Profiles Asia Pacific, Inc.

(continuation)

According to experts, any form of verbal abuse, humiliation, or threatening constitutes workplace bullying. Bullying in the workplace is a fairly common occurrence and the incidences are as high as 49% in some countries. Most people experience at least some form of bullying in their work place. Other than the psychological effect on the victims, bullying also results in huge financial losses due to low productivity. However, bullying should not be confused with harassment. In cases of persistent bullying, if it is not controlled in time then it can lead to drastic consequences. It is also the main cause of work related stress. To counter bullying, the management must ensure that the bully be discredited. In addition, it is better to have a strict anti-bullying policy. Read the article below to know more on the impact of bullying at the work place.

Impact On Employers

Reduced Output - Bullying in the workplace drastically reduces the productivity. There is also deterioration in the work performance.

Commitment - The loyalty towards the company and the commitment towards the work get eroded gradually. There is a decrease in the morale, which ultimately leads to a work culture clouded by negativism.

Attrition- Employees who face bullying tend to leave the organization sooner or later. This can lead to increased costs in hiring and training of new recruits.

Unsafe Work Environment - Bullying leads to a work environment that is potentially unsafe because it fosters a spirit of enmity.

Staff Turnover -There is a rise in the number of absentees. Also, more number of staff request sick leave.

Increased Liabilities -As a result of bullying, additional costs are incurred in a variety of issues like defending claims, workers compensation, engaging mediators and civil and criminal actions.

Public Image -Giving gives a poor public image of the organization and attracts adverse publicity.

Impact On Employees

Outlook -Employees who experience bullying develop a negative outlook, which reflects in their work.

Psychological Impact- Bullying can result in negative psychological effect. The victims develop symptoms of anxiety and depression. They experience increasing bouts of stress and panic attacks. Victims also develop eating disorders and are more prone for alcohol abuse. They face difficulty in going to sleep and waking, which if uncontrolled can lead to insomnia. These in turn affect the work, as they face difficulty in concentrating and make more mistakes and accidents.

Physiological Impact -Increased incidences of bullying can adversely affect the physiology of the victims. They experience loss of confidence and self esteem which in some cases can even lead to suicide. The victims also are at a higher risk of heart diseases and other conditions like erratic bowel movements, less resistance to infection and high blood pressure.

Behavioral Impact -Due to adverse psychological and physiological impact of bullying, victims develop a change in their behavior, which can further aggravate their situation. They tend to become emotionally drained and resort by showing aggressive behavior. They become irritable and vengeful, often showing signs of hypersensitivity. They also generally tend to withdraw into themselves and have limited interaction.

Source:http: lifestyle.iloveindia.com

Bosses, how well do you know your employees?

In a quest to find a good source for this blog, the search landed in an article found in the Wikipedia.org site.

To begin answering the question posted, let us identify the forms of this subject according to the definition suggested by Tim Field.

Secondary bullying — the pressure of having to deal with a serial bully causes the general behavior to decline and sink to the lowest level.
Pair bullying — this takes place with two people, one active and verbal, the other often watching and listening.
Gang bullying or group bullying — is a serial bully with colleagues. Gangs can occur anywhere, but flourish in corporate bullying climates. It is often called mobbing and usually involves scapegoating and victimisation.
Vicarious bullying — two parties are encouraged to fight. This is the typical “Triangulation” where the aggression gets passed around.
Regulation bullying — where a serial bully forces their target to comply with rules, regulations, procedures or laws regardless of their appropriateness, applicability or necessity.
Residual bullying — after the serial bully has left or been fired, the behavior continues. It can go on for years.
Legal bullying — the bringing of a vexatious legal action to control and punish a person. It is one of the nastiest forms of bullying.
Pressure bullying or unwitting bullying — having to work to unrealistic time scales and/or inadequate resources.
Corporate bullying — where an employer abuses an employee with impunity, knowing the law is weak and the job market is soft.

Organizational bullying — a combination of pressure bullying and corporate bullying. Occurs when an organization struggles to adapt to changing markets, reduced income, cuts in budgets, imposed expectations and other extreme pressures.                                                                                      Institutional bullying — entrenched and is accepted as part of the culture.

