HSE gets tough on Stress Management

Employers are being urged to improve their management of stress at work issues after it emerged that the Health and Safety Executive issued an improvement notice for stress against the Lincolnshire NHS Trust.

This latest improvement notice shows that the HSE will not shy away from taking action when employers fail to meet their stress management obligations under the health & safety laws.

You should always take the health of your staff seriously and stress is often an area that is overlooked as the symptoms are not always physically displayed. Of course, this does not make stress any less important and we have an obligation to ensure that staff who become subject to stress issues are treated with the respect and care they deserve.

Recent statistics confirm that work-related stress is widespread in the UK working population and is not confined to particular sectors or high risk jobs or industries.

An annual absence survey carried out last year by CBI/AXA, found that non work-related stress, anxiety and depression was the most common cause of long-term absence. Government guidelines on how to manage it and a growing pile of evidence on tackling stress have not solved the problem.

Another report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists adds that sickness absences due to mental health problems such as stress are likely to be longer than those caused by physical health problems, accounting for 47% of long-term absence.

It is important that all businesses take the subject of stress management seriously. Ensuring staff are aware of stress issues and how to cope goes some way to ensuring they are better prepared to cope with stressful situations. Add to this a clear policy on stress and a structured method of working and levels of workplace stress can be reduced.

Make your staff aware of Stress Management and methods of coping with stress by delivering the Trainer Bubble training course materials on Stress Management.

Embed a key learning point through humorous movies!

Always on the look out for novel ways to get a message across during training courses, I was excited when I found a collection of websites that allow you to subtitle your own words over different movie clips. These movies allow you to create your own input and develop a memorable clip related to any topic you want to present to your participants.

The possibilities are endless and you can play around with the idea as much as you want until you feel it is right. The method of delivery is both fun and memorable as the following clip on this link will show...

http://www.grapheine.com/classiktv/index.php?module=see&lang=uk&code=0a8dcc77381389d614bd8ff2f89e3be3

Give it a go yourself. You might want to use it to get across a message about a new product or to embed learning from a training issue that you are discussing. Here's another one I put together in about 2 minutes...

http://www.grapheine.com/classiktv/index.php?module=see&lang=fr&code=053a194bd64ba3387025223f43b202e6

Here's a few links of sites that provide this free service...

http://www.grapheine.com/classiktv/index.php

http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/

http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/v2/

http://www.grapheine.com/futeboltv/

Have fun!

Ridiculous Customer Complaints - A fun activity

I recently came across 20 ridiculous customer complaints. A list made up from research by Thomas Cook and ABTA.

Having looked at the complaints and laughing a lot, it occurred to me that this might make a fun activity to carry out during a customer care or complaint handling training session. You simply provide the participants with the list of ridiculous complaints and ask them to come up with the best response possible by way of feedback. This will test their ability to respond to customer demands as well as providing a bit of fun to the training session.

Here's the list...

1. A tourist at a top African game lodge overlooking a waterhole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel "inadequate".
   
2. A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she’d been locked in by staff. When in fact, she had mistaken the “do not disturb” sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room
   
3. "The beach was too sandy."
   
4. A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time.
   
5. "Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."
   
6. "We bought 'Ray-Ban' sunglasses for five euros (£3.50) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake."
   
7. "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."
   
8. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England it only took the Americans three hours to get home."
   
9. "My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."
   
10. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."
    
11. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying here?"
    
12. "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners."
    
13. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."
    
14. "We had to queue outside with no air conditioning."
    
15. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."
    
16. "I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite."
    
17. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."
    
18. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned."
    
19. "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all."
    
20. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."

This training game and many other training resources and course materials can be found at Trainer Bubble.

Self-Study Workbooks

We've been working hard to add Self Study Workbooks to our growing portfolio. In the fast paced work environments we encounter today, these workbooks provide the perfect opportunity to develop and build on skills that might otherwise be neglected.

The workbooks provide clarity and insight to the specific topic, whilst including activities, questions and practical tasks. So far we've added four of these workbooks to the Trainer Bubble website (Business E-mails, Leadership, Report Writing, Time Management) and we are working on providing a complete range. So visit Trainer Bubble to find out more.

...and more on airline service

Following on from the Ryanair post last week. Here's an interesting new promotional clip I've spotted...

Low cost, or, customer service?

So, Ryanair seem to have upset a lot of people again with their plans to charge people £1 to use the toilet on one of their flights. It begs the question, what is more important, low cost or customer service?

Ryanair would no doubt argue that the fact they charge people for heavier luggage, eating and now possibly going to the toilet, means that they can keep their low cost flights at the smallest costs possible and if people really want more than to be flown to their destination, they will have to pay for it. In a lot of ways, this is reasonable, after all you know what you are getting when you sign up and if you expect first class service, then you'll have to pay for it (with another airline).

I heard a story of a Ryanair staff member who was rude to a customer and upon complaint was told that if you wanted great service, which I guess included being treated politely, you should pay for it. The trouble as I see it is that people want both. They want to pay a cheap price for things, but when they don't get exceptional service as well (this includes the 'extras' mentioned above), they are not happy. Is this reasonable? Well, to a certain degree it has to be. After all, without customers, no company will succeed and they can always vote with their feet.

What you cannot deny though, is that Ryanair is a very successful airline. So, are they right or wrong in their approach? Well, to be honest I'm undecided. I could argue that people who book Ryanair know what they are going to get, but then in the same breath, I put my customer care hat on and say that all companies should work towards providing exceptional customer service.

Whatever my thoughts are, the ultimate truth is that the success of the company will provide the answer. Because, I suspect, people will still book flights with Ryanair and continue to complain about them...after all, we all enjoy a moan don't we?

I think the following image provides a perfect example of this...

Managing Negativity at Work

Unfortunately, negativity is a natural part of wokring in a business environment. There is often discontent in some form or another and a good leader recognises this. By developing an inclusive approach to leadership and involving your team in decision making processes it is possible that the likelihood of negativity arising is minimised, but you should be prepared to deal with it when it does appear as even the most effective leader will run into negativity at some point in their career. The big problem is that negativity can be contagious and once it rears its head, can be very difficult to manage.

Sometimes negativity will arise as a result of company processes or changes required to make an organisation more effective. It can also arise over time for what appears to be no obvious reason.

An organisation that is in the grip of negativity will display an increase in the amount of complaining, a focus on why things cannot be done, a ‘what’s in it for me’ attitude and a view that things will never get better.

When negativity arises, it can sap your energy as a leader and potentially pull you into its grasp. A great leader will use simple techniques to manage negativity in the workplace and ensures their own attitude remains positive and focused.

The following suggestions will help you to overcome negativity when it arises:

Acknowledge negativity

Negativity will not go away if you ignore it, in fact it will most likely get worse. If it is not acknowledged, you will lose credibility as a leader. Discuss the negative feelings with those concerned, show that you care and ask for suggestions on how you might overcome the issue.

Identify the positives in all situations

It is easy to be dismissive and ignore the input from our team members. Celebrate the small victories and where suggestions will not work, try and identify the elements that you can work on. Positive actions are often a result of lots of little actions rather than one big one.

Give positive recognition often

This is something that is often overlooked and leaders can fall into the trap of considering the efforts of their team as ‘part of their role’. Everybody likes to be recognised for their success, so be prepared to acknowledge it at every opportunity.

Avoid colluding on negativity

This can be hard! We all like to have a moan about things. However, by remaining upbeat and positive, we put out the flames of negativity before they start.

Focus on issues, not personalities

When you are addressing negativity head on, you should remove the focus from the person and instead look at the issue at hand. Otherwise you risk undermining that person and might escalate the negativity.

Understand their feelings

Put yourself in the shoes of the person who feels negative. This does not mean for you to become negative too, but for you to understand how they might feel in this situation and resolve it accordingly.

Express your ideas and feelings

Don’t be scared to let people know how you feel and provide an insight into what you are thinking. Most negative issues can be resolved when everyone is open and honest about their feelings.

Be willing to compromise

As long as the new position is fair, you lose nothing by moving your stance slightly on an issue to ensure all parties are happy. Just because you are the leader, it does not mean that you cannot modify your position.

