U.S. Firms Lag in Assisting Employees with Work/Life Balance
Companies in the United States do well in handling problems of discrimination in the workplace, but they don’t rate quite as well in aiding employees’ family life. That was the result of a recent study that compared U.S. companies with other firms in 173 countries on their guidelines for working families. The study used information Read more »
Market for Online Learning Growing
The market for online learning — where users go at their own pace and on their own schedule — has been growing constantly, led by the corporate sector, one of the top users of online training. Small- and medium-size businesses also are using online training much more than in the past. According to a recent Read more »
Health and the Workplace
According to a recent survey on employee health, workers could do more at work to eat better and be more active, while employers could improve workers’ health by doing more to encourage healthy lifestyles. The issue has become important because about three-fourths of Americans will be overweight by 2015, according to healthcare experts. And the Read more »
Changing Careers
Taking on a new career path is more prevalent now than in the past. Different reasons have been given for this – the rise technology, the pace of change. The days when someone spent their entire career at one company or in one job are certainly becoming less common. People change jobs for many reasons. Read more »
E-mail: Gossiping and Wasting Time at Work
Waaaay back in 2007 (remember those halcyon days, pre-recession?) a survey by the company MessageGate, Inc. found that employees considered e-mail systems the most important “corporate workflow tool.” Still, it also was a tool that helped employees “exercise poor judgment in its use,” and increased costs as well as business and legal risks. We can Read more »
Creating a New Year’s Career Resolution and Following Through
With the new year just begun, many people may have made a career resolution or two: “This year, I’ll get at least a five percent raise.” “This year, I’ll go to my boss before June and ask for a promotion.” And, while these certainly can be worthwhile plans, resolutions of any type too often fall Read more »
Perk Power
On-the-job perks can be very powerful when it comes to recruiting and even retaining employees. Let us count the ways: 1) When employees feel they are being “taken care of by their employers” (more on this in a moment) the more likely they are to recommend your company to their friends, neighbors and former colleagues. Read more »
Important Employee Performance Management Tasks
When supervising employees, don’t forget these important performance management tasks: 1) Be sure to align your workers’ goals with your company’s goals. As you create SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals for your workers, be sure you align these goals with your firm’s vision and objectives. By doing so you’ll help employees understand Read more »
Developing Business Ethics in Your Employees
As the country reels from several business scandals of the past few years, the idea of training employees in business ethics is gaining traction. The idea is to help staffers and managers examine their own ethics and come up with approaches for handling the occasional “sticky wicket” on the job. Yet to really get your Read more »
Telecommuting Better Than Working in Office
A study conducted by Brigham Young University and published this past summer in the Journal of Family Psychology reported that employees who were able to work from home said they had a better work/life balance than their office-based colleagues — even though the telecommuters worked much longer hours. The study took a look at almost Read more »