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Five Flex Time Options that Can Propel your Employee Productivity Flex time is something that is still very rarely used in the United States, but has many followers in other countries, especially European countries. Flex time in general means flexible working hours for employees of a company. They way the flexible working hours are implemented can differ greatly. But one thing is for sure, flexible working hours can greatly propel the employee productivity in your company. Take a look at five different ways to implement flex time in your company. The first and probably easiest way is to give your employees the option to come in to work and leave work within a certain time range. For example, so far your employees worked from 8am to 5pm, now you might give them the opportunity to come in to work anywhere from 7am to 9am, and of course, leave somewhere between 4pm and 6pm. This first model would give your employees an opportunity to be on time as long as they are within that range and their individual habits are considered in regards to being an early riser or a late sleeper. This first model would set the rule that there are 8 work hours plus a one hour lunch in a work day and these are not variables. Therefore, you only have to check their arrival and leaving times in one way or another. A second option is very similar to this, but you can expand the hours worked to a weekly or monthly check, where the employee is responsible to work 40 hours a week with one hour lunch everyday. Then he or she can come and leave in the morning and afternoon in the specified time ranges. For the employee, this means maybe on days that he or she is more energetic, they can spent more hours at work to get their work done and on days they do not feel so energetic or so good or they have family things going, on they can come in the minimum hours established from 9am to 4pm. This version of flextime is a much appreciated model by many employees, but for the employer, it means more work in tracking hours worked and arrival times, to make sure the required hours per week or months are worked. An even more advanced version of the first two flex time themes is a theme where the worker can accumulate time to take off at some point in the future. How specifically you are going to use this version is up to you. You basically are making sure that your employees are not working more than the required amount of hours. Why would you profit from this? Less time spent at the work place makes for more time to relax and regenerate and your employees will be more efficient and motivated throughout your work week. In some companies this flex time method allows the employee to accumulate hours up to a certain amount and then for example, they are allowed to leave after six hours for several days to be home for activities with their family. In an even more expanded version, a fourth version of flex time options, the employee can actually take full days off after having accumulated hours. These days are in general additional to vacation and holidays and can be taken in agreement with their supervisor. The fifth option that has been adopted by some companies actually gives the employees the chance to go into negative hours on their time account. This means if you do not have the required hours, you can still take a flex day off, but have to make sure that after a period of time, that the employer sets in the contract your account goes back to zero or higher. If the employer is a really generous person, he might allow you to completely choose the hours you want to work. You might be able to take work home or work from 10pm to 3am if you desire, as long as you have your assignments done on time and your hours are fulfilled.

Five Positive Actions You Should Do After a Lay-off Lay-offs are hard for most people and are essentially difficult to cope with if you were and excellent worker and outstanding employee. Sometimes lay-offs are general cuts such as the closing of a whole department. It often times hits good employees that the company otherwise would have never gotten fired. So what do you need to do after you get laid off? Here are five positive steps you should take after you have been laid-off. The first and probably most important step is coping with the situation. Get your feelings straightened out. Of course you are upset and plain dumbstruck by what happened, but if you are not able to get this sorted out with yourself, the company is not going to take you back. Then you won’t even have a chance of finding another job. In some cases, if it was not very clear why you have been fired, it helps to talk to coworkers, and maybe the human resource person to just find out that it was not you or any of your doings that got you laid-off. Within this step falls also the realization that the job market currently is a tough one and that you might have to make some budget adjustments first off all. Do not be picky about what kind of jobs you want to choose. Sometimes, this means a new beginning, some job you might like much better than your old one, and you just do not know it yet. After you have been able to work through the situation and are ready for the job hunt, get your résumé out. If you have not been looking for a job in a while it might be dusty and not be up to date. Add your last job to the list; add your role and responsibilities to your list and maybe you even have to adapt your résumé to a more current style. Résumés and cover letters are your way into a job and the first impression that a new employer gets from you. When you are finished getting your résumé up to date, apply to as many jobs as there are. As a third step, make yourself clear that the job market is difficult and finding a new job might mean to apply for something that you might have not really wanted to do, maybe because you did study it, but you never really liked in the university classes? Well, it is worth applying for. The sooner you get another job, the better of you are. Face it, if you really do not like the work you can find another job after a year or two. After a lay-off it is very important to get back into the working world as fast as you can. To make your job search even more successful, as a fourth positive step after a lay-off, you also need to network. Talk to friends, other companies’ bosses you know, and anybody you have ever met that might have a job available for you. Besides networking, you can also always try to do some cold calling, writing letters to businesses that are not having a newspaper add out. There is always the possibility that they are looking for somebody. As a fifth positive action after you are laid-off there is always college. Taking classes that will refresh your topic and specialty you are working in can make a good bullet on your résumé. If the job market is quite tough, why not go back and finish that degree or add another maybe a graduate degree. This always is better on your résumé than plain being out of work.

Clean Up your Digital Profile and Land that Job Whether you are looking for a job after getting fired or you are looking for a job other than the one you are working at currently, many steps in that process are the same. You need to get your résumé up to date and conform to newest standards, you need to get your wardrobe together and most of all you need to be prepared to go for the interview. But did you know that in a fast paced society with all the high technology gadgets, employers and companies appreciate a good digital profile? When it is time to land a new job it is time for you to clean up your digital profile. For those of you who might not know what a digital profile is, let’s reminisce about digital profiles for just a second here. A digital profile is any and all information about you that can be found online. It can be anything from your own homepage, over articles and answers that you have posted on the Internet to videos and pictures of you. Anything that is somehow connected to you and your name and can be found through Internet search engines such as Google, Yahoo and other crawlers belongs to your digital profile or e-portfolio. Believe it or not, many employers have started to check out your digital profile online by doing a little research on the Internet and finding any information about you. If it is on the Internet it is public information and therefore not illegal. Information on the Internet does not necessarily have to be positive. What if one of your friends posted some stories or pictures/movies about you on the Internet? Employers might see that and think that you are not fir for the tasks that are asked form you by the new job and might just plain throw your nice résumé into the trash before they ever have a chance to meet you in person. Therefore before going onto your next job-hunt, clean up your digital profile. Steps you can take to clean up your e-profile are many and one of the easiest ones is a regular search with different Internet search engines about things that are related to your name. See what comes up and try to clean it up. If there are pictures or movies posted on such pages as u-tube about you, try to get friends or the owners of the page to take them down or at least take your name of the page in such a way that a search engine cannot find this information when somebody is searching for your name. A very important positive step in cleaning up your digital profile is to create your own positive statements and information on the Internet, such as online résumé, Personal web pages or a personal development plan (PDP). If the amount of positive information, academic achievements, and plans for the future are greater than any negative amount of information they can find, the light shed on you is of good nature and your chances are greater to land that job than when they only find negative information for the reasons that you never knew about a digital profile. Should you still be new to all of this and you are not quite as well versed on the Internet, there are places that can help you. Many Universities and development centers offer help and tools just for this kind of situation. Public libraries also offer you free time on the Internet as well as other resources in connection with the job-hunt and digital profiles. So before you actually send out your résumé, make sure that you checked online for any information that might harm you.