Sharing is Caring: MyWave and Your Way
By Blanche Sheppard
Many of our blog posts heavily feature technology. We talk about how it changed how we work, how we live, and how we interact with one another. This blog is about sharing the things that teach us to be better: better people, better employees, and better resources for our clients. Spotlighting the technology that helps us do that is just a natural part of that process.
This week I’d like to discuss a technology that we offer to our clients because it leads to a wider discussion of how businesses share content in 2018. At RISQ Consulting, we offer our clients a variety of resources through MyWave, a platform with monthly articles on wellness, Human Resources, Commercial risks, family health, and a variety of other topics. These topics all deal with benefits, such as the benefit of being healthy, having a work-life balance, understanding how to keep yourself and your business safe from Cyber Risks, and how to use your HSA plan. I learned a lot from these articles, and find that many of our clients look forward to receiving their monthly newsletters because they find them equally helpful.
Sharing is caring is a trite phrase, but the sentiment is valuable. Sharing articles or resources that you find helpful might seem a bit awkward at first, but if you’re interested in something, there is a large chance that someone else will be equally intrigued. Your general audience might want to know about the best way to harvest crab apples, or how to repair their credit. We share content through MyWave because our clients might be interested in OSHA regulations or disaster planning.
A lot of people consider technology to be a hotbed of political animosity or social intolerance, but it also allows us to share the resources and knowledge we encounter. We are all walking encyclopedia’s, we just don’t have indexes. Offering the knowledge at your fingertips gives those around you a starting point for their own research.
If you’re a business subscribing to a newsletter, blog, or some other platform, think about how that resource reached you. Did it come from other industry professionals? Was it recommended by a friend? What makes it educational to you?
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The Importance of Social Media for Your Small Business
By Alison Riggan
“I have a small business, do I really need to use social media?”
That’s the question I’ve heard asked on multiple occasions from owners of small businesses who don’t want to go through the hassle of learning about various social media platforms.
The short answer? Yes! Utilizing social media in your small business can be extremely beneficial. In fact, small businesses can benefit more from utilizing social media than larger companies. You see, small businesses can focus more on customer engagement within social media. They are more likely to respond to comments from consumers, which improves your business’s relationship with your customers as well as enhances the perception of your business within the community.
Consumer interaction is a key ingredient to a successful media campaign. So what are some other ways that your small business can engage with consumers? Giveaways are another great option. For example, I’ve seen many small clothing businesses post a picture of multiple shirts and say “Which shirt is your favorite? Comment with your answer and then share this post for a chance to win your favorite!” This is a fantastic way to spark engagement with consumers while getting some additional brand recognition.
Small businesses are also in the unique position to ask for feedback and then actually change things accordingly. For example, you can post something along the lines of “What would you like to see more of in our store?” You can then review the comments and adapt to the suggestions without having to run everything up the corporate ladder.
Finally, another reason to use social media for your small business- it’s FREE! Posting on various social media outlets a few times a week is a great way to help develop your brand and reach more consumers without having to pay for other expensive marketing campaigns. If you don’t currently utilize social media regularly, I recommend signing up and getting started today!
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Bring Fido to Work
By Alison Riggan
It’s no secret amongst those who know me- I’m a crazy dog lady.
I have two dogs (Spock and Watson) who I absolutely adore and probably talk about more than I should, but again- crazy dog lady. I would LOVE to bring them to work with me during the day, and it turns out there could be some benefits to bringing your dog to the office!
Bringing your dog to work can boost your productivity. How is that? Well, giving your dog a quick pet can help you to reduce stress and refocus on the task at hand. It can also improve creativity by encouraging little breaks throughout the day that allow you to gain a fresh perspective. Additionally, bringing your dog to work can improve both employee experience and retention!
If you need more convincing before you change your company’s pet policy, take a look at the links below!
http://mentalfloss.com/article/501612/9-benefits-taking-your-dog-work
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Trash, Servant Leadership, and Safety – What do they have in Common? Alaska Waste (Series – Part 2 of 2)
By Tonya Mott
Why am I hanging with Alaska Waste? A couple of reasons:
1. Servant Leadership – I’m on a mission to learn how to be the best leader I can be and help others do the same. As you read, you’ll find out why I would be learning this from employees at Alaska Waste.
