Category Archives: Training

How to Handle Raise Request

“Can I have a raise?”

Five little words cause a lot of stress and frustration. In many smaller organizations — and even some larger ones — there’s no formal compensation policy. There may not even be an HR professional available to consult on merit increases and other pay issues. In these companies, you are likely to encounter direct requests from your staff members for a raise. Absent a policy, people assume that if they want a raise the only way they can get one is to ask for it.

Of course, the best solution to this problem is to set some kind of compensation policy so these decisions don’t have to be handled in a one-off, spur-of-the-moment fashion. But as a manager, you may not be in a position to determine what your company’s policy will be, particularly if your company is a small owner-operated firm and you aren’t the owner. To have to say, “You’ll have to talk to Mr. Jones about that,” lets everyone know that you have no power or authority in the really important areas.

Raise-requesters usually offer up a combination of reasons why they deserve a pay increase: They’ve done an outstanding job and therefore deserve an increase. (Regardless of the truth of the assertion, this reason is almost always offered.) The scope of the job has significantly widened. The person is underpaid compared with peers in the office or what the going rate for the job is at other organizations. The cost of living has gone way up since the last salary adjustment. And there’s always the universal “I just need more money” motive.

If you are the decision-maker, the best approach is to thank the person for bringing the matter to your attention along with a promise to get back with an answer by a specific date. From there, talk to other people in leadership positions in your company about the whole issue of compensation. Is this raise request a unique event, or is it the tip of an iceberg of compensation grumbles?

Then, fairly assess the situation. Keep in mind the difference between the value of the role that employees perform and their value as individuals. They’re not the same. Every job is worth a certain amount. That amount is determined by the market, not by the quality of the individual’s performance or their need for a greater income. It may be that the limit of the value that can be placed on a particular role has simply been reached. The refusal to grant a salary increase here is not a reflection on the person’s value as an individual but the worth of the job to the company, no matter how well it’s performed.

But let’s say a review of the individual’s salary-change request tells you that a pay increase is appropriate — the person is, in fact, underpaid compared with others in the company who are doing similar work, or it would be difficult to replace the individual if she left at anywhere near the salary the raise-requester is currently getting. Don’t immediately grant the increase. If a salary increase is granted directly following a request, word may spread that all individuals in the organization are underpaid. The unfortunate precedent will be set that the way to get a salary increase is simply to ask for it. You will then be held hostage to all the other raise requests that will immediately follow.

Instead, initiate a second conversation. Explain how the amount of money paid an individual is a function of two things: the value of the job itself and the quality of performance of the person doing the job. Ask the individual to examine both how she might enhance her performance and how her job can be made more valuable to the organization. What additional duties might she assume? How much extra responsibility is she willing to take on? How much extra effort is she willing to put forth?

When these issues have been successfully settled, the pay increase can be granted with both you and your subordinate can leave the table satisfied. With a few extra steps and strategic thinking, answering difficult compensation questions can be a breeze — and not a headache.

by Dick Grote  The Conversation- Harvard Business Review

You won’t hear “you’re hired” if you spell it “your hired”

Each spring, schools from around the U.S. send their best spellers to Washington, D.C., for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. At the Bee, a moderator tosses out words that most of us have never heard before, and these prodigious pupils rattle off a stream of letters as if stromuhr and Laodicean are everyday words. If you saw the film Spellbound, you understand how gripping this display of linguistic skills can be. You’ve got silent Ks and hidden Ms and tricky origins that complicate words. It’s so exciting even ESPN broadcasts the Bee.

We watch in awe as students a fraction of our age spell words we never heard before and probably will never hear again. Yet, judging by the amount of typos I see on a daily basis (including the ones I write), many of us are having trouble with some basic words. Ridiculous doesn’t have an e; too is not the same as to. These misspellings don’t mean we’re not as smart as the youngsters at the Spelling Bee, it just means we’re not as focused on accuracy as they are. Yet, we should be because spelling matters, especially when you’re looking for a job.

Rather than let spelling be something you don’t think about much or a terrifying monster that looms over every cover letter you type, we think you can easily handle it. Here are a few tips for impeccable spelling and why it matters on a job hunt:

1. Check (and check again) the names of companies, references, interviewers
Names are some of the easiest words to spell incorrectly because there are no definitive ways to spell them. Thom or Tom? Stacy or Stacey or Staci?  Don’t ever assume you aced the spelling the first time, especially when typing out the name of the hiring manager of people you interviewed with. Check e-mails, business cards and online profiles to ensure you’re spelling their names correctly. Failing to do so will be a glaring error that suggests you have no attention to detail.

Above all else, spell your name correctly. You laugh now, but believe me, it happens.

2. Don’t rely on spell check
Listen, spell check is an amazing invention that has made life easier for everybody. However, it’s not perfect and shouldn’t be used as the authority on all things spelling. For example, a good spell check might catch some grammatical mistakes, but it won’t always know that you meant “through” instead of “threw.” Both words are spelled correctly but they’re not interchangeable in the least. If your résumé boasts of your “righting” abilities, don’t expect a call from the hiring manager.

3. Avoid slang
Thank you, Internet, for making us forget that “want to” is actually the grammatically proper way to say “wanna.” The same goes for “gonna,” “whatcha,” and “srsly.” We’re a world that loves abbreviations, especially in e-mails and texts, but they don’t translate well to the professional world. Using abbreviated netspeak in an informal e-mail is fine, but when you’re trying to impress a potential boss stick to standard English. Employers want to know that you’ll be a strong representative of their brand, so prove you know the difference between “b4” and “before.” For realz.

4. Have a proofreader
The hardest part about making sure you don’t misspell something is knowing what you might be misspelling. Not everybody’s blessed with the spelling gene, and it never occurs to some people that supposedly and supposably are not interchangeable words, and some people won’t even acknowledge “supposably” as a valid word. The easiest way to solve this conundrum is to let someone else look over your résumé and cover letter because they might catch a mistake you didn’t even know you were making. Have your significant other, friend, roommate or even your (hopefully smart) child take a look before you hit send.

5. Stick with the language you’re comfortable with
One surefire way to ruin your writing is to use words that you think make you sound smarter. In reality, they don’t. Not only will your syntax will sound weird because it’s not natural to you, but you are also going to be using words you don’t know how to spell. Suddenly your attempt to sound sophisticated has turned your correspondence into a word jumble that looks like an eye chart. Save yourself the headache and write in a way that makes you feel comfortable while still using proper, traditional grammar.

Another reason you want to display your most honest writing is so that you’ve set an accurate expectation for your writing. Pretending you’re someone else in order to get the job, only to be unable to perform at that level on a daily basis, is not going to be fun for you or your boss. Be honest in your writing style.

Not everyone is a gifted speller, and it’s a skill that’s more important in some occupations than in others. However, in today’s world where many of us spend our days sending e-mails and writing reports, knowing how to communicate with error-free writing is a skill you can’t afford to lack.

How has spelling played a role in your career? Does it not matter or is it one of your most used skills? Have you had a boss who relied on you because he or she couldn’t spell in the least? Let us know.

~Anthony Balderrama

7 tips for improving email etiquette »

According to 2009 research from international consulting firm Deloitte, the average office worker sends around 160 emails and checks his or her inbox more than 50 times per day. If practice really made perfect, we’d all be Olympic gold medal-winning emailers by now.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I still hit the “send” button in the exact instant that I spot a typo, and I still get emails that give me the funny feeling that a co-worker didn’t mean to hit “reply all.”

Despite tons of practice, it seems that email etiquette is still something most of us are working to perfect.  

So, in honor of National Email Week (what, that wasn’t on your Outlook calendar?) we talked to a few communications experts about proper email etiquette. Here’s what they had to say about what makes a good email, and what gets your message sent to the trash folder.

