Recognition! What's In A Name?

Cameron Timpson is CEO of a medium-sized electronic assembly operation. He makes a point of making a weekly recognition award to the best assembler on the factory floor. "Today," he shouts to the gathering crowd "it is Lavinia Argot's turn" and he turns to her to present her prize. Her mouth is smiling but her eyes are not. "My name's Davina Urquhart" she whispers. Cameron smiles and tells her not to worry about it.

The ability to connect with people at a personal level is such an important skill that all supervisors, managers, vice-presidents, directors and CEOs should possess it. Even the most trivial oversight can have a massively de-motivating effect on employees.

Recognition is not only some sort of formalized award ceremony; it is not contained only in a pay-check; it is part of the fabric of interpersonal relationships within the entire organization.

Personal details

In his book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" the best selling author Dale Carnegie tells us that a person's name is the sweetest word they will ever hear in any language. Remembering someone's name, especially if you meet them infrequently, sends a message that they are important to you. Forgetting names or getting them wrong sends completely the opposite message.

But surely there is a point beyond which it is impossible to remember every name in the organization. Well, the simple answer is "No". Your brain has a capacity in bits of 10 followed by 8741 zeros. A Gigabyte is 10 followed by 8 zeros (1,000,000,000) bits. So, compared with the average computer hard drive your memory capacity is enormous and there is no physical reason why anyone cannot learn 300 or a thousand names, given time. The only barrier to a manager learning the names of everyone in the organization is whether they think it is important enough.

Add to this list of names, details of where people live, their wives names, how many children they have and their interests outside work and you have a highly valuable motivation database at your disposal.

Projects

When there is no senior management attention paid to projects they can often drag along and suffer from under-funding, understaffing or both and they may end up producing poor results. There is a fine line to be drawn between "breathing down their necks" and being motivational but that is the true skill of being a thoughtful leader.

Project teams need the same sort of collective recognition that an individual desires. As part of the team, each member can benefit from words of praise aimed at the whole project. In these circumstances, it can actually be more destructive to heap recognition on one particular team member when they may have achieved their success through collaboration with their colleagues.

Of course, Davina (or is it Lavinia?) was pleased that she had been recognized for her hard work by the CEO but his lack of attention to the small detail of her name took the shine off just a little.

Recognition As Part Of Performance Management

Performance Management is a system developed out of the best practice of top performing organizations to provide managers with a structured approach to the key retention criteria. Simplistically, most people will feel motivated and will want to stay in their job if their manager:
pays attention to their work provides them with a job to match their skills, knowledge and experience gives them opportunities to grow and develop judges their performance objectively

Most Performance Management processes contain critical opportunities for recognition.

Appraisals

Traditionally, the annual appraisal is the only meeting during the year when an average or better worker will meet their boss to discuss performance. People with poor performance can and do have a regular audience with their manager; sometimes on a weekly basis. Your appraisal form is "the" document that is held on file as a record of how good, bad or indifferent you might have been. For some, this may be the only time in the year that they receive plaudits and even these may be guarded comments because of the close link in everyone's mind between appraisal and pay rise despite repeated denials. Too much praise might raise expectations of a large pay increase. Poor performers, however, frequently receive far more than their fair share of management attention throughout the year.

If paying attention to our employees is one of the greatest motivators, when did we decide that high performers need less motivation than poor performers? Of course they don't! Many of the top performing companies in the world have introduced regular coaching and mentoring sessions to supplement the appraisal system and to give all employees a regular, sometimes fortnightly, opportunity to talk about their job, their performance against their objectives, their motivation and their aspirations.

Coaching

Often you can see situations where managers act as spectators. Their behavior plus the words they use along with their body language would not be out of place at a soccer or baseball match. They would be sitting in the stands eating a hot dog, throwing down a beer and belting out criticism at the players (their staff) on the field. There is almost no connection between the manager and the staff other than they just happen to be sitting in the same building.

This image is used to point out the profound difference between the 'manager as coach' and the 'manager as spectator'. A coach works individually with players, helping them to overcome setbacks and obstacles to progress forward. They know and understand how their players respond to different types of motivation and how their family life and health impact their performance.

The majority of coaching is done on a very frequent basis. You simply don't wait for the big match to deliver your advice to the team in the way the 'manager as spectator' does. You work very closely with everyone in the team, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your defense and your strikers before they are tested under pressure.

Recognition By The Happy Wanderer

Quin Jerome is Sales Director with a clothing company. He is a talented talker and entertains major clients on a regular basis. One summer he was deputizing while the CEO was on vacation and found an entry in his planner that just said "11.00 - 12.00 Wander". The CEO's PA clarified that it meant walking the production floor to talk with the machinists. "But I don't know what to say to them!" said the gifted raconteur.

Curiosity is the real key to uncovering performance that deserves recognition. Managing by wandering about (MBWA) is a technique first recognized in the 1980's by quality guru Tom Peters. He found that some successful organizations got that way by encouraging managers to get away from behind their desks on a regular basis. With the emphasis on wandering, which is a slow process of following your nose, you will find yourself being drawn towards areas of the business you might not otherwise visit.

You may find yourself speaking to people who are hidden away from the light of day and by asking the who, what, where, when, why and how you'll discover things about your own business that would never have been revealed to you otherwise. It's not that your managers are hiding anything; they just want to let you know what they think is important and they edit out what they consider to be trivia.

Unfortunately one man's trivia is another man's hero's journey and these examples represent the acorns that you will want to nourish. How can well focused behavior be copied by others in the company if it is not captured, highlighted and praised?

MBWA is in itself a form of recognition. If the senior woman or man can spend some of their valuable time talking to employees and asking their opinions, the employees must have value. This feeling can be reinforced by asking your people for their opinion about management decisions, company policy and rumors. Keep an open mind about their answers, understand their perspective and calm their uncertainties.

Simple questions can open up enormous opportunities. "What one thing could I do to help you with your job?" will always get a cheeky answer about swapping salaries but is usually followed up with the really simple stuff like: "We need better lighting", or, "We need an electric fan in the summer", or, "Can I replace the missing wheel on my chair?"; none of which will break the bank but all of which will improve their work experience.

Asking "What and who makes a difference to the performance of your department?" will start to reveal some of the activities that should be emulated throughout the business. People will be named who are seen as role-models in their approach to their work and to their colleagues. Remember that work is not all about hard graft. A good proportion of work is a social experience which should be as good humored and pleasant as possible to bring out the best qualities of your employees.

Recognizing "Smart" Performance Can Be Difficult

The monthly performance recognition awards have come round again but, once more, Fiona White is sure she won't be featuring. Fiona is a consistent administration worker. She is well organized and clears her desk of the day's work without making fuss or having 5-minute panics like some of the others seem to do. She often helps these people out because she has enough control over her own work to be able to reschedule things. However she is not a high profile earner for the company. She'll never make the big sales, negotiate the mega-deals or save the business thousands through the work that she does. She knows she is one of the better performers in her field but does anyone else?

Ever since the advent of 'time and motion' studies there has been an understanding of the difference between working hard and working smart. Some individuals prefer to work in a state of chaos. It provides them with the challenge that perhaps the job does not. They can battle disorganization instead of strolling along doing the job. Making substantial achievements for them always has the appearance of running a marathon.

Smart workers, on the other hand, may appear to be doing the equivalent of cycling downhill with their feet on the handlebars because they have the job so well structured. They know that both sets of results, from the hard and the smart approaches, have equivalent value and they would be very unhappy if their sweating co-worker was rewarded with praise and they were not.

The people working at the coal face of the business often know how to get results that will attract recognition. That they don't do this permanently is a reflection of their motivation and their understanding of the market value for their effort. This can be seen most clearly where staff are paid minimum wage. If more effort can achieve greater income through bonuses, overtime or a performance recognition system they would prefer to utilize this rather than make themselves more efficient.

These views of performance might provide a confusing picture but all they really do is prove that a "job well done" must be seen in context. A coat of paint never did cover up poor workmanship and most jobs can be broken down into the important stages of:

planning and preparation
material sourcing and processing
component production
quality checking components
product assembly
function testing
quality checking product
packaging
delivery

Even a written document, a software program or a product design has to follow these steps otherwise the whole thing will come back and bite your ankles.

Good performance worthy of praise will inevitably be a subjective judgment; however checking back to make sure that the relevant steps have been followed will help to put things in perspective.

Fiona White's manager would need some pretty sophisticated radar to discover how well she was really working because, let's face it, she may never get round to self-promotion.

Recruiting a Diverse Workforce: Don’t Making Two Common Mistakes

To be a successful business in today’s culture you need to create an environment of inclusion where people feel valued and integrated into a company’s mission, vision and business strategy at all levels. When employees’ skills and knowledge are recognized, appreciated and utilized they are more engaged in contributing to an organizations’ success. They are more willing to go the ‘extra mile’ and share ideas and innovation. The visible and invisible dimensions of diversity that they bring are used as resources for success and growth. In order to create an inclusive work environment you need a diverse workforce.

Organizations make two common mistakes in recruiting a diverse workforce that cause them to fall behind their competition and even lose market share.

