4 Tips for How to Purchase Holiday Gifts for Employees

4 Tips for How to Purchase Holiday toxikums for Employees4 Tips for How to Purchase Holiday Gifts for EmployeesIn the midst of the busy holiday season, human resource executives, managers and employers often put off choosing employee gesundheitsgefhrdender stoffs until the very last minute. Yet holiday toxikums are one of the simplest and most appropriate ways to demonstrate your appreciation for employees hard work. If you are a supervisor, executive or anyone in between, and you manage employees on a daily basis, gifting during the holiday season demonstrates strong leadership and your desire to invest in the lives of your employees. A well-chosen employee gift makes your employees feel appreciated and cared about. A gift demonstrates your respect for them and your commitment to their happiness, well-being, and retention. Your expressed appreciation is one of the characteristics of an employer of choice. Whether you want to purchase individual employee gifts or buy in bulk, follow these four tips to provide the most effective recognition for employees. Make the Gifts Personal Personalizing employee gifts adds an element of genuineness that simply cannot be matched by a one-size-fits-all gift. Although any employee gift will be appreciated, one that is well thought through and custom-tailored for a specific employee shows that you care about that person individually. In the small business setting, it might be feasible to purchase an individual gift based on each particular employees preferences. In larger organizations, purchasing the same gift for all employees might be in order. If this is the case, try to personalize each gift with a meaningful picture, logo or the employees name when possible. A customized, personalized gift goes farther in demonstrating your gratitude and appreciation for each employee and what he or she brings to your company. Give the Gift of Practicality Although it might be difficult, try your best to avoid gifts that will eve ntually end up on employees desks or in a closet of memories, collecting dust. Select a gift that your employees can use whether its a gift card to a local business, a couple of extra hours of vacation time, or a handbag in which to carry his or her laptop. Whatever gift you choose, ask yourself Is this something I see my employee actually using? If the answer is yes, then you need to purchase that gift. Give Your Employees the Gift of Giving A great way to foster a sense of gratitude and giving during the busy holiday season is to give a gift that gives back to others. Whether you purchase a cow for a family in need on behalf of your employees or find a charity to donate to in their name, giving gifts that reach beyond your employees will prompt a continued spirit of giving within your organization. Consider giving your employees a gift card through CharityChoice, which lets the recipient choose which charity theyd like their gift card funds to benefit. Options for organization s that can benefit from your employee gifts include the Alzheimers Association, the American Red Cross, and 250 other major charitable causes. Dont Forget to Express Your Gratitude to the Employee While holiday gift-giving is a time to express creativity and the spirit of giving, dont forget to simply tell your employees how grateful you are for their hard work this year. Without your employees, your business simply would not be where it stands today. The power of an employer-provided gift is magnified when you also tell the employee about your gratitude for all of their contributions. Use the holidays as a time to celebrate your employees and their commitment to hard work- by voicing a simple thank you. Here are 40 ways to say thank you to employees at work. 129 Watch Now How Gratitude Makes Happier Employees Human resource executives, managers, and employers can rest assured that any gift to an employee is a good gift. You should not feel pressured to stick to a certain minimum budget or type of gift. The holiday season nurtures the spirit of giving, gratitude, and happiness, in small businesses and large organizations alike. Purchasing holiday gifts for employees will quickly become a meaningful part of celebrating this year and kicking off another great year in the new year. Heres hoping that these tips help you select an outstanding gift for your employees.

How to Ask If a Position Is a Telecommute Job

How to Ask If a Position Is a Telecommute JobHow to Ask If a Position Is a Telecommute JobIf a company doesnt specifically say a standort is a telecommute job in the description, then most likely it doesnt intend to hire a telecommuter directly. And thats pretty common. Telecommuting is often a perk allowed after an employee has proven his or her productivity in the bro. And the decision is often made by individual managers, even if the company has a telecommuting policy. If you would not accept a position thats not a telecommute job, then you have little to lose by asking straight out if telecommuting is a possibility in this position. But youd probably still want to wait until an offer was made or pending. However, just because a company doesnt hire a telecommuter directly doesnt mean there is no possibility of a position becoming a telecommute job in the future. And if you would still want the job even if no telecommuting is allowed, youll have to be subtle to find out about a com panys telecommuting policy. If a company is not telecommute-friendly, asking about telecommuting can seriously hurt your chances of getting the job. Take a step-by-step approach to glean information about telecommuting. First, Research If you know anyone who works at the company (who is not involved in the hiring process), ask how telecommute-friendly it is. Does he or she know anyone who telecommutes? If so, how often? Is there a telecommuting policy? If you dont know any insiders, research the company to get a sense of its attitude toward work-life issues. Read news stories about the company. Check out lists of telecommute-friendly companies. Look for clues in the job description. Does it mention flexibility or other work-life benefits? But keep in mind that just because a company allows some telecommuting, that does not mean the position you are applying for could be telecommuted. Ask Indirect Questions Inquire about hours and the office location. (Is the position located in this office? What are the jobs hours?) These are innocuous questions that might yield some information. Try to pick up subtle clues about your interviewers attitudes on work-life issues. Do they seem open to flexible hours? If the signs are good (both on the telecommuting attitudes and for you getting an offer), decide whether you want to be a little more direct about it by asking general questions about the companys telecommuting/flextime policy. If telecommuting is allowed, but only on a case-by-case basis, you may want to stop right here. Wait until youve been at the job for a while to bring up telecommuting again. Ask Directly, if You Dare If a company is not telecommute-friendly and you ask about telecommuting directly, you probably wont get the job. So base your decisions on how much to pursue this on how much you want the job if you cannot telecommute at all. If you do decide to ask if the position could become a telecommute job, wait until a job offer is made. Try to put a positive spin on telecommuting for the company, i.e., eliminating the commute would make you more productive, it would save office space, etc.

Bots and Bugs in Harmony

Bots and Bugs in Harmony Bots and Bugs in Harmony Bots and Bugs in HarmonyRobot designers have been emulating lifeforms for some time now. Insects, mammals, fish, reptilesyou name ittheyve all been tapped to make our machines more efficient, productive, and amusing. But now researchers at Switzerlands cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne are turning that process on its head. Instead of borrowing from the beasts, theyre helping them.Bertrand Collignon, a researcher at the university, has programmed a cheap, accessible, and leid very animal-like robot to help ants harvest food. In doing so, he has created one of the first purely autonomous robot/animal systems that outperforms what either the robots or the animals could do on their own. And the success of this synergy between insect and machine may someday turn around and help us as well.Researchers test the response of animals to various signals emitted by robots. Image EPAIn setting out to help ants collect their food, Collignon dec ided to divide the duties between bot and bug. Ants would do the hunting and the robots would do the gathering.Just how to do that presented Collignon with his first challenge.Even if there is no food in the environment, there is a fluctuation in the behavior of ants, he says. There is a rhythm of activity that can last for a few minutes or hours. The activity is not constant.One possibility was to count the ants going in and out of a colony. When the flow remained under a certain threshold, the robots would assume the ants had not yet found food. When it went above another threshold, they would know the ants had discovered a source. But those thresholds are different for every ant colony. Collignon wanted a system that would work with any colony anywhere without the need for initial data collection or additional research.Identifying and counting individual ants is not a simple programming problem. So Collignon decided to count the number of moving pixels at the entrance of an ant n est. This straightforward method would work with any colony size.The final configuration used a Raspberry Pi camera and computer at the mouth of the nest. When it detected a sharp uptick in pixel activity, the harvesting drones were sent in. These Thymio robots, programmable toys that cost about $200, followed the line of ants to the sugar source, picked it up for them, and delivered it to the nest.The ants did not seem especially appreciative. We dont expect them to realize that the robots are helping them, says Collignon.The whole set up was designed to be easily replicated. The Raspberry Pi computer, the Thymio robots, and the Python programming language were all created to help educate kids. That was one of the ideas, to keep everything accessible says Collignon. Anyone can do this experiment at home or at a school once they have the software.But children and ants arent the only ones to benefit from this research. Such a robotic system would help in any situation where animals a re used as detectors.Dogs in airports, for instance, are trained to exhibit a specific behavior when they find drugs or explosives. Right now we need a human to gesangssolist that behavior. With a system like Collignons, You dont have to be close to the dog to see what he is doing, so you could have a higher number of agents, he says. Similarly, hundreds of ferrets could be unleashed in collapsed buildings. Outfitted with a biologger to monitor their behavior, emergency workers could know when they reached anyone trapped in the rubble.There are some natural agents that can still outperform artificial ones for some tasks, Collignon says. For energy management or sensing, its very hard to be as good as nature.Michael Abrams is an independent writer. For Further DiscussionWe dont expect them to realize that the robots are helping them. Prof. Bertrand Collignon, cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne