You remember recess when you were a kid, don’t you? Well, it seems that recess isn’t just for kids anymore because a growing number of businesses are incorporating recess-type breaks for their workers, according to business writer Meg McSherry Breslin. And it has been showing results.

If you work in human resources, it may be something worth checking out for your company.

At some companies, recess activities take a more traditional format – workers can jump rope, play basketball or other “schoolyard” games. Other places have a more adult flavor to their recess, offering short exercise routines, ping-pong, or miniature golf. The purpose, however, is the same for each – to pull employees away from their computers for 15 minutes and help reduce stress on overworked people.

People in the benefits area say that it may seem like a gimmick, but it really is helpful for employee wellness.  That’s because many people, who spend their workdays at a desk, lead very sedentary lives. This in turn raises a host of health issues. And that in turn affects businesses that employ these people. Recess is one way of addressing the need for people to get more activity.

Health officials encourage companies to offer some recess-like activity at work, or something similar, such as walking breaks. Sitting for a long time can adversely affect your health, according to health officials, and so recess breaks are a good way to break up the sitting.

Between five and 10 percent of the increase in healthcare costs comes from employees who do not engage in enough physical activity, according to health officials. About one-fifth of all cases of heart disease and diabetes come as a result of inactivity.

Keen Inc., a company located in Portland, Oregon that makes footwear, began its recess program just last year. Such programs can reduce healthcare costs and also drive up productivity, according to company officials. They cite research by a UCLA professor who estimates that there is a $1.50 to $2 return from every dollar spent on a recess program.

Recess also helps companies to get buy-in from their employees. Many people are not thrilled at the idea of wellness programs, but when they get a chance to have a little fun during the day, it becomes something they really want to do.

Speaking of fun, the recruiters here at Winston Resources love to find New York City companies great temporary and direct-hire employees. Contact us today!

Coaching plays an important role in business, helping employees gain new insight and skills in their jobs. Some organizations handle the training of coaches internally, while other human resource departments encourage their coaches and managers to get certified in coaching. What are the benefits of coaching certification? Is it necessary?

In order to answer that question, you first need to decide on the goals you want to reach through the use of coaching, according to business consultants Ellen Kumata and Colleen Gentry. You need to set up clear objectives that you want your coaching to accomplish. How do you expect the coaching certification training to improve the performance of your coaches, to help you reach your goals? And will that improvement be great enough to justify the cost?

Sometimes a certification program does not provide enough of the nuts and bolts advice for your particular business that  you may be looking for. Rather, the program focuses on a general model of coaching that can be used by many different organizations. It helps people to understand the process of coaching itself.

You need to choose carefully the type of coaching program you want, Kumata and Gentry say. You need to figure out what kind of support you want your coaches to give; you need to make sure that that support matches your company’s goals and strategies. Do you want your coaches to guide a feedback process on performance, such as 360 degree interviews, or to help with orienting new employees, or develop new skills? The amount of training a coach will need depends on the kind of coaching he or she will be doing.

You may want to consult with outside experts with experience in developing coaching programs for businesses.

And, if you want to get the most out of your training of coaches, you need to create an environment in your company where coaching is valued and practiced widely, according to Kumata and Gentry. You need to find out who in your company is the best at coaching and use these individuals as a nucleus around which you build your program. You also need to establish evaluation methods for your coaching and ways of measuring coaching effectiveness to see how well your coaching programs are working.

Need some “coaching” on how to recruit great employees in the New York City area? Then call Winston Resources. We’re experts in sourcing, vetting and placing terrific professionals in temporary, temp-to-hire and direct hire assignments. We look forward to hearing from you.

With the increased pressures the weak economy has put on businesses, human resource departments may not be paying as much attention as they have been to organizing volunteer programs.

Yet these kinds of programs have become even more important. Workers are looking to find ways to contribute their time and talents for a good cause, so these programs not only enhance worker morale, they also help them hone their skills and give them the opportunity to develop new ones.

Surveys have shown that recent college graduates are looking for ways to get involved in community service through their employers. In fact, surveys show that an employer’s commitment to community service has a big impact for younger workers on where they choose to work.

