The Employees’ Essential Guide for Preventing Repetitive Stress Injuries

There are several steps to help reduce and prevent injuries from developing. Follow these tips to keep your employees healthy and happy at work.

1. Offer every full-time office worker an ergonomic evaluation. Hire an ergonomist to evaluate the desks of each employee. A qualified ergonomist understands the body’s natural posture and the best position to stay in for several hours a day. They can make suggestions to help employees stay comfortable while working.

2. Require staff to take rest breaks. Rest breaks help the body pause and recover from the impact of working. Ideally, every employee should get away from his or her desk once an hour and stretch for a few minutes. If an employee is in pain, it’s important to take short 15 to 30-second breaks every few minutes to stretch his or her arms and look away from the computer screen. This helps the body circulate oxygen and nutrients and nourish overused joints and muscles.

3. Help reduce conflict and tension. Stress in the office can make employees tense up while working, instead of sitting in a natural and comfortable posture. This can cause strained muscles and pinched nerves. Additionally, conflict among co-workers can lead to people worrying about their jobs, working overtime or performing other unhealthy behaviors that can lead to injury.

4. Encourage healthy lifestyles. Employees need to take care of themselves outside of work, too. For example, have employees develop their own healthy-eating cookbook by collecting their favorite healthy 15-minute dinner recipes. Or, encourage them to exercise during lunch breaks or bike to work rather than drive. Encouraging general health and wellness will make people stronger and less prone to injury  and happier when they are on the job.

5. Start a stretching group. Many workers can benefit simply by stretching during one of their breaks. Set aside a small office room and have workers meet every morning during their first 15-minute break for a guided stretch or yoga session. Stretching helps people reduce stress, increase circulation and stay awake — better than that extra cup of coffee.

6. Hold training sessions. People who understand the risks and early warning signals of repetitive stress injuries are less likely to develop them. Educating staff by holding workshops about ergonomics, how injuries develop, and the signs of an impending injury.

7. Have a library of resources available. Another way to educate staff is to provide books, CDs, videos or simple fliers about healthy living, ergonomics, stretching and exercise and more. A good book on stretch exercises for frequent PC users is “Pain Free at Your PC” by Pete Egoscue, because it provides stretches for people of various capabilities and levels.

8. Encourage staff to speak up if they’re in pain. Early intervention is key in preventing a repetitive injury from becoming serious or debilitating. By simply letting employees know you’re available and willing to help, you can provide early treatment and stave off the very severe injuries, thus improving your employees’ work experience and quality of life.

11 Ways to Measure Employees’ Performance

Once an annual ritual, performance appraisal has become a continuous process by which an employee’s understanding of a company’s goals and his or her progress toward contributing to them are measured. Performance measurement is an ongoing activity for all managers and their subordinates.
Performance measurement uses the following indicators of performance, as well as assessments of those indicators.

1. Quantity: The number of units produced, processed or sold is a good objective indicator of performance. Be careful of placing too much emphasis on quantity, lest quality suffer.

2. Quality: The quality of work performed can be measured by several means. The percentage of work output that must be redone or is rejected is one such indicator. In a sales environment, the percentage of inquiries converted to sales is an indicator of salesmanship quality.

3. Timeliness: How fast work is performed is another performance indicator that should be used with caution. In field service, the average customer’s downtime is a good indicator of timeliness. In manufacturing, it might be the number of units produced per hour.

4. Cost-Effectiveness: The cost of work performed should be used as a measure of performance only if the employee has some degree of control over costs. For example, a customer-service representative’s performance is indicated by the percentage of calls that he or she must escalate to more experienced and expensive reps.

5. Absenteeism/Tardiness: An employee is obviously not performing when he or she is not at work. Other employees’ performance may be adversely impacted by absences, too.

6. Creativity: It can be difficult to quantify creativity as a performance indicator, but in many white-collar jobs, it is vitally important. Supervisors and employees should keep track of creative work examples and attempt to quantify them.

7. Gossip and Other Personal Habits: They may not seem performance-related to the employee, but some personal habits, like gossip, can detract from job performance and interfere with the performance of others. The specific behaviors should be defined, and goals should be set for reducing their frequency.

