6 Ways Charity Work Creates a Cheerful Culture

6 Ways Charity Work Creates a Cheerful Culture Hosting charity events in the workplace  has a  huge impact,  not only on those youre raising money to support, but also for the team behind the event and the people involved.  Supporting a charity should always be about helping others in a selfless way, however it  also provides a special opportunity  to bring  people together for a common cause, promoting generosity and cohesion among colleagues. If youre trying to find a way to boost your employees morale, why not trying  focussing  your efforts on  people outside your organisation who are doing it tough?  The flow on benefits to the office will wow you! 1. Productivity and team work Charity work doesnt care about bonuses, targets  or  hitting the top of a leader board. Everyone taking part has the same end goal, and the only way to get there is if you work together. This can be a breath of fresh air if you work in a competitive environment, as it will help you bring back a sense of teamwork and pride amongst a group of people. Wave  goodbye to the competitive atmosphere of the office, and be prepared to welcome a newly found sense of togetherness. 2. Pride and passion Theres nothing more satisfying than finishing a task, and having accomplished something incredible. Taking part in charity projects can boost this sense of pride tenfold, as you know its not only for personal gain. As well as personal pride, it can also boost employees pride in the business they work for, and this is all the more important now were in an age where employee advocacy has so much importance. 3. Ethics and happiness at work Everyone, no matter how radical they may seem in their approach to work, has a sense of ethics or morals which helps them do what they do. Getting involved with charity projects will help develop these ethics in your employees, which  will  in turn boost the ethical value of your business.  Employees are a companys  biggest asset; without a team of ethical, hardworking people, youll never have a ethical, hardworking organisation. 4. Volunteer days Something that has grown in popularity over the past few years is businesses allowing their employees a set amount of volunteer days each year on top of paid leave and holidays. Not only is this a fantastic benefit  to provide for a workforce, it also boosts the business in a few ways. First off, potential new employees will see that youre a company who hold volunteer and charity work of high importance. Its also great for existing employees as they will feel as though the company wants them to do well at something else other than just their job for monetary gain. All of these benefits come on top of actually having a few spare days a year to help others, which is the most important factor! 5. Fun Not only does charity raise awareness and money for some great causes, but it can also be an injection of fun into an otherwise boring office. Bringing employees together for a day of fun shakes things up a bit and makes the office more interesting. Theres also an array of super fun fundraising  ideas that would make even the most serious of people laugh. 6. Charity ideas: Bake sale Sponsored run Dance off Skydiving Sponsored silence Auctions Bag-packing at a local supermarket Talent show or concert Football or sports event Karaoke And many more. For more fundraising ideas check out this  list. Main image credit: Shutterstock

Inertia and Persistence as it Relates to Your Career - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Inertia and Persistence as it Relates to Your Career - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Inertia and Persistence. Inertia inhibits us from moving forward in our careerâ€"persistence is what we need to keep us moving forward in our career. Inertia I am a baby boomer! I was raised to be an employee to go to work for an employer who would take care of me. We were also raised to be loyal to our employer no matter what. Therefore, we created a lot of inertia in our careers. Once we started something, we stayed and stayed and stayed well until we got laid off or something happened to wake us up. For me, that was in 2002 with a near fatal bicycle accident. That accident set in motion a series of actions that has led me to where I am today. Until then, inertia had me stuck. In todays workplace, inertia is a dangerous thing. The world is changing fast, and you need to keep moving forward with your career. Persistence I have been interviewing entrepreneurs, and one key word keeps coming upâ€"persistence. The definition I like the best is: persisting, especially in spite of opposition, obstacles, discouragement, etc.; persevering The opposite of inertia. I have helped multiple clients write their brand stories over the last year. In listening to them tell me their stories, I found a common themeâ€"they have been laid off multiple times over the last dozen years. All have gotten back on their feet and moved forward in their careers. They showed persistence in spades. Before that first layoff, inertia kept them from preparing for the next career pivot. However, once they were shoved forward and, often, off a figurative career cliff, they did not stop until they landed. Unfortunately, inertia would set in again until that next shove. See the pattern: We get comfortable, and inertia sets in We get shoved into action Our persistence kicks into gear We land, and inertia returns I have seen this over and over again. I have done this in my life. I bet you have, too! How can we stay persistent and not let inertia settle in? Take breaks. Yes, take a vacation. Take a day off before you become exhausted. Celebrate success. Stop, sit, and digest the good feelings when you have a success. Analyze failures, but return to the feelings of success. When failures occurâ€"which they willâ€"you have the option to go back to that time of success. Recapture those feelings. Always look forward. Be ever vigilant. Persistence will keep your career moving forward. Marc Miller â€" Career Pivot Check out my book Repurpose Your Career â€" A Practical Guide for Baby Boomers Do not forget to follow me on Twitter or FaceBook

How to Activate Your Digital Employer Brand Like LOreal

How to Activate Your Digital Employer Brand Like LOreal Getting your employees involved is one of the most effective means of building a strong employer brand and in turn boost your talent attraction efforts. So how can you get your employees involved in the employer branding for your organisation and whats the next big thing for digital employer branding? I spoke to  Alexander Onish who is the digital employer branding manager of LOreal, a front runner in social and digital employer branding, to get some of his best advice and insights! Listen to the interview on iTunes, SoundCloud or keep reading for a summary. And dont forget to subscribe to the Employer Branding Podcast. What  LOreal do and how Alexander fits in: About LOreal:    LOreal as you probably know is the world leader in cosmetics, beauty and grooming around the world. We have companies in more than 70 countries, were selling products in around 130 and basically we are on a mission to help provide confidence to men and women around the world, by making them feel better about themselves, protecting them against skin cancer, making them put together their optimum version of themselves, when they are presenting themselves externally and ultimately trying to make the world a more beautiful place. Alexanders Role: In terms of what I do there, Im in charge of HR communication and specifically with digital communication. Im not at all from an HR background. In fact Im coming from the e-commerce and digital marketing world, where I was working on Kiehls in the US for about 2 years. And now my job is to use the same digital tools that I used for selling skin care in order to help attract top talent, which means managing the career websites and all of the campaigns that drive traffic there. CRM campaigns with our email database, social media and content strategy, as well as employee feedback tools. And kind of on the side, just because I am an additional person working in HR, Im helping with the upscaling of the entire HR community and helping introduce and onboard tools that help digitalise and get people to understand the objectives of why digital is so important even if were not talking about marketing. The objectives of digital employer branding at LOreal: Well Ill go first through a principle that we like to use which is the loyalty of the principle, which follows the consumer on the main stages of their awareness of a product: Their evaluation of a product; Their purchase of a product; Their post purchase advocacy of that product. So in the HR world we use the same loop, but we replace the purchase with apply. So we want to make sure that were developing campaigns and working with platforms in order to increase the awareness of LOreal as an employer. Then give all the tools possible to help evaluate the benefits and possible options that you could have with a career. The next step is to apply; and then once youre inside LOreal, to of course advocate on behalf of the company, in order to use the power of the network and the recommendation and the word-of-mouth to make more and more people come to join us. So, our employer branding team is separate from the talent acquisition team; but we work very closely in tandem with them in order to make this loop as solid as possible. We focus as much as possible on the awareness and evaluation parts of the loop and of course on developing different platforms and procedures for inciting advocacy. LOreals  employer branding  methodology: Think digital:  In employer branding we love to be, I guess, as digital as possible and what we do is a lot of testing and learning. In the digital world its better to to launch something and then improve after you have learned about how it  works, so test and learn. So when we see a new platform or a new system thats not necessarily meant for employer branding or HR communication, we say what could we do with this? Is there a way that we can hack it? Is there a way that we can use this media or take some of our existing content and put on this platform to reach people that we havent reached before. Share content: We have tons and tons of great content that were creating ourselves, but were also collecting from all parts of the business all around the world and a platform, like for example SoundCloud, which normally is for DJs and artists to showcase their newest tracks, could actually be used in fact for showcasing interviews of people and we use that as a content repository and we use that to share sounds if you will on all of our other channels. Some hard lessons  learnt: Know your audience: Just because you want to talk about something that you think is attractive to a candidate, or that you really want to share about your company because you think its really cool, it doesnt mean that the candidate actually cares or that the message is going to even work on social media or digital channels, or even off-line. So first you have to really analyse the things that youre actually credible to speak about and then of course intersect them as I was saying before with whats attractive; then you have something worth of talking about. Get employees involved: Also I guess say that its been an uphill battle and in some cases specifically with a project like Glassdoor.  You know its a place where people could certainly air their dirty laundry and as it has traditionally been a place where we dont want employees to go because we were afraid of what theyre going to say. But in fact if we treat this opportunity right and try and re-frame how the platform is perceived, or how other new digital platforms are perceived, then by showing what the possible benefit is or that they wont  be ignored anymore then we help try to change the discourse. Experiment: If youre trying to launch something new or youre trying to launch something interesting, that you think is really going to make a difference, with employee advocacy, or with social media strategy, or a new candidate portal for example, that really takes itself out of the corporate environment; dont be afraid to challenge the norm because the only way that youre going to be able to make any change if you may be think of further than what people want you to go then you bring it back a little bit. But there are  certainly going to be obstacles in your way, especially in the HR world where people are certainly concerned about privacy and people are certainly concerned about ensuring that we keep our image and our reputation as positive as possible. The future of  digital employer branding: Create a good experience: Its not about employer branding anymore, its certainly about the employee experience and giving the power if you will, back to the employees. We talk a lot about advocacy and employee engagement and we want our employees to be sharing content and sharing their stories to their networks, which essentially does all of the work for us. I think that in the future, there wont be employer branding teams when you have an engaged workforce that knows exactly what and how you want them to share. Employees will be more involved:  When I talk more about giving the power back to employees, I think its about creating platforms and encouraging the use of platforms, that get people to leave feedback and get people to play an active role in the construction of the future of the company; because first of all when people do in fact share they really feel like this culture is something that they can be proud of and something that theyve constructed them self. But also you create a much better version of the company, so Glassdoor is a really important platform for not just for recruiting, but also for employer branding and getting people to go there and know that this is a place that we want them to share their experience. So employer branding can be a much bigger role than you think as a change agent, because the tools are normally perceived as external are also internal. But were also working on launching internal engagement apps that actually encourage people to read news stories about us and share them on their own personal networks and that also gets people embedded into our culture, plus becoming advocates as well. Follow Alexander on Twitter  @AlexOnish  and subscribe to the Employer Branding Podcast.

MBS Graduates University of Manchester Careers Blog

MBS Graduates University of Manchester Careers Blog Top 5 online resources for MBS graduates To give you a helping hand as you head out into the big bad world of job seeking I thought it would be useful to list our   top 5 online resources for Manchester Business School graduates. I hope you find them useful. Prospects ‘Options with your subject’   Includes a range of job profiles and information on typical employers, work experience and a breakdown of what graduates in this area have gone on to do  in a range of subjects. Starting Point Series  A range of helpful job seeking resources including help on applications, interviews and specific help on careers in investment banking, consultancy, economics and human resource management. Sector Pages   Really useful information and links to further resources and job sites. Get an insight into different sectors such as finance, HR, recruitment training and management consultancy. TARGET Finance   A great place to find finance related graduate jobs, schemes, internships and training as well useful profiles on employers in the sector. Inside Careers   provides careers information for a range of business sectors including banking, accountancy, management consultancy and actuaries. The site also advertises s range of graduate internships and jobs. Remember although your studies are over your contact with the Careers Service doesn’t end now. As a graduate youll receive full services for the next 2 years. This will include information, advice and guidance as well as access to vacancies and events listed in Careerslink. Find out more about eligibility and services here. Graduate

This is why FOMO is actually completely ok to feel - Debut

This is why FOMO is actually completely ok to feel - Debut This post is written by a member of the Debut Student Publisher Network. Read on for  Christines thoughts on the  millennial plague that affects us all: FOMO. Otherwise known as the fear of missing out. You know. Its that niggling feeling that everyones going to the same party and youre not invited, or youre not feeling up for going. FOMO is the plague that looms over adult life, and yeah, it sucks. Not only will it potentially haunt you through  your first steps to  adulthood, but also it is perpetuated by your peers. Youve probably heard things like,  Oh, come on, its ONE party, you should definitely come! or Dont be such a party pooper. The fear of missing out can be awful.  But Im here to tell you why its totally okay. 1. Because  peer pressure is silly What makes  FOMO so effectively terrible is that it relies on The Power of Peer Pressure. FOMO comes from the idea that you are not having fun but everyone else is. Youd be home, snuggled up, when suddenly you think, Oh no why am I  at home by myself?  Why did you turn down the idea of fun? Heres the thing. You shouldnt let other people tell you what is fun and what isnt. And if youve said no to going to a party,  they should respect that decision. 2.  Because expectations dont necessary mirror reality FOMO  makes you  feel bad because you see and/or hear proof of other people having fun at thinsg  you didnt go to. Keep this in mind: youre only shown those fun parts. Just because these people had fun at this One Thing you didnt go to doesnt mean you would have. Heck, it doesnt even mean  they had as much fun as theyve portrayed. An Instagram post does not a party make, my friend. 3. Because fun comes in many shapes and sizes What you find fun might not be what other people find fun and vice versa. For example, Im really not a party person, but many  have tried to convince me to hit da  clubz.  Deep down,  I know its not my thing. Having said that, I still felt left out and awkward when the people around me told me the  stories about what they got up to. The FOMO was  so real, but in the end I was grateful for it; I looked at why I felt that way and what part of their stories I found myself wanting to be in. Feeling FOMO helps you figure out what you find fun and what you dont, and what I ended up doing was reaching a compromise that suited me. 4. Because  everyone feels it Talk to anyone you know. Ask them, Hey, was there ever a time you felt like you were missing out on fun stuff? Spoiler alert: they will all say yes. FOMO is perpetuated by the idea that youre the only person in the universe who is not having fun, and the moment you realise that everyones going to feel FOMO at some point in their lives, its super comforting. 5. Because recharging is super healthy Look, missing one party and taking the time to just recharge and breathe is super important. It is totally okay to not want to go out and be social and spend energy in an environment that is super draining occasionally. Make like a KitKat and take a break, man. Youll be grateful for it when everyone else has hangovers the next day. Youd have spent a relaxing night in (especially if you spend it listening to one of our night in playlists). 6. Because therell probably be another chance Sometimes you get FOMO when theres a party that screams, Im a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!But to be perfectly clear, there is a distinctly  high probability that there will be another party to go to if you regret not being there for the one you missed. Its up to you to figure out if you want to act on that FOMO or not, and youll most likely have the chance to do so, so dont sweat it. 7. Because youve made your decision Even if you decide after all of this to definitely stay in and never go to another party again, or if you decide to use your FOMO to encourage yourself not to miss out the next time you can, its your decision what you want to do with your time. Dont worry so much about what other people are doing or saying, because your choice is yours and FOMO is okay either way. Download the Debut app and you could totally grab yourself a summer internship  way before anyone else. Follow Christine  on Twitter  @slytherchris Connect with Debut on  Facebook  and  Twitter

Having A Capsule Wardrobe For Work

Having A Capsule Wardrobe For Work Having A Capsule Wardrobe For Work || Three Looks To Create Right Now How To Wear, Outfits, Work Outfit February 22, 2017 0 Comments  Top: similar @ Nordstrom Pants: Tobi Understand This Cigarette Pants Purse: C/O Coach Dinky Crossbody Bag Shoes: Nike Air Max TheaEveryone should have a go-to outfit on days when they don’t want to stand in front of a closet, stare at it, and stress.  If you have to dress for work 5 days a week, this scenario I just painted has probably happened to you. For most of us, the concept of the capsule wardrobe is not new â€" find what works for you, and stick with it. Whether you’ve gotten around officially defining what that look is for you,  it’s never too late to start thinking about it.Today on Cubicle Chic, I’m sharing my “template” is, when it comes to something that ALWAYS works for me, Jessica, yours truly. But that’s not it. I have 2 other career blogger friends whose styles are just on-point and I absolutely adore. I am sharing what their go-to outfits are with you too! Keep scrolling to the bottom to see 2 more impeccably professional yet fashionable looks!White Top + High-Waisted Pants + Leather Sneakers Here’s the deal â€" the color white in an outfit always conveys professionalism and efficiency (think about what doctors and chefs wear). Plus, you and I both know it, white goes with everything. Topshop $ 40 Get Sale Alert Topshop $ 68 Get Sale Alert Chelsea28 $ 69 Get Sale Alert Gibson $ 49 Get Sale Alert High-waisted pants tend to elongate me and that’s why I love them. But I have to be very careful of where the hem of the pants hit â€" it has to be at a place that’s flattering for my body frame. And what kind of shoes I wear also makes a big difference.Leather sneakers is a new trend I discovered lately. I’ve always secretly wished we could wear sneakers to the office, and when I saw the Nike Airmax Thea in leather, I knew it was the one. The leather material makes them look a lot less casual, and my feet always thank me at the end of the day in the office. But remember they’re still sneakers after all, so don’t wear them to an interview or a presentation.Lastly, pair it with a simple, neutral-tone and classic handbag â€" you’re good to go! Coach $ 450 Get Sale Alert Coach $ 395 Get Sale Alert Coach $ 395 Get Sale Alert Coach $ 595 Get Sale Alert  Top: similar @ Nordstrom Pants: Tobi Understand This Cigarette Pants Purse: C/O Coach Dinky Crossbody Bag Shoes: Nike Air Max TheaNow, if this isn’t the type of look you see yourself wearing, I have two more â€" and I want to introduce to you Michele Lando from Write Styles, and Chanèle McFarlane from Do Well Dress Well. These are both fabulously stylish and total #GirlBosses who have amazing tips on how to dress for the office.Structured Blazer + Flowy Blouse + Skinny Pants [or] Pencil SkirtMichele has a simplistic and sometimes monochromatic approach when it comes to creating her go-to outfit. This look works for most body type, and as long as you find a quality blazer, and keep colors to a minimum, you are sure to look chic and professional like Michele does here!Neutral Color Dress + Print or Floral Blazer + Statement NecklaceOn the other end of the spectrum, Chanele is an absolute expert in mastering color in her outfits. Honestly, if you want to see how colorful outfit s can be done professionally tastefully, check out her blog!!Here Chanele pairs a simple black dress with a super bright and floral blazer, and finished the look with a statement necklace. Voila â€" this outfit is bold and bright, but so meticulously chic and polished!All Cubicle Chic Photography in this post are by Natalie Alvarado @ Stylenfuse

Noticing the Tightrope

Noticing the Tightrope The Spaces in Between by Kecky My husband came home Thursday night, a few minutes after I wrote this post, despite the late hour we sat on the couch talked listened. I told him why Ive been feeling heavy lately, laying my fears out on the table allowing myself to cry be held. He said everything in the husband handbook very sweetly securely: I believe in you. This is where you belong. Youre so, so good at this. Its not a fluke. Well be OK. Im behind you. Thats what she said. And they were all comforting, sweet words that made me feel almost invincible. But then he said something Ive never heard before, that made me smile allow the trust to sit into my heart: Babe, you seem to walk a tightrope every day. And sometimes,   you stop yourself look down say, Holy crapballs! Im walking on a tightrope! And sometimes it scares you you stop walking for a bit, but youre the only person Ive known who has always, always, always started walking the tightrope again. Todays just a day that youre noticing the tightrope how scary it is.   And tomorrow, I know youll start walking again. Im the smartest woman for marrying this man.