Posts Tagged ‘Opinion’

  • 04 Jun

    Posted by
    Ryan Anderson


    Category

    Don’t Allow Standard Expectations to be What Sets Employers Apart

    2

    If I have heard it once, I have heard it a million times: “We are a good employer because of (insert reason here)”.  “Insert reason here” ends up a generic, yet positive reason to why you, as an applicant, should be baited to pursue a career with the Company.

    What most employers fail to consider is what should be your unique selling propositions as an employer and what sets you apart from other organizations. Employers need to rethink the selling points that market you as an ‘employer of choice’. If your best tag line features include things you should naturally be doing, a rewrite is in order:

    “We provide base salary and benefits” – Great…and you should.
    “We are an equal opportunity employer” – You are supposed to be!
    “We offer a comfortable working environment” – Opposed to?

    These types of postulates remind me of banter with mates who want undeserved points for paying their bills on time, taking care of their kids and being a courteous driver.  All fantastic qualities affording you the right to claim you are a decent human being, but nothing that sets you apart from what you should be doing.

    Employers want to believe that their offerings are original and different, when in fact there is little that is separating them from other organizations. Consider identifying benefits that are outside of the norm. Do you offer tuition reimbursements and professional development? Do you offer flexible hours for those who have varying commitments supporting a healthy work/life balance? Do you promote strong workplace values such as public image and ethics?

    Employers need to discontinue marketing themselves with reasons that should be expectations of employees and not as perks. Less credit needs to be taken for the things that employers should be doing naturally, and more for truly enhancing an employee’s experience with an organization.

  • 28 Apr

    Posted by
    Erik Bartz


    Category

    Your Inbox Is Not a Productivity Tool

    2

    How often does this happen to you?  You receive an email asking everyone on a large list a request for a specific piece of information.  Moments later another email comes in with a reply that is of no importance to you.

    Think of all the email you receive on any given day – how much heads straight to the trash bin?  Or should, for those hoarders in the group.

    Email can be a very effective communication tool, but it gets used and abused way too often.  So if your organization is like most, and you’d like to get some control of the Inbox-monster and improve company productivity you might consider some of the following.

    Stop the Reply-All Hell – Only use the reply-all function when EVERY person in the group needs to know your message.  Otherwise consider replying only to the sender and CC a few other relevant people.

    Thank you is Implied – Its not necessary to send ‘Thank you’ emails when someone has replied and finished a request.  Replying to requests is part of our jobs, and your Thank you email just makes for more work – hitting the delete key yet again.

    Filters are your BFF – Filters, otherwise known as rules, are a tremendously valuable tool to sort through your emails and organize them where they need to go.  Subscribe to a newsletter?  Send them automatically to a newsletter folder to keep them out of your inbox.  This gives you clarity in your inbox, and a single place to click when you have the time to catch up. (BFF = best friend forever)

    Practice Inbox Zero – Become an Inbox Master by filtering, processing archiving and deleting emails with passionate zeal.  Got a thank you email, hit delete.  Newsletter gets filtered to a folder for later.  Process short requests right away and banish it from your inbox.  Head over to 43folders.com to learn more about this email philosophy.

    Outlook is not Your Boss – Change the settings to check for new message every 30-60 minutes or more.  Having email constantly coming in and interrupting your work is a total productivity-killer.  Push the envelop on this and see how far you can go – perhaps to scheduling yourself limited time per day to process email.

    We can Re-build It – Office communication that is, can be rebooted using alternative tools that offer better ways of working and communicating in a group.  Here are a few ideas:

    • A group messaging tool, such as Campfire, allows an always-on ‘chatroom’ for everyone on the team to communicate and share information.  The conversations are archived and searchable, including any documents shared – which is really powerful when new people join the team.  They can just search for the documents instead of emailing a request.  Check out how one company used Campfire to not only tame the email beast, but also reduce the frequency of meetings.
    • Web-based project management tools are a great way to work together in a team, with a central source of information fueling the team.  Tools like this are especially useful to teams spread across time zones, or offices.

    This is just a short list of ideas – what does your company do to help the flow of communication and improve productivity?

  • 01 Apr

    Posted by
    Michelle Ventrella


    Category

    This Social Media Thing

    4

    As my maternity leave ended and I prepared to return to work (not that being on maternity leave is a total picnic – nobody spits up on me at work, or emotionally manipulates me into playing “here comes the airplane” at 3am) – I anticipated a lot of change.

    Indeed, everything from management strategy to recruiting tactics to employment legislation has shifted over the last year, and all of this change was naturally bringing with it new approaches, strategies and understanding.

    And frankly, after a year of talking in my “mommy voice” and discovering that I have a disappointing and very large capacity for hating children’s television — yeah, I’ll send Dora on a voyage of exploration; as long as it’s one way! – I welcomed the opportunity to encounter the new, changed landscape of work.

    But…what I didn’t realize, was how much technology – and in particular social media — has influenced the workplace in so many different ways.

    Twitter, Rypple, LinkedIn, blogging, “digg”ing things, Facebook as a recruitment tool, online surveys through Wufoo (I can’t believe I just typed that). These are my new social media friends. They’re here to stay. And now it’s up to me – for the first time in my career – to play catch-up with workplace technology and learn how I fit into this new social media world at work.

    Honestly, it’s a bit of a daunting task. Almost as daunting as dodging mashed carrot from your son who just won’t eat WHY WON’T HE EAT I MEAN I’M TRYING TO FEED HIM AND WHAT MORE CAN I DO WILL YOU PLEASE EAT THE CARROTS PLEASE CAN WE MAKE A DEAL HERE, HOW ABOUT SOME DORA…

    (Sorry. That happens every now and then. I’m sure it will pass.)

