Your Body Needs a Break Today

According to H and L Office Furniture, your body needs a break. Just like you would in a workout schedule at the gym, you need to mix things up and let the worked-out muscles rest.

Switch the hand you use for the mouse. This will take a little practice at first, but your other hand can learn to use the mouse with a little training, and the break will be appreciated by the hand and wrist accustomed to doing this work.

Set up hotkeys. Many computer programs will allow users to use hotkeys instead of using a number of keystrokes. Such as using Ctrl+P to print instead of having to go through 3-4 other steps to get to the same place.

Switch your position. Take a break from typing to do some filing, sorting, or any other activity. If you do not have any such activity to complete, just take a break for the sake of getting up and moving about.

Stretch. While you are up, and if you can take a brisk walk, even if it is just around the office. It is a way to get blood flowing throughout the body and to let some muscles that have been sitting still too long get moving, while giving a break to the ones you generally use at the desk.

Think of your days work like a workout. Your body does and needs the same kinds of breaks you would give it in the gym.

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Keeping Older Workers Engaged

Despite worker shortages throughout North America, a recent survey by international staffing firm Express Personnel Services shows employees today want to stay on the job long-term.

The firm surveyed a cross section of 788 business owners, managers, and employees in a variety of industries throughout the U.S. on their current employment situation. A total of 143 individuals answered the question, "How long do you plan on staying with your current employer?" Nearly half, or 48 percent, say they never plan to leave.

When analyzed by age groups, respondents ages 35 to 44 and 45 to 54 echo that mentality at 54 percent and 63 percent respectively, compared to respondents ages 25 to 34 (27 percent) and 55 to 64 (29 percent).

Maybe Baby Boomers are having more fun at work and will want to continue working.

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Keeping Boomers Engaged with a Great Place to Work

Your employees could be smiling--and producing--more, and it doesn't have anything to do with Six Sigma or Lean Management. According to San Francisco-based Great Place To Work Institute, Inc., the happiest workforces are also some of the most successful. Speaking at the Human Resources Forum, aboard The Norwegian Dawn last week, Jennifer Robin, Ph.D., consultant for the institute, and her colleague, business development manager Meghan Johle, offered "Great Workplace" pointers:

· The best workplaces are supported by: a strong commitment from the CEO and senior management to preserve the corporate culture; a genuine belief that workers are indispensable to the success of the business; active community forums between employees and managers; and the perception of a "special and unique culture."

· At these "Great Places," everybody knows his or her responsibility and acts on it.

· If greatness still eludes you, start by focusing on what you already do well for your employees, and do more of it. If your CEO needs to be convinced to be part of the effort, figure out what he or she most likes to do. If he or she is a people person who likes to interact, explain how the plan will include regular live forums with workers.

· Show your CEO how a great office links up with profit, customer experience, and adding to the bottom line, but also point out that the advantages of a happy work environment are incalculable. "Numbers are one thing, but they are not what moves people," Robin says of making your case to management. "It's the emotion of the fundamental belief in a better way."

If we're going to keep Baby Boomers employed we need to create great places to work.

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Training for Baby Boomers in Senior Management

Senior management is the least likely, of all corporate staff levels, to receive training and development, according to a survey of 2,000 human resources and training and development executives by Boston-based Novations Group. Ninety percent of first-line managers will receive training this year, but only 59 percent of senior executives will.

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Helping Companies Transition to Employee Retirement

Findings released last week by The Ken Blanchard Companies annual Corporate Issues Survey cite increased competition and escalating challenges in attracting and retaining talent as the leading organizational concern in 2007. Top employee development challenges for the year include developing managerial and supervisory skills, building customer relationship skills, and executive development.

As Baby Boomers are retiring they may want to help train new managers for their jobs.

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Older Workers Are the Next Retention Challenge

In five years, nearly 20 percent of the total US work force will be age 55 or older, up from just under 13 percent in 2000, according to forecasts from AARP.

Many older people, some already retired, want to go back into the labor pool and do jobs that are different from what they did in their earlier careers. The AARP survey found that 69 percent of people between the ages of 45 and 74 who are either working or looking for work plan to work in some capacity during their retirement. Also, 68 percent of workers between the ages of 50 and 70 who have not yet retired reported that they plan to work in some capacity into their retirement years or never retire.

Finding our true passion and pursuing it sounds like it may be possible in retirement.

Read the article: www.projo.com/business/content/JK0415_04-15-07_OF57899.31f5614.html

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Do Americans Work Too Much?

Today, Americans are logging longer hours on the job than ever--more than medieval peasants. We are working ourselves to death, said the co-author of "Affluenza" and national coordinator of the "Take Back Your Time" movement.

"It's not good for our health, for our families and communities, or for our environment," said de Graaf. "We don't have to make work (the center of) our entire lives."

But many of us do. The average American works nine weeks more each year than their European counterparts, according to de Graaf's book, "Take Back Your Time."

We also have the shortest paid vacations in the industrialized world--an average of two weeks compared to the four or five weeks of paid leave many Europeans get by law. Twenty-six percent of workers take no vacation at all.

"That's pretty shocking when you understand that for vacation to do its work, to improve our health, our productivity and mental health, (studies show) you usually need at least two weeks," he said.

The toll is tangible: An annual vacation can cut a man's risk of heart attack by 30 percent and a woman's by 50 percent, he said, citing research studies. Europeans over age 55 are only half as likely to have the kinds of chronic diseases from which many Americans suffer, including heart disease and hypertension.

"We are by far the least healthy nation (among industrialized nations) and we spend twice as much on health care," he said.

Our children are paying a price, too. Unstructured, outdoor playtime is largely a thing of the past. And the number of American families eating dinner together at least four times a week is falling, from 83 percent in 1997 to 75 percent in 2004. That's crucial since researchers say the nightly ritual can help prevent teens from smoking cigarettes or marijuana, drinking alcohol, getting lower grades, suffering depression or attempting suicide.

What will happen when we retire and don't have the job to go to? We had better learn how to do something other than work now. There's no time like the present to have some fun!

Read the complete article:

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=LEISURETIME-04-12-07


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