2. Safety, from a risk management perspective – According to the 2016 Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, the garbage collection industry is the 5th most dangerous in America. Of course, that means I must go for a ride on a garbage truck, living on the edge!
In Part 1 of this series, I talked about Alaska Waste’s management style, Servant Leadership. For part 2, I want to explain how that ties into occupational safety for their employees and the public. If you didn’t catch the first article, you can check it out here: Part 1 – Servant Leadership
Now to the fun part; I was invited to go for a ride along in a garbage truck!
I wish I could say I actually got to drive the truck, but I left the driving to the professionals!
Meet Dee:
Dee started as a Swamper in the 80’s and, after having fun with that for seven years, she started driving her own truck. Today, 30 years later, she is one of Alaska Waste’s most respected and trusted drivers. She is the sweetest, toughest woman you will ever meet.
Our day started with a team safety tailgate meeting. They begin with stretching and then go over the plans for the day, discuss any necessary business, and lastly reiterate the importance of being engaged, aware of your surroundings, and keeping the general public and themselves safe.
I rode around with Dee for about four hours picking up garbage cans. When I type it out it sounds simple. It’s not. This job required a heightened sense of awareness for what’s happening around you at all times. You check your mirrors once, and then you check them again before making any moves. You are constantly watching for pedestrians, school kids, bicyclist, animals, and anyone that may be approaching the truck. In addition, because you are driving the equivalent of a monster truck, traffic safety is a must. Our winters are dark; 9 to 10 months out the year our road conditions are not ideal. It’s imperative to watch out for the drivers around you and the moves they are making. Distracted driving is not tolerated. There is no eating, drinking, talking/texting on cell phones, completing paperwork, reading, etc. while operating the trucks. To make this a habit, Dee follows these rules even when driving her personal vehicle.
As we moved from can to can, Dee would occasionally get out of the truck to move a can in a safe spot so that she could pick it up. It may have been too close to a vehicle or a building and she didn’t want to take any chances. There were also a couple instances where the client clearly had trash that needed to be picked up but they didn’t pull the can to the end of the driveway. She recognized that with school starting that parents may be overwhelmed and she didn’t mind pulling the cans out and making sure they got dumped. On to the next, she noticed when setting down a can after dumping it, that it had a large split down the middle. She immediately notified dispatch and requested that they send out a new one. She clearly takes pride in her work and cares about the clients.
Why would Dee care so much about her job and doing what’s right by the client? Based on my conversation with Dee, my opinion is this is all due to Alaska Waste’s management style. Dee said if a driver has an incident out on the road, whether it’s a car accident, an injury, etc. they call their management team and they rush out to be by their side and help them through the issue. They do not leave them alone to fend for themselves during a time when they need support the most. Managers are humble and welcome being called out if they make a mistake, sharing their own mistakes with the entire team so that everyone can learn from them. The culture organically creates a place for colleagues to point out to each other, with no qualms on either side, when a mistake is being made that could potentially be unsafe. They know it is for all the right reasons and they are ultimately looking out for their fellow co-workers safety and wellbeing. They clearly define Work Family.
Speaking of family, in part 1, I wrote about Josh James, the Operations Manager. When we were discussing servant leadership and what that entails, he told me that every year he writes a letter to his employee’s families, sharing appreciation for the employees’ hard work and vowing to make sure that they come home safely to their families every day.
In closing, shout out to Josh, Dee, and Alaska Waste for allowing me the privilege to come in and learn the operations first hand. I’m envious of what you have created and will do my best to replicate this in my professional and personal life.
On another note:
Congrats, to Alaska Waste driver’s for winning the Denali – Rainier Truck Rodeo District Champion amongst many other awards this year! To top it off, the Waste Connections annual Truck Rodeo Challenge will be in Alaska next year!
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How to stop saying “Um”, “Ah,” and “You Know”
By Tiffany Stock
We’ve all been there before – listening to an in-person presentation or webinar, and the presenter keeps saying “um.” You even start counting “um’s” after the first four or five occurrences. It can be so distracting! Have you ever thought, “Oh my gosh, I hope I don’t sound like that!?” Well, fear no more! Check out this article I came across from the Harvard Business Review, giving you some useful tips and guidance for using fewer crutch words and becoming a better public speaker!
https://hbr.org/2018/08/how-to-stop-saying-um-ah-and-you-know
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Hey, Can You Hear Me Now?
By Bailey Penrose
“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”
– The Animals (Cover, 1964)
Everyone just wants to be heard. I don’t think anyone would dispute that point, especially in an age where it’s easier than ever to broadcast to a larger audience – a blog post, a YouTube video, a Tweet. However, in this new world of instant communication and sharing, there seems to be a growing sense of isolation as we focus more on screens than each other.
That feeling of isolation can affect our working lives too. Have you ever run into the situation where you send an email that seems friendly yet direct, but is received like the opening salvo to an office equivalent of WWIII? I have been the culprit on more than one occasion. An email just seemed so much cleaner, more efficient. If I’d actually spoken face-to-face with my coworker (the email recipient) in the last week I would have learned that they were buried in work or going through a rough time personally. That email that I thought was phrased so nicely hit a nerve and now we needed damage control.
Because of this scenario, I am huge proponent of responding to that occasional maddening email sitting malevolently in your inbox with a phone call, “Hey, good morning! Yes, I got the email. I think I hear what you need, but I’m not sure I understand the tone. Can you help me with your goal and deadline on this?”
Instant communication is a tool and it’s one that has revolutionized the world as well as our workplaces. This revolution comes with some new challenges though. Work email is easily accessible from personal devices, response time expectations are speeding up, and coworkers are spread across the country or even the world. How can you keep up with the work and still have time to ask your coworkers or customers how their kids/dog/sick-aunt are doing?
I don’t have an answer. There is no one-size fits all answer to that question. All I’m saying is that I think it’s important the we try.
Companies focus on employee engagement to boost production, vendors focus on customer experience to expand their market, and teams focus on cohesion to accomplish goals. These things are only possible if we listen to one another and seek to understand. This is not the Matrix; people are still important.
By the way, how are you today?
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Trash Talk: Servant Leadership and Safety (Series – Part 1 of 2)
By Tonya Mott
Why am I hanging with Alaska Waste? A couple of reasons:
1. Servant Leadership – I’m on a mission to learn how to be the best leader I can be and help others do the same. As you read, you’ll find out why I would be learning this from employees at Alaska Waste.
2. Safety, from a risk management perspective – According to the 2016 Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries the garbage collection industry is the 5th most dangerous in America. Of course, that means I must go for a ride on a garbage truck, living on the edge!
The primary reason for my visit was to learn about Alaska Waste’s management style, Servant Leadership.
Meet Josh:
About a year and a half ago, I bribed my good friend Josh James to be a guinea pig and test our new process called the BHIQ (Business Health IQ Profile). The profile brings awareness to various operational risks and then in return business owners and leaders can come up with a plan to prioritize and tackle those risks.
The risk categories that we were focusing on with Josh was Human Resources, leadership, safety, compliance, employee benefits, productivity, and technology.
First, let me provide a little info about Josh’s background. I have to admit during our 20 years of friendship neither of us ever discussed in depth what we do for a living. I knew he worked for Alaska Waste for the last 14 years and was in a management position. I recently confirmed that he started as a roll-off driver, picking up the large open top containers you see at grocery stores and construction sites. The next 2 years he drove a rear load recycle truck, servicing roll-carts in residential areas. From there he moved on to driver dispatcher managing 2 channels, with 20 drivers on each channel. Then he was promoted to operations supervisor and finally, for the past 2 years served as operations manager. As operations manager he manages the operations supervisors and 74 operations employees.
I figured from a management perspective having him test the BHIQ would help us fine-tune our profile. I also did the unspeakable and made assumptions about his potential responses to the questions before we even got started. I stereotyped him based on the industry and this hilarious video clip that some of you may recognize, made many years ago by a previous Alaska Waste employee as a joke (45 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sByVwTHYkCE.
