Recruit, Inspire & Retain |
February 2006 |
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Shortages — Elderly Achievers — Never Too Young to Start – Tips from the Feds
"Over
a quarter-million math and science teachers are needed. That is like a
ticking time bomb not just for technology companies, but for business and
the U.S. economy." – IBM Foundation head Stanley Litow, on the company’s
offer to subsidize employees who leave to become schoolteachers.
Oldies
but Goodies. There are a lot of "older" workers available and a
lot will become a really lot in the coming years. Think older workers
aren’t quick enough, or too steeped in old ways:
Michelangelo completed his final frescoes, in the Vatican’s Pauline
Chapel, at 75.
Benjamin Franklin invented bifocal glasses at 78 to help correct his
own poor vision.
Giuseppe Verdi finished "Falstaff", his final opera, just 8 months
shy of his 80th birthday.
Georgia O’Keefe continued painting well into her 80s, despite failing
eyesight.
Frank Lloyd Wright worked on the Guggenheim Museum until his death at
91.
Martha Graham danced until 76, then kept choreographing 20 years
longer.
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Get
potential employees excited about your industry and your business early: |
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 Marlin Kaplan,
Cleveland, OH, recently guided 30 6th graders through a
5-week program that culminated in a dinner party for their families. The
Dinner Party Project, produced by Spoons Across America, teaches
children about nutrition, food safety, meal planning, table setting,
etiquette, and cooking. "The children were quite stunned at what they
were able to produce and a 10-year old came to me after dinner saying he
decided to become a cook," says Marlin. |
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Cesare Cassella,
chef/owner, Beppe, NY, NY, volunteers with Slow Food’s Harvest Time
in Harlem and the American Institute of Wine & Food’s Day of Taste,
teaching children to respect the seasonality of food and to eat as
naturally as possible. "Kids enjoy trying new foods, and when they go
home, they influence their parents," says Cesare. "One kid told me he
had never eaten anything green – imagine that." |
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The Ojai Valley Inn,
Ojai, CA, offers internships to teenage graduates of an
intergenerational project called PB&J (People Bonding & Joining) where,
for 12 weeks, they have worked alongside retired seniors, planning and
executing menus. "The interns are treated as crew and have been an
important addition to our staff – one has decided to pursue pastry,"
says Bernard Collin PB&J director. |
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At Charlie Trotter’s,
Chicago, IL, twice a week high school students have dinner in the
studio kitchen. "It’s a chance to have an experience they might not
otherwise be exposed to," says Molly Glover, assistant to Chef Trotter.
"Our team members, many of whom come from different backgrounds, speak
about their own career path and approach to personal excellence." |
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52%
of the 1.9 million-member federal workforce will be eligible to retire in
the next 5 years. Agencies are scrambling to plug the coming brain drain
and give prospective employees a sense of why public service matters. Some
agencies are showing real ingenuity. The CIA enlisted TV spy Jennifer
Garner, star of the ABC drama Alias, to recruit young employees and
other agencies have added a host of recruitment programs. These include
student loan repayments of up to $60,000, hiring bonuses up to 100% of
salary, and fast-track entry to bypass the regular hiring process. |
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Get more tips on recruiting great employees from TRAINING SYSTEMS. |
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Things My Mother Taught Me
My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
"If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished
cleaning."
My mother taught me RELIGION.
"You better pray that will come out of the carpet."
My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL.
"If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next
week!"
My mother taught me LOGIC.
"Because I said so, that's why."
My mother taught me MORE LOGIC.
"If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the
store with me."
My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
"Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."
My mother taught me IRONY.
"Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."
My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.
"Shut your mouth and eat your supper."
My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM.
"Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"
My mother taught me about STAMINA.
"You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."
My mother taught me about WEATHER.
"This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it."
My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY.
"If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!"
My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE.
"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."
My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
"Stop acting like your father!"
My mother taught me about ENVY.
"There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have
wonderful parents like you do."
My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.
"Just wait until we get home."
My mother taught me about RECEIVING.
"You are going to get it when you get home!"
My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE.
"If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck that
way."
My mother taught me ESP.
"Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?"
My mother taught me HUMOR.
"When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."
My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT.
"If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."
My mother taught me GENETICS.
"You're just like your father."
My mother taught me about my ROOTS.
"Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"
My mother taught me WISDOM.
