Tag Archives: staffing

Positive Dialog For Evaluating Employees

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Are you a boss or supervisor and need some positive words for evaluating employees? If you are in charge of other supervisors, you may also need toevaluate their performance. We are going to look at some areas of competencyand positive words associated with them,

Positive Words for Evaluating Employees

If you are a direct supervisor or boss, you may have difficulty in assessing the different areas of an employee’s job. Some of the areas to assess are: dependability, computer skills, adaptability, people skills, personal qualities, dedication, creativity, personal development, and organizational skills.

 

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Where To Recruit GREAT Employees

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“To succeed, surround yourself with great talent.” Sounds great.

Also sounds expensive.

Hiring the best is really hard to pull off in practice, especially if your goal is to hire Lamborghinis and all you have is a Kia budget.

So what can you do? Try taking a contrarian investment approach to hiring.

People, just like stocks, are often underappreciated and undervalued, like people who have great skills but no experience in your industry. Or people who are well educated, but their education is in the “wrong” field. Or people whose current job lacks sufficient “status.”

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Who Is Your Company’s Worst Employee?

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Pop quiz: who is your organisation’s worst performer? Without naming names, think about why they perform so poorly. Maybe they are just not up to the job, lazy, unmotivated, and poorly trained or managed. Maybe they’re winding down the clock until something better comes along, or don’t care.

Now think about how that employee makes you feel. You might be annoyed that your organisation tolerates deadwood for so long, or furious that the poor performer is milking the company. Perhaps you are peeved that you can’t get a decent pay rise because underperformers are chewing up too much of the company’s salary cap, and creating more work for others. Maybe you don’t care.

Go a step further: what is being done to help your company’s worst performer? Do they even know they are performing so poorly, and are they on notice to improve or leave? Have you made an effort to help the underperformer (if in a small team) and has your boss taken that person under their wing? Does your company banish underperformers to corporate Siberia?

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Exit Interviews – The Real Purpose Of Them!

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Employee engagement continues to be an issue for organizations.  There is constant conversation about being over-worked and under-paid.  We all realize times have been tough but now is the perfect time to examine some of your processes to ensure your business remains healthy.

One of the overlooked opportunities to communicate and learn more about your organization is the exit interview.

Conducting exit interviews can be a valuable experience for any organization.  Provided of course that the exit interview is done with proper planning and for the right reasons.  If you’re doing exit interviews to get the heads-up on whether the departing employee plans to sue you and your company, well…that might be good to know but it’s not really the best use of an exit interview.

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Improving Employee Retention NOW!

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In a down economy, employees have fewer opportunities to take a job at another company, but entrepreneurs would be remiss to take their fingers off the pulse of company morale simply because employees have fewer options. “Companies that don’t think about [employee retention], that basically rest on their laurels and think ‘the economy will take care of us, where are they going to go?’ Those are the companies that, as soon as the labor market picks back up, their turnover rates are going to go from 5 percent to 50 percent and it will happen overnight,” says Mark Murphy, author of The Deadly Sins of Employee Retention and CEO of Leadership IQ, a Washington D.C.-based executive education firm.

So what’s one of the biggest reasons people quit their jobs? “One of the major reasons is being dissatisfied with their supervisor,” says Linda Argote, a professor of organizational behavior at Carnegie Mellon and editor-in-chief of Organization Science. And in the cramped confines of a small business, that relationship can create even more of a strain. “In bigger companies there are more opportunities to move to other jobs if you’re dissatisfied with a particular supervisor but like the firm, whereas smaller companies may have less options so they run the risk of losing the employee,” Argote adds.

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How Employers Can Contain Costs With Staffing

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What business isn’t looking to control expenses? Staffing firms offer many effective solutions for reducing overhead, managing operating costs and improving organizational performance. Used effectively, staffing services can save you more than they cost.

