Casual Articles - Business

Meeting Planning - Everything Your Parents Did Not Tell You About Effective Meetings
Meeting planning and an effective meeting are key to great communications in teams and yet the below simple and powerful strategies are often overlooked.If you are here pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix to move your meetings from slow, boring and conflict struck happenings to efficient, powerful and meaningful gatherings, you can jump straight to end list at the end of this article where you have the quick version. To get more of the meat, more of the essence and lost of help to boost you there, take a chunk of your time and keeping reading below, it will be worth it.Have you been there? Have you felt it? How the meeting is over and you are not quite sure what you accomplished?Or even before the meeting was over, right in the midst of action, or lack of it, you felt irritated because you were stuck or bored because you wandered aimlessly from one topic to another without any sense of direction.Maybe you were surprised or even upset with that the meeting never get to be about that one thing that you thought it was going to be about. Everybody else kept talking about other things that you could not have cared less about.Keep reading below and I will share some of the secrets that make meetings efficient, energized and excellent. People often ask me for advise on this topic since they have experienced how these strategies I will give you below work their magic when applied properly.There are some timeless sure-fire strategies that

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Reason #7: Lack of appreciation, recognition, and rewards.

We won’t spend a long time on this section other than to underscore its importance since there are already so many books and resources available on delivering rewards and recognition.

We recommend conducting employee surveys once a year provided you actually act on the results; these will give you a lot of information about how well employees feel appreciated and recognized.

In terms of appreciation, research conducted by Gallup found that effective supervisors and managers praised each one of their employees a minimum of once every five working days.

What’s the best way of expressing giving praise? By thanking the employee and specifically telling them what they did right or well.

Answer this question about appreciation: How many people have ever complained to you that their boss gives them too much sincere praise and recognition?”

Reason #8: Insufficient coaching and feedback.

It’s surprising, but research shows many employees don’t get the positive feedback they need to know if they’re doing a good job--and what it is they’re doing that’s right. So they can continue to do it.

In addition, they often don’t get the corrective feedback they need to improve their performance.

Most people want to do a good job, but without the helpful positive and corrective feedback they need in order to do so, they’ll consider other employers.

Feedback is especially important in developing and retaining New Hires. They’re often a bit nervous in their new positions; effective feedback helps them understand what they’re doing well, builds their confidence, and helps them improve performance.

In many ways, management shapes the quality of employee performance it gets by how frequently and effectively it provides feedback What Things Should be Considered in Magazine Printing
Magazines are just like newspapers that are intended to provide significant information to the readers. However, what makes it different from the newspaper is the fact that magazines are often issued every week, or twice a week or every month. The cover of the magazine usually indicates a date which is later than the date when it was actually produced. The usual feature of a magazine is that it is printed in a paper that is coated with color and is fastened with a soft cover. The magazines are usually found in newsstands and book shops.Now if you’re thinking of making a magazine as your means of boosting up your marketing efforts, then you’ve got the right choice. But when you make a magazine, the process is not that simple. Why? It’s because you can’t publish a magazine when you don’t have anything to publish. Got it? Well the essence of it is that you still need to write articles or stories to make the magazine whole. When you’re through with the writing stuff, then, that’s the time that you give attention to the publishing aspect.But before you do that you need to think first what kind of magazine you would like to make. Generally speaking, there are two major types of magazines. These are the business magazines and the consumer magazines.What’s their difference? Well basically the consumer magazines are intended for the general public. They can be availed in book stores and other retail outlets. Usually, they talk about various topics that match the general int

Here are 10 of the most common reasons employees leave; we haven’t ranked them in their order of importance with the exception of the first one, which is usually the largest single reason employees leave.

1. Poor relationship between the employee and their immediate boss.
2. Lack of a career advancement plan.
3. A poor match between the employee and the job or the employee and the company.
4. Compensation not competitive.
5. No direct link between strong performance and increased rewards.
6. A need for stimulating, meaningful work.
7. Lack of appreciation, recognition, and rewards.
8. Insufficient coaching and feedback.
9. Quality of the people the employee works with.
10. Insufficient alignment of how the employee’s work achieves

Their boss may frequently criticize them while withholding praise and appreciation for quality work; demean them in front of others; pile on more work as a reward for being productive; refuse reasonable requests for time off or other matters; and act disagreeably. What can you do?

a. Make employee retention part of their job descriptions and base at least 25% of bonuses on employee retention.

b. Provide training in how to give corrective feedback-and in how to praise and recognize employees.

c. Help them understand the high cost of employee turnover and how it affects their performance and department.

d. Train them to conduct “stay interviews” with their employees so they find out why they continue to work there, what would entice them to leave, what they like most about their jobs, and what other skills they want to learn.

e. Consider coaching for supervisors and managers who need it; our experience is that most can make improvements.

Many employers now have many Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1980) and Generation Y (born between 1981 and 1994) employees in their workforce.

Both of these generations are much more determined to add skills, training, and expertise to better develop their careers and stay more marketable and promotable.

Their supervisor or manager is often the person best qualified to help them identify and develop new skills since they’re the ones who are most familiar with the employee’s work, preferences, and performance on a daily basis. Your company will likely need to learn how to help employees develop career plans, and then train managers to work on these plans with their direct reports.

If two jobs and companies are fairly similar, and one employer offers career advancement help while the other does not, which employer do you think is more likely to attract and retain qualified employees?

Reason #3: A poor match between the employee and the job or the employee and the company.

Many new hires start with a fair amount of enthusiasm when they begin a new job with a new employer. However, when the new hire, the job, or the employer haven’t been well-matched, many will leave while the employer incurs expensive replacement costs.

a. Use exit interviews, preferably by a third party who can promise confidentiality, to find out why they left.

b. Be certain job descriptions are accurate and up-to-date, and identify the skills and competencies the job requires, not just the tasks. Be able to state what is required to be successful in the job.

c. When you have qualified candidates, pay them to shadow a capable employee in the same job for one day, and then get feedback from both of them.

d. Ask the prospective employee to identify the needs and expectations they have of the job and the company. Spell out the needs and expectations the company has of them, and then compare what both of you have written. How close are you?

e. Continue to review the mutual needs and expectations you have of each other at least once a month during their first three months.

Our experience has shown that measures like these tend to increase employee loyalty, effort, and retention.

Are your wages, salaries and benefits competitive with what other employers pay? If they’re not, you can expect to lose people unless there are other compelling reasons for them to stay for slightly lower wages. Conduct a comparison of your wages and benefits every two to three years.

In addition, are you only paying minimum wage? If you are, then you’re susceptible to losing people to other employers for increases as low as 5% in their hourly wages!

Do your employees know what they can do to improve their performance and productivity and to earn more as a result?

If they don’t, they’re likely to reach a plateau which consists of doing work that’s good enough to keep the job, but without expending extra effort.

Developing a work-compensation link isn’t easy, but companies have been doing it in one form or another for a long time. For example, salespeople who receive a base salary and commissions or bonuses for higher sales.

Or, gain-sharing plans where employees receive a percentage of production gains over a certain level.

The logistics of developing such a program are too lengthy to be covered here, but you can research or get outside consulting help on how to build direct links between increased performance and increased rewards/compensation in your organization.

I must admit I don’t know how some people do the jobs they do: repetitive, boring, little thinking required, little chance for advancement.

Some jobs will always have these elements no matter what we do to redesign them. How can we make many jobs more meaningful and stimulating?

1) By acknowledging the value of the job, and more importantly, the person doing the job. Every job is beneficial to the organization and other employees in some way, yet it amazes me when managers don’t recognize the hard work some employees do.

If my boss thinks the work I do is important and tells me (and others), then I will often place a higher value on the work that I do-and on myself.

2) Ask the employee what the significance is of the job they do. If they say, “Just cleaning the building,” help them understand it’s much more than this. For example: “You help 103 other employees have a clean and more enjoyable place to work, and a building we’re proud to show to customers and visitors.”

This isn’t untruthful, it just sounds odd because many jobs-especially lower level ones-are talked about in negative terms.

3) Can you give the employee more choice in how they perform the job? Review what the job must accomplish as an end result and any safety or legal matters, and then ask them how to change or redesign the job.

We won’t spend a long time on this section other than to underscore its importance since there are already so many books and resources available on delivering rewards and recognition.

We recommend conducting employee surveys once a year provided you actually act on the results; these will give you a lot of information about how well employees feel appreciated and recognized.

In terms of appreciation, research conducted by Gallup found that effective supervisors and managers praised each one of their employees a minimum of once every five working days.

What’s the best way of expressing giving praise? By thanking the employee and specifically telling them what they did right or well.

Answer this question about appreciation: How many people have ever complained to you that their boss gives them too much sincere praise and recognition?”

In addition, they often don’t get the corrective feedback they need to improve their performance.

Most people want to do a good job, but without the helpful positive and corrective feedback they need in order to do so, they’ll consider other employers.

In many ways, management shapes the quality of employee performance it gets by how frequently and effectively it provides feedback Positioning Strategies For Real Estate Agents
Just recently I was asked to do a talk for my good friend and co-author of our best-selling book in Singapore titled Get Rich Now: 15 Strategies from a Self-made Millionaire, Dr Dennis Wee. (Dr Wee is one of Singapore’s most celebrated entrepreneurs. Despite not having completed his high school education, he managed to start and build up his own real estate company, Dennis Wee Group, to become of Singapore’s leading real estate companies generating S$3.8 billion worth of sales in 2006.)He wanted me to share some marketing secrets with his real estate agents and I was more than happy to do so because I believe there’s so much more that agents can do to position, brand and market their services. Sadly, most agents, whether in real estate or financial services (insurance) or any other industries, tend to see themselves just as a salesperson. This perception of themselves is limiting their growth and income!By thinking that they are just salespeople, they don’t see the possibilities of growing their careers into full-fledge businesses. There are so much more benefits for someone to think big and build a big business, compared to just existing, and making a living. Donald Trump said: “If you’re going to be thinking, you might as well think big.” But that’s another topic for another session.Here, I’m going to show you some detailed examples of how an agent can differentiate himself using some simple positioning and branding strategies ent.