http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/overcoming-resistance-to-change.html http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/overcoming-resistance-to-change.html Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0500
This is not just something that happens on a personal level either. Anything you attempt that might be new or just 'out of character' can quite easily be undone by other people - often the people closest to you. Machiavelli captured it best in his famous quote "There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all who profit by the new order. This lukewarmness arises partly from fear of their adversaries, who have law in their favor, and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not believe in anything new until they have had an actual experience of it." Can you see why your dreams should remain private? It is fairly obvious that your dreams might well impinge on the comfort zones of others and if they do you can certainly expect some resistance!

This is not something to get concerned about though. You have a responsibility to yourself to do the best for yourself. You can only make the world a better place by changing what you do to become a better person. If the path to achieving your dreams makes you a better person then it has to be the right way to go. We all have to be willing to leave our comfort zones to make the world a better place and if that means we are doing it to fulfill another persons dreams whilst pursuing our own, then so be it. In fact, the quickest way to make your dreams a reality is to help other people achieve their dreams.

If you are skeptical about this innate resistance to change we all seem to have, think of the real pain and heartache that comes from repeating the same mistakes again and again. We are all guilty of this on some level whether it be our health, our relationships or our financial situation. Why do we choose not to suffer a little discomfort now for the sake of a whole lot of pain later? Equally, why do we choose short term pleasure over our long term well being? Is it because we have allowed the mind to control our lives rather than us controlling it? Of course it is! Our anticipation of any event that we have never actually experienced is more often than not based on false evidence from the past. This makes us choose the easy option over the better option regardless of the long term consequences.

One of the most effective weapons in fighting our resistance to change is to change our attitude to events as they arise. Look for the hidden benefits in every event, even if on the surface it appears things are going wrong. Just flip the switch and start to expect the best from any action you take. When you do
this on a consistent basis you will find it easier to leave the comfort zone and choose the best option; the option that moves you closer to your dreams.

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Stuart is the co-owner of site http://www.7stepsup.com
and is a long term student of practical philosophy. He considers the development of a positive mental attitude a prime key to success.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/management/benchmarking-avoid-comparing-yourself-to-the-industry-average.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/management/benchmarking-avoid-comparing-yourself-to-the-industry-average.html Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0500
Many surveying companies sell their services on the basis that they will be able to compare the scores of the one company against the average score of all of the organizations in their database. Comparing yourself to someone else is enticing. We have been exposed to comparative data from the first day we stepped inside a school. Throughout our primary and secondary education we were compared to the rest and typically this comparison was against the “class average”. We knew who the smartest and the dumbest kids were but it was the average that counted. Was I above or below the class average? That was important in terms of dealing with our own self esteem and dealing with our parents. This was not the case for all students. The parents of some students demanded top marks and that is exactly what those few students worked towards. They had to be the best. They had to have the top marks.

This was all very interesting but in the end it was irrelevant. When it came time to apply to university a new standard had to be reached. University entrance requirements varied but one thing was clear. Average marks were not good enough. In fact being above average in many instances was not good enough. University entrance requirements were demanding and one had to strive for a new and much higher standard than “average”. The profile or status of a university that you were interested in attending, determined the level of academic excellence you had to achieve.

It is puzzling to see how many organizations fall into the trap of placing a great deal of emphasis on comparing their surveys scores to a database that represents the average of a number of companies. These comparisons are sought not only for the overall scores of the employee survey, but for every question in the survey.

It would appear that a fundamental question needs to be asked by every organization-why are we conducting an employee survey in the first place and what are we going to do with the results.

From a strategic perspective it would seem reasonable to think that an organization would wish at the very least, to demonstrate that the survey is helping the organization to achieve their strategic goals. In other words, they are conducting the employee survey as a way of obtaining employee information that can be used to improve for example, workplace practices in order to lift their employees’ working experience. In turn this will lift the customer experience and profits.

However, if this or some other strategic purpose is not being fulfilled by the employee survey than the value of conducting the survey is questionable. One could argue that comparing oneself to other organizations is in fact a legitimate strategic objective. It is worth knowing how you compare to the best. How does your stock performance compare to the best in your business sector-not the average of all the companies in your business sector but only the best? How do your employee survey scores compare to the best in your business sector-not the average of all the businesses in the database but only the best?

Comparing oneself to the very best is legitimate especially if the best sets a benchmark that you adopt as your own. But to compare oneself to the average serves no useful purpose. If a senior management group knows that their scores are better than the average of all the companies in a database, strategically of what use is this information. Perhaps it may give them a sense of pride knowing that they are better than the average. But it may also lull them into a false sense of confidence. The question that should be top of mind is “are we really as good as we can be and are we really achieving a level of excellence that will sustain us over the long term.”

