Writer's Block Obliteration Tip #10: Poetic Presentation

Find a poem (there are lots online if you aren't near a book) and choose a line at random. You can use a number generator if you don't trust yourself to randomly choose a line. Put that line at the top of your page and imagine it is the theme or title of a presentation you are handling at work. Now, write the speech you would give if that were the title you planned to announce to your audience. Did you know your company newsletter is a powerful tool to change behaviors that will positively influence the bottom line of your organization? That is because your employees are a captured audience (in a positive way). They will read almost anything you put in front of them that does not have anything to do with work. Your newsletter can influence better parenting, coming to work on time, reducing waste, and decreasing conflicts. It all depends on what you put in the newsletter. Here, try this for example. It's a free trial to an editable newsletter called FrontLine Employee: http://workexcel.net/FE/fe-trial-request.html

Writer's Block Obliteration Tip #9: 9. Animated Conversations

To really loosen up your muse, choose an inanimate object (or animal) and start writing a conversation with it. Focus on the voice your conversational partner has—the way it says certain words or just its view of the world. Even if you're working on a technical piece, this exercise can really have some merit by pulling you out of your singular perspective and studying your subject from another angle, as you and an inanimate object discuss it conversationally.

Writer's Block Obliteration Tip #8

Choose the name of a color and write a description of something with that hue, without ever mentioning the color. This exercise helps you be very mindful of what you're writing and forces you not to rely on clichés. Afterwards, give the piece to a reader and see if they can figure out what you're describing. If so, you're on the right track—but if not, you need to learn to rely better on the way you use descriptive language! Descriptive language is critical in effective content writing, but this exercise enables idea generation as well. I just created this movie about FrontLine Employee. You may like it.

Writer's Block Obliteration Tip #7: Connect the Thoughts

Connect the Thoughts
Take a piece of paper and make three columns—nouns, verbs, and adjectives—then list some relevant words under each column. Draw lines connecting random items from the various lists, and as you write about these things, you will see new associations you may not have seen before. If you're having trouble choosing randomly on your own, roll a dice or use an online random number generator to do the work for you.

Writers Block Obliteration Tip #6: Little List Book

Purchase a notebook that you keep solely for writing lists when you're suffering from writer's block. Pick something special that you won't accidentally mistake for a work notepad. When you're feeling stuck writing your employee newsletter scribble down a list about the first thing that comes to mind—anything from "what I dreamed about last night" to "goals for this year." Write entries until you've exhausted the topic. Now for each item on the list go through the following steps: Ask what, why, who, when, who, where, which and apply these words to each item on the list to see what emerges. For example, let's list called "list of my mistakes to learn from" pops into your mind. Apply the word "How" might give you "How and what should we do to learn from our mistakes". There's an article: How to Learn from a Mistake. And, here is what I actually wrote:

Everyone makes mistakes. Big or small, they’re instant stressors. The key is to minimize their negative impact and learn from them. First, you must own your missteps. You can’t learn from something that you can’t admit happened. Next, guard your mental health like a watch dog and let go of your feelings of guilt and shame. Analyze the situation rationally to understand what went wrong and how you can do better. Lastly, seek out advice, training, and support as needed.

Writer's Block Obliteration Tip #5

Clean out a tin can and remove the label, then fill it with slips of paper containing words or phrases relevant to what you're writing. When you're feeling stuck, choose a slip at random and start writing down everything that comes to mind when you think of that word or phrase. Combine phrases if you get stuck, or just draw another one and keep going. Have other people contribute to the can for extra randomness! Also, your employee newsletter can of ideas should sit where people can drop in words, phrases, other more developed ideas. Put this can on your desk, in the hallway outside your door, or in the break room. Yes, you will get the weirdos dropping inappropriate things in this receptacle, but hang in there. Relief is on the way. For a free trial to FrontLine Employee, a completely editable newsletter (rename-able too) go to FrontLine Employee Free Trial

Writer's Block Obliteration Tip #4: Can of Words

Okay, stick with me here...Clean out a tin can and remove the label, then fill it with slips of paper containing words or phrases relevant to what you're writing. When you're feeling stuck, choose a slip at random and start writing down everything that comes to mind when you think of that word or phrase. Combine phrases if you get stuck, or just draw another one and keep going. Have other people contribute to the can for extra randomness! When you come up with any idea...if it is not unique enough say following outloud: "Many writers write about "X-TOPIC" but they never seem to write about "Y-TOPIC" -- at this point, your mind will produce a spin-off article idea associated with the not-so-unusual topic "X". For some reason, this works especially well when you "voice" the idea. (Don't ask me why. It must be like an affirmation or something--your brain works more effectively when you can hear what you are thinking.) Stop the monthly struggle with content ideas, subscribe to an editable, employee newsletter. Just Google surf -- "Editable Employee Newsletter Articles" and see what pops up!

Writer's Block Obliteration Tip #3 of 43: E-Mail Inspiration

Have you watched FOX NEWS, and particular "The O'Reilly Factor"? At the end of each show, Mr. O'Reilly always throws out a word that many people have never heard of. He uses it in a sentence. Many people like this part of the show, and you can copy the idea. Sign up for a word of the day service to be delivered to your e-mail or simply go to a Word of the Day Service. Before you start your day, write a page inspired by that word. Use multiple definitions if possible, and see if you can find more than one word of the day program to give you variety. You can also get writing prompts emailed to you from various writing sites. Today's word for instance is "lobcourse". Do you know what that word means? It means a sailor's dish of stewed or baked meat with vegetables and hardtack. You will get a sentence for that word, and you will get other information about it. People love this or they would not have this on the O'Reilly Factor. However, you can expand on the idea by giving the word, definition, using it in a sentence, and/or supplying more information.

I will guarantee that many employees will look forward to every issue of your newsletter. Many people in your workplace do not have formal education or have English as a second language. This employees will be especially happy about your newsletter. Even if they do, they probably have not heard of these words. So you have a great, educational, and interest newsletter item with this idea.

Do you need more work done for you when it comes to employee newsletters. Here is a super exciting idea. Subscribe to a newsletter that 1) Is completely done when it arrives in your e-mail inbox, however one that is still completely and utterly editable in MS Publisher or MS Word. Also, a service where you can change the name of the newsletter and, get this add, edit, or delete articles. We found this resource. You can even change the name of the thing! It is called FrontLine Employee. Get a free trial at: FrontLine Employee newsletter.

Okay here is the name of one service, but you can Google for more: An example is http://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/.

Writer's Block Obliteration Tip #2: Brainstorm Spiral

Start with the subject that's blocking you at the very center of your page, then start writing everything that comes to mind in a spiral around it. If you run out of paper, start with a new focus on a fresh page. When you're done with the spiral, draw lines from your original topic to the things with which you plan to connect it. Write using these ideas as starting points. For a free trial subscription to an editable, reproducible newsletter for your company that focuses on health, wellness, productivity, communication, and managing stress -- and get this -- you can edit and change the name to call it your own, go to www.workexcel.com

Writer's Block Obliteration & Destruction Tip #1

Okay here's the first of many ideas for you about how to break the dreaded writers block. Try the "Syncopated Walk":

How to do it:
Take a small notebook and pen with you and set out on a walk. Try to take a path you have never been down before, so that the sights will be fresh and different. Observe as you go, and every five minutes, stop to write something—anything—down. When you return to your workspace, use the most intriguing material to get you started on something bigger. Click here to get a free fax-back brochure for FrontLine Employee, the only fully editable, reproducible, web-usable, re-nameable, customizable, employee wellness and company communication newsletter in existence. You company newsletter is made easier by having super employee newsletter articles read to use or edit. And you can also get your own employee newsletter name and employee newsletter template.

Newsletter Topic to Consider

If you visit workforce.com, you will find a place where you can visit a forum where HR managers make posts and read posts about all sorts of problems. This is valuable stuff for your newsletter because it tells shows you in black and white and with numbers the concerns human resource managers have. Simply cruse the topics for discussion and hit the back post topics too. See what post topics are getting the he most "views". These are the concerns, arguably that HR managers have most on their minds. See if you can't create content around them. Here are only ten, but subjects over 2000 views number about 50.

Top Ten:
Text Messaging Policies and Issues
Employees Who Are Always a Little Late
Managing Mentally Ill Employees
Divorce and It's Affect on Workers
Unusual Bathroom Habits Due to Culture or Religion
Employees Bringing Children to Work
Stealing and Lying Employees
Childcare Referral Issues
Tips for Success in HR in Working with Managers and
Employees
Time Management

Can you imagine any articles? I can!

Do You Have An Internal Newsletter?

My name is Dan Feerst. I publish FrontLine Employee.

You might not have a solid employee newsletter, and because of that have communication problems and a lot unaddressed risks that newsletters help resolve.

FrontLine Employee is 100% customizable in MS Publisher or MS Word. It’s professionally written by licensed mental health professionals with 25 years minimum workplace experience, and it is completely unique. Nothing compares to it.

Four million employees read FrontLine Employee. Hundreds of employers subscribe, and that includes the HR departments of Tennessee, Ohio, and Washington states.

