Fri, September 29th, 2006 - 12:59 pm - By Gordon Basichis
We found this terrific article at Peppersand Rogers.com
Innovation, Employees and Customer Value
By Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.
There simply is no hotter word for senior level executives right now than innovation. It drives almost every discussion of growth that we hear and one factor contributing to this push for innovation is the increasing amount of attention companies are paying to customer value — not just in the short term, but in the long term as well.
These days the business journals and news magazines are filled with examples of bellwether companies driving innovative services and products forward. It’s not just the innovative “usual suspects” like Apple, Tesco, Google, Zara, Intuit, Nokia, or GE, either. Even Wal-Mart is coming up with new ideas to improve its already highly successful retailing formula. In addition to its efforts to tailor individual store product inventories to the local demands of the communities being served (see related article), the company recently launched an innovative pricing program for prescription drugs, announcing that it plans to sell generic prescriptions for as little as $4 per.
Whirlpool innovates customer value
But if innovation is to mean more to a business than a momentary fashion, the business itself has to organize around the creation and implementation of new ideas. Among the success stories in terms of creating innovative customer value is Whirlpool. Its executives are held accountable not only for the development of new products and services, but also for the creation of processes and systems that foster innovation.Whirlpool uses a knowledge management system called “Innovation E-Space” to provide a ”dashboard” view of its innovation activities, track the mix of incremental versus radical ideas and to engage innovators throughout the organization. To debunk the myth that innovation has to be risky and costly, it has established a seed fund for innovation in each region that is accessible to all employees, not only business unit heads. Whirlpool has also created a team of Innovation Consultants whose job is to teach others in the organization about innovation. In the first quarter of 2006 this approach contributed to a 37 percent increase in earnings, record unit shipments and “productivity improvements.”
As the executives at Whirlpool know, the surest way to strengthen a firm’s “innovation quotient” is through its employees. Successful, consistently innovative companies encourage and cultivate new ideas from employees, and measure the results from the ideas that employees generate. In their April Harvard Business Review article “Manage Customer-Centric Innovation Systematically,” Larry Selden and Ian MacMillan point out that employees must be relied on to fuel the innovation engine. “It is essential for frontline employees to be at the center of the customer R&D process,” they wrote. “The only way to sustain customer R&D is by putting customer-facing employees behind the wheel. The benefit is two-fold: Companies exponentially expand their knowledge of their customers and employees become engaged as they contribute their insight and energy.”
One tactic for engaging employees in the innovation process is something Carlson Marketing’s Director of Performance Improvement Jennifer Rosenzweig, calls “appreciative inquiry.” This is a technique for emphasizing a company’s unique strengths (appreciative) while at the same time developing a meaningful and robust dialogue with employees (inquiry) that seeks to help management understand when the company is moving in the right direction or not.
Carlson Marketing’s research shows that given the opportunity, nearly 50 percent of employees will engage in identifying and implementing ideas. But “squandered” or untapped ideas are a major source of employee frustration and disengagement. A recent Gallup report shows that 17 percent of all the employees it surveyed consider themselves “disengaged” at work.
Toyota engages innovative employees
Toyota may be one of the world’s most accomplished companies when it comes to engaging employees with this kind of strength-based questioning and dialogue. They don’t call it “appreciative inquiry,” but the Toyota Way is well known and has been written about extensively. According to the Economist (19 January 2006), Toyota’s strong corporate culture of employee participation and engagement is what generates a nearly constant stream of innovation at the firm.Once everyone has bought in to the Toyota Way, decision-making can be pushed down into the very front-line organization, whether it’s manufacturing, distribution, or sales. Toyota’s famous “just in time” provisioning, enabling it to operate manufacturing plants efficiently in 58 countries around the world is only made possible by the fact that line employees are actively engaged in making decisions with respect to parts supply and production. Part of the Toyota Way leads employees to come to work each day with a determination to become just a little better at their job than they were the day before. Continuous employee engagement like this increases the likelihood of developing consistent innovation. Inquiry, recognition and reward must all be part of an organized process. (see PeppersandRogers.com for rest of the article)
Corra prides itself in innovation and flexibilty. As such, we can’t agree more with this article in acknowledging that employee innovation provides a company with that added, special dimension that will ultimately move it to the top of its industry.
The article also admonishes that employers should be patient, since innovation takes a bit longer to generate its much appreciated advantages. Your Human Resource Department should also exhibit that patience in making sure they hire the right top of employee, those are not only able to be innovative but who can also adapt to the innovation of others as well.
Like always, the selection of the right candidate begins with a pre-employment background check. It is most important to review a candidate’s possible criminal record as well as the patterns of behavior certain pre-employment searches will reflect. To assess patterns, an HR Manager may want to offer credit checks, MVR Records as well as education and employment verification. You may want to look into a candidate’s civil records to examine how he behaves with neighbors and others with whom he has been involved.
So seek to be innovative, and have the patience necessary to allow innovation to take root as part of your company culture. And remember, as Corra says, check them out before you hire.
