don’t have to take a class in economics to determine if your company is a player in the talent game. Take the following
test to determine if your HR job sucks or rocks...
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Putting an End to End-of-Year Reviews
Performance assessment can be more than 30 minutes of uncomfortable conversation followed by a raise.
The only truly effective annual review may be the one Santa conducts on children, and even that rarely influences behavior for more than a month before the holidays. In the business world, human resources executives and line managers consider annual
reviews largely a waste of time, according to a survey from OnPoint Consulting, a human resources firm based in New York City. Employees aren't sold, either. A recent study by Salary.com found that more than 60 percent of workers doubt reviews boost
performance. The criticisms are legion. Annual reviews fail to motivate people long term; assessments are often perfunctory; problem resolution gets postponed; and the ritual is painful for all concerned. In response, some CEOs are starting to rethink
the process, emphasizing more frequent feedback and in-depth evaluations, says Steve Gross, who heads the performance and rewards consulting practice at Mercer Human Resource Consulting. "Employees want the feedback, and companies want a better sense
of whether an employee is at risk of leaving," Gross says. Here's how two companies scrapped their blunt-instrument reviews and created in their place precision tools
for performance management...
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Is your Blackberry lowering your IQ?
Researchers have found that communication overload causes a professional's IQ to drop 10 percentage points. Think about that before you bombard the staff with e-mail
An on-again, off-again player, I attended my first tennis clinic of the summer this last weekend. I was taken aback by the BlackBerry addled behavior which newly seems de rigeur courtside. Between each drill at least two of the five participating players would scurry
off to sidelines, rummage in a sports bag, pull out a BlackBerry and check their email. In 50% of cases this was then followed by a furtive phone call. The tennis pro rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath but seemed to have learnt to tolerate these goings-on. Along
with tennis whites telephone etiquette seems to have gone out the window. So what's the deal here? Have the demands of our professional lives become...
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Wage wars [overtime]
Workers—from truck drivers to stockbrokers—are winning huge overtime lawsuits.
There's a place in Reno, Nev., that practically mints money. It's not one of the many casinos in town. Nor is it one of the legal brothels that operate in the area. It is a law firm, located in a wing of a private home nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.
From a utilitarian office, with a view of horses grazing in a neighbor's paddock across the road, attorney Mark R. Thierman pursues a practice that in recent years has won his clients hundreds of millions of dollars from some of the biggest names in Corporate America—and
produced tens of millions for himself. A Harvard Law School grad, Thierman, 56, spent the first 20 years of his career as a management-side labor attorney and self-described union buster. He has been pelted with eggs by construction workers and his tires have been
slashed by longshoremen. But in the mid-1990s he brought a series of cases on behalf of workers in California and established himself as a trailblazer in what had long been a sleepy, neglected area of the law...
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Managing your boss
It's not manipulation—it's forging ties based on mutual respect and understanding.
The Idea in Brief
Managing our bosses? Isn't that merely manipulation? Corporate cozying up? Out-and-out apple polishing? In fact, we manage our bosses for very good reasons: to get resources to do the best job, not only for ourselves, but for our bosses and our companies as well. We
actively pursue a healthy and productive working relationship based on mutual respect and understanding—understanding our own and our bosses' strengths, weaknesses, goals, work styles, and needs. Here's what can happen when we don't...
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How much is too much information at work?
Once you share even a seemingly benign personal story with colleagues, people may perceive you differently—and some may question your judgment.
When I was starting out in the white-collar world, it was a very different social environment from the typical workplace of 2007. We talked about work, work, work, with a little personal gossip thrown in now and then. From time to time, we'd say something like
"I saw a good movie this weekend." People didn't bring their personal lives to the office as much as they do now. Of course, the dress codes were more formal, the use of titles was more formal, and workplaces in general were more hierarchical and buttoned-down then. I'm
not complaining about the changes. But the loosening up of many workplace cultures has made it more difficult to determine just which elements of one's personal life should be made public in the office. Loose Lips Sink Careers...
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What executives want now
Today's sought-after leaders are asking for more work/life balance and want, among other things, to protect themselves against real estate losses.
The business of executive headhunting is growing increasingly complicated. The issues that motivate today's top management talent to pursue new career opportunities have themselves grown more complex, in large part because of leaders'
desire for more work/life balance and/or the need to protect their assets. Many headhunters say search assignments used to be considerably easier to orchestrate when more management-level career climbers were willing to commit—with little or no
hesitation—to do whatever it might take to succeed in a new job if it promised big career opportunity. But executive recruiters now see a significant shift in how
talented business managers qualify and assess new career opportunities. Indeed, there is now a myriad of personal issues that they and client hiring organizations need to explore as they court so-called A players...
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Boost your presentation performance
We've all heard the statistic that people fear public speaking more than death. It may be an urban myth—but death? Wow, that’s some powerful fear.
Look, if you're in business and you work in any department where you need to communicate with others—inside or outside your organization— then, guess what? You've got to make presentations. But there is some good news. Often this fear is
actually presentation performance anxiety—which isn't life threatening. Rather than live in fear of your next presentation, you need some ways you can build confidence in your presentation skills. Increasing your presentation performance will reduce
your fear and accelerate your career. So how can you improve your presentation performance? I use the term "presentation performance," because, just like sports, there are certain techniques, tactics and strategies you can master. Are some people
better presenters than others? Of course! But you can become a better presenter over time as well. Interestingly, it's not the act of presenting that causes all of the angst; it's the doubt in your presentation itself—your message—that often causes the
pain. Ever notice that some of the strongest actors and actresses become absolute boors and goofballs when they're accepting an award or sitting on a talk show couch? It's because they no longer have a script, a solid story to tell. Here's seven tips
that will help you significantly boost your presentation performance...
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Training exclusive: First comprehensive corporate video library
Corporate University Xchange gave Training's editors the inside story today on a new and unique corporate resource: CorpU TV
Corporate University Xchange (CorpU) launched CorpU TV, a Website featuring mini-documentaries and an archive of video interviews with corporations and training researchers. The site debuts with an
inside look at JetBlue's business and talent strategy. In this first "episode" of a bi-monthly mini-documentary series CorpU calls "The People Factor," JetBlue Chief Learning Officer Mike Barger discusses...
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Millennials: Alterior lifeform or fellow prioritizer?
A second look at the career priorities of the incoming working generation .
What do you think of when you hear the term "Millennial?" Probably words such as "young," "flighty," and even "career-unfocused" come to mind. But have Baby Boomers and Gen Xers been too quick to misjudge and dismiss the incoming workforce's
mindset? A new study from global staffing and consulting service company Robert Half International and Yahoo! HotJobs says that may be the case—and the generational gap might not be as wide as first thought....
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The Funny Thing About Training
Facilitating certain corporate U classes may make you want to cry, but that doesn't mean your learners have to feel that way. On-demand humor help is just a mouse click away.
Shrinking attention spans and an amusement-minded culture make training harder than ever. Providing information is no longer enough; learners want to be entertained. That's why trainers often are advised to add humor to their repertoire. Here are
some humorously helpful Websites I detail, along with others, in my new e-book, "Don't Worry, Be Funny: Web Sites That Can Automatically Generate Humorous Material for Your Next Presentation and How to Use Them—Even If You Can't Tell a Joke:" If
you're teaching a formula, use the Einstein Dynamic Photo Generator, a Website that shows...
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Can Facebook Help You Do a Better Job?
If you're cruising the net on company time, you're not alone. According to a recent survey by UK-based content security specialist Clearswift, half of HR execs have had to discipline employees for wasting time on the Internet.
But just because employees are on the Web, doesn't mean they're messing around. Emerging Web 2.0 sites that utilize user-generated content are beginning to blur the line between wasted time and productive time. The study, which polled 300 HR
professionals in the UK, indicates that many organizations fail to recognize the potential benefits of Web 2.0 technology. According to the study, most companies (65 percent) block their employees' access to social networking sites such as Facebook
and MySpace. Only one-third actively use Web 2.0 technologies and 20 percent are completely unfamiliar with them. Stephen Millard, VP of Strategy at Clearswift, says that as social interaction through networking sites becomes increasingly popular,
employees will start looking to conduct business through the same means. "Innovative HR departments are already...
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Say Goodbye to the Generation Gap
A five-year-long study involving more than 3,200 corporate leaders shows major similarities between the generations. What's different -- and what HR leaders need
to understand -- is how those similarities are exhibited in the behaviors of the various generations.
Bob, an employee ten years from retiring from Acme Packaging Company, stood at the water fountain venting to Mark, a worker in his 30s. "Can you believe with all my qualifications and experience they bypassed me to give that promotion to Yvonne?
She's just out of school -- she doesn't know anything."...
Mark nodded politely, and thought to himself: This guy is over the hill. He's out of touch with our clients, unwilling to drive change, and couldn't learn anything new to save his life. Yvonne may have less experience than he does, but she has...
Bob could tell Mark was just being polite, and Bob thought to himself: These kids are all the same. They don't appreciate the value of experience and loyalty. They don't respect my contribution to our work. And the worst part of it is that they
don't get what they don't get!...
Many of the assumptions about different generations are exaggerated or untrue, according to Retiring the Generation Gap, a Center for Creative Leadership study
that went on for more than five years and involved more than 3,200 corporate leaders. ...
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Holiday Cheer on Tap
Most companies plan to hold holiday parties this year -- although alcohol consumption will be down, but will likely still be offered at a majority of those affairs. HR executives may want to explore ways to limit potential liability.
