In this article, you’ll find references to research findings, personal musings, and a series of articles that I hope you find helpful in your everyday work of supervising people. You’ll see that many of the articles in this issue are reprints from authors published on the Society for Human Resource Management “Managing Smart” web library.

My undergraduate degree, achieved many years ago, is in General Business from Portland State University with many courses completed in the PSU Human Resource Management program. I have worked in a variety of industries since then – Savings & Loan, Insurance, Health Care, and now Higher Education – doing work in employee relations, employment, and training in most of these environments. For many years, my work also included benefits design, retirement plan design, leaves of absence, and organizational communications.

Anecdotally, I think I can safely say that the work of a manager has become much more complex over the 25+ years of my professional experience. There are times when managing people takes all of our creative energy and enthusiasm to the lowest lows only to later take a turn that moves us to our highest highs.

No two people have the same needs and personal dreams. Our individual life experiences are often far from static either in our home life or work life. As managers we may find ourselves not only on our own roller coaster of life, but to a certain degree we experience the roller coaster of our employees’ lives. Not surprisingly, they bring it to the workplace. When this happens it can be extremely challenging when our energies are concentrated on the consistent attainment of our department and institutional goals. We are required to provide work-related leadership, guidance, and coaching to smooth out the ride for others we count on, keeping staff engaged and productive in the work of PSU. There’s rarely a roadmap to guide us in this important responsibility.

According to a 2003 research study conducted by Towers Perrin HR Services, titled “Working Today: Understanding What Drives Employee Engagement,” “At a time when virtually every organization is struggling with cutbacks and financial pressure – trying to improve performance with fewer people and dollars – having a critical mass of employees who freely give that effort (discretionary effort) is of tremendous value. Think of it as the human power driving the financial and operational engine. The greater the power, the better the engine performs on multiple levels, all other things being equal.”

Accessing the human power of our dedicated staff requires thoughtful and informed leadership to create value for those individuals. Some of the articles contained in this issue discuss effectively providing continuous performance feedback to employees that builds trust and personal growth, making the most of an employee’s time in those “dreaded” meetings, learning about legal and compliance trends in employment, and learning how a 2006 survey rates satisfaction with leadership.

This newsletter is one of the many ways we are working to bring useful information to our leaders to increase your positive experiences in leading, managing, coaching, and guiding our workforce. We have created the page so that you can go back to the issues to refresh on topics presented in this bi-monthly tool. In addition, we are very interested in knowing what workshop or seminar topics are of most value to you. Please take a moment to respond to the list of topics found here, otherwise, we’ll have to choose. We are confident that we can do that, but would love to hear from you too.

One final note, annually we participate in the Willamette Valley Higher Education Human Resource Consortium to bring a management development series of courses to our leaders. To review the course schedule for these low-cost and highly rated sessions click on this link.