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Is Your Career Management Program a Waste of Resources?
| Your HR people may have gone to their touchy-feely meetings with balloons and happy face stickers to develop a best-practice career management program, but, giving credence to your skepticism about that group in general, the program may still not meet the needs of your workers. A recent survey by BlessingWhite found that most workers seldom or never even share their career plans with their employer. What’s more, the survey confirms my belief that many workers don’t even have a clear plan. Members of at least one generation do not believe it is useful to plan their careers. Yet, if careers are not managed appropriately, you are not getting the most out of your workers and adding to reasons why they want to leave.
The next questions then are: Do you have a problem with career management, and, if you do, what can you do about it? I’ll look at that tomorrow. |
Posted on: August 01, 2007 02:18 PM
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How Low Can You Go? IT Worker Confidence Down Again
| There has been a sharp drop in IT workers confidence in the last couple of months. Accoring to June data, it’s nearly as bad as it has been in 12 months.
The Bad News: Fewer workers rated their finances as “excellent” or “good”. Also, fewer workers predicted their companies would be hiring in June. And more workers have concern over job security. The Good News: There was a drop in the number of workers who anticipated their company will be reducing headcount. As we have learned in previous posts, this kind of fear does not mean workers try to do better in their existing company. It means that they are looking to leave for more secure situations, so be prepared for increased turnover, and avoid problems by doing as much as possible to promote why your project is a secure situation. It is, isn't it? |
Posted on: July 30, 2007 10:49 AM
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Daily Frustrations as The Oblivious Obstruct Productivity
| Picture this:
Your worker is focused on the task at hand – cognizant of a looming deadline. Then a cell phone nearby rings, as the theme to Star Wars. The worker can’t get the tune out of his head. Say, doesn’t that guy in Testing look like Chewbacca? Never noticed it before. Wait – have to concentrate!
What’s that? Down the aisle someone is on a speaker phone! It’s a conference call about project scope change! Can’t focus!
Now what? Next door, someone talking loudly about her ex-boyfriend, who she now thinks looks like Chewbacca.
How do you expect this worker to get anything done? It won't be easy, yet yhis is not an unusual situation. In a survey last year, mentioned here, the highest rated pet peeves were loud talking, cell phone ring tones and speaker phones. What’s worse, many workers are afraid to discuss the problem with the oblivious offenders. So they suffer in silence.
It does not have to be this way. You have the power to create a more productive environment. During the activation phase, set ground rules for the work environment. Mention all the three pet peeves. Explain to all hands that they should keep it quiet, and if a co-worker comments or complains about noise, take it seriously. |
Posted on: July 26, 2007 10:54 AM
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Clock Ticking Until Bloggy Nightmare
| Oh it seemed like such a progressive idea. Allow certain workers to write blogs and use them as fun and inexpensive ways to promote the company. What could go wrong? Who needs a policy? Just tell them to use common sense!
Riggghhht. Here’s where we are now:
Look, this is little different than when e-mailing became popular. Now we have e-mail policies. It’s time for you to develop a blogging policy before you end up in a similar situation. It's just a matter of time. |
Posted on: July 24, 2007 01:17 PM
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A Way to Double Retention Without Permanent Door Locks
| A Wall Street Journal Report (“Corporate Tuition Aid Appears to Keep Workers Loyal”) in May said that an organization could almost double its retention statistics through corporate tuition aid. The example given tracked employees hired in the same year. Some used tuition assistance to get training, others did not. Of those who did not use the tuition program, 66% left the employer in five years. Of those who did use the program, only 33% left within five years.
That’s a big difference based on loyalty of employees. Low retention is costly in time and money, and workers appear more likely than ever to be looking to move. A training manager opined last week at HR.com that the reason more organizations do not provide more tuition aid is because they believe workers will get trained and then get out, making it a waste of money. This training manager believes that training leaders in general are not making the financial case for more tuition aid.
Now that you know differently, support tuition aid in your project and champion it in your company! |
Posted on: July 18, 2007 02:02 PM
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