Implement quiet “work” time
It can be easy to slip into comfort with your friends at work and ignore your tasks instead spending the day chatting and laughing. I know from experience. But this is not at all conducive to a working environment. If you find that you really cannot get any work done sharing an office with your friends, try speaking with them about how your work is suffering. Maybe everyone’s work is suffering and they agree that there should be more quiet time to get your tasks done. If this does not work, ask your supervisor if you can be moved elsewhere. It’s not an ideal situation, but it can be a last resort.

Keep work talk during work hours relevant
You know you’re swamped at work. You have a million things that need to get done today but you just saw Linda, the receptionist, doing something she should not have been doing and the only thing you want to do is discuss this with your work friend for hours. For some reason, work environments tend to turn many individuals into gossip inclined high schoolers. I have seen this with many coworkers- young and old. However, there is a time and a place. Ideally, you don’t want to be gossiping about Linda, or anyone for that matter, but if you must at least wait until lunchtime rolls around.

Keep cool, especially in front of higher management
I’m sure this has happened to almost everyone. Your supervisor is giving a PowerPoint presentation and says something that suddenly has you and one of your work friends in what is called “the church giggles”: uncontrollable laughter in an inappropriate setting. You may want to burst out laughing or even talk about it, but keeping it professional, especially in front of your supervisors is pertinent. You never want your work friendships to interfere in your actual work. Remember that you are there to perform your duties at the best of your ability and keeping it professional at all times, especially when working with friends, is important.

IMAGE: Courtesy of WAHM Resource Site

Ever since Facebook popped it’s head into our lives years ago, it seems as though it has been causing an awful lot of trouble. For awhile, many users were unsure of the privacy limits. Once that was taken care of, we were exposed to unwanted marketing and our information was and still is stored and used without our knowledge. Now, Facebook seems to be butting it’s head into our work communities. It’s no secret that employees have photos, posts or information that employers would deem as unsatisfactory, but what gives them the right to presume to ask people for their passwords?

A lot of people don’t feel like they have they right, and so the password bill in Illinois begins to make its rounds. If signed, the bill will protect employees and job seekers by law from having to provide their social media passwords to prospective or current employers. If the bill is in fact signed by Gov. Pat Quinn then Illinois will join Maryland as one of the first states to take legal action against employers demanding access to private networks.

Earlier this month Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed a similar bill which takes effect starting Oct. 1. Senators of New York and of Connecticut have also asked the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity(EEOC) Commission to take a look at the issue and investigate it. Not surprisingly, state representatives in Chicago started to catch wind of the seriousness of the issue when people began writing letters describing their experiences with employers asking for their passwords. With such a high unemployment rate, it doesn’t seem fair that boundaries like this are being crossed and candidates being ousted for information that is mostly private and personal.

Sate Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, was quoted saying, “Any time you have high unemployment, we have barriers, and we have to do everything we can to help people get to work. We try to make the laws to fit society, and this is what this bill does.” The bill passed through the Illinois senate this past Tuesday with a 55-0 vote. If passed, it will be illegal for employers to ask employees or possible employees for their social media passwords. And that’s how it should be, right? An employer wouldn’t ask for our email password and search through our personal emails would they? It’s not likely, so this should not be likely either.

What do you think of this bill and the act of asking an employee or prospective employee for their password? If you were an employer would you ask for it? Tell me about it in the comments or tweet me @nicole_spark.

SOURCE: Chicago Tribune in print
IMAGE: Courtesy of Colgate University

First off, you probably already know for yourself if you are not happy at work. After all, you’re there everyday and you know how you feel. If you aren’t really happy at work then you will probably put less effort into what you do which will effect your productivity and your overall experience at work. When you are happy, you work harder and produce better results. That’s why you need to do what you can to ensure your happiness at work.

In order to assess your happiness at work, you need to answer a few questions for yourself. They cover a few areas of basic human interactions, but we tend to forget about them in our everyday work schedule: giving, relating, appreciating, exercising, direction, resilience, emotion, meaning and trying. So let’s look at a few of the questions you can ask yourself to see where your happiness is at work.