Helping overstressed employees and their family members, and reducing risk to employers inspired me to create this newsletter. Specifically, I wanted to write shorter, more useful, and punchier articles with plenty of how-to’s, tips, and action steps employees could sink their teeth into. Why? To help them and reduce workplace risk.

With FrontLine Employee, you edit or add anything you like “on the fly”. Do nothing—or insert your own articles, add photos of your staff, place it on your website, email it to employees, or send it home to family members. I am talking full control.

You can do ANYTHING with FrontLine Employee (except give it other companies). 

You can change the name of the newsletter, too if you like. Instantly you have your own customized newsletter that maximizes internal communication.

Do These “Behavioral Risk Exposures” Loom?

During the year, I target and discuss stress management, family wellness, nutrition, workplace communication, conflict resolution, improving productivity, improving relationships, dealing with difficult people, improving morale, staying safe, preventing injuries, getting help for personal problems, and improving one’s relationship with the boss!

Get this: You can email “www.workexcel.net/hotline.html” and suggest topics. What articles ideas will help your employees? Let me know! I use 95% of suggestions.

FrontLine Employee allows you—perhaps for the first time—to have your own personalized, monthly internal newsletter with none of the hassles. Subscribers love this!

No Invoice for Two Months

There is no risk to this offer whatsoever. You will get two or three issues before you see an invoice. You will quickly see the impact of FrontLine Employee and how beautifully it works for your company. You’ll also see that employees love it.

But don’t worry, if you don’t wish to continue, simply cancel. However, I don’t think you will want to cancel. Employees will fall in love with FrontLine Employee and it will solve your lack of having a great internal communication and wellness newsletter.

Phone My Cell: 843-367-0920 or click here to load brochure


Sincerely,

Daniel Feerst, LISW, Publisher

Your Newsletter Name, Newsletter Title, and a Great Newsletter Masthead

Do you have a newsletter name yet? Click here to take a look at a few newsletter nameplates (PDF) that cost only $75 to produce a graphics pro. The graphic artist is Joe Russell, and FrontLine Employee has an exclusive bargain rate working with him. Do this. Send Dan you 1) Web site address. 2) Name for your newsletter. 3) Your company logo. See what Joe and produce for you. When you get your employee newsletter nameplate back, one change so he can redo it is free. After that, each change is only $10. But rarely do people ask for more than one change to nameplates that look this great. Go here to contact Dan Feerst from his main website, WorkExcel.com

Save Employee Lives with Your Newsletter

Don't laugh. Every company should have an employee newsletter for one important, even paramount reason. It will save lives. Are you in the least bit skeptical about this point? I think this reason is the one that gives me the most satisfaction in writing employee newsletters.

The wonderful thing about employee newsletters is the captured audience that comes with them--employees on the job. The most direct way to save lives is to discuss health care problems with short, punchy narratives.

(Remember, I never advocate articles longer than say 250 words or shorter than say, 75-80 words. This keeps employee moving from one article to the next. Less is more when it comes to newsletter articles.)

As an example, everyone knows that the most common form of cancer is lung cancer, primarily among smokers. But healthy employees who don't smoke, are perfect in their weight, and who work out with low cholesterol think they are completely immune from other other types of cancer.

Well, if they are not thinking that they are immune, they certainly don't have cancer fears at the top of their mind. They should if they have not been screened for colerectal cancer, and are over 50 years of age. This is the most incidious and sneaky cancer.

So, below is an example of an article on this topic. You can mimic the energy and frankness of this article for others that you might write yourself.

Imagine a company with 300 employees reading it. Do you think it will cause a few to get screened for this cancer? Absolutely. So, include these types of articles in your newsletter periodically. Don't overdo it. Maybe twice a year. You will definitely be doing the right thing.

Know about Colorectal Cancer

If you don’t smoke, what cancer presents the highest risk, even if you feel healthy as an ox? Answer: colorectal cancer (CRC). CRC is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States among nonsmokers. The good news is that CRC deaths are dropping because of education and the willingness of people to get screened for it. Nearly 50% of people between 50 and 75 years of age have not been screened for CRC. What about you? Don’t procrastinate with this one. Talk to your doctor or health care provider to learn about screening options, how early you should get screened, associated risk, and your next steps. Avoid being one of the 140,000 people diagnosed each year with CRC. Source: Centers for Disease Control, Press Release, July 6, 2010

Free Article for You

Here's a free article for your newsletter. I wrote it but can't use it. It appeared in one of my April newsletters, but I can't use it for the others. So, don't use it if you are a FrontLine Employee subscriber. I can't use it because it will throw off my sequence. If you want it, download it here. You must add "by Daniel Feerst, WorkExcel.com". Thanks. The title of the article is "Keep A Stress Management Arsenal at the Ready". Talk to you soon. Don't retype the article. It is a pdf, but use the copy text tool to copy and paste to a document. You should not have to retype it, but you can if you wish.

Employee Newsletter Ideas: Promote Your Unpromoted EAP

About 70% of companies have employee assistance programs (EAPs). The percentage of true EAPs is up for debate, but essentially these programs help employees with personal problems that affect their lives or job performance.

Here the blog point: Do you know if your company has an EAP and are you periodically mentioning it and talking about its confidential nature?

About 30-40% of people who contact me don't know if their company has an EAP or they have never heard of an EAP or do not know how to contact their EAP, if they have one. Of the employees who do DO know about their company's EAP, 50% or better don't think "that" it is confidential, or in some manner or form don't trust it being confidential. If the person contacting me works for a police department, or some federal agency with significant national secuity implications, they are REALLLLY hestitant about confidentiality--almost every one.

Your newsletter should periodically talk about your business organization's EAP and its confidential nature. Does it? Saying that the EAP is confidential at the top of the newsletter masthead isn't enough to pentrate the fear barrier. You have to put a little more meat on the bones to make an impact on the very natural fear associated with whether or not something like an EAP is confidential. This is called "marketing confidentiality".

Of course, you have one less employee newsletter article to search for if you can plan ahead during the year and perhaps mention the EAP several times in this respect. (Please tell me your newsletter is more frequent that quarterly--and don't say employees already have too much to read. It's the lamest excuse I hear for not reducing behavioral risk exposures in the workplace via a newsletter.)

Marketing confidentiality increases use of the EAP, reducing risk, helps employees, helps family members, increases word of mouth marketing (your best friend), and makes the financial investment in your EAP pay off. That's a lot of stuff.

Start with an article that goes something like this, "Are you aware that in your wallet or purse, and the back of your insurance card is a number to our company's employee assistance program?..." Then discuss top management endorsement of the EAP, what it does, etc. Even have top managment sign the article, or make the article come from the CEO. That's even better strategy.

There are lots of ways to create an article on the subject of confidentiality and your EAP, but the point is, your company wellness newsletter or employee EAP newsletter is directly linked to beating back fear of non-confidentiality because you have a captured audience.

So, make your employee newsletter pay off and your EAP along with it. You can get a completely editable newsletter, possibly in the next 15 minutes to use--for three solid months. If you want your own name for your newsletter, and special masthead, you can get one. Learn more: Here are a few examples of customer mastheads for FrontLine Employee.

Make a Newsletter Avoid the Pain

If you have been tasked to make a newsletter for your company with the purpose being to help employees with health, wellness, and productivity content, start with MS Publisher if you are not an expert in more sophisticated software like Quark, InDesign, or more programs often used to make a newsletter in many larger companies. Don't panic about design. Very simple formats can look quite readable, neat, and clean. Admittedly that sometimes templates look like you obtained them from your Microsoft Office newsletter software, so you may want something that doesn't look too canned.

Some of the most expensive newsletters are extremely plain appearing. You will discover eventually, that content is everything. Having great employee newsletter ideas and employee newsletter topics that appeal to your workforce, and you put your newsletter on a cocktail napkin, and they would read it. A couple hints. Only use two types of fonts in your newsletter, and their bold and non-bold types. That's four visual differences in fonts. Choose another readable font for the body (the articles) and you now have a good balanced approach to make a newsletter look great. One of the easiest ways to have your own newsletter is to examine FrontLine Employee. The publication is completely editable and you can manipulate anything in it. The format is clean, simple, and it is so well accepted that the States of Ohio, Washington, and Tennessee use if or their employees. Don't underestimate simplicity. Success is attracted to simplicity, not complexity.

Choose Simpler Words for Your Employee Newsletter Articles

Always choose the simpler word when writing employee newsletter articles. Forget using the word "conundrum" to describe a big problem. Instead use "a big problem". You must draw a balance between writing how people speak, but ridding yourself of slang, contractions, and inappropriate grammar, etc., even if people do speak that way. And don't count on free employee newsletter articles available on the internet to always use the simpler word. It takes practice.

You may have employee newsletter ideas that really excite you. That's great. But realize that the more emotionally involved you are with the article, the more likely it is that you will write quickly and your mind will speed your thoughts up causing you to produce your employee newsletter too fast. It is easy skip sentences that should be included to help the reader grasp the full meaning of your article. So try to make sentences short, not long-winded. And think "process" as you connect one thought to the next.

As you write for your audience, realize a very important point: Your reader must interpret what you are saying one word at a time. They are reading what you wrote for understanding. You should therefore do the same thing. Be careful not to write for your own personal reasons. These might include impressing your reader, saying something profound, being angry, making a splash, getting something off your chest.

