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!

On March 28, 2012, the 2012 International Green Construction Code (IgCC) was released and will increase the energy efficiency of structures, while providing government direction and oversight of green design and construction. The International Code Council (ICC) applauded the new model code, as it serves as an important new policy option for state and local governments looking to codify green building practice.

Brendan Owens, vice president of LEED Technical Development, USGBC said, “The IgCC and Standard 189.1 draw from more than a decade of national and regional leadership programs that road-tested green building practices, methods and materials,”

“These pioneering efforts broke important new ground that has enabled the IgCC to mainstream green building practices that were previously considered innovative in a foundation intended for minimum code language.”

The 2012 IgCC, which incorporates the 2011 version of Standard 189.1 as an optional path to compliance, offers a new code baseline that can be tailored by state and local governments to share many of the benefits of green buildings with the millions of buildings that are designed, constructed and renovated to meet minimum code, whether or not they are engaged in the LEED program.

“The IgCC published today was developed during the last three years with input from code and construction industry professionals, environmental organizations, policy makers and the public,” said Richard P. Weiland, CEO of the ICC that developed the new code. “Our community was diligent in developing a code that is not only adoptable, usable and enforceable, but also flexible and adaptable. We expect this new model code, like the family of other ICC Codes, to be adopted across the country and used globally.

LEED is the world’s foremost program for the design, construction, maintenance and operations of green buildings. More than 45,000 projects are currently participating in the commercial and institutional LEED rating systems, comprising 8.4 billion square feet of construction space in all 50 states and 120 countries. In addition, nearly 19,000 residential units have been certified under the LEED for Homes rating system, with over 75,500 more homes registered.

And if you’re looking for top employees to work on your green construction and design projects, please visit the Bayside Solutions website 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!

But we can only do so much by being mindful enough to throw our discarded paper into a separate bin.

Larger, upscale projects need to be mindful, too. And this is why you need to consider LEED Greenbuilding when you need green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.

What is LEED Greenbuilding? Well, LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. LEED looks to achieve the highest standard in the key areas of human and environmental health while optimizing construction, operation, and maintenance solutions.

LEED looks to achieve sustainability in their approach to building or innovating buildings. Sustaining sites means discouraging building on previously undeveloped land and seeks to control or minimize the buildings impact on the ecosystem it revolves around. According to Science Daily, there are a reported 37 environmental impacts that happen around most building developments.

LEED also looks to be more aware of water conservation through the use of higher efficiency appliances and fixtures. LEED also manages the amount of waste that accumulates during the construction and operation phases. The challenges of energy conservation and waste management are met head on when dealing with this group.

What makes LEED above and beyond the call of duty is that they’re committed to educating on energy efficiency best practices. They know that living green has the best results when green features are used optimally.

Using LEED isn’t a niche thing, either. Public and privately-owned businesses has worked with LEED in creating an efficient and innovative space for themselves. Government and non-government agencies has used them. LEED has operated in over 120 different countries around the world!

Want to know more about LEED or about how to get an environmentally conscious project off the ground? Contact the green technology experts at Bayside Solutions 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!

1) Know your business

You may be your organization’s most talented developer or dedicated systems administrator. But if you don’t know what the business is selling or what service it’s providing, you’re not indispensable. Don’t look at things from strictly an IT perspective, but make sure you understand how your job relates to the business world around you.

2) Watch the bottom line

Your job isn’t just about systems, software or machines. It’s about helping your organization use technology to trim costs and increase efficiency. IT professionals need to focus on areas that either drive down costs, such as virtualization, cloud computing and converged networking, or on areas that help to generate revenue, such as social media, mobile marketing and SEO.

3) Get your head in the cloud

With so many traditional IT functions moving to the cloud, your company may no longer need you to flip switches, connect cables, or troubleshoot machines. But they’ll still need someone who can tell them what services are available, which ones are worth looking at and which ones they should avoid. And they’ll require people with expertise in managing a catalog of cloud services, handling subscribers, brokering agreements with cloud providers and intervening when problems arise.

4) Broaden your horizons

Besides maintaining mastery of your own tech domain, expand your skill set to include other areas of expertise. If a crisis arises in one of those areas—and the person responsible for handling it isn’t available—you may be able to step in and save the day. Plus, an employee who has more than one area of expertise is more valuable when a department is downsizing.

5) Be a translator.

Want to facilitate communication between IT and the business side, as well as earn a little goodwill in the process? Teach your co-workers to speak geek. Start a series of casual teaching sessions where you bring less savvy coworkers up to speed about the latest in tech. You can become the go-to guy for upper management when they need something technical explained.

6) Deal with data.

If your business users aren’t drowning in information now, they will be soon. Taming the data deluge will make you invaluable to any organization. IT people who can make sense of business data, safely store it, categorize it, retrieve it, and especially analyze it are highly valuable.

7) Make a name for yourself. The more people who know and rely on you—especially outside your department or organization—the harder it is to fire you. Look for projects and opportunities that cut across departments, because this builds your internal network — thus making you more valuable to the company.

And if you’re ready to practice those habits in a new and exciting position in the Bay Area, contact Bayside Solutions today!

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!

