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Thursday, December 04 2008
Submitted by EntecCorp on Thu, 2004-12-30 18:30. Employee Engagement
 Steep increase in antidepressant use, study shows Researchers examine rise in expenditures on pharmacotherapy for depression by Jessica Whiteside
Oct. 15, 2002 -- Canadians' use of antidepressants has soared by more than 300 per cent over the past two decades, says a study by researchers at U of T and The Hospital for Sick Children.
The study, published recently in The Annals of Pharmacotherapy, found a 353 per cent increase in prescriptions for antidepressants (from 3.2 million to 14.5 million) between 1981 and 2000. Correspondingly, Canada's population increased one per cent annually during this time.
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Thursday, December 04 2008
Submitted by spherica on Mon, 2005-01-10 03:09 Employee Engagement
What HR needs to Learn from Marketing
During the earlier stages of my career I was fortunate to have worked for a large corporation that had a management development program for up-and-coming managers. This program combined formal management courses with on the job training. The job training involved assignments to different divisions in the company. Two learning goals were mandated by these assignments:
Acquire knowledge in a new discipline
Learn about the different parts of the organization, experience their challenges and understand how they contribute to the success of the whole
My formal education was in environmental studies with a specialty in ecology. One of the key principles in ecology is that ecosystems are made up of interdependent elements. A change in one part of an ecosystem will result in changes in other parts of the same system. Without knowing it at the time, my classmates and I became “systems thinkers”. This ability to see systems has guided my decision making throughout my life in business and in my private affairs. Naturally, I thrived in this opportunity to be a part of a management training program where I was able to experience different parts of the organization and see first hand how each part related to the whole company. Read more »
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Thursday, December 04 2008
Submitted by spherica on Tue, 2005-01-25 20:45. Administration
by Michael E. Porter, Jay W. Lorsch, and Nitin Nohria
Most new chief executives are taken aback by the unexpected and unfamiliar new roles, the time and information limitations, and the altered professional relationships they run up against. Here are the common surprises new CEOs face, and here's how to tell when adjustments are necessary.
Surprise One: You Can't Run the Company
warning signs:
- You are in too many meetings and involved in too many tactical discussions.
- There are too many days when you feel as though you have lost control over your time.
Surprise Two: Giving Orders Is Very Costly
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Thursday, December 04 2008
Submitted by Contact101 on Tue, 2005-02-08 01:23.
See References: Customer Surveys
 A key strategy for quality monitoring is listening to your customers. Prospect and Customer surveying is an essential listening tool that can give you valuable information about your prospects and customers expectations, customer satisfaction and strategies for improvement.Read more »
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Thursday, December 04 2008
Submitted by spherica on Tue, 2005-02-08 01:48.
Summary - It's easy to talk about developing leaders. Turning that talk into action is hard. Here's how you can do it.
Compared with number five, the other items on a typical CIO's to-do list are easy. But turn Johnny - who's a terrific programmer but also a guy who mumbles, forgets to say hello to his coworkers and has only the vaguest notion of what the company actually does - into a leader? Now that's a tough one.
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Thursday, December 04 2008
Submitted by spherica on Sat, 2005-02-19 09:20. Employee Engagement
Presenteeism: Another Dimension by Michael Koscec
In the past few years the terms “employee engagement” and “employee disengagement” have emerged to more fully describe the employee’s level of motivation and commitment to their job. An engaged employee is considered to be passionate about their work and emotional connected to their work and to their company.
Disengaged employees are those employees that are at work but their minds are not necessarily on their jobs. The term presenteeism has also been used to describe disengaged employees. There minds are somewhere else. They could be thinking about their children, their upcoming date, a party, last’s night basketball game or be engrossed thinking about their own personal problems. From a productivity perspective this may not be that serious for a person working manually on repetitive tasks. However, in the advanced economies of the world such as those found in North America, Europe, Japan and elsewhere, where the contribution of knowledge workers to the GDP is greater than that associated with production workers in the manufacturing sector. Mental performance is the key determinant of productivity and profitability. In this setting if an employee’s mind is not on their jobs they become a significant liability to their organization. The mind today is the ultimate productivity weapon.
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Thursday, December 04 2008
Submitted by spherica on Mon, 2005-02-28 10:19. Administrator
Principles Of Work Life Balance: by Michael Koscec
Introduction
Recently I read the book Life Matters by Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill. Everybody is concerned about work/life balance, but few understand that time and money are as important to life balance as work and family. In the book the authors note that each area matters and focusing on one without considering the others is ultimately unfulfilling because they are so closely interrelated. Even the term "balance" implies a one-time effort instead of an ongoing journey.
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Thursday, December 04 2008
Submitted by spherica n Tue, 2005-03-08 10:38. Employee Engagement
A great deal has been written on leadership ethics lately. The one element that seems to be missing is the leaders emotional state of being. In other words all of the author seem to assume that the leader is emotional stable is not suffering from depression or burnout.
I think this is a stretch especially when there are in excess of 10% of employees in the western world at any time who are suffering from depression or some time of mental disablity. Taking this into consideration it seems that some discussion needs to be devoted to this piece because "mental wellness" will affect a leaders abilty to make the right decisions.
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Thursday, December 04 2008
Submitted by spherica on Tue, 2005-03-08 14:12.
Stress has received much attention since Brady’s executive monkey and the effect of the large red button has been subject to a host of research fields. Physiologically, stress is defined as an environmental change that must be adapted to if health and life are to be maintained. Social scientists have a similar view, operationalizing stress in terms of ‘stimulus’ and ‘response’, a process where stress is seen as a response to a stimulus or a stressor. A stressor is defined as an event or a situation that is perceived to be potentially harmful.
Work has been recognized to be a significant part of an individual’s life. Recognition of this relationship allowed stress researchers to quickly spin the stress concept, applying it to the realm of work and developing the concepts of work (or organizational) stress. However, there has been little agreement in the literature on the definition of work stress. McGrath and Schuler had made a significant contribution to this area by offering the following definition of work stress: “a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, constraint, or demand on being/having/doing what one desires and for which resolution is perceived to have uncertainty but which will lead to important outcomes.”
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Thursday, December 04 2008
Submitted by spherica on Tue, 2005-03-08 15:00.
The conditions for stress and burnout most frequently studied and cited in the literature can be grouped under three general headings: task characteristics (workload, role conflict and ambiguity, autonomy, and tenure), organizational characteristics (job context, and organizational pace and technology) and personal characteristics (demographics, social support, hardiness, unrealistic expectations, and career progress). In this article we will explore Task Characteristics.
Task Characteristics
Workload: Experiencing excessive work demands can lead to stress. Overload, quantitatively occurs when there are too many things to do and not enough time to do them in; qualitatively it is defined as an individual’s perception of their lack of ability to complete a task or reach expected performance standards. Underload, qualitatively, occurs when an individual is subject to too little challenge and job stimulation, has also been proposed to play a role in the experience of work stress.
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