You can write for any of these reasons, but always put them second to the goal of writing for understanding. Did you know that the New York Times writes for a reader who has a ninth grade education? Keep this in mind and do the same, and employee newsletters that you write, will be completely read--and passed along to others.

Changing Employee Behavior for the Better

If you are an employer and you don't have a "work-life-health-wellness-productivity-stress management newsletter" (I call it an employee newsletter for short), you are missing a profound opportunity to influence behavior, reduce behavioral risk, decrease accidents, improve morale, stop negativity, influence positive change in the homelife of your employees, save money, reduce absenteeism ... and a host of other benefits.

The list of such benefits is enormous. I cannot emphasize this point enough when I talk about employee newsletter tips. Employee newsletter topics that relate to the most important issues in your organization can be brainstormed in minutes and articles gathered. Instantly, you have a newsletter tool to reduce costs.

All of this is inexpensive because you can acquire newsletter content from many sources and even a typed page of information for employees is enough to make an impact.

There are two important secrets however. You must, and should absolutely distribute frequently--I recommend once a month. Why in the world send such a publication quarterly? Also, one other point: Make articles short.

You have a captured audience. It's a beautiful thing. So, a punchy newsletter of two pages with short to-the-point articles will be picked up and read by your employees.

If your employees pick up a newsletter meant for them and it is a book of 4 or 8 pages, they will instantly feel like they are in a cluttered garage and put it down until later. We all react this way to "work" from time to time. But you do not want this to happen with a risk management tool that can influence positive change or prevent loss. Imagine inflencing an employee with an anger management problem, or even violence prone behavior with your newsletter?

Make your articles between 70 and 250 words, and vary the number of articles (I suggest eight) on a two-page newsletter. Put an image with each article.

Your organization buys expensive insurance to prevent financial loss. You spend money to protect your organization, pay workers' compensation bills, hire security guards, have lawyers to protect you, and spend enormous amounts of energy dealing with employee complaints, disciplinary matters, and having special events to improve morale -- pizza parties, off-sites, and birthday celebrations.

An employee newsletter can reduce the costs associated with each one of these things. I can think of an article that will directly enhance each of the forgoing.

So, if you don't have an inexpensive employee newsletter, you have a big hole in your risk management and employee benefit program. Fill it and reap the benefits for your work organization.

Respect in the Workplace--Behavior Change is Top Down

Let me take the long route to the real point of this article -- using your newsletter to help promote and generate respect among employees.

If you think that disrespect is an individual employee responsibility, you are 25% correct. The truth is that disrespect is contagious like the common cold. When one person is disresepectful persistently, and gest away with it, other employees frustrated by the behavior will soon lower their standards to cope with it in the same way. This turning to disrespectful as a solution can then become cancerous. Pretty soon, you can have your entire workplace at risk with people treating each other like crap. Why is this the case?

Disrespect is simply a modern day facet of other undesirable behaviors in the workplace such as abuse, workplace conflict, sexual harassment, racism, negativity, discrimination, anger management gone awry, and other issues all of which are part same continuum of human behavior--aggression. Aggression is a normal, necessary human capacity for defense and survival. The problem is that the behaviors just mentioned are inappropriately expressed forms of getting one's needs met in some capacity or another, especially at work.

Frankly, once you get practiced enough at it, being aggressive and inappropriate is a cheap emotional way of getting your needs met because you do not have to temper your inappropriate behavior with civility. (The behavior you learned well enough that your parents finally allowed you to come out of the playpen.) Of course, the origin of disrespect may be absent parents for many folks who never acquired these skills of respect. Any takers on that belief?

Civility is a modern day concept of self-imposed restriction on basal instincts that otherwise would predominate and completely ruin a civil society if it did not exist. It's why we have come at least this far in our evolution.

The bottom line -- respect is a organizational responsibility and one employee being disrespectful, like negativity in general, spreads like a virus among the workforce. So top management, and management employees in general, must first be training in respectful workplace behavior, and then you impart it to the rest of the workforce in that order.

Research respectful workplace issues and make them a regular part of your employee newsletter topics offerings. It will have an impact on your employees. HOWEVER---> keep your eyes open in your workplace for the type of disrespect that predominates there. It exists because all workplaces will from lack of a respectful workplace at some point. Other employees are witnessing the same thing. Then write about that type of behavior in general terms. It will be noticed and it will have an impact on your employees.

Never stop writing in your employee newsletter about disrespect, but title articles in positive terms. This is critical. For example, "How to Gain More Cooperation from Your Team" is positive. Articles with positive titles communicate a message of "enhancement" or "becoming more".

All of us naturally gravitate to things that will add to our lives and you will get more readers for your employee newsletter articles verus titling such an article "Stop Being Bossy with Your Team". Fewer people will read your employee newsletter articles because they are not hard-wired to be attracted to it and it does not appeal to self-interest as much as an article title which communicates "enhancement".

Preventing Workplace Violence and Other Critical Education

Struggling for employee newsletter ideas? If you write a newsletter for your company, pay attention to the news. When an some extraordinary incident occurs such as workplace violence, or a tragedy like an earthquake happens, experts will come on television or radio to be interviewed by media professionals. At these times, you will be handed free newsletter content

These conversations will allow you to capture highly relevant and rich information orally presented by these experts that you can use in meaningful articles to help employees live better lives. Let me give an example.

The Hunstville Alabama female college professor who gunned down her faculty colleagues last week after being denied tenure, it elicited a string of media interviews about workplace violence. I learned several important points during these interviews over the ensuing days that I hadn't quite read or heard before. Bam! Employee newsletter article content and information for your story. One clear useful tip that "an employee who visits a shooting range" might be at higher risk of violence or "a belief that one is smarter than what what he or she is being given credit for by other people" give powerful clues to risk of workplace violence when the issues are examine in total. Make article hot and relevant, and do so by watching the mainstrea media news.

The point of this note is to let you know that their is information all around. True low hanging fruit. Go get it.

Get the Alcoholism Thing Right

If you author a workplace wellness newsletter or an employee fitness bulletin, you will someday, if not already, have the urge to write about alcoholism.

Don't think that this will be an easy scrabble. The economics and politics of alcoholism diagnosis, causation, treatment, and ongoing recovery are profound and convoluted. You must be prepared to have your worksite health program or corporate wellness services come under heavy scrutiny for discussing alcoholism in way that runs counter to the beliefs of others will feel affronted by your educational presentation--that at least for several hours or days cause the house of cards many addicts live atop, to come tumbling down. Count on whatever you say not being in conformance with many people's false, yet with a death grip held, beliefs.

But as much of a snarl as has been made over this biological, genetically induced, non-equal opportunity, chronic disease -- there is an answer and a clear cut way to explain it in a precise and inerrant manner.

Go to the American Medical Society on Addiction Medicine's Web site. The reason that you have never heard of this organization, despite the fact that its 4000 members are the world's foremost authorities on the nature and treatment of addictive disease, is because science flies in the face of the popular culture.

ASAM's strong position on alcoholismt does not serve many powerful economic interests that benefit from servicing alcoholics with completely bogus explanations of alcoholism that under gird their so-called treatment or beneficent activities.

The bottom line is that you must abandon your personal opinions and almost certain false beliefs about what alcoholism is in favor of facts. You will find everything you need at ASAM.org.

You will undoubtedly learn something magnificently new that will allow you to explain this disease to your readers. Almost no article you can possibly write will have as much of an impact in helping many and upsetting just as many.

Stress Management Tips for Employees

If you are not delivering a firehose of stress management tips to employees, you are missing the most important part of your employee newsletter and its power to help employees. You absolutely must do it, and you cannot assume employees won't eat them up.

I am have been a clinical social worker and EAP consultant for 31 years, and I will confess to you that three days ago I was fumbling through a pile of papers in my office and saw a list of stress tips. One of them was, "take a hot bath". You know what? I have done that. So, I became motivated to try it. Of course, I cannot count how many stress tips I have used and tested, but that that one I have never tried.

It was great. I took that bath at night after everyone in my family was a sleep but as a employee newsletter article goes, do not assume that stress tips have to be complicated. Just make them keep flowing.Employee Newsletter I recommend.

Write Newsletter Content as Do's, Don'ts, and Checklists

It's a fast-paced work-life we live, so you need to cut down on the narrative content of your newsletter articles. People who read your newsletter are not in a lounge chair. They are in go-karts with the accelerator stuck. So, you want your articles to be fast-paced with lots of to-dos and checklists. Most of the content I write for newsletter customers -- whether it's the U.S. Congress's employee newsletter content or the mom and pop store, I write in a way that people can snap up the information fast.

Here are a couple recent articles from this month's and last month's issues of FrontLine Employee and WorkLife Excel. They follow this format:

Avoid Mistakes at the Gym
If you’re using gym equipment to help create a “new you” in 2010, follow a few simple rules to keep yourself safe. Start with an OK from your doctor, and get expert advice on using gym equipment. The American Council on Exercise says the following mistakes are commonly made by new gym-goers: 1) not warming up prior to training (muscles need time to adjust to demands before you start); 2) lifting too much weight (gradual and progressive resistance is much better); 3) not cooling down after exercise (this lowers your heart rate and boosts flexibility); 4) not doing enough stretching after an exercise (this can help you prevent injuries); and 5) consuming energy bars and sports drinks during moderate workouts (unless you are working out for two hours a day or more, you’re piling on calories you don’t need). Source: American Council on Exercise.

