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<b style="color: blue">Human Resource Associates</b>
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<h2>HR - On The Job</h2>
<h3>You're Asking The Wrong Questions</h3>
<p>“When are they going to straighten this mess out?” Why don’t they hire someone who knows what they’re doing?” “Who screwed this job up?” “Why can’t they bring in more customers?”</p>
<p>These are the kinds of questions we tend to ask when we encounter problems. You may have asked one or more of them this week yourself. Did you get an answer that solved the problem? Probably not. Answers to these questions seldom solve the problem because they’re the wrong questions. All of them require someone else to do something. To get to the right answers we need to start with the right questions. The right questions should have three things in them. They are:</p>
<ol>
<li><em>Ask “what” or “how”</em>, <strong>not</strong> “who” “why” or “when”.</li>
<li><em>Use the term “I”</em>, <strong>not</strong> “they”, “them”, “we” or “you”.</li>
<li><em>Focus on action</em>.</li>
</ol>
<p>The prime question then comes down to “What can I do about this now?” And then do it.</p>
<p>Stop the circle of blame by framing the question differently. Who’s to blame? No one, not even yourself. Forget about who to attack and ask “How can I make this right now?”</p>
<p>Wrong Questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>“When will they start delivering materials on time?”</li>
<li>“Why do these customers expect so much?”</li>
<li>“Why don’t people just follow instructions?”</li>
</ul>
<p>The Right Question:</p>
<ul>
<li>“What can I do to help?”</li>
</ul>
<p>Wrong Questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>“Why can’t those salespeople stay within our capabilities?”</li>
<li>“Why can’t those field guys follow the specs?”</li>
</ul>
<p>The Right Question:</p>
<ul>
<li>“How can I better understand the challenges they face in the field?”</li>
</ul>
<p>Wrong Questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>“Why doesn’t this younger generation want to work?”</li>
<li>“Why aren’t these people motivated?”</li>
<li>“Why can’t they get to work on time?”</li>
</ul>
<p>The Right Question:</p>
<ul>
<li>“How can I be a more effective coach?”</li>
</ul>
<p>Wrong Questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>“Why do they dislike me so much?”</li>
<li>“Why do I have to do everything myself?”</li>
</ul>
<p>The Right Question:</p>
<ul>
<li>“How can I be a better partner?”</li>
</ul>
<p>Sometimes you need to ask someone else that question.</p>
<p>In John Miller’s book “QBQ The Question Behind The Question”, he says, “Long range vision and strategic planning are great tools. But I need to get something done before lunch.” Ask things like “How can I accomplish what is needed with the resources I have now?”</p>
<p>Once you’ve framed the right question and you know what you need to do, focus on action. Sometimes that takes courage or at least confidence, you may even see it as a risk. Take the risk! Ultimately the risk of doing nothing is a dead end.</p>
<p><b>Action</b> brings learning and growth even when it leads to mistakes.</p>
<p>Inaction leads to stagnation and atrophy.</p>
<p><b>Action</b> may require courage but…</p>
<p>Inaction is based on fear.</p>
<p><b>Action</b> builds confidence.</p>
<p>Inaction builds doubt.</p>
<p>As John Miller said, “It’s better to be the one who is told to wait then to be the one who waits to be told.” Action is not just about knowing what to do, but doing what you know.</p>
<p>So stop “we-they ing” yourself to a standstill. It's about “What can I do now?” It's about taking personal responsibility.</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 />
<h2>Hitchhiking on the Information Highway</h2>
<h3>Will The Circle Be Unbroken?</h3>
<p>Pensions are pretty neat things. To one degree or another, every worker has one some certainly are better than others. One of the best can be found in the case of some government workers who are only required to work for twenty years before they can take their pension. In many cases those pensions pay more than the employee earned while working. And in that they are lifetime pensions, many may be receiving those pensions for forty years or more. So a government worker who retires after twenty years of work making $85,000 a year can then be paid $90,000 a year for the next forty years as a thank you. And in some cases they never paid a penny into those pension plans. How long can any system last paying more for retirement than they paid for the work? Oh, and also pay it for twice as long as the work lasted.</p>
<p>How long indeed. The answer to that takes us into the next stage of a modern day merry-go-round or as some are calling it, a vicious circle. Last year in Costa Mesa, California the town mayor discovered that they were paying out more money to employees on union pensions than they were paying to employees still on the job! He was unable to get any concessions from the unions so he decided that he had to take a drastic step that may be a forerunner of things to come. <em>He has to lay off almost half of the city’s current workers in order to have enough money to pay the retirees!</em></p>
<p>The vicious cycle comes about when it you consider that the retirement account doesn’t even have any money. Like the U.S. Social Security fund, when you open that retirement lock-box, it’s full of IOUs. The money to pay the retirees comes from the payments being made into the retirement account for the current employees. But when they reduce the number of current employees by half, the amount going into the retirement fund will also be reduced by half. So in order to pay the retirees he must lay-off current workers. But by laying off current workers he will not have the money in the retirement box to pay the retirees. The question again rises, how long can any system pay more for retirement than they pay for the work? How long indeed.</p>
<p>If you like complicated puzzles, think on this. Half-way through that forty year pension, the next group of retirees will have finished their twenty years and will be joining them. Now there are twice as many workers on forty year pension as before, but will still have the same number of workers (or fewer) workers paying in. The circle is unbroken.</p>
<p class="quote">“I don’t want to abolish government.<br />
I just want to reduce it to the stage where I can<br />
drag it to the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub”<br />
– Grover Norquist</p>
<h3>Is It Time For My Retirement Yet?</h3>
<p>An employee named Jill McGlone worked at the Norfolk Community Services Board in Norfolk, Virginia. That is she did until 1998 when she was fired for allegedly bringing a weapon to work. Then it seems that the top brass just forgot about her. She was never fired, but then again, she never did another day’s work. Yet she has been getting those paychecks every payday! For 12 years she’s been getting them while sitting at home.</p>
<p>Last year a new executive director realized the mistake and stopped the payments. The HR director has been fired and the FBI is involved. After all, there may be others on that phantom payroll. But as you have probably guessed by now, McGlone has sued her former employer for wrongful termination! Oh, and she wants unemployment benefits too. You can’t make this stuff up.</p>
<p class="quote">“The buck stops with<br />
the guy who signs the checks”<br />
– Rupert Murdoch</p>
<h3>More Circles Ahead</h3>
<p>While we’re on pensions consider the impact of pension costs (Which taxpayers are going to have to bail out all those failing plans?). What if suddenly there was a big increase in the number of government employees retiring? Well some experts are forecasting a boom in government and union retirements over the next five years, starting now. How do they know this?</p>
<p><em>Many government union plans are very generous in how they calculate pension amounts.</em> It’s often based upon the earnings of the final five years of employment. That includes annual earnings, overtime worked, bonuses collected, incentives paid, vacations not taken, sick leave accumulated etc. So the more promotions, overtime etc an employee can pack into those last five years, the higher the pension amount. (<em>That’s how the pensions can sometimes be more than the annual salaries.</em>) Those experts are reporting that the overtime hours of government employees across the country are exploding. In some areas an employee can more than double his/her income through the amount of overtime allowed.</p>
<p>Another method of increasing retirement amounts is by job injuries. Disability retirements pay more than regular retirements. A legitimate disability retirement in any industry is an honest process of compensating someone for the injury received on-the-job that will affect them for the rest of their lives. And the cost is minimal when you consider that fewer than 10% of private industry workers are on disability retirement pensions. But the reports show that the amount of injuries occurring during those last five years of government employment seem to be jumping significantly. A few years ago the Washington Post reported that over 75% of all the retired policemen in Washington D.C. were on disability pensions.</p>
<p>With the amount of overtime being reported increasing dramatically, the number of job injuries during the last five years of employment age increasing and the fear that in a few years the pension accounts may be bankrupt the signs may be right.</p>
<p>And if you want to add another complication, consider that in some cases, the union continues to negotiate pension increases after the employee has retired. As long as the employee keeps paying the union dues, he will be represented at the bargaining table for increases in pay and benefits. (That’s another way pensions can pay more than the employee earned while he was working and in some cases more than the employee currently doing that same job.)</p>
<p class="quote">“Wherefore, being all of one mind, we do highly resolve<br />
that government of the grafted, by the grafter for the grafter<br />
shall not perish from the earth”<br />
– Mark Twain</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: center"><sub>© William J. Cook</sub></p>
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<span class="heading">Labor Stats</span>
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<b>Federal Minimum Wage</b>
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<p align="center">
<b>$7.25</b>/hour<br />
</p>
<hr />
<b>Average Income</b>
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<table>
<tr><td /><td class="u">June 2013</td><td class="u">June 2012<td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Hourly</td><td class="b">$23.50</td><td class="b">$24.01</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Weekly</td><td class="b">$828.35</td><td class="b">$808.40</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>Federal Povery Level</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">one person</td><td class="b">$11,490</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">family of four</td><td class="b">$23,550</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>IRS Mileage Allowance</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">business</td><td><b>56.5</b> cents/mile</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">medical or moving</td><td><b>24</b> cents/mile</b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">charitable</td><td><b>14</b> cents/mile</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>Postage</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">1 oz</td><td><b>46</b> cents</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">postcard</td><td><b>33</b> cents</td></tr>
</table>
<p>On January 27, 2013, the 1 oz rate will increase to <b>46</b> cents and the Postcard rate will increase to <b>33</b> cents.</p>
<hr />
<b>Population</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">U.S.</td><td class="b">316.2 Million</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">world</td><td class="b">7.1 Billion</td></tr>
</table>
<p align="center">
<i>one birth every </i><b>8</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>one death every </i><b>12</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>one new immigrant every </i><b>44</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>net gain of one person every </i><b>13</b><i> seconds.</i>
</p>
<hr />
<b>U.S. Civilian Workforce</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td /><td class="u">June 2013</td><td class="u">June 2012</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Total</td><td class="b">155,835,000</td><td class="b">155,149,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Employed</td><td class="b">144,058,000</td><td class="b">142,448,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Unemployed</td><td class="b">11,777,000</td><td class="b">12,701,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Want A Job</td><td class="b">6,580,000</td><td class="b">6,556,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Unemployment Rate</td><td class="b">7.6%</td><td class="b">8.2%</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</td><td class="b">+0.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2012</td><td class="b">+0.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2013 1st Quarter</td><td class="b">+0.5%</td></tr>
</table>
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