<b>1. “Company photo diversity” </b>

The organization only considers the visible dimensions of diversity primarily race, and gender. The company photo looks good but everyone thinks the same. Differences that include sexual orientation, geographic background, thinking and communication style, work function, ability and disability, religion, and work style are not valued and are even discouraged. This is a very narrow definition of diversity and offers little or no value to the organization in terms of new ideas, creativity and innovation.

<b>2. “ Diversity by Numbers” </b>

Again diversity is defined by what you can see. Demographics reflect the outside community but it is only at the lower levels. (Production, and unskilled labor) There is little or no diversity as you move up into management. When questioned about diversity in their organization, they point to all the numbers. Every year they have good “numbers”, but the people are constantly changing. Employees leave and get jobs where there is a value of diversity at all levels and they are encouraged to move up in the ranks.

<b>Addressing the Issues</b>

To be a successful business in today’s culture you need to create an environment of inclusion where people feel valued and integrated into a company’s mission, vision and business strategy at all levels. When employees’ skills and knowledge are recognized, appreciated and utilized they are more engaged in contributing to an organizations’ success. They are more willing to go the ‘extra mile’ and share ideas and innovation. They spread the word that your organization is a great place to work. They are enthusiastic about recruiting their talented colleagues to fill open positions who bring new ideas and diverse ways of thinking, solving problems and expanding market share.

Recruiting Software VS CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

What is CRM?  If I buy CRM software will I be a better recruiter?
Should recruiting software have CRM features?  Do recruiting software vendors include CRM in their product?

I think CRM is a lot of smoke created by some very good marketing people who could sell ice to Eskimos.

A common definition for CRM is “The process of using information to find, secure and keep customers. The people, events, and questions associated with marketing, sales, and service”.   Yikes! I thought that is what recruiting is?

Why am I on such a soap box?  Because I talk to about 50 different recruiters and recruitment firm owners a week and every once in a while I get asked does this software contain CRM.  A few years back when the question was asked I was at a loss for words.  I had no idea what they were talking about.  I was terribly concerned that after 25 years in the recruiting industry putting in 10 hours a day seven days a week I had completely missed something and an entire process went right over my head.

So I went to work reading and studying everything I could find on CRM and came to the conclusion that CRM and recruiting software are one and the same.  If your recruiting software does not have the characteristics defined by CRM then you do not have recruiting software.

First of all, who are the customers of an executive recruiter?  Candidates and clients are!  As any recruiter knows the product of a recruiter is also the customer, the candidate, one unique characteristic of the recruiting industry.

Let’s go back to that CRM definition above.  “The process of using information to find, secure and keep customers”.  Your recruiting software must be used to find and track candidates and clients.  Once found the software has to keep them available to you through periodic contact.

Next, “The people, events and questions associated with marketing, sales and service”.  Ok, if your recruiting software cannot help you market to different demographics of clients and candidates then why are you using it? What are you using to market to clients and candidates?  Do you have a separate system for this?  Do you have a separate database for marketing to clients, a separate database for marketing to candidates?  Do candidates sometimes become clients?  Do clients sometimes become candidates?  Is candidate John Smith repeated in the client Database and then again in a separate marketing system?  How silly these questions are!  If you answer yes to any of the above I suggest you reconsider your whole approach to recruiting.

And if you have this separation how in the world are you ever going to keep track of the events and questions?   Perhaps if they are all separate I can sell you business idiot consolidation software that will pull all these desperate systems together for you.

So I will answer the leading questions. If I buy CRM software will I be a better recruiter?  No, because you’re an idiot for having recruiting software that is not also CRM. Should recruiting software have CRM features?  Of course, CRM and recruiting software are one and the same thing.  Do recruiting software vendors include CRM in their product? Yes, if they don’t they are not a recruiting software vendor.

Recruitment as the most important aspect of Human Resource Management

Human Resource Management theories focus on methods of recruitment and selection and highlight the advantages of interviews, general assessment and psychometric testing as employee selection processes. The recruitment process could be internal or external or could also be online and involves the stages of recruitment policies, advertising, job description, job application process, interviews, assessment, decision making, legislation selection and training (Korsten 2003, Jones et al, 2006). Examples of recruitment policies within healthcare sector and business or industrial sectors could provide insights on how recruitment policies are set and managerial objectives are defined. Successful recruitment methods include a thorough analysis of the job and the labor market conditions and interviews as well as psychometric tests to determine the potentialities of applicants. Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) also focus on interviews and assessment with emphasis on job analysis, emotional intelligence in new or inexperienced applicants and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Other techniques of selection that have been described include various types of interviews, in tray exercise, role play, group activity, etc.

Recruitment is almost central to any management process and failure in recruitment can create difficulties for any company including an adverse effect on its profitability and inappropriate levels of staffing or skills. Inadequate recruitment can lead to labor shortages, or problems in management decision making and the recruitment process could itself be improved by following management theories. The recruitment process could be improved in sophistication with Rodgers seven point plan, Munro-Frasers five-fold grading system, psychological tests, personal interviews, etc. Recommendations for specific and differentiated selection systems for different professions and specializations have been given. A new national selection system for psychiatrists, anesthetists and dental surgeons has been proposed within the UK health sector.

Recruitment is however not just a simple selection process and requires management decision making and extensive planning to employ the most suitable manpower. Competition among business organisations for recruiting the best potential has increased focus on innovation, and management decision making and the selectors aim to recruit only the best candidates who would suit the corporate culture, ethics and climate specific to the organisation (Terpstra, 1994). This would mean that the management would specifically look for potential candidates capable of team work as being a team player would be crucial in any junior management position. Human Management resource approaches within any business organisation are focused on meeting corporate objectives and realization of strategic plans through training of personnel to ultimately improve company performance and profits (Korsten, 2003). The process of recruitment does not however end with application and selection of the right people but involves maintaining and retaining the employees chosen.  Despite a well drawn plan on recruitment and selection and involvement of qualified management team, recruitment processes followed by companies can face significant obstacles in implementation. Theories of HRM may provide insights on the best approaches to recruitment although companies will have to use their in house management skills to apply generic theories within specific organizational contexts.

Bibliography

Jones, David A.; Shultz, Jonas W.; Chapman, Derek S. (2006) Recruiting Through Job Advertisements: The Effects of Cognitive Elaboration on Decision Making International Journal of Selection and Assessment, Volume 14, Number 2, pp. 167-179(13)

Korsten A.D. (2003) Developing a training plan to ensure employees keep up with the dynamics of facility management Journal of Facilities Management, Volume 1, Number 4, pp. 365-379(15)

Papers For You (2006) “P/HR/254. HRM: methods of recruitment and selection", Available from http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprthrm18.htm [22/06/2006]

Papers For You (2006) "E/HR/21. Using relevant frameworks and theories critically evaluate the recruitment and selection appraisal processes used by an organisation with which you are familiar contribute. How does it contribute to the performance of the organisation?", Available from <a href="http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprthrm18.htm">Papers4you.com</a> [21/06/2006]

Shipton, Helen; Fay, Doris; West, Michael; Patterson, Malcolm; Birdi, Kamal (2005) Managing People to Promote Innovation Creativity and Innovation Management, Volume 14, Number 2, pp. 118-128(11)

Terpstra D.E. (1994) HRM: A Key to Competitiveness Management Decision, Volume 32, Number 9, pp. 10-14(5)

Rehabilitation Of Injured Workers Boosts The Bottom Line

To most employers, Workers’ Compensation insurance is a necessary evil. Not only a statutory requirement, it ensures that employees injured in the course of their work are taken care of. It can, however, be very costly, particularly for larger companies where the premium is based, in part, on claims experience.

Work accidents can never be completely prevented, however, with the implementation of safe work practices and a strong rehabilitation policy, the number of incidents and time lost will be significantly reduced. This will result in lower claims costs and, therefore, lower premiums. Productivity losses are also minimised with injured workers rehabilitated for a quick return to work.

An employee being injured on the job affects several parties.

• The injured worker and his family need to be reassured that
i. his medical needs will be attended to
and
ii. the family will not suffer financially.

• Colleagues and Workmates need to be reassured that the injured worker is being taken care of properly and that management is supportive. They also need to be kept updated on his progress and expected return to work.

• Supervisor/Immediate Boss needs to know worker is being looked after and also needs to take a proactive role in the rehabilitation process. This is done through close contact with the relevant rehabilitation and health professionals managing the case and the injured worker himself.

• Corporate Management needs to be kept apprised of the current situation; in particular, how the progress of claim and estimated cost will affect claims costs. Close contact with Workers’ Compensation insurer will clarify this and ensure all parties are working together to achieve a successful outcome –i.e.: returning the injured employee to work.

Apart from the obvious stress and strain on the employee’s own family, the insured business is placed under pressure when an employee is injured and at risk of suffering considerable financial loss as a result.

For example:

Jim works at the “Crisp ’n Juicy” apple orchard. Crisp ’n Juicy supplies eating apples for the major supermarkets in the state and also has its own juicing centre at the orchard. From there, Crisp ’n Juicy Apple Juice is transported all over the country.

Jim’s job is to sort the apples according to size and type into eating apples and juicing apples. It’s a fairly specialised role and a keen eye is needed to select which are juicing apples and which are for eating. It is also fast-paced so Jim must be quick, efficient and precise. It took Jim years to reach his current level of proficiency; the only other person who can match him is Crisp ’n Juicy’s owner.

