Are your Employees Engaged at Work?

Employee engagement, also called work engagement is a business management concept. An "engaged employee" is one who is fully involved and enthusiastic about, his or her work, and thus will act in a way that furthers their organization's interests. An employee’s work place engagement can be measured to the degree of an employee's positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, to fellow colleagues and the organization in which profoundly influences their willingness to learn & perform at work.

Why is employee engagement so important in today’s climate? It’s more important than ever because it’s a function of what’s called “Knowledge-based economy” focusing on lean operations and ROI (return on investment). We are experiencing faster-changing work environments and employee emphasis on personal fulfillment and as leaders we must learn to enable employees and channel their efforts on productivity, job performance, personal alignment and ensuring availability of positive resources. Pay attention to the indicators of how you measure your companies Human Capital. These indicators will provide your organization with an accurate profile of its workforce effectiveness and employee engagement. Paying attention now will pay off in the long run.

Best Practice for New Employee "Onboarding"

By Commongood Careers

Imagine it’s your first day at a new job. You arrive at an office where no one seems to be expecting you. After locating your workstation, you realize that no one has shown you how to log into your computer or get an outside line on your phone. You do not have a clear idea of what you are expected to do first in your new job. Your supervisor is nowhere to be found, and you are starting to question your decision to accept this position.

As the above scenario suggests, an organization never gets a second chance to make a first impression with its new hires. Investing in employee on-boarding ensures that an organization is prepared for and committed to positioning its new hires for success in their roles.

Effective employee on-boarding serves three interrelated purposes. First, it ensures that the new hire feels welcomed, comfortable, prepared, and supported. In turn, this leads to the new hire’s ability to make an impact within the organization, both immediately and over time. Finally, employee success leads to satisfaction and retention, which allows the organization to continue to meet its mission.

In order to position a new hire for success, it is important that an organization prepares in advance and continues to support a new hire throughout the first several months (and beyond). This article explores some established best practices for employee on-boarding procedures.

Before the First Day

Preparing for a new hire’s start date is the first step in ensuring effective on-boarding. Start by completing an agenda for the first week on the job. As part of the agenda, schedule times for the new hire to meet with key staff members.

Provide staff members with the new employee’s resume and job description, and advise them to follow a meeting format that includes sharing a description of their own position, how their role interacts with that of the new hire, and how they might expect to work together in the future.

This is also a good time to assign a mentor or buddy to the new hire as an immediate resource for any questions, help them build a network, educate them on resources, and give key information about organizational culture and goals.

Next, create a comfortable workstation for the new hire. Stock his or her workstation with the tools needed to hit the ground running, such as paper, pens, computer, phone, keys, and business cards. Make sure that voicemail and email accounts are set up. Leave a copy of an organization chart, staff list and phone directory on the new hire’s desk. If your organization has an employee handbook, leave this on the desk as well, along with all administrative forms such as employment, direct deposit, and benefits so that they will be ready to be completed on day one.

To really impress new hires on their first day, add any branded collateral that you can spare such as a logo backpack, hat, pen, tee-shirt or mug to your new hire’s new desk.

Finally, make sure to communicate with your new hire before the first day to confirm logistics such as driving directions, parking, public transportation, expected arrival time, dress code, plans for lunch on the first day, person to ask for on arrival, etc.

The First Day

The first day of a new job can rattle the nerves of even the most experienced professional. The better prepared you are to welcome the new hire on his or her first day, the easier this transition will be for everyone.

Schedule a particular staff member to be available to greet the new employee and give an office tour. During the office tour, introduce the new hire to all staff members as well as pointing out the copy machine, mail room, employee mailboxes, lunch room, and restrooms. Remember that new hires are asked to absorb a lot of information in a short amount of time, so encourage them to take notes and expect that they will have questions about these things later.

Balance the first day schedule between orientation, meetings, and less formal gatherings. If possible, arrange for the new hire to be treated to lunch on the first day by a group of staff members.

Schedule a meeting with the employee’s supervisor for the first afternoon. During this meeting, the supervisor should review the responsibilities of the position and give an overview of what the first 30-90 days in the position will look like.

The First Week

While the first day entails presenting basic information to the new hire, the first week focuses on setting expectations and developing relationships with staff, particularly the supervisor of and any direct reports to the new hire.

During the first week, the supervisor and new hire should meet to discuss desired management style and information about typical processes, such as how decisions are made. This is also the time to begin the most important aspect of on-boarding, which is setting expectations about deliverables, timelines and performance metrics. It is essential that such plans and goals be clearly communicated at the outset of the relationship in order to position a new hire for success in his or her role. The two most common errors when on-boarding new employees are: (1) expecting higher performance and faster learning curves than is reasonable, and (2) leaving employees to wonder what they should be doing and what is expected of them by their new managers.

If the hire is in a supervisory role, also ensure that he or she meets with any direct reports one-on-one and as a group within the first week. These meetings will help build the new team and allow the new hire to get a sense of the work style of each team member.

It is also important for the new hire to interact with other staff members who may not be on his or her immediate team. Schedule at least one meeting per day with different staff members. This gives the new hire time to learn about the whole organization from many different perspectives and to create new relationships with key staff members.

In addition to interacting with internal staff, if it is appropriate for their role, ensure that the new hire is scheduled to meet in person with any necessary partners, funders, Board members or other constituents within the first month. Encourage new hires to notify their personal and professional contacts of their new role, thereby providing a marketing opportunity for your organization.

The First Three Months and Beyond

The output expectation for the first week should be nominal so that the time can be most effectively used for learning and settling in. During the first month, it is traditional to expect modest deliverables in which the new hire can learn by doing and be positioned for success and confidence building. By the end of the first three months, the new employee should be getting up to speed and should be expected to be evaluated on a normal workload.

