Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Strengthening Employee Engagement

Originally printed in the Guelph Business Venture Magazine - April 2010
While employee satisfaction and engagement has been a topic on many human resources professionals’ minds over the past few years, it is only now starting to be considered by company owners and operators. Many employers are starting to see that successful organizations are the ones that ensure employee growth and satisfaction, not just those that hire the right candidates.

Effective human resource management and planning is required throughout the employees’ life cycle with the organization to encourage employee growth and success. Satisfying and engaging employees not only encourage critical thinking and heightened creativity; it also produces a higher quality of work and optimized performance. Organizations that are able to effectively engage employees experience lower employee turnover, see increased customer satisfaction, have a stronger team based culture with improved performance and commitment to the values and objectives set out by the organization.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Accessibility Customer Service Standard – it’s the law

Originally printed in the Guelph Business Venture Magazine - February 2010

Does your company provide goods or services to the public or other third parties within Ontario? Does your company have one or more employees? If you answered yes to both these questions, then the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) - Accessibility Customer Service Standard applies to you and you are legally required to comply with the requirements. The Accessibility Standard became law on January 1, 2008, with public sector companies required to comply by January 1, 2010 and private and non-profit organizations required to comply by January 1, 2012.

What does this mean to you and your organization? There are set requirements set out to ensure you are providing accessible customer service to people with various kinds of disabilities, in summary all companies must:


Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Hazards Often Missed

Originally printed in the Guelph Business Venture Magazine - December 2009

As recommended by the Conference Board of Canada, businesses that wish to succeed and prosper in today’s economy need to start to include psychosocial issues in their policies and programs. Organizations that identify and correct the psychosocial issues in the workplace will experience fewer injuries, less sick time, less benefit claims, and will see an increase in productive, healthy and happy employees.

Psychosocial hazards are workplace stressors or work organizational factors that can threaten the mental or physical health of employees. Examples your organization may identify with include; work overload and time pressures, lack of influence or control over job, lack of social support from supervisor or co-workers, lack of proper training or lack of any training to properly perform the job, to little or too much responsibility, ambiguity in the job responsibilities, lack of status, rewards and appreciation, discrimination, harassment or bullying by co-workers or supervisor, poor communication, lack of respect for the employee and the work they do.


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