Recruit, Inspire & Retain

Things You May Never Have Realized...We Didn’t

Did you ever think about:

• The impact on customers from “offshoring” jobs overseas?
  Seems like a good move to keep the cost of services/products down. But...Charlie Seaman used to drink Coca-Cola. Determined to stop patronizing companies that he believed discarded U.S. workers, Seaman began researching and eventually launched a Web site, that lists which companies offshore and which don’t. Now he shops at BarnesandNoble.com instead of Amazon, uses a local bank and drinks Publix cola. “Once you get used to it, it tastes fine,” he says. (Newsweek, 6/14/04)
   
• Screening potential employees for their identity theft intentions?
  Identity theft is a $2 trillion industry and a good deal of it is happening from inside The Social Security Administration, financial institutions, restaurants and other retailers, state departments of Motor Vehicles, credit card companies, recyclers, sanitation, just to name a few.
  
  If you’re in any of these industries and others where your employees have access to customer’s social security #s and credit cards, you need to check references even more diligently than others. The identity theft industry is planting people in organizations to get information. Not only will your organization be contributing to this huge problem, but you’ll be liable when your employee is caught.
  (Checking references ideas @ http://www.trainingsys.com/tips/recruit0112.html)

Have a recruitment, inspiration, training, or retention idea or question? Ask by clicking the question mark, and we’ll post your idea or question (and the answer) in Answers & Ideas on Recruiting, Inspiring, Training, & Retaining Great Employees at http://www.trainingsys.com.

Responses From Last Month’s “What’s in your desk drawer?” AND Best Signs

Congrats, Betty Soltesz, Tammy Zulauf, & Heather Breidenthal!

Betty Soltesz:
* Cinnamon Altoids
* Rubic's cube
* tie dyed star stickers
* pictures of a Japanese garden
* a purple teddy bear
* alpaca fleece
* anti-bewilderment temple balm
* Nutcracker sweet herbal tea
* Dancing hampster that plays "when you go to San Francisco"
* old birthday cards with uplifting notes
* echinacea

Tammy Zulauf:
Okay, some of these things aren’t totally unique, but I bet you wouldn’t find them in everyone’s drawers:
* a can of soup
* batteries
* silly putty
* a mug in the shape of Frankenstein
* a stress ball
* a timer
* homemade glasses
* aircraft wings
* phone cards
* post-it notes in the shape of a shoe
* felt blankets (the stuff you put under items like flower pots to protect furniture)
* about 50 cards with riddles on them

Heather Breidenthal:
Here's my e-mail back on all the weird things I found in my desk drawer! Good for at least a few laughs today (at myself!!!)
* handbuzzer - yes, the old fashioned kind
* old piece of a chocolate chip cookie
* a level (you know the kind to ensure pictures are hung right) - key here is that I didn't know it was there....
* a box of business cards - with no business cards in it!
* 1 french fry
* some sort of gray metal piece of something
* a magic eight ball
* a fish bowl with rocks & plant - no joke!
* a bag of pistachio's
* a picture of someone else's child - can't remember who
* a mouse (computer mouse) - circa 1990 I believe!
* approximately 10 dollars in miscellaneous change!

AND Best Signs
We see so many great signs – many for directions, others for advertising. Here’s our favorite.
E-mail us your favorite and we’ll print it next month, plus send you a prize!

From a Sprint PCS ad:

* Roger Lee Burdette (a year after participating in TRAINING SYSTEMS, INC. training at the NIGP Conference): “Just wanted to let you know I’m still grading every speaker and preacher that comes before me. MAN; what a curse you cast on your students. I still stop and look at what I’m doing right and wrong. I tell my wife to watch and listen for things that I can improve.”

* Betty Soltesz, Managing Director, Society for Biomolecular Screening (emailed her list of Desk Drawer items for last month’s contest): “It was so crazed around here yesterday all I had time to do was to dash off the list of items, didn’t even say hi! We need all the fun stuff we can get.

By the way, are you presenting at ASAE? I went to one of your sessions in the past and it was great. I’ve been a fan ever since.”

* Bob Filotto, accountant while reading The Leadership Genius of George W Bush: "Great timing to read it during the Convention. I'm really enjoying it!"

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, … it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair… How could Charles Dickens, writing in 1859, about England in 1775, capture the late 20th and early 21st century so exactly?

When it’s the best of times, Bush's plainspoken style makes us feel confident, because he is. He tells people, “I’m going to win the nomination and I believe I’m going to win the presidency.” And we believe it too. His brief speeches (for a political figure), lasting under 15 minutes, give us what we need to know without a lot of rhetoric. His repetition of his agenda using the same words (Message Discipline) allows us to believe that he’s telling the truth. Message Discipline also helps him actually achieve his agenda/goals – the more you say something, the more committed you and all those around you are. It becomes a part of you. It becomes a part of all of us.

When it’s the worst of times, Bush’s plainspoken style comforts us. “Well I don’t think about myself right now,” President Bush said when answering questions about a 9/11 possible assassination plot. “I think about the families, the children.” Tears welled up in his eyes. His tears made you feel he was compassionate, not weak. He’d never been much of an actor. The expressions that flashed across his face could be trusted as accurate reflections of what he was really thinking and feeling.

Whether it‘s the best of times or the worst of times, speaking plainly and simply lets people know what’s in his heart. The combination of just the facts brevity, confident wording, message discipline and compassionate emotion is well suited to a time of fear, grief and a primal rage for revenge. It’s equally well suited to “the spring of hope”. When you net it all out, people like someone when he tells it like it is. He tells a British journalist, “My job isn't to try to nuance. My job is to tell people what I think.”

Here’s How Bush Does It:
■ Short Sentences
“We refuse to be discouraged.”
Look for words and sentences in your writing and speaking to shorten. There are sure to be 9 letter words for which you can substitute 5 letter words. There are sure to be 15 word sentences that you can shorten to 10. Short, simple words and sentences make it easier for people to get your message more quickly. If you have many things to say you still can. Just do it in many short sentences instead of one long one.

It’ll be easier to understand as it draws the person in. They can picture what’s happening because they’re understanding as they’re reading/hearing. Long sentences require people to go back over the sentence to get the meaning and make the picture. Most of us don’t bother. We just go on to the next sentence instead.

■ Powerful Words
“America must keep its pledges to defend friends from aggression.”
Normally “must” is on our “not today, not ever” list. It smacks of patronizing (think about it? – who in your life said, “You must…” – your mother. And love her as we do, do we need another one?) Somehow coming out of Bush’s mouth in the example sentence it’s powerful. It’s because it’s America (a vision, a concept) that must instead of “You must”. When speaking about yourself “must” is powerful as well – as in “I must commit myself to moving this organization ahead”.

Use these powerful words/powerful ways to say them: