How to overcome the anxiety of public speaking
If you were asked to list the things in life you fear the most, I dare say that the fear of speaking in public would be at or close to the top of your list.
You’re not alone. According to statistics, it’s stronger than the fear of dying, followed by financial ruin, spiders and snakes.
The dictionary describes fear as a “feeling of alarm or dread caused by the expectation of danger, pain, or disaster.”
Fear is a natural emotion that we all experience from time to time. It warns us when we’re in danger. Without it, we would probably not survive. Irrational fear, on the other hand, is a destructive, self-defeating emotion that prevents us from achieving our fullest potential. It represents lost opportunities as it robs us of our self-confidence and limits our personal growth. The fear of not measuring up to expectations can be overwhelming.
If you’re a non-professional speaker, being asked to speak in public can easily throw you into a panic. The thought of all those eyes looking at you is like an alarm bell setting off butterflies, weak knees, tight throat, shortness of breath and a trembling voice. What to do?
To reduce your anxiety and put the problem in perspective, you need to identify the cause of your fears.
The fears most commonly voiced by my clients in my coaching and workshops are:
Making mistakes – It’s not the mistakes you make that are the problem. It’s how you handle them. Everyone makes mistakes. If it’s a small one, ignore it and move on. The audience probably will never notice it unless you visibly or verbally react to it. If it’s one you can’t ignore, don’t apologize.
Acknowledge it and, if possible, treat it with humor. The audience will appreciate the ease with which you handled it.
Being boring – If you expect to be boring, you will be. Know your subject thoroughly and speak from the heart. Be sincere and let your audience know you’re enjoying yourself. (If you’re not, pretend you are. Public speaking is acting in disguise.) Use inflection, phrasing, pauses and word stress to give vitality and nuance to your words. If you sound interested, you’ll be interesting.
Freezing or forgetting – Avoid memorizing your speech. If you’re the least bit nervous, you’re sure to freeze – and forget. Memorize your opening to help you settle down and get past the nervousness of the first few minutes. Memorize your closing to enable you to finish with direct eye contact. If you use notes or a script, use large print with plenty of white space for easy reading. Avoid being glued to the text by making frequent eye contact with the audience; they’re not interested in seeing the top of your head. The audience wants to see your eyes and the expression on your face.
To bring your fear until control, prepare yourself thoroughly. The more you know about your subject, the less stress you’ll feel. It’s difficult to communicate effectively when you’re afraid, nervous or under stress. Think positively and visualize yourself speaking like a pro.
Turn off all negative thoughts and follow these few suggestions:
Practice – There’s no substitute. Practice may not make you perfect but it will certainly make you more comfortable and relaxed. Zig Ziglar practices before every speech. If Ziglar, one of the top speakers in the country, considers it important, so should you.
Practice often and out loud, preferably as you stand – Use a tape recorder and/or video camera to become familiar with the sound of your voice, style of delivery and body language. Invite friends and family to listen to you and ask for comments and suggestions.
Relax and be yourself – Before beginning your speech, inhale deeply several times to help you relax. Using your full lung capacity rather than breathing high in the chest will help you stay relaxed. Talk to your audience, not at them. Be warm in your delivery and use a comfortable conversational style to allow your personality to come through. Audiences relate to the “likable” speaker. And don’t be afraid of moments of silence. The audience will never notice what can seem like an eternity to you.
Use humor – Humor in your opening will relax you and warm up the audience. Wherever possible, pepper your speech with pertinent stories and incidents that are humorous, even though your topic may be serious. It establishes a connection with the audience.
Advance preparation – Success is in the details. Avoid problems by checking the details well in advance – the type and theme of the meeting, the number and gender of attendees, special interests of the audience, other speakers who have been scheduled and where in the program you will be appearing. Request any equipment you plan to use well in advance. If possible, arrange an on-site rehearsal to determine that everything is operating properly.
Fear can make you nervous but nerves need not make you fearful. While fear is difficult to channel, nerves, when channeled into energy, can be a positive force bringing vitality and enthusiasm into your speech. Musicians, actors, speakers and performers rely on nervous energy to enhance their performance. You can, too. Control your fear rather than allowing it to control you.
Your goal is to be comfortable and enjoy speaking before an audience. Create as many opportunities for speaking in public as possible. Join Toastmasters, a community theater group, or take coaching or a class in public speaking or dramatics. Speaking in front of others doesn’t need to be dreaded. It can be fun!
Speech coach June Johnson is president of Voice Power of Milwaukee. She can be reached at 332-0926 or via e-mail at voicepwrl@aol.com.
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Know what you’r edoing before you negotiate the lease for your business
For those seeking office or industrial space, representation by an experienced broker will save the user considerable time and money in his search, maintains Jack Quinlevan, a vice president with Trammell Crow’s Milwaukee office.
The commission paid by the building owner to the broker is typically three percent of the annual gross rent on a five-year lease and will be more than made up for in properly negotiated terms and conditions, Quinlevan says.
However, for those who want to go it alone in their search for office or industrial space, it pays to keep a few things in mind.
First, ask yourself how much space your firm requires, and how much space you will need two to four years from now, Quinlevan says.
Also, let’s say you’ve got a sales force of 10 people. Do you want them working in enclosed spaces? Or, do you place them out on a main floor separated by dividers. The enclosed option will cost more every time, Quinlevan says.
You also have to have a firm grasp of how long the process takes. Each step takes time: the search, the building walk-through, the space planning, requesting proposals, counter-proposals, negotiating the lease points, completing the construction documents, and the actual build-out of the space.
Remember, the listing broker can be overly optimistic in terms of the time it takes to complete the deal and get the prospective tenant into the building. Build more time into the equation.
Here are some other key points to remember, Quinlevan says:
Timing is critical – When does your lease expire, and what is the lease holdover language? If you don’t leave on time – say your lease expires May 31 and you have to stay longer – some lease documents say the landlord can automatically hold you over for another year. “It’s very contentious,” Quinlevan says. “Some guys find this out and they start screaming.”
Image – Do you want to be in the Firstar Center or a lower profile single-story office/industrial-type building? “Some people have told me that they don’t want to be in Class A high-rise space because their clients will think that they are charging more so they can pay their rent,” Quinlevan says.
Signage – If you don’t ask for it, you don’t get it. There is pylon signage on a totem-pole-like stack out front, or there is building signage. “If you don’t ask for it, you don’t get it,” Quinlevan says. Or, is it reserved for the largest tenant in the building? Don’t forget to ask about being included in directory signage and suite signage, both of which are considered standard.
Tenant mix – Be aware of who is in the building. You want to be sure you know who your neighbors are, and that they provide a good complement to your own business.
Negotiation points: unless you are experienced, it is hard to know the landlord’s asking rate and the deal rate. Some building owners may ask $20 per square foot, but the deal range is $18.50 to $19 in the actual deals as they are made.
Rentable vs. usable square feet – When comparing buildings, know the difference between rentable square feet and usable square feet. Usable square feet is the amount in between the walls. Rentable square feet incorporates common space such as halls, and bathrooms and lobbies. This can add 10 to 15 percent to the overall cost, Quinlevan says.
Tenant improvements – Understand what landlords are willing to provide in terms of tenant improvements. Keep in mind that landlords love to deal with tenants that are willing to take the space as is. However, in some cases, landlords are willing to pay up to $15 per square foot for improvements. “Often, people walk into an office, and they say it looks fine,” Quinlevan says. “What they don’t realize is that the landlord is willing to knock down walls and redo the space.”
Lease terms – Typical lease duration terms are five years, although some landlords will go three years. In some cases, landlords will offer 10-year terms with exit points negotiated at five years. There is a decided cost savings for locking in at 10 years, and you have the ability to get out and renegotiate if the market takes a turn, Quinlevan says.
Expansion options – If you are in a growth company and you need a defined amount of square feet, you’ll want to negotiate the option to expand into additional square feet. If you don’t negotiate it, the landlord could easily lease it out from under you. That could mean you have to sit packed into your space for the next five years when it’s too small for you.
Parking – Parking is scarcer in parts of downtowns than in the suburbs. If you don’t ask for it, you don’t get it. So you
“People will walk into an office space and say it looks fine. What they don’t realize is that the landlord is willing to knock down walls and redo the space.”
– Jack Quinlevan, Trammel Crow
need to ask and negotiate this up front. “In one deal we negotiated, we saw that there was a vacant space in the lot with four parking spots, so we grabbed those,” Quinlevan says. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get it, and it’s never volunteered.”
Lease language – Some leases are strongly slanted toward the landlord. You need to take a careful look at this, or, have an attorney review the lease on your behalf.
When performing your search, don’t forget to ask around, Quinlevan says.
“Somebody who is looking may want to talk to other tenants and ask them what the heating and cooling systems are like, whether building management is responsive, and whether tenancy is stable.” Also find out how many times the building has been bought and sold in recent years, Quinlevan says.
Finally, be prepared for escalations in rent, operating expense, and taxes.
The real estate investment trusts (REITS) have come into the Milwaukee area marketplace, and they need to show growth to their investors. So they are raising the rent. A typical increase would be two percent, Quinlevan says.
In most negotiated leases, the owner tends to pay the tenant’s portion of the operating expenses and real estate taxes for the first year of the lease. After that, the tenant will be responsible for any increases on a pro rata basis, with the tenant paying above a certain fixed amount.
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Third Ward office design is way out of the box

For the majority of us, the office is a utilitarian environment where we show up, do our work, and go home. We don’t complain about glaring overhead lights, noise distractions, or confining cubicles parked at right angles which seem to block out the world around us.
After all, it’s an office, right? The message inherent in most office design is that work is an activity not meant to be enjoyed. With everything placed at right angles and uninspired colors covering the floors and walls, is it any wonder that people feel dull at work?
But for the relative few who have the good fortune to work in an inspirational office setting, the office environment is a source of energy from which creativity naturally flows. The medium is the message.
More often than not, advertising agencies are on the cutting edge of contemporary office design. That is certainly the case with Marx McClellan Thrun, a six-person agency in Milwaukee’s Third Ward.
From the moment one sets foot in the 4,000-square-foot space on the sixth floor of the Marshall Building, you realize this is an office that transcends the merely ordinary.
Marx McClellan Thrun’s low-ceilinged reception area, while modest, gives a hint of what lies ahead. Six black wooden icons affixed to the wall serve as metaphors for what the agency does. There is a bowling ball, a black cat, a dagger, dice – all which serve to illustrate the nature of the work that the agency juggles, says principal Rick Thrun.
"We’ve been successful because every day we juggle lots of dangerous things for some very special clients," Thrun says. "And yet we still manage to have some fun."
Heading from the reception area into the main office, the visitor is greeted by views of the Third Ward skyline which is visible through the large, old-fashioned casement-style windows. Two metallic stairwells lead to an office loft. Colorful portrait murals by local artist Tom Porter stand out against Cream City brick walls.
In another subtle but perceptible shift, nearly everything about the office is flowing at 45-degree or odd angles. Nothing is set up on traditional 90-degree lines. Even the odd-shaped cubicle walls take on this effect. Sight lines flow in virtually all directions.
"No matter where you are in here, you can see out," Thrun says. "We didn’t want to make people feel that they were walled off. At the same time, we also didn’t want to come up with a space that was overdesigned, or overdecorated.
Before the $43,000 remodeling was done in 1995, the agency occupied the office much as it was from the previous tenant, a photographer who both lived in the space and used it as his studio loft.
One of the primary goals for remodeling the wide open space was to give everyone his or her own workspace while maintaining the feeling of openness and light.
Taken together, the overall feel of the office is one of airiness combined with industrial chic. Throw in some imaginative interior design elements, and you’ve got an office that positively oozes the feeling that cool advertising concepts are just waiting to be born.
The office was designed over three years ago by Ed Miller of the Winters Design Group, who also helped agency principals Rick Thrun and Laura Marx remodel their 1935 home. Miller credits Thrun with helping him take some of his ideas to the next level.
"I think they needed a space that lets their clients know that they are in the right place if they are looking for innovative ideas and exciting artwork," says Miller, who won the National Remodeling Industry Association’s Contractor of the Year Award in 1996 for his work on the office.
"We didn’t want people to walk in and get the impression that six people are sitting at Macintosh computers doing design work," Miller says. "We wanted to convey a sense of energy, that this is a place that is not static. For the customer/client, this space shows that members of the agency are not status-quo thinkers."
Marx McClellan Thrun’s clients include Johnson Controls, Briggs & Stratton, Motorola, Concours Motors and Lake Park Bistro.
A kitchen the photographer put in has been retained, and works well as a separate area within the redesigned space. Brick walls that were painted white were sandblasted.
"It was too ’60s/’70s, kind of ‘pop’ looking," Miller recalls. "It needed to be updated to the ’90s into something more refined."
One of the first moves made by Miller and Thrun was to carpet over the checkerboard pattern linoleum floor
"We wanted to convey a sense of energy, that this is a place that is not static."
