According to research, employees who have friends at work are seven times more engaged. People are social creatures and good relationships with colleagues make them feel more satisfied with their job. Good relationships make work more meaningful, which is very important because many people spend more time at their jobs than with friends and family.

Good relationships in the workplace can make a big difference, increasing commitment and creating more opportunity for career development. Good relationships among colleagues are also the key to creating strong teams because employees don’t waste their attention and energy on solving personal problems and can focus on what is really important.

Why Relationships Are Important and What to Focus On

Although the need for good relationships in the workplace is rather obvious, not all businesses manage to create a comfortable emotional environment for employees. The main reason is that we all see the concept of good relationships differently. There are many kinds of business relationships. Quite often, they are purely transactional, only consisting of the necessary interactions. In turn, transactional interactions can be either competitive or collaborative. Collaborative interactions imply that both parties are satisfied with the results of their collaborative efforts, while competitive relationships are often associated with unfair treatment and have a very negative impact on teams.

There are also relationships of another kind — relational interactions, where both parties care not only about the outcome but also about each other. Relational interactions take collaboration to a new level. To build relations of this kind, employees should realize the long-term benefits of such interactions, prioritizing the quality of the communication process.

The main distinctive features of good relationships in the workplace are trust, mutual respect, and mindfulness. Employees should be responsible for their actions and words, understanding that their negative emotions impact the whole team. Strong teams also welcome diverse people and opinions, understanding the benefits of diversity for decision-making. The last but not least feature of good relationships is open and honest communication.

How to Establish & Maintain Good Relationships in the Workplace

Conflicts are natural, and it’s impossible to avoid them forever, especially in a stressful business environment. According to statistics, American employees spend about 2.8 hours a week solving conflicts. At the same time, 37% of leaders feel uncomfortable when dealing with conflicts and communicating with their employees. Therefore, supervisors and managers should pay particular attention to de-escalating conflicts and recovering relationships, acting as mediators and showing an example of respectful behavior.

Honest communication is crucial for any relationship. It only becomes possible when people appreciate each other for who they are and don’t try to change others. The first step towards honest, open communication is acknowledging what you know and what you don’t. It’s better to honestly say that you don’t know an answer to a question than to make things up, undermining your own credibility.

Sometimes, your intonation, facial expression, and gestures can say much more than your words. People don’t use verbal communication only. If you’re being sarcastic, a person you’re talking to understands it. The same way, if you don’t feel respect for people, they also understand it. To ensure the right type of nonverbal communication, companies should build their corporate culture around respect.

Employees should clearly understand what to do, as well as when and how to do it. This way, a company can eliminate many conflicts between individuals. Therefore, it’s very important for leaders to set clear, measurable goals and to explain how every employee can get the necessary help.

According to statistics, two-thirds of millennial employees feel stressed out most of the time. The main causes of stress in the workplace are an inability to maintain a healthy work-life balance and communication problems. Stress leads to employee burnout and numerous negative consequences for both physical and mental health, making companies lose up to $190 billion a year. Therefore, companies should create opportunities for cognitive, emotional, and physical relief.

The best way to build strong relationships within a team is to recognize and reward every member’s contribution to the overall success of the company. Employees should feel valuable, regardless of their position. Leaders should make sure that every member of their team understands their importance and the importance of teamwork, creating a motivational environment. An individual growth of every employee benefits the whole company.

Quite often, an office environment prevents employees from demonstrating their highest productivity. Gossipy coworkers, social media, office noises, and other factors are the most common causes of distraction. The more your employees get distracted, the less productive they become, and the higher the stress level. In turn, stress leads to conflicts in the workplace and makes employees feel unsatisfied with their job. Therefore, companies should create a comfortable environment, motivating employees and setting clear goals, instead of encouraging multitasking and micro-management.

A positive work environment and good relationships in the workplace are crucial for any business. If your employees are unhappy, their productivity declines, they get sucked into conflicts and lose their motivation. To cultivate positive relationships, companies should create an atmosphere of mutual respect. Team leaders should ensure open communication and recognize each employee’s contribution. It’s especially important to create a strong corporate culture based on respect and honesty, setting clear goals and minimizing stress.

Ester Brierley, a competent virtual assistant and a content creator for College-Writer, knows the secret for balancing freelancing and her full-time job as a QA Engineer in a software outsourcing company. She enjoys researching cutting-edge digital trends and sharing them in her writing pieces. Follow her on Twitter.

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You can do it: how to establish & maintain good relationships in the workplace

You don’t have to read too many news articles to know that Internet security is on everyone’s mind. Even Hollywood knows this and is trying to cash in with hit shows like Person of Interest, </Scorpion>, and the Emmy-winning Mr. Robot. Major corporations are also taking notice. Gartner is forecasting worldwide enterprise security spending to total $96.3 billion in 2018, an increase of 8 percent from 2017. 

