Towers Perrin, the corporate benefits consulting firm,
surveyed over 1000 American workers and found the
following:
* Only 51 percent of all workers trust their organizations to
tell the truth in employee communications
* Only 48 percent of all workers with more than five years of
tenure believe their companies are honest in their employee
communications
* Only 44 percent of all workers over age 50 trust their
organizations to tell them the truth in employee
communications
Organizations then wonder why worker productivity
decreases, employee loyalty is at an all time low, and human
resource situations increase. Your employees see everyday,
at least in their eyes, the following:
* Record profits, yet massive layoffs
* Hearing how important they are, yet having their jobs
outsourced
* Experiencing changes to their jobs, yet not being asked for
their ideas
* Being told how they are doing a great job, yet being yelled
at for mistakes in front of colleagues
No wonder there is tension in the workplace. When I work
with organizations, the following three concerns are the ones
usually express:
“My supervisor, manager, etc., doesn’t know how to
communicate with me.”
“I am the last to hear about bad news.
“He/she never asks me for my ideas.”
Because of these concerns, there is a divide, professionally,
emotionally, mentally, and physically between the employees
and their supervisor/manager, etc., which leads to lost
productivity.
The following are five secrets that will increase your
credibility with employees and produce outstanding results
for your organization:
1. Be Honest
You owe it to your employees and to colleagues to be
honest. Tell your employees exactly where they stand within
the organization. Be positive, yet don’t sugar coat it. Once
your employees know where they stand, use this as a
stepping stone for improvements and solutions you can
work on together.
2. Be Consistent
Be consistent with your communication among employees.
You will lose credibility with employees if they see you
communicate differently with different employees concerning
the same situations. For example, if you berate an employee
(which I’m sure you would never do) for a mistake, yet say
nothing to another employee for the same mistake, you will
lose credibility.
Also, be consistent with the way you communicate your
moods. Remember, if you project a professional manner, no
matter the situation, your employees will emulate your
behavior.
3. Communicate Bad News ASAP
There is nothing worse for employees than hearing bad news
from human resources, shareholders, the news, friends,
family, and even their religious leader, but not from you, their
manager. The biggest reasons I hear for not telling
employees are the following:
“Management asked me to keep it secret.”
“I don’t have all the facts yet.”
“I don’t think the employees can handle the bad news.”
Well, guess what:
* Employees always find out about bad news (sometimes
before their supervisors/managers, etc.).
* Employees always appreciate when you share whatever
information you have with them as long as you are honest
with them.
* Employees can take more than you think if you are
sensitive to their concerns and express these concerns with
them.
Will some of them be unhappy in the short run? Some
employees may not be happy; however, they will respect
you as a manager that respects them and keeps them
informed of all news, good or bad.
4. Give and Receive Constant Feedback
Employees want feedback on, “How am I doing?” By giving
constant feedback, you are developing a bond of trust that
improves the performance of your employees.
Remember, your employees are always doing something well.
Make sure you come from a positive position of
improvement when giving feedback. Let your employees
know that you appreciate their efforts and the difference
they make each day.
Also make it “safe” for employees to give you feedback. Let
them know that no one is perfect (I know we think we are)
and that you value their feedback to make the work
environment a “win-win” situation for all involved. Teach
your employees how to give feedback, both positive and
constructive. Remember, as a leader, you are constantly
developing your employees for the next level.
5. Ask for Employee Solutions
People go to work to succeed, not fail. Employees also go to
work because they want to make a difference at their job.
One of the best ways for employees to feel they are making a
difference is to involve them in the solution creation process.
Make asking for solutions from your employees an ongoing
process. Whether during staff meetings, one-on-one
sessions, etc., make it safe for employees to develop their
own solutions. If given the opportunity, your employees will
come up with solutions that are innovative, proactive, and in
some cases better than any solution we can ever develop.
To motivate your employees to create solutions, you must
do the following:
* Give them credit for the solutions
* Create reward systems for solutions
* Make it easy for them to communicate solutions
* Massage solutions for positive results
Very importantly, if employees share a solution with you,
please, please, please, give them feedback ASAP. You will
lose employee credibility if they think you don’t care or are
taking credit for their ideas.
