Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Civility in the Workplace

Civility in the Workplace by Dr. P. M. Forni
Woodbury Public Library, April 22, 2009

The quality of our lives depends upon the quality of our relationships, which depend on the quality of our relational skills. These depend on codes of civility and good manners.

Civility depends on benevolent awareness of others; applying restraint, respect, and consideration; caring about others and treating them well even if we don’t know them and may never interact with them. Example: wiping the sink in an airplane bathroom for the benefit of its next user.

Conversely, rudeness weakens social bonds and social support, damages self-esteem, increases stress, harms relationships, poisons the workplace, and can escalate to violence. Its ripple effect makes it difficult for others to think, reason, and treat others well.

Rudeness stats: 90% experience it, 50% lose work time worrying, and 12% leave the job. Over 50% of the American workforce experiences high stress; 35% rank “people issues” as worse than workload. Cost: $300 billion/year (health care, missed work, etc.).

Effective leaders build consensus; possess vision and integrity; they communicate temperately and resolutely. They gather widely in team formation, accept input from all members, share credit fairly, turn to all members including those perceived to be “uninteresting”, welcome new colleagues.

Defenses against toxic stress include getting to know co-workers, becoming more inclusive, not burdening co-workers with insecure hostility, being aware that we don’t have to constantly prove our worth.

For best performance, evaluate whether an action is ethically right, or simply self serving; consider consequences on others; note whether others prefer our absence to our presence; imagine a confrontation with another as the source for a training video.

Responding to rudeness: SIR Sequence:
State facts
Inform other(s) of impact of his/their actions
Request the behavior not happen again.

Civility improves social bonds, relationships, stress reduction, work quality, and job satisfaction.

Steps to take: assess civility level and commit to improvement.

Choosing civility: listen and pay attention; acknowledge others (greet, respond, etc.), include others; speak kindly; accept and give praise; acknowledge other’s contributions and achievements; don’t claim undeserved credit; respect others’ time and space; apologize promptly and sincerely; assert without being aggressive; criticize constructively, not destructively; accept blame, responsibility.

SPPL owns Dr. Forni’s Choosing Civility: the Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct and The Civility Solution: What To Do When People Are Rude. His website is http://krieger.jhu.edu/civility


--Bill B.

Government Publications You Should Know

Health, United States, 2008 with Special Feature on the Health of Young Adults.

From the preface:
"Health, United States, 2008 is the 32nd report on the health status of the Nation and is submitted by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to the President and the Congress of the United States in compliance with Section 308 of the Public Health Service Act. This report was compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics served in a review capacity.

The Health, United States series presents national trends in health statistics. Each report includes an executive summary, highlights, a chartbook, trend tables, extensive appendixes, and an index.

Chartbook
The 2008 Chartbook includes 41 charts and introduces this year’s special feature on young adults, a group making many life choices including decisions about education, marriage, childbearing, and health behaviors such as tobacco and alcohol use, which will affect both their future economic and health status as well as that of their families. The chartbook assesses the Nation’s health by presenting trends and current information on selected determinants and measures of health status and utilization of health care. Many measures are shown separately for persons of different ages because of the strong effect of age on health. Selected figures also highlight differences in determinants and measures of health status and utilization of health care by such characteristics as sex, race, Hispanic origin, education, and poverty level.

Trend Tables
The chartbook section is followed by 151 trend tables organized around four major subject areas: health status and determinants, health care utilization, health care resources, and health care expenditures. A major criterion used in selecting the trend tables is availability of comparable national data over a period of several years. The tables present data for selected years to highlight major trends in health statistics. Earlier editions of Health, United States may present data for additional years that are not included in the current printed report. Where possible, these additional years of data are available in Excel spreadsheet files on the Health, United States website. Tables with additional data years are listed in Appendix III.

Racial and Ethnic Data
Many tables in Health, United States present data according to race and Hispanic origin consistent with Department-wide emphasis on expanding racial and ethnic detail when presenting health data. Trend data on race and ethnicity are presented in the greatest detail possible after taking into account the quality of data, the amount of missing data, and the number of observations. Standards for classification of federal data on race and ethnicity are described in detail by data system in Appendix II, Race.

Education and Income Data
Many tables in Health, United States present data according to socioeconomic status, using education and family income as proxy measures. Education and income data are generally obtained directly from survey respondents and are not generally available from records-based data collection systems. State vital statistics systems currently report mother’s education on the birth certificate and, based on an informant, decedent’s education on the death certificate. See Appendix II, Education; Family income; and Poverty.

Disability Data
Disability is a complex concept and can include presence of physical or mental impairments that limit a person’s ability to perform an important activity and affect the use of or need for supports, accommodations or interventions required to improve functioning. Information on disability in the U.S. population is critical to health planning and policy. Although some information is currently available from federal data collection systems, the information is limited by lack of standard definitions and survey questions on disability. Several current initiatives are underway to coordinate and standardize measurement of disability across federal data systems. Until such standardized information is available, Health, United States includes the following disability-related information for the civilian noninstitutionalized population: prevalence of limitations of activity due to chronic conditions (Table 58), vision and hearing limitations for adults (Table 59), and limitations in Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) for the population age 65 and over (Table 58). In addition, disability-related information is provided for Medicare enrollees (Table 144), Medicaid recipients (Table 145), and veterans with service-connected disabilities (Table 147).

For more information on disability statistics see: Altman B, Bernstein A. Disability and health in the United States, 2001–2005. Hyattsville, MD: NCHS. 2008. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/misc/disability2001–2005.pdf."

Holdings:
We have the paper going back to at least 1999, and the CDC website has editions back to 1975 in pdf.

If you have someone looking for detailed U.S. health information, you should check this source.

Melissa @ Central.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Targeting the Ages: Programming that Hits the Mark

On February 13, 2009, I had the opportunity to attend a webinar, titled, Targeting the Ages: Programming that Hits the Mark. The webinar was sponsored by the College of Dupage and was presented by librarians Penny Mandziara (Library/School Liaison for the Bensenville Community Public Library) and Kelly Watson (Reader Services Librarian for the Bensenville Community Public Library in Bensenville, Illinois).

The teleconference was an informative session that basically instructed individuals how to come up with innovative programming that meets the needs of their patrons. Set-by-step, library programmers were guided through planning of a program, offering creative ideas that combined partnering amongst local organizations and/or groups.

For successful programming, the programmer must:
Identify your patron's needs
Develop a plan for successful implementation
Adapt to your surroundings, be creative, pay attention to details and partner up if necessary
Evaluate your programs
Many programming ideas were offered for youth, adults and seniors.


Programming Workbook for librarians.



-Terry G, Central Library

Monday, April 06, 2009

Twin Cities Local & Community Newspapers

Did you know that United Way's Beehive/MN 211 has a listing of Local and Community Newspapers in the Twin Cities with links to their sites?

Melissa @ Central.