– Ed MIller, Winters Design Group
that dominated the space. Not only did the carpet provide sound abatement, but it gave the space a more professional look, Thrun said.
The large pillars that stand in the room were painted gray, as was the ceiling. Industrial-type lights hang off the pillars and point skyward. Steel cables fan out across the ceiling like spokes from a wheel, giving it added visual texture.
Partition walls are painted in warm colors like eggplant and terra cotta. Placement of corrugated steel on curved surfaces and glass block in random, but strategic, order inside dividing walls adds an element of sophistication.
Two metal stairways lead up to the loft. One of the stairways is surrounded by curved partition walls which play off the rounded walls at the top of the stairs, providing the staircase with a more cohesive look.
Thrun’s design studio looks out over the floor below. Marx has her own separate office with a door on the first floor, as she performs a lot of the nitty-gritty financial work for the firm which requires a higher level of privacy. Jagged-edge concrete panels with steel reinforcing bars protruding are placed at the front of the loft near Thrun’s office. The fractured panels perched at the top of the loft are meant to create the abstract feeling of being in a deconstruction zone.
There are several conference rooms, including a more formal one off the reception room that, in reality, is anything but formal in terms of design. Suspended industrial-style lightning aimed down at the table is the dominant feature of the room, which has Cream City brick walls. The other conference area is in a partially enclosed space in the main room. On a steel table, this is where much of the decision-making for the group takes place on Monday mornings. Clients and vendors are also brought here.
"We wanted to make it a place that clients would enjoy coming to," Thrun says. "When vendors and other people that we work with come here, it’s a place they remember."

May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Miller Brewing fund helps tradesmen get started
Orlando Arce knew that if he wanted to get ahead in the world, he would need the tools of his trade.
Trouble is, those tools are expensive. And in many of the trades, employees are expected to have their own tools, especially at smaller firms. But even at larger firms, employees often need to bring in some of their own tools.
Arce, however, didn’t just sit on his desire. He attended classes as Milwaukee Area Technical College and did so well that he was awarded a set of shop tools through the Tools for Success program sponsored by Miller Brewing Co.
Since its introduction in Milwaukee six years ago, Tools for Success has assisted more than 180 MATC students with more than $185,000 worth of tools. This year alone, 21 MATC students in 20 different fields won the tool scholarships. The scholarships are based on the students’ academic achievements, career goals, community service, biographical statements and references from faculty and community members.
“Before I won the scholarship, I had to borrow tools to do my job,” said Arce, an auto body and paint technician who works for Lou’s Autobody Carstar. “It’s better to have your own tools. The program has helped me out in my career to a very large degree.”
Arce, who won his tools last year, said he would have been in a bind without the tools scholarship.
Tools scholarships range from $600 to $2,500 worth of tools. But because Miller works with MATC to buy the tools through educational channels, a scholarship can include equipment valued at up to $10,000.
Arce’s story is not unlike the hundreds of other persons who’ve won tools through the Miller-sponsored program in Wisconsin, California, Texas, Ohio and Puerto Rico – they have one final hurdle to qualify for jobs in their selected fields. That hurdle being tool ownership.
The program not only benefits the worker, it also benefits employers, say Jack MacDonough, chairman
“Before I won the scholarship,
I had to borrow tools to do my job … The program has helped me out in my career to a large degree.”
– Orlando Arce, Lou’s Autobody Carstar
and CEO of Miller Brewing, noting the tight labor market that businesses must deal with. “We’re facing a critical shortage of skilled labor, and no issue is more important to the future of the collective workforce. Young people and those looking for new careers have shied away from entering the trades over the years, and now we must address this problem head-on if we hope to solve it.”
The Tools for Success program, he says, is one way Miller is tackling the problem.
Miller started the program in Los Angeles in 1991 after seeing a growing need for skilled tradesmen, said Julie Kubasa, corporate communications representative for Miller. Through the years, “it’s helped us publicize that America needs more people in the trades,” she added.
For MATC, the program is a boost for its skilled trades disciplines, says Donna McCarty, director of college relations. “It really helps us encourage people to go into the trades,” she said, adding that for many people, a career in the trades can be financially rewarding.
“The lowest pay-range of the jobs these people are moving into is $9 to $10 an hour while the highest is $18 to $20 an hour,” she said.
The demand for workers is there. “For every graduate we have, there are five job offers,” McCarty notes. The U.S. Department of Labor says a growing percentage of the workforce will be comprised of skilled labor.
For some of the scholarship winners, the tools they get are the only ones they own. For others, having an extra set allows them to have a set of tools on the job and one at home for sideline work.
Miller, Kubasa noted, is a very active benefactor to many causes. But the Tools program is a favorite, Kubasa says. “Of all the corporate programs we have, this one is most special. It makes the giving so much more real when you can see an individual recipient and when you know the impact of the giving on that person’s life. And when you see what some of these students have overcome, it really is rewarding for us.”
McCarty is similarly enthusiastic about the program, especially since it provides an extra recognition for accomplished students at the end of their studies.
And for many of the students, the awards ceremony is recognition the likes of which they’ve never felt. “It’s a real self-esteem builder,” McCarty says. “Many of the students will say they’ve never had an honor like this.”
May 1998 Small Business Times,Milwaukee

Geoffrey Martin lives in Mequon, but he put his business elsewhere. Martin, executive vice-president of Pope Scientific, likes living in Mequon, but he’s relocating his growing business from Menomonee Falls to the Saukville Industrial Park. Martin’s new 44,000-square-foot facility should be complete by August.
“We looked in Menomonee Falls, Germantown, Grafton and the Cedarburg areas, but we avoided Mequon because the land there is too pricey,” Martin said. “I live in Mequon and would have liked to have my business close by, but I didn’t want to deal with the city government there.”
Easy freeway access and affordable land prices led Martin to locate his firm, which manufactures distillation equipment for the chemical industry, to Saukville.
“Saukville was the place to go,” Martin said. “They want the industry and were willing to work with us. Ninety-nine percent of my employees will go with me, so labor won’t be an issue. It was a real pleasure working with Saukville. They did everything but shine your shoes. They were so open to working with us.”
That’s good news to Chris Lear, Saukville’s village administrator. Saukville owns and promotes its industrial park and wants to see businesses there succeed.
“We’ve got five new buildings going up in the industrial park this year,” Lear said. “That’s in addition to the growth planned at Charter Steel, our biggest employer, which has added a $100 million addition to its physical structure. We will do whatever we can to help our industries grow and grow our industrial park at the same time.”
Ann Murray, president of the Grafton Chamber of Commerce, said the village of Grafton is the industrial hub of the Ozaukee County.
