muniBLOG: Human Resources

How do you find your perfect Training Partner

How do you find your perfect Training Partner?

by Ken Kavanagh, Founder & CEO of Orion Learning

Ask training organizations these seven questions and you could find the training that fits your expectations and needs.

Finding the right training organization to help you achieve your learning and development goals is not easy. It’s more than just hiring someone who says they have the materials that meet your needs, you need to find out about them and their material. Here’s some questions that you should ask to make sure you’re hiring the right training organization and getting the right content for your training goals:

  1. Are you accredited? Would you sign up for an online degree course with a college you knew nothing about? Nor would I! By going to an Accredited Training Organization (ATO) you’ll go to a recognized organization, on a recognized course and get a recognized qualification. The accreditation process assesses the competence and reliability of training organizations and the knowledge and skills of the trainer.
  2. What’s your track record? When you’re investing good money in training, some timely research can help ensure it’s money well spent. Find out how long an ATO has been in business. Ask for pass rates, evidence of success, testimonials and for a client portfolio; that way you’ll be sure that it has the depth and breadth of experience to understand your business.
  3. What kind of expertise do your trainers have? Just as you’d do background checks on potential employees, so you should verify the quality of an ATO’s trainers. Check who trained them, check they haven’t just passed a training course themselves (yes, it happens!), check they’ve got real-world experience and make sure support tutors can answer questions (inexperienced trainers hate them!).
  4. What kind of learning experience can you offer? Let’s face it, training can be like going through a sausage machine. So pick ATOs offering learner-centred courses designed to help you retain training and deliver change in the workplace. Look for quality materials, newsletters, downloads, video tutors, full tutor support, exam simulations so you can assess progress, mobile games, forums, blogs, social networking through sites like Twitter and Facebook as well as the chance to try the course before you buy it. People live and work in a rich, multi-media technological world and ATOs should be able to reflect that in your learning experience.
  5. How flexible is your learning delivery? Geography, time and budget can limit an individual’s or a company’s ability to go or send people on classroom courses so it’s worth hunting around for the ATO that gets this and provides a choice of delivery methods to suit you. Classroom learning should be supplemented by blended, mobile, live virtual classroom, digital learning and social learning to optimise costs, time, and of course, learning. If you’re new to digital learning, there are some simple steps you can take to make sure that your training project goes to plan.
  6. How much is it going to cost and what do I get for my money? It’s the old story: you’re on a great course and then they hit you for things you thought were included in the price. A committed ATO will go that extra mile. Our service holds your hand through creating the right set of courses for digital learning so that you capitalize on the experience and maximize your Return on Investment. They’ll take care of everything from designing your programme, and tracking and reporting learner progress, to organizing exams.
  7. What development opportunities can you offer? People and organizations want opportunities to grow. They want to develop their skills, careers or the business. A good look at an ATO will tell you if it’s a one-trick pony or if it will stay the course and grow with you. Ask yourself if its programmes complement each other and if it develops new courses and services and ways to deliver and support them.

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Orion Learning, a global leader in providing accredited internationally recognized learning solutions. Our learning solutions include a robust learning management system (LMS), thousands of hours of learning content covering 16 learning categories including certification courses and examinations such as Project Management, Change Management, Financial Management, Risk Management and Service Management.

Get Certified, Get Trained and Get Started with Orion. More information on Orion solutions can be found at www.orionelearning.com

 

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Managing Gossip in Your Workplace

By: Monika B. Jensen

Gossip is widespread in the workplace. At times, it appears as if employees have nothing better to do than gossip about each other. They chat about their organization, their coworkers, and their bosses. They often take a half truth and flip it into an entire hypothetical reality. Speculating on the team’s future, who will let go, who is seeing who and what employees are doing in their personal lives.
Employees are capable about gossiping about everything, and they do in a workplace that fails to bring about a stop to the chatting employees.

A certain amount of gossip is likely to occur in any place of work; employees are curious to know what is going on and like to chat about work matters. The essential point is to determine when the gossip is inappropriate. In which case, if it is not addressed, it may lead to low employee morale or a toxic work environment.

As a manager, the need to stop the gossiping occurs when it becomes disrupting to the workplace and the business of work, it is hurting employees’ feelings, it is damaging interpersonal relationships, or injuring employee motivation and morale.
Since research shows that gossip is disruptive in the workplace, what can we do to address it? Let us look at a few different approaches as a team and as an individual to addressing gossiping in the workplace.

When you deal with gossip as a team considers putting a ban on gossiping. Some workplaces have adopted an official ban on workplace gossip by having employees sign a pledge. Although extreme it may be effective. To discourage gossiping encourage employees to speak to each other about issues that are causing them problems before they bring it to their supervisors or other parties’ attention.

In the age of social media, it becomes easier to spread rumours and gossip about others. This can cause tremendous harm to the culture of the workplace. Organizations, today need to deal with social media and keep an eye on emails, personal blogs and Facebook discussions among employees. Finally confront rumours promptly. Providing factual information about layoffs, problematic situations or surplus of employees serve them better than to leave them speculating on their own. It is important to discuss the impact that gossip may have in the workplace. Talking openly the differences between active communication and gossip. In today’s workplace, verbal harassment has legal ramifications. Employers have a duty to take action against verbal harassment when they become aware of it.

So in dealing with gossip as an individual, always share information.

Be generous with the non-confidential material. This has proven to put a check on the gossip mill. Interestingly closed doors can set off alarms even if the intent is innocent.

Let people know that you may be interrupted at any time unless in a private meeting. Be sensitive about appearances.

Often rumours and gossip form around cliques in the workplace. Try to avoid forming groups and reach out to new people to keep the loop open. If all else fails, walk away. Gossip loses its momentum when there is no audience.

Find a way to tactfully suggest a more efficient channel for complaining or remove yourself from the discussion. If you start to focus on the positive qualities of your colleagues, you will automatically have nice things to say about each other.

Workplaces that have the highest levels of gossip seem to be the ones where employees are not engaging in work duties. Stay busy. If your day is full of tasks which you find thought-provoking and rewarding you will be less likely to get distracted by trivial activities.

We spend long hours at our job, make a point of cultivating relationships and activities outside your workplace. Having strong relationships outside the office provides sources of emotional support and objective advice often.

Unfortunately lurking at the extreme end of the gossip spectrum is workplace bullying. What may seem harmless rumors to some, may amount to intimidation and harassment for the targeted employees. Complications of physical and meth health issues arise and need to be addressed in the proper forum.

Finally become a role model. Do not indulge in any gossip yourself. Become a leader in this area. Do not feel the need to chat to feel connected, liked or to be informed about your team. Taking a stand to prevent random gossiping creates a better workplace for everyone.

Monika B. Jensen

Principal, Aviary Group

905-683-9953

[email protected]

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Building Trust in the Absence of Integrity

Building Trust in the Absence of Integrity

by Gordon White, theconflictjourney.com

I wish to introduce both a general definition of trust I have formulated and the general idea of trusting before looking at some of its variations:

trust (def): a belief in a positive attribute(s) of someone else, and a willingness to rely on that belief although the belief is not fully verifiable

Trust flows out of relationship with others. As we come to know people and have experienced their integrity in various situations, we come to rely on that integrity and therefore trust them. But, what if trust has been lost?

A closer examination of what we rely on may enable us to both better understand trust and begin to rebuild trust when it is lost. We tend to assume that confidence in someone’s integrity is required for trust, but this may not be the case to the degree we assume. It is not only integrity that we may rely on. In any particular situation we might rely as much on one of the following qualities:

  • competence
  • consideration
  • caring
  • predictability
  • vulnerability

Below I devote a short paragraph to each of these five qualities, attempting to show that they may allow us to build trust when we are unable to rely fully upon someone else’s integrity.

Trust in a bookkeeper, carpenter, or medical specialist is likely to largely be a reliance on competence and skill more than integrity of personhood. As long as a professional does his or her work for us in a satisfactory manner, we may not be overly concerned about his or her conduct in other areas of life or even how he or she is viewed by peers. In the Speed of Trust, Stephen M. R. Covey highlights the importance of competence as a basis of trust.

Suppose you know that your boss is sometimes dishonest and lacks integrity in other ways. It may be enough for you to know that he or she shows consideration for you and will consult with you over decisions. You can trust that you will be considered even when you don’t think he or she has much overall integrity.

On the other hand, you may have a sibling you find to be inconsiderate (the opposite of the boss). However, at a more fundamental level, you may know through acts of affection that you are loved by this sibling. You know that he or she cares about you and would not intentionally set out to hurt you. You can rely on caring but not on consideration (in the form of forethought or action infused with wisdom).

In Getting Together, Fisher and Brown presented a version of trust that divides trust into predictability and caring. They point out that in the Cold War, the USA and USSR, although not caring about the well-being of the other, had a form of trust based on predictability. As long as each remained predictable to the other, the tension between them remained in balance. Unpredictable behaviour provoked alarm. Legal settlements and less formal agreements often create some predictability over future behaviours. In an antagonistic relationship, if we have assurances about how each of us will predictably behave, we can then set out on a road to building deeper forms of trust.

In the Five Dysfunctions of Team, Patrick Lencioni has promoted vulnerability-based trust as essential on high-performing teams. One key behaviour is the willingness to be open about one’s weaknesses and errors, and to bring them into team conversation so they can be addressed and compensated for. Another needed practice is the willingness to engage in conflict over proposals with the willingness to consider other viewpoints. Being vulnerable with others is an important avenue to building trust.

There are at least three benefits that come from examining what we rely on in a relationship where trust is an important factor:

Firstly, if trust has been broken, we may be able to find one of these five qualities in the other person at a time when we think he or she is lacking in integrity. If we can rely on one of those qualities, we can begin to rebuild trust.

Secondly, if we know what quality we are relying upon, we may be able to find ways of increasing mutual trust, for example, by demonstrating greater predictability or competence to each other.

Thirdly, if we discover that we are relying largely on a quality other than integrity, it indicates that we may not have much evidence of integrity (because we didn’t need to experience integrity in order to trust). In this case we should not be surprised when we encounter lack of integrity. And, in some situations, we should probably be prepared for lack of integrity to show itself.

Gordon White is the principal of Gordon White Consulting in Victoria, B.C. He is a mediator and organizational development consultant who offers team development programs and negotiation training in one- and three-day formats. He also teaches a course in Conflict Analysis and Management at Royal Roads University. Gordon is currently creating an online conflict management course for large organizations. He blogs regularly at theconflictjourney.com. You can follow him on Twitter @valueconflict, and reach him at [email protected] or (250) 389-6231. This post, which originally appeared at The Conflict Journey on March 11, 2016, has been edited for style and is used by permission.

National Education Consulting Inc.

Phone: (250) 370-0041     Toll Free: (888) 990-7267

[email protected]

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Living Wage Policies in the Supply Chain: It’s Not a Zero-Sum Game

Living Wage Policies in the Supply Chain: It’s Not a Zero-Sum Game

by Larry Berglund, SCMP, MBA, FSCMA

Presentations Plus Training & Consulting Inc.

“If we pay contractors who work for our municipality a living wage, it will cost the taxpayers more money.” This is an urban myth.

What is a living wage?

According to the Canadian Living Wage Framework (CLWF), the hourly living wage rate is based on the cost at which a household can meet its expenses once government transfers have been added and government deductions from wages and taxes have been deducted.

