Category Archive: Employee Welfare

Jan 24

Three Salary Negotiation Techniques That Work

The recession has forced thousands of professionals to forego salary increases in order to keep their jobs. Now with recovery underway and indications of hiring increases, those same individuals may find salary negotiation a growing possibility. If you’ve experienced a salary freeze, it’s possible that you may find yourself thinking about seeking a new, higher-paying job over requesting a salary increase.

If you decide to maintain your current employment, salary negotiation or restructuring may be in order. Negotiating salary and benefits can be complicated. It can also be emotional, so you need to be prepared. Here we’ll cover the “3 Ps” of negotiations. With these tips and the strengthening economy, there’s a great chance that you can gain a higher salary or better benefits.

Prepare for Negotiation:

Approach salary negotiation as an art rather than a fight. It requires a higher level of skill and patience than arguing or demanding.

Be prepared to ask for what you want: a higher salary, better benefits. More vacation days, or a different position are among the most negotiated topics. Remember: if you don’t ask for it, you’ll never get it. Stand tall, calm your nerves and go into negotiations ready to ask for what you want.

Arrive prepared and do your research. Employers review salary data from their competition and across the industry. Know where your request stands along the spectrum, accounting for your experience, education, professional training and relevant certifications.

Determine your ideal salary number, and then consider a “lowest-possible” figure. If the counter offer remains below your “lowest possible”, know what will your next action will be?

List your accomplishments and successes. This will help define your qualifications and back up your request for a raise. Did you bring in a big client, launch a successful new product or manage difficult projects well? Be sure to articulate your successes during negotiations.

Practice the Skills of Negotiation

For those of us who only negotiate car and home purchases, practice is in order. Talk to a friend or family member about what you want. Have them play “devil’s advocate.” Work out what you’ll say, what you’ll leave out, and the structure of your negotiation. For this, it’s best not to ask a co-worker.

Proceed Carefully

Successful negotiators employ important skills you may already have like active listening, diplomacy, creativity and courtesy.

Strive to understand the other person’s point of view. Listening is as important as making your case. Hear what the HR manager is saying, you may hear clues that can boost your position or stance.

Ask questions, don’t assume. Going in convinced your employer won’t give you a raise doesn’t accomplish anything. You may be right – or not. You’ll only know by asking. You may discover that your boss is willing to give you a higher salary to keep you happy and motivated. You may find out areas to improve in order to get a raise down the road. Or you may find out there’s an indefinite salary freeze which could be what you need to hear in order to begin seeking employment elsewhere.

Be creative. If a higher salary is unattainable, what else would satisfy your specific needs? Increased benefits, higher commission, extra vacation time or the ability to work from home one day a week can often enrich your life as much as a raise can. Remember, in salary negotiation, everything is up for discussion.

Successful Salary Negotiation

Negotiations are successful when both sides feel good about the outcome: the classic win-win situation. Go in looking for a fight and you’ll probably get one, resulting in a win-lose or lose-lose situation. If you approach salary negotiations professionally, meaning you’ve prepared, practiced and proceeded with care and caution, you’ll impress your employer, boost your confidence and increase your odds of becoming a winner.

This article was provided by University Alliance and submitted on behalf of Villanova University. Villanova provides several human resources courses include human resources degree and HR certification programs.

(Note: Many elements of this article have specific pertinence to employment market dynamics in the US. India’s job scenario is obviously very different – however, the guidelines for salary negotiation are universally valid.)

5 comments

Dec 13

How To Set Your Goals This Year

George Harrison said it all when he sang “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”…

Goal setting is about fine-tuning the direction in which you want to go in a pre-determined period. In a very important way, it is about taking the locus of control over your life in your hands rather than resigning yourself to fate or destiny. We all know people who blame the destiny for what is happening to them. The idea behind goal setting is not to be one of them.

How To Set Your Goals

Setting goals is one of the easiest things to do. However, most of us don’t do it on time, or limit ourselves to the notoriously failure-prone concept of New Year resolutions. Here are the basic steps to effective goal setting:

Determine what do you want

You should be able to describe to yourself precisely what kind of results you want. Your also need to be clear on how they will impact your life and the lives of people around you. Once you have these points clear in your mind, close your eyes and visualize how you would feel about this success.

Be clear on the implications

Choose your goals freely, but be aware of how much and what kind of efforts are required to attain them. Picture this effort on a day-to-day basis – what can you keep of your present lifestyle, and what will you have to let go? While the destination may be tempting, you need to know what the journey will be like. No matter how desirable the goal is, you don’t want to miss out on the things that are very important to you. Life is a precious, limited commodity and must be experienced in the here and now.

For example – if you want to move on to a fast-track career and adopt a lifestyle that involves responding to all emails in 90 seconds (fastest finger first on Blackberry), be aware that you will be sacrificing sleep, personal space and family time. If your goal is a high-powered, swanky title y, be ready to deal with the stress that comes with it. There are no free lunches.

Determine a time-frame

Things seldom get done if you don’t put a deadline to them. If you are a chronic procrastinator, break your goals down into milestones, set up mini-deadlines and establish the necessary time metrics for their achievement.

To illustrate, many of us are haunted by the feeling that we did not do enough in the last few years of our lives. With such a demon dogging our heels, we will be tempted to hit the dirt track at full speed and try to achieve everything in a year. The chances of burnout are very high in such a situation. Remember that the journey has to enjoyable. Spread your goals out in a way that allow you to have fun while you achieve them.

Map the journey

Rome was not built in a day and not by one person alone, though Caesar gets most of the credit for it. Achieving ambitious career goals is always about leveraging one’s network and garnering support. If your goal is your mission, then you are a missionary – and no missionary achieves his mission without external resources. Your network of resources will amplify your efforts to achieve what you want.

Ensure that the resources you require are available to you, and that they are not based on assumptions. Accept your limitations and know that it is foolhardy to try to do everything yourself. Collaborating with others is the key. Concentrate on things you are really good at and use others’ strengths to support you in your weaker areas.

Are you getting paid for it?

You will often experience frustration and resentment at not recognized if you are not paid enough for the work you do. These negative feelings will hamper you in reaching your goals. If you don’t get paid enough for the goals you seek to achieve, you need to determine if achieving the goal is worthwhile even without the benefit of commensurate monetary compensation.

If you feel that you deserve appropriate compensation for the extra efforts involved in achieving your goals, discuss with your manager what the rewards would be if your hit the target. Of course, this depends on whether the company would see value on you achieving your goals. Your goal achievement would need to be quantifiable if you want to a fair shake for your success.

Measure the success of your goals

Success means different things to different people – there is no one-size-fits-all approach. If you want to sustain the drive to achieve, your goals must be in harmony with your values. This involves summing up what you feel is important in life and checking your goals against these values regularly:

Establish:

What makes you up (what are your values )
What do you want out of this life
What you don’t want to be known for
What do you want to be remembered for after this life is over.

Keep the faith!

Jappreet Sethi

16 comments

Nov 22

How To Do A Good Performance Review

The ingredients of a bad performance review are haste, lack of focus, a non-empathic attitude and a mechanical approach to the process. A good performance review obviously calls for a diametrically opposite approach. Here are some tips for managers whose duties include conducting performance reviews of their team members.

Be Prepared: The intention behind a performance appraisal is to have a fruitful discussion based on previous findings. Meaningful preparation for a team member’s annual appraisal includes referring to old emails, memos and other communications as well as mental notes pertaining to his or her performance. This is, in fact, a two-way process. The employee should be asked to complete a self-appraisal against the previously set goals, backing this up with all possible documentation. This reduces potential fireworks and enhances the quality of the discussion.

Set A Positive Tone: A manager should keep in mind that most employees tend to be anxious about their annual performance appraisals. After all, a lot of things that affect them directly depend on it. Reaffirm that the purpose of the meeting is to help both the employee and the organization to benefit from his or her work. The last thing that a manager should do is allow the employee to feel trapped or confronted. The best way to begin is by asking the employee to present his or her self-appraisal. During this, the manager should pay careful and courteous attention while the employee relates key achievements during the year.

Identify Performance Gaps: After the self-appraisal, the manager can proceed with his or her own appraisal of the employee‘s performance. This should focus on whether the employee‘s perceived accomplishments are in line with the performance goals set in the previous year. The purpose here is to identify gaps between the actual and expected performance. The employees should be made aware of how a particular performance deficit or achievement/goal imbalance impacts the organization. Employees tend to agree if they see how their work fits into the larger picture. The manager needs to watch out for signs of defensiveness or any kind of negative reaction, keeping in mind that the objective is not to confront but to find solutions.

The manager should:

Allow the employee to articulate disagreement
Not pass judgments or make depreciating personal comments
Stick to areas that matter
Use praise as well as criticism

Agree On An Action Plan: The employee should be allowed to suggest an action plan first. There should be no spoon-feeding from the manager at this stage. The manager should, however, ensure that the plan is smart, doable and addresses the established performance deficits.

Summarize And Set New Goals: The performance review discussion should lead to the establishment of new goals, or amendments to the previous goals. Again, this is a two-way process which should take into account the employee‘s skills and capabilities. The manager should explain how these goals relate and lead to organizational success, and how business would suffer if the mutually agreed goals are not achieved.

Set A Follow-Up Plan: Even if the conversation has been tense, the manager should ensure that the final summary includes performance strengths. The final task is to set up monthly meetings for following up on the mutually agreed plan.

Annual performance appraisals have their place as a formal system. They serve as a discussion forum that allows all concerned to examine an employee’s performance over the bygone year. However, this process must always be balanced and complemented with abundant recognition and real-time feedback throughout the year.

1 comment

Nov 20

Reharnessing Painlessly After Long Leave

Returning to work after a long leave is not always an uplifting experience. The mind and metabolism are likely to have adapted to a more leisurely pace, and one may have taken active steps to dissociate from work pressures during the period of leave. This is especially true if the period of leave has been an extended one.

Even if the leave was for attending to personal work rather than for pure relaxation, an employee is bound to experience a disconnect from day-to-day work life on returning to it. There may an overload of emails to attend to, and a number of other accumulated tasks – which would have usually been tackled on a day-to-day basis – to address. Many employees also entertain subtle or overt fears of redundancy even before taking long leave. Specifically, they fear that being absent from work for a long-enough time would cause them to be replaced.

Another variant of the redundancy fear is, “What if they have found out that they don’t really need me at all?” This fear is not uncommon in a scenario where companies are actively ‘right-sizing’ their employee force in order to cut costs. The psychological pressure of this fear can cause many employees to feel extremely intimidated during the first couple of days at work after returning from long leave.

Redundancy fears will wane on their own once the employee has got back into a regular work routine. However, the realities of accumulated work remain. Progressive managers will factor in this very understandable phenomenon and allow the employee a couple of days of readjustment to the workplace routine.

All said and done, one should not expect too much from oneself immediately upon returning from a long leave. It is best to schedule important meetings for a couple of days after being back in harness, and to avoid having an overload of commitments waiting to be tackled. A quick email to one’s manager before returning, asking for a day or two of slower pace till one is fully into the workplace routine again, is perfectly acceptable.

Above all, it is important not to squander the energy generated during a period of R&R on work-related worries, but rather to harness and utilize it in a graded manner for optimal and sustained productivity. This will benefit everyone concerned. It makes sense for employees returning from long leave to spare a few hours prior to actually returning to the office in planning the first three days of work.

Jappreet Sethi

5 comments

Nov 17

Why You May Hate Performance Reviews

Performance feedback and review is part and parcel of the life of someone in a managerial role. Poorly handled reviews lead to low morale and dissatisfaction, in turn increasing workload. There is a school of thought that believes that performance appraisals do more damage than good to the individuals being reviewed; that they are a waste of time and effort. It is certainly true that it may be better not to do a review than to go through a meaningless, mechanical ritual.

Why Do Performance Reviews?

A performance review can offer timely and honest feedback. According to Pete Foley, PhD, a Principal at Mercer and North American Employee Research Leader, “The overall employment deal is in a state of flux around the world, with employees rethinking what they want out of the employment relationship. Our research shows that, despite the on-going economic uncertainty, more employees would consider leaving today for a better opportunity.”

A rapidly changing, uncertain world needs engaged employees, and employees need a solid reason to be engaged. The performance appraisal can be one of the reasons. Appraisals can drive employee engagement by:

Letting them know that their work is meaningful, and how it contributes to a larger picture
Helping them to progress and grow
Recognizing and rewarding their results

What Ruins A Performance Review?

Short Term Memory Effect: Most performance evaluations tend to focus on performance over the most recent period, even if the employee has accomplished great things over the course of the entire year.
A New Story Every Time: Most managers forget the advice and feedback they gave during the last review. However, the employee does not forget it
Focusing On Traits: In other words, attendance, attitude, beliefs, etc. and not on actual performance
Focusing On Weaknesses: Beating down the employee on his weak areas so that he forgets his strengths and devotes his energy to make his weak areas his strengths
Not Allocating Time: Busy managers hate doing reviews as they are always short on time. As a result, employees feel that their managers cannot spare 60 minutes in a year to give them feedback. Managers and employees merely perform a ritual that benefits none
All-Is-Well Syndrome: Brushing issues under the carpet as some managers are scared of telling employees where they need to change course or align energy. They often speak in general terms to avoid specifics
Fiddling With Gadgets: During appraisal sessions, managers are often more interested in checking their Blackberries and fielding phone calls than in the task at hand. This conveys to the employee that he or she is insignificant in the manager’s scheme of things

Next week – How To Do A Good Performance Review

3 comments

Nov 10

Indispensible Email Skills For Job Seekers And Employees

If you are about to apply for a job via email, the quality of your emailed covering letter to the potential employer is extremely important. After all, you are marketing yourself. This means that the employer’s HR department will first judge your capabilities by how you introduce and portray yourself. If clothes make the man (or woman), then his or her words make the aspiring employee.

In many cases today, emails have degenerated to offensively abbreviated messages. Job seekers seem to assume that the quality of their emails is not as important as their actual work. The point is that the Human Resources departments of the most prestigious companies today will ignore badly worded emails containing chat-like abbreviations, spelling errors and grammatical bloopers. They are looking for serious, properly educated, well-spoken employees who take pride in their communication skills and will be assets to the company.

Here are some pointers on effective email writing to help you get that lucrative corporate job:

State your business clearly in the subject line. For example: ‘Application for the position of _______’, ‘Response to your advertisement for __________’, etc. In direct email inquiries to you, the company’s HR department will have used a relevant subject line. Simply hit ‘reply’ while answering – do not change the subject line.
Be brief and to the point – Do not bore the HR operative with long introductions. Get to the point. State your name and experience, and express interest in working for the company. End with your complete contact details.
Include your CV and scans of experience certificates and additional qualifications. When it comes to your CV, remember that in most cases, the company’s HR operative is not interested in your future career aspirations.
Run a spell check and grammar check before sending. Most email platforms feature these today. If yours does not, write your email in Word first and run a spell and grammar check. Then copy it into your email window.
Maintain the right tone. Be businesslike and straightforward. Do not use superfluous words or language. Also, ensure that you use technical or business jargon sparingly. While you do need to impress the HR operative at this stage, you do NOT want to exasperate or intimidate him or her.

Nor do these email guidelines apply only to job applicants. In the rapidly globalizing India of today, your language and diction matter in EVERY email, be it an internal mailer or a response to a client. It is simply not good enough anymore to merely be a black belt in spoken English.

Most lines of business communication today begin with an email. The quality of language employed in our written electronic communications can therefore be a make-or-break point in many business situations. Remember that every email you send is, in more ways than one, an ambassador of the company you represent – and also your character certificate, personality profile and visiting card.

Jappreet Sethi

3 comments

Nov 05

How To Manage Stress And Regain Well-being

Without doubt, wellbeing is the ultimate objective of human existence. Paradoxically, we often wind up surrendering well-being in order to earn money, and then spend a major part of the earnings in attempts to regain it. These efforts are invariably fruitless – so why do we do it? More often than not, the only real beneficiary of the eternal rat race is the healthcare industry.

For most of us, work is the central pursuit in life. We strive to move up the career ladder, putting up massive efforts at the expense of other important factors that make life meaningful. We are not unaware of the toll this takes; the effort leads to physical and mental stress, while the subconscious knowledge that we engaged in a fool’s errand leads to psychological and spiritual stress.

Managing stress is essential for maintaining a sense of well-being. Stress occurs when we face situations for which we don’t have ready-made responses. The stress factor remains in check and can even be exhilarating as long as our minds entertain the hope that success is imminent. As soon as a feeling of impending defeat or loss sets in, stress becomes unpleasant, unhealthy and draining. This also leads to loss of motivation and destroys all feelings of well-being.

The Building Blocks Of Stress

Stress is multi-faced demon which we create to drive success, and which eventually gobbles us up. It consists of:

Threat perception
Feeling of negativity
The resultant psychological arousal

The drivers of stress are called stressors, and everything perceived as an impediment to what one desires to achieve is a stressor. The defense reaction causes a psychological alarm to go off, and makes us to muster all our energy to achieve the goal. If the situation continues for a prolonged time, the human mind prepares for long-term battle by remaining in a persistent state of active alertness. Eventually, both mind and body tire of this constant stage of red alert. Energy levels drop and there are increased chances of failure at the task level.

The Effects Of Stress

At the mental level, persistent and continuous stress leads to anxiety, insecurity and lack of concentration. At the physical level, it leads to changes in our hormonal secretion, in turn leading to cardiac problems and reduced immunity levels. In the societal realm, it leads to the steady erosion and breakdown of relationships. Burnout – emotional, physical and mental exhaustion mixed with reduced self-confidence and morale – sets in.