“The first phase of the Grafton Industrial Park is complete and the second phase has at least three firms there now and more are coming,” Murray said.” In the past, it was easier to get industry here, but with the difficulty in getting good employees, it’s become more challenging.”
Besides attracting industry, Grafton hopes to bring in new business to its downtown area. A master plan to redevelop the downtown is in the works.
“Finally we’re seeing some much-needed changes,” Murray said. “Some buildings are for sale downtown and we would like to see business owners get the help they need to make their businesses successful. We will have small business loans available to them. As a chamber, we do a good job of recruiting new businesses and helping them to feel comfortable in the community.”
While Saukville and Grafton bend over backwards to help businesses locate there, Mequon takes a different approach.
“Most communities say ‘What can we do for development,’ but in Mequon we say ‘What can development do for us,'” said Brad Stenke, the city’s community development director. “We can be more selective about the development we have here. We are mainly interested in providing regional services for the people who live in our community.”
While Mequon has 300 acres set aside for industrial development and an additional 100 acres for commercial/office development, it’s in no hurry to develop it.
“If someone wants to locate here they have to come to the table with the type of development we feel is in our best interest,” Stenke said. “But once you are here, our feeling is that we want you to prosper and we will work with you to see that you are profitable.”
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Not even the CEO has an office at firm’s new quarters
When the staff of the Milwaukee engineering firm of Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer & Associates was planning the firm’s new office space last year, they knew they wanted to project a professional, high-tech image.
But whether that image would be projected through an open-concept office, or through a facility with individual offices would become a central issue for the discussions.
“We discussed it at length,” says Rich Bub, CEO and a principal of the firm. The sticky situation that kept cropping up in those discussions was, if there were going to be offices in the new facility, who would get one and who wouldn’t?
That was not only seen as an immediate dilemma, but one that could continually crop up. If the company had decided to build offices for employees above a certain level, what would happen if a cubicled employee were promoted to an officed level position?
What followed those thoughts was the concern of how the non-officed group would react to being left out.
“It came down to a situation of, if this group has offices, why not that group, too?,” says Bub, a proponent of the open concept.
Thus the push for the open concept, in which no one would get an office. “That became our biggest seller,” he says of the some-or-none scenario. “It would have been a harder sell if I were to get an office while others didn’t.”
Further, it was determined that an open-plan concept would offer far more flexibility for staff changes.
The firm’s board was very sensitive to getting the entire staff to accept the open-plan idea, noted Cynthia Gall and Jane Dederling of Engberg Anderson Design Partnership, the architectural and design firm which handled the office design.
The principals and staff bought into the egalitarian approach, and the firm moved into its new open-concept offices in the Honey Creek Corporate Center development March 7.
The 22.5-acre Honey Creek Corporate Center, just off 84th Street adjacent to I-94 in Milwaukee, is a project of Opus North Corp.
Graef, Anhalt Schloemer & Associates anchors the first of three similar buildings planned for the site. G.A.S. has 36,000 square feet on the third and fourth floors, with an option to lease additional space in the 118,000-square-foot building. Superior Services, a West Allis-based nationwide waste services company, recently announced that it would move to the development, leasing 16,000 square feet.
In selecting an open concept, Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer & Associates is following a trend, according to the International Facility Management Association (IFMA). More managers at US and Canadian offices are now working in open-plan workspaces than three years ago, according to IFMA’s new research report, Benchmarks III.
The open concept is seen as more conducive to camaraderie while the office set-up can reinforce hierarchical patterns.
“It gives the feeling that everyone is in this together, the CAD technician to the owners,” Bub says. “There’s a real teamwork mentality promoted.”
There is, however, some respect for hierarchy and for work needs. Bub, for example, has a larger work station than other persons at the firm. But basically, there are two sizes of “cubicles.”
The IFMA report indicates that while open-plan workspaces are more common among corporate professionals, senior clerical, and general clerical employees, the use of open spaces has increased the most among middle management.
The current mix of office type revealed by the study is 58% open plan (spaces divided by movable partitions), 36% private (offices enclosed by floor-to-ceiling walls), and 6% bullpen (open areas without partitions).
A recent study by office furniture manufacturer Steelcase showed that only 17% of workers desire a corner office – once deemed the most coveted office space. And office furniture maker Haworth has seen a marked increase in its sales of systems developed for open-plan offices. Other firms have seen similar increases in sales of open-plan office products.
“Call it what you want: open-plan, systems furniture, or cubicle, it’s a great answer to a business’s need to promote better communications and collaboration among their workers,” says Sheri Cuccarese, Haworth’s director of product marketing and development.
Dederling, of Engberg Anderson, notes that in the Milwaukee area, there’s still a demand for private offices for upper management. But those spaces are not only smaller, but they are more often incorporating both exterior and interior windows, allowing management to see the staff and the staff to see management.
Besides the change in corporate culture, another factor driving firms toward open offices is money, Dederling says, with owners seeing cost savings in open-plan concepts.
The new Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer & Associates facility isn’t without enclosed spaces. In fact, there are 15 conference rooms in the site. When privacy is needed, or when a large group of employees gather on an issue, the rooms are available. But even those conference rooms share in the open-ambiance, with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the main office space rather than solid walls. “The glass walls add to the open feeling,” said Engberg Anderson’s Gall.
A lunchroom can double as a meeting space when needed.
Otherwise, the site is planned to promote people being together rather than being off by themselves, Bub says.
Bub sees two main attributes of the open-plan concept. First is visibility; everyone, not just partners with offices, gets to look out a window. “It allows a view of the outside world without having to look through a manager’s office,” he says. No cubicles are stationed along the main length of the offices; rather, the space is reserved for an aisle, allowing everyone to share in the view of what is planned to be a pond-centered prairie-style courtyard. That window-side aisle also allows more natural lighting to flow into the entire office area, Dederling notes. Everyone at G.A.S. also has access to a deck off the fourth floor.
The open concept is additionally intended to promote greater and quicker communications among the staff, Bub says.
There was a significant concern about noise levels in the open office, concerns that were addressed by the design of the office and materials selection. Work centers that were seen as noise producers – such as the mail room and paper copiers – were consolidated. Hard walls rather than partitions were used in some locations to hold back noise. Ceiling tiles and panel fabrics were selected with noise abatement in mind. A “white noise” system was installed. And along aisles, higher cubicle panels were used.
Within cubicles, employees are discouraged from tacking too many items to the panels. Pictures, papers and other items on panel walls thwarts their noise-reduction capabilities, Gall says.
