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Communication Key to a Better Work Environment Everyone knows the story of A Christmas Carole. On Christmas Eve, poor Bob Cratchit, who is working late again, spends his day working up the courage to ask his boss, Mr. Scrooge, if he can have Christmas Day off from work to spend with his family. When he finally does get up the nerve to ask, Mr. Scrooge lets forth a tirade over lazy people using Christmas as an excuse to have a day a off from work. This fictional story unfortunately rings true for a lot of people who have to work up the courage to ask for things from their employers. An employee who has to feel about their employer the way Bob Cratchit felt about Mr. Scrooge is not a very happy and productive employee. To get the most of out of your workers, you have to create a much more hospitable working environment. To create a better working environment, keeping the lines of communication open is absolutely crucial. How does communication work in your office? Do you get the impression that everyone is walking around on eggshells around you? While this kind of fear from your employees may be good for your ego in some senses, it is really bad for your business. When your employees don’t feel like they can talk to you, you will lose control over what is going on with your business. You may be the boss, but your employees are the ones who are actually on the front lines. To know what is really going on out there, you need your employees to communicate honestly with you. If they feel that you are unapproachable, they will hide problems and concerns from you, and you won’t be able to act to fix them. You can’t expect to run your business with half of the information about what is actually going on, and so your business will suffer for your “mean boss” routine. There are still other problems with creating an office environment in which your employees feel like you are unapproachable. In general, there will be a dark cloud over the office when you are around. The stress will keep employee morale low, and employees with low morale are employees with low productivity. Besides, who wants to work hard for someone they cannot approach or who doesn’t show they any respect? Shutting down those lines of communication will definitely affect your bottom line as employees “phone it in” because they don’t feel invested in making your business a success. If you want a better working environment, you have to improve the lines of communication. If there has been a communication breakdown in the past, take the time to address it with your staff. If you staff is small, talk to them each one on one, letting them know that your door is always open and that you want more regular communication with them. If you have a larger staff, schedule a meeting to address the issue. Weekly office meetings are a great way to keep communication channels open and swap ideas in the office environment. If weekly meetings are not feasible, find some way of touching base with your staff on a regular basis, either through weekly emails or a weekly newsletter. Also, you should encourage your staff to communicate with each other. Sharing information among the staff is a great way to generate fresh ideas and fresh approaches to problems. If your office is suffering from a communication problem, make nipping it in the bud a priority. The pay off will be more productive workers and a whole lot less stress. Who knew work could actually be a pleasant place to be?

Get the Scoop on Some Great Informative Parenting Freebies Being a parent can be hard and especially, when it is about money. So many things in life are very expensive and children often desire what they cannot have. Therefore families of average or below income have often trouble giving their children what is in or what other children have. Therefore any opportunity to get something for free in parenting hood is a great opportunity. Whether it is free advice, free literature or even free products, it is surely something that a parent can use. Where and how to find great parenting freebies? It is actually fairly easy to find parenting freebies, especially when one has access to the cyber world. The Internet is one of the greatest resources for information, products and advice. The Internet holds freebies for any stage in life, but the most for the infancy and toddler stage, as well as some resources for the young years of life before children grow into adulthood. Many of the resources that are available on the Internet are actually sponsored by different departments of the United States government. For example, the US Department of Health offers easy reader books for young children or a free CD for parents with information on the development of teenagers during their adolescents. For parents of toddlers, the Internet holds resources for free toddler magazine subscriptions, potty training success guides and guides to prevent childhood lead exposure. Many of the major issues in toddler live can be found online with advice, frequently asked questions sections, chats and forums to help parents. For later on in life, there are plenty if resources that will help parents with such things as saving for college, preventing teen pregnancy, preventing drug and alcohol abuse in the teenage years and preventing or talking about smoking with children. All the information that is available online is often also available for parents as kits that are mailed to their houses. Online pages offer forms that parents can fill to have material sent to their home mailing address. Books, CDs, DVDs, guides, and other informative material can be downloaded or requested by parents. Many parents do not know about these resources and struggle with these exact same problems that they could have help with. Some of the offers for young children, such as free music downloads for children, often include such music as classical music and therefore might make a good download for anybody who loves classical music. Even though these pages are geared at babies and toddler, it does not mean that other people cannot use this music for themselves. Other sources on the internet offer for example free descriptions to art projects, fee coloring pages that can be printed using any printer, free read along stories online and more. There are so many activities online, that parents can do with their children, or that can be used to educate children that sometimes it might be hard to choose with what to start. The Internet also offers parents the possibility to talk tot her parents and get connected without having to attend an actual meeting or playgroup. Whenever parents need advice, they can just log on to one of the many free parenting sites and ask questions. Of course answers are given by other parents and are more their thoughts and experiences rather than professional advice, but some of the pages sometimes offer advice from experts on topics and have special chat sessions for parents with these experts. Whatever kind of informative parenting freebie or product parents are looking for, the Internet might hold the answer to their questions. It often amazes parents what they can find just by typing their questions or search keywords into one of the Internet search engines. Literally hundred of answers and pages with free help might pop up and parents might have a hard time reading it all.

Let your Resume Speak Volumes for that Next Big Job Before you even get through the door of any job interview, there is already one document that has done the talking for you – your resume. A good resume can mean the difference between getting the call of the interview and waiting by phone, and a well written, thoughtful resume can make you stand out over and above other applications with similar skills and work experience. Let your resume give you the edge on that next big job by following a few simple tips. When you sit down to write your resume, you need to plan it out before you start typing. There are two main formats for a resume: the chronological format, in which you simply list your job history, starting with your most recent or current job and moving backwards, and the functional format, in which you highlight your skills and experience rather than specific jobs and specific employers. The chronological format is definitely the most common, and many employers prefer this kind of resume, but choose the format this is going to show off your skills in the best light. If your work history is a choppy and a chronological format resume would only draw attention to that, use the functional format. The key is to choose the format that will give you the best chance of getting noticed for the job and to stick with the format throughout your resume. No matter which resume format you choose to use, the top of your resume should always include your name, contact information and work objectives. Name and contact information is pretty straight forward, although experts do recommend that if you have a “gender neutral” name that you include a helpful “Mr.” or “Ms” to clear up any confusion. Your work objectives should be your career goals. For instance, if you want to manage a small team of sales people, then say that, so your potential employers know that you are moving in a certain direction with your career and not simply apply for jobs willy-nilly. After your work objective comes your work experience. List your jobs in reverse chronological order. Instead of simply creating a bullet pointed list your work related tasks, look for a way to frame all of your responsibilities so that they sound like you showed leadership and problem solving capabilities. For instance, if you were in charge of keeping the expensive accounts in order, say that you were in charge of troubleshooting monthly expense account records, saving the company hundreds of dollars every month. If you have a few blips in your work history, be clear about what you were doing in the downtime. If you were raising children, traveling, or in school, say that you were. If you weren’t really doing anything, put as positive a spin on things as you can without lying. Never leave gaps in your work history unaddressed on your resume. After your work history, it is time to list your education credentials. If you didn’t finish a degree, say how much college work you completed and highlight any coursework relevant to the job. If your college degree or post grad work is in progress, say when you expect to be finished. This is another place where gaps matter. If there is a gap in your education history, again say what you were doing in that time, referring back to your work history where appropriate. You can overcome these gaps as long as you don’t pretend that they don’t exist. Round out your resume by listing any awards and professional memberships you may hold. Don’t get into your hobbies unless they are specifically related to the position for which you are applying. Personal details like religion and race have no place on your resume and you are not required to disclose your age. Instead, let your experience do the talking.