Back to the BHIQ – It’s a Saturday night, I bribed my friend with food and to get this job done. Even with my bribe the look on Josh’s face was less than enthusiastic about spending his Saturday night answering 50 or so work-related questions. At this point I’m thinking, he looks bored now, just wait until we start asking him these questions, we’re going to blow his mind, and get his wheels turning on how to make improvements and be a better manager. Well, it didn’t quite go that way, he proved me WRONG! We asked the first question, “Organizational clarity creates increased productivity. What do you have in place to maximize organizational clarity?”, Josh’s response nailed it. Without a doubt, his team, hands down has organizational clarity, they live and breathe clarity EVERY DAY. From there the rest is history; every response blew us away. We obviously had a lot to learn from him.
As we moved through the BHIQ, he kept saying, as a “Servant Leader….”. Finally, I asked, “Josh, what the heck is a servant leader”? Let me pause here for second and ask, have you ever met someone that talked about their job as if they were the owner, as if they built it from the ground up, and was so passionate about their job that they would do anything for the company and the employees that they manage in an effort to support their success? Notice how I said “THEIR” success, and not their own success. It’s sad to say but I’ve only met one person in my lifetime with this much passion about their job and that’s, Josh. Could you imagine a world where all employees felt this passionate about their jobs? Seemed unheard of, until I learned the term Servant Leadership.
I could write forever about my conversation with Josh, so I’ll leave you with this article to learn more about Servant Leadership and how it can help you become a respected leader: https://howwelead.org/2018/02/07/lets-clear-up-some-misunderstandings-about-servant-leadership/. After meeting with Josh we immediately adopted Servant Leadership. You can start as simple as turning your organizational chart upside down. We realized our team members on the front lines, closest to our clients, are the most important people in the company and we need to support them.
Bottom line, if you are looking to change up your leadership style or improve safety, reach out to Josh James at Alaska Waste (yes, Josh, I’m putting you on blast).
Stay tuned for part 2 of this series where I’ll write about my first-hand experience going for a ride along in a garbage truck. Learn how Alaska Waste’s management style ties in to the safety of their employees and the general public.
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Trust Your Business Gut
By Nicholas Wiandt
Your gut is telling you something, and I don’t mean its lunchtime. No one knows your business better than you do, so it’s no surprise that you will often have a gut feeling or a hunch about what’s going on in the undercurrent.
Often these feelings are spurred on by analyzing our own in house data, such as the amount of leads we have received lately, the kind of feedback we get from clients, or our current results as compared to previous years.
The trouble with data though is that there is so much of it that it can quickly turn into noise. So, how do we ensure we pull real value out of our data? I hope you enjoy the attached article, as it lines out 6 key ways we can transform data into something that is truly ‘actionable’.
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‘Crucial Conversations’ and Positive Outcomes
By Bailey Penrose
Have you ever read something that changed your outlook on life? Maybe the change wasn’t drastic (maybe it was), but the Rubicon had been crossed and there was no going back. The book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switlzer did that for me.
When I thought of the term ‘crucial’ before diving into this book, I always thought it meant events of apocalyptic proportion; something you might see in a movie where alarms are blaring and groups of tense people in suits shout at each other in small huddles. That is not quite the scenario that Crucial Conversations envisions. The authors’ definition of ‘crucial’ seems to focus on the positively mundane – a ‘Crucial Conversation’ involves the intersection of only three criteria: 1. Opposing Opinions, 2. Strong Emotions, and 3. High Stakes.
Typically, when confronted with a tense conversation, we immediately jump into ‘fight or flight’ mode. No one involved in those situations comes out feeling very happy or accomplished. However, if you had the tools to deal with that discussion with a co-worker, boss, or family member and walk out of it with everyone feeling resolute and committed, wouldn’t you use them?
When you look at hard conversations as opportunities to improve communication, relationships, and outcomes, you will create positive change in both your personal and professional life. Not only will you benefit from the change, but so will everyone around you.
You can find a copy of ‘Crucial Conversations’ through your local library in either book or audiobook format:
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