Expert Advice
Calculator: How Much Is Employee Turnover Costing You?
By Ira Wolfe Tuesday May 25, 2010Employee turnover is inevitable. But it’s stupid decisions leading to employee turnover that is eating up the profits of businesses.
How Your IT Decisions Affect Employee Morale
By Kevin Beaver Tuesday May 25, 2010How happy are your employees? Have you thought about how morale can affect IT and vice versa? There are plenty of tie-ins. A recent Atlanta Business Chronicle column talks about how happy employees “tend to be more cooperative, less self-centered, and more willing to help other people."
Manager's Dilemma: When Employees Say, 'Not My Job'
By Jay Forte Monday May 24, 2010In this week's Manager's Dilemma, you are the CEO of a plumbing-supply business, One morning you walk through the parking lot, picking up cups and other trash while your employees inside watch. No customers have arrived yet. “It gets pretty messy out there,” one of the employees says to you as you enter the store. You stop, unable to control your anger. "If you see trash out there, why don’t you pick it up?," you demand. "How can you let the parking lot look like this? And moreover, why do I have to do this?”
Beware Predictions of the Hottest Jobs
By Ira Wolfe Monday May 24, 2010In 1999, 70% of workers considered it a good time to be looking for a quality job. Only 12% believed that in 2009. Similarly, 64% were confident in 1999 that they could find a new job as good as or better than their previous job, while only 20% believe that today.
Why Hasty Tech Buys Invite More Problems
By Kevin Beaver Monday May 24, 2010Lou Gerstner once said "If life was so easy that you could just go buy success, there would be a lot more successful companies in the world. Successful enterprises are built from the ground up." Information technology is no different. You can't just go buy some computers and software and expect to hit the ground running. Developing a solid IT infrastructure — even for the smallest of businesses — takes time. It also takes good people, good vendor relationships and a good amount of capital.
Manager's Dilemma Solved: What Facebook Bans Say About Employee Trust
By Jay Forte Monday May 24, 2010Last week I presented a question every manager needs to consider: to what extent should you get employees involved in your company's social media marketing efforts? By allowing — even encouraging them — to use Facebook at work, are you just inviting a host of problems?
The Top 10 Reasons Why Hiring Fails
By Barry Deutsch Friday May 21, 2010Before we wrote our book, "You're NOT the Person I Hired," we commissioned a study within the Vistage Community to identify the most common mistakes and errors executives made in hiring.
Is Your Confidential Business Information Really Safe?
By Kevin Beaver Friday May 21, 2010I attended a seminar recently where a high-level manager working for a Fortune 500 company was speaking about information security. At the bottom of every one of his PowerPoint slides it said "For Internal Use Only/Proprietary and Confidential." I thought: "Wow, here this guy is telling people how important information security and risk management are at his business and yet he's apparently violating one of his own company policies."
Hiring Mistake #1: Inadequate Job Descriptions
By Barry Deutsch Thursday May 20, 2010The No. 1 reason hiring fails is due to the lack of a good definition of success. Most companies use a traditional job description in the hiring process that lists a series of inputs such as minimum education, minimum years of experience, skills, knowledge, attributes, behaviors, responsibilities, duties, tasks, and activities.
Understanding Why New Hires Often Disappoint
By Barry Deutsch Thursday May 20, 2010Hiring fails in most companies more than 50% of the time. Ask yourself this question: Of all the candidates you've hired, how many lived up and exceeded your expectations vs. how many failed to live up to your expectations?