A living wage is defined using several criteria including:

  • A healthy family of two adults and two children
  • One child in full-time daycare; one in before- and after-school care
  • The hours worked between the two parents is 35–40 hours per week
  • One parent taking evening courses to improve their employment opportunities
  • Groceries
  • Rent
  • Transit passes

A living wage excludes:

  • Credit card, loan, or other debt obligations
  • Retirement savings
  • Owning a home
  • Saving for the children’s future education
  • Cost of elder care

AND excludes:

  • Any costs “beyond the minimal required for recreational, entertainment or holidays”
  • Any costs “beyond the minimal for emergency or hard times”

Canadian municipalities that have introduced the living wage policy having varying rates according to the cost of living in the various locales.

Table 1

Sample Living Wage Rates by Province and Capital City – per CLWF 2017 

Province

General Minimum Hourly Wage

Hourly Living Wage by Capital City

Alberta

$13.60

$17.36

BC

$11.85

$20.01

Manitoba

$11.00

$14.07

Ontario

$11.40

$18.52

Nova Scotia

$10.85

$19.17

 

There are approximately 65 Living Wage Communities in Canada – and growing. There are hundreds of private sector employers which participate in living wage programs. Why?

It makes good business sense to do so. It’s argued that raising any wage rate increases production costs and the price of selling those goods must therefore increase and your competitors will eat your lunch: higher wages lead to layoffs. But the research shows otherwise. UBC economics professor David Green says that while the latter may apply to teenagers working part time, once you get over the 20-year old age limit employment isn’t really affected. The higher wages contribute to employee job satisfaction and provide those workers with greater economic stability. Every employer faces an affordability factor; however, higher wages do support staff attraction and retention. This leads to lowering the costs associated with hiring and training.

Families receiving a living wage stay within their communities and support local products and services through the redistribution of revenues. These individuals also see an improvement in their self-esteem and in general health – less sick time and medical visits – which in turn saves social costs. Living wage earners, while still considered as lower-income earners, spend more of their increase on essential needs when they receive a higher wage. All the evidence shows that minimum wages, certainly in urban areas, do not meet the cost of living.

Innovation within a living wage business philosophy also considers access to professional development courses, access to in-training staff, or no-cost services for community partners. These ideas can be quantified into a living wage calculation.

Living wage organizations:

The City of New Westminster was the first city to implement a living wage policy for its contractors. In 2011, the city enacted an ordinance for all its contractors to be paid a living wage rate. The living wage criteria is a part of their competitive bid process and is closely monitored for compliance. Living wage rates are adjusted where a contractor is paying some form of economic benefits to its employees. Living wage rates are adjusted annually.

Vancity credit union reviewed its contracts with approximately 1200 contractors across 45 industry sectors. They targeted strategic annual contracts over $250,000 and contracts that typically involved lower wage earners where contracts had lower annual spending thresholds. The latter included personnel agencies, janitorial services, catering, and security services. The financial cost to the bottom line for Vancity to implement its living wage policy was about 1% of its budget. Vancity is one of Canada’s largest living wage employers.

City of Vancouver

In 2017, the City of Vancouver implemented its Living Wage policy aimed at contracts $250,000 per year for ongoing service requirements. The minimum number of hours for these contracts is 120 hours per year per contract. Social enterprises are exempt from their living wage policy.

Living wage criticisms:

Living wage programs are not without their detractors. It is relatively easy to assess the difference in out-of-pocket costs between free market hourly rates, minimum wage, and living wage rates. It appears that the taxpayers – or members of a financial cooperative, for example – are absorbing the difference and do not enjoy a corresponding benefit.

Arguably from a total cost of ownership perspective, it may be more difficult to measure the social benefits between these three wage rates. Putting a cost to building a strong community is as difficult as placing a price tag on improved performance, better employee morale, improved customer service, improved health rates, increased self-esteem, reduced rates of absenteeism, increased staff retention rates, or increased support for local goods and services.

Bottom line – building a healthy and wealthy community is being done by private and public sector organizations through the living wage programs across Canada.

Thanks to Maya Maute, SCMP, Director, Procurement & Contract Management, Vancity credit union for her contributions to this article.

Larry has been in the supply chain management field as an author, manager, business trainer, academia, and consultant for many years. Larry has worked in both the private and public sectors. Recently he has been co-facilitating NECI eSeminars, classroom sessions, and online modules. His new book, Good Planets are Hard to Buy is now available on Amazon.com

Readers are cautioned not to rely upon this article as legal advice nor as an exhaustive discussion of the topic or case. For any particular legal problem, seek advice directly from your lawyer or in-house counsel. All dates, contact information and website addresses were current at the time of original publication

National Education Consulting Inc.

Phone: (250) 370-0041     Toll Free: (888) 990-7267

[email protected]

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Interpersonal Skills: Effectively communicating, building rapport and relating well with all kinds of people.

No matter how hard you work or how many brilliant ideas you may have, if you can’t connect with the people who work around you, your professional life will suffer. How you are perceived by your manager and coworkers plays a large role in things as minor as your day-to-day happiness at the office and as major as the future of your career.

 

Increasing your sociability and being relaxed and available for others will take you a long way in being accepted as a valuable, approachable resource. In order to have good Interpersonal Skills, you must learn how to present yourself as polite, knowledgeable and assertive.

 

Having strong Interpersonal Skills increases productivity in the organization. In informal situations, it allows communication to be easy and comfortable. People with good Interpersonal Skills can generally control the feelings that emerge in difficult situations and respond appropriately, instead of being overwhelmed by emotion. This capacity involves strong gut intuition and success in using it without being prejudiced or biased.

 

People who have good Interpersonal Skills are sensitive to other people, and they don’t prejudge others either positively or negatively. Rather, they perceive each person individually and base their opinions and assessments of that individual on sensitive, realistic observations and instincts about that person.

 

A person who doesn’t have intuitive Interpersonal Skills can still make good judgments concerning others, but more data and time to make these decisions is usually required. Without this supportive data, decisions may feel rushed.

 

Poor Interpersonal Skills can lead to overestimating or underestimating others, misunderstanding what you hear from others, and perceiving yourself as a bad judge of character.

 

To receive a brief email with 3 tips for developing Interpersonal Skills, send us an email at [email protected] no later than May 4th.

Source: TTI SI

Submitted by: Sophie Mathewson, PCC – Prism Group Int’l – [email protected]

Prism Group Int’l is a central Ontario-based boutique consulting and coaching firm specializing in supporting progressive organizations and leaders in creating respectful, emotionally-intelligent working environments with the right people in the right jobs, who build constructive working relationships and are focused on producing the desired results.

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Brain Food Friday – Personal Accountability Trumps Other Competencies

If you hire for one skill and one skill alone, please let it be this: personal accountability. Personal accountability is the most important trait someone can bring to the job.

To understand why this competency is so important, let’s examine the negative state first. People without personal accountability are most at risk to quickly and irreparably fall into a victim’s mindset, particularly if the person’s sense of self is not well developed.

Once stuck in that negative loop of self-pity thinking, it is very difficult for the mind to re-wire.

Someone without personal accountability will never be able to see anything that occurs as their fault. They may even become belligerent about things going wrong. They see errors and wrongdoings as the result of other people’s shortcomings or because the world is against them.

In a work environment, this lack of personal accountability can have a very harmful effect on the people around them, causing co-workers to become distracted, disengage from their work, or isolate themselves.

Now the positive example: The person who has highly developed personal accountability believes failures are a temporary state of being. They are adept at picking themselves back up after mistakes or downturns, reworking their thinking or behaviour, and moving on in a positive direction.

People who have developed personal accountability will do what it takes to do the job. Personal accountability should always be in the top 7 skills sought in job candidates.

Bottom line: If you are hiring and you are not looking for personal accountability as a skill, you will run into problems — sooner or later.

Source: TTI SI

Submitted by: Sophie Mathewson, PCC – Prism Group Int’l – [email protected]

If you would like one month of complimentary access to our Personal Accountability e-learning module, please send me an email with the words “Personal Accountability” in the subject line and I will gladly send you a link to the video tutorial and PDF workbook.

 

Prism Group Int’l is a central Ontario-based boutique consulting and coaching firm specializing in supporting progressive organizations and leaders in creating respectful, emotionally-intelligent working environments with the right people in the right jobs, who build constructive working relationships and are focused on producing the desired results.

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Accountability: Does it start with the Leader or Team?

There are so many aspects to being a leader within an organization or running a business with a team. There are also a few challenges that come with being in a leadership role and probably one of the challenges I hear about most often from leaders I work with, is accountability. First of all, how many of you out there, find it’s like pulling teeth to get your team to be accountable? How many of you feel, that accountability should come naturally, they should just know… shouldn’t they? Well, let’s dig a little deeper into this.

We all have our opinions on how leadership should be and our own experiences with leaders, but what is the deal really?

Here’s what I believe. As a leader, if you want to be successful in leading your team, there are three key components that promote accountability, setting clear expectations, good two-way communication and trust.

The first component is to set clear expectations. If you set clear expectations from the beginning, you and your team know where you stand, everyone is clear on their roles and responsibilities and what needs to happen. It’s also a good idea to revisit the expectations regularly to ensure they still make sense. As things change and evolve within your team, your business or organization, you may want to or need to make some changes. Again this is why it’s so important to have them AND be sure your team understands them in the first place.

The second component is good two-way communication. This means staying connected, asking questions, giving them opportunities to ask questions and sharing regular feedback AND asking for it as well. As leaders if we are all about giving feedback, but we are not open to receiving it, you will (if you’re self-aware), start to notice a decline in productivity, you may have people leaving your team or seeking other opportunities. This is a clear sign that communication is not open and honest and soon trust begins to erode. Nobody wants to work for someone who does not ask for or cannot accept feedback. You may have heard the saying, People don’t leave their job they leave their manager. Again, open, honest two-way communication is absolutely key.

The third component is trust. Team members typically trust their leaders, they’ll do what is asked and believe what you say is correct…until you give them a reason not to. As leaders, we need to demonstrate a level of trust with our team members as well. If you as a leader do not feel you can trust them to do what you have asked of them, then there will be little to no potential for accountability because they’re not sure of where they stand. In fact, in not allowing your team to take on a task (low risk of course, when the task is new) and fail or succeed, then you are also not allowing them to learn how to be accountable. It’s in the trying, failing and trying again that you learn best, would you agree? How good were you at managing your team when you started? You had to learn, you probably had some set-backs, but ultimately someone took a chance on you, trusted that you had it in you to manage, to lead your team and now you are succeeding.  

So back to the question, does accountability begin with you, the leader or your team members? Consider this, accountability is not something you can hold, teach or something you do. Accountability is more of a behaviour, it’s something you feel and understand. Accountability is based on our own personal values, morals and beliefs. So where does this leave us? When looking for qualities in someone, what are you seeking? Skill or Will? We can teach people how to do something, but teaching people how to be someone, that is different. There must be a compelling reason for us to do something, want something, to excel. We all go to work wanting to do a good job, but what determines a “job well done?” It’s in hearing what we did well (specifically), that it matched the expectations and accomplished the goal. We can only know this when we hear it and trust the source.

When it comes to accountability, the truth of the matter is that it’s both the job of us as leaders and our teams. That said, as leaders, you start the process of building accountability through these three components; setting clear expectations, good two-way communication and trust. These are what I believe to be the pillars of accountability and it is the job of the leader to model behaviours you want to see in your team, to lead by example and to set clear expectations, promote good two-way communication and build and enable trusting relationships between you and your team.

Heather Wilson, ATC

Founder of Spark Your Vitality

Customized Coaching and Training Solutions

[email protected] | www.sparkyourvitality.com

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The Future of Health Insurance for Retirees in Canada

by Gavin Prout, Special Benefits Insurance Services

This article takes a look at current trends and relates them to the future trends for retirees looking for health insurance once their group plan has terminated. Check out this article for stats from a recent study from Sanofi Canada.

https://www.sbis.ca/future-health-insurance-retirees-canada.html

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