Running a successful company is like the proverbial running of a tight ship; organization is paramount. Not to be confused with bureaucracy, there should be clear-cut definitions of what is expected from each position and the reinforcement of these expectations in a well-meaning manner. Micromanagement can rear its head when what is required of personnel isn’t being delivered. Nevertheless, micromanagement can eat away at an operation like a disease, eroding the self-worth of employees and ineffectively absorbing a manager’s time.
Micromanaging can begin naively, perhaps in response to an employee’s inability to handle a delicate situation with an irate client or as a result of trying to right an unproductive staff. As a continued practice, however, micromanaging reroutes the flow of an organization; management is habitually stepping in to one of its employees’ positions and therefore both leader and worker aren’t doing what their job requires of them. Micromanaging essentially tells the employee that you don’t think he or she is capable of carrying out his or her tasks properly. It exudes an overall lack of confidence and it makes the employee uncomfortable, afraid to ever take the reigns even when they’re handed back to them.
Employees who perpetually face micromanagement truly never gain the skills necessary to both perform effectively and grow with their positions. The absence of trust will create an undeveloped worker who cannot ever truly shine; they’ve never been given the opportunity to savor what it feels like to face a challenge and succeed at solving it. Therefore a culture of mass micromanagement will create throngs of nervous, incapable and awkward employees.
Micromanagement can occur even when an employee is doing their job properly. Sometimes leadership, itself, is under the gun to produce certain things and out of misguided delegation or inefficient communication intervening on employees’ behavior results. It all comes down to insecurity, as spotlighted in an article on the negative consequences of micromanagement: insecurity with oneself as a manager/leader, insecurity with staff and insecurity with the overall operation.
There are ways to combat the disease of micromanagement in an organization. One of the first things a company/management needs to do is to have a clear, concise vision. What is it that the operation stands for? What purpose does it fulfill? All employees from top-to-bottom need to be made aware of the basic tenets of the company and this should be communicated thoroughly and frequently. The next obligation of the company is to keep lines of communication with staff open. Regularly-scheduled meetings, training seminars, and even email messages or company memos will give opportunities to vocalize what is expected of employees and to touch base with their perceptions of situations.
Ambiguity often creates the need for micromanagement, and another way to combat both of these things is to engage employees to the point that they want to do their best, and want to uphold what is required of them. Performance reviews done on a regular basis allow a manager to communicate what they feel an employee can improve and what the employee feels is needed from management.
Overcoming a tendency to micromanage employees not only rebuilds worker confidence, but better directs all aspects of a company’s performance. When micromanagement occurs it eats away at an employee’s ability to fully grow with their position, takes management away from the leadership it should be providing, and stops the potential for success.
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Being able to work from home or locations outside of a physical office is a benefit of our modern times; as such the number of persons working as freelance professionals has increased. Approximately one-third of the nation’s workforce – 35 million or so – is freelance. And just as the internet has made it easier to find and hire the services of freelancers, it’s becoming just as easy to avoid paying them for their work. Short of waging expensive legal battles – that end up costing more than the amount of underpayment itself – freelancers often have little recourse toward being paid what they are due. The Freelancers Union is bringing this issue to light nationwide, and has lobbied heavily for the passage of a New York bill that would help with repayment.
The Freelancers Union, per a recent survey, says that 77% of freelancers – just under a staggering 27 million – have been unpaid for their services. If this were a problem affecting hourly or salaried employees, well, it wouldn’t be a problem, as there are obvious wage protection laws and federal agencies dedicated to making sure people are being paid what they are due. But freelancers aren’t covered by standard wage protections, and as more and more people find themselves performing this type of work the number of those being under or unpaid is only growing.
The World’s Longest Invoice is a campaign launched in April by the Freelancers Union. It is a multi-faceted vessel that hopes to not only increase awareness to the issue of freelance nonpayment, but also to rally freelancers in an effort to draft serious legal protection against nonpayment at state levels. Freelance workers who have been under or unpaid for their services are being urged to sign an online petition that documents their personal stories and the amount of money that they are owed. The Freelancers Union will present this “World’s Longest Invoice” to the Senate Labor Committee of New York in late May in an attempt to further persuade them to pass legislature that protects freelance workers in that state.
