Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Sample Absence Excuse Letters for Work

Sample Absence Excuse Letters for WorkSample Absence Excuse Letters for WorkThere are many excuses for missing work. Some are legitimate, and others are not quite. Some companies require all absences to be documented in writing, in which case you will need to write an absence excuse letter anytime you miss work.Whether it is company policy to require an absence excuse letter or not, its always a good idea to document missed work days, for your records as well as for the companysrecords. In some cases, you can call in sick or send a quick emailstating that you wont be in. In others, youll need to provide documentation for your absence. That way, should a question ever arise about your time off, your file will show that your absences were all legitimate. How to Write a Work Absence schmelzglas or Letter Your work excuse letter can be sent via paper or email. If you send an intra-office letter, you need to include the date and the contact information of your supervisorin or HR mana ger at the beginning. Your email subject line should contain your name and Absence Excuse.Always begin your letter formally Dear Ms. Jones or Dear Phyllis.The body of your letter should be brief and specific, mentioning the reason for your absence, the date, duration, and if you are including any explanatory documentation such as doctor or ER paperwork.Use a polite and professional close, such as Sincerely or Regards. Remember that any business correspondence should look professional. Even in a casual office, use the appropriate format for your letter, and proofread it before sending. Careless errors reflect negatively on your professional reputation. You dont want a poorly written absence excuse to become part of your employment file. Sample Work Absence Letters Here are sample absence excuse letters to review when you need to provide a written excuse for missing work. Its fine to keep the letter short and simple- just be sure to state the exact date of the absence and the prim ary reason behind it. Sample Work Absence Letter 1 DateFirstname LastnameTitleOrganizationAddress City, State Zip CodeDear Mr. LastnamePlease accept this letter as written notification that I was unable to attend work on August 1, 2018, due to family illness.Please let me know if I can provide any further information or documentation from our physicians office.Sincerely,Your Signature (hard copy letter)Your Typed Name ExpandSample Absence Excuse Letter 2 DateFirstname LastnameTitle?OrganizationAddress City,State Zip CodeDear Ms. Lastname,I am writing to document my absence on July 15, 2018. I needed to take my son to have his leg platzdeckchen after an injury in his baseball game the previous night.Please see attached documentation from the pediatric orthopedist. If you need any additional information, please let me know.Sincerely,Your Signature (hard copy letter)Your Typed Name ExpandSample Absence Email Message 1 Subject Firstname Lastname - Absence ExcuseDear Manager,Please accep t this letter as documentation of my absence on August 9, 2018. I was traveling to and attending my grandmothers funeral.If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Thank you for your understanding.Regards,Firstname Lastnameemailemail.com555-555-5555 ExpandSample Absence Excuse Email Message 2 Subject Roger Bledsoe - Absence ExcuseDear Mr. Garner,Please accept this letter as written documentation of my absence on October 30, 2018. As you know, I am in the process of divorce, and I had meetings with my lawyer and financial planner.I appreciate your support and understanding. If I can provide additional details or documentation, please let me know.Regards,Roger Bledsoerogerbemail.com555-555-5555 ExpandSample Absence Email Message 3 Subject Janet Nathan - Absence ExcuseDear Ms. Blevens,Please accept this email as written documentation of my absence yesterday on November 14, 2018. A tree fell on our house during the windstorm the previous evening, and I had to meet with o ur insurance agent, an arborist, and a roofer.I appreciate your support and understanding. If I can provide additional details or documentation such as photographs of the damage, please let me know.Regards,Janet Nathanjanetemail.com555-555-5555 Expand

