One is to have gatherings similar to town hall meetings where employees can communicate with each other and give their opinions to company leaders. One company followed up on these town halls by creating a website where employees could access the company’s business strategy and give their input.

Employees also need to be kept informed, especially during a downturn. They need to know what is happening and how the business intends to confront it. Without this, information is replaced by rumor.

Another way to emphasize employee involvement is by setting goals each quarter with employee input. They don’t have to be huge goals.

Recognition programs are also important to show workers that they are valued. Managers should be educated on how to recognize employees. Also, investing in employee training shows that they are valued within the company.

Another small way to show appreciation to employees is with a simple, handwritten  thank you note. It may seem a bit old fashioned today, but this seemingly minor courtesy can go a long way toward making employees feel valued.

Also, employees should be given the chance to tackle problems that face the business. This could be done by setting up teams with workers from different departments. You could post the problem to be solved on the company Intranet and then ask for volunteers. The team’s solutions could be advertised at a company-wide meeting. And if the team comes up with a good solution to the problem and is supported with solid analysis, it should be implemented.

Another way to show that you value your employees is by looking after their health and wellness. You can do this by setting up a wellness committee made up of volunteer employees. They can research healthcare plans that address wellness issues and even set up wellness activities.

Another way of showing how important your employees are to the company is by keeping them up to date on career opportunities at the firm. The company can provide information on career paths at the business, and an online job posting network. The company can offer career coaching to employees using mentors.

Want some more tips on how motivate regular as well as temporary employees? Contact Bayside Solutions. We’ve been recruiting great workers for some of San Francisco’s best employers since 2001 so you may count on the fact that we know a thing or two about employee motivation. Contact us today!

The survey interviewed workers worldwide. In the United States, about one third of all workers use social media for job information and job searches, according to the survey. Across the globe, more than 40 percent of all workers use social media for job hunting. And in the Asia Pacific region, almost 60 percent use social media for job searches.

The worker survey is done every year. In this year’s poll, almost 170,000 people in 30 countries took part. More than 31,000 of those were United States workers.

In a recent Gallup poll has reaffirmed what most people already know – despite an improving economy, employees are not all that happy at work.

The lackluster figures come from the Well-Being Index that Gallup puts together. There are six different categories that go into the index: life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities.

The index is now at 66 out of 100. And, of all the categories, work environment has fallen the most since the poll began. It now stands at 47, the lowest score of any of the categories.

The poll provides more support for what many already know, that with the downturn in the economy, workers are more concerned about their jobs, about their economic security, and being asked to do more with less at work, and, as a result, job satisfaction has taken a big hit.

While the job satisfaction news certainly isn’t good, it does show that there are opportunities for businesses who want to recruit good people. When the economy is booming, and employees are happy, it’s hard for a business to stand out among its competitors as a good place to work. But in a down economy, having a corporate culture that puts employees first makes the business a lot easier to get noticed, and makes it a lot easier for that business to attract talented workers who are looking for a  good work environment.

If you’re on the hunt for great workers for temporary or direct-hire assignments at your San Francisco-area company, contact Bayside Solutions. We’ve been sourcing, vetting and placing great workers for hundreds of companies since 2001 and we look forward to being of service for many years to come. Contact us today!

Read below for seven tips on how to let someone go with grace and professionalism:

