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<b style="color: blue">Human Resource Associates</b>
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<span class="heading">HR - On The Job</span>
<p class="issue">Are You A Proactive Or A Reactive Manager?</p>
<p>This isn't a trick question, although it would seem that the desired answer is obvious. Most of us want to be proactive managers. But there are two questions we should consider first.</p>
<ol>
<li>Why are most of us reactive managers?</li>
<li>What's the difference between proactive and reactive managers?</li>
</ol>
<p class="section">1. Why Are Most Of Us Reactive Managers?</p>
<p>Because that's where the applause comes from. That's how heroes are made. When we're knee deep in alligators the person who swings in and pulls us out is our champion. But another reason is that it takes a lot more brainpower and patience to prevent the problem before it occurs. Why didn't someone figure out ahead of time how to keep the people out of that alligator infested swamp?</p>
<p class="section">2. What's The Difference Between Reactive And Proactive Managers?</p>
<p><b>A. Reactive Managers</b> solve problems when they arise. That's a good thing. It's a management style that's admired for its ability to quickly get the resources back into production, whether those resources are machines or people.</p>
<p>If you're good at reactive management you are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Decisive and able to think and act quickly</li>
<li>Able to identify the root causes of problems</li>
<li>Creative and resourceful with an ability to develop many solutions</li>
<li>Calm and in control in the face of crisis</li>
</ul>
<p>So, someone who is good at reactive management is able to remain calm, quickly analyze the problem, find the root cause and be decisive in activating the solution. This is clearly a desirable set of skills for a manager to have. But, however valuable, the reactive style is not really the best style.</p>
<p><b>B. Proactive Managers</b> focus on reducing or preventing the problems before they occur. You could also call this the predictive style. The more problems that can be predicted and prevented, the less you will need reactive management later. Beyond dealing with problems and emergencies, proactive managers are people who don't wait to be told to get things done. They look and act ahead. That works here too.</p>
<p>If you are good at proactive management you are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Thoughtful and analytical</li>
<li>Not spending much time in panics and crisis</li>
<li>More focused on what's important than on what's urgent</li>
<li>Able to identify patterns in data including patterns in failures</li>
<li>More focused on <em>why</em> something failed than on <em>what</em> to do about fixing it</li>
<li>Able to keep the big picture in mind when working through the details</li>
</ul>
<p>So, someone who is good at proactive management is sufficiently detached from the urgent pace or current emergency, to identify the problems that are important and install procedures to reduce or eliminate them. Rather than being focused on the immediate crisis, proactive managers are able to compare current conditions to earlier information and predict which problems might occur and when. The more problems that can be prevented through proactive management, the fewer resources will be spent on reacting to them when they pounce on us later. Proactive management does not replace reactive management but it's almost always less costly and it reduces the need for it.</p>
<p>Both management styles are of value. We often refer to our daily panic as “putting out fires”. That's a good analogy.</p>
<p>Reactive managers are firemen putting out fires.<br />Proactive managers are fire inspectors preventing them from happening.</p>
<hr />
<p align="center"><b><i>Have an employment question?</i></b></p>
<p align="center">Send it to <a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=From HR On The Job">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p align="center">Please include Company Name and Association in your e-mail. Company identification will be kept confidential.</p>
<hr />
<p class="heading">Hitchhiking on the Information Highway</p>
<p><b>Dateline:</b> September 2011</p>
<p><i>(Note: Although we attempt to provide the HRU update on the first of each month, we are normally delayed awaiting the release of several monthly government statistical reports. We will hereafter update the information as each report becomes available without waiting for all of them to be released.)</i></p>
<p class="section">Need Rules? More Coming Up</p>
<p>The percentage of U.S. private industry employers that are union is approximately 7 ½ %, but if you want to go union the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) wants to help you do that. If you don’t want to go union, they want you to help your employees do that for you. Another new rule by the NLRB designed to increase union organizing goes into effect on November 14, 2011. By that date all employers must post a notice informing employees of their right to join a union and how to do it, who to contact if they do, and who to contact if their employer is giving them any problems about this.</p>
<p>The notice must be included in any form or location form where you normally inform employees about other rules and company policies. That appears to include your intranet and employee handbooks. Approximately 7,000 organizations and individuals entered opposing comments and a new legal challenge is being considered, NLRB says it will begin enforcement on time.</p>
<p>Another new bill not yet finalized will allow unions to pick out specific work groups when organizing companies. In many cases very few of a company’s employees want to form a union, so the union wants to segregate out that group that does and just organize them. They can then work on the other groups from the inside.</p>
<p>Another new rule being proposed by the Department of Labor (Office of Labor Management Services) would require employers who speak to consultants and attorneys about union issues to disclose those conversations to DOL and the unions. The NLRB and the unions are cheering the new proposal saying that companies have too much freedom to dissuade employees from joining unions and they want to curtail that.</p>
<p>Another surprise for the technology buffs. DOL is issuing new free APs for I-pods and such to all U.S. employees. These new APs provide the employee with a tool to document all wages, hours, certain job conditions etc to provide to DOL as needed. Employers need to understand how these work and how to work with them. The expectations are so high on this one that Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are also considering them.</p>
<p class="quote">
“The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free,<br />
neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits”<br />
– Thomas Jefferson
</p>
<p class="section">Outsourcing, To Where?</p>
<p>Is outsourcing bad? Many people see it as the ultimate evil but to see outsourcing only as sending our high paying jobs to India for cheap labor is not the whole story.</p>
<p>Considering the number of jobs that are outsourced to the U.S. and that most of the jobs we outsource are repetitive, digital transmissions and telephonic response, real outsourcing can mean finding more efficient, productive, accurate and cost effective ways of doing the job, and that’s how the U.S. is today still leading the world in the global economy.</p>
<p>A surprising example can be found in Cape Girardeau, MO at the McDonald’s restaurant on US 55.As you place your order at the drive-thru mike to the attendant and begin your 5-second drive to the pick-up window, you won’t notice that:</p>
<ul>
<li>Your photo has just been taken</li>
<li>Your order has been outsourced to an attendant over 800 miles away in Colorado Springs, CO</li>
<li>It has been returned to the pick-up window with your bill and photo attached to assure a proper match-up</li>
</ul>
<p>After payment and pick-up the photo is destroyed.</p>
<p>Is all this trouble just to hire a cheaper, non-uniformed attendant? Actually, the Colorado attendant makes more money than the one being replaced. No, its about efficiency and productivity, it cuts the time from order to delivery by almost half. Over the day it can cut down on the lines and the accumulating waiting time. And it’s about accuracy in that it cuts mistakes by about half. And it’s profitable as the Colorado service provider gets a small transaction fee paid by the McDonald’s owner.</p>
<p class="quote">
“If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it.<br />
If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.<br />
If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.”<br />
– Stephen Covey
</p>
<p class="section">May I Introduce Myself?</p>
<p>When a customer in Las Vegas decided to rob the Papa Murphy’s Pizza Parlor, he first ordered a pizza and then asked for an employment application, while completing the form, he pulled out a gun and demanded the money in the cash register. He got $200 and made his escape leaving the application blank behind with his name and address.</p>
<p>And even though a witness also got his license number, his lawyer says he’s innocent. He says it’s a case of mistaken identity.</p>
<p class="quote">“He’s got a few parts on order that just never came in”<br />
– Jack Rafferty</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: center"><sub>© William J. Cook</sub></p>
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<span class="heading">Labor Stats</span>
<hr />
<b>Federal Minimum Wage</b>
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<p align="center">
<b>$7.25</b>/hour<br />
</p>
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<b>Average Income</b>
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<table>
<tr><td /><td class="u">August 2011</td><td class="u">August 2010<td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Hourly</td><td class="b">$23.09</td><td class="b">$22.67</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Weekly</td><td class="b">$789.68</td><td class="b">$775.31</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>Federal Povery Level</b>
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<table>
<tr><td class="i">one person</td><td class="b">$10,956</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">family of four</td><td class="b">$21,954</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>IRS Mileage Allowance</b>
<hr />
<p>July 1, 2011 through December 31, 2011</p>
<table>
<tr><td class="i">business</td><td><b>55.5</b> cents/mile</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">medical or moving</td><td class="b">23.5</b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">charitable</td><td class="b">14.0</td></tr>
</table>
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<b>Postage</b>
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<table>
<tr><td class="i">1 oz</td><td><b>44</b> cents</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">postcard</td><td class="b">29</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>Population</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">world</td><td class="b">6.9 billion</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">U.S.</td><td class="b">311.9 million</td></tr>
</table>
<p align="center">
<i>one birth every </i><b>8</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>one death every </i><b>11</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>one new immigrant every </i><b>45</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>net gain of one person every </i><b>15</b><i> seconds.</i>
</p>
<hr />
<b>U.S. Civilian Workforce</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td /><td class="u">August 2011</td><td class="u">August 2010</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Total</td><td class="b">153,594,000</td><td class="b">154,117,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Employed</td><td class="b">139,627,000</td><td class="b">139,267,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Unemployed</td><td class="b">13,967,000</td><td class="b">14,267,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Want A Job</td><td class="b">6,493,000</td><td class="b">6,039,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Unemployment Rate</td><td class="b">9.1%</td><td class="b">9.6%</td></tr>
</table>
<br /><hr />
<b>U.S. Workforce Productivity</b><br />
<sub><i>(The amount of goods produced, divided by the number of work hours it took to produce it)</i></sub>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">1992</td><td class="b">3.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1993</td><td class="b">0.5%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1994</td><td class="b">1.3%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1995</td><td class="b">0.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1996</td><td class="b">2.5%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1997</td><td class="b">2.0%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1998</td><td class="b">2.6%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1999</td><td class="b">3.3%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2000</td><td class="b">3.4%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2001</td><td class="b">2.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2002</td><td class="b">4.6%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2003</td><td class="b">3.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2004</td><td class="b">2.8%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2005</td><td class="b">1.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2006</td><td class="b">0.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2007</td><td class="b">1.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2008</td><td class="b">1.8%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2009</td><td class="b">+5.8%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2010</td><td class="b">+3.6%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2011 1<sup>st</sup> quarter</td><td class="b">+1.8</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2011 2<sup>nd</sup> quarter</td><td class="b">-0.7</td></tr>
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