The Freelancer Payment Protection Act would help independent workers collect money – anything $600 or over – from delinquent clients. It already passedNew York’s House of Assembly in June 2011, and passage by the State Senate is pending. The gist of the bill is simple: independent workers should have just as much protection as hourly or salaried employees do, and there would be Department of Labor involvement if claims for nonpayment were waged. Passage of this legislature would set the precedent for the rest of the country, who would be urged to do the same, argues Althea Erickson, advocacy and policy director for the Freelancers Union.
This campaign addressing freelancer nonpayment is bringing substantial claims to the forefront of the issue. Unpaid invoices for tens of thousands of dollars a piece have been added to the World’s Longest Invoice as the tally grows daily. The Freelancers Union’s recent survey reported that a mere 4% of people actually involve legal assistance to their matters, as doing so can ultimately cost more than they are even owed from clients. That’s especially why protection is needed so much now, and will continue to be needed more in the future as freelance work grows, regardless of the potential pitfalls.
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Down just 0.1% from March, April’s unemployment rate dropped slightly, to 8.1% or approximately 12.5 million persons. Teenagers made up the largest percentage of the unemployed for April, at 24.9%, with adult men and women at 7.5 and 7.4%, respectively. Long-term unemployment lingered at near the same levels as March, with 5.1% of the workforce jobless for 27 weeks and over, although the long-term unemployment numbers for the year decreased by 759,000 in April.
Total nonfarm labor increased by 115,000 jobs in April, down slightly from the 154,000 jobs increased in March. Sectors with growth for April were: professional and business services, retail trade and health care. Professional and business services have been increasing since a September 2009 low point, with 1.5 million gains in that period of time and 62,000 since March. The transportation and warehousing sectors saw job losses for April (-17,000), but architectural and engineering services saw a gain of 7,000 each, as did computer systems design and related services.
On May 2, the BLS released its Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment Summary for March 2012. Unemployment rates were lower in March than a year earlier in 342 of the 372 metropolitan areas, higher in 16 and unchanged in 14 areas. Thirteen areas had jobless rates of 15% or higher, but 17 areas had rates lower than 5%. It was El Centro, California and Yuma, Arizona, with the highest unemployment rates in March, at 26.2 and 23.8%, respectively.
The BLS analyzes mass layoff data by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month. Employers took 1,273 mass layoff actions in March, involving 121,310 workers, as reported on April 24. Each mass layoff involved at least 50 workers per a single employer. These mass layoff events were decreased by 20 from February, but the number of associated individual claims was actually increased by 1,847 from February. In March, the manufacturing sector accounted for 22% of mass layoff events and 21% of associated initial claims.
Released on April 27, the Employment Cost Index indicated that compensation costs for civilian workers increased 0.4% for the 3-month period ending March 2012. Wages and salaries increased 0.5% (these make up 70% of total compensation costs), and benefits (the remaining 30% of compensation) also increased 0.5%. Over the 12-month period ending in March 2012, compensation costs for civilian workers increased 1.9%, essentially unchanged from the previous 12-month period’s 2.0% increase.
On May 8, the BLS released the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for March 2012, reporting that there were 3.7 million job openings on the last business day of March, changing little from the month previous. Since June 2009, the end of the recession, there has been an increase of 1.3 million job openings.
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OpenOffice is free software designed for professional and consumer use, and its downloaders are not only able to use it, but distribute and modify it, as well. Essentially a free version of Microsoft Office, OpenOffice’s glory lies in its no-cost premise. The release of 3.4 has been on hold since Oracle donated the code to the ASF in mid-2011. For version 3.4 there are notable updates, namely a faster startup because the application no longer needs to start each component on launch. There is also improved ODF 1.2 encryption support; documents encrypted using AES256 standard can now be encrypted and decrypted with OpenOffice 3.4.
Under the spreadsheet capabilities, DataPilot has now been renamed Pivot Table, and these Pivot Tables no longer have a set number of fields. Mozilla Address Book has also been removed for SeaMonkey, its successor.
There was a 3.4 Beta OpenOffice version available prior to this recent 3.4 release. Replaced from the 3.4 Beta version are support for attributes and transformations to OLEObjects.
