Around our house, nothing signals the end of summer more than helping our kids prepare for their return to the daily school routine. The arrival of the end of summer also means that companies are now returning to full strength with most of their employees having finished their vacation time away from work.

While taking a vacation break can provide us with the benefit of recharging ourselves and allowing us to clear our focus, there can be some feelings of ambivalence surrounding those first few days back on the job over what we may find awaiting us upon our return. This is especially true for employees who return to work after a prolonged absence from taking a maternity, paternity or sick leave.

Of course, returning to work after a prolonged absence can provide its own share of challenges to employees, issues which may not be obvious to the organization’s leadership or their fellow team members. Indeed, unlike employees returning from a holiday break, these employees have to contend with concerns over unexpected additions to their workloads or changes made to their role within the organization while they were away. Such issues can have a dramatic impact not only on their productivity, but also on their ability to ease back into their role as a member of your team.

With this in mind, here are three steps leaders can take to help their employees with the transition of returning back to work after a prolonged break. Click here to continue reading »”Helping Employees Regain Their Productivity After A Prolonged Absence”

Every now and then when I sit down to write a post for my blog, I find my mind drifting off to other tasks; things that I could be doing at that moment instead of writing. In these cases, it’s not an issue of struggling with writer’s block, as I know exactly what it is I wish to write about. Instead, the problem has to do with something we all face at one point or another in our daily lives – getting stuck in the procrastination rut.

It’s a common situation that we can all relate to – finding ourselves procrastinating when there’s this pile of work that requires our current attention and focus. Of course, thanks to today’s hyper-accelerated sense of immediacy and drive to increase productivity, procrastinating not only draws our frustration and annoyance, but it’s also become something we feel guilty about doing.

Ironically, part of the problem with procrastination is that we’ve created a negative perception around it, instead of recognizing it as being a normal behaviour. After all, even the most efficient workers among us procrastinate at times. In dealing with procrastination, we need to understand that the real issue here is not so much the behaviour as how we choose to respond to it when it happens.

With this in mind, here are some things you can do that will not only help with maintaining some level of productivity, but which will also change how you look at procrastination: Click here to continue reading »”How to Make Procrastination Beneficial For Your Business”

Like most people, I look forward to that time when we can unplug from our computers and mobile devices in order to unwind, spend time with the family, and recharge my mind and body before we need to prepare ourselves to dive back into the hustle and flow of our workplace.

There are times, though, where that continual push to maintain our productivity through the week takes its toll and we can find ourselves struggling to get out of neutral. This is something that happens to me at times and I know only too well how frustrating these moments can feel, especially when we see that large heap waiting for us in our “To-Do” basket. As such, I want to share some of the strategies I use to recharge my productivity batteries so I could complete my tasks for the week: Click here to continue reading »”6 Tips You Can Use Today To Help Boost Your Productivity”

Last week, I wrote a piece on my blog that discussed the benefits for you and your business in taking some time off work to enjoy summer. Naturally, part of the inspiration behind that piece was my own realization of the benefit I’ll gain from taking time off, not just from work, but also from writing new posts for this blog.

It’s for this reason I wanted to write a brief note to let my readers know that I’ll be taking a two-week break from writing new content for my site. At the same time though, I didn’t want to have my blog going quiet during this time even if I was taking a short break to recharge and relax.

As such, I’ve compiled a four-part series that focuses on personal development and productivity. Starting tomorrow and continuing over the next two weeks, I’ll be sharing ideas and tips that will help you address the following:

• Why negative self-talk sabotages our ability to succeed and what you can do about it

• Five steps you can take today to help you become more confident and self-aware

• Improving your overall productivity through some simple-and-straightforward strategies

• How you can use procrastination to make you more productive

As always, I welcome your comments and I hope you’ll enjoy the insights I’ll be sharing in these upcoming pieces.

Last month marked the completion of my first year of writing for this blog and my second year of blogging in general. Looking back over the last twelve months, it’s hard not to feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction regarding the opportunities and relationships I’ve attained as a result of writing for my website. As this milestone also coincides with the year’s halfway mark, I also saw this as a good opportunity to review how much progress I’ve made in reaching the goals I set out for myself at the beginning of the year.

In some ways, it felt odd to be performing such an exercise in the middle of summer, especially when one considers the downtime most companies are experiencing right now thanks to vacationing employees and customers. As it turns out though, the summer downtime actually provides an excellent opportunity for businesses and their leaders to review their team’s efforts, in order to assess how much progress has been made in reaching their shared goals. By performing this review during the summer break, leaders will develop a better understanding of where to focus their team’s efforts when they return to full force at the end of summer.

Of course, in assessing the efforts made so far by your team, it’s important that you Click here to continue reading »”Using The Summer Downtime To Assess Your Organization’s Direction”