Employee training

There would definitely be situations when you get disturbed at unsatisfactory functioning of people at your workplace, particularly when you make continual efforts to guide them.  Feelings of dissatisfaction and annoyance are natural if despite your pains, assigned tasks are not completed. Do you would ponder over how numerous efforts on your part have not yielded positive results? If you do, then it is time to consider the reasons for their failure.

There are basically two major causative factors for employees not being able to come up to your expectations. It is quite likely that they lack the requisite skills to do a job. It is also quite possible that they deliberately do not want to perform. Both these reasons need to be delved into.

If people lack the required know-how, it is evident that their skills need to be brushed up. They may not be lacking in motivation and want to complete all assigned tasks. But they do not know how to go about doing them. Under such circumstances, your intervention is necessitated; you must lead by example. You have to demonstrate to them the correct procedures and processes; and also stress upon the need to be methodical and adhere to standard operating procedures. Your own knowledge and comprehension of matters comes into play. You should share it with them and simultaneously display involvement as a person in charge. You should show them the way, even if it amounts to completing an assignment single-handedly; obviously you will have to educate them as you go along.

But if people simply do not want to work, an alteration of their attitude has to be brought about. This could be an intricate task. Statistics indicate that nine out of ten employees acquit themselves well with modest urging. However, one person may have to be pressed really hard; and he is the category that drives you to annoyance. Your irritation and disappointment manifests in some form of antagonism and anger. Such a manifestation could well prove to be loss – of the person concerned as also the charge of completing the assigned work. It is human nature to respond aggressively to any intimidation, particularly when job security and salary raises are concerned.

Whatever be the causative factor, you should not shy away from exhorting people working under you. There is one singular solution – training, more training and additional training. All training capsules have inherent components of inspiration, motivation and stimulus; and hence you get to take on dual executive responsibilities. If your employees undergo training programmes successively, their insight increases, enthusiasm levels rise and they display a tendency to perform in accordance with your directions. It is also likely that they also surpass your hopes.

Now let us see what you ought to do when an assignment is completed. You need to acknowledge the good work done and make it a point to thank every member of your team. This should be done openly and visibly; and applies to doing so for an individual as well. Remember that such actions on your part should not be done perfunctorily. You have to be really truthful and earnest in commending and extolling your staff.

Every work and workplace has demands of time and stresses of implementation. And hence team leaders and division heads will find themselves running a race against time; training will be seen as a difficult proposition. But it needs to be realized that employee training reduces the time normally taken to finish assigned tasks because consumption of valuable time spent on analyses of contributory factors leading to delays or non-accomplishment is obviated.

Training, therefore, is necessary and should be done. It results in saving time that is frittered away on your intervention, issue of instructions, instituting corrective actions and monitoring of progress. An organization is what its employees are and their ability to learn and translate that learning into action eventually leads to competitive advantage. 

Remember what Piet Hein, a Danish inventor and poet said, “Err and err and err again but less and less and less.” Therefore, training should be seen as not just the filling of a bucket but an ignition of a spark that will illuminate the workplace with better productivity.

All about career planning

Do you seek to make out where you stand in your career? Do you want to know where you intend to be in your career? Do you want to know how you can reach that aspired position in your career? A good career plan is one of the most valuable instruments that can help you to get answers to all these questions.

You can do exhaustive career planning by going through the following basic but vital steps:

Self-evaluation:  In order to unearth your aspirations, you should be clear about what you stand for. You can discern this by raising queries with yourself as under:

·   Which pursuits inspire you the most?

·   What are your qualities that stand out the most?

·   What sort of a lifestyle do you seek?

·   What are your plus-points and vulnerabilities that people around you know?

·   What are the prime attributes of the job that you are seeking?

Skills analysis:  Individual penchants apart, the talents that you possess should be the central guiding factor to show you the way forward. You should think over your abilities by seeking answers to the following questions:

·   What are your prime capabilities?

·   How much practical acquaintance do you have?

·   What are your skills that you can utilize effectively on ground?

·   What all attainments do you have to your credit?

·   What are your weak-points that call for improvement?

Compass setting:  Your way forward will be contingent on your preferences, priorities, abilities and experience. Having discerned them, you have to put together your thoughts to find out the field of work that suits you the best. You should come up with answers to the following questions:

·   Which appointments and workplace environments fascinate you the most?

·   How do the above complement your individual likes and dislikes/

·   What are the areas that you need improvement in?

Adherence to a timeframe:  You need to work out a timetable to reach where you want to be. Your objectives should be organized into sub-objectives to facilitate easy achievement. Towards this,  the answers to the following queries should be found:

·   What are your immediate, short-term and long-term objectives?

·   How do you propose to acquire all requisite qualifications and in what timeframe?

·   How can you can widen and establish an influential contact base?

Mid-term corrections:  Having known your objectives and the timeframe in which you intend achieving them, you embark on your career journey. En route, you should look back periodically to discern how much you have traversed; a biannual exercise for this is recommended to help you stay on the correct path and make allowances for any extraneous developments.

You may be prompted to go in for a change of job or career. Such a decision could be impelled by several reasons. You may not have been able to give wings to your passions or that your dream job came to you after a very long wait. The harsh truth however is all along you were not satisfied with your job. You should take the following actions to ensure that your remainder journey remains hassle free:

Ascertain causes:  You must mull over your decision; in case it is based on any of the following, it would be justified:

·   Tedium and intense pressures at work.

·   Lack of adequate opportunities to make full use of your expertise.

·   Absence of supportive actions by the management and growth prospects.

·   Job insecurity and failure to have a work-life balance.

Look at alternatives:  Having inferred the impelling reasons as above, you may find that your grievances can be removed by simply doing straight talk. You may even take a break and rejoin rejuvenated. Moving to take up another or switching to another career ought to be the last option.  

Plan your future:  A shift into a new job or career can be hassle-free and satisfying. But you should be mentally prepared for some delay and that what you start and end up with could be lower; everything will have to be taken in the right spirit.

Career planning entails bringing your future into the present so that you can do something about it in advance. The better your planning is, the more chances you stand to make your dreams come true. Remember that failing to plan means planning to fail.

Retired, but wanting to go strong

“Age is only a number, a cipher for the records.  A man can't retire his experience.  He must use it.”

  ~Bernard Baruch

They say that one must retire from work but never from life. Retirement is superb if you have two basics — much to live on and much to live for.  Gone are times when retirement meant leaving the workforce. In the current times, retirement is being subjected to a redefinition; work happens to be a significant component of post-retirement planning of any person. 

The above notwithstanding, whatever be your basis and cause, if you decide to carry on after retirement – whether you do not want any break or want one aside – here are some suggestions that can be useful:

·      Try to stick with your current employer:  Your current place of work is the ideal location where you can perhaps carry on. Most organizations like to retain retiring employees; they know you and your performance and hence may even afford you bargained work timings. In case you are entitled to pension benefits, the same would be paid to you, however, it is likely that you may now draw less remuneration.

·      Look for fresh non-demanding work:  Most companies are inclined to take on their rolls people with experience. They organize special orientation programmes to draw and recruit people who are either elderly or have superannuated. There are also several help groups that can put you through with companies and establishments that want aged and people with experience. Getting in touch with such groups will help.

·      Become a professional advisor:  During your work span which may have extended from twenty five to forty years, you would have acquired several skills. Some sage once said that experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. You will not waste time if you utilize your experience; and there will be many in the queue waiting to benefit from it. Depending upon your expertise, you can join a professional consultancy or even freelance.   

·      Take up a provisional job:  You could also consider taking up a casual or temporary job; in fact there are many companies who contract retired people for specific assignments. You may be required to complement the efforts of their regular employees. Depending upon the project, your position and experience, a fixed remuneration would be paid to you; and that will not be meager by any standards. And who knows, the same temporary job could be offered to you for long.

·      Work with NGOs or do social service:  Today, numerous government and non-government organizations are engaged in conducting training programmes specifically for senior citizens. Your experience can be of immense utility to the society at large.  Remember that the training which makes men happiest in themselves, also makes them most serviceable to others. When you work for a social cause and general welfare, the rewards are immediate and the gratifications quick.

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing. Today, as more and more people superannuate from their jobs, they feel that retirement is perhaps the ugliest word ever. Ask any one of them and the view will be that wrinkles on their face are inevitable, but remaining idle will bring wrinkles on their souls. It is therefore, no wonder that they dovetail post- retirement jobs in their retirement plan. And with companies inclined to hire older workers, you have a better chance to keep working. You should not feel age in your mind; and if you do, others will tend to regard you as futile.

Working people have a lot of bad habits, but the worst of these is work. And old habits die hard. So if you have been working, how can you not work now? If you are considering retirement jobs, you must plan for it much before you actually retire. And never forget that there is a whole new type of life that lies ahead of you – a life full of fresh experiences about to take place. If you live through them, you will go through bliss.

Addressing job rejection

Any rejection is difficult to digest and when it happens to pertain to a job, it becomes all the more difficult. This is largely due to perceived agony related to your pecuniary circumstances and prospects. If you happen to not make it for a job that is seen as satisfying on all fronts, the worry will largely be your apprehension of not being able to get a similar one again. The feelings of rejection are more accentuated if during probation, you are unable to satisfy clients or you make your displeasure known at any unsavoury comments by others.

The way you handle job rejection depends on many factors. But the essential point to remember is that you should not take it as a personal ignominy. Your rejection does not manifest your incapability; it just that someone more capable or qualified has got it. Your rejection thus should be seen as an indication that perhaps you could fit better in some another appointment and that more successful roles are in store for you.

Besides taking into account the above, it is also imperative to view it from the correct angle. All prospective recruiters and employers deliberate on various aspects before taking a final decision on whom to select and whom to reject. Ninety nine percent of all such considerations are not within your power of influence and management. Your selection or rejection is not totally contingent on the curriculum vitae that you submitted or the colour of your suit that you wear for the interview, though they also have their own limited weight. If you realize this, you will be better geared to cope with any possible job reaction.

If you are faced with the predicament of job reaction, you should not dwell too much on what went before. It is considered pertinent to state that doing so is indeed a difficult proposition. Every human being has a propensity to recollect previous failures whenever they fail again; in fact this becomes more of a routine. You should try to shed this habit as you may end up feeling more crestfallen than before. What you should do is to remember every single attainment and all the upbeat developments in your life. You will thus feel self-assured and the hope of getting the next job will increase manifold.

You must also introspect and raise queries with yourself. This in no way implies that you have to subject yourself to a self-interrogation procedure to gear up for a job interview. In fact, any of your close friends could do this. In order to become a really formidable contestant for the next job interview, you need to recall the sequence of events at your last interview and ask yourself the following questions:

·   What are the issues that you could have handled in a different way?

·   How could you have acted in a special way?

·   What experience have you gained?

·   How do you stand to gain?

If it is possible, you could even seek a view from the employer concerned. While most may not oblige, some will. You will thus get to know some specific qualitative requirements that may have skipped your attention. This may not be truly applicable if someone more qualified than you got the job. But definitely if you faltered on any aspect – whether you did something incorrectly or failed to do something - the same would come to your knowledge for further improvement.

Today, there are career counselors and trainers available to guide you; they train and prepare you for getting a job. Taking assistance from them is also a good choice. In doing so, you do not seek to know the best job in the market that you ought to apply for. On the contrary, your aim should be to boost your self-assurance and self-belief in settings and situations that are helpful and accommodating. Your trainer would recommend to you on the most appropriate line of action that will help you attain your objectives and also offer you good tips to fare well in an interview.    

            You should understand that rejection is a usual and accepted component of any job hunt. Some people do get a job on their maiden application, but most do not. Therefore, job rejection should not be allowed to impinge on you adversely. You should acknowledge the fact that there is nothing extraordinarily unusual in rejection and hence focus on refining your resume, improving your performance at job interviews and keep the process of applying for jobs alive.