How to Find the Best Employee for the Job
Frankly, a lot of businesses are only as good as the workers who handle the day to day activities and actually come in contact with the customer or client. However, finding the right person, to fill a position, can be a guessing game, unless you know the right questions to ask, in order to make an informed decision.
For example, many potential employers make the common mistake of asking hypothetical questions, to determine whether the employee can handle customers, and related duties properly. Instead of receiving an informed answer, based upon past experiences, many applicants will simply be guessing at the response that will garner them the position.
Instead, ask the individual about a time when he/she was able to resolve customer conflict. Find out the circumstances surrounding the issue, how the worker dealt with the problem, and if he/she would do anything different, if a similar situation were to occur in the future. Now, instead of receiving a hypothetical answer to a fictitious question, you are learning how your candidate handled a real life situation with a customer. Then, you will be able to better determine whether this person can handle any potential problems that may arise in the workplace.
Once you have visited with the potential hire, get the proper release to contact references. Many employers ask for references, yet never bother to follow up on the information. Some interviewees are counting on this lapse in judgment. After all, after the 100th interview, some people have many answers prepared for the questioner. In other words, they are prepared to give you the answers you want to hear.
Although some previous employers will give a good report, even if the applicant was a lousy employee, others will give an honest evaluation of how the individual worked with others and handled the customers. So, do not ask for references if you do not intend to follow through and make a few phone calls.
As an employer, your business will be only as good as the workers you hire. So, it is in your best interests to make every effort to get it right the first time. Hiring the wrong person can cost you valued customers and ultimately cause you unnecessary time and expense searching for a replacement. So, ask the right questions, know the acceptable answers, and be willing to extend your search for the best employee for the job.
Paul Sutherland is an Accelerated Business Growth Coach. His company – Daniel Thomas International – http://www.dti.eu.com helps corporate and SMEs to grow their businesses with tried tested and proven techniques and strategies, increasing their bottom line profits in 90 days or less.
Using Corporate Gifts to Improve Morale in the Company
To improve the morale within your company, you should look for ways that will reward individual achievements, organizing events such as annual dinner and dance, or thank your employees for their loyal contribution and effort to the company. For all those ways mentioned above, you can use corporate gifts to organize events and present corporate gifts to your employees.
One of the best ways to get an employee feels important and recognized within the company is to keep track of his or her birthday. Send him or her a personal birthday wishes and a gift. This will make them feel valued by you and will definitely improve his or her morale during work.
Another way to boost morale of your employees is to reward them for their loyalty to the company. Having good and loyal employees to stick thick and thin with the company for years is not an easy feat. Those who stick with a company for years are those who most likely gone through at least one life changing event in the time they are with the company. They will have seen the bad and goods within the company and has continued to work hard for you. This kind of employees is hard to find, and their loyalty should be rewarded. By rewarding loyalty within your company, you will be showing to your employees that you value them and loyalty is worth rewarding in your company.
For company anniversary events or annual dinner and dance, make sure that the corporate gifts that you are giving out to your employees are quality good. Organize your event in a public setting and call your employees up and thank them for their time in the company. Tell them how much you appreciate their time and effort put in for the past few years, and presents them their gifts with a sincere smile on your face.
Quality gifts do not necessary need to be expensive and personalized. There are tons of corporate gifts providers on the Internet that offer competitive prices with highest quality of gifts. You will most likely get a much cheaper price when purchasing bulk of gifts online as these online merchants have lesser overheads to cover and thus are able to pass on the savings to you. Just make sure that the online merchant that you are buying for are reputable and check out their return policy carefully.
Keep your gifts simple and you will be able to keep your loyal employees happy.
Cheow Yu Yuan is a freelance article writer and specializes in article marketing on the Internet.
This article is written for one of his clients in the corporate gifts industry, you can visit the website from the link below…
http://www.CoolStyleGifts.com
Not Your Usual Easter Egg Search
No more wondering about where the infamous gangsters got wacked and what restaurants Jimmy Hoffa frequented to discuss mafia hits in New York’s Little Italy, cleverly planned a scavenger hunts around these fun, historical events and spots, where all the members of the group pitch in and get their kicks finding fun facts together, are an increasingly popular method of bringing people together, whether those people are a family or corporation.
Companies now specialize in creating hunts for anyone and anywhere. They are not “lame” fact finding trivia gathering scavenger hunts, but engaging and involved teamwork-driven adventures that open the eyes to cool historical facts and landmarks.
Public Hunt
The themes and location of the hunt vary, but companies will often post available hunts and adventures on their website where you can usually buy tickets. The public would buy tickets prior to meeting for the scavenger hunt. The attendees are grouped together not much larger than six people each. Each group competes to find answers to 20 or so riddled and pun-like questions given in a set of clue sheets provided by the scavenger hunt emcee. The fastest group to find the answers will win.
Public scavenger hunts are mainly hosted in Major Cities: New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Although the hunts are a little more geared toward adults, there are still family oriented scavenger hunts like New York Bronx Zoo’s “The Wild Wildlife Scavenger Hunt” and the “Art Attack Family Scavenger Hunt” in L.A’s Getty Museum. To contrast with family night, PG-13 rated scavenger hunts are available as well, such as the Getty’s Nude art pieces with puzzler questions around them.
Private Hunt
The fresh way of starting the next company team building meeting is to have a scavenger hunt. With the private hunt you can call the shots; selecting the place, the group setting, where to go out for drinks later and even throw in some scavenger questions pertaining to the company. It’s a good way to get groups to work together, notice each other’s strengths and have a few laughs on the way.
In addition to a standard scavenger hunt, other options some companies offer include photo questions, where teammates are given a Polaroid camera to take group photo answers for their questions. Another more luxurious option are Limousine hunts. Attendees are chauffeured around town to every question destination. The scope of the game becomes that much grander.
Whatever your reason for taking on a scavenger hunt, you’ll find that modern-day hunts are far more sophisticated — and fun — than what you might remember from your days trying to get into a college fraternity or sorority.
Watson Adventures (http://www.watsonadventures.com) are the scavenger hunt experts. With clients that include some of the most well-known corporations, corporate scavenger hunts to improve employee cohesiveness and productivity have become a specialty.
Stress in the Workplace – A Management Responsibility
Stress is considered to be the main cause of many medical conditions, including heart problems. At the same time, the nature of stress is multifaceted and difficult to define, and the reasons for its increase are poorly understood.
Stress in the workplace can have a disastrous effect on peoples’ health and lead to sickness and absence. It can also seriously disrupt the business and reduce profits. Yet many organisations consider stress to be a personal problem of individual workers, and something which an organisation can do little to address.
The amount of stress in the workplace is generally considered to be increasing. The concept of a job for life has been consigned to history and most workers will need to learn new skills during the course of their career. Male manual workers in traditional heavy industries such as mining, steel and manufacturing may need to adapt to the very different work situation of an office environment. Advances in Information Technology mean that staff will need to become computer literate and this can be a major challenge for anyone over 40 years of age.
The cost of labour is invariably the biggest cost of any organisation in a western economy and dwarfs the costs of machinery and business premises. Most large firms have an opportunity to relocate part of their operations in a low wage location such as India, and this increases the pressure on management to increase the productivity of staff in the mature economies of the west. All companies are searching for ways to reduce their staff and to make their existing staff work harder and to greater effect.
In one sense, stress can be productive. Giving people targets and deadlines invariably generates mild levels of stress and this state of agitation can help to focus attention on the tasks to hand.
However, many workers report symptoms of stress which are decidedly unhealthy and lead to sickness and prolonged periods of absence from work. It has always been the case that high flying, young male executives experience high levels of stress and this often leads to burn out at an early age. These high flyers were often difficult to work with and received little sympathy from colleagues whom they had mistreated over the years, in the event of a physical or mental collapse.
In recent times, stress has permeated the entire workplace and there are many people who genuinely feel that they are unable to cope with the demands of work. Responses vary. Some staff will seek to avoid responsibility and try to get others to make difficult decisions. Others will turn down opportunities for promotion. Some will simply start looking for a job elsewhere, and eventually leave the organisation. Worse still, some may embark on regular and prolonged periods of sickness, while still drawing their salaries and other benefits of employment.
Most articles on the subject of stress focus on ways an individual can try to reduce stress in work and learn how to cope. While these are undoubtedly useful, it should also be remembered that the management of the organisation is ultimately responsible for the welfare of staff. A stress ridden workplace, with high staff turnover and excessive sick leave is neither beneficial for employees nor the organisation itself.
A progressive company should always be looking for new ways of working more efficiently and effectively in order to reduce costs and increases revenues or profits. The management of human resources is probably the most crucial element in this quest.
There are several things an organisation can do -
1. The organisation of work in a company should be a top management function, and should be the subject of company wide, regular reviews. This does not mean that emphasis should be place on rewriting job functions every few months. In fact many argue that excessively detailed job specifications are the source of inertia and atrophy. What is required is an appreciation of the human implications of corporate strategy. In other words, as the activities of the organisation change or expand, then careful thought should be given as to how the workforce should adapt to these changes in order to make the strategy a success.
2. Recruitment of skilled and capable staff is essential to the achievement of corporate objectives. In all organisations, there will be leaders and followers, and poor selection of leaders will inevitably lead to corporate collapse. Therefore great care should be given to the selection process for the recruitment of key staff. In addition to personal qualities such as vision, intelligence, energy and dynamism, it is also important that key staff can inspire and motivate their junior colleagues.
3. Management styles have, or should have, moved away from the traditional hierarchical and authoritarian based military model. In other words, staff perform tasks, not because they are simply told to by management, but because they appreciate the value of their role in the organisation as a whole. On this approach, the remit of a manager is to assist staff to perform their roles and to inspire commitment based on his or her personal example.
4. There should be a culture in the workplace whereby staff who are experiencing difficulty in discharging their tasks have an informal forum in which to discuss these matters. It is simply incorrect to think that the reason why a person is not performing well must always be due to a personal failure on their behalf. Staff are often given targets which are impossible and deadlines which are unrealistic. In this case, the failure lies with the manager who allocated this task, rather than the unfortunate person who was given the job.
5. All workers should have a personal development plan. The plan should identify the skills they need to develop and discharge their responsibilities more effectively, and provide training or supervised learning experiences which will assist in skill building. If a member of staff is content with his or her current responsibilities and is not seeking a pay rise or promotion, then one should be able to articulate this preference without fear of ridicule or discrimination.
If these steps are implemented then the staff of an organisation will learn how to work imaginatively and proactively. This will invariably lead to a reduction in stress.
Leslie Hardy is the UK Chairman of Wellington Estates Ltd, a North Cyprus property development company. Read the full text of this article at http://www.wellestates.com