For example, employee turnover in the retail sector is fairly high. Most retailers take it for granted. Entec Corporation has been working with Gap Inc. Canada for several years. Gap offers excellent training programs especially for their associate managers and store managers. In 1999, Gap was routinely being raided by other retailers and their annual turnover rate for store managers was 39% and for associate managers it was 48%. This was costing Gap hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in recruiting and training. With over 200 stores and 10,000 employees across Canada, these costs were unacceptable. Entec Corporation was engaged by Gap to conduct an Organizational Health Survey. Gap acted upon the recommendations in the survey and was able to reduce manager turnover rates to 13% in one year.

But these lower turnover rates were accompanied by real business gains. For example, secret shopper scores increased by 5% after only eight months and sales in Canada over the last few years have improved to a level where the Canadian operation moved from being about in the middle to becoming one of the most profitable divisions in the world. The survey results were linked directly to the bottom line.

If Gap accepted “the trap of comparing themselves to the average” and accepted the conventional wisdom that “this is the average turnover rate in retail so we are OK”, they would not have saved thousands of dollars each year in training and recruiting. More importantly they would not have experienced the benefits that reduced turnover brought them; namely preserving human capital of highly trained managers that helped to grow Gap’s business. This last point is typically overlooked. The impact of a reduction in turnover of well trained employees to the bottom line of a company is considerably higher than the cost savings achieved from reducing recruiting and training.

Several points need to be considered when embarking on an employee survey:
1. Develop clear strategic objectives
2. Measure towards those objectives
3. Inform your employees of the survey scores
4. Follow up with positive implementation
5. If you must compare yourself to others, compare yourself only to the best

If this process is not followed the organization can expect:

1. Employee participation rates in the survey to be low (30% or lower)
2. Rising employee cynicism with the organization (why bother if the activity of completing an employee survey does not make a difference)
3. Employees become disengaged from the organization
4. The organization loses an opportunity to make significant strides in performance

Conclusion

The trap an organization falls into when they become focused on benchmarking themselves against others is that they lose sight of what is really important-what is it that we are doing well and where do we need to improve in order to create an even better organization than the one we already have. If you must compare yourself to others, compare yourself only to the best and do not get side tracked. Focus on becoming better yourself and avoid the trap of comparing yourself to the industry average.






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About Author:
Kelly McCullough is a graduate with a Masters in Organizational Health from the University of Michigan. She has worked for Entec Corporation as research assistance. One of her most significant projects was her work as a research analyst on a major study of older workers that was led by Entec Corporation for the Canadian Federal Government.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/characteristics-that-contribute-to-work-stress-and-burnout.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/characteristics-that-contribute-to-work-stress-and-burnout.html Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0500
Task Characteristics

Workload: Experiencing excessive work demands can lead to stress. Overload, quantitatively occurs when there are too many things to do and not enough time to do them in; qualitatively it is defined as an individual’s perception of their lack of ability to complete a task or reach expected performance standards. Underload, qualitatively, occurs when an individual is subject to too little challenge and job stimulation, has also been proposed to play a role in the experience of work stress.
As the demands (qualitative and quantitative) increase, the demands placed on the individual also increase. It is crucial to recognize that if these demands are experienced on a continuous basis, rather than intermittently, the individual may be more vulnerable to burnout.
Role conflict and Ambiguity: Role Conflict, as defined by Kahn, occurs “as a result of incongruity or incompatibility of expectations communicated to a role incumbent by his or her role sender” (Kahn, 1978). In other words, an individual experiences role conflict when the set of expectations an individual uses to operate within a job is in conflict with another set of. Role Ambiguity is associated with an individual’s need for certainty and predictability. Ambiguity can occur when an individual does not posses sufficient information to complete a task. Insufficient information occurs when it is restricted or the communication is unclear. The literature demonstrates that these variables - role conflict and ambiguity - can account for a significant proportion of the variance in the dimensions of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment.
Autonomy: Autonomy can be defined as the amount of decision making and control one has over his or her job. Several researchers have suggested autonomy, and moreover a lack of autonomy, has a direct effect on job stress and a moderating role in burnout.
Tenure: Tenure can be a moderator of the relationship between job stress and burnout. Although limited, some evidence suggests that experienced employees may not suffer from burnout as readily as their less tenured counterparts. In addition, individuals with lower job tenure experience the classic three component-model of burnout, whereas employees with greater tenure had more varied experience to burnout pressures. It seems that more experienced or tenured individuals are more likely to have developed coping skills over time as compared to their junior counterparts. .
However, there is room for caution in the interpretation of such results due to the self-selection bias that may lie with more tenured individuals. It is possible that the resistance to burnout exhibited by more tenured individuals is not in fact because of tenure but rather a measure of personal resistance – hardiness – to burnout. This is to say that more ‘hardy’ individuals will be less apt to fall victim to either condition and its negative effects, thus creating a greater chance of obtaining tenure.


Organizational Characteristics that Contribute to Work Stress and Burnout
The conditions for stress and burnout most frequently studied and cited in the literature can be grouped under three general headings: task characteristics (workload, role conflict and ambiguity, autonomy, and tenure), organizational characteristics (job context, and organizational pace and technology) and personal characteristics (demographics, social support, hardiness, unrealistic expectations, and career progress). In this article we will explore Organizational Characteristics.