Goal Achievement: Boiling It Down
There are thousands of books on goal achievement, but not all of them have a unique message. In fact, most boil down to four principles stated in many different ways: 1) You must decide precisely what you are going to achieve and accept no substitute for achievement; 2) you must decide that you will act vigorously and relentlessly to make the goal reality; 3) you must recognize progress and lack of progress so you can repeat, add to, or not repeat action steps accordingly; 4) you must abandon preconceived notions of what should or will ultimately work.

Feel free to use the above articles if you wish, simply add my copyright (c) 2010 by WorkExcel.com

Almost any newsletter article content can be reduced to bullets and to-dos. Try this approach and you will get more readers, and even better, you will have them looking forward to your newsletter! You can learn about an editable newsletter content publication here.

Is Your Quarterly Newsletter a Sheepish Apology?

What a weird question? Well, it's one of the many elephants in the Work-Life-Productivity newsletter living room, so let's discuss it.

Can a newsletter that you distribute too infrequently from your department make your program less visible and more likely to be cut? After communicating with hundreds of EAPs and watching what happens internally, I have slowly gravitated to an answer on this question. It’s “yes”.

It’s convenient not dealing with the distribution of a newsletter more often, but still appearing as though you are “doing something” to promote your EAP. Is this your mindset?

This vintage approach to communicating wellness information in a technological era has become almost an apologetic frequency as your newsletter sheepishly slips into employee in-boxes every three months.

I would like to make the argument that this is too infrequent and makes a statement about the importance of this material and your program, in particular.

Do you disagree? Consider why you do this. Is it because there is a history of EAPs always doing it this way because that is all that was initially available from vendor sources? So, by default, did it become the standard for EAPs, and you copied others? I think this is precisely what happened.

Since I joined ALMACA (EAPA’s early name) in 1978 – 32 years ago I have witnessed the evolution of this service. And, I have watched it grow more important.

With all the stress that employees face, and with the degree of importance that you place on your EAP as a life-saving and cost-saving mechanism, isn’t it a bit ironic that you only distribute a quarterly newsletter to employees when you could do it bimonthly or monthly for less, and with less hassle?

You may have a quick comeback — employees have too much to read! Don’t fool yourself. This is your codependency talking. You're giving in to a HR manager’s phone call telling you to slow it down about other material you may have sent. Or it's simply your imagination, because you haven't received such a phone call at all. You're just making this statement to avoid the work and it sounds damn good. I have caught many EAPs in this argument. It's not reality. This, too-much-to-read line is bogus.

If you are hearing this line, it is all about muscling you around and telling the EAP how to do its job. Why is that the most important thing employees read regarding their well-being and perhaps the one thing that they really look forward to most receiving, is the one thing that should be cut back?

What you’re hearing from HR, if indeed at all, is one HR manager’s opinion, or at best a manager’s opinion relayed via HR.

You need to understand something: HR managers don’t argue with top managers. They are their primary customers. Instead HR managers ask how high to jump. Corporations are on a big outsource-the-HR-departmet kick these days, and HR managers -- like EAPs are a threatened species.

I assure you that you are not getting the results of a survey that is supported by employee opinions.

Here’s the problem. Employee newsletters have historically been four pages. The problem begins and ends there.

Quarterly newsletters are always print or sub-links to the vendors own web site destroying your seamless look. They are expensive, with 500-600 word articles, and they are a vintage solution manufactured for EAPs in the early 1980’s when anything more frequent would be over-kill. Employees had more leisure time then to read these "books".

But the problem today is that they sacrifice your EAP or program visibility. You become less competitive with other things in the organization. You don’t want that. It will jeopardize your program.

You are sacrificing visibility and communicating the message that quarterly life-saving health and wellness information is quite enough. Trust me, you do not want to send this message.

An EAP newsletter is a resource, and visibility mechanism, and item of extreme interest to employees. And it is a way to compete against other things in the environment that are targeting the employee’s attention. You must not give in to the “stop distributing this material because our employees don’t have time to read it” mantra.

Instead, stop sending 4-page newsletters. Send two-page newsletters bimonthly or monthly.

Employees do not generally finish or complete four-page newsletters in my experience and in my view. This is another reason that you are locked into a 4-page solution distributed quarterly. It’s nuts to send it more often! And its expensive. So, change the model to the 2010 solution. Get out of the 1980's.

In this era, go for less content, shorter more action-oriented tight copy, and more frequency with the ability to edit the content yourself on the fly. This way your EAP will stay visible, be perceived as being more valuable and relevant, and be more effectively mainstreamed. Anything less and you’re in danger of being seen as expendable during next budget cycle.

Distribute EAP-wellness-productivity newsletters via PDF. Post them on your web site and send a link to employees when they are added to the site.

Distribute print to employees without computers, or send copies to appropriate locations. Your utilization will increase, your visibility will be enhanced, you will spend less, and employees will read more, more frequently. Your EAP will be talked about more often, and this is what you want.

A two-page monthly newsletter is 50% more content than a quarterly four-page newsletter! (Read that again.) And, the two-pager is more likely to be completely read. Are you with me?

You’ll will also reduce waste, motivate more self-referrals, and reduce more risk to the organization with a two—pager, monthly newsletter. Oh, and it will cost less than print. Everything I am writing here is pure logic and it holds up in real life.

Still need paper, make copies from your clean PDF supplied by the vendor. Can’t get permission from the vendor? Dump the newsletter vendor!

FrontLine Employee and WorkLife Excel are your modern day solutions to effective employee and EAP newsletters.

You can get brochures here:

FRONTLINE EMPLOYEE EAP WORKPLACE NEWSLETTER
WORK-LIFE-EXCEL WORKPLACE NEWSLETTER

Employee Stress: What Can You Do About It

A recent press release issued by the Conference Board Research group has discover that employees hate their jobs more than ever.

65% of employees hate jobs! Truly amazing.

What are you doing about this problem? The impact on productivity, and especially innovation and creativity to American business is enormous, and let's face it folks, -- this is a crisis.

There are several ways to help employees feel better about their work, but the most important underlying mechanism to make it happen is effective communication that helps employees feel like they are not simply cog in a wheel.

Here is an article that you are welcome to place in your newsletter. Simply be kind enough to place "Copyright 2010 by DFA Publishing, LLC. Used with Permission".

TITLE: Getting More Excited and Finding Meaning in Your Job

Let’s face it — not many of us will ever land our dream job. Instead, most of us find some acceptable compromise between salary, perks, job security, schedule, and job satisfaction. We don’t expect to have it all; we just want balance. But what happens when external obligations make you feel trapped in a job that you can’t stand?

The bottom line: You must figure out how to feel better about an unchangeable situation.

What Does “Making a Difference” Mean?

Everyone has moments when they ask themselves, “What am I doing to make a difference? Does what I do really matter?” Unless you work for a charitable organization, finding meaning in your work can be elusive.

Making a difference doesn’t have to involve grand gestures. People make small differences every day, even when their work isn’t intrinsically altruistic. Simple kindnesses such as a pleasant greeting or words of encouragement when a coworker is having a rough day can have significant impact on the well-being of others.

Positions, titles, and salaries don’t determine influence. Actions do. Never underestimate your potential to influence others in a positive and meaningful manner.

Find Your Gifts

We generally find happiness and satisfaction when we’re able to fully use our natural gifts. Everyone is exceptionally good at something, but not everyone has a job that plays to their strengths. Unfortunately, a lot of managers aren’t good at steering employees toward their potential. So it’s up to you.

Write down five things that you’re very good at and find some way to apply them to your work, even indirectly.

Widen Your Focus

Is your career at a standstill? So what? YOU don’t have to be.

You are not your job, but neither are you separate from it. Try as we might to compartmentalize our work selves from our private selves, all parts of our lives overlap and blend.

Bring your personal goals to work. When frustrated with on-the-job tasks, shift your focus to self-development and away from concerns about where your career is or isn’t going. When you move forward personally, other parts of your life tend to move along with you.

Let Life Teach

Use job-related setbacks as teaching moments by relentlessly pursuing their underlying lessons. A bad day at work can teach you all kinds of things about yourself when you’re able to step away from the situation and review it dispassionately.

Look for opportunities to expand your knowledge in ways that will make you more marketable. Always be alert for prospects both within and outside your organization. Keep an open mind; life can take you in directions you’ve never imagined.

Reconnect

All of us at one time or another lose sight of our values. When work has you down, it’s often a sign that you’ve strayed off course in some larger sense.

Find some quiet time alone when you can give thought to prioritizing what matters to you and formulating a plan for getting the most that you can out of life. You may find the things that have been bothering you the most aren’t as important as you thought they were.

Dream

Whatever your circumstances, you’re not trapped forever. Don’t let your present situation prevent you from developing skills that will lead you to something better. Visualize where you want to be, and plan how to get there. You never know when doors will open, but you can always be prepared for when they do.

