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Top Tips for Good Managers

June 29, 2010 By

Top Tips for Good Managers

If you want to be the very best manager, make sure you follow all of these tips.

  • http://www.crystalinks.com/micromanagement.html

    Ignore your employees- they love not getting any attention.

  • Make sure you never learn their names- it makes them feel important.
  • Hand out new projects on the fastest fingers first basis- ensuring that the right person gets the job is not really that essential.
  • Ask your employees to work late, and at the last minute.  Everybody loves working nights and weekends for no extra pay.
  • Micro-manage.  We all love it when our managers breath down our backs.
  • Make sure office noise is abundant- nobody needs sound masking for better focus.
  • Have employees report to different bosses every week.  Confusion breeds respect.
  • Make your employees refer to you as Mr. ________.  You can never take formality too far.  Another great avenue for forced respect.
  • Take credit for your underlings’ ideas.  It’s a sure win for them offering more good ideas.
  • On the flip side, make sure to make your employees the scapegoat(s) during damage control.  You’re far too important to take the fall.

By following these tips, you are sure to have a happy, healthy, productive work force.

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Ergonomic Solutions for Increased Productivity

June 22, 2010 By

Office Morale

Regardless of the solstice, summer is upon us full-force.  More than ever, workers are distracted.  Whether it’s longing looks out the window or distracting co-workers, most people are not firing on all cylinders these days.  Rather than get frustrated about it, micro-manage them to death, or worst of all ignore the problem completely, why not be creative in your problem-solving?

There are actually a variety of reasons your employees are not working to their full potential- let’s look a few common office hindrances.

Common Office Hindrances

  • Annoying co-workers and office noise in general
  • Repetitive Stress Injuries, such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
  • Ill-fitting desks and chairs
  • Disorganized work stations
  • Back, shoulder, and neck pain

While office noise is quite obvious in most cases, most of the rest of these problems are largely unnoticed until it’s too late.  Thus, valuable hours of productivity are lost every day, and no one seems to know why.  I’d like to offer a few solutions, ergonomic and otherwise.

Ergonomic (& Other) Solutions

  • Good ergonomic posture: monitor is eye level, back and feet are supported, arms are neutrally positioned.

    Install a sound masking system.  The use of low-level white noise will cover intrusive noise, thus allowing each worker the freedom to do “distraction-free solo work.”

  • Do a quick ergonomic refresher, reminding workers how important it is to take care of themselves.  Points to be emphasized: never over-extending to reach and neutral body positioning, especially for backs, necks, shoulder, arms, and wrists.
  • Encourage workers to adjust their chairs and desks for a better, more comfortable fit.  Raising or lowering arm rests can help workers keep their arms and wrists in line, as well as enable workers to sit more comfortably and relieve pressure on their backs, etc.
  • Institute a Friday afternoon “Re-Org” hour from 4-5pm.  No one works well at 4pm on a Friday.  Why not allow your employees the freedom to get their desks reorganized and all their ducks in a  row for next week?

Many times, just changing their habits will keep employees in better shape and therefore more productive.  As for management, it might be time to consider office-wide solutions, such as sound masking and better ergonomic products (adjustable chairs and/or desks, ergonomic keyboards and mice, etc.).

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The Keys to a Successful Office: Rewarded and Protected Time

June 15, 2010 By

Top 10 Office Distractions

According to this article, the Top 10 Office Distractions are:

  1. Email
  2. Telephone
  3. Paper
  4. Visitors
  5. Environment
  6. Noise
  7. Meetings
  8. Lists
  9. Expectations
  10. You

Whether you manage 1 or 100 employees, they each struggle with those internal and external distractions (and so do you!).  They might rank them differently, but each distraction costs them a valuable chunk of time.  In fact, many studies suggest that the average worker is distracted more than 2 hours every day!  Two hours times every employee is a staggering loss of productivity.

Rewarding and Protecting Their Time

Just to be clear: you're shooting for happy workers, not ecstatic.

You can’t control for everything, but as a manager, it’s your job to step in and help relieve your employees from the stress of not getting their work done.  It’s easy to assume that the average worker doesn’t mind being distracted at work.   On the contrary, most employees report that they are irritated by distractions and just want a place to do distraction-free solo work.  Sure, there are probably a handful of office slackers who are just fine with less work, but most of your employees are frustrated with  the loss of productivity- for many, it means nights and weekends, and for others, it’s lower commission levels.  According to Frank C. Barnett, a marketing expert, “ownership of the job is huge“, which is why he is trying to reward mastery of a task/job not just with money, but also with something more internal- the feel of success and the knowledge of a job well-done, even the controversial ability to build their own brand on the company’s dime and with their reputation.

In addition to building a great incentive plan, you still need to provide a great work environment.  The biggest time suck at work is conversational distraction.  Whether 2 employees are chatting it up themselves or several are unwitting recipients of sales calls, there is no reason with today’s technology, such as sound masking,  that any office worker should fall prey to noisy distractions.  By covering unwanted noise with low-level white noise, you keep everyone focused on their own work.

By protecting and rewarding your worker’s time, you increase productivity and decrease stress levels- everybody’s happy.

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Sound Masking for Dummies

June 8, 2010 By

If you’re like me, you like to know what things are, how they work, but not every detail.  That’s why this is sound masking for dummies- I’m not an engineer or even a salesman.  I just write blogs about stuff I like.  So, without further ado, let’s get going.

What is sound masking?

Well, let’s start with what white noise is.  Simply put, white noise is the use of all the different sounds on the spectrum so that the brain tunes out unwanted sounds.  It’s like being on a road trip and the sound of the car just driving tunes out the annoying beeps of your little brother’s game boy, or whatever newer, cooler toy he has these days.  So, basically, sound masking is white noise on steroids, but in a legal, good way, mind you.

How does sound masking work?

An emitter from a sound masking system.

Sound masking is the application of white noise to a big area, such as a conference room, board room, or doctor’s office, or even an entire suite of offices, through speakers.  You can limit who and what is treated by using zones.

It seems to me the best kind of sound masking is direct-field technology.  Like most things, the more direct a product is, the better.  Sound masking is no exception.  With direct-field technology, the speakers are installed in the ceiling tiles themselves, thus providing the best and most uniform coverage out there.

Why would I want Sound Masking?

Well, sound masking helps you regain the 2 hours a day each of your workers lose due to distraction.  If they aren’t privy to every conversation around them, chances are they’ll stay focused better.  In fact, many workers themselves complain about office noise, reporting that having a less distracting work place would boost productivity.

Additionally, sound masking provides speech privacy.  Now, sound masking does not just blare out noise that deafens everyone to the point of not hearing anything at all.  Instead, it offers a low background noise that renders other noises unintelligible according to the speech privacy index.  Thus, if you need confidentiality or just prefer privacy, sound masking is a sure bet.

Lastly, many sound masking systems offer additional features, such as paging and music.

So, if you’re concerned about improving your own or your employees’ productivity, or you need confidentiality, sound masking is a  step in the right direction.

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The Cost of Work Distractions

June 1, 2010 By

The cost of work distractions

According to  a 2005 study,  work distractions have never been more costly.

  • 1 in 5 workers will interrupt a business or social engagement to respond to a message.
  • 9 out of 10 people thought colleagues who answered messages during face-to-face meetings were rude.  Interestingly, 3 out of 10 believed it was not only acceptable, but a sign of diligence and efficiency.
  • Ultimately, this level of distraction is equivalent to a 10 point IQ loss.

Regardless of how colleagues view these distractions, the most concerning point is the loss of brain function, which isn’t all that surprising.  Juggling work, co-worker conversations, internet interests (personal and otherwise), and messaging of all types is difficult and obviously distracting.

More on IQ loss

In 80 clinical studies, Dr. Glenn Wilson of King’s College London University found that distracted workers lost 10 IQ points, the equivalent of a lost night of sleep and more than two times worse than smoking marijuana (a 4-point loss).

This is fairly disturbing information for a manager.  Who wants their workers to work from less than their best?

Sound Masking for Better IQ & Fewer Losses

Businesses lose almost $600 billion/year because of office distractions.  This is a result of workers finding themselves distracted more than 2 hours every day.  The most commonly reported distraction in co-worker conversation.You can’t raise your employees’ IQ, but you can protect them from distraction with sound masking.  Sound masking is the use of low-level background noise, white noise, to cover distracting noises, such as office conversations and common noises.

IQ loss and profit loss are not a coincidence.  It’s time to regain your losses- on all fronts.

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