"When you get to be my age, you'll understand."
And my favorite: My mother taught me about JUSTICE.
"One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you."
**TOOL
BOX**
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| * | The Society for Human Resource Management's online Recruiting & Staffing Library published No More Recruiting For Top Spots: Use Succession Planning Only, by TRAINING SYSTEMS, INC. President, Carolyn B. Thompson, in the January 2006 issue. Get a copy by emailing cbt@trainingsys.com |
Creating a Buzz—For a Good Cause
One day a week, Ken Zaiken sits in a doctor’s office, awaiting chemotherapy treatment. Then he thinks of the other office, the one where he works, and, specifically, of the people with whom he shares that office. And at that point, Zaiken, who’s battling Hodgkin’s disease for the second time, feels thankful.
In July, doctors found a mass deep in Zaiken’s abdomen, near his bladder. It was a recurrence of the Hodgkin’s disease he was treated for some 18 years earlier. Zaiken was told chemotherapy would begin immediately.
When the vice president of research and development informed his co-workers at Lakeview Technology of his condition, they responded by offering their emotional and financial support. And by breaking out the electric razors. On August 11, Lakeview’s Rochester, MN, office put on a rally for Zaiken where about 30 employees volunteered to have their heads shaved. Most were from Rochester, but a few came in from the Chicago-area headquarters. And at least 1 employee from across the pond at Lakeview’s Leaven, Belgium, facility got her own buzz cut.
The event was not only a show of camaraderie for Zaiken, who was 4 weeks into chemotherapy at the time, but also a fund-raise for the American Cancer Society. By the end of August, more than $5,000 had been raised from pledges to those who submitted to the shears. Dennis Schmidt, a user-interface developer at Lakeview, came up with the idea for what is dubbed the "Z-Team" initiative. His inspiration comes from deeply personal experience. Schmidt’s wife, Joan, 48, died of breast cancer in early 2004. "The staff here was incredibly supportive to me," Schmidt says, "I know what that support means."
Z-Team buttons abounded at the rally, which was attended by Lakeview employees and family members, and chronicled by the local newspaper and TV stations. While the cause was serious, levity—and family—dominated the day. Bob Wysick, a Lakeview programmer, got his hair buzzed: his wife, Nina, did the honors. Meanwhile, Doug Curier, software engineer, took a seat so his seven children could take turns rubbing his newly stubbly scalp. Of course Zaiken’s family—wife, Mary, children, 19 year old Beth, 17 year old Jessica and 12 year old Michael, along with Mary’s mother, Millie Canfield—was on hand, too.
Zaiken, who had come from chemotherapy the morning of the rally, admits he found his co-workers’ actions overwhelming. "This is very moving, very uplifting and totally unexpected," he says. "I wasn’t the only one in that doctor’s office, but I don’t know that anyone else there had going for them what I have going for me."
From Eserver Magazine, November 2005
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Get more tips on inspiring great employees from TRAINING SYSTEMS. |
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You’ll "Lose" People Unless You Get Them Involved
Trainers need to expect to "lose" some people at some point during the learning. Especially if it’s facilitated training: learners can process speech at the speed of 400-600 words per minute, while trainers typically talk at 125 words per minute. That slow speed causes learners to "tune out", so be prepared to apply some of the following techniques:
Give
examples related to what learners are seeing on transparencies,
PowerPoint screens, and workbook pages rather than just reading them aloud.
Illustrate
with interesting analogies and stories to pique interest.
Create
games like contests and word puzzles to reinforce terms and concepts.
Give
out prizes for participation.
Infuse
the session with your own energy. Pick up the pace and use really short
segments of learning. Sound bites. Tag lines. Slogans. One-liners. The 30
second spot. The 60 second take. Small chunks of information dished up in
short snippets of time. In television dominate cultures, learners are used
to this mode of information delivery: short and quick. Lengthy lectures are
out. Short information chunks are in. Keeping this trend in mind, and using
what we know about learning that sticks, those of us who are involved in the
business of helping others learn need to design and deliver learning that
uses shorter segments of time more effectively. We need to create learning
experiences that are built on 2 fundamental learning principles of the 21st
Century: shorter segments of instruction are better than longer ones,
and learners remember more when they are involved in the learning.
Involving learners before, during, and after short segments of instruction
is also the basis of brain-compatible training.
