asdfauaogoaigoaa suggestions:  hollidays, workpalacaorigh suggestion, solution season freetings

By Alexandra Marriott

A recent decision by the full bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) has ruled against paying penalty rates to “highly paid” professionals.

The Award Modernisation request included the stipulation that the creation of modern awards was not intended, among other things, to “extend award coverage to those classes of employees, such as managerial employees, who, because of the nature or seniority of their role, have traditionally been “award free” nor “result in high-income employees being covered by modern awards”.

Early scheduling for the award modernisation process described one of the Stage 4 modern awards to be created as the “General Award or Miscellaneous Award”.

Considerable concern has abounded throughout consultations with, and submissions to, the AIRC by employer groups concerned about the extension of the Miscellaneous Award to traditionally award-free employees, and high-income employees, despite the proscriptions contained within Minister Gillard’s Award Modernisation Request.

The draft modern Miscellaneous Award 2010 expanded the coverage of the Award to both high-income employees and employees who have been traditionally award-free.

In the version of the Award ultimately made by the AIRC, the coverage is narrowed slightly.

The coverage of the Award now makes the following exclusion in line with the terms of the Award Modernisation Request:

“The award does not cover those classes of employees who, because of the nature or seniority of their role, have not traditionally been covered by awards including managerial employees and professional employees such as accountants and finance, marketing, legal, human resources, public relations and information technology specialists.”

Whilst a number of employer groups have already applauded this decision, I would also note that this is one of the outcomes of award modernisation that I am pleased about. The new safety net should be, as the legislation promises us, easily implemented, and allow businesses to continue to manage their workforces, and businesses, in a productive and efficient manner without additional regulatory burden or cost.

Of course, the Financial Sectors Union have been quoted as arguing for an award safety net for all employees. Others have argued that the new safety net for award-free employees – the National Employment Standards – provides adequate protection and entitlements, including notice of termination and redundancy.

What do you think? Should high-income employees receive penalty rates and higher rates for overtime? Should they have been included in the Miscellaneous Workers Award? And is the ‘new safety net’ of National Employment Standards adequate?

Let us know what you think about this issue in the comments section, below.

Excellent article about bipolar and the work place. Aimed more toward those who support a family member who has it than the actual person with the bipolar disorder. Great read. Wish I could forward it to my co-workers!

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/friedman/2009/12/the-hidden-business-cost-of-me.html

Some of you may not be too thrilled to hear that money doesn’t grow in trees. In these difficult times, environment and social issues would be the hardest hit and for such a good reason, money does a lot of talking! Inefficiency on spending are beginning to surface everywhere in different parts of the governments. There are primary reasons I could list: unacknowledged staffing, understaffed, stressful staffs, lack of strong leadership, low staff morale, or communication issues. If these issues are at your workplace, you are not going to have a very good time no matter how hard you work.
Before cuts or the source of funding disappears, we shall look at efficiency and the people that surrounds it. We would not want the people that needs the money the most suffers. We would like to understand where the mistakes occur, where the staffing skills needs to upgrade to handle ie: customer service or the knowledge of the product(s). In terms of leadership, we can’t really train a leader, a good leader should be able to execute the tasks to the employees. He/she is hopefully a fair and a balanced listener, an open-mind when needed. Don’t forget the basic: communication. It sounds easy, but doing it takes loads of effort and time!

Do you really need to document every bit of your safety training?  The short answer is, yes, you do, even if OSHA doesn’t require it.

More than 100 separate OSHA rules feature training requirements. Some of those standards also require you to certify that training has been successfully completed and that employees have learned the skills and information they need to work safely.

For example, OSHA’s process safety management standard (29 CFR 1910.119) requires documentation of training, as does the powered industrial truck standard (29 CFR 1910.178). And DOT’s hazardous materials transportation regulations (49 CFR Parts 171-180) require you to keep records of training conducted in the preceding 3 years.

But even when documentation isn’t expressly required in the regulations, as a practical matter, you should keep records of all safety training. As OSHA points out, documentation that proves training has been conducted and that employees have successfully completed the training provides evidence of your good-faith compliance with OSHA standards in general. Documentation can also supply an answer to one of the first questions an OSHA inspector will ask when investigating a workplace injury: “Was the injured employee trained to do the job?”

