(By Amy Maingault)

First, consider the impact of your actions on fellow co-workers. Will what you do affect their ability to complete their work? Will it offend any of their five senses—for example, cause a distracting noise? Will it draw undue attention to their mistakes or faults? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” then consider an alternative. While you will not be able to avoid affecting others through your actions all the time, considering the impact your actions have may help you minimize the impact.

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As we move rapidly from a manufacturing to a service-based economy, the importance of human capital as a key marketplace differentiator has become increasingly evident. Companies have come to realize they need to hire, develop, and retain superior talent if they are to differentiate themselves from others and achieve competitive preeminence in the marketplace.

There should be little question in people’s minds about the importance of human capital to organizational success. Companies such as Microsoft and General Electric have long demonstrated that having a superior workforce is key to sustained market preeminence and business success. In fact, studies by McKinsey and others have consistently proven a factor frequently differentiating successful from unsuccessful companies is the time spent by their senior management in “talent management”. Leaders of highly successful organizations are known to spend better than 50% of their time in
the assessment, development and selection of their firm’s human assets.

What is not clearly understood by many, however, is the tie-in between people and profits. There should be no mystery here. There is a direct relationship between people and profits, and that relationship is captured in one word - “competencies”. It is the competency level of the workforce that determines how well that workforce plans, organizes and controls all other business assets (i.e., capital, raw materials, equipment, technology and people). A highly competent workforce will tend to manage these assets well, rewarding their employer with higher productivity and profits. Low competent workforces do just the opposite, draining profits away.

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Market pay is vital

Is the pay in your organization competitive with the pay in today’s job market? You can answer this question by taking a look at the quantity and caliber of the applicants who you are attracting. Equally, high employee retention rates demonstrate a great deal about your organization’s competitiveness in the marketplace. Regardless of what workplace studies reveal, working is about compensation. Working can be about much more, too, but the bottom line for people is that their work must pay their bills. Employees desire reasonable, viable, and market-responsive salaries. Compensation is the visible demonstration that an employee’s work is valued. Consequently, effective compensation is one of an employer’s most important and powerful communication tools.

Collecting market pay data

Therefore, the value that you assign to jobs in your organization’s compensation system should be driven by the most up-to-date information about market pay. You can obtain practical market pay data, which includes information about salary, benefits, and bonuses, from a continual analysis of the competitive job market. Large organizations, which have many resources and compensation professionals, might even design and administer custom surveys to regularly obtain market pay data. Smaller organizations must use market surveys conducted by national, local, and professional associations.

Or you can match your jobs to commercially available compensation studies that provide compensation information for:

• Your industry
• Your geographic region
• Your company size
• The number of people that you employ
• Your job descriptions

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Pray
Prayer is two-way communication, so talk to God and ask him for wisdom – then listen for his answer.

Define the Decision that Must be Made
Ask yourself: What am I trying to achieve with this decision? What is the problem that must be solved? What are my options? Avoid looking at the decision in either/or terms. There are often three or more options to any decision, so think creatively and expand your options.

Gather Information
Get as much information as possible – but don’t wait too long to decide. Avoid getting caught in “the paralysis of analysis.” Usually a good decision can be made with considerably less than 100 percent of the available information; 50 to 75 percent is usually sufficient.

Make a List of Pros and Cons
This will help you to think clearly and logically about the decision you must make.

Listen to Your Instincts and Intuition
This does not mean, “trust your feelings.” Feelings are never a good substitute for clear-eyed analysis. But most decisions are improved by listening to your intuition as well as your logic.

If Still Undecided, Consider Your Worst-Case Scenario
What is the worst thing that can happen if you decide this way or that way? Considering your worst-case scenario will help you identify the uncertainty and anxiety that keep you from deciding – and it will bring clarity to your thinking.

Seek Counsel from Trusted Advisors
“In the multitude of counsellors there is safety.” Sometimes an outside perspective can bring clarity to the situation. You don’t have to take the advice of other people, but it is wise to listen and at least consider it.

Make a Decision
Don’t stall, don’t procrastinate – decide. Then act on your decision and trust the guidance God gave you in answer to your prayer.

If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you won’t.
If you like to win, but don’t think you can,
It’s almost a cinch you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost.
For out in the world you’ll find
Success begins with a fellow’s will;
It’s all in a state of mind.

If you think you’re outclassed, you are;
You’ve got to think higher to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can win a prize.

Think big and your deeds will grow.
Think small and you’ll fall behind.
Think that you can, and you will.
It’s all in a state of mind.

Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger, faster man;
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the fellow who thinks he can.

A recent research in Australia and New Zeakand by Human Synergistics, a specialist NZ leadership and culture company, shows that men tend to be more dissatisfied at work.

The study was conducted in April to evaluate employee job satisfaction and staying-power in 182 New Zealand and Australian companies, using Human Synergistics’ Organisational Effectiveness Inventory (OEI). 11,658 individuals were involved and the conclusion was that generally women are much happier in their jobs, and are much more satisfied with their employment, than their male colleagues.

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Executives, managers and organization staff members universally explore ways to improve business results and profitability.

Many view team-based, horizontal, organization structures as the best design for involving all employees in creating business success.

If your team improvement efforts are not living up to your expectations, this self-diagnosing checklist may tell you why. Successful team building, that creates effective, focused work teams, requires attention to each of the following.

1. Clear Expectations: Has executive leadership clearly communicated its expectations for the team’s performance and expected outcomes? Do team members understand why the team was created?

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1.Recognize your skills, interests, and values.
Success in your career starts with you, so it makes sense to start your career search with a thorough understanding of what you do best, what you enjoy doing, and what is most important to you. Clicking on this section will offer you a variety of on-campus and internet resources to help you describe yourself in terms of your skills, interests, and values.

2.Explore the possibilities.
Knowing what you want and what you are good at doing is a starting point. A next step is to determine the kinds of industries, organizations, and work settings that will make the best use of what you want and you have to offer. Clicking on this section will lead you to a list of resources for discovering what is “out there.”

3.Connect your skills, interests, and values with majors.
While some occupations require specific fields of study–you can’t be a surgeon, for example, without a medical degree–many fields allow entry from a variety of majors and career preparation programs. Similarly, a single major can provide preparation for a wide range of career opportunities. So, it is important to find out what majors can lead you in the career directions you want to go and what completing those majors will involve. You will also want to know how minors, certificates, and electives can add to the skills developed by your major. Clicking on this section will take you to a list of resources for finding out more about academic programs at UNI and for connecting majors with job titles.

4.Gather information on specific careers.
Once you have identified majors and broad fields of interest, you’ll want to find out more about the occupations related to those majors and fields. What would you do on a day-to-day basis? What is the employment outlook? What salary ranges are possible? What does it take to get your first job and to move ahead in the profession? Clicking on this section will provide you with a variety of resources for finding out more about the specific career areas that interest you.

5.Develop career-related skills and experience.
Employers look for more than a college degree when they hire. In addition to academic preparation, they want personal qualities like flexibility and initiative and functional skills such as oral and written communication, relationship-building, and organizing and planning, which apply across career fields. In addition, surveys of what employers look for in new college graduates have consistently emphasized the importance of career-related experience. Clicking on this section will lead you to a menu of ways to develop your career-related skills and add to the experience you can list on your resume.

We all know how important it is to hire the right candidates. If an employee does not have the right competencies to perform the job, or is not a good fit for the culture of the organization, this individual will have to be replaced.

The market is flooded with testing services and self-administered tests that purport to measure everything under the sun.
Will pre-employment assessments help you to make better hires? Not necessarily.
Testing can be expensive, and for some organizations, the benefits will not sufficiently justify the costs.

Before you invest in a testing program, ask yourself what you wish to accomplish. If you have a high turnover rate or a history of bad hires, or
there is another compelling reason that you need to screen for certain competencies, pre-employment testing can be very useful.

If you have been generally happy with your hires and your turnover rate is low, there may be no reason to implement a screening program.

If you do decide to test, the more specific you are about the skills and characteristics for which you wish to screen, the more likely you will be to obtain good results. Selecting the right assessment tool is critical. The quality of tests can vary widely, and you want to be sure to choose one that will effectively measure what you want to measure.

The test must measure skills or work behavior that is important to performing the job for which the applicant is being tested.  The test must be administered to all candidates in a fair and uniform manner. A test cannot have a discriminatory impact against any race, religion, sex or ethnic group. 

If a particular test produces a significantly different rate of hiring men than women, for example, the test might be considered discriminatory.
Tests should be validated. This means that there should be a demonstrated correlation between individual performance on the test and subsequent performance on the job. Scoring of the test, whether a target score or pass-fail standard is used, must be applied consistently.

It is much easier to do a good aptitude tests than psychological tests, because aptitude tests measure skills that are more directly relevant to the job. Psychological and personality tests present more of a gray area, and are therefore more open to challenge.

If you do decide to use psychological tests, closely examine the job description to determine the characteristics you are seeking to measure. Do not attempt a “one size fits all” approach. Since it is unlikely that one test will be relevant to applicants for all positions at an organization.

Do not attempt to devise your own tests unless you have in-house expertise in the areas of test development and validation.

(Written by S. Smith)

Cancer and AIDS are considered costly illnesses for employers. Yet many professionals in corporate America do not realize that clinical depression is just as costly. According to the National Mental Health Association (NMHA), depression in the workplace costs more than $43.7 billion a year in employee absenteeism, lost productivity and direct treatment. Depression is treatable; more than 80 percent can overcome it successfully. However, it takes early recognition and the support of not only family but also those in the workplace to beat this sickness.

Depression in the Workplace, a recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the National Foundation for Brain Research (NFBR), discovered that a majority of human resources (HR) professionals believe depression is an extremely serious issue in the workplace. Eight out of 10 HR pros report that it has been a problem for one or more of their organization’s employees during the past three years.

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