After 90 days, have the supervisor provide formal feedback on the new hire’s performance, while also soliciting feedback from the employee. Depending on the organizational culture and policies, this meeting could involve a representative of the human resources department. During this meeting, any issues should be addressed and all parties should be confident that the new hire is poised for success in their role.

Remember to build opportunities for feedback into the on-boarding process. Encourage the new hire to note any ideas that they have for improving the operations, strategy, or culture of the organization. The new hire may or may not feel comfortable sharing these immediately, but it is important that the organization be open to the impressions of someone with fresh eyes.

Throughout the first three months, stay mindful of opportunities to integrate new hires into their work groups and into the organization as a whole.

Conclusion

Although all of these steps require an investment of time and resources, it is an investment whose cost / benefit analysis is clear. The potential downsides of failing to effectively on-board an employee include that individual’s failure in the role, potential embarrassment to the organization, resignation or termination, and a new hiring process with an estimated total expense to the organization of three times the position’s annual salary. On the positive side, implienting these suggestions will increase employee satisfaction, speed of getting to full performance levels, quality of ultimate performance, and long-term retention in the role. Effective on-boarding is also a fantastic way to show all of your employees that you value their happiness and want them to succeed.

This article was written by Commongood Careers and is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs.

For more information about nonprofit and socially entrepreneurial careers, visit Commongood Careers at http://www.cgcareers.org.

Four Ideas to re-engineer your Human Resource Practices

How much do you have in your budget? You’re not alone. Corporate belts are cinching all across America. While a few unfortunate companies are struggling for survival itself, nearly all organizations are looking for ways to become leaner. The solution however, isn’t as simple as cutting HR budgets. The challenges the HR professional faces today are more complex: maintaining productivity while reducing staff, for one. A company can be facing contraction and experiencing growing pains, at the same time. These challenges force most leadership to look beyond simple budget and staff reductions to re-engineer its human resource practices. So in short you are not alone. Across the HR field, companies are finding creative ways to “do more with less”. Following are four simple ideas you can use to help you re-engineer your Human Resource department:

1) Analyze Your HR Practices
2)Develop a Strategic HR Plan
3)Embrace Technology
4)Leverage Your Resources

Analyze Your HR Practices - Everyone gets stuck in a rut. You are so busy putting out fires that you have little time to think about the big picture or the smaller details. Reach out for another pair of eyes to give you a fresh perspective. One valuable tool to help you gain insight is an HR audit. Find an HR expert to review and evaluate your company’s HR operations, top to bottom. An audit is an extensive examination of a company’s systems and practices.

What’s on the list for an HR audit? These areas are likely suspects:

Recordkeeping
Compliance
Salary and Compensation
Benefits
Professional Development and Training
Performance and Recognition
Recruiting and Retention
Safety and Health
Culture
With a successful audit, you’ll uncover those compliance risks that can derail an organization, learn how your company’s practices compare to industry leaders and get a host of new ideas to improve your results.

Develop a Strategic HR Plan - You want senior leadership to understand that HR brings value beyond the basic hiring and firing functions. A strategic HR plan aligns the department’s goals with those of the organization. Any major corporate actions are sure to have an impact on HR. When a regional service firm created a 5-year strategic plan to expand its single-state presence to the entire Midwest through a series of acquisitions, the firm’s HR executive created a plan to support those goals. She focused on learning the employment laws in the new states, securing regional benefit brokers and creating step-by-step processes to integrate the acquired staff members.

Embrace Technology - Technology can streamline HR workflow, provide communication and accessibility to a non-centralized workforce and allow your staff greater flexibility. Some great technological time-savers: web-based payroll and HR Management System applications, employee intranets and electronic applicant tracking systems. The HR manager at an 160-person, five office company, partnered with the IT department to create a simple intranet-based tool for employees to make annual benefit selections.

Leverage Your Resources - This concept is about accomplishing HR objectives, especially those strategic goals, more efficiently. Break free of traditional practices. Rather than hiring a new staff member to fill a long-term but ultimately temporary need, consider alternate forms of employment, such as payrolling. Payrolling is the practice of referring a contingent worker to a staffing vendor or payrolling provider. The vendor acts as the employer of record, responsible for employer taxes, payroll, and all legal matters pertaining to employing workers, thereby reducing contingent workforce costs.

Your company’s employees can be an invaluable resource, too. When Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston challenged the hospital’s staff to volunteer creative cost-saving ideas, he received hundreds of suggestions. Putting some of those ideas into practice, BIDMC was able to save enough expenses to reduce necessary layoffs from 600 to 150.

Don’t overlook the importance of employee morale during an uncertain economy. Enterprising HR departments can give employees valuable benefits, without blowing the budget. For example, companies may offers its staffers bimonthly brown bag lunch-time enrichment events, led by local vendors, experts and service providers. These vendors deliver their programs at no or nominal charge to the company. Topics can be work-related subjects such as time management and presentation skills, or take a personal bent, such as choosing a workout program or creating a will.

Submission by www.kjgrouphrconsulting.com

The Interview - The Positive Approach to Tough Questions

The following are some of the most commonly-asked interview questions, along with suggested approaches for answers. It is important that job candidates practice these responses until they are able to handle all the questions effectively.

Why do you want to work here? How can you help our company? Why should we be interested in you?
Answer is always based on information you’ve researched in advance about the company and their needs.

If you were choosing someone for this job, what kind of person would you select?
Answer is to generally state your own general qualifications, without being too “obvious.” Leave out the details.

If you could have any job, which one would you want at this company?
Answer has to do with the most general description of the job – NOT A SPECIFIC TITLE.

What weaknesses do you have for this job?
TRAP QUESTION. Never state anything negative! Answer is to ponder for a while and then state that you can’t think of any weaknesses that would compromise your performance at this job; or negatively impact your performance of the job’s responsibilities.

What do you expect to get in this job that you haven’t gotten in you current/previous job?
TRAP QUESTION. Do not say anything negative. State that your current/previous jobs have met or exceeded your expectations. With the new position you would hope to have broader responsibilities and make greater contributions.

What do you see as your future here?
I would expect to be contributing at higher levels and have increased responsibility over time.

Are you considering other positions at this time?
TRAP QUESTION. Simply say “yes.”

How does this opportunity compare?
From what I’ve heard so far, very favorably … and I would like to learn more.

What other companies/opportunities are you looking at now?
As I’m sure you can appreciate, I’m not at liberty to say as I am still in discussions with these companies. I need to protect their privacy, as I would for your company under similar circumstances.

What are your short and long term goals?
Short range: To secure an appropriate new position where I can apply my skills and experience to increase the company’s productivity and profitability.
Long range: Assume more responsibility and make greater contributions over time for my employer.

What motivates you?
Focus the answer on your core values, and also on the values and priorities of the company you are interviewing with (which you should have identified through your preliminary research).

What have you done to improve yourself during the last year?
Talk about professional development, training programs, educational curricula, study in your field, on-the-job training, skill-building, relevant books you’ve read, etc.

How do you spend your spare time?
Say something inoffensive, apolitical and innocuous. (reading, exercise, travel, home projects, gardening, family activities, home projects, etc.)

Tell me about your health.
My health is excellent.

If you could re-live your last 15 years, what changes would you make?
Nothing is perfect, but overall I would say that I’m quite satisfied with the way my life and career have developed – so I wouldn’t make any significant changes.

Tell me about your greatest achievement/disappointment in your life.
Give one personal example (like meeting your spouse and getting married; putting yourself through college and graduate school; or saving-up to buy your first house, etc.). Then give your best professional accomplishment story. As for the disappointment, give an answer similar to the one above, implying that “overall, I would say that I’m quite satisfied with the way my life and career have been developing, so I really can’t think of any major disappointments.”

What did you like best/least about your last job?
TRAP QUESTION. Never state anything negative! Explain what you liked best. Then say that while every job has its challenges, you have been fortunate enough to learn and grow professionally in each of the positions you have held.

In your last position, how much of the work did you do on your own, and how much as part of a team? Which did you enjoy more?
Talk in terms of your flexibility and adaptability – your ability to work in whatever mode seems appropriate to the situation. Make it clear that you have been equally effective in teams or working independently, as each case demanded. You enjoy both; it’s more about what will work best for the project and the company at that time.

What are some of the more difficult problems you have encountered in your past jobs? How did you solve them?
Tell two or more pre-prepared accomplishment stories. Keep it POSITIVE!

Did you ever make suggestions to senior management? What happened?
Say “yes.” Tell some accomplishment stories and results, in which you positively influenced senior management.

At your previous job(s), what did you think management could have done to make you function more effectively as an employee?
TRAP QUESTION. Never state anything negative! Say that the employer was very good in providing resources and support to your position, and that you have no complaints about this.

What has kept you from progressing faster and farther in your career?
TRAP QUESTION. Never state anything negative! State: “I don’t know what could have given you the impression that I am dissatisfied with the progress and pace of my career. I am quite satisfied with where my career is at this point in my life. However, I am ready to take on greater challenges.”

What else should we know about you?
Tell one or two more of your best accomplishment stories. You can also repeat how well-suited you think you are for the opportunity, and how interested you are in the job.

Tell me about the best/worst boss you’ve ever had.
TRAP QUESTION: Never state anything negative! Say that while every boss has been different, you have worked productively with, and learned something from, each one. (Be prepared to give some examples of what you have learned.)

Everybody likes to criticize. What do people criticize about you?
TRAP QUESTION. Never state anything negative! Say that you can’t think of any criticisms you have received from colleagues on the job. Of course, there have been areas for development – such as when your supervisors would have given you your “employee review,” and they might have made a suggestion for improvement. State that you have always taken these kinds of suggestions seriously and have taken steps to make the improvements that were requested, and that this has made you stronger as a professional. (State at least one example).

Everyone has pet peeves. What are yours?
TRAP QUESTION. Never state anything negative! Turn this question around, by talking about your high professional standards. Your only “pet peeves” are with yourself – pushing yourself hard and not accepting mediocrity, for example – or how you are always striving to reach your full potential on the job, etc.

What is your leadership style?
Talk in terms of your flexibility and adaptability – your ability to lead in whatever mode seems appropriate to the situation. Explain that it’s more about what approach will work best for the project and the company at that time. Give an example or two, demonstrating different leadership styles, using your accomplishment stories.

Are you geographically mobile? (or) Are you willing to put in a lot of extra time?
Ask for clarification – what exactly does the interviewer mean? Then, according to their answer, either say, “that would be no problem at all,” or tell them “you’d like to give it some thought and get back to them within 24 hours.”

You don’t have the experience/background for this position. How could you handle it?
Say you’re confused by their comment, that you’re quite confident that you DO have the experience and background for this position, and that you’re a very strong match for the responsibilities. Ask what specifically concerns them about your background; what’s missing in your experience? (Sometimes the interviewer is just testing you.) Re-state your qualifications as needed, tying your accomplishment stories to the employer’s requirements.

You’re overqualified for this position, aren’t you? (even if you are slightly overqualified)
State: No – I see a lot of challenges in this opportunity, and I’m sure that I would find the work extremely interesting. Give some examples of what you mean, and talk about the new dimensions of experience and skill that you would bring to the position, almost as though you would expand the level of contribution in this job, thus making it more than it is at present.

We have all the information we need. We’ll be in touch.
Take the initiative. Ask such questions as: “Where do I stand? Am I being considered as a strong candidate? When should I expect to hear from you, or would you prefer that I contact you in a day or two? What is your time-frame for making a final decision? Is there anything else I can provide to facilitate the process?” etc. Then re-state your strong interest in the position and your confidence that your background is an ideal match to the job.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend that you prepare for your interviews by studying and practicing these answers. Get someone to help you, by doing a “role play,” in which your friend can be the interviewer and you can play the part of the job candidate. You will reduce your anxiety, boost your confidence and perform much better if you “know your lines” in advance! And remember – never say anything negative in a job interview!

