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Success in the modern business environment depends on effective people management skills. With a little effort you may learn and improve these skills. Having a spontaneous skill for communicating with people is a plus, but there are a few things you can do to facilitate the process.

Build relationships: Remembering individuals by name can be a start. Talk to employees; get eye contact during a conversation. Develop a respectful attitude, and be attentive to everything the other person says, irrespective of whether you are in agreement with them. Developing the ability to listen is among the greatest things you can do to improve your people management skills. Welcome any contributions from your team members. Exhibit integrity: Keeping your promises is fundamental. If you can’t deliver on what you promise, the fragile bond of trust is violated, and nobody will offer you their best if they do not trust you. Each time you make a statement or give a promise, make sure you can deliver or it would be better not to give your word at all. You’ll discover, when your people can’t count on you, your team won’t be there when it’s really important. Feedback is important: It’s a two way street. Talent management skills mean keeping an open mind to all feedback. If you are prepared to show that you are accessible and receptive, you establish that you want to listen to your co-worker’s views, and they should value yours. Open discourse in addition encourages original ways of thinking, ways of achieving goals, and develops the team. By giving the staff some input, the success of the business becomes important to every employee. Communication is important: Good communication is central to managing employees with skill. Keeping an open door policy, listen intently to people, be open minded, and allow all of your staff a chance to speak. Inspire staff not just to communicate with you, but also with each other. The creative process relies heavily on the open exchange of ideas, and in listening to each other, it becomes simple to discover issues before they could become a problem, and measures can be applied before things get out of hand. This may take some effort, even so the payoff is worth it. Through promoting a good team dynamic and developing effective listening techniques, you can have a successful business.

Many patterns in our society act like the swing of a pendulum, first one way and then the other. The highs usually go too high, and the lows sink too low. The same concept fits hiring trends.

In the not to distant past we had the swing of the dot-coms, companies were being started almost every bit of each day. Then came the swing of the pendulum, companies folded, jobs went away, and now ten years later many of those buildings remain vacant.

Then we entered the 2000’s and the hot industries were bio-tech and health-care. The SF Area saw a growth of schools training people in the medical field; even the EDD started training people for the medical field. Unfortunately, after a while, the number of people looking for jobs far exceeded the needs of the industry and today many of these professionals are now seeking a new hot field.

The new buzzword for jobs in 2009-10…and maybe beyond…is “GREEN JOBS”. The government has injected colossal sums of funds for companies in a variety of connected industries – like batteries, smart-grid, solar thermal, wind. These amounts are allowing these companies to expand and also helping new companies to get a start. According to CNN Money (11/18/2009), the government stimulus money has made 110,185 jobs in California. In discussions with Paul Davis, V.P. of Client Services here at the AA-Careers job hunting center, this year 25% of new clients are seeking career changes, and over 20% of them are taking clean tech jobs. The job positions cover the complete spectrum from accounting to hardware developers to customer service and sales and marketing.

According to an article done by CareerBuilder, hiring in the 2009 period in “Green” jobs increased nationwide by 13 %, and that will grow again in 2010. Clean Edge.(October 2009) states “President Obama and Chinese President Jintao have both made clean-tech development and deployment a cornerstone of their leadership, targeting the creation of millions of new clean-tech jobs”. “Many believe we are just at the beginning of the clean-tech job creation era.” It could be the deepest growth area since the coming of the computer and the Net.

The top 5 sectors for clean-tech job growth, according to CleanEdge are:
1. solar
2. Bio fuels & Biomaterials
3. Conservation and Recycling
4. Smart Grid, and
5. Wind Power.

Making job changes has never been simple. Many people using the old “Tombstone Style” resume have little success and tend to give up, using excuses such as “they are only hiring people with prior experience”. Paul Davis and his staff at AA-Careers have been extraordinarily successful for years using highly targeted resumes which contain more and highly specific information regarding the job hunter’s ability to make the company money or save them money, based upon past accomplishments. Think about your past accomplishments and how could they apply to the new rapidly growing “green” jobs.

Stay tuned for more hiring trends with our new job hunting blog!

Here’s a very deep secret few net gurus are willing to share or actually mention without a fee. Part of the reasons to their success is they were among the first to start it all. If you’ll remember hearing,’first come, first serve’ it’s the same way on the internet.