Aside from those measures, Bub says he’s noticed a difference in the voice levels used among the staff. “They end up talking softer,” he says.
During a reporter’s visit, despite considerable activity the office atmosphere was one of peace and tranquillity rather than noise and commotion.
The acoustically-friendly facility stands in contrast to the firm’s former offices at the Milwaukee Engineering Center – the old St. Therese Catholic grade school about a mile west of the new site. The original use of that facility has been restored by the Milwaukee Montesorri School.
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Don’t let big account list force you into reactive mode
Question:
I feel a little guilty saying this. I have too much business and find myself being reactive to my sales territory. I am afraid that I am neglecting some of my current accounts. Any suggestions?
Answer:
This is a common situation in today’s economy. Some may say it’s a good problem.
It’s still a problem.
If you have been involved in sales during leaner times, then you know how important it is to retain and nurture the business that you have. Too many accounts can cause sales people to become reactive rather than strategic in approach to their territories.
Here are some ideas:
Are you working on the right kind of business? Sometimes inquiries from new potential customers can seem like a priority. If those inquiries are keeping you from developing more profitable business with your current customers and/or other more desirable potential accounts, refer the business to someone else, either internally or externally.
Don’t be afraid to refer business to resources outside of your organization. By demonstrating that you care about taking care of the customer’s needs, you will reinforce that you are a valuable resource and will position yourself for future business.
Categorize and prioritize your accounts. Define the most desirable accounts and most profitable business for your company. Those should become your priority accounts. Then, rank the remaining accounts according to long-term business potential. Depending on how many accounts you are managing, you may end up with two or three categories such as type A, B and C accounts. As new account inquiries are made, categorize them immediately in order to stay focused on the appropriate actions.
Develop account plans for your top accounts. Type A, or priority accounts, typically are those that reflect the most profitable and long-term business potential. Develop a strategic account plan for each of those including the customer’s long- and short-term goals, how you are positioned to help meet those goals, and a communication plan for interacting with the account influencers on a regular basis. Those accounts warrant the majority of your sales/service time. A general rule of thumb is to spend time in your accounts proportionate to the sales potential.
Develop plans for the existing accounts, or type B and C accounts. If you have determined that those accounts warrant your attention and reflect long-term business potential, then you must communicate with them on a regular basis. However, that does not mean that the communication has to be face-to-face. You may develop a communication plan for all Type B accounts, for instance, which would include methods that you would use to simply stay in touch and receive feedback from the accounts. It is best to get feedback from these customers to see what type of communication they expect and prefer.
Examples may be that all Type B accounts receive the following:
Annual sales visits with review of goals and objectives. Quarterly newsletters. Monthly phone calls. Semi-annual survey and response forms.
Get others involved. Are there others within your company that would benefit from account contact? For example, pairing technical people from your company with technical people within your accounts not only frees you up, but will solidify multi-level relationships. This is also a wonderful way to develop associates who wish to develop a better understanding of your business. A visit, or even a phone call, from your president to the account president sends the message that the relationship is important to you.
Assign temporary responsibilities. If your company is experiencing a growth spurt, you may wish to assign certain individuals to temporary account responsibility. For instance, if your strength is developing new account relationships, you may assign a service person to develop ongoing relationships in your existing accounts.
Do some gardening. Weed out accounts that drain you of your time with little return. No one likes to turn down business, yet the time that you save can be spent to cultivate more profitable relationships.
Marcia Gauger is president of Impact Sales Training in New Berlin.
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Two years ago, Terry Tarillion felt the weight of the world on his shoulders.
The 52-year-old executive was in the process of moving his company, Heritage Printing & Graphics Center, to a new facility in Brookfield, and there was considerable pressure and uncertainty tied to the move. At the time, Tarillion was engaged in a never-ending struggle with city officials over building code restrictions. The company also took on a large amount of debt for both the building and new printing equipment as part of a strategic shift Tarillion was implementing.
Then, in the middle of the move, two of his three key employees unexpectedly left the company. One was a print shop manager who came down with a rare bone disorder. “About the time we really needed him, he was gone,” Tarillion recalls. The other, a trusted sales and marketing manager who had been with the company for 16 years, up and left for Prairie du Chien to start her own business with her husband.
With uncertainty surrounding the company’s future, Tarillion started to show the signs of stress. He visited a doctor for stomach problems. Then, with the pressure of work weighing on him, he started neglecting his marriage and having trouble at home.
“There was a lot of uncertainty,” Tarillion recalls. “It was like, ‘What’s going to happen next?’ It was a period of time when chaos reined. There was this constant background of doubt and fear creeping in. We had long-term people showing physical and mental strain. It is not a time I would like to go through again.”
The more he leaned on himself for solutions, it seemed the worse things got, Tarillion recalls. Ultimately, he says it was his Christian faith that pulled him through.
“Terry realized the job is not the end-all,” observes Poul Sanderson, a Milwaukee psychotherapist who specializes in executive stress counseling. “He empowers his employees, seeks outside counsel, and he’s well-rounded. That’s why I think he’s successful.”
Many are not as fortunate, succumbing to stress in the form of heart disease, migraine headaches and all manner of debilitating illnesses. The American Institute of Stress reports that anywhere from 75 to 90 percent of all doctor visits are stress-related. A report issued in 1992 by the United Nations called job stress the United States’ largest export. Stress-related ailments cost US corporations as much as $300 billion a year, according to a study by Cornell University.
According to Jo Hawkins Donovan, a Milwaukee corporate consultant and psychologist, when the pressure of living with ordinary and extraordinary events exceeds our capacity to cope, we start to exhibit the symptoms of stress. Our physical and mental health starts to deteriorate.
Tend your garden
Hawkins Donovan once treated an executive in his mid-40s who came to her completely burned out. The man had risen through the ranks as a high-energy over-achiever to become head of a 500-employee Milwaukee company.
Over time, the executive ignored the early warning signs such as irritability, lack of enthusiasm for the job and not being able to sleep. The man didn’t say anything about his stress to anyone, and the symptoms grew worse to the point where he became almost non-functional, Hawkins Donovan recalls.
By the time he walked into her office, the man exhibited the classic symptoms of burnout. His energy level was so low he could hardly respond. He was in despair and wholly incapable of making decisions.
In the midst of his despair, the executive would drive down to his old South Side neighborhood and sit there, longing for the days when he felt he was still in control of his life, Hawkins Donovan says. The man felt trapped that he had to be with people all day long, both at work and when he got home and stepped into the role of father. This conflicted with his introverted nature.
“People in this situation feel like they are losing it,” Hawkins Donovan says. “But there are so many options for managing stress. The big issue is to stop and decide you are going to do something about it.”