Thu, September 28th, 2006 - 3:10 pm - By Gordon Basichis
Silver and Freedman A Professional Law Corporation, known for its fine work in employment law as well as other disciplines, sent us this email.
If you are in California, you may wish to attend.
If not, you may want to access as a webinar.
California’s employment laws are among the most demanding in the country.
As an added drawback, they are constantly changing, sometimes requiring significant modifications in the way your company does business. This program will help you identify and properly respond to the numerous challenges in administering time off for California employees.
Learn How To:
- Recognize the interplay between the various types of leaves - pregnancy, workers’ comp, FMLA, CFRA, PFL and more
- Determine who is eligible for which leaves and when
- Navigate the interplay between leave laws and the ADA
- Handle employee requests for light duty and return to work
- Counsel employees about attendance issues
- Receive the latest developments in leave legislation
Date:
November 3, 2006Location:
Four Seasons Hotel
Grand Ballroom
300 S. Doheny Drive, Los AngelesTime:
Registration and breakfast — 8:00 am to 8:30 am
Seminar — 8:30 am to 10:30 amCost:
$85 per pre-registered person
$90 per person at the door
(fee includes continental breakfast and valet parking)Unable to attend this seminar?
Attend our LIVE online “Wage & Hour” Webinar on Wednesday, November 8 2006, from 9:00 am to 11:00 am.
We all that when it comes ot employment law there is nothing more important than staying current. Laws can change at any time and taking action in accordance with obsolete statutes can cause serious problems for your business. Seminars, such as the one offered here by Silver and Freedman, will keep you up to date on the changes in employment law.
But the main thing for any Human Resources deparpment is to run background checks on all your employment candidates. Perhaps, too, to remain current on the habits and practices of your existing employees you should also be running pre-employment screenings. Corra suggests you always run a Social Security Trace and Crimchecks, that is one or several of a range of criminal searches. The Social Security Trace will not only verify the leigitimacy of the number and the fact it belongs to that canddiate, it will help your avoid growing legal pressures against hiring undcoumented workers.
So stay updated, and run pre-employment screening on every candidate.
Remember, Corra says–Check them out before you hire.
Mon, September 25th, 2006 - 2:56 pm - By Gordon Basichis
We saw this frightening article in the LA Times.
ID Theft Infects Medical Records
Victims face bogus bills and risk injury or death. Privacy laws make such fraud hard to pursue.
After shoulder surgery last year, Lind Weaver was stunned when hospital bill collectors demanded that she pay for the amputation of her right foot.
“Either you didn’t do the surgery, or you did a really [shoddy] job of it,” Weaver told them, sending along notarized photos of her toes, all still attached. “Either way, I’m not paying.”
But the 56-year-old retired schoolteacher quickly discovered she was dealing with something more nefarious than a simple clerical error: An identity thief had obtained medical care under Weaver’s name and had the bill sent to her insurer.
A year later, Weaver is still trying to catch errors in her medical records and clear the hospital bills fraudulently run up in her name.
“It became a 40-hour-a-week job,” Weaver said. “I put my phone to my ear and sat there listening to elevator music.”
Although the most typical of the millions of identity theft cases in the U.S. each year involve credit cards, a 2003 federal report estimated that at least 200,000 instances involved medical identity fraud. Experts believe that the rising cost of healthcare is driving more identity theft, and that many people are unaware they have become victims unless they receive a hospital bill or query from their insurer.
“There’s no reason to assume the patients ever find out,” said Harvard University management professor Malcolm Sparrow, an expert on regulatory agencies who has written books on healthcare fraud. “The bulk presumably remain invisible.”
With their medical records compromised, victims of this kind of fraud face a greater risk of injury or even death if doctors make treatment decisions based on bad information. Files might list incorrect prescriptions or the wrong blood type. Or, as in Weaver’s case, an erroneous diagnosis of diabetes.
Bad information can also put careers and insurance at risk. Many employers, including more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies, demand access to medical records when making hiring, promotion or benefits decisions, according to the nonprofit Patient Privacy Rights Foundation. Health and life insurance companies routinely scan medical files or payout reports before issuing new policies.
Victims, though, often find that clearing their medical records of bad information is much more difficult than fixing credit reports, which are centralized in three major credit bureaus.
Consumers have the right to obtain one free credit report annually, and to demand an investigation of information they believe is fraudulent or incorrect. Unverified reports must be removed promptly.
Medical records, in contrast, can be scattered across dozens of doctors’ offices, hospitals and clinics. And federal privacy rules intended to protect private information can make it difficult for patients to even obtain their own records when identity theft is suspected.
“These privacy rules might put you in a situation where you can’t even investigate,” said Wilma Kidd, chief privacy officer at WellPoint Inc., the largest U.S. health insurer for employees and other groups.
A big reason most people never find out about erroneous records is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. The law can make it difficult for patients to see their own medical records, since the penalties for improper disclosure prompt some hospitals to set up roadblocks including demands for multiple forms of identification.
The bitter twist on medical identity theft is that once a person tells a keeper of records that someone else’s data might be intermingled, the file becomes even harder to obtain. Why? Because it includes another person’s medical history, which many hospitals argue can’t be turned over without consent.
Even when patients do see their records, they have no automatic right to fix errors they find.
As she battled collection agencies last year, Weaver fought to see her medical files. She suspected that someone had used her identity to obtain a foot amputation, but hospital officials wouldn’t help.
Weaver marched into the hospital waiting room in Bunnell, Fla., and started shouting that the doctors didn’t know who their patients were. That got her service in a hurry. After she was shown to a consulting room and given the file, she soon thought she had weeded out her impostor’s medical history.
In May, Weaver suffered a heart attack at her home in Palm Coast, Fla., and was in and out of consciousness.
When she awoke in her hospital room two days later, a nurse asked Weaver what drugs she had been taking to treat her diabetes. Weaver has never had diabetes, a disease that can lead to foot problems severe enough to require amputation.
“They could have given me insulin,” Weaver said. “There’s a whole different heart procedure that covers people with diabetes.”
Diabetes experts said those procedures would have been unlikely to threaten Weaver’s life. A hospital spokeswoman declined to answer questions about Weaver’s case.
Weaver doesn’t know how her identity was compromised, but identity fraud is easy when so many in the medical field have access to intimate records and patients are admitted without having to prove who they are.
At New York homeless shelters, state Medicaid identification cards once could be rented for as little as $2 a day, said Harvard’s Sparrow, who has seen overlapping pregnancies claimed under the same name. In Veterans Affairs hospitals, some eligible veterans have their identities assumed by brothers or cousins who have easy access to their documents, said Richard Ehrlichman, the department’s assistant inspector general.
Sometimes it’s the doctors who commit identity fraud to collect insurance payments for work they didn’t perform.
A Boston-area psychiatrist, Richard Skodnek, was convicted a decade ago of fraud after falsifying diagnoses, treatment sessions and entire patient histories. His victims, some of whom discovered that their insurance benefits had been exhausted, had to struggle to clear their records.
In perhaps the most sensational case, a Chicago podiatrist under grand jury investigation for exaggerating the work he performed shot and killed one of his patients in 2002 when she refused to lie on his behalf. Ronald Mikos was convicted of the murder last year.
Many insurance companies have hotlines for reporting fraud against them, and they sometimes refuse to pay suspicious hospital bills. But that often doesn’t do the identity theft victims any good: They still have to make their own cases to the hospitals, the bill collectors and the credit agencies.
In Weaver’s case, getting the insurance company involved made things worse.
After Weaver realized she was being billed for an amputation she never had, she told her insurance company, which refused to pay as well. In the hospital’s eyes, that left Weaver responsible for the whole $66,000 surgery bill, instead of just her deductible.
Collection agencies didn’t care about her explanation. Each tacked on a fee and resold the collection contract to the next agency down the line. That made correcting Weaver’s credit report especially difficult, because after she established that she wasn’t responsible for one amount billed on a certain day, the credit bureau would receive notice of a new amount with a different date, even though it was based on the same bogus debt.
Even when identity theft victims avoid health complications, the legal side effects can be terrible.
Anndorie Sachs of Salt Lake City found that out in April during a phone call from Utah’s social services department. The social worker told Sachs that her hospitalized infant had tested positive for methamphetamine. The state planned to take away the baby, along with her siblings at home.
Sachs, a mother of four, said that she hadn’t delivered a baby in two years.
“I was freaking out,” said Sachs, 27. “She was not going to believe a word. She said: ‘You’re Anndorie Sachs. You’re on the birth certificate. We know your other kids are being exposed to this too.’ ”
After the social worker grilled Sachs’ 7-year-old about whether her mother had been to the hospital lately, the agency relented.
Months earlier, Sachs’ driver’s license was stolen from her husband’s car. It eventually emerged that a woman named Dorothy Bell Moran had used that license when she checked into the hospital to give birth. Already wanted on other charges related to identity theft, authorities said, Moran hadn’t wanted to use her own name for fear of getting caught. (She was later arrested on the earlier charges.)
Sachs had to hire a lawyer to disentangle the legal and medical records, and she is still fighting a collection agency over the medical bill.
As with Weaver and other victims interviewed, the Utah hospital cited the health insurance law and refused to show Sachs her files after she told them someone else’s paperwork was included. After Sachs went to the local media, officials agreed to delete both women’s records.
Just to be safe, when Sachs contracted a kidney infection, she chose a hospital that neither she nor the impostor had used. But some records had been shared electronically, and the hospital had the impostor’s blood type down as Sachs’ — setting up a possible fatal error. Fortunately, staffers had drawn blood and double-checked. When they reviewed other data with Sachs, she found they also had the wrong emergency contact name and number.
The increased use of electronic records such as the ones that dogged Sachs could worsen the spread of medical errors caused by identity theft.