Organizational Characteristics
The environment one works in can have a powerful influence on an individual. Several researchers have examined the effect of organizational level antecedents on work stress and burnout.
Job Context: Job context can be a contributor to the incidence of stress and burnout in the workplace.
In a study of the effects of organizational politics and support on stress, Cropanzano, Howes, Grandy & Toth (1997) explored psychological environment as a moderator of burnout. Organizational politics was viewed as dysfunctional, defined as “limited to behavior that is strategically designed to maximize short-term or long-term self-interest.” For example, an example of political behavior could be a “politically-oriented manager who might use the performance evaluation system for self-promotion or show favoritism to a personal friend.” On the other hand, organizational support was defined as a caring and secure workplace, a positive environment that is related to a variety of positive work outcomes.
Research has shown that there are three trends concerning organizational politics and support: first, politics was related to negative work outcomes, while support is related to positive. Second, politics and support predicted above and beyond one another, suggesting that they should be viewed as separate constructs rather than opposite ends of a single continuum. Third, politics and support predicted job tension, somatic tension, general fatigue, and burnout.
Job level, the second component of job context can e linked to emotional exhaustion. Pretty and colleagues (1992) looked at the relationship of job level and emotional exhaustion among managerial and non-managerial telecommunications employees. Results demonstrated that women experienced more emotional exhaustion and depersonalization if they were non-managers, while the opposite reaction was noted for men. Gaines and Jermier (1983) also conducted a study of job level with police officers, noting that emotional exhaustion differed across departments suggesting different reactions to stress among different jobs in the force. Each of these studies lends credibility to the moderating effect of job level and the experience of emotional exhaustion.
Organizational Pace and Technology: The pace of change experienced by organizations today has been unprecedented in history. Although little research has been conducted, time will reveal what effects the increased pace of organizations and technology has on stress and burnout experienced by today’s workers.

Task Characteristics that Contribute to Work Stress and Burnout
The conditions for stress and burnout most frequently studied and cited in the literature can be grouped under three general headings: task characteristics (workload, role conflict and ambiguity, autonomy, and tenure), organizational characteristics (job context, and organizational pace and technology) and personal characteristics (demographics, social support, hardiness, unrealistic expectations, and career progress). In this article we will explore Personal Characteristics.

Personal Characteristics
In addition to task and organizational influences, research has demonstrated strong relationships between personal characteristics and the experience of stress and burnout.

Demographics: Empirical evidence is mixed concerning the relationship between gender and burnout. Numerous studies have reported differences on all three constructs of the model; however, there is little evidence of a clear understanding of the pattern or complexity of those relationships. Younger individuals have consistently been found to report higher levels of burnout and this may serve as an indication of the previously discussed effect of tenure on employees.

Social Support: Social support as a moderator of burnout has received extensive attention in the literature. Social support appears to affect workers in two different ways: as a buffer between work stress and physical consequences and a direct effect on stress experienced. As a buffer, social support functions in two ways: first, to redefine the threat or stressor, and second, to promote the use of adaptive coping behaviors.
Outside the realm of stress, empirical research has found positive correlations for social support and physical health.

Hardiness: It has been suggested that individuals who possess hardiness have a buffer to the negative impact of life changes, or stress. Individuals who posses hardiness exhibit an internal locus of control, an extremely commitment to activities in their lives, and they view changes in life as challenges

Unrealistic Expectations: Burnout is often associated with the gap between an individual’s perceptions of expectations for successful professional performance and the realistic observed performance. Researchers have suggested that the greater the discrepancy an individual experiences, the greater the effect felt by the organization and the employee’s reaction to their job.
Shifts in employee expectations have also been studied, revealing a correlation with all three constructs of the burnout scale (e.g. high burnout was correlated with negative expectations shifts). This relationship was related to employee tenure as less experienced employees tended to shift their expectations more negatively causing higher levels of burnout, whereas experienced employees reported decreased levels of burnout by positively shifting their expectations.

Career Progress: Employees who experience greater upward career movement will be less likely to suffer from burnout. This hypothesis is grounded in three thoughts, one for each component of burnout: first, promotion accompanies a reduction in client contact; second, promotion may provide rare feedback concerning personal accomplishment; and third, the experience of career progress is likely to be coupled with an individual’s belief in organizational policies, procedures and environment. However, it must be noted that these hypotheses have yet to be validated empirically.





--
About Author:
Kelly McCullough is a graduate with a Masters in Organizational Health from the University of Michigan. She has worked for Entec Corporation as research assistance. One of her most significant projects was her work as a research analyst on a major study of older workers that was led by Entec Corporation for the Canadian Federal Government.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/management/employee-surveys-do-we-do-them-ourselves-or-not.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/management/employee-surveys-do-we-do-them-ourselves-or-not.html Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0500
Today I am on the other side of the fence. I have worked with corporate clients for the past nine years providing various kinds of employee surveys. Recently, I had the opportunity of speaking with HR staff from several organizations. These organizations were scouring the internet to collect questions so that they could create their own employee survey. Once they assembled these questions they were planning on running their own survey process in-house.

At first blush this does not sound like an unreasonable approach. However, I asked the HR staff to consider the following.

Privacy and Confidentiality

One of the most significant issues from an employee’s perspective regarding employee surveys is privacy and confidentiality. It has been our experience that most employees have a low comfort level knowing that their responses to the survey are contained in their company’s computers. Despite a company’s best efforts to ensure that unauthorized access to the survey data is protected, the fact remains that it is company staff that are working with the data and conducting the analyses. In the minds of employees, confidentiality has already been breached. Whether it has or has not is not the issue. It is the employees’ perception of what may happen that will ultimately drive the response rate.

Several years ago Entec was faced with a situation where the company president said that he was prepared to move forward with an employee survey but since he was paying for the survey he wanted the database as well as the survey report we were going to prepare. We had no choice but to walk away from this project. We could not provide unequivocal assurances to the employees that their privacy and confidentiality would be secure.

These concerns can be significantly minimized when employees are advised that a third party will run the complete survey process. For example, in the pre-survey communications, Entec advises employees that there is a firewall between the organization and Entec Corporation. No employee can access our computers. No employee or company official will see or have access to our database. Any special requests by senior managers or anyone else in the company to look at the data is flatly rejected. Incidentally, this has happened on a couple of occasions over the past nine years. Privacy and confidentiality are serious matters and they cannot be compromised. Employee surveys are a two edged sword. On the one hand employees welcome an opportunity to provide feedback. On the other hand they will not participate or they will not provide honest answers if they feel in the slightest that their privacy can be compromised.
Response Rates

A high response will raise the statistical validity of the results. A high response rate generates a large database. A large database can be used to prepare data cuts that drill deep into the organization providing meaningful results. A small database can only be used to prepare a superficial analysis that will not be able to point directly to specific improvements that need to take place. Therefore obtaining a high response rate is vitally important in any employee survey. For example, the Entec survey process has resulted in response rates between 82%-95%. This is well above average and it allows for detailed analysis. Data shows that company-run employee surveys typically garner a response rate of 30% or lower.

Survey Analysis

The nature of the survey analyses is just as important as the questions that are asked. The survey analysis is more than the provision of percentages. The analysis should provide an interpretation of the statistics. How do the answers from one question or set of questions relate to the answers of another question or set of questions? Some questions are much more important than other questions as they relate to employee motivation and performance.

For example, in one company, the statement “There is little to no office politics and gossip” statistically linked with the following leadership statements: “Takes appropriate action with people who under perform”, “Resolves conflicts fairly and appropriately” and “Leads by example and action”. This type of analysis identified other leadership behaviors that appeared over and over again as being behaviors that were important to the culture of this particular organization. The analysis led to identifying priority leadership behaviors that had the greatest impact on best practices. Therefore the HR department had a concise set of behaviors that needed to be coached on a priority basis. The survey report also provided an evaluation of how well all those in the company with supervisory responsibility rated against these behaviors.

These same statements do not necessarily link with the same behaviors in other organizations. They vary somewhat depending on the company’s culture. Considering the example of office politics, research has shown that a high level of office gossip is typically associated with a toxic workplace. This type of analysis gives the company the knowledge and comfort that they are pursuing the right actions to minimize gossip and therefore improve performance.

There is a particular ordering to the questions. This ordering drives the analysis which in turn allows us to provide clear recommendations for follow up implementation.

Survey coding is another essential part of good analysis. How will you capture different departments, job functions and job levels. For example, the least effective way is to ask respondents to indicate their department. This always leads to errors. The best way to protect against errors is to pre-code all of the surveys: the greater degree of pre-coding the greater the accuracy.

Reliability and Validity

Anyone can gather questions and create a survey. However this raises a question. How will you know that the questions are valid and reliable? In other words, if an organization creates its own survey, do they have the internal skills and are they prepared to conduct the necessary reliability and validity testing to ensure the survey will produce meaning results.

Nine years ago Entec Corporation spent one whole year developing a series of surveys. The process involved a number of steps. The first step was assembling an eclectic group of professionals comprising expertise in strategic management, organizational development, leadership, psychiatry and behavioural psychology. This group developed models and questions based on these models. These were tested with many focus groups in several business sectors and than pilot tested. Reliability analyses were conducted. Principle component analyses were conducted. The various surveys were pilot tested and analyzed again and the surveys amended. This iterative process continued and continues to this day in order to ensure the clients receive surveys that will produce the best possible results.