The Document Foundation’s LibreOffice, based on OpenOffice, gained users since a 2010 OpenOffice stall. Now that 3.4 has finally been released, the next 6-to-8 weeks will be spent on perfecting a maintenance suite (version 3.4.1) for release. Of course, once 3.4.1 is released, work on a version 4.0 will begin, using code from IBM’s defunct Lotus Symphony, also based on OpenOffice.
Some of the new features of OpenOffice 3.4:
• Faster startup, as aforementioned
• Improved ODF support, including new ODF 1.2 encryption options
• New spreadsheet functions
• Enhanced graphics, including line caps, shear transformations and native support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
• Improvements in performance and quality, overall
Apache’s OpenOffice is created by an all-volunteer group of collaborators, and is one of the most popularly-used productivity suites in the world, with over 100 million users, per the ASF website.
For more information on downloading this latest version of OpenOffice 3.4, visit Apache’s OpenOffice site.
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The topic of insuring the uninsured has been a call-to-debate for sides both in-favor and out. Democrat Cuomo has often erred on the side of caution when it comes to vocalizing support or the contrary for any national policies on the horizon, but his opponents say that this online health insurance marketplace definitely aligns him in support of Obama’s health care initiative. Whether or not New York legislators are in agreement with Cuomo and his New York Health Benefit Exchange, what is known is that for the state itself, health care reform has arrived, and there is no turning back.
Lisa Sbrana, a state policy analyst, says that 1.1 million New Yorkers are estimated to use the health care exchange once operable. Over 600,000 of these buyers are expected to be individuals purchasing coverage for themselves, the remaining 450,000 will be people who work for small businesses in the state. A boon in the favor of those utilizing the exchange will be that three-quarters will be eligible for subsidies to help pay their costs.
There are two sides to this gubernatorial executive order. Those in support of Cuomo’s plan are quick to mention the numerous uninsured across the state, like the estimated 10,000 cancer patients and 337,000 50-to-64-year-olds without coverage. But for opponents of Obama’s health care initiative – currently under Supreme Court debate – and similarly-minded Republicans in the state legislature, health care exchanges are the foundation upon which the President’s health insurance programs will be implemented. It is via these online marketplace exchanges that uninsured Americans will be made to purchase their health coverage, blogs Peter Suderman. Calling the exchanges bureaucracies through which overpriced and overregulated coverage will be bought, Suderman urges states like New York to avoid starting what may one day be mandatory.
Factually, health exchanges like New York’s are required under the President’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), but Cuomo’s administration insists that New York’s exchange is being implemented to help, not hinder, and that it will create a competitive arena for the healthcare industry in the state, leading to reduced costs for New Yorkers.
Outlined in the Governor’s order is that by January 2013 the state will have to show that it will be ready to begin taking applications by the following October. An expected $2.6 billion in federal tax credits and subsidies will be available to the individuals and small businesses that use the exchange. Regional advisory committees will be involved in the establishment and operation of the exchange, also, and would include consumer advocates, small business representatives, health care providers, agents, brokers, insurers, labor organizations and public commentators.
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With a 44-5 vote in its favor, the passage of the living-wage bill marks the end of several years of debate and contention. City Council speaker Christine Quinn, herself a possible Bloomberg replacement, has walked the line between pleasing both big business and labor groups, and has orchestrated some key changes to the bill in the years leading up to it as a result of this need to appeal to as many sanctions as possible.
Because the bill passed with a margin greater than two-thirds, a City Council override of Bloomberg’s well-promised veto is allowable, to that the Mayor promises a legal battle.
Read original article on the bills here.
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Initiating an employee-based volunteer program can attract talent to an organization: a 2007 Deloitte study on volunteering showed that 62% of 18 to 26-year-olds would rather work for a company that offered volunteering opportunities than those that didn’t. It makes good sense for an operation to capitalize on this trend amongst a generation of workers; like-minded individuals working together in this way will be better-connected, and greater overall morale is achieved. Allowing employees to take part in these experiences given, say, 40 free hours a year is another way to breathe new life into a potentially-stale work routine.
Volunteering in the very community that surrounds an organization can do wonders for its public relations and subsequent bottom-line, as well. A company that is well-placed amongst the socially-involved groups in its community is in effect networking with the area at-large, and interacting with other like-minded organizations. It’s all about exposure, and a company that has a presence in the community has greater opportunities to initiate relationships with potential business customers. A 2005 study by Boston College’s Center for Corporate Citizenship revealed that 84% of company executives found that their bottom-line benefited after they started an employee volunteer program. A reduction in turnover costs linked with the retention of top talent was achieved for companies that were seen as socially-responsible and, in turn, concerned with maximizing a balanced work-life environment for their staff.
Choosing a charity or worthy cause with which a company can involve itself is an important task, and a company should utilize a cross-section of employee opinions when trying to make this decision. Selecting a cause that is of greater concern with a variety of employees can increase the likelihood that participation will be high. Choosing a charity that is aligned with a company’s mission or goals might be a wise decision, also, and it furthers the opportunities to be seen as socially-responsible amongst one’s clientele, also.
LUSH cosmetics, a Vancouver-based operation, took company volunteering to another level when it expanded upon its already-in-place line of lotions called Charity Pots, 100% of the sales of which benefit 58 different charities. Instead of touting merely these sale-based donations, the company chose to survey all of its employees and ask what organizations they would like to volunteer with, given the opportunity. LUSH found that it made more sense for them, in their attempt to be ethically and socially-minded, to show that their employees gave of their time as well as the company does of its profits.
Microsoft proudly touts the volunteerism of its employees and says that it’s through community involvement that the true creative passion of workers is achieved. Large operations may have the resources to establish company volunteering but that doesn’t mean that smaller operations can’t do the same. Starting small and directly within its community can put an organization in touch with existing frameworks for volunteering and uniting with needy, surrounding causes.
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receive government subsidies. The prevailing-wage bill would increase wages for the service workers in buildings that receive government subsidies, and its legislative brother, the living-wage bill, would raise the minimum wages for a larger group of NYC workers whose employers also receive public subsidies. Bloomberg has also promised to veto the living-wage bill after its Council passage, even assuring a court battle against the two bills if (rather, when) the Council overturns his vetoes.
Mayor Bloomberg vetoed the prevailing-wage bill, passed in March by the City Council, on the grounds that it would seriously hinder the growth of businesses in the area. Under the prevailing-wage bill, if the city leases space in any building, even a portion of it, the service workers employed within that building must be paid what the city Comptroller decides, not the standard wage of similar position-holders in the area – even those wages of the workers next door to the very buildings in question. There are 41 city-backed, tax-subsidized buildings that would fall under this legislature. Under the Comptroller’s prevailing-wage scale service workers would receive a 35-45% pay increase. These are not minimum-wage-earning individuals, either; some of the workers privy to a wage increase currently make close to $25 an hour.
The living-wage bill, not yet passed by the City Council, would increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to $11.50, or $10 with benefits, for workers at companies who receive at least $1 million in city subsidies. To affect only 600 workers at this time, the living-wage bill is not a wage increase for a large number of New Yorkers, but the Mayor has expressed equal concern with its impending passage. Like the prevailing-wage bill, under the living-wage legislature companies with government subsidies would be faced with higher wage mandates, regardless of what their non-subsidized competition was paying.
Bloomberg’s feelings on the matter are intense; he’s clearly told the public that the City Council will have a court battle on its hands if it overturns the prevailing-wage and soon-to-be living-wage vetoes. In a defense of his position, published in the New York Post, the Mayor explains that NYC has been trying to revitalize “long-neglected areas” by pushing for the investment dollars of interested businesses. He feels that the essential nature of these two bills is counterintuitive to creating a climate that welcomes free industry when the basic logistics would make it illegal for certain businesses to pay the going, competitive wages for certain workers, and instead force them to pay a much higher rate. In addition, when trying to boost investment with lures of potential governmental tax subsidies, future industry would be faced with having to pay these higher wages after getting some sort of city-backed incentive.
Labor organizations are clearly on the opposing end of Bloomberg’s decision, and in support of the City Council’s push for these higher wages. Dan Morris, a spokesman for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union said that it’s unfair, basically, to offer billions in taxpayer subsidies to corporations without ensuring that “taxpayers get a decent return on their investment” through these wage increases.