There are all types of volunteer services programs, ranging from stints that last just one day to extended oversees activities, where the employees may even go to a developing country. At one company, for example, workers can sign up for a number of different activities during the workday. They include such things as sorting library books at a school in a poor neighborhood, planting flowers in a city park, helping out with getting clothing and other donations, and coaching people on how to do job interviews, as well as helping to prepare lunch at a soup kitchen.

Employees loved the program and even established connections with other people at the company they had not known before. The volunteer program began with just a few departments but has since grown to include the entire business, and more than half of the employees take part.

Some larger companies also sponsor volunteer work oversees, in such places as Brazil, Vietnam and Ghana. Not only do these programs give employees opportunities to develop new skills, they also give the companies a chance to check out possible new markets. Moreover, they can even help employees with career advancement.

Other companies send workers to Central and South America for about three months. They do the same work as at their companies, only at much smaller operations.

So, volunteer opportunities through the workplace offer a lot more than just helping employees feel good. They also help keep workers happy, act as opportunities to develop leadership skills and also scout new business markets.

Winston Resources has been helping New York City’s companies find temporary and direct-hire employees for going on 45 years. We look forward to serving Manhattan’s finest companies for another 45 (and more) years. Contact us today!

A recent survey has shown that there has been a big shift among younger workers in their attitude about preparing for retirement. Many are now saying they would prefer giving up salary now to get more in retirement and health benefits in the future.

This sea change in younger worker attitudes could have a significant impact on human resource departments and the types of retirement packages they help put together for employees.

The survey showed that the biggest shift in attitudes about retirement was among workers under 40.

In the survey, more than half the workers under 40 who were enrolled in some type of pension plan said that they would be agreeable to paying more from each paycheck to make sure of a guaranteed retirement amount. That is about a 10 percent increase from just two years ago.

To conduct the survey, researchers contacted about 10,000 workers in the United States in 2011.

In addition, half of those who responded said they would also be willing to give up some of their pay now to ensure that they would have healthcare coverage if they retired before becoming eligible for Medicare. That is also an increase of about 10 percent from two years ago.

Indeed, rising healthcare costs are an even bigger concern for employees, and about two-thirds said that increasing healthcare costs are the main reason they have become more concerned about having enough money for retirement.

The survey also showed that almost two-thirds of younger employees, and nearly half of all employees, believe that their retirement benefits will be reduced in the next several years. And, while retirement is a concern for many, the survey showed that even more are concerned about healthcare costs, and what their out-of-pocket expenses and co-pays will be.

The results surprised some retirement consultants, who did not think the younger workers would be willing to sacrifice more immediate gratification in the form of reduced paychecks for the sake of something many years in the future.

And, even though more have become aware of retirement planning, retirement consultants say that too many employees still are not taking retirement seriously enough, and are not doing enough to plan for it.

When looking for great temporary and direct-hire workers for your Manhattan-area company, call upon the expert recruiters at Winston Resources. We’ve been matching great people with great companies for 45 years and we look forward to doing the same for your company. Contact us today!

If you work in human resources, you are dealing with email, often a lot of it. Like everyone else in business, you are probably trying to figure out how to get control over it.

In fact, email has become such a big issue at some places that they have threatened to ban it entirely. But experts in this area caution against taking such extreme measures, because it remains an important tool. It is becoming harder and harder to reach people any other way these days. To get a handle on it, experts say what you need to do is look at the causes of your email problem, and then follow some guidelines for getting control of it.

The experts say that email overload is actually the result of other shortcomings. For example, if a company does not have a clear decision-making process, and people are left with questions about business operations, they will resort to email to get their questions answered. As more email floods the system, a feedback loop begins as recipients get bogged down trying to reply to all the missives.

If meetings are effective at giving people what they need to know, they won’t have to resort to email to get information they need. Email used effectively reduces the need for meetings, and meetings used effectively reduce the need for email, according to business consultant David Allen.

You can also get a handle on email by reducing the inflow of messages. Don’t sign up for e-newsletters. Turn off notices from Twitter and Facebook. Tell colleagues not to copy you on every action item. Don’t send emails with messages such as “Thanks.”

Empty your inbox as soon as possible. Then, as new messages come in, delete those you don’t need to read or keep immediately. If you can respond to a message right away, do it. Then file the others in folders. Then choose a limited number of times during the day when you look at your email.

The experts also say it’s impractical to come up with sweeping company-wide rules on email use because everyone uses email differently. Try, they say, instead to come up with some email guidelines that apply to smaller groups or departments.

