Archive for January, 2010

  • The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

    A new book just out – “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right,” authored by Harvard Medical School professor Atul Guwande – makes a compelling case for the use of simple but powerful checklists: a means to ensure that proper steps are implemented and adhered to so as to prevent costly downstream mistakes. As this article summarizes, failure, Guwande argues, results not so much from ignorance (not knowing enough about what works) as from ineptitude (not properly applying what we know works). While the book uses examples taken largely from the medical field, its lessons hold true more broadly… across industries, and applicable to business operations, often process-rich and highly prone to error.

    2010.01.30 / no responses / Category: In the News

  • Sell? Sell! Sell?! When to Pull the Trigger

    An interesting post on when to sell a business… (excerpted below); as with most things, timing is crucial:

    “Most sellers contact my firm either when they want to sell or when they have to sell — as opposed to when the time is right to maximize value. There are two common points in the life of a business when owners most often consider selling:

    The first usually takes place somewhere between two to five years after the start, when the owner reaches a certain level of success but is too burned out from the start-up effort to continue building the business. These companies often have a bright future and are entirely sellable. The owner, however, has to accept that this is not the time to achieve maximum value. Buyers typically won’t pay much, if anything, for potential.

    The second situation occurs when a business is experiencing declining sales and the owner wants out. Sales may be trending lower for a number or reasons, but chances are that buyers aren’t going to care too much about excuses. As I once heard a colleague say, ‘If your numbers are bad, your story better be good.’”

    2010.01.29 / no responses / Category: Helpful Tips

  • Motivating the Troops

    According to Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, employee motivation often boils down to creating intrinsic rewards that play to the inherent satisfaction of the work activity itself … engaging and empowering employees in what they do, emphasizing inspiration more than just perspiration.

    Instead of using a traditional carrot-and-stick motivational approach (rewarding good work with pay / benefits / promotions; penalizing bad performance) – which has “seven deadly flaws” (listed below) – Pink argues that the main motivators of productive employee behavior are a) the freedom to do what you want, b) the opportunity to take on a challenge and c) achieving a sense of fulfillment when the task is completed.

    Merely Rewarding Good Work, Penalizing Bad Behavior … Why It Doesn’t Work

    1) Extinguishes motivation
    2) Diminishes performance
    3) Crushes creativity
    4) Crowds out good behavior
    5) Encourages cheating, shortcuts and unethical behavior
    6) Becomes addictive
    7) Fosters short-term thinking

    Read more here and here.

    2010.01.28 / no responses / Category: Human Resources

  • State Unemployment Payroll Taxes on the Rise

    With the national unemployment rate continuing to top 10%, it’s not surprising that many states – 36 in fact – have rolled out mandatory increases to the unemployment contribution taxes assessed to businesses. At the extreme end, Hawaiian employers have seen their annual unemployment tax increase by 1089%, to an average tax burden per worker of $1,070. Other states, already borrowing federal dollars to shore up insolvent trust funds, have been forced to reduce benefits – an example: The jobless in Pennsylvania will receive 2.3% less in unemployment compensation starting in January 2010.

    Read more here and here.

    The latter link – the Unemployment Insurance Tracker created by ProPublica – provides useful, at-a-glance state-level data … Trust Fund balances, current borrowing (of federal funds), projections going forward, solvency status, etc.

    2.2.10 Update: Utah’s UI situation.

    2010.01.27 / no responses / Category: In the News, Payroll

  • Passwords – Not as Safe as You Might Think

    Whether for personal or for business use – or both – people commonly choose overly simplistic passwords, frighteningly easy to hack according to new research. The top 10 passwords, as selected by one million users:

    123456
    12345
    123456789
    password
    iloveyou
    princess
    rockyou
    1234567
    12345678
    abc123

    For many of us, it seems, it’s time to hit the reset button and select a new (more complex) password, one that uses capped letters and symbols for starters.

    Read more here.

    2010.01.26 / no responses / Category: In the News

  • Pay (more) to Get Employees to Stay (longer)

    An informative read on workforce.com concerning how recent salary cuts and freezes have impacted employee morale, and what companies may want to think about doing heading into 2010 – namely, reconstituting compensation and benefits packages. Of particular mention is the threat of continuing employee disengagement, its real risk of undercutting company performance. As one consultant framed it: “The disengagement issue is a prime concern for employers in the context of pay freezes and cuts. The myth is that employers can put in reductions without consequences.”

    Read more here.

    2010.01.25 / no responses / Category: Human Resources

  • BLS Employment Facts and Figures – A Treasure Trove

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) keeps track of ever-changing employment-related data. For example, as part of its Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program, the nation’s unemployment situation is scored on a monthly basis, with data sortable by geographic region (states, counties, metropolitan areas, etc.) comprising some 7,300 areas. As well, the BLS captures employment costs as they change over time, wages by area and occupation, earnings by industry, benefits breakouts, etc., as well as information on workplace injuries. And the list goes on.

    The BLS website is rather easy to use and navigate, worth a visit for anyone interested in keeping tabs on a multitude of key employment facts and figures.

    2010.01.24 / no responses / Category: Helpful Tips, Human Resources

  • Mom (Women) as Breadwinner, but Still Earning Less

    According to 2009 Census Bureau data, mothers in increasing numbers are functioning as a family’s breadwinner. When it comes to two-person households, about 4% (or 963,000) of moms were the only parent in the labor force. The percentage of fathers as the sole worker was much larger – 28.2% or 7.3 million – but still the lowest since 2001, largely attributable to a down economy that has taken a greater toll on men. The share of couples who both work stayed the same at 66% or 17 million.

    Such figures reflect an emerging workforce trend, that of women coming close to outnumbering men in the absolute number of jobs held. In November 2009, women occupied 49.9% of the nation’s 131 million jobs. That said, pay for women still lagged that of men: Women in full-time jobs earned salaries equal to 77.9% of what men earned, up from 77.5% in 2007 and about 64% in 2000.

    To read more, click here, for the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.

    On a related note, you can also read more about caregiver protections in the workplace, as written about earlier.

    2010.01.23 / no responses / Category: In the News

  • States and Health Care Reform

    As blogged about here earlier, Utah has been piloting its own health care reform effort – one that so far has met with rather disappointing results. This article further delineates just how complicated insurance reform might become if left up to individual states to determine their course of action on this front.

    2010.01.22 / no responses / Category: In the News

  • E-Verify Survey in the Works

    The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a notice in the January 6, 2009, Federal Register indicating its intent to conduct an Internet- and telephone-based survey on the government’s E-Verify program — the voluntary, web-based program that enables participating employers to verify employee status as to eligibility to work in the U.S. The Survey will include 2,400 respondents. Many political observers anticipate that any kind of immigration reform to be discussed and/or enacted in 2010 will have as one of its cornerstones mandatory employer use of E-verify.

    2010.01.21 / no responses / Category: Human Resources

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