What Hawkins Donovan did was get the executive to take some time away from work, and helped him re-examine his priorities. She had him do simple things to get time alone, such as plant a garden. With her assistance, the man learned to be more discriminating about where he applied his abilities.
“He was giving a crisis-type energy to everything he did at work,” Hawkins Donovan says. “He had a belief system that said he couldn’t say no. He was just madly trying to please everyone else without taking stock of what his own needs were.”
Burnout is reversible, Hawkins Donovan says. The man is back leading the company and doing fine since he made the necessary adjustments.
Great expectations
Mike Tetkoski sees a lot of middle management health-care workers in his job as clinical psychologist at St. Michael Hospital in Milwaukee, and many are there for the same thing:
They’re stressed out.
A combination of too much work, not enough people to do the work, and unreasonably high expectations in today’s corporate environment are leading people to work themselves not only into poor health, but into a mental state in which they feel they have little control.
“Fewer people are doing more work,” Tetkoski says. “But the expectation is that it will be done at the same level and within the same timeframe. So they suffer in silence and work longer hours, hoping that it will all work out in the end.”
This is what Tetkoski calls quantitative stress, the kind that results when there aren’t enough bodies to go around. For people who have been promoted, what might have seemed like a reward now seems like a sentence. They see others going home to their lives while they stay and work into the night. People in this position can start to feel isolated and resentful toward the organization, Tetkoski says.
“At the same time, they think to themselves: ‘I have to justify the company’s faith in me,'” Tetkoski says. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that one. So they decide to work longer, harder hours, because retreating to their old job is not an option.”
According to a study of more than 5,000 Swedish and American men, junior executives are more likely to sustain heart attacks than leaders of companies, Sanderson says. Also, the lower tenth of workers are more likely to develop heart disease than men in the top five percent of companies, suggesting that stress is not confined solely to management ranks, Sanderson says.
The other type of stress Tetkoski sees in his practice is qualitative stress. That results when people who are good at their line-level jobs are promoted into management ranks with little or no training. And they are reluctant to ask for help or training for fear they will be perceived as not being up to the task.
“Just because someone is a good radiologist or staff nurse does not make them a good manager,” Tetkoski says. “This is an entirely different mindset. And the organization is not crazy about providing you with the opportunity or the time to acquire those skills to get you over the hump. And if they do get permission to take a class, their workload remains the same. These people are typically expected to do more work.”
What if the organization is asking you to do budget projections, and you have never done that before? Tetkoski asks. If you are lucky, you may get an experienced manager to walk you through the project. But ultimately, the job you end up doing is slipshod and you are left with the feeling that you are an impostor in this new position, and that you will be fired when your superiors find out, he says.
Some of the business people Tetkoski sees in his practice are business owners of companies with 20 or fewer employees. They started the business because they were particularly good at the necessary skill to get it off the ground, but now they are struggling with the managerial aspect because the company is in its second stage of growth.
“It is at this point that these guys come to me after they’ve hired five new people, and they are further and further removed from what they used to do,” Tetkoski says.
For some owners or managers, it is a matter of loosening up the reins and delegating authority, he says.
“I ask these people to look at their own values,” he says. “I ask them where they see themselves in the workplace, and what niche they can fill. A lot of these people just think they’re along for the ride. So I stop and make them think by showing them that they have control over their own destiny. Some decide that they don’t want to do this anymore. They don’t want to be a manager, or they decide to delegate more.”
Tetkoski knows of several highly respected physicians who are getting out of the practice of medicine because they are sick and tired of the increasing administrative burden.
“My assumption is, they have become so far removed from doing what they want to do – which is practice medicine – that they feel like they can’t turn back the clock,” Tetkoski says. “That’s the sad part. It’s not that people don’t want to do the job. There are obstacles that get in the way, and everyone loses.”
Reclaiming their lives
For the small entrepreneur, stress can be as much of a factor as it is for the lead executives of a large company.
Until early 1997, Rick and Cindy Owings felt like they were living to work in their seven-employee firm, Owings Computer Graphics. There was constant pressure to maintain a sufficient backlog of work in order to keep the employees busy, Rick Owings recalls.
“There were different pressures such as dealing with people’s individual lifestyles, meeting payroll and having to compromise our standards, at times, in order to maintain a necessary volume of work,” says the 39-year-old Owings. “This created a tremendous amount of pressure. We had to spend more time – a lot more time – than we really wanted.
“We really didn’t have a life other than work for about 10 years,” Owings continues. “For the first six years, we worked every Saturday and half of Sunday. We didn’t take vacations. We were putting in 65- to 70-hour weeks. Our 7-year-old daughter was raised in this office. Our social life was virtually non-existent.”
Finally, Owings and his wife began to see the light when several employees left the firm. They noticed a corresponding decrease in pressure. They started taking 10-day vacations to the Caribbean.
“Our blood pressure must drop 30 points when we do that,” Owings says. “I feel like it adds 10 years to our lives.”
About 16 months ago, the last employee left on her own. Now, it’s just Owings, his wife, and a part-time bookkeeper. Their quality of life is better, and they feel as if they are in control.
“I think some people are afraid to admit that it is impossible to do it all – to function at a high level as an executive, to manage the household, be excellent parents, and still have time for friends and family,” Owings says. “I think some people want to give the impression that things are problem-free, that everything is running smoothly.
“They are afraid that if clients, friends or relatives see the bumps in the road, that somehow they may lose credibility with these people,” Owings says.
“I just found that admitting the fact was a big step in the right direction for us. Everyone sets high goals and standards, but there is a price to pay for it. And the price is personal relationships and free time. You just have to draw the line somewhere. You just have to come to the realization that it probably can’t all be done.”
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Sterns see mission in filling vacant urban properties
When Sam and Nathan Stern look out over their third-floor office in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood, two things stand out in the panorama.
One is the distant view of downtown – an area infused with millions of dollars of redevelopment money over the last decade and an area with a seemingly very bright future.
The other scene is of Humboldt Yards across the street, arguably a blighted area where railroad engines and cars of the Milwaukee Road once gathered, and where neighbors once bought gravel and sandbox sand from a corner-lot business operated by Norman Pipkorn. The vacant site is now the center of controversy over the potential establishment of a Jewel/Osco retail operation there, alongside residential development.
But behind those scenes of downtown redevelopment and the highly publicized Humboldt Yards prospects lie scores of properties awaiting attention. The Sterns have made it their mission to bring attention to those sites, to be catalysts in redeveloping what some would say are the less-attractive parts of the community.
