~ articles and trends for EA and other workforce professionals

Monthly Archives: January 2014

This Thursday, January 30 at 3 p.m. ET the White House Office of Public Engagement will re-launch its disability community conference call featuring a senior Administration official.  The call will keep listeners informed about various disability policy issues, introduce you to Administration officials who work on these issues and gather your input. 

These calls are open to everyone.  Please spread the word among your networks.  The conference call information appears below:

Once you register, a confirmation page will display dial-in numbers and a unique PIN.  You will also receive an email confirmation of this information.  This call is accessible to deaf and hard of hearing participants via live captioning.  For live captioning feature, at the start time of the call, please login by clicking on the following link:

One of the biggest misconceptions in the business world – regardless if it’s employee assistance, supported employment, or any other profession – is that if you are an expert on a certain topic, then you can be a trainer.  However, understanding a given subject does not necessarily translate into knowing how to help others learn the topic as well as you.  In truth, the secret to successful training is to train the trainer FIRST… before they can train others. 

Think back to a recent training session you attended, and ask yourself i you were “engaged.”  Did the activities make you interact with the subject being taught?  Or did you find yourself listening half-heartedly while multi-tasking on other things at the same time? 

After the event, were you able to implement the new skills rather quickly?  Or did the new skills dissipate rather quickly?  Did the training materials used in the training ADD TO the learning process before, during or after the event, or are you asking yourself as you’re reading this right now… What training materials?! 

If the answers to these questions are positive, then the people involved in your trainings are skilled in not only the subject matter, but in the modes of adult learning.  This is outstanding news.,  and you should be pleased with your organization’s training efforts. 

However, if your answers are NOT positive, then the training department is dysfunctional.  Unfortunately, this is all too common.  Many speakers are accomplished professionals who know their stuff, but they don’t know how to convey it.  But presentations needn’t be a chore when the speaker THINKS. 

T – Transform how you think about your role.  Your first job as a speaker is to be a memory-maker, so don’t be the supplier of solely facts and data.  You are there to present and inform, but more importantly, you are there to create a learning environment.  Presentations should focus on digesting content into directly applicable skills. 

Many of the nation’s employers still do not fully understand the options and implications of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act or “Obamacare.” 

A comprehensive white paper, The Employer’s Guide to “Play or Pay” is now available from United Benefit Advisors. 

This 14-page guide is an invaluable resource that evaluates the ensuing financial, legal, and competitive implications facing businesses and organizations as they move beyond compliance and prepare for strategic implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. 

Dr. Rich Mahogany is a character created to “man up” mental health and help men of working age think about their emotional problems from a different perspective.  The tools offered by Man Therapy provide employee assistance professionals with an innovative method to reach men who might not otherwise use mental health services. 

The team behind this mental health program designed it as an “upstream” approach to stem the tide of tens of thousands of men who die by suicide each year.  The team, a public-private, nonprofit partnership is comprised of Colorado’s Office of Suicide Prevention, Cactus Marketing Communications, and the Carson J Spencer Foundation http://www.carsonjspencer.org

In addition, research discovered that workplaces needed training, just like CPR, to help co-workers identify suicidal distress and refer to helpful resources such as http://www.WorkingMinds.org Because of these discoveries, the mental health program “Man Therapy” needed not only to target men but also to reach the people who surrounded men in crisis. 

This is a brief overview of two articles that appear in the February 2014 Employee Assistance Report.  For more information, or to order a free copy, visit the “Employee Assistance Professionals” link at http://www.impact-publications.com

We love our smartphones.  There’s no denying it.  In fact, we love them so much that we never want to put them down.  Most of us constantly check text messages, emails, and the latest Tweets and Facebook updates at all hours of the day, whether we’re in a meeting, at lunch with a friend, or just at home in front of the TV. 

It’s easy to justify our smartphone love.  They allow us to stay plugged into what’s going on both at the office and at home.  They help us organize our schedules, and much more. 

But our smartphone obsession comes with a definite downside.  It prevents us from making the most of an event because we’re texting and emailing the whole time.  And we suffer from burnout from always being plugged into work. 

Here are some easy steps to take back your life from your smartphone, recover your common sense and rediscover what it means to be productive:

At work:

* Turn off cyberspace.  There’s no greater blow to productivity than breaking your concentration to reply to an email or text as soon as it hits your smartphone.  No award will be handed out at the end of the day for the person who responded the fastest.  If you’re doing nothing but responding to emails and texts, you’re bouncing around like a pinball.  It’s important to keep in mind that the purpose of email and texts is not to generate more email and texts.  Unless a response is necessary in order for the sender to move ahead on a task or project, it’s OK to let this person have the last word. 

* Tame the social media beast.  Smartphone apps make it fun and easier than ever to read our friends’ status updates and to see the photos they’ve posted on Facebook.  It makes us feel good when they “like” something we’ve posted or when we’re tagged in one of their photos.  That’s one reason social media is so addicting – it’s like experiencing hugs all day long.  Likewise, Twitter can quickly move from social communication to an obsessive compulsive disorder.  But remember, Facebook and Twitter won’t be evaluating your work performance and probably can’t qualify you for a raise either. 

At home:

* Turn off the lights and your phone.  More and more of us are using our smartphones as watches and alarm clocks, keeping it plugged in to recharge on the bedside overnight.  But as long as your phone is plugged in, so are you.  Take a break from your phone.  If it’s by the bed you’ll get those late night calls, tweets and texts that interfere with precious sleep.  Unless there’s a likelihood of an emergency, we have some rules in our house that we absolutely follow – the first is no smartphones in the bedroom. 

* Crunch on kale instead of candy.  Games are fun, but Words with Friends can wait until after dinner.  We have another rule that bans smartphones from the table whether we’re at home or in a restaurant with friends or clients.  Checking your texts and email during a meal is the social equivalent of picking your nose in public. 

Summary

Though it may seem painful at first, by making these changes to your smartphone habits you’ll find it can actually become the productivity tool you want it to be instead of a drain on your time and social skills. 

Integrated employment professionals wishing to submit proposals for the APSE 2014 National Conference, to be held July 1-3 in Long Beach, CA are reminded that the deadline to submit them is January 15, 2014. 

APSE is looking for conference presentations that are innovative and expand state-of-the-art practices to advance the field.  APSE is making significant changes in the conference structure to diversify both content and session structures, and to significantly reduce the number of sessions that use the format of lectures with PowerPoint.  It is also encouraging the submission of proposals in Spanish. 

The theme of the 25th-annual National APSE Conference is “Livin’ the dream… building the future for Employment First!”  APSE offers the only national conference focused solely on the advancement of integrated employment.  APSE is rolling back prices to 2009 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the conference. 

Once again, APSE is also looking for nominations for various categories, such as professional and best practices awards.  The deadline to nominate an individual, organization or business is January 31, 2014. 

For more information, contact Jenny Levet at jenny@apse.org or visit http://www.apse.org For more information on submitting a proposal, click on the “Call for Proposals” tab.  To learn more about the award nominations, check out the “National Awards” link at the APSE website.