Honesty and Survey Integrity

A few years ago we met with a company that had been running internal employee surveys. At the time we met with this company, to their embarrassment, they had to discard the results from their most recent survey. This is a company of 35,000 employees. They realized that employees were not answering the questions truthfully. They were tipped off when they discovered that surveys completed by a department with 50 female employees and 10 male employees showed 37 male respondents. As they began to check the data it became apparent that there were so many inconsistencies that they had to discard all of the survey results. This is an extreme case but it highlights two issues: there was little to no follow up action from previous surveys and employees had little confidence that their responses were private and confidential.

Conclusions

If a person feels sick, is in pain and is running a fever, they can do one of two things. They can either take their own temperature or they can go to the doctor. If they take their own temperature their intervention options for regaining good health are severely limited because they do not have enough information. If they go to the doctor and undergo a battery of tests they will receive valuable information and an intervention plan from their doctor that will lead them to health.

Conducting an employee survey is the same. Organizations are complex human systems. Using an untested employee survey, untested survey process and simple analysis will produce results that are similar to taking the temperature. Taking the temperature severally limits your ability to identify specific actions for performance improvement. This in turn acts as a de-motivator. Employee expectations are raised by employee surveys. When the post-survey process fails to show any meaningful movement, employee cynicism sets in and productivity drops.

If you decide to conduct a survey, you should seriously consider the advantages of using a third party that provides: a complete survey process, a pre and post survey communication plan, a reliable survey, a comprehensive analysis, clear recommendations for follow up implementation and a process for follow up action planning and implementation. These are all essential ingredients of conducting a successful survey that will benefit both the employees and the organization.


--
About Author:
Kelly McCullough is a graduate with a Masters in Organizational Health from the University of Michigan. She has worked for Entec Corporation as research assistance. One of her most significant projects was her work as a research analyst on a major study of older workers that was led by Entec Corporation for the Canadian Federal Government.


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/management/points-to-consider-before-conducting-an-in-house-employee-survey.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/management/points-to-consider-before-conducting-an-in-house-employee-survey.html Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0500
Today I am on the other side of the fence. I have worked with corporate clients for the past nine years providing various kinds of employee surveys. Recently, I had the opportunity of speaking with HR staff from several organizations. These organizations were scouring the internet to collect questions so that they could create their own employee survey. Once they assembled these questions they were planning on running their own survey process in-house.

At first blush this does not sound like an unreasonable approach. However, I asked the HR staff to consider the following.

Privacy and Confidentiality

One of the most significant issues from an employee’s perspective regarding employee surveys is privacy and confidentiality. It has been our experience that most employees have a low comfort level knowing that their responses to a survey are contained in their company’s computers. Despite a company’s best efforts to ensure that unauthorized access to the survey data is protected, the fact remains that it is company staff that are working with the data and conducting the analyses. Confidentiality has already been breached. Under these circumstances there are many opportunities for abuses.

Several years ago Entec was faced with a situation where the company president said that he was prepared to move forward with an employee survey but since he was paying for the survey he wanted the database as well as the survey report we were going to prepare. We had no choice but to walk away from this project. We could not provide unequivocal assurances to the employees that their privacy and confidentiality would be secure.

These concerns can be significantly minimized when employees are advised that a third party will run the complete survey process. For example, in the pre-survey communications, Entec advises employees that there is a firewall between the organization and Entec Corporation. No employee can access our computers. No employee or company official will see or have access to our database. Any special requests by senior managers or anyone else in the company to look at the data is flatly rejected. Incidentally, this has happened a couple times over the past nine years. Privacy and confidentiality are serious matters and they cannot be compromised. Employee surveys are a two edged sword. On the one hand employees welcome an opportunity to provide feedback. On the other hand they will not participate or they will not provide honest answers if they feel in the slightest that their privacy can be compromised.

Response Rates
A high response will raise the statistical validity of the results. A high response rate generates a large database. A large database can be used to prepare data cuts that drill deep into the organization providing meaningful results. A small database can only be used to prepare a superficial analysis that will not be able to point directly to specific improvements that need to take place. Therefore obtaining a high response rate is vitally important in any employee survey. For example, the Entec survey process has resulted in response rates between 82%-95%. This is well above average and it allows for detailed analysis. Data shows that company-run employee surveys typically garner a response rate of 30% or lower.

Survey Construct

Developing the questions, the scoring algorithm and organizing the questions are all separate parts of creating an employee survey. At Entec we followed the principle that question organization drives the effectiveness of the analyses phase. Therefore if we wanted the analyses phase to lead clearly to recommendations for follow up implementation, the questions had to be organized in a way that reflects the outcome we were seeking. This thinking was responsible for the employee engagement modeling that Entec conducted as a first step in the survey design process. When the modeling was completed, the survey questions were placed inside the appropriate parts of the model. The section on Reliability and Validity below describes this process in more detail. The fact remains that there is a particular ordering to the questions. This ordering drives the analysis which in turn allows us to provide clear recommendations for follow up implementation.