1. How does the work I am doing now connect with my overall purpose and what gives my life meaning?
2. What things, small or big, can I do or find to make me feel good about work? What makes me smile at work?
3. Goals, goals, goals. What are my work goals- short term and long term? What are my goals for today, next week and this year? Do these goals fit into my overall life goals? How?
4. What are the new things I have learned? Am I continuing to learn?
5. How am I helping and supporting my coworkers? Does my work make a difference to others- coworkers or customers? How?
6. Am I keeping a healthy balance between life and work?
7. How can I better my relationships at work?
8. Am I getting enough rest and eating well at work? What you eat at work and how much sleep you get is a huge factor in your happiness level- for work and life alike.
9. How do I deal with tough coworkers?
10. How do I deal with and take on the tough challenges that work presents? Am I being challenged at all? Do I ask for help? Is there someone there that can help?
11. Am I making the best of my strengths at work? How?

Answering these questions can really give you a full idea on how you feel at work. If you are not able to answer most of these questions positively, then you may be positively unhappy at work. However, if you find that you are unhappy, then it may be time for you to work towards being happy or to start finding a new job. Being unhappy at work, and worse, hating your work can really start to take a toll on your overall life happiness. We are at work a third of our day and the other third we are sleeping. For half of our daily lives, we are at work. Doesn’t it make sense to be happy there instead of miserable? Start to figure out how happy you are at work and start taking action, if you can, towards getting there.

SOURCE: Action for Happiness
IMAGE: Courtesy of OpenForum

By legal definition, workplace sexual harassment is, “unwelcome verbal, visual, or physical conduct of a sexual nature that is severe or pervasive and affects working conditions or creates a hostile work environment”. This covers a wide spectrum of behavior however that is usually broken down into four categories: verbal/written, physical, nonverbal and visual. Following are examples workplace sexual harassment.

Verbal or written.
-This can include inappropriate sexual comments about clothing, personal behavior or a person’s body
-Telling sexual or sex-based inappropriate jokes
-Sending unwanted suggestive letters, notes or e-mails
-Requesting sexual favors, making sexual innuendos or repeatedly asking someone out
-Telling lewd jokes or sharing sexual anecdotes
-Inquiring about someone’s sexual history or sexual orientation
-Making derogatory remarks about a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity

Physical
-Blocking a person’s physical movement
-Inappropriate and unwanted touching of a person and or their clothing
-Other inappropriate touching including kissing, hugging, patting, stroking or rubbing
-Purposefully brushing up against another person

Nonverbal
-Looking a person’s body up and down
-Whistling or staring in a sexually suggestive or offensive manner
-Offensive gestures or facial expressions of a sexual nature
-Following a person
-Making inappropriate sexual gestures

Visual
-Posters, drawings, pictures, screensavers or emails that are in sexual nature
-Sharing sexually inappropriate images or videos, such as pornography, with co-workers
-Displaying inappropriate sexual images or posters in the workplace

These are just a few examples of workplace sexual harassment and what type of behavior constitutes each category. There is a whole array of other types of behavior that may fall into the spectrum of workplace sexual harassment as well. Just remember, if you are feeling uncomfortable at work by someone’s inappropriate behavior towards you, then it might just be workplace sexual harassment and it should be dealt with swiftly. No one should have to deal with this type of behavior, especially in the workplace.

SOURCE: ERA
IMAGE: Courtesy of Plotnick Law

When you have a lot of diversity in your office, you can learn from one another and already gain a sense of how others with different cultural backgrounds communicate. Since you have to learn how to effectively communicate with them naturally in the office, you already have a leg up on those offices that aren’t quite as diverse. Another great reason for keeping a diverse office is to keep discrimination at bay. When there are mostly people in the office with the same cultural background, it will be more difficult for someone of a different racial or religious background or someone of a different age. That is why you should make sure that your workplace is diverse from the get go. The more your employees have to work together and understand each others cultural differences, the more tolerant and understanding your employees will be with global business interactions.

However, this isn’t the only great aspect of having a culturally diverse workplace. When you have people of different backgrounds and likely different perspectives and points of view on life then your workplace will be oozing with creativity. When you have workers of mostly the same race, religious views and age then it’s likely they will share a lot of the same ideas and views. With diversity, you also get diverse creativity, and more of it.

So many great things can come out of a diverse workplace. Plus, when you have diversity it makes things a lot more fun. You always learn new things and it’s likely your workplace will never be deathly boring.

SOURCE: EthnoCorrect
IMAGE: Courtesy of Hispanically Speaking News

Back in the days of the “company man” this attitude made a lot of sense. Employees used to stay with companies for years, decades, even lifetimes! The current economic climate, with its constant air of uncertainty, has made this kind of job security a thing of the past.

