Welcome to the September 8, 2004 issue of The Total View

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

"Hiring the right people is the hardest part of a manager's job."  Listen to how Union National Community Bank and Advanced Automation Associates, Two of PA Best Place to Work companies, have used SPS online personality tests and CriteriaOne services to hire the right people and improve customer service.

Segment 1 -High-tech company hires the right people with CriteriaOne

Segment 2 -Personality Tests help Community Bank embrace diverse workforce

(Download speeds may vary - please be patient or contact us for a CD)

Ira Wolfe in the News!  Business Values and Motivators Make News On CN8 Money Matters

What's Inside

1. Will Employee Stress Bleed Bottom Lines Dry?

2. Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #241 to #245

3. Tips You Can Use

4. Recommend Reading

5. Learn To Hire High Motivation Employees On A Limited Budget

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

7.  Over 250 Supervisors Have Attended Managing to Excel Workshops

8 . Fall Workshop and Speaking Schedule

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

10 . Thousands of Small Business Owner Now Build High Motivation Teams Who Never Thought They Could

 

1.  The Truth About Employee Stress: Will It Bleed Bottom Lines Dry?

'Fess up. You know your employees complain about their jobs, their bosses, their co-workers. They gripe about being overworked and under-paid and working too hard for the recognition they receive. Or, maybe it's the guy three cubicles away who listens to music so loud that it grates on your nerves all day long.

Every employee feels work-related stress. That's normal. Complaining about it is normal too. So is that occasional outburst that just releases enough pressure to allow you to calm down and get back to work.

What is not normal is sustained and prolonged stress. If you read the news, you know more than half of all American workers say work leaves them "overtired and overwhelmed." That alone is not alarming until you dig a little deeper and realize these workers have developed chronic, often serious, stress-induced health problems. Taking two aspirins and calling the doctor won't cure this problem.

While management and human resource professionals wrestle with reigning in skyrocketing insurance and pension costs, workplace stress is adding over $300 billion each year to cover associated health care costs and absentee rates. That is like writing an extra paycheck exceeding over $600 to every "stressed" worker without getting anything in return.

Like stress, worker productivity is also in the news. Productivity increased more than 3 percent between 2000 and 2003, much of it now attributed to downsizings, outsourcing and rapid expansion. But according to a study published in the British Medical Journal, workers have been paying the price but employers may soon be paying the piper. Researchers found that the risk for a worker having a heart attack and hospitalization doubled after downsizings, along with a number of other conditions. The cost of insuring and taking care of these stressed and frazzled workers is beginning to exceed the gains made from increased output per worker.

The cost of stress in the workplace is not new. A Massachusetts-based study dating back to 1972 showed the surest predictor of heart disease was job dissatisfaction. But an aging workforce and global competition is bringing enlightened attention to the effect stress has on the bottom line and productivity. A recent study conducted by LLuminari® found that 54 percent of workers leave work fatigued. Ten percent of workers are too tired to enjoy their leisure time. The result? Nearly one out of five workers is at risk for stress-related health problems.

In addition to a threefold risk for heart and cardiovascular problems, stressed employees are two to three times more likely to suffer from anxiety, back pain, substance abuse, injuries, infections, cancers, and obesity.

All employers need to remember this: Chronic disease is expensive to treat. Prevention is a great investment. That's why it's to your advantage to de-stress your business and learn how to help your employees deal with the slings and arrows that fly every workday.

Three easy-to-use tests offered through Success Performance Solutions give any manager tools he or she can use to identify at-risk employees and, ultimately, manage employee health and well-being. The easiest to use is CriteriaOne DISC Behavioral Style Indicator. CriteriaOne DISC uses a proprietary 2-graph system with one graph measuring how much energy an employee normally uses when dealing with problems, people, pace and procedures. The second graph measures how much energy this employee believes is required to be effective on the job. Research shows that adapted behavior changes greater than 25 percent means a potentially high stress job situation for that employee. Workers with gaps exceeding 40 percent almost always admit to experiencing changed in their health.

Now that you know which staff are feeling stressed at work, it's very important to know why and how they will cope with the stress. Many people who feel stress show no outward signs of their misery and, unlike the complainers, have no pressure valve.

Next, we move on to Business Values and Motivators (BVM), a test that assesses what motivates an employee. If the job or company culture does not satisfy at least two motivational values, job dissatisfaction is inevitable. High risk employee stress occurs when a BVM test showing job dissatisfaction is combined with graph gaps of 25 percent or more on DISC.

The TotalView Assessment System (TV) evaluates five personality traits including emotional stability, or how an individual copes with workplace stress; in other words, how long and how often can an employee adapt their behavior (DISC) without burning up or out.

Using these "stress" tests provides three pieces of mission critical information to every employer fighting the war on rising health care costs: how much energy it takes an employee to adapt his or her behavior to be successful at work (DISC); the degree of his or her satisfaction with the job (BVM), and; how effectively that person copes with stress (TV).

A treadmill stress test doesn't stop heart disease, but it can identify people at risk for a heart attack. DISC, BVM, and TV don't eliminate stress either, but they are reliable for predicting workers at risk for developing costly stress-related illness. From these assessments, employers can use the results to re-assign workers with better job matches, teach them skills to cope with job stress, and modify the work environment to reduce potential conflict. It's the best preventive workplace medicine to stop workplace stress from bleeding bottom lines dry.

Take a "free' stress test. Just complete our contact form and one of our CriteriaOne experts will call you to schedule an online DISC assessment and consultation. Just enter CriteriaOne DISC in the comment box.

What do we mean when we say we are stressed out?  Doesn't everyone have a bad day now and then?   Read  "The Response to Stress" - it is one of the best written and easy to understand articles on how chronic stress will make move us from "bummed out and frazzled" to "sick and tired". 

2.  Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #241 to #245


Fact #241:   53 percent of American workers say work leaves them “overtired and overwhelmed”. (Source: Kronos, Inc.)

Fact #242:   30 percent of workers say they are “always” or “often” under stress at work. (Source: National Opinion Research Center )

Fact #243:   1 out of 5 workers are at risk for stress related health problems. (Source: LLuminari® Landmark Study)

Fact #244:  1 in 10 are so tired at the end of the work day that they do not enjoy their non-work time. (Source: LLuminari® Landmark Study)

Fact #245:   Workplace stress costs the nation more thasn $300 billion each year in health care, missed work and stress reduction efforts. (Source: American Institute of Stress)

Listen to The Perfect Labor Storm - live at the 2003 PA Chamber HR Conference

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.

3.  Tips You Can Use

Stomp out job stress and reduce your health care costs. Identify at risk employees before illness and disability takes over.  Develop reliable hiring and coaching strategies to avoid job mis-matches and work overloads.

We recommend the following three "stress tests" to evaluate at risk employees and how much a worker can bend without breaking.

CriteriaOne DISC

Business Values and Motivators

TotalView Assessment System

4. "Required" Readings

"How Full is Your Bucket": Positve Strategies for Work and Life

by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton and published by Gallup Press.

According to Gallup research, 65% of people polled said they got no recognition for good work last year. And the No. 1 reason most Americans leave their jobs is because they don't feel appreciated.  Rath and Clifton say each person carries an invisible bucket. Fill the bucket and an employee is motivated.  Dip into an employee's bucket and stress and dissatisfactions sets in.

"Understanding Business Values and Motivators" takes the bucket analogy one step better.  Employees have a choice of buckets, six of them as a matter of fact.  Over a life time, people value two of them more than the others.  To recognize and praise employees in areas they value, managers must know which buckets the employee is carrying.  In this book, Ira Wolfe describes the six personal motivators with easy to read stories and analogies that any manager or business owner can understand and apply immediately.

Manager's Pocket Guide to Dealing with Conflict.  Conflicts occur everyday in the life of managers. You can't escape them, but you can learn how to handle them better. Conflict causes stress, low morale, and decreased productivity. This pocket guide is for leaders who want to learn skills that will prevent and resolve conflicts and ensure a better working environment.

5. Learn To Hire High Motivation Employees On A Limited Budget

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 September 30, 2004.

Order How to Hire The High Motivation Employee today.

6. 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.

7. Over 250 Supervisors Have Attended Managing to Excel Workshops

Ever since Success Performance Solutions introduced Managing to Excel in 2002, Central PA supervisors and managers have been learning and developing proficiency in the twelve competencies that highly effective managers and supervisors have that average performers don't. 

To read more about Managing to Excel, visit Managing to Excel - Management Competency Workshops.

Managing to Excel is also available for purchase by in-house trainers and human resource professionals.  The per participant cost per program is as low as $20!

8.  Fall 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 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 23, 2004 - Lancaster Chamber Job Fair - Human Resources Panel Discussion at 10:15 AM, prior to job fair.

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.

October 4, 2004 - Columbia/Donegal/Elizabethtown Consortium - The Perfect Labor Storm

October 21-23, 2004 - The Most Reliable Hiring System Ever Used - CriteriaOne Train-the-Trainer. Competency ID, 3 Personality Assessments, Behavioral Interviewing and more.

9. 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.

10. 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