As an employer or a manager, it is your job to make sure that your employees are doing their job. Furthermore, it is your job to make sure that they are working to their highest potential. Let’s take a look at some ways that you can figure out if your people aren’t working their hardest and how to help them get more done.

How Do You Know That There Is a Productivity Issue?

There are many ways that you can determine if there is a productivity issue in the workplace. First, you may notice that some employees are able to get more done during the day than others or that they have accomplished more in previous months or years. Second, you may notice that orders aren’t getting fulfilled or that items aren’t being delivered to clients on time. Finally, you may notice that workers seem listless or otherwise not engaged in their work, which could indicate that they are burned out or overwhelmed. Continue reading →

By MJ Plaster

Remember the pizzazz your team had when it first began to come together and click? It was electrifying, like Fourth of July fireworks set to the 1812 Overture. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but just like all relationships, teams go through stages. What started out with a bang is bound to go stale unless you reinvigorate it from time to time. Team players who lose their mojo are detrimental to your business, so let’s look at symptoms of complacency followed by prescriptions for regaining the spark.

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By MJ Plaster

When your brand turns on a dime and loses its luster, who you gonna call? BrandBusters? There are firms that make a fortune restoring a damaged brand. However, the object is to maintain your hard-earned brand rather than restoring it. First, we’ll look at a few brand failures. Then, we’ll look at the single best way to avoid busting your brand so you don’t have to restore it.
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By MJ Plaster

Last summer, I attended a conference and had the opportunity to listen to leading human resources professionals expound on hiring and promotion practices. What I learned surprised me because I haven’t been involving in the hiring process for over two decades. We’ll look at common, 21st-century hiring practices and why you should adopt them as part of a winning hiring strategy.

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By MJ Plaster

Networking is what you make of it—it can raise you to new heights, or it can destroy the efforts of your entire career in the blink of an eye. It can build trust, or it can earn you the label of “untouchable.”

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By: MJ Plaster

The workplace is a melting pot of diverse backgrounds and eclectic personalities, so it’s unreasonable to expect everyone will get along swimmingly all the time. Still, there is an expectation that employees will act civilly toward one another and ignore petty annoyances.

Even minor irritations can send productivity plummeting, so how you handle toxic co-workers can make or break your day. Long term, how you manage these people can determine your career trajectory.

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