Retain Employees, Save Money

Employees who are happy perform better at their jobs.  More productive employees means you can do more with less. And an employee who enjoys working for a particular company may stay at the company longer, saving recruiting and training dollars.

So how do you make your employees happy and retain them at your company? The following Chicago Tribune article gives some great ideas on how attract, retain, and motivate your employees.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/chi-mon-minding-perks-1026oct26,0,400399.column

Here are some of those ideas that are especially appealing to Gen Y workers:

•  Opportunities for advancement
• Generous vacation time
• Telecommuting options
• Flextime
• Free lunches on Fridays
• Tuition reimbursement
• Bonuses for exceeding sales projections
• Evidence of social responsibility

While many employers are cutting all of these things and more; the companies who can provide employees with some of these benefits can increase productivity and actually cut costs.  Think about the long-term impact before you cut employee benefits.

Is your company a progressive company?

Have some extra time? Find the Volunteer Center…

For the fortunate ones of us, work or school is enough to keep us busy on a daily basis.  For many of us though, due to the ever increasing market insecurity, we may have only part-time work or no job at all.  While you may be out job searching or enhancing your career options with higher education, there is a constructive activity and networking opportunity that you may not have already considered…

Volunteering to aid both your community, upgrade your resume and the value of contacts you will make within your community.

Performing volunteer work, depending on the depth of the experience, may enhance your resume if you don’t have much work experience.  This is a common concern of high school and college students who feel overwhelmed by the resume creation process, feeling that they do not have much to put down in terms of work experience.  It is also a great opportunity if you are currently out of work and have extra time.   Taking on a charitable activity, or performing your regular job function for free in some way shows both strong initiative and compassion. 

Volunteering opportunities, depending on their level of professionalism and relation to the job you are applying for, may be addition to a somewhat short resume.  Additionally, you may list the accomplishments and tasks performed in the volunteer position much like you would for past work experience on a resume.

In addition to resume building advantages, building contacts is essential when knowing what work opportunities are available to you locally.  By aiding your community with various projects ranging from food pantry help, building maintenance, tutoring, special event help, and even yard work you are giving yourself the chance to meet new people whom you will volunteer with that may have important connections that you didn’t realize.

Recently, the United Way of Rock River Valley has upgraded their Volunteer Center with a new webpage and method of coordinating volunteers with charitable opportunities within the community.  If you have ever considered volunteer work as a meaningful and even career enhancing option, the Volunteer Center is an excellent and easy-to-use resource at your fingertips.  Anyone may register at their website www.wevolunteer.org  and begin searching volunteering opportunities easily; and can also be contacted at 815.986.4806.  You may search by days of the week, times of day, types of opportunities and particular organizations that may fit your desired goal and availability. 

Please take advantage of this resource as it is an excellent way to raise awareness not only of the needs of the community, but to enhance your career and character goals as well…

How to Hire An Intern

A recent article titled “How to Hire An Intern” at smartlife.com is an excellent summary of how to get the best candidate for your internship.

Having an intern at your company means more than cheap or free labor and getting new ideas on how to run your company. Many of the best company sponsored internship programs realize that the intern is providing value to the company and offer some form of compensation. Also the education and the experience an intern gains is the most important factor of an internship.  Therefore, it requires a lot of dedication to training and working with an intern.

I highly recommend any employer that has an internship program or is considering an internship to read this article first  to ensure your program is the most effective for both you and the intern.

http://smartlifeblog.com/how-to-hire-an-intern/

Why Attracting and Retaining Our College Educated is So Important

By Sarah Petrovich on June 15, 2009

There has been all of this talk lately about attracting and retaining talent and the economic impact of doing so. In the Rockford Area only 20% of people over the age 25 have a Bachelor’s degree compared to the national average of 27%.  When we increase that percentage by one only point, it can mean $230 million more in wealth for the community each year.

That extra money comes from multiple sources. Educated people make more money.  Companies look at the educated population of the area when choosing where to expand; IBM is a prime example of this. Check out this article http://www.businessrockford.com/archive/x679400865/IBM-snub-can-guide-Rockford-s-rebirth. This will in turn create more jobs and attract more educated people. Once we begin to grow in the right direction, the results will be exponential.