Survey Analysis

The nature of the survey analyses is just as important as the questions that are asked. The survey analysis is more than the provision of percentages. The analysis must provide an interpretation of the statistics. For example, how do the answers from one question or set of questions relate to the answers of another question or set of questions? Some questions are much more important than other questions as they relate to employee motivation and performance.

For example, in one company, the statement “There is little to no office politics and gossip” statistically linked with the following leadership statements: “Takes appropriate action with people who under perform”, “Resolves conflicts fairly and appropriately” and “Leads by example and action”. This type of analysis identified other leadership behaviors that appeared over and over again as being behaviors that were important to the culture of this particular organization. The analysis led to identifying priority leadership behaviors that had the greatest impact on best practices. Therefore the HR department had a concise set of behaviors that needed to be coached on a priority basis. The survey report also provided an evaluation of how well all those in the company with supervisory responsibility rated against these behaviors.

These same statements do not necessarily link with the same behaviors in all organizations. They vary somewhat depending on the company’s culture. Considering the example of office politics, research has shown that a high level of office gossip is typically associated with a toxic workplace. In this example, this type of analysis gives the company the knowledge and comfort that they are pursuing the right actions to minimize gossip and therefore improve performance.

Reliability and Validity

Anyone can gather questions and create a survey. However this raises a question. How will you know that the questions are valid and reliable? In other words, if an organization creates its own survey, do they have the internal skills and are they prepared to conduct the necessary reliability and validity testing to ensure the survey will produce meaning results.

Nine years ago Entec Corporation spent one whole year developing a series of surveys. The process involved a number of steps. The first step was assembling an eclectic group of professionals comprising expertise in strategic management, organizational development, leadership, psychiatry and behavioural psychology. This group developed models and questions based on these models. These were tested with many focus groups in several business sectors and than pilot tested. Reliability analyses were conducted. Principle component analyses were conducted. The various surveys were pilot tested and analyzed again and the surveys amended. This iterative process continued and continues to this day in order to ensure the clients receive surveys that will produce the best possible results.

Conclusions

If a person feels sick, are in pain and are running a fever they can do one of two things. They can either take their temperature or they can go to the doctor. If they take their temperature their intervention options for regaining good health are severely limited because they do not have enough information. If they go to the doctor and undergo a battery of tests they will receive valuable information and an intervention plan from their doctor.

Conducting an employee survey is the same. Organizations are complex human systems. Using an untested employee survey, untested survey process and simple analysis will produce results that are similar to taking the temperature. Taking the temperature severally limits your ability to identify specific actions for performance improvement. This in turn acts as a de-motivator. Employee expectations are raised by employee surveys. When the post-survey process fails to show any meaningful movement, employee cynicism sets in and productivity drops.

If you decide to conduct a survey run comprehensive diagnostic will render results that will point to meaningful follow up implementation. The organization will receive the information it needs to move forward and to achieve its objectives. The survey questions, the survey structure, the survey process, and the survey analyses and interpretation are key factors in generating meaningful results from an employee survey. The complex nature of employees’ perceptions and expectations limit an organization’s ability to effectively apply all of the necessary steps they need to follow in order to conduct a successful employee survey.







--
About Author:
Kelly McCullough is a graduate with a Masters in Organizational Health from the University of Michigan. She has worked for Entec Corporation as research assistance. One of her most significant projects was her work as a research analyst on a major study of older workers that was led by Entec Corporation for the Canadian Federal Government.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/diamond-buying-jargon-explained.html http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/diamond-buying-jargon-explained.html Wed, 17 May 2006 00:00:00 -0500
BODY:
It's easy to get overwhelmed when buying a diamond by all the new words you have to learn. But don't panic! It's not really that difficult.

The four most common terms used to describe diamonds are cut, clarity, color, and carat. It's vital to understand what each of these means as they define a diamonds quality and value.

The cut, not surprisingly describes the way in which the stone has been cut. This tells you more than simply what shape it is. The cut will determine how light passes through and how much it will appear to sparkle, or how much brilliance it has. This will be rated from poor to ideal.

Clarity is determined by how many flaws there are, which will also Effect the brilliance. Almost all stones have flaws, but the untrained eye will rarely notice them.

People are often surprised that diamonds have a color, but they do. Colors such as red and green are extremely rare and therefore are very expensive. Most common are white or near-colorless diamonds, with just a hint of color. These traces of color will absorb light, so for maximum
brilliance you want a stone with as little color as possible.

Carats are a measure of weight. A small increase in weight will mean a Big increase in cost. In fact it is possible to buy many small diamonds for The cost of one large one.

Now you understand these key words, buying a diamond should be a much Less scary prospect.


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A Jewelerhas written more information about http://www.astoundingjewelry.com/loosediamonds.php buying loose diamonds http://www.astoundingjewelry.com/.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/5-security-considerations-when-coding.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/5-security-considerations-when-coding.html Sat, 06 May 2006 00:00:00 -0500
Always check user input to be sure that it is what you expected. Make sure it doesn’t contain characters or other data which may be treated in a special way by your program or any programs called by your program.
This often involves checking for characters such as quotes, and checking for unusual input characters such as non-alphanumeric characters where a text string is expected. Often, these are a sign of an attack of some kind being attempted.