Do:

Be concise: “Email is intended for short, informational messages,” says Jodi R. R. Smith, president of Mannersmith Etiquette Consulting in Marblehead, Mass., and author of “From Clueless to Class Act: Manners for the Modern Woman.” “Keep in mind that with some email systems it is possible for the recipient to read just the first three lines of your message without ever opening the email. Make the first couple lines count.”

Double check: “Never, ever skip the spell check and double check the word is not changed to a word you did not intend to use,” says Diane Gottsman, owner of The Protocol School of Texas, a company that specializes in corporate etiquette training. “Spell check is not foolproof if it picks up a word that it ‘thinks’ you mean.”

While you’re rereading your email, also take a second to ensure that the correct person’s name is in the “To” field. It can be easy to accidentally type in the wrong name, especially with email programs that auto-complete email addresses when you start typing.

Be professional: “Treat email like a professional correspondence, because it is. It’s the only communication most executives see and you will be judged accordingly,” Gottsman says. That means spelling out words in their entirety (no “U,” “LOL,” etc.), using correct capitalization and including an email signature with your contact information.

Professionalism should extend to the style and formatting of your email as well. When choosing fonts and creating an email signature, use the “Phyllis” test. Anything you think Phyllis from “The Office” might include in her emails should be avoided in yours. This includes cutesy fonts like Comic Sans, email wallpaper, and signatures with flash animation or your favorite quote.

Be pleasant: You probably know from experience that it’s hard to tell whether someone is being sarcastic or serious via email. “Watch not only what you say, but how you say it,” Smith says. “Using all capital letters is considered yelling.” The same goes for sentences with excessive punctuation — ending a sentence with “!!!” or “???” will just make you seem angry.

Similarly, suggests Robby Slaughter, owner of Slaughter Development LLC, a business productivity firm based in Indianapolis, start your email off with a friendly greeting, not an order. “The word ‘hello’ followed by the name of the recipient does wonders in ensuring your email is well received and actually read,” he says.

Don’t:

Avoid face-to-face conversation: Sometimes, it’s just easier and more effective to walk into your boss’s office, or pick up the phone and call your customer. “Remember this rule: Email is more for coordination than it is for communication,” Slaughter says. If you have a lengthy project or proposal to discuss, schedule time to talk to the person face-to-face or over the phone.

Similarly, email shouldn’t be used to resolve conflict, or as a method of avoiding confrontation. “Don’t hide behind your computer,” Smith says. “Don’t use email as a shield to avoid having a conversation or a face-to-face interaction.”

Copy your whole team: “This is like scheduling a pickup from two taxi companies ‘just in case’– you’re wasting almost everyone’s time, and most of the recipients will assume that someone else will answer,” Slaughter says.  

Send an email when you’re angry: In the heat of an angry moment, it is way too easy to fire off a scathing email full of things you’d never actually say to someone’s face. “Wait until you cool off before putting something down in writing,” Gottsman says.

While most of the experts we heard from agreed on the above points, there were some divided opinions on a couple of popular email practices, notably:

  • The use of emoticons in work emails. Some experts said they were OK, because they helped signify the tone of the email (i.e. putting a at the end of the sentence to tell the recipient you are joking), while others thought they were simply unprofessional.
  • Whether or not the “Sent from my BlackBerry” or “Sent from my iPhone” should be kept at the bottom of emails from wireless devices. Some argued that it should be there, to alert the recipient that formatting issues or typos are a result of emailing on the go, while others said it should be removed, because it’s a dead giveaway to clients and colleagues that you’re not in the office.

~Kaitlin Madden

WIA FUNDING WILL BE CUT—WILL YOU HELP US?

***WIA FUNDING will be cut-we need your help!!***
The skinny on the funding-Underemployed and Unemployed constituents that are receiving TANF, Food stamps, Unemployed benefits, are eligible to go to school and receive the funding. It pays for their training. Please click the links and ask to NOT CUT the funding. You need to submit to both links!
WIA info link.
Thank you,
On-Site Computer Training Staff

Wal-Mart Paying For Education? Who Knew?