Submitted by:
Ford R. Myers
Career Potential, LLC

The importance of Mentors

(excerps from “TheLadders”

A mentor teaches you faster than you can teach yourself. The stories, the wisdom, the guidance that they provide gives you the benefit of understanding the world or a new adventure before you've actually lived through it. And the emotional support and reassurance that somebody who has "been there, done that" can offer to a wet-behind-the-ears greenhorn is comforting as you navigate your way through new experiences.

The young hero (whatever your age) needs to learn from a master, to grow in wisdom and learning while being guided by somebody with greater experience, to have a sounding board and sympathetic ear in times of turmoil.

But what a mentor provides most is wisdom and insight into whether you should go to that big company or the hot little start-up, whether you ought to stay in your area of functional expertise or move towards more general management, whether you'll be better off working for the tough and demanding boss, or you'll thrive in a more collegial atmosphere.

I'd urge you to cultivate your mentors. Whether he/she's an old boss, or a more senior colleague, or somebody in the industry that you admire, developing those relationships can make your career growth much richer and better-informed.

And you can also get something back by giving back, "The brighter the student, the more the teacher learns." There's no better way to learn, or re-learn, something than by teaching it. And by taking that bright young woman or man under your wing, you'll not only be helping out the next generation, but you'll be surprised at how much you've learned over the years!

Get personal, get job

Business Courier of Cincinnati - by Chris Hughes Courier Contributor

Read more: Get personal, get job - Boston Business Journal

Relying too much on Internet job boards, and relying too little on networking, can result in prolonged unemployment.
That’s because this is a job market where employers are routinely bombarded with hundreds of inquiries for advertised positions, according to human resources professionals and recruiters.

“A person spending most of their time online looking for a job is going to have a long and painful search,” said Julie Bauke, president of Congruity Career Consulting. “In a tough economy it is hard to stand out by throwing your résumé in that big, black hole because the number of people doing that naturally increases.” And with so many candidates for companies to choose from, Bauke estimates less than 10 percent of people obtain a job advertised online at popular sites such as Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com or TheLadders.com.

Jobs boards are convenient and easy to navigate, but have become a crutch too many job hunters lean on exclusively, said Derek Jackson, managing partner at Summit Solutions Group. “The Internet has become the first place people look, and unfortunately some rely solely on what they find on job postings online or on corporate websites,” Jackson said.
Donna Trainor, human resources manager at Procter & Gamble Co., experiences firsthand the intense competition for positions advertised on the company’s website. “The high volume of applicants and applications we get every year are primarily online, which sometimes make it hard for people to get jobs,” she said.

Internet searches on jobs boards are not necessarily fruitless, but job seekers should spend less time online and invest more in building a network, Jackson said. It is crucial to build a network comprised of colleagues and friends, create profiles on social networking sites such as LinkedIn to connect with other professionals and be purposeful in attempts to reach out to those already in a position to be helpful. “The best and most effective place to find a solid job lead is going to be your network,” Jackson said. “For most people in that professional rank, the majority of them will find their next opportunity through someone in their own network.”

Since a greater emphasis is being placed on the importance of networking, it is critical job seekers project a professional image at all times within their network. “Everyone is basically their own brand right now,” said Cheryl Besl, public relations director at

Topic Design. “You need to be sure that you are conveying an image you want to convey through LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or MySpace because an employer is going to Google applicants on those social networking sites.” Besl said an excellent way for professionals to improve their personal brand and network is to volunteer for a worthy cause. “It is expected today that professionals are going to be philanthropic or be on a nonprofit committee,” she said. “And it’s a great chance to network, to expose yourself to new people and maybe even broaden your skill set.”

College job fairs provide an opportunity for soon-to-be or recent graduates to build connections.
“We do a lot of our recruiting on campuses since most of our hiring is done with people fresh out of college, so it would be a great help to network with people from P&G that come to campus to recruit,” Trainor said. Candidates able to establish a relationship inside the organization gain a distinct advantage over the rest of the applicant pool. An overlooked method to initiate contact with a recruiter is a simple telephone call, said Paul Wehner, senior search and leadership consultant at The Human Capital Group and The Taplow Group. “There’s a tendency to over utilize e-mail to communicate with recruiters that are overwhelmed with more e-mails than they can manage,” said Wehner, who is also the staffing and recruiting chair at the

Greater Cincinnati Human Resources Association. “If they’ve contacted me about a position, I’m glad to get their phone call as opposed to getting three e-mails. I think the world has become over focused on e-mail as a way of communicating and under focused on use of their phone.” Jackson suggests that after job seekers learn the identity of the recruiter filling a position, they leverage a network contact at that firm who can place a phone call, send a message via e-mail or personally visit human resources to make a recommendation on behalf of the candidate.
“It comes as a great comfort to a hiring manager when someone you know and trust recommends a candidate,” Jackson said. “Internal recruiters are more open to looking closer at that candidate based on the fact that top talent doesn’t recommend anything other than that, so there’s a lot of credibility in that network.”
“The people who already know you, and at least think somewhat highly of you, are the people invested in helping and will speak positively on your behalf,” Bauke said.


Read more: Get personal, get job - Boston Business Journal

How to Cope with being Unemployed

When you lose your job, not only is your usual source of income gone, but also your personal work relationships, daily structures, and an important sense of self-purpose. Unemployment can be, and often is, a shock to your whole system. You can experience some of the same feelings and stresses that you would if you were seriously injured, going through a divorce, or mourning the loss of a loved one. You can go through some or all of the stages of grieving just as you would with any other major loss.