Friday, November 22, 2019

Creating a Company Culture that Rocks

Creating a Company Culture that RocksCreating a Company Culture that RocksCreating a Company Culture that Rocks GalloEven in the best of economic times, employee engagement surveys show that only 10 percent of employees look forward to their jobs. Today your employees might look forward to going to work because, well, they have jobs. But are they truly inspired and engaged? Legendary General Electric CEO, Jack Welch, doesnt think so. In a recent BusinessWeek column, Welch wrote that many people dont want to work for the man anymore, having grown distrustful and skeptical as they watch millions of others lose jobs and careers. Welch believes the impact of this growing attitude will be profound as the economy recovers and employers are left with employees who are elend especially excited to work for them.As an author and communication skills coach for some of the worlds most admired brands, Ive personally witnessed the influence that inspiring leaders have on corporate culture. The key word is inspiring. Most anyone can study management or human resources and zustrom a department or division but few people can create an engaged workforce where employees cant wait to jump out of bed Monday morning to get to the office. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has the ability to energize his employees, as do extraordinary leaders who run companies like The Ritz-Carlton, Starbucks, and Google. Heres how.Sell dreams. In an inspired culture, employees see their jobs as more than a paycheck. Steve Jobs doesnt sell computers. He and his team create tools to unleash human potential. Jobs has a passion for Apple products and hes not afraid of sharing that passion and enthusiasm with his team. Its part of the reality distortion field that some observers say surrounds Jobsthe ability to convince people of almost anything.Jobs is persuasive because he genuinely believes Apple products are making the world a better place. When PepsiCo CEO John Sculley was debating whether or not to accept the CE O position at Apple, Steve Jobs turned to him and said, Do you want to sell sugared water all your life or do you want to change the world? Sculley said those words hit him like a punch to the gut. Inspiring leaders dont offer jobs. They offer opportunities to live a meaningful life.Create vision. Inspiring leaders craft and deliver a specific, consistent and memorable vision. A goal such as we intend to double our sales by this time next year, is not inspiring. Neither is a long, convoluted mission statement destined to be tucked away and forgotten in a desk somewhere. A vision is a vivid description of what the world will look like if your product or service succeeds. And it can fit within the 140 characters of a Twitter post Microsofts Steve Ballmer once said that shortly after he joined the company, he was having second thoughts. Bill Gates and Gates father took Ballmer out to dinner and said he had it all wrong. They said Ballmer was looking at his role as bean counter for a st artup. Instead, they had a vision of putting a computer on every desk, in every home. Ballmer said that vision a computer on every desk, in every home convinced him to stay.Tell stories. Inspiring leaders call on effective communication skills to weave stories into the cultural fabric of the workplace. Each day at every Ritz-Carlton hotel in the world, every department gathers for a staff meeting in which they share wow stories. These are true stories of employees who go above and beyond a guests expectations. Ritz-Carlton President Simon Cooper told me that these corporate stories give people local fame. People want to be famous in front of their peers. Local fame is a powerful motivator and, as a bonus, it helps inspire, educate and motivate others to offer the same exceptional service.Invite participation. Inspiring cultures empower employees to participate in the growth of the company. Google Vice President Marissa Mayer has office hours. Every day at 400 p.m., anyone on her te am can sign up for a fifteen minute discussion to talk about anything feedback on existing products, introducing new ideas, etc. She says some of Googles best products have been born in these office hours. This is especially important with younger employees who value participation. The command and control way of managing is over.Encourage potential. An inspired company culture motivates employees by recognizing the power of praise and incorporates praise into the workplace.Virgin founder Richard Branson has said that when you praise people, they flourish. Criticize, and they shrivel up. When people receive genuine praise, their doubt diminishes and their spirits soar. Great leaders nurture a culture where teams praise each other. Disneys Teacher of the Year, Ron Clark, became famous for taking a class of underachieving fifth graders in Harlem, New York, and turned them into a class of winners the kids in his class outperformed the gifted classes by the end of the school year. Clark told me that he praised his students often, but he also encouraged the students to praise each others accomplishments. Together, they lifted each other to higher levels of achievement.Regardless of your title, you have the potential to be the chief inspiration officer in your workplace, helping to create a company culture that rocks Encourage people to be their best selves and they will walk through walls for you.Author BioCarmine Gallo is a communications coach and author of The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience (October, 2009, McGraw-Hill) and Fire Them Up 7 Simple Secrets of Inspiring Leaders(Wiley, October 2007).