The Causes Of Stress

In an organization, some of the commonly observed caused of stress among employees are:

Very high or very low role demands
Lack of sufficient authority to discharge duties effectively
Favoritism and poorly-handled appraisal discussions
Lack of career prospects
Impending layoff or role redundancy

At a more individual level, existing personal circumstances, learned responses as well as inherent genetic dispositions cause us to react to stress differently. Major life transitions such as the death of family member, family breakdown, illness or loss of friends also play a role and make us sensitive to stressors that would have been ignored under other circumstances.

How to Manage Stress

Here are some of the most effective stress management precepts:

Be conscious of your thoughts and deeds, and of what your action do to you and others
Maintain a healthy and balanced diet
Draw up an integrated life plan – give equal weightage to work, family and society
Practice regular yoga and meditation to balance body and mind – there are very easy modules run by several agencies
Remember that it is not about winning at all costs but winning without any damage to you

Finally, remember that we cannot remove stress from our life. There are too many causative factors, and not all of them can be stopped. A reasonable degree of stress can actually be beneficial, because it makes us strive for more. However, it is essential to how much is enough for each one of us.

Jappreet Sethi

2 comments

Oct 29

How To Tackle Financial Stress

Financial stress can adversely affect a persons’ psychological state. This negative psychological state has a tendency to percolate down to the affected person’s workplace and – in fact – into all social interactions. Surveys have shown that financial stress is among the root causes of decreased performance at work and a steady decline in physical and mental wellbeing.

CAUSES OF FINANCIAL STRESS

The sources of financial stress are varied. In India, one of main causes is worry about the adequacy of retirement savings. Debt is yet another significant causative factor, as is worry about one’s ability to pay regular bills and housing loan installments. Most middle-class people in India are also under considerable stress related to their children’s education. Almost 90% of all survey subjects indicated that they experience stress over the rate of inflation and the resultant changes in interest rate, and the fact that their pay packets are not keeping pace with it.

An adjunct is stress created by joblessness or the fear of losing one’s job – which would create a financial deficit. A smaller segment of the Indian population experiences stress because they fear losing wealth that they have accumulated.

Lack of objectivity with the use of credit card can also cause stressful situations. Credit cards are a relatively new phenomenon in India, and many users tend to overspend with them. The financial woe this results in can be attributed to a lack of knowledge about credit card billing, hidden clauses and neglecting to read the fine print.

In the age of plastic money, people are tempted to overspend and misinterpret their spending power. A credit card purchase does not entail immediate payment and this can lead to a false sense of security. The result is invariably a lot of stress. The roots of most finance-related stress disorders are two-fold – lack of proper planning and a disconnection with the of one’s true financial position and future prospects.

DETRIMENTS OF FINANCIAL STRESS

Is financial stress itself a serious matter? If we consider that 80-90% of all ailments derive from stress, it certainly is. It has been proved that worrying excessively about one’s finances leads to heart disease, high blood pressure and in some cases alcohol and drug abuse. Depression related to haywire finances is almost a national mantra in India now. Financial stress also has peripheral bad effects, meaning that it causes absenteeism and reduces am employee’s productivity.

TACKING FINANCIAL STRESS

One of the baseline commandments in financial stress management is – get help. Finances are a serious matter and no single person can have perfect oversight. Moreover, we tend to become stuck in false belief systems about money. For instance, we may believe that a certain investment scheme is the best only because we have no knowledge of other schemes. Effective financial management calls for inside information into market dynamics and changing laws.

Complacency about deteriorating finances is a known ‘killer’. We tend to ignore the increasing seriousness of a situation, allowing it to build up until it is unmanageable. People dealing with large amounts of money – such as businesspersons – should consult a qualified financial adviser.

Even at the grassroots level of household finances, two heads are better than one. Managing household finances is teamwork, not a one-man show. Couples need to communicate with each other over the state of household finances. They must also set weekly, monthly and yearly parameters for what needs to be purchased or invested in. Doing this will considerably reduce the levels of finance-related stress in the family.

Regardless of how serious a financial situation is, it is never too late to get organized. Organization is they primary key for sorting out complicated finances. Effective organization calls for inputs from others and, when required, from experts.

BRINGING DOWN FINANCIAL STRESS

If one is already under stress from financial problems, planning is an extremely important factor. Often, one is tempted to throw good money after bad in hope of a quick-fix solution. When one is faced with financial stress, there are certain ground rules to follow:

Consult a professional financial adviser – A professional will know of ways and means that you are not aware of
Curtail spending until the crisis is resolved – This is no time for impulse buying as a stress-busting measure
If in debt, talk to your creditors and explain your situation frankly – Perfect transparency in such situation is a far better tool than evasion

OBJECTIVITY – THE ULTIMATE STRESS-BUSTER

We tend to run away from money-related problems rather than facing up to them. This is not even a temporary solution. The minute we accept such a situation squarely, we reduce stress because we are no longer trying to escape.

Getting proactive about tackling financial problems means one develops a ‘game plan’. This means positive action rather than negative inaction, which displaces the anxious feeling of helplessness. To develop a game plan, we involve the help and advice of others. In other words, we are no longer alone in the stress-inducing situation and are strengthened in a situation where we feel impotent and weak.

Jappreet Sethi

5 comments

Oct 01

How To Tackle A Difficult Boss

It’s a vexing problem for many – they like their job but just don’t seem to be able to get along with their boss. Obviously, the first impulse of many who have a difficult boss is to hand in their papers and search for another job. Is this always the best decision to take? One of the things you like about your job may be the financial security it brings with it. Is scuttling this security worth it just because of a difficult boss?

There are other ways to handle such a situation. Here are some tips on handling a difficult boss. These tips will not work in all situations. Your boss may be a genuinely unreasonable man, in which case it may be prudent to look elsewhere. However, we often perceive our bosses as difficult only because we are scared of them. Fear closes down communication, which means that resolution of the problem is impossible.

Stop gossiping about your boss. The spoken word has immense power – over you, over those you work with and over the general office atmosphere.

