Personal use of the internet at work costs over £10billion

The Confederation of British Industry announced that personal use of the internet at work costs UK PLC £10.6 billion.

We agree with CBI Chief John Cridland who says that allowing staff to use the internet in works time can boost productivity if it is managed correctly.

Allowing unlimited use will encourage staff to do very little work. Using forums and reading blogs can be almost an addiction.

A blanket ban, on the other hand, will encourage staff to find other ways to stay in touch and gossip with friends. These include sloping off to the toilet or using text messaging. Neither of these can be policed as easy or effectively as the internet.

Trust is essential and a good internet & email use policy will foster this.

Weekly update subscribers can access a free internet use policy from the members only site

The full story is here

How to retain good staff

The following article was sent to weekly update subscribers this last week

How to retain key staff

Key staff are essential for any business. When an accountant or financial person looks at your staffing structure or business set up – they just see numbers on a sheet and people as a fixed cost without taking account of the value they provide.

But for the effective manager, this is where the art of management comes in – some people are more use than others and a key management skill is to retain key staff.

What are key staff?
Key staff have what we have called “corporate know-how”.

They know how to get things done. If a large delivery comes incorrect or there is a power cut or a water shortage or a leaking roof – chances are key staff will know what to do and most likely – start doing it. These are the sort of staff you need.

Staff you don’t need are those who stand around waiting for someone else to take the lead.

Quite often though – key staff can be quite hard work and almost exhausting to work with. The trick is to wind them up and let them go…

Failure to keep up with them can mean they become disillusioned and look to move on..

How to spot when key staff are unhappy?
If you are getting requests for references for other jobs, this should reveal something crucial about your business..

Moreso, if you look at the job description and think

“they would be wasting there time doing that”

The thing to remember is – They don’t think so – otherwise they woudn’t have applied and that is pretty damming on your organisation or business.

But how to reward them?

A common discretionary way to reward staff is to award what the British public sector calls an increment. At around £20 per month, £5 per week (less tax of course!) , this is at best a token gesture, at worst an insult.

We would suggest that financial rewards are not the best option in these circumstances. These people aren’t (totally) in it for the money – yes it helps – but the want to do a good job as well.

If you are going to provide them with training – then give them a booking form or a web link so they can book it themselves.

Saying “yes – we will sort out that training course” and then doing nothing about it is a way of saying “go away and calm down”

Bending the rules and knowing which rules to apply is another management skill which can help here.

Suppose the person you want to reward wants to leave work 30 minutes early to watch a child in a school concert or important sports match.

For the non key staff (who stand around waiting for other people to do things), a half day leave would be required but for the key staff, being flexible and just asking them to just make the 30 minutes up some other time is the way to go.

However, you must get them to trust you and you them that your “special arrangements” are perks for them personally and not for “general consumption”

However, you do it, you must recognise that key staff are very valuable to you and your organisation. The key is to build trust and relationships so what is good for them is also good for your business.

Call that a skill?

Having carried out many recruitment activities and interviews for vacancies from clerical to managerial, we know that the most basic interview question which all candidates should have a stock answer for is:

“Tell me what skills you can bring to this position?”

Firstly, this lets us know if the person has even read the job description and secondly what they consider to be a skill.

We are constantly amazed when people say

“I can use the internet and email”

What?

Unfortunately these days that is not a skill. Most children aged 7 can use the internet – It’s that easy.

So before that important interview make a note of your skills. Give them the skills that they can use and more importantly – that no-one else has…

Travel light at Interviews

When you go for an interview what will you take with you?

This probably depends on what the interview is for – you might have to take tools or equipment to do a test for some jobs, but for most it will probably mean just a pen pencil and maybe a calculator.

At one interview session we conducted the first candidate arrived. He was laden down with briefcase, newspaper, umbrella, and raincoat along with a location map of the area.(nothing wrong with the map - you can put it away when you reach the location)

It seemed to take him about 10 minutes to get into the room and settle down, and we thought it was a wind up of some sort.