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Can College Prepare Students for the Uncertainties of the 21st Century Economy

Can College Prepare Students for the Uncertainties of the 21st Century Economy Can College Prepare Students for the Uncertainties of the 21st Century Economy These people have been saying for years now that colleges especiallycertain (usually liberal arts) degree programs dont adequately prepare students for the working world. In Career Preparedness and Lifelong Learning,Instructure seems to support that argument. According to the study, which surveyed roughly 8,000 current students and college graduate from around the world, only 1 in 12 students feels that college has fully prepared them for their careers.Victory for the naysayers? Not so fast, says Jared Stein, Instructures vice president of research and education.Only 1 in 12 say they were fully prepared, but there welches generally more satisfaction than dissatisfaction, Stein explains.Overall, students felt 67.7 percent prepared for their careers by their college experiences. So, its not complete satisfaction, but its hardl y a sign that college is worthless. Id rather be two-third prepared than not prepared at all.But thats not to say that everything is prefect in college world. No, theres definitely some room for improvement, Stein says.I think this study reveals that college is not doing a bad job, but its not perfect, either, he explains.Many students especially in the U.S. attend college with the specific aim of preparing themselves for certain career paths, and many colleges invest extensively in such career preparedness programs.But investing more resources in career preparedness isnt exactly the best way for colleges to better serve students, according to Stein. Rather, he thinks colleges should be doing more to prepare students for the uncertainty theyll face once they enter the workforce.The Job-for-Life Is Deadur own Kazim Ladimeji has written extensivelyabout the fact that, in todays economy, very few if any of us can expect to stay with one company for our entire lives. Furthermore, he s gone on to explore why few of us can even expect to stay with onecareeruntil we hit retirement.For workers today, the reality is that job- and career-hopping are the new normal, which may parteially explain why 29.8 percent of graduates of four-year degree programs dont end up working in their chosen fields of study.It doesnt make a ton of sense, then, for colleges to focus on preparing students for one specific career path. This kind of education can be useful, sure, but it wont be terribly helpful when a former engineer decides, for whatever reason, that its time to become a middle school teacher instead.The rapidly advancing pace of technology plays a role in all of this, too. Every few years, it seems, some piece of technology comes along that either totally redefines an existing career or opens up doorsinto brand new career paths. How can colleges help students navigate these dramatic shifts when its impossible to predict what these shifts will actually look like when they ar rive?Even if career preparedness is what students go to college for, the uncertainty of todays economy is kind of a bigger factor, Stein says. What were suggesting is that colleges need to look beyond career preparedness and think more about the skills students will need to adapt, whether thats to the changes they will encounter within their careers or as they have to shift their expectations to a different career focus.Teaching Students to Prepare for Unpredictable Futures Through Lifelong LearningOn the surface, lifelong learning may sound like a vague, squishy kind of idea, but Stein and Instructure concretely define the concept for the purpose of the study as any kind of learning that happens throughout your lifetime that supports your personal goals.Lifelonglearning can happen in formal classrooms, or it can happen informally, during ones day-to-day life. It can even happen non-formally (that is, through organized or semi-organized learning outside of a formal program).Regardle ss of how or whereit occurs, Stein says, lifelong learning is about having the skills so that you can go and accomplish your goals by learning on your own and finding the experiences and resources that you need to get there.By teaching students how to become lifelong learners how to seek out the experiences and resources they need to accomplish their goals colleges can go a long way toward preparing students to cope successfully with the volatile economy theyre destined (doomed?) to enter.Stein says that Instructure isnt quite ready to present a broad vision to guide higher education toward betterequipping students for uncertainty, but he does have two common sense, straightforward recommendations he can make right now.First, colleges can start by ensuring that students have the proper expectations for what life after college will be like.My college experience didnt ask me to consider the strategies Id need to make career shifts throughout my life, Stein says. Those shifts arepart of the 21st century, and I think thats where colleges and universities can start to help students be more prepared.Second, colleges can focus on teaching students the skills necessary for self-directed learning.That way, every student who leaves college not only has the knowledge and skills that will be helpful in their chosen career fields, but also, the skills they need to keep learning effectively on their own in any career, even if they have to shift from one to another, Stein says.So, no, it doesnt seem that colleges are tremendous wastes of time. (Nor, would I wager, are liberal arts degrees but thats a fight Ill have to have another time with anyone who wants to pick it.) They do a pretty decent job of preparing students for their careers. What higher educationreallyneeds to work on is preparing students for what happens when they dont (or cant) get the career they wanted.