You will probably feel as if you are on an emotional roller-coaster. You may be shocked, angry, or deny that anything bad has happened to you. You will probably worry or feel anxious about how you are going to pay the bills. This can also make you feel frustrated and depressed. Feelings of frustration, anger, hope and excitement will all come and go while you are looking for a new job.

The roller-coaster ride can often keep going until you find a new job. If you have recently lost your job, we hope this pamphlet will help you to understand that you are not alone in your feelings and to help you cope with the difficulties of unemployment.

Why you?

Your job is a very important part of your self-esteem. When you lose your job, your self-esteem may be diminished. You may even begin to feel worthless; it is a common response.

Try to be realistic about why you lost your job. Was it something beyond your control, such as financial problems or political decisions within the company? Or were you somehow responsible?

If you decide you really were responsible for losing your job, do something to improve your job skills. There may be programs available through your local Canada Employment Centre or other community organizations. You can also check out the local library and bookstores for books on improving job skills.

What about money?

You have a right to claim unemployment or welfare benefits that you are entitled to, and you should do it as soon as you possibly can. There is nothing wrong about doing so.

At the same time, start thinking about how to reduce your regular living expenses. Find out about sources of low-cost entertainment, recreation, food and clothing in your community. If you have a family, everyone will need to be involved in making plans to cope with a reduced income.

Create a new daily routine

A job forms a large part of your daily schedule. When you lose your job, it is important for you to build and maintain a new routine. Your search for a new job will, no doubt, take a large part of your new schedule, but it will likely not take up all your time. Remember to maintain recreation and leisure time for yourself. Try to live as normally as you can while you are unemployed.

Reach out for support

We all need to share our burdens. When we do, problems can be put into a better perspective and can seem less difficult.

Talk to your family and friends about the problems you are facing while you are unemployed. Their caring and support can help you cope during this period. You will, no doubt, find they care about you and that you are important to them whether or not you have a job.

Remember, family and friends can also be a valuable source for suggestions and may even help you find a new job. In addition to family and friends, check out local organizations for programs designed to assist unemployed people with building their self-confidence and improving job search skills. Self-help groups may also be available in your area to help you cope with the changes in your life.

Coping strategies

To help you keep your stress level down, your confidence up, and your health and relationships strong, you should develop some special strategies while you are unemployed, such as:

Establish a daily schedule including a regular time for job search activities.

Set daily goals that you know you can accomplish. Go for a walk, go to the library, call a friend.

Contact the local Canada Employment Centre or other employment counselling service for information on programs in your community.

Use your networks. Tell everyone you know what kind of work you are looking for, and ask if they know of any jobs or any companies that employ people with your skills. Your friends, relatives and acquaintances may not think of mentioning contacts to you because they don't have a clear idea of what kind of work you are looking for. Remember, many people get their jobs through "word of mouth."

Volunteer to help someone else. Both of you will feel better.

Keep busy and stay active outside your home. Isolating yourself at home will not get you a new job and can lead to additional mental and emotional stress.

Reward yourself on a regular basis for your efforts.

Before you go to bed, prepare a written plan for the next day. It will give you a reason to get up in the morning.

Pursue the hobby you always wanted but never seemed to have time for.

Check into new career opportunities or the possibility of continuing your education.

Keep regular hours, and get regular exercise. Limit your intake of caffeine, cigarettes and alcohol. When you do get a job, you want to be in good shape for it.

Job search rules have changed considerably

For those who may be reentering the job market after decades of employment, you should know that the rules have changed considerably. Fifteen years ago, online job sites were in their infancy; now thousands of sites post millions of jobs every year and they're the most widely used and practical job-hunting tool available. If online job searching is new to you, here are few hints for navigating the process.

Most employers post job opportunities on their own websites. Typically, you either submit your resume or fill out an online job application and the company will reach out if you meet their qualifications. Many sites ask you to create an account so you can be contacted when appropriate jobs become available. To broaden your search beyond individual companies, there are many job search sites from which to choose. Some target particular career specialties, while others post listings from broader categories.

Some sites list jobs for which employers have paid a posting fee. Other sites are job search engines that aggregate job postings from company employment websites, other job sites, recruiters and other career sources. These sites are useful when searching for a new job. Job search engines save you time so you don't have to visit a bunch of sites to scour through online job ads. One final note: Be cautious when posting personal contact information online. Consider setting up a dedicated email account for all your job search efforts.

Abridged: Huffington Post

Greening a Most Promising Entrepreneurs List

by Nathaniel Whittemore
At this point, it's hard to deny that "green" is a beast of an industry that has left the social entrepreneurship nest. Bloomberg Businessweek's annual "America's Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs" feature, however, displays the connection between the spaces as prominently as I've seen in major media coverage for some time. This is a trend I think we should encourage.

When I set out to write my "Top Moments of the Decade" in social entrepreneurship post last December, I faced an interesting question. What moment(s) in clean or green technology should I highlight as part of that list? As I started to think about it, I got less and less sure that it fit.

For one, the environmental movement predated at least the consolidated social entrepreneurship movement by years, so it felt a little weird to subsume its banner. Second, the intersection of the environmental movement and big business that has born the cleantech industry over the last decade is operating in such an independent space when it relates to social entrepreneurship that it hardly felt like part of the same thing. Ultimately, I opted to list Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" as an honorable mention, and shared some of these questions I had been having.

I've been thinking about that more and more lately, and wondering not only whether that was the right decision on my part, but moreover whether we as a field need to be even more proactive about linking the movements.

There is a language question that worries me. Right now, a lot of the movement around cleantech is that it's "good business." That's great, in the sense that it's no longer relegated to the margins of economic activity as charity. And it's good because ultimately, we need these technologies now, almost regardless of the motivation.

