A recent survey of interest to human resource departments has found that employees are not getting on board with all of the healthcare investments being made by businesses.

The survey found that businesses are putting a lot of resources into helping their employees enhance their health, in areas such as health benefits, health programs in the workplace, and using other healthcare resources outside the company. But despite all of these efforts by the companies, employees have not taken the time or effort to learn about or get involved in the programs.

The study was done by the Midwest Business Group on Health. Midwest worked with five client companies employing more than 250,000 workers over a five-year period to compile the information.

The Midwest Business Group on Health (MBGH) is a non-profit, Chicago-based business coalition made up mostly of human resources and health benefits professionals  from more than 100 large, self-insured public and private employers. The coalition represents about three million people and more than $3 billion in healthcare benefits annually

To help companies get their workers more involved in their health, Midwest made a number of recommendations. It recommended that companies look at their corporate culture when putting healthcare programs in place at work so that these programs fit in with the culture at the company. Midwest also recommended that companies make efforts to improve their communication about healthcare not only with workers, but with the workers’ dependents and family members. Midwest also said companies need to offer more incentives as well to motivate workers to improve their health.

Also, Midwest recommended that companies make resources available to workers so that they can compare different health plans and actually see what their healthcare is costing them.

Midwest also recommended that companies develop initiatives to springboard off of clinical screening programs, such as tests for cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, and other conditions, to use the screenings to motivate employees to make lifestyles changes.

Midwest also suggested that companies provide resources to help employees deal with setbacks and stress on the job and at home.

If you’re looking for great employees for either short-term temporary or long-term assignments at your San Francisco-area company, contact Bayside Solutions. We have a large pool of skilled professionals ready, willing and very able to help your company thrive. Contact us today!

In looking at employee performance, some business analysts make the comparison between an employee and a gasoline tank. The point of the comparison is to describe the amount of fuel in the tank that employees have to use. And, the analysts say, the tanks are getting low.

People have physical and emotional resources that they use when they confront various situations, and people use these resources at work. When the tank needs fueling, we use things like vacations, support from friends and family, and a sense of fulfillment in our jobs to add fuel. What empties the fuel are such things as bosses who are hard to work for, worries about money, concerns about keeping a job, and heavy workloads.

When the tank is full, people have the energy and enthusiasm to take on new pressures and challenges. But when the tank is low, new pressures and tasks tend to create more problems for the person and become harder to achieve.

One example of this that was studied in detail was the response of workers when a hurricane hit, which naturally put a lot of additional stress on the employees. Research showed that the extra demands made on employees – things such as working longer hours to fill in for people who could not make it to work – caused more problems for people whose reserves were already depleted, whose gas tanks were already near empty. The extra stress actually caused a drop off in their efforts. But employees whose gas tanks were fuller were much more engaged when the hurricane hit.

When demands in the workplace increase, employees need to also increase their resources — their reserves – in order to be able to handle these demands, according to Dave Ulrich, a business analyst. When employees have more resources such as better control of their time, or the chance to learn and grow, they are better able to handle increased stress. The breakdown happens when demands outpace the resources, Ulrich says.

Several business analysts say that they see workers’ tanks nearing empty in the wake of increased demands at work after the recession. And while workers have been able to increase their productivity, the analysts say these increases will not continue if employees are not able to build up their reserves, if they are not able to put some gas in the tank.

Are you ramping up some projects for the coming year. Are you current employees working at capacity? Then consider adding skilled temporary workers with the help of  Bayside Solutions to your Bay Area firm. Contact one of our recruiters today!

If your human resources department is involved with overseeing volunteer programs for the company, here are several ideas for getting employees engaged within volunteer opportunities that don’t actually have them involved in some kind of volunteer assignment.

One thing a company can do is sponsor a kind of signature volunteer program that is of a short-term duration, but one that involves the entire company. For example, JP Morgan Chase has a volunteer program called Global Days of Service, which is a month-long effort of volunteer service each year by Chase employees around the globe. The Chase employees get together with family and friends to volunteer in a variety of service projects. In 2002, volunteers at Chase worked in more than 950 projects in 275 cities around the world.

In another kind of volunteer effort, companies can help out non-profit organizations by volunteering their skills and business expertise. An example here is America Online, which offers IT help to non-profits and schools. The goal is to help them more effectively use resources online for whatever purpose they have. .

To get the most out of your volunteer programs, your company should follow a three-point plan outlined by the Points of Light Foundation:

• First, your company should acknowledge that community service and employee volunteerism are not just the right thing to do, but important to your business achieving its goals.
• Next, your company needs to make a commitment to create and encourage volunteerism for all employees, and you need to look at community service the same as any other business function.
• Finally, you need to focus your efforts at serious social problems in the community.

