Subject: How Many Of These Did You Know?

A sealed envelope - Put in the freezer for a few hours, then slide a

knife under the flap. The envelope can then be resealed.

(hmm...)

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Use empty toilet paper roll to store appliance cords. It keeps them neat and you can write on the roll what appliance it belongs to.

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For icy door steps in freezing temperatures: get warm water and put

Dawn dish washing liquid in it. Pour it all over the steps. They won't

refreeze. (I wish I had known this for the last 40 years!)

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To remove old wax from a glass candle holder, put it in the freezer for

a few hours Then take the candle holder out and turn it upside down. The

wax will fall out.

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Crayon marks on walls? This worked wonderfully! A damp rag, dipped

in baking soda. Comes off with little effort (elbow grease that is!).

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Blood stains on clothes? Not to worry! Just pour a little hydrogen 

peroxide on a cloth and proceed to wipe off every drop of blood. Works

every time! (Now, where to put the body?) LOL

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Use vertical strokes when washing windows outside and horizontal

for inside windows. This way you can tell which side has the streaks.

Straight vinegar will get outside windows really clean. Don't wash windows

on a sunny day. They will dry too quickly and will probably streak.

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Spray a bit of perfume on the l ight bulb in any room to create a lovely

light scent in each room when the light is turned on

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Place fabric softener sheets in dresser drawers and your clothes will

smell freshly washed for weeks to come. You can also do this with towels

and linen.

John's Note: I also use a half sheet in my shoes to keep the odor out

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Candles will last a lot longer if placed in the freezer for at least 3

hours prior to burning.

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To clean artificial flowers, pour some salt into a paper bag and add the

flowers. Shake vigorously as the salt will absorb all the dust and dirt

and leave your artificial flowers looking like new! Works like a charm!

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To easily remove burnt on food from your skillet, simply add a drop or

two of dish soap and enough water to cover bottom of pan, and bring to

a boil on stove top.

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Spray your TUPPERWARE with nonstick cooking spray before pouring

in tomato based sauces and there won't be any stains.

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Wrap celery in aluminum foil when putting in the refrigerator and it will

keep for weeks. Also, place a paper towel in a zip lock baggie with the

mushrooms, onions, lettuce, etc. The towel will absorb the moisture.

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When boiling corn on the cob, add a pinch of sugar to help bring out the

corn's natural sweetness. Or you can cook it in a microwave--3 min. each ear.======================================

Cure for headaches: Take a lime, cut it in half, and rub it on your

forehead. The throbbing will go away.

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To get rid of itch from mosquito bites, try applying soap on the area

and you will experience instant relief.

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Ants, ants, ants everywhere ... Well, they are said to never cross a chalk

line. So, get your chalk out and draw a line on the floor or wherever ants

tend to march. See for yourself.

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Use air-freshener to clean mirrors.! It does a good job and better still,

leaves a lovely smell to the shine

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When you get a splinter, reach for the scotch tape before resorting to

tweezers or a needle. Simply put the Scotch tape over the splinter, and

then pull it off. Scotch tape removes most splinters painlessly and easily

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Now look what you can do with Alka Seltzer........

Clean a toilet.

Drop in two Alka Seltzer tablets; wait twenty minutes; brush and flush.

The citric acid and effervescent action clean vitreous China .

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Clean a vase.

To remove a stain from the bottom of a glass vase or cruet, fill with water

and drop in two Alka Seltzer tablets.

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Polish jewelry.

Drop two Alka Seltzer tablets into a glass of water and immerse the

jewelry for two minutes.

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Clean a thermos bottle.

Fill the bottle with water, drop in four Alka Seltzer tablets, and let soak

for an hour (or longer, if necessary).

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Unclog a drain.

Clear the sink drain by dropping three Alka Seltzer tablets down the

drain followed by a cup of Heinz White Vinegar. Wait a few minutes,

and then run the hot water.

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Do your friends a favor. Pass this timely (and some not-so-timely)

information on to a friend! I just did.

Some Famous Theories on Employee Motivation

For productivity to be achieved by organizations factors like employee motivation, job satisfaction, commitment and skills have to be taking into consideration. When employees are satisfied with their jobs, they are motivated to give their level best to attain organizational goals. This job satisfaction can come from different factors that link to motivation at work. The need  to increase productivity which will lead to increase in profitability makes it necessary for managers to understand various motivational theories. Organizations have different strategies they use to motivate their employees. They understand that if the staff is not motivated, he or she will not be satisfied, the staff would not put out the best job. Overall the company’s level of productivity can be affected.

