Friday, August 31, 2012

Astronology - Attracting and Retaining Organizational Keepers

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Astronology

Volume XIII

Issue 5

September 4, 2012

Dear Andrew,

Astron Solutions provides high-quality, low-cost, innovative human resources consulting services to organizations like yours. Call us for advice, innovative program design, and user-friendly Web/PC based software.

 

An Astron App?

Astron Solutions is conducting some research regarding Human Resource apps, and we'd love to hear from you! 

We are interested in knowing your perspective on the following questions:

  1. What type of cell phone or mobile device do you use?
  2. Do you use apps?  Why or why not?
  3. What content would you want to see in a Human Resource app?

Please e-mail us with your thoughts!  We will provide a summary of the survey findings in a future issue of Astronology.  Thank you for your time and insights! 

 

Attracting and Retaining Organizational Keepers

As we hopefully near the end of rough economic times, many organizations fear and dread an increase in turnover rates. In this issue of Astronology, we discuss what it takes to find and keep employees who will stay with an organization to help it succeed and grow....Continue article | Continue to Astron Solutions

 

 

Have a Question?

If you have a topic you would like addressed in Astronology, or some feedback on a past article, don't hesitate to tell us!  Simply reply to this e-mail.  See your question answered, or comments addressed, in an upcoming issue of Astronology.

Looking for a top-notch presenter for your human resource organization's meeting?  Both Jennifer Loftus and Michael Maciekowich present highly-rated sessions on a variety of compensation and employee retention issues.  For more information, send an e-mail to info@astronsolutions.com.

 

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To remove yourself from this list, please follow your personalized subscriber link at the bottom of your Astronology alert e-mail.

Copyright 2012, Astron Solutions, LLC

ISSN Number 1549-0467

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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The History of the Power Lunch

I love "power lunches". I have to admit they come rarely, but they're a rare midday indulgence in a world that demands a constant work schedule and a chew-and-swallow-while-typing lunch is certainly a part of that. But once in a while, I get the chance to relax and indulge on something delicious while sitting back, relaxing, and talking business with colleagues, clients and suppliers. Wonder where the history of these power lunches came from. Wonder no more as The Paris Review tells in amazing detail:

The earliest power lunches likely took place in the 1830s at Delmonico’s, whose culinary wizardry (Lobster Newburg, Baked Alaska) and prime location in the financial district made it popular with well-heeled suits. Apart from the occasional visit from such authors as Charles Dickens or Mark Twain, Delmonico’s remained largely populated by business and finance moguls. Other powerful groups gathered at different locales over the years: playwrights and actors descended upon Sardi’s in the theater district in the forties, while wealthy socialites clustered at Le Cirque, Le Pavillion, and La Grenouille in the fifties and sixties, earning the not-entirely-flattering nickname “ladies who lunched.” 

For literary types, the lunch venue of choice was the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street. What would later come to be known as the Algonquin Round Table (or, as its members preferred, “The Vicious Circle,”) began in June of 1919, when Vanity Fair writers Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Robert E. Sherwood joined like-minded pals for a midday soiree to welcome back famously sharp-penned New York Times drama critic Alexander Wollcott from a stint as a World War I correspondent overseas. Theater agent John Peter Toohey had organized the lunch as a practical joke, ostensibly as a welcome home, but instead used the opportunity to roast Wollcott for failing to include one of his clients in a column. Legend has it that all attendees—Wollcott included—enjoyed the gathering so much they decided to do it again the next day, and the next, and the one after that. 

Dining upon free popovers and celery sticks, or, in flush times, chicken hash with pancakes, the aforementioned writers—along with an ever-evolving cast that included playwrights George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, columnist Heywood Broun, and author Edna Ferber—bantered and gossiped, played endless games of cribbage and poker, and devised elaborate practical jokes to deceive one another. Conversation was fast, clever and biting—hence the “vicious” nickname, though the Round Table moniker was widely used after a Brooklyn Eagle caricature depicted the group draped in armor around a circular table. (Not all were fans of the club: Groucho Marx, whose brother Harpo occasionally joined the group, distanced himself from the table, claiming “the price of admission is a serpent’s tongue and a half-concealed stiletto.”)
Awesome. Just awesome

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Quit the Yapping

We recently wrote about how workplace arguments can be bad for the office health, but Inc. writes about how listening to complainers is actually bad for your personal health. That doesn't mean that you can't just tune it out everything that's awry with your company:

But if you're running a company, don't you need to hear about anything that may have gone wrong? "There's a big difference between bringing your attention to something that's awry and a complaint," Blake says. "Typically, people who are complaining don't want a solution; they just want you to join in the indignity of the whole thing. You can almost hear brains clink when six people get together and start saying, 'Isn't it terrible?' This will damage your brain even if you're just passively listening. And if you try to change their behavior, you'll become the target of the complaint."
The article doesn't stop there as it goes to give some advice on how to handle the Negative Nancies, including getting some distance and putting your shields up. My favorite piece of advice, though, was one that they describe as letting the complainer fix the problem:
"Try to get the person who's complaining to take responsibility for a solution," Blake says. "I typically respond to a complaint with, 'What are you going to do about it?'" Many complainers walk away huffily at that point, because he hasn't given them what they wanted, Blake reports. But some may actually try to solve the problem.
I like it because it doesn't avoid the problem, but, instead, goes head on on how to fix it. The goal isn't to ignore what's going wrong, it's finding a way to fix it. And sometimes the best fixer of issues is the person who yaps the most. So while it's bad for your health to listen to them, find a way to make it a productive yapping.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Astronology - Business Coaching and Mentoring: Are They Worth the Effort?

