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5 Signs it’s Time to Call in Sick

By tiffany monhollon on Tuesday, December 11, 2007

As the weather cools, the sniffles are descending upon workers across the country. And many are showing up to work that way. In fact, it’s a pretty normal thing for workers to show up with a lot more than the sniffles. Some are on the clock with a temperature, and many show up to work even when they are contagious.

Of course, it’s a hassle to have to pull weight for someone who is out sick or to find a replacement, but sick leave exists for a reason. Not only do workers perform more poorly when they feel ill, they also pose a risk to the other people they work with. That’s why it’s important to call in sick when you’re, well, sick.

But how do you know when you’re sick enough to call in? Health experts say there are some important signs for any worker – or for that matter, boss or colleague – to know if they or someone around them are sick.

1. A high fever. If you have a high fever – above 101 – don’t go to work. If you’ve gone in to work thinking you have a slight cold, and your fever escalates, tell your boss you need to go home – or to the doctor, depending on your other symptoms – immediately. Fever is a common sign that whatever you have is contagious, and the last thing any employer wants is for their entire workforce to be taken down by the same bug.

2. A very sore throat. White patches on your throat plus a fever is a common sign of strep throat, which is highly contagious. A very sore throat is also associated with a number of other common contagious ailments, so see a doctor and then head home instead of to work.

3. A cough. A minor cough can be due to allergies or minor irritants, which you can work through, but if you have a cough plus aches and a fever, you may have a cold. You won’t get over a severe cold or the flu unless you get rest, so stay at home. You won’t feel well enough to get much accomplished anyway.
A severe cough along with mucus or shortness of breath can be a sign of bronchitis or pneumonia, so it’s best to see a doctor and stay away from the workplace until they’ve signed off on your health.

4. Stomach problems. According to experts, if you can’t hold down food, don’t go in to work. You could have a contagious stomach virus, which typically lasts one or two days. Food poisoning is another option, and the last thing you want to do at work is puke in the presence of your co-workers.

5. Pinkeye. Even though you might not feel miserable, the bright red, matted, gooey eye you are sporting is highly contagious if it’s the most common form of pinkeye. See a doctor, because this infection will need to be fought with antibiotics.

If you have one of these or other signs, chances are, you are too sick to be at work. Give as much advance notice as possible to your boss, but when you’re sick, do yourself, your boss and everyone you work with a favor. Call in sick.

Have you ever gone to work sick? How bad was it? Does your boss encourage you to take sick leave when you’re not feeling 100%? Let us know in the comments below!

Note: This article is not intended to replace expert medical advice. Please consult with your physician.

The Daily Grind

Workplace Routine: 3 Ways to Shake Up the “Same Old, Same Old”

By summer on Friday, December 7, 2007

If you’re like many employees, your job is pretty consistent throughout the week. While you may have a few surprises pop up every now and then, for the most part, your work follows a predictable pattern. While a routine can be comforting, it can also get dull after a while.

If you’re so familiar with your job that you could do it in your sleep, it’s time to shake things up a little. The tips below can help you get out of a rut and get reenergized at work.

Break Out of the Daily Grind. Have you ever watched a movie that was so predictable you knew what the ending of the film would be within the first five minutes? It made for a pretty boring two hours, didn’t it? The same is true for your work. To mix things up and keep yourself interested in your job, you’ve got to add a little variety to each day. One way to spice up your work day is to change your routine. Do you archive e-mails every Monday at 3 p.m.? Why not try Fridays at 9 a.m. instead? File paperwork first thing every morning? Switch it to the last thing you do before you go home. You might be amazed how simply shifting your schedule can breathe new life into your day.

Change Your Scenery. Your surroundings affect your outlook. Sitting at the same desk, looking at the same computer screen, eight hours a day, five days a week, can take a toll on your creativity and enthusiasm. When you feel yourself going into zombie-mode at work, get up and get your blood flowing with a brisk walk around the building. Or if you have the opportunity, relocate for an hour or two and do your work in an empty office, conference room or even outdoors or at a coffee shop. Another way to freshen up your surroundings is to rearrange your workspace. Put up new pictures and change the position of your desk or computer. Anything that livens up your physical environment will help you feel more invigorated on the job.

Look at Your Work with a New Perspective. The daily grind can make you feel “ho hum” about your job if you’re not careful. To create a more interesting work environment, try giving your attitude a face lift. Your perspective makes a huge impact on your job satisfaction and performance. If you go to work saying, “Today’s going to be a great day. I’m going to accomplish a lot,” you’ll have a much better day than if you start the morning saying, “I can’t wait until Friday.” Making the effort to see your work in a positive light will allow you to infuse creativity and add a little extra zip into your routine. Focus on doing your best, even with small everyday tasks. Challenge yourself to do your work faster and more efficiently. Looking for ways to improve the status quo can keep you from becoming apathetic about your job.

Nobody wants to spend their working hours feeling bored or dreaming of being someplace else. To chase the “blahs” away, strive to make each day a little better than the one before by making simple changes in your routine, workspace and attitude.

Do you struggle to stay energized throughout the work week? What helps you stay motivated on the job?

Leadership

5 Tips to Empower Your Team

By Jennifer Kenley on Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Employers often times want to empower their employees, but they don’t always know quite how to go about it. Empowering employees is crucial to the survival, expansion and growth of your business. It not only creates employee satisfaction but increases productivity and morale. Here are five tips to empower your employees.

Ask for input. It can be hard to ask for ideas and suggestions from staff members if your department isn’t used to working together on projects as a team. But, who knows your customers better than the employees who interact with them on a daily basis? And for internal issues, employees are in the midst of the daily activities and can contribute valuable information for making things better. These employees know what will work both internally and externally to make everyone happy. By allowing all your employees to actively add input, you will not only add value to your clients, but you will add value to your staff as well.
Reinforce with positive feedback. Make sure your employees know when they have done a job well. Many employers may avoid consistently giving positive feedback to employees because they believe employees are just doing their jobs and shouldn’t require recognition. However, employees often become unmotivated when they hear only negative feedback. Employees who feel respected and valued within their departments will perform better on their tasks and are more likely to stay loyal to your company.
Designate leaders. It is important to delegate projects and tasks to individual employees and give them authority over specific projects because it gives them a sense of value within the organization. They begin to see the goals of the company more clearly and feel more a part of the process. Assign projects to high-performing employees and make them leaders on individual tasks. This will not only help alleviate your own workload, but it also gives your employees an opportunity to shine.
Mentor your employees. The most successful companies are the ones that invest in their most valuable assets, their people. Investing in your employees’ developmental growth not only benefits them, but it also benefits your company. Instead of focusing on just being their boss or managing your team, try being your employees’ mentor. Focus on coaching them to success. Help them achieve not only the department or company goals, but their personal career goals as well. Find out where they want to be in the next year, or even five years, and help them achieve their goals by giving them the tools they need to develop and become successful.
Encourage open communication. Make sure that you clearly communicate your goals, projects and ideas, and encourage your employees do the same. Establish an environment where employees are comfortable expressing their comments and feel free to experiment with new ideas. Encourage your employees to contribute in brainstorming activities and commend them for their feedback. This will generate new ideas and establish a more team-oriented atmosphere.

Empowering your employees doesn’t have to be difficult. By following these five tips, you will start to see a difference in your employees’ attitudes, improved respect among co-workers and an increase in productivity. Employers will also see leaders rising to the challenges of more responsibility and a sense of ownership and pride in their employees’ work.

Career Advancement

3 Ways to Improve Communication with Your Boss

By summer on Thursday, November 29, 2007

Are you getting the support you need from your boss? If not, you probably feel frustrated and overlooked at times. To improve your relationship with your boss, it’s important to focus on communicating your needs in a respectful way. This means being willing to open up and start a dialogue with your supervisor. The following tips can help you talk with your boss about your needs so that, together, you can create a work environment you’ll thrive in.

1. Help your boss help you.
Your boss isn’t a mind reader. If you don’t have the resources you need to do your job, it’s your responsibility to let your boss know. But before you approach your boss with a request, be sure you’ve done your research. You’ll want to be able to answer basic questions such as “How much will this cost?” “How much time/money will this save?” and “What’s the problem with our current system/resource?” More than likely, your boss wants to help you be successful but will need to be persuaded that what you’re asking for will really do the trick.

2. Let your boss know how you like to receive feedback.
Everyone has a unique communication style. That means that you and your boss may not always be on the same page when it comes to giving and receiving feedback. Some people like to receive praise in a group, others in private. Having weekly in-person meetings works best for some, while others prefer to discuss matters through e-mail or over the phone. If your communication style is clashing with your supervisor’s, focus on creating a happy middle ground. For example, if your boss frequently interrupts you during the work day, request to have a weekly meeting to discuss all non-urgent tasks then. To keep your boss from being offended at the suggestion, phrase the request in a way that shows you value your boss’s time and your own. “I know how busy we both are these days. What do you think of setting up a weekly huddle up to discuss these projects?”

3. Give credit where credit is due.
To improve communication, it’s important to show appreciation for what your boss is already doing right. Do you like the way your boss encourages brainstorming or praises you for a job well done? Don’t keep it to yourself! If you want to see more of a behavior, praise it. When you give thanks it encourages your boss to strive to be the best leader possible.

Do you ever struggle to communicate with your boss? What have you found to be the most effective way to improve your relationship?

Career Advancement The Daily Grind

Overcoming Office Distractions – 5 Tips to Keep Your Focus

By summer on Tuesday, November 27, 2007

A recent study by a New York-based research firm, Basex, found that the average knowledge worker loses 2.1 hours a day of productivity, or 28% of the workday due to workplace distractions. Even the most focused employees can have a difficult time remaining on task under a barrage of e-mails, phone calls and visits from uninvited co-workers. If workplace distractions are breaking up your concentration, check out the tips below to get back on task and in the zone.

Give Your Outlook a Break.
E-mail is a great tool for streamlining business communications, but at times the sheer volume of messages can defeat its purpose by overwhelming you with information. When you need uninterrupted concentration, use your e-mail’s out of office function, and then close the program for a few hours during the day.

Even if you don’t think e-mails are really a problem for you, you may be more distracted than you realize. A University of Illinois study reported by Globe and Mail found that when workers were frequently interrupted, it took them longer to finish projects. They also made more errors and experienced greater frustration and annoyance. If e-mail notifications are dinging in your ears or appearing on your screen every few minutes, chances are you’re losing focus and productivity. So when you need to focus, give yourself and your co-workers a break by going “e-mail free” for a few hours.

Just Say “No” to Unnecessary Meetings.
How many hours do you spend in meetings each week? Now, ask yourself how many of these meetings did you really need to attend. If you’re not contributing or learning something new from a meeting, it’s probably a waste of not only your time but the company’s as well. Another good way to evaluate whether you really need a meeting is to ask yourself whether the information could be handled just as effectively through an e-mail, memo or conference call.

So, think twice before you schedule your next meeting or accept a colleague’s meeting request. While you probably won’t be able to avoid all meetings, keeping these tips in mind will help you better evaluate when you really need to attend or schedule a meeting.

Hang it up.
In some offices, the telephone is the preferred means of communication. While the telephone is more personal than e-mail, it also tends to take a little more time. If phone calls interrupt your focus every few minutes, it’s time for you to take control again. Instead of jumping to respond every time your phone rings, let your calls go to voicemail. To ensure that callers know what to expect, change your voicemail greeting to let them know when you will be checking messages. By only checking messages at designated times throughout the day, you’ll reduce the number of distractions you encounter, giving you a greater ability to stay on task.

Send a Message.
When you’re working on a tight deadline or just really need to focus, it’s best to keep social visits from co-workers to a minimum. To discourage unexpected drop ins, shut your office door for an hour or two while you work. Or Monster.com suggests if you sit in a cubicle, put up a sign that says something like “working on deadline,” and adjust your workstation so that visitors see your back when they enter. This helps because once you make eye contact, people feel it’s an invitation to stay and chat. Of course, you won’t want to keep your door closed or the sign up at all times or else colleagues will view you as antisocial.

Leave Your Surfboard at Home.
According to a recent survey by Salary.com, the average worker wastes nearly two hours of every eight-hour workday. Of the 2,700 people polled, 52.0% cited web surfing as their No. 1 distraction at work. Imagine what you could accomplish if you harnessed those hours to do something productive instead.

Designate before work, break times and after hours for your online shopping, bill pay and other web surfing activities. Or, just make it a priority to do all of your online perusing at home. That way, you’ll keep your Internet usage from interfering with your work.

What’s your biggest distraction at work? What do you do to stay on task and keep your focus?

Workplace Relationships

Office Gossip: Friendly Chatter or Hurtful Conversations

By Jennifer Kenley on Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Gossip in the workplace is a form of social interaction between two or more co-workers in which speculation and opinion about other individuals becomes the topic of discussion. Gossip can usually be dismissed as idle chitchat, but if you’re not careful, workplace gossip can turn into malicious behavior that can tear teams and departments apart.

In a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive, more than 2,000 employees were asked to pick their biggest pet peeve. Sixty percent picked workplace gossip as their No. 1 annoyance.

Some companies are taking drastic measures to ensure workplace gossip doesn’t interfere with productivity and employee morale. Empower Public Relations, a Chicago PR firm, has taken steps to prevent workplace gossip by dubbing their workplace “a gossip-free zone.” If anyone is caught engaging in small talk about another person that they wouldn’t say to their face, they are immediately terminated.

According to the CEO of Empower Public Relations, Sam Chapman recently said in an interview with CNN, “Gossip can ruin people’s lives.” A small not-so-pleasant observation made from one employee about another can blow up into a major firestorm of negative comments from co-workers about the employee, ultimately resulting in the employee establishing a bad reputation by no fault of their own. If the issue that was being talked about by other employees is immediately addressed, the problem that existed could have been resolved without jeopardizing the other person’s career or reputation.

Here are a few simple ways that can stop you from engaging in workplace gossip.

Don’t surround yourself with individuals who gossip.
Don’t be afraid to report the gossip to your superior.
Do keep your personal life private.
Do let any gossip you overhear end with you.
Don’t be afraid to let others know that it makes you uncomfortable to be a part of those types of conversations.

Let’s face it, it’s human nature to want to engage in office conversations and often times, individuals enjoy the juicy details of potential drama in the workplace. But you must remember, a real person is involved and the potential damage you or fellow employees can create can be devastating.

If you find yourself in the middle of a conversation that you think might be hurtful to the person you’re talking about, try using these guidelines and eventually, your co-workers will start to realize that you don’t want to participate in workplace gossip.

Career Advancement Career Options The Job Search

Professional Crossroads – How to Choose the Right Career Path for You

By summer on Monday, November 12, 2007

Have you reached a point in your career when you know it’s time for a change, but you’re not quite sure what your next move should be? When you come to a professional crossroads, it’s important to look at where you’ve been to determine where you want to go in the future. Your past successes and even failures can provide excellent insight into what direction will ultimately be right for you.

1. To begin, make a list of all the responsibilities you’ve had through current and past jobs, volunteer activities and hobbies. Label the responsibilities you enjoyed and excelled at with stars or smiley faces. Then put a line or an x through the tasks you disliked, as well as those you didn’t excel at.

2. If you’re not sure whether you excelled at something, think back to the type of feedback you received on that particular task. Also, consider the level of accuracy and speed with which you completed the responsibility. If you consistently received positive feedback and were able to fulfill the role in a timely and error-free manner, you excelled.

3. Once you’ve organized your past and current responsibilities by category, take inventory of the tasks that you enjoyed and excelled at. These items are your road map to finding the career path that’s right for you.

4. Now that you have a clear understanding both of what you like to do and what you’re good at, you can look for careers that rely heavily on these skills. Of course, most jobs will probably still require you to spend some time on tasks you don’t find 100% exciting, but the important thing is to acquire a position where the majority of your time will be spent on tasks that you really enjoy and excel at.

When you’re working in a career that plays on your strengths and stimulates your mind, you’ll find that you’re more professionally fulfilled, productive and satisfied.