Recruit, Inspire & Retain |
July 2006 |
|
Ideas for "Marketing" and Providing "Customer Service" to Current and Potential Employees |
|
TRAINING
SYSTEMS,
INC.
Great Training for Great Employees |
Visit our website,
www.trainingsys.com
|
| ABOUT US | BOOKS & FUN STUFF |
|
COOL STUFF IN THIS ISSUE! |
|
||||
|
READERS! If you find an article worthy of Recruit, Inspire & Retain, please send it (with a note telling us where you found it) |
| Remember, Recruit, Inspire & Retain back issues are available at http://www.trainingsys.com/rir/index.htm. |
|
If this was forwarded to you, get your own copy FREE! |
|
|
JULY SPECIAL DAYS
July is...
Picnic Month
Hotdog Month
Anti-Boredom Month
Cell Phone Courtesy Month (we have lots of ideas for things you can for
for this one!)
National Parks & Recreation Month
July 24-30 – Coffee Week
July 25-31 – Salad Week
July 7 – Chocolate Day & Macaroni Day
July 8 – Ice Cream Sundae Day & Milk Chocolate With Almonds Day
July 9 – Rock ‘N Roll Day & Sugar Cookie Day
July 11 – Cheer Up Day & Blueberry Muffin Day
July 12 – Simplicity Day
July 13 – International Puzzle Day & Beans & Franks Day
July 14 – French Fries Day, Bastille Day, & Blueberries Day
July 16 – Ice Cream Cone Day & Talk To A Telemarketer Day
July 17 – Peach Ice Cream Day
July 20 – Lollipop Day & Fortune Cookie Day
July 21 – Monkey Day
July 23 – Vanilla Ice Cream Day
July 24 – Public Opinion Day & Coffee Day
July 25 – Christmas in July
July 26 – Coffee Milkshake Day
July 28 – Hamburger Day & Cheese Lovers Day (so, shouldn’t it be
Cheeseburger Day?)
July 30 – Cheesecake Day
Email
TRAINING SYSTEMS,
INC. for ideas on how to
celebrate any of these days.
Are You An Emergent Employer? Would You Like to Be?
Want workers who have begun to take control of their careers? Want people who put renewed emphasis on balancing work and personal life? This new workforce has created a new kind of company – the Emergent Employer. The Spherion Corporation, a staffing and recruiting company, did some research into emergent employers that’ll help you:
The Rise of the Emergent Employer
Nearly a decade ago, Spherion began tracking historical changes in
America’s workforce. From taking control of their careers, free agency, to
the renewed emphasis on work/life balance. This new group of U.S. workers —
dubbed emergent workers — have developed very different motivations,
attitudes, and beliefs about their ideal work environment. The number of
emergent workers has continued to grow since they were first identified in
1997, and is expected to represent the majority of U.S. workers by 2007.
What motivates these workers is far from the traditional employment pact of
the past where employees expected to remain at one company and receive their
gold watch at retirement. The U.S. workforce has undoubtedly changed,
and changed dramatically. Throughout this evolution, there will be
significant implications if the workforce continues to change but employers
do not.
How to Become An Emergent Employer
Emergent employers can be broadly defined by their utilization of two
key workforce strategies:
They have
adopted emergent management practices to effectively compete for employed
talent.
They have
become masterful at maintaining flexibility in their cost and workforce
structures by leveraging a contingent workforce.
These progressive employers have implemented emergent programs such as flextime, job sharing, and telecommuting because they acknowledge that time and flexibility is a key driver of retention among the majority of today’s workers. Practices encouraging career and financial growth, such as training and development, are more prevalent and highly encouraged at emergent organizations. Workers are rewarded based on performance and measurements, not simply tenure. Emergent employers are keenly aware of what motivates and satisfies their workforce because they regularly survey employees to determine retention drivers specific to their workforce.
Emergent companies strategically and proactively develop an integrated hiring strategy in order to effectively utilize "supplied" vs. "employed" talent. These organizations reap benefits such as increased flexibility, cost-savings, and the ability to better weather economic fluctuations, because they’ve hired the right mix of full-time, contingent, or contract labor. And emergent employers enjoy greater financial success and employee growth than their traditional counterparts.
Emergent Employers: Creating A Model Workplace
19% of today’s companies can be classified as emergent. But, who are
these emergent employers? The majority (62%) of emergent companies are
larger organizations, typically $1 billion or more in revenue. However, a
number of companies both small and mid-size fall into the emergent camp.
And, all the emergent organizations cut across industry and geography. Most
important, they all have one thing in common — emergent employers are
preoccupied with creating an environment that ensures retention of its
existing workforce and that attracts valuable, quality talent that is the
best fit for their organization.
Overall, emergent employers are far more likely to utilize key retention programs at their organization, such as offering more work/life balance options, training and development programs, surveying employees on retention drivers, and offering bonuses to top performers.
Adapted from Joliet Junior College Training Source, 2006
|
Get more tips on recruiting great employees from TRAINING SYSTEMS. |
**TOOL BOX**
|
|||||||||||||||
 Have
a recruitment, inspiration, training, or retention idea or question? Ask by
clicking the question mark, and we’ll post your idea or question (and the
answer) in Answers & Ideas
on Recruiting, Inspiring, Training, & Retaining Great Employees at
http://www.trainingsys.com. |
 |
* | Decorah Bank employees & customers | |
| * | Family members at the Banks family reunion | ||
| * | Express Printing & Distribution customers |
Logic Alone vs. An Open Mind
Logic alone can cause you to come to the wrong conclusion.
A scientist was teaching a frog to "jump" on command. First, he cut off one of the frog’s legs and gave the command, "Jump!". The frog did. The same thing happened after cutting off legs two and three, though the third jump was a bit lop-sided. When the scientist cut off the frog’s fourth leg, he said, "Jump!", but the frog just sat there. The scientist repeated the command with no response.
The Scientist’s Conclusion: When a frog loses all four legs he becomes deaf.
**TOOL
BOX**
|
| * | ASAE's Professional Development Forum Online published Don’t Lose Your Learners—Involve Them! by TRAINING SYSTEMS, INC. President, Carolyn B. Thompson, in their “BOOKS THAT WILL MAKE YOUR JOB EASIER” section. Email TRAINING SYSTEMS for a copy. |
Simplify Your Life & Encourage Your Staff To Do The Same
Everyone is busy — you, your staff, your boss, your customers, your vendors, your family. Ask any retired person you know and they will tell you they don’t know where the time goes. Their life is full. And they are retired.
It is impossible to add any more to a full cup. When our lives are filled to the brim, there is no room for anything else to come in. Our lives become more and more frantic, we become stressed, our health suffers, we have less fun, and feel more and more powerless. Our lives may feel out of control. (Are we telling you something you don’t know?)
The idea of controlling time is a myth. There is no way to control time. All you can do is attempt to control events, and many of them are out of your control. You need to take charge of the things over which you do have control. This takes discipline. It’s not easy. With a finite amount of time available, you need to choose very carefully.
In order to make room for what you want, you need to get rid of what you don’t want. Your life will fill up by choice or by default. You need to choose. This requires a ruthless evaluation of everything you do and why you do it. You can make more time for yourself by delegating, reducing, or eliminating things you are now doing — things you either don’t like to do or that don’t provided the payoff you require.
It may not seem immediately apparent what or how something can be eliminated, but it can be done. It starts with making a list of everything you do that you don’t like doing and everything that no longer has real value to you.
Once you have made your list of hate-to-do and low-payoff tasks, it’s time to start prioritizing. One way to do this is to think about what you would do if you became incapacitated. How would these things get done? Would they get done? What would happen if they didn’t get done? Who else might do them? What could you be doing to produce more or better results?
Look for at least 3 things you’re doing...things you could discontinue or delegate. Think of how you would feel if you were no longer obligated to do these things. If the feeling is relief, then eliminate these tasks.
Dr. Wayne Dyer says relationships operating from obligation lack integrity. Our relationship with ourselves and with others should be one of integrity. Our goal is to eliminate this feeling of obligation.
What do you have in your life that you no longer want? Are they things? Obligations? Jobs? Problems?
In our complex world, it’s more important than ever to simplify our lives. Getting rid of whatever no longer serves us or others is one way we can do that.
What are you ready to eliminate from your life?
What can you do to help your staff eliminate things?
Adapted from an article written by Radha Sharma Makhecha for The Training Ideas listserv
Call
TRAINING SYSTEMS, INC.
for help prioritizing!
800-469-3560 or Email
|
Get more tips on inspiring great employees from TRAINING SYSTEMS. |
**TOOL BOX**
|
|||||||||||||||
Balanced Scorecard & Training
The Performance Scorecard, more commonly known as the Balanced Scorecard, is a performance management tool which aims to capture in a concise way the factors (performance drivers), which have the greatest influence on the performance of your organization, and how they are measured. The "balance" in a classic Balanced Scorecard is derived from the balance between performance in different areas like:
customers
internal
process
organizational development
finance
What's the benefit? You can use the Balanced Scorecard to demonstrate a strong link with human performance technology (HPT) goals. In fact, many successful organizations use Balanced Scorecards to establish a balanced approach to managing business performance.
You’ll need to:
- Develop your organization’s Performance Balanced Scorecard to effectively support your organization’s strategic business initiatives.
- Help your organization see the link between the HPT model and a Balanced Scorecard performance measurement system, so everyone knows how they relate.
- Apply your scorecard.
If you happen to live near Chicago, the Chicago Chapter of The International Society for Performance Improvement on July 12th is examining the Balanced Scorecard as a method for driving business success and give real life experiences of how the scorecard method has been used by companies to increase employee performance. For more information and/or to register, visit the CISPI website at http://www.cispi.com/reservation_event_details.asp?event_id=25.
If you live outside Chicago, Email or call TRAINING SYSTEMS, INC.at 800-469-3560, and we’ll fill you in on what we learned.
|
Get more tips on training great employees from TRAINING SYSTEMS. |
**TOOL BOX**
|
|||||||||||||||
Worried About All Those Retiring Boomers? Take Care of Your Generation X&Y-ers!
Having been asked this week both to write a magazine article on how to keep Generation X&Y staff and in a phone call to answer a question about what associations can do to replace the huge number of retiring Boomers — this article by Carolyn A. Martin, Ph.D. seemed appropriate:
Last summer, Barbara, a Boomer hospital administrator, had such a positive experience with a Gen Y intern that she recommended him to the accounting department. Just out of college, Jason hadn't thought about using his finance degree in a healthcare setting, but his internship was so valuable that he agreed to a one-year deal. Just three months later, however, Barbara received an irate call from the accounting manager. Jason had bailed out.
"See, I told you he was too young and impatient," Jason's fifty-something manager fumed. "Didn't he know he had a cushy job?"
Curious as to what went wrong, Barbara immediately got Jason on the phone. Jason's story was very different: "They put me in a cubicle for three months doing data entry," he explained. "They promised me I'd learn lots of stuff, but I wasn’t using my brain."
Generationally savvy, Barbara immediately understood the disconnect: "Cushy job" versus "I wasn’t using my brain." The most talented Gen Yers don’t want "cushy"; they want challenge. In our research on Gen Y, we've asked Yers what they consider when deciding whether to stay in a job or leave it. Their answers are quite telling:
* "We just need an opportunity. We don't want to be locked into dead-end jobs."
* "Get us to buy into your organization and let us contribute. We'll work our butts off and do a good job. If not, we're not afraid to move on."
* "I know it's time to leave when a position is open, I have the skills to take the position, and I've been turned down. It's worse yet to train someone off the street to take the job you're qualified for."
* "Just give us a chance to show you what we can do and what we can learn. We know we're young, but we want to contribute."
Y
ers want to be challenged and engaged: to learn new skills, to tackle new projects, to work with new people. When opportunities for learning and contributing disappear, so does their drive. Without a doubt, Gen Y is the highest maintenance workforce in history. But the flip side of high maintenance is high performance. Managers who make that investment will tap into a generation that wants to "use their brains" and "work their butts off" to do a good job.reprinted from Rainmaker Thinking Inc.