1. Give the person at least one more chance. Unless the person has been caught stealing, or otherwise has committed an infraction that warrants automatic termination, sit down with the employee, let him or her know of your concerns and let the person know that you will give him or her a set amount of time to improve, or you will have to terminate.
2. Better still, when someone is underperforming, you should aim to speak with the employee as soon as you notice such a pattern. Sit with the person and professionally and congenially say you’ve noticed a decline or steady erosion in performance, an increase in tardiness, etc. Ask if there’s anything that’s bothering the employee either at home or at work (if it’s a personal matter, tread very carefully). As you listen, let the employee know you understand there always are challenges in any aspect of life, but that the person was hired to perform a certain task or complete a certain project and that you will help him or her improve performance. Give a deadline as to when improvement must be seen.
3. If you do decide to terminate, aim not to have the termination meeting in your office. Instead, pick a more neutral spot such as a conference room.
4. Don’t dither. Get right down to business and let the person know that you’ve decided to terminate his or her employment.
5. Show empathy but remember that you are not the individual’s comforter. That role belongs to family members. Show compassion, but don’t act as a shoulder to cry on.
6. Especially since the person has been given warning (see steps 1 and 2 above), don’t enter into a discussion with the employee about what he or she can do better in order to keep the job. Don’t yell, cry, or pound your fist.
7. It’s definitely OK to be sympathetic and offer the employee resources to help with finding a new job. This can be especially helpful if the employee is losing the position due to a layoff rather than being terminated for cause.

Using Bayside Solutions to bring on temporary staff means you never have to fire them…they’re our employees, not yours! If a worker isn’t meeting your expectations, let us know and we’ll replace him or her quickly, sometimes as quickly as the very next day. Learn more about our staffing solutions for San Francisco-area companies by contacting us today!

Many experts believe humans aren’t really cut out to multitask. Trying to do two things “at once” means we do neither well and experts recommend that we do just one thing at a time.

But it is possible to do two things at once, so long as the tasks don’t use the same brain functions (think folding the laundry while listening to music).

Yet most work tasks are more complicated than laundry folding.

Below are some tips on how to improve your multitasking skills (or, at least, mitigating the poor effects multitasking can wreak on the finished results).

• Understand that our ability to multitask does decrease with age. People in their early 20s can multitask with less adverse effect than those older. In fact, our ability to multitask declines precipitously between the relatively young ages of 20 and 30!
• Multitasking skills do seem to improve with practice.
• Be careful about trying to multitask on undertakings that use the same type of brain functions, such as texting while reading an e-mail, for example.
• Using willpower alone to meet the barrage of distractions – and opportunities to multitask – is well nigh impossible today. For example, it’s incredibly more interesting to read a favorite blog or website “while” writing a business report than to write the report “uninterrupted” for an hour or so. So work with human nature and consider disabling the Internet while you’re writing that report (perform all Web-based research before sitting down to write).
• Experts also recommend setting a timer of some sort. A good period of working could be, for example, 25 minutes, in which you do nothing but the task before you. Take a short 5-10 minute break after 25 minutes (walk around, check e-mail, check for phone texts, etc.) and then set the timer for another 25-minute über-focused work session.

If you’re a San Francisco-area company needs skilled and reliable professionals for temporary and direct-hire assignments, call the staffing professionals at Bayside Solutions. We look forward to hearing from you!

Businesses spend a lot of money on these programs. In 2010, for example, companies spent more than $170 billion on worker training and development programs, about 10 percent of which was for compliance training.

So, given that compliance training as it currently is organized could use a shot in the arm, what can be done to improve it?

The first thing to look at is the content. Does the material covered apply to real situations, real responsibilities and risks that people actually face on the job, rather than just a general overview of abstract concepts and generalities?

If workers need to learn straightforward facts and figures as part of the training, the information should be made available in written form, whether online or as a hard copy. There also should be some way for the workers to confirm that they have received the information, as well as follow up to the initial learning, with periodic reminders. Workers also should be able to ask questions and get answers. Doing this will help employees to better absorb the information, because it will make the training more of an ongoing enterprise rather than just a one-time data dump.

Any individual training session should revolve around only a few key themes or ideas, rather than introducing a laundry list of items. Also, the classes should give the workers the opportunity to put the learning into practice, through some type of simulation or role playing, for example, so that they can put their knowledge to use, further helping them absorb the information.

Also, the learning should receive reinforcement with follow-up notices, where key ideas are repeated and emphasized, so that the learning becomes a continual process. These reminders will help to prevent employees from falling back into old habits.

Bayside Solutions has been helping Bay Area companies find great temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire employees since 2001 and we look forward helping your firm in 2012 and beyond. Contact us today!

