Happy Republic Day.

 

Wish You All A Happy Makar Sankranti-Pongal..!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 Things Your Employees Will Never Tell You.

What your employees won't say could be what you most need to hear.

Your employees have a lot of thoughts. Most of those thoughts they don’t share-- especially with you.

At times their silence is a good thing, especially where your ego or their employment status might be concerned, but their silence also may keep you from understanding what your employers really think and what they really need from you.

Consider whether your employees might be thinking one or more of the following:

1. “Please don’t talk to me about your personal life.” Talking about subjects that aren’t work related helps build a personal relationship, but many people fall back on talking about themselves when they don’t know the other person well. Employees, especially new employees, have no interest in hearing about your go-to topics like your last vacation or your antique collection or your beach house.

New employees want to feel like they belong, but more importantly they want to know how they’re doing. Long-term employees want to know you care about them; talking about yourself only shows you care about yourself.

2. “Can’t you see I’m really busy?” Here’s what happens. You stop by to talk, the employee stops what they’re doing to chat with you… and when you walk away they’re behind and have to catch up. Employees want to talk to you, but they have work to do, too. Sometimes there’s an easy answer, especially if the employee’s job involves physical tasks: Help out while you talk. Not only will your employee appreciate a little help, your conversation will be less forced. In other settings, pick your spots carefully.

Never interrupt an employee who is busy simply because today you’ve decided to “check in with the troops.”

3. “I can tell you really don’t care about my personal life.” Walking up and asking an employee a generic question like, “Hey, how are your, um, kids?” or, “Are you doing anything fun after work?” or, “Hey, who do you think will win the Cricket Worldcup this year?” comes across as forced and insincere, at least to your employees. Either take the time to get to know your employees well enough so you can have a decent conversation or just stick to work-related subjects. (Employees definitely prefer “all business” to “pseudo-personal.”)

One way to show employees you care about them as people is to follow the 20% rule: When you’re talking to employees, never talk more than 20% of the time. The single best way to show you care is to listen.

4. “You claim you respect me… so give me something important to do.” Assigning an employee a critical task is a definite sign of respect. Do it as often as you can.

5. “You claim you trust me… so give me something important to do and let me decide how to do it.” It’s only natural to tell your employees how to do their jobs; after all, it’s your business. Still, when you assign a project without providing a lot of direction your employees instantly know you respect their abilities and trust their judgment.

Employees appreciate respect; they love trust.

6. “Actually, I would like to work here a long time.” The average person switches jobs a number of times before they’re 30-years-old.  Some leave for money, but many leave because they can’t stand their boss. No matter what your industry, high employee turnover doesn’t have to be a fact of employment life. Find out why employees leave and address the causes. It’s stressful to change jobs, so most employees won’t start job searching until you give them a reason to.

Watch, listen, take smart actions… do your job right and most of your employees will stay.

7. “That gift card is nice, but a simple ‘thanks’ is really all I need.” Sure, every time you hand out paychecks you’re implicitly saying thanks, but not really. Find reasons to thank your employees as often as you can. Look for an accomplishment, however small or fleeting, and express your appreciation. “Thanks for taking care of that difficult customer.” “Thanks for jumping in and helping Ms. Sweta.” “Thanks for letting me know we have a problem in the warehouse; I hadn’t realized orders were consistently shipping late.”

Say thanks benefits both of you: The employee feels appreciated, and you get a great way to start a meaningful conversation.

 

Top 10 Innovative Companies of 2011

Ranked 1: Apple Apple Inc. formerly Apple Computer, Inc., an American multinational corporation, that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers was established on April 1, 1976 in Cupertino, California. On January 6, 2011, the company opened their Mac App Store, a digital software distribution platform, similar to the existing iOS App Store. As of September 24, 2011, the company had 357 retail stores, including 245 stores in the United States and 112 stores internationally. Apple has recently been the largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalization, and the largest technology company in the world by revenue and profit. On October 4, 2011, Apple announced the iPhone 4S, which includes an improved camera with 1080p video recording, a dual core A5 chip capable of 7 times faster graphics than the A4, an "intelligent software assistant" named Siri, and cloud-sourced data with iCloud. On October 29, 2011, Apple purchased C3 Technologies, a mapping company, for $240 million.

Ranked 2: Twitter Twitter is an online social networking and micro blogging service that has redefined communication with a user retention rate of forty percent. It was created in July 2006 by Jack Dorsey and it has over 300 million users as of 2011, generating over 300 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. On April 5, 2011, Twitter tested a new homepage, as well as phased out the "Old Twitter." Twitter acquired application developer Atebits on April 11, 2010. On December 8, 2011, Twitter overhauled its website once more to feature the "Fly" design, which the service says is easier for new users to follow and promotes advertising. In addition to the Home button, the Connect and Discover buttons were introduced along with a redesigned profile and timeline of Tweets. The site’s layout has been compared to that of Facebook.