Every night at 9 p.m., Walmart employee James Boskell sits down to his dining room table with a laptop to work on his college degree — courtesy of his employer.

The world’s largest retailer is now offering its 1.4 million employees a college education. Through a partnership with American Public University, employees can take online courses toward a bachelor’s or master’s degree. And Walmart will cover up to 15 percent of tuition.

Boskell has cleared away the cats, the markers and pieces of construction paper — usually left over from one of his kid’s school projects — and logged on to a couple of online courses.

“The first one is ‘Foundations of Online Learning and Proficiency in Writing,’” he reads. “I’ll be writing a paper probably later this evening or tomorrow.”

For more information go to: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131109016
The partnership between Walmart and APU is an exclusive deal that education experts say is worth watching, but it’s employees who’ll determine if the program succeeds or not.

Responding To Employees

Boskell, 36, is a zone merchandise supervisor at a Walmart in Elkton, Md. He dropped out of college 14 years ago and bounced around before taking a part-time job pushing carts and selling shoes at Walmart. Last June, when the company announced it was going to help employees sign up for college, Boskell was one of the first to jump at the chance.

“In the back of my head, it’s always been there, like, ‘What if you finish school?’ or ‘Why didn’t you finish school?’” he says. “This is something to better myself.” He’s expecting to graduate with a degree in retail management in 2012.

Walmart isn’t sure how many of its employees are as motivated as Boskell, but when it surveyed 32,000 workers — from store managers to cashiers — 70 percent liked the idea of taking college courses online, especially if it led to a four-year degree.

“We were really blown away by that statistic,” says Alicia Ledlie Brew, Walmart’s director for lifelong learning. “We didn’t expect there to be as much acceptance with such a large population as we saw in those survey results.”

“Following up on that survey, we kept hearing again and again, ‘I’ve tried going back to school, and it’s just very hard for me to make my schedule work with my family and work life,’” Brew says.

She says the feedback supported an idea that she and other top executives at Walmart had been pushing: the need to partner with an accredited, affordable online university that offered working adults a chance to further their education.

After looking at 81 schools, Walmart picked American Public University, a for-profit school based in Charles Town, W.Va., best known for its work with the U.S. military.

Willing To Give It A Try

For Walmart, it was a marriage made in heaven. But for Wally Boston, president and CEO of American Public University, initially there were concerns.

“We did not want to put ourselves in a situation where our reputation for quality was damaged,” Boston says. He was concerned that potentially doubling APU’s enrollment might stretch its services and instructors beyond their capabilities, especially because Walmart employees tend to be older adults who are juggling work and family.

“An adult population is actually considered high-risk,” Boston explains. “You can have debt issues managing your budget and those problems in life can exacerbate someone’s ability to complete an academic degree — and many times leads to students dropping out.”

Brew says the company is putting $50 million into this project over the next three years to make sure it succeeds. So far, only 400 Walmart employees have signed up, but the company intends to roll the project out slowly.

For Boskell, a bachelor’s degree will be icing on the cake. His real education, he says, has been here on the job. In fact, APU is giving Boskell credits for the 14 years he’s worked at Walmart.

“I don’t expect to get 80 percent of my degree on experience credits,” Boskell says, “but the time that I’ve put in here is valued, and that meant a lot to me.”

Too little income to afford an education?…NOT ANY MORE! WORKFORCE INVESTMENT ACT (WIA) IS YOUR ANSWER!

The federal Workforce Investment Act was signed into law in August 1998, and went into effect in Georgia in July 2000. The Governor designated the Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL), under the leadership of Commissioner Michael L. Thurmond, as the state agency responsible for implementation of WIA. The Governor also appointed the State Workforce Investment Board to help plan and develop Georgia’s overall workforce system. The State Board is composed of a private sector majority with a business sector chair, and various workforce development, government, youth, labor, and human services representatives.