Community service programs have wide-ranging benefits. They help workers do their jobs better, acquire new skills, work in teams, think creatively, and help with job satisfaction. They also are an important factor in attracting and retaining good employees. And, as is well known, they also improve the company’s image and reputation.

Will you need skilled and reliable workers for your San Francisco-area business in 2012? Then give Bayside Solutions a call! We can place one worker for a short-term assignment, or several temporary workers for long-term assignments. We can even help find great full-time employees for direct-hire assignments. Contact us today!

Almost three years after the recession began, and with the economy still in the doldrums, a recent survey has shown that the bonds of trust between employees and management have weakened noticeably.

The survey showed that about 25 percent of workers are less involved with their managers than they were one year ago. The workers say their superiors do not communicate well with them, are disinterested and erratic in their management and play favorites.

Only about 10 percent of workers believed that their management would make the right calls in a time of crisis, according to the survey. Moreover, only about 15 percent said they thought their company’s leaders were ethical and honest. A little more than 10 percent thought that their leaders really listened to them and cared about them. And less than 10 percent thought their management was completely honest.

These figures are alarming, according to business experts, and point to a real need for management to take serious steps to get its workforce re-engaged. One of the ways companies can do this, they said, is to re-examine the organization’s values. Employees need to be able to believe in the values of the company. They need to feel that they share important values with their organization if they are to feel a loyalty to it and work enthusiastically for it.

The surveys revealed the strong connection between trust and shared values. In places where employees had more trust in their leaders, the survey showed a higher percentage that believed the values of the company reflected their own values.

Employee disconnect from a company can result in less production and hurt the firm’s bottom line. In the overall economy, employee apathy results in losses between $300 billion and $350 billion a year, according to experts.

Apathetic employees are less productive, have less loyalty to their organizations, are less happy in their personal lives, and are more anxious about their jobs and keeping their jobs.

A 2010 survey also showed that high-performing employees are more disenchanted as well and are looking at opportunities at other companies. According to the survey, about 25 percent were looking to leave their jobs within a year, compared to about 10 percent who said the same thing in 2006.

Bayside Solutions can provide San Francisco-area companies with skilled employees on a temporary, temp-to-hire or even direct-hire basis. Contact us today.

If there’s one thing that companies with successful retention rates for IT talent know, it’s that you have to make sure your IT employees feel like they’re part of the larger organization. Too often, the IT department is treated as a separate entity, and it’s crucial that they feel part of the business.

You should also make sure they understand how their efforts impact the bottom line and improve the profitability of the company. In other words, show your appreciation!

If you can create an inclusive, supportive environment, you will get both engagement and innovation from your IT staff. By differentiating your work environment, you will make your IT employees think twice about leaving and joining a more typical work environment – even if it offers a little more pay.

One great way to make your IT employees feel important to the company is to create incentives. These incentives aren’t necessarily monetary. They can be professional rewards.

• Organizations can improve retention rates and employee performance by making it easier for IT personnel to find new opportunities within the company.
• Some companies empower IT employees by giving them the opportunity to work on diverse, limited-term assignments, rather than in one department or function. Some organizations develop a talent exchange. This connects employees and other resources with appropriate projects, roles, and positions across the company.
• Companies that provide intensive training to promote skill building convey the message that professional development is important – and it is especially important to IT personnel, who work in a field that develops and changes rapidly.

Some incentive plans can be quickly implemented and will yield positive results almost immediately if executed well: project bonuses or other project-related incentives (which can be non-cash, like restaurant vouchers or gift cards); awards for outstanding performance; or public recognition of achievement through corporate communications outlets like newsletters and intranets.

IT employees tend to value family-oriented or quality-of-life rewards, such as extra paid time off or a paid family vacation as compensation for their efforts.

Of course, you can always use cash incentives such as stock options and annual bonuses. A recent survey found that more than 90% of companies provide some form of cash bonus or incentive plan for IT workers.

However, research also suggests that what matters most is not always how much money or how many perks are offered, but the way in which incentive programs are structured. An incentive must be attainable, relevant, and meaningful to impact performance and behavior. Giving the employee an opportunity to have input into the reward system he will be attempting is important in developing commitment. Employees who have been given some say in the design of their incentive programs will be more committed to seeing the program through to reap the rewards.

If you would like to learn more about the ins and outs of hiring IT talent, contact Bayside Solutions today.