Here’s an example from Sharon Bowman, the master of short segments of learning:
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Mark-Ups What is a Mark-Up? You instruct learners to mark their written material in certain ways so that they will remember the information longer. According to educational research, most learners only remember about 10% of what they read. If they interact with the written information in some way, the probability increases that learners will remember more. And since a Mark-Up is kinesthetic—that is, it requires movement—participants who learn through doing will find it easier to pay attention when listening. With a Mark-Up, learners will: Mark-Up Ideas Excerpts adapted from
The Ten Minute Trainer: 150 Ways to Teach It Quick & Make It Stick,
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Remain focused on the
written material in front of them.
Draw a square (a circle)
around this important word (words, phrases).
page. Or tell learners what
to write in the blank spaces.
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Get more tips on training great employees from TRAINING SYSTEMS. |
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Creative Orientation Solution to High Turnover Rate
Nationwide, the school-age population is surging, and the departure of baby-boom-age faculty at Blue Valley School District in Overland Park, Kansas—thanks to pension plans that allow them to retire with full benefits in their mid-50s—already is creating a dire situation. Over the next decade, public schools across the country will need 2.4 million new teachers—nearly as many as the 2.8 million presently at work in classrooms.
While college education programs are scrambling to produce graduates to meet the need, these novices have an alarmingly high washout rate. Nationwide, 30 to 50% of new teachers leave the profession within 5 years because of poor performance or because they are disillusioned (luckily the rate is only 13% at Blue Valley).
Blue Valley administrators knew that just filling jobs with new hires wouldn’t work. Research indicates that it takes a teacher several years to develop the skills needed to reach children with different learning styles. For the school district to keep its lofty reputation intact, new hires had to stay long enough to develop into talented veterans. The problem wasn’t a lack of quality applicants. Blue Valley’s reputation and pay scale, the fourth-best compensation among Kansas school districts, attracted 10 for each opening. Instead, new teachers who should have succeeded weren’t making it.
Sandra Chapman, Director of HR, and others gradually realized that a solution would require major changes in the initiation process for teachers. In the past, rookies had plunged in with little formal help from administrators or experienced colleagues.
Thus, Blue Valley developed the Alliance for Educational Excellence program, a new-teacher-development initiative providing orientation seminars, workplace mentoring, and continual in-the-classroom evaluation and training to help new teachers improve their performance. The program gives new teachers an opportunity to build on their academic credentials with a master’s degree from the University of Kansas through a special program in which they can actually take many of their classes at Blue Valley and conduct research on issues in their own classrooms.
Another distinctive aspect of the program is the district’s extensive use of surveys and feedback to continually monitor and improve the program’s performance. Finally, the program is a product of partnership. On one level, it’s an alliance that includes school-district administrators and the local teachers’ union, who’ve put aside their sometimes divergent interests to work together, and the University of Kansas. But on another level, it also is a cooperative effort between the district’s HR professionals and veteran teachers, who’ve been persuaded by HR to contribute many hours of work--with only modest compensation--to help their new peers.
The results of the Alliance initiative have been startling. Since implementing the program in 1999, Blue Valley hasn’t had to fire any new teachers for poor performance. Given the previous 13% rate, that’s a net gain of 27 veteran teachers who might not otherwise be in the classroom.
| Components | |
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6 days of training at start of school year, much of it
from veteran teachers teaching fundamentals such as curriculum,
instruction, classroom management, workplace culture and
community expectations for teacher performance. |
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Demonstration classroom, where new teachers spend a half day in
the classroom of a veteran teacher mentorship program that pairs
new and more experienced teachers who are in the same grade or
subject. The mentors are volunteers and receive a nominal $400
stipend for their efforts. To qualify, mentors receive 10 hours
of specialized training on coaching techniques. |
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Continual critiques to improve—and validate—performance, implemented by four veteran teachers, who take 3 years off from the classroom to work with new hires and help them develop their skills. Each peer assistant has a caseload of 25 to 30 new teachers. The veteran meets with his or her charges at least eight times in the course of the year, and spends much of that time actually observing the novice teacher in the classroom. |
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Optional master’s degree in education — new teachers have a chance to take 9 credit hours of classes taught in the evenings at school-district buildings by university professors and school-district staff members. They use textbooks supplied by the district. |
Adapted from Workforce, 9/02 Blue Valley’s Lessons in Retention
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Get more tips on retaining great employees from TRAINING SYSTEMS. |
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FUN DAYS TO CELEBRATE/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCES/WAYS TO VOLUNTEER & GIVE |
FEBRUARY SPECIAL DAYS
February is...
Library Lovers Month
Get Inspired Month — get a great start by celebrating Inspire Your
Employees to Excellence Day, February 1st, sponsored by
TRAINING SYSTEMS, INC.!
February 8-14 – Love & Laughter Week
February 16-22 – Love Your Pet Week
February 22-28 – Pancake Week
February 1 – Inspire Your Employees to Excellence Day
February 3 – Carrot Cake Day
February 4 – Thank a Mailperson Day
February 5 – Chocolate Fondue Day
February 6 – Compliment Day
February 8 – Smiles are Contagious Day
February 9 – Pizza Pie Day
February 10 – Umbrella Day
February 11 – White Shirt Day
February 13 – I Value Our Friendship Day
February 14 –
Valentine’s Day
February 16 – President’s Day
February 17 – Random Acts of Kindness Day
February 18 – World Thinking Day
February 20 – Be Humble Day & Cherry Pie Day (but aren’t we supposed to
eat humble pie?)
February 22 – Teddy Bear Day
February 23 – Banana Bread Day
February 24 – Obnoxious Day (some people celebrate this every day!)
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCES
February 24-25, 2006
Laurie Beth Jones Train-the-Trainer PEP Event, Addison, TX,
February 26-28, 2006
ASAE’s The Great Ideas Conference, Coronado Bay Resort, San Diego,
CA,
February 26-28, 2006
IADIS International Conference Web Based Communities 2006, San
Sebastian, Spain,
March 6-8, 2006
Gartner Business Intelligence Summit, Chicago, IL,
March 10-12, 2006
Dave Barry’s Hoot Camp, Embassy Suites, Tampa, FL,
March 12-15, 2006
Questionmark 2006 Users Conference, San Francisco, CA,
March 15-18, 2006
19th Annual International Mentoring Association Conference,
Chicago, IL,
March 17-18, 2006
Laurie Beth Jones Path for Adults: Personal Growth, Phoenix, AZ,
March 29-31, 2006
Dave Meier’s 3-day Accelerated Learning Training Methods Workshop,
Orlando, FL,
March 31-April 3, 2006
Humor Project Cruise to the BaHAHAHAmas, from Miami to
Bahamas,
April 6-7, 2006
Managing for Impact: HR Metrics and Firm Performance, Cornell
University, Ithaca, NY,
April 10-12, 2006
Dave Meier’s 3-day Accelerated Learning Training Methods Workshop,
Atlanta, GA,
April 18-21, 2006
15th Annual Association of Australian Career Counselors (AACC)
Conference, Sydney, Australia,
April 23-26, 2006
Strategic Leadership for Women in Human Resources, Simmons School of
Management, Boston, MA,
April 24-28, 2006
Leadership Development for HR Professionals, CCL campus, Colorado
Springs, CO,
June 22-23, 2006
Accelerated Learning Advanced Design Class, Lake Geneva, WI,
June 25-28, 2006
SHRM's 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition, Washington, DC,
July 7-9, 2006
National Career Development Association 2006 Conference, Chicago, IL,
1-866-FOR-NCDA
July 26-30, 2006
WorldFuture 2006: Creating Global Strategies for Humanity’s Future,
Sheraton Centre Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada,
Enter the 2006 ASAE Associations Advance America Awards!
February 17, 2006 is the deadline for programs conducted between
October 2005 and January 2006.
May 2, 2006 is the deadline for programs conducted between January
2006 and April 2006.
For details on eligibility and award categories, go to
WAYS TO VOLUNTEER & GIVE
Give a Little Love:
The easiest way to feel good is to do good! The following sites let you
donate to all your favorite charities in 1 place.
Network for Good (
JustGive (http://www.justgive.org)
GuideStar (http://www.guidestar.org)
RECYCLING
Responsibly Dispose of Your Old Electronics
Donate PCs to National Cristina Foundation,
Recycle PCs and other computer products at Hewlett Packard and Dell. See their websites for details.
Find local Electronics recyclers at http://www.earth911.org and
http://www.ebay.com/rethink
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