Face Time is Better than Face Book!

We live in interesting times --when social media is an oxymoron.  This hit me hard the other day when I finally had a long overdue breakfast with a dear colleague.  I respect this business coach so much--but hadn't found/made/taken the time to reach out to her. I mean--not for months! Oh, I was busy doing something else: looking for solutions, finding clients, fulfilling client needs, back office stuff, well, you know how it goes....and then add in the usual holiday frenzy.   I wasn't going to let the year go by without seeing her again.  A client meeting postponed the original date...we rescheduled again. 


We had a great conversation over breakfast around family and business and clients and market and organizations and the economy and goals.  No agenda--just getting together.  


As I drove off after breakfast, I realized that I really enjoyed the face time.  


I love catching up with old friends on Facebook, making new connections on linked in and tweaking an article that I know would be useful.


But the sitting down and breaking bread was almost gone from my things I do.  How did that happen?  When did I lose the something that was so important to me?


I think about calculating my age while a child and reading Orwell's 1984 and then doing the same as an adult for the year 2000. Today Christmas items are displayed with Halloween in the stores.  Valentines are already popping up and we aren't even in 2012.  Time is rushed as the "best of" lists  come out with 3 or 4 weeks left in the year.  What if the "best of"  hasn't happened?  Don't the days and weeks at the end of year count as much as the others?  Aren't they 24-7 as well?  


Face time got a bad name for itself when bosses insisted that people spend time in the office just to be there--whether they were accomplishing anything or not.  That was an era ago.  Today, we are virtual, on flextime and technology has helped (?) make us accessible.


Nothing replaces the slowing down and making time for another-- really engaging and listening to another person.  


I got a great gift this year--and it came unexpectedly. Face Time is better than Facebook.   Happy New Year!

Florida Minimum Wage goes up Jan 1, 2012! New Poster!

Florida's new Department of Economic Opportunity has announced that the minimum wage is going up by 36 cents to $7.67 per hour effective January 1, 2012.  Here's the link to the posters on the site:
http://www.floridajobs.org/business-growth-and-partnerships/for-employers/display-posters-and-required-notices

How do you coach yourself or your partner?

Hmmm:  the motivation of ourselves.  How do we keep that spark alive inside and how do we help those around us?   That’s a tough question—but we seem to be able to “help” our partner better than ourselves at times.  Isn’t it interesting how so often we can find the flaws in others?  They aren’t to our standard.  Now, if we only held ourselves to that standard.  How many times have we been late with a delivery of a service or a product or even an appointment yet we will make sure another person with tardiness is aware that we know he/she is late.  Why is that?  Does recognizing the obvious make us feel better?  Is it really that important to step on those we are around the most?

Let’s focus on you first.  You get up and you have this feeling—it is going to be a rotten day.  The humidity is bad so your hair has a mind of its own.  There is little gas in the car and you have little cash and now you realize that you put that new magnetic name tag right next to your credit cards.  Quite a start to a day.  My Granny said: “Sit down.  Have a cup of coffee and start the day over.”  That Kentucky wisdom really is good.  The moment you have now is itself.  It can affect or not affect the next moment—and how it affects it is up to you.  For instance-do you decide to stop for the stoplight or just slow and go?  If it is the latter—how do you feel when you get that ticket?

The great author and inspirationalist Og Mandino claimed that “we make our own weather.”  What is yours?  Do you have that black cloud over your head?  Do your sharp words strike like lightning? Or do you shine? Do heads turn when you come into the room because the energy and “sunshine” is there—all around you?   So just like Tampa weather which can change between intersections and at a moment’s notice-change yours.  Have a ”that was then-this is now” talk with yourself.  THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO IS DECIDE.  Make the choice to change your weather.  If you are stuck in the mud, think of the sun and dry out.  You may want to take a walk, work out, call someone who loves to hear from you or have that cup of coffee; but decide.  You are the only one who can make you act like a victim.  Take the first step by deciding!

Now onto your partner-what do you do when their spark is out; when they are feeling down or just not motivated to get something done.  This is a fast paced world full of impersonal voicemail trees, animated characters on emails so we don’t even need to write to express ourselves and to do lists that go on and on.  We have lost some of the human touch in all of this and that may be true in this case.  This is a wonderful time to help your partner.  Schedule a planning session, review your business plan-remember the passion you had around starting it.  Remind your partner of the successes you have had together and what they bring.  Great partnerships complement and compliment each other. The two of you are greater than two—you create more being together than apart.  In business, we can be sorting out the tasks, the meetings, the duties and the appointments of the day.  It can be lonely.  If your partner is in the office all day, because you are so good with people and networking-remind him/her that you can drum up that business because he/she is getting the back office of books, invoices,  packaging and web site all done.  Take a picnic lunch in and enjoy each other.  Isn’t that the reason for this work arrangement?

Being is business is great; having a partner is wonderful.  When you are in business with your partner in life-it is truly the opportunity to have it all.  You can have the best of both worlds by bringing the best of you and bring out the best in your partners.

Good luck and let me know if I can help spark your pilot light again!

He was simply: “Click. Boom. Amazing!”

Today, in honor of man who made products through a culture he built-his words say it best. His philosophy and his products changed my career and my life.  RIP Steve Jobs

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

“We’ve gone through the operating system and looked at everything and asked how can we simplify this and make it more powerful at the same time.”

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

“I want to put a ding in the universe.”

“I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money.”

“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products.”

“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.”

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

"You've got to find what you love."

“A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.”

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

Labor Dept. Expands Enforcement Of Wage Violations

Hi all:  Just wanted to share this news release from The AP.  I will comment later this week-but didn't want to delay in getting this out to you all.

Labor Dept. Expands Enforcement Of Wage Violations 

by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON September 19, 2011, 04:18 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Labor Department is signing agreements to share information with nearly a dozen states and the Internal Revenue Service as it gets more aggressive in its program to crack down on businesses that cheat workers out of their wages.

The information will help Labor officials target businesses that improperly label workers as independent contractors or as non-employees to deprive workers of minimum wage and overtime pay. Misclassifying workers also lets companies avoid paying workers compensation, unemployment insurance and federal taxes.

Patricia Smith, the Labor Department's top lawyer, said sharing information between state and federal agencies could subject businesses to multiple fines.

"There's more of an incentive to be in compliance because the cost of what we consider to be illegal activity has increased," Smith said in an interview.

In the past, Smith said, a company might pay a single fine to a state agency for not making proper unemployment insurance payments. Under the new agreements, a state can share the information with the Labor Department, which also can seek fines and penalties for federal wage violations.

The violation also would be reported to the IRS, which can go after the company for unpaid taxes, Smith said.

States that have agreed to work with the Labor Department so far include Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Utah and Washington. Labor officials from New York and Illinois plan to sign up in the near future.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has made increased enforcement of federal wage-and-hour laws a top priority since she took office in 2009. The department has focused on industries where so-called "wage theft" is considered a problem, including the hotel, restaurant, janitorial, health care and day care industries.

Last month, the agency began targeting large U.S. homebuilders to see if they failed to pay workers the minimum wage or overtime.

"The urgency of addressing this issue has become more pronounced because we're seeing these illegal business practices used by more and more industries, like restaurants," said Nancy Leppink, head of the department's Wage and Hour Division.

Earlier this year, for example, the department recovered over $219,000 in back wages for 44 Boston-area restaurant workers who were misclassified as independent contractors by two restaurants. The restaurants had failed to pay them overtime and also weren't paying their payroll taxes.

Scott DeFife, a vice president for policy and government affairs at the National Restaurant Association, said his group works closely with members to navigate the "increasingly complex" federal and state rules governing wage and hour issues.

"We support 100 percent compliance with the law," he said.

Leppink said employers who do follow the law are finding it difficult to compete against those businesses that are misclassifying their workers.

In 2010, the Labor Department collected nearly $4 million in back wages on behalf of about 6,500 employees who had been misclassified, a 400 percent increase over the amount collected in 2008. The department has hired about 300 additional investigators to probe wage theft complaints.

Leppink said getting more referrals from states would help the agency increase enforcement efforts. IRS officials said they could take case referrals from the Labor Department, but would not refer individual cases to any agency.

COBRA subsidies for jobless expires

Today, one of the stimulus package items comes to an end.   COBRA is the program set up under federal law that allows people who lose their jobs to keep the employer-provided insurance, typically for 18 months, if they pay for the premium plus a small percentage for administrative fees-generally around two percent.

In February 2009, Congress approved a 65 percent subsidy for COBRA premiums to help those who had been laid off starting in September 2008.

Congress extended the COBRA subsidy three times to cover workers who lost their jobs through May 2010.  The subsidy lasted for up to 15 months.

Here are two good sources of info:

DOL fact sheet :

http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/fsCOBRApremiumreduction.html

and a good article by benefits pro

http://www.benefitspro.com/2011/08/30/6-faqs-about-end-of-cobra-subsidy

Employers told me, in the past year,  that workers would not take job offers because the health care premium they would be would be higher than the subsidized amount.

It will interesting to see what happens now.

New Poster again! The NLRB in 11x17 and on your intranet!

The National Labor Relations Board has issued a final rule requiring most private-sector employers to notify employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act by posting a notice. The rule was placed of the Federal Register on August 25. It is scheduled to be posted in the Federal Register on August 30 and will take effect 75 days later.

The posting requirement, which takes effect on November 14, 2011 is intended to inform employees - both unionized and non-unionized - of their NLRA rights and is patterned after other required postings.

The rule will not apply to non-NLRA employers, including employers of railroad, airline, and agricultural workers. Federal contractors will also be required to post this NLRB notice as well as others.

Employers must post an 11-by-17 inch poster in the workplace and requires covered employers to post the notice on an internet or intranet site, if HR rules and policies are genrerally posted there. However, employers will not be required to distribute the posting by emails. 

The poster will be on the NLRB website for download and available at no charge in hard copy form at NLRB regional offices.  Posters will available by November 1, 2011.

Don't follow the posting requirements?  You may have earned an unfair labor practice.

Employers failing to post the notice may get a break as the NLRB recognizes that employers may be unaware of the new rule. In those cases, the Board may not seek penalties as long as the employer posts the notice right away.

Here is the link to the info: http://nlrb.gov/news/board-issues-final-rule-require-posting-nlra-rights

A fact sheet published bythe NLRB is here: http://nlrb.gov/news-media/fact-sheets/final-rule-notification-employee-rights