Just as work was finished for the day, Jim decided to pick up a crate of apples and place it next to the sorting bay ready for the next day. When he lifted it his back “froze” and he found himself doubled up in pain. Jim’s boss, Tony drove him to the hospital where it was confirmed he had a slipped disc in his back. Jim was certified unfit for work and kept in hospital for a few days.

Tony visited him in hospital the next day, bringing claim forms for Jim to complete and reassuring him that he would be looked after. An appointment was also scheduled with Crisp ’n Juicy’s Rehabilitation Provider for when Jim was released from hospital.

Meanwhile, back at the orchard…

Bill, the owner of Crisp ’n Juicy, has ceased his outside commitments with potential export market representatives so that he can replace Jim at the sorting bay. He knows that to train somebody new would take weeks, if not months.

Bottom line… Crisp ’n Juicy is losing money every day Jim is not at work.

Two weeks have passed and Jim is moving more freely after an intensive physiotherapy treatment program. In consultation with his treating doctor the rehabilitation provider has devised a return to work plan. The employer is thrilled at the prospect of having Jim back at work and implements the program immediately.

Jim returns to modified duties for two weeks, sharing the role initially with Leila, the new trainee. Jim is teaching her how to sort apples, which enables Bill to recommence his marketing activities and make the company more even profitable.

After two weeks on modified duties, Jim returns to full duties. Seeing the potential damage that could have been done to his business, Bill implements a work safety program, part of which entails all workers attending a course on safe work practices, including lifting.

In consultation with Crisp ’n Juicy’s Workers’ compensation insurer, Bill learns that quick rehabilitation intervention has potentially saved the company hundreds of dollars in premium.

Bill’s a happy fellow.

Replacing administration with capital management

Enterprises have a large sums invested in the capital that is utilized in performance, to achieve objectives. Most enterprises don’t even know the extent of what this capital is. There is no manageable organization of enterprise performance capital. People talk of intangible assets like there is a black hole someplace with all that performance capital that we don’t understand.

So much of our capital is not recognized as something of worth. Much capital is not documented or under management control. Performance capital is created day in and day out without being recognized as something of worth that should be managed and made available to improve enterprise performance.

Most enterprises have no idea about managing capital. They may have an assets register and make some attempt at understand utilization of assets and think of this as managing capital. Capital is put under management control by assigning it to a responsibility center. This actually removes capital from management control for the benefit of the enterprise. Typical responsibility center managers do not perceive any responsibility for managing capital. They are not in a position to manage capital that is shared with other responsibility centers. Much enterprise capital resides underutilized within the confines of a responsibility center with rare enterprise attention paid to it.

So, most performance capital is not managed for utilization for the benefit of the enterprise. Performance capital is administered under an administrative function like accounting, IT, purchasing, HR, corporate planning, etc. These functions don’t actually recognize a responsibility for managing capital, and most have no perception of helping the enterprise gain benefit from the utilization of capital. They perform day-to-day functions that might help to operate or support capital.

We have many problems today in administration because administrative units have to manage capital that requires totally different sets of professional capabilities.

IT and CIOs have problems managing technology, business process capital, and strategic management capital. Accounting is expected to do record-keeping and provide management intelligence. Business, human, equipment, and management capital are mixed together to be managed as a monolithic business process.

We make large investments in capital that are paid back only when the capital is employed to provide benefit. Every enterprise has much benefit to gain by optimizing the utilization of capital. Performance capital must be managed to understand improvement and development needs and carry through with capital improvement and development.

This is one of the issues that we are discussing on the Business Change Forum, in order to define problems with conventional methods and discover breakthroughs in management of the enterprise.

There are two important aspects to properly managing performance capital:

> Managing and supporting the capital so that it continues to operate and function properly, so it is regularly improved, reassigned, or replaced, so that new capital is developed as needed, and so that utilization for benefit is managed from the capital point of view
> Organizing and managing capital for the benefit of the enterprise at the point capital is utilized

In order to manage and support capital, we need to gain control of performance capital.

> We need to identify all the performance capital available in th
e enterprise.
> We need to understand the unique management and support capabilities required get the most out of the capital
> We need to organize the categories of capital requiring specific professional capabilities to be managed together for operation and development
> We must develop professional capabilities to manage and support each category of capital
> We must support the managers utilizing the capital so that they have the capital needed for optimum benefit
> We need to replace administrative functions with capital management responsibilities to manage the complete lifecycle of all performance capital to provide a healthy return on our capital investments

In order to utilize capital for the benefit of the enterprise, we must organize capital in the way that it is used.

> We must integrate the different categories of capital so that we have capital ready to be utilized, the capital that is utilized only in performance, and the information capital needed to perform and document performance
> We need to support the people utilizing capital so that they utilize it properly, and understand the potential for improvement
> We need to plan and respond to needs to change, improve, or develop capital to redeploy capital, to define requirements for improved or developed capital, and to utilize improved or developed capital

All enterprises have much to gain by properly managing their capital. But, they can never manage capital while it lies around hidden from view and while those who should be managing capital are performing administrative functions.

Rescuing concrete floors from holes and adhesives

As companies attempt to retrofit floor spaces and walls, carpeting and vinyl tile are often removed or repositioned. These renovations usually end up exposing large areas of adhesives, underlayments, and
sprawling holes from anchors, studding, and equipment. Now there is a solution with step by step instructions and help.

Remodelers often can see no alternative but to reinstall similar adhesives and floor coverings like carpet and tile. This is unfortunate because hard epoxy, urethane, and glass emulsion surfaces offer less expensive and longer wearing alternatives.

If concrete is exposed to wear, it will eventually deteriorate. Friction wear, erosion, and contamination all play a role. Dust, cracks, crumbling, rough surfaces, and the inability to keep the environment clean are symptoms of a floor that has not been  protected and is moving towards an unserviceable condition. Carpeting often holds contaminants in place and can be a growth medium for mold and mildew. Vinyl tile cannot hold up under heavy wheeled traffic, is subject to lifting when wet, and has a soft finish which can be contaminated by solvents and dyes. In contrast, laminated epoxy coatings create a wear-barrier between a floor and its environment. These laminated surfaces not only keep the concrete from deteriorating but also provide a protective plate over it. Contaminants and hazards, like PCBs, heavy metals, and toxic chemicals, are kept away from the porous concrete. Properly applied, these laminated surfaces can provide decades of protection and service.

Epoxy coated floors can cure, rather than just cover over, the holes that exist in even the most devastated floors. Customers are often surprised how holes from old walls and equipment stands can be made
to disappear when filled with 100% solid epoxy and then ground flush. The process is quick, easy, and long lasting.

 Supplies that may be needed include adhesive removers, oil removing detergents, and durable long lasting epoxy fillers for holes, joints, cracks, and crumbling surfaces. Kits of materials can be customized to owner specification and delivered directly to the job site. Kits include full directions and 24/7 help
lines staffed by seasoned flooring experts, so professionals and amateurs alike can successfully install a quality floor.

Web visitors can obtain free, job-specific quotes on materials or nationwide turnkey installations by completing a simple questionnaire at www.concrete-floor-coatings.com.

For photo examples and more detail, visit www.concrete-floor-coatings.com

For more information, contact Harvey Chichester at: harvey@concrete-floor-coatings.com

Phone: 1-800-466-8910 or 952-888-1488 (24/7)
###

Restaurant Scheduling For Success- From E-Book "How To Improve Dining Room Service"

This Tip will Help Maintain the Staff Schedule Keeping the Dining Room Service Staff Tight and Content which is Essential for Pleasing Paying Guests.

Staff scheduling is closely tied to dining room customer service and crucial for keeping your staff tight, happy and well connected. In every way, a balance must be achieved by matching the dining room service labor needs to forecasted business.

There should be a system whereby the staff shift availability days can be communicated in writing to the person who makes up the schedule. A simple staff shift availability sign-up sheet posted conspicuously will do. There was a schedule maker from one of my past restaurants who asked for shift requests on little pieces of paper. The main point is that constant communication with the staff while staying abreast of their available work shifts will facilitate the scheduling process immensely.

Each staff member should work a balanced amount of shifts throughout the week. If the schedule maker is burning out staff members with extra shifts or scheduling too many staff members to work only 1 or 2 shifts, it will subtract from customer service. Usually, a restaurant will get more efficiency from staff members working 3, 4, or more shifts per week rather than only 1 or 2 shifts per week. Though at times, one may have to bend this guideline to keep the work schedule filled, but it should be kept to a minimum.

The person who makes the schedule should be highly aware of the projected business in the restaurant. The schedule should contain the correct amount of labor needed to provide a proper level of service for each work shift. Seasonal aspects, (e.g. busy holidays/slow summers), special occasions, private parties etc. must be figured into the schedule. Any outside activity that may affect business in the restaurant such as food festivals, parades etc. needs to be taken into account. If there are separate dining rooms, the busy times must be properly forecasted for each room especially if one dining room is more popular such as showing off a special type of décor or providing entertainment on certain nights. If there is outdoor seating, the weather should be watched closely for it can change quickly.

Forecasting helps to schedule the correct amount of staff with the perfect balance always being sought. If there is light scheduling on a day that gets very busy, the dining room customer service will be slow and inefficient --affecting sales and reputation. On the contrary, if there is heavy scheduling on light business days, it will become frustrating for waitstaff who will be working very few tables while draining the payroll.

