Welcome to the August 11, 2004 issue of The Total View

Published by Success Performance Solutions, Written by Ira S. Wolfe

1. Mid-Life Career Changes Mobilize Motivated Workers
2. Best Practice Tips and Resources
3. Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #221 to #225
4. Employee Motivation: It Takes Two to Tango...and Tangle
5. Hire High Motivation Employees like the Experts
6. Exploring Generational Differences and Interview for Success
7. Summer/Fall Workshop and Speaking Schedule
8. Are You Wasting Too Much Time Sorting Through Unqualified
Resumes?
9. Build a High Motivation Employee Team

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1.  Mid-Life Career Changes Mobilize Motivated Workers

Remember the good old days of lifetime contracts between employers and employees? Young, eager job applicants sought jobs with employers willing to invest in training and career development. Employers rewarded loyalty with career advancement. Internal promotions were expected. Everyone knew the rules. Life was simpler then.

Today's employer seeking knowledgeable and dependable employees must learn how to hire and retain a very different workforce. The rules have changed. Now, employers often hire for the life of a project, not for the working life of an employee. In turn, workers see jobs as many things-income, benefits, career advancement, challenge, opportunity to do good work-almost everything but security. Very few people take a job thinking it will last for more than five years, let alone decades.

Look around you. The age of 65 that government puts on collecting full retirement benefits slowly creeps upwards. For many people, the mid-60s marks the beginning of a second, third or fourth career. Regardless of the reason, supplemental income, desire to be active and productive, boredom with being at home, the simple fact is a lifetime career ended by an arbitrary age cut-off is no longer the norm.

That  means the boomers who are in their 50s and 60s and certainly Generation X ers think differently when they seek employment. When you recognize and accept that fact, it becomes clear that filling vacancies and keeping them filled is not a matter of simply hiring candidates and hoping they stay. The astute hiring manager looks for seamless workforce solutions to gain the ultimate competitive edge – an unfair share of talent in a competitive and limited market.

I'm walking proof of what's happening today: I retired from my first career nearly ten years ago, at age 44. Who would have thought I could walk away after a decade of post-secondary schooling and seventeen years behind me. I was tracked for a 30- to 40-year career ending with comfortable retirement. Today, mid-life career changes are common. My second career currently occupies my time and interests. If demographers are correct, and to the possible chagrin of my wife, I have at least one or two more career changes waiting to happen before I'm forced to hang it all up.

I'm not alone. I'm just a kid when compared with Papa Joe Paterno, who renewed his coaching contract with Penn State at age 78, and John Glenn who flew in space at age 77.

Employees, young and old, don't want to stop working. But they will if they don't get what they want. Workers today want to be able to work at what they want and when they want to. For hiring managers, that means a diverse work force with equally diverse employee motivations for seeking jobs. This diversity brings me back to the "motivational buckets" I often refer to: those pails that need to be filled every day so that skilled employees remain energized and enthused by their jobs.

Understanding motivation today means forgetting everything you learned about hiring fresh talent with lots of moxie and enthusiasm. An employee with moxie moves on to greener pastures, most likely your competitor, when motivation wanes. This happens regardless of age. The best employees, those you want to retain, move on when the motivation to do the job just isn't there anymore.

That's why skills-based training and hiring decisions so often fail. These are one-sided decisions based on what an employer believes is necessary for a person to do a job. Employee motivation isn't about filling your bucket but the buckets of your employees. Skills-based decisions ignore a crucial component of the equation for successful hiring: the unique traits, interest, abilities, and personality of each applicant and how those factors affect job performance and desire to remain with your company.

Success Performance Solutions offers proven online personality tests for predictable hiring decisions and team building assessments, including the TotalView Assessment and Business Values and Motivators. With these easy-to-administer tools, hiring managers can take advantage of the valuable diversity of the potential workforce, save money, and make the best hiring decisions.

How can you learn more about the tools and techniques used by our clients? See "Best Practice Tips and Resources" below.

2.  Best Practice Tips and Resources

Learn the secrets about how to match an employee's capability, motivation, and behavior to the core competencies required by the job. Includes training on the TotalView Assessment System, Business Values and Motivators and DISC, too.

To participate in our hands-on CriteriaOne training on August 18-20, 2004, visit or order
"The Best Kept Secret for Hiring The High Motivation Employee - Job Profiling".
Your fee of $1595 includes fees for two participants.

Where can you receive more information about behavior and personality tests like TotalView and Business Values and Motivators, and DISC?

3. Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #226 to #230

Problem drinking, including alcoholism, can strike anyone, even your most valued employee. It reduces the productivity of your workers and increases your health care costs - two of the labor storm "fronts" moving in on businesses today. What are employee alcohol problems costing you?  Click here for the Alcohol Cost Calculator.

Fact #221: Alcoholism causes 500 million lost work days annually. Absenteeism among alcoholics or problem drinkers is 3.8 to 8.3 times greater than normal (Bernstein & Mahoney, op. cit.) and up to 16 times greater among all employees with alcohol and other drug-related problems. (US Department of Labor)

Fact #222: Family members of alcoholics and substance users use ten times as much sick leave and have higher than average health care claims than family members of non alcoholic and substance using families. (HSS and NCADD Fact Sheet)

Fact #223: Up to 40 percent of industrial fatalities can be linked to alcohol use. Forty-seven percent of all industrial injuries are attributed to alcohol use.(NCADD Fact Sheet)

Fact #224: 60% of alcohol-related work performance problems can be attributed to employees who are not alcohol dependent, but who occasionally drink too much on a work night or drink during a weekday lunch (JSI Research & Training Institute)

Fact #225: Drug-using employees take three times as many sick benefits as other workers. They are five times more likely to file a worker's compensation claim (Strategic Planning for Workplace Drug Abuse Programs, NIDA)

Don't be caught in storm without all the facts. "The Perfect Labor Storm Fact Book: Why Worker Shortages Won't Go Away" is a must-read leading edge forecast that predicts workforce trends for decades to come. Order your copy today - $7.95 includes no shipping costs for limited time only.

Get the forecast LIVE at your next meeting or conference. Now scheduling 2004-2005 keynotes - Ira Wolfe, What's Ahead In Hiring Trends or Generations in the Workplace - You can't work with them, You can't work without them.

4.. Employee Motivation: It Takes Two to Tango...or Tangle.

Sustained productivity and profitiablity doesn't just happen. Employees have varied needs. Managers have preferred leadership styles. These needs and styles don't always match.

But managers and leaders can now get the results they want with a revolutionary new approach to leadership. It's called Strategic Leadership.

Strategic leadership gives leaders the knowledge and insights to adjust their approach to match the varied capabilities and commitment of employees.

To schedule Strategic Leadership training in your company for the Fall 04/Winter 05, contact us today.

New! Strategic Leadership Type Indicator.(SLTi)
Help leaders understand their own leadership habits and learn how they can respond more effectively in the future. The first part of the SLTi is a self-assessment that gives leaders feedback about their use of multiple leadership strategies. The second part guides them in selecting the best strategic leadership style to use, and the third part illustrates how leaders can develop their direct reports using these strategies.

View Brochure here.

Email for more details or pricing.

5.. Hire High Motivation Employees like the Experts

It is finally here. After three years and hundreds of hours, The How to Hire The High Motivation Employee audio series is complete. Six 30-minute CDs - more than three hours of interviews - guide a manager through each section of the TotalView(tm) Assessment System, complete with examples and stories you can use to hire the right employee and build the best teams. Why TotalView? It is simply the best job matching and employee evaluation system on the market today.

The first CD begins with an overview of the TotalView(tm) Assessment System and explanations of each of the Abilities scales. The second CD focuses on Motivations and Interests. And CDs three through six discuss the four major personality traits and eight sub-scales in detail.

As a thank you for reading The Total View newsletter, we're offering the complete audio series for only $159 through August 31, 2004.

Order How to Hire The High Motivation Employee today.

6.. Schedule Your Fall/Winter Workshops Today

Exploring Generational Differences is designed to explore the differences between the four workforce generations and how to build bridges between them. If you've ever heard "what's wrong with the younger generation" or "I'm too old to learn this stuff", this is the perfect program for your workforce. Half-day or Full-day.

Learn more about bridging generation gaps


Interview for Success: This disciplined approach to interviewing candidates, identifying competencies and developing questions and target behaviors for specific positions, is nearly 50 percent more effective than traditional interviewing at hiring the right employee. Half-day or full-day.

Improve your behavioral interviewing skills.

Speak with Ira or Marilyn about scheduling Exploring Generational Differences or Interview For Success.

7.  Summer 2004 Workshop and Speaking Schedule

Just announced! Ira will be a presenter at the 2005 International Builders Show in Orlando, FL at the end of January. Watch for more details.

September 1, 2004 - Ethical Shenanigans: How Susceptible Is Your Business? Small Business Group Breakfast. To reserve your place, call The Lancaster Chamber at 717.394.3531. Speaker: Ira S. Wolfe

September 13, 2004 - What is This Thing Called Emotional Intelligence
….And Why We Need It In The Workplace?" Sponsored by Clemson University; Location - Harrisburg, PA. Speaker: Marilyn Walker

September 27, 2004 – Best Practices in Performance Consulting, Atlanta, GA. Sponsored by International Quality and Productivity Center. Speaker: Ira S. Wolfe. Ira will join leaders from Dell, Microsoft, HomeBanc, Harley-Davidson,Hewlett-Packard, Putnam Investments, EDS, Synovus and Internal Revenue Service.

8. You don't need a huge budget and staff to hire the best employees

Eliminate The Hassles and Headaches Associated With Screening Candidate with Total APS.

The Total Applicant Processing System enables the small and medium sized employer to do online recruiting and screen applicants with customizable and scorable filtering questions with a click of the mouse.

Use Total APS to recruit and screen applicants for your next job opening.

9. Wondering if you have the right people on your team?

Everyone wants to build the High Motivation Employee Team. Do it with team building activities packaged exclusively for small businesses and home businesses.

Contact Information:
Success Performance Solutions 2481 New Holland Pike, Suite 2, Lancaster, PA 17601

email: tv@super-solutions.com
voice: 717.656.4632
web: http://www.super-solutions.com