It is no wonder with 50% of respondents reporting an increase in the number of cyberattacks from last year and four out of five indicating it was likely or more likely their enterprise will experience a cyberattack in 2018 (according to the 2018 ISACA State of Cybersecurity Study). Even this past election cycle isn’t immune to accusations of stolen emails and hacked servers.

But not all is doom and gloom; for the IT professional, this is a great climate for those looking to update their skills and join the relatively new and growing sector of IT security. Don’t believe me? In a March 2018 article posted by Forbes, five of the top 15 most valuable IT certifications are security based, and all had an average salary north of $100K. Security certification has become a serious and well-respected career.

Now you are probably wondering, where does one start in getting a piece of this lucrative cyber pie? As I quickly found out myself, this is not an easy answer. There are many different certifications around security to choose from and many different companies and organizations offering them. But don’t fret; let me help you carve the right path and get you on your way.

Being a security professional is not about finding the one perfect certification; it’s more about finding the right combination of certifications. What certifications you seek depends on what areas of security you’re most interested in and how high up the corporate ladder you wish to climb. The most popular certifications are those that are relevant to all areas of IT security.  But before we get into too much detail, I think it is important to establish some baselines. One does not simply jump immediately into security without a solid background in the general IT hardware and networking field.

If you’re going to attempt entering a security field and IT is not a current profession or hobby of yours, then I’d suggest tackling a couple of certifications to get you started. The first is CompTIA A+ where all IT begins by focusing on learning the standard computer hardware, basic operating system functionality, and general troubleshooting. From there, I’d recommend getting certified in CompTIA Network+, which will get you familiar with basic networking concepts like IP addresses, DNS, domains, routing—essentially everything that defines the framework that Internet security relies on.

Okay, you are now an IT expert. So, what next? It’s good to start with the basics of security, and the best certification for that also comes from CompTIA. Their Security+ covers all the core concepts in IT security from Wi-Fi passwords and firewalls to employee best practices. Although this doesn’t necessarily go deep into any one area, it provides an excellent starting point and a balanced overview of the major topics. 

So, what next? After you have Security+ under your belt, you can start considering some specialty certifications. One of the most popular next steps is EC-Council’s Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certification and Certified Security Analyst (ECSA). One of the best ways for a company to ensure that their systems are hardened (or secure) is to hire someone to try and break in. And since recruiting hackers from the Dark Web is considered very unwise (really, don’t do it), they instead look for those trusted individuals who are trained to think like a hacker. Based on that premise, the ethical hacker certification was born. Once certified, you will understand the tools (like Kali Linux) and the techniques (like penetration testing) that you can use to assure companies that their systems are indeed secure.

Another very popular certification is EC-Council’s Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator (CHFI) certification. Like the television show CSI, it is an area of the security field that focuses on how to collect and analyze digital evidence to detect when something is about to or has happened. Most companies know that it’s not if you will be hacked, but when. And with any hack or attack, there are always telltale signs or fingerprints that are left behind, leading companies to hire professionals to look for these to identify areas that may need more hardening, to avert an pending attack, or to clean-up after the damage is done under document what happened. This certification is about learning the skills for detecting or mitigating the aftermath of a successful hack.

That’s all we’re covering in this post, stay tuned for part 2 where we will continue down the road to more advanced IT security certification…

Vice President of Technology | LearnNowOnline | Eden Prairie, MN

Martin Schaeferle is the Vice President of Technology for LearnNowOnline. Martin joined the company in 1994 and started teaching IT professionals nationwide to develop applications using Visual Studio and Microsoft SQL Server. He has been a featured speaker at various conferences including Microsoft Tech-Ed, DevConnections and the Microsoft NCD Channel Summit. Today, he is responsible for all product and software development as well as managing the company’s IT infrastructure. Martin enjoys staying on the cutting edge of technology and guiding the company to produce the best learning content with the best user experience in the industry. In his spare time, Martin enjoys golf, fishing, and being with his wife and three adult children. 

Navigating your IT security certification, part 1

If you feel like you’re always rushing through the day, trying to get a million things done at once, it may be time to look at ways of improving your productivity.

Do you have a co-worker or friend who always seems incredibly productive and on top of everything? Take a deep breath and a leaf from their perfectly organized notebook – it’s time to get your work life in order.

We’re going to show you how to take control and take charge of your work day. Getting on top of your To Do lists and feeling confident in your productivity skills will:

Improve your work efficiency and performance

Reduce stress and build your self-confidence

Allow you to have more time to do what you like!

Read on for our top 5 tips to become a more super-productive version of yourself.

When we talk about productivity, it soon becomes clear that it’s a really personal thing – especially, it seems, in the way we manage our inboxes.

While some people stick fastidiously to checking their emails first thing every morning, others swear by leaving their inbox well alone until at least 10am, allowing them to focus their full attention on completing other tasks.

Regardless of what time of day you decide is right for you, one of the best things you can do to improve your productivity is to schedule proper time each day to go through your inbox. Constantly checking emails, or responding to every little notification from your inbox, results in a lot of wasted time and energy and disruption to your workflow.