Documentation provides additional benefits. For example, your safety training documentation will help you:

• Keep up to date with annual or periodic training requirements included in state and federal government regulations
• Maintain efficient training schedules and select appropriate trainers and trainees
• Identify at a glance which employees have already been trained and which training topics they have completed
• Decide if employees are qualified to work safely in their assigned jobs
• Determine retraining, refresher training, or additional training needs
• Diagnose accident and injury patterns to see where additional training may be required or where current training is failing to achieve goals

If you don’t already have a centralized training log, you need one now. Your safety documentation should be kept in such a way as to make it easily available to those who need to refer to it. Keep these tips in mind:

• Your safety training log can be maintained either as paper or computer files, whichever is easiest. But if you use computer files, make sure they’re backed up.
• Include the name and department of each employee trained, the date(s) of the training session(s), the name of the trainer(s), the topic of the training session, the length of the session (to show how much time was spent on the topic), and frequency of training required.
• Keep all training records accurate and up to date.
• Have employees sign an attendance sheet or some other document that proves they attended the session. Also, have them sign any evaluations, such as quizzes, skill proficiency tests, and so on.
• Document your evaluation method by keeping an individual dated record for each worker that lists the methods you used to verify that the employee learned what was required in training.
• Document when additional training is required to achieve proficiency, and include the date on which such additional training took place.

Failure to meet government recordkeeping requirements can result in citations and fines.  Unless you know who needs training, in what, and when, your safety training program will not be effective.  Training documentation ensures that employees have the skills and knowledge to perform their jobs safely and avoid accidents and injuries.

At Central Florida Safety Academy, we provide not only individual student completion cards for each on-site class we teach, but also documentation for each student that can be placed into your training files. Our online courses also include printable training documentation that provides all pertinent course details once the course is completed.

I was asked recently by a reader whether or not expat wives can work in Beijing. The answer is “yes, but”…Let me explain.

If you speak to women who’ve been trailing spouses in China for a while, some of them will tell you they were given an automatic work visa along with their husbands upon entry into China.  That’s certainly what I was told but alas it has proved untrue.

The combination of the 60th anniversary (which raised feelings of invincibility to a whole new level here) and the recession have meant the Chinese government sees less and less need for foreign workers. I’ve been told anecdotally that work visas generally are now much harder to come by, with companies having to provide a lot more detailed evidence of why they want to hire a foreign worker over a Chinese one. Information from the Chinese government on this point is often conflicting and unclear.

If you want to find work here it is possible. Many expat wives set up their own businesses to ensure a portable career. Others decide to start a family. Others find companies willing to take them on under the table (albeit for a token wage – think around EUROs 150-300 a month), and others trawl around for freelance work, the favourites being writing/editing and teaching English. A very good place to start and to seek up-to-the-minute advice is the excellent VIVA network which holds monthly networking meetings and is run by seasoned expat business women. I’d also recommend the national chambers of commerce, specialist Beijing-based groups on LinkedIn and alumni associations.

All of this brings me to the bigger topic of what happens when working women become expat wives. I know from personal experience it is not at all an easy transition to make. Whatever the benefits of taking time out, don’t let anyone tell you there is no loss of identity involved in becoming a tai-tai. Speaking personally, loss of financial independence is a big part of this. I’ve seen firsthand how it can make expat women here in Beijing incredibly lonely, depressed and angry, and take a huge toll on marriages.

There have been a couple of very interesting stories in the media here about this phenomenon over the last few weeks. I’m linking them here so those who are new to this odd trailing spouse life know they are not alone, and more importantly, that there is help out there. Get thee to an expat coffee morning!

Dave Hill - Fun in the Workplace

10 Benefits of Having a Workplace Culture that Embraces Fun:
1. Enhance your customer service – Imagine having clients that have such a good experiences that they are actively talking about your company, and recommending it for business.
2. Stimulate workplace passion and creativity.
3. Evoke a culture of helpfulness and balanced fun.
4. Recruit talent and retain valued employees.
5. Elevate performance and morale.
6. Enhance teamwork, motivation, and recognition.
7. Understand the competitive advantage of a fun workplace
8. It can help empower employees to be successful.
9. Benefit from employees working hard, playing hard, and having fun at both.
10. Diffuse conflict with humor

Recommended reading
The Levity Effect by Adrian Gostick & Scott Christopher

If you have any advice, thoughts, or comments on embracing fun in the workplace, please feel free respond to this blog or send me an e-mail at dave@davehillspeaks.com

Dave’s Public Speaking Website (Bio, Keynotes, Workshops, etc.) www.davehillspeaks.com

Copyright © 2009 Dave Hill Speaks LLC all rights reserved

By Alexandra Marriott

The Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) made its final modern awards on 4 December. This marks the completion of the task of award modernisation and also reminds us that the commencement of the new Safety Net – introduced by the Fair Work Act 2009 – is only weeks away. 

By way of background – one of the first acts of the Rudd Government upon its election was the making of the Award Modernisation Request. Minister Gillard has since made various amendments to this.

Simply put, the Award Modernisation Request charged the AIRC with responsibility for modernising Awards. The existing 4,000 or so federal Awards and NAPSAs would, as a consequence of award modernisation, be devolved to around 100 modern Awards.

The AIRC were obliged to have regard to several principles, and in particular, a ‘modern awards objective’. Under s.134 of the Fair Work Act, “modern awards, together with the National Employment Standards [must] provide a fair and relevant minimum safety net of terms and conditions”.

The modern awards, accordingly, must take into account a number of factors. Among others, these are:

• the need to promote social inclusion through increased workforce participation;
• the need to promote flexible modern work practices and the efficient and productive performance of work;
• the likely impact of any exercise of modern award powers on business, including on productivity, employment costs and the regulatory burden;
• the need to ensure a simple, easy to understand, stable and sustainable modern award system for Australia that avoids unnecessary overlap of modern awards; and
• the likely impact of any exercise of modern award powers on employment growth, inflation and the sustainability, performance and competitiveness of the national economy.

The costs impact of the modern awards has been broadly and vigorously debated. As a consequence of this debate, amendments have been made to the award modernisation request, and to the content of modern awards. In September 2009, at stage 3 of the award modernisation process, the AIRC acknowledged the costs burden of the modern awards on business, and introduced transitional provisions that apply where modern awards increase costs for employers (and also where the modern awards decrease employee entitlements).

In turn, the impact of modern awards – along with other regulatory burdens potentially introduced by the implementation of the Fair Work Act 2009 – on labour market participation, vis-a-vis the impact of modern awards on “business, including on productivity, employment costs and the regulatory burden” has been closely observed and considered.

On 4 December, the AIRC made the final stage 4 modern awards. These included the highly contentious ‘Miscellaneous Workers Award’, which at times has threatened to extend award coverage to those employees who have not historically been award-covered. In this instance, the AIRC has, correctly, narrowed the scope of coverage of this Award.

In other respects, the award modernisation process has been something of a dog’s breakfast.

Transitional provisions, the insertion of labour hire provisions, adjustments of the award modernisation request, and last-minute changes to awards for some sectors has meant that even industrial relations practitioners are struggling to make sense of the application of the new modern awards from 1 January 2009.

It is also worth considering whether or not the introduction of modern awards has assisted business to manage their workforce. In order to improve productivity and efficiency, many employers will still, despite the introduction of ‘industry-based’ modern awards, juggle a number of awards, and thus continue to be subject to a morass of red tape and compliance burdens.

VECCI notes that many employers don’t understand how the new safety net will affect them – but it will impact on all employers in Victoria.

To seek further advice, we recommend our Modern Award and NES briefings – free to members – and encourage employers to seek advice about their new obligations.

the inevitable happened.

I am one of four first-block subs at my place of employ. Since the school fell on hard financial times several years ago, and even harder times this past year, teachers are no longer paid to sub for their colleagues. Moreover, subbing has moved from a paid gig to an “extra duty”. So, subbing first block is one of my “extra duties.” According to the Sub Folder this morning, nobody had left sub teaching plans. So, I figured I could sleep a bit longer, despite the fact my gut told me otherwise.

My gut was right. Catch a break? No way, no how. I received a phone call at 8:22 am, informing me that the middle school science teacher called in sick, but wasn’t able to access her Internet to leave lesson plans in the Sub Folder. So, I dressed quickly, and headed to campus. Fortunately, I had taken my shower. Unfortunately, I had not eaten my granola. Not a good way for me to start the day. So, I was pretty hungry by lunch, which I don’t get to eat until 1:15 pm on Tuesdays: Two classes back-to-back, followed by another “extra duty”: assisting with Middle School Chorus.

I thought I could catch a break, but not at my place of employ.

I think in the future, I am just going to arrive at school at 8 am on the days I am scheduled to sub. Doesn’t seem worth it to do otherwise. I also asked Tech how to access the sub voice mailbox and retrieve messages from colleagues who phone in sick.

(By Mary Beth Di Figlia, AIA)

The corporate headquarters, the airport, our client’s conference room, the local coffee shop…where we work is truly dependent of what we are required to do on that day and with whom.  So how effective are even the most cutting edge corporate workplaces if 40, 50, even 60% are vacant on any given day?  How much of the cost to own or lease, light, heat/cool, secure, insure and maintain goes underused or wasted?

How do we reconcile the location, sizing, and design of the physical workplace in light of the reality of our virtual world of work?

The most challenging part of rethinking this equation is specific to quantity and location.  Most companies and their design professionals have yet to truly account for the expanding remote (or virtual) workforce.  According to the 2009 CoreNet Global Dallas Summit survey of 300 Corporate Real Estate executives, Alternative Work Strategies (AWS) is a mainstream concept with more than 50% of the respondents able to perform their jobs remotely. Accounting for AWS in sizing and locating physical corporate space is challenging and requires us to rethink cost, space, and performance metrics.  Having access to people where and when you need to meet with them is not a problem to be solved simply by real estate anymore. While it may be considered heresy in some circles, dare we “design less space”?  An exploration of virtual and location based work in terms of value to the individual worker, the business and/or organization and impact to the environment should help guide us toward an answer. Considering new space typologies and a different mix of workspace is imperative.  For companies that can and have embraced Alternative Workplace Strategies such as satellite offices and drop in centers, right sizing is still an elusive target.  They often find that they can serve many more employees with fewer individual workstations than expected.  Not surprisingly, the most utilized spaces in these evolved places of work have been the collaborative and face to face meeting areas.

While it may be considered heresy in some circles, dare we “design less space”?  An exploration of virtual and location based work in terms of value to the individual worker, the business and/or organization and impact to the environment should help guide us toward an answer.

By focusing on work process and taking more advantage of technology, we collectively need to find ways and places to encourage coworkers to come together for the in-person meetings that promote and sustain professional social bonds, and harness the importance of positive corporate culture. This may imply that the traditional notion of assigned workplaces needs to be challenged, altered, or abandoned altogether.  I believe this will be more important than ever if work continues to be more distributed. Successful Programs such as iWork, We work, My Work, Open Work, ROWE, were developed with a great deal of employee input and focus on employee performance metrics not linked to physical presence.

Let’s face it, technology assisting in the collaborative work process is at the core of our work now and into the future. This means that architects and designers have to respond quickly with new ideas and honest perspectives to improve the design and utilization of next generation work environments.  Blurring the lines between here and there, sustaining our cities and urban areas in choosing a location, reinforcing corporate culture and branding, engaging social networks within the company as well as the larger community must all be part of the equation to bring value and credibility to the proposed solutions.

One approach may be to follow the thinking presented in Mathew May’s compelling book, In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing and evolve the workplace by reducing it to its most essential and valuable elements and characteristics.  In doing so, we may find a place for work that we can’t live without!

What do you think?

The best organizations have a business growth strategy that builds organizational culture, productivity, creativity, and innovation. They recognize the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace to retention of employees and to long-term business success.

Dave Hill - Article on Rewarding and Recognizing Employees

I want you to imagine your boss with a $100 check in his hand. You have been working late at night all week and also on the weekend to get a project completed on time. You volunteered to help out and you have been noticed. Your boss takes a thank you card out of a drawer in his desk and takes the elevator up to the executive offices. He walks from office to office and gets thank you signatures after explaining to them what you have done. He takes the check for $100 and inserts it into the card and puts it into an envelope. But he doesn’t send the card to you…he addresses it to your spouse and kids…..with a personal note, thanking the family for the personal time…
Imagine how you feel, your spouse who may have been angry at the company because of the extra household burden, trying to get kids to and from school, sport practices etc., is now feeling more amicable towards the company. The work and family time has not been taken for granted. The spouse might even boast to friends about the achievement and talk positively about the company (think free recruitment). Picture your kids reading the thank you note while holding the $100 check and thinking to themselves, “This is so cool, our parents are important, and now we have enough money to buy all the ice cream in the world!”

