It takes more than money to motivate employees. In fact. while money is important to employee morale — workers need to be paid fairly for the skills and talents they bring to your company — it’s not the most important motivator. Not by a long shot

In fact, the things that truly motivate people to do a good job at their place of employment pretty much have nothing to do with money at all. Instead, people want, in no particular order:

• the chance to learn new skills
• interesting work, with variety
• A culture where managers are open to feedback, positive or negative (the proverbial “open door”)
• Respect for the needs of their personal lives (“work-life balance” and possibly flexible work hours)
• Fairness at work
• Regular and proactive communication from management
• Leaders and managers who do what they say and say what they do
• Positive feedback and praise
• Requests for employee input and heeding that input where applicable
• The chance to be promoted
• Recognition and rewards for exceptional work

That said, here are some ideas as to how to motivate employees without increasing pay.

Don’t micro-manage. Trust your employees to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done in the manner it needs to be done. Delegate responsibility to those employees you feel are up to the task and then leave them be. Be available to them, of course, and set clear, identifiable deadlines and goals. Then step back and watch the magic happen!

Encourage and then encourage some more. If some employees doesn’t meet expectations, avoid criticizing. Instead, help find where the problem lies and help them find solutions to the challenges. If more training is needed, provide it.

Offer non-monetary incentives. An afternoon off at a local amusement for an entire department if goals are exceeded, for example. Lunch on the manager to an employee of the month. Extra paid days off. And so on.

Always, always, always show respect. Listen to what your employees tell you, even if it’s critical. If they have legitimate concerns, do your best to alleviate them or solve the problem of which they speak. Trust their judgment. You hired them, after all (you didn’t hire dolts, did you?).

Encourage a culture of openness, tolerance and respect among coworkers. Train your managers to be flexible in their interpersonal skills so that they’ll be able to get the best out of their individual employees.

Look to Bayside Solutions for help in sourcing motivated workers. As one of San Francisco’s premier staffing agencies, we know how to source and screen top employees for your firm. Contact us today; we look forward to serving you.

Business cycles ebb and flow, yet keeping a highly-paid professional employee on your payroll when things are slow may not be the best use of your company’s payroll dollars.

Instead, consider using professional temporary professionals — think attorneys, financial analysts, marketing directors, even CEOs — to help you when the good times roll, but you’re concerned they may last just a few weeks.

The use of high-level professional temporaries is showing considerable growth. An article on MSNBC.com in January reported that a large international staffing services firm placed “placed more than 100 people — including lawyers and scientists — in interim stints that paid more than $250,000 a year.” The article reported that a large executive staffing firm that its “roster of 1,000 executives has done jobs at companies like mobile-phone content provider Fox Mobile, health care company Healthways, and private equity firm Carlyle Group.” The executive staffing firm said that  “client demand rose 50 percent in 2009,” the MSNBC.com article stated.

So when you have a critical member of your executive or management team absent from your company due to resignation, maternity leave or illness — or even if you need an experienced project manager to get you through that bid you just won that requires completion in just three months, contact  Real Street Staffing for just-in-time executive, scientific, technical, project management, and other professional-level workers.

You don’t want to wait –  leaving such critical positions to remain empty can leave your company vulnerable, especially during crunch times.

Bringing a high-level temporary CEO, manager, scientist, project manager, UNIX administrator, etc. will help you stay the course while you search for a replacement for a departing executive. Some high-level temporaries also are looking for a regular position, so you both could try “each other out” while you work to fill the position. Other executive contract workers enjoy “temping” too much to go back to a regular position, but having one there in the interim can keep your company on an even keel while you search.

You’ll also be able to avoid costly mistakes. Too many companies take a nosedive in productivity, sales and profits when an important executive or management position is left empty. Workers begin to take it easy, projects get put on the backburner, and so on. Yet having someone around to lead a company, even if it’s only for a little while, can help keep your company moving in the right direction — forward.

Look to Bayside Solutions when you need help sourcing critical members of your executive or management teams. As one of San Francisco’s premier staffing agencies, we know how to source and screen top employees for your firm. Contact us today; we look forward to serving you.