Choose the time (or times) of day you’ll use to process your inbox and stick to it – for example, you may decide to read and respond to emails every morning, noon and night. Don’t be tempted to keep flicking over to your inbox to see if anything new has come in. With your new schedule you’ll have ample time to read and action new mail.


By committing to handling things once, and once only, you’ll be able to focus on dealing with things as they arise, particularly little things that only take a moment but can easily be forgotten. Or start adding up when you put them all together! Taking the time to do things in the moment will actually save you time in the long run, as well as a lot of potential stress.

You can start practicing this way of thinking by paying bills as they arrive, replying to emails when you read them or simply putting something back in its place straight away. Doing this means it’ll be done, dusted and out of your head – allowing you to focus on new tasks at hand. 


Richard Branson is known to be a big fan of the humble notebook, carrying a notebook with him wherever he goes and claiming he’d never have got where he is today without this habit.

Using a notebook to get things out of your head and onto the page is very effective for stress management, allowing you to keep on top of your daily To Do list and jot down your ideas throughout the day.

Whatever you write in your notebook, it’s sure to be a lot better for your brain and creativity than staring at a screen and hitting refresh on social media.


Did you know that the average office worker is only productive for two hours and 53 minutes a day? That’s only three hours of productive work, out of the general eight-hour work day. This tells us that a lot of time is spent being distracted by other things. Or sites.

Take a look at your own day and evaluate how you spend, or waste, your time. If checking social media has become a problem for your concentration or work deliverables, consider taking a break from it or at least putting some strong strategies in place to manage it.


It’s important to find productivity tools and strategies that make sense to you, while fitting in with your personality and lifestyle. Look for apps and websites that offer tools that can boost your productivity as soon as you start using them. There are also apps that can help you kick bad habits and change old behavioral patterns.

Check out the Top 10 Apps for Enhanced Productivity by organization expert Suzanna Kaye. This online course shows handy productivity apps in action, providing tips for leveraging their best features and offering cool alternative uses.

Online learning courses are a great way to learn more tips and tricks, helping you to boost productivity and achieve your goals. You may also like to enroll in 10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity, an online course offering simple, practical steps to help you create the perfect productivity system and build powerful habits to help you achieve your goals.

Good luck with your new systems and strategies – we hope they work as well for you as they do for us!

The advancements made in technology today and the changing needs of the marketplace and its consumers have opened an opportunity for a new workplace phenomenon – remote work. Although the concept has received controversial feedback, research suggests that there is a range of benefits both for the employer and employee from working outside the office. 

Employees share that their productivity increases, stress levels drop as there is no need to plan the time and money necessary for commuting, creativity is easier to be found, and overall their level of satisfaction is higher. Research reveals that 61% of employees share that loud colleagues are a significant distraction preventing them from working effectively in the office. Because of this and additional reasons, 86% of employees have a preference for working alone in order to reach maximum productivity. 

It is interesting to see from the same study that 46% of workers communicate over email, instant messaging tools, or phone with the aim of reducing the distractions related to face-to-face communication. As the quality of the written material is essential in business communications, often companies rely on professional writing services such as those provided by Handmadewritings.

With the rising trend of remote work, it is only natural that management turns a focus towards communicating properly and effectively with remote employees to maximize productivity and reach business objectives. Let’s look at a few tips that can improve communication with remote employees and result in better business relations and successfully achieved targets.

1.    Outline specific expectations and deadlines

One of the most important aspects of communicating with employees, local or remote, is setting clear expectations and deadlines. In order to be on the same page and work towards a common goal, it is essential that employees have an understanding of their specific tasks and are given a deadline that they will be working against. This will allow remote workers to organize their daily and weekly tasks in a way that will benefit the company in the long-term.

Remote employees often require regular meetings to keep track of ongoing tasks or completed work, share feedback, and exchange new ideas. There is a range of platforms that can be used for setting up online conversations such as Google Hangouts, Skype, or other instant messaging tools. Regular communication with remote workers will ensure that they have a sense of belonging and are included in the company’s team spirit and culture. 

3.    Provide access to necessary materials

In order to ensure that the workflow of remote employees is easy and undisturbed, make sure that you have organized an online platform or library of all the necessary information that will be needed. For instance, give remote workers access to contact lists, marketing materials, or other business resources that they will require as part of their responsibilities. Often, the work process is stopped if the information is unavailable and time can be wasted in reaching management for authorization or approval.

4.    Provide systematic online training

Depending on the personal characteristics of your employees, remote employees’ motivation can be lower than that of local employees after a certain time period. This is why it is necessary to stimulate workers by offering regular online training or video coaching in which employees are updated with innovations in the company or industry. This can recover the lost creativity and motivation for work. In addition, it will ensure that remote workers are equally as skilled and trained as local employees for their designated tasks.

Especially if the remote employee is part of a wider team of colleagues and their work will be dependent on others, it is mandatory to make the progress or workflow transparent for all involved members. For instance, it will be unfavorable to have a remote employee working on a task that has just been completed by someone else simply because there is no available information regarding the progress made. 