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Andy Blumenthal, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, says that in the U.S. alone managers spend $150 billion annually handling poor performers. In situations where employee performance is sub-par, the gut-level response of management is often to handle the worker like a subordinate schoolchild, reprimanding him or her, explaining why their work is not complementary to that of the team. But Blumenthal thinks that many managers are actually unable to assess situations of low-level performance as best as they should. Sometimes management is simply ill-suited to the job of judging performance. Human emotions, arbitrary guidelines, and subjectivity lead some supervisors to spend so much time “handling” the problems of the company that they are unable to effectively mentor, guide and re-route the scenario back to right.
Again, instead of focusing on the problem-maker or less-than-perfect employee, managers should look to flawed performance as an actual gift wherein a bounty of lessons on the efficacy and logistics of the organization can be examined; perhaps these areas of concern created the poor performer! Col. Thomas A. Kolditz says that it’s much more important to address the circumstances within the organization that created the poor performance than it is to focus on the lone one or two weak players. Using this theory, properly managing and redirecting these policies and company processes-gone-astray would be a much more beneficial and efficient use of a manager’s time because failing to do so leaves the opportunity to create more flawed employees, and handling the situation upfront could potentially stop the formation of them completely.
Granted, some players are not beneficial for every team. There are cases that occur where someone should be removed from the organization and this may not even require extensive discussion. Situations where termination is warranted still allow the opportunity to address flaws in the hiring and talent-acquisition process. Nevertheless, regarding poor performance, oftentimes an efficient, thorough examination of where the problems are lying with both employee and company are needed instead of immediate termination of the employee. In an online piece detailing how to handle employees that are a negative drain on the workplace there are several ideas listed to help manage these situations:
• Be specific: Let employees know exactly where you have issues with their performance. Specificity in this regard also allows the opportunity to re-address company goals and what is expected of them.
• Consider the needs of the receiver: Be straightforward in your communication with employees but do handle them in a manner that is consistent with their personality. Some people are less or more-sensitive than others, and a good manager knows this.
• Give timely feedback: Not only is it important to handle situations when they arise (and not allowing them to fester and get worse) it is also important to review and assess employee performance in a consistent, timely fashion. When there is order in this regard, there is often more effective performance in the individual.
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PrimeCB.com is CareerBuilder’s site for more mature workers and retirees. Their survey, which involved over 800U.S. workers age 60 and over, 3,000 hiring managers and HR professionals, was conducted between November 9 and December 5, 2011. Of those surveyed, 57 percent said they would look for a new job after retiring from their current position. Perhaps the most shocking bit of information to come out of the study is that 11 percent, when asked how soon they plan on retiring from their current position, said they don’t think they’ll ever be able to retire. The following statistics represent the other answers to this question:
- Can retire in 1-2 years: 26 percent
- Can retire in 3-4 years: 23 percent
- Can retire in 5-6 years: 22 percent
- Can retire in 7-8 years: 7 percent
- Can retire in 9-10 years: 7 percent
- Can retire in more than 10 years: 4 percent
Certainly our American perspective on aging has changed over the last 20-30 years, perhaps contributing to the idea that being 60 or older no longer means one is ready to slow down, or even feels like that is necessary. Financial unpreparedness is another large reason for postponing retirement. A recent British study found that 68 percent cannot retire at the time they had previously planned due to, quite simply, not having enough funds. Bad returns on investments and increasing cost-of-living expenses were listed as the prime reasons for this retirement-unpreparedness. An interesting perspective brought about by the British study is that as people are living longer, they fear they won’t have enough money to last for the duration of their post-working years. Years ago, preparing for one’s future meant planning for 10, maybe 15 years of retirement; now retirement can realistically go from 60 to 85 or 90 years of age, putting a greater financial burden on one’s savings and further stretching one’s retirement dollar.
Encouraging data coming out of the Careerbuilder study shows that 43 percent of employers plan on hiring workers over the age of 50 this year, with 41 percent having hired people over 50 in 2011. Seventy-five percent of these employers would consider the application of an overqualified applicant over 50 years old; and 59 percent of these employers would consider this applicant because of the breadth of experience, wisdom and mentoring-potential that older candidates have.