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Astronology

Volume XIII

Issue 4

August 21, 2012

Dear Andrew,

Astron Solutions provides high-quality, low-cost, innovative human resources consulting services to organizations like yours. Call us for advice, innovative program design, and user-friendly Web/PC based software.

 

Business Coaching and Mentoring: Are They Worth the Effort?

In this issue Astronology, we revisit a previous article about Business Coaching and Mentoring. Many people consider Business Coaching and Mentoring to be the same. Even though they are both organizational development terms, they are not synonymous.....more

 

 

Have a Question?

If you have a topic you would like addressed in Astronology, or some feedback on a past article, don't hesitate to tell us!  Simply reply to this e-mail.  See your question answered, or comments addressed, in an upcoming issue of Astronology.

Looking for a top-notch presenter for your human resource organization's meeting?  Both Jennifer Loftus and Michael Maciekowich present highly-rated sessions on a variety of compensation and employee retention issues.  For more information, send an e-mail to info@astronsolutions.com.

 

The Fine Print

We hold your e-mail address in trust.  Astron Solutions promises never to share or rent your personal information.  We also promise never to send you frivolous e-mails and will allow you to leave our list, at your option, at any time.

To remove yourself from this list, please follow your personalized subscriber link at the bottom of your Astronology alert e-mail.

Copyright 2012, Astron Solutions, LLC

ISSN Number 1549-0467

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Thursday, August 16, 2012

Dealing with Yelling and Not Yelling at Work

We've all been in an office setting where someone was getting chewed out. It may not have been us as the recipient but we heard the yelling and saw the employee fight back the tears as their boss laid it on to them thick after they messed up something big. You duck behind your cubicle and hope that you never have to deal with that wrath. But while yelling bosses like that happen once in a while in the workplace, they're much more prevalent on a television show or YouTube than they are in real life. As the Wall Street Journal explains:

Indeed, the yelling boss appears to be quietly disappearing from the workplace. The new consensus among managers is that yelling alarms people, drives them away rather than inspiring them, and hurts the quality of their work. Some bosses also fear triggering a harassment lawsuit or winding up as the star of a co-worker's cellphone videotape gone viral. While underlings may work hard for difficult bosses, hoping for a shred of praise, few employees do their best work amid yelling. 

Verbal aggression tends to impair victims' working memory, reducing their ability to understand instructions and perform such basic tasks as operating a computer, according to several studies of cellphone-company employees and engineering students published earlier this year in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
But the article doesn't stop there--it goes on to say that while actual yelling doesn't go on as often, what's taken its place when all that aggression is swept under the rug may actually be worse:
Managers spend about 25% of their time resolving conflicts, research shows. The "not-so-good part" of the no-yelling trend "is that people are pushing things under the carpet," causing frustrations to seep out in other ways, says Jack Lampl, president of the A.K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems in Rainier, Wash. One favorite way of venting, angry email, "serves as a relief valve, but tends to inflame conflict. It takes a very corrosive role in the workplace, for gossiping and undermining others," he says. 
The way to solve all this behavior, according to The Journal is to have some sort of mediated discussion and air your grievances (in a better way than Festivus, hopefully). Hopefully this allows the two parties to come to a civil understanding which can serve better than angry e-mails, stone-cold stares and that embarrassing yelling that left me cowering in a cubicle years ago.

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Astronology - 2012 SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition Recap

Astron Website Top 

Astronology

Volume XIII

Issue 3

August 7, 2012

Dear Andrew,

Astron Solutions provides high-quality, low-cost, innovative human resources consulting services to organizations like yours. Call us for advice, innovative program design, and user-friendly Web/PC based software.

 

The Astron Road Show

It's August, and the Astron Road Show keeps rolling along! The next stop on the Astron Road Show finds National Directors Mike Maciekowich and Jennifer Loftus in Dallas exhibiting at the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) annual conference, August 12 - 13. We are excited to be first time exhibitors and attendees. We'll have our famous games of chance on hand. If you'll be at the event, please stop by booth #423 to try your luck!

 

Then, on August 16th, Jennifer will be in Syracuse, NY presenting to the Central New York SHRM chapter on the results of the chapter's annual salary and benefits survey. This presentation has become an annual summer tradition! Jennifer looks forward to reconnecting in person with seminar attendees and chapter leadership.

 

 

2012 SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition Recap

Over 13,000 HR professionals from the US and 65 countries gathered in "Hot-lanta" for the SHRM 2012 Annual Conference and Exposition. While Atlanta's weather lived up to its nickname, the summer heat didn't stop attendees from having a wonderful conference experience. Without a doubt, SHRM provided four outstanding days of continuous learning experiences, robust networking, and good times for those in attendance.....more

 

 

Have a Question?

If you have a topic you would like addressed in Astronology, or some feedback on a past article, don't hesitate to tell us!  Simply reply to this e-mail.  See your question answered, or comments addressed, in an upcoming issue of Astronology.

Looking for a top-notch presenter for your human resource organization's meeting?  Both Jennifer Loftus and Michael Maciekowich present highly-rated sessions on a variety of compensation and employee retention issues.  For more information, send an e-mail to info@astronsolutions.com.

 

The Fine Print

We hold your e-mail address in trust.  Astron Solutions promises never to share or rent your personal information.  We also promise never to send you frivolous e-mails and will allow you to leave our list, at your option, at any time.

To remove yourself from this list, please follow your personalized subscriber link at the bottom of your Astronology alert e-mail.

Copyright 2012, Astron Solutions, LLC

ISSN Number 1549-0467

Quick Links

 

World of HR Blog

Bringing you Human Resource news from around the globe...compliments of Astron Solutions.

More

 

Join Our Mailing List

 

 

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