Generally, the schedule should start Sunday; therefore it needs to be posted by Thurs. or Fri. of the previous week. Excel spreadsheet formats are great for scheduling organization. The schedule should be posted in an easily viewable location with enough copies available for all staff. Staff phone lists should be printed, copied and made readily available to all. This improves communication especially for work shift substitutions.

This leads to the substitution process for staff work shifts. There needs to be a Substitution Book readily available with blank spaces for names, upcoming dates and work shifts for the next 1 to 2 months. If a substitution made, the information must be recorded with the date and shift time a.m/p.m. etc. It must be initialed by both parties involved and finally initialed by a manager ensuring no mistakes in communication. A substitution mishap may result in a shift not being covered.

Scheduling may look great for payroll cost control, but it must be remembered that dining room service staff are real people with real lives whose cheerful and efficient service is what restaurants are dependant upon. The schedule maker needs to be understanding towards the staff’s schedule requests, but should not roll over and play dead (again, balance). It is impossible to please everyone 100% all of the time, but a proper scheduling balance will truly have a positive effect on restaurant dining room customer service and staff.

*** It is better for a manager or service consultant to handle the schedule at the initial phases of a new operation. Afterwards, it should be monitored by a second or third person-- especially if the restaurant has just opened. Some mature restaurants may let a senior member of the service staff handle the schedule because there is better communiqué’ with schedule concerns.

Please use whichever system works best for the establishment for the staff schedule is a strong part of customer service and should not be taken lightly.

Restaurant Training - Selecting Your Restaurant Cast

The hospitality business is like show business.

When you are casting, it is important to place people in suitable roles. The costs involved with hiring an individual should be a strong deterrent to rushing into decisions you may regret in 1 weeks time. Remember, once the casting decision has been made, your entire production's reviews are going to depend on the various people you've chosen for the performance.

Don't be fooled by first appearances and beware of being overly impressed by what appears to be an excellent Resume/CV. Although these can provide a valuable insight, neither may be truly indicative of whether an individual is suitable for the role you wish to fill.

Obviously the show must go on, but it is important to invest the time and effort needed to get the right person- A well planned approach can go a long way in accomplishing this.

Here are a few casting tips to get you started.

1. Treat every vacancy like an open role in a play. Define the role you are auditioning people for in terms of the part the new cast members must play and how they'll have to relate to the other members in the cast. Make people skills and technical knowledge of equal importance in your hiring.

2. Identify the skills needed for the role. Once the interview begins, it's too late to start thinking about what you want to learn. Based on the job description and your knowledge of the role you are casting, what traits or personal attributes do you want new cast members to possess? Friendliness? Courtesy? Optimism? Creativity? How will you judge the presence or absence of those traits to your satisfaction? Focus the various stages of the selection process on the real-world skills demanded by the part you're trying to fill.

3. "Screen test" your applicants. Consider the way applicants treat your staff, which may be a good indication of how they will treat your customers and their co-workers if hired. Try role-playing difficult customer situations with applicants, or posing "what would you do if" questions based on the kinds of situations likely to occur on the job. You don't want to listen just for "right" or "wrong" answers. You can train them to use the right words later. Listen for orientation and attitude.

4. Use multiple selection methods. Remember test anxiety in school? Job applicants get it too. Instead of sifting all applicants through one coarse screen, use a succession of fine ones to help you differentiate.

5. Ask the right questions. There are questions that can be very effective in determining the general suitability of an individual applying for a role in your show. Following are several that can be adapted to your particular requirements

-What does "great service" mean to you?
-When was the last time you experienced great service and how did it make you feel?
-In visiting the restaurant today, did you feel welcome- did you notice things we could improve on?
-The restaurant business is a people orientated business- What
-Characteristics do you have that you feel are well suited for this role?
-How would you handle a difficult customer?
-What do you like most about being in the hospitality business?

6. Emphasize mutual selection. Applicants need to make as good a selection decision as you do. Just as you want to pick the right person, you gain by helping them pick the right position and organization. If they make a poorly informed decision and discover it only after being on board for a while, you will end up with a competent but unhappy camper.

7. Recruit actively. Good people may not always find you. Sometimes, you have to find them. Where have your best people been coming from? Reward your people for introducing new candidates by paying a bounty for bringing in friends, former colleagues, even relatives who are capable of filling roles in your production.

8. Hire people that are right for the role they need to play. Customer focused organizations have whatever kind of people it takes to dazzle the customer and bring them back again. It's very human to overlay personal beliefs, values, likes, and dislikes on the selection process, but it's seldom in the best interest of the customer to do so.

Next month's article 'Directing the performance' will help you prepare for the show.

To view previous articles please visit the Archives section of our website.

Restaurant Training - This Is Show Business

In today's increasingly competitive hospitality industry, owners and managers are constantly seeking the answer to an important question- How do you recruit, retain, and motivate staff who are responsible for creating a "magical" experience which exceeds your guest's expectations?
Some answers may be found by looking to successful companies that are consistently achieving these goals.

William Shakespeare wrote, 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players'. One company that has exemplified that quote is the Walt Disney World Co. based in Orlando, Florida.

Disney is recognised as one company which creates such "magical"experiences. The Disney challenge is to ensure that all of the 36,000 staff are playing a role in a show which exceeds all expectations.

The Disney approach to people management has helped gain them the reputation of providing a leading benchmark for quality and service in America.

Disney does not just "hire" people for jobs, they "cast" performers for a "role" in the show. The emphasis is in finding 'people oriented' cast members who are willing to adapt to the high standards established, and not necessarily on the skills an applicant may have.

Their 'casting process' introduces each applicant to the culture of the company, and the important role which they will play in the future success. This way there are no surprises, and it is this approach which helps to maintain turnover at approximately 20%.

Success on the "Restaurant Stage" requires the development and choreography of many different aspects, such as a great cast, script, support and direction.

Quality 'Casting' or recruitment, is critical to everything else in the production.

As an owner or manager, you are more director and choreographer of a performance. Your front of house staff, are the actors, and your customers are the audience for whom they must perform.

The supporting crew is responsible for ensuring the script and show is executed as planned. As director, you have to prepare your cast to recognize guest cues, deliver their lines and improvise when it will add to the enjoyment of the performance.

Think of a typical theatre performance- the audience files in, the curtain goes up, the actors make their entrances and speak their lines. If each and every cast member, not to mention the writer, director, stagehands, customers, makeup artists, and lighting technicians, have prepared themselves and the theatre well, the audience enjoys the show and tells others about it.

However, despite the proven talents of individual members of the cast or the presence of an award-winning director or the skills of the backstage crew, the whole thing can be a magnificent flop if just one person fails to do a job on which everyone else depends.

Filling out your service cast with people who can star in their roles is the key to success. But casting for a restaurant show is far more involved and difficult than hiring just anybody to answer a phone, or take orders and deliver food.

The next article, 'The casting call' is about how to attract the right cast members. For previous articles please visit the Archives section on our website.

Retail Executive Dashboard Does Not Serve Front Line Sales Managers

Retail Dashboards are pictures of spreadsheets used by executive managers to visually identify around five key performance indicators. Dashboards have gauges, like the speedometer in a car, and graphs and colour, to draw attention to areas of strong and weak performance of each retail store and the organisation as a whole. They may display: sales per hour, items per sale, average sale, conversion rate, and wage to sales ratio – at the store, regional, and national level.

The purpose of the Dashboard is to enable executive managers to effectively communicate strategy and objectives to area managers who then reinterpret the strategy into actions for each store manager. Ultimately it is the Salespeople on the shop floor who carry out the activities that satisfy the objectives of the company.

Sophisticated Dashboards allow executives to produce ‘what if’ scenarios, save them, and send them down the line to their area managers. But mostly, there is an upward reporting of numbers and a downward communicating of strategy - meaning that the statistics are lost at the individual Salesperson level.

For example, an executive dashboard may show each store’s ‘sales per hour’ KPI (Key Performance Indicator) compared to each other store but it does not show each Salesperson’s ‘sales per hour’ compared to each other Salesperson within the store. Therefore it is impossible for the executive to know – at the individual Salesperson level – how to improve sales performance.

Particular to the retail industry sales are made on the shop floor. Not by telephone or meetings, or online purchase. While branded merchandise and store design attracts customers to the shop it is almost always the Salesperson who makes the sale. But in almost all cases Salespeople have no individual daily sales target because there is no system in place to generate objectives, goals, targets at the individual sales level.

This represents a problem because area managers, who have been tasked by executive managers to improve sales performance, have no further information about the KPI activities within that store.

Once the merchandise and store displays have been checked by the area manager, the next logical step is to look at the POS (Point of Sale) reports to identify poor areas of performance. And here comes the surprise! - Not a single POS system is able to tell managers which Salespeople performed better than others. Why, simply they do not have a time sheet (roster) attached to Sales Targets so have no way of calculating predicted or actual individual sales goals.

Some attempts use spreadsheets to figure out individual sales goals but spreadsheets fall over. They inaccurately produce goals as they do not weight fast and slow periods of the day. They are not connected to a dynamic time sheet – meaning if the roster changes the goals do not, but should. Spreadsheets take time to copy, past, edit, modify, and correct mistakes. And there is no feedback system for comparing actual performance – compared to everyone on the shift.