Folks generally remember who was first, not 2nd. For instance, who was the first to sell books online? Amazon ; who was second? Who was first to start mass production cars? Ford ; who was second? Which company was the first to start the fast-food chain restaurant? McDonalds ; who was second? Who was the first to build an airplane? The Wright brothers ; who was second?

Did you at any time spot the crickets when I asked for the second provider?

We all have a tendency to remember who was first but rarely do we remember too much further than that. Whomever enters the market first generally makes the most important impression. Most of our Internet gurus are extremely wealthy because they were first to present their products. Is that fair? Well, from their point of view, of course it is. But from ours, it isn’t very desirable.

Now you are thinking that you have got to be first at something to become rich but you don’t know what to be first at ; so, you think it is not possible. Take it easy, my chum. There are ways around it. Let me ask you a question. Who owns money?

Did you try asserting Bill Gates? Did you try announcing Donald Trump? Did you even try asserting George Bush? It isn’t important WHO you claim to have money, you are wrong. Nobody owns money. Bill Gates has money, Donald Trump has money, George Bush has money and YOU have money but no one will ever own it.

Though money is man-made it is very like nature. Nobody owns it. No one owns the weather we feel, nobody owns the water we drink, nobody owns the air we breathe and so on .

‘Oh, but people own land!’

Do we really?

My point is this, money belongs to no one so do not think you cannot become as wealthy as any other guru you know of. And notice that I never once said being first mechanically makes you rich. That is not always the case and that’s why I say the 1st will make the largest impression.

If wealth was made for only those that were first in line, then there would be no such thing as a line. They’d benefit before us but it does not mean we cannot benefit anything.

—
Original article was written by Kevin Lam from www.TexasSEO.com – Texas SEO is a Dallas-based web marketing and consulting firm specializing in SEO & SEM, PPC, copywriting, web designing and more.

Numerous businesses feel that, by providing their staff with training in health and safety, they have everything necessary to cope with an emergency. Realistically though, training in health and safety regulatory affairs simply isn’t sufficient. Equipping your staff, providing good supervision and facillitating frequent practise are crucial to the safety at work.

Those in a supervisory job has a larger function to perform than just supervising the work environment. The supervisor you employ is required to see the importance of health and safety instruction and have the ability to get other employees feeling enthusiastic. On top of following rules and regulations, the supervisor as well should ensure that every employee performs to the best of their abilty. This isn’t a easy task. In depth industry knowledge is an essential in a supervisory role in addition to a very high level of understanding of the safety legislation, risk assessment, and emergency assistance techniques. Just supplying health and safety training isn’t sufficient for your employees. Your staff must practise risk assessment and the identification of hazards. They must know the best way of eliminating problems as well as knowing what to do if disaster strikes. Only when these procedures have developed into habitual are employees totally protected. Instruction is in reality useless if you don’t keep safety equipment. When they don’t have apparatus that is needed, or discover that items are damaged only after a crisis has occurred, the education your employees have undergone will have been wasted.

You have to check on a regular basis to ascertain if you possess all the essential apparatus and to check that it is functioning well. If your apparatus won’t come up to the applicable standards, be certain to have it sorted out ASAP and put it back in the right place. Your staff have to have proper health and safety education, but they must have quality apparatus, the opportunity to practise, and a knowledgeable supervisor who gets employees excited about being healthy at work. If you take this advice you will find health and safety legislation will become a natural component of life in the workplace not an inconvenience that staff have to attempt to remember all the time.

Many businesses feel that, since all of their staff have the required level of health & safety training, they have all the experience they need to prevent an emergency. The truth is though, basic education in safety legislation and risk asessment simply is not sufficient. Equipping your workers, employing good supervision and promoting frequent practise are all essential factors. Every team must have an excellent supervisor to keep an eye on employee performance, but this person also needs to take another role on the floor. Your choice of supervisor needs to see their health & safety training as important and have the ability to get other staff feeling enthusiastic.

In addition to observing rules and regulations, the person supervising must furthermore make sure that every employee performs efficiently. Of course it’s difficult to do all this at once. A good standard industry knowledge is a necessity for a supervisory role as well as a very high standard of understanding of the latest regulations with regard to safety, risk appraisal and CPR.

Simply having health & safety training actually is not sufficient for your employees. To effectively find a safety hazard they must get practical experience. Staff in addition require insights into the steps necessary to remedy the situation not to mention how to react if disaster strikes. Only when these processes have become habitual are employees totally protected. Training is in fact useless if you don’t buy the required safety supplies. If they do not have the appropriate apparatus or should workers see that items are broken when they really need them, the education your staff have completed will have been in vain.