Being unavailable at a time of emergency can cost the business a fortune and can result in destroyed bonds between employees or even clients. Due to the inability of a remote employee to walk up to your office in times of need, ensure that you are available at all times or arrange backup that can respond to queries. For instance, this can be a colleague from the office or it can be a whole team of employees all working on the same project that could assist remote employees, if needed.

Remote employees play a significant role in the way business is done today but they do require an adapted form of communication and a pre-organized system that has considered all the potential weaknesses. The suggested tips above will help you tackle the world of remote employees with a smile on your face and will ensure flawless communication and exchange of information.

Donna Moores is a successful blogger and CMO at Writemyessaytoday.us. She has gained an outstanding marketing experience within the biggest industries and businesses, which she pleasantly shares with the readers. You may reach out to Donna on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Six amazing tips to effectively communicate with remote employees

How to Use Active Listening Skills to Coach Employees to Solve Their Own Problems

Think of a boss – that’s the person who tells everyone what to do, right? The thing is that no-one likes being told what to do. Successful managers don’t just rely on their authority to boss people around. Instead successful managers have a much stronger form of personal power and that’s the power to communicate persuasively. And one of the most persuasive, but little known, forms of communication is using active listening skills to coach employees to solve their own problems. 

When we think about communication skills people usually think about talking or writing. 

But communication is a two-way street. Without listening, you’re not communicating, you’re just broadcasting. Listening is the other half of successful communication.

What is your Active Listening communication score? Take the Quiz to find out.

What I’d like to share with you is some of the powerful ways that you can use active listening to be a better boss.

“Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking” Bernard M. Baruch

 5 Ways to Use Active Listening to be a Better Boss

1. Coach Your Employees to Solve their Own Problems

When your employees bring you a problem the natural urge is to solve the problem for them ASAP. But the problem is that when you solve your employees’ problems for them, then you’re training them to bring you their problems to solve. What you end up with is more problems, not fewer. Instead of showing them that you know the answer, invest a little time to coach them through finding their own solution.  

2. Build Better Relationships with Employees 

Listening is essentially the whole premise behind Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” Humans have a basic need to be understood. Listening to people helps them to feel valued. Conversely working for a boss who doesn’t listen to you destroys motivation. This is why your One-on-One Meetings with Employees always start with their agenda.

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them” Ralph G. Nichols 

Ownership is that manager nirvana where your employees take responsibility for their work. When you tell your employee what to do, they don’t own your solution. But when you use active listening skills to coach them to come up with their own solution, they also have the ownership to prove that their solution works.

4. Stimulate Creativity, Innovation & Problem Solving

Successful bosses don’t try to do everything themselves. Successful bosses are the bosses who can leverage the unique skills and abilities of every employee on their team. Got a complex problem that you don’t have the time to solve? Delegate the responsibility to your employee and then coach them through their own problem solving. This isn’t just a problem solving technique because your employee’s love learning and growing.

Train your employees to solve their own problems and they won’t need to wait to find the time in your busy diary. Don’t let your long to do list become a massive bottleneck. 

Managing employees is difficult because people are complex and school doesn’t teach you how to be a better boss. If you want to be a better boss, giving effective performance communication is one of the essential manager skills that you need to develop. But don’t forget that half of communication is listening. And effective managers know how to use listening to build better relationships, create ownership, stimulate growth, encourage innovation and build problem solving.

So the next time your employees come to you with a problem, resist your natural urge to quickly solve the problem for them. Instead of telling them what to do, use active listening skills to coach your employees to solve their own problems.

This article is a guest post from Manager Foundation which specialises in showing people the soft skills they need to create a happier, more productive workplace. 

The forgotten half of communication skills for bosses

According to the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), 65 percent of people are visual learners. That means if you hold a meeting, training session, or some other work-related gathering, unless you use some type of visual aid, you’ll probably lose the majority of your audience’s attention within minutes. Although you have many different options, slideshow presentations still reign supreme.

Regardless of which type of presentation you decide on, an excellent way to help your staff absorb and retain the information shared is by using a PowerPoint slideshow or some other visual aid. Each of the options listed below boasts unique capabilities and advantages. Keep in mind that for training purposes, it’s especially important to select the appropriate type of presentation.

An informative speech is the most commonly used form of presenting research data. With this, your Learning and Development (L&D) Manager has the opportunity to present specific findings in a systematic way that people understand.

As the name implies, this presentation involves communicating with your employees through some kind of demonstration. Whether that’s how to work machinery, install a component, or make the perfect wedding cake, you want to use slides that contain images along with step-by-step instructions to drive the message home. 

The goal of this presentation is to encourage your employees to see things differently than they currently do. For instance, if you want to emphasize the importance of an open-door policy among your leadership team or help your employees understand the value of eating nutritional foods, this would be the correct presentation to use. In other words, this presentation works to change thinking patterns about a particular issue or topic. 