While an executive manager can see that a particular store is underperforming, because a KPI is lower than the other stores, they cannot determine who in the store is underperforming on the same KPI.

So what’s the big deal? If you cannot determine low KPI’s at the individual Salesperson level in retail then you cannot improve individual sales performance based on statistics – and dashboards are pretty pictures about statistics - which we interpret as instructions for changing behaviors. Dashboards cause executive mangers to want to change behaviors across the organisation but, as you can see, they do not help front line store managers change behaviors at the individual staff level.

Effectively increasing sales in retail – by focusing on the sales skills and behaviors of each individual salesperson, requires a sophisticated, easy to use, web-enabled system, that communicates the objectives of the organisation to each individual salesperson – on a level playing field. Such a system will report both up and down the organisation so that staff at every level can understand the objectives of the organisation clearly, statistically, and fairly.

Retail Management – Identifying Each Salesperson’s Lowest KPI Can Boost Sales By 30%

Stick with me here for minute – its not hard math.

There are five retail KPI’s worth tracking at the individual Salesperson level: Sales per hour; items per sale; average sale; conversion rate; wage to sales ratio.

If you add them all up (individually) and divide by the number of staff you get the ‘store average’ of each KPI.

You can now compare each Salesperson’s five KPI’s to the ‘store average KPI’ instantly revealing the MOST deficient statistic or undersupplied KPI for each individual Salesperson.

Why is it important?
Well you are now able to say with perfect clarity that:

HAD (employee’s) average sale of say $69 been at the store average of $114, (employee) would have sold $2803.

HAD (employee’s) "Items per sale" of 1.68 been at the store average of 3.02 (employee) would have sold $3471.

HAD (employee’s) "Sales per hour" of $129 been at the store average of $169, (employee) would have sold $1355.

And so on…

Thus, $3471 is the greatest sales increase (employee) could have achieved - the deficient statistic - or undersupplied KPI - being Items per sale.

This deduction gives us great insight into what behavior to coach first. In this case it’s ‘items per sale’ and the associated behavior correction is either a) (employee) is not adding on, or b) (employee) does not have enough product knowledge to sell companion products. The point is that managers who want to help their Salespeople perform better now know exactly which area of expertise to focus on to achieve the maximum possible performance improvement result.

In the case of ‘sales per hour’ (employee) may be slow at attending customers or taking to long with others. For ‘average sale’ (employee) probably doesn’t have enough product knowledge or does not know how to sell more expensive items.

By first looking at the deficient KPI, and then sorting through memorable observations about (employee’s) behaviors during the week, managers can quickly home in on corrective behavior, in its most appropriate or truthful form.

If you track these statistics each week at the individual staff level – which implies comparing each Salesperson to the store average – you would increase each Salesperson’s chances of succeeding within their own specific area of need and thereby create an opportunity to increase individual sales by as much as thirty percent.

Retail Performance Best Practise Now In Reach Of Single Store Operators

In recent years, with the aid of sophisticated information technologies, multi-store retailers have developed a science out of Retail Performance Best Practices by putting into play real-time systems for recording and measuring performance KPIs at all levels of the organisation.

So sophisticated are these systems that they are able to tell employees, even at the operational level, exactly how they are standing up to the company’s vision, plans and objectives.

Using balanced scorecards with lead in and lead out Key Performance Indicators, staff at all levels of the organisation can track statistics and glean information that allows them to react in time and perform better.

Performance based measures are important for any retailer whether large or small and serves to communicate the strategy of the business and align employees with the goals of the organization. Managers use performance measures to track staff against benchmarks and targets. Managers are able to identify poor performance areas and react in time to make adjustments in resource and skills. Big companies motivate staff using Key Performance Indicators (KPI) as the basis for rewards. And performance measures are used by Senior Managers to guide future developments and plans.

Whether a multi-store retail chain or franchise or single store operator; measuring performance is key to identifying opportunities for success. The problem is that systems used by large retailers are usually out of scope and not cost-effective for single store owners to adopt. Moreover, wasting time producing spreadsheets that do not produce the ‘full picture’ may inhibit examination of all the facts.

Usually single store owners rely on their POS systems to track the obvious KPIs such as Average Sale, Sales per Hour, and Items per Sale. However, the figures produced by POS systems are simply a tally of those KPIs and do not show Store Managers how each Salesperson is performing in relation to each other as well as the store objectives. Unless you have something to compare someone to you cannot identify their area of weakness. Moreover, Salespeople need to be measured on a level playing field to make any sense of the numbers, because they work in slow and/or fast periods of the shopping day.

Look at the following example in sport. The Manager of a baseball match is interested only in whether his team wins. Of course knowing by how much they win or lose will offer some indication of the team’s performance compared to other’s in the division. Tracking each week’s result will produce important trend information for Managers so they can begin to forecast the future or look at other avenues for improvement should the team lose matches.

Taken from the Coach’s point of view however things look quite different. While the Coach is equally interested in the team winning matches, he/she is focused on the strategy that will yield results. The strategy for this team is to run out wide, drive the ball up the center after set plays, and score goals using a 3 point dummy run from the centers. Thus the Coach needs to measure how well the team performs according to its strategy. Measuring the wide run outs, centre plays, and dummy runs will shed new light on the internal events that took place during the game. These statistics are measured on an individual team member basis to track their performance and help the coach determine who the best players are or whether the strategy us a successful one.
Not measuring performance at the individual level, the team would be left asking questions without answers.

It is virtually impossible to train a Salesperson without knowing their deficient selling skills. Most single store Managers guess and if they do coach, it’s often by gut instinct alone. Many retailers make no effort to train their Salespeople beyond smiling at the customer and ‘trying their best’. If you can’t track performance against the basic POS KPIs (average sale, items per sale, sales per hour) within the framework of a Store Sales Goal and comparing Salespeople to each other, then you cannot identify individual coaching needs.

Competition is fierce and customer and staff loyalty are low. To strike back you need to look inside your business at precisely how to have each individual Salesperson perform at their optimum. Not only will your sales skyrocket due to coaching in the right area of expertise, but your staff loyalty and motivation will increase too.

Multi-store operations put into place sophisticated Report Dashboards and Scorecards that “make all salespeople accountable for their time” and “filter business objectives down the shop floor”. Making this kind of information available to Salespeople and Store Managers is paramount to growth and success and is now within easy reach of single store operators.

Single store operators no longer need to be a multi-store chain to benefit from smart KPI performance reporting. Recent developments in desktop technologies have resulted in off the shelf software systems that allow single Store Owners and Store Managers to play the same game as multi-store retailers, at a fraction of the cost.

Retail Sales Training Essential To Increase Retail Sales Performance

Retail Sales Coaching should be designed to work on behalf of each individual Salesperson who wants to succeed for them, while being part of an environment that nurtures and speeds their growth.

Retail Sales Training is for each person who cared to show up today to express themselves in a retail sales environment and who demands more of themselves. Retail Sales Training is for people who want to feel they have done their best with what they knew, today.

Retail Sales Coaching’s purpose is to clarify, in a realistic, truthful and meaningful way, precisely how each person can perform better. It must do this by connecting people with the objectives of the company within the framework of their own need to succeed and be recognized.
Retail Sales Training Software must work by identifying the absolute area of selling skill, the one out of five key performance indicators (KPIs), which if the Salesperson were to focus on exclusively, would become their best performance enhancer – their best chance at optimum improvement.

Retail Sales Coaching Software should be about helping your company and its people become richer by revealing the truth about their performance, on an individual basis, so your Salespeople can focus on making their most significant improvements in the shortest period of time.

The result of implementing the right solution is that each Salesperson's performance is increasing at optimum speed, so you can expect your retail store as a whole to increase sales by anywhere from ten to thirty percent.

Any Retail Sales Training system of appraisal and reporting should make sales people accountable for their time by measuring their performance according to key KPI’s, against each other, and against the store average. Unless measurements are taken on a regular basis and compared with the rest of the people on the shift it would be impossible to know the area in which to train.

Today, most POS software programs generate KPIs such as average sale, items per sale, sales per hour. However, they do not allow store managers to set sales goals and divide them up proportionally between salespeople so effectively POS sales reports are useless.

While door counters are useful unless they integrate with an effective Retail Training software program they cannot generate Conversion Rate KPIs – one of the fundamental KPI’s used in Sales Training.

There are software programs available to compliment your POS that will do the job including breaking down slow and fast periods of the day by weightings.

Here are some things to look for in a Retail Sales Training Software Program:

• Store Information Register to record specific information about the store.

• Staff Information Register and Coaching Log to record specific information and availability and coaching history of each sales person.

• Weekly Sales Goals Planner that automatically divides the store sales goal fairly between the salespeople on duty, including taking into account slow and fast periods of the day.

• Weekly Staff Roster to allocate staff to a time and attendance schedule within the framework of the store’s wage budgets, warning when over rostering and helping to improve wage to sales ratio efficiency.

• Actual Performance Score Card that tracks individual actual sales performance against individual sales goals to identify areas of weakness and strength so that managers can coach behaviors.

• Optimally, coaching tips should be integrated so managers can quickly get information about coaching on specific deficient selling skills.

