Thursday, May 27, 2010

Employee morale on the wane as organisations overstretch staff

That the economic recession is affecting businesses and the general workforce is no surprise, given that the world has become a global village, in a manner of speaking. Today’s mantra is re-engineering, restructuring, downsizing, rightsizing and retrenchment, among others. These are different words that express one concept: cutting down on staff strength.

A recent survey however provides an intriguing insight into the many ways the economic downturn is shaping employees’ attitude to work. Nowadays, it has been discovered that employees’ morale and loyalty can no longer be trusted, as they seem to be on the wane on a daily basis. In Nigeria, findings show that the global economic recession and attendant reforms, especially in the financial services sector have not only resulted in the disengagement of some employees in many organisations but spurred some feeling of insecurity and dissatisfaction among those in active employment

For the complete article, go to:

Employee morale on the wane as organisations overstretch staff - latest news, breaking news, business, finance analysis, comments and views from Nigeria :: Businessday

Monday, May 24, 2010

Social networking critical to employee satisfaction - 24 May 2010 - Computing

Eight out of 10 employees claim that being trusted to manage their own time and the internet as they wish is more important than pay.

Additionally, a fifth (21 per cent) of employees would turn down a job if it did not allow them access to social networking sites or personal email during work time, according to a survey carried out by software specialists Clearswift.

“This is quite shocking, especially when you consider the recent financial meltdown and the fact that unemployment is still so high,” commented Clearswift chief operating officer Andrew Wyatt.

He said that the trend is most evident among 25 to 35-year olds, a group that has grown up using IT and the internet from a young age.

See more at:

Social networking critical to employee satisfaction - 24 May 2010 - Computing

Thursday, May 20, 2010

The employees you’re most likely to lose when the economy brightens | HR Morning | Your daily dose of HR

New research reveals which employees you’re most likely to lose as the job market loosens.

A Leadership Pulse Study from HR software firm eePulse, Inc. offers four criteria to pinpoint the workers that’ll be  most susceptible to poaching by your competitors. See how many of them could apply to your situation:

  • Employees between 41 and 45
  • IT and marketing staffers
  • People at the director and manager/supervisor levels, and
  • Employees at firms whose performance is average or below average in comparison to industry peers.

The industries likely to see the biggest poaching push: health care, social services, information services and retail.

For more. go to:

The employees you’re most likely to lose when the economy brightens | HR Morning | Your daily dose of HR

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

I Interviewed To Be Google's "Head Of Social" And It Was Terrible

Recently, word broke that Google is looking for a new "head of social."

A couple months back, Google reached out to a source of ours in the industry for the job.

Curious "to see what the famous Google interview process was like," our guy told Google he'd talk to them about the job.

In the end, he says the interview process "was not handled well at all."

For the full account of the interview process, read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/i-interviewed-to-be-googles-head-of-social-and-it-was-terrible-2010-5#ixzz0oK6rqgQ2

I Interviewed To Be Google's "Head Of Social" And It Was Terrible

Costs, Causes and Correction of Conflict

Employees and managers who know how to tackle work-related conflict in an effective manner can save time, energy and frustration, experts say. And they might even save their organizations a little money.

The authors of the New York Times best-selling book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High (McGraw-Hill, 2002) conducted an online poll in March 2010 with the help of VitalSmarts, an organizational performance consultancy, in an effort to quantify the costs of conflict.

Respondents were asked how long it takes to have a crucial conversation—a discussion among two or more people where “stakes are high, opinions vary and emotions run strong.” A third of the 656 North American respondents said such conversations take a half an hour or less, while 29 percent said they take up to an hour and 22 percent said they take one to two hours.

But many workers put off such conversations in an effort to avoid further conflict.

For the complete article, go to:

Costs, Causes and Correction of Conflict

Promoting Volunteerism Can Reap Rewards for Employers

Volunteerism is part of the corporate bone and sinew at Rosen Hotels & Resorts in Orlando, where employees can mentor students as e-pals electronically, assist with the local YMCA’s annual Healthy Kids Day and earn monetary donations to organizations where they volunteer.

The CEO at MindWorks Multimedia Inc.—an interactive multimedia video production company in Durham, N.C.—volunteers in the community and pays his 18 employees to contribute eight hours each month to community organizations they believe in. In 2009, employees volunteered more than 2,500 hours. That’s in addition to thousands of dollars in pro bono work and charitable donations the company makes.

And at Ohio-based public accounting firm Rea & Associates Inc., the company’s values statement reminds employees they are company ambassadors and exhorts each to be “a person of influence,” to “be a Rea ambassador,” and to “invest in your family, your community and your future.”

