| If you are having difficulty seeing this mail or images in it, you can view it in your Web browser. |
|
| Volume 8, Issue 3 |
|
In This Issue:
 Are you the pointy-haired boss?
Padlocking the revolving door on turnover
Communication for managers 101
[Shift your] Culture: Aligning employee focus with the rule of the O.M.I.T.
 Simple ways to salvage 'below-standard' employees
Choosing a recruiter? Steer clear of these 4 deadly sins
When romance goes bad: Protecting the company from the fallout
Termination meeting should include open door, easy exit
 The fine art of sucking up to your boss
 Marketing your way through a recession
 Helping co-workers cope with loss
 'Most admired companies' pay less for talent, groom employees better
 Meet the bosses who could win the ‘Awful’
|
|
|
 |
Are you the pointy-haired boss?
Here he comes again. In Dilbert cartoons, you know him as the pointy-haired boss.
He will parade up to your cubicle to dispense self-serving advice. His logic is as arbitrary as his deadlines. He may sprinkle his language with the latest acronyms, but you know the truth. He is oblivious to day-to-day operations, like Mr. McGoo
wandering through a minefield. Behind your corporate Pollyanna, you resent him sometimes. Still, you follow the drill: stroke his ego and don't make waves. You may have started to tune him out, but he still holds sway over your career. It may be
dispiriting, but you have come to accept your situation: your boss is not equipped to help you and you are on your own. Demonizing then Becoming the Boss In the cubicle culture, it is easy to caricature or demonize the boss. The dizzying speed
of business sometimes makes corporate decision-making seem capricious. When you step into management—and become responsible for the livelihoods of others—your words and actions become instantly magnified. Your world accelerates and expectations are
high. Your credibility is constantly on the line. In this environment, you can quickly become overwhelmed. Some managers choose to insulate themselves; others overcompensate. Either way, you may morph into that person who once made you
snicker. You may not even realize it. Then, like a blinding light on the road to Damascus, it hits you...
Read the article. Back to top
Padlocking the revolving door on turnover
Company loyalty and long-term job tenures often seem like relics from a bygone era, but does constant turnover necessarily have to be the status quo for most companies?
Not at all, says Peter Handal, chairman, president and CEO of Hauppage, N.Y.-based Dale Carnegie Training (dalecarnegie.com). On the contrary, Handal says there are certain steps businesses can take to ensure their employees stay engaged and loyal. These include the following...
Read the article. Back to top
Communication for managers 101
Employees Stressing Out
While it's no secret that stress contributes to overall worker well-being, what is surprising is that many employers are likely to do little about it.
|
|
Harvard Business Publications recently confirmed what many have always known: effective communication is the number one skill for executives to develop.
But this skill is neglected when it comes to employee development. Companies send their managers and executives to all types of continuing education programs. And yet, communication development goes highly overlooked. Managers and executives need
to be acutely aware of their communication within the organization. A Gallup poll of more than 1 million U.S. workers concluded that the No. 1 reason people quit their jobs is because of problems with their immediate supervisor. Also, surveys show that
over 80% of work-related problems are due to a breakdown in communication (Felber 2002). So how can managers and executives improve their interpersonal communications with their employees? Here are five easy steps that can be taken:...
Read the article. Back to top
[Shift your] Culture: Aligning employee focus with the rule of the O.M.I.T.
 Incentive online "Culture Shift" columnist Paul Levesque is an author, seminar leader and public speaker with two decades' experience as an international business consultant
specializing in the connection between employee motivation and customer satisfaction. He is a senior consultant with Boston-based Novations Inc., and is also founder and CEO of Customer Focus Breakthroughs Inc.
|
What's the One Most Important Thing in your business? If not everyone on your staff gives the same answer, you need to read this.
The people who run a business usually have a pretty clear picture of what they're trying to accomplish. The problem is that their ultimate success inevitably depends on how well everybody else shares their understanding—and their enthusiasm. This is
where things usually begin to fall apart. But why? A lot of the answer may lie embedded in what we can call the "Rule of the O.M.I.T." The Rule itself can be stated as follows:
In any collective endeavor, the prospect for success is directly proportional to the degree everyone agrees on what constitutes the One Most Important Thing.
This is not a complicated rule. I even suspect that not many would be inclined to disagree with it. Yet the vast majority of business organizations violate this simple rule every hour of every business day. And their failure to apply it may be
doing more to destroy employee motivation—and the organization's chances for success—than all other factors combined. [Here is the rule spelled out: Four Words, One at a Time ...]
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
Simple ways to salvage 'below-standard' employees
Every manager faces employees who exhibit below-standard performance.
These aren’t terrible employees who should be shown the door, but they’re not achieving the quality or quantity of work they’re capable of. Unless the performance issue is addressed directly, it’ll only get worse. Too many managers try
to deal with such employees by sending subtle signals. Not smart. According to an OnPoint Consulting report, here are the five best ways to give below-standard workers a performance boost...
Read the article. Back to top
Choosing a recruiter? Steer clear of these 4 deadly sins
Say you needed to fill a key executive position, so you brought in a recruiting firm.
But the process took forever, broke the bank, resulted in a small, inferior candidate pool—and the new hire jumped ship after three months. You could have bypassed most of those headaches by avoiding four common mistakes...
Read the article. Back to top
When romance goes bad: Protecting the company from the fallout
Ants in His Pants—But Can You Fire Him?
The Internet has created a whole new pond for employment lawyers to fish in. But you’re not powerless to act against employees’ embarrassing activities. You can discipline employees who go over the
line.
|
|
When office romances sour, scorned lovers often use Title VII to allege that their former lover was a sexual harasser.
