We have received an award by SoftOnion

5 stars Award on SoftOnion

List everyone you know professionally with whom you want to reconnect. Motivate yourself by starting with people you like, respect and share mutual work or personal interests.

• Make connecting a priority. Schedule time weekly to contact different people.
• Connect in whatever way you prefer: talk by phone, have coffee/lunch, work out together, etc.
• If your time for connecting is limited, use e-mail
• To meet new contacts attend all hands meetings, seminars and other talks. If you prefer, go with a colleague/friend for support when meeting new people.
• Create ways to motivate people to connect with you:

– Give presentations and speak with audience members afterwards
– Include your e-mail address on your presentations and handouts
– Work with people outside your job group: Contribute to a cross-functional team
– Participate in a community volunteer project

• Express appreciation for your contacts’ help and tell them how their information was of value to you
• Build mutual connections by sharing information, contacts and referrals with others
• Follow through with information and referrals from contacts

As the economy worsen more Americans overlook to follow important safety procedures and protocols.

According to a survey released by Kimberly-Clark Professional 89% of safety professionals have witnessed workers not wearing PPE when they should.

The main reasons for workers not complying with important safety rules and protocols are directly related to the economy.

As business concerns get more attention, safety concerns get impacted during though economic times. Other reasons affecting safety programs are;

• Safety training programs or resources are affected by the economy
• Employees have more to do within the same time period due to workforce reduction
• Less money available for safety education and training

In the US, work related injuries cost more than $50 billion a year. The great majority of these injuries are cause by employees not complying with PPE protocols due to comfort and style.

This year’s survey also polled safety professionals about the steps they have taken or intend to take to encourage greater PPE compliance.

• Improving existing education and training programs
• Purchasing more comfortable PPE
• Increased monitoring of employees
• Tying compliance to individual performance evaluations and purchasing more stylish PPE

In the current economic climate it is more important than ever to invest in PPE that workers will want to wear. Busineses should not cut corners whenever it comes to employee safety, training and equipment. Even in a slow economy the financial burden of just one serious injury or fatality could put a company out of business. Safety doesn’t cost, it pays.

Some days it could be overwhelming to stare at the stack of papers needed to be processed or project folders sitting at your desk “screaming” at you.

Beware of reactive behavior

It doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to tackle these tasks. Soon, you start jumping from one reactive behavior to the next one, from one interruption to an email. This takes your concentration away throughout the day making it difficult for you to complete projects and therefore decreasing your productivity factor.

What can you do to complete everything on your plate?
Taking a vacation or the day off is tempting but it will lead to more procrastination.

One solution is to identify and adopt new habit to increase productivity factor. Consider the following six new effective habits.

Know what to do first

Don’t spend time staring at your things to do or how many emails you have received. Spend 10 to 15 minutes at the beginning of your day organizing your work in batches. This is a simple and effective way to increase productivity. Once you have grouped your tasks, prioritize and identify the most important projects.

Divide and Conquer

It could be overwhelming to take over a complicated assignment. Break you work to smaller manageable tasks first. Look at what tasks are the essential ones and try to eliminate tasks that perhaps are unnecessary. Then integrate other tasks into main tasks and set a dateline. This forces you to avoid procrastination and create a sense of accomplishment each time you reach a milestone while working towards your goal.

Working at the right time

There are morning and night people out there. A recent survey indicates that 57 percent of executives are more productive on Tuesdays. Schedule the most important tasks and/or projects for days and times when you can have the highest productivity factor. For example; if you are a morning person don’t allow any interruptions during the first part of your morning. Focus and use this productive time to your advantage. Focus and concentrate until these small tasks have been completed during the early morning.

Use Email efficiently

Constantly going through an ever expanding inbox full of unorganized email can become a time consuming task. Instead of checking email constantly, turn off the reactive behavior by checking emails twice or three times per day. Use your inbox as a process tray. Create an archive folder that you will use to move emails you have dealt with. In your inbox, keep emails that need to be processed or need a response from a coworker before you can reply back.

Always think in bulk and anticipate your recipient’s answers. For example, if you receive three different emails from different coworkers that are involved in the same project, wait until most related emails have arrive (usually during the afternoon) and write one email directing each person into what to do. Have sections separated be the parties and sub parties involved that include actions to take for any possible questions and provide with anticipated answers.

Remember that sometimes is faster and better to pick up the phone for certain activities such as coordinating complex activities. The less email you send, the less you are apt to receive.

