Coping with the Stress of Job Insecurity

We all now work in an insecure working environment. The old ‘cradle to grave’ mentality of a secure job for life has been replaced by the reality of the 4 R’s.

•Redundancy
•Redeployment
•Retraining
•Retrenchment
Here are some things you can do to reduce the stress of job insecurity:

1. Meet regularly with your boss: make sure your boss has regular progress reports of what you’re doing well; ask
for feedback regularly … and accept it non-defensively;

2. Network throughout your industry; join professional groups where you can contribute your expertise;

3. Increase your visibility across business units: write for your newsletter; make a presentation; chair a staff meeting; involve yourself in groups outside your own ’silo’ (eg social club; Equal Opportunity; discussion groups);

4. Communicate with others at work; do your colleagues know what you’re doing? ….and what you do well??;

5. Notice when someone looks snowed under and offer support. Team involvement is a highly-prized behaviour in most organisations;

6. Do an audit of your skills, interests, values and motivations so that you have a clear idea of the best fit job for you;

7. Have a career goal and a plan to get there. Remember: if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you’ve got there??

10 Ways to Solve Manage Job Stress

Minor sources of job stress may include equipment that doesn’t work or phones that don’t stop ringing.Major stress comes from having too much work or not getting along with your manager.Any type of stress can cause you to become unhappy and less productive in your job. Here are some options for lowering your job stress levels.
1. Identify the problem source
Whether it’s an unrealistic workload, job insecurity, office politics or a hostile work environment, you need to figure out what’s making you miserable at work and then you can take steps to deal with it.
2. Meet with your manager
In addition to your formal appraisal, meet with your manager every six months to talk about your performance and your job. Use this meeting as a chance to clear up issues that may be causing stress for you. Discuss and clarify what’s expected of you, where the company is going and how you fit into that as well as your strengths and areas for improvement.
3. Manage your time
Make a list of tasks you have to do and tackle them in order of importance. Do the high-priority items first. If you have something particularly unpleasant to do, get it over with early and you will enjoy the day more. Drop tasks that aren’t truly necessary to the bottom of the list or eliminate them entirely. Avoid scheduling things back-to-back or trying to fit too much into one day. If your employer offers a course in time management, sign up for it.
4. Have a hobby
If you feel the stress building, take a break. Try walking around the block or get involved in some other activity that is relaxing and gets your mind off work. Also try to get away from your desk for lunch. Stepping away from work to recharge will help you be more, not less, productive.
5. Develop friendships at work
Cultivate allies at work. Just knowing you have one or more co-workers can listen while you off-load will reduce your stress levels. Just remember to be there for them when they are in need.
6. Delegate responsibility
Let go of the desire to control or oversee every little step. You’ll be letting go of unnecessary stress in the process. You don’t have to do it all yourself, if other people can take care of the task, why not let them? In the long run, it doesn’t take more time to teach someone else than to always do it yourself.
7. Unplug
Leave work at work. Make a conscious decision to separate work time from personal time. Avoid checking work e-mail at home. When with your family, for instance, turn off your work mobile and put away your laptop.
8. Keep a log
Make a list of all the demands on your time for one week. On a scale of 1 (not very intense) to 5 (very intense), rate the intensity of stress that each demand causes. Pay attention to events that you ranked as very stressful. Select one of them to explore and implement a solution and then focus on the others.
9. Take advantage of your options
Find out if your employer offers flexi hours or job sharing for your role. The flexibility may alleviate some of your stress and free up some time.
10. Seek professional help
If your life feels too chaotic to manage, talk to a professional. You can speak confidentially to your doctor, a psychologist or a trained counsellor through your company’s employee assistance programme.
Final Thoughts
Put it in perspective. Jobs are disposable. Your friends, families and health are not. If are really unhappy and the suggestions above haven’t helped, it may be time to start looking for a new job.