That said, saying something is "good business" is different than saying "we're going to shift our paradigm of what 'good business' has to mean." The shift in business language that I think we're going for is to say that good business means good for people beyond shareholders and good for the earth as well. From a branding standpoint, I think that triple-bottom-line thinking is what social entrepreneurship is good at provoking.

It's great to see, then, Businessweek's list of the most promising social entrepreneurs just bursting with people who are starting new green businesses. There are energy projects, sustainable food companies, material science companies using the earth's bounty (and mushrooms) in new ways, and more.

With any list like this, the specific sort of ranking tends to be less important to me than what the overall tone suggests about the space. It may not be a radical shift, but I'm still excited to the link between social entrepreneurship and green made clearer than ever.

Check out the full list here.
http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/blog/view/greening_a_most_promising_entrepreneurs_list

Are You Protec-O-Managing?

One of the greatest traps in growing a business is also a pitfall for self management: if you don’t trust your leadership team or systems that you have created, you can’t let go of operational details, you’ll limit your ability to create at a higher level. In the words of Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard in “Let My People Go Surfing”, he expresses how important it is to trust in your staff, let them in on the process and live the experience of what they are working toward.

Many successful managers and business owners have been characterized as “highly creative control freaks.” It’s understandable because usually it takes that kind of strong, directed energy to create a business, to make something out of nothing. It takes tremendous focus and determination to create something new and get it to stick around in for more then just the trend period.

But protectionism can inevitably becomes your undoing. In order to continue in the “visionary” capacity, to grow and expand your business, you must learn to let go, trust the team you have built as well as the systems that have been put into place. However, trust is not something you can just do because you should; you learn to build trust over time, and do that by creating a solid set of systems and working it along side your key staff and leadership team. Once you do that, you let go of the lower operational functions and continue on to see the bigger picture of what you’re trying to accomplish.

Entrepreneurs and high-level managers have to break out of their comfort zone of operational control, get good people in the right places, hold them accountable for the right things, but don’t forget to motivate appropriately and often.

One-on-One with Social Entrepreneurs

The following summary provides an overview of the themes resulting from a series of regional gatherings of 200 leaders from innovative nonprofits.

By James Weinberg, Commongood Careers and Frances Kunreuther, Building Movement Project

The societal, economic, and political landscape looks very different in 2010 from that which existed just a few years ago. Faced with a range of new realities, social entrepreneurs feel that they are approaching an “inflection point,” or a moment of dramatic change for their organizations and movement. Despite diminished resources, social entrepreneurs are now working to grow in entirely new ways and at faster rates than ever before.

These conditions and goals are putting incredible stress on systems that were already running at nearly full capacity. To be successful in moving to the next level, leaders need to take the entrepreneurial skills that they used so successfully in programmatic development and focus their talents on enhancing internal operating systems. Organizations need to build capacity, enhance efficiency, and leverage human capital in order to increase their social impact per dollar invested (as represented below figuratively, not quantitatively).

To explore how social entrepreneurs are navigating through this dynamic period, Commongood Careers and the Building Movement Project convened “Conversations with Social Entrepreneurs.” This effort included an electronic survey study and a series of regional gatherings in four cities with a group of 200 leaders from innovative nonprofits. The conversations revealed three prominent themes, as follows:

(1) Looking for new revenue sources: Social entrepreneurs are cautiously optimistic at the moment and 73% of them plan to expand programs this year, despite foundation funding cuts and other challenges with traditional funding streams. To be successful, however these groups will need to become more innovative in their approaches to revenue generation, such implementing growth capital campaigns and social media strategies, but also especially in their government relationships where only about 30% of all participants are planning to pursue new funding opportunities such as the Social Innovation Fund.

(2) Focusing on core growth with partners: In response to resource constraints and high levels of uncertainty, social entrepreneurs are rethinking their strategic plans in order to focus on core operations and essential programs. At the same time, organizations are pursuing aggressive growth plans, with 74% of participants expanding in their current regions and 40% replicating their programs in new regions in 2010. Partnerships among social entrepreneurs and across sectors also emerged as a key strategy to increase impact and decrease costs. Participants also expressed a strong desire for additional regional convening opportunities.

(3) Enhancing human capital: Participants agreed that one of the largest sources of untapped potential for increasing organizational capacity exists within the human capital arena (including staff members, consultants, volunteers, board members and other stakeholders). In order to achieve their growth and impact goals, however, social entrepreneurs recognize that they will have to re-prioritize the perception of human capital’s importance in their organizations and embrace innovative new ways of recruiting, hiring, managing and developing talent. Through these conversations, a number of best practices and new ideas were identified along these lines, including:

1. Pipelining: Build year-round recruiting partnerships, career tracks for program alumni, and pipelines into constituent communities.
2. Cross-Training: Create cross-functional teams to facilitate knowledge sharing and increase organizational cohesion.
3. Managing Volunteers: Utilize HR systems for volunteers just as for staff (job descriptions, recruitment, screening, managing, etc.)
4. Sharing Talent: Move away from competitive poaching and toward inter-organizational career ladders and management exchanges.
5. Leveraging Corporations: Ask private-sector partners to share professional development trainings, systems, and technologies.
6. Partnering and Merging: Explore sharing back-offices, staff trainings, pooled employee benefits and even celebrations.
7. Re-branding: Collaborate to build a unified and exciting nonprofit “brand” to attract new employees, volunteers and supporters.
8. Pooling Candidates: Develop a single talent database across many organizations to pool alumni, ex-employees and strong candidates.
9. Engaging Politicians: Inform elected officials about nonprofit employment levels and advocate for solutions to stimulate hiring.

What is the future of corporate citizenship?

If you are a corporate citizenship professional it is not hard to feel that corporate citizenship has really come into its own in the past decade. Corporate citizenship seems to have passed the “stress test” as companies continue to embrace corporate citizenship despite the worst economic crisis in 50 years.