If you have been unable to communicate your grievances directly to your boss, you may have fallen in the habit of bad-mouthing him or her to all who will listen. This creates two problems – firstly, it reinforces your own negative feelings about your boss, making the problem worse. Secondly, it can strain your relations with your boss further because word travels quickly in an office setting. The more you complain to those who cannot make a difference in your problem, and the more slander against your boss you indulge in, the worse the situation becomes.

Communication is the key to resolving most problems in life. If you do not communicate your issues to your difficult boss, he can hardly be blamed for not being part of the solution.

The intangible concept of ‘relationship’ comes into play here. You need to build a better relationship with your boss, and this involves communication. How many times have you approached him or her personally? Muster up the courage to approach your boss and outline your problems diplomatically. Be sure to mention that you are happy with your job, but that you would like to enjoy better professional comfort levels. Be specific about the nature of your problem and ask if there is any way you could help in resolving it. You may be surprised at how open people can be if they are approached properly and sincerely.

If you feel or have been told that your boss has a negative impression about you, strive to change that opinion.

Your boss’ antipathy toward you may be well-founded. You may be under-performing, gossiping about the management or be fraternizing too much with other negative people. Make efforts to correct this course. Drop out of office gossip and groups that indulge in it. Offer to work over-time on a crucial project, and ask your boss if there any areas he or she wishes you to improve upon.

We tend to look at our bosses as super-human people who do not think, feel and react like we do. This is a mistake. In any given situation involving your boss, ask yourself if you would not have reacted in the same manner if the shoe were on the other foot. Once you are able to see your boss as just another human being, you may begin to understand where the problem lies and what you can do about it.

Jappreet Sethi

3 comments

Sep 10

Do You Have Healthy Work-Life Balance?

Are you married to your job? Have your family, personal hobbies and social life taken the back-seat? For how long has this state of affairs been going on?

If you do not have a healthy work-life balance, chances are that your stress-levels are on the higher side. You may be able to detect some of the symptoms of stress within yourself – fatigue, recurring headaches, lack of appetite, depression and hopelessness, etc. However, the more dangerous symptoms of work-related stress are likely to be flying below the radar. If you don’t know this by now, wake up – stress can kill you.

Gone are the days when people could draw the line between work and personal life. Modern technology (read Blackberry, laptops and video conferences) has ensured that work follows us wherever we go. This causes us to lose whatever harmony we may have once had in our lives. We forsake our hobbies, give our families the short end of the stick and lose touch with our friends. We do nothing to divert ourselves from work and work-related issues

If you’re currently married to your job because you’re chasing a promotion, remember that losing your work-life balance can actually impede your productivity. The lack of diversion and family time will cause your faculties to overload and slow down. Moreover, you will have lost focus on what hard work is finally all about – creating a better life for yourself and your loved ones. Your absence from your family is therefore not going to increase the quality quotient of your life

Also, don’t forget that the more you put in over and beyond the call of duty, the more will be routinely expected of you. You may soon find yourself shouldering a burden of responsibilities that should ideally be spread over a team. In other words, your hard work may be nullifying the chances of forming and leading a team for your department. This obviously translates into negative career growth.

Losing work-life balance is also a leading cause of substance abuse, nervous breakdowns and various other health-related problems.

Finally, excessive work may also be an escape mechanism. Many people whose personal lives are out of whack tend to bury themselves in work. This is a form of denial which can have serious consequences. The objective in such cases is to postpone or entirely avoid working on such issues. The ultimate result will be that these unresolved issues reach a breaking point. For instance, many divorces take place because of this syndrome.

If you find yourself consistently working harder and longer hours and losing work-life balance, it is time to take a close look at your options. Here are some the questions you should get answers for:

Are you empowered to hire subordinates?
What are your delegation powers?
Is you company open to flexible working hours and/or telecommuting?

However, the onus of creating work-life harmony still falls on you. After all, we cannot blame our employers for giving us work-loads that we seem willing and even eager to take on. If you have not learned to refuse to take on excessive work, you may need counselling to muscle up your assertiveness skills. You should also reinvent your weekly schedule to include a fair and equitable amount of time with your family, with your friends and on your own to pursue your personal interests.

Leave comment

Aug 01

Tips To Create Time And Harness Energy

Life for corporate employees has become so hectic these days that if they blink, they may miss something potentially important. It is almost impossible to be fully present in the moment with someone constantly on the phone, the report on the desk and the unanswered mail in the inbox. Today, employees’ attention is divided among so many different things that they are engaged in everything, but are never really completely focused on anything.

We zoom ahead at breakneck speeds with the help of modern gadgets, never realizing what we just skipped a traffic signal or that we would really have enjoyed that movie which waltzed out of the cinemas last week. When you max out your to-do list and you struggle to cope up with deadlines, you are forever running to catch up. Final destination – burnout.

We’re told that we need listen to our inner voice even while we’re running around. We need to accepting the white noise of work-related pressure as a given, yet acknowledge our inner voice. Simple? Not quite. In real life, the only time we listen to that inner voice is when our bodies start screaming under extreme work-related frustration. The clinical term for this condition is stress.

Stress remains one of the biggest causes of contemporary lifestyle disorders like hypertension, diabetes and cardiac issues. In a day and age when no one wants to sit at home doing nothing, we often create work for ourselves just to keep busy. We seldom realize that this is an addiction, and that we will suffer withdrawal symptoms later in life.

The Benefits Of A Simplified Life

Creating more physical, emotional and interpersonal space in our lives allows us to view the constant hustle and bustle around and within us with increased clarity. Somewhere along the way, we see ourselves again – and suddenly, we have the space we need to reflect on what we really want to do with our lives. We catch a glimpse of the possible futures we can choose from and make quality decisions about where we want to be in the next five, ten or twenty years’ time.

Also, a simplified life allows us to look after ourselves better. Our stressed-out minds tend to turn our bodies into jails, but now they can become vehicles that take us where we want to go. Finally, we can take advantage of the recent advances in medical science and research on longevity and take some proactive steps to live a longer, more fulfilling life.

