Angled Knipex pliers and cutters boast 25° comfort angle

September 22, 2014 – Knipex Tools says its latest series of angled pliers and cutters, which include an 8-in. angled long nose pliers, 7-in. angled diagonal cutter, 7 1/2-in. angled combination pliers and 8 3/4-in. cable cutter, meets the needs of hardworking hands and various applications.

The tools boast a 25° comfort angle, which Knipex says makes the tool a natural extension of the user’s hand—a design with comfort and convenience in mind. In addition to comfort, the series promises better sight lines when working in confined spaces, providing the user with the ability to see what is being grabbed, pulled and cut, which is critical to getting the job done quickly, accurately and efficiently, says Knipex.

For more information and electrician industry updates visit: http://www.ebmag.com/

The 3 Keys to Achieving Greater Employee Performance

What does it take to get your employees excited about their jobs?  Money is a common benefit of working, but money isn’t everything.  Most employees are happy to receive fair compensation for the job they perform, but they also want opportunities to learn and grow, recognition for a job well done, a positive work environment, and encouraging team members and management.

Keeping employees energized and well trained about their job can improve productivity, morale, teamwork, and can reduce turnover.  Doing so can make a positive impact on your company’s bottom line.

1. Start off Right

If you follow the proper steps outlined in your success manuals and hire the right people, you enhance your chances for success – that’s not a surprise.  However, if you’re struggling to find the right people, it might be time to do something different.  It’s time to look through your SGI^™ materials and call your support team.  You were wise enough to make the investment in the organization; now, put it to use for you!  Remember, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

2. Train or Change

Most employees understand the need for job-specific training and can make the connection between investing in performance- and technical-skill development. Look at your sales- and closing-percentage numbers. Is it time to jump start your employees to get them moving to the next level of success?  Or do you have the wrong people on your team who just don’t get it.  Weak links on your team sets everyone up for failure! Could this be the reason why you are not achieving greater success today?  You will need to train the weak links on how to become strong, or you will need to remove the weak links and replace them with a trainable, stronger link that creates results.

3. No More Excuses

If you have a weak link in your business’ chain… get them trained.  If you have a new employee and you want to set the right work performance ethic early in their employment… get them trained.  You have a variety of courses offered by Success Academy^® that can help do this for you if you’re uncertain on how to get the ball rolling.  If you haven’t attended the courses, as the owner, you absolutely should consider it, too.

It is essential to get your employees trained, if nothing else it can reenergize them.  Training allows them to share knowledge and work with their fellow technicians to develop real-world solutions to challenges they face.   New knowledge is always gained during training.

There is no better way to kick the dust off or remove the rust from stagnant employees than getting them involved in training.  Even the best of the best employees need a little refresher now and then – give them what they need to succeed.

Stop asking yourself, “What if I train them, and they leave?” Instead start asking yourself, “What if I don’t train them, and they stay?”  The second question, if answered poorly, could keep your company dormant forever.  Choose wisely.

Now Hiring… PLEASE!

We all need good people on our team.  Even if we are fully staffed, a successful business is always seeking out top talent.  SGI^TM teaches that managers should spend one-third of their time managing, one-third of their time training, and one-third of their time recruiting.  Larry Bossidy once said, “I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day, you bet on people, not on strategies.”

Hiring today is not like it used to be… The tide has turned. Employers can no longer tell employees, “Like it or leave it.”  In today’s marketplace, attracting and retaining good employees is a top priority in both large and small businesses.

With the cost of replacing employees at 70 percent to 200 percent of their annual salaries—not including the effects on the business of lost knowledge, declining morale and productivity, and customer dissatisfaction—it is no surprise that four out of five respondents rated employee retention as a serious or very serious issue in a survey conducted by the American Management Association (1997).

“You need to have a hiring process,” said Steve Jobs in The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty.

Let’s examine a five-step process:

Step One: Recruitment Ads

Recruitment is all about finding the right people—but the old rules no longer apply.  Today, recruitment includes a serious referral program in your business, radio ads, job fairs and open houses, Internet-recruiting sites, church newsletters, and community organizations. Of course the Internet includes CareerBuilder® and Monster.com®.  But many local newspapers also have an online edition, which normally includes a job-search function.

Another option may be recruitment from local career centers at schools and colleges in your state.  Go to www.rwm.org for a complete listing, by state, of vocational-school locations, phone numbers, and contact information.

Oh, you can always put an ad in the newspaper, too, I suppose.

Step Two: Initial Call

Have you called your office lately and pretended to be a job-seeker?  What did they say?  Was it something like, “Yes, you can come by the office anytime and complete an application…”

In today’s market, few, if any, potential employees will “drop by the office” to “complete an application.”  Today’s workforce wants instant gratification. If you miss the opportunity to answer their questions now, they will hang up and go to the next call.

Make sure your entire team knows you are recruiting and let them see the ad you place. Have employment applications ready. Make sure you or an on-duty manager is able to speak with every inquirer and is able to clear your/their calendar to meet with the candidate.

Step Three: First Interview

The goal of the first interview is 1) sell the company and the job, 2) let the applicant know what your standards are including drug screens and background checks, 3) be real and don’t sugarcoat things, 4) let the applicant ask questions, and 5) let the applicant know the next steps.

You must first sell the opportunity to the potential employee.  This can be accomplished by either a printed presentation in a three-ring binder or a PowerPoint® presentation.

The presentation should include: Your company story (who you are), product story (what you do), service story (how you do it), guarantee story (what makes you different), market potential (room for growth), and how you develop leads (take your company to market).

Step Four: Checks

It is highly recommended that you contact past employers.  You may only get verification of length of employment, or you may be surprised by what you may hear.  Remember, always ask, “Would you hire _____ again?”

Before proceeding too far in the selection process, be sure to conduct a driving-record check, a drug test, and a national criminal-background check.  Some locations include a personality profile, especially for full-time sales positions.

Step Five: Now What?

Once the decision has been made to bring on a new employee, the work has just begun.  After all, research has shown that most new hires decide if they are staying or leaving the company within the first five days of employment!

Have you and your team put together a plan.  Train, train, and then train.  Don’t just get them—keep them!

How Desirable Is Your Company to Work For?

How Desirable Is Your Company to Work For?

Is there a magical formula or pixie dust you can sprinkle on your company to create success?  Unfortunately, no. The fastest way to success in this industry is to start looking at your team a bit differently. You must realize that they’re your most important asset, and an asset that generates the biggest return on investment.

You can’t have a successful business operating on your own. But you are the leader, and as the leader, you must decide the direction and culture of your business. Culture is defined as, “the beliefs, customs,

practices, and social behavior of a particular nation or people.”

To gain insight on what creates a positive culture within a company, I researched a list of some of the top companies to work for in the United States. I found that the top U.S. companies have a clearly defined culture, which makes them desirable places to work and they attract more employees! The positive work environment these companies create makes people want to work for them—and almost all of them have a waiting list of applicants.

For example, at the time of this report, Google had 12,580 U.S. employees and 7,013 abroad—and they added 3,550 new employees last year. Google attracts 777,000 applicants a year because of the environment of working with the Internet leader! Zappos.com sells shoes on the Internet. Zappos offers employees free lunches, concierge services, and 100-percent- paid health-insurance premiums. After Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh cut eight percent of the staff, Hsieh received several glowing letters from departing employees. Zappos offers five weeks of initial training and at the end of the training period,

potential employees are offered up to $2,000 to not work there. It recognizes that $2,000 is a small price to pay to avoid hiring a bad apple.

We all agree that growing and developing your own team is the best method of having successful team members. Based on a mechanics rate of $25.00 (see table above), taking a green apprentice through his entire apprenticeship will cost you $150,000. That is before one additional hour of supervision, call-back, or mistake is made. I would suggest your actual investment will be close to double.

When you look at these costs, some of the points mentioned below begin to make more sense. But none of it matters unless you are making money. Here are some of the benefits the top 100 companies provide for their team members:

• Health plans

• Performance bonuses

• Gift cards

• Fun environment

• Retirement plans

• Hiring of interns

• Paid maternity leave

• Fitness bonuses

• Free lunches

• Concierge services

• Constant communication to employees’ homes

• Corporate day care

• Training

• Short days with pay

• Sales contests

• Paid hours to volunteer for a cause of their own choice

• Opportunities to export good ideas outside the company

• Paid vacation

All of these ideas require an investment of both time and money on your part. But recognize that your company is only as strong as your weakest team member. Constant team evaluation is necessary if you are going to reach your goals. Now is probably a good time to begin! You need to create a culture of success inside your company so that you become known as the go-to place for the best employees to work.

Manage It or It will Manage You!

Today, despite technology that is intended to make our lives easier, we tend to work harder and have less flexible time than ever. About 95 percent of the time, the time management challenges we find fall into a set number of common categories.  I want you to become more productive. This is why I am sharing with you the biggest waste of time traps we experience today.

#1: Interruptions and Distractions
Emails and phone calls impact us constantly and represent almost a third of this category’s complaints. Overcoming this trap requires a firm application of self-discipline. If something distracts you, tighten your focus.  Turn off your email alerts or close your browser; forward your calls to voicemail and respond a few times a day, or go somewhere quieter to work.

# 2: People Problems
Many distractions emanate from others.  They’re the result of either the employee or the manager not being properly trained. Management duties represent the biggest time challenges. Employees who are not properly trained hurt profitability and productivity. Most employee challenges can be solved by holding them accountable to perform. It is your job to lay the path so you can get the performance standards to where they should be.

#3: Overwork/Overwhelm
You can only push yourself so much within a 24-hour day. Eliminate unimportant tasks from your schedule.  To the greatest extent possible, find ways to delegate. If you run out of time for something minor, let it go. Stop seeing your task list as a must-do list; instead view it in order of must-do today, can-wait-until-tomorrow, can-wait-a-few-days, can-be-delegated-and-followed-up-on list.

#4: Prioritization
Whether the failure to set priorities is the manager or the employee’s challenge, focusing on the wrong task at the wrong time can lead to feeling overwhelmed.  The solution: Simply prioritize your projects and focus first on the items that truly bring you the greatest returns.

#5: Meetings
Besides not over scheduling meetings yourself, you can overcome the meeting trap by only participating in meetings that absolutely need your attendance and setting time limits you communicate to everyone before it starts. If you can, leave once you’ve made your contributions.

#6. Lack of Self-Discipline
Fire up your willpower, crack the whip on yourself and your employees, and decide to concentrate on a task until it is complete.  About a quarter of those with self-discipline problems see procrastination as a bigger issue than a lack of focus. Most often, they find themselves daunted by huge, complex projects. So in addition to applying tight focus to the problem, break it into smaller chunks you can handle more easily. Set milestones, buckle down, and get to work.

#7: Disorganization
Learn to use your email to its fullest by establishing a logical, simple organizational system, and process every piece of information you receive. Don’t let it pile up, and never hesitate about what to do with an item whether a piece of paper, an email, or voicemail.  And always make time for planning, including making time to review what you’re doing to ensure it’s working. As necessary, take steps to fix what doesn’t work, and be on the lookout for ways to improve efficiency.

#8. Scheduling
Do you have problems getting things done in the time you have? Common complaints include an inability to estimate how long tasks will take and deciding where on the calendar to place each task. The second case requires task prioritization, as well as a willingness to say no to new work.  You can’t accomplish anything important if your calendar is filled with unimportant meetings and events.  Target the high-significance tasks first and address them directly, so as not to waste time.

#9: Crises
You can’t do much when others create a crisis except react, which means you must remain flexible. Establish processes in advance to help you handle the unexpected.  Create guidelines for each type of emergency you can imagine. When a crisis arises, practice SLLR: Stop, Look, Listen, and Respond.

#10: Work/Life Balance
People want a personal life, so they can pursue their hobbies, rest and relax, exercise, go to school, or spend more time with their families. Again, the solution involves a strict adherence to self-discipline and prioritization, so you can make a big enough time in your schedule to enjoy life outside of work.

Focus on being efficient and productive at work, so you can achieve maximum results in minimum time.  Proper training and discipline can help you and your employees achieve greater results.