Everyday Bliss For Women In Leadership

I rarely make political statements, but this is one I happen to think is important, and it’s not about people, it’s about the environment. It’s a good point they’re making along the lines of  an untutored person thinking "if one pill is good, five must be better" and killing themselves through ignorance.  Biofuels are great, but the authors of this newsletter Avaaz (see below) have a good point about green technology caveats. Vote your conscience…

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Biofuels are billed as a way to slow down climate change. But in reality, because so much land is being cleared to grow them, most biofuels today are causing more global warming emissions than they prevent⁵, even as they push the price of corn, wheat, and other foods out of reach for millions of people⁶.

Not all biofuels are bad–but without tough global standards, the biofuels boom will further undermine food security and worsen global warming. Click here to use our simple tool to send a message to your head of state before this weekend’s global summit on climate change in Chiba, Japan, and help build a global call for biofuels regulation:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/biofuel_standards_now/9.php?cl=60989106

Sometimes the trade-off is stark: filling the tank of an SUV with ethanol requires enough corn to feed a person for a year. But not all biofuels are bad; making ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane is vastly more efficient than US-grown corn, for example, and green technology for making fuel from waste is improving rapidly.

The problem is that the EU and the US have set targets for increasing the use of biofuels without sorting the good from the bad. As a result, rainforests are being cleared in Indonesia to grow palm oil for European biodiesel refineries, and global grain reserves are running dangerously low. Meanwhile, rich-country politicians can look "green" without asking their citizens to conserve energy, and agribusiness giants are cashing in. And if nothing changes, the situation will only get worse.

What’s needed are strong global standards that encourage better biofuels and shut down the trade in bad ones. Such standards are under development by a number of coalitions⁸, but they will only become mandatory if there’s a big enough public outcry. It’s time to move: this Friday through Saturday, the twenty countries with the biggest economies, responsible for more than 75% of the world’s carbon emissions⁹, will meet in Chiba, Japan to begin the G8’s climate change discussions. Before the summit, let’s raise a global cry for change on biofuels:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/biofuel_standards_now/9.php?cl=60989106

ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington DC, and Geneva.

CHICAGO - The first follow-up of a landmark study of hormone use after menopause shows heart problems linked with the pills seem to fade after women stop taking them, while surprising new cancer risks appear.

That heart trouble associated with hormones may not be permanent is good news for millions of women who quit taking them after the government study was halted six years ago because of heart risks and breast cancer.

But the new risks for other cancers, particularly lung tumors, in women who’d taken estrogen-progestin pills for about five years puzzled the researchers and outside experts….

….Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a New York University women’s heart specialist, said the study underscores that in addition to cancer screening, women who stop taking hormones need to find other ways to keep their bones strong, including getting more calcium and exercise.

Well we knew that ingested hormones were bad for you, but here’s even more proof. Get a bone density test if you’re over 35, don’t smoke or quit if you already do, exercise like a rabid rottweiler and drink your milk or oyster shell calcium with an acidic chaser like a shot glass of orange juice or a teaspoon of lemon juice, to help it absorb. Don’t forget if you’re taking a calcium supplement to make sure it has Vitamin D in it to aid assimilation of the calcium inside the body - milk in America already has Vitamin D added. And please do go read the whole article here

This just out from Watson Wyatt Worldwide Research Reports: stress plays a large part in why employees job-surf and high-pressure companies find loyalty difficult to guarantee. Execs, take notice. If you don’t already have one, you NEED a stress reduction program in your company NOW.

Read the below and contact me if your company of 20 - 1500 employees is willing to have:

a) Far fewer collateral sick days

b) Employees able to take pro-active care of self and others

c) A comfortable, respectful work environment

d) Sky-high morale at ALL levels of the company

e) No snags to trip up and derail the workforce (and those few that might happen easily resolved)

f) Serious longterm employee loyalty and support

If you’re willing to do some of the most pleasurable work you’ve ever done as a team, contact me for a complementary prescriptive analysis.

From: watsonwyatt.com/research/resrender.asp?id=2007-US-0164&page=1

Playing to Win in a Global Economy – 2007/2008 Global Strategic Rewards® Report and United States Findings

Executive Summary

The increasingly global market for talent makes it critical for companies to understand the factors that affect employee attraction and retention everywhere they do business. Organizations that do not balance financial imperatives and employee reward preferences risk losing their best talent.

The 2007/2008 Global Strategic Rewards® study examines how companies in Asia-Pacific, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the United States are tackling attraction and retention issues and reward management. The first half of the report highlights the similarities and differences between the regions, while the second half focuses on U.S.-specific data.

Global Key Findings

Regardless of region, the study found:

• The majority of employers have problems attracting critical-skill employees (70 percent) and top-performing employees (67 percent).
• Employers have an incomplete understanding of why employees join or leave their organizations. For example, employees rank stress as a top reason they would leave, but it is not even among the top five reasons cited by employers.
• When employees are satisfied with stress levels and work/life balance, they are more inclined to stay with their companies (86 percent versus 64 percent) and more likely to recommend them as places to work (88 percent versus 55 percent).
• Financially high-performing firms get performance management right. For example, their managers are much more likely to link organizational performance to rewards (51 percent versus 38 percent of low-performing organizations).
• Clearly setting expectations and delivering on the reward promise is a formula for a more engaged workforce. Sixty-nine percent of employees who say their employers succeed at both promise and delivery are highly engaged, versus roughly 25 percent overall.

U.S. Key Findings

• Employers report difficulty in attracting and retaining employees — particularly, top-performing and critical-skill employees — for the fourth year in a row. Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of employers are having difficulty attracting critical-skill employees, while 60 percent are having difficulty attracting top performers.
• Consistent with the global findings, U.S. employers and employees have different ideas about why employees join or leave (see below*). As a result, some of the actions that employers are taking to attract and retain employees may be counterproductive.
• As employers continue to manage their cost structures, they are putting more money into variable pay and raising the bar for performance. As in 2007, more than one in five (21 percent) increased the size of individual target awards for 2008.
• Merit-increase budgets for 2007 remained relatively stable, at an average 3.6 percent, and are expected to rise only slightly, to 3.7 percent, in 2008.
• Highly engaged employees are more than twice as likely to be top performers than are other employees.

Interesting stuff, no? It says basically what most savvy execs have known all along - value someone appropriately, keep them engaged in interesting duties that fulfill them and invest them with personal power insofar as possible. Do this and there isn’t anything they wouldn’t do to stay on the job and tout the company and its products to all they meet.

Why employees actually leave is found in another Watson Wyatt report (here and in charts below) of the European market where we learn that there is a large gap between the employee’s values and the employers perceptions of those values.

You can’t market where the market doesn’t exist. Employers wanting to pitch their employees on longevity of their position within the company, need to take a more prosaic set of employee needs into account: people hate long commutes, they don’t want to spend most of their waking hours during the week in a pressure cooker environment with little to no release, and they want to have some security when they finally do decide to take a job. That and a dollop of feeling like they’re in control of their life. From the study:

"…employers need to increase their focus on more immediate needs as well, such as the nature of the work they do now, and the internal and external pressures that affect employees’ working experience, like stress and length of commute.”

What attracts employees?
The three reasons most frequently given

Rank	Employers	Employees
1	Career development opportunities (55 per cent)	Nature of work (49 per cent)
2	Employer reputation (51 per cent)	Job security (34 per cent)
3	Base pay (43 per cent)	Base pay (30 per cent)
4	Company culture (33 per cent)	Length of commute (29 per cent)
5	Nature of work (23 per cent)	Employer reputation (24 per cent)
Percentages reporting element as one of the top three reasons European employees consider joining an organisation

Why they leave?
The three reasons most frequently given

Rank	Employers	Employees
1	Career development opportunities (49 per cent)	Stress levels (35 per cent)
2	Promotion opportunities (48 per cent)	Base pay (34 per cent)
3	Base pay (43 per cent)	Promotion opportunities (27 per cent)
4	Relationship with manager (31 per cent)	Career development (25 per cent)
5	Work/life balance (28 per cent)	Work/life balance (20 per cent)
Percentages reporting element as one of the top three reasons European employees consider joining an organisation

Found here: www.watsonwyatt.com/news/press.asp?ID=18396

Is this you? Your company? Then you may be able to benefit from what I offer executives and their teams. Contact me for your company’s complementary prescriptive assessment.

I’m a pink ribbon kid. Mom, grandma and two aunts on both sides of the family all either had or died of breast cancer. I’ve decided I won’t be doing the same, thank you very much. Tapping on the acupoints around the breast, including the thymus, helps keep the breasts free and clear of toxins, and the emotional issues can also be worked on by tapping as well using EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique.

Wonder of wonders too, last night I heard on the news that a compound found in cannabis, CBD, greatly slows the spread of aggressive breast cancer cells without the painful side effects of other treatments currently available.

Researchers at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco warn that this is not a recommendation to start smoking though, as you can’t get enough CBD this way. CBD, unlike that other cannabis compound, THC, does not get you high. The proposed CBD  treatment would be the first all-natural, non-toxic breast cancer treatment, without the serious side effects of radiation and chemotherapy.

Having watched strong and precious women in my life become shrunken shells of their former selves while on radiation and chemo, this news comes as a great comfort. This herbal form of medicine may in time come to replace chemotherapy if all test results pan out.

My grandmother, Grace Evans Ratliff, a natural herbal healer who herself battled breast cancer, said that there is no disease known to man that God did not put a plant in the ground to either help or cure.

How sad that the plant in question happens to be illegal. Perhaps this research will at least see cannabis admitted once again, to the American Pharmacopoeia and world-wide materia medica - as it has been, safely and effectively for thousands of years.

Read the full article here:

http://cbs5.com/health/breast.cancer.marijuana.2.571109.html

Have you found this? Because we have such different ways of processing and working together, experimentation is rife, ideas flow and merge and new forms are created.  Lucy Ward and John Carvel of the London newspaper, The Guardian, found this to be the case:

“ Teams of workers come up with the most innovative ideas if they are made up of even proportions of men and women, according to researchers. A study published yesterday by the London Business School found that professional teams with an equal gender split were much more likely to experiment, share knowledge and fulfil tasks, regardless of whether the team leader was a man or a woman.

An even mix allowed "a psychological safe communication climate" and self-confidence among members, which in turn provided fertile ground for innovation, says the report from the school’s Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business. ”

If you’re gender segregating your teams, now might be the time to integrate.

Read the whole article here

Last week I gave a speech to a group of technology workers about workaholism being the standard, not the exception these days. I also shared the statistic that women work longer hours than men do, traditionally in the home  and also at outplacement work sites. Remember mom putting in hours on dinner, cleanup and mending or other jobs while you and dad watched tv and hung out? Most moms worked up to bedtime when I was a kid. Work at home COUNTS as "work". We’re seeing this historical tendency transfer into the corporate workplace as well where women are asked to work longer hours and then come home to resume working. Reading a 1980’s women’s magazine, my mother was once heard to mutter "Time for myself? Whatever do they mean by that?" For many women world-wide, little has changed in the past twenty years.

The point I was making is that housework and child rearing are historically un-valued or undervalued jobs, and are typically taken on in a majority of households by women. Once a woman has worked a full day in the office, she potentially comes home to meal preparation, cleaning and parenting taking up her time in far greater proportions than do male parents. This is not my observation, but that of dozens of clients, industry research and formal surveys. I cited the article below and so am running it again for those of you who missed it back when…

This study cites how women in the UK are working longer, harder and as a result, are accumulating more stress. When you translate that to America, you can tack on a few hours and perhaps even add a quarter more bother to the stress load. Why? While they are fast approaching levels of job-stress we have in the U.S., Europeans tend to have more realistic work/life balance than Americans.

From:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3178554.stm

WOMEN WORK LONGER HOURS

A woman’s work is never done may sound like a tired old cliché - but it may be more true than ever.

According to a new survey a woman’s working week is now half a day longer than it was five years ago - and that’s without housework.

The increase is down to the growing number of women in more high-powered management and professional jobs, say researchers.

In contrast, the total number of hours worked by men has fallen slightly over the same period - from 45.5 hours to 44.8 hours.

Key Findings

* Average working week for all workers is 39.6 hours * Men’s working hours have fallen slightly over the same period - from 45.5 to 44.8 hours * The working week for younger workers (18-24 year olds) is 36.3 hours * Almost a quarter have reduced working hours since 1998, largely due to parenthood * A quarter of workers now work long hours, compared to only 10% in 1998

Girls to work more

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (www.cipd.co.uk/default.cipd ) who conducted the survey, the shifting pattern is down to changes in the UK economy.

And these are more likely to become more magnified, not less, in the future, as the UK economy shifting from male-dominated manufacturing to the more female-friendly service sector.

Mike Emmott, head of employee relations at CIPD, said: "If efforts to secure equal treatment for women at work are to bear fruit we can expect to see their experience of work and working patterns aligned more closely with those of men."

However, men are still working much longer hours in paid jobs than women.

Compared to an average week of 44.8 hours for a man, women are working 33.9 hours.

Flexible friend?

The impact of the government’s campaign on work-life balance has had little effect, the report says.

The element of the report’s findings contradicts a recent report for the Office of National Statistics which said that six million workers were now benefiting from flexible work.

The government has introduced a range of family-friendly and flexible working measures.

It signed up to the European Social Chapter shortly after coming into power - and many European-inspired policies have subsequently been introduced.

In recent years: new fathers have gained paternity rights; women can take up to a year’s maternity leave - and parents now have the right to request flexible working patterns.

In addition, people working part-time have gained the right to equal treatment as full-time employees.

But according to the report there is an increasing proportion of people working long hours - more than 48 hours a week - up from 10% in 1998 to 25% today.

These long hours can have a negative effect on quality of life, with more than a quarter of those people who are working long hours admitting health problems as a result.

A quarter said had led to stress or depression and it had affected their sex lives and their relationship with their children.

More than four in ten workers say long hours "gets in the way of" their relationship with their partner or spouse.

"The only crumb of comfort", the report says is that one in four employees have cut back their hours in the past five years, although this is largely down to parenthood.

Come to EduCamp at Stanford University with me! A bunch of educators, both the hoary oldschool types who remember chalkboards and wooden pencils like me and a bunch of the younger high tech variety are gathering to conference over our ideas. 

I’ve been teaching in one format or another since 1979 and most recently in the last seven years, in an online eCampus format. Towards that end I’d like to invite you to join me at StanfordUniversity September 16 - 17 for Educamp, where I am giving a presentation on Successful Leadership in Online Learning Environments: Tips & Tools of the Virtual University.

More info here: http://educamp.pbwiki.com/

EduCamp is collaboratively hosted at Stanford University on Saturday, September 15, 2007 at 11:00 am PT- Sunday, September 16, 2007 at 5:00 pm PT and you can register here:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/70116721

For a look at what I’m doing, here’s the description and syllabus for my presentation:

Successful Leadership In Online Learning Environments:
Tips, Tools and Lessons of the Virtual University

with Maryam Webster, Director of The Energy Coach Institute

Course Summary

Maryam will share her experience of seven years as an online teacher for a specialty coach training institute, and as training director and course writer through the 1990’s for several corporations in different training contexts. We will be discussing the best open source software, audio class -vs- webcasts and how to handle each inexpensively, enhancing student experience through didactic and autodidactic participation, in-class structure, out-of-class semi-structured learning and participation opportunities, skilful initiation and use of the cohort bond, collaborative software as community, ensuring ongoing learning after the course is over.

Syllabus

• The Advantages of Online Learning
• One Model of eCampus Technology - it’s Advantages/Disadvantages
• eCampus Leadership and Community Building
• Collaborative Leadership Of The Cohort Model Online
• Fitting the Syllabus to the Learner: Languaging as an Aid in Learning Styles
• The Power of the Mastermind in Retention and Learning Group Cohesion
• e-Learning Course After-Care

Resources

Online Learning Course Search Network
The Moodle Open Source eCampus software- this is one of the opensource software packages we use and recommend
Online Learning Teacher Clearinghouse
Be a Student For a Day: Take An Online Learning Demo Course
Getting The Most Out Of Online Learning
Are You Ready To Learn Online?- this quiz would be really great…if the scoring system worked!
15 Benefits of Online Learning
More Benefits of eLearning

Again scientific confirmation comes for a syndrome most have long known exists - stress at work = anxiety and depression. Family troubles. Failures in business. And there doesn’t seem to be much difference in occupation studied from this quote:

"The most toxic factor here is high psychological demands. That can be present in multiple professions: the media are always working under time pressure;  doctors, firemen, nurses, builders, plumbers - it applies across the board."

From New Zealand, generational research proves the  link between high stress on any job and the mental illnesses of anxiety and depression. Other studies have linked such stress to chronic pain perception as well. Keeping in a stressful situation does more damage than you may have thought. Just look:

Now the proof: Work Stress Makes People Mentally ill Work stress is making people from doctors to plumbers mentally ill, new research has found. The Dunedin-based study found that 14 per cent of women and 10 per cent of men who were stressed at work suffered depression or anxiety when aged 32. They had not had these conditions before. They were among nearly 900 people Otago University has been following since they were born in 1972-73. For the latest paper, they were asked at the age of 32 about psychological and physical job demands, the level of control they had in decision-making and social support structures at work. The paper, published in the British journal Psychological Medicine, found that women who reported high levels of psychological job demands - such as long hours, pressure or lack of clear direction - were 75 per cent more likely to suffer from clinical depression or general anxiety disorder than women who reported the lowest levels…

Jeepers. But then, we already knew this…didn’t we?  Click to read the whole article here  and click to get relief here

Thanks to Krishna who tipped me off about putting this at my blog. You can read her sage suggestions here on how to use this research to market your self growth business!