Do you want to “light a fire” under your sales and marketing team, show your employees how a new product solves problems, or perhaps you have young employees who need a gentle push to help them feel excited about achieving success within your organization? An inspirational speech works to motivate people and push them toward a goal. 

For a presentation to make the greatest impact, consider combining a little bit of each type of speech. You can still focus on a primary topic but at the same time, cover more bases. 

For a presentation to have the intended impact on your employees, it’s vital that you include the right leaders during the planning phase. If you want to organize a corporate-wide training program, you need input from your HR Director, L&D Manager, and even your Compliance Manager. However, for a presentation that’s more department-focused, you want your HR Director and the department head to brainstorm together.

Regardless of the presentation, and whether you’re organizing in-house training for a large group or sharing information obtained through an online course for a select number of employees, success starts by creating a compelling and memorable message.

See Things from the Employees’ Perspective 

When putting a presentation together, try to see things from your employees’ viewpoint. By drafting a speech with humor, emotion, storytelling, and interesting facts, you will have a captivated audience.

You don’t want to give presentations just for the sake of saying you did. Instead, there must be a point for the meeting or training session. Some reasons include a new product rollout, launching a new service, utilizing different equipment or machinery, and bringing your employees up-to-date on compliance issues. Select a topic that will ultimately benefit both your staff and the organization.

Instead of a catch-all, a presentation should have one focus and one goal. If you have multiple topics to address, you can either create additional presentations or have the applicable staff members complete training courses online. That way, you don’t hold up production for the sake of covering everything with one swipe. 

Before finalizing a presentation, including the supporting documentation that you pass out to employees, double and even triple check all facts. Along with that, make sure your spelling and grammar are on point. 

Just like “location, location, location” is vital in the real estate world, practice is critical when preparing for presentations. The more you practice the better the results.  

A common mistake made by presenters is having employees take notes. Since everyone has a unique perception, there’s no guarantee they’re all writing down the same message. Therefore, prepare supporting materials and pass them out before giving your presentation.

Remember, the material you hand out should support the topic of the speech. At no time do you want to give your employees a copy of the slides themselves as that makes you look lazy and disinterested. 

After creating a killer presentation comes the fun, and also nerve-wracking part: delivering the message. Use the following tips to ensure your employees engage.

From the minute that you take the stage, put your credentials on display. That doesn’t mean going over your entire career bio, but rather providing important details that let your employees know you’re a person of authority on the topic and in the industry. As a credible presenter, your audience is more likely to pay close attention.

Early on, let your staff know the goal of the presentation. Whether you’re there to get input about a new product, service, or process, setting and revealing the goal helps people relate and it’ll keep you on task.

Even when addressing a serious topic, a compliance issue pertaining to workplace safety for example, not only do you want to inform your employees, but it’s also important entertain them to some degree. Remember, giving a presentation in front of a live audience is entirely different than sending out an internal email. Therefore, you need to appeal to their emotions, which comes from both passion and humor.

As stated by Jeremy Choi, a highly respected entrepreneur, leader, and professional presenter, “Create a single sentence description for every service, product, or idea.” He explains that a presentation riddled with long descriptions appears confusing. For that reason, he stresses to keep descriptions as part of a PowerPoint presentation slide to no more than 140 characters.

If you opt for a slideshow presentation in conjunction with your speech or training, never use more than 10 slides, keep the duration to 20 minutes, and use at least a 30-point font. Anything more than that will cause your staff to lose interest. If you look at reputable Learning Management Systems, you’ll see that most courses take little time to complete.

While the person who gives the presentation may feel “weak in the knees,” he or she needs to stand tall and appear confident. You can help with this by offering the leaders in your company access to online courses that focus specifically on building confidence and creating poise.

For a lot of people, especially those giving a presentation in front of a large audience, making eye contact feels uncomfortable. However, eye contact helps hold the group’s attention, allowing for the message to stick.

Especially when using a PowerPoint slideshow when giving a presentation, never read each slide word-for-word. A speech becomes far more powerful by first understanding the message and then delivering it without referring to the slideshow. As a result, you’ll give off an air of confidence and authority that makes people listen. In other words, use PowerPoint slides to support statements as opposed to using them as a teleprompter.

Perhaps the best tip on delivering a presentation is to tell a story. Provide the group with real-life illustrations and scenarios that help them relate. As an example, the presenter could share about an injury sustained due to a non-compliance issue or landing the dream job through hard work, dedication, and determination. For this, the possibilities are endless.

There’s nothing more frustrating than attending a presentation only to hear nothing because you’re seated toward the back of the room. Therefore, make sure you have all the necessary technology in place to enhance both the visual and audio experience. 

What better way to drive a message home than with an open question and answer session following a presentation? When you are finished with the speech, encourage your employees to ask questions followed by you or a member of your leadership team providing the correct answer. Along with helping your employees learn, this is an excellent way to boost morale, in that it makes your staff feel valued.

Along with what your employees ask, throw out some thought-provoking questions of your own. Choose those that prompt forward-thinking and make your staff feel eager to learn the answer.