Turnover happens. Whether your company is large or small or somewhere in between, employees leave. Some businesses experience a turnover that’s slow and steady, with employees leaving only because the commute is too long, there’s no room for advancement, their spouse has a terrific new job 200 miles away, etc.

But for some companies, employee turnover is almost a constant churn. This can be quite expensive, since the cost of hiring a new employee often can be at least 50 percent of a worker’s annual salary.

And that doesn’t even count the amount of money and/or productivity lost because the other employees must fill in and do some or all of the departed worker’s tasks until a replacement is found.

Here are some ideas to help cut down on employee turnover:

Are you paying your employees fairly? Are they receiving at or above the rate of pay other companies in your industry and geographical area pay their employees?

If you can’t raise salaries, try beefing up some other on-the-job benefits such as giving more vacation time, starting flex time and/or job sharing.  For those employees who do mostly desk work, think about starting a telecommuting program. Reward those employees with perfect attendance with one or more days off. Think about starting a job sharing program

Make sure you reward your employees for doing outstanding work. Be sure to acknowledge their accomplishments publicly. Merit pay can be a terrific way to keep good employees.

Promote from within. Strive to make sure every single position in your company has a place to which an employee may “move up;” don’t let any job be considered a “dead end.”

Seriously consider offering to pay a portion of continuing education expenses, particularly for college.

No matter how great a place your company is, you will experience turnover. To help fill in the skill gap while you search for departing employees’ replacements, look to Bayside Solutions to help. We can bring in terrific temporary employees for companies in the construction, manufacturing, green, scientific and other technical industries in the San Francisco area. Contact us today.

As the economy shows signs of improving, you may start thinking of bringing on additional regular employees.

Here are some tips to help you decide if it is indeed the “the right time to hire.”

People are getting “testy.” Overwork will do that to a team. Once calm and composed people can turn sullen and morose, even curt. If you start hearing that employees are increasingly becoming short — and even rude — to customers, or that they’re starting to miss deadlines, calling in sick more and more, etc. it may be time to add another employee or two to help lighten the load.

News of expansion or more clients  normally is happy news. But if you and your team hear of new sales that will bring increased revenue as well as extra demands and you and your team members express concern about meeting the increase in workload, it may be time to bring more employees on board.

You notice that even your best employees are missing deadlines and/or not performing at the normal high level. Work loads may have become so burdensome that deadlines that were expected even just a few months ago have become impossible to meet.

Is just about everyone staying late on a regular basis? It may be time to bring in more hands.

Are managers doing the work of their staff members — work they normally wouldn’t do — in addition to performing their own job functions?

It may not be necessary to hire full-time, regular employees onto your payroll. Bayside Solutions can provide San Francisco-area companies with skilled employees on a temporary, temp-to-hire or even direct-hire basis when business picks up. This will help you ascertain whether you need these employees temporarily or if it truly is time to bring new workers onto your payroll. Contact us today.

We’ve all done it: hired someone who just turned out to be truly awful employee or, at the least, someone who never moved above mediocre.

Here are five common mistakes just about every hiring manager has committed, and tips on how to avoid them.

During an interview, stop talking! The point of an interview is to get to know the job candidate talking, not to hear the soothing sounds of your own voice. Listen 80 percent of the time and you’ll learn a lot of valuable information about your candidate. Watch how she responds to your question about why she left her previous employer. Note how he perks up when he talks about how he’s read your annual reports for the past five years and learned that you doubled in size in that time and then baldly states he wants to work for a winning company just like yours! You also may want to consider using behavioral interview techniques so that you can learn how your candidate handled challenges and opportunities in previous jobs.

Be sure the candidate is very clear regarding the job’s duties and expectations. Will she be expected to travel two days a week in her sales job? Does the PR person need to pitch to X number of media professionals a week? Will the administrative assistant report to two or three managers? This helps clear up any misconceptions about the job (she thought she traveled two times a month; he thought he would be supporting a group of five directors, etc.)

