When Does Your Paycheck Start in 2008?
March 3, 2008
photo credit: A colleague just sent me this link regarding “Work Your Proper Hours Day” in the UK. This day is celebrated on February 22nd - the average day on which Britons working unpaid overtime pass the mark where their unpaid labor ends and they begin to work for themselves.
WYPH day is the brainchild of the Trades Union Congress (TUC). This organization, with roots going back to 1868, advocates for working people. Their Worksmart site provides tips for employees on how to manage work life balance, and provides a calculator you can use to figure out your individual WYPH day. I took a quiz on their site - it looks like my day is today - March 3. Hmmm - I think I still have a couple of months to go before I stop working for the Government and get to keep the rest.
Many of us have New Year’s resolutions relating to achieving better work life balance. Mine was to get home in time to cook dinner (link to a wonderful cookbook) a couple of nights per week. I’ve been doing ok with that one. Mark Bittman, another one of my favorite cookbook authors, wrote this article in yesterday’s New York Times about taking a break from virtual reality each weekend.
What do you do to draw boundaries between work and life outside of work?
Snow Crazed
February 28, 2008
photo credit: Our blog and press release last week regarding how companies deal with extreme weather generated a lot of interest. I’ve had interviews with the Associated Press, Wall Street Journal radio, and HR Executive - all looking to follow up on what employers should do to prepare for and manage through extreme weather conditions. The AP article ran in many print and online newspapers across the US. The survey results and/or the AP article were referenced in dozens of television and radio broadcasts. The Boston Business Journal opened up their own survey on employer behavior on snowy days that indicates employees wish their employers would act more quickly to send them home when the weather is bad.
The level of attention this survey received points to the universal human desires it surfaces around our need to be treated with consideration and respect. People want to believe that their employers care about them, but when employers put business ahead of human welfare, that trust is undermined. On the other hand, severe weather conditions create an opportunity for workplace colleagues to connect with each other around a shared experience external to their work.
What are your war stories about weather and work?
The Sun Also Rises
February 4, 2008
…when the Patriots lose the SuperBowl. Over at Boston.com, Boston fans are feeling the pain.
In a portent of the sad things to come for our New England Patriots, this blog from Friday got a few people’s hackles up. Over at Cali & Jody, the authors took issue with my comment that in a time of economic uncertainty, employees may want to be extra careful about calling in sick the day after the Super Bowl. While I meant the tone to be light, I can appreciate their perception that it came across a bit harsh and old school. I applaud their commitment to and suggestions for helping organizations create a Results-Only Work Environment. When organizations have to make tough decisions about their workforce, it is absolutely the people who drive results that survive - and they aren’t necessarily those who maximize their face time with management.
My Top Ten Career Management Tips for 2008
December 28, 2007
As this is the time of year that many people start making their New Year’s resolutions - personal and professional - I thought I’d share some of the best career management tips I know. Some of these I learned from others and some I learned the hard way. In any case, here goes:
- Do whatever Irene tells you to do and don’t embarrass me.
This one comes courtesy of my father. My first job was doing the payroll, manually, at his codfish processing plant in Witless Bay, Newfoundland. (Photo is my family in the harbor in front of that plant last summer). Irene was the long time office manager who knew how to make things happen. Getting to know the Irenes everywhere I’ve worked since has saved me time and embarrassment. - Speak up. This one applies when you have a good idea and/or when you know that something just isn’t right. Organizations rise and fall on the quality and openness of communications between people.
Where is Everybody? (Home for the Holidays)
December 13, 2007
We’ve just released the results of a survey entitled “December: Vacation-Heavy Month Light on Attendance” that we conducted with Harris Interactive to assess planned absenteeism among US workers during the upcoming holiday weeks. Not surprisingly, 63% of those polled plan to take time off between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. What is surprising is that a relatively small proportion of those planning to take time off will have cleared that with their managers through an online request process. Even though a recent BusinessWeek Article “Shirking Working: The War on Hooky” indicated that more and more employers are looking for more effective and automated ways to proactively authorize and plan for employee absence, only 20% of those polled indicated that they had to request their time off through an automated system.
What are employees doing more of online? Holiday shopping. How do employers deal with this phenomenon? In a recent Christian Science Monitor article titled “Why Go to the Mall When You Can Shop at Work?” employer reactions range from those who closely monitor and restrict internet access by employees to those who leave it up to the employee’s judgement as long as the job is getting done.
For those employees who do work during the holidays - as a matter of necessity or personal preference - many find that they are super productive during a time that meetings are few and they can focus on projects that are hard to complete with frequent interruptions. Whether working during the holidays is voluntary or not, however, managers would do well to acknowledge those who remain on the job when 2/3 of their colleagues are enjoying some downtime.
Balancing Work and Family: What Makes “The Best Places” Different?
November 2, 2007
Two of our board members, Ruth Bramson and Jared Bernstein, have recently collaborated on a new article entitled “Balancing Work and Family: What Makes “The Best Places” Different? We asked them to think about how organizations are helping employees to manage work-life balance - not only for the white collar ranks, but for their hourly workers as well. To us, it just makes good business sense to assume that greater flexibility for hourly workers should help organizations expand their candidate pools and retain their high performers. It’s clear, however, that many hourly workers have far less flexibility than their white collar counterparts. This makes sense for jobs that absolutely require face time (cashiers, nurses). Even for these roles, though, there are options that can help. Jared and Ruth explore some of these options in their article.
I encourage you to take a few minutes to read their article, and think about the questions below. We’d love to hear your comments. While you’re at it, take our quick poll.
Do you think that flexible work options should be available to hourly as well as salaried employees?
Does the availability of flexible work options help organizations recruit and retain hourly workers? Or do organizations with high hourly populations accept high turnover as a cost of doing business?
What are additional best practices that you’ve heard about that we should add to our list of recommendations?
Scouting for Leaders
October 30, 2007
Tonight I was at a Boy Scout recognition event where I was recruiting the parents of the younger boys to step up to the responsibilities of running the troop. My son, a senior in high school, has been in scouting for 10 years. His scoutmaster, one of our friends and contemporaries, will be stepping down this year as our sons graduate from high school and out of the Boy Scouts. After 7 years of running the troop, he and his wife have earned a break from these responsibilities.
Boy scouting has been great for my son and his peers. As they’ve moved through the ranks, they’ve earned not only merit badges, but an increasing confidence in their individual ability to take control of their lives. Ten years ago, they were the little kids, intimidated by the big kids. Tonight, they’re the big kids- moving on to Eagle Scout status, completing college applications, and ready to leave the protection of our small town for a much larger world. They’ve become the mentors and leaders the younger kids look to for lessons from using a knife safely to navigating the bumpy middle school and high school years. The foundation of personal responsibility, integrity and teamwork they take from scouting will serve them well wherever they land in their future work lives.
None of this is possible without adult leadership, on several levels. Scouting, like most youth organizations, depends on adults to carve out time from work and other obligations to keep a troop alive. Scoutmasters sacrifice weekends and vacations to lead their troops. Families of scouts help with fundraising events and camping trips, and support their kids in completing their merit badges.
Scouting teaches kids to set long term goals and to persist for however long it takes to reach those goals. Scouting also teaches them that family, community and spirituality are as important to a full life as pursuing individual goals. The adult leaders who model this behavior for the kids are teaching them lessons every bit as meaningful as anything in the Boy Scout Handbook. For many workers today, it’s hard to escape the demands of their jobs to make time for “extras” like scouting. Let’s hope, for the sake of the kids (our future workforce), that forward thinking organizations continue to provide their employees with the flexibility in their lives to do so.
-
Loading ... -
Subscribe to Our RSS Feed
-
Associations
- American Management Association
- American Payroll Association
- American Staffing Association
- HR Magazine
- Human Capital Institute
- Institute of Management and Administration
- International Association for Human Resource Information Management
- International Workforce Management Benchmarking Association
- Personnel Today
- Society for Human Resource Management
- The Future of Work
Blogroll