By showing up early to give a presentation, you have the opportunity to set everything up. That way, when your employees arrive, you can start the meeting or training session right on time.

The great thing about creating and delivering a presentation is there’s no written rule that says you have to stay within specific confines. In fact, some of the best presenters in the world, including the late Steve Jobs, have a knack for stepping outside of the box, regardless of the type of speech involved. While you and your leadership team can come up with some creative options, you might throw the following into the mix.

As mentioned, storytelling is a crucial part of any successful presentation. Even if you need to toss out a lot of facts and statistics, incorporate them in a story. By doing so, you create a story that demonstrates and supports the details provided.

Another powerful way to give a presentation involves using video. If the situation warrants, you could also incorporate background music. For instance, if you have a funeral planning business, a video showing a beautifully manicured cemetery with soothing music accompanying it would set the stage.

Although there’s talking and words that go along with a photo presentation, this entails adding images to your slideshow and letting them make a statement. The goal is to carefully choose photos that connect to the topic and resonate with your employees, but without them being too distracting.

An excellent way to present involves getting your workers involved. Rather than watch a slideshow or listen to you talk throughout the presentation, have them participate. Depending on what you want to achieve, you can select people randomly, ask for volunteers, or organize several groups of employees that work together.

When introducing a new product or going over the details of how something works, a prop presentation is ideal, In lieu of PowerPoint slides, you would use different types of visual aids. For example, if rolling out a revolutionary new smartphone, you might use a cell phone from the 1980s as a prop to stress how far technology has come.

If you have a manufacturing company that makes various types of kitchen gadgets, you could combine a prop and interactive presentation to have a few employees perform a task the old way versus the new way with a cutting-edge product.

Along with all the things that you should do when creating and delivering a presentation, there are some mistakes that you want to avoid at all costs. For starters, you always want to expect the unexpected. You never know if right in the middle of a speech, the projector bulb will go out or the electricity will shut off. While not a life crisis, never give a presentation without a backup plan in place.

Also, never think you can wing a presentation. Even if you have years of experience in the industry and vast knowledge of the topic, standing before a group of employees is a completely different game. It’s usually not so much a case of bad nerves but more disorganization. This is why you want the right leadership team involved from the beginning and the reason that practicing is so vital.

One final mistake has to do with coming off as robotic. No matter the position you hold in the company, your employees know you’re human so there’s no reason to try to present yourself as perfect. Instead, smile and enjoy the process of sharing information and educating the people who work hard to help your organization succeed.

Whether using training material you find online in your presentation or offering courses to different members of your staff, Go1 is the best resource. We have a massive library of business topics in podcast, video, article, and blog format.

Become a master of work presentations with these top tips

Employee performance feedback - who wants it?

Giving your staff negative feedback can be stressful for both you and them. Let’s face it no-one likes being told what they’re doing wrong. And who likes confrontation. 

What if you could use positive feedback to fix an employee performance problem? Sounds a little crazy I know, so I’m going to tell you a little motivational story. 

Giving effective feedback is one of the essential manager skills. If you’re a manager looking to improve employee performance with better communication find out more here: 

This is the common scenario many managers face: Carol, a receptionist, has recently been late for work. 

So this story starts with a minor performance infraction, are you a manager who has experienced something similar? I know I have, and I know that when this happens, I start evaluating my options. Some of the things that go through my head include:

This is a minor issue that doesn’t justify a long performance discussion. I’m busy enough as it is, so I’ll wait and see if it becomes an issue,

Carol already knows what her start time is, she doesn’t need me to remind her and

I don’t want to seem petty, get into an argument and end up with Carol disliking me

In this story what happens is that Carol's manager hesitates to address this (minor) employee performance problem. The “reasons” above become excuses to avoid dealing with the issue. As a result, someone else must stop what they are doing and cover the front desk until she arrives. Her behavior affects members of the team. 

Worse, by not addressing her tardiness, this manager is sending the message that they condone this behaviour.

In a parallel universe, Carol’s manager does something different. No, they don’t undertake the unpleasant task of calling Carol into their office for a serious talking to about punctuality. Instead they does something incredibly easy and simple. They starts giving a particular type of positive feedback when Carol does something right:

“Good morning Carol. I like seeing you at the desk when I arrive because then I know there is someone here to greet our      customers.”

“Good morning Carol, I’m glad to see you on the desk. I want you to know that your work on reception is important to the whole team to keep everything running smoothly. I appreciate that. Can you please keep that up?” 

“Good morning Carol. I’m glad to see you here before start time – now I know I don’t have to worry about covering      reception. Can you please continue with that?”

Hasn’t said anything unpleasant or got involved in an unpleasant confrontation,

Hasn't delayed their feedback until annual performance review and

Hasn't even spent a long time giving performance feedback.

They is using secret ninja manager skills to fix a problem. 

