An employee incentive program has become common as a human resource tool.  As today’s workplace becomes more competitive, companies and organizations turn toward incentives above base salaries to attract talent, increase performance and maintain employee loyalties.  A successful employee incentive program if implemented correctly will motivate employees and improve performance.

Before implementing any employee incentive program, it is crucial to clearly communicate the objectives and nature of the program to staff.  Employees must understand how performance will be measured and what is required to take advantage of the incentives offered.  Having employees know why an incentive program is being implemented and how it fits into the overall strategic direction of the organization.  Employees must also be assured that not participating in the incentive plan will have no negative impact on their current position. Full Story »

Employee discipline is an unpleasant part of being a manager and regardless of the precautions taken, discipline is often handled poorly.  No matter how unpleasant an act this is for a manager, it is important that employee discipline be handled properly to protect all parties involved, including the employer, the manager and the employee.

Managers tend to frown upon taking actions to discipline an employee because of the connotation that is associated with disciplinary action.  There is a perception that there will be resentment at the workplace towards the manager once disciplinary action is taken against an employee.  It is often easier for managers to “look the other way” and let minor infractions go unpunished.  In other cases, a manager may feel unqualified or be untrained to handle disciplinary action.  In these cases, managers simply choose to do nothing.  There is also a fear that disciplinary action may eventually lead to litigation.  No manager wants to be subject themselves to becoming involved in a court case. Full Story »

There is a common perception that organizations utilizing performance appraisals are doing so to identify employees no longer wanted or required within the organization.  As a result, the performance appraisal process is often a time that is very stressful for employees.  However, it is important for employees to know that performance appraisals and the performance management of an organization is not a disciplinary process.  Effective performance management has to be seen as a process that should be embraced, not feared.

Performance management is a critical component contributing to the success of an organization.  It is a process that sets out to establish a clear and common understanding of an organization’s goals and how these goals will be achieved.  The performance appraisal is a tool used by human resource (HR) departments allowing them to manage its employees.  It is a mechanism that increases the likelihood of achieving success.

The performance appraisal should not be threatening or adversarial.  It should not be seen by employees as a mechanism for discipline.  To have an effective performance management process, it is important this be clearly communicated to all employees prior to the actual appraisal.  Employees should view the performance appraisal process as an opportunity to discuss and acknowledge their contributions to an organization and how these contributions have contributed to successes realized.  It is an opportunity for individual employees to align their goals closer to that of the organization and should be seen as an enabler of both career advancement of the employee and success of the organization. Full Story »

The dynamics of effective team building present many unique challenges that arise largely from the individual personalities that individual team members bring to the group.  To address this, team leaders must not only facilitate and guide a team’s activities towards the final goal, but strive to improve the level of cooperation amongst team members while accommodating the individuality of the members themselves.

This often becomes a challenge for the team leader.  Ensuring the delicate balance between individuality and team loyalty is of utmost importance for the success of the team.  It is essential for this balance to occur to maximize the level of teamwork and cooperation throughout the team.

Effective team building will occur when the members of team cooperate, not compete.  It is the responsibility of the team leader to ensure that team members not only take ownership of the tasks at hand, but willingly cooperate with the other team members when working toward success.  Competition lowers performance and often brings out the worst in people.  This will in turn will hinder, not promote the fulfillment of the goals. Full Story »

Employing the power of teams and team building by organizations has the potential to empower employees to achieve an organization’s goals.  Many team building events utilized within organizations wrongly borrows from competitive nature of teams from the sporting world.  Teams are often placed in competitive environments and encouraged to compete with coworkers as a mechanism to motivate and enhance performance.

This concept while it appears to be straightforward has one major flaw.  Teams and team building is not about competition it is about cooperation.  Team building is meant to facilitate an organization’s success and enable team members to achieve desired goals.  Competition encourages the concept of “win at all costs”.

Competition plays on the basic primal instinct that exists in us all.  Everyone wants to be a winner and be perceived as being successful in life.  Introducing competition into a team building exercise will not only encourage the “win at all costs” attitude in some team members, it will destroy the underlying principle of team building.  Team building is seen as facilitating the cooperation amongst team members to facilitate achieving goals and completing the assigned task. Full Story »

Talk about your loaded questions.  The responses you get could be all over the place.

So what am I talking about you ask.  Well is it quite simply called branding.  The American Marketing Association tells us that branding is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.

To me branding is not so much about getting the marketplace to choose me over my competitors.  It is about being presented in such a way as the marketplace I am targeting sees my service or product as the only viable solution to their problem.  There is no choice involved. Full Story »

By now you must have seen the hype. Big companies spending millions on advertising e-commerce solutions for small business. But try finding even a comprehensible explanation of e-commerce, let alone a complete small business solution and you begin to realize that there is an abundance of resources pressuring us to get on the e-commerce bandwagon, but the resources to allow us to achieve that goal are lacking. The following is a very basic overview of how e-commerce works.

Technically there are different forms of e-commerce, but for simplicity we will look at e-commerce as buying and selling of goods online. 

The first concept to understand is that operating a commerce site requires the same elements of operating a store in the real world.

• A way for customers to gather information about your products
• A way for customers to select and submit their order
• A way to transfer the payment from customer to seller.  Full Story »
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It is a very common saying that first impressions need to be the very best impressions.   This is especially so when it comes to career interviews.

Most managers involved in hiring will tell you that they can tell from the first handshake and a little small talk whether they have an interest in hiring the candidate.  It takes hiring managers only about 10 minutes to form either a positive or negative opinion of that job seeker. 

This should tell you something about the approach you need to take for a job interview. 

It really means that the moment you arrive the interview is on.  You need to project confidence and enthusiasm right away.  You should pay particular attention to preparing for the first few questions to be asked. 

Be ready with your responses when they come to these topics.  Full Story »

Why Extend the Product Life Cycle?

The primary reason for extending the product life cycle is simply profit.  Extending out the life of a product gives the business every opportunity to exploit the markets opportunities.  It allows businesses to gain additional time to generate more profit by establishing a longer presence with the product.

When each stage of the product life cycle is extended it allows more exposure to every target market in that phase of the life cycle giving the product time to gain even more consumers.

Strategies to Extend the Product Life Cycle.

  Full Story »

There are many stages to the product life cycle and they involve different aspects of business planning.  Based on where your product is in its life cycle there are going to be different sales and cost expectations along with different business strategies for maximizing the products profit.  The products profits and expenses will rise and fall as it progresses through its life cycle. 

When you accept that a product has a life cycle you also accept four additional truths about products.  That is they have limited life spans, sales fluctuate with the stages, profits will also rise and fall during the stages of life and lastly products require different marketing strategies based on the stage of their life cycle. Full Story »