Apply these techniques now and you will gain credibility
and increase productivity with your employees while
developing a high performance environment that achieves
outstanding results.
Source: Towers Perrin, Enhancing Corporate Credibility-Is It
Time to Take the “Spin” Out of Employee Communication?
January, 2004
Ed Sykes is a professional speaker, author, and success
coach in the areas of leadership, motivation, stress
management, customer service, and team building. You can
e-mail him at mailto:esykes@thesykesgrp.com, or call him at
(757) 427-7032. Goto his web site,
http://www.thesykesgrp.com, and signup for the newsletter,
OnPoint, and receive the free ebook, “Empowerment and
Stress Secrets for the Busy Professional.”
Please allow me to start off and say that I am very happy to run PHP software on my computer. Specifically, the bulletin boards developed by PHPBB2 [an open source program] works head and shoulders above the EZBoard system I gave up on several months earlier. Still, it has its own special challenges that only a regular user or administrator can appreciate. If you are considering starting your own message board community please read on for some homespun advice on how to make PHPBB2 work best for you.
On Memorial Day 2005 I had a rude awakening. Although a national holiday here in the U.S. I was taking advantage of that day to catch up on some much needed behind the scenes work. You see, when you work for yourself a holiday just isn’t the same thing. It ends up being a day where your phone isn’t likely to ring all that much, thereby making it a better opportunity to catch up on all the little niggling details of operating a business, like paying bills and bookkeeping. Okay, I digress.
What happened on that special day was the total overthrow of the EZBoard message board system. Hackers, so EZBoard claimed, infiltrated their entire system and brought down the house. Literally overnight thousands of boards were affected and compromised. Now for the rub: forum managers, myself included, had no power to back up their sites. Thus, what was lost was likely lost for good or would take many weeks to restore from pasted together backups. We depended on EZBoard for our back ups and when their system failed we all suffered.
So then the decision was made for me. I downloaded PHPBB2 software a few days later and immediately went to work.
As open source programs go the PHPBB2 software was free and the instructions were quite good. Fortunately for me the two sites that I planned to set up, the Aviation Employment Board and the Corporate Flight Attendant Community, already had separate web pages hosted with a company that could support a database. This particular MySQL database would essentially power the site and house important stuff including all the member information.
Fortunately those who have been working on building, maintaining, and promoting PHPBB have a copious amount of detailed information accessible right online and available for viewing and/or downloading. Personally, the biggest help to me were the excellently made Flash videos that helped walk me through the installation process. Without them in place, I doubt I would have figured it all out. Truly, in this case, a picture is worth a thousand words each!
In addition to the software itself, PHPBB2 also offers a separate file to help speed the process conversion process from EZBoard to PHPBB2. This EZBoard converter takes messages from the old board and transfers them to the new board. Unfortunately, it was only partially successful which could have been due to the hacked nature of the EZBoard site. Still, what I was able to move over was helpful, but it did not include member files as that bit of necessary information was under EZBoard’s lock and key.
By the time I downloaded everything, followed all the instructions, converted what I could from EZBoard, laid out the new site, and made some additional design changes, approximately eight hours had flown past. At the end of that time a useful and functioning board was in place. The next day I contacted all my current EZBoard members and told them about the switch and put notices on the old site about the change. Most of my members were very understanding as they realized that the switch had to be made.
Without exception PHPBB2 has been a big improvement. Still, it could use some refining and, happily, many of those refinements are routinely accomplished within regular updates of the software or via preselected “mods” that a forum manager can select.
Without belaboring the point here are some things that I have observed about PHPBB2 that are helpful to know about before going with the software:
Limited Support There is a lot of information right online to read and there are forums moderated by volunteers. At the same time the moderators are stretched very thin and sometimes their responses border on the irritated. Of course, that could have something to do with all the N00B questions, many of which are answered somewhere on the site. My recommendation is that you spend plenty of time reading before posting a question. Study the forum for similar questions asked and answers given.
Difficult Updates Get on the forum managers mailing list to ensure that you receive notification of each update as they are made. Some updates are simple while others are more difficult. If you make any modifications to your site then only a “patch” update is necessary while everyone else will select “changed files only.” If you select “changed files only” and you have some mods installed, you risk losing all of your mods. Let’s just say that already has happened to me once!
