It drives me nuts! On any given day I am on the phone – calling clients, friends and prospects. Guess which ones never get returned? If you guessed all three you are right – there are times when clients, friends and prospects don’t return calls – I bet this is a surprise. You probably thought it’s only prospects that don’t return calls. Wrong! Continue reading
Flexibility in the Workplace
Well, it is out there – the latest Softchoice survey has just released its findings and they are going to cause many organizations to stand on their heads. The workplace as we know it is changing. This is definitely not a surprise yet some of the findings may make us sit up and take more notice about how we run our businesses. Continue reading
Focus on Your Future
Are you happy with what you see as your future? Thousands are and even more thousands aren’t! These are the individuals who get sufficiently comfortable in the situation they are in that, no matter how bad it is, it is easier to stay the course than to make a change. Continue reading
Three Reasons to Get Rid of Performance Appraisals
General Electric did it! Microsoft did it! And so did Adobe! Each of these companies canned the age old format of Performance Appraisals. GE has a reputation of having the yearly Performance Appraisal and then ranking all staff and letting those who are the lowest 10% fired. They got rid of this formal forced ranking about 10 years ago, however, they did carry on with Performance Appraisals. Continue reading
Five Ways to Demotivate People in Your Midst
Hannah McDonald and her Ontario Grade 2 summer literacy students were talking about motivation. Their discussion turned to how they could help motivate the people fighting the fires in northern Saskatchewan. Soon an idea sprang forward! They decided to send post cards to these brave souls fighting fires for many days. Great idea – now how do you carry it out? Continue reading
Succession Planning
LiveScience.com suggests we are living a lifespan longer than ever. As an employer, extended longevity has implications with regards to your workforce and presents unique challenges in succession planning. Continue reading
10 Ways to get Yourself Fired!
Here in Canada it has been all over the news lately – the group of young men who were harassing a TV reporter by yelling lewd remarks into her microphone. Many feel they have the right to free speech and just as many feel they were inappropriate. More still, feel that although inappropriate nothing should be done about it.
Let’s look at what happened to one of the young men. Shawn Simoes was fired from his engineering position at Hydro One. Now is the time to look at what can get one fired in the business world. Continue reading
3 Reasons Why Your Organization Will Get Hacked Like Sony In the Near Future
Sony dropped the ball when it placed a marketing specialist as the head of IT. The rumor is key positions in IT leadership roles were filled due to office politics rather than exhibited skills. There is nothing unusual about that, however, with little knowledge of the IT field, one exposes one’s organization to a number of risks. In Sony’s case, we understand they were hacked! Continue reading
7 Ways A Lack Of Respect Hurts Your Bottom Line
It’s happened! Recently we spent time with a small group of friends and their teenage children at a restaurant and were astonished at some of the lack of respect shown to others in the group. One of the teens (let’s call him Tim) looked at his mother and demanded she not interrupt him while he was talking. The stunned mother said nothing. Continue reading
5 Things You Should Never Do to the Person you are Letting Go
A large manufacturing company had to let one of their long term employees go – this could have been for cause, yet the company decided to do this with no cause attached. As this company has rarely let anyone go it was not used to doing this. It could have been handled better! Continue reading