Planning and Hosting Meetings (View Discussions)

How to Create an Effective Meeting Agenda

If your company meetings quickly turn into a free-for-all conversation hour, you're not alone. Plenty of workers leave a meeting each day claiming that it was a complete waste of time, so why even bother? Meetings are supposed to be held with a specific purpose. Whether it's to brainstorm for ideas, assign tasks, or inform the group, there's a goal to achieve. For the most part, an agenda can be used to help you do just that.

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Human Resources and Job Search (View Discussions)

Section 125: Complicated Term for Simple Savings

A Section 125-sometimes called a Cafeteria Plan-is a federal tax code provision that allows companies to deduct certain qualified expenses from an employee's paycheck on a pre-tax basis. These expenses include health insurance premiums, dental insurance premiums, 401(k) contributions, certain medical expenses and even dependant day care costs.

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Organization and Workflow (View Discussions)

10 Tips for Effective Sales

Anyone will tell you that doing sales work requires a special kind of person. For office professionals working in a sales office, you often have to become quite sales savvy to be successful in such a position, even though you aren't necessarily out in the field. It's important to be able to relate when assisting a sales team as it can often be very difficult otherwise. A successful sales person should have the following qualities:

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Software and Web Tools (View Discussions)

How to do a Mail Merge

I bet that you've heard a lot about how the mail merge feature can make your life easier when you need to send out the same letter to a lot of different people. And yes, that's true! Mail merge can set up envelopes or documents to send to hundreds of destinations, provided, of course, that you are sending off a form letter. Doing a mail merge is as easy as 1,2,3,4:

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Air, Hotel, and Transportation (View Discussions)

Review: Clear Card Makes Travel Easier

If you've been to the airport post 9-11, you know how big of a deal security is. Long lines shuffling toward an endless barrage of security exercises: place boarding pass in mouth, take shoes off, place in bin, remove laptop, place in bin, stand at attention at metal detector and wait for the wave through. It's no easy feat especially if you're in a hurry. When you're a business traveler, these hassles not only slow you down, but because you likely travel on short notice, it could be the difference between catching a flight and missing it. If you haven't heard, there is an alternative.

Clear is your first class ticket through security. It doesn't eliminate TSA's security procedures, but it allows you to navigate through the lines 30 percent faster.

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Management and Communication (View Discussions)

How to Tactfully Handle & Minimize Interruptions

I doubt that we can eliminate all interruptions. However, learning to tactfully deal with and limit them is a skill we should all have up our sleeves. But is there such a thing as discretion when dealing with constant interruptions? Don't we just have to bite the bullet and catch up with our work later? Believe it or not, there is a better way.

If you've read some of my articles on OfficeArrow, you know that it's not uncommon for me to reference one article in particular, "Learning How to Say No", by Chrissy Scivique. If you haven't read it already, now is the perfect time.

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Organization and Workflow (View Discussions)

Creating an Elevator Speech

The term "Elevator Speech" has become a familiar buzzword among business professionals in recent years, but what is it? How can you create one and use it to sell yourself and your business? Today we'll take a look at the answers to these questions.

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Planning and Hosting Meetings (View Discussions)

8 Fun Activities to Help Build Your Team

Want to add some fun to your staff meetings and build team rapport at the same time? Try incorporating team building exercises into your next meeting. Based in problem solving of a light hearted nature, the purpose is to get your team working together, laughing together and most importantly, learning more about each other. Team building exercises help to personalize our co-workers. Jack Welch, often touted as one of the best leaders of the last quarter century, says that creating an informal work environment is one of the keys to business success. "If you take the stiffness out of it," Welch said in an MSNBC interview, "you get down to people dealing with people."

Below are a few exercises to help in your teambuilding efforts. Most of these exercises can be completed in less than 20 minutes, and require few or no props.

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Organization and Workflow (View Discussions)

How to Make a Decision

In today's ruthless business world, office professionals simply cannot be indecisive in the workplace. We're often faced with complex issues to which a solution is not obvious. Many of us call these solutions "executive decisions" but we all need guidance in formulating a plan to get there. If indecision plagues you, as it does all of us from time to time, this comprehensive guide to decision making will work wonders.

Don't confuse the idea of decision making with good decision making. While these tools are great at helping you reach a decision, it doesn't necessarily mean you'll make the right one every time. Of course, you can flip a coin or trust your Magic 8 Ball to prophesize your decision destiny, but if you're looking for a more calculated approach, I've got just the fix.

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Job Satisfaction and Motivation (View Discussions)

Integrity in the Workplace

In the last two companies that I worked for, a fortune 100 company and a start-up beverage company, there have been issues with professional integrity. In both instances my bosses-a marketing executive at one company, and the CEO at the other-were fired for lying on their expense reports. There is a much uglier, legal term for what they did. But semantics aside, the end result is the same. They lost their jobs, and irreparably damaged their reputations.

Having professional integrity means more than just not committing a crime. The American Heritage Dictionary defines integrity as "steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code." In the workplace, this can be as simple as honoring your word.

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