You need to perform detailed checks regularly to make sure that you have all of the essential equipment as well as checking that all the supplies are being properly maintained. If you find your equipment is not in perfect working order, ensure that it is repaired quickly and put it back in the proper place.

Your workers must get appropriate health and safety instruction, however they also must have good quality apparatus, regular practise excercises, and a supervisor with the sort of enthusiasm that is infectious. When you implement these steps you should find health & safety legislation will be part of the staff’s working habits instead of something everyone has to try to remember constantly.

We must keep in mind that as well as by increasing income, profits can be generated by minimizing overhead and by encouraging better use of assets. One of the best ways to do this involves performance management software. Business optimization calls for an understanding of the strengths and weak areas of its staff; where do they do their best work? How can you adjust your system to take advantage of their strengths and cover their weaknesses? This is the important question. The core trouble lies in identifying and tracking this knowledge. Defining and keeping track of progress through employee evaluation alone can turn into a significant hassle. First of all, you set up employee evaluation systems to assess and keep track of work carried out by each worker. Should you be employing traditional methods, your next move will be the manual analysis of all the raw information you will have obtained just to track future development and define goals. Utilizing performance management software you’ll find that this assessment is taken care of and you need only scrutinize the different metrics and factors to know what an appropriate set of targets for this employee would be. It also renders keeping track of the employee’s progress much simpler. Providing as it does more useful information in less time, this is of course a cost saving measure on its own. It is of course also possible just to use the system to keep track of raw information like performance review forms and to make your own assessment.

I’m sure I don’t need to say, it isn’t employee effieciency alone that can be improved by advice from performance management software. It’s often worth studying suppliers and clients to be better able to reduce costs by precision buying. Knowing the suppliers that offer the better quality or lowest priced products can be a great boon.

Turning our attention to affiliates, clients, and retailers, you can demonstrate who bringhs you the most resales if there are payment issues, which client experiences the worst loss percentage, and the answers to other questions. With this information at hand you become able to customize your ordering and selling habits to boost profits and minimize expenses. In addition to this, it’ll be simpler to plan marketing campaigns due to your deeper insight into your market and the location of your biggest audience.

You can analyze your suppliers to minimize costs and keep up with your target market so that you can maximize profit using performance appraisal software. It also makes employee performance management quicker and far more effective in addition to helping encourage staff members by setting unambiguous goals extremely. It seems the sky honestly can be the limit when using performance management software.

The newest method of doing Employment Verification is to simply hire a company that will set up an account for your company and charge you based on how many Employment Verifications you do in a month. Once you have selected a company and set up an account, simply select the appliers that you want to check. Just make sure that you have authorization from the applicant before you check anything.

According to a recent study, it is not unusual for a human resources employee to spend eight out of forty hours in a week tracking Employment Verification. Fortunately, for everyone involved, a company named VeraTrack has invented a solution that takes the hassle and the headache out of these tedious tasks. Welcome to the Information Age!VeraTrack offers an automated system that is conducted through a website. As a client, one simply creates an account, logs in, obtains the applicants authorization, and begins the Employment Verification process.

If you are a large corporation and intend to this system often, your costs should start at under $5 per verification. If you are a smaller company that requires less usage of this system, you can expect to pay around $7 to $9 per verification. If you do the numbers, you can see that it is a cost effective solution in many ways. If you have to make the calls yourself and do all the verification, it costs you your valuable time as well as any extraneous Employment Verification costs. Get more information online on how you can make this process easier, faster, safer, more efficient and more effective for yourself and your business.

Numerous companies believe that, by offering each staff member training in safety in the working environment, they have everything necessary to cope with an incident. Realistically though, instruction in health & safety regulatory affairs just isn’t adequate. Equipping your staff, providing good supervision and facillitating frequent practise are crucial to the safety at work. Someone in a supervisory job has a much bigger role to play than just general management. Any supervisor you choose must see the necessity of health & safety training and be able to encourage others to share their enthusiasm about it.

In addition to following any relevant legislation, a supervisory role includes maintaining employee performance levels too. This is a tough role. Good product knowledge is crucial for a supervisory role in addition to an in-depth understanding of the safety legislation, the identification of hazards, and first aid.