Sometimes that becomes difficult, because no matter how much companies stress the value of employee integrity and ethical considerations, people can be less than truthful. So, having some understanding regarding why workers might want to shade the truth would certainly be helpful in more effective communication and problem resolution, says business consultant Ron Ashkenas.

We all have different criteria about what is truthful. And it is these differing perspectives that often lead to breakdowns. What might lead an employee to be less than truthful?

One instance that is easily understandable is when a person does not want to be seen in a negative way. So, if he has made a mistake, he might create excuses and rationalizations about it, rather than admitting the real cause. For example, Ashkenas relates the story of a manager who was behind schedule on a big project. The delay was due mostly to his lack of discipline, but his reason for the delay was a snowstorm.

Another reason for shading the truth is the unwillingness to subject others to criticism. This was the case with a manager who refused to criticize her workers during performance reviews. Her excuse was that it was better to offer support for good practices, rather than highlight weaknesses. Yet, without telling them their weaknesses, there was no way they could make improvements.

People also shade the truth when it might have a negative impact on the bottom line of the business. This might occur when a salesman doesn’t mention supply problems in making a sale to a customer, or when a CEO fudges on the problems of integrating an acquisition. Letting people know what is really going on could hurt reputations and obviously even cause the failure of the project or sale. So, many opt to give only a portion of the truth and then try to determine how to handle the problems later.

Ashkenas says it’s easy to make judgments about these behaviors and demand that people be utterly truthful always. But that is not in our nature, and it is not in the nature of businesses either. The best course, he says, is to try to become more alert as to why people might be less than honest.

When you need high tech professionals for your San Francisco-are company, contact the recruiters at Bayside Solutions. We can find great workers for your long- and short-term temporary needs as well as direct-hire recruitment. Contact us today!

It has been said that employees quit their bosses, not their jobs, and that quote has a lot of truth to it. Despite the rough economy, many workers are still leaving their jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are no statistics on exactly why these people left their jobs, but Richard Finnegan of the Retention Institute suspects that bad managers had more than a little to do with it. The relationship that a manager creates with his workers is the prime factor in whether a worker will leave or stay, Finnegan says. Moreover, the people leaving were probably some of the best workers in the companies they left, Finnegan says. A recent survey has shown that 25 percent of top workers were looking for work last year, compared to just 15 percent in 2005.

Finnegan says that when companies have problems with retention, they usually go to their human resources department to develop some new policy or incentive to help tackle the problem. But these kinds of things are of little help when, instead, the companies should be getting their managers involved in the process.

To keep employees, there are no magic bullets, no simple solutions, according to human resource professionals. It takes an effort by many different people, and changing the culture of the organization. For example, at one retirement community, there was a problem retaining nursing staff. So, the human resources director, Jane Holda, conducted interviews to find out what factors were contributing to the turnover.

Then, the organization began a training program that focused on building trust among its managers and directors. The managers were held accountable for building trust with their workers, and this activity was incorporated into their performance review, Holda says. In addition, managers were asked to evaluate their own ethics and integrity, while workers were asked about managers’ approachability, how interested they were in employees’ problems, and whether they followed up on inquiries.

When you’re looking for reliable and skilled professionals for your Bay Area company, look no further than Bayside Solutions. We can source temporary and direct-hire workers for your assignment needs. We look forward to hearing from you!

One example of this has been at the giant grocery store chain SuperValue, which has about 135,000 employees spread over 44 states. Because it is such a huge organization, connecting people had become a problem, Ferris says. So the company set up a social media platform called Yammer which was used internally. It is helping the company boost sales, according to SuperValue officials. The company uses Yammer to set up working groups. These groups might consist of managers from similar departments, like liquor or deli, or managers whose stores serve similar markets, such as college towns.

A recent survey of Fortune 500 companies showed that almost three-fourths of them are planning to put more emphasis on social media.

But social media experts say to avoid problems with this technology, don’t put the cart before the horse; that is, don’t get so caught up in the kind of technology you are going to use and forget about the purpose you want your social media to serve. The technology doesn’t matter nearly as much as what you want to use it for. The first thing you need to do, they say, is set up goals for what you want to accomplish, and to make those goals as specific as possible – with specific problems and specific people.

Too often, what happens is that companies set up the social media without any overall purpose in mind. Workers then tend to post randomly and no real conversation really develops. Managers use it simply to issue orders. As a result it proves useless, leading management to abandon the entire idea.

But used effectively, social media can become a real change agent, as shown by SuperValue, generating good ideas from workers, Ferris says. It can also help to attract younger workers to the company, build loyalty among employees and promote a strong company culture.

If your San Francisco-area company needs skilled and reliable technology workers, contact a recruiter at Bayside Solutions. We can source, vet and place workers for your temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire needs. We look forward to hearing from you!

Without further ado, here are the top five ways to screw up a project:

1. Avoid putting things in writing. It just irritates everyone and makes them nervous. This includes NDAs, Statement of Works and other agreements.

2. Never tell the client “no”. This allows you to avoid unpleasant conversations such as “we can’t deliver this campaign within your budget” or “we need another two weeks for production.” After all, we want the client to be our friend, right?

3. Don’t bother prioritizing your organization’s overall project load. After all, if there’s a free-for-all approach to your overall program management (i.e., “survival of the fittest”), then the projects that survive will be those that were destined to survive. And don’t trouble yourself aligning projects with strategic goals or facing the logical imperative that people simply cannot have 12 number one priorities!

4. Halfway through the project, when most of the deliverables have begun to take shape, add a whole bunch of previously unnamed stakeholders and ask them for their opinions about the project and its deliverables.

5. Make sure project managers have lots of responsibilities and deadlines, but no authority whatsoever to acquire or remove people from the project; to get enough money, materials, or facilities; or insist on timely participation of SMEs and key reviewers.

Oh, there are many more ways to screw up a project—avoiding client contact, encouraging the sponsor to approve deliverables verbally, setting up numerous committees and enforcing frequent meetings—but this handful of tips should get you off to a good start. And if you want your project to go well? Ignore these tips!

On the other hand, if you want to run a project successfully, feel free to learn from these mistakes!

You need to take advantage of the work that has already been done, and then apply it to your particular goals and needs, he says. Usually, what gets in the way of adapting someone else’s plan is simple human nature – our pride is hurt if we cannot take ownership of any initiative. Sackett says get rid of that attitude, it’s inefficient. Don’t worry about pride, worry about the task at hand.

Usually, whatever human resources project you have in mind has already been done by a larger company, one with more resources to use. In fact, the other company probably already has designed it, tried it out, and reworked it until it got what it liked, Sackett says.

What Sackett says is the smart thing to do is to take advantage of the hard work others have already done that will help your company. He gives four steps for doing this, from the magazine Fast Company.

First, stop thinking that because a competitor has done it, you cannot. The important thing to consider is whether the plan works or not. Will it help your customers? What you need to do is take the plan and make it your own, tweak it and adapt it to your particular situation. But don’t try to go and make something brand new, from the ground up. It takes a great deal of time and resources to invent something completely new, and why do that when you already have a template at hand?

Also, you need to keep your long-range goals in mind. Make it clear to everyone in human resources where you want to take the department with the project, what your ultimate goal is, what you want to achieve.

Then, reach out to people who have done the kind of thing you would like to do. You may not be able to go to a direct competitor, but at non-competitors they will most likely be more than happy to talk to you about what they did and how they did it, what worked and what didn’t. It gives you the added advantage of being able to present to your leadership something you know has been tried and has worked.

Drawing up and implementing a human resource project is not easy, don’t make it harder than it has to be, Sackett says.

When your San Francisco-area company needs reliable top professionals contact Bayside Solutions. We can source, vet and place professionals for your short- and long-term temporary assignments, as well as find you great people for your direct-hire needs. Contact us today!