workplace

In the past week I have been confronted more than ever with the horrific degrees to which politics in the workplace can swell.

PR Week published a pretty good piece about policies and guidelines for employee blogging last week.

Wouldn't it be nice if every boss came with a standard API? It would be so easy to look at the interface specifications and know exactly what he expected, in what format he expected it, when you should deliver it, what predictable events would result from your input and how you should handle error conditions. All the politics would go away. Those pesky emotions would become a nonissue. Success would become deterministic.

Have you ever seen a newcomer to the workplace work her/his way from "new face" to "promoted face"?

Workplace Ethics is a subject that we have all heard of. In fact, the subject of Ethics in general is something that most people are familiar with. And, what is commonly understood about ethics is there are ethics and then there are workplace ethics. What most people don't realize, however, is that there is no such thing as workplace ethics; ethics are the same, (or, should be) whether in the workplace or in personal life.

The effects of conflict in the workplace are widespread and costly. Its prevalence, as indicated by three serious studies, shows that 24-60% of management time and energy is spent dealing with anger. This leads to decreased productivity, increased stress among employees, hampered performance, high turnover rate, absenteeism and at its worst, violence and death.

Bringing your emotional baggage into the work place is inappropriate for all the reasons you may imagine. Yet employees, managers and business owners do it all the time.

Why are you so busy? Do you really have too much work? Is work so important to you that you'll sacrifice just about anything in your life to get the job done? Even if it's at the expense of your health and your relationships? Stress in the workplace can be caused by many factors, however from my experience I've found for many people it is their inability to organise themselves and their time. They also have difficulty saying 'no'. Or worse still, you may be a work addict.