Why was all that stuff a bad idea?

At an interview you are bound to be nervous. (If you have taken our stress course you will know why) Giving yourself more stuff to carry will only increase you chances of fouling up.

So for all budding interviewees we suggest ‘Travel Light’.

Pen and pencil, calculator and note pad in hand and Qualifications if asked for.

But make sure you keep a hand free in order to shake hands as you enter.

All the rest of the stuff - leave behind…

Children learn faster with CD ROMs

Interesting article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph pointing out that children learning languages performed better when using CD ROMs as opposed to traditional text books.
Researchers at the University of Durham analysed data of 1000 children split into 2 groups.

One group used traditional text books and the other used CD ROM’s.

The CD ROM group improved by 0.5 - 0.8 of a level compared to the text book group.

The Head Teacher said the school may look at other languages including Spanish and German.

The full story is here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1935909/Pupils-learn-faster-with-computers.html

Did you miss your free training course?

Weekly update subscribers got a FREE serial number to access our latest course “violence at work” last week. The text of the update is below.

If you want a FREE serial number for free training, just subscribe to our weekly update. You can do this by entering your name and email in the box at the top of the page.

This is the last week of this offer. The course will be on sale next week.

We are delighted to bring our eNewsletter subscribers a “world premiere” this week.

If you have noted from our blog,., we have been working on a new course – “violence at work”

Final testing has now been completed, and it is now ready for public viewing.

As subscribers, we wanted to give you the chance to view the course, for free.

To take advantage of this free training, please do as follows

Go to www.learn-on-demand.co.uk

Scroll to the bottom where it says “get started”

Pick the “violence at work” course

Ignore the price

Enter your name & email and where it says coupon code enter xxxxxxxx –

This gives 100% discount

Your user name and password will be emailed to you within a minute or so

You will be taken straight to the start screen – enter your user name & password

Enjoy…

The coupon code allows for unlimited use but is exclusively for subscribers.

Please feel free to send any feedback on the course..

Of course, if you want more users and reporting on user activity, please contact us on 01909 772729 for a heavily discounted rate.

Many thanks for your continued support

PS Don’t forget that there are free training resources & downloads in our members only website www.training-subscribers.info

User Name = xxxxxxxx

Password = xxxxxxx

Dealing with difficult people

Dealing with easygoing people is easy but dealing with difficult people is difficult.

We have read that it is unofficial policy at large call centres to simply hang up on a difficult customer.

Why?

It must be very hard to try and explain to someone how to make their appliance work when you can’t see them or the appliance. It would be virtually impossible if they are screaming down the phone at you.

And so that’s it – just hang up and hope when they ring back, they don’t get through to you.

However, the truth is more subtle than that – so subtle that it is almost a secret.

Very few people seem to know, understand or accept this secret.

And it’s this

“Staff will treat customers no better than they are treated themselves”

Why should they? What part of a person is built to believe

“That’s OK, I get treated like a servant, but I must be nice to the customer, after all, they pay my wages”

The truth is something like a stepping stone effect.

However well you treat staff, raises the level of customer service because staff feel increased pride in the job and pass this on almost subconsciously.

If you subscribe to our weekly update, we touch on this in point 1 of our report “The 5 mistakes most employers make”

If you haven’t subscribed, you can do so here.

10 Management mistakes

This post in Personnel today is very interesting.

We suggest that the type of manager referred to would view paying the relatively small sum of #20 as a waste of money. And then go on to waste 20 or 30 times that in hidden costs.

Jonathan Senior
Chartered Manager

Are you a forum bore?

Forums can be useful. If you are installing some software or the like, just pasting an error message into google gives you instant answer.

But who answers your questions? What experience do they have? And what support do you have if things go wrong? That’s right… another forum…

Do you really want to trust your computer, health, business, health of your children to a complete stranger with an even stranger “avatar” and a silly slogan for a “ sig”.