Ranked 3: Facebook Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. As of July 2011, Facebook has more than 800 million active users. In February 2011, Facebook began to use the hCalendar microformat to mark up events, and the hCard microformat for the events’ venues, enabling the extraction of details to users own calendar or mapping applications. Since April 2011 Facebook users have had the ability to make live voice calls via Facebook Chat, allowing users to chat with others from all over the world. On July 6, 2011, Facebook launched its video calling services using Skype as its technology partner. It allows one to one calling using a Skype Rest API. On September 14, 2011, Facebook launched a Subscribe button. The feature allows users to follow public updates, and these are the people most often broadcasting their ideas. The site released major modification on September 22, 2011.

Ranked 4: Nissan Nissan Motor Company Ltd. (usually shortened to Nissan), a multinational automaker headquartered in Japan, was founded on December 26, 1933 by Masujiro Hashimoto, Kenjiro Den, Rokuro Aoyama, Meitaro Takeuchi and Yoshisuke Aikawa. Along with its normal range of models, Nissan also produces a range of luxury models branded as Infiniti. In its home market, Nissan became the second largest car manufacturer in 2011, surpassing Honda with Toyota still very much the dominant first. The Nissan VQ engines, of V6 configuration, have been featured among Ward’s 10 Best Engines for 14 consecutive years. Nissan is expected to use renewable energy to charge the Nissan Leafs that will be produced there in 2012.

Ranked 5: Groupon Groupon (a portmanteau derived from "group coupon") is a deal-of-the-day website that features discounted gift certificates usable at local or national companies. The idea for Groupon was created by now-CEO Andrew Mason and the company was launched in November 2008. On February 19, 2011 The Wall Street Journal reported that Groupon was preparing to launch in China. Groupon also expanded into the MENA region with its launch of Groupon UAE on June 16, 2011. Groupon New Zealand launched on 10 May 2011. From January 2010 through January 2011, Groupon’s U.S. monthly revenues grew from $11 million to $89 million. Groupon’s 2011 estimated revenues are in the $3 billion to $4 billion range. Groupon’s gross billings in October 2011 increased 1.5% to $147 million from $144 million in September 2011, according to independent data provider Yipit.

Ranked 6: Google Google Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation invested in internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. It was founded by Menlo Park, California, U.S on September 4, 1998. The company’s mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google’s algorithm was changed in March 2011, giving more weight to high-quality content possibly by the use of n-grams to remove spun content. In May 2011, unique visitors of Google surpassed 1 billion mark for the first time, an 8.4 percent increase from a year ago with 931 million unique visitors. On September 28, 2011 the company has announced to build 3 data centers worth more than $200 million in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan) and the land has been owned by Google Inc. It will be operated between one to two years ahead. In late June 2011, Google soft launched a social networking service called Google+ that had reached 10 million users just two weeks after it was launched in the "limited" trial phase and 25 million users after four weeks in operation.

Ranked 7: Dawning information industry Dawning Information Industry (Shenzhen) Limited manufactures and sells high-tech computers and servers that owns more than 30 percent of the country’s high-performance computing (HPC) market. Dawning has manufactured some of the fastest supercomputers in the world including Nebulae, the second fastest computer in the June 2010 TOP500 list. The high-performance Dawning 6000, which has a projected speed of over one quadrillion operations per second, will incorporate the Loongson processor as its core. Li Guojie, chairman of Dawning Information Industry Company and director and academician of the Institute of Computing Technology, said research and development of the Dawning 6000 is expected to be completed in two years.

Ranked 8: Netflix Netflix, Inc., is an American provider of on-demand internet streaming media in the United States, Canada, and Latin America and flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States. The company was established in 1997 and started its subscription-based digital distribution service in 1999 and by 2009 it was offering a collection of 100,000 titles on DVD and had surpassed 10 million subscribers. In April 2011, Netflix announced 23.6 million subscribers. In summer 2011, Netflix announced they will expand into the European market, starting in Spain by 2012. In September 2011, Netflix completed the launch of streaming-content services in Latin America by launching in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America. In October 2011, it was announced that Netflix would be launching in the UK and Ireland in early 2012.

Ranked 9: Zynga Zynga, headquartered in San Francisco, is a social network game developer that develops browser-based games that work both stand-alone and as application widgets on social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace. As of November 2011, Zynga’s games on Facebook have over 200 million monthly active users. Four of Zynga’s games, CityVille, Texas HoldEm Poker, FarmVille, and Empires & Allies, are among the top five most widely used game applications on Facebook, with CityVille having over 54 million monthly active users. In May of 2011, the company launched its most complicated game to date—Empires and Allies.

Ranked 10: Epocrates Epocrates, Inc., founded in 1998, is an American company based in San Mateo, California that makes various mobile health software applications under the "Epocrates" name, mostly for health care providers. Two Stanford students have founded it as a means to ease doctors’ burden of carrying around books to look up drug information, drug interactions, and dosing information. Since then, the company has transformed itself into a leading provider of clinical information and solutions to healthcare providers. By 2010 the company said it had 1 million users worldwide, including 40% of the physicians in the United States, and that it employed more than 250 people. For the current year, Epocrates projects revenues of $122 million–$125 million with EPS of $0.12–$0.15.

Wish you Happy New Year...

 

 

Merry Christmas...

~

Go Green Intiative...

Save Wood and Paper

• Return unwanted mail and ask for your name to be removed from the mailing list.
• Always use both sides of a sheet of paper.
• Use e-mail to stay in touch, including cards, rather than faxing or writing.
• Re-use envelopes.
• Always recycle paper after use.
• Share magazines with friends and pass them on to the doctor, dentist or local hospital for their waiting rooms.
• Use recyclable paper to make invitation cards, envelops, letter pads etc.

At your workplace

• Use printers that can print on both sides of the paper ; try to look into this option when replacing old printers.
• Use the back of a draft or unwanted printout instead of notebooks. Even with a double-sided printer there is likely to be plenty of spare paper to use!
• Always buy recycled paper - for your business stationery and to use in your printers.
• Switch off computer monitors, printers and other equipment at the end of each day. Though in standby mode they're still using power - and that adds to global warming.
• Always turn off your office light and computer monitor when you go out for lunch or to a meeting.

In your Home

• Turn off equipment like televisions and stereos when you're not using them.
• Choose energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.
• Save water: some simple steps can go a long way in saving water like for e.g: you should always turn off the tap when you are brushing your teeth. And try to collect the water used to wash vegetables and salad to water your houseplants.
• Let clothes dry naturally.
• Keep lids on pans when cooking to prevent your cooker having to work extra hard. Prefer to use gas ovens, Geysers etc in place of the electric ones.
• Recycle your paper, glass, plastics and other waste.
• Use rechargeable batteries.
• Send e-greetings instead of paper cards.

In your Garden

• Water the garden early in the morning or late in the evening. This reduces water loss due to evaporation. Don’t overwater the garden. Water only till the soil becomes moist, not soggy.
• Explore water efficient irrigation systems. Sprinkler irrigation and drip irrigation can be adapted to garden situations .
• Make your garden lively - plant trees and shrubs which will attract birds. You can also put p nest boxes and put food.
• Try growing sturdy grass in bare patches of land , and convince people in your neighbourhood to do so too.
• Put waste to work in your garden- sweep the fallen leaves and flowers into flower beds or under shrubs . This will increase soil fertility and also reduce the need for frequent watering.
• If you have little space in your garden , you could make a compost pit to turn organic waste from the kitchen and garden to soil enriching manure .
• Don't use chemicals in the garden - as they will eventually end up in the sea and can upset the delicate balance of lifecycles.
• Organic and environmentally friendly fertilisers and pesticides are available - organic gardening reduces pollution and is better for wildlife.

Reuse and Recycle

• Use washable nappies instead of disposables if you can.
• Recycle as much as you can.
• Give unwanted clothes, toys and books to charity shops or jumble sales.
• Use mains electricity rather than batteries if possible. If not, use rechargeable batteries.
• Use a solar-powered calculator instead of one with a battery.
• Instead of a plastic ballpoint, use a fountain pen with bottled ink, not plastic cartridges.
• Store food and other products in ceramic containers rather than foil and plastic wrap 

While Shopping

• Buy fruit and vegetables that are in season to help reduce enormous transport costs resulting from importing produce and, where possible, choose locally produced food.
• When buying fish look out for a variety of non-endangered species and buy local fish if possible.
• Prefer vegetarian options for your meals.
• On-line Shopping Purchase solar powered products.
• Send e-cards, if you can, rather than buy paper cards.
• Shop online, not only will this reduce fuel consumption and emissions by not driving to the shops, but each time you buy something on-line WWF receive a donation. You may even buy products from the nature shop.