2.Range Checking

Always check the ranges when copying data, allocating memory or performing any operation which could potentially overflow. Some programming languages provide range-checked container access (such as the std::vector::at() in C++, but many programmers insist on using the unchecked array index [] notation. In addition, the use of functions such as strcpy() should be avoided in preference to strncpy(), which allows you to specify the maximum number of characters to copy. Similar versions of functions such as snprintf() as opposed to sprintf() and fgets() instead of gets() provide equivalent length-of-buffer specification. The use of such functions throughout your code should prevent buffer overflows. Even if your character string originates within the program, and you think you can get away with strcpy() because you know the length of the string, that doesn’t mean to say that you, or someone else, won’t change things in the future and allow the string to be specified in a configuration file, on the command-line, or from direct user input. Getting into the habit of range-checking everything should prevent a large number of security vulnerabilities in your software.

3.Principle Of Least Privileges

This is especially important if your program runs as root for any part of its runtime. Where possible, a program should drop any privileges it doesn’t need, and use the higher privileges for only those operations which require them. An example of this is the Postfix mailserver, which has a modular design allowing parts which require root privileges to be run distinctly from parts which do not. This form of privilege separation reduces the number of attack paths which lead to root privileges, and increases the security of the entire system because those few paths that remain can be analysed critically for security problems.

4.Don’t Race

A race condition is a situation where a program performs an operation in several steps, and an attacker has the chance to catch it between steps and alter the system state. An example would be a program which checks file permissions, then opens the file. Between the permission check the stat() call and the file open the fopen() call an attacker could change the file being opened by renaming another file to the original files name. In order to prevent this, fopen() the file first, and then use fstat(), which takes a file descriptor instead of a filename. Since a file descriptor always points to the file that was opened with fopen(), even if the filename is subsequently changed, the fstat() call will be guaranteed to be checking the permissions of the same file. Many other race conditions exist, and there are often ways to prevent them by carefully choosing the order of execution of certain functions.

5.Register Error Handlers

Many languages support the concept of a function which can be called when an error is detected, or the more flexible concept of exceptions. Make use of these to catch unexpected conditions and return to a safe point in the code, instead of blindly progressing in the hope that the user input won’t crash the program, or worse!

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Bryce Whitty owns and runs computer repairwebsite called Technibble.com. A website that provides technical how-to’s for repairing your computer. Technibble also has many guides for getting into the computer business or managing your existing one. We also cover other side topics such as Security and Software.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/google-friend-or-foe.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/google-friend-or-foe.html Sat, 06 May 2006 00:00:00 -0500
We had a handful of methods of finding information. They were so-called search engines. Their names were Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, and of course Alta Vista. If someone wanted to find a piece of information on this “World Wide Web”, they would enter their keywords into one of the above named search engines and would then begin the long arduous process of sorting through a lot of garbage before finding what they were looking for. Somewhere along the way, each of these companies got it into their corporate heads that what people wanted was even more fluff thrown at them.

This is when they became portals instead of search engines. Instead of offering just search results for what we were looking for, we now had stock quotes, weather reports, movie reviews, news reports, health tips, beauty tips, sports scores, horoscopes, dating tips, entertainment gossip, shopping links, financial hints, games, and lastly ads. Lots of ads. In the late nineties, enter Google, which had a very simple vision and unique philosophy.

While every portal was busy trying to deliver us critical information about when to kiss our date and how to shave our pet, Google was refining its search algorithms to make it so it would yield our searched keywords in a more efficient fashion without us having to endure that arduous process of sifting through garbage data. This coupled with the unique philosophy of do-no-evil, garnered them much deserved attention and fame.

Their approach to a lot of the services they now do to this day is very well executed. Some would argue that they’ve become what they said they wouldn’t become in the beginning, which is a portal. However, if you really think about it, they did this in such an elegant and well thought out system. The entire portal features are completely optional, those that do not wish to utilize them, are not forced to look at it or participate in it.

However, as good as the methods and intentions of Google may be, there is indeed a danger to our continued dependency on them. If you use Google regularly, then you more than likely have a Google Account with them and utilize one of their specialized services. One of the automatic ones is that they hold your search history for you by default. Every time you run a Google query, it is recorded and stored by Google for your convenience at a later date.

It even records what sites you jump to from the Google search list. As our dependency on Google increases, we are putting all of our eggs in one basket per se. We trust Google with a lot of information about our personal lives. After all, why should we think twice about a company who has a philosophy of Do-No-Evil and actively shows its good intentions to the technology community? Perhaps we should be thinking twice about it though. It may not be Google that we have to worry about, but rather, the governments of the world. If they are able to tap into Google via legal means to garner information about its own citizens, then this is a serious breach of privacy and security. A current example of this is still ongoing in the United States of America.

