Plant These Seeds and Show Employees That You Care

Friends:

Today's POST brings to sixteen the seeds that we all can plant to to show employees, husbands, wives, spouses, children, relatives and colleagues that we care. Be creative, loving and considerate and your returns will far exceed your efforts!

Seed #13: Create an environment of trust between employer and employee! Employees are happier and work harder when they feel like they can trust their leaders. They decide which leaders they can trust based on how their fellow employees, company vendors, and customers are treated. As a leader, do you treat all with whom you come into contact with respect? Do you behave ethically and hold others accountable for their actions? When you have to take tough action, like terminating someone, do you follow proper steps and treat the person with dignity in the process? If an employee
sees you treating someone else poorly, whether it's a vendor or a fellow employee, his level of trust diminishes and he starts to care less about doing a good job for you.

Seed #14: Rid your pasture of weeds! The weeds in your figurative pasture are those poor performers and negative employees who stifle the good attitudes and high performance of their fellow
employees. If you're not pulling out your weeds, then it's likely their counterparts won't stick around and keep working with them. They'll choke out your best performers.

Seed #15: Use internship and mentoring programs to grow and nurture new talent! These programs allow promising prospects and employees to learn what your company culture is all about while
also developing their own professional skills. They offer a win-win situation for your company because they allow you to get a good look at new talent without paying out a huge salary or, making a long-term commitment.

Seed #16: Take a seasonal approach to showing employees you care! "There are any number of ways to do this," says Sujansky. "Be creative. In summer, consider giving half-days off on Friday, or
give a half-day off before an employee's vacation to help her minimize the stress of leaving town. Even something as simple as providing fresh fruit or flowers for the office can make an impact. .... These ideas aren't expensive, and they go a long way toward showing employees that you care!

Halloween, Thanksgiving, and year-end holidays are all opportunities for planting one or more of our sixteen, caring seeds!

Please visit our BLOG again. We await your comments!

Let's Plant More Seeds Today. A Bountiful Harvest Will Result!

Friends:

Here are today's "four ways" which, if followed imaginatively, will help retain key employees and slow down the brain drain:

Seed #9: Conduct "stay" interviews regularly. Great employees like to hear about what they can do to make the company even better. Regular "stay" interviews provide a great opportunity for leaders to compliment their high performers on their great work and also to
inspire them to do more to take the company to the next level.

Seed #10: Create the kind of environment where people can do their best work. Is your work environment restrictive and stifling or is it freeing and innovative? To show its appreciation for innovation, Google allows their engineers to spend 20 percent of their time on independent projects.

Seed #11: Help employees to achieve work/life balance. In today's high-tech world, it is easy to set employees up so that they can work from home. Employees in today's workforce saw their parents give their lives to companies .... only to be laid off at age 55 without much hope for finding other employment! Today's working generation seems to share the sentiment of we're not going to let that happen to us! .... "Providing flexible hours or allowing your employees to work from home shows them you value the lives they have outside the office," says Sujansky.

Seed #12: Insist that your employees take vacations. .... Several studies show that employees who take vacations
are less stressed, lead a healthier lifestyle, and are even at lower risk of having heart disease. All of that means lower healthcare costs for you. .... "Here's a great opportunity for you to lead by example," says Sujansky. "Take time off to show them how important you think it is, and when they are enjoying their own time off don't call them with problems that can wait until they return. .... If they are able to completely disengage, they will come back with renewed spirits—which, in turn, will help them reach their company goals."

That's it for today! Plant these seeds, and the harvest will be abundant and bountiful!

We look forward to your visit tomorrow, and to your comments. Thank you!

Sixteen Ways To Keep Your Best Employees (Continued)

Friends:

Here are another four ways to help retain our best employees:

Seed #5: Give praise where praise is due. If someone does a great job, let him (or her) know. And then let his customers know! Recognizing a job well done isn't an expensive proposition, but it will mean the world to your employee.

Seed #6: Get creative with benefits. You don't have to provide your employees with onsite medical care and
state-of-the-art fitness centers. "There are many inexpensive ways to satisfy your employees; you just have to use your imagination," says Sujansky. "Take a
note from Qualcomm. In addition to offering an amazing healthcare package, the company caters dinner for employees who work late, a relatively inexpensive perk
that is sure to please hungry, hardworking employees. Other options include providing access to dry-cleaning services, treating all of your employees to lunch once a week, or providing them with on-site educational programs delivered by local experts or company vendors in a wide variety of fields."

Seed #7: Be aware of the changing needs of your employees. Keep in mind that as your employees progress in life their needs change. After having a child, an employee may want to travel less than before the child was born.

Seed #8: Realize that great employees thrive under great leaders. Your employees won't leave you for that greener
pasture unless you drive them to it. The buck starts and stops with their leaders. In fact it's commonly said that employees don't quit their job, they quit their manager.