Dealing with change is difficult. It’s not something we enjoy.  People usually respond to change with resistance. But if businesses want to continuously improve, they have to keep changing.

So, how do you make change possible in your organization?  There are useful techniques that some successful, change-oriented businesses use.

The first technique is really an attitude, one of paranoia.  You have to set things up so that it’s actually more uncomfortable not to change than it is to change.  Everyone needs to know about what not changing will mean, and the problems it will bring. You have to think as if your business were constantly on fire.  To make constant improvement, a company has to get good information about customers and competitors and disseminate it throughout the organization. The people in charge have to show how important customer satisfaction is. The difference between what people are doing now and what they need to do to stay on top has to be on everyone’s mind.

As Andy Grove, the former chief of Intel, has said, the main job of a leader is to guard against attacks and get everyone in his or her organization to assume this guardian mentality as well. He said he worries constantly about competitors, about other people finding ways to do better than his company does and taking away customers.

Businesses also need to encourage innovation, trying new things, and not be so quick to criticize or negatively evaluate employees for experimenting. Companies need to give people a little more room to use their imagination and be more encouraging of people trying new things.  While short-term results matter, that should not be the exclusive focus. To deal with the cost and risk involved in experimentation, companies can guide their innovation through an experimentation process, where the tests are designed to be fast, cheap and flexible.  Ideas should progress through levels – developing and testing, a pilot program, and rolling out the final version.

Also, change should be seen not as something that disrupts the normal course of things, but as a chance to learn new things. People will be more accepting of change if they see themselves as change agents and if they become more effective in their jobs as a result.

When you need to source critical members of your executive or management teams, contact Bayside Solutions. As one of San Francisco’s premier staffing agencies, we know how to source and screen top employees for your firm. Contact us today; we look forward to serving you.

How many of your top IT performers are simply biding their time, waiting until the economy improves before bolting to the next job? As the job market opens up, the first people out the door will be the ones with the most options – the best employees in your organization.

This could have a devastating impact on your company in more ways than one — disrupted projects, overruns on schedules and budgets, quality issues, and loss of corporate memory — in addition to the time and expense of having to find replacements.

How can you increase commitment and decrease turnover among your valued IT employees?

First, you need to understand why IT professionals tend to leave an organization. You may think the most important reason is money, but that’s not the entire story. It’s easy for IT workers to compare their salaries to others doing the same work, both within your company and within their industry. If they feel they are not being paid competitively, pay is definitely an issue. However, infotech employees also appreciate other perks, such as:

• Challenging work assignments
• Favorable work environment
• Flextime
• Stock options
• Additional vacation time
• Family-friendly values
• Everyday casual dress code
• Cross-functional assignments, tuition and training reimbursement

One recent survey found that the second most important retention factor for IT professionals is quality of management – how well the IT staff is managed. Many bosses in IT aren’t strong on mentoring and team-building. They often received promotions themselves because they were technically strong, and not necessarily because they had strong people skills or instinctive leadership qualities.

In order to ensure that your managers are giving the IT staff what they need, try to ensure that they are:

Communicating about Career Development IT managers need to communicate frequently with their employees about career development activities. This should include assessing an employee’s competencies in terms of technical ability, project management and process skills, innovation, and effectiveness.

Employees also want to learn business skills, interpersonal skills and communication skills. They know that companies are looking for well-rounded individuals, not just “techno geeks.”

Conducting Employee Surveys In other words, managers need to ask their employees what they like about their jobs, and what they need in terms of training and mentoring. The amount of training offered is a critical consideration in an IT professional’s decision to stay or leave.

Training is too often seen as a perk when it should be viewed as an essential investment in a company’s intellectual capital. In IT, change is rapid and nobody wants to become obsolete by working too long in an unchanging environment. Strong training, coaching, job rotation programs, and opportunities for experimentation send a clear message that management is seeking to establish a long-term relationship with employees.

In order to retain your top IT employees, take a look at your salary ranges to see if they are competitive, ensure that you are offering other benefits besides salary and insurance, make sure your managers are providing a challenging work environment, and see that career development and training programs are in place.

To find out more about how you can keep your IT team intact, or how we can help fill your technical staffing needs, contact Bayside Solutions today.

The way of the business world has changed completely from what it was even just five years ago. The “new normal” is constantly in flux and a firm’s leadership must change the way stay flexible in order a company to thrive — if not survive — in today’s fast-paced, global economy.

No longer can a firm’s leaders take on the “top-down” style of management, where an executive barks orders to the minions below, expecting employees to carry them out without input. This type of organizational structure has gone the way of the dodo — to extinction.