And notice who “pops up” minutes after almost every post with their opinion or thoughts . If it were software that did this, it would be very expensive…

It’s known as “perceived authority” where we subconsciously assume people who are loud and noisy know what they are talking about.

In truth though, they are the cyber equivalent of a pub bore. Where every conversation has to start or finish with them or be “approved” by them. And they feel the need to join in every conversation regardless how little they know about the subject.

You wouldn’t go to a complete stranger in the street and say

“Excuse me, can you help me with this problem with my computer please,
here’s the error message”

We have just read James Brausch’s excellent book “The Internet Business Book” and he offers some advice on the typical make up of a forum.

The owner – They aren’t really bothered about what goes on so long as it is legal and makes money.

The moderators – Enjoy the role of being a football referee and having the power to delete post and throw people out

Lurkers – People who just lurk around, sometimes posting, most of the time keeping their heads down

Trolls & Pub Bores – People who I have described above. People who enjoy winding others up and/or showing off their vast knowledge

People who answer questions – People who think that they are doing a public service answering questions asked by people who can’t be bothered to look it up for themselves

Advertisers – Again, similar to owners, they aren’t really bothered so long as they make money.

Want to see what we mean ? Post a link to this article in every forum you post in and see the chickens fly…

Skype Etiquette

This is NOT a technical guide, and we do not intend to take you through the various reasons software does what it does. Neither are we going to advise you as to the whys and how’s you can get skype on your computer. (Some larger firms may not allow)

Skype and other messenger services are very much part of the web 2.0. As with a lot of this type of software, the manufacturer’s website only says how great it is, not how to use it on a day to day basis.

Most of these programs have 2 functions, a text message conversation and a voice conversation using a ‘virtual’ telephone.

We would suggest that before a voice conversation, it is good practice to fire off a quick text message saying something like “are you free to speak?” or “have you got a few minutes to speak?”

Remember your contact may be busy elsewhere or may not want to be disturbed (not everyone uses the “status” settings as well as you…).

Do not take a lack of enthusiastic response or sudden cut off personally. There are many possible explanations for, what you may feel, is rudeness. The computer has problems, the real phone is ringing, the web connection breaks etc.

Skype text conversations are stored for 30 days, so take up where you left off.

When having a conversation on the “virtual” phone don’t forget that you are using a free service so line quality may be poor . Don’t assume the other person can hear with the same quality as you.

If the line quality deteriorates, don’t be afraid to “hang up” and try again or, go back to a text “conversation,”

We have found that the best setup for voice conversation is either a headset with attached microphone or a skype phone. Using a standalone microphone and the computers built in speakers can lead to feedback and distortion.

Be aware that confidential or delicate information could be recorded with sound recording software.

In cases of multiple member text calls, be very careful when someone leaves the conference call. The “hello” and “goodbye” ripples can continue for sometime…

Usually, it goes something like this.

Person 1: “Okay I’ll see you tomorrow” (starts to switch off this and onto something else)

Person 2: “OK – See you then”

Person 1:”Bye” (Definitely switches off and maybe even closes window)

Person 2: (New window pops up) “Bye then”

Person 1: “Goodbye” (obviously annoyed now)

Person 2:”Don’t forget to bring your (something unimportant)”

Person 1: “OK I won’t”

One party says to themselves, “I need to end this – but it feels like I’m being really rude”, while the other person is feeling the same way. You could, potentially, be stuck in this virtual clinch for ever…

(Hint: One way of knowing that a conversation is coming to a successful conclusion is when one or more parties starts repeating what has been said. They are in effect, summing up. When this starts to happen, and you say something like “OK, we will leave it at that then” – They are less likely to take offence, and you can end the conversation sooner).

[tags] skype, etiquette, netiquette, politeness online, friends, friendly, professional [/tags]