Time for some stress busting.....

Time for some stress busting.....

I saw some funny OOO messages. Here they are.
Source: http://daveduarte.co.za/best-out-of-office-automatic-replies/2008/06/09/

1. I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. I may be a little moody so be prepared.

2. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all.

3. Sorry to have missed you, but I am at the doctor’s having my brain removed so I can be promoted to our management team.

4. I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from vacation on 4/18. Please be patient, and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.

5. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first 10 words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.

6. The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try sending again.

( The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many in-duh-viduals did this over and over.)

7. Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system.
You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.

8. Hi, I’m thinking about what you’ve just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.

9. I’ve run away to join a different circus.

10. I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as ” Sharon ” instead of “Steve”.

Women and Support structure at work place

What makes some companies succeed very well with women employees? I'm not talking about only-women companies here although I really admire them. In my opinion, women employees primarily need the following infrastructure.

1. Management must proactively listen to women employees

Most women, especially from Asia, have a dual role to play at home and work with completely different set of privileges.

While at work the women are expected to be assertive, make witty comments, talk sports and business and perhaps join the boys' network they have a completely different role at home. They essentially are not the primary decision makers at home. How many women buy cars or decide on an apartment all by themselves? A womean at home is always consensus person. She does take very judicious decisions after consulting other stake holders. So, primarily women make decisions after getting every one's opinion but they do make that known as a group decision. You know what I mean?

The same behaviour is shown at wrk. The woman employee codes, tests, documents and suggests feature changes or product changes. However it is unusual for a woman employee to stand up and say 'Ahem! I did it!' and instead she will say 'Congrats team! We did it!' even though she has contributed 80% to it.

So, good management should have the infrastructure to check out the contributions of women employees. I hear the men saying 'why the hell should we ask?'. Yes, you need to ask - if not you will lose valuable women employees who do great work and instead you will be hiring male employees for twice the price!

2. Create learning opportunities for women to understand business and finance.

In the usual world, women tend to be right brained and usually we don't find women talking near the water cooler about certain stocks going down, the national budget implications, the car specifications or P&L details.

In order for women to gel with the 'boys' it is essential that they learn all the above aspects. And if management can create that learning infrastructure, they have a win-win situation!

We all know women are relationship oriented and are hard working and loyal to the company and are paid less (lets face it!).

Companies can do well to create women friendly infrastructure which is way beyond providing child care facilities and flexi time issues.

HR and Top Management - Time for us to be innovative and feel the pulse!

http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/A_woman_in_Bangalore_can_compete_with_the_world__Obama-nid-58990.html