And even if the lovers are happy, workplace romances can cause problems in the office or on the shop floor. If co-workers feel a love affair results in favoritism,
the relationship may lead to charges of conflict of interest, harassment, retaliation or discrimination...
Read the article. Back to top
Termination meeting should include open door, easy exit
The setting for a termination meeting can be crucial in preventing an unexpected charge—false imprisonment.
To avoid unfounded false imprisonment charges, make certain termination meetings are private, yet open. Allow the employee to sit by the door, with nothing blocking her exit...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
The fine art of sucking up to your boss
 |
|
|
Forget about complimenting the boss' tie or her choice in shoes. And if you're thinking of picking the head honcho up a scone and coffee on your way into work, think again.
Forget about complimenting the boss' tie or her choice in shoes. And if you're thinking of picking the head honcho up a scone and coffee on your way into work, think again. There's an art to sucking up, and if the boss--or your co-workers--can
figure out what you're up to, you're not doing it right. More importantly, it will backfire. Your goal is to develop trust between you and your manager since the projects you work on and whether you get promoted is directly tied to your
relationship with him or her. So while everyone calls it something different, it's key to your success at work. "I call this self-survival," says Faith Ralston, an
organizational leadership coach. "It's not fun to play the game, but if you do it to succeed then you're not just doing it to make the boss feel good." The key is...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
Marketing your way through a recession
|
When economic hard times loom, we tend to retreat to our village." |
|
The signs of an imminent recession are all around us.
The spillover from the subprime mortgage crisis is weakening both consumer confidence and the consumer spending—much of it on credit—that has been buoying the
U.S. economy. Companies should bear eight factors in mind when making their marketing plans for 2008 and 2009...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
Helping co-workers cope with loss
|
If there's something I can do for you, let me know." |
|
When people are hit with a tragic loss and it throws them for a loop, don't believe for a moment that they're leaving their personal lives at the door. Debilitating diseases, divorce or the death of a loved-one are among the most
stressful events anyone can experience. The human mind demands time to process such events, and as much as some believe otherwise, we can't turn that processing on or off at will.
Processing personal grief takes time, and it can take its toll, too. Quite often, the person experiencing grief is distracted. Attention to detail can suffer. Safe work practices can get ignored. Emotions can run the entire spectrum from angry
outbursts to total withdrawal. Perhaps the most egregious error we can commit in the workplace is expecting someone who's recently experienced loss to be "back to normal" within a few days. Frankly, it's an unrealistic - and unreasonable -
expectation. If it's not your loved one that passed away, two weeks after a funeral can seem like a long time. But to the person who experienced the loss, even a month later, "normal life" will probably still feel out of reach. In what might be the
classic work on grief, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's book "On Death and Dying" outlines five phases a person goes through after experiencing the loss of a loved one. [Lots of advice for helping people cope with loss is available. The following
are some tips from a variety of grief counseling resources, mental health practitioners, and writers on the subject. The list is by no means complete, but as
someone who's been on both sides of this issue recently, I see this list as a good starting point...]
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
'Most admired companies' pay less for talent, groom employees better
Hay Group, a global management consulting firm, and FORTUNE magazine released today the eleventh annual rankings on The World’ s Most Admired Companies list and Hay Group also conducts supplemental research each year to identify business
practices that distinguish companies on the lists from all others. This year’ s analysis focused on how these companies manage their employee reward programs, and found that they do a much better job of leveraging their reward investments than
their peers. “We know from previous research that companies on these lists actually manage to pay less for talent than their peers – about 5% less; they tend to have less of a need to hire expensive outside talent for jobs, because they are better at
grooming people internally and retaining employees. The lower costs of recruiting and training new people have a ripple effect across an organization,” said Hay Group Vice President Mel Stark. “In addition, these companies do a better job of rewarding
top performers – delivering the best pay increases to those who are truly deserving and holding the line on pay for marginal performers. Over time, this results in a compounded effect of top performers earning appreciably more than others.” Stark
noted, “These companies also do a much better job of engaging and leveraging their managers to reinforce with employees the total value of what the organization provides, encompassing both the tangible and the intangible nature of rewards.”Other
notable gaps between companies on America’ s Most Admired Companies list and The World’ s Most Admired Companies list and their peers include:
- 79% regularly provide employees with total reward statements, versus 53% of peer group respondents
- 82% regularly...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
|
 |
Meet the bosses who could win the ‘Awful’
When bad boss behavior occurs, it generally happens in an atmosphere in which the law is ignored, company policy is ignored and the line separating good business
practices from boorish conduct—and often unlawful conduct—is crossed. A dose of stupidity, mixed with a larger dose of arrogance—that’s the formula for winning an Awful Award.
Dressed in their Sunday best, everyone leaned forward to hear the words: “The envelope, please.” Anticipation grew. Who would win and who would lose? The room was hushed. The envelope loomed large in the announcer's hand. "And the winner is
..."This could be a scene from the Academy Awards. Or it could be a scene from any courtroom in the country, any day of the week. Actors who receive an Oscar are honored for their behavior on-screen. Employer-defendants who receive a jury verdict
in favor of a plaintiff are also recognized—for their bad behavior in the workplace. Here, in no particular order, are this year's nominees for the Awfuls—my Bad Boss Behavior of the Year Award. First: American Apparel CEO Dov Charney, noted for his
role in the lawsuit Mary Nelson v. American Apparel, Inc., et al. Mr. Charney often referred to women as...
Read the article. Back to top
|
|
|
Forward to a Friend:
Do you have a friend that would like to receive MgmtWatchsm? 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 MgmtWatchsm simply change your status, or send a letter requesting opt-off to: The BusinessWatch Network Privacy Mailbox, 1321, Marblehead, MA. 01945
DISCLAIMER: MgmtWatchsm 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
|
|
|
| |
