E-Mail Etiquette and its importance

In this age of messaging in short cuts, any one is hardly bothered about e-mail etiquette. If I am not wrong most of the people wonder if there is any such thing as e-mail etiquette. Because we are so used to informal way of communication and shortcuts that we hardly care about this.

Right from students who communicate with their pals and guides, to business people most of us are only concerned with time. Hardly anyone has time to bother about e-mail etiquette. But it does play a very important role when it comes to business communication and formal communication. The way you compose your mail and communicate reveals a lot about the importance you give to the other person and how much you value them.

The first and very important thing you should keep in mind is you should always sound polite, but not arrogant or careless in your address or communication with the other person. The fact you should never forget while composing a mail is that you should never be too short or too lengthy.

Some people never come to the point they just beat around the bush wasting a lot of time on the other hand there are people who use shortcut words and minimum not bothering to show respect to the other. Both the approaches are not good you should try to be moderate and to the point. In formal communication you should never use short cut words like you use in messaging, this conveys a very wrong impression.

Short messaging may be good when you are communicating with your buddies and pals, but not in professional mails. Just because you are writing an e-mail doesn’t mean that we are allowed to write spelling and grammar mistakes. So, always check to make sure that there are no grammar mistakes. Because the way you compose your mail says who and what kind of person you are. So, next time you compose a mail make sure you have maintained e-mail etiquette.

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Importance of Work Place Etiquette

Though many skilled Indian workers have degrees from top universities, analysts said they often lack the basics of international workplace etiquette. Such as dressing properly, hosting a meeting, making inoffensive, small talk and using cutlery. These deficiencies are lessening India’s leadership potential.

Infosys built a Global Education Center in Mysore, to teach more than 50,000 graduates leadership and corporate manners. The company has also partnered with 400 engineering schools to train 4,400 faculty members. These faculty members will train more than 80,000 students in soft skills and how to be "industry-ready" when they graduate.

The country's largest information technology company, Tata Consultancy Services, has an in-house training center along with an affirmative action program. It has joined hands with the government to help economically disadvantaged students improve their office and leadership skills.

If graduates and skilled people want to survive in this competitive world, it is very much necessary to train themselves in soft skills. Just degrees and skill sets will not help to secure a job; you should develop and sharpen your soft skills as well.

A lot of importance has been laid on these points when people are selected to work in corporate offices. You should be well equipped and well mannered to carry yourself in such a way that you earn respect. There are institutes that are meant to train people only in this aspect, corporate etiquette, manners and soft skills that are necessary to survive in the corporate world.

So, whether you are student looking for a career in corporate or an employee looking for a career shift into the corporate. You need to have good soft skills, along with technical skills and good educational qualification. So, equip yourself with the soft skill, and corporate etiquette and manners before you dream of a corporate career.

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Necessity and Process of Counseling at Workplace

Reasons or necessity for Counseling in an Organization:

Given below is a list of situations that call for counseling from a superior to his subordinate, but these are not necessarily the only situations, there may be other situations also as per the necessity:

• When an employee violates the organizations standards.
• When an employee consistently comes late or is absent.
• When an employee’s productivity has come down, or the quality of work is not up to the mark.
• When an employee’s behavior affects the productivity of others employees in a negative way.
• When an employee has conflict with the other employee, or employees and the issue is public and has its affect on productivity and the company.
• When you want to compliment an individual employee.
• When you want to assign a new task to an employee.

How to prepare for a Counseling Interview?

• You need to choose an appropriate, quiet and private location.
• Before proceeding for counseling, make sure that you are not disturbed during the counseling session.
• As a counselor it is your duty to give sufficient time to the person you are counseling and that he is not being rushed into it.

Objectives of the Counseling Interview:

• Counselor should help the person being counseled to:
• Open up and discuss his problem.
• Look out for new perspectives.
• Clarify the issues.
• Identify areas that require change.
• Set goals.
• Develop action plan to reach the goals.
• Review progress as to how far he is able to achieve his goals.

Counselor should extend complete support during the interview and also after the interview to implement the action plan and to review the progress.

Counseling Skills

• Counselor should listen carefully.
• Counselor should demonstrate empathy.
• Counselor should not make judgments.
• Counselor should understand emotions/feelings of the person being counseled.
• Counselor should question with care.
• Counselor should ask open ended questions.
• Counselor should reflect back, summarize and paraphrase so that understanding becomes easy.
• Counselor should use appropriate body language.
• Counselor should not show superiority.

Techniques of Counseling: (Based on Rogers, Carkheff and Patterson's model)

• Structure
• Listen (active and empathic)
• Be silent (when required)
• Respond
• Reflect
• Question
• Interpret

Limitations in Counseling:

• Person being counseled may not trust in his counselor (usually, his superior) or other person from the organization.
• Usually the person being counseled has suspicion, on the level of confidentiality.
• There is a possibility of constraints, from organizations side, on using its resources, time and efforts.
• It is also possible that the counselor is unskilled.