When you’re flooded with requests to fill positions at your New York City company, shoot an e-mail to one of the recruiters at Winston Resources. We can help you find great workers for your temporary and direct-hire needs. We look forward to hearing from you!

The concept of corporate culture can be a somewhat nebulous thing. It is not something where you can look at facts and figures. It has to do with the attitude and morale of workers, their engagement with their work and their productivity.

But, although culture is not easy to quantify, human resources specialist Andy Porter says there are definite tell-tale signs that show when your corporate culture is in trouble. They are signs that human resources staff members need to be aware of and take action on when they see them.

One sign is when a manager accepts the fact that an employee is not performing the way he or she should, and rationalizes the acceptance with the attitude that something is better than nothing. What this means, Porter says, is that the performance standards in the company have really taken a nose dive. This is something that will really hurt the morale in a company. If employees know that a manager is allowing someone to get away with less than satisfactory performance, they see a double standard, and they may believe they have to do more to make up for the other person’s lower performance. Plus, it also calls into question the assessment that the manager gives to other employees, and how much that can be trusted.

Another sign that things are not right is when a hiring manager settles for a job applicant who may not be exactly what he or she is looking for, taking the attitude that you have to accept what is available. This could mean that the manager really doesn’t know how to evaluate candidates properly for the skill set needed, or that the manager is really just looking out for himself and is not in tune with the culture of the company, Porter says. Human resource workers need to put the brakes on this kind of thinking and remedy the problem.

Finally, another sign your culture is really slipping badly is when you hear someone say, “It’s not my responsibility.” This shows a person who is concerned only about him- or herself and not the good of the company as a whole. Porter says there is no easy answer for handling this problem. It involves reviewing the mission of your company with your employees and trying to reconnect your employees to it and letting go of people who can’t or won’t buy into it.

If you’re looking for skilled and reliable professionals for your Manhattan company, call upon the recruiters at Winston Resources. We’ll find terrific workers for your temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire assignments quickly. Contact us today!

Bringing new people onboard is an important process, and should be done with care and planning. New workers should be brought up to speed, given the tools they need to be successful, and made to feel welcomed by the company.

What you should avoid, however, if you are in human resources, is a very long and very boring orientation session, something, for example, that usually runs for more than three hours. If it goes longer than that, says human resources specialist Meredith Soleau, you are going to fall victim to the law of diminishing returns. Some HR orientations run long because they show videos, some covering areas that may not even be all that important.

In fact, showing videos may signal to your employees that you don’t think their time is that important, especially if the videos are some generic, bland and boring production. More effective would be a presentation made by someone in human resources about the pertinent issues, presentations that have been well thought out, that are simple, clear, and direct, telling the employees what they need to know and why they need to know it.

An effective and efficient presentation would focus on a company’s major policies first – things such as accepted norms of behavior, harassment issues, professionalism, and performance goals. Covering the benefits package should not take hours either. If it does, it is probably too complicated.

For those employees who work on a shop floor, obviously safety is a primary concern, and there should be a safety manual to go over with the employees.

For job duties employees will perform in their departments, those should be left to the managers to introduce.

This emphasis on streamlining the process is meant to increase efficiency, not to downplay the importance of the onboarding process, which for the most part does not get enough attention from employers. But a lot of the onboarding process should be done by managers – things such as bringing the new hire up to speed on the job’s duties and what is expected of on the job, making the new hire feel welcome and an important part of the team.

If you’d like help with your orientation process, contact Winston Resources. We can help your Manhattan company look its procedures and suggest ways to make them more efficient. Contact us today!

When the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) went into effect in 2003, most employers that had self-insured health plans took steps to make sure they were in compliance. But with the passage of time, compliance standards at a number of organizations have fallen off some, and human resource departments need to take another look at HIPAA and healthcare privacy, according to Workforce Management, a human resources communications company.

One problem that has arisen is the failure of businesses to comply with the HIPAA security rules.

Many businesses still have not completed their plans and procedures for maintaining security of electronic healthcare information, stipulated in the HIPAA guidelines. Others have not updated their security arrangements, specifically arrangements they need to have with business associates, spelling out exactly who can and cannot have access to healthcare information, and how to protect that information. This is something human resource departments may want to prioritize since the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has recently begun HIPAA compliance audits.

