Archive for November, 2011

Effects of Workplace Stress

November 29th, 2011

Workplace stress is unavoidable. Actually, a certain amount of stress at the office is essential to make sure that employees feel positively challenged, and they continue to develop additional skills and talents. However, for some employees the strain they experience may become overwhelming, leading to frustration, disillusionment, as well as anger. The American Institute of Stress estimates that negative workplace stress costs U.S. companies alone $150 million in losses annually. Additionally, the nation’s Institute of Occupational Safe practices estimates that about 40% of employees experience moderate or “extreme” stress levels.

Moderate or high levels of workplace stress in many cases are associated with:

- Increased absenteeism
- Increased conflict at work
- Reduced productivity
- Poor customer service
- Reduced quality of labor
- Difficulty concentrating
- More workplace injuries

Workplace stress has additionally been linked to hypertension, heart problems, stomach problems, sleep disorders, depression, anxiety, and even problems in employees’ relationships beyond work. If these conditions go unrecognized and untreated they are able to lead to much more serious outcomes for employees and their companies.

As the factors that cause stress can vary according to employees’ occupations or positions, or their sectors, they generally include:

- Not feeling worth work
- Not feeling meaningfully involved with decision-making and problem-solving
- Having insufficient information to do their jobs well
- Having insufficient training or professional development
- A lack of a work and life balance
- Workload issues: Too much work and never enough time
- The physical demands from the job
- Workplace politics, together with a insufficient trust at the office, gossip, and perceived favouratism
- Poor relationships with their co-workers and immediate supervisors

The existence of negative workplace stress might not always be obvious. It is also tough to assess just how much stress employees are experiencing, or even the specific reasons for their stress. In workplaces with separate departments or work locations, levels and results in of stress can vary widely across employee groups. We have also discovered that employees who go through the highest levels of stress report, on average, from 9 to 14 different stress factors. This means that no one solution alone is going to successfully lessen the amounts of workplace stress experienced by these employees.

The good news is that negative workplace stress can be reduced significantly, through the outcomes of strategic planning processes according to formal research findings. Here are some steps that will help you to make sure that your organization has got the cost effective given the time and commitment from the managers and employees who develop a questionnaire, or take part in an emphasis group or interview.

1) Make sure that your employee questionnaire or any other research questions are specially created for your sector or industry. Avoid generic or ‘canned’ questionnaires often available online.

2) Endeavour to incorporate all managers and employees in your study. This could likewise incorporate term employees and people who take presctiption leaves of absence.

3) Ensure that analysis is undertaken not just within the aggregate (i.e., all employees as a single group) but by factors such as employees’ positions, occupations, work locations, education and training, years of experiences, as well as their gender and ages.

4) Ensure that you have the data needed to help you to develop effective stress-reduction strategies. Don’t limit your process to some single question, for example ‘Do you experience workplace stress?’ Drill down with questions for example:

Just how much negative workplace stress do you experience?
What factors cause you stress at work?
What is the impact of workplace stress on your life outside of work, and the other way around?
What strategies would you personally use to resolve your own stress?
How effective are these strategies?
What changes if the company make to help reduce levels of negative workplace stress?

5) Make sure that you get a report that includes a full analysis and interpretation of all of your study findings, both in the aggregate by at least some of the variables noted above (in Point 3). Also ensure that the report features a clear and manageable set of recommendations made to enable you to develop, implement and assess your strategic plan.

Factoring Like a Cash Management Technique for Your company

November 29th, 2011

Factoring is a kind of financial transaction in which a business sells its expected revenue streams or any other assets to a 3rd party (known as a “factor”) for a cheap price in return for immediate payments. Factoring may include purchase order factoring, invoice factoring and even structured settlements and royalties.

Why Factoring?

It is a tremendous tactic for quickly enhancing your income situation during trying times for the business. It is a great way to increase capital for your operations while you watch for customer payments in the future in. Factoring could be especially useful when your customer organizations possess a better credit rating than you do.

Factoring is also a useful technique for companies that feature extreme swings in cash positions such as seasonal businesses like landscaping, tourism and hospitality companies.

It’s also an essential financing and cash flow management strategy for companies conducting business internationally. Large firms sometimes use factoring to exhibit more cash on their balance sheets rather than account receivable entries.

Differentiating Between Factoring and Invoice Discounting

It is necessary that you should comprehend the distinction between asset-based lending strategies like invoice discounting and becoming payments from a factor for the invoice. Invoice discounting involves receiving a bridge loan or short-term loan by borrowing on the asset value of unpaid invoices.

Third-party factors must have a basis of assessing the need for the asset that they are paying you for. This is particularly the case with non-recourse factoring in which the factor has no recourse to come back for you if your debtor does not pay them as promised.

By clearly understanding the features of such financing arrangements, you can increase your opportunities for getting the funding you need under terms which are favorable for you.
Here are the two most common methods to leverage this important financing strategy.

A / r Financing

As long as you don’t have a “cash only” policy around the delivery of your services and products, you have accounts receivable assets. They are monies owed to you for what you have sent to your customers. Before you can properly leverage a / r financing, you must make sure that your invoicing product is efficient and effective, and that your customer selection is adequate.

For instance, if your invoices do not get sent reliably, or maybe they can be sent late, that may modify the asset value of your receivables overall. Furthermore, if you bill your customers without doing a great job of pre-qualifying them before service, you might find out that the significant percentage of your visitors are high default risks.

Purchase Order Financing

When B2B or industrial customers develop a purchase order, these purchase orders can be used to obtain funding to pay for materials, suppliers, etc. Many factors is only going to offer funding to companies that have minimum monthly amounts they need funding for.

In other words, you can make your factoring arrangements a strategic component of your on-going cash management system. Just note that purchase order financing may need the factor to dig in to the credit worthiness of the customers, and perhaps the ability of your suppliers to deliver the products.

When Factoring May Not Work

It isn’t really a great strategy for you if your margins on the sale of products are small, or maybe the financial trustworthiness of your company among suppliers usually takes popular because of the arrangement. Whether that pertains to your organization depends upon variables much like your past credit rating, the confidentiality (or lack thereof) inside your factoring agreements, the scale of your company and typical practices inside your industry.

How you can Manage 3 Common Side Effects of Marijuana Withdrawal

November 29th, 2011

Are you thinking about quitting marijuana, but they are a little timid and hesitant due to the negative effects you might experience? Are you aware you will find stuff you could do to help manage these symptoms?

It’s correct! Here we will take a look at three of the most common marijuana withdrawal symptoms along with strategies which will help lesson their general impact on you.

The frequency and harshness of the side effects you’ll experience after quitting marijuana are largely determined by how often you smoked the drug, with what quantity the marijuana was smoked and how long your addiction has been happening. Naturally, those people who are heavy, long-term users of marijuana are experiencing side effects which are more severe compared to those felt by an informal user. However, even those who admit to smoking marijuana only once per month have reported an array of side effects which appear to mirror those seen with long-time users.

Anxiety and Depression

The active ingredient in marijuana, or THC, includes a mind altering effect and can change your perception, judgment and cause serious issues with memory and learning. Additionally, it produces a euphoric and relaxed feeling not found in other drugs-a characteristic that makes the drug very popular with users of all ages. When marijuana is abruptly stopped, also is the calming affect it had on your brain, opening the doorway to a number of emotional and mental difficulties. Signs of those are depression and its “ugly cousin” anxiety.

Depression will require a lot out of you; it will make you are feeling sad, anxious, apathetic and irritable, and will even cause problems with your sleep. To combat these symptoms you might want to force you to ultimately get up and get moving, to defend myself against a project or begin an exercise routine. Anything which supports distract you against your symptoms is definitely an effective weapon against depression and anxiety, just as idleness and negative thinking will raise the severity of your symptoms. If you think your depression has not ebbed after a few weeks, you might want to see your doctor and ask what treatments are available. He might prescribe medication which will help manage your more troubling symptoms.

Nightmares

Whenever you were using marijuana you probably noticed that your sleep seemed absent of dreams. Like marijuana shortens the amount of REM sleep-the stage when most dreaming happens. After quitting, you are going to notice quite contrary effect. You won’t just dream, but due to the marijuana withdrawal, your dreams will seem more vivid and real, even frightening.

While there is not a way to avoid this altogether, your very best technique is to successfully go to sleep tired every evening and normalize your sleep pattern so you are going to bed simultaneously and waking at the same time every morning. You may still have vivid dreams for a while, but this strategy can help decrease the effects of the dreams until your normal sleep returns.

Loss of Appetite

No doubt whenever you were using marijuana there were periods whenever you felt especially hungry, also known as “the munchies.” After quitting marijuana, however, you will likely notice the opposite. People coping with marijuana withdrawal often are convinced that they are not hungry and that nothing sounds appetizing, and while this may seem like a harmless enough side effect it may be especially problematic. During marijuana detoxification it is really essential that you are very well nourished to help you cope with another withdrawal effects.

Even if you’re not hungry, it’s important that you provide the body with the nutrients it must assist you to wage this battle against marijuana withdrawal. Try drinking a protein shake several times a day, adding your preferred fruit and ice cream. Avoid fast foods like chips and candy and replace them with healthier alternatives. Most significantly, try taking a multivitamin each day to ensure you’re getting the recommended daily allowance of minerals and vitamins.

Dealing with Change: Develop Your Personal Strategy

November 29th, 2011

So why do we resist change?

As they say, the only real individuals who like change are busy cashiers and wet babies. We find change disorienting, creating within us an anxiety much like culture shock, the unease people to an alien land feel because of the absence of the familiar cues they took for granted back home. With an established routine, we do not need to think! And thinking is difficult work.

Change is really a business fact of life

Is your company is currently undergoing major changes that will affect the lives of of their employees? These changes are most likely in reaction to the evolving needs of the customers. They’re permitted due to improvements in telecommunications and technology. They are likely guided by accepted principles and practices of total quality management. And you can expect that they will lead to significant improvements profitability–a success that employees will share. Because our customers’ needs are NOW, we must make changes swiftly, which means that all of us must cooperate using the changes, instead of resist them.

How can we resist change?

We tend to react to change the same way we respond to anything we perceive as a threat: by flight or fight. Our first reaction is flight–we avoid change if we can. We do what futurist Faith Popcorn calls “cocooning”: we seal ourselves off from those around us and then try to ignore what is happening. This could happen in the workplace just by being passive. We don’t volunteer for teams or committees; we do not make suggestions, ask questions, or offer constructive criticism. However the changes ahead are inescapable. People who “cocoon” themselves will be left behind.

Even worse is to fight, to actively resist change. Resistance tactics might include negativity, destructive criticism, as well as sabotage. If this seldom happens at the company, you’re fortunate.

Take a different method of change

Rejecting both alternatives of flight or flight, we seek a better option–one that neither avoids change nor resists it, but harnesses and guides it.

Change can be the way to your goals, not really a barrier for them.
Both fight and flight are reactions to perceiving change as a threat. But if we are able to change our perceptions, we can avoid those reactions. An old proverb goes, “Every change brings a chance.” Quite simply, we must learn to see change as a way of achieving our goals, not a barrier preventing us from reaching them.

One other way of expressing exactly the same thought is: A change in my external circumstances generates for me a chance to grow like a individual. The greater the modification is, the higher and faster I can grow. As we can perceive change along these lines, we will find it exciting and energizing, instead of depressing and debilitating.

Yet this restructuring in our perspective on change can take a while. In fact, coping with change follows the same steps as the grieving process.1 The steps are shock and denial the old routine must be left behind, then anger that change is inevitable, then despair along with a desiring the old ways, eventually replaced by acceptance of the new along with a brighter look at the future. Everyone works so as to; for some, the transition is lightning fast, for other people painfully slow.