Benefits of Counseling:

• The process of counseling helps the person being counseled to understand himself.
• The process of counseling allows the individual to help himself.
• The process of counseling helps in understanding the situations more objectively.
• The process of counseling facilitates to look at the situations from a new perspective.
• The process of counseling develops positive outlook.
• The process of counseling paves way to look for alternate solutions to problems.
• The process of counseling helps in better decision making.
• The process of counseling gives scope to the person to cope with the situation and the concerned stresses.

If one follows this approach for counseling, the results will be great, and the objective of counseling would be achieved.

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Is Workplace Counseling Effective

Counseling is a process of interviewing the person, being counseled and helping him solve his problems, through sharing and guidance. With reference to work place counseling is having an open discussion, in private, (in office or organization this place is usually a cabin, where there is privacy, for both persons to open up and talk). Counseling is held at various times as per the situation and the necessity. Sometimes it may be just to compliment the employee for his work or for his good gesture or behavior. Sometimes it is regarding the issues that are affecting the productivity/quality of work of the employee. At other times it may be needed in case if the behavior of the employee is not as per the rules and regulations of the company and needs corrective action on part of the company.

Counseling is a two way process where in both the people participate and communicate. Counseling gives the other person a scope to talk about himself and express his feelings so that, he has a clear understanding of the situation and the problem, and a solution can be designed. The counselor’s most important responsibility is to listen to the other person, and be a good listener first. Some organizations have a separate counselor who is qualified and experienced to handle employee issues. It depends on the company policy or the organizations policy, if they want to have a separate counselor or they want a team leader, supervisor, or manager to handle the issues. Or in extreme case or when necessity arises they may use the services of a professional external counselor.

So, counseling has a broad meaning and scope and plays a very important role in the growth of an organization. Counseling, if given properly, helps improve the productivity of the employees.

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The Best Ways to Relax during Working Hours

Most of us believe that the best way to get out of the stressful routine and come back to normal relaxed state is a week-through vacation. Though it is also true to a great extent, but stress is a daily matter or concern, at least in the existing times, whether it is personal life or professional. Stress has become an unavoidable factor and to come out of the day-to-day existing stress, which is the better way? Yearly once vacation for a week or to look out for alternatives ways through which we can relax us on a daily basis.

It will be always better to look for alternatives for relaxation on a daily basis. Because every time you are stressed it is not possible to go for a vacation. There are several ways of relaxation depending upon people types, geographical area, working environment, people or assets around you and many others. Some people prefer listening to music; some opt to dance; or exercise. Well it all depends on the person as to find his own personal relaxation source. But there are times when you feel burnt out of energy and no more in a way to concentrate on work. Especially in today’s time, whether it’s corporate job or otherwise, working hours are extremely long and people get squeezed into their desks.

So the best ways we think to relax during working hours are:

• Take a break for ten minutes every hour.
• Sit down with closed eyes and concentrate on breathing for a period of ten minutes
• You can go for small walk in the office which loosens your mind and body pressure.
• Talk to someone who can make you laugh or with whom you open up
• Take a sip lemon soda drink with colleagues and get energized 
• Play something you find cool like a Puzzle, board game or even cycle a bit. 

      Caution: You may want to avoid computer games if you were on a desk job or computer job,  though some people also find these games relaxing

And the greatest advantage of doing these is, at the end of the day you don’t come out totally burnt out of physical and psychological energies and you can take charge of your personal life.

Live Healthy and Live Long!!

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Four Tips to Improve Work Culture

Every organization big or small has a work culture and rituals of its own, which make it stand apart from others. Work culture is what sets and drives the standards of behavior, Work culture makes employees know what is acceptable and important. Work culture lets people know about your organizations values. Work culture of your organization states your philosophy and everything else.

Competitors can copy anything your services, products, etc. but they cannot copy your work culture. So, to develop a work culture of its own is very important aspect of every organization.

1. Appreciation: is one of the best ways to boost employee morale and performance, find some of your employees who are good at their behavior, or exemplary at work find anything that makes them deserve appreciation, and acknowledge them, appreciate them reward them in employee get together. This is a unique way of building organization culture. 
2. Our vision: when employees know about the organizations missions its goals, and feel them as their own, will an organization achieve its goals. Make it a point to repeat your goals and vision, in all the meetings, employee get together, etc so that the vision gets imprinted in the hearts of the employees. This way there are driven and motivated inwardly to achieve goals. 
3. Rituals: rituals help build team spirit, and gives boost to the employees to perform better, it helps increase cooperation and understanding among the employees. You may have a monthly or weekly employee get together, depending on the size of the organization. You may plan for an outing with all the employees. It may be anything that is special and is a part of your organization that helps people come together. Rituals play a very important role in building work culture. 
4. Sharing success stories: This is very important and very positive aspect of the organization that helps in increasing employee morale and positive thinking. When the company shares, what it has done for the betterment of the society or for the betterment of the employees in any way, it increases the respect employees have towards their organization. When an employee's success story is shared in front of the other employees, it gives encouragement to others to perform better. There will be some mile stones in every organization and some inspirational people, when these incidents are shared again and again over time they have a impact of their own and very positive one which will inspire everyone to give their best and keep their organization on top.

So, building a work culture is a must for every organization that aims to be the best.

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