Business

Business awards attract media attention and raise your profile. Here’s how to increase your chances of winning: Inquire about awards and nominations through your local chamber of commerce and trade groups. Complete applications for awards carefully. Profile your business, describe major challenges you have faced and overcome, explain your solutions. Submit your award entries well in advance of the deadline. When you win—and even when you are just nominated—write press releases about the awards and send them to local media.

A lack of recognition is the number one cause of employee dissatisfaction. Give creatively to employees, and they will give back productivity, loyalty and team spirit. Here are low-cost ways to reward employees: Name it. If Kelly was drinking coffee while working on a report until 2 am, post a sign on the coffeemaker dedicating it to her. Name the conference room after the employee who scored a big account. Change the names as the people who deserve recognition change. Bribe the spouse. Show appreciation to the support person behind the star employee. A simple note works. Flowers, wine or dinner is even better. Give discounts. Macy’s employees enjoy discounted…

Say you dream up an innovative product or advertising strategy. Or you have devised a better system for paying bills at home. But when you present the idea to your colleagues, boss, spouse—whomever—you are met with resistance. Here’s how to head off opposition, before it gathers steam, by addressing the three types of resistance: “I DON’T GET IT” The individual or group simply doesn’t understand your idea. Perhaps you used the wrong language. Jargon may work in your department, but to those down the hall, it may sound like you come from another country. Or your audience lacks the background to understand the concept. When my accountant reviews my retirement…

Photo: Pexels Face it, you work much harder than you need you. Chances are you’ve had this conversation with yourself. The average workweek is over 60 hours and it is getting longer, not shorter. Remember back in the 80s when it was predicted that the average workweek would be less than 30 hours in the next 20 years? As if. Did you know there are some professions, especially in the tech sector, employees are expected to put in 100+ hour weeks? Even interns. This marathon approach to working creates a lot of stress and limit the quality of life. It also hinders performance, productivity, and creativity. Working a lot harder,…

Everyone negotiates at some level every day. You negotiate with your spouse about where to go for dinner or what movie to see, and with your boss about salary. Yet standard negotiation strategies often leave people dissatisfied, worn out, and alienated. A better way to deal with differences is called “principled negotiation.” How it works: Listen actively. Frequently, negotiators talk, but not to each other. Instead, they talk merely to impress third parties or their own constituency. Example: Following World War II, negotiations over the city of Trieste involving large delegations from Yugoslavia, Britain, and the US stalled until representatives abandoned their large delegations and began meeting alone and informally…

The ability to perform well under pressure is crucial to career success—so crucial that General Motors, Lucent Technologies, and other corporations use the test I developed to predict how potential hires will do under challenging circumstances. Follow these steps to stop stress from sabotaging your life and career. Take a Stress Test Stress is a constant today. Rapid technological change and globalization are making jobs increasingly complex. We can’t escape workplace stress, but we can identify episodes when it has gotten the better of us. Stress overload often leads to one of these mistakes. The Attentional and Interpersonal Style (TAIS) inventory test comprises 144 questions and is widely used to…

Visitor attraction King John’s Castle in Limerick has been officially reopened by Minister for Finance Michael Noonan TD following a €6m revamp funded by Fáilte Ireland and Shannon Development. In the first four months since reopening its doors on the 28 June this year, the revamped visitor attraction has welcomed over 40,000 visitors from Ireland and overseas – double the amount in the same period in previous years. John Ruddle, chief executive, Shannon Heritage, Ireland’s largest operator of tourist attractions, said: “We have had more visitors in the first four months since reopening than we would normally have in a full year. We see this as only the start and…