You can bet employees are taking note. The average American changes jobs once every three years; not exactly a lifetime tenure. The average under-30 Millennial employee? If you fear job hoppers they’re your worst nightmare, changing jobs approximately once a year.

Is it ‘once a job hopper, always a job hopper’? More importantly, is job hopping really such a negative thing?

Serial Job Hoppers?

If the resume in front of you has a list of a jobs a mile long, does this mean the candidate is likely to rabbit from your company as well? Not necessarily, according to a new study. After analyzing applicant data Evolv found prior job hopping is not a strong predictor of future employment length. This means just because a candidate switched jobs in the past doesn’t mean they’ll be leaving your company soon.

There are plenty of reasons candidates might have left several past jobs. Looking at those potential reasons before discounting a good candidate is important. You don’t want to miss out on a great employee. If their qualifications and experience are great and they wowed you in their video profile, read between the resume lines. Maybe they moved to be with a spouse or maybe they switched career paths. Just because they’ve held more jobs than you’d like, doesn’t mean they’re any more likely to repeat their former career path.

How Bad is a Job Hopper Anyway?

Sure, there are easy to list negatives about job hoppers. For instance, companies never train an employee with the goal of losing them soon after to another job. Job hoppers, however, might have some qualities more stationary candidates lack.

For one thing: passion! Frequent job changes can often be useful in maintaining career passion. After a few years in the same job, your learning curve flattens out. Unless employees are being reliably promoted into new and challenging roles, the amount they learn is going to level off. With the economy tough and many companies putting freezes into place, often the only way to dive into a new challenge is to find a new job.

You can bet your candidate isn’t alone either. Nearly 75 percent of all workers are job hunting in some capacity. This means job hoppers are likely the candidates looking for a new challenge. They’re not complacent to sit in their old jobs forever and watch everyone else take on more rewarding work. They want to get in there and grow professionally. These are the type of employees not afraid to take risks and think creatively about the problems facing their industry.

Counter to traditional thinking, job hoppers can also be loyal. Their loyalty might not be to the company at large, but they will be loyal to their supervisors and coworkers. These are people they might need down the line when looking for a boost up the career ladder. You can also bet these employees will be more polite and professional to clients and networks, knowing they might need them sometime in the future.

In today’s economy, job hoppers are the candidates who have adapted to the new paradigm of impermanence. While doing so, they’ve focused on their own career development and in seeking out new challenges. These candidates could be just the ticket to kick-starting your business and taking calculated risks.

What do you think? Would you hire a job hopper? Share with us!

Image Courtesy of the Cubicle Chick.

Ask yourself, is it possible to put one on hold. Can you wait a few years to have a family? Having that extra space in time allows for more time to figure out how to work things out. Make a five-year plan with your partner. Together you can plan ahead and see where you can both make the time and commitment to have a family. Establish who can take fewer hours at work and how the household and child rearing responsibilities will be divided amongst each other. Figure out the quality time you can spend with your child. Think about child care. If you’re both taking on a lot of responsibility at work and see yourselves taking on even more down the road, then having a family may be hard to accomplish.

Next ask yourself about your career. Do you have a career right now that you truly can’t live without? Determine whether this job is where you see yourself working in the long term or if it’s simply a stepping stone to the job you really want. Finding out how committed you are to your present career can determine whether you’re willing to give it up to take a break to raise a child, work part time or switch to a job that offers more flexibility. Also, think about where you currently live. Consider if you plan to raise the child where you currently live or if you had planned to move out somewhere quieter or safer for children. Think about how moving will affect your career.

Choosing between a career and family is difficult and is a matter of answering a slew of questions like the ones I just proposed here, but having a family is a big life-changing decision that needs to be well thought out. Remember, although it may seem hard it is possible to have both. You don’t necessarily have to completely sacrifice one for the other. If you truly love your job and see yourself advancing in it, then you may have to actively seek out flexibility within your work schedule to accommodate for a family. You will have to make small sacrifices and so will your partner. For women, it’s important to recognize that you aren’t alone in this decision process. You need to ask for your partner to be active in the decision process and be willing to make it less of a burden for you. This is a process that involves the both of you, and you both need to figure out a solution that will satisfy you both.

SOURCE: Buzzle
IMAGE: Courtesy of blog I Used to Have Hair

Music is an important part of the world, but it’s often absent in the office and the workplace. Do you listen to music at work? What music works best for what you do? Share with me in the comments or tweet me @nicole_spark.

SOURCE: Visual.ly
IMAGE: Visual.ly