Effective performance feedback. The power of words:

These simple words have a very powerful employee engagement and job satisfaction effect:

Feeling Valued & Acknowledged: The manager has let Carol that they are aware of the contribution that Carol makes, they appreciate the work she does and she is valued, 

Doing Important Work: The manager has told Carol how her work is part of a larger whole. Even though many people might think that a receptionist is a low-level role, the manager is helping Carol to find the value and meaning in her work

A Sense of Belonging: The manager has shown Carol how she is an important part of the team. They have shown her that she has a role that others rely on her to do. This helps people to feel like an important part of a community and to feel accepted,

Increasing Performance: And if you look carefully, you’ll also see that the manager has asked Carol to commit to coming in on time in the future. This isn’t just praise because effective feedback motivates employees to make a positive future change


So what do you think will be the result of these words of encouragement. With that sort of consistent performance feedback, do you think it’s likely that Carol will be late in the future? Based on what other managers have experienced. This sort of positive feedback doesn't just fix individual problems. This positive feedback increases employee motivation, increases employee engagement and employee retention. This is because acknowledgement, feeling valued, doing meaningful work and having a sense of belonging are strong drivers of employee satisfaction, employee engagement and staff retention. 

And by improving employee engagement all aspects of performance improve, not just the little things.

Managing by exception is a management excuse

The “Manage by Exception” management technique is where the manager keeps an eye on things and only performance manages problems. But the problem is if you only give feedback when your employees do something wrong then the only feedback that you give is negative.

All this negative feedback is destroying your employee relations. If you are consistently negative and critical, no wonder employees don't like you or want to listen to you. Dr Gottman's magic ratio for healthy relationships is 5 times as many positive interactions as negative. Healthy employee relations doesn't mean making your employees like you as a friend, Healthy employee relations means respect and good communications. Positive feedback builds employee engagement.

“About 90% of the things in our life are right. Make sure you don’t overlook the 90% of things that are right because you are focusing on the 10% of things that aren’t.”

Positive feedback isn't only for positive performance

There is a misconception that positive performance feedback is only for good performance. But as I’ve shown above, you can and should use positive performance feedback to also fix employee performance issues. This works for employee performance issues large and small. And regular performance communication is one of the tools that successful managers use to get results. In fact the real technique isn’t just to use feedback when you have a performance problem. As a manager if you communicate regularly and frequently about performance your employees will be more engaged.

Are you a manager responsible for the performance of your employees? Is there a performance issue that you wish your employees would pay more attention to? Find out How to Use Positive Feedback to Fix Performance Problems here. 

I hope that you have enjoyed this motivational story and that you are inspired to use positive feedback with your staff. 

Manager Foundation specializes in the skills that managers need to know to create a healthy, productive and satisfying work environment. Giving effective performance communication is an essential manager skill because it supports you to be an effective manager in your other management duties:

Use performance communication when you delegate to your employees: See the Ultimate Guide to Delegation to find out more

The best place to give performance communication is in your One on One Meetings with Employees

Use positive feedback to keep your employees on track when you are coaching them to improve their skills and abilities

Effective communication is as much listening as speaking. Find out how to use Active Listening Skills to coach your employees to fix their own problems

Although adopting and following good ethical practices is vital regardless of the industry, it’s particularly critical for the finance industry. If you have a company that handles investments, banking, loans, or another aspect of this market, there’s no margin for error.

After all, not only does your company deal with people’s money but also their futures. Individuals and businesses that turn to you for assistance depend on the fact that you’ll make the right decisions on their behalf.

Although most companies in the finance industry follow strict internal policies along with government laws and regulations, you know as well as anyone that sometimes, things go very wrong. All it takes is for one employee to make an unethical move to send both the customer and the company spiraling out of control.

Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme is a perfect example. He, along with other members of his staff, became greedy. As a result, they began to do unethical things that resulted in the theft of millions upon millions of dollars from clients, ruined lives, and sent he and his clan to prison. Of course, stealing is just one of the many unethical things that people in the finance industry do.

This story along with many others has created a perception among consumers that the financial industry is unethical. That means you already face an uphill battle in building your customer base and retaining clients you already serve. One of the challenges is this industry encompasses multiple sectors, including securities firms, investment banks, mortgage lenders, insurance companies, mutual fund organizations, and more.

With so many entities making up a massive market, whenever something unethical happens, it spreads like wildfire throughout different news organizations. The other thing to consider is that because the finance industry is so heavily regulated, people quickly identify and report unethical events. 

Before long, people around the world, whether a customer or not, know what happened. As mentioned, there’s no room for error within your organization in that one tiny slip up could prove disastrous. This is why ethical training for your entire staff is crucial.

As part of this industry, it’s imperative that you understand the most common pitfalls. Knowing the difficulties that happen most often will help you and your leadership team stay on top of potential issues, snuffing out fires before they engulf everything. In particular, five things stand out.

Selfishness and Greed – Taking from a quote in the Bible in I Timothy chapter 6 verse 10, “For the love of money is the root of all evil…,” nothing is closer to the truth. Sadly, some people are self-serving, meaning they go after what they want at the expense of others. Once these individuals take that first step toward doing something unethical out of selfishness and greed, seldom do they stop. For people in this category, the goal is to accumulate as much as possible quickly.