Our 2009 State of Corporate Citizenship survey last fall showed most American C-suite executives now realize the business value of corporate citizenship and are actively working to integrate corporate citizenship policies into their companies’ business strategy and practices. There is a rapidly growing corporate citizenship consultancy and ranking industry, which seems to further confirm that corporate citizenship is now material to business and not simply a “do-gooding sideshow” as the Economist once characterized it.

Given all this activity it is easy to lose sight of the bigger questions: Is all this activity adding up to anything meaningful? Are we really driving a fundamental transformation in the way business impacts society? Is business really stepping up its contribution to helping solve the immense social and environmental challenges now facing us? Are we measuring progress in inches when we need to be making progress in miles?

While we can point to any number of individual success stories, the truth is that while we may be winning some battles, we appear to be losing the war. Tracking by GlobeScan and other public opinion firms shows a continued widening gap between public expectations and business performance in corporate citizenship over the past decade, while the scale of social and environmental challenges we face continues to grow.

What will it take to close this gap and truly make corporate citizenship a fundamental driver for business strategy and practice? At the Boston College Center’s annual International Corporate Citizenship Conference next week, this question will be the focus of the breakout session The Corporate Citizenship Journey: What Have We Learned, What’s Next? We encourage you to bring your ideas to this session and consider some challenges I think we need to address.

Risk management >Business innovation
The focus of corporate citizenship as a business driver still centers on risk and issues management for most companies. The challenge for corporate citizenship leaders now is to help their companies understand and use corporate citizenship as an innovation driver for the core business. This is the key to driving real transformation of business’ impact on society as mainstream companies such as Wal-Mart and GE demonstrate with their integration of sustainability into their core business strategies. To meet this challenge, corporate citizenship leaders will need new ways of thinking and new competencies. The difficulty of meeting this challenge is not to be underestimated. In a survey of investors we did last year with McKinsey & Company, investor relation executives and corporate citizenship leaders (How Virtue Creates Value for Business and Society), it was corporate citizenship leaders who had the least appreciation and most difficulty in articulating the business value of corporate citizenship.

Philanthropy >Shared value social partnerships
While there are many innovative examples of business/community partnerships, most companies still equate social issue engagement with philanthropy and volunteering. This is grossly insufficient if business is to truly contribute to solving the systemic social and environmental challenges we now face. We need a new model for corporate engagement that involves and mobilizes the full spectrum of intellectual, financial and human capital resources of companies in addressing these challenges in ways that create value for society and the company. Again, for community involvement leaders this will require new levels of influence and capability. It will require leaders who are connected across the business, and can design full-spectrum social initiatives for the company that align with the company’s strengths as a company and strategic interests as a business. It will require leaders who understand public policy and know how to engage their government affairs colleagues in lobbying for public policy innovations that can support the programmatic initiatives the company is working for, while increasing trust and respect for the company among legislators.

Corporate citizenship reporting>Corporate citizenship performance management
Much of what passes for corporate citizenship measurement and reporting today has little in common with the performance management systems and metrics that are driving the business. Companies can learn to play the CSR ranking game by tweaking reports without any real learning or continuous improvement going on within the company. The truism that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” is as applicable to corporate citizenship as any other part of the business. For corporate citizenship leaders to make corporate citizenship relevant at the line level, they must be able to connect corporate citizenship to the real drivers of the business and an ability to integrate measurable corporate citizenship metrics and targets into the performance management systems that define and reward business success.

Reactive>Proactive
Underneath all the challenges facing the corporate citizenship field going forward is the need for greater leadership both at the C suite and corporate citizenship leadership level. Without this leadership corporate citizenship cannot realize its true potential. It is striking that among all the various public opinion poll surveys done these days, almost no large company in America stands out for its leadership in corporate citizenship in the public’s mind with the highest-ranking companies identified by no more than 6 percent of Americans. There is clearly both an unfilled demand and opportunity for leadership in corporate citizenship that has the potential to reward those who seize it.

Submission by By Chris Pinney, Director of Research and Policy, Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship

Workplace Sexual Harassment Seminar

A Great Seminar put on by Monroe County JSEC - Workplace Sexual Harassment: Presented by Sharon P. Stiller, Partner, Boylan Brown Code Vigdor & Wilson LLP. Designed for business leaders, employers, and human resource professionals, this program aims to enhance understanding of Workplace Sexual Harassment Recognition, Prevention, & Compliance . This program is accredited by HRCI (SHRM) for strategic credits . Wednesday, April 28, 2010Cost: $20.008:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.Where: St John Fisher College,Wilson Formal Lodge,Haffey BuildingRochester, New York 14609Parking Available in Lot A/B on Campus To registerRegister by email at fernanc@rochesterymca.orgOr by phone at (585)-263-3907(Fernan Cepro)Registration Deadline April 23, 2010 http://www.monroejsec.org/

Six Career-Killing Facebook Mistakes

With more than 400 million active visitors, Facebook is arguably the most popular social networking site out there. And while the site is known for the casual social aspect, many users also use it as a professional networking tool. With that kind of reach, Facebook can be a valuable tool for connecting to former and current colleagues, clients and potential employers. In fact, surveys suggest that approximately 30% of employers are using Facebook to screen potential employees — even more than those who check LinkedIn, a strictly professional social networking site. Don't make these Facebook faux-pas — they might cost you a great opportunity.

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/109267/6-career-killing-facebook-mistakes

Listening to our Subconscious Intention: Truth in Leadership

Ever notice that what gets your attention gets your energy. This seems to hold true in both personal life and organizational behavior. If your attention is scattered, your ability to focus your energy on achieving your goals is greatly diminished. If your attention is focused on negatives, mistakes or problems, your ability to sustain positive attitudes and behaviors that bring about desired results in the workplaces is greatly diminished. Listening to your subconscious intention is such a critical element of true leadership. Concentrate on your intentions and be aware of where they’re leading you.

