How to Manage Workaholics

Given the state of the economy, it’s tempting to advise people to work harder and really focus on keeping their jobs. But too much effort at the office can be counterproductive.

We are now in a work smart economy where the focus is on doing more with less. Those seemingly stand-out individuals putting-in long hours may be viewed as less efficient than their more balance-conscience colleagues.

The challenge in managing workaholics is that they are often blind to the negative aspects of their behavior. Workaholics often lose sight of why they are even working and can pull their team members into their world if you aren’t careful.

To prevent the long hours are always better attitude to overtaking the office, managers need to take action:

Don’t be peer-pressured into becoming a workaholic. Avoid allowing yourself and your team to get baited into the workaholic’s schedule. It’s important not to punish your more productive and balanced team members with added timelines and burdens purely created by a wayward workaholic. Ultimately, when you let the team workaholic set the pace you lose control of your own schedule and any hope of keeping your family obligations this holiday season.

Help prioritize their activities. When managing a workaholic, managers must set clear priorities for the tasks at hand. Workaholics are driven to overdo it, so keep the employee focused on a limited set of priorities with defined tasks.    

Set clear boundaries. Workaholics tend to have few boundaries, which can be problematic when working on a team. They are the ones who will e-mail you at 2a.m. looking for feedback on something. Once you have agreed on a set of priorities, set clear boundaries around appropriate communication times and be sure to enforce them.

Encourage extracurricular activities. Talk about the fun you had over the weekend, but also point out how non-office experiences enhanced your creativity on the job. The best way to subtly nudge a workaholic into expanding his or her activities is to tie outside activities to work in some way. If workaholics can see how being healthy or spending some time traveling may help them at work, they may take a stab at it.

Don’t enable. Workaholism can be an addiction, and the last thing you want to do is enable a workaholic by legitimizing the belief that he or she is overloaded. Workaholics often overload themselves.  Avoid offering to pick-up extra work or chip-in on a weekend, because it won’t matter--the workaholic will find something else to fill the void. The best thing you can do is show them what they are missing in the world around them. 
Remember, effort doesn’t always equal results. Workers need to find that sweet spot that allows them to maximize productivity while also maximizing personal time. Be sure to find some balance this holiday season and don’t fall prey to the workholics in your office. 

source: foxbusiness.com

Should You Be Scared Of Inflation?

More than anything else, the financial markets are driven by fear.  Investors fear large, unexpected moves in the markets.  They fear missing out on opportunities.  And, most of all, they fear losing money.

Of course, fear becomes a real factor in the financial markets when a major crisis occurs, such as the bank bailouts in 2008.  Fortunately, these types of events don’t happen all that often.

On a more consistent basis, nothing generates investor fear like the threat of inflation.  Year after year, analysts and experts of all kinds warn of the adverse effects inflation can have on an investment portfolio.

Basically, inflation means the costs of goods and services are rising over a period of time.  As such, each dollar you earn can purchase less and less of those goods and services.

So what makes inflation such a big deal?

Well, if your income level doesn’t keep up with the pace of inflation, you’re essentially taking a pay cut when inflation occurs.  On a limited basis, it’s not a major concern. However, over a long period of time or in large amounts, inflation can be a real issue.

What’s more, severe inflation can lead to social unrest and other major sociopolitical issues.  Clearly, that’s the kind of stuff no one wants to deal with.

With that in mind, you might be wondering if the recent Fed stimulus is a reason to worry about inflation.  After all, many of those critical of the Fed have been citing inflation concerns.  Their argument is that with the Fed “printing” so much money, it will devalue the dollar to the point of significantly eroding our purchasing power.

Here’s the deal with the recent round of quantitative easing (QE3): yes, it should result in some inflation.  However, it’s actually supposed to create inflation.  You see, a certain amount of inflation is actually good for the economy – especially during a recession.

Let me explain…

There are actually several positive benefits to inflation when it is sits at a reasonable level (from 2% to 4% depending on overall economic conditions).

First off, reasonable inflation levels benefit the labor market.  The thing is, companies don’t like lowering wages because it upsets the workforce.  Instead, they can let inflation do their work for them.

Without getting too technical, companies can leave wages flat in tougher periods and inflation will function as a sort of pay cut.  Eventually, this means companies can hire more workers sooner than if inflation wasn’t occurring.

Second, inflation means money sitting in the bank is losing its purchasing power.  So, it makes sense for companies to go spend that money on capital investments, such as plants and equipment.  This capital spending then leads to economic growth.

Finally, when inflation is occurring, it means deflation is being avoiding. Deflation is very bad, even worse than high levels of inflation.  Just think of the Great Depression versus the high inflation of the 1970’s.  Everyone agrees the Great Depression was far worse than the 70’s.

What’s more, the Fed has a good track record of dealing with high inflation – particularly over the last 25 years.  On the other hand, a deflationary spiral is much harder to recover from.

Here’s why this is important to investors…

The first two reasons I mentioned about how inflation can be good are also good for your portfolio.  If a company is doing well enough to hire more workers or purchase capital goods, it should also be posting higher earnings.  And of course, that should translate to a higher stock price.

Let me break that down a bit further.

Suppose we’re in a recession or slow growth period with inflation running a modest 2%.  A company that makes widgets will raise the price of their widgets in line with inflation.  However, they’re holding labor costs steady due to the recession.  That means higher revenues with roughly stable costs (yes, materials costs will also rise, but in most cases labor is the far greater expense).

So what does higher revenue mean if costs stay the same?  Bigger profits.

Now, let’s say our widget company also has $100 million in the bank just sitting there.  If inflation is at 2% and short-term interest rates are paying 1%, then the company is effectively losing money.

So what will they do?  Well, they could buy another widget factory, buy more advanced equipment, acquire another company, expand into a new product, and more.  The payoff from these types of activities is almost certainly higher than what they’d earn saving the money.

Of course, any sort of expansion or addition to the company should result in higher revenues – and likely higher profits as well.  And, that’s exactly what investors are looking for when they buy stocks – in other words, higher stock prices.

Keep in mind, the benefits of inflation have an overarching effect on a portfolio as a whole.  Over time, it will benefit a cross section of companies.  It’s not necessarily the sort of reasoning investor use when purchasing one specific stock.  However, since most investors’ portfolios contain multiple stocks or mutual funds, healthy inflation is a positive for a vast majority of investors.

Bottom line, inflation isn’t nearly as bad as many investors think, especially during a recession.  Just keep an eye on inflation expectations.  As long as the number doesn’t exceed 3% to 4%, there’s nothing to worry about.  Even better, it should actually benefit your portfolio over time.

source: excessreturn.net

UK ‘excited’ over trade with Philippines

LONDON—The Philippines is a “hugely exciting” market where the United Kingdom is keen on boosting reciprocal investment.

Key trade officials here bared this bright outlook, noting that the UK was setting its sights on Southeast Asia as a priority growth area amid the continuing dim prospects in Western economies.

They said the UK hoped to step up trade with growing markets to combat a general sense of pessimism over economic numbers here and in the euro zone.

Nick Baird, chief executive of UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), the state body that links UK firms to the global market, said that British firms were looking at ways to tap the Philippines’ robust economy and invest in major infrastructure, health care and retail-related projects.

“I think that for us, the huge opportunities there are certainly around big infrastructure projects, health… We’re also very interested in areas I would describe as building on and working with countries’ growing middle classes, so [it’s about] providing better education, health services, accessing the consumption of these middle classes through the retail sector,” Baird told Asean reporters on a visit here.



Enjoys Brits’ confidence

Baird said the Philippines enjoyed the confidence of the UK business community, particularly of Richard Lambert, former head of the UK employers group, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), and now chancellor of the University of Warwick, a top British university.

“We have a lot of very strong champions for the Philippine market. I was talking recently to Mr. Lambert, former head of CBI, which is our biggest business organization and he’s saying the Philippines is a hugely exciting market,” said Baird.

The Philippines is currently regarded among the world’s booming markets and is expected to retain in the second semester the 6.1-percent growth rate it posted in the first half of the year.

International credit ratings agencies Moody’s Investors Service, Fitch Ratings, and Standard and Poor’s upgraded the country’s rating to a notch just below investment grade, citing the Philippines’ steady growth pace.

The UK is sending a trade mission to the Philippines this week to touch base with the government and business sector and discuss possible partnerships in social infrastructure and transport.

Participating UK companies include Arup, Tata Steel International, Kier Construction, Tony Gee & Partners, GE Healthcare, Ryder Architecture, IMC Worldwide, SKM Colin Buchanan and KM&T, top firms in construction, design and architecture, project management and consultancy, services and supply chain management, according to the UK Embassy in Manila.

Total bilateral trade between the Philippines from January to August of this year was placed at 512.9 million British pounds (P33.8 billion), a five-percent growth over the same period last year.

‘Asean is very important’

Such an economic glow in the Philippines, also mirrored across the region, is a bright spot amid continuing economic troubles in the euro zone and the slow recovery in the United States. The latest UK growth rate was placed at one percent and the struggle to raise this is expected in the next few years.

“The Asean is really very important to us not just because this is such, collectively, a huge economy, comparable in size to China and Japan, bigger than India, but also because in many of the countries, we have good strong positive relationships,” Baird said.

Expand export capacity

He said the UK hoped to establish greater two-way trade with Asean firms, stepping up both export and inward investments. Currently, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are among the UK’s major trade and investment partners.

More than half of UK exports go to the developed but currently struggling markets and it has only a 1.2-percent share of imports in major growth markets, including the whole of Asean.

“Britain wants to hugely expand its export capacity, with particular focus on the growth markets and, in that, the Asean markets have a special place for us. And second, this is a country that is massively open to foreign investors and companies of all kinds. It’s very easy to set up business here,” he said.

He said the UK aimed to double its trade with each of the Asean countries by 2015. And while concerns about political stability, corruption and business ease may remain, the UK holds the view that there is “far less risk to trade with Asean than there is to trade with China, Africa or India,” he said.

Giving Asia attention

“We have been trading successfully in the last few years in our European backyard and with the United States, but of course those markets are still weak and we need to get much better trading into the big growth markets of Asia, Latin America and Africa,” Baird said.

The UKTI, through the year-old UK Asean Business Council, is hoping to facilitate this exchange through spreading greater Asean market awareness to UK firms, said the council’s executive director, Tom Burden.

“We are working on raising awareness of Asean markets in the UK. It’s really about giving Asia the attention it deserves,” Burden told reporters in a separate briefing.

source: business.inquirer.net