Client bullying — an employee is bullied by those they serve, for instance subway attendants or public servants.
Cyber bullying — the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behaviour by an individual or group, that is intended to harm others.

Examples of Workplace Bullying Tactics

1. Making someone and/or other people feel unwelcome and not letting them join in e.g. being in a clique and cliquey behaviors and being snobby and/or elitist. Another hurtful form of unwelcomeness is vilification.
2. Unkind remarks about someone’s family, lifestyle, body, appearance, shape, weight, clothes and their personal life.
3. Invasion of privacy e.g. tampering with someone’s personal effects, asking someone intrusive personal questions, e.g. about their love-life.
4. Being refused annual leave, sick leave and especially compassionate/bereavement leave without a genuine and a fair reason why.
5. Being subjected and called to disciplinary hearings/meetings without absolute proof and when they are suddenly out of the blue and especially WITHOUT moral support e.g. a Union rep/parent/friend/trusted colleague/other trusted person with you.
6. Discrimination and/or unfair treatment to someone because of disability/medical condition/age/race/ethnicity/how they live and sensitive issues about someone e.g. HIV positive and sexual orientation e.g. gay/lesbian etc.
7. Spreading stories and/or lies about someone and/or his/her friends/family.
8. Deliberately withholding/giving out false information to make a competent worker look unprofessional and in order to make him/her fail.
9. Playing practical jokes on someone/telling jokes to someone which they do not like and if it makes them uncomfortable and when they and others are NOT laughing and they DO NOT find it funny (especially those based on sex, body and race).
10. Sexual harassment of any kind e.g. persistently asking out for dates/romances, touching/staring at someone’s body, forcing/coercing to have sex,(especially private areas), displaying explicit/pornographic pictures, cartoons, DVDs, videos, saying sexual comments and any unwanted touches (that the person isn’t comfortable with) e.g. brushing against, hugging, kissing, patting, catcalls, wolf-whistling etc.
11. Beware of terms of endearment as not everyone likes them e.g. even terms like Dear, sweetheart, chick, babe, honey, hun, baby, babycakes, lovey, etc. CAN be offensive/uncomfortable to some people.
12. Harassment/stalking e.g. following the person around, always hanging around outside his/her home and/or workplace, favourite haunts like their local pub, shops etc. Persistently emailing, phoning up, text messaging, writing typed/handwritten letters, Instant messaging, Facebooking, and looking at someone’s personal and confidential information/giving out personal and confidential information without consent.
13. Making someone feel unvalued, for example making someone feel the work they do is unimportant and that if they were to leave it would be no consequence to the company. This can be used as a threat, suggesting that the person is at constant risk of losing their job as they could easily be replaced. The bully will often assert their own power by suggesting that they themselves are far more valuable, possibly even that their value allow them to get away with bullying other, less valuable employees.

(to be continued)

Credits/Sources: www.wikipedia.org,

Adams, Andrea with contributions from Crawford, Neil Bullying at Work: How to Confront and Overcome It (1992)
Bassman, Emily S. Abuse in the Workplace: Management Remedies and Bottom Line Impact (1992)
Bell, Arthur H. You Can’t Talk to Me That Way: Stopping Toxic Language in the Workplace (2005)
Brodsky, Carroll M. The Harassed Worker (1976)
Davenport, Noa, Distler Schwartz, Ruth, Pursell Elliott, Gail Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace (1999, 2005 Third Edition) http://www.mobbing-usa.com
Elbing, Carol & Elbing, Alvar Militant Managers: How to Spot … How to Work with … How to Manage … Your Highly Aggressive Boss (1994)
Field, Tim Bully In Sight: How to Predict, Resist, Challenge and Combat Workplace Bullying (1996) ISBN 0-9529121-0-4
Futterman, Susan When You Work for a Bully: Assessing Your Options and Taking Action
Hare, Robert & Babiak, Paul Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (2006)
Hornstein, Harvey A.Brutal Bosses and their Prey: How to Identify and Overcome Abuse in the Workplace (1996)
Namie, Gary & Namie, Ruth: The Bully at Work’ Second Edition’ (2009)
Oade, Aryanne Managing Workplace Bullying: How to Identify, Respond to and Manage Bullying Behaviour in the Workplace”. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ISBN 9780230228085
Randall, Peter Adult Bullying: Perpetrators and Victims (1997)
Randall, Peter Bullying in Adulthood: Assessing the bullies and their victims (2001)
Randle, Jacqueline (Editor) Workplace Bullying in the NHS (2006)
Wyatt, Judith & Hare, Chauncey Work Abuse: How to Recognize and Survive It (1997)

In the world of Customer Service,one can only survive if they the have what it takes to keep their customers satisfied.  Having a strong customer service is a valuable asset, awareness to common customer service mistakes may strengthen your position in the market.

1.  Untrained staff. It does not matter whether you have two or 200 employees, you must train everyone in the art of customer service. Customers and clients will not tolerate rudeness, incorrect information, or apathy on the part of your staff. Not training the staff — and this should include everyone — is a major mistake made by too many businesses.

2. Trying to win the argument. It is worth remembering that it takes five times more effort and cost to gain one new customer as it takes to maintain one current customer. Therefore, to win an argument and lose a steady customer, you are punishing your business.

3. Inaccessibility. If you want to see repeat business, you need to be accessible to your customers. If it is difficult to contact the customer service department or speak to a manager, customers may not return. Many businesses, especially on the Internet, try to maintain a distance from their customers. This rarely works. Check out Online Customer Service Basics for tips on a positive online customer service experience.

4. Standing by your policy. While the clerk who is scared that he or she may lose their job can say “That’s our policy,” customer service representatives and managers should be able to find ways to bend policies to build customer relationships. The phrase “If I do that for you, I’ll have do to it for everyone,” is one of the fastest way to lose customers.

5. Unfulfilled promises. If you promise a customer that something would be ready by Thursday, then it should be there by Thursday. When you cannot make this happen, do not make excuses; the only words you need to remember are “We’re sorry,” backed up by an extra effort to make the customer happy.

6. Poor record keeping. If you keep referring to Mrs. Johnson of Jackson Avenue as Mrs. Jackson of Johnson Avenue, you can be sure that she will not continue to do business with your company. While any business can make a mistake, constantly misspelled names and similar foul-ups do not encourage regular customers to return.

7. The runaround. When someone calls for customer service, they expect a service representative to be the first or second person to whom they speak, following a receptionist perhaps. People do not like being passed from one person to another or sent from one department to another in a retail location. Passing the buck is akin to passing the customer on to your competitor.

8. Email/online cop outs. Since email is impersonal, many businesses send a form letter or a programmed response that answers 10 common FAQs, none of which may apply to a particular customer. Other businesses simply ignore customer complaints hoping that the customer will simply forget the issue. These are email cop outs, or excuses for not providing adequate customer service. It is very simple for a customer representative to respond to each inquiry in a timely fashion.

9. Failure to listen. Customer service representatives routinely do not listen closely to customers. Typically they respond with an answer that does not match the problem because they were not paying attention. Customer relation representatives need to be trained, particularly in the art of listening and even taking notes.

10. Forgetting the basics. “Please,” “thank you,” “we’re sorry about the inconvenience,” and so on are simple phrases that cost nothing, take little effort, and win big points.

Source: Customer Service Mistakes

People quit people-not companies. A bad manager negatively affects attitudes, productivity and turnover. Good managers provide direction, build trust and cultivate their employees’ talents to achieve results.

The Profiles CheckPoint 360° Feedback System™ provides the basis for planning and executing a program for professional growth for each manager. The CheckPoint 360° Feedback System is a multi-rater feedback process that provides managers and leaders with an opportunity to receive an evaluation of their job performance from the people around them, compare the opinions of others with their own perceptions, positively identify their strengths and pinpoint the areas of job performance that could be improved. A powerful professional management devel-opment tool, the CheckPoint 360° Feedback System positively impacts an individual’s growth and the organization’s success.

The Process
Each participant completes an evaluation – via the Internet - a process that takes about thirty minutes. Participants, other than the “Boss,” are guaranteed anonymity and are urged to be honest and objective in their responses. Results from all participants are compiled in a report that is returned to the manager.

Full Color Report

Narrative descriptions and colorful graphs and charts in the CheckPoint 360° Feedback System Reports help managers   understand and effectively use assessment data for self-development. The report has a special personal growth section that coaches the manager to improve performance in development areas. For managers, supervisors and others in leadership positions, the CheckPoint 360° Feedback System can facilitate peak performance that generates improved productivity. The assessment process is concerned with managers’ job performance in eight skill clusters and eighteen universal competencies:

http://www.profilesinternational.com/product_checkpoint360.aspx

Do you have a plan for the emerging workforce crisis? This article will provide you with information that can help your managers and business leaders develop a strategy for recruiting, hiring and retaining top performing employees. Whether you’re an executive, a manager or a supervisor, the following information will be beneficial to you.

Handle the workforce crisis by preparing for an emerging talent crisis by development recruitment, hiring, skill development and employee retention strategies.

A workforce crisis, a new term for the coming talent shortage, will cost your organization time, money and resources unless you plan now. Developing an effective workforce crisis strategy is the first step in making sure your business can respond to challenges like preparing for the emerging talent crisis, cultivating the skill sets of your current workforce and retaining highly talented employees by protecting them from competitors. Since the widespread recognition of the importance of human capital in organizations, companies are creating strategies for taking action before the talent crisis hits full force.

Workforce planning strategies have evolved significantly in the last few years as technological advancement becomes a calculated, competitive edge for businesses.

By investing in new technology and ongoing research, your organization can proactively eliminate hiring, on-boarding, employee development, talent retention and career planning issues before they begin and address challenges that already exist. Progressive companies use workforce crisis solutions to interface, or even integrate the multiple solutions they employ, empowering them to recruit, hire, develop, retain, engage and promote top talent seamlessly.

Identify areas where you can improve your workforce and prevent the workforce crisis from affecting your business.

Here are a few tips that will help you learn how to overcome talent management issues and quickly take action:
- Focus on recruiting and retaining workers
- Capitalize on current workforce skills
- Keep employees engaged and productive
- Ensure employee job fit and redeploy if necessary
- Employee training and development
- Minimize turnover

Over the next few years, most organizations will begin to experience a talent crisis that will affect the way businesses are run. It will affect the employee/manager relationships, succession opportunities, approaches toward employee development, our philosophies toward retirement, and the fundamental way work together. Workforce crisis planning is important because it addresses all of these issues before they become a problem.

Workforce crisis planning helps you understand the capabilities and role of everyone in your workforce by giving insight into the core characteristics of each employee, regardless of the culture, age or gender. As the talent shortage nears, it’s increasingly important to create a business culture that is welcoming and engaging for talented individuals from all backgrounds and all levels of experience.

Managers must find new ways to create the capacity for innovation in your organization by encouraging collaboration, sharing knowledge and working together to create new ideas. Workforce crisis planning will help you do just that.

Workforce compatibility measures critical workplace compatibility information between a manager (executive, director, supervisor, team leader) and their employees. Organizations use it to improve the relationships of every member of the workforce.

Jim Sirbasku - co-founder and CEO of Profiles International, a leading provider of human resource management solutions and employment assessments for businesses worldwide.

In a web article by Gregory P. Smith employees quit for many reasons but, in general, there are five important areas that motivate people to leave their jobs.

5 P’s

1. Poor match between the person and the job
2. Poor fit with the organizational climate and culture
3. Poor alignment between pay and performance
4. Poor connections between the individual, their coworkers, and the supervisor
5. Poor opportunities for growth and advancement

Smith wrote:

As you know, it is getting difficult to attract and keep skilled employees. Many businesses and industries are desperate for help and can’t find good people with the right skills and attitudes.

While many leading companies place more effort in employee retention, most are clueless. They accept employee turnover as a normal part of doing business. High turnover organizations spend disproportionate amounts of resources on recruiting and replacing their workforce, while smart organizations invest in employee retention. Yes, there is going to be turnover no matter what you do, but blindly ignoring the reasons for turnover is foolish and expensive.

The five P’s can be addressed successfully. Employee retention begins by paying attention to what causes low job satisfaction as well as what attracts, retains, and motivates your workforce.

Here are a few items to consider:
Identify and weed out poor managers. The relationship with the employee’s front-line manager is the most common reason people leave. La Rosa’s is a large restaurant business with over 3000 employees. As part of their employee retention strategy, all employees evaluate their bosses twice a year using a special report card. It asks the employees to give their managers a letter grade from A to D in four categories. Any score less than a “B” requires a specific comment from the employee. After it’s completed, they tabulate the comments and design action plans for improvement.

Hold managers accountable for turnover. Set specific responsibilities for Human Resources, supervisors, and executives on what their specific role is in employee retention. Train managers so they understand what leads to higher retention and greater job satisfaction. Hold managers responsible for retention in their departments, set turnover goals for each manager, and track accordingly. Promote managers whose behavior is consistent with the organization’s values and philosophies.

Create a positive work environment. Money and benefits may bring employees through the front door, but poor work conditions drive them out the back. In its National Study of the Changing Workforce, the Families and Work Institute showed earnings and benefits have only a 3 percent impact on job satisfaction. “Job quality” and “workplace support” have a combined 70 percent.

Develop an “Onboarding” program for the first 90 days on the job. Don’t hire and abandon your new employees. Insure they get the support, training, and assistance they need. Quint Studer, CEO of the Studer Group, a consulting firm in Gulf Breeze, Florida, finds companies that take steps to “re-recruit” new employees can improve performance and reduce turnover in their first three months by as much as 66 percent.

Enhance connections between co-workers, managers, and the organization. To build stronger bonds between the top management and employees, one corporate office practices something called Employee Scavenger Hunt. Once or twice a year, they give every executive or manager five names of employees. They find each person, meet them, and learn about them as individuals. The process builds a better bond, improves communication, and builds trust within the organization.

Hire the best and avoid the rest. Research shows those organizations that spend more time recruiting high-caliber people earn 22% higher return to shareholders than their industry peers. Cisco CEO John Chambers said, “A world-class engineer with five peers can out produce 200 regular engineers.” Instead of waiting for people to apply for jobs, good organizations are always on the lookout for high-caliber people.

Provide learning opportunities. For many people, learning new skills is as important as the money they make. Identify career paths and provide developmental opportunities for employees early in their jobs with the organization. Promote on-going, two-way communication between employees and their immediate managers regarding career progress. In a study by Linkage, Inc. people said they would consider leaving their present employer for another job with the same benefits if that job provided better career development and greater challenges.

Make people feel appreciated. People want to be paid well, but also would like to be treated with respect and appreciation. Find creative ways to make people feel good about their job. We have helped organizations set up something called, “peer recognition.” Peer recognition allows people to reward each other for doing a good job. It works because employees are in the best position to catch people doing the right things. TD Industries in Dallas, Texas, helps their employees feel valued by using one wall within the company to place photographs of all employees who have been with the them more than five years. They also try to make everyone feel equal and have no reserved parking spaces for executives. That is one reason why TD Industries was listed by Fortune magazine as one of the Top 100 Best Places to Work.

Measure attitudes of your workforce. High-retention workplaces are using employee climate assessments to measure the attitudes and feeling of their workforce. Every organization should conduct some form of climate assessment periodically during the year.

Focus on individuals. You must manage retention one employee at a time. Focus on the key jobs that have the most impact on profitability and productivity. Everyone has a different set of needs and expectations about their jobs. By conducting an individual retention profile, managers can quickly identify the employee’s unique motivations, goals, level of job satisfaction, as well as other expectations.