The critical difference is, the Sterns don’t see those areas as unattractive. On the contrary, they see the central city as laden with amenities for businesses. And they believe it’s incumbent for business to support the central city.
“We believe it is important that, if the suburbs are going to be strong, the center of the community has to be, too,” says Sam Stern, Nathan’s father and the originator of the duo’s business, Stern and Associates. “You can’t have a strong suburban economy if the head is weak. All the limbs of the body have to be strong.”
But how do you make the head strong? The Sterns believe the ingredients are in place for that to happen. And they don’t see the “head” as being totally down and out.
“Milwaukee has done a great job of holding itself together, “Nathan says. “But where is it going from here?”
Sam adds, “The suburbs have grown at the expense of the head, and it’s time that the head compete.”
The right marketing in commercial real estate dealings can makes things happen, the Sterns say.
“It takes more than putting up a sign on a property; you have to be willing to market your offerings as would any new industrial park in the suburbs, and maybe more so,” Sam says, lauding efforts of the city to do just that in some parts of town, such as the 30th Street Industrial Corridor.
The perceptions of crime, which they’ve noted are misperceptions, have to be dealt with head-on, they say.
“The reality is much better than the perception, in a business sense,” Sam says. Those misperceptions, he says, foster economic depression in central city areas and impose unnecessary costs on businesses. “They’ve allowed their fears to cost them money.”
What business owners will find in city commercial buildings, the two say, are favorable cost-per-square-foot terms, in-place infrastructure, and a nearby labor pool which doesn’t require extraordinary transportation to a plant.
The Sterns don’t say that a city location is the right move for every business.
“While I have lived in the suburbs and while there can be good reasons for a business to be in the suburbs, there are businesses that should be in the city and which would benefit from being in the city,” Sam says.
The Sterns last year – their first year of business – handled close to $2 million in transactions, and they have a number of properties in Milwaukee County which they’re now marketing, including the old Geiser Potato Chip plant at 30th and Burleigh in Milwaukee – a 142,000-square-foot, food-grade facility that now lies vacant after a trucking/warehousing firm declined to renew its lease for the space. They’ve been in talks with prospective tenants about the space.
They’re also marketing space in the building they operate from at the southwest corner of Humboldt and North avenues, a building owned by Damian Zak that was originally built in the 1800s as a Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. tavern.
Interest in city properties has picked up, they say.
“In the last six months we’ve had inquiries from people who need crane buildings, and who need to save on fixed costs, and who need workers,” Sam says. “And they’re considering leaving the suburbs because the square-foot rate of being west of the beltway is a lot of money in comparison to what it is in the city.”
Marketing properties in older areas of the city can be challenging.
High on the list of those challenges are regulations related to polluted lands -regulations that must be changed if America’s cities are to survive, say Sam and Nathan Stern of Stern & Associates in Milwaukee.
“No one wants to drink polluted water, or to have their children or themselves exposed to contaminants,” Sam observes. “But there are situations where pollution causes no harm.”
In those cases, the two say, redevelopment must be made easier.
It can be made easier by indemnifying property owners from liabilities for past polluting practices, they add.
“The present laws which will not indemnify against future liability make it impossible to transfer title, so lenders won’t touch such deals,” Sam notes.
But the second issue, he adds, is that there are properties that might be polluted but which pose no health threat. The question then becomes, what’s the real cost – to a community’s economic vitality – of not developing those sites?
“Those sites become unbuyable for people who could use them,” Nathan says. Unused, he says, the sites only foster further economic degradation, a point community leaders throughout the nation realize. “City governments realize that, without indemnification, major portions of cities will never have a use.”
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Joppe Logistics, LLC, a new distribution company, has leased 137,500 square feet of the former Briggs & Stratton facility at 12000 W. Burleigh St. in Wauwatosa, according to Mooney LeSage & Associates which handled the transaction.
The company commenced business in February, according to owner James Joppe Jr.
In addition to serving Briggs & Stratton, the company offers distribution, logistics and warehousing.
The company has signed a long-term lease.
Other leases announced by Mooney LeSage include:
– 42,000 square feet of space at 960 E. Milwaukee St. in Whitewater for Eco-Tech;
– 32,300 square feet of space at S66W14328 Janesville Rd. in Muskego for Meurer Bakeries of Milwaukee;
– 30,000 square feet of space at 1171 Universal Blvd. in Whitewater for Trek Bicycle Corp.
The Polacheck Co. of Milwaukee has announced the following leases:
– 1,847 square feet of retail space in the Riverview Centre at 827 S. Rochester Rd. in Mukwonago for Einar C. Svang III, DDS;
– 2,820 square feet of office space at 8350 N. Stevens Rd. in Milwaukee for Barrientos Architects;
– 1,150 square feet of retail space at 1677 N. Farwell Ave. in Milwaukee for Starbucks Corp.;
– 11,241 square feet of office space at 4915 S. Howell Ave. in Milwaukee for Sky Alland Marketing;
– 2,681 square feet of office space in the Riverfront Plaza at 1110 N. Old World Third St. in Milwaukee for CBS Cable; CBS Corp.;
– 1,780 square feet of office space at 5485 S. Westridge Dr. in New Berlin for Aid Association for Lutherans;
– 2,289 square feet of retail space at The Pavilion in Mequon for Scando Enterprises, d/b/a The Tinder Box;
– 6,400 square feet of industrial space at 11711 River Ln. in Germantown for Mero Structures, Inc.
– 2,738 square feet of office space at 250 N. Sunnyslope Rd. in Brookfield for Banc One Financial;
– 23,500 square feet of retail space at Rivercrest Drive and Appleton Avenue in Menomonee Falls for Office Max, Inc.;
– 2,000 square feet of retail space at Timmerman Plaza at 10442 W. Silver Spring Dr. in Milwaukee for Advance America, Cash Advance;
– 10,400 square feet of space at 1000 N. Water St. in Milwaukee for New Resources Corp.;
– 4,800 square feet of retail space at 6800 Washington Ave. in the Racine County Town of Mount Pleasant for Aurora Health Care, Inc.
Building Projects
Golden Leaves, LLC, is constructing a 15,000-square-foot retail and professional office building in downtown Hartland. The property, at 350 Cottonwood Ave., will be the home of Benning’s Books, adjoined by Heidi’s Café and Gourmet Coffee, Inc. The project also includes interconnected professional office suites and a luxury second-level apartment.
Ludwig Ridder Design, an architectural firm, will occupy one of the suites.
The development is a venture of Dianne Benning, who started Benning’s Books five years ago, and partner Karen Zernan. Golden Leaves will also manage the building.