Here are some key ways you can use staffing to reduce costs in your organization:

Convert fixed expenses to variable.
Develop a plan to staff your business strategically. Minimize the number of permanent employees on your staff to the level needed to sustain your core volume of work. Proactively plan to bring in extra help when it’s needed.

Bring in expertise on an as-needed basis.
Temporaries can deliver the experience and skills you need without impacting fixed expenses. As an added benefit, temporary “experts” are often less expensive than consultants.

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Does Your Company Culture Attract Greatness??

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Why do companies as disparate as Google, Southwest Airlines and Zappo’s get such great reviews from their employees? How do they attract top candidates? Easy. They’ve worked hard to develop company cultures that epitomize strong values, a modern work ethic that includes fun, and service above all.

If you want to appeal to the top-drawer candidates that apply to these popular companies in droves, it’s time to think about what your company can offer. Has your company defined its core values? Created a distinct corporate culture? Have you expressed these values on your web site or in your job listings, where candidates can see them?

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Staffing Firms Add Jobs in October

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Seasonally adjusted employment data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that staffing firms added 15,000 new jobs (0.7%) from September to October. In a year-to-year comparison, temporary help employment for the month was 7.9% higher than October 2010.

U.S. nonfarm payroll employment added 80,000 jobs in September, largely driven by employment increases in the private sector. Modest job growth was reported in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, health care, and mining. Government employment continued to decline. The overall unemployment rate dropped slightly from 9.1% to 9.0%.

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Department of Labor Partners With Facebook

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With the unemployment rate still at 9%, the White House and the U.S. Department of Labor have reinforced their focus on putting Americans back to work. Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis recently announced an innovative partnership between DOL, Facebook, and several employment organizations to help job seekers find employment through social media.

The Social Jobs Partnership is a Facebook fan page with links to career resources such as guidance on writing résumés, tips on interviewing, and a Web site that matches visitors’ skills with potential job opportunities. In addition, candidates can find information on apprenticeships that provide training along with a job.

In a press briefing Oct. 21, Facebook’s vice president of global public policy, Marne Levine, said that 92% of recruiters have used or plan to use social media platforms to find talent. As more candidates begin to take advantage of the Social Job Partnership, staffing firms may find it’s a convenient site to locate motivated candidates.

Here is the Facebook page:  http://www.facebook.com/socialjobs

Courtesy of the American Staffing Association and Diana Mertz

How A Temp Position Can Build Your Career

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Whether you are the lone temp, or working with other temps, temporary work is a hub for opportunities and conversation.

More often than people realize, a temporary opportunity turns into a fantastic long term career. When you are working in a company on a contract, you should look at the position as a working interview for future opportunities.  Those opportunities don’t necessarily always come from the company your at but by word of mouth.

I can honestly say, while I own my successes, word of mouth is what gave me the initial chance to prove myself. I didn’t come in with a specific skill set, I came in with great recommendations on other projects and learned as I went. People gave me the opportunity to grow my skills because of what they had heard about my work ethic, personality, networking abilities, etc.  I know that I am not unique.  You can turn a ho-hum position into a life long journey of successes as well, if you want.

What I suggest ::

1.  Get to know everyone in the company, and let them get to know you. What are their career goals? Where did they come from? How long have they been with ‘said’ company?  What other companies have they worked for?

2.  Work your tail off and show how committed you are.  You don’t have to be committed to a company necessarily ..but you do have to be committed to doing a great job on the assignment – to the end.

3.  Show interest for more. Get involved in networking events. This may take a bit of your free time but it will pay off.  Everyone knows someone who knows someone.  Get out there and meet those 2nd and 3rd connections.

4.  Finally, connect to all of your temporary co-workers on LinkedIn.  Request recommendations from them. Keep in touch with them long after your assignment.  As your career develops, so will theirs.  Those contacts may pay off big in 5 years.

Bottom line?  Take advantage of every opportunity that you are given.  Nothing is minimal unless you insist it to be.  The opportunities are out there and the time is yours.  Do as I did/do…. OWN IT!!!