A newly published guide for Business Owners and HR Professionals has been published on InsuranceQuotes.com. It features Seven important tips that must be considered to help employers save money and decrease the stress surrounding this process. The guide features the following quote and supporting information from Jumpstart:HR CEO Joey V. Price:
7. Make note of pre-existing conditions.
Workers sometimes get hurt on the job by tweaking a pre-existing injury, says Joey Price, CEO of Jumpstart HR, a human resources consulting firm in Washington, D.C. A construction worker who injured a knee while playing sports several years ago, for instance, may be more likely to suffer knee problems while working at the project site.
For pre-existing conditions, you may be able to prove that your work site did not contribute to the injury, Price says. Doing so can free you from any liability charges that may arise from an incident. Screen employees during the hiring process, and document any pre-existing conditions. If an injury does occur, you’ll have notes ready to help assess the situation.
To read the guide in full, visit this link.
To learn more about how Jumpstart:HR can help you navigate the challenges of WC Insurance, send a message here to schedule your free 30 minute consultation.
In a perfect world, merit alone would be the key driver behind career growth and development.
Unfortunately, Corporate America is far from a “perfect world.”
In an corporate environment where mean people earn more, I think there are several lessons that all individuals can learn from “mean” people if they want to see their career grow. As a self-proclaimed, and humbly affirmed, “nice guy” who has gone from entry-level HR Assistant to Interim HR Director of a 1,200 multi-state Federal Contractor to now HR Consultant, I can say that I got here by being nice but I didn’t let humility humble my growth.
Here are three ways humility can humble your job growth:
You won’t toot your own horn. How many times have you heard a manager or co-worker give you a pat on the back or send a congratulatory email for your hard work on a project? Not often, right? Well if people are rarely shouting praises about you then you have to take that responsibility upon yourself. When speaking with your manager and other persons of influence, learn how to build in the milestones and achievements that you’ve accomplished. “Mean” people do a great job of explaining their case and so should you!
Being humble can make you “blend in” very well…. too well. Pop quiz! Think back to high school or college and think about the most humble person that you can remember. What do you remember about them? As I am thinking back, I can only remember the fact that this particular person was “nice.” I can’t attribute any measurable achievement even though I can remember that they were just a nice guy. If humility trumps your ability to promote yourself then you may run the risk of blending in with the walls as opposed to standing out as a leader or person who has accomplished notable things.
You’ll quiver come performance review time. Performance Reviews are often hampered by a concept in HR called the “recency effect.” The recency effect is a term that describes managers who can only recall information that has happened within the a “recent” time frame. When managers fail to remember your efforts and you are humble about bringing them up, this makes for a terrible quiet storm that results in lower marks than you could’ve received if you only were able to speak up!
What can humble people learn to help grow their ability to communicate past accomplishments and to navigate career growth in spite of “mean” individuals? Here’s a list:
- Learn to confidently talk facts and figures.
- Document past performance so that you can remember it come performance review time.
- Let your personality shine through in conversations and in the workplace.
- Develop leadership potential by offering to take on tasks that “lead” rather than “support.”
- Learn to speak up and talk about yourself – that isn’t a crime :).
- Never forget your career goals and what you wish to accomplish – and always be in the drivers seat of making sure you get there.
Leadership Takeaway: Humble people need a boost. Don’t let your humble people go unnoticed but learn to encourage them to grow. Jumpstart:HR can help you learn to engage your humble individuals in a way that shows you care.
Human Resources Takeaway: The performance review process can be riddled with human error and inconsistency. Learn how to create a consistent performance review process that eliminates these things and gives all employees a fair review process.
Professional Development Takeaway: Humility can hinder your career by way of missed promotion or failure to network effectively at business functions. Schedule a chat with me and learn how to incorporate skills that show you know how to boast but not at the risk of being “mean.”
Let’s face it… Some of your best talent’s New Year’s Resolution might just be to leave your organization. Don’t believe me? Check out this new article on Inc.com to understand why some of your brightest stars might be planning their escape in 2012 (or may have already begun the process!)
http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/6-reasons-why-your-best-employees-will-leave.html
A quote from the article:
Sometimes great employees leave because you can’t afford to pay them more and they can earn more somewhere else. Unfortunately, that happens. Often, though, great employees leave because your company has changed—and they don’t want to change with it.