That's my POST for today. Please remember, you can read Dr. Sujansky's article at: http://www.itworld.com/Career/nlscareers071008/index.html, and please use our "comments" box to post your thoughts, ideas and suggestions. Thanks again, and do visit us again tomorrow.

Sixteen Ways To Keep Your Best Employees!

Friends:

My research this past week has led me to a number of interesting and relevant pieces which I would like to share with you!

The most interesting piece is entitled "16 Ways to Keep Your Best Employees -- Without Breaking the Bank." Author is: Joanne G. Sujansky, PhD, CSP, KEYGroup, and the source document can be viewed at -http://www.itworld.com/Career/nlscareers071008/index.html.

Today, and on each of the next three days, I shall POST four of the sixteen "ways" provided. Please peruse each of Dr. Sujansky's "seeds," and be sure to use our "comments" box to share your ideas, thoughts or suggestions. So, here we go:

Ways To Keep Your Best Employees Without Breakin The Bank!

Seed #1: Don't misrepresent your culture. Engaging your employees starts with the first time you interview them.

Seed #2: Learn the rules of engagement. Bored employees are neither happy nor productive.

Seed #3: Cross-pollinate your culture by embracing diversity. It takes a lot of different influences—diversity in race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual preference, lifestyle, geographic origin, education, personality, values, experience,
socio-economic background and so forth—to make your pasture the greenest.

Seed #4: Be a good corporate citizen. Once upon a time, the corporate heads of many organizations had one concern: "How much money can we make and how fast can we make it?" Well, money still matters, of course. But today's employers are finding that they have to care about more than just profits if they want to keep
their employees happy.

Please think about these suggestions, and we invite you to return for four more tomorrow. Thank you!

More About South Korea

The focus of today's Post is once again The Republic Of Korea, i.e. South Korea.

The brief but significant excerpts shown below are from The World Bank's website: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/

The Republic of Korea has experienced remarkable success in combining rapid economic growth with significant reductions in poverty, despite the country's history of civil war and its dearth of available natural resources.

The Korean economy recovered rapidly from the 1997 financial crisis that hit Southeast Asia, as the government implemented reforms to quickly address economic vulnerabilities.

As a "newly industrialized economy," Korea is working to share development experience learned from its transformation to a "knowledge economy." These lessons include embracing good economic policies, adopting a high-growth development agenda, enhancing the labor force and increasing social capital through increased education, and addressing agricultural development and rural equity.

And now, to provide a more comprehensive view of the South Korean economy, here is a recent South Korea "Country Brief" (April 2007) from the World Bank website referenced above:

• The Korean economy expanded by 5 percent in 2006.
• Growth was supported mainly by stronger private consumption (4.2 percent), growth in facility investment (7.5 percent) and strong exports (13.0 percent).
• In the past few months, however, the economy has slowed, easing to 4.0 percent growth in the final quarter from 4.8 percent and 5.3 percent in the third and second quarter, respectively, principally due to weaker domestic demand.
• Private consumption moderated in the final quarter from recovery at a faster pace than household income since 2005.
• Slow growth in employment and income is likely to restrain private consumption growth in the near future. Fixed investment growth remained sluggish in 2006 with negative growth in construction investment, partly affected by government measures to curb speculation in real estate, although construction investment did begin to pick up slightly in the fourth quarter.
• Exports continued robust growth averaging 16 percent in the first two months of 2007, but is expected to slow with a slowing overall export environment.

Should you wish to share any thoughts with us re "Reversing The Brain Dreain," please type them in the COMMENTS box, and then click the PUBLISH button. Thanks.

South Korea. A Fascinating Country!

Today we will take an indepth look at the South Korean economy, and will treat you to some excerpts from the website: www.workpermit.com:

Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans have emigrated to places around the world since the Korean War ended in the 1950's. Traditionally a closed society, very similar in some aspects to Japan, not very many foreigners immigrate back into the country.

Combined with a fairly static birth rate, the country has shown signs of
not replacing its highly skilled and educated work force at needed rates for some time.

Research Institute now indicates that increasing numbers of highly skilled Koreans are leaving the country. One of the conclusions of the report is that the Republic of Korea's international competitiveness is being shaken, with many of the best Korean workers leaving the country and not enough replacements arriving.

So, it seems that South Korea is losing some of its vitally needed skills, and that this problem cannot be ignored or brushed aside!

We will therefore continue our indepth look at South Korea in our next few Posts.

Meantime, please feel free to share any comments on the "brain drain issue" by posting your Comments on this blogsite. Thanks!

The Tiger Economies

In the next few Posts, we will take a closer look at the so-called "tiger" economies, and at the impact of the "brain drain" on these economies.

You will recall that South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Ireland were amongst the first to be dubbed "tiger" economies! Their economic growth rates were regarded as very rapid, and they came to be seen as role models which other developing economies should emulate.

A decade or so later, other rapidly growing economies such as the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, also came to be generally regarded as "tiger" economies.

It will be highly interesting (and fun) to see how these tigers coped with the challenges of the brain drain. Were their skills attracted to North America and to the European Union countries, and what specific steps did their Governments take in order to slow down or to reverse the brain drain?

Should you have any thoughts and/or suggestions that will help us better understand these matters, we warmly invite you to leave a "comment" or a "post" on this blog-site. And, please visit us again soon to read the results of our research!

Thanks very much.

Is the "Brain Drain" already in "Reverse"?

Now hear this! The "Times of India" newspaper says that the Brain Drain is already in "reverse", courtesy of the US Immigration & Naturalization Service!

WASHINGTON: More than one million skilled immigrant workers, including
engineers, doctors and researchers compete for 120,000 permanent US resident
visas each year and this imbalance may fuel a reverse brain-drain from America
affecting the country, a new study has said.

The situation is even bleaker as the number of employment visas issued to
immigrants from any single country is less than 10,000 per year with a wait time
of several years, the report by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation said. "The
United States benefits from having foreign-born innovators create their ideas in
this country," said Vivek Wadhwa, Wertheim fellow with the Harvard Law School
and executive in residence at Duke University.

"Their departures would be detrimental to US economic well-being," he said.
The earlier studies documented that one in four engineering and technology
companies founded between 1995 and 2005 had an immigrant founder.

Indian immigrants founded more companies than the next four groups from the
United Kingdom, China, Taiwan and Japan combined.

Researchers found that these companies employed 450,000 workers and
generated USD 52 billion in revenue in 2006.

The key finding from this research is that the number of skilled workers
waiting for visas is significantly larger than the number that can be admitted
to the US.

This imbalance creates the potential for a sizable reverse brain-drain from
the United States to the skilled workers' home countries, the Foundation said.

REMITTANCES TO LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN

In its March 2007 report, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) describes Latin America & The Caribbean(LAC) as "the largest remittances market."

Here are some other interesting excerpts from that report:

• The remittance market has changed dramatically over the past few years.
• Once "hidden in plain view," remittances are now widely recognized as
  critical to the survival of millions of individual families, and the health of
  many national economies throughout Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
• Unlike foreign aid, migrant remittances go directly to families in places
  that are often difficult to reach with official development assistance.
• While international capital flows have fluctuated with market cycles,
  remittances have steadily increased, even during economic recession.
• For 2006, remittances to LAC reached US$62.3 billion (14% over 2005), making the region the largest remittance market in the world.
• This amount exceeded, for the fourth consecutive year, the combined flows of
  all net Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Official Development Assistance
  (ODA) to the region. Given the complicated process of tracking informal
  flows, particularly those still carried by hand, actual flows could be at least
  10% higher.
• Mexico remains the largest recipient of remittances, at over US$23 billion,
  followed by Brazil and Colombia which reached over US$7 and US$4 billion
  respectively. Central America and the Dominican Republic combined to reach over US$13 billion; the An-dean countries totaled almost US$11 billion; and the Caribbean, $4.5 billion.
• It is currently estimated that over 20 million LAC-born adults send money
  home on a regular basis -- typically $200-$300 a month - resulting in more than 250 million separate financial transactions a year.

These figures are revealing indeed, and raises the question whether the diaspora as a whole fully appreciates how important its role can be, in promoting the social and economic development of the so-called 'third world,' and in banishing poverty worldwide!

What are your thoughts on this tantalizing issue? Please share them with us by placing a Post or Comment on this blog.

Thank you.

End of August, 2007 Post

Lots of goodies in store for future posts. Any inputs?

Welcome to "Reverse The Brain Drain"

For many years we have heard our friends and colleagues talk about, and sometimes lament, the brain drain.

Simply, some of the best educated, trained and experienced people from the so-called "developing countries" have made their homes in the developed countries, and the resultant skill shortages in the developing countries have added to the poverty and dismay so prevalent in the countries from which they, in most cases, have literally fled.

Some people think that "aid" from the developed world will get the development process going, and that this will in time reduce, alleviate or banish poverty - and thereby remove the "push" forces that speed up the brain drain.

Others argue that a sensible mix of "trade and aid" will do the trick .

However, most indicators seem to suggest that the solutions to the brain drain problem which have been tried so far have not worked, and that the brain drain -from the developing to the developed world - is in fact gathering pace!

This is a major problem for us all, and I therefore invite comments and suggestions from our worldwide family, and some firm suggestions on how to reverse the brain drain.

Our blog may be reached at: reversethebraindrain.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading this welcome message.

Now I invite you all to join in sharing ideas and suggestions about how we might stem and reverse the brain drain.

Each month we will identify "the most creative ideas" that hit our blog, and prizes will be awarded.

So, let's be creative and let's have some fun !!