If you are a supervisor or manager etc., imagine what value was received from $100, and the price of a thank you card and stamp. Visualize a happy worker who is energized, more productive, and willing to volunteer for future challenges. Taking a workplace from good to great does not always require huge resources- it involves a proactive, creative, and thoughtful touch.

11 Success Strategy for Rewarding Employees
1. Recognize achievements at every opportunity – create a positive workplace culture of reinforcement at all levels of the organization and for all employees (favoritism can erode this initiative and deplete its credibility).
2. If you are recognizing or rewarding someone, for increased effectiveness, tell them the specific behavior or action that they are being rewarded for, and how it made you feel. This applies to the workplace, the community and your family members.
3. Reward in a timely manner and communicate the achievement as widespread as possible. By communicating throughout the organization, you are reinforcing the behaviors and actions that you want others to follow.
4. The specific level of accomplishment and reward size should correlate.
5. Put thought into what types of rewards would be best appreciated by the employee.
6. Brainstorm ways to reward and recognize people in your specific organization. Keep evolving and find and use new ways to make this program effective.
7. Have a competition on how recognition can be taken from good to great (and recognize the people who came up with ideas!).
8. Remember, everyone wants to be appreciated whether they are employees or leaders.
9. The newer generations thrive on recognition and rewards – if you have a high turnover of younger employees this can help stem that flow.
10. Look over your shoulder after you have implemented a successful recognition and reward program and see the increased camaraderie, productivity, loyalty, and employee engagement.
11. Read books such as 1001 Ways to Reward Employees by Bob Nelson; this contains a wealth of ideas, and costs only $10.

If you have any advice, thoughts, or comments on recognizing and rewarding employees, please feel free respond to this blog or send me an e-mail at dave@davehillspeaks.com

Dave’s Public Speaking Website (Bio, Keynotes, Workshops, etc.) www.davehillspeaks.com

Copyright © 2009 Dave Hill Speaks LLC all rights reserved

As you know, I blogged before about the horror of The Duty Of Fair Representation. This is the Supreme Court Standard which says that so long as your union treated you in the same manner as everyone else, they don’t have to do anything for you.

Well, here’s an update. The Union President who stood up and yelled that he “would never help you” has been handily rewarded. After a year in which AFSCME hired a major law firm to defend his actions against myself and another person with the Public Employment Relations Commission of New Jersey (who refused to process our unfair practice charges, but that’s for another day….)  the President of my local has just received a huge promotion. You see, by not helping us against unfair practices in Personnel, he has been promoted from a front line staffer all the way up to …. wait for it….

Personnel Director for my entire building. That’s right. After showing myself and others he would never fight the requests of Personnel, no matter how illegal or unethical; he has been heavily rewarded… by becoming Personnel.

At my job the line works like this:

Front line staff

Supervisor

Assistant Administrator

Administrator

Director, Unit

Director, Agency.

The President of our local went from Front line staff to Administrator without any of the steps in between. There were tons of more senior staff in those other steps, but he was picked? Surely it’s not for his qualifications as a (wait for the irony) fraud investigator of clients. That’s right. My job can hunt down clients for fraud while still committting it themselves. .. but I digress.

This is an obvious reward for years of inaction on the part of our Union President. Think I’m paranoid? Well, you’d be surprised how many former Union Presidents and officers are now Supervisors and Administrators at my job. Once their term is completed and they have done the wishes of management, they are promoted as a reward.

But I am a Christian. God sits high and looks low. I have to hope that if Ninevah won’t repent, the Lord takes care of it. My County has been crooked for far too long. If God in Heaven cares about justice, then I will see some “in the land of the living.”

New bff.

Photo by my awesome co-worker, Lois.

The Arizona National Guard’s aviation brigade in Phoenix had their annual family day complete with Christmas lunch on Sunday. I’d like to say it wasn’t amazingly fun … at least there were highlights … including riding in a humvee, seeing the inside of a portable air traffic control center and sitting in a helicopter.