It’s not unusual for organisations to go through periods of negativity. How long that negativity progresses is often down to you as a leader. By displaying the correct attitudes and behaviours, you are likely to managing negativity and stop it from becoming an inherent problem. With an open and honest approach to the workplace, you might even remove the likelihood of negativity arising in the first place.

This article is taken from an excerpt in the training course materials, 'Great Leadership', which are available to buy from our website - Trainer Bubble training course materials. Visit today for this and many other great training courses.

Twitter as a Learning Tool?

I've recently started using Twitter to communicate and keep in touch with people in the world of training and it occurred to me that this simple little tool could be a great way to stimulate learning & development in the eyes of a whole new generation.

For those that don't know, Twitter is a social networking tool that allows you to keep in touch with different people as well as letting them know what you are up to at any time. The process is simple and you just have to add in a bit of text to a text box and it is posted for your 'followers' to see. It is really easy to use and if you want to place a link to a website or some other information, you simply add this into the text box.

This application could be a great way of sharing information and gathering feedback before and after training events, as well as being a way to keep in touch with those that are interested for as long as you want to keep on posting. The possibilities for learning are endless.

The reason I think this is such a useful idea is that more and more I notice that learners like to get information in short snippets, rather than spending a great amount of time researching and developing ideas. Twitter is a great way to do this. What is also good is that this tool is already being used by hundreds of thousands of people, it wouldn't be a great leap to get them to buy in to the concept of learning in this way.

So, why not consider how you might use this application for future learning and development. A few ideas are:

1) Post pre-course learning information
2) Evaluation - Check people's views before and after training events
3) Add snippets of learning information that learners can follow
4) Re-cap key points from a learning session
5) Ask for others feedback, feelings and thoughts on learning

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. Have a look for yourself and see how this might work for you. You can also follow Trainer Bubble on Twitter, just look us up!

Great Leadership Skills - Self Awareness

A great leader has a strong sense of self and will identify with both their strengths and their weaknesses. It means recognising what you are good at and acknowledging that there is still a lot for you to learn. It also means being prepared to state when you do not know the answer and addressing the mistakes you might make.

This can often go against our in-grained beliefs, often we are determined to demonstrate that we know and can do everything. However, just because we don’t recognise our weaknesses, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If you try and hide things, it will mean that others might question your abilities, which in turn will undermine your efforts as a great leader.

When you develop a strong sense of self you will model behaviour that demonstrates that it’s alright to admit to not knowing all the answers, to make mistakes and to ask for help. All characteristics that, when adopted by the staff, will help an organisation to develop and grow.

On an individual level, by having self-awareness, you will be able to identify where the support of your team is required and utilise their expertise to ensure effectiveness.

There are many ways that you can develop your self-awareness. A few things you can start to focus on are...

- Be true to your strengths
- Solicit feedback
- Ask good questions and listen to the response
- Commit to lifelong learning

This article is an excerpt from the brand new training course materials from Trainer Bubble called, 'Great Leadership Skills'. You can view these materials and many others at - Trainer Bubble Training Course Materials.

Trainer Bubble Adverts

We recently designed some adverts to promote Trainer Bubble and our training course materials and thought we'd share the designs with you. The idea was to show our fun side. We hope you like them...

We call this picture, 'When you've got to go!'. Of course we don't provide these type of training course materials, but perhaps we should...

This ad we call 'Shot stopper'. Originally one of our course designers turned down the idea of this image as it showed the worng colour football top! The MD won out though as his team play in blue (you need to hunt down the address on our website for a clue to that one!)

Advertising is a funny old business and along with training can be one of the things that people cut back on during the leaner times. As with training, I think this is a mistake and these are the times when a company needs to stand out more than ever.

Of course there are many ways to advertise, and any business should be careful before they splash out on a big campaign that will provide little or no return. Another thing to be wary of is how equipped you are to cope with the success of a campaign. I recently heard a story of a company that spent thousands on the ad campaign for a telephone based service and tried to save money by not recruiting enough staff to cover the phones...certainly a backwards step!

So, by all means, keep spending money...but spend it wisely.

p.s. you don't get much wiser than a Trainer Bubble training course!

http://www.trainerbubble.com/