Adding value to your HR role

HR practitioners, how can you add more strategic value to your firm?  By taking at look at the potential risks in your department and having the ability to evaluate and mitigate those risks.

What might some of those risks be? They could be wage and hour issues, or contractor versus employee status, or hiring and firing. Whatever your HR role, or whatever HR situation you get involved in, Michelle Blomberg, JD, MBA (Equinox Business Law Group) has some general advice for you.

Continue reading →

What’s wasting your time?

4864045598_ee7409fd43_mAt the end of the work day, did you get anything done? Accomplish what you were expecting to accomplish? No? What happened—why didn’t you finish the tasks you thought you would finish when you first showed up for work that morning?

Was it you? Or was it others that prevented you from getting your work done?

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Speaking of meetings . . .

At our September business practice dinner, Erica Loynd of DLR Group demonstrated best practices for holding effective meetings.

  • First, she distributed the agenda ahead of time, and in doing so, she engaged the attendees by asking them to share their meeting experiences.
  • Then, she began her presentation by telling the audience how her presentation will go (her agenda).

Those two actions alone helped the audience know what to expect at her presentation. And that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? Your meeting attendees should have a good idea of what to expect when they walk into the meeting (its purpose), and they should be engaged throughout the meeting (that’s right—there will be no opportunity for nodding off). And what about the rest of Erica’s other best practices for holding effective meetings?

  • Appropriate setting
  • Trust
  • Guidelines
  • Meeting record

Thank you, Erica!

Planning to take the PHR exam?

Ben Eubanks blogs about the HR business. According to his About page, “I started writing because I wanted to help make the HR profession better, one HR pro at a time.”

He has a free ebook on how to manage your time while prepping to take the Professional in Human Resources (PHR®) certification exam.

The financial reports you need

Steve Burns, FAIA (Chief Creative Officer at BQE Software, Inc.) knows all about the financial reports that can help you manage your firm’s finances. He presented “Effective Financial Management for Architectural Firms” at SDA’s EDConnect15.

Here’s his recommendation:

  • Billing Summary
  • Detail Bill Report
  • Cash Flow vs Revenue
  • Revenue Summary
  • Profitability
  • Budget vs Actual
  • Budget vs Actual Detail
  • New Business by Project Type
  • Work in Hand
  • Revenue Forecasting

Turn what on?

Field shading, that’s what. In Microsoft Word.

Why?

So you don’t inadvertently type over automatic numbering. So anyone else that might be working in that document won’t inadvertently type over auto numbering.

Help spread the word . . . it’s the smart way to work on Word documents.

To activate field shading:

  • Click the Office button (2007) or the File tab (2010, 2013)
  • Click on Word Options (2007) or Options (2010, 2013)
  • Click Advanced
  • Scroll down to the Show document content group
  • Change the Field shading: window to Always

Make some space on your plan set

Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD) will reject your set of plans right from the beginning, if you don’t allow a space for DPD’s approval stamp.

Are styles important? Duh!

Microsoft Word wizard Dorothy Skans (Parsons Brinckerhoff), shares a thing or two about MS Word styles (version 2007).

Actually styles are, without a doubt, the most important tool in MS Word. Every single thing you do in Word has a style attached. However, for many of you, that style is often “Normal.” Unfortunately, that is the least useful style when creating any document that involves multiple types of formatting.

Every time you manually add bold, italics, font size, numbering, etc., you are slowing your production down. If you take the time in the beginning to create a style for each different type of formatting, you are only one click away from applying that style.

Here are some tips to make it easy to get in the habit of using styles always. Continue reading →

Become the catalyst

Ron Worth (CEO of SMPS) spoke about leadership practices at a past SDA national convention. His focus was on what it takes to become a catalyst within your company and within your membership in professional organizations. Here are a few noteworthy excerpts from his presentation. Continue reading →

I am a Project Manager . . . now what?

A golden oldie excerpt from an SDA member’s white paper published in 2012.

I’ve just been made a project manager.  But now what do I do?

The first thing is to understand the key components of project management: Continue reading →