Food included hamburgers and hot dogs, but there was also turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie. I’d give the food a C because most of the potluck dishes had cooled down immensely by the time the eating started.

It was probably a better time for the kids who got a chance to sit on Santa’s lap, get some presents and jump in the moon bounce. I wish I was five again.

View of the rocks on base

A humvee

Inside the humvee

Sitting inside the humvee

A portable air traffic control center

Another portable air traffic control center

Pretending to work inside the portable air traffic control center

Sitting inside a blackhawk helicopter

Millennials and Technology Shake Up The Workplace by Kristen Tatti

In an article published in last month’s Northern Colorado Business Report, author Kristen Tatti explores millennials recent arrival on the job market.  Common traits shared by millennials, or people born between 1980 and 2001, include a sense of entitlement, general optimism, civic-mindedness, and close parental involvement, among others.  The sense of entitlement of the millennial “trophy kids” is attributed to “helicopter parents” or parents who hover and are more involved in their children’s lives than necessary.  Millennials also bring “disruptive technology” into the workplace, operating business via text messaging and email rather than over the phone.  This technology is sometimes frowned upon by managers from older generations.  Conflicts can arise in the workplace when people from different generations work together.

Do you experience any major generational differences in the workplace?  Have you seen how technology might play a role in creating conflict?  What do you think about the idea of holding a seminar within an organization to discuss generational differences?

By Alexandra Marriott

Last week’s Liberal Party leadership stoush has had some significant consequences for national politics; and many of us have closely observed the impact of the leadership change on the outcome for the proposed CPRS legislation.

Tony Abbott has also flagged a tougher Opposition agenda around industrial relations/workplace relations policy.

In an article in the Age, Tony Abbott is quoted as saying that the Rudd Government’s Fair Work laws, which took effect from July 1, had reversed decades of reform:

”Kevin Rudd has rolled back the industrial reforms of the Keating government…’Kevin Rudd is taking us back to the 1970s, that’s what he’s doing. And I’ll tell you, that won’t happen under us.”

The Rudd Government has made recent public comment around similar critiques of the Fair Work Act, arguing that instead it builds on the Keating government’s industrial reforms – known as the Brereton legislation – and represents the next positive step forward in shaping the future of workplace relations in Australia.

VECCI will certainly be watching this space with interest, and welcomes further, rigorous policy debate around the legislative frameworks that inform our workplace relations practice and futures.

What do you think? Have the Rudd Government’s Forward with Fairness reforms delivered on the election promises? Can the Liberal Party encourage further debate on this issue?

Holiday time is here, and party invites are flowing.

Time for fun … and time for faux pas a plenty!

Here is my list of 9 holiday party mistakes to avoid making …

1) Not RSPVing when asked. Always respond to invitations – whether or not you can attend the event. This includes citing any guests who will be coming with you, too.

2) Making wardrobe mistakes. Always plan your wardrobe carefully, and ensure it’s appropriate attire for the event. For women, this means remembering that a party isn’t the time to show off cleavage. For men, the reminder is that no one needs to see your chest hair or 6-pack. For both genders, remember to limit how much skin you show in general.

3) Not knowing the exact location. Find out the exact location of the party before you leave, so you arrive on time. No last-minute scrambling to get directions or set up your GPS. “Fashionably late” isn’t fashionable.

4) Drinking too much alcohol. Limit your alcohol intake. Alcohol consumption is not a license for poor behavior. I don’t care if there IS an open bar, that’s not an excuse for drinking more than you should.

5) Talking business. Always keep conversations to small talk and not major business-related topics. There’s a time and place for everything.

6) Sticking with one or two people the whole time. Mix and mingle at all work and business parties. Don’t spend too much time with any one person. Parties are for socializing and meeting new people.

 7) Pigging out at the buffet. Remember, it’s NOT about the food. So, when you eat at these holiday affairs, avoid overdoing it. And, watch your table manners!

8. Overstaying your welcome. You certainly don’t have to be the last person to leave. But worse yet, never put yourself in a position where you’re asked to leave.

9) Forgetting to send a thank-you note. Always send a thank-you note to the host or hosts. You will be remembered for the right reasons.

Now, the fun part is up to you!