    The point is, as strange as some of these social media tools and terms may seem (wufoo?),they can also be overwhelming. There’s a lot to learn. There’s a lot to take in. There’s a lot to make sense of.

    However, just as quickly as I’m learning to have meetings on dim dim, I’m also learning that these social tools are actually fun, helpful and surprisingly easy to use – once you get the hang of it, and simply stop fighting the movement.  I feel ridiculous saying wufoo but it’s a great tool and it makes my job easier.

    So if you’re finding the whole social media blitz overwhelming, my advice to you is to take a deep breath, go at your own pace, ask for help when you need it, and take it one day at a time.

    Heck. If I can master the fine art of mashed carrot dodging, I’ll OWN this social media thing in no time.

  • 18 Nov

    Posted by
    Pam Mihailoff


    Category

    Revisiting your Mission Statement

    0

    As an HR Consultant for the last 13 years, I’ve been exposed to a diverse group of organizations, across many different industries and in those years I’ve seen A LOT of mission statements.  They usually get framed and posted on the wall somewhere in Reception.  What is interesting is that very few of those mission statements were memorable to me – it was rare to see a statement that truly defined, in a clear and concise way, the company’s purpose and end-state goal.  Often the statements I read sounded all too similar, i.e.  “To be the best in the industry,” “To continually provide exceptional customer service to our valued customers,” and “To be flexible to our clients ever changing needs.”  It seems to me these declarations were more of a marketing statement than a mission statement.

    Illustration by Patrick Leger

    Illustration by Patrick Leger

    I recently came across a fantastic article entitled “How to Write A Mission Statement that isn’t Dumb” that contains wonderful insights on writing a Mission Statement that has true value.  What I learned from this article, is the most effective mission statements are:

    1. simple
    2. quantify the organization’s goal
    3. completely void of meaningless statements like “To strive towards excellence”

    If you develop a mission statement that EVERY employee can remember and understand, they could use it as a guiding tool when making every day decisions in their job.

    You may have heard this famous story about President Kennedy that exemplifies my point. During a visit to the NASA space center in 1962, President Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom.  He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man and said, “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?”

    The janitor responded, “I’m helping put a man on the moon, Mr. President.”

    How’s that for simple, goal-oriented and completely void of meaningless statements?

    Now the bigger question – have you read your mission statement lately?

  • 26 Oct

    Posted by
    Erik Bartz


    Category

    Practice the ‘puppy theory’

    1

    The HR Fishbowl wrote an interesting piece titled, “Annual Reviews…Who Needs Them?”  It explores the perspective shared by Carol Bartz in a New York Times article regarding annual performance reviews and her general dislike for them.

    I have the puppy theory. When the puppy pees on the carpet, you say something right then because you don’t say six months later, “Remember that day, January 12th, when you peed on the carpet?” That doesn’t make any sense. “This is what’s on my mind. This is quick feedback.” And then I’m on to the next thing.

    If I had my way I wouldn’t do annual reviews, if I felt that everybody would be more honest about positive and negative feedback along the way. I think the annual review process is so antiquated. I almost would rather ask each employee to tell us if they’ve had a meaningful conversation with their manager this quarter. Yes or no. And if they say no, they ought to have one. I don’t even need to know what it is. But if you viewed it as meaningful, then that’s all that counts.

    Its an interesting perspective on the importance of feedback and the inefficiency of the annual performance review.  Perhaps its time not just to review your annual reviews, but the communication between managers and their staff.

  • 23 Dec

    Posted by
    scooper


    Category

    How much Resignation Notice is enough?

    0

    While Ontario Employment Standards requires Employers to provide employees with “Reasonable Notice” when terminating the employment relationship “without just cause”, there is no such statutory requirement for Employees to provide Notice should they wish to do the same.   

     

    Conventional wisdom has – at least up until now – provided that 2 weeks of Resignation Notice is appropriate and necessary if one wished to leave an Employer on relatively good terms.  

    What few people know is that here is a Common Law (laws developed in the Courts) obligation for an Employee to provide his/her Employer with Reasonable Notice of their intent to resign.  The Reasonable Notice is predicated upon the following:

     

    1. The degree of specialization and scarcity of the skill and/or knowledge held by the departing Employee relative to the labour market, and how vulnerable a position the Employer would be left in as a result of an Employee’s hasty departure.
    2. The length of time it would reasonably take for the Employer to find a suitable replacement
    3. The Employee’s contractual obligation provided though an Employment Agreement or a Company Policy.

     

    Failing to provide such reasonable notice of resignation has been coined “Wrongful Resignation” and this type of claim is making its way into the Courts and winning.  The damages awarded to Employers have typically been limited to actual costs incurred as a result of an Employee’s early departure – such as lost business, overtime costs, etc.   However the savings realized by not having to pay the ex-employee’s salary and benefits is deducted from this total when calculating the award.  It is interesting to note that where Employees provide reasonable resignation notice, the Employer may still turn around and ask them to leave immediately.  In this case, the Employer is obligated to pay the now-terminated Employee the lesser of Statutory Notice of Termination without cause, and the amount of Resignation Notice provided by the departing Employee.

     

    There are relatively few Employers pursuing claims for Wrongful Resignation, but in an ever tightening labour market we would expect this trend to increase as Star Employees are lured away by other Employers offering more attractive Employment situations.   Those wanting to avoid becoming the target of such a claim are well advised to take the safe route and consider the Notice factors listed above in determining an appropriate length of resignation notice.  At the very least, remember that it is a small world, and the boss whose foot you step on today might be connected to hand that you need to sign your paycheck or sales order next year.   
    - S. Cooper
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