To get a Free Trial Subscription to FrontLine Employee corporate wellness newsletter visit http://behavioralrisk.com/eap-newsletter.html

Less is More: How to Get Your Employee Newsletter Read

I am guessing that you're pretty good at arithmetic. So, let's have a little math test. What is the increased percentage in the amount of readable content in an employee newsletter that is two pages sent monthly versus a four pages sent quarterly. Music please...

The answer is 50%. Employees will have 50% more content to read per year with 24 pages corporate wellness newsletter delivered in monthly 2-page bites versus a quarterly 4-page newsletter corporate wellness newsletter equal to 16 total pages delivered to them during the year. 16 pages + 8 Pages = 24. 50% more. 16:8

Surprised? Okay, next quiz. Which of these two types of newsletters is most likely to be completely read? Same Jeopardy music please.

I don't have arithmetic or social proof, but I believe the monthly, 2-page newsletter will more likely be completely read by employees. Do you think that I am right about this? I bet you do agree. Think about it. Frequency versus quantity. Less versus more?

The logic is this. The competition your newsletter faces is time. Four page newsletters are at greater risk for not being read because either employees don't have the time to read them, or the opportunity to be distracted is ever present.
It's that simple.

But here is the key issue. You have more efficiency with a 2-page newsletter and because employees are more likely to read two pages versus four pages, the newsletter can do more good. (Now we are getting someplace in this discussion.)

Quarterly newsletter with four pages each do not provide enough frequency to promote an EAP or other helping program. Why show up only quarterly with a folded 4-page newsletter, when employees need much more of a continual stream of information than that to help them deal with all the problem they face?

Now, how do you feel about quarterly, four page newsletters? Click here to get a brochure about FRONTLINE EMPLOYEE EAP NEWSLETTER or here to learn about WORKLIFE EXCEL (essentially the same newsletter, but with more "corporate appeal". You know, the kind of newsletter you send to "the Board".

Get a Super Looking Nameplate for Your Newsletter

Let's face it, looks do matter. You may have a great newsletter with super articles, but you really need to get your appearance spruced up. Let me recommend a couple options that can save you hundreds of dollars.

In my last post, I forgot to mention a web site called Elance.com. It is the crossroads of the world for people who want to buy services of all kinds and people looking to sell them. From legal help to number crunching, from data entry to graphic artists. You name it, it's at Elance.com. You can have 20 bidding on producing an outstanding nameplate for your employee newsletter within 24 hours, and they will be so polished and amazing that you won't know who to pick. And, best of all, the prices will be fantastically low.

I found such a guy by the name of Joe Richards. He now works for me producing great nameplates for FrontLine Employee subscribers. Would you like to see one? Click here. How much?

Your Masthead, Nameplate, Flag

Here is the answer to the $64,000 question--What is the top of your newsletter called? Answer: It is called the nameplate or flag. It is not called a masthead. The masthead is the who, date, copyright, etc. - all of the details.

So, do you need an awesome looking, incredible looking, nameplate for your newsletter?

Take a look at this: Take a look at this transformation, click here. This newsletter called FrontLine Employee. The publisher will let you change the name of the publication to one you like better, and for new subscribers they will create a professional nameplate for you for only $75. Their phone number is 1-800-626-4327. Don't risk it, you get a free trial to the FrontLine Employee here.

Maximizing the Power of Company Newsletters

Most organizations of any appreciable size have an internal house newsletter. Are you mentioned in it every once in a while? Better yet, do you answer specific questions employees have about EAPs, or even discuss certain personal problems that might attract employees to inquire further about the chosen topic? One of the most powerful utilization techniques we've tried is encouraging employees to call us and request handouts on popular topics we offer for free. Recently we offered a handout called "13 Ways of Getting to Work on Time". The phone rang off the hook. These callers can translate into EAP referrals and boost your utilization rate. In addition, placing an article of this type in your company or corporate customer's newsletter has high value for its editor who has the singular mission of encouraging employee readership. Plus, these editors are frequently starved for content, making it likely they will accept virtually anything you have to offer that's reasonable. Consider different topics that you might insert in such newsletters. Come up with one for every issue. Here are a few topics to get you started: 14 Sure-Fire Ways to Organize the Top of Your Desk; 15 Ways to Use A Kitchen Timer to Make Your Life Happier; "The Care and Feeding of Teenagers: 10 Parent Tips"; "Care-givers for the Elderly: Ten Stress Management Tips" You can easily develop handouts like these by looking in the literature sitting on the shelf in your EAP office, or contactin local associations that devote themselves to specific human problems like the eldercare example above. You will soon train employees to look for things for free, and with such familiarity, will come a "de-mystification" of the EAP. This will make it more likely that employees will call when they have personal problems. This type of promotion is called increasing "top-of-mind" visibility.

Never Start A Sentence Like This

Get employees to dive into your articles. Don't force them to wander down a path to discover your point through twists and turns. If you drag them along, they may turn around and go back. The secret for doing to effective article writing is to appeal to the human instinct of desire and greed. Satisfy desire immediately in your article. Ready for a test? Okay tell me, which one of these articles about resolving conflict with your coworker satisfies your desire for actionable information best? A or B

A. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to almost never have conflicts with people at work? By...

B. Avoiding almost all conflicts at work is easy if you...

Hmmmm.

Yes. You are correct if you chose "B".

Never, ever start a sentence with the phrase, "Have you ever wondered..." or similar phrases that cause your reader to "donate" their precious time to you with patience as you arrive at your point in a leisurely way. Get to the point quickly. You can laugh if you want, but an employee who desperately needs the content in your article about avoiding conflict, may never read it. And that could, in theory, lead to untold damage and loss. Am I right about that theory? Yes. Think about it.....

Secret Weapon Increases Employee Readership

It's time for another visit to the newsletter ideas department. You will like this newsletter tip that you will soon claim as a secret weapon for increasing the likelihood that employees will read your company's employee newsletter. If you use a newsletter template, you may not see this technique, so be sure to include it. The technique is the "drop cap".

It's likely that you have been manipulated (in a good way) by this scientifically proven technique to increase article readership by as much as 25%. A drop cap is the first letter of a paragraph or story increased in size by some significant measure in order draw attention to the beginning of the article in such a manner as to cause it to be read.

As you can see in the image below, the first letter of the paragraph is larger. This technique grabs attention, is optically pleasing, and will help you busy employee readers grab the article with their eyes and start reading it.

Use drop caps. MS Publisher has a special tool for this purpose. Don't try to create it from scratch. You'll go crazy. The drop-cap tool in MS Publisher is located under format -- choose "Drop Cap".

Clip Art for Your Newsletter

There is a ton of free clipart on the Internet, but believe me when I say that most of it is not worth pursuing. It is time consuming to find the image associated with a specific topic, and there are many hoops you must hurdle through to get the image you want for free. Time is money and the best source that I have found on the Internet is Clipart.com. You can get photos or clipart, although it is named "clipart.com". The price is only $159 per year for unlimited downloads of the artwork. That is a great bargain, and with over 6 million images, you can't go wrong. Stay away from "free clipart" is my recommendation. (This post is from the been there, done it, and got the T-shirt and scars to prove it department.)

Solving Problems with Supervisors

Your employee newsletter or workplace newsletter has endless possibilities for managing risk. Consider writing an article to help employees take action and be proactive about fixing relationships with their supervisors when problems arise.

Not getting along with the boss will rank high on any employee’s list of stressors. Taking initiative to fix the relationship is tough, but payoffs are huge for reduced conflict, increase productivity, and the viral improvement of morale.

Further deterioration of a supervisor-supervisee relationship makes it tougher to repair down the road. Employees should be prompted to take the time to define the real issue creating problems in their relationship before such a meeting however.

The next step is discuss one's perspective with a confidential, professional helper to gain clarity on the purpose and need for the meeting with a supervisor. An employee assistance professional (no not an 800# cubicle counselor in cyberspace) is the ideal confidant. The goal for the employee is an improved relationship, not finding fault. This takes some coaching by the counselor because employees typically have convinced themselves that the supervisor is out to get them. A role play can be immensely helpful.

Has the employee played any role in the problem? Do communication issues in the past contribute to the difficulties that are experienced in the relationship at present?

Employees won't get very far if they don’t accept the universal principle that each party in conflict plays a role in contributing to it. Your workplace newsletter can offer this guidance and appear as neutral and powerful source of the information. (Simply use parts of this post in your article. Massage the content you see here to make the point. You can get more articles, just the text without royalties on similar topics at WorkExcel.com)

Continuing..after preparation, the employee explains in plain, unemotional language the observations and concerns about the relationship. An employee should use I statements. “It appears that we are having difficulties in our relationship.” or “I have been concerned about the way we communicate", etc.

An employee trying to fix a relationship with a supervisors should apply universal rules to the process. 1) Be positive—not cocky or passive aggressive. 2) Don’t act like you’ve cornered your boss. 3) Let the boss respond to your statements without interrupting. 4) Always let the boss have the last word. And 5) initiate regular contact with your boss going forward. Do not let any more trees grow between you after chopping one down.

WorkExcel.com)

Employee Newsletters: Entertainment or Risk Management in Disguise?

A newsletter is written to a captured audience -- your employees. They are at work and anything you offer them in writing has a fairly high likelihood of being read. With this in mind, it is a smart move to consider how to use your employee wellness and productivity newsletter as a tool both to help them and to help your company. Employee newsletters can influence behavior, and it is from this vantage point that they derive their power as risk management tools.