PrimeCB.com offers the following tips to mature workers on a job search or planning to stay employed at their current positions:
- In interviews and on resumes, play to the skills you’ve honed professionally, and in real-life settings. These strengths can often set one apart from a younger candidate.
- If you want to stay with your company, offer to mentor or help to train new hires that join the operation.
- If finances allow you to work less, consider part-time work. Many retirees enjoy the activity and mental stimulation of working in a smaller scale post-retirement.
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As technological advances modernize the way business gets done and workers adjust their lives accordingly, much lip service is given to the idea of restructuring the contemporary work day so that employees can best take advantage of some of the benefits that the web and personal computing devices offer. Not only is technology changing many of the presuppositions about how work should get done, but people are changing what they want to get out of the very work they do, too. Jon Stein, founder of the investment firm Betterment, thinks his company’s No-Hour Workweek is one such way that forward-thinking 21st Century companies can best marry the technological advancements we’ve come to enjoy with the desire for fashioning a more contented, productive worker.
Betterment’s No-Hour Workweek is built upon the framework of our inter-connected society. Stein’s workforce is constantly in contact via the usual suspects: internet-accessing smartphones, tablet pcs and home web service. Two-thirds of his team, he says, takes customer calls outside of the traditional hours-of-operation and this includes weekends. His development team, as well, is known for working into the wee hours of the morning. So how, amidst these seemingly-excessive work-hours is anything better for the employee? While there is constant contact and increased connectedness with the customer, Stein’s employees also have unique freedoms, and in spades.
Betterment’s employees can come into the office at 8am, at Noon, or later, if it is more beneficial for them. They can take personal days for family commitments or “just because”. They can work from their offices, Starbucks, the park or their living rooms; working remotely is not something that is discouraged. The underlying principal guiding the creation – and implementation of – this No-Hour Workweek is the idea that when people are respected to make the best decisions on the use of their time, they’ll give more of what time they spend in relation to work; it’s quite a simple philosophy, really.
Stein cites a recent Gallup-Healthways study that showed close to a third of all employees surveyed expressed unhappiness and resulting lacks of motivation for their careers. In startup organizations, especially, what can start as a shared passion for this newly-created business oftentimes turns into long hours, overworked employees, and underlying bitterness at the amount of time that has been siphoned away from one’s personal life. Something has to change in order to better fulfill the very people who are building your organization from the ground up.
It is no surprise that, as Stein points out, when The New York Times recently studied the key words in a sampling of commencement speeches given, the words “world” and “love” showed up far more often than “money” and “success.” The internet has made the global community feel smaller, more-connected; we’re evolving as a people, and we want more of a work-life balance, as a result.
Stein’s No-Hour Workweek is built upon the creation of basic guidelines for the organization:
- Respect – Being constantly-in-contact doesn’t mean making absurd requests of those on the team.
- Focus – Specific, identifiable goals are to be created, individually, and reviewed with management every three months – if not more-frequently.
- Environment – Their may be great freedom for Betterment’s employees, but most still work from the office and take part in team-building lunches, happy-hours, and workstation options.
- Leisure Time – It’s just as important to foster good working time as it is good resting time.
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Through the reinstatement of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) no-match letter-sending and heightened numbers of worksite audits, the federal government is trying to combat a seemingly out-of-control issue regarding the large numbers of undocumented workers in this country. Employers who face these letters and/or worksite investigations which mandate them to produce I9 employment-eligibility forms for all employees may eventually find out that, unwittingly, they have been employing undocumented workers for years. Some businesses have lost record numbers of their employees from these stepped-up procedures.
No-match letters are sent to employers when one or more of their employees have names or Social Security numbers (SSN) that do not match SSA records. Prior to 2007, a list of employees with non-matching SSA information would be given to the employer in one letter. In 2007 the SSA stopped sending no-match letters based on challenges in federal court by unions and business groups. The Department of Homeland Security overturned its rule on the matter in 2009 and in 2011 the no-match letters, with some tweaking, were being sent out once again, informing employers and employees of what they would need to do to handle this situation and how they could avoid a potential audit by ICE. With its post-April-2011 resumed no-match letter process, each employee whose information is non-matching is documented in a separate letter to the employer.
Between 2009 and 2011 there were noticeably more worksite audits conducted. In 2009 there were 1,444 ICE worksite audits performed; this number is almost triple the number of workplace investigations in 2008. In 2010 the amount of audits jumped to 2,196. When an audit takes place, the employer has a certain amount of time to produce valid documentation for each employee that both legally identifies them and also acknowledges their eligibility to work in this country. When an employer, on behalf of his or her employee, cannot produce this documentation, they are then forced by ICE to terminate the employee. After an ICE I9 audit such as this, David Cox, the chief executive of a family-owned nursery in California, found that 26 of his 99 employees were not legally allowed to work in the United States. He had to terminate those 26 employees who had been with his company, in some instances, for up to 10 years, acknowledging that “telling them was probably the worst day of my life”.
Contrary to what most people believe, ICE does not deport these individuals who have provided improper documentation to their employers. Most, after termination, are free to go and seek work at another location, often at their previous employer’s competition. Turnover after an ICE audit is no different than any sort of situation wherein an owner is forced to re-hire and re-train a new staff of employees; there are great costs associated with this new acquisition of staff, and businesses often find themselves fielding larger numbers of customer complaints due to inexperienced new-hires.
Employees documented in a no-match letter from the SSA should quickly handle the matter to avoid a potential audit. Sometimes clerical mistakes are to blame for non-matches; an employer may improperly transfer an SSN and cause a no-match scenario, for example. If an employer receives a no-match letter on the same employee for a second time, having either disregarded the first letter or believed an employee’s declaration that their SSN information is valid, there is no reason to be alarmed if a workplace audit eventually occurs.
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American Express’ report shows an increase from last year’s number of women-owned businesses in the state, also. There were 622,300 female-helmed operations in New Yorkin 2011, and with 674,200 this year, that signifies an 8.3 percent increase in just one year. Young women, especially, have vocalized a frustration with the employment opportunities available nationwide, and many are finding themselves going down the route of entrepreneurship in an attempt to turn the tides of employment and success in their favor. The health care industry seems to be where a large portion of these women are focusing their energies; of these women-owned businesses 52.9 percent were in the health care sector, education had a 45.2 percent portion and retail had a 34 percent share.
Susan Lindner, of the public relations firm Emerging Media, points to intrinsic differences that women-run businesses offer when discussing this trend. There are a whole pool of women who have opted out of the traditional business-world to start – and raise – families; these women have business experience under their belts, and are often a great resource for new companies that wish to utilize their skills in a new light, and under more flexible circumstances. Freelance and part-time positions are bringing women back to women-owned firms in NY and the rest of the nation.
Nationwide, the figures on the growth of women-owned businesses are also large. The 8.3 million women-owned operations in the U.S. are up 54 percent since 1997, but women are in high-level positions in only 18 percent of Fortune 100 companies and 15.7 percent of Fortune 500 firms.
While some of the women-owned businesses came about due to inheritance or acquisitions, it is safe to say that the climate has warmed extensively toward encouraging and supporting female-based startups and entrepreneurships. Minorities and women at the beginning stages of business development have New York City’s Economic Development Corp. (NYCEDC) which offers $22 million in funding assistance via the New York City Entrepreneurial Fund for tech companies and the Artists as Entrepreneurs program, as well.
Women-helmed startups have access to programs such as these, but many say that a lot of the assistance stops there. There is a national buzz for nurturing startups that was begun by the current presidential administration; city-based programs such as the aforementioned in NYC are helpful when a fledgling newborn of a company is trying to find the capital to get started, but Maria Ortero, founder of the Women’s Venture Fund, says that many women-owned companies have a hard time finding the support to grow once they are already established. American Express’ data assessment supports Ortero’s assertion, and shows that for women-owned businesses generating between $250,000 and $499,999 and having between 5 and 9 employees there are a great deal of difficulties in transitioning to the next level, and obtaining capital once the business is at this stage of development can be challenging for women unable to assert their company’s needs as well as their male counterparts.
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recently, with the West Village hookah bar/lounge and restaurant Veranda admitting to wage violations that will cost the owners $200,000 in total. Under the almost-year-old Wage Theft Prevention Act (WTPA) of NY $150,000 will go toward repaying employees who were compensated below the hourly minimum wage and not given overtime wages, when due. The remaining $50,000 will go toward lost wages, damages and penalties for the wrongful termination of two employees who first brought the wage violations to light. It is only via the WTPA that such large penalties due to retaliation are incurred.
Wage violations would fall under the general umbrella of the State’s Department of Labor (DOL) but the WTPA, passed in April 2011, created a larger system of penalties for employers. The WTPA quadrupled employer penalties for wage violations, and has added protection for employees who receive unfair treatment for addressing these unfair practices. Retaliation by employers, such as termination or threats that employees keep quiet, can award up to $10,000 to workers per instance of retaliation. In Veranda’s case, the two employees who brought the wage violations to the attention of Make the Road New York, an advocacy group that works with NY-area immigrants, were fired shortly after reporting the violations. Make the Road is one of the groups responsible for the passage of the WTPA; it first received notice of these violations last April, shortly before the WTPA became law.
In NY State, the minimum wage is $7.25/hour, with anything over 40 hours a week paid at 1.5 times this hourly rate. Veranda reportedly underpaid 25 employees, most of them immigrants, in addition to firing the two whistle-blowers to Make the Road NY. As well, tips that were designated for employees were distributed to management, instead. The restaurant, retail and construction industries often employ large numbers of immigrant workers – in the greater NYC areas and throughout the nation - and wage violations in these industries are particularly rampant because these workers are often unaware of their rights or afraid to rock the boat. NY Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, on behalf of Veranda’s wage violations, said that many minimum-wage earners are especially afraid of standing up for themselves, or voicing concerns about potential wage theft, when the economy is such that having a job is better than not having one at all; it’s better to accept a job that doesn’t pay in adherence to state guidelines than to complain about one and face the possible repercussions.
Veranda’s settlement, under the WTPA’s guidelines, forbids retaliated employees or those who were underpaid and now being duly-compensated, from future retaliation by the restaurant’s owners. As well, Veranda’s operations and wage practices will be monitored by the State for the next two years.
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The Senate put its mark on the JOBS Act the week prior to it going to the House for a final vote, where it there passed with a resounding 380-41 margin. The JOBS Act comes on the heels of the White House’s StartupAmericainitiative, which seeks to bring small businesses and entrepreneurs together with the public to better support these startup operations, and better provide opportunities for national economic stability and job creation. With this legislation, which will be finalized by an already-promised signature from the President, the small business community will have the legal freedom to essentially crowdfund. This is the act of accepting investments via the internet from a large variety of individuals, up to $1 million.
Another aspect of this JOBS legislation comes through the exemption from some Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations for the first five years after a company’s initial public offering (IPO). More businesses are expected to go public now, given these SEC changes. Under the Act, companies will be allowed to offer up to $50 million in public stock without registering with the SEC, up from the prior limit of only $5 million.
The JOBS Act underwent some Senatorial amending before it reached the House for its final vote. One of these amendments was requiring companies that use crowdfunding to provide financial statements to investors. A company seeking between $100,000 and $500,000 would have to get independent accountants to review these financial statements, and audited financial statements would be mandatory for companies seeking over $500,000 in capital investments. The online forum for crowdfunding is overseen by internet intermediaries, whose business it is to offer these investments to the public. The JOBS Act will require intermediaries to register themselves with the SEC.
The fundamental appeal of this Act is the breaking-down of traditional barriers to capital access for small businesses, especially those small businesses that are out-of-the-loops of the more-traditional startup worlds such as the Silicon Valley,Los Angeles and New York City. The internet-based investment intermediaries will facilitate greater accessibility for companies that may not currently have the ability to better vocalize about their business, and their investment opportunities for the public. Companies who benefit from public capital sources will have greater opportunities for growth and stability, and greater likelihood to create new jobs.
There are critics to this legislation. Under the Act, some suspect that chances to defraud individuals would be made easier. A potentially-naïve investor – one piece on this topic hints at businesses soliciting grandmothers for investment opportunities – might lack the ability to ascertain certain things that a financially-savvy, more-established investor wouldn’t overlook. On this note, there are protections embedded in the JOBS Act for just this type of situation: individuals with annual income or net worth of $100,000 or less would not be allowed to invest more than 5 percent of their income via crowdfunding.
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