The objectives of Retail Sales Training Software Programs are to:

• Increase profits, decrease costs, motivate staff

• Bring Retailers in line with industry Best Practice

• Filter company sales objectives down to Individual Salespeople on the shop floor

• Focus Store Managers on the two operational expenses within their control: Wages and Individual Sales Performance

• Make Salespeople accountable for their time

• Reduce payroll by Rostering within set wage parameters

• Identify each individual Salesperson's deficient selling skills each week

• Show sales trends for each individual salesperson and store

• Integrate self-based coaching to give front line store managers' tips on demand

• Motivate employees by instilling a performance based team culture

• Identify best performers allowing Store Managers to roster those staff more often - yielding a higher wage to sales ratio or ROI

• Reduce attrition rates, retain good staff

• Introduce a system of setting standards, tracking, measuring and reporting results, identifying under performance and coaching for success

• Integrate with POS to produce instant information at Salespeople’s fingertips.

Retail competition is fierce and times are tough. If you want to increase retail sales performance then coaching sales people is vital to success. Successful retailers put into place best practice retail training software programs to help them immediately identify skill areas requiring coaching attention.

Without the help of retail performance metrics you may be wasting valuable training time and missing the point for each individual salesperson.

Retooling The Hiring Process For Today's Market

As the Baby Boomer generation exits the workforce steadily over the next 10 years, sourcing new candidates will become a tenuous task. Companies that understand the impending scarcity of candidates and can retool their process will have a marked advantage in acquiring talent.

One key to properly retooling will shift the current focus from experience to talent. This fundamental change will be precipitated by the need to develop talent as opposed to hiring experience. The experienced candidate will become a product of a supply and demand marketplace. There will be more demand with less supply which leads to increased wages. The highly successful, extremely experienced candidate will be able to take a free agent approach to their job search. They will be able to select from multiple offers and leverage the best overall package.

There is nothing new in this market-driven scenario except for one item. The supply will be greatly diminished which will put incredible pressures on the compensation packages. However, companies will have an alternative to the bidding war – hire for talent and develop for strength.

This shift in hiring focus will require an “outside the box” approach to candidate screening. The first step will be to wean the process off of the 20th century approach of placing an ad, receiving and reviewing resumes and qualifying candidates with a face-to-face interview. This 3 step process is riddled with vulnerabilities.

First off, the sheer number of responses will surely decrease let alone the quality of the applicants. Gone are the days of simply placing an ad in the Sunday edition of the local newspaper and collecting the overwhelming responses. Some online ads return volumes of resumes, but the applicants’ qualifications are often completely misaligned. Properly written online ads provide fewer responses but a higher quality of fit to the position.

Second, the majority of resumes (some statistics state >75%) contain embellishments of some form. Using these embellished, sometimes fictional documents to sort applicants is similar to building your house on shifting sands. The entire premise is flawed from the start. The resume elicits experience-based decisions which are less than reliable. The applicants’ embellished industry experience is weighted grossly higher in comparison to their true talent and abilities.

Finally, face-to-face interviews are needed in any hiring process, but again, they tend to be used out of sequence for an effective process. Society of Human Resource Management studies have shown that interviewers make candidate decisions within the first 7 minutes of the in-person interview. We are all susceptible to internal biases and blind spots. No interviewer is completely objective.

The aforementioned hiring approach was widely followed in the last century. The onslaught of the Internet, decreasing worker populations and exploding job productivity requirements have made successful hiring the key component of the 21st century.

Retooling a complete hiring process requires a company to release outdated, stereotypical approaches and embrace the tactics needed in today’s market. There are 3 steps all companies can integrate into their process today to begin the shift towards a reliable and repeatable hiring strategy.

Phone Screen. This article discusses new approaches to hiring and then leads off with a retro tool! Perhaps we should consider the phone screen a lost art. Oh, but how effective it is. In our own practice, we do not assist companies in hiring salespeople without using the phone screen. In fact, we use some variation of it for all positions – it is that effective. This approach removes many biases that naturally occur in a face-to-face meeting. An effective phone screen can be accomplished in 15-20 minutes which allows for many more to be completed in a day versus the traditional 1 hour, in-person interview.

The phone screen allows the hiring manager to get a better understanding of the applicant’s thought process, composure, communication ability and even, to some extent, their fit to the position. This tool is vastly more effective for pre-screening candidates than sorting resumes into yes and no piles.

Job Rewards. Remember the days when newspaper ads were riddled with acronyms and abbreviations to save on cost? There were literary artists who could describe an engineering job in 50 words or less. Those days are gone, yet we still see the occasional online ad written in that manner. One might as well place “dinosaur” in the ad's title.

Today’s young job seekers value balance in their work life. Their rewards are less centered on material wealth accumulation. They still work to earn money, but they are greatly influenced by the job’s rewards. How will they personally grow in the position? What skills will they develop? How would you describe the company culture? These topics can easily be added to any online job posting since space is no longer a fiscal limitation. The candidates who respond to this information will have a strong interest in learning more about the role and typically will have a reinforced skill set that matches the position’s needs.

Objective Assessments. There are amazing tools available in the market today that will measure intrinsic traits in a candidate that not even the most skillful interviewer can ascertain. As previously stated, all interviewers bring biases to the process. Two techniques to limit these biases are the incorporation of objective tools and the delayed introduction of an interviewer’s bias into the process.

Candidates should be assessed before an in-person interview. The EEOC encourages this approach in all hiring processes. A validated assessment tool given to viable candidates provides a strong insulator for any hiring process. The tests do not introduce biases and generate objective information.

A secondary, powerful benefit to using assessments before interviews is that it changes the focus of the in-person interview. The interviewer now has reliable data about the candidate that can be explored within the context of the interview. The interview is shifted from the candidate mindlessly regurgitating previous work experience to an exploration into their talent areas and potential vulnerabilities in direct relation to the position for which they have applied.

Most companies have seen the significant shift in hiring that has occurred with the advent of Internet-based technology over the past 10 years. This fundamental realignment has already rooted itself into the economy. The next seismic shift is already underway as the Baby Boomer generation begins its exit from the full-time workforce. Companies that adjust their hiring process and adapt to the changing landscape will ensure their success in the evolving 21st century marketplace.

Reward And Recognition; The Glare Of Publicity

The company newsletter hit Ruth Kenyon's desk and there was her picture on the front page under the heading "Employee of the Month". A simple paragraph of text explained that she had single-handedly reduced the debtor days from 39 to 32 in a period of 6 weeks. If others didn't understand the significance of her work, it didn't matter, she just felt a huge wave of pride sweep over her.

Even the smallest company has a reception area. This is a great place to publicize how good your people really are. Fast food restaurants are some of the best at this form of recognition; however every company should be telling its customers and suppliers how good its people are. An A4 size sheet can provide a photograph and a little background about the reasons for choosing this individual for recognition. Keep the display fresh, don't leave the same information on display for more than a week otherwise regular visitors will think you only have one good employee.

If you have an in-company newsletter this is an ideal place to publicize the success of individuals and teams. Have a professional article written about the work that was done and include a photograph. Also make sure the CEO includes a quote about his or her interest in the work.

Every year companies produce their annual report for shareholders. Typically they will include photographs of the executives and name each one. They also feature a range of photographs of their operations showing dynamic employees doing their jobs. It gives people such a buzz if their name is included in the caption saying something like "Frank Rodgers and Mary Knight producing Zenfda components on the state-of-the-art FRANMAR digital router" rather than the usual, anonymous "FRANMAR digital router: Investment in Technology" caption.

Company websites can be very informative about products and services but rarely do they take the opportunity to talk about the people in the organization. There is sometimes reluctance to publish anyone's name on a website for fear that they may be targeted by spam mail or more sinister approaches, however this can easily be worked around by using initials or only first names. There is no good reason not to use this medium too.

If at all possible avoid publishing only a list of names as this leaves fertile imaginations to conjure up conspiracy theories about why they are not included.

There is no good reason in these days of digital cameras and camera-phones to avoid producing a photograph of the person being recognized for their contribution to the business. Purists might say that the photographs should be of studio quality but in the interests of rapid turn-around the quality of the images will be forgiven in favor of instant feedback.

Later in the day Ruth Kenyon passed by the coffee machine and was instantly recognized. She met the barrage of questions about debtor-days with aplomb and educated her colleagues. The perils of celebrity are that you must eventually face your fans.

Rewarding Work Well Done with Fun

Has your sales team just completed its third record-setting month in a row? Did your advertising team pull off a spectacular campaign under a tight deadline? Have you just closed the books on your most successful year ever? One of the best ways to motivate your employees to continue working hard is to reward work well done with fun.

It’s a simple enough concept, and one that is central to the concept of team building. People work harder when their hard work is noticed and appreciated. While a little extra in the pay cheque is always appreciated, there are other ways to show appreciation and recognition that can help cement the team spirit you’ve been working so hard to foster. One of the best of these is to offer special corporate event weekends for your hardworking team.

Corporate events have come a long way since the old fashioned company picnic. These days, companies are taking advantage of travel and networking to offer corporate events that are fun, productive and memorable. Many companies these days make their annual meetings and other corporate events do double and triple duty – a business meeting, a recognition and appreciation reward, and a strategic team building event all rolled into one.

