Latest Blog Posts
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Disengaged Managers Create Disengaged Employees |
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| I expected two diametrically opposed view-points when I discussed the prospect of four weeks of public holidays with delegates who had been attending recent workshops with Staff Training.
My understanding was that the ‘worker bees’ would relish the time off, whilst management would panic, given the resultant loss in productivity. |
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Published on 25th of Apr 2019 by Carolyn Kessler |
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Article: Job Sharing- An Uncommon Practice |
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| One of the challenges we face from an HR perspective is how to empower women in the workplace. After all it is not uncommon for a female graduate to be placed in a new job, work hard and fast, be promoted, meet a partner, start a family and go on maternity leave. Returning a few months later, repeat the hard work, just a bit more stressed as her home duties have increased and two years later continuing to add another blessing to the family unit. |
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Published on 23rd of Apr 2019 by Debbie Engelbrecht |
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Pressure – Good or Bad? |
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| Delegates often say they work best under pressure; many of them maintain this is their most productive zone. |
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Published on 17th of Apr 2019 by Carolyn Kessler |
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People at Work |
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| I was recently approached by a young man who posed the following scenario. He works at a youngish tech company and they employ a programmer, who also happens to be a quadraplegic. The company has a young vibe and they quite often have after work drinks. The week prior, the director, who is not always on site, breezed in with hamburgers for all to enjoy with their drinks. Sounds really good doesn’t it? |
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Published on 10th of Apr 2019 by Debbie Engelbrecht |
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The Number 1 Question you need to ask yourself today! |
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| We all get stressed. Life happens and sometimes it can feel like we’re the bulls-eye for Murphy’s arrow. Constantly feeling stressed and focusing on the negative events of the day can cause additional stress and even depression. It’s a vicious cycle… |
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Published on 5th of Apr 2019 by Shona Potgieter |
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When is it OK to Shout at a Colleague? |
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| Let's imagine:
"Sheila is responsible for a weekly payroll of 540 staff members. She collects, collates and captures everyone’s hours, sick leave etc. and makes the relevant payments. She is pretty much snowed under and mistakes are creeping into her work. They manifest in the worst way possible – incorrect wages for staff members... |
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Published on 3rd of Apr 2019 by Carolyn Kessler |
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Don’t let Latent Prejudice Kill Productivity in your Organisation |
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| Unresolved prejudice amongst employees kills productivity!
I run a lot of Diversity workshops and am often amazed by two things. Firstly, how much more open we have become when speaking about prejudice and its many forms and secondly, how political correctness effectively stifles open, effective communication. |
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Published on 25th of Mar 2019 by Carolyn Kessler |
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EQ vs. IQ |
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| Are you Emotionally Intelligent?
It’s not possible for you to answer me unless you have some idea of what Emotional Intelligence actually is. |
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Published on 13th of Mar 2019 by Carolyn Kessler |
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4 Tips on How to Resolve Conflict |
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| CONFLICT – What does that word mean to you? I’d be very surprised if you had no thoughts on this subject. They could largely be positive thoughts – “Yay, now we know there’s a problem, let’s fix it!” or they could be strongly negative thoughts: “Run/keep quiet/fight back”. |
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Published on 26th of Feb 2019 by Carolyn Kessler |
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2019's Ripple Effect |
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| Did you know that there is a direct correlation between customer care and staff retention?
It's simple really. When you empower your staff with the ability to give better customer care their stress levels are reduced. Reduced stress levels lead to happier employees, who tend to stay longer. |
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Published on 11th of Feb 2019 by Debbie Engelbrecht |
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Article: Agrizzi and Business, what Leaders should be Concerned about. |
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| The damning Agrizzi testimony that we are all by now well aware of has me concerned about the future of South African business.
Firstly it is clear that the level of corruption has stripped our country of much needed wealth, this is not news, we all know this and we see the results on a daily basis. |
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Published on 30th of Jan 2019 by Debbie |
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How to Ensure you Achieve your Goals in 2019 |
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| Welcome back to work all of you who were lucky enough to down tools and head out on holiday.
Once the excitement of a few weeks leave stretching before us is replaced by the reality of a new year, we tend to sit up and take stock of our lives with a view to overhauling all of our bad habits. In fact it’s almost mandatory for us to take a strategic look at the year ahead and set all sorts of wild and wonderful goals – which we seldom ach |
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Published on 23rd of Jan 2019 by Carolyn Kessler |
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4 Productivity Tips |
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| Electing to work smartly, definitely assists our productivity. But how do we do this? |
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Published on 16th of Jan 2019 by Staff Writer |
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Assertive Communication |
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| Most of us are woefully unassertive. We constantly experience interactions where we are simply unable to convey who we are or what our point of view actually is. We live with the frustration of ineffectively navigating our way through life, and it really sucks!! |
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Published on 23rd of Nov 2018 by Carolyn Kessler |
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4 Communication Tips for Stressful Situations |
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| At some time or another we all have to deal with that monster called Stress. Whether you are in a highly competitive work environment or dealing with angry or frustrated customers, stress is never too far behind… |
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Published on 14th of Nov 2018 by Shona Potgieter |
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Getting things done in 3, 2, 1… |
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| The hustle and bustle that surrounds us can make us feel like we have a big red target on our backs and life is not just giving you lemons, but throwing them from all sides…. The question is how do you make lemonade and avoid getting knocked out? |
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Published on 30th of Oct 2018 by Shona Potgieter |
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Turn Motivation Monday into Motivation Everyday! |
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| We all get to a point where we lack motivation… Whether you don’t want to get up early to go to the gym or the days just feel too long and each task in front of you makes you sit with your head in your hands. It’s completely normal. The good news is that there are quite a few ways you can keep those motivation levels up! |
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Published on 22nd of Oct 2018 by Shona Potgieter |
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4 Easy Tricks to Survive Stress |
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| Stress is a sneaky little monster, one moment you’re handling your business and the next you feel like you want to jump on a flight to the Bahamas and start over. I know, I’ve been there! |
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Published on 10th of Oct 2018 by Shona Potgieter |
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No News is Good News? |
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| Are you aware that out of 15 clients who receive poor service from your company, only one is likely to complain? The other 14 simply take their business elsewhere! |
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Published on 5th of Oct 2018 by Carolyn Kessler |
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Bye-bye (office) Blues! |
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| Are you tired of the same old routine, day in and day out? Then it's time to take a step back... Assess what you want from your day and make a concerted effort to make it happen. |
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Published on 25th of Sep 2018 by Staff Training |
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How strategic is your policy towards up-skilling your staff? |
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| As a soft skills training provider, it’s really satisfying working closely with companies on designing and implementing up-skilling programmes for their employees. We are available to build strategies which help translate their vision into reality through ongoing investment in their gold value medal – their staff. |
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Published on 3rd of Sep 2018 by Carolyn Kessler |
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4 Ways Emotional Intelligence improves your career prospects… |
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| If there is one thing we know for sure, it is that change is constant. In 2018 we are being inundated with potential and possibilities as far as the future goes and everyone is scrambling for an audition. Ultimately this means that an enormous amount of team work and collaboration is necessary for us to stay abreast of the trends and to bring our full potential to the stage. |
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Published on 27th of Aug 2018 by Debbie |
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Diversity: Do we only embrace it or simply pay lip-service to it? |
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| We run a lot if Diversity workshops, both in-house (at the customer's premises) and at our own venue. In our experience there is a growing awareness around the need to not only overcome prejudicial thinking within teams, but to actively celebrate and thus leverage the diversity therein. |
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Published on 22nd of Aug 2018 by Carolyn Kessler |
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The problem with our projects… |
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| As facilitators we are in the position where we often hear what goes wrong with projects rather than what goes right. Delegates bring their challenges to us, so clearly this is exactly what we should be hearing. More often than not we establish that what went wrong is that the very concept of what a project is, is not being understood. We would thus like to challenge you to a slightly new approach. |
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Published on 17th of Aug 2018 by Debbie |
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11 Reasons Parents are Project Managers |
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| The term Project Manager, isn’t one which most time constrained parents would think to apply to themselves. Yet it’s exactly what they’re doing day to day, season to season. |
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Published on 2nd of Aug 2018 by Carolyn Kessler |
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Itsy Bitsy Spider |
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| “The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain, and washed the spider out
Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain
So the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.
Incy Wincy Spider climbed up the tree
Down came the snow and made poor Incy freeze
Out came the sunshine, and melted all the snow
So Incy Wincy Spider had another go.” |
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Published on 27th of Jul 2018 by Debbie |
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3 Steps to Being Confident |
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| “Confidence is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.”
Confidence is a major part of how we approach different situations and people. We’ve all admired that one person in our group of friends, that co-worker, or that lady walking past us in the mall who seems to naturally exude confidence. |
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Published on 23rd of Jul 2018 by Shona Potgieter |
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When the Wheels Come Off... |
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| One of our Trainers yesterday conveyed the interaction between herself and a particularly resistant delegate. This delegate was on customer care training and he was a sales person for a retail store. |
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Published on 16th of Jul 2018 by Debbie |
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Ducks in a row... |
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| At Staff Training nearly 60% of our clients are return clients. This means that we often get to meet their new staff members as they go through a series of workshops that the organisation has identified as a minimum entry level requirement. |
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Published on 9th of Jul 2018 by Debbie |
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Motivation and Generational Differences |
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| One of the constant complaints we hear from managers today is this notion that Millennials do not want to work, the idea that they are not prepared to put the effort in for the amount of money they want to earn. In some instances this is described as a state of entitlement. A matter of rights vs responsibility or a matter of privilege with no accountability. |
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Published on 25th of Jun 2018 by Debbie |
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Would you work for you? |
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| I recently penned a blog asking if you would hire you as an employee in your company. I'm going to turn the tables now and ask if you would be prepared to work for someone like you? |
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Published on 29th of May 2018 by Carolyn Kessler |
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Would you hire you? |
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| Social conversations generally flow round a few well-worn topics. Spouses, kids, politics, how poor service seems to be endemic in South African companies and so on; eventually taking us down the road to discussions around that activity we love to hate - work.
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Published on 18th of May 2018 by Carolyn Kessler |
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