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Working from home full-time for some during these trying times of COVID-19 has throw a wrench into the concept of work-life balance. And, while some of us are slowly returning to the office, others have continued to work from home.

Wheter you have an arrangement with your manager to telecommute a couple days a week or if you are working from home full-time, here are 3 tips for taking care of your eyes from an article written by Sarah D. Young

  1. Adjust your environment: Sit about two feet away from your computer screen to reduce eyestrain. Position the screen so that your eyes are looking slightly downward, not straight ahead or up. Adjust the screen brightness and contrast until it feels comfortable, and consider using a larger font if you’re working hard to see letters. 
  2. Take regular eye breaks: Seldomridge advises following the “20-20-20” rule, by looking 20 feet away from the screen every 20 minutes for 20 seconds. Alternatively, you can close your eyes for 20 seconds every 20 minutes. 
  3. Use artificial tears: Because staring at screens reduces blinking and increases dryness, the use of eye drops (“artificial tears”) can help keep your eyes moist and alleviate dry eye discomfort. Seldomridge said a humidifier can also help add moisture to the air and help prevent eye dryness. 

Bottomline: These tips can help reduce eye strain when we are forced to look at screens all day. Some experts suggest that we create technology-free zones in certain areas of ours homes, like the bedroom or bathroom. Just imagine spending the entire day working on the computer, getting in bed and scrolling through social media?  We should instead, truly unplug by reading a book or spend some quality time with family members without our phones.

About ATS
ATS offers a broad portfolio of time and attendance solutions that streamlines the collection, calculation, and reporting of employee hours for workforce management and eliminates the manual tasks of payroll preparation, increasing efficiency and reducing errors in corporate payroll departments.

Thousands of organizations across North, Central and South America and Europe- including more than half of the Fortune 500 – use ATS TimeWork OnDemand, Workforce Planning, Employee Scheduling HR and payroll solutions to manage their workforce.

In addition, ATS provides modular analytic solutions that includes; workforce planning, benefits management, employee self-service, business intelligence, human resources, payroll, and advanced analytics based on a robust cloud computing platform for information and data needs. It also offers design, rapid deployment, support services, software updates, and enhancements; and consulting and training services.

To learn more, call: 866.294.2467 and to download a demo go to our website.

The Herculean Tasks Of Removing Biases From Hiring Decisions

July 6th, 2017 | Posted by ATS in Careers | HR | Time and Attendance Blog, Workforce Management Software - (Comments Off on The Herculean Tasks Of Removing Biases From Hiring Decisions)

A great deal has been written about removing biases when interviewing candidates for jobs, but to some degree it’s easier said than done. All human beings have their own set of biases on a range of things that include; gender, race, religion, class and it’s influenced when hiring employees or simply offering a promotion. The fact that this is being discussed in many online forums is good first step, but, this type of paradigm shift will take perhaps a generation or two for significant change to take effect. Change, after all, is always a difficult proposition for humans.

The Herculean Tasks Of Removing Biases From Hiring Decisions

Will Yakowicz, Staff writer for Inc, article titled How to Remove Gender Bias From the Hiring Process offers three tips. These tips are derived from a posting in Harvard Business Review by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox.

The gender bias tips are as follows:

“Make gender bias a business issue.
If the results of the test don’t bother you initially, think about the fact that under- qualified men were hired over more talented women. Wittenberg-Cox says you should reframe gender bias as a business issue, not a women’s issue. “If managers are choosing less qualified men over more qualified women, the company is clearly losing valuable talent,” she writes. “Even if hiring managers are choosing equally qualified men, if they’re doing it in dramatically greater numbers (as the study above shows they do), the company is still missing an opportunity to build the kind of balanced workforce that we know produces more creative results.”

Change people’s minds
Wittenberg-Cox says leaders need to start educating themselves and managers about the issue of gender bias instead of putting the burden on women to change themselves. “You can expect all your women to suddenly change their behavior and start overselling their skills, as the men in the study above did–but frankly, do you really want them to?” she writes. Research shows when women boast about their skills they are perceived negatively, instead of as confident and ambitious. You need to teach your staff, male and female, about the different behaviors men and women exhibit and how to effectively and accurately perceive them.”

Change your hiring systems
If gender bias runs deep in the corporate world that means HR policies are often rife with bias too. Wittenberg-Cox writes that many large companies consider “ambition” to be an important character trait for their leadership candidates. When candidates are seen as “ambitious,” they’re usually boasting, or overselling their talents–a trait studies have shown to be predominately male, she writes. Hiring managers typically believe erroneously that the most self-promotional candidates are objectively the best. “This does not make room to develop the majority of today’s talent for tomorrow’s world. Nor allow a variety of leadership styles to co-exist,” she adds.”

Social media and online career job boards, while all great tools can also hurt prospective candidates. Many of today’s hiring managers will scan sites like LinkedIn to view a candidates profile and formed an opinion about the person before they walk through the door for an interview. And in some cases, based on what they see online, these hiring managers might cut candidates from consideration. Thus, asking people to eliminate or at least, separate their biases from the hiring decision is not as easy as it sounds.

Keep current with ATS:

Old Habits Die Hard

April 30th, 2014 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Time and Attendance Blog, Workforce Management Software - (Comments Off on Old Habits Die Hard)

Social media has not only changed the world of selling but, it has changed just the way in which most people communicate. In fact, it has been a boon for small businesses, many of whom could not compete with the Goliath’s of the world of business. This lends itself to an interesting question, if social media is so effective, then why aren’t more companies advocating its use by their sales staff with some regularity?

One of the more thought provoking and well written articles, on this subject, is titled “The Rise of Social Salespeople” and it is featured on Forbes.com by contributor, Mark Fidelman and Co-Authored by Jim Keenan. One of the more poignant parts of the article reads in part;

“Communication has changed selling and the way we sell for years. Mail ended the carnival pitchman and catalogues were created. The phone put an end to the door-to-door sales, and cold calling was born. Now, social media is changing communication and how sales are made – yet again.

Today, buyers spend far more time researching and moving through the buying process before they engage vendors. Much of the buyer’s journey leverages social media. Social selling allows sales people to engage buyers much earlier in their journey.

Cold calling has traditionally been the approach of choice for hungry, driven sales people. However, according to a recent study by InsideView over 90% of CEO’s said they NEVER respond to cold emails or calls. The return on cold calling is drastically decreasing.”

You can read the article in its entirety on the Forbes site. At ATS, we are lucky to have a forward thinking leadership team that embraces social media and its correlation to the new world of sales.

As with everything else, old habits do die hard. Some have advocated that attaining leads through a variety of ways works best, while others are adamant that only cold calling will work.

Are you working for an organization where lead generation is only done through cold calling and you are expected to make 100 calls per day?

Old Habits Die Hard

 

 

 

In an era of automating business processes that were previously done manually, many companies are taking advantage of recruitment and applicant tracking applications to help them filer resumes based on a set of criteria. These can include; years of experience, schools attended by the applicant, ability to travel etc. If you are not sure what kind of questions to ask, consult your HR department, an employment lawyer or the local Human Rights Commission in the state or province where you do business or hope to attract applicants. Questions that might be permissible in one state may not be permissible in another province or country and this could land a company in hot water.

Recruitment applications are not unlike workforce management solutions in that, what comes out correlates to the data that was keyed into the application. So before, before you post job vacancies, go over the criteria carefully and seek the advice of an HR person that understands the region where you are doing business, to make sure you avoid the topics that are illegal.   Based on several studies and in no particular order, here is a short list of questions should be avoided on online applications:

Race: Why this question is even an option on a recruitment application is mind boggling. Since it has no bearing on an applicant’s ability to perform the job, why ask it anyway? Sooner or later, prospective applicants will start turning down jobs when this question comes up. They will also start telling their friends on social media which companies to avoid based on their initial experience, and we all know how fast negative news can travel. Diversity is here to stay and the companies who embrace it will be sought after by bright candidates from all walks of life.  Avoid asking this question at all cost-it’s not worth the hassle.

Social Insurance /Security Number: If a candidate is eventually hired then this number is required for filing necessary taxes to the regulator tax agency. However, asking for this information on an online application is another question that should be avoided.

Political or Religious Affiliation: This also has no bearing on the applicant’s ability so avoid it and instead focus on the applicants’ reasons for applying for the particular position.

Gender, Marital Status, Family Status: Do not ask the candidate if he has plans for marriage or family, childcare. If these questions are part of your criteria on the application form-it shouldn’t be.

Sex of the Candidate: Does it really matter if it’s a man or woman who’s applying for the VP of Sales vacancy at your company? There is no justifiable reason to ask for the sex of the person on your application form. Trying to diversify a workforce should not amount to asking candidates about their sex or race on an online application.

The Alberta Government has a tip sheet  titled “Human Rights and You: What Can Employers Ask?” It can be used as tool for businesses that are unsure  about the questions that should be part of their criteria for posting jobs.

Once you have hired the right candidate, now it’s time to use cloud-based time and attendance,   employee scheduling and workforce management software to keep track of attendance. You might also want to automate benefit accruals, vacation planning and time-off request and that’s where ATS comes in. To learn more, go to our website.

 The Grey Areas Of Employee Recruitment