Want to reward your most prized team members? Why not treat them to full weekend of activities to go along with the annual meeting? A professional corporate event planner> can put together a multi-activity day with program of activities that will please everyone on your staff – including corporate headquarters. When you work with a professional planner, it’s easy to combine high profile fun activities like wind surfing or quad biking with team building activities designed to promote and foster the team relationships.

Whether you’re looking for a way to reward your hardest workers, impress your clients or cement relationships between key team members, a bespoke design corporate event weekend can be just the thing you need. From a day on the golf course to a night on the town, professional corporate event planners can help you design the perfect event for your company.

Risk Assessment In The Workplace. Part 2

Step 3. Evaluate the risks and decide whether existing precautions are adequate or more should be done.

Consider how likely it is that each hazard could cause harm. This will determine whether or not you need to do more to reduce the risk. Even after all precautions have been taken, some risk usually remains. What you have to decide for each significant hazard is whether this remaining risk is high, medium or low.

Firstly, ask yourself whether you have done all the things that the law says you have got to do. As an example, there are legal requirements on prevention of access to dangerous parts of machinery. Then ask yourself whether generally accepted industry standards are in place. But do not stop there, think for yourself, because the law also says that you must do what is reasonably practicable to keep your workplace safe. Your real aim is to Make All Risks Small by adding to your precautions as necessary.

If you find that something needs to be done, draw up an action list, and give priority to any remaining risks which are high, and those which could affect most people.

In taking action ask yourself:

1. Can you get rid of the hazard altogether?

2. If not, how can you control the risks, so that harm is unlikely?

In controlling risks apply the principles below, if possible in the following order:

1. Try a less risky option.
2. Prevent access to the hazard (eg by installing guards)
3. Organise work to reduce exposure to the hazard.
4. Issue personal protective equipment.
5. Provide welfare facilities (eg washing facilities for removal of contamination) and first aid.

Improving health and safety need not cost a lot. For instance, placing a mirror on a dangerous blind corner to help prevent vehicle accidents or putting some non-slip material on slippery steps, are relatively inexpensive precautions considering the risks.

And failure to take simple precautions can cost you a lot more if an accident does happen.

But what if the work you do tends to vary a lot, or if you and your employees move from one site to another?

Identify the hazards you can reasonably expect and assess the risks from them. Then, if you spot any additional hazards when you arrive at the site. Get information from others on site, and take what action seems necessary.

But what if you share a workplace?
Tell the other employers and self-employed people working there about any risks your work could cause them, and also the precautions you are taking. Also, think about the risks to your own workforce from those who share your workplace.

But what if you have already assessed some of the risks?
If. for example you use hazardous chemicals and you have already assessed the risks to health and the precautions you need to take under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations (COSHH), you can consider them checked and move on.

More information about legal requirements and standards can be found in the HSE publications:

An Introduction to Health and Safety. Essentials of Health and Safety. And Management of Health and Safety at Work: Approval Code of Practice.

Thats it for this section.
I'll cover Steps 4 and 5 in Part 3.

Risk Assessment In The Workplace. Part 3

Step 4. Record your findings.

If you have less than 5 employees then you do not need to write anything down. Although you will find it useful to keep a written record of what you have done.

If you have five or more employees, then you must put in writing the significant findings of your risk assessment. This means writing down the significant hazards and your conclusions.

Examples might be something like:

Electrical installations: insulation and earthing checked and found OK.

or

Fumes from welding: local exhaust ventilation provided and regularly checked.

You must also tell your employees about your findings.

Suitable and sufficient, not perfect.

Risk assessment must be suitable and sufficient. You need to be able to show that:

a proper check was made,

you asked who might be affected (at risk),

you dealt with all the obvious significant hazards, taking into account the number of people who could be involved,

the precautions are reasonable, and the remaining risk is low.

Keep your written record for reference in the future. It will help you if a Health and Safety Inspector decides to pay you a visit and asks what precautions you have already taken. Or if you become involved in any legal action for civil liability.

It can also act as a reminder for you to keep an eye on any particular hazards and precautions.

You should also make sure that any new employees read the documentation so that they are aware of what is being done.

To make things easier, you could refer to other documents, such as manuals, the arrangements in your health and safety policy statement, company rules and regulations, working instructions, health and safety procedures, and your arrangements for general fire safety.

You may already list these procedures elsewhere. You do not need to repeat all of them, but it is up to you how you wish to present the documents. You could keep them seperately or combine them all into one document.

Step 5. Review your assessment and revise it if necessary.

Sooner or later you are going to bring in new machinery, substances or procedures which may lead to new hazards. If there is any significant change, add this new hazard to your assessment. You do not need to amend your assessment for every trivial change, or for each new job.

But if any change, or new job, brings in significant new hazards, then you should consider them in their own right and do whatever is necessary to keep the risks down.

And finally, it is a good working practice to review your assessment from time to time, to ensure that the precautions are still working effectively.

Risk Management - An Inescapable Part Of Doing Business

Risk is an acknowledged and inescapable part of business - which means that risk management should be an integral part of a successful enterprise. By employing professionals or training members of your team, you reduce the possibility of misfortune, financial or personal.

It works by highlighting the possibility of failures in your business enterprise, and giving you the information to weigh up what level of risk is acceptable.

A failure can mean something that endangers employees, a venture that will not achieve the desired result, or anything not considered to be carried out in a financially viable and wholly professional manner.

Once risks are identified, it is the responsibility of your specialist team to provide options on the minimizing or avoidance of the problem. They may also help to prioritize areas for action and to develop a risk management plan.

In effect, reducing risk is about aiding good judgments: in the interest of your business, your customers and your employees.

There are different ways to go about ensuring that your enterprise has a satisfactory plan to achieve a safe workplace.

For very large organizations, it is suggested that a team of 1-3 people be employed on-site. In general, though, using the services of an outside consulting business works better for most companies.

These professionals will have high-level qualifications in appropriate disciplines, and be able to provide you with a comprehensive risk assessment.

For enterprises that involve low levels of risk or have a very small budget, there are other options that can give you a sufficient degree of protection, for instance part-time courses for employees in risk assessment that are provided from centers nationwide.

These give participants enough skills to be able to deal with the basic ideas, which may be helpful for any size organization.

Additionally, some consultants will provide non-profit enterprises with risk management courses, plans and software at a discounted rate - this can be invaluable if your not-for-profit business is struggling to afford the extra expense involved in meeting your statutory obligations.

The Internet can provide all managers with an overview of the risk management services available, as well as useful tools such as downloadable worksheets and software.

Risk management is the best way available to ensure the continuing success of your business and safety of your workplace. Evidence of attention to this inspires faith in investors, customers and shareholders alike, and the benefits of increased safety and productivity will far outweigh the initial cost involved.

Risk Reduction For Crop Protection

Insurance policies, in general, are directed against specific risks. Agriculture insurance is no exception. Whether you opt for farm bureau insurance, farm insurance, farm auto insurance, or horse insurance, there are risks you must be sure to protect your property against. It is likely that most farm insurance companies cover these risks but it could never hurt anybody to be sure and know how losses posed by these risks are determined and prevented.

In choosing farm bureau insurance, farm insurance, farm auto insurance, or horse insurance, keep in mind these risks and how to prevent them. Production risks are generally considered as risks stemming from weather conditions, pests, crop diseases, technology malfunction, genetics, and the kind of the seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers used. To prevent losses due to production risks, crop variation is recommended. This could mean planting different crops in one season or raising livestock and crops together. This is an expensive risk reducing method because this would require greater capital and investment. However, in the long run, greater savings can be had from opting for this risk prevention method. An economical method is to use technology to your advantage. Use genetically altered crop seeds for a bigger crop yield. In addition, this method controls the growth of weeds and improves the crops' resistance to pests and diseases. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are to be used only as directed because they could strip your land off its nutrients. Crop insurance is also a good option though it is offered only at private insurance companies. Marketing risks are also to be thought of considering the increasingly competitive market. To develop an effective marketing plan, it is important to assess the demand and the supply of your crops. Research crop prices and price your crops competitively. This does not mean that you lower your price but to include production and transportation costs, and market price in placing value on your crops. An efficient marketing plan can ensure a consumer base for your crop, thereby reducing risks of crop rot and low income returns.

Traditionally, agriculture insurance is multi-peril, which means that it covers marketing and production risks. Multi-peril insurance basically involves compensation to the farmer for shortcomings like a lower yield than what the policy requires. In some cases, this spawned improper insurance use which led to unnecessary risk taking like planting crops in inappropriate locations. This increases the growers' risk of incurring losses. Farm bureau insurance, farm insurance, farm auto insurance, and crop insurance can save you from losses but no agency would offer you insurance if you are extremely high-risk. It is therefore important to undertake risk reduction methods such as those mentioned above to prevent losses in the future.

Safety In The Home Workplace: The Best Environment

One of the most ignored aspects of working at home is safety. Business offices go to all sorts of lengths to avoid any injury or harm to their workers (they don't want to get sued, after all). Meanwhile, you might not even know that it's possible to injure yourself with nothing more than office equipment. If you're going to avoid a lot of pain in your future, you need to read up on home office safety now.

Your Chair.