AOL Quirks Some members have difficulty signing up, especially AOL account holders. It seems to be that the confirmation code doesn’t always show up when members register [you don’t need to have it enabled, but it does put a halt to rogue registrants] and sometimes AOL users get booted when logged on. A little thing called “sessions” monitors everyone’s visits by examining their I.P. address for a match. Of course, AOL scrambles I.P. addresses mid-session, a reason for much of the booting. The fix involved from a PHPBB2 standpoint is not recommended as it puts you at risk for security breaches. Quite frankly, I have urged some members to leave AOL especially if they can’t work around it on their end.
Back Ups The administration panel is simple to use, but back ups don’t always work. Errors messages prevail; therefore backing up through your web host is another option. Speaking of the administration panel, you can select whether members can email each other [not a good thing to have enabled], how long their signature can be, enable automatic pruning of posts, and lots more. Indeed, the features offered by PHPBB2 far exceed the limitations that are inherent with EZBoard.
There are alternative forums to PHPBB2 and one popular one is another PHP program called vBulletin. vBulletin utilizes excellent forum software that takes off where PHPBB2 leaves off. Many of the modifications that are not part of PHPBB2 are standard with vBulletin, therefore removing some of the behind the scenes tasks that a webmaster must do with PHPBB2 in order to customize his site.
So, why not go with vBulletin? For many it is simply the cost. With vBulletin, you can lease a license for $85 for one year or buy a license for $160. Access to updates after the first year costs another $30 per year while custom support can run from $30 for one month up to $300 for one year. Thus, if you have a small forum that makes little or no money, and you need extra special assistance, than vBulletin can be a big expense to carry. Other paid forums have similar expenses, but there are some free ones out there. For the record, EZBoard isn’t free, although the start up cost is very low. However, your renewal fee is calculated on the amount of bandwidth used in the most recent thirty day period and for some forum managers that amount could easily be several hundreds to well over one thousand dollars!
So then, why go with PHPBB2? Well, language packs to name a big reason. Besides English forums, an additional 59 languages are supported by this open source code! From Afrikaans to Vietnamese, Arabic to Russian, and from French to German, PHPBB2 is available in many native languages. For people of very limited means this has become an excellent way to communicate for no capital outlay. One gets the sense that PHPBB2 is very proud of this fact and I must admit that I am too!
As I write this I am in the midst of updating my two sites to the latest release. Because it is near the Christmas season I am also looking at several themed templates for my flight attendant site and have selected a “Merry Christmas” board replete with drifting down snowflakes. This template, which looks so professionally done, is free as well.
I plan on sticking with PHPBB2, quirks and all, by continuing to support our growing community of forum managers worldwide. Each of us, in our own way, has helped to shape this all important piece of open source software. It certainly isn’t perfect, but it definitely has been a lot of fun and has helped me to increase my knowledge as well as to appreciate the whole open source movement.
Copyright 2005 — Matt Keegan invites you to visit his two open source message boards, the Aviation Employment Board and the Corporate Flight Attendant Community for first hand examples of forums built utilizing PHPBB2.
Fibromyalgia is known for its disabling symptoms of widespread chronic pain and fatigue. If you have Fibromyalgia, then you know how severe these symptoms can be. However, the severity of your symptoms may vary greatly over time. Some days you feel okay, others you don’t.
Here is an effective strategy to help manage your symptoms so you have more good days than bad, and you may also find your bad days are more manageable. Striking this ‘balance’ is the goal of good symptom management.
A program of symptom management should always include an element of “pacing”. This is extremely helpful in managing both pain and fatigue and is probably the single hardest thing you will need to learn how to do!
Pacing doesn’t mean waiting until you are worn out to stop what you are doing. It means setting a schedule of activity and rest. Sometimes only a few minutes each. Then you gradually increase your activity until you find the right balance between activity and rest. Most importantly, you do this for everything you do, even when you feel well.
Now, be honest. When you have a good day what do you do? You run around the house trying to catch up on all the housework. You stay a little extra longer at work to finish up that project. You go out with your family for a whole day in the park. Or maybe a big shopping trip. You just plain overdo it! Then what happens? You CRASH BIG TIME, right? You spend the next few days in bed or on a strictly reduced schedule.
STOP! This is not the way to manage your symptoms. Experts agree that learning to pace your activities by alternating between periods of rest and activity is the proper way. Now, this doesn’t mean just when you are feeling poorly. The key to this strategy is to pace yourself when you are feeling good! This way you won’t cause a flare-up by doing to much.
So how do you do this? Here are some basics you can implement today and improve your symptom management through pacing.
a. Start Using a Stopwatch or Timer. Learn to pace your activities by the clock. To start, set your timer for five minutes or longer if you think you can do the activity that long. When the timer rings it’s time to change positions or rest. You can gradually increase the intervals of activity and rest as you learn what your endurance level is.
b. Change positions: If you are sitting, stand for a few minutes and vice versa.
c. Stretch: At least twice an hour, do a little mild stretching. People with fibromyalgia need to be cautious about overdoing it with stretching. By this I mean “intensity” rather than frequency. Our muscles respond to extreme stretching by contracting even more. The way to avoid this is to stretch mildly - just until you feel the muscle extend. Easy does it is best. Ask your doctor or physiotherapist to recommend some good stretching exercises. (You can do a lot of stretching while sitting.)
d. Set A Schedule: Plan out your activities for the next week. Don’t overbook your schedule. Plan time for rest, personal time, family time, as well as work - if you are still working. Remember, your schedule doesn’t have to be written in stone. You can always change it. Now that you have a schedule, try to stick to it. Some people find it best to make a schedule one day at a time. In this case, it may be best to create your schedule the night before or first thing in the morning.
e. Prioritize: You may find your schedule was too much to follow. Don’t despair! This is a learning opportunity. Make a list of the things you want to accomplish and assign each task a number according to its importance. Then, when you make your schedule you can spread the tasks out over time. Don’t try to do all the important tasks all at once. Also, don’t put too many strenuous tasks together. Plan for rest breaks. Remember, you’re pacing yourself.
f. Split tasks into smaller bits: Do you have to wash all the dishes at once? Do you have to put them all away right after washing? Same with vacuuming. Instead of doing the whole house, do one room each day! Learning to split these jobs up into smaller chunks is an important part of pacing.
g. Learn To Delegate: This can be really challenging for some of you. Asking for help is not always easy. But for many people with fibro, it’s a necessary part of symptom management. Try to enlist the help of family members. This might cause some friction at first, so it is vital that you first explain why you need their help. Get some information on Fibromyalgia and print out some copies to hand out. Then go through it together. Once they more fully understand the situation, they may be more willing to help.
h. Learn to say NO: This is tough to do, I know. We often feel bad when we have to refuse someone’s request. An easy way to say “no” gracefully is “I’m sorry, but my schedule is really full right now. I don’t like to say yes and then not be able to fulfill my obligation and let you down.” They’ll understand that your refusal is partly because you don’t want to disappoint them and it’s not against them personally.
Some of you may be asking, “Well how can I pace myself at work?” Granted, your boss may not like you taking a 5-minute break for every 5 minutes you work! It may just be that your symptoms are so severe you might have to reduce your work schedule or maybe even stop working all together! This can be a very difficult decision. You may want to consider working from home as an alternative. Some employers now offer this option. As well, the Internet provides you with many work from home opportunities. This is not for everybody. You do need some computer skills and the self-discipline to stick with it. Some of you may not even be well enough to work from home. But it could be something to work towards. Learn to pace yourself using the strategies outlined above. You may just find you can handle one or two hours of work at your computer each day.
However, if you must work outside the home, then planning your pacing schedule and using the above strategies becomes even more important. You will definitely need to delegate more, learn to say “No” to many things, and not overcrowd your schedule.
Managing your symptoms of fibromyalgia through pacing is not always easy, but if done properly you will find that you will actually reduce the amount of “down” time and get more done. Remember…easy does it!
Dave Leach is an Internet Marketing and Online Business Coach living with Fibromyalgia. His website FibroBuddy.com provides tools and services that enable people with Fibromyalgia and CFS to work from home.
Here is a useful guide to what is Debt consolidation. For some people with credit problems debt consolidation may be an answer. Debt consolidation is borrowing enough money from one lender to pay off all your debts. When you consolidate:
You make only one payment each month, to the new lender.