The primary task of any good leader is one that can establish the intention for the group, how it will perform, the strategies they will use as well as the set up of processes and alignment of talent. Leaders fully engage those who will be involved in the process, welcoming their wisdom and advice. They keep close eyes on how the project or process is unfolding so that they can adjust and adapt to new ideas as they emerge. Most importantly leaders need to be positive, appreciative, and encouraging throughout the project; to bring out the best in the whole group, individually and collectively. Even when mistakes happen, leaders recognize them as opportunities, whereas to learn and explore new possibilities in reaching the desired goal. But none of this truly can happen without everyone paying attention to a clear and agreed upon intention from the very beginning. Leaders establish and sustain their intentions through one simple competency – the ability to have conversations. The quality of your leadership is determined by the quality of the conversations you initiate and sustain. If, in those conversations, you grow ever more proficient at listening, appreciating, encouraging, contributing, aligning, and inspiring, then you will gain and retain credibility as a great leader; you will help people achieve their intended aspirations, both personally and organizationally. That is the real truth of leadership.

Entrepreneurs: 3 Clues That It’s Time to Delegate

Entrepreneurs tend to be wildly confident. But too often, confidence can mutate into arrogance, and arrogance can blind you to the reality that you need help. The bigger your company gets, the more likely it is that you’ll wake up one morning and suddenly realize that your darling baby has grown into an unruly toddler and that you’re quickly losing control. You need the entrepreneurial equivalent of SuperNanny: professional managers. So how do you know when it’s time to call in the reinforcements?

Nick Thomley, the 30-year-old CEO of Pinnacle Services in Minneapolis, made that decision three years ago when he hired Jill Cihlar as his COO. Pinnacle, which provides home health care, housing, and employment services for seniors and people with disabilities, is now an $11.5 million company and has been on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing privately held companies for three consecutive years. Thomley attributes that growth to his new management structure. Here’s how he knew it was time to loosen the reins of control so that his company could grow (and grow up):

• He was avoiding tasks he found unpleasant. “I wasn’t dealing with employee issues, like terminating people who should have been let go, or getting employee evaluations done on time,” he concedes. And the more the company grew, the more important those responsibilities became. “I needed to realize my strengths — and they weren’t in operations,” Thomley says. “After I hired my COO, I had people who I had previously supervised come and thank me.” Ouch!

• He was missing out on new business. Because Pinnacle lacked the organizational structure that any multi-million dollar company should have, Thomley found that he was too busy putting out fires and running the company on a day-to-day basis to think strategically. “We definitely missed opportunities because we just weren’t organized enough,” he says. Since hiring Cihlar and another senior level manager to oversee the company’s case management division, Pinnacle has been able to expand its service offerings and increase revenue by 64% since 2006.

• He stopped having fun (and so did everyone one else). Thomley had always been proud of his innovative, youthful, and fun company culture. But a growing staff combined with an overflowing in-box meant that Thomley didn’t have time to nurture that culture. When he delegated day-to-day control over operations and the company’s 80 full time employees and 450 part time service providers, Thomley could once again focus on the fun stuff. The result: a foam pit (see picture, above) into which employees hurl themselves from the second to the first floor (”I went first and found out we needed more foam,” says Thomley) and an inflatable Velcro wall (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it). The staff recently took off a day to go snow tubingtogether, and a Minnesota Twins game is on the schedule for this spring. Thomley has also brought in an acupuncturist and a manicurist for free treatments. He estimates that turnover, which is typically high in his industry, has been reduced by 10% in the past two years.

Now, Thomley is preparing for the changes, and potential growth, that may come from the effect of health care reform on his industry. With a new management structure in place, he feels well positioned for whatever opportunities may come his way. And if there are bumps in the road, he can always pitch himself into the foam pit.

How about you? Do you have a trusted management team? How do these employees change the way you run your company?

By Donna Fenn@bNet

Improve your Business Through Values

There are four critical issues preoccupying the boardrooms of both large and small companies today:

How to attract and keep talented people?

How to increase profits and shareholder value?

How to increase creativity and productivity?

How to ensure ethics permeate the corporate culture?

Building a successful corporate culture and value-driven leadership teams has become the most significant source of brand differentiation in business today.

Why are values-driven companies the most successful?

Values drive culture

Culture drives employee fulfillment

Employee fulfillment drives customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction drives shareholder value

What Are Values and Why Are They Important?

Values are deeply held principles that people hold or adhere to when making decisions. Individuals express their values though their behaviors and organizations express their values through their working culture.

Research shows that there is a strong link between financial performance and the alignment of an organization’s operating values to the employees’ personal values. Who you are and what your stands for is becoming just as important as the quality of products and services you provide.

In Corporate Culture and Performance, John P. Kotter and James L. Heskett shows that companies with strong adaptive value-driven cultures, outperformed other companies by a significant margin.

Kotter and Heskett found that companies had higher job creation rates, stock prices grew faster, and profit performance was 750 times higher than companies that did not have shared values and adaptive cultures.

In Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras show that companies that consistently focused on building strong corporate cultures over a period of several decades outperformed companies that did not by a factor of six and outperformed the general stock market by a factor of 15.

John P. Kotter and James L. Heskett, Corporate Culture and Performance, (New York: The Free Press) 1992 James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, Built to Last, Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York: Harper Collins) 1994

Great Resource for Monroe County Employers

Monroe County NY JSEC is an independent organization under the auspices of the federal Department of Labor. JSEC stands for Job Service Employer Committee. We are one of 40 JSECs throughout New York State. The goal of the Monroe County JSEC is to provide expert information to employers on issues that affect the business community, engage in public / private ventures that will be of benefit to both employers and the labor force, and effect beneficial legislative changes at state and federal levels. JSEC also provides a vehicle to inform employers of services and programs of the Labor Department they can benefit from.