Beyer Construction of New Berlin is handling interior office construction for the Helen Bader Foundation at the century-old Saddlery Building at 233 N. Water St. in Milwaukee. The foundation is locating from the Firstar Center. Architectural work is by Kahler Slater Architects of Milwaukee.
– Beyer is nearing completion of a project at Eaton Corp./Cutler Hammer Products, 4201 N. 27th St., Milwaukee. The project, which began in December, involves renovation of the second floor elevator lobby and complete reconstruction of the cafeteria and servery areas. Work includes installation of new servery fixtures and food service equipment, and new lighting and furniture. Quorum Architects of Milwaukee handled design.
Selzer-Ornst Co. of Wauwatosa is completing the renovation for Interim Health Care in Wauwatosa.
KCM, Inc., of West Bend has completed the design and has been awarded the contract for a 10,000-square-foot professional office and retail mall to be located in Jackson. B.E.K. & Associates, owners, are in the process of leasing the space.
– KCM has also been awarded a contract for a 13,000-square-foot industrial building in Jackson. The owner, Sierra Grinding, manufactures grinding wheels.
Z-Teca Fresh Mexican Grill Restaurant of Milwaukee chose MSI General Corp. of Oconomowoc to complete the tenant build-out for a Mexican restaurant at 3101 N. Oakland Ave. in Milwaukee. An April opening was scheduled. The restaurant will be operated by Roaring Fork, LLC, which is owned by Mike Pranke and Eric Wagner and which holds the exclusive Wisconsin franchise for Z-Teca. The restaurant firm is based in Denver. Founded in 1995, it plans to have about 300 locations in the US by the year 2000. It features made-to-order entrees.
– MSI General has also been selected by Custom Products Corp. of Menomonee Falls for the design and construction of a 33,502-square-foot addition to its manufacturing facility at the corner of Lilly Road and Silver Spring Drive. The expansion is Phase I of a program to provide additional manufacturing space. New orders from Cummins Engine and others were the catalyst for the project.
When John Iverson purchased the company in 1972, it had three employees and 8,000 square feet of space. It now occupies more than 300,000 square feet and employs more than 650 people. With expected growth, the company is planning a Phase II addition, as well.
Venture Development of Waukesha has completed the new office space for Relations Systems in Brookfield.
– Venture Development has also completed an interior remodeling project for Burton & Mayer, Inc., in Brookfield.
ASI General, Inc., of Waukesha has completed a new office building for Wisconsin Retail Lumber Association at W175 N11086 Stonewood Dr. in Germantown. The building includes 6,000 square feet of offices for the association and 4,000 square feet for tenant space.
The Lang Group of Lake Mills has been selected by the Sheboygan Redevelopment Authority to develop 14 condominiums with individual entrances on the Sheboygan River in the downtown area. The project will be known as River’s Edge. Each home will have a boat pier in the backyard with access to Lake Michigan.
Moves
George Webb Restaurants has moved to a new corporate office and commissary in the Bluemound East Industrial Park, south of I-94 in Pewaukee. The 16,350-square-foot building features expanded warehouse space plus rooms for training, conferencing and a full test kitchen. The chain now has 45 restaurants in Wisconsin.
Image Makers Advertising has moved from its Elm Grove location to its own renovated building at 139 E. North St. in Waukesha. The historic building was constructed in the 1880s as an out-building for a woolen mill.
Maglio & Co., a full-service wholesaler and distributor of produce, has relocated its offices and warehouse to 4287 N. Port Washington Rd. in Glendale.
The company had operated for 50 years on Commission Row in Milwaukee’s Third Ward. A second location was added in 1985 in the Walker’s Point neighborhood. Both those locations were vacated.
By the end of the year, the company expects to add 15 people to its current staff of 52.
The Glendale site was purchased from Johnson Controls last May. A 21,000-square-foot addition was constructed, adding 10 truck doors. The completed facility has 80,000 square feet of operating space with more than 30,0000 square feet dedicated to refrigerated storage.
With the added capacity, the company plans to expand its service territory and product lineup.
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

At Jorgensen Conveyors in Mequon, business is booming. The firm, which makes custom-designed conveyor equipment used in the metal-working industry, employs about 120 individuals. It moved from Milwaukee to Mequon in 1985.
“Getting qualified employees is a challenge,” said Marc Jorgensen, president of Jorgensen Conveyors. “It is one of our main issues, especially as a constraint to growth. We are in an environment here where you have to be as creative as possible in finding new workers.
You can’t just sit back and rely on traditional methods.” To build his workforce, Jorgensen got involved with the Ozaukee County Transportation Management Association.
“It has really helped us,” Jorgensen said. “We’ve got about four people each day riding the system. I know it’s helped other businesses even more than us.” The other path Jorgensen took to increase his labor pool was through the Workforce 2010 program, which allows high school students to get apprenticeships at local businesses. A consortium of businesses along with the local high schools developed curricula in the schools and at various worksites to teach students basic skills they need to succeed in the workplace.
In addition, Jorgensen is working with the Milwaukee Area Technical College and the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership to recruit under-employed and unemployed workers, as well as those involved with the Wisconsin Works (W-2) program. In late March, a welder from Jorgensen spoke to a group of about 50 prospective employees about working at Jorgensen.
“We hope to hire about 10 to 12 people as welders through this program,” Jorgensen said.
“It is a nice opportunity for us and them.”
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Does yours provide all the benefits it could?
Recruiting is arguably the most basic HR function. And the employment application form is certainly the most basic recruiting tool. Therefore, it seems logical to make sure your application form enhances the hiring process.
However, if you’re like many business owners (or HR people) with “to-do” lists that are already too long, it’s been quite awhile since you revised or even reviewed your company’s application form.
As with many employment-related matters, there are two aspects to consider – legal compliance, and potential benefits that enhance HR effectiveness and therefore organizational success.
Legal compliance
No law dictates what an employment application form must look like. But numerous laws make it illegal to use the answers to any potentially discriminatory questions.
It’s therefore risky to include such questions on an application form, since courts and administrative agencies are likely to presumé that you’ll use all the information solicited.
If discriminatory hiring activity is alleged, the burden is overwhelmingly on the employer (and it’s very difficult) to prove that non-job-related questions on an application form were truly not used to discriminate.
The best rule to follow is to include only questions that will provide job-related information.
Enhancing the effectiveness
of the hiring process
It’s a good practice to require all applicants to complete an application, even if they’ve submitted a resumé. Remember, a resumé is written to present an individual in the best possible light. A well-designed application form provides valuable information that is rarely included on a resumé: