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Communication Key to a Better Work Environment Everyone knows the story of A Christmas Carole. On Christmas Eve, poor Bob Cratchit, who is working late again, spends his day working up the courage to ask his boss, Mr. Scrooge, if he can have Christmas Day off from work to spend with his family. When he finally does get up the nerve to ask, Mr. Scrooge lets forth a tirade over lazy people using Christmas as an excuse to have a day a off from work. This fictional story unfortunately rings true for a lot of people who have to work up the courage to ask for things from their employers. An employee who has to feel about their employer the way Bob Cratchit felt about Mr. Scrooge is not a very happy and productive employee. To get the most of out of your workers, you have to create a much more hospitable working environment. To create a better working environment, keeping the lines of communication open is absolutely crucial. How does communication work in your office? Do you get the impression that everyone is walking around on eggshells around you? While this kind of fear from your employees may be good for your ego in some senses, it is really bad for your business. When your employees don’t feel like they can talk to you, you will lose control over what is going on with your business. You may be the boss, but your employees are the ones who are actually on the front lines. To know what is really going on out there, you need your employees to communicate honestly with you. If they feel that you are unapproachable, they will hide problems and concerns from you, and you won’t be able to act to fix them. You can’t expect to run your business with half of the information about what is actually going on, and so your business will suffer for your “mean boss” routine. There are still other problems with creating an office environment in which your employees feel like you are unapproachable. In general, there will be a dark cloud over the office when you are around. The stress will keep employee morale low, and employees with low morale are employees with low productivity. Besides, who wants to work hard for someone they cannot approach or who doesn’t show they any respect? Shutting down those lines of communication will definitely affect your bottom line as employees “phone it in” because they don’t feel invested in making your business a success. If you want a better working environment, you have to improve the lines of communication. If there has been a communication breakdown in the past, take the time to address it with your staff. If you staff is small, talk to them each one on one, letting them know that your door is always open and that you want more regular communication with them. If you have a larger staff, schedule a meeting to address the issue. Weekly office meetings are a great way to keep communication channels open and swap ideas in the office environment. If weekly meetings are not feasible, find some way of touching base with your staff on a regular basis, either through weekly emails or a weekly newsletter. Also, you should encourage your staff to communicate with each other. Sharing information among the staff is a great way to generate fresh ideas and fresh approaches to problems. If your office is suffering from a communication problem, make nipping it in the bud a priority. The pay off will be more productive workers and a whole lot less stress. Who knew work could actually be a pleasant place to be?

Helpful Hints on Getting Better Respect in the Workplace Sometimes, an inhospitable work atmosphere can ruin the best job in the world. If you work in an office where people don’t respect each other and you feel undervalued and taken advantage of, then you are likely to give up and move on--no matter how much you love the work. When people work closely together, disagreements and problems are bound to arise from time to time. There are, however, ways you can get more respect in the workplace, so you don’t have to dread heading to the office every morning. As the old adage goes, you have to give respect to get respect. Are you doing everything you can to treat your co-workers with dignity and respect? Put another way, are you doing everything you can to avoid annoying everyone in the office? There are a lots of little ways you can make the day more pleasant for everyone, including showing up on time for work and for in-house meetings, not talking too loudly on the phone, keeping your personal cell phone ringtone on silent or vibrate, and cleaning up when you use the common break rooms and kitchen area. Things like spamming everyone in the office with incessant “funny” emails, sending political or religious emails (or challenging everyone on political or religious issues), or invading privacy by looking at someone else’s emails, phone messages, or mail are also not a good idea in the office setting. Then there are the big ones – you should never take credit for someone else’s work, talk behind people’s backs, lie, steal from other’s desks (even if it is just a post-it note or white-out), or have a general bad argumentative attitude. If you are doing anything of these things, trying to correct your own behavior is the first step to earning a little more respect in the workplace. What happens if you are doing everything you can and you still aren’t getting the respect you feel you deserve in the office? How you handle things may partly depend on who is showing you the disrespect. Are your subordinates treating you like you’re not the boss? In this case, having a little one on one conversation might do the trick. It doesn’t have to confrontational. You can simply point out that you are getting the impression that they may be having a little trouble with your leadership style and offer them a chance to raise any problems. If they bring up a legitimate problem, then there is something you can work on to make things go smoother in the future. If they can’t point to any one thing, let them know politely, but firmly, what you will need from them going forward in terms of respect. And then, stick to it and hold them accountable for their behavior. If your boss is not respecting you, things can get a little trickier. If your boss has a bad attitude, being pulled up on it by his subordinates is probably not going to do much to improve it. Your company may have a grievance policy in place to deal with issues like this, and it is best to go down this path when dealing with a boss with a respect issue. There are some respect issues in the work place that can’t be resolved with the softly, softly approach. If you are being persecuted on the basis of your gender, your race, your disability, or your sexual preference, you have a right to demand a stop to that at once. If the abuse is coming from your co-workers, go straight to your boss. If your boss is unresponsive, or if your boss is the offender, go right over their head, and keep going until you get some satisfaction.

Working Smarter – Planting Seeds to Earn Employee of the Year To be awarded with the employee of the year and maybe even having your own plaque posted on the wall is the highest of rewards for some employees. With all the competition in the workplace, becoming the employee of the year is not an easy task. One of the first steps to becoming employee of the year is to be a good worker. Being a good worker actually includes lots of different strategies. A good worker is always on time and never leaves early without permission. Of great benefit to you as well as to others is to make sure that you have a pleasant attitude and lots of motivation. The lack of motivation in a workplace can slow down productivity immensely and if your boss sees that you are one major motivator in your department, a small seed towards that plaque is already planted. A good worker is also very well organized and works in an efficient manner. Efficiency with high quality results is a great combination to add more seeds to sprout your career and reach your goal of being the employee of the year. In some companies there is an employee awarded every month. The employee of the month gets awarded for his outstanding work and contribution to the company over the course of the month. Sometimes to become the employee of the year, you need to get several or the most of the employee of the month awards. But since you are trying to be the employee of the year, you must already try to be the best employee every month. You should have a chance for one or more of the monthly awards. Becoming employee of the months is one important seed to harvest your crop, the employee of the year award. Often times, it also helps to have a good relationship to your boss. A relationship of mutual respect, somebody your boss can rely on, likes to exchange ideas and just plain small talk with, are all important. Become his ally and best worker, but do not over do it. Sometimes in the effort to become employee of the year, you try too hard to be somebody you are not in order to show off in front of everybody and forget that working in a businesslike or industrial setting also means teamwork. Try to be a leader and show respect for others at your workplace. If you are just trying to take away work and glory from others, you will soon be the person nobody wants to go to. To become the employee of the year, you need to be a resource for others, help with their daily problems and most of all, respect them and recognize their accomplishments. If you are working in the team, everybody needs to feel welcome and feel like he or she is contributing. As you can see, just doing the most work will not get you the employee of the year reward. Accomplishing many other things at the same time is just as important as the amount of work you correctly and timely deliver. That is why the process of getting awarded is more like planting seeds in the field and seeing them sprout. It is not just one action; it takes many different actions to become the employee of the year. Possibly one of the most important facts at the end of the year-- do not expect that it is you that gets the award. Be humble, think of others that did also tremendous amounts of work and tried to be motivated throughout the year. Do not be disappointed if it is not you.