Demanding Clientele – Another area in which online training dramatically helps is by defining the responsibilities of your leaders and their staff members. That way, when customers become demanding and push for an employee to bend a little, there’s no temptation. You need a well-defined plan for your organization so that workers know who to turn to when faced with demanding clients. Because there’s a close connection between customers and employees in the finance industry, the goal is to build loyalty from the people who work for your company and gain respect from the clients you serve.

No Moral Compass – Whether lacking sound mentoring from parents or guardians while growing up or perhaps having the inability to look past one’s own perceptions, some people in the finance industry have no moral compass. In fact, some of these individuals are so good at convincing others, and they get away with doing unethical things without anyone questioning them.

Internal Conflict – For your company, it’s vital that you have a viable reward system in place. The reason is that if you give kudos that don’t bridge the gap between your staff’s responsibility and company demands, you promote unethical behavior. In simple terms, if your current reward system creates room for cheating, even a little, there’s a chance of someone acting unethically for monetary gain. Instead, you should implement a system that encourages honesty, perseverance, and integrity as opposed to dysfunction.

Moral Versus Legal Behavior – Do you know someone who always runs the yellow light, picks up the tip change left on the table for the server, or behaves poorly in some other way? While perhaps that individual’s actions are not a crime, they do equate to bad moral behavior. One of the benefits of setting up a training program within your organization specific to ethics is it stipulates punishment for illegal behavior. Without consequences, some people will continue to push boundaries.

Remember, unethical acts aren’t always about stealing large sums of money. This could be something as simple as padding an expense report, using a corporate credit card on a personal dinner date, stretching the number of hours worked, fudging on the truth about what your company can deliver, and so on. 

What it comes down to is you have the responsibility to take control over your company’s success by knowing where risks exist and putting a plan of action in place to address them.

Developing and Maintaining an Ethical Work Environment

Kathie Rotz, CPTM Director of Learning at Honkamp Kreuger might have said it best, “A major reason employees behave unethically is because they don’t value company ethics.” If you want people in your organization to stay on the right path, you need to develop and maintain an ethical work environment. By doing so, you foster positive attitudes among your staff.

The thing with training in the finance industry is it touches on every department. You can select the best courses specifically for your sales and marketing team, the HR group, compliance managers, and so on. Using online courses as the groundwork, you set the stage for what the company expects from everyone, including the consequences of unethical acts.

The goal is to change the mindset of your employees, so they focus on providing excellent customer care rather than the outcome of selling a product, solving a problem, or locking in a major investor. Training proves highly beneficial in this area as well. Through a trusted Learning Management System, you can create a customer-centric training program. 

However, for any training to work the way you want, it has to start with your leadership team. After they complete courses, your HR Manager, L&D Manager, Compliance Manager, and other executives can devise the right approach for their respective teams, as well as lead by example. Also, you need to make training an ongoing part of the organization, especially considering how fast things can change in the finance industry. 

One look at the housing market crash in 2008 is enough to understand the devastation that unethical practices unleash on innocent people. Handing out loans to buyers without the necessary qualifications eventually led to a bona fide recession, costing millions of people their homes and leaving them in financial destitution.

Do you remember the statement about starting with your leadership team? If you want an ethical organization, you have to develop ethical leaders. Although there are several different ways to accomplish this, one involves cross-training. Working as a check and balance system, it keeps people honest and makes them accountable.

Not only that but by cross-training the leaders within your company, you provide them with an avenue for identifying alternative solutions. Instead of believing there’s only one way to do something, they begin to see different perspectives. Over time, training helps them develop powerful thinking and processing skills that lead them to make ethical choices.

At the same time, your management team must develop trusting relationships with their staff members. Using various online training courses, your leaders improve on communication, which makes it easier for employees to come forward when they notice something unethical happening in the workplace.

Instead of getting scared of the consequences of being a whistleblower, employees begin to feel confident their managers will maintain confidentiality and handle the situation in the correct way. With so many incredible online courses, the sky is the limit as to the caliber of the program you can implement in your organization.

You want every employee to know that simply turning a blind eye to unethical behavior is never okay. While an issue may appear to affect just one department, the reality is it impacts the company as a whole. For that reason, it’s critical for every person to look beyond themselves and understand that preventing and correcting unethical actions requires the effort of the entire organization. 

The challenge is that in some instances, an individual who spots someone doing something unethical either feels frightened to come forward or like a disloyal friend. Building confidence in your employees will help give them the courage needed to report suspicious things as they happen. Fortunately, a trusted Learning Management System has a massive library of topics to develop people into strong, dedicated, and confident employees willing to protect the business.

As someone in the finance industry, you probably know all about the Chinese Wall theory. With this, you segregate different divisions within the organization to prevent sharing insider secrets that could shake the company to its core. Instead of having various professionals caught in the middle of a security breach, you protect different areas of the company.