In Georgia, there are 12 service delivery regions and 20 local service delivery areas. In each of the 20 areas there is a local Workforce Investment Board, appointed by local elected officials. Local Workforce Boards are made up of a private sector (business) majority, various human services agency representatives, parents, and other workforce-related customers and interested parties. WIA requires each Local Board to have a Youth Council, as a subgroup of the full Board, to maximize youth involvement in the One-Stop System. The degree of authority and autonomy of the Youth Council is defined at the local level and may be different for each area. Local Workforce Boards are responsible for designing local One-Stop Workforce Systems that are employer-led, demand-driven, customer-friendly, and continuously improving. No two local workforce systems in Georgia look alike, since no two communities are alike.

Each workforce area has at least one “official” comprehensive One-Stop Center where various human services organizations assist employers and job seekers with their workforce needs. In Georgia, there are over 45 comprehensive WIA One-Stop Centers, and nearly three-quarters of these are GDOL Career Centers. WIA requires the participation of certain partners in local workforce systems, but many systems have expanded to include any and all organizations meeting workforce-related needs in the community. In addition to these comprehensive sites, many communities have other locations for customers to access workforce services, often called “satellites.” These locations may include libraries, technical colleges, welfare offices, community based organizations, and mall kiosks.

A wide range of quality workforce services is available at no cost to employers and job seekers at One-Stop Centers. Typical services for employers include rooms to interview job applicants, and access to PCs, laser printers, Internet, email, telephone, fax, and labor market information. Employers who have special education and training needs for their businesses may want to explore on-the-job training or customized training.

Typical workforce services for individuals include exploration of training/education offerings, financial aid application assistance, labor market information about high growth occupations and salary ranges, and tips for surviving a layoff. Many of these basic services are available on a self-service basis via computer. Career advisors are available for customers who want more intensive help. If certain criteria are met, some customers are eligible for Workforce Investment Act funding through the WIA Individual Training Account Eligible Provider/Program List system: (http://www.dol.state.ga.us/js/wia_ita_providers.htm). Customers seeking WIA funding for training must work with a career advisor to determine eligibility for services.

Find a One-Stop Center (by county): (http://www.dol.state.ga.us/find_one_stop_centers.htm). Contact the administrator serving your area for additional information about a specific local workforce system (left-hand side of the drop-down box), or contact the local One-Stop Center serving a specific county to learn about available workforce services (right-hand side of the drop-down box). (GEORGIA DEPT OF LABOR)

Follow or copy and paste the links below into your browser for just a few of the many participants of the WIA program:

http://www.pegatech.edu/wia-workforce-developmet

http://www.gpc.edu/orgdev/pmwia.htm

http://www.highlands.edu/site/sss-wia

Georgia Works Program…Shouldn’t this be shouted to the world when you enter the unemployment Office?…Spread the word!

By Michelle Chen

Honeywell, an aerospace and consumer products company headquartered in New Jersey, is participating in the Georgia Work$ program.
With thousands of workers grappling for any kind of job, Georgia is making unemployed residents an offer they can’t refuse—an offer that some critics worry is capitalizing on people’s desperation.

The Georgia Work$ program has for several years connected the jobless to jobs by letting them basically work for free at private companies. It’s a triple-win for all stakeholders, the state argues: government saves by moving people into the job market efficiently, workers gain credentials that help them find real work, and employers bank on free temporary help.

NPR reports on the program’s seeming impressive gains:

So far, almost 8,400 employers have signed up, and about 7,800 workers have participated in training. Businesses are not required to hire workers, and those who don’t get jobs will continue to receive their unemployment checks. But nearly half of the trainees — more than 3,700 people — now have jobs.

“The average length, the duration of unemployment in Georgia, is now at about 15 weeks. So when a person is hired within six weeks, then you’ve saved nine weeks of unemployment insurance benefits,” says Michael Thurmond, Georgia’s labor commissioner. “That has generated some $6 million in savings for our Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund.”