You will usually pay out less money each month.
You usually pay more money in finance charges to consolidate debts.
You make payments longer.
Debt is a way of life today. Everybody owes somebody something: products, services or money. Financial debt (owing money) is a choice you make to defer payment on something you want or need now. In return for this, you usually pay the person or business (called the “creditor”) extra money (”interest”). Debt is not a problem as long as you can repay.
The most important step in conquering debt is controlling spending. This starts with being a critical consumer and learning to separate real needs and desires from artificial ones. How much debt is too much depends on your income and what it costs for you to live.
When you see financial problems coming, the first step is to take stock of your financial situation. Most problems can be remedied with planning and budgeting:
Make debt reduction your first priority.
Determine all sources of income.
Face up to how much you owe.
Determine which bills are essential and which are avoidable.
Quit charging and apply extra cash to reducing balances.
Find ways to generate extra income.
Cut back on nonessentials.
Track spending.
Seek financial counselling.
Call your creditors to see if you can work out some change in monthly payments that will ease the pressure.
If you do decide to consolidate your debts, shop around for the best deal.
Before you choose whom you will get the loan from, find out the following information from each place:
The charge for the service.
The annual percentage rate (APR).
The amount of your monthly payments.
How long you must make payments.
What the total amount is that you will pay.
What happens if you miss a payment.
What happens if you are late making a payment.
Making only one payment a month may make you think you are better off than you actually are. You may be tempted to buy something else on credit, and before you know it you could have an even worse problem: too many bills with too little income.
You may freely reprint this article provided the author’s biography remains intact:
John Mussi is the founder of Direct Online Loans who help UK homeowners find the best available loans via the http://www.directonlineloans.co.uk website.
Never mind if you haven’t had good response from your ads in
the past. That doesn’t matter. You can learn how to write
an ad that will have people clicking their little fingers off! I’m
going to teach you how to do that right now.
We all know how important the headline is. We also know it’s
the hardest part of the ad to write. So we’re going to leave
that until last. Know why? Because you can spend so much
time creating the perfect headline that you never get to the
ad itself. Besides that, if we leave it until last we’ll be writing
a headline that goes with the ad, not an ad that goes with a
headline.
Okay, so what’s our first step going to be then? We’re going
to define our ideal customer, get inside her skin and find out
who she is, what she’s looking for, what she wants. This is
very important because if we don’t have this information, who
are we going to write our ad to? Are we just going to send it
out into cyberspace with no destination in mind? Not if we
want response we aren’t.
Now that we know who we’re directing our ad to, the second
step is to list all the ways our ideal customer will benefit from
the program, product or service that we’re promoting. Notice
I referred to benefits, not features.
The Focus is on Benefits . . .
There is a big and important difference here. Benefits tell
people “what’s in it for them”. Benefits tell them what they
will gain from your product. Features, on the other hand, are
things that describe your product.
For example, let’s pretend that you’re promoting cell phones.
A feature of the cell phone is that it has an extra long-lasting
battery. A benefit of the phone is that the purchaser can
talk longer with her pals without having to worry about the
phone dying.
Another feature might be the unique design. The
corresponding benefit would then be that, not only can you
talk longer, you’re more comfortable while you’re talking.
Benefits are things that appeal to the emotions and that’s
usually what makes a person buy.
Okay, now we know we have our list of benefits. Next, we’re
going to choose which benefits to focus on. If we’re writing
a small classified or ezine ad we’ll choose only one benefit and
concentrate on that. With longer solo ads we could choose
several benefits. We’re going to write an ezine ad today but
the same guidelines apply to any ad you need to write.
Write like you talk . . .
If we want our ad to be interesting we need to write in terms
that everyone can understand. Leave all the $50 words in
the dictionary and just use a conversational tone. We aren’t
writing the ad to impress people with our vocabulary; we’re
writing it to appeal to their emotions. A stiff, formal tone isn’t
going to do that.
So . . . we’re going to write like we were talking to a friend.
We’re going to use short, punchy sentences and omit any
words that we don’t positively need. Remember, we only have
a few lines to convince our ideal customer that she wants to
click on our link and learn more. We have to choose our words
carefully and make each one of them count!
Don’t use an ad to sell your product . . .
The purpose of the ad is just to get our ideal customer to our
site. We aren’t trying to sell her on our product ~ that’s the
job of the sales page. We’re simply putting her in a “buying”
frame of mind. We’re creating interest and leaving her wanting
to find out more about our product. That is the sole purpose
of our ad.
Just start writing . . .
Now we’re ready to start writing. The best way to do that is
just to start writing without thought of how it’s going to sound,
spelling, puctuation or any of that stuff. We’re just going to
write down what comes into our minds. Okay, ready?
We might end up with something like this:
If you want to talk all night with your best friend, you don’t
want to worry about the battery on your cell phone dying. You
want to know that you aren’t going to miss all the juicy details
of her dinner date with a new guy. You want the confidence
that you won’t lose your connection in the middle of her story.
That won’t be a problem with the new XYZ cell phone. Check it
out here and see how it meets your needs.
Go back and polish it . . .
That isn’t a bad start. Now we have something to work with.
We’re going to pare this down, punch it up, polish it and see
what we have.
Don’t you just hate it? Right in the best part of the story
your cell phone dies. Now you won’t have to worry about
that happening ever again. Now you know you’ll decide when
the story ends, not your cell phone. Find out more today.
Well, that isn’t too bad but we still have to cut it down more
and liven it up some.
Don’t you just hate it? She was going to tell you . . . and
your cell phone died! Don’t put up with it! If you want to
hear the end of the story every time — find out more now!
http://www.xyzphone.com
Can you see the difference? The sentences are short and
snappy. We’ve created interest. We’ve told her we’re
going to solve a problem for her but we haven’t told her so
much that she doesn’t have to visit the site to know what
we’re all about.
I’ve simplified this a little. Sometimes you have to write and
rewrite a few times before you have exactly what you want.
It may take a little time but the end product will be worth it.
You’ll have an ad that will make people want to click on your
link and learn more about your product. They arrive at your
site already thinking you can solve an annoying problem for
them. Your ad has done it’s job.
And finally . . .
Okay, it’s now time to go back and find a headline for this
piece of art! Can you see that it’s easier to create a
headline now than it might have been at the beginning?
And . . . the content of your ad is finished so that takes
some of the stress away.
Try out a few different headlines and choose the one that
you believe to be the most magnetic. Put yourself in your
ideal customer’s shoes and imagine what would appeal to
her the most. You get the idea, don’t you?
Let’s just pretend that we’ve made our list of possible
headlines. We want one that is short, catchy and fits our
ad. How about this one? “It was just getting good when …
or “Don’t miss the best part!” Then there’s “Hang up when
YOU’RE Ready!” Now you have lots to choose from and once
you make your final choice you’re finished. Or, are you?
Always, always, always proofread your copy . . .
There is nothing that will ruin the impact of an ad quicker
than errors in spelling, punctuation or grammar. You have to
find all of the errors and typos before you send that ad out!
Don’t just rely on spell check either. If you misspell a word
it won’t be caught if the misspelling is actually a word - even
though it wasn’t the word you wanted to use. For example,
maybe you typed “hear” when you meant to use “here” - it
won’t be caught! Go over those ads with a fine-tooth comb
or, better yet, have someone else read them too.
There you have it . . .
Now you know how to write copy that works. You can apply
everything you’ve learned here (and hopefully if was a lot) to
any ad you write. And don’t worry, as with any skill, it gets
easier with practice.
Just one word of warning . . .
Please do yourself and your business a favor and become
familiar with the FTC guidelines for advertising on the Internet.
Make sure you know them and that you follow them. You can’t
afford not to! Keep your ads and your web pages honest, cut
out the hype and half-truths ~ if you don’t, you may not have
a business to promote!
Now go out there and knock ‘em dead! I’m expecting great
things from you!
About the Author
Linda Offenheiser is the owner of Stress-Free Copy where sales
copy comes alive! Always the right words with no stress, no
hassle, no time wasted. She also publishes a weekly marketing
ezine, All the Write Stuff!, that’s informative, friendly and fun!
You can visit her at http://www.stress-freecopy.com or subscribe
at http://www.stress-freecopy.com/subscribe.htm
