Business Trends

Poll: Social Life, Not Social Media, Is Work’s Biggest Distraction

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The ComPsych Poll – When at work, what is your biggest distraction?

Personal relationship issues: 22 percent

Co-workers who want to chat: 19 percent

Challenges with work relationships: 16 percent

Financial/legal problems: 15 percent

Child-related or care-giving issues: 11 percent

Personal health problems: 6 percent

Personal communications cellphone, email/instant messenger, social media: 4 percent

Other: 7 percent

Source: ComPsych

via Poll: Social Life, Not Social Media, Is Work’s Biggest Distraction – Featured Article – Workforce.

Why Good People Can’t Find Jobs – Part 2

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The sad truth is that it’s costly and risky to hire anyone to do anything, and “bankable projects” that might generate profit/require more labor are few and far between. The overhead costs for employees have skyrocketed. So even though the wages employees see on their paychecks have stagnated, the total compensation costs the employer pays have risen substantially.

via charles hugh smith-Dear Person Seeking a Job: Why I Can’t Hire You.

Go read this article.  There are quite a few insightful observations.

Steven Pressfield – The Lunch Pail Manifesto

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The Lunch Pail Manifesto

  1. We must find the work that brings our lives meaning.
  2. We must strive to make our work purposeful, truthful, and authentic, a pure offering to our Muse and fellow human beings.
  3. We must wage a lifelong war with Resistance and accept that instant gratification is an oxymoron.
  4. We must not speak of our work with false modesty or braggadocio.
  5. We must not debase our work for short term gain nor elevate it above its rightful station to inflate our ego.
  6. We must not covet the fruits of our work, or the fruits of others’ work.
  7. We must respect others’ work and offer aid to fellow professional laborers.
  8. We must accept that our work will never be perfect.
  9. We must accept that our work will never be without merit.
  10. We must accept that our work will never cease.

via Standing 8 Count | Black Irish Books | Get In the Ring!.

Why Good People Can’t Find Jobs

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A Manpower survey asks employers if they’re having trouble finding people to hire. In that survey, about 11 percent say they can’t get people to accept jobs at the wages they’re paying. So 11 percent are saying we’re not paying enough. The real number is probably double that. We’re not very good at identifying problems we create ourselves. If they’re not finding [employees], don’t call it a skills gap; don’t call it a skills mismatch – you’re just being cheap

via Why Good People Can’t Find Jobs.

NatWest Open Sunday – IT Fail Causes Chaos

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NatWest is battling to get on top of a huge backlog of failed payments after a software upgrade on Tuesday night went wrong, resulting in the bank being unable to process payments for its personal and business customers.

via NatWest opens on Sunday as IT glitch causes chaos | Reuters.

In a prior life, I ran information technology operations for two different insurance companies.  I changed my professional focus because the stress and pressure of maintaining 100% up-time in a 24/7 environment as my budgets were continuously cut was stupid.  Software upgrades should not, I repeat, NOT take down your entire business operations.  But in this case it did.

On Monday go give your IT person a BIG HUG.  She/he deserves it.

Go Do – How Hard Can It Be?

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Change This – Go Do: How Hard Can It Be?.

If you work hard and love what you do you will find success.  Common sense tells us we all become pretty skilled at things we love to do.  Conversely, you will never get good at things you hate to do.

Hard work alone is not a guarantee of success.  The lack of hard work guarantees failure.

Failure leads to success.  You must fail to learn how to succeed.

 

Do or not do.  There is no try.

Yoda