The Snitch

Negativity can be infectious and have a draining effect on the morale in the workplace. Is there any way you can manage or even change the attitudes of negative employees?

Alan Fairweather, associate consultant of d’Oz International, believes so. In the video interview, Fairweather has a few suggestions for managers who find themselves having to deal with employees who relish seeing the glass half full.

Playing with Lego bricks can foster teamwork in employees which would translate into better decision making and effective communication in the workplace.

Other than possessing the necessary skills and creativity, a successful employee has to be able to work well in a team, says LegoLand’s creative director Tim Burnell. And it is an attribute which is specifically tested for in any recruitment exercise LegoLand conducts.

There are altogether three model building – individual skills, team skills and creative freeform building skills – tests, followed by an interview during a recruitment session for model makers. It is in the second round where Burnell would quietly observe the candidates’ ability to communicate with each other. “As team members, they try to recreate this model [a large 30cm-tall Lego man]. It’s not necessarily to rebuild it but to see how they work together as a team.”

In the video, Burnell explains why teambuilding with Lego bricks would allow HR to understand how employees connect and adapt to each other’s working styles in order to complete any given tasks.

In the current economic crisis, forward-thinking companies are constantly looking to prove to existing or new customers that they can add value to their business needs. One way to do that is developing a reputation for innovation and being good at what you do.

Likewise, employees who can show how they add value to the company during the downturn will be the ones earmarked for further success at work. But it takes time to build such a positive reputation.

Dr Martin Henery, who heads the Manchester Enterprise Centre UK for Manchester Business School, shares how you can enhance your reputation as a valuable employee at work. The trick is to start small.

The economy may be in the doldrums but if you’ve been doing more than your usual job scope, you’re likely itching for a better pay to commensurate the effort you’ve been putting in. The question is how?

If your company is still mindful of the fragile economic conditions or has gone through budget cuts, you do have to play your cards right without getting backslash from your manager.

Speaking from a boss’ perspective, Roy Magee, regional vice president for AchieveGlobal Greater China & Singapore, gives Human Resources an insight into when’s the best time to approach bosses for the money talk.

Have trouble loading the video? Why not check your company or computer’s firewall settings to make sure that Youtube videos can be streamed on your computer.

A poorly managed restructuring exercise can result in a loss of top performers and sharp decline in morale but here’s what HR can do to avoid this scenario.

In the video below, Dr Ric Roi, senior vice president and Asia Pacific practice leader of Right Management,  shares details on how to carry out an effective step-by-step internal communication plan six months before a restructuring exercise.

For more guidelines on effective communication before any restructuring exercise, click here: Human Resources website

Employees go wacky over social media

Tech-savvy HR professionals are rubbing their hands with glee at the rise of new media tools. For them, it means engaging employees, particularly the Generation Ys, has become dirt cheap.

With most of the companies scrambling to shave as much money off their corporate budgets, VP at Aon Consulting Ken Groh believes using Web 2.0 media and other electronic resources can do precisely that. Not only does it reduce print and postage costs, Web 2.0 media can “supplement traditional communication materials to help speed learning and employee engagement, which enables you to achieve your goals faster”.

According to an Aon Consulting survey of 8,000 employees from both public and private sectors, more workers are finding ways to use social media tools at work for work purposes. Some of the tools which they use to communicate with one another include Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, blogs, podcasts, wikis and instant messaging chats.

This should be music to employers’ ears because “corporate communicators and HR” can now align their internal communication strategies and educational material using these social media preferences. No doubt, it’ll be much appreciated by employees who have increasingly shorter attention span nowadays and need information regurgitated in a fast and efficient manner.

“Since Web 2.0 media is electronic, it can provide access to your intranet or HR portal to create a more integrated and cost-efficient way to communicate with employees, including benefits enrolment and wellness education campaigns.”

And there are some companies that have been embracing social media for quite a while now. They include Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan I. Schwartz who blogs, IBM which has its own social network for 30,000 employees called Beehive and British Telecom which uses wikis for global team projects.

While respondents who are comfortable using social media tools both at home and at work are still mostly those under age 29 (Generation Y or millennials), the rest of the generations are slowly catching up. The survey has found a “higher usage of Web 2.0 media at work than at home among employees over age 28”. So employers, you can rest assured that your  older employees would be equally attuned to any internal campaign which uses social media tools.

As the power of social media grows in the workplace, companies will find that the bond between the employer and employees who can now actively participate in online dialogues stronger than ever.

(Via Sparxoo)

With most industries adversely affected by the current economic slowdown in 2009, will there even be salary increments for us this year? If there are, how much should we be expecting?

Samir Bedi, practice lead of rewards for Hewitt Associates, reveals his prediction for the salary increment projections in Q2 in the video below. But before that, Bedi helps Human Resources retrace the salary increment figures  since the downturn began till the end of first quarter this year.