People with an overstretched lifestyle use up all their existing resources and then go on to exhaust their reserves, as well. This is why many over-stressed executives turn to substances of abuse to manage the overload. Anything above our natural energy base cannot and will not last long enough.

Question Your Lifestyle Priorities

Answering the following questions will do a lot to kick-start a desire to simplify your life:

Why is my life so busy?
Why do I choose to do so much?
If I continue this way, what will be the result?
What is the price I am paying for this – what am I missing?
What will be my regrets if I die tomorrow – what should I have done rather than what I’m doing now?
How can I go about simplifying my life?

Some Tips

Trust that better things will come if you hold in your mind a clearer picture of what you desire. Start by creating space and time. Cut out activities and thought processes that are not required. You can begin with some of these:

Tasks that are no longer necessary
Things that other people said that you should do
Voluntary positions that you don’t enjoy
Social positions and obligations that take more time than you want to devote to them
Financial goals that tie you down
Ego-driven goals, priorities and agendas

People who devise actual systems and structures with strict discipline are the ones who make their dreams come true. They are the ones we read about in success stories. Do you want to be one of them? If yes, start shedding some of that useless load.

Jappreet Sethi

8 comments

Jul 11

How To Get Yourself Noticed At Work

Have your talent, potential and resourcefulness on the job gone unnoticed while those of other have been rewarded? Have others of equal experience risen on the corporate ladder much faster than you? You have probably not mastered the fine art of increasing your visibility at the workplace. Adeptness at getting noticed at work in a positive way is a major professional resource.

Increasing Visibility Vs. Self-Promotion

This does not mean that you should get busy advertising yourself, which would only make you unpopular. That said, you still need to become more prominent – albeit diplomatically – with the authorities. You do this by indicating that you are ready to contribute to the business in more responsible ways.

Obviously, a great deal of tact is involved in this. The last thing you want is to find yourself labelled as over-ambitious. Getting noticed at work begins with learning more about:

The business
The organization’s objectives
How the organization functions administratively

After familiarizing yourself with these aspects, your credibility quotient when approaching the managerial echelons increased multifold.

Experience Speaks Loudest

However, just knowing how a business works is often not enough – you need hands-on experience, too. Lack of this will show up, especially if an opportunity is given to you to prove yourself on the job. However, it may not be the best idea to experiment with untested management theories in a ‘live’ work situation.

The best way to gain experience is by:

Volunteering for charity work
Participating in a family business
Involvement in local charity or social/environmental improvement work.

Such work gives you a chance to acquire managerial and general people-related skills under non-threatening circumstances.

Effective Communication Skills

The degree of your communication skills has a direct bearing on the image and potential you project. Any business will value the presence of an employee who has good communication skills. These are most evident in one-on-one interactions and written communiqués (such as emails or even memos). The art of effective communication does not depend on getting noticed with the use of impressive words. Rather, it is reflected in your ability to get a point across as concisely, politely and clearly as possible.

Trying to get noticed at work by razzle-dazzling others with impressive terminology doesn’t work. That, and the use of complicated sentences, will only mark you as a snob. That’s not what you need to get noticed at work for.

Improved communication skills are useful while outlining your career objectives to your superiors, too. If you feel that your verbal technique needs working on, find some useful reference material to study and also observe how effective communicators around you handle themselves.

Creative Input – A Sure Attention Grabber

A tactical suggestion at the right time and under the right circumstances can work wonders. To get noticed at work, such a suggestion should not be trite or superficial. It should have a genuine bearing on a situation. If your input is valid in the context of overall business goals, you will get noticed.

A suggestion should not be centered only what you could do to resolve a given situation. A potential manager, team leader or supervisor can never be a one-man/woman show. The ideal suggestion involves team work.

Teamwork And The ‘Common Touch’

Have you taken steps to get noticed as potential managerial material? Well, now your interactions with colleagues will be evaluated by your superiors. You will be judged on:

Your willingness to occasionally get your hands dirty
You ability to take suggestions positively
Your resourcefulness in motivating people in the workforce

These are the traits that you get noticed at work for. The canvas on which you paint your new job profile is the shop-floor, not the director’s cabin.

Keeping Track Of The Highlights

Finally, keep a log of your work – especially the kind performed over and above the call of duty. This is both for your own reference as well as a record on which to make a pitch for promotion. You the right of getting noticed at work by your superiors for your noteworthy achievements. However, make sure that this is done discreetly. Most managers would be more than willing to give you a monthly appointment to review your performance. This is the best time to outline your professional goals, too.

Your objective in getting noticed for possible managerial post in an organization also matters. If the idea is plain one-upmanship, it will show up as a black mark on your record. The idea should always be to be an asset to the company and be justly rewarded for being a valuable resource.

Jappreet Sethi

17 comments

Jul 04

Tips To Build Your Resume

Do you feel that your present job is going nowhere? Do you yearn to spread your wings and soar higher in your career? The way to do it is to build your resume and make it more attractive to present or future employers.

The emphasis should be on gaining new experience. You can do this by concentrating on either value-adding skills that increase your profile and market value or gaining experience and qualifications in an area that you are interested in and feel you can excel in.

Many employees now use their spare time to try their hand at something apart from their daily job. As mentioned above, it may well be something that they have always longed to do under different circumstances. The experience and certification that they gain by branching out like this boosts their resume considerably.

Employers value in a wide range of professional experience in their employees. Experience certificates speak very loudly – the more the better. However, most of us aren’t lucky enough to get wide market exposure in out fulltime jobs. Often, it’s just doing the same thing over and over again till one makes a change.

The Temporary Job Option

If you want to build your resume, you could try your hand some temporary jobs. ‘Temping’ opens you up to many different work cultures and gives you a fresh perspective of the job market. Get rid of the misguided notion that ‘temping’ is for slackers and lazy unemployables. For you, it can be the road to an enhanced career. It can provide you with a decisive edge as far as experience, exposure and knowledge of the marked are concerned.

