Planning Your Mentoring Sessions: A Mentoring Program Outline

By  Date  December 27, 2018
Categories: Management, Supervision & Leadership Tags: ,

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There are many ways to structure a mentoring relationship.  Some mentees benefit from a free-flowing exchange. The mentee may just need someone to talk to, or they may want to hear stories from you that offer insights for their own development.  Other mentees have expectations that demand more structure.  Mentor characteristics and qualities also play…
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Super-cali-OSHA-listic-expi-ali-docious: A Safety Song

By  Date  November 29, 2018
Categories: OSHA & Workplace Safety Tags: , , ,

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In 1964, Mary Poppins hit the theaters, and the word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was born. To commemorate it’s return to theaters, let’s have some fun with Pryor’s rendition of Super-cali-OSHA-listic-expi-ali-docious!   ♫ When noise is loud, and all you hear is danger all around, Then drop those decibels, and safety soon shall re-abound.   Look! We need…
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OSHA Ergonomics

By  Date  November 29, 2018
Categories: OSHA & Workplace Safety Tags:

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In my former career as a facilities manager I was tasked with overseeing all of our OSHA compliance. We were a small company of forty-five employees primarily all office/desk workers. A few months after we moved into a newly built facility with all new furniture (chairs, articulating keyboard trays, etc.), we had a few employees…
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Four Activities to Build a Safety Culture

By  Date  November 29, 2018
Categories: OSHA & Workplace Safety Tags: , ,

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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has a mission to assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women, by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance (osha.gov/about.html). Making sure those standards are met, of course, is up to your organization. While OSHA publishes a myriad of…
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Motivational States: Understand and Shape Employee Motivation

By  Date  October 25, 2018
Categories: Management, Supervision & Leadership Tags:

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It’s hard to measure employee motivation in the workplace. Different people are motivated by different things at different times.  Given this changeability, how do we create a motivational strategy that will benefit the entire organization? A psychological tool called Reversal Theory can help. This theory provides a list of eight motivational states that managers can…
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Seven Simple Actions that Build Employee Motivation

By  Date  October 25, 2018
Categories: Management, Supervision & Leadership Tags:

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Thoughtfully motivating employees requires focused energy and a diverse set of motivational strategies and tools.  There are also simple activities that can support employee motivation. Here’s a list of opportunities to motivate others. Commit to them, and you will see positive outcomes in both the short and long term. Say “thank you.” Everyone is motivated…
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Building a Customer Centric Organization

By  Date  September 25, 2018
Categories: Customer Service Tags:

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What does it mean to be a customer-centric organization?  A great first step is defining who the customers are, and what their goals are.  For staff members with direct contact with customers, such as those providing retail customer service or responding to inbound customer inquiries, defining the customer is often easy: the customer is the…
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Six Steps to Pumping Up Your Customer Service Team

By  Date  September 25, 2018
Categories: Customer Service Tags:

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Customers. Depending on the kind of day you’re having, that word can either bring a smile to your face and a song to your lips, or send you scuttling under your desk to whimper and rock back and forth muttering incoherently about someone named “Angry Edith” and her profane cockatoo, Roosevelt, who shrieks Samuel L….
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Seven Questions to Ask to Restore Work-Life Balance

By  Date  August 23, 2018
Categories: Professional Development Tags:

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Maintaining consistent employee work-life balance can be a daily challenge for many.  Here are seven questions to ask if your work-life balance is getting out of order: Who really needs this and when? When considering which tasks to tackle, objectively evaluate the audience and the timing. Take on the high priority tasks that will have…
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Embracing Life Enhances Work: The Benefits of Work-Life Balance

By  Date  August 23, 2018
Categories: Professional Development Tags:

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Let’s look at a real-life example addressing the importance of work-life balance. Recently, a high-performing employee — Nina — came to my office for a coaching session. Nina had recently been given a high-visibility project to manage. She was doing well, so our sessions were usually future-focused and optimistic. That day, though, Nina was in…
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