He also gave an insight to some of the measures compensation and benefits practitioners across various industries in Singapore will be implementing as the economy tightens up.

Nothing like knowing the salary increment projections for the second quarter of the year to keep you motivated at work, eh?

Ever had this problem of facing some work to be done and you don’t know how to do it or you just don’t feel like getting started?

It’s called procrastination and it is the “mother of all bad work habits”, says Angeline Teo, principal consultant for d’Oz International. Work procrastination can easily create a domino effect which may affect someone else’s workflow because you leave your work undone and they have to pick up your slack. That’s work inefficiency and it affects the overall organisation’s productivity.

Alarmingly, another top work habit most of us have is disorganisation or desk clutter. A cluttered desk prevents you from accessing documents efficiently and you waste time and effort to obtain new copies. According to Teo, executives spend up to six weeks a year looking for lost files, documents and emails. So if an organisation has 20 managers who have this bad habit and they are paid $100 per hour, add the numbers up and that’s how much your company is losing every year.

In the video below, Teo tells Human Resources more about the bad work habits all of us are guilty of and the potential consequences to our careers and even personal life.

Even robots deserve some funtime.

Ever felt like the king of the world whenever you’ve successfully completed a particularly tough PC game? Well, if you can channel the same excitement into your work, soon enough you can be king of your office too.

Whenever you hit a problem at work, sometimes the best way to learn or solve the complication is to start treating it like a game. Playing, it seems, makes you feel better at your job, which naturally inspires you to be more productive at work.

Rubbish, you say? Hardly so. Even if Maslow forgot to list it in his hierarchy of basic physiological needs, playing is as essential to our health as sleep or food is. So says Stuart Brown, author of the new book Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul.

Playing is actually nature’s version of troubleshooting for us. When we play, the problems we face would somehow filter through the unconscious mind and work themselves out. Just don’t be afraid of trying stuff out and to see what works. Learn from any mistakes and do it differently next time.

Playing also makes you feel alive which helps when you are back at work. Try spending a few hours doing something you love over the weekend, it can make you feel new again.

“If adults can begin to reminisce about their happiest and most memorable moments,” says Brown. “They can capture the emotion and visual memories of those moments and begin to connect again to what truly excites them in life.”

Going through this process, he adds, may also encourage someone to give serious consideration to move to another job that makes them happier or reignite their current life with elements that once brought them joy.

What’s more, with the recession upon us, there is also the worry of performing badly and getting laid off. Playing would then give you the “emotional distance to rally” as an individual or a team.

In his book, Brown cites a CEO who held an employee meeting to talk about a recent bad financial quarter. After the CEO bravely took the blame for the company’s performance, he informed everyone that there was a toy dart gun with foam darts under every seat. They were all invited to take shots at him.

The CEO then went on to explain how they, as a company, were going to turn things around. Firing the toy guns had made everyone felt better and that things might not be as bad as it seems. In a way, it inspired them to figure out ways to fix the problems.

Go on then, start playing at work today. It might just make your day.

Via USNews

HR puts companies on massive diet

Employees are going to cry in their nonexistent coffee cups soon if the recession keeps up its relentless pace as more HR practitioners look to scrap off more staff perks this year.

Things are definitely not looking up for corporate folks these days. A recent CareerBuilder.com survey of more than 3,000 employers and HR professionals reveals 38% of them will make administrative cuts to perks such as company social events and corporate travel sometime this year.  No more cushy flights or free flowing champagne for you then.

Some employers in Singapore are already taking a harder cost cutting stance as overheard during the recent Conference for Fair Employment Practices. “I’m going to cut everything. [Like] D&D this year, I’m going to cut the dance. And the dinner.”

Employees should also start loading up on their vitamins or a fitness regime as healthcare benefits take a backseat this year for a quarter of employers polled. Likewise, charity will remain at home this recession as 21% plan to cut or reduce spending on philanthropic activities. Same goes for pantry offerings and incentive trips, say 34% and 28% of respondents respectively.

But there is tiny ray of joy still even if companies are curbing expenses in these areas. Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources for CareerBuilder.com, says companies are nevertheless “keeping in mind the importance of retaining their top talent”.

“We see companies offering more flexible work arrangements and placing an increased emphasis on employee recognition programmes to help maintain job satisfaction levels within their organisations,” she adds. Other special recession perks include increased telecommuting, public transportation discounts, compressed workweeks and increased mileage reimbursement rates. (Click here for cheap employee perks you can implement now!)

Are you impressed or depressed by HR right now? Feel free to let us know if the gloom has set in for you in your company in the comments below.

Hang on, there is more to this. Read more on the craziest, and some would say drastically hilarious, cost-cutting measures in Human Resources magazine’s newest column by The Daily Grimer in the upcoming March issue.