How to Feel Happy at Work--7 Secrets of Workplace

What accounts for the difference between "Oh crap, it's Monday" and "Thank God it's Monday"? It's your happiness. And, for your own emotional and mental health, you need to feel happy at work.
It all boils down to seven habits that can change everything about the culture of your workplace.
1. Show up fully and commit with all your heart
At work, we think of home. At home, we think of work. Time to stop that. The first step toward a TGIM workplace is being present and accounted for at work. Thinking about being elsewhere leads to resenting where you are.
While you are at work, commit to work with all your heart. This is what I call throwing your heart over the bar--committing 100 percent to the moment and task before you.
2. Communicate clearly
Use powerful and positive language about what you will do and the attitude you expect from others. If a TGIM workplace is your goal, take the time to make your communications clear on every level.
3. Go beyond the job description
Going beyond the job description happens when you pitch in and help others at work without expecting reward. Willingly share the load. If you're caught up on your tasks, help someone else who is crunching for a deadline. Instead of feeling like it's an extra burden, you will actually feel like you play a bigger role in your company than you ever did before.
4. Don't tolerate dysfunctional behaviors
Establish a zero-tolerance policy for talking behind another person's back. Then give each other permission to address conflict head-on, out loud, courageously and honestly. Create a trusting and open environment and watch the dysfunction ebb away.
5. Clean up your messes
Relationships are built on trust. Without that foundation, there is no basis for a relationship. We breach the trust each time we don't do what we said we would do. But here's the thing--that breach can be healed quickly IF you come back and clean up the mess. Acknowledge that the results are not okay then make a commitment to make things right and prevent a recurrence.
6. Live a life of profound service
Once you place yourself in the service of those around you--your family, your colleagues and your customers--every moment becomes imbued with purpose and significance. You will feel GOOD.
As you drive to work, begin thinking about how the work you do is serving others and contributing to their success and happiness. This is the essence of true service, and the key to a workplace that draws you happily back, Monday after Monday after Monday.
7. Celebrate
Every project consists of little steps and little victories along the way. Recognize and celebrate them in both large and small ways. Build a system of celebrations and rewards--quarterly, weekly, daily--and follow through like your company's life depends on it. Because, (psst) it does.
Acquire these seven habits and spread them through your workplace. Then be sure to notice the first Monday your hand reaches for the alarm--and you smile. You can love your job and feel happy at work if you follow these 7 secrets. Article Source: http://www.bestmanagementarticles.com

Motivating Your Team in ‘Tough Times’

The challenge to motivate the worker of 2009 is thus a major one. So how have the management gurus responded with new techniques to repair and rebolster motivation? The answer, it seems, is not a lot. Ideas in motivation get repackaged, renamed, rebranded, but fundamentally remain the same as ever. The fact that we know some of the key factors in motivation, however, has surprisingly not prevented many managers ignoring them.