If you do decide to build your resume in this manner, you obviously need to find something appropriate. You might benefit from using your own contacts. Don’t underestimate the power of word-of-mouth. You can start your search for resume-building temporary work by networking with previous colleagues, family members and friends. Chances are fairly good that something suitable will turn up, either through them or their own contacts.

If you have no contacts of your own, surf the many job sites available on the internet till you find what suits you best. Additionally, scan the paper’s classifieds regularly.

Home-based Work

You can do resume-boosting work from home, too. What you will need are enough spare time after your job and appropriate computer skills. These are:

Reasonable proficiency with Microsoft Word
Reasonable typing skills
More-than-average internet skills
Reasonable diction (vocabulary)

This is the age of the Internet, and the possibilities for building your resume on your own time are virtually limitless. While computer-based jobs are not the only kind available, they certainly pay the best. Other possibilities like writing short stories or data entry may also pay, but they certainly do not help to build your resume.

Doing Social/Charity Work

Today’s managements respect evidence of social awareness and concern in their employees. In other words, if you have a good opportunity to work for a charitable organization, do it. It will look great on your resume. You will greatly increase your resume’s value by adding experience and contribution certificates of this kind. Make sure that you enumerate the details of all work you have done for such organizations, and include feedback and commendation letters if possible.

Championing Your Own Cause

The idea of building your resume is to make sure that you get mileage out of it. For this, you will have to bring your value-added resume to the attention of the management. You have every right to ask for a periodic evaluation with your superiors. These would be the occasions when you highlight your new experience and ask for possible upgrades in your job profile.

If you feel that your present company cannot offer you what you are looking for, go ahead and scan the market. Put your enhanced resume on the Internet and ask around for new opportunities. This does not mean that you should give any indication of this to your present employer. But some jobs are genuinely the dead-end kind, and there is really not much point in building your resume if you do not get the desired rewards from yours.

Jappreet Sethi

4 comments

Jun 27

How to Get Promoted Without Asking

It is time to rise in the ranks in your company, and you are convinced that you deserve a promotion. You could always ask for one, but how would such a request be received by the Powers That Be? Asking for a promotion may not be the best course to take. A wiser and far more effective plan to get a promotion is to get yourself noticed at work for the right reasons. A lot of employees these days have understood this fact and are acting on it.

Mentioned below are some tips that have worked for many employees looking for a promotion. Of course, there are no guarantees – a lot depends on your company, its work culture and the person you report to, as well. In any case, you have nothing to lose by trying these tips out.

One of the best ways to stand our positively from the rest of the crowd – and therefore increase your chances of getting a promotion – is by helping your colleagues. Take time out each week to help someone facing problems. This is a sure-fire way of getting yourself noticed, because very few employees do it. Offer guidance on specific tasks and help them to organize their work better. Going over and beyond the call of duty in such a way will soon get you noticed by someone in management.

Yet another plan of action is to be present at all optional meetings, including online video meetings and business conference calls. Participating in these events – even if you do not always contribute in any significant manner – will get you noticed. Moreover, the information you pick up during such meetings makes you privy to knowledge about the company you work for that other employees are either unaware of or not concerned about.

Similarly, create more recall value for yourself by attending all extra-curricular events that your company organizes. Never miss an offsite get-together or an inter-departmental sporting event.

Needless to say, offering to work as much as possible without sacrificing your current social and family life entirely is a time-tested and proven route to a promotion. Unless you are working for a completely mercenary and exploitative outfit, your consistent presence in the office after official working hours is bound to get you noticed favorably.

Finally, look for opportunities to give suggestions to your department head on how work processes could be improved upon. Make sure that you do not criticize the existing regimen, and steer clear of badmouthing under-performing co-workers. Also, ensure that you make such suggestions in complete confidence. Any ideas that you can pass on to your superior that will help him or her do a better job will get you noticed.

Jappreet Sethi

8 comments

Jun 20

Asked to Relocate? What To Ask Your Employer

Have you been asked by your employer to relocate? If so, you are in a situation which an increasing number of employees are finding themselves in today. There can be any number of reasons why you may have been asked to relocate. For instance, with many companies finding it difficult to manage financially in areas with high real estate costs, a number of them are choosing to relocate to areas from where it is cheaper to operate. If you have been asked to relocate for such or any other reasons, there are certain pointed questions that you should ask your employer before officially agreeing to the move.

Obviously, one of the primary concerns that you will want to address with your employer if you have been asked to relocate will be with regards to your salary. In cases where a company chooses to relocate to an area where operational costs are lower, lower pay for employees may also be on the agenda. It is therefore important that you determine what your pay will be after relocation. As a current employee, you shouldn’t be asked to take a reduction in pay – but there is always a chance that you may be.

Another area of concern in such a situation would pertain to your existing designation. Are you working in management or do you hold a similarly high position? If so, find out if your position will stay the same, or perhaps increase. Certainly, relocating at the behest of your employer shouldn’t mean that you receive a reduction in status or a reduction in salary – but, as already observed, there are no guarantees. In other words, it is essential that you find out as much as you can about your new position before you officially decide to transplant your and your family’s life and household to another city .

Don’t neglect to find out all you can about the duties you will be expected to fulfil after relocating. Since companies often relocate to save money, this may also involve eliminating positions and having the remaining employees assume a larger workload. If you would be expected to perform more duties, you may want to negotiate yourself a higher salary. Don’t forget – these are all questions that you should ask before you make the decision to relocate for your job or not.

Yet another query to place before your employer concerns relocation expenses. You should most definitely establish whether your employer will cover the cost of relocating for you or your family. The financial assistance, if any, may not cover every expense that you are likely to incur, but it may be enough to help cover your travel expenses or the costs of hiring a moving company. Most employers will notify you upfront if they plan on assisting you with the cost of relocating. If yours doesn’t, you definitely need to ask about it.

Finally, take out the time to learn as much about your new location as possible. You will want to focus on points such as the current real estate market, crime rate, availability of civic and social infrastructure such as shopping outlets, medical care, public transport, etc. If you have children, you will want to examine the local school districts, and it would be prudent to scope out the current job outlook for your spouse’s line of work in the new city.