And good riddance!

Instead, leaders today need to persuade (not coerce). Leaders need to be honest, not dictatorial. In addition, a companies leaders should come from all levels of an organization, of all ages so that leadership will be nimble and innovative and also wise and efficient.

Leadership best practices today call for a company culture where everyone has a say, where ideas are welcome. This will help spur employees to greater innovation.

In fact, leaders should come from everywhere in a company, not just from the executive suite. Workers need to be able to move up, down and sideways within an organization, depending on where their particular gifts are best utilized and where their aspirations take them.

Today’s leaders should be accessible to all employees. Leaders today should actively solicit input from the firm’s workers. Employees need to know they may speak their minds freely (within certain boundaries, of course), without worrying that they’ll be demoted, ostracized, ridiculed.

Company leadership today also must be completely honest with a firm’s workers. This is especially true with the prevalence of social networks, making it easy for workers to spread news, gossip or vent about bad management online. News of any sort, good, bad, indifferent, etc. can spread around a company — if not the world — in an instant. Since there’s no place “to hide” anymore, honesty from a firm’s leaders is ever more imperative.

How can Bayside Solutions help your company succeed? We offer Bay Area firms custom recruiting solutions, temporary staffing and other workforce solutions. Contact us today!

Of all the valuable tools available to help us meet our daily  goals, there is one that is not to be found  in a smartphone, in the drawers of our desks or in a supply closet. In fact, this special tool is best used when you have completed the seemingly endless string of tasks that constitute a day on the job. The tool is actually your mind and the task is simple – reflect on the activities of the day and categorize how well things went. The objective is to repeat or improve on those things that went well, and to change your approach to those activities that didn’t fair so well.

This is a no-cost approach to analyzing how well you are doing on the job and to adjust those areas that ultimately will improve your performance and standing in the company.
Some experts say giving five to 10 minutes at the end of the work day to reflect on the day’s activities is an important skill that should not be ignored. This is the time to remember what worked well and store it in your arsenal of things to retrieve at another time. It’s also the time to scrap those decisions that flopped and discard them before they become an annoying habit. Ultimately you benefit from the regular adjustments you make and reduce the number of troublesome hurdles you encounter as a result of your decisions.

One simple exercise is to look at your planning calendar and review how closely your day reflected what you anticipated would happen. Do this at the end of the day when things are less hectic. Ask yourself if what you actually did closely mirrors what you planned for the day. If not, then determine what is needed to make it happen. Consider the people you dealt with and how things went with them. This is the time to put things under a mental microscope and determine if you plan to repeat a particular activity or change it, and why it should or should not be repeated.

Also ask yourself is there is anyone on staff with whom you need to speak, to keep him or her up to date on projects on which you’re working. Remember, it is important to retain and foster the positive relationships you’ve built up, as well as establish new ones.  It takes little time to write a quick e-mail to keep the lines of communications open so co-workers and supervisor area aware of your activities.

In these instances a little bit goes a long way to produce positive results for you personally as well as the company.

Produce positive results in your career by bringing your résumé to a Bayside Solutions recruiter. We can help you contact some of the mover and shakers at some of the Bay Area’s finest employers. Give us a call today!

The world of work has changed since many of today’s older workers started out in the workforce. Many people today change careers more often, requiring that they start in a staff position (rather than management) as they grow their new skills. Or older workers may have been laid off from a position they’ve held for several years and end up taking a job that’s not quite as high on the management ladder as the one they just left.

Which means that that may be older than their supervisors.

Peter Cappelli, professor at the Wharton School of Business and coauthor of Managing the Older Worker: How to Prepare for the New Organizational Order, believes supervisors then have two issues to deal with:

1. Being “afraid” of managing someone older than themselves.
2. Finding excuses not to hire the older worker to begin with or, if they do, allowing their “fear” of managing someone with more experience to mean they won’t hold the older worker accountable (“Joan knows more about this than I do. I certainly can’t tell her what to do!”) So they ignore the older worker.

Cappelli recommends organizations do away with a “top-down” management style, the usual “I’m the boss, so you do as I say.” Instead, according to Cappelli, companies should create a culture where supervisors and staff work in a true teamwork environment, one in which supervisors engage subordinates’ input, advice and one in which managers bring their staff members in on goal-setting activities.

When you’re looking for qualified, reliable professionals for your San Francisco-area firm, contact Bayside Solutions. We “know the good guys,” and we’ll source and place skilled workers for your temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire IT, construction, scientific, and construction assignments. We look forward to hearing from you!