Current issue Newswire
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Seven signs it's time to hire |
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Written by Workplace Staff
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Recent Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey indicated that 43,000 jobs were created and the unemployment rate dropped slightly to 8.3 per cent. With these signs of improvement, many companies may be wondering whether it’s time to hire.
Robert Half offers seven signs that it’s time to bring in reinforcements. They include:
1. Service levels are deteriorating. Perhaps your company has experienced an unusual increase in returned items and requests for refunds. Or customers may be complaining frequently about the way your staff treats them. Or perhaps you’ve noted that employees seem to be operating in a constant reactive mode, rather than anticipating and preventing problems the way they used to.
2. Important but non-urgent projects are repeatedly deferred. Deliverables are chronically postponed, or projects are thrown off schedule because individuals or teams fail to complete their duties on time. You find yourself constantly revising due dates to accommodate unexpected complications.
3. Your company has to take a pass on emerging opportunities. There are new products you would launch or new services you would offer – if only you had more workers. You’ve watched as competitors seize opportunities that you had to forego because you are short-staffed.
4. Your firm can’t take on any more clients or customers. You’re beginning to have to turn away new business. Referrals from current customers and clients are piling up on your desk, awaiting follow-up.
5. You’re doing low-level work. You spend most of your day dealing with urgent but unimportant matters, rather than focusing on strategic, big-picture issues. You find yourself stocking inventory, answering phones or refilling toner cartridges because your business is so short-handed.
6. A single absence throws the entire team off schedule. You step in repeatedly to cover for staff members who are out sick or overloaded with work. You feel like you’re literally doing it all – from IT trouble-shooting and accounting to sales, customer service, order fulfillment and basic administrative duties.
7. Your staff regularly works overtime to finish projects. If your team is on a constant first-name basis with the cleaning crew, it’s probably time to hire. Having people work long hours for extended periods of time isn’t ultimately sustainable.
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Required Reading: Ignoring unwritten rules of business like a viper in the dark |
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Written by Laurie Blake
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Unwritten Rules: What Women Need to Know About Leading in Today’s Organizations
By Lynn Harris
Amazon Books (self-published); $24.95 (CAN)
 In the introduction to her first chapter, author Lynn Harris repeats the story about a new CEO of a Fortune 500 company who walks into his first senior management meeting and asks: “Where are all the women?” And, in fact, despite “decades of efforts”, to quote the recent Catalyst report, the number of women in top positions is declining, not only in Canada but worldwide.
Harris offers a number of reasons for this in her new book, but clearly the one she believes women need to focus on is learning the unwritten rules of the business world. “A lack of understanding of the organizational environment and its unwritten rules is an ignorance you simply can’t afford,” she writes.
“It’s like having a snake in the room with the lights turned off – you never know when you might trip over it or get bitten, sometimes fatally.”
Harris, a Montreal, QC-based executive coach, says her purpose behind writing Unwritten Rules was to “turn on the light,” reveal where the snakes are hiding and teach women how to manage or to avoid them altogether.
For more about the book and how to order it, visit www.unwrittenrulesthebook.com.
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Bonuses reign as top employee reward, CFOs agree |
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Written by Workplace Staff
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Yet another study confirms that bonuses are an important part of an organization’s reward programs. According to a recent Accountemps survey, despite lean budgets for many businesses today, most financial executives say cash is king in recognizing their teams’ hard work. Thirty-four per cent of chief financial officers (CFOs) interviewed for the Accountemps survey cited bonuses as the most effective way to acknowledge a job well done. Another 28 per cent of CFOs, however, indicated that they do not reward employees after major projects.
CFOs were asked, “Which of the following do you feel is most effective in rewarding your accounting team after major projects?” Their responses:
- Bonuses we key for 34 per cent.
- Time off was the second most important element, at 15 per cent.
- Departmental lunch or social gathering were appreciated by 11 per cent of respondents.
- Tickets to sporting or entertainment events were valued by 8 per cent.
- 28 per cent of respondents do not reward at all while some three per cent of respondents didn’t have an answer. ( Survey does not equal 100 due to rounding.)
“Offering bonuses for a job well done can be an effective way to motivate and retain employees,” says Kathryn Bolt, president of Accountemps’ Canadian operations. “For those workers taxed with additional responsibilities as a result of staff cutbacks, offering recognition demonstrates that their contributions are valued.”
Bolt acknowledged that bonuses may not be feasible for some firms. “While some companies may be challenged in offering compensation-based rewards, investing in budget-friendly recognition programs will help motivate staff and protect companies from the threat of employees leaving as the economy improves.”
The Canadian study was developed by Accountemps, a division of Robert Half International and the world’s first and largest specialized staffing service for temporary accounting, finance and bookkeeping professionals. It was conducted by an independent research firm and is based on more than 270 telephone interviews with CFOs from a random sample of Canadian companies with 20 or more employees.
Accountemps has more than 360 offices worldwide and offers online job search services at www.accountemps.com. Follow Accountemps for workplace news at twitter.com/accountemps.
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Workers with mental illness more likely to suffer recurrence than those with physical disability |
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Written by Workplace Staff
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With mental illness associated with more lost work days than any other chronic condition and costing $17.7 billion annually in lost productivity, understanding its underpinnings is increasingly important to the Canadian economy. Now new research from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) indicates that the strongest predictor for work disability leaves is a person's past history of occurrences.
A team led by Principal Investigator Dr. Carolyn Dewa, head of CAMH's Work and Well-being Research and Evaluation Program, evaluated the employment data of over 10,000 workers from a large Canadian employer and compared several variables to analyze patterns of disability.
In general, workers who have had a disability leave are more at risk of having another one. Comparing patterns of leave taken due to physical disability with those for mental health disability, data showed that the likelihood of reoccurrence for those with a physical illness doubled while those with mental illness were seven times more likely to reoccur. There are several possibilities for this disparity. First, mental illness is chronic in nature and relapse is common. Even when symptoms improve there are often persistent effects. Another contributor may be that there are not adequate resources offered to workers to address their mental health needs.
"Often the support and services available to employees when they return to work does not address the chronic nature of mental illness," says Dr. Dewa. "It's important that employers implement a continuum of care and support – both to help prevent a person from needing to go on leave, as well as to help maintain their mental wellness upon their return to work."
The treatment of mental illness can often be complex and may involve more than just the patient and their doctor or therapist," according to Dr. David Goldbloom, CAMH's senior medical advisor. "Successful management of mental illness involves proper follow-up care and medication, counselling, social support both from loved ones and the workplace, as well as ongoing access to meaningful employment," he says. "All these may need to come together in order to get better and stay better."
Robin is a former teacher who knows first-hand how wellness initiatives and education can help someone successfully integrate back into the workplace. After a biking accident led to a bout of severe depression, Robin found that her employer was unaware of how to appropriately support her return to work. "During my leave of absence, there was constant pressure to return to work I felt that my employer was not fully aware of what supports needed to be in place to help my transition, which made it difficult for me to return."
Now an education specialist at CAMH, Robin works openly with her managers and uses workplace supports when they are needed. "My managers understand that staying healthy is an ongoing, dynamic and collaborative process. With the proper resources and supports in place, I am able to manage my condition and still be productive."
Dewa stresses the need for employers to educate themselves and their employees about creating a workplace that promotes mental health. This includes addressing the needs of those with mental health issues in the workplace and encouraging the development of effective interventions for promoting mental health in the working population.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital, as well as one of the world's leading research centres in this field. CAMH combines clinical care, research, education, policy development and health promotion to transform the lives of people affected by mental health and addiction issues. CAMH is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto, and is a Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization Collaborating Centre. To learn more, visit www.camh.net.
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Study links wellness programs to innovation and creativity |
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Written by Workplace Staff
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Organizations that promote employee health and well-being are three-and-a-half times more likely to encourage creativity and innovation, according to research by Right Management released at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“We found fewer than half of the more than 28,000 employees who participated in our worldwide study reported that their organizations actively promote health and wellness,” says Deborah Schroeder-Saulnier, senior vice president for global solutions at Right Management. “Yet we now have persuasive evidence linking health and well-being to greater employee engagement, organizational productivity, talent retention and – of utmost importance in today’s post-recession economy – creativity and innovation.”
Seventy-two per cent of respondents who rated their organization highly for actively promoting health and well-being also rated it highly for encouraging creativity and innovation. Among those who did not rate their organization’s health and well-being efforts highly, only 20 per cent took a favourable view of their organization’s encouragement of creativity and innovation.
Schroeder-Saulnier cites the top drivers for promoting health and well-being at work:
- “I work in a safe and healthy environment.”
- “My organization allows me to maintain a reasonable balance between my family and work life.”
- “You can balance work and personal interests at my organization and still progress.”
- “I have an appropriate workload.”
- “The amount of pressure I experience in my role is reasonable.”
“Of all the individual actions an organization could take, these five would do the most to improve the well-being of employees,” says Schroeder-Saulnier.
“In swiftly changing markets, creativity and innovation provide organizations with the agility to meet new needs and make the most of new opportunities,” advises Schroeder-Saulnier. “The true potential of wellness initiatives can only be realized when wellness is embedded within the organization’s core business strategy. Leaders and human resource professionals would do well to implement wellness initiatives that focus more precisely on yielding results that drive individual behaviours essential to improving the effectiveness of the entire organization.”
Right Management surveyed 28,810 employees across 10 industries in 15 countries. Participants were asked to self-report on attitudes, performance and conditions directly related to the effectiveness of their organization. Right Management is the talent and career management expert within Manpower, the global leader in employment services.
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