Robert Petrick, an American citizen, is being held on trial for the murder of his wife. A terrible act that should go punished, yes. However, the interesting portion is how their prime evidence against him was obtained via Google, in which it was found that he searched for terms such as neck and snap days before the murder took place. I’m not here defending his acts, I along with mostly everyone else believe that murder is not an act to be taken lightly and the man, if guilty, should be prosecuted and sentenced to the fullest extent of the law. But my point is here that it is possible for the government to tap into Google to research about their own citizens.

The possibilities of abuse here are paramount. Google is unable to really defend our privacy in this regard, as they must comply with the law and divulge our information. Next time you are Googling, remember the fact that they record it. After all, searches can be quite telling of the person and their current intentions.

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Bryce Whitty owns and runs computer repair website called Technibble.com. A website that provides technical how-to’s for repairing your computer. Technibble also has many guides for getting into the computer business or managing your existing one. We also cover other side topics such as Security and Software.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/public-key-ssh-login.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/public-key-ssh-login.html Sat, 06 May 2006 00:00:00 -0500
Even so, the password based login feature transmits your password through this link, to the remote server, where it is hashed and compared with the stored value in the password file. To many, even though the connection is encrypted, this is not satisfactory. SSH allows the use of public key authentication to login to a server. Here, you upload your public key to the server, and keep your private key on the client machine, optionally password protected so that no one can steal your private key file and use it to gain access without a password.

Now, when the SSH connection is established, the server will need to check the authentication of the client; that is, make sure it is you logging in. This was previously done by requesting your password, and comparing it against the stored password hash. Now, the server encrypts a randomly generated token against your public key, and sends this to you. The private key associated with your public key, stored in a file to which only you have access, either by password protection, filesystem permissions or other means, is the only key able to decrypt this message. Now, your SSH client will decrypt the message and send it back to the server, which compares it against the original value. In reality, the authentication is often also checked in the opposite direction, using the server’s public key, which may be stored by the client. Once the server knows you hold the private key which corresponds to the public key, it grants you access.

So, you may ask, what is the security benefit here? Well, no secret information is being transmitted. You are no longer transmitting a password, nor are you transmitting any of your private key file. You are using the keys to encrypt and decrypt a piece of random data, which works one time only. Anyone who did somehow manage to listen in on this data stream would not be able to regain access by playing back your password, or even by playing back the same data transaction, as a different value would be encrypted the next time you login, and only the private key itself can decrypt that.

Public Key authentication is supported in OpenSSH, and also in PuTTY and many other SSH systems. Check your systems documentation for details on how to use public-key based logins.

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Bryce Whitty owns and runs computer repair website called Technibble.com. A website that provides technical how-to’s for repairing your computer. Technibble also has many guides for getting into the computer business or managing your existing one. We also cover other side topics such as Security and Software.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/on-denial-of-service-attacks.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/on-denial-of-service-attacks.html Sat, 06 May 2006 00:00:00 -0500 DDoSattack on theMillion Dollar Homepage. The site's owner was asked for $50,000 in exchange for the attack being halted.

It is clear, to me at least, that steps should be taken to prevent DDoS attempts at some point in the network where the bandwidth can cope. This is, usually, before it hits the destination server. Firewall hardware on the main connection to an ISP is one of the best places to block such attempts, but the problem arises from the distributed nature of these attacks. It is not a matter of blocking a single IP address, or even a single range, and trying to block all of the subnets usually prevents legitimate users accessing the site, which is what the attackers intended all along.

One approach to preventing this would be to detect IP addresses which are repeatedly sending the same data to the same place, such as large ping packets going to the same hosted server, or patterns in the traffic, and selectively block or delay such packets with respect to legitimate packets from IP addresses seen much less frequently, usually characteristic of real site visitors.

Another approach is to drop unwanted packets directly, rather than wasting time and resources replying to those packets, and to prioritise based on protocol - giving HTTP priority over e.g. ICMP.

Of course, this doesn't prevent attacks which utilise a large number of HTTP connections, filling the server's connection pool and preventing other users establishing a link to the server, but there are often modules for the web server software itself which can detect such activity and prioritise traffic, or drop connections which fit a certain characteristic pattern.

Distributed Denial of Service attacks are almost impossible to entirely block or prevent, but measures are easily introduced which can limit their effectiveness. Ultimately, the real source must be determined in order to stop such an attack, but this usually means tracing connections back through several computers which have been used without the owner's knowledge, usually by means of remote control software installed silently. Performing such a trace is difficult at best, and even authorities struggle to reach the end of the chain and determine the real source.

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Bryce Whitty owns and runs computer repair website called Technibble.com. A website that provides technical how-to’s for repairing your computer. Technibble also has many guides for getting into the computer business or managing your existing one. We also cover other side topics such as Security and Software.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>