Jappreet Sethi

3 comments

Jun 14

How To Tackle Difficult People at Work

It doesn’t matter how great the organization you work for is. It doesn’t matter how fulfilling the work culture and atmosphere is. There will always be difficult people at work with a different agenda than helping with optimum work performance.

Maybe you cannot understand why people want to be anything other than professional or team-spirited at work. Perhaps you feel that people should not let their personal problems or prejudices intrude on the workplace. But the fact is that we all carry outside baggage into the office. It shows up in ways that others will not fully understand. Any professional environment will feature people with vastly different expectations from the job, each other and life in general.

The factor that causes the most interpersonal problems on the job is insecurity. A co-worker’s insecurity may show up in the form of malicious gossip or slander, a fawning attitude towards the management, inappropriate curiosity about what you are doing, manipulation and plain nastiness. Such symptoms in others tend to grate on our nerves.We assume that they are trying to find shortcuts to success – and we are often right.

Considering the pace at which we conduct our work in the 21st Century, our work culture has become highly depersonalized. To fully analyze why certain people behave the way they do would require the services of an in-house psychologist. In fact, many progressive organizations do offer such services. But how do we protect ourselves from difficult people at work without the benefit of an internal arbitrator?

They come in various shades, and they have different styles and approaches to making their presence felt. To be fair, most of them may not even know how disruptive they can be – then again, some do. However, the sincere and focused always has a bad time with them.

You may, for instance, have come across the typical brown-noser. They seem to have very little personal dignity, or a very strange version of it. Getting and staying in the good books of their (and your) superiors seems to be their main priority. Apart from being a shortcut, this also seems to them to be the best way of saving on effort. Bootlickers are universally despised.

Bootlickers invariably see their tendencies in a very positive light.
To them, it is uncommon and enviable dedication and devotion to those in charge.
This presents a major problem – they are very averse to being told the truth about their tactics.
This state of denial ensures that the problem does not easily resolve itself.

Yes, such behavior in others is disturbing at the workplace. However, you would do well to remember that they rarely get the results they want. Most managers do not mistake subservience for effectiveness. In fact, you should train yourself to ignore the bootlickers. Many enlightened employees have found that getting to know the brown-noser better on a personal basis can defuse the situation entirely.

If you have people around you who maliciously wreck your efforts, that is another matter. These rank among the most difficult people at work. They disrupt the peace and harmony of the workplace. Unable to achieve good results in their own right, they sabotage those of others. In rare instances, it may be out of sheer ignorance. Whatever the case, their influence is extremely negative.

You may find that a critical document has been misplaced
Your Internet connection may have been mysteriously disconnected.
You may not receive the accounts you badly need even though the person responsible for giving them to you is aware of the urgency.
A malicious piece of gossip affecting you may have been put in the ear of the supervisor.

Sounds familiar? If you have such a co-worker in your midst, you know that such a person can cause a lot of damage and is often extremely clever. To him or her, the act of sabotage is a game that must be won. Exposing such an individual can be time-consuming and extremely stressful.

What about the obnoxious guy who pushes his weight around? He is the office equivalent of the schoolyard supremo. His tools of the trade are ridicule, overt and veiled threats as well as verbal and physical abuse. The object of these difficult people at work may be:

To compensate for intellectual deficiencies.
To compensate for inbuilt laziness by using others to do the work meant for them.
To compensate for a lousy personal relationship or a past of abuse.

Again, this person is a highly insecure one and probably has real personal problems. If he really is a problem to you, try confronting him alone and asking him what his problem with you is. The idea is to do this in private. He will feel less defensive if there is no audience. Alternatively, you can bring him to the notice of the management and explain that his behavior is disruptive. You can even get the endorsement of other victims in this.

The chronic snitch is another of the difficult people at work that many of us are familiar with. Whether for personal gain or out of plain mean-mindedness, such persons will not hesitate to sell you down the river. They are usually pleasant and co-operative on the surface. This enables them to obtain inside information and then act on it. Here are some symptoms of such a turncoat in your office:

A personal confidence that damages your professional image at the workplace is leaked to the authorities.
The fact that you have under-performed or made a serious mistake is suddenly the talk of the office.
Someone else gets the credit for a project that you slaved on. Amongst the difficult people at the workplace, these can be the most damaging.

Excessive ambition is another unpleasant trait in certain colleagues. To them, the workplace is the venue for political intrigue or simple personal gain. Co-workers and even superiors exist solely to be manipulated. These extremely difficult people at work are usually power seekers who will stop at nothing. They may employ:

Blackmail to get a personal deal through
Gossip to spread a self-serving rumor
Spurious claims of personal connections to the management

Their ultimate objective is to gain a position of strength. This strength may then used to gain internal political traction (promotions, raises etc) or for financial gain not related to official work. You can confront such people via private memos or in privacy and warn them that you will not stand for their behavior. They are usually spines and easily intimidated.

In any modern work environment, you will encounter these and other troublemakers – be it the chronic latecomer who always has some pathetic excuse, the slob who messes the place up, the workaholic who just can’t stop producing, etc.

The idea in your dealings with such people is not to let your own professional momentum and personal equilibrium be disrupted.

Jappreet Sethi

9 comments

HR Blog | Human Resources

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes" – Oscar Wilde

Follow Human Resources Blog

Read More on

Category Archive: Employee Welfare

Three Salary Negotiation Techniques That Work

How To Set Your Goals This Year

How To Do A Good Performance Review

Reharnessing Painlessly After Long Leave

Why You May Hate Performance Reviews

Indispensible Email Skills For Job Seekers And Employees

How To Manage Stress And Regain Well-being

How To Tackle Financial Stress

How To Tackle A Difficult Boss

Do You Have Healthy Work-Life Balance?

Tips To Create Time And Harness Energy

How To Get Yourself Noticed At Work

Tips To Build Your Resume

How to Get Promoted Without Asking

Asked to Relocate? What To Ask Your Employer

How To Tackle Difficult People at Work

Search HR Blog

Recommend us on Facebook

HR Blog Posts

Copyright