It simply isn’t sufficient to offer your staff health & safety education. They must practise risk assessment and the recognition of hazardous areas. Staff also need a solid comprehension of the required precautions that they’ll need to take as well as understanding what to do when something goes wrong. Not until these processes become habitual are workers properly educated.

Adequate safety gear is equally as vital to the safety of your staff as the training itself. When they don’t have gear they need, or find out that they’re damaged when they are needed, the safety training your employees have already finished will have been basically useless.

You need to inspect often to ensure you possess everything you need and to make sure it is working properly as well. If an item is not in perfect order, ensure it is mended or call out a maintenance engineer as a matter of urgency. The right health & safety education is important for the health of your workers, but in addition they also need to have good quality gear, scheduled practises, and a supervisor who can motivate your staff. If you implement these steps you will find health & safety legislation will before long become a part of your employee’s working habits not something troublesome everyone has to try to think about all the time.

Even now, months after it happened, it surprises me when I think about it. No phone call. No heads up. No discussion. As I opened the email from a business associate, checking my messages from an airport lounge, I expected a routine update. Instead, I read a message severing our relationship.

What startled me wasn’t that this person decided it best to change a business situation. These things happen. It was how she informed me of her decision that brought the pain. You see, it’s not just what you do that matters, it’s how you do it.

I discovered more about her in that instant than I had in the months we worked together. I learned she took the easy way over the right way; lacked relationship courage; and retreated from difficult encounters. Her intention was to severe the current working relationship, but in the process she also severed my respect. You see, how you do what you do speaks volumes about who you are and what you value. It’s a telling impression that leaves an imprint on those you touch.

Sure it’s easier to use email to terminate relationships, deliver bad news or launch print-grenades. Just like it’s easier to give advice when you don’t have to live with the results; give orders you don’t have to follow; and point out flaws you don’t have to fix. And it’s easier to be reactive instead of proactive, trade long-term sustained results for short-term gains and tell your boss what he wants to hear instead of what he needs to know.

All these things are easier. But easier isn’t better, and easier won’t get you winning at working results. Choosing the right way will. But that means finding the courage to pick up the phone and have the unpleasant conversation, terminate a relationship that’s not working or deal with conflict in honest ways. It means confronting issues, being hands-on as needed and letting your life’s actions speak to who you are.

I’ve found in my twenty years in management, people who are winning at working don’t take the easy way, even when the right way is difficult or fear producing. How they do their work is as important to them as what they do. And while we all slip at how we do our work at times, out of anger or frustration, people who are winning at working know when they’ve slipped and keep striving to do better.

You see, the impressions we make by how we go about our work, last. Bad impressions can destroy trust, eliminate respect and derail careers. But good impressions can create trust, earn respect and build your career. Sometimes you may not like the decision, but you still respect how someone executed it. That’s a good impression. Want to be winning at working? Choose the right way to do what you need to do, not the easy way.

(c) 2005 Nan S. Russell. All rights reserved.

Sign up to receive Nan’s free biweekly eColumn at www.winningatworking.com. Nan Russell has spent over twenty years in management, most recently with QVC as a Vice President. She has held leadership positions in Human Resource Development, Communication, Marketing and line Management. Nan has a B.A. from Stanford University and M.A. from the University of Michigan. Currently working on her first book, Winning at Working: 10 Lessons Shared, Nan is a writer, columnist, and speaker. Visit www.nanrussell.com or contact Nan at info@nanrussell.com

Although there are any number of different networking groups and events you can attend, some of the best networking can occur within your organisation. To build your profile and reputation internally and understand “who’s who in the zoo” it is worth investing time to get to know the people around you. Here are some suggestions of activities you could try to boost your internal networking skills.

Volunteer for the social committee. Every business (large or small) has a social committee (sometimes is it informal) designed to create fun activities to get to know co-workers. Invest some of your time to help the team create some fun and energy in your workplace. Organise a variety of events – some costing money, others that are free, some that include family members or partners and some that involved outside activity i.e. company picnic – you can all meet in a park, take your own food, provide sports equipment and plan to have fun. This activity also allows others to meet your extended family and help learn more about you. If you want to keep it strictly to those you work with, organise an event where you can meet people during the week and participate in an activity i.e. ten pin bowling or the movies. By choosing a week night it means people are not giving up their weekend. At Christmas hold an event to help a charity by collecting gifts or tinned food to donate to the needy.

Arrange a Lunchtime self-development session. Determine a topic you and your colleagues would be interested in, then simply invite someone into your organisation to give a brief presentation allowing time for questions and answers. You don’t need to pay this person; they may be an internal expert you invite. Choose someone who is an expert in his or her topic area. When organising the meeting, set up the agenda so that there is time when people arrive to meet each other, allow 20 minutes for the presentation, 10 minutes for questions and a few minutes at the end to continue chatting to co-workers.

Start Friday night drinks after work. Suggest your team finish at 5.00 on Friday afternoon and all meet at a local bar or café. Invite other teams that you work with to join you. Meet from 5.00 – 6.00 PM so it isn’t a late night and still allows people to meet other Friday evening commitments. Pick a central location close to the office and make it a regular event. After a month it will gain momentum and people will know you are there and will join you when they leave the office.

Organise a lunchtime sports team. This is a great way to build teamwork internally and also get to know people from other areas within the organisation. Put up a notice or send an email asking for interested parties and then form a team i.e. basketball, football, tennis, soccer team are all fun and easy to organise. Find an oval, park or gym close to the office you can use and set a regular time and day each week to meet. This is a great way to also get fresh air and exercise while networking. You might even like to get everyone to contribute some funds and organise team t-shirts to wear, your organisation may even have some you can use!

Hold a quarterly breakfast forum and invite the CEO. Make an appointment with your CEO’s Personal Assistant and advise them you would like to invite the CEO to a quarterly breakfast where they can meet the team and also answer questions they might have. Once you get approval from the PA, book the next quarter’s date and find a suitable venue (preferably close to the office). Each person pays for their own breakfast so it doesn’t cost the company any money. Make arrangements with a café close to the office or in-house catering if you have it, and start at 7.30 and finish by 8.45. This allows people to meet, ask the CEO questions and get involved in discussions.

Seek out (or start) a mentor program. Identify people you would like to learn from within the organisation and approach them about being mentored for 6 months. If your organisation already has a mentoring program, sign up and get involved.

Write for the company newsletter. Offer to provide articles or updates for the internal newsletter. This is a great way to work with the production team (who are often volunteers looking for content for the newsletter).

Get involved in a charity. Select a deserving charity and organise events within the company to raise money for them. Your company may already have a chosen charity, if so; invite someone from the organisation to update your colleagues on suggestions of how you can help even more. This can be a fun way to help others and also help you get to know those you work with. Make it an annual event if it is something special i.e. red nose day or Daffodil day.

Hold a ‘brown bag’ seminar at lunchtime. Invite everyone to bring his or her own lunch; you can invite a speaker to provide information to the team. The topics might be relevant to them for outside life i.e. health, fitness, family or some way to add value to the people you work with. The topics can come from our colleagues – ask them for suggestions. You can hold these on a monthly basis and allow time within the agenda to meet at least two other people from other departments. Advertise it on the notice boards, email and in the bathrooms (you would be surprised how many people read information in the bathrooms).

Organise cross-function team events. Get to know other teams within the business by holding a morning tea and asking the other team to explain what they do within the business and the challenges they face, and then you do the same. This is a great way to find about others and also share what you are working on.

Start a book club. Find a few people who are interested in similar books to you, set yourself a book to read every two months. If it is an Australian author, invite them to join you at one of your meetings to explain more about the book and why it was written. Most authors love to meet their readers. When you get together, chat about what you learnt from the book, what your opinions are on the writing style and what you liked most about the book.

Get in a project team. Seek opportunities to work on projects within your team and with other departments. Ensure you have your manager’s permission to be involved. This is a great way to network and learn from others.

Offer to be the MC. If you have a conference or event, offer your services to be the master (or mistress) of ceremonies. This will help you meet other people within the organisation, external experts that might be invited as part of the event and also help profile your skills.

Provide your business card to co-workers. When you meet someone from another department always offer your card. This will give them your contact information if they want to contact you again.

Make the most of getting to know those you work with, take time to learn what they do and how you can work together to achieve your goals.

Neen is a Global Productivity Expert: by looking at how they spend their time and energy – and where they focus their attention – Neen helps people to rocket-charge their productivity and performance. A dynamic speaker, author and corporate trainer, Neen demonstrates how boosting your productivity can help you achieve amazing things. With her unique voice, sense of fun and uncommon common-sense, Neen delivers a powerful lesson in productivity. Find out more at http://neenjames.com/