Focus on the family. One small company gives their employees’ children a $50 Savings Bond twice a year when they get straight A’s on their report cards. Another survey of 1,000 companies showed half of them let workers stay home with mildly ill children without using vacation or sick days. Two-thirds permit flextime defined as allowing employees to adjust work hours on a daily basis.

http://www.businessknowhow.com/manage/retain-employees.htm

A “perfect storm” is an expression that describes an event where a rare combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically.^[1] The term is also used to describe a hypothetical hurricane that happens to hit at a region’s most vulnerable area, resulting in the worst possible damage by a hurricane of its magnitude.(source: Wikipedia.org)

The Workforce Crisis A common myth about the impending workforce crisis is that the issue is about an anticipated talent shortage. The issue is much larger than one could imagine. The United States has never had such a large proportion of older workers in the workforce, or a generation as large as the baby boomers preparing to retire. The growth rate of the labor force has never dropped and stayed so low in our history. We never before relied so heavily on intellectual rather than physical labor. Business owners cannot anticipate the compounding effects that will take place when these trends collide. There is a concept known as the “Perfect Storm” in which critical weather fronts come together to create a storm of catastrophic proportion. The collision of these three factors will in fact create a “Perfect Storm” that can create waves so large the challenges of the millennium bug and the impact 9/11 had on business could look like only a squall on an otherwise gentle sea.

The demographic composition of the workforce has become more diverse than ever before, not just in age but in gender, ethnicity, country of origin, level of education, family status, personal ambition, wealth needed for retirement, and corporate loyalty. Put these forces together, and tomorrow’s labor market will be characterized by more than slow growth and shortages. Will you be prepared when your employees think and act quite differently than their parents, grandparents and previous generations?

So what does this impending workforce crisis mean to you and your business? If we break the crisis down to its simplest elements, you have a supply and demand problem. As a leader, you must have a ready supply of skills and talent to implement and sustain the execution of your business strategy and achieve your performance goals. The issue won’t just be about achieving business goals; it is much broader with even greater implications to your business. Do you have aggressive plans for growth? You may have the people and leaders you need to achieve today’s goal but will you have the people and leaders to take advantage of the economic boom that is before us?

For years you could contract or expand your workforce based on business conditions because you knew there would always be a labor pool in your marketplace. The combination of the baby-boomers’ rush to retirement, coupled with the dearth of new births, has led to fewer and fewer people entering the labor force.The result is a labor pool that is shrinking rapidly.

There is serious doubt whether ready-made, already qualified, locally available candidates will form a large enough labor pool to meet a company’s needs. So, you will have to change your thinking about how you manage your workforce. You are going to have to anticipate your labor and skills needs in the context of the longer term trends. Some of the first tactics you need to take are the retention of key employees, increasing the level of engagement of existing employees, changing how you select new employees, changing your approach for developing new hires, and tapping new sources of labor and skills.

You may be thinking, “I read enough, this is one more problem on my desk I have to solve.” The reason that Age Wave, The Concours Group, and Harris Interactive united with Profiles International to conduct the study about the workforce of the 21st century was not just to cry out, “danger ahead, crisis on the horizon.” Because of the breadth of the study, practices and actions of progressive companies were identified, tools have been created and processes pioneered that can help you survive and thrive during these periods of turmoil and lack of people resources.

(Read more)

http://www.workforce-analysis.com/Reports/Workforce_Crisis_Whitepaper_PS.pdf)

When you don’t like your job, going to work every day can be a challenge. Your problem might be with a pesky officemate, a bad manager, that you constantly feel stretched to the breaking point, or that you are resentful about taking a pay cut. Or, the whole environment may just feel toxic. You might need to stay in your job because it provides health benefits, or maybe you’re only staying while you look for another position. Whatever your reasons for being unhappy, you need to maintain your professionalism and prevent a bad attitude from sabotaging you.

Being unhappy might indicate that there’s a part of the self that is not heard. There’s a need to deal with that feeling of unhappiness and try to figure out what went wrong.

Sometimes people just don’t match well with their jobs, employees tend to rationalize their job dissatisfaction rather than consider that they may be part of the problem. But if you are part of the problem, you may be part of the solution, too.

Knowing your capabilities and capacity might help to avoid dissatisfaction and being unhappy in the workplace. You should know what you CAN and what you CAN’T do. It would also help if you will be responsible for every change that you will make. Never ever assume that nothing will ever change. Making the best of a bad situation will also help for you to feel great about yourself. Never ever allow negative thoughts to rule you because it will ruin all your hardship at work.

Focusing more on the advantages that you have at work will lessen the thoughts of being unhappy rather than thinking of the disadvantages or reasons that made you unhappy.