1. Pocket Microscope

Diagnosing malaria or other blood-borne illnesses used to require analyzing cell slides under a light microscope—which can be difficult to find in impoverished, remote locations. Enter LUCAS (Lensless, Ultra-wide-field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging), an easy-to-use, pocket-size holographic microscope that weighs less than 50g, uses inexpensive, off-the-shelf parts, and can be attached to a cell phone’s camera, making it ideal for diagnosing disease in isolated, developing countries.

2. All Around the Mouse

This past September, Bioscan introduced BioFLECT, the first 360-degree optical imager, which uses a rotating ring of 48 detectors to generate a full 3-D scan of fluorescent markers.

3. PCR in a Pouch

The FilmArray system was designed to make pathogen detection simple, accurate, and fast. Because there are multiple nested PCR reactions within each FilmArray pouch, one run can detect all of these pathogens, and others, at a cost of less than $150. Plus, the FilmArray reaction does not require a trained technician and only takes an hour rather than the 5–6 hours needed for a traditional, real-time PCR reaction.

4. Single-Cell Mass Cytometry

Designed by Scott Tanner, chief technology officer of DVS Sciences, CyTOF is a mass spectrometer that can feed researchers data about molecules within and on the surface of individual cells, revealing not only the cell’s identity but also some of its functions.

5. Illuminating Microscopy

Nikon incorporated SIM technology into its flagship inverted microscope to produce the N-SIM Super Resolution Microscope—one of the fastest and most powerful high-resolution optical microscopes on the market. The N-SIM microscope can achieve a spatial resolution between 85 and 110 nm and a temporal resolution of 600 milliseconds per frame.

6. DNA Deluge

RainDance Technologies’ ThunderStorm System for DNA sequencing is the newest iteration of the company’s popular next-generation RDT1000 model. While other PCR enrichment systems allow researchers to process fewer than 100 gene regions, the ThunderStorm allows researchers to sequence up to 20,000 regions per sample.

7. Mini MRI

Thanks to Aspect Imaging’s M2 Compact MRI System, all you need is about one square meter of space and $500,000. Having its own lead-lined housing means the M2 can be used in a standard laboratory and avoids the credit card–erasing, watch-destroying, and medical instrument–damaging effects of large-scale MRI machines.

8. The Circadian Watch

The Dimesimeter may offer researchers insights into how disrupting circadian rhythms affects human physiology, behavior and disease. Developed by scientists at the Lighting Research Center at RPI, the battery-powered, dime-sized Dimesimeter contains optical sensors and accelerometers that measure both the light exposure and activity of the person wearing it.

9. One-Step Sample Prep

To prepare material for analysis by mass spectrometry, chemist Akos Vertes of GWU developed Protea Biosciences, Inc.’s LAESI (Laser Ablation Electrospray Ionization) DP-1000 System, which can handle any type of biological sample that contains water—either naturally, as in animal or plant tissues, or water added by the experimenter.

10. Super-Resolution Solution

The new Leica SR GSD microscopy system illuminates only a few random molecules in the field of view at a time, taking a picture, and then repeating the process thousands of times until all the molecules have been illuminated and imaged.

And U.S. developers need to take advantage of federal tax credits for renewables by the end of 2012, so 2012 may result in the largest number of wind projects completed in one year.

Many wind projects began construction under the 1603 Treasury Grant Program. These projects had to commence by December 31, 2011 in order to qualify for the 30 percent grant in lieu of investment tax credit (ITC).

Section 1603 will likely expire at years’ end, but the federal renewable energy production tax credit (PTC) will inspire wind developers to start construction in 2012. The PTC, which is set to expire on December 31, 2012, provides an income tax credit for the production of electricity from utility-scale wind turbines.

AWEA is pushing for a four-year extension of the PTC, but Elizabeth Salerno, director of industry data and analysis for AWEA, said wind developments post-2012 have a “question mark over them” for the time being due to the lack of long-term federal policy.

OUTLOOK 2012— A YEAR OF RESEARCH?

Many in the renewable energy industry consider the U.S. permitting and financial climate to be hostile toward offshore wind developments. Since offshore wind is an emerging North American technology, start-up costs are higher than onshore developments. Project cancellations became fairly common in 2011.

Cancellations leave prospective offshore wind developers in a quandary. Considering the unstable global financial environmental and the likely removal of federal grants for renewables, is now the right time to plan offshore wind projects?

In February, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu unveiled a national offshore wind strategy with a goal of the deployment of 10 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2020 and 54 GW by 2030.

The potential value of offshore wind in the U.S. is sizeable. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the 28 U.S. coastal states consume 78 percent of the nation’s electricity, but only six of these states could meet even one-fifth of their power demand with land-based wind energy. This leaves a clean energy void that could be filled by offshore wind power.

And earlier this year, the Interior and Energy departments announced $50.5 million in funding opportunities for projects that support offshore wind energy deployment.

It’s likely that 2012 will not usher in the completion of any U.S. offshore wind projects, but it will be a time for permits and additional research.

Want to know more? Need more people for your own green technology project? Bayside Staffing has relationships with the top-notch engineering, technical and construction personnel you need, so contact us today.