Meanwhile, federal unemployment aid has been in limbo for months, as a polarized Congress has dithered on extending benefits for the long-term unemployed. States are growing increasingly desperate to close the yawning deficit in viable jobs, even amid questions about whether programs like Georgia Work$ are more exploitative than innovative.

The controversy over programs like Georgia Work$ stems from the blurring line between vocational training and the types of work that require fair compensation. According to a recent Labor Department memorandum, the Wage and Hour Division uses the following guidelines “to evaluate whether a worker is a trainee or an employee for purposes of the [Fair Labor Standards Act]”:

1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational instruction;
2. The training is for the benefit of the trainees;
3. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under their close observation;
4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the
activities of the trainees, and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded;
5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period; and
6. The employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

For work that matches these criteria, “an employment relationship does not exist under the FLSA, and the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime provisions do not apply to the worker.”

A system like Georgia Work$—which is theoretically voluntary and doesn’t obligate employers to pay normal wages nor to hire people for the long-term—raises questions of equity, possible impacts on the regular labor market, and measuring success.

Participants, according to the program’s website, spend up to 24 hours per week working, receive a small training stipend, and “qualify for up to $600 in training stipends (an average of $100 weekly) to help defray training related costs such as child care and transportation.” So far, the state government estimates a job placement rate of about 50 percent.

The data may be promising, but the number of actual jobs generated seems miniscule compared to the 463,000 unemployed people in the state in 2009. And those who remain locked out of the anemic job market might be left wondering about the opportunity cost of all those hours of labor they contributed.

While Georgia Work$ focuses broadly on the unemployed and not just the poor, state-sponsored welfare-to-work programs may offer lessons on potential pitfalls in the initiative. New York City’s Back to Work program, for instance, has drawn criticism from anti-poverty activists for failing to provide welfare recipients with meaningful work experiences. Community Voices Heard reported in a 2008 analysis that the program had led to weak job placement rates and “a frustrated client population” who were routinely “channeled towards jobs with low wages and little opportunity for career advancement,” like housekeeping or warehouse work.

The core dilemma in the Georgia Work$ concept may be that the ultimate winners are not so much struggling workers, but the businesses that can use them at no cost. The National Employment Law Project fears that employers will be encouraged to tap a basic public benefit, unemployment insurance, as a free labor pool. NELP deputy director Andrew Stettner told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “We reviewed Georgia Works. It looks more like work than training… You can’t try someone out and not pay them. It’s not allowed under our nation’s labor laws.”

Stettner added, “ ‘If a lot of businesses can bring in a lot of people’ essentially working for free, ‘somebody else [working full-time] isn’t getting an extra shift or extra work hours.’ ”

Georgia Work$ boasts that the average participating employer saves nearly $5,000, which adds up to a statewide employer “savings” of over $14.7 million. The biggest boost workers can hope for, meanwhile, is a foothold in a precarious job market with a few more skills under their belt.

Media coverage of Georgia Work$ has featured success stories of happily re-employed individuals.

The overall value of such workforce development systems, however, is more ambiguous: advocates warn that some re-employment strategies based on the federal Workforce Investment Act have proven dismally inadequate in alleviating the unemployment crisis. One consequence of this, according to MDRC, is that “the system focused on quick placement into jobs of a relatively more advantaged population needing less intensive investments and services.”

Will the supposed success of Georgia’s program trickle down to marginal sectors of the jobless population—those with limited formal education, conviction records, or other common barriers to employment?

Will Georgia Work$ become the primary main job-creation strategy at the expense of other, potentially more targeted workforce measures that are not embedded within the limits of the unemployment bureaucracy?

As Georgia prepares to expand its program, will it hold employers accountable for connecting workers to decent-paying, secure jobs, maybe even jobs with unionized workplaces that will ensure sustained support for workers after the state reaches its job-placement benchmark? In this economy, any policy that helps the unemployed get a foot in the door is a welcome boost. But what does it say about the government’s role in fostering opportunity when the door must be propped open with free labor?