Don’t place so much emphasis on the  first interview. Aim to take your first impression of a candidate more lightly than you probably are inclined to do. Realize that many people who interview can end up not being a good employee. In addition many people get very nervous during interviews and clam up. That awfully “nice” and “quiet” person could become quite testy once he’s been on the job a few weeks. Meanwhile, many truly shy people can sometimes be quite wonderful contributors to your company’s success.

Aim for several interviews (at least two) before making your choice. See if you can get others to sit with the candidate as well. You also may want to give some personality tests to see if a person’s talk matches her true personality. For example, regarding sales positions: some experienced interviewees can be very gregarious during an interview but then clam up when facing sales prospects. Test for the correct sales personality.

In addition, be aware that there’s a dark side to every positive personality trait. A “caring” person can go overboard and become too involved with office personalities. Conversely, someone who’s proud of her “I get the job done” trait could become so pushy around others as she strives to complete tasks that she alienates her co-workers.

Ask the exact same questions of each candidate for the same position. This way you’ll be able to compare candidates using the same criteria. You’ll be better able to compare candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. Develop a ranking/rating system for your interview process.

Let Bayside Solutions take the often tedious, lengthy and highly subjective interview process off of your to-do list. Our Bay Area staffing firm can bring you skilled and professional workers for temporary, temp-to-hire and direct hire assignments with just a phone call. We look forward to hearing from you.

As you enter the salary negotiation portion of the interview process with your top candidate, your job is to hire the person at a fair wage for her talents and experience that also stays within your budget.

Here are some tips to help you do so:.

1) You should know in advance the salary standards for your industry and your location. If you don’t already know this, contact businesses in your region similar to yours and ask for their salary structure for different positions.

2) Set a number over which you will not go. Give yourself a ceiling after you figure how much you can spend on salaries and benefits. If you find a great employee you believe will ask for more, you should leave yourself a bit of wiggle room, but a ceiling will help prevent you from wasting time on candidates who are too expensive, no matter how wonderful they are.

3) Remember that salary negotiation is about more than money. If your terrific candidate truly wants and expects more than you can truly afford, offer more paid time off, stock options, perhaps even a signing/retention bonus (this is a one-time hit to your budget, rather than one that occurs week after week). An attractive benefits package can go a long way to attracting and keeping great employees. Or, for a truly ambitious candidate, you could place her on a special, highly visible project with the goal of promotion in responsibilities and pay.

When you’re looking to save on your San Francisco company’s payroll costs, contact Bayside Solutions. We can source and hire (on our payroll) some of the best Bay area employees for temporary, temp-to-hire and direct hire positions. Contact us today; we look forward to helping your company run smoothly and well within your budget.

The days when temporary employees worked as “fill-in” workers when a company’s regular workers were out sick or on vacation are long gone. Instead, temporary workers often are highly skilled workers such as doctors, nurses, CEOs, architects, designers, lawyers, computer programmers, etc.

Of course, temporary employment services continue to provide the country’s businesses with warehouse workers, administrative assistants, receptionists and general laborers, but the “face” of today’s temporary worker is changing to one who possesses high-level skills.

In fact, according to an American Staffing Association Intelligence Report,
Staffing Employees: Extraordinary Human Resources:

• Staffing employees are better educated than the overall workforce, with 74 percent having at least some college education (compared to only 62 percent of the overall workforce.
• Staffing employees who prefer temporary and contract work are more likely to hold a bachelor’s degree and earn higher wages.

In addition, many people who work for temporary employment firms do so because they enjoy the variety and the chance to learn new skills temporary assignments can give them.

They also see temporary work as a bridge to a regular position on a company’s payroll. In fact, many people who work for a staffing service see the service as the way to find a full-time position. As the ASA Intelligence Report states:

“Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as a truly permanent job. But most staffing employees and most staffing clients want something staffing firms have to offer: a bridge to permanent employment.”

• Most staffing employees who want a permanent job get one eventually—43 percent get hired by the staffing client.
• Almost 25 percent of those who got a permanent job say they did so faster because of their temporary or contract work.
• Fewer than half of staffing employees are actively seeking permanent employment on their own — most are either using their temporary job as their only way to search for a position. (some just prefer the temporary/contract work).

“As the world economy evolves and agility becomes absolutely essential for success in the global marketplace,” the report states, “the smartest companies are taking bold approaches to staffing,” the report states. “Increasingly, they are eschewing the traditional hiring model. They are moving away from hiring processes that can take weeks or months to recruit, interview, screen, and negotiate with candidates to fill a single opening. They no longer see the wisdom in filling every position with a permanent employee whose real cost to a company only begins with a salary and extends to benefits, payroll taxes, vacation time, holiday pay, and a host of other expenses.”

To read the full Intelligence Report, click here.

If you’re a company doing business in the Bay area, Let Bayside Solutions help you maximize your human resources efforts. We’ll be happy to demonstrate how using our staffing service can help your company become more agile and more profitable. Contact us today!

If you have brought in temporary employees to your workplace, you know how productive and efficient they can be.

Here are some tips to help you manage your temporary workforce:

Long gone are the days when most contingent workers came to a place of business just to fill in for a vacationing or sick “regular” employee. Companies today bring temporary workers in for long-term (sometimes indefinitely so) assignments, many of them critical to an employer’s success. Companies now routinely also bring in highly skilled — even executive level — contingent workers to complete special projects or to help manage or even lead a company through a touch transition. And, of course, many businesses now look to temporary staffing firms to bring them potential employees on “temp-to-hire” contracts, allowing both the worker and the business to check out the position to see if the worker and the job/company are a good fit for each other.

Yet, and we do see this frequently, many managers still treat their contingent workers like second-class citizens. There are “our employees” and “the temps.”

Instead, we recommend you look at your temporary employees as potential regular employees (after all, you very well may hire them yourself!). Take the time to help them feel as if they belong, that they are an important part of your team.

When you hire a temporary, especially for a long-term assignment, take the time to give plenty of detail about the open position and the skills and background you feel are necessary of the person who ends up filling the slot. Let your staffing agency know of the kind of your company’s culture and the kind of person who fits best within it.

Once the temporary employee arrives, give her an orientation. Give a thorough explanation of the job’s duties, as well as a tour of your facilities, break times, lunch times, where the rest rooms are located.

As you introduce the individual, don’t refer to her as “the temp,” either to her face or to others. Instead, let employees know the her name and the duties she’ll be taking on.

Let your temporary workers be “in the know.” Give them information about your business and how their work fits in to your goal’s. Invite your contingent workers to staff and department meetings. Share company memos and announcements with them.

When you’re looking to bring in new employees on a temp-to-hire basis, or when you need highly skilled temporary employees to help your business grow, give Bayside Solutions a call. We provide talented and hard-working employees for Bay Area manufacturing, “green” technologies, technology and construction companies. Contact us today.

Are there individuals at your company who seem to “know it all” and enjoy letting others know they know it? Are there people who can take a seemingly offhand remark and make it into a declaration of war? Are there those who appear to hear instructions, yet do things their way on their time schedule?

Yet as maddening as these behaviors are, sometimes a company’s “divas” are the best performing employees, mavericks with ‘tude, but with a solid work ethic and who enjoy reaching and exceeding goals.

Basically, there are two kind of office “divas.” Those who  are high-performing mavericks as described above and, well, those who are drama queens, making Everests out of problems and challenges that truly are anthills. (Both men and women can be drama queens, by the way.)

Both are challenging to manage. Both can be a true pain in the keister. But the mavericks are keepers as they stretch your management style to the max while accomplishing far more than other employees, while the drama queens are true pains in the derriere.

Here are just a few tips on how to deal with each:

Mavericks: Yes, they can be arrogant. Yes, they can be hard to control. But so long as they exceed at their positions, which they invariably do, you need to aim to give them  clear objectives and goals while also giving them a long and loose leash. Should your mavericks be annoying as all get out to other employees — the imperial attitude, the flaunting of rules, etc. — you should sit with them and give unambiguous goals regarding their behavior with others (thankfully, many mavericks tend to congregate in sales positions, so they may be out of the office more often than not).

You’ll need to listen to their venting that they meant no harm, people are too sensitive, etc., when you tell them they’ve hurt the feelings of others, and you’ll need to listen gently and with some sympathy. Then, as you counsel them on their behavior, do so quietly but firmly, engaging their sense of being “above all this” and stressing that you know they prefer to walk a higher path.

As for the office drama queens, counseling also is in order, with specific goals and objectives regarding their behavior as well as outcomes. Never tell them they are drama queens; instead keep any counseling session business-like and based on facts. Give them deadlines regarding when you expect tasks and projects done (their love of drama and problem creation often distracts drama queens so much that they often miss deadlines and fail to finish tasks.) As you counsel them, be prepared: they may start blaming others for the missed deadlines, etc.

Be very firm with drama queens. Give them deadlines and give them firm consequences for missing those deadlines.

Tired of sourcing new employees and finding too many with poor attitudes? Bayside Solutions finds excellent employees for San Francisco companies. Whether you need workers for temporary, temp-to-hire and direct placement positions, we thoroughly screen our candidates for skills and attitudes, ensuring that anyone we send your way will be able to fit right in to your company’s culture. Contact us today.

Yes, it’s a sweet time to be a business owner or human resources manager right now when it comes to getting to pick and choose from the wealth of talent looking for work . With so many great people out of work as a result of cutbacks at their employers during the Great Recession, finding a talented, committed, skillful employee is almost as easy as just dipping a fishing line into small, well-stocked fishing pond.

But that will change. And sooner than you may think.

Talent Management reported in March the results of a survey conducted by StepStone Solutions. In the article, Talent Management stated that “[c]companies must put their people first in the recovery or risk experiencing deep talent erosion and sustained underperformance, StepStone Solutions warns businesses in a new report, titled Companies at the Crossroads.”

The article continues:
“According to a worldwide survey of senior managers, sponsored by StepStone,  two years of cutbacks have undermined workplace trust. Combined with  increasing demand for executive talent and a sharp drop in graduate recruitment,  the survey found that companies without the right talent strategies risk developing  a major skills shortage just when they need employees’ energy and commitment  the most. The survey, undertaken in December 2009, covered more than 400  senior managers primarily in major corporations in the US, Europe and Asia-  Pacific.

“Matthew Parker, group managing director at StepStone Solutions, said: ‘Right now, businesses are at a crossroads when it comes to their talent. They can either  take steps to create, maintain and develop global talent pools, or ignore the  warning signs from this survey and suffer a gradual talent erosion at all levels  that will inevitably lead to underperformance.’”

So what can and should a business owner/HR manager do now to avoid a dearth of talent in the coming years? Here are some tips:

• Be prepared to pony up in increased salaries to attract and retain the best and the brightest. Know this going in, increase payrates quickly and you can keep and find the best first. If you wait to increase wages too long, you run the risk of having your candidate pool be filled with less-than-stellar candidates.
• Create a brand around your organization. A company that has the reputation of a great organization — think Microsoft, Google, Southwest Airlines, etc. — will have a much easier job attracting and keeping top talent
• Think about improving other aspects of your employees’ day-to-day working lives. Can you automate the tedious, hard or dangerous tasks on the job. Can you increase fringe benefits (go from two weeks of vacation a year to three or even four weeks). Make sure you offer employees great learning opportunities, whether it’s tuition reimbursement for college, on-site classes in net technology, or even management training for promising colleagues. Can you offer telecommuting options or become more flexible in your scheduling (worried less that employees clock in at certain hours and instead letting them do the work as they see fit, on their own schedule, so long as the work gets done by deadline)?

Finally, look to personnel firms such as Bayside Solutions for help in sourcing exceptional employees. As one of San Francisco’s premier staffing agencies, we know how to source and screen top employees for your firm. Contact us today; we look forward to serving you.