Businesses often fail to train new workers who have access to protected healthcare information about HIPAA guidelines, and to retrain workers when there are changes to the company’s healthcare arrangements, such as new wellness programs. This training is required. Companies should also should have periodic refresher courses for employees to remind them of what the privacy guidelines are for health information.

Another problem is that employers have not taken the time to familiarize themselves with state privacy laws. HIPAA does not preempt these laws, so if they are stricter than the HIPAA guidelines, both state law and HIPAA regulations must be followed.

Also, if a company makes changes to the way it administers its health plan that affects privacy policies, or adds new kinds of health plan coverage, or adds a wellness program, the company needs to make changes to its HIPAA compliance regulations and send notice of these changes within 60 days. This often is not being done.

Another problem is that companies often do not have procedures in place for dealing with privacy complaints. HIPAA does not require a company to have a written policy for resolving complaints, but having one could prevent a lot of headaches later on. The company could be assessed penalties by Health and Human Resources if a complaint is filed with the agency and the complaint is determined to be valid.

When you need help finding great employees for your NYC-area company, call upon the expertise of Winston Resources. We look forward to hearing more about your staffing requirements!

A representative from human resources needs to be on any performance improvement team that is worth the name, according to business analyst Brad Power.

In addition to people who know how things work, and people who know how to make them work better, Power says that there also should be on the team people who know how to get workers to accept and work with the new policies and procedures. These are people who know about how incentives work, how best to incorporate training programs, who know how best to communicate, and who know how to work within the corporate culture. These are all the people skills in which human resource workers specialize.

Studies have shown that efforts to make change happen in companies fail almost three-fourths of the time. The reason, Power says, is not because the new procedures were bad, but because the workers didn’t want to change the way they worked.

While Power says it is crucial to have human resources on any performance improvement team, few companies do. Part of the problem is with human resources itself. If it is to get involved in process improvement, human resources needs to change the way it operates.

It must change its standard defense for keeping things the way they are. This is a natural reaction for human resources – the department’s job is to maintain the policies and procedures of the company by making sure it complies with all the laws and regulations. But this is a role where human resources works against change, where it has to watch out for risks and threats. So if the company makes major changes in its operations and processes, a whole new set of risks and threats arises to which human resources needs to attend. It involves changes in job descriptions, terminations, training and development, etc.

But any performance improvement team needs members who are human resource professionals, who know about the behavior of employees both individually and as an organization. They know what is important to employees. They can be of immense help to the team in assisting them to fit the needs and interests of employees into the needs of a new system that is more effective and efficient.

Let Winston Resources “be of immense help” to your New York City firm when it comes to sourcing, vetting and placing qualified and reliable workers for your company. We look forward to hearing from you!

Recent signs are showing that companies that develop a culture where coaching is encouraged and practiced well by everyone have better bottom lines. This may be something for human resources departments to think about and to get involved in creating such an atmosphere.

A recent study by the California-based advisory firm Bersin and Associates showed that companies where managers made efforts to frequently coach others had business results that were 21 percent better than those companies that did not. And companies that developed a corporate culture where coaching was encouraged had a bottom line 13 percent better than those that did not, as well as significantly better engagement, productivity and customer service among employees.

The study, surveying almost 200 companies, also revealed that nearly three-fourths those surveyed now do coaching in place of conventional performance reviews. However, the authors also noted that coaching effectively is not a skill that many managers have.

According to the study’s authors, coaching is a major challenge for businesses trying to improve performance, yet they don’t know how to get the support needed for it. To ensure that coaching becomes an integral part of a company’s culture, senior executives need to get involved in coaching. But this is a problem in itself as only about 10 percent of executives believe in the value of coaching to improve performance.

To reverse the problem, business leaders need to get involved and personally bang the drum for coaching, especially by starting up coaching programs in their companies, according to the report. The report also says that human resource departments also need to get involved to help create an atmosphere that supports and measures the effectiveness of coaching.

Good performance management centers around coaching, experts say. Performance reviews focus on the past, while coaching looks toward the future and how to improve. To coach effectively, managers need to be good listeners, help to reinforce the behavior they want to see, and also ask open ended questions.

If you’re Manhattan-area company is on the search for improved results in 2010, partner with Winston Resources. We can help you source and place great employees, help you with your payroll, help you with drug testing, and more. Contact us today!