The chances are that you're going to be sitting on your chair for quite a long time each day. If you have a bad chair, or you haven't adjusted it properly, you could give yourself a back injury -- and they're painful, not to mention expensive to treat.

When you're choosing your chair, make sure you sit on it for a while in the shop, giving yourself a chance to get used to the way it feels, and be prepared to walk away if it starts to get uncomfortable quickly. Don't pay a ridiculous amount, but don't get the cheapest and worst thing in the shop, either.

Your Mouse and Keyboard.

If you're using a computer mouse a lot for your work or doing a lot of typing, you can give yourself some pretty nasty injuries. This is because doing the same thing over and over again can give you a repetitive strain injury (RSI), such as carpal tunnel syndrome or tendonitis. This is one of the most common problems amongst office workers, home workers included.

You might have an RSI if you notice pain, weakness and fatigue in your muscles. One of the most common symptoms is pain when you're lying in bed. People tend to think that they must just be sleeping in an awkward position, or that they need a better bed or pillow, not realising that their office equipment is to blame. If you think you might be an RSI sufferer, go and see your doctor. Massages tend to be the most effective treatment, when given by a trained therapist.

To protect yourself against RSI, there are a number of things you can do. You should take regular breaks from using your computer, and stop immediately if you start to feel any kind of pain. You may also wish to invest in an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, which are laid out differently to normal keyboards and mice in an effort to make them more comfortable and less dangerous to use.

Clean and Tidy.

Silly as it might sound, the second most common problem amongst home office workers is that they make a mess. Your home office might become cluttered with wires, open drawers, and various objects all over the floor. It's quite possible to trip and fall over all of these things, and if you walk around enough in a confined space then eventually you will. Do as much as you can to keep your home office uncluttered: always close drawers, keep wires in one corner of the room and don't put anything on the floor.

Strangers in Your Home.

An aspect of safety that many people don't think of is the fact that you could be letting strangers into their home when you agree to meet clients there, and this can be risky for you and your family. You might be especially worried if there will be children at home with you while you're working.

The simple answer, of course, is to always meet new customers in a public place, until you know and trust them. Coffee places are good for this. As a bonus, you'll inevitably look more professional if they don't realise that you're a home business, and having a coffee each gives you something to do during any lulls in conversation other than just sitting there and looking awkward.

First Aid Kits.

Finally, one last note if you're doing manual work: you really ought to have a first aid kit in your workshop, as well as one that you carry around with you. You really shouldn't be doing anything physical as a business unless you've taken a first aid course -- they're quick, easy and inexpensive, so there's no excuse. It could save your life someday, after all.

Sales Management Strategies

Abstract

The paper discusses three sales management strategies that are currently used. Each of the strategy is analyzed in details. The entity advantages, disadvantages and practical application are discussed for each of the strategies.

Introduction

Nowadays the world economy becomes more and more complicated because it becomes more and more global. As a result this leads to the development of an unparalleled competitiveness. Naturally in such a situation it is extremely important for survival in the market to remain competitive that demands to use the most advanced technologies, including not only technical aspect but managerial as well. It means that a company that uses the most advanced and most effective management strategies can be more competitive and has more chances for success. It is especially important when the company deals with the sales management.
The sales management is one of the most significant part of any company’s work since it is due to sales management the company can finally sell its products or services to customers and the general success of the company greatly depends on the effectiveness of the sales management. Consequently, it is absolutely necessary to know well recent trends and strategies that are used nowadays by the most successful companies that would permit to realize what strategies are the most perspective what are their advantages and disadvantages and finally it would be possible to define what strategies may be used in the future or in what way the current strategies should be modified in order to be the most effective. In terms of this paper three sales management strategies would be basically analyzed and discussed. These strategies are: Establish a Never-Before Sales Quota, Establish and Build a Team Selling Program, Employ Advanced Prospecting

Technologies.

Establish a Never-Before Sales Quota
This sales management strategy deals with the market visibility problem since very often companies have problems at this respect and consequently they cannot afford competitiveness and their sales rates would gradually decrease, as the company is not well known or recognizable among the consumers. Traditionally it is said that if the company’s percentage rate of new equipment sales to customers who have never done business with this particular company and with its dealership is 20-23% or even lower than the company obviously has market visibility problems. As a result, in such a situation the circle of the company influence is not expanded as well as the rate of sales does and probably will not increase if certain measures are not undertaken. Basically such companies can work about three years than they have to retire.

However, if a company is planning to work in a long-term perspective than the company should set 30-35% rate as a ‘never-before’ goal for each of its equipment and product support sales reps. For instance, 30-35% should be with accounts that have never before done business with the company’s dealership and may even not know it exists. As a result such an increase of the company’s visibility in the market would proportionally increase its sales rate.

By the way it should be pointed out that if the company just starts some business in a new area the rate should be even higher. Basically specialists indicate that it should be about 45-50% (George 2002) only on such conditions the company sales and influence would gradually expand.
Nonetheless, it is only theory and the advantages of this strategy are obvious since the growing visibility is vitally important for increase of company sales but in real life the company that use this strategy may face certain problems that may be treated as disadvantages of the strategy. It should be mentioned that the Establish a Never-Before Sales Quota strategy is based on the never-before customer’s motivation and practically always the customers feel fear. They are fearful of the company’s reliability, its equipment, which, as they afraid, would not work as promised, and the list may be continued.
Naturally the question arises: how the company can best overcome the fear of customers in the never-before account? Basically specialists (Reilly 2000 and Goerge 2002) single out two main ways in overcoming this problem. So, the problem may be solved through short-term rentals and product support.
Obviously the two ways mentioned above are not the only one but they are probably the easiest ones. Using short-term rentals and product support it is relatively easy to penetrate never-before accounts for “by demonstrating strong dealer customer care capabilities with an aggressive, short-term rentals program and highly responsive parts and service programs, a company can quickly build a positive relationship in the new account” (Reilly 2001, p.184).

Furthermore, a very effective parts and service support tool is the planned maintenance contract. For instance, nowadays planned maintenance and full-maintenance leases are quickly gaining acceptance in North America in the construction equipment and heavy-duty truck industries.

Finally, among other advantages of this strategy may be named the fact that short-term rentals and product support capabilities eventually can eliminate fear and sales reluctance in the never before account. Thus, summarizing the Establish a Never-Before Sales Quota strategy it is possible to say that on the one hand, it may be quite effective and increasing the company’s visibility, on the other hand, there is still the risk that the customers’ fear won’t be overcome.

Establish and Build a Team Selling Program
This is another strategy that may enhance the company sales rate and its general position in the market. Traditionally dealers have three or four different employees working in the same territory. Traditionally they are: a capital equipment sales rep, a full-time customer parts and service sales rep, one or more field service technicians and, as a rule, a rental and used equipment sales rep.

However, the problem is that in some cases team selling does not work. But the root of the problems lies in the fact that the equipment sales rep is at odds with these other dealer representatives and does not consider them allies or partners in development activities. Nowadays such a situation is not affordable anymore and such type of reps should be eliminated, or, it would be better to say, changed.

Establish and Build a Team Selling Program strategy implies quite the contrary role of all representatives of the company. Nowadays this strategy becomes more and more widely used. This is why in some very successful dealer organizations prefer the thoughtful formation of territory sales teams but it should be pointed out that this is not just the assembly of field employees to grovel and provide the equipment sales rep with leads (McBride 2001, p.311). Team selling requires enlightened leadership. Consequently in order to unite all the reps as a team it is necessary to organize team activity.
Practically it means that sales team activity is a frequent meeting of specialists to share insights, establish strategies, set information gathering goals, etc that would eventually complement one another’s strengths and work together to foster the overall business development of the dealership in that given market area.

Also it should be said that this strategy demands to provide team selling recognition awards that would stimulate the work of the whole team but not its separate participants. It is also especially effective in account management and penetrating, new account development, problem solving success, market share gain.

A very important positive feature of team selling is the fact that it offers the possibility of utilizing of all of the resources. Team selling captures the mind and spirit of the company’s business and can present total solutions to customers (McBride 2001, p.349). An effective sales team is generating the highest possible revenue and profit for the business.
Summarizing the strategy, it is only should be pointed out that its main disadvantages are the problems of organizing all the reps in an effective sales team with a strong leader.

Employ Advanced Prospecting Technologies
This strategy implies the usage of the advanced and prospecting technologies as tools in achieving better results in sales rates. The most effective technology that can be used nowadays is teleprospecting. It is quite effective and inexpensive. The objective of teleprospecting program is to contact, profile and identify short-term needs, problems and opportunities of a large number of inactive and prospective customers.

To achieve such a goal it is necessary to train a teleprospector by having him/her update the company’s current customer mailing list for correct contacts for promo mailings. It is also important to train a teleprospector for ‘cold calling’ by having him/her first test a survey questionnaire or interview guide on five very friendly customers for constructive feedback. Furthermore, proper facilities and resources should be set up.
However, this strategy also has its own disadvantages. To be effective the prospecting program will require intensive administrative support to avoid wasted, non-productive time. Otherwise, the effectiveness of the program would be low.

Finally, it is necessary to provide challenging incentives. For instance, it is possible to set three completion level goals for the week and to offer a 20% base hourly rate increase for entire week if the goal is reached. It may be done as follows: