7 things we need for optimum performance

 

 Potential generally refers to a currently unrealized ability. Potential is latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and could lead to future success or usefulness. We all have hidden gifts and talents that sometime are only brought to the fore under pressure. In other times we need guidance to bring out the best of gifts and talents in us. Look at yourself closely and ask people who are sincere to you what potential they see in you. You would be surprised at what they tell you.

Purpose is a person's sense of resolve or determination. The reason for which something is done or created or the very reason for which something exists. Everyone has a purpose for his very existence. If we can find that purpose it would help us pursue our goals in a highly effective manner. Purpose is a driver. Purpose spurs us forward and enables us to conquer new realms. Work hard at discovering your purpose and you will go places.

Passion is a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion, a compelling enthusiasm or desire for something. Passion is a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something. : Passion is also a strong feeling (such as anger) that can cause us to act in a dangerous or undesirable way. We ought to channel our passion towards positive things. You need passion to succeed at what you want to do. If you are not passionate about it, on a bad day you might lose faith and give up.

Prayer is solemn requests for help or expression of thanks addressed to God. Praying helps us to focus on our goals and commit them unto God so he can help us achieve them. Sometimes  the tasks we undertake are unbearable and when that happens faith that our God is backing us in our positive endeavours helps push us forward. Frequent prayer is a powerful tool for those people striving to higher heights.  

Plans are documents that are meant to take us from where we are to where we want to be. Everyone should work from a plan and have a strategic plan for everything in life, so that there can be a reference and we can keep going to back to the document when ever we get stuck or alter it when it is no longer realistic. Plans ought to be flexible, and short as well as long term. Short term plans marked with mile stones enable us to plot our progress and do frequent evaluation to make sure that we are on the right path.

People  are important to our very existence. No man is an Island. No body can succeed alone that is why it’s strange when we hear people refer to others as “Self made men”, there are no such beings. Everyone was helped by someone at one time or the other. So it’s important for us to let people who will advance our plans into our lives so as to help us. If we are hiring people for a cause or a business its good to hire experts and people who are smarter or more brilliant than us. Anyone who is afraid to work with people smarter than them will find it difficult to succeed in life.

Patience is a virtue. Everything we desire will not come to our side immediately. Sometimes we have to wait. We have to wait for certain things that are beyond our control to take place or be revealed to us. Sometimes we have done all we know how to do and we need time to consolidate our activity. Time is an asset and it is the only resource that all human beings are given in equal measure on a daily basis. We all have 24 hours. The real question is what do we do with these hours? Using our time constructively is a challenge to every living person. Let us not get carried away with distractions of life. Life is too short to waste on insignificant things. This does not mean that we cannot relax or have fun. But lets make sure that we try to accomplish all that is to be done. 

Backache prominence in sedentary office work

Human Resource Managers are currently battling with challenges that their staff face in sedentary office work. Ergonomics, the science of healthy work life  that deals with designing and arranging things so that people can use them easily and safely advises that officer workers should not sit in a place for too long a period because such sitting positions could give rise to dire health implications if proper care is  not taken.  Sitting at a desk  for up to six hours at a stretch consistently for days is a perfect scenario for bringing on back aches. The stress point is generally right at the lower back and being in a seated position  could cause muscular imbalances which are basically like a tug-o-war that is going on inside the body. One muscle group is stronger than the other and it causes stress on the joints and the back tends to take the brunt of this stress. Major telecommunication organizations are known to subject their telephone operators to long hours of answering telephone subscribers which demands sitting in a position and working.The experience is not peculiar to telecoms companies alone. Banking institutions are guilty of the same thing. You could stand in line at a bank for hours on end to be rendered one service or the other only to get the front of the queue and realize that one person has been in charge of rendering one aspect of the service for hours on end. This role could lead to a lot trouble for the both the customer and the person offering the service. Long hours can often lead to diminishing returns on the part of the person doing the job. In other words, it would reach a point when fatigue would set in and the person at the point of service is no longer putting in optimal service. This would lead to sloppy work and mistakes that could be avoided. The position and the power of HR in the modern organization would be a major factor in dealing with this problem. In a recession, where jobs are few victims would be afraid of losing the ones they and would probably not speak up when they are brought before labor commissions of inquiry to give evidence.
Some workers have left such positions with terrible damage to their bodies and psyches while others still hang in there hoping to get better jobs so that they could leave the ones that are having debilitating effects on their bodies.

One lady who works in a prominent telecoms company in Nigeria told us that colleagues of hers had consistently resigned because of work conditions in a company that has Arabs as its technical partners. She stated in disgust that the company dare not put such work conditions up in their own country and was wondering why they were allowed to do it Nigeria.
Nigeria appears to have become a bad example for labour laws since the laws are known by both the unions and the owners of the various companies but are hardly upheld.

Measures that would help move women up in the corporate environment

  Hilary Clinton and Theresa May attained leadership positions by fighting tooth and nail to get there. There is a need for us to look at a few measures that can be used to prop women up by human resource departments and managers. Mind you we are not talking about affirmative action here, just to give the ladies a smooth ride that the men enjoy in the same environment. Ibukun Awosika is a very good example of a woman in corporate leadership. She made her way to become the first woman chair of a major financial corporation in Nigeria. Some of the interesting measures that corporate environments ought to evolve to ensure that more qualified and efficient women get to leadership positions is: Integrate women's development into mainstream human resource policies, mentoring and providing role models, reviewing equal opportunity policies, auditing attitudes towards women in the work place, providing women only training to encourage such women who are really interested to climb to the top of the corporate ladder. Also, equality needs to be put on the organizational agenda and there should be proper review of selection and promotion appraisal processes. Men networks tend to flourish in the work environment, so there is a need to strengthen women networks or get the women aligned with the men. Women also need to undergo assertive training so that they can get their ideas adopted with out being outwardly and unnecessarily strict. If all these are accomplished, it would be easy to move women out of the "ghetto" positions to the front line. The career paths in larger organizations should either take women into cognizance or align them women so that training would lead to development for them and eventually there would more credible women managers emerging in the contemporary organization.  

There is also the problem of chauvinism, which strangely enough has created the concept of the glass ceiling in the minds of both sexes in leadership. Clinton recently claimed that she took a great crack at the glass ceiling while being nominated the first women to represent a major political party in a presidential election in the United States. That ceiling could get wider if she becomes president in November. The truth is hundreds of women are being turned away from positions in which they could do well if they were only given a fair chance. To make that chance fair, the entire organizations involved have to streamline policies that would ensure that women are not treated any differently from men.