Helping employees and helping your company are not diametrically opposed. Many people, especially some organized labor folks I know, would maintain that anything good for the company is inherently bad for employees. Bull. Let's take a look at how a newsletter article on a simple subject can become a powerful little piece to protect a work organization, even while it helps employees. See below.

Most employee newsletters help employees manage stress. That's a good thing. But if you are thinking strategically with your newsletter, you would write articles to help employees with stress, but keep the topics of stress focused on critical issues facing the workplace or its work culture.

Below is a simple article, and an example of addressing stress management by building resilience. Future stress anticipated in the company directly influenced the timing of the article. It's purpose is to help employees, but also the company in general.

(Yes, you can use this article in your current newsletter if you include "used with permission, by Daniel Feerst, WorkExcel.com)
=================================

Building Resilience to Prepare for Stress

Don’t wait until you are on the skids with stress. Start beating it back before it arrives by building resilience. Building resilience is not a passing pop-psychology fad. The American Psychological Association has weighed in on the strategy and endorsed a 10-step approach.

How many of these tips do you follow? Which ones would be good to work on more?

1. Build effective, supportive relationships with others.
2. Avoid “catastrophizing” (seeing crises as insurmountable).
3. View change as part of life, with new opportunities accompanying it.
4. Be proactive. Move toward your goals. Don’t let things just happen to you.
5. When faced with problems, act decisively. Don’t just go with the flow.
6. In the midst of a crisis (or sometime soon after), ask yourself, “Can this event change my life for the better in some way?”
7. Nurture a view of yourself that includes the ability to withstand adversity.
8. Practice not zeroing in on the worst part about a crisis or adverse experience.
9. During a tough time, practice looking forward to the hoped-for conclusion and resolution while avoiding the visualization of your worst fears.
10. Take care of yourself by maintaining your physical and mental health, because this makes it easier to bounce back when adversity strikes.

Go for Short Articles

It seems people are in such a rush all the time. To some extent it is true, and it is necessary. Financial security is guaranteed by no company as it nearly was by so many in prior decades. This concern about the future, combined with rapid-fire messages fueling consumerism drives society to work hard, faster, and participate in an ever increasing, multi-tasking world.

The introduction above to this post is the rationale for having only short articles in your employee or company newsletter. When I author articles for newsletters, they are 72 to 228 words in length. That's pretty punchy. But what I have discovered, is that employees prefer short over long. With short articles, you can communicate the essentials, and because the reader can see who short the article is, will be drawn to read it completely.

When employees see long articles, with narratives that drone on, they mentally reject reading them. Make your articles short, and you will help your employees more.

Do It Yourself or Hire a Newsletter Writing Service? Or ...

Doing your own employee newsletter is a nightmare, better to have someone else do it right? Actually no, it's easier to do it yourself, and it's cheaper. No, I am not crazy. What's important is finding the best of both worlds to accomplish this feat. You need everything done for you--definitely. And then you need to be able to change anything you want in the final product, and keep doing it if necessary. You should never have to go back to the newsletter writing service to make another change. A newsletter writing service for your health and fitness newsletter for employees is a great thing, but check out the options by Googling "editable employee newsletters" to see the options. There are few companies that will let you do this, but they are few. Do not subscribe unless they let you email them with newsletter topics you want them to consider. Also, make sure you can create your own look and get a custom nameplate designed. Make sure you can edit your newsletter in MS Word or another program like MS Publisher. Find these options, and your weekends of struggle to get a newsletter written are over.

Stop Panicking about Copyright

Did you know that it is impossible to copyright an idea? You can copyright creative works and the entire paragraph you are reading now can be copyrighted, but I can't copyright my subject or the idea I came up with to discuss this subject with you. You can also write about it if you wish.

And this is the point: Frequently, it is not content that you are looking for. Instead it is an idea. Once you have the idea, then writing about it is fairly easy. The idea however must exist.

You can stare at a blank page, and not know what to write about. If you have ever experienced this phenomenon, it is not the lack of an article and text you face. It is an idea. Once you have the idea, everything starts moving forward. So you need ideas to write about. To get ideas, visit firstgov.gov and search any word. See what comes up. Then ideas will begin to pop into your mind. For really good brainstorming instruction, purchase the book: The Writer's Idea Book by Jack Heffron

Get an Insurance Discount for having an Employee Newsletter!

Come on, folks. Seriously, I am a little tired of property casualty insurance companies pretending they don't notice all of the things that companies big and small do to reduce their legal, financial, and behavioral risk and liability. By that I mean, where are the discounts off premiums and deductibles? Companies need to be rewarded and share the returns.

If there was one full-time hobby I could pursue with glee, it would be helping companies like yours get premiums reduced and other monetary concessions for using your newsletter as loss prevention tool that saves money.

An employee newsletter can be used to remind employees to use safety helmets, lift properly to avoid back injury, and not sexually harass the secretary. They can be used to encourage employees to get to work on time, resolve conflicts earlier, and improve relations with supervisors (and vice versa.)

It is a fact: The more information about safety and wellness given to employees, the better its effect on behavior. And a flyer in a information stand outside the health office won't cut it. An employee newsletter is the only way to go.

Employee newsletters can encourage employees to manage stress, calm domestic violence, get help for psychological problems, and intervene earlier with teenager troubles. Alcoholics and drug addicts to wake up in the morning ready to dial the phone number to the treatment center of their choice, but they do slowly self-diagnose their condition and then enter treatment when a crisis appears and someone says "go now!" (That's how nearly all treatment admissions occur.)

So what types of losses associated with the above problems are prevented by dropping information in the laps of employees in the form of a newsletter they can quickly read? Tons of losses. And these losses will never be known. But, let me say this: Insurance companies know they are making a fortune in reduced payouts because of their insured companies that focus routinely on these issues. And please, don't argue for a discount with a measily quarterly newsletter. Employees need monthly stuff. Short, sweet, and to the point.

If you decide to seek a discount from your business insurance agent, let me know. I want to start telling the world about it and put employee newsletters on the map, where they should be as risk management tools.

Intervene with Your Newsletter

Did you hear that the Obama administration is stoking the furnace at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) with the goal of going after businesses and industries that are continuing to ignore safety rules in the workplace? Oh, yeah, it's coming. Now, you and I both know that employees who violate safety rules cause accidents. But OSHA looks at reportable accidents and targets businesses for "corrective action" when they become aware of the numbers. Businesses get blamed, not individual employees. If you are not using your newsletter to educate and pound home the need to be safety conscious and follow safety rules, get going. The most frequently injured workers on the job in the USA are Hispanic workers. A big political payback is in the works and the legislation coming your way may be the Protecting Americ's Workers Act. This bill even includes new felony categories. Learn more by contacting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Appreciate your employee work-life-productivity newsletter. It is one of the cheapest forms of prevention you've ever taken for granted.

You Know Enough to Write Like A Genius

I know, it's hard to think of newsletter content for your workplace newsletter. But I would like to give you a few tips. #1 Rule in this game---You Know More Than You Think You Know.

I have written over 2000 articles for company newsletters. But how in the world did I do it? It wasn't easy figuring out how, but let me give you a small secret that will take a bit of burden off our mind.

Take any article in any journal lying around near you and open it up. I'll wait...............

Now, when you begin reading that article, do it with two minds. One of your minds is reading the article for its purposes. The other mind is reading the article for "ideas". You should freely associate with this second mind. As you do, ideas for spin-off articles will come to mind. Have pen handy.

Let me do this myself and I will show you what I am talking about. Please wait while I reach for the nearest journal (seriously, I am doing right now....................................). Okay, I am back.

Now, I am going read the first article I can find in this magazine from the Employee Assistance Professionals Assocation. It just came in the mail.

The article is entitle Responding to Workers in Financial Crisis (They probably got the idea for this article from me -- I just wrote 3 fact sheets on this topic three months ago and sent the notice to 1600 EAPs.

Back on track (I am a little ADD)...Okay, I am reading. The article talks about ripple effects in the economy and people losing their jobs. Bingo - article idea. What is the impact of the financial crisis on sleep problems. Wow. That's a biggy. And what do people do, and what should they not do about this problem. What's dangerous. What's not. Are they using Uncle Harry's sleep cure, or do they have a sleep disorder. Are they taking Advil PM that can give you a stroke or heart attack with continous use?!!

There's your freely associated example. You try it. See if you do not come up with wonderful examples that you can pursue on your own.

Avoiding Sleepless Nights as a Content Writer

I absolutely hate to procrastinate, but I still do it. And I kick myself every time. Perhaps when easy-to-use resources exist to help you write a newsletter, it can become a curse. That's because you will wait until the last minute even more to write your newsletter knowing it's going to be easier. (The human mind is an amazing thing isn't it?)

Procrastination is about putting off the pain, and it can be so powerful that your subconscious mind will fight your conscious mind as you attempt to force your arms to move the keys on your typewriter.

So, here's a resource both to help you, while it offers you a curse of even further procrastination. So with awareness, take advantage of this resource. It's called www.firstgov.gov.