Here are six of the top (non salary) reasons your best employees will leave:
Looking for an objective and knowledgeable resource to help encourage your talent to stay? Contact us to learn more about how you can encourage and engage employees which ultimately leaders to higher retention and stronger company culture.
Guest Contributor: Yolanda Santirosa
The earliest pension plan, established in 1875 was the American Express plan. Benefits under this plan were 50% of the average pay earned in the final 10 years of a participants employment and could not exceed $500 dollars annually. The second plan was established five years later by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1880. During the next 50 years roughly 400 retirement plans were established. The railroad, banking and public utility industries instituted the early employee retirement plans. During this same time frame the manufacturing industry was still relatively new and therefore they were slow to develop employee retirement plans since they were not faced with employee retirement problems. The first group annuity contract, which is a contract designed to meet retirement goals between an individual and an insurance company, was issued in 1921 by the Metropolitan Insurance Company. Also, in 1924 the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States became the second company to offer group annuities.
Even though pension plans came about in the 1800’s there was no significant growth in pension plans until the creation of the Wage Stabilization Act of 1942. During World War II as part of a general price control effort, the Wage Stabilization Program denied employers competing for labor the ability to offer higher wages as an incentive to attract and retain employees. Additionally, union leaders found that the wage control hindered their efforts to persuade employees to join unions and created difficulties for the union leaders to validate the advantage of belonging to a union to their membership. Under the Wage Stabilization Act the War Labor Board permitted the establishment of fringe benefits programs that included pensions thus beginning the practice of employer-sponsored health and pension plans. Finally, in 1948 the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that employers had a legal obligation to bargain over the terms of pension plans.
Reference
Allen, E. T., Melone, J. J, Rosenbloom, J.S, & Mahoney, D. F. (2008). Retirement plans 401(k)s, IRAs, and other deferred compensation approaches. (10th.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Taken from a GREAT article on Fast Company:
- Every element of their work will be pored over by multiple layers of bureaucracy. Even if that’s how the rest of the company operates, it can’t spill into the digital department. In a technology environment, new products and businesses spring up daily and a new endeavor can go from conception to launch in a matter of months. Reining in the momentum will be read as inaction and a clear signal the company isn’t willing to grasp the new way of the world.
- Mediocre is good enough. While clocking out at 5 p.m. is attractive to some, it will discourage digital talent. They want to be expected to do something great. They want to be pushed. They care about their work. Their leadership, and those they rely on to get things done, must match their appetite for success.
- Trial and error is condemned. The freedom to try out new ideas allows employees to take initiative, make decisions, and learn from their mistakes. It also demonstrates an attractive and inspiring entrepreneurial spirit.
- Your company is structured so it takes a lifetime to get to the top, and as such there are no digital experts in company-wide leadership positions.Digital talent–often in their 20s and 30s–need to see a clear path for uninhibited career development that’s based on merit, not years spent, and that’s beyond the confines of the digital department. If they don’t, they won’t see a reason to stay with the company in the long term.
- Your offices are cold, impersonal and downright stodgy. It may sound like it conflicts with the “you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley point,” but appreciate the nuance. A traditional office layout is designed to communicate power among certain individuals and barriers between departments. This does not support the collaborative ethos which is intrinsic to the web. Companies should do everything possible to provide the digital team friendlier, open office space. A location in a hip, young neighborhood (which surely exists in every mid- to large-sized city) is also a big plus.
Any thoughts??
From a newly released Wall Street Journal article:
“The conventional wisdom is that our education system is failing our economy. But our companies deserve a lot of the blame themselves.”
“Unfortunately, American companies don’t seem to do training anymore. Data are hard to come by, but we know that apprenticeship programs have largely disappeared, along with management-training programs. And the amount of training that the average new hire gets in the first year or so could be measured in hours and counted on the fingers of one hand. Much of that includes what vendors do when they bring in new equipment: “Here’s how to work this copier.”
What are your thoughts?
