One of the keys to improving your employee retention rates and their overall productivity is recognizing their contributions to your organizations. However, while some small companies don’t have the budget to implement big plans for recognition, that doesn’t mean they can’t find affordable, yet impactful, ways of recognizing their employees.

Let’s look at just a few ideas that you can begin implementing at your company right away. All of these ideas are very low cost, and some are even free!

Get a Little Clever

 Creativity goes a long way – not only does it show that you actually put some thought and time into your gift, it’s also a light hearted way to say thank you. For example, you could put together a small gift of a coffee cup, filled with packs of Reece’s Pieces and with a little note that says “We appreciate you to Pieces!” Little gifts that are handmade and feature a cute play on words are always appreciated.

 Creating a Recognition Board

 Public recognition also means a lot to employees. Create a special board in a break area and use it to highlight employees who go above and beyond to help customers or do their job. You can also use this board to display special letters and recognition you receive from your customers. This gesture means a lot to employees and will also serve to motivate other employees who would like to be seen on that public board.

 Simple and Free

 Recognition doesn’t have to be costly – in fact, it can even be done for free. Simply taking aside an employee and thanking them personally lets them know how much you value their contributions to your company. It means even more if it comes directly from the owner or boss of the company. Again, it’s not what you spend, it’s the fact that you’re making an effort to go out of your way to show your appreciation.

Any or all of these programs will help your employees know just how much they mean to you and your company. You don’t have to go all out to make someone feel valued. In many cases, it’s the little things that truly mean the most.

Do you need a few more ideas on how to create an affordable employee recognition system? Ask the experts at Solopoint today!

Once you land what you think is your dream job, it’s normal to feel a bit overwhelmed at first. We all go through a period when first starting where we don’t feel confident and it takes a little bit to find your stride. However, if after several weeks you aren’t comfortable in your position and it’s taking you longer than normal to complete your work or if you find yourself constantly behind in your schedules, it is possible that you have a skills mismatch.

Ideally, you would only be hired for a job that you’re qualified to do. If you’ve been honest on your resume and the hiring manager or recruiter was aware of your current skills, you should be matched up with a job you have the capability of doing. In many cases however, especially if you’ve changed industries, you may feel like a fish out of water.

The first step is determining exactly where the problem is and what you need to do to fix the problem. Make a list of all of your current duties and target the areas where you are uncomfortable or struggling. Once you have an exact idea of what’s not working, you can take some steps to fix the issue. If you have a more experienced co-worker, ask them if they wouldn’t mind showing you how to efficiently do what you need to do. Ask your manager for help if you feel that you need a little more coaching. If it’s an issue that can be fixed with more training or by taking an online course, take the initiative to improve your skill set.

It is vital to communicate any difficulties you’re having to your manager. This is important for two reasons. First, it lets them know that you are committed to your job and learning how to do it more effectively. Second, it allows them to judge your progress and your performance fairly. If they don’t know you need help, they won’t be able to offer you the advice and extra training you may need.

Another step you can take while you are going through your job duty list is to take a minute and go over the list with your manager. You may be taking on too much, or you may be doing tasks that you don’t need to do. Ask for their advice and find out what you need to do exactly.

Never be afraid to ask for help. It’s much better to be honest and humble enough to ask for some extra coaching. A good manager will be more than happy to assist you and help you become a more skilled and valuable employee.

Do you have a question about fixing a skill mismatch? Ask the experts at SoloPoint for help today!

Too many employers find out the hard way how necessary it is to have organizational policies both for managing their employees and protecting their day-to-day operations. While every state is different, and you also need to factor in different federal laws and regulations, once you’ve developed your policies, you’ll need to find a way to implement them all.

Consistency is the key when you’re implementing new workplace policies. Let’s take a look at a process you can use in your organization.

1. Make it clear from the start. First, you’ll need to let employees know that a new policy is coming soon. Give them plenty of advance notice to get them prepared. Next, you’ll need to distribute this new policy in a variety of different ways. Post it in a high traffic area, like a break-room. Email it to all of your employees and request a read receipt. Lastly, hold department meetings that are mandatory and tell your employees about the new policies verbally. This ensures that you’ve covered all of your bases and that no one can say they were not aware of the change.

2. Work out issues ahead of time. In order to stay professional , you’ll need to work out all of the details of your new policies ahead time. This prevents having to issue company-wide changes and keeps all of your employees on the same page. In addition, you won’t risk having your employees lose respect for your organization if you’ve got everything worked out and handled ahead of time.

3. Enforce your policies consistently. Once you implement a policy, you’ve got to enforce it consistently — all the time, every time, no matter what mitigating circumstances may be in place. If you don’t enforce them consistently, they immediately lose all power and your management loses a portion of their power as well. Be as fair as possible, and your employees will appreciate it.

4. Stay on top of changes. Even though you want to make sure you’re not issuing amendments to policies all the time, if laws, regulations or circumstances do change, you’ll need to stay on top of it to ensure that you’re in compliance. If changes do occur, following the above step on making it clear to ensure that everyone in your organization is aware of the change.

Do you have a question about implementing policies in your organization? Let the experts at SoloPoint guide you!

Motivating your employees can be a challenge, particularly when you don’t necessarily want to use monetary awards. However, what you may not realize is that many employees are motivated by non-monetary rewards and you can actually raise your productivity rates, improve morale and keep your workforce motivated just by practicing a little innovation with your motivation techniques.

On the plus side, most of these techniques are little to no cost motivators, which not only helps your bottom line but they are also great ways to increase sales and overall productivity, benefiting your company even more!

1. Set up a Recognition System. Recognizing achievements and making sure that employees know they are valued is a great motivator for your team. Whenever an employee goes above and beyond, thank them both personally and publicly. Setting up a recognition system ensures that your employees will want to try harder to be included. Instead of the tired “Employee of the Month,” or special parking places, mix it up by offering a free lunch to the employee who achieves the most recognition during the month, or even offer a special gift certificate or tangible reward like a prize.

2. Offer Additional Paid Training and Certification Potential. Your employees want to be able to better themselves, but quite often, they can’t afford special training and certification programs. This is particularly important for IT or engineering employees. Make it possible for them to advance their own careers by offering special paid training opportunities and certifications. This keeps your staff motivated not only to produce for you, but to produce for themselves as well.
3. Offer Leadership Roles to Qualified Employees. Sometimes, employees want more than a little recognition, they want the ability to use the skills they have earned to lead others. While you may not have an opportunity to promote qualified employees to management positions just yet, you can give them some leadership ability, whether it’s through leading a team or a task force, or assigning them more duties within the sphere of their current position.

4. Offer Paid Time Off Opportunities.  One thing that all employees appreciate is a little paid time off. You can incentivize projects by offering a paid day off to the employee who finishes on time or ahead of schedule, or find ways to incorporate this reward into their daily tasks, whether it’s a paid day off for perfect attendance or some other benchmark.

These ideas may seem small, but they present different opportunities for employees to self-motivate, hold themselves accountable and achieve more for your organization.

Do you have a question about motivating your work force? Let the experts at SoloPoint help you today!

Without a doubt, our society is becoming increasingly reliant on technology. This translates into more companies embracing this technology which in turn creates a need for more qualified engineers and technical employees.

In response to this potential demand, the US government is introducing what they called STEM or Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education. STEM is being touted as a way to begin increasing the amount of students who are interested in this fields, and as such, creating a entirely new group of future new hires that are highly qualified for jobs in the tech and engineering industry.

Tech leaders are jumping on board this proposed program with fervor. Some are even proposing that the government take the next step and provide additional funding for students who are interested in these fields of study to further widen the talent pool.

Not everyone is in agreement however that STEM is a good thing. Some engineers have pointed out that while it’s a great idea to encourage kids to embrace technology fields, the problem the United States is currently facing isn’t a lack of talent, it’s economics that are driving jobs overseas. These nay-sayers see the potential for creating a glut in the talent pool if too many are encouraged to go with this field of study, only to find out that the majority of jobs that are available are overseas.

STEM is a good thing, and it is vital to increase the number of qualified tech employees. Technology is going to expand and we need to be ready to embrace these changes as they occur. However, we also need to work at encouraging smaller businesses to thrive and support existing businesses to ensure that this next crop of engineering talent will have a place to go when they graduate.

It’s a double-edged sword and it is only prudent to make sure that we are prepared to face the future in terms of talent availability and job availability.

Is your organization ready for the future? Are you getting the best talent for your open positions? Let the experts at SoloPoint help you position your company for success — give us a call or an email today and let’s see what we can do together.

Training specialized engineering staff is vital, but it can also be expensive. If you are finding that your company’s training costs are getting out of control, there are six easy ways that you can lower your expenses, without lowering the quality of the training.

1. Schedule as much group training as possible. If at all possible, group training sessions are typically less expensive and will allow you the ability to increase the team spirit and provide peer support for employees. While this is not always possible, particularly when you only have one new incoming employee, group sessions will save you money and help get everyone up to speed at the same time.

2. Streamline the training process. You can streamline your training process by examining the current material, removing redundancies and looking for what information your employees will actually be using on a daily basis. Focus on this instead of broader training that may not be actually useful for their position.

3. Offer incentives for early training completion. Paid training is nice, but some employees may be tempted to stretch that out while they complete the necessary tasks. Instead, consider offering a lower rate of pay during train, or do away with paid training entirely. Your new hires will be motivated to get through the training process quickly.

4. Find a key team member who is already experienced. Instead of hiring an outside instructor, or using someone within your organization who is needed elsewhere, find a team member who has leadership and teaching skills and ask them to help you train the others in their department. Since they know the actualities and the day to day requirements, they are uniquely appropriate for this type of training.

5. Utilize temp to perm hires more often. Contract workers who are already experienced can help you drastically reduce the amount of money you spend on training new hires. This also gives you the luxury of trying out a new person before making them a permanent employee in your organization.

6. Move to an entirely digital training format. While much of engineering training takes place on a computer or in a similar environment, there are still manuals and materials that are typically printed. By reducing your reliance on this type of training material you can save significant money, particularly over time.

As we grow up, particularly in America, summer time is the time to play. Even as adults, it can be very difficult to stay on task when it’s beautiful out and the last place you want to be is behind a desk. Your employees are undoubtedly feeling the same siren song and it’s vital to keep them engaged at their task during the summer season.

This can be easier said than done, but with a little creativity, you can ensure that your employees will stay engaged all summer long.

1. Create specific goals with milestones. One of the best ways to get your employees on task is make it very clear what the final goal is, and what each one needs to do to achieve that goal. Once you set up a goal and milestones, make it fun to achieve those milestones by offering rewards, particularly if the tasks are completed well ahead of schedule.

2. Offer some time away. In many cases, the way to help employees focus is give them what they want — but on your terms. If the team reaches a goal ahead of schedule, offer them a paid day off, preferably on a Friday to give them a long weekend. They’ll be appreciative and much more likely to work hard to get that paid day off.

3. Make it interesting. Competitions are a great way to get your employees focused on their jobs and not the great outdoors. While you don’t want to pit them against one another in a brutal fashion, offer rewards for performance (again, the extra day off is a great motivator in summer). Set team performance goals as well to keep the entire team working together towards their collective goal. Find new ways to spice up competitions and make the rewards well worth the effort needed to achieve them.

Yes, there’s an app for that, even in the engineering world. Whether you’re looking for a way to increase productivity or creativity, you’ll find plenty of iPad apps designed to assist you. Let’s take a look at five of the most outstanding apps on the market right now.

1. AutoDesk CAD WS – Not only can you use this app to view CAD drawings across a variety of different devices, this app will also let you annotate and change the drawings on the fly, wherever you are. If you have a WiFi only iPad and happen to be out of a connection area, you can save a local copy and update it when you get back into an area with service. We like the quick rendering and easy-to-use interface. With all this power, it’s hard to believe this app is completely free.
2. Engineering Unit Conversion – While this tool may look simple on the surface, it’s truly a handy little app to have running around. Need to convert density or conductivity? This app will have you covered. It earns extra stars simply because it’s easy and fast to use and answers an oft-overlooked need. This app is priced at just .99.
3. Siemens Sirius eAssistance Doc Finder – If you’ve ever been in the position of needing access to docs on a component, this app makes it truly quick to find what you’re looking for. While the downside is that its only Siemens specific, if your firm utilizes this brand, you’ll find this app a valuable resource that gets its fair share of use. This app is also free.
4. GaugeFinder – Another little app that does one thing and does it very well. No more guesswork on wire gauge. Pop open the app and you’ll be able to look up the type of wire you’re working with and get specs for a variety of different wire types, tubing and more. With its free price tag, it’s hard to pass this one up.
5. PowerOne Financial Calculator – If you remember the old RPN calculators from Hewlett Packard, you will truly love this app. Although it’s not free, priced at 4.99, it is incredibly useful and well worth the money. Calculate everything from microns to fathoms right on your iPad.

The engineering development community has been hard at work creating real-world apps that answer today’s most common needs. We look forward to their continued development and to their making our lives even easier.