That's right, you've heard of it. It's the federal government web portal. Your tax dollars hard at work (some of them anyway) have produced a deep well of information on almost any conceivable subject. And most of this information is in the publican domain.

What's amazing is that information and documentation on this web site comes from a zillion sources, including local, county, and state governments. Do a key word search on any topic and you will discover information to prompt your articles and make life easier in developing content. Some of it can be used wholesale and without fear of copyright infringement.

Enjoy a peaceful night's sleep, but don't procrastinate.

Corporate Newsletters that Save Lives and Increase Productivity

Corporate newsletters are powerful tools and the most effective way to insert behavioral change information into the lives of employees who are moving at a fast pace on the job. Properly constructed with management goals and employee well-being in mind, these productivity tools can help resolve issues with problem employees, reduce risk to business customers, and even improve the ability of a smart insurance producer to build better relationships to sell insurance and improve marketing of risk management products. Corporate newsletters are grossly misunderstood as marketing tools, risk management reduction devices, troubled employee helpers, and productivity boosters.

When I first began writing the work-life-productivity newsletter for the 12,000 employees of the U.S. Congress, my mind was on entertaining employees and helping ensure that I would please the reader. Satisfying the host organization was the mission, but I soon discovered how to do that and much more.

Today, after authoring newsletters for over 50,000 companies, I can assure you that your corporate employee, work-life wellness newsletter is under-powered and under-utilized. Here is how to make your newsletter a instrument of change and directly responsible for doing everything you can imagine from improving customer service to preventing workplace violence.
Step #1: Divide the editorial planning of your employee/work-life newsletter, corporate newsletter, or planned newsletter articles into 12 topic areas.

These will include:

Improving Coworker Relationships
On-the-job Worker Productivity Tips
Balancing Work, Family, Home, and Community
Improving Personal Fitness and Effectiveness
Alcohol and Drug Education, Recovery, & Intervention
Team Building
How to Get Help Now (put information at end of articles)
Hot Work-Life Topics in the News (Seasonal depression, back-to-school, etc.)
Stress Management Tips
Improving the Relationship with Your Supervisor
Workplace Safety, Injury Prevention, and Recovery
Customer Service Improvement and Relationship Enhancement

These topics are the ones that I have discovered meet the most essential needs of employees and business managers in any company large or small.

Next - NEVER have a company newsletter of four pages. Employee will ditch it after 2 pages. So make them two pages. And make them monthly. This is an easy process with a customizable newsletter service - Google "Customizable Editable Employee Newsletters" to find resources.

Next - Distribute by PDF. Employees without computers can get hard copies. And make hard copies available in strategic locations.

Next - Never make articles long and comprehensive when they are associated with mental health issues. Instead make them motivating and captivating. For example, if an article addresses anger management--DO NOT make articles so comprehensive that employees "self-diagnose" and begin treating serious problems themselves. This can increase your risk because they will take half measures and avoid introspection and persistence. It takes a professional to keep this process going most of the time when serious problems exist.

Instead, provide enough information to motivate the reader to take the next step and get help from the company EAP or other resource (preferable a live health/counseling/mental health professional) who can work with the employee. Use this person's face in your newsletter during the year. It will improve the likelihood of this person being utilized as a helping resource. Do you see how doing this can reduce organizational risk? A person struggling with anger issues, who might be the next person to go "postal" in your company could be helped by a newsletter that "sells" help in this manner.

You can apply the above model of information, enticement, and referral to the next step to almost any corporate or employee behavioral problem.

To obtain 24 free newsletter articles that you can use in your own corporate newsletter right now, visit this link to request the download from WorkExcel.com in MS Word. There is no obligation or restriction on the use of these articles.Daniel Feerst, MSW, LISW is author and publisher of the employee newsletters for the U.S. Congress and publisher of the workplace newsletter FrontLine Employee and WorkLife Excel, available by subscription and used by thousands of companies nationwide. Click here to obtain them and learn more other corporate newsletters. You can reach Dan Feerst at mailto:publisher@workexcel.com. His phone number is 1-800-626-4327.

Translating Your EAP to Spanish

Translating your company newsletter to Spanish is an easy thing to do, but it is also easy to make big mistakes in your attempts to do it. Use two translators. One edits. The other proofs. Only use translators that are extremely familiar with the nuances of Spanish for Latin America. How to do this. I suggest using a company called SDL, Inc. which operates under a web site named "Click2Translate.com". One neat idea is to share this cost among many other companies so you don't have to spring for the $200 translation fee each month for about 800 words. One option you may wish to explore is Empleado de FrontLine. Hundreds of companies use it monthly at extremely reasonable cost, and its editable, reproducible, and e-mailable.

Employee Newsletter and the Biggest Behavioral Problems

What are the most important problems that human resource managers face with regard to employee behavior. Is there one location where you can learn about these issues and stay on top of them. And, once they are known, can your employee newsletter do anything to tackle them, help employees with their work-life issues, and help get resolution on some of these issues.

An employee newsletter can. And here are the most popular concerns of human resource managers listed below. Begin to include content about these issues, and you will make a small dent in the behavioral risk fabric of the workplace.

I started digging around at Workforce.com. The site has an e-newsletter that is sent on Tuesdays to approximately 125,000 HR managers. But Workforce.com also has a very cool bulletin board service with more than a million page views on it covering nearly a thousand topics related to HR. The number of visitor clicks on each of these topics has been recorded. Folks, that's some bodacious data. I figured the topics that had the most clicks logically represented the areas of greatest interest to HR managers.

Some topics have 50 to 100 clicks/views recorded. But some have as many as 15,000. In other words, unless someone visited twice, 15,000 people had an interest in those specific topics. I decided to type out a list of topics that had more than 2,000 views.

I then discarded topics that weren't directly relevant to EAPs, such as HR metrics, pension plan issues, and COBRA. I left on the list topics that had some relationship to problems EAPs typically resolve or offer consultative guidance for resolving.

The following list represents a survey of about half the pages on the Web site's bulletin board and includes the topics getting most of the attention (equal to or more than 2,000 clicks).

• 
  Text Messaging Policies and Issues
  Employees Who Are Always a Little Late
  Managing Mentally Ill Employees
  Divorce and It's Affect on Workers
  Unusual Bathroom Habits Due to Culture or Religion
  Employees Bringing Children to Work
  Stealing and Lying Employees
  Childcare Referral Issues
  Tips for Success in HR in Working with Managers and
  Employees
  Time Management
  Spirituality in the Workplace
  Casual Dress Problems
  Motivating Employees
  Reasonable Accommodations of Employees
  Romance Problems Between Employees
  Terminating an Employee: Dealing with the Emotional Aftermath
  Emotional Stress to HR manager of terminating employees
  Bringing Your Baby to Work
  Combating Rumors
  Helping Employees with Work-Family Balance
  Disciplining Employees: Who and When and How Much
  Motivating Employees Without Monetary Incentives
  Motivating Long-term, Non-managerial Employees
  Diversity Issues and Morale in the Organization
  Helping Immigrant Employees Not Feel Isolated and Left Out
  High Gas Prices Causing Problems for Employees
  Management Burnout
  Negative Employees and How to Influence Them
  Sick Leave for Smoking Withdrawal
  Use of Myers-Briggs Assessment Outcomes
  How to Keep Employees in the Field or Off Site from Feeling Left Out
  How Can HR Boost Employee Productivity
  How to Communicate for Effectively with Employees
  The Entitled Employee—Attitudes of Those that Think the Organization "Owes" Them
  Coaching/Disciplining Employees on Their Attitude
  Supervisors Waiting until Evaluation Time to Address Issues
  Teams and Evaluating Individual Members Who Don't Contribute
  Teaching Supervisors How to Supervise
  Employee Communication: Keeping Them Informed and Involved Body Odor
  Worsening Employee Morale and Turning It Around
  Deciding if an Employee Should Be Terminated
  Pornography on Company Laptop Computers
  How to Win Back Employees Who Are Angry at the Company
  Teaching Supervisors How to Motivate Their Staffs
  Invigorating and Making Staff Meetings More Exciting

Workplace Newsletters and Soft Skills Education

Your newsletter can be a powerful vehicle for bringing soft skills to employees and helping improve your bottom line. If you're paying attention to the news, you know about the burgeoning economies of the Asia. Some countries like India, are experiencing double-digit enconomic growth records for their economies. And guess where they are seeking business? You guessed it--the United States and Western Europe. Imagine the challenge they face--these Asian countries attempting to convince us Westerners to do business with them rather than our neighbors. Well, that is the challenge. And, well, they're winning! One reason businesses in these developing economies are doing so well is because they are experts on soft skills. These soft skills include etiquette, politeness, honesty, respectful behavior, negotiating, and many more. These are people skills. These Asian countries also have a fast growing industry of consultants to teach people these soft skills and they are making a fortune. Your employee newsletter should dedicate space to soft skills. Find out what they are. And start dribbling the information on your employees. It will power up your bottom line! Check out these skills--big sellers in India:

• 7 Steps to A Lot More Sales skills
• Art of Meetings
• Creativity and Innovation
• Customer Astonishment: The Commitment to World-Class Customer Care
• Customer Service Plus
• Dealing With Difficult Employees
• Decision Making
• Delegation - Leveraging Through Others
• Interviewing Skills: Hiring the Best
• Interviewing Skills: Landing the Job You Want
• Leverage for Leadership in Business and Success in Life
• Making the Transition to Management
• Negotiations Plus 101
• Organizational Communications
• Problem Solving
• Sales Plus
• Strategic Thinking
• Team Management - Enabling Teams
• Team Management - Leading Teams
• Teams Management - Managing Team Conflict
• Team Management - Team Participation
• The Art of Active Listening
• Time Management
• Writing for Business Professionals

Your Newsletter Can Deliver Management's Message

An employee newsletter is a powerful tool for getting important messages to your employees--messages that management wants them to heed. The trick of course is doing it without looking like you are badgering employees. Certainly management wants employees to put customers first, reduce conflict with peers, get to work on time, take initiative, put the needs of the company first, and many other positive behaviors that help it with the bottom line. A newsletter is a bottom line enhancer. It can do this by communicating the message in a way that it inspires cooperation. The key is having a close collaborative relationship with your newsletter writer. If you purchase a mass produced newsletter, you lose this control and cost-benefit. When I work with an organization to produce their newsletter, I learn about the concerns of management. I want to know what is keeping them awake at night. For example, one concern top management has is fear of getting sued. In very indirect, but important ways, newsletter articles should have a prevention function, and this is certainly one topic that needs focus.

