Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Retraining Rochester's Workforce

Read an Interview with Peter Pecor, Executive Director of RochesterWorks, in the Minority Reporter entitled "Retraining Rochester's Workforce" by Rodney Brown: Read the full story

Monday, November 22, 2010

Making Your Organization a Great Place to Work

We recently participated in a conference where we held a panel discussion about what it takes to make your organization a great place to work. I thought I would share a series with you some of the things we do here at RochesterWorks to create such a culture. I hope you enjoy it.

To begin with making your organization a great place to work, you will want to first check in with your employees. You can't fix something that you are not aware of. We began two years ago with a survey that was completely anonymous. It was interpreted by someone who did not work for the company.

If you do decide to do this, be prepared for the feedback. Ask your staff to provide you with honest, non judgemental observations about the company. You will want to know strengths as well as areas for improvement. Focus on the top three topics that have been identified to improve.

Examples for focus might be: professional development, recognition, trust, communication, balance, preventing burn out, stress management, health benefits, management, the culture, conflict with co-workers, etc

If you can not do an official survey, do an informal one using an online service that won't reveal participants. Depending on how large your organization is, you can have a focus group to discuss this with staff.

In our next part of this series, I will share what we focused on within our organization.