Profiles Asia Pacific, Inc.

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)

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

WorkForce Compatibility

April 28,2010 9:00AM to 12:00PM

6th floor - Development Academy of the Philippines, San Miguel Avenue, Ortigas Center Pasig City.

Hosted by Profiles Asia Pacific.

Employment is a state where a person have job and involved in any activity and work while, unemployment means that a person is out of work and is jobless.

It pains to hear the word “unemployed”. It does not sound good either! Being jobless is something that any person will not dream of. It’s a serious matter though!

Packing your coffee mug and clearing your desk is a common scenario when the boss fired an employee—having a big box where to put all your stuffs. How would one be able to handle such kind of situation depends on the person. Being fired by your boss is the least thing that you would like to happen I believe! Who would like it in the first place? Contributing to the huge number of unemployed is not a good idea. Because being part of the unemployment rate means that you’re not helping the country’s economy but rather contribute to its downfall.

However, consider being fired as opportunity. A chance to improve oneself and correct all the mistakes that was done. It is an opportunity to make things better. Perhaps, it can be a great incentive to think again your career path and start fresh. There’s always room for improvement. Don’t lose hope. Prepare yourself for another great opportunity will come.

The book Thank You for Firing Me by Kitty Martini and Candice Reed offer valuable tips for keeping yourself together by exercising, sleeping, a sound diet, socializing and staying active, and plotting your future after a job loss. This fresh, funny, and smart guide will be their life saver, providing them with the information they need to thrive even in this tight economic environment. The book will help “used-to be-employee” to see the positive side of being fired. If you’re not happy about your job and you think it wasn’t right, maybe your boss did you a favor. (Fenelle Macarayan)

Elements of Greatness

Profiles Asia Pacific Managing Director Ms.Jocelyn R. Pick obtained her BS and MS Statistics from the University of the Philippines, and her MBA on International Business and MSBA Finance from the University of Southern California. After several years of working with the government (PMS/NCC and PPA, OPM) she held positions with KPMG in Los Angeles,California and The Holden Group. Consultant for the USC International Public Policy & Management (IPPAM) Masters Degree Program. And was Consultant of the Department of Education in Philippines. Officer of the Pasig City Chamber of Commerce Inc., member of Intitute of Management Consultants of the Philippines (IMPHIL), member People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP).

The Metro Manila Toastmasters Club (MMTMC) made a clean sweep of first place wins in all four categories at the recently concluded Area 2 Speech Competitions. Held on January 30, 2010 at the Meralco TSB at Pasig City, the event combined the speech contests of Area 2 and Area 5. Declared Area 2 champions were the MMTMC speakers in the following categories:

Impromptu Speaking - Past President Freddie Dela Cruz, ACB-CL
Evaluation - Vice President Erick Llaguno, CC-CL
Humorous Speech - President Josephine Mines, CC-CL
International Prepared Speech - Past President Mariecel Onate, ACS-ALB

Photo at top shows the MMTMC contingent posing proudly with the bemedalled champions. From left are: Past President (PP) Tootz Dela Torre, ACS-CL; VP-Publc Relations Lynne Gamboa, ACG-CL; Mica Carino, TM; Cris Aviso, CC; PP Cristine Gonzales, ACG-CL; PP Freddie Dela Cruz, ACB-CL; PP Mariecel Onate, ACS-ACB; President Josephine Mines, CC-CL; Vice President Erick Llaguno, CC-CL; Area 2 Governor Joy Gatdula, CC-CL; Stella Simbulan, TM; and Roland Fernandez, TM.

It was a wonderful victory for the four MMTMC speakers, especially since they went up against equally good speakers from other clubs in Area 2. Photo below shows all the contestants from both Area 2 and 5 having fun as they are introduced and interviewed before the audience.