An employee newsletter can reduce this risk: Take a look at this article from the April 2008 newsletter of FrontLine Employee:

Powerfully Respectful Workplaces
Many behaviors commonly exhibited by employees can be detrimental to the well-being and productivity of coworkers. A lack of respect in the workplace, if left unchecked, will drag down morale, create higher turnover, and increase risks to the employer. What role do you play in contributing to a respectful workplace? Respect is the regard or consideration we have for others in all aspects of what concerns them—personal property, appearance, character traits, values, personal space, opinions, and emotional well-being. Disrespect toward others can negatively affect any of these things, so it is important to understand the role we play in maintaining a respectful workplace. Each of us has personal power, and with it, we affect others around us, whether we know it or not. Your daily actions signal to others the level of personal respect that you hold for them. Understanding that what you do matters can increase your personal awareness and give you more control over the direct, indirect, or unspoken signals you send to others. It can lead you to make improvements in your relationships and increase your happiness at work. This awareness is the key to minimizing strife and hostility, and to increasing the courtesy and mutual respect that all of us want from each other.

Can you see how such an article goes hand in hand with a workplace policy on preventing harassment? Can you see how powerful an employee newsletter can be?

Employee Newsletters and Social Issues

Many vital social issues can best be communicated by EAPs and other workplace health and wellness professionals because of their unique ability to reach employees with established channels of communication. That means employee newsletter folks!

Here is a press release issued yesterday by the American Psychological Association. It discusses the first empirical study of the 21st birthday binge drinking ritual known as "21 for 21".

EAPtools.com will produce a Free Fact Sheet on Binge Drinking Dangers in the near future. It will include updated information made possible by the study mentioned below.

You can obtain an original copy of this press release from this link at the American Psychological Association

APA Press Release
May 19, 2008
Contact: Audrey Hamilton
Public Affairs Office
(202) 336-5706

STUDY FINDS 21ST BIRTHDAY BINGE DRINKING EXTREMELY COMMON; CAN POSE SERIOUS HEALTH HAZARDS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Washington,DC: The "21 for 21" ritual, where 21st birthday revelers attempt to down 21 alcoholic drinks, is highly prevalent among college students, according to new research. In the largest study of its kind, researchers at the University of Missouri determined that many college students drink to excess on their 21st birthdays and potentially jeopardize their health.
The study will appear in the June issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association. The data were collected from a larger study where students at one university were followed for four years and asked questions about their drinking behaviors.

For this portion of the online survey, 2,518 current and former college students from one university responded to several questions. The participants had already turned 21 and were asked whether they had drunk alcohol to celebrate turning 21, and, if so, how much they had drunk and for how long. The researchers found that excessive drinking on this particular birthday was common, with more than four out of five participants reporting they had consumed some alcohol on their birthday. Of those participants, 34 percent of men and 24 percent of women reported consuming 21 drinks or more. The maximum for women was about 30 drinks, while the maximum for men was about 50 drinks.

Based on the information the participants provided, the researchers estimated the drinkers' blood alcohol content, reporting that 49 percent of men and 35 percent of women had estimated blood alcohol contents of 0.26 or higher, a level that clearly indicates severe alcohol intoxication and could lead to dangerous health problems such as disorientation, coma and even death. To put it in context, an average size woman would have to drink anywhere between seven and nine drinks per hour to attain a BAC of 0.26, while the average man would have to drink between 10 and 12 drinks.

"This study provides the first empirical evidence that 21st birthday drinking is a pervasive custom in which binge drinking is the norm," said Patricia C. Rutledge, PhD, the study's lead author. "This research should serve as evidence that there needs to be more public education about the dangers of 21st birthday binge drinking. The risks here are not limited to those with a history of problematic drinking, and there needs to be a strategy to address a custom that can lead to alcohol poisoning and, possibly, death."

These findings may not apply to all college-age students in the United States. The data in this study were obtained from a single Midwestern university and most of the participants were white. Also, the authors suggest that future studies should attempt to capture 21st birthday behavior as it's happening in order to obtain more detailed results. Article: "21st Birthday Drinking: Extremely Extreme," Patricia C. Rutledge, PhD, University of Missouri - Columbia and Allegheny College; Aesoon Park, and Kenneth J. Sher, PhD, University of Missouri - Columbia and the Midwest Alcoholism Research Center; Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 76, No. 03.


(Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/ccp763511.pdf )


Contact Patricia Rutledge by e-mail. You can reach her by phone at 814-332-6271 or 814-332-5361.

The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 148,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting human welfare.

Employee Newsletters Save Lives

Don't think your employee newsletter can save lives? Think again. Workplace employee newsletters have captured audiences--your employees. That means you have the ability to significantly change their lives for the better, and depending on what content you place in your newsletter, easily save lives. Here is an example: This is a press release from the American Psychological Association on the subject of "Binge Drinking and Consuming and Consuming 21 Drinks On One's 21st birthday. It happens a lot as you will see from the press release, but who is responsible for getting this information to these young people. The press release doesn't say that. Well, it's you. It's not going to be the newspapers or parents--at least most anyway. So, use information like this in your newsletter.
======================================
APA Press ReleaseMay 19, 2008Contact:

Audrey HamiltonPublic Affairs Office(202) 336-5706

STUDY FINDS 21ST BIRTHDAY BINGE DRINKING EXTREMELY COMMON; CAN POSE SERIOUS HEALTH HAZARDS

Drug-related cues may sway adolescent preference more strongly -->
Washington,DC—The “21 for 21” ritual, where 21st birthday revelers attempt to down 21 alcoholic drinks, is highly prevalent among college students, according to new research. In the largest study of its kind, researchers at the University of Missouri determined that many college students drink to excess on their 21st birthdays and potentially jeopardize their health.
The study will appear in the June issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association. The data were collected from a larger study where students at one university were followed for four years and asked questions about their drinking behaviors.

For this portion of the online survey, 2,518 current and former college students from one university responded to several questions. The participants had already turned 21 and were asked whether they had drunk alcohol to celebrate turning 21, and, if so, how much they had drunk and for how long. The researchers found that excessive drinking on this particular birthday was common, with more than four out of five participants reporting they had consumed some alcohol on their birthday. Of those participants, 34 percent of men and 24 percent of women reported consuming 21 drinks or more. The maximum for women was about 30 drinks, while the maximum for men was about 50 drinks.

Based on the information the participants provided, the researchers estimated the drinkers' blood alcohol content, reporting that 49 percent of men and 35 percent of women had estimated blood alcohol contents of 0.26 or higher, a level that clearly indicates severe alcohol intoxication and could lead to dangerous health problems such as disorientation, coma and even death. To put it in context, an average size woman would have to drink anywhere between seven and nine drinks per hour to attain a BAC of 0.26, while the average man would have to drink between 10 and 12 drinks.

“This study provides the first empirical evidence that 21st birthday drinking is a pervasive custom in which binge drinking is the norm,” said Patricia C. Rutledge, PhD, the study's lead author. “This research should serve as evidence that there needs to be more public education about the dangers of 21st birthday binge drinking. The risks here are not limited to those with a history of problematic drinking, and there needs to be a strategy to address a custom that can lead to alcohol poisoning and, possibly, death.”

These findings may not apply to all college-age students in the United States. The data in this study were obtained from a single Midwestern university and most of the participants were white. Also, the authors suggest that future studies should attempt to capture 21st birthday behavior as it's happening in order to obtain more detailed results. Article: "21st Birthday Drinking: Extremely Extreme," Patricia C. Rutledge, PhD, University of Missouri – Columbia and Allegheny College; Aesoon Park, and Kenneth J. Sher, PhD, University of Missouri – Columbia and the Midwest Alcoholism Research Center; Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 76, No. 03. (Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/ccp763511.pdf ) Contact Patricia Rutledge by e-mail. You can reach her by phone at 814-332-6271 or 814-332-5361.

The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 148,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting human welfare.
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