Some of the more popular motivational techniques currently employed are the following:
· Give employees the information they need to do a good job. Make sure they know their priorities and give them the appropriate tools and training for the job. For some, this can be expressed in the jargon of setting key objectives, or key result areas. Despite much talk, a high number of people still cannot articulate very clearly, if at all, what their key objectives are.
· Give all employees as much meaningful work to do as possible. The less intrinsically interesting the work, the more motivational is anything done to encourage job enrichment. This often means job rotations, job sharing or job enriching. Also, to enrich jobs may make employees less efficient – but more happy.
· Pay people what they are worth. Consider market forces, predatory competitors as well as individual contribution. Consider what insurers call replacement costs. Most people benchmark their salary more regularly than do their employers. Feeling inequitably paid – that is, paid less than the market rate – is sure to make them very unhappy and demotivated.
· Offer employees a share of the profits. Let them feel part of the organisation as one of many stakeholders. Lots of companies talk about this, but few do more than token offers. There are many ways to ensure that employees feel part of the family – all on the same side – but these are rarely done at lower levels.
· Demonstrate as much as possible a commitment to long-term employment, career development and promotion from within.
· Reward commitment manifest by loyalty and continuous performance. Most companies now do the opposite, punishing loyalty. It is deeply alienating to believe that no one, apart from yourself, is doing anything about your career.
· Provide regular, specific feedback to all staff. If necessary, write notes to employees about their individual performance. Make sure each knows what their boss (and customers) feels and wants. Ask the average employee when they last had 30 minutes with their boss discussing just their performance and few will say this has happened in the past five years. Giving progress reviews is cheap, easy, important and motivating.
· Publicly recognise and personally congratulate employees regularly for good work and, more specifically, after the good work occurs. Celebrate success: create heroes. The army does it, and so do politicians. Many British companies find the idea faintly embarrassing, or are scared that they may create jealousy.
· Foster a sense of community or teamwork. Include recognition as part of morale-building meetings that celebrate group success. Make it apparent that most people at work are interdependent. You don’t have to do fire-walking or outward-bound courses. It is enough to provide opportunities for people to meet, talk and share together. Propinquity is a powerful predictor of joint liking and co-operation.
· Be accessible to employees. Establish easy-to-use channels of communication, both formal and informal. Make sure they are kept open and communicate real, salient information about the company and the department. Do the MBWA (Management By Walking About). This does not mean sending lots of e-mails. It means being physically and psychologically accessible, within reason. It means not punishing those who want to meet you.
· Ask employees for their feedback and their ideas, and involve them in decisions that affect their jobs. Reward them for good ideas that, when implemented, improve both individual and group efficiency. Genuinely listen to them – most of them are at the coalface. Publicise the rewards given to those with good ideas.
· Pay attention to individual differences and personal needs. Ask each employee what motivates them and consider a cafeteria of well-equilibrated reward to choose from. Consider their free-time activities and create opportunities for them to use these skills in activities at work. Just as we have flexitime to suite individual preferences, consider other aspects of free choice.
· Use performance appraisals and behavioural measures as major criteria for promotion. Make it clear that rewards are contingent on progress, that the equity principles apply in the organisation. The astute reader may be tempted to ask: so what in the dozen points is really new? The answer is, nothing really. Motivational techniques get rediscovered and readvertised, but they have been known for hundreds of years. Fads and fashions in the management consultancy world seem to dictate which particular technique is seen to be the most powerful and popular. Old ideas get repackaged in the jargon of today. Some are more fashionable at one time than others.

Drop in staff morale increases security threat

Malicious action from disgruntled employees is the highest impact, but lowest likelihood staff-related event, writes Jay Heiser, research vice-president at Gartner. However, organisations can expect to experience internal security problems as staff reductions in turn reduce morale. Undoubtedly, there will be malcontent about reductions in stock or bonuses, outsourcing or redundancy.
Brain drain is likely to occur as employees are laid off or outsourced, and some will choose voluntarily to leave.
Huge amounts of sensitive data is already being squirreled away by people who are concerned about their future employment prospects, and that they might not have a job tomorrow, particularly in The City and on Wall Street. As unease spreads through other industries, previously loyal employees will start bringing memory sticks into the office and collecting design documents and engineering material, contact and customer lists, best-practice documents and whatever else happens to be available on their laptops.

Where previous generations of employees would clean out their desks, today's wired workers will clean out their digital desktops, storing gigabytes of content on their personal hardware. Employees who feel they are getting a raw deal may have a propensity to steal data, possibly delete information of value to their employer or commit other acts of sabotage.

Ultimately, there is only so much that can be done to save the morale of employees within a struggling business. Realistically, employees have always leaked huge amounts of data out the door, but this issue needs to be addressed. Few organisations have actually told their employees what information is not appropriate for them to treat as their personal property, so it probably is a time when HR and IT managers need to consider making a new policy and communicating it to their employees. However, that will only result in a minor stemming of the data leakage flood, so organisations that cannot stomach the 'loss' of data need to consider putting in technical controls.