|
Get more tips on retaining great employees from TRAINING SYSTEMS. |
**TOOL BOX**
|
|||||||||||||||||||
WorldFuture 2006: Creating Global Strategies for Humanity’s Future, Sheraton Centre Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, http://www.wf.org
July 28-30, 2006
Annual Conference of the World Future Society, Sheraton Centre
Toronto Hotel, Toronto, Ontario, Canada,
August 19-22, 2006
ASAE’s 2006 Annual Meeting & Exposition, Boston Convention &
Exhibition Center, Boston, MA,
September 14-15, 2006
Learnshare’s Atlanta Sharing@LearnShare Conference: Achieving Competitive
Advantage, Renaissance Atlanta Hotel, Atlanta, Georgia,
September 25-27, 2006
IQPC’s E-Learning 2006: Evaluating, Delivering & Aligning E-Learning
Technologies with Business Strategy, Renaissance Atlanta Hotel, Atlanta,
GA,
October 4-6, 2006
Strategic HR Conference, Phoenix,
October 16-18, 2006
SHRM Workplace Diversity Conference & Exposition, Los Angeles, CA,
Global Volunteers (http://www.globalvolunteers.org)
You can:
select
by type of work project
select
by country and date
select
by service program conditions
select
by cost
Donate Old Suits
Check with your local Dress Barn. Some have programs to help unfortunate
women get jobs by supplying them with business suits people have donated.
Plus, they offer the donator a 10% off coupon for any purchase. Give a
little, get a little!
RECYCLING
Responsibly Dispose of Your Old Electronics
Recycle PCs, cell phones, printers, CDs
diskettes, etc. with GreenDisk. For $29.95, they send a 70-pound-capacity
box. When it’s full, you download postage from their website and ship it
back. Your "junk" then goes to workshops for the disabled and are
refurbished.
Donate PCs to National Cristina Foundation,
Recycle PCs and other computer products at
Hewlett Packard and Dell. See their websites for details.
Several
other places to recycle old PCs:
www.plugintoscycling.org,
www.earth911.org,
www.eiae.org.
Find local Electronics recyclers at
http://www.earth911.org
and
http://www.ebay.com/rethink
WWW.TRAININGSYS.COM
Get FREE access to great recruiting, inspiring, training & retaining tips,
ideas & resources where you can:
* Download articles for your newsletter!!!
*
Use free online assessments!
* Purchase books, tapes & fun
incentives to help you & your employees be the best!
*
Get new tips each month on Recruiting, Inspiring, Training, & Retaining
great employees!
*Have a recruitment, inspiration, training, or retention idea or question?
Send Email,
and we’ll post your idea or question (and the answer) in Answers & Ideas on
Recruiting, Inspiring, Training, & Retaining Great Employees at
http://www.trainingsys.com
*
Click on links to great managing and training websites!
*
Purchase our famous inspirational quote posters!
*
Get answers to your employee recruiting, inspiring, retaining, & training
questions from our experts!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Copyright 2006 TRAINING SYSTEMS, INC. All rights reserved.
**FORWARD RECRUIT, INSPIRE & RETAIN TO OTHERS
Remember, you can get issues you missed at our Website
http://www.trainingsys.com/rir/index.htm. For older (pre-1997) issues,
call 800-469-3560 or send an Email.
**ARTICLE REPRINTS FOR RECRUIT, INSPIRE & RETAIN
An ideal way to introduce new ideas or stimulate learning with the
employees in your organization.
Article reprints can also serve as a powerful promotional or sales tool -
include them with your
brochures, newsletters & media kits. For complete information on article
reprints or copyright
permission, call 1-800-469-3560 or
Email.
**YOU HAVE UNIQUE, VALUABLE KNOWLEDGE FOR OTHERS
UNSUBSCRIBE - send blank Email to:
leave-rir@trainingsys.com Change your
Email address (we want to keep you!) - unsubscribe under your old
address (send blank Email
We’d love to print your articles on recruiting, inspiring, training and
retaining employees. Email
your article.
**We’ll be back next month with more great tips, ideas, success stories, and
information to help you recruit, inspire, train, & retain great employees!
RECRUIT, INSPIRE & RETAIN contains links to websites operated by
organizations other than
TRAINING SYSTEMS, INC.
These links are for your convenience and we assume
no responsibility for the content or operations of those sites.
RECRUIT, INSPIRE & RETAIN
TRAINING SYSTEMS, INC.,
published 12 times/year. Editor: Carolyn B. Thompson, Data Entry: Patti
Lowczyk (Lowczyk Secretarial), HTML: Debbie Daw (http://www.helpquestdomains.com).
Visit us at http://www.trainingsys.com
soon!
SUBSCRIBE (it's FREE) -
send blank Email to:
join-rir@trainingsys.com
to: leave-rir@trainingsys.com)
then subscribe your new address (send blank Email to:
join-rir@trainingsys.com)