Strategies to Motivate Employees

Some strategies used to motivate employees are :-

o   Performance Pay and Rewards

o   Flexitime

o   Job Empowerment

o   Job Enrichment

o   Job Rotation

We will take about performance pay and rewards system and how effective they are in motivating employees. Performance related pay is generally used where employee performance cannot be appropriately measured in terms of output produced or sales achieved. Like piece-rates and commissions, performance related pay is a form of incentive pay. A reward is a work outcome of positive value to the individual. Some argue that this kind of system can cause dispute about how performance is measured and whether an employee has done enough to be rewarded, it may also create rivalry between employees or managers.

Motivational theories on Employee Motivation

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 – 1917) brought forward the notion that workers are motivated primarily by pay. His Theory of Scientific Management argued that worker do not normally enjoy work so they must be controlled and supervised. Managers should break down production into small parts, workers should get training and tools to help them work better on their job. He notes that workers are then paid for the number of items the make in a period of time, as a result workers are encouraged to work hard and maximise their productivity. His approach is closely related to autocratic management style where employees do as they are told with minimum contributions of ideas. But is approach can be boring as workers do the same things all the time. In the end workers are not so motivated.

Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970) along with Frederick Herzberg (1923-) introduced the Neo-Human Relations School in the 1950’s, which focused on the psychological needs of employees. Maslow’s theory states that there are five levels of human needs which employees need to have fulfilled at work to be fully satisfied. Below are the list of needs in hierarchy. He says that only once a lower level of need has been fully met, would a worker be motivated by the opportunity of having the next need up in the hierarchy satisfied. For example a person who is dying of hunger will be motivated to achieve a basic wage in order to buy food before worrying about having a secure job contract.

He says that managers have to give their workers incentives to workers in order to help them fulfill each need in turn and progress up the hierarchy. Managers need to see that workers have different things that motivate them and do not all move up the hierarchy at the same pace. They may therefore have to offer a slightly different set of incentives from worker to worker.

Frederick Herzberg

Frederick Herzberg believed in a two-factor theory of motivation. This theory states that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are driven by different factors - motivation and hygiene factors, respectively. Motivators are more concerned with the actual job itself. For example, how exciting is the work? How much opportunity it gives for more responsibility, recognition and promotion. For example a worker will only turn up to work if a business has provided a reasonable level of pay and safe working conditions but these factors will not make him work harder at his job once he is there. Importantly Herzberg viewed pay as a hygiene factor which is in direct contrast to Taylor who viewed pay as piece-rate in particular.

Herzberg notes that managers can motivate employees by creating a democratic setting in the work place and by improving the nature and content of the job they do. Some of the methods managers could use to achieve this are:

Job enlargement – workers being given a greater variety of tasks to perform (not necessarily more challenging) which should make the work more interesting.

Job enrichment - involves workers being given a wider range of more complex, interesting and challenging tasks surrounding a complete unit of work. This should give a greater sense of achievement.

Empowerment - means delegating more power to employees to make their own decisions over areas of their working life.

In conclusion, both Maslow and Herzberg, suggest that satisfied employees tend to be more productive, creative and committed to their organizations. If an employee is not satisfied with work the person might not be motivated to go to work, this can affect production in the case of a manufacturing company whereby the production process needs every one to be at work all the time. Furthermore, unsatisfied employees can decide to quit the company all of a sudden causing general productivity to reduce. Good ways to motivate employees would be through methods like promotions, job enrichment, job rotation and communications. Employees that feel like their needs are taken care of by their company tend to be more satisfied. 

Introduction to Social Media as an Effective Strategy for Growth.

There has been much buzz about Social CRM recently with many companies looking to new ways to embrace SCRM as part of their strategies. Some like Dell computers and Air Asia are among companies that have been leveraging the power of social media over the years. Others are still slow to better understand and utilize social networks to improve their business.  Today social media consumers are educated and influential people whose opinions can shape and break even the biggest organization.  To understand Social Customer Relationship Management it is important that customer relationship management is understood already. Customer relationship management is a process used by both small and large organizations for over 20years now in staying abreast with their customers. Social CRM still represents Customer Relationship Management (CRM) but evolved with a back-end process and system for managing customer relationships and data in an efficient and process-centric way. The growth in technology has resulted in rapid advancements in the way business is carried out today. A few years back organizations relied heavily on mass media advertising to get their message out to their target market. 

Times are changing now with customer behavior not lacking behind either. Today, consumers are in the forefront and are driving force to any organizations success. Organizations that take lightly embracing social CRM as part of their strategy would be left behind in the long run. According to Paul Greenberg, an expert in SCRM pointed out that Social CRM is designed to engage the customer in a two-way conversation in order to provide a mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. This report will be discussing the difference between traditional customer relationship management and social customer relationship management. We will also briefly understand some social CRM trends, and take recommendations on how organizations can embrace social CRM strategies into their business.

The difference between Traditional CRM and Social CRM

While the traditional CRM has been around for a very long time, social CRM is a fresh area in marketing with many organizations still looking for ways to better understand and implement it as a part of their business strategies. Traditional CRM is about identifying, attracting and relating with clients in a way that keeps them coming back to the company using technology as a means. CRM focuses on securing and maintain large amounts of customer data which might sometimes become complex and difficult to understand by users who are not experts in the field. If CRM is implemented properly it can help organizations reduce cost, attract more customers and make more quality decisions. Social CRM on the other hand is much simpler compared to traditional CRM. Technology has made it possible for businesses to have access to low cost but very effective tools that make social media marketing more effective.

Social CRM strategies and technology offerings should complement, but not replace Traditional CRM software, a platform organizations conventionally used to keep and analyze customer data. Social CRM can play a vital role in enhancing traditional CRM efforts adding more value by augmenting traditional systems. While many Traditional CRM solutions are highly regarded and excellent at automating processes, managing the customer data and provide management reports to track sales, Social CRM focuses on the relevant conversations taking place online and offline.

Social CRM not only addresses how you will respond to new kind of customers and the demands that they put on your company, but also how to can engage social media influencers like bloggers, independent analysts and customers who are passionate about brands (Panesar, 2010). Today’s consumers are smarter and more involved in the production process more than ever before making Social CRM important. Traditional CRM as seen in the diagram below, fig 1.0 obtained from a chess media group research in 2010, shows how traditional CRM work. Sales, marketing, services and support are all organized by the company and tailored to attract new customers while retaining existing customers.

Fig 1.0 The Traditional CRM Process. Source:Jacob Morgan.

CRM strategy, enabled by procedures and technologies, is architected to deal with customer relationships as a way for extracting the best value from customers over the lifetime of the relationship. These strategies typically focus on the operational responses required to manage the customer. CRM tools are applied to help secure and maintain customer data, sometimes these tools can be complicated and different to learn making training users costly. Customer Relationship Management laid more emphasis on obtaining and tracking large amounts of data about customers to help organizations find ways to get customers to patronize them more frequently. Some common CRM tools are Salesforce, Zoho, and Microsoft Dynamics. All of them are normally supported by a CRM strategy with technology simply an enabler. The issue with the traditional CRM is that not much is done when it comes to customer support. The firm’s interaction with its customers is more of a one way interaction. Collaboration and customer involvement is lacking.

Michael Fauschette defined Social CRM as the tools and procedures that encourage effective customer interactions leveraging the collective intelligence of a much larger customer community with a goal of increasing intimacy between a company and its prospect customers. With social media, though, companies are no longer in control of the relationship. Instead, customers (and their highly influential virtual networks) are now driving the conversation, which can trump a company’s marketing, sales and service efforts with unprecedented immediacy and reach (IBM Report, 2011). Companies are engaged in a two way communication process with customers with Social CRM. According to Global World Tech (2011) the major difference between traditional CRM and Social CRM is that Social CRM is based on a strategy for customer engagement and not customer databases management. A lot has been written on social customer relationship management and its rapidly growing importance in engaging customers. Social media makes it easier for companies to relate with customers more than ever before.

Fig 1.1 Social CRM. Source:Jacob Morgan.

According to Woodcock & Green 2010, customers would trust friends and colleagues more compared to TV advertising or corporate communications. They talk to one another like never before about products they are associated with or like using social media networks.   These conversation are a times grim, for amusement, short, angry, happy and intense. Opinions, ideas and thoughts are shared through blogs, videos, photos or just be leaving status as it is called on Facebook or tweets as it is on Twitter. Social CRM creates a shift of brand control from the organization to customers as customers opinions can be amplified very quickly affecting brand performance.

Marketing brands is becoming less about the push messages approach rather about the brands being part of the dynamic conversation actively listening in on customers, serving them with relevant content and experience to earn their trust. Trust earned can be very effective in enhance profit growth in the mid and long term as customers that trust a venture remain loyal to that venture even giving out good ‘word of mouth’ which boost leads and sales. Businesses rely on customers to keep them in business. Without customers, a company cannot achieve profitable set out goals. Social CRM Technologies help to bring these needed customers closer.