Close your door

Set boundaries whenever it comes to give access to coworkers. Establish office hours at your cubicle or office to avoid interruptions. This is especially important when you are under a tight deadline or working on an assignment. If necessary, you could hang a “Do Not Disturb” sign in you cubicle.

Get Fresh Air

Recharge and clear your head by taking short breaks throughout the day. Changing the scene of your cubicle and moving around can be invigorating from your routine and helps you get the energy necessary to tackle the next task.

GrandCentral is a new web app. (recently adquired by Google) that allows you to redirect all of your phone numbers (wor, cell, home, etc.) into one number. There are many features that come with your GrandCentral account (GC Features).

How can I save money with this new service? My favorite feature is the Click2Call. I use Click2Call to reduce my cell phone bill significantly and to bypass that annoying Outgoing code I have to enter everytime I need to call someone out of the state.

Let’s go through the steps about how to accomplish have a zero long distance telephone bill for your company or home.

1. First, open an account with http://www.google.com/googlevoice/ by reserving a number. This is usually easier for those who already have a google email account. The reservation process will tell you how to get a google email account if you don’t have one. The confirmation page let’s you know there may be some areas where they won’t have coverage.

 

• Wait for their approved email and go through their well documented website to become familiar with the service.

 

 

• Pick a telephone number in your area code and enter your office and mobile telephone numbers in your account.

 

 

• Add a few family members and/or customer phone numbers from out-of-state into the address book.

 

 

• Now, here is the trick; use click2call feature to have google voice call your office telephone (incoming call) and then make the connection to your out-of-state contact.

 

 

• Voila !! You will be talking to your customer, friend or family member, no extra charge.

 

How is this possible? Since you are simply answering a telephone call from your service, http://www.google.com/voice/, it is not necessary for you to enter any access code to make an outgoing telephone call.

Please share this How can I save money trick with as many of your friends and remember to refer them to these instructions.

Subscribe to this blog for more interesting office and productivity tricks (top right form of this webpage).

The hiring process is not an easy one, especially during current times of high competition for talent during a great shortage of skilled labor in the US. Managers want to make sure they find and keep the best people. Therefore, it is a collaborative job among human resources representatives, managers and work unit employees to know what is considered the best hiring practice.

Involving your workforce staff in the hiring process helps to get a good employee and one that fits the staff therefore building a stronger team. Another good practice in the hiring process is to have the manager or supervisor interview the candidate for the tasks and duties to be performed under his/her supervision. Other practices to consider during at the beginning of hiring process are;

• Make sure a resume submission process is in place
• Create flexible job requirements for the description of your posting
• Craft behavioral questions for the interview process. Open ended questions are best and considered great a hiring practice since they determine candidate’s natural tendencies when faced to resolve unexpected problems.

One of the most important and frequently overlooked hiring practice is to consider the work environment of your company. Ask yourself and your personnel what makes it great to work at your company. The best candidates will be more willing to apply to companies with great culture, benefits, promotion opportunities and work environment.

Learn more:
7 Steps For Hiring The Right Person First Time
Pre Employment Interviewing Skills And Hiring Practices Training

There are two main ways that you can keep up to date with the latest news at iTrainingTracking Software. Each option will suit different people and you’re more than welcome to pick any (or all) of them.

RSS Feed

For those of you familiar with RSS and News Aggregators you can follow iTrainingTracking via our RSS feed. Simply add it to your news aggregator and you’ll get notification every time something is published on Micromango Software. Learn More about RSS and how to use it.

Email Subscription

If you’re not an RSS user you can get an email that gives you any post that has been written on Micromango. You can unsubsribe from this this service at any point. This service is provided by a third party (AWeber) and you can subscribe to it by leaving your email address in the following field and following the instructions.

Seven Reasons to Subscribe

1. You never have to check the site for updates again, and you get the latest and greatest first.
2. It’s totally free.
3. Using e-mail or RSS saves you wasted visits. More results in less time.
4. Exclusive content is often limited to subscribers only. If you want the rarest opportunities, subscribing is the way to go.
5. Your info will never be shared with anyone. I hate spammers as much as you do.
6. Subscribing is worth testing for a few days just to experience it. Decide you prefer visiting? Just unsubscribe with one click and you’re back at the campfire.
7. Subscribers are smart and hot.

Please note – your privacy is assured with any of the above options. We do not use your details for any other purposes than what you sign up for and details are kept private

For the last two weeks we have been working on uploading most of iTrainingTracking’s work. Portfolio, artwork and webpages are up and running. We are currently working on our products page and soon will make available a free beta version of our addressbook and a free limited training tracking software.