HR encourages and helps facilitate employee volunteerism; employees are recognized annually with a ‘volunteer of the year’ award. The winner receives money and a plaque; runners-up receive money. Rewarding volunteerism is a practice Rea continued during the soured economy, said HR director Pat Porter, because it recognizes that contributing to the community creates goodwill and develops a person personally and professionally.

For the full SHRM article, go to:

Promoting Volunteerism Can Reap Rewards for Employers

Monday, May 17, 2010

The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Employee Engagement

Employers are increasingly asking their employees to “do more with less.” Yet countless studies warn that disengaged employees won’t deliver peak performance. Understanding what engagement is all about—and why it matters—is a good place to start.

Engagement is defined by benefits consultancy Watson Wyatt as a combination of commitment—the motivation employees have to help the organization succeed—and line of sight—the focus and direction employees need—to know what to do to make the organization successful.

To see how ideas can be translated into action, follow the link:

The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Employee Engagement

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Building Employee Engagement With Internal Social Networks by Intranet Insider Blogs on Communitelligence

Employees want to connect with each other, and more importantly, they want to connect with the company and senior management. A study by Towers Perrin found that employees overwhelmingly want to know “that leadership is interested in them.”

Social media on the corporate intranet (Intranet 2.0) presents a unique opportunity for all employees at all levels and geographies to better connect, and share information and knowledge they might not otherwise share or learn. In fact, distance – both geographical and intellectual – between these connections is often significant with little if any filtering from one side to the next; an information gap that is not easily bridged in larger, dispersed organizations. For example, the Towers Perrion study also found that:

  • 43% of employees do not feel they know enough about their own customers
  • 65% of employees do not feel they know enough about the competition to be fully effective
  • Only 39% of employees feel they are informed about the differences between their company’s products and the competition

Social networking allows employees to connect with relevant or related individuals by subject matter, job description, geographic location, and by personal networks to help bridge this information gap. In fact, for those social media doubting-Thomases that question the value of Intranet 2.0, there are increasingly more numbers that quantify the measured value:

  • 52% of organizations using Web 2.0 achieved Best- in-Class performance (5% didn’t) (Aberdeen Group)‏
  • Companies using Web 2.0 tools achieved 18% increase in engagement (1% of those that didn’t) (Aberdeen Group)‏
  • Sabre has already attributed $500k in savings to their employee social networking tool
  • Cisco attributes $millions in savings to their wikis

Leading organizations that understand the power of Intranet 2.0 are blazing some incredible trails. Early adopters are finding positive business results by helping employees connect through "internal Facebooks." By effectively harnessing these new networks, organizations are seeing positive impacts on internal brand building, as well as employee engagement, satisfaction and motivation -- which leads to higher levels of productivity, revenue, and profit.

But the world of the internal social network is the opposite of command & control. That said, reasonable guidelines, a group of informal influencers, and a posse of community managers who help keep the dialog lively and the network on track.

Building Employee Engagement With Internal Social Networks by Intranet Insider Blogs on Communitelligence

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Happy Employees Make Thriving Companies - Entrepreneur.com

Create programs that promote a healthy work-life balance and enrich your employees' lives.

Fifty years ago, if you said you wanted better work-life balance, most managers would have smiled and assumed that meant you wanted to work until the balance of your life was over. Fortunately, times have changed. The best employers strive to help workers strike the right balance between work and enjoying life away from the office so they are re-energized when they return each day.
Every manager or business owner must ask, “Do my employees like coming to work or is work a repressive grind that they can’t wait to get away from, unwilling to spend an extra minute at work?”
Helping employees balance work and life has been a hot topic for years. Overlooking this need can cost business owners productivity, increased turnover, morale and--according to the Mayo Clinic--even contribute to poor employee health.

For the complete article and more ways to make your workplace less like work and more like a club that employees want to be part of, follow the link below:

Happy Employees Make Thriving Companies - Entrepreneur.com

Monday, May 10, 2010

Raising Engagement

A vast majority of employees say they are disengaged or not engaged, creating an unproductive—or, worse, toxic—work environment.
The August 2009 Gallup Employee Engagement Index reported that only 33 percent of workers are engaged in their jobs, 49 percent are not engaged, and 18 percent are actively disengaged. The Gallup Organization defines the categories as follows:
Engaged employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward.
Non-engaged employees have essentially “checked out.” They sleepwalk through workdays. They put in time but don’t approach their work with energy or passion.
Actively disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what engaged co-workers accomplish.
Gallup researchers, who base the Employee Engagement Index on a survey of nearly 42,000 randomly selected adults, estimate that disengaged workers cost U.S. businesses as much as $350 billion a year.
While troubling, these figures could also be viewed as an opportunity to re-engage a large percentage of disengaged workers—and reap financial benefits. Other research shows that companies with highly engaged employees perform better: Gallup’s 2009 analysis of 199 surveys found that business units scoring in the top half on employee engagement double their odds of delivering high performance compared to those in the bottom half. Those at the 99th percentile are nearly five times more likely to deliver high performance than those at the 1st percentile.
In a subsequent study in January of this year, Gallup researchers found that companies in the top 10 percent on employee engagement bested their competition by 72 percent in earnings per share during 2007-08. For companies that scored beneath the top quartile, earnings fell 9.4 percent below their competition.
And in a September 2009 study of 50 multinational companies, the London office of Towers Perrin, now Towers Watson, documented the impact of engagement on financial performance. The report found that during a span of 12 months, companies with high levels of engagement outperformed those with less-engaged employees in operating income, net income growth rate and earnings per share growth rate.
“Our research shows that the connection between employee engagement and business performance is [a stronger] indicator than any other measure of employee attitude and business performance,” explains Julie Gebauer, managing director at Towers Watson in New York. It “makes a difference in terms of dollars and cents.”
Reports such as these have piqued the interest of executives seeking to move the needle of engagement in their favor. HR professionals are now bombarded with a multitude of sales pitches for survey tools, models, books and technology—all promising to deliver improved employee engagement.
Yet “Employee engagement is not an expensive undertaking,” says David Zinger, a consultant based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

To read the complete article on cutting through the hot air about engagement to find factors that motivate your employees, follow the link below:

Raising Engagement

Friday, May 7, 2010

Proper Job Fit Ensures Productive Employees

Capability refers to the skills, tools and experience that a person needs in order to successfully perform her job. When any of these factors are missing, there is an increased chance that the employee will underperform. It isn't uncommon for hiring professionals to overlook these basic factors, especially if a candidate has solid academic credentials and comes across as intelligent and confident in a job interview. Furthermore, it's no secret that most candidates exaggerate their abilities on their resumes and job applications.


Diagnostics that help you identify if an underperforming employee has adequate capability:


Do you know what skills are needed to perform the job and whether the employee possesses those skills? If she doesn't possess the necessary skills, how will you help her acquire them, and how long do you expect that process to take? Skills training takes time and money, and results are never guaranteed unless there is adequate commitment from both the manager and the employee. It's in everyone's best interest for the manager to set appropriate expectations for the employee from the beginning. This is especially true if the job requires special technical capabilities.


Read more: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Proper-Job-Fit-Ensures-Productive-Employees/1110777#ixzz0nGirMWIp
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution No Derivatives

Proper Job Fit Ensures Productive Employees

Employee Engagement - Getting Your People Interested In Their Jobs

Having qualified employees is important to your business. Of course, it doesn't matter how qualified those people are in the long run if they aren't interested in their careers and how they affect the company. The goal of employee engagement is to get them thinking about something beyond their work, their abilities, and the bigger picture in what they do. When people know the common goal of the company and are aware of how their job directly affects that goal, they will be much more motivated to succeed and willing to help you create a success model for your company to follow.
Getting people interested in their positions isn't difficult. In most cases, all that you really need to do is show them that what they do goes well beyond just their task at hand at the end of the day. Give people a chance to see how they affect the company on a bigger level than they might realize. This will be a good step toward creating effective employee engagement in the workplace. When people know that their jobs really matter, they're going to be much more likely to be interested in what they do and doing a good job because it affects the entire company.


Read more: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Employee-Engagement---Getting-Your-People-Interested-In-Their-Jobs-----/1073407#ixzz0nGeD34jI
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution No Derivatives

Employee Engagement - Getting Your People Interested In Their Jobs

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Engage your staff to beat recession - Emirates Business 24|7

As competition warms up, firms are trying to engage staff.

As businesses prepare to face the intense post-recession competition, more firms in the region are focusing on employee engagement by improving leadership and staff management capabilities.

According to those in the recruitment and human performance improvement business this is because performance goes hand in hand with fulfillment.

"Performance alone is not sustainable in organizations anymore," Stephan Melchior, Managing Director and Consultant of Wilson Learning, told Emirates Business. "We need people that invest a high level of energy into their jobs to execute business strategy, be innovative, customer-focused, and focus on implementation. People with a high level of job fulfillment work out of passions and deliver continuously high performance in their positions."

Sudeshna Mukherjee, General Manager at careers portal Careertunity.com, added: "The fallacy in the management circles is to focus on performance and managers tend to react to those, while they miss out on the element of fulfillment. In many cases, performance is affected due to lack of fulfillment and an effective leader is the one who can identify these factors and work on those with their team members."

There are many challenges in driving employee engagement as the main driver for that is usually the line manager and how they motivate their staff generally depends on their leadership skills as well as the organizational culture, the experts said.

For the complete article on engaging your staff to beat recession, click on the link below:

Engage your staff to beat recession - Emirates Business 24|7