Are holiday parties on the rise this year, or is the uncertain economy causing employers to trim costs -- but not the company tree -- by pink-slipping their holiday soirees? It all depends on who you ask, it seems. According to an annual
survey from Battalia Winston, a New York-based executive search firm, tough times call for less partying. In its 19th Annual Survey on Corporate Holiday Celebrations, 85 percent of 104 "leading businesses" say they will have some type of holiday
celebration this year -- a 9 percent decrease from the previous year. "In all honesty, we were stunned by the lower number," says Jo Bennett, a partner at Battalia Winston. The 2007 survey represents the third-lowest percentage of
companies holding holiday parties in the survey's history (83 percent in 2001, post 9/11, and 82 percent during recession of 1991), she says. On the other hand, a survey of 100 HR executives by Chicago-based global outplacement consultancy
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., found an 11 point increase -- from 79 percent to 90 percent -- in the percentage of companies holding holiday parties...
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Finding candidates with the right fit
About 20 percent of hiring decisions made for salaried jobs end in failure.
Failure rates for hourly jobs are even worse, frequently reaching levels of 50 percent or more, according to recent research by Kronos Inc. It is astonishing companies tolerate these failure rates, given the costs associated with poor job
performance and staff turnover. It is even more surprising because everyone in the staffing process has a vested interest in making the best hires possible. Hiring managers directly benefit from hiring good employees and bear much of the pain and
frustration that result from hiring the wrong person. Recruiters' reputations are made (or broken) based on the quality of candidates they find for their clients. Even candidates recognize it is rarely in their best interest to be hired for jobs
they are ill-suited to perform. Given that everyone from the CEO to the prospective employee has an interest in making effective staffing decisions, why do companies
make so many poor hires? Two of the top reasons are that...
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Turning HR data into business intelligence
If your CFO came to you and asked you to assess the workforce's ability to execute on a new business strategy that demanded new skills, diverse demographic changes and enhanced training, could you?
What information would you use? How would you present it? More and more HR executives are waking up to find their careers depend on showing their department's strategic value to the organization. And that value has to be measurable. There is no question sound HR practices can make or break an organization's success. Open up today's newspaper, and there is a good chance you will find a story that speaks to human capital management (HCM) having a tangible impact on shareholder value:
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The CEO of an electronics retailer credits much of the company's recent gain in market share to investments in training its salespeople to be consultative. He also credits a compensation model that rewards its front-line associates, not only for sales but the service qualities customers find most important when shopping.
- The head of a major airline blames record-high flight cancellations not on weather or equipment problems but on an insufficient number of qualified pilots available to fly its commercial jets.
- An elite basketball coach complains that although his team was the most talented, it just did not have the right combination of role players or the collective attitude to make it past the second round of the playoffs. This cost the organization $12 million in lost ticket sales and TV revenue.
Relationships between workforce measures and other key performance indicators such as revenue and profitability always have been there. So, why have organizations only just begun to establish, monitor and manage workforce measures? There have been and continue to be challenges to systematically applying popular measurement disciplines such as the balanced score card to people management:...
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How to keep your employees happy
Work is, well, work. But a few companies understand that in order to get the most out of their staffers--and keep them--they need to have fun. At least sometimes.
Take Nugget Markets, a 10-store northern California grocer. Turnover is 12% among its 900 full-time employees. That's relatively unheard of in the grocery industry, where average turnover is 8% higher. CEO Eric Stille attributes it to Nugget's
culture. Management shows employees they are valued with dance parties, field trips, unexpected financial giveaways and lots of free food. "We want our team to know how much they're appreciated," says Chris Carpenter, Nugget's COO. "That's the number
one thing we want them to understand." That's not a priority for many employers. But it should be...
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Eight Hints For Healthier Holiday Eating
Between Thanksgiving and Super Bowl Sunday, Americans indulge in food and drink like no other time of year. But they pay for it over the long haul.
While those buttery mashed potatoes, marshmallow-topped yams and endless glasses of wine may taste heavenly, for the average adult, that translates into an extra pound weight gain each year, according to the National Institutes for Health. One pound
may seem little, but this extra weight accumulates and may later contribute to obesity, currently affecting one-third of Americans. The trick to staying slim during the holidays, however, is not deprivation or suffering through flavorless
food. With tips from a few experts and nutritionists, who advise cooking with healthy ingredients, monitoring portion control and prizing
quality over quantity, it's possible to eat like a queen or king and stay lean....
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America's Most Obese Cities
We are heavier than ever.
Once considered an affliction of the lazy and indulgent, obesity now affects about one-third of Americans. The epidemic has swept up the wealthy, middle class and the poor; city dwellers, suburbanites and those in rural areas; and people of all races
and ethnicities. The causes, researchers say, are numerous. These include a diet of calorie-dense but nutrient-deficient food found in grocery and convenience stores, public planning strategies that favor motorists over walkers and cyclists, and
simply bad habits. And while the causes are many, the costs are enormous. Obesity's associated costs add $93 billion to the nation's medical bill annually. Each year, 112,000 people die from obesity-related causes, and the condition is responsible for
an increased risk of chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease...
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