8. Personal Appearance/Grooming: Most people know how to dress for work, but in many organizations, there is at least one employee who needs to be told. Examples of inappropriate appearance and grooming should be spelled out, their effects upon the employee’s performance and that of others explained, and corrective actions defined.

9. Team Appraisal: Similar to peer appraisal in that members of a team, who may hold different positions, are asked to appraise each other’s work and work styles. This approach assumes that the team’s objectives and each member’s expected contribution have been clearly defined.

10. Assessment Center: The employee is appraised by professional assessors who may evaluate simulated or actual work activities. Objectivity is one advantage of assessment centers, which produce reviews that are not clouded by personal relationships with employees.

11. MBO (Management by Objectives): The employee’s achievement of objective goals set in concert with his or her manager is assessed. The MBO process begins with action statements such as, “reduce rejected parts to 5 percent.” Ongoing monitoring and review of objectives keeps the employee focused on achieving goals. At the annual review, progress toward objectives is assessed, and new goals are set.

TV Industry

Television is still one of the most popular forms of entertainment and information, with the average British viewer still watching twenty hours or more per week. But the rapid growth of the internet and interactive media is competing strongly for audiences and revenues.

Broadcast Television is going through an extraordinary time of change and challenge.

The Job Profiles and Department overviews available below have been developed by industry experts to help industry newcomers understand the different job roles and the skills required in order to succeed within the Television sector.
Work is underway to develop more job profiles, so you can gain a more in depth understanding of the TV sector.

Increasingly, people with commercial skills and entrepreneurial talent are needed for a sector that must compete globally.

DIRECTOR

In television, Directors work across all genres, including news, sport, documentaries, current affairs, light entertainment, children's programmes, situation comedies, soaps or serial dramas, or one-off dramas. Directors work closely with Producers and/or Writers, embellishing, refining and ultimately realising original ideas into finished programmes. They collaborate closely with all Heads of Department, including Designers, Camera, Sound, Lighting, and Choreographers. Directors may be employed by broadcasters or work on a freelance basis.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Executive Producers are responsible for the overall quality control of productions, and for ensuring that final products conform to commissioners' specifications. They are part of the team who are responsible for selecting marketable projects and ensuring that every step is taken to guarantee success in the market. They lead the production of a range of television programmes, including dramas, serial dramas, documentaries, drama documentaries, etc.

LOCATION MANAGER

Location Managers research and assess suitable locations, negotiate contracts and payments, and present their findings to Producers and other descision makers. Location Managers must identify, from scripts and from discussions with Directors, Designers or other Heads of Department, the number, types, and sequence of locations required for productions. They identify and use appropriate sources of information to research different locations, and arrange reconnaissance visits (recces) to assess their suitability.

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Production Managers are responsible for all the organisational aspects of production scheduling and budgeting. Production Managers must have highly developed communication skills, and be able to work effectively with all members of the production team, and with actors, other contributors, and members of the public. They need to understand the technical processes involved in television production, including camera, lighting, sound and editing.

RESEARCHER

Researchers originate or develop programme ideas, drawing on their knowledge and understanding of industry requirements, and present their findings to descision makers. Researchers may be briefed by Producers or other decision makers about programme ideas and carry out further development. Researchers must be able to quickly establish a rapport with production personnel, and potential contributors. They must maintain up-to-date contact lists, and be able to access relevant information from various sources, including the internet, libraries and archives.  They source and suggest suitable contributors, demonstrating how their input fits into each production.

E-commerce by Social Networks

Did you know that your musings on Facebook and Twitter are valuable to many businesses such as producers of consumer goods, electronics and cars?
Say, for example, that you’ve just purchased a cell phone, and after using it for a week, you found it had many flaws. Its battery only lasts five hours in standby mode, or it quickly gets too hot for your temple. Can you really complain to the manufacturer and get help? Perhaps not. After all, it is only a Rp 200,000 handset anyway.
What would you do? Well, you could do two things. Complain to the manufacturer or write about it on your Facebook or Twitter. If you lodge a complaint, it will usually fall on deaf ears. So you resort to writing on social networking sites.
The age of social networks has given us Facebook and Twitter to share our disappointments, which smart companies can mine and use to their advantage.
They can use the information gathered from social networking sites to improve their products, provide their employees with the right training or even monitor what their competitors are doing, if they have the right tools.
Businesses should not ignore social networks, especially as Indonesia has the fastest growing number of Facebook users in the world, who are certainly producing a lot of data on a daily basis.
Enda Nasution, a blogger with close to 40,000 followers on Twitter, said that he supported approximately 10 different clients in promoting their products, services and events. He does this by posting tweets or mentioning the product or event his clients wish to promote.
“This is part of their marketing campaign, which does not stand alone and is paired with other campaigns such as advertisements on television, radio and print media.”
According to Enda, the influencers have an assortment of arrangements between them and their clients whose marketing they agree to support. “There are many creative ways to engage an influencer.”
Some people chose to send influencers their products. Unique products, Enda said, had greater chances of being mentioned on Twitter.

Another twitter account holder, Nasta Inda, offers to promote youth-oriented boutiques for free through her account.
However, for her the promotions are more of a trade-off. She said she provided her services for free knowing just how hard it was for small boutiques to get the word out about their products. Nasta said she preferred Twitter over Facebook and BlackBerry Messages because “people have to log in before they access their Facebook accounts.”
Nanda Ivens, Director of Digital, Technology and Consumer at IndoPacific Endelman, said it was important to have influencers engaged with the product as an influencer who “has love for the product” and “believes in the product” sent messages differently from those simply paid to promote.
However, he said, “the backlash against paid tweets can be high.”
Nanda explained that engaging influencers in the product or service allowed them to wrap the message according to their own style and thus avoiding the cut-and-paste hard-sell messages cooked up by the clients.

Mercedes’s Sophisticated Safety Technology

While other global carmakers focus on building green cars, luxury car manufacturer, Mercedes Benz maintains that road safety still cannot be overlooked in the pursuit of getting around safely and conveniently.

The workshop, titled “Mercedes Benz Safety Workshop on The Road to Acci-dent-Free Driving”, was the second of its kind in China, a country where economic growth has been comfortably high, at an average rate of 10 percent over the past 30 years.
The German automaker capitalizes on road safety, as it is an area they know best. The company claims it has been making serious efforts in road safety since it began systematic work in 1939, in which the company’s prime goal was preventing traffic accidents and promoting safe living by technical progress.

Since then, Mercedes has developed numerous technologies to make driving safer, such as an airbag that was brought into production after 13 years of development, strong car frame materials that have been continuously improved over the years and sophisticated new technologies such as radar and stereo camera technology that detect threats while driving.
Mercedes also frequently sends specialists around the world to investigate the causes, sequences and results of accidents that involved Mercedes cars. As of now, the company has analyzed more than 4,000 traffic accidents that involved its cars.
Based on the knowledge gained during these investigations, Mercedes developed many important restraints and assistance systems that became standard in modern cars. One example is Mercedes’ driver and front passenger airbags, which deploy in two stages, depending on the calculated impact severity.
Ralf Bogenrieder, another Mercedes’ senior engineer, said the company utilized an integral approach in implementing road safety, which consists of four phases: safe driving, pre-safety (in which the driver is facing a dangerous situation), crash and post-crash.
Ralf said the company developed different ways in dealing with each phase. For safe driving, for example, Mercedes developed radar sensors to detect threats ahead. For the pre-safe phase, the company developed a seat belt tensioner.

“The seat belt for the front passenger and driver will tighten for a few seconds after the radar sensor detects a threat ahead of the car. It will minimize the crash impact and help save lives,” said Ralf after demonstrating for Asian journalists in the workshop how the system worked.
The same technology has been applied to the braking system. The driver will be alerted by a signal 2.6 seconds before the crash, and if the driver is unaware or has no time to push the brake, the car will automatically engage the emergency brake 0.6 seconds before the impact.
Combining the two systems, which have been introduced on the market, helps reduce fatalities by minimizing the crash impact on drivers and passengers.
Besides seat belts, radars and braking systems, Mercedes equips its cars with other safety systems, which include building light but solid metal frames for to protect passengers and drivers from being maimed in crashes. “Drivers of Mercedes-Benz vehicles are safer on the road than drivers of other car brands,” Dieter said in his speech.