Leadership is stated as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership).

Real leaders are effective when other people acknowledge them by listening seriously to their ideas, valuing and following their suggestions for action, and turning to them for advice.

To lead aren’t limited to times when one has the formal authority to do so. Leadership in each individual is inherent. We just need to develop and practice the art and science of it. When you demonstrate leadership even if you’re not the boss, you will not only contribute value to a project or enterprise but also fortify your leadership skills.

Being a leader even if you are not the boss involves five-step method according to Harvard negotiation specialist Roger Fisher and coauthor Alan Sharp in their book Lateral Leadership: Getting Things Done When You’re Not the Boss (2nd ed., Profile Books, 2004).

1. Establish goals

People accomplish the most when they have a clear set of objectives. It follows that any group’s first order of business is to write down exactly what it hopes to achieve. The person who asks the question “Can we start by clarifying our goals here?”–and who then assumes the lead in discussing and drafting those goals–is automatically taking a leadership role, whatever his or her position.

2. Think systematically

Observe your next meeting: people typically plunge right into the topic at hand and start arguing over what to do. Effective leaders, by contrast, learn to think systematically–that is, they gather and lay out the necessary data, analyze the causes of the situation, and propose actions based on this analysis. In a group, leaders help keep participants focused by asking appropriate questions. Do we have the information we need to analyze this situation? Can we focus on figuring out the causes of the problem we’re trying to solve?

3. Learn from experience–while it’s happening

Teams often plow ahead on a project, then conduct a review at the end to
figure out what they learned. But it’s more effective for teams (or individuals) to learn as they go along.

Anyone who prompts the group to engage in regular minireviews and learn from them is playing a de facto leadership role. Why is this ongoing process more effective than an after-action review? The events are fresh in everyone’s mind. And the team can use what they learn from each minireview to make needed adjustments to their work processes or their goals.

4. Engage others

A high-performing team engages the efforts of every member, and effective team leaders seek out the best fit possible between members’ interests and the tasks that need doing. Suggest writing down a list of chores and matching them up with individuals or subgroups. If no one wants a particular task, brainstorm ways to make that task more interesting or challenging. Help draw out the group’s quieter members so that everyone feels a part of the overall project.

5. Provide feedback

If you’re not the boss, what kind of feedback can you provide? One thing that’s always valued is simple appreciation–”I thought you did a great job in there.” Sometimes, too, you’ll be in a position to help people improve their performance through coaching. Effective coaches ask a lot of questions: “How did you feel you did on this part of the project?” They recognize that people may try hard and fail anyway: “What made it hard to accomplish your part of the task?” They offer thoughtful suggestions for improvement, being careful to explain the observation and reasoning that lie behind them.

Having an authority is not necessary to be a leader.

Good leaders are made not born. If you have efthe desire and willpower, you can become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience (Jago, 1982)

Workforce planning is a systematic process for identifying, acquiring, developing, and retaining employees to meet the needs of the organization.

Workforce planning is an effort to focus on developing information that can help an organization make decisions for both the short and long term, yet allow for flexibility in a changing environment. The plan is intended to help solve staffing problems related to managed position movement into, around, and out of an organization.

IMPORTANCE OF WORKFORCE PLANNING

Workforce planning has become increasingly important to organizations over the last several years, due in large part to increased retirements, as well as retention and restructuring initiatives. Global trends that illustrate the importance of workforce planning include:

• aging of the population;
• baby boomers redefining the idea of what retirement is;
• harnessing of technology to change the human resource function;
• proliferation of rules and regulations, with new legislation often competing and colliding with existing legislation; and
• the sheer number of people with advanced educational degrees is advancing human knowledge at an unprecedented rate.

The implementation of the workforce plan should result in the desired workforce the organization needs in terms of the number of employees, with the appropriate skills, at the right locations, etc. The workforce plan should be continually measured for its success in meeting both efficiency and effectiveness parameters. While efficiency will measure the time, speed, cost, and volume regarding the plan, effectiveness will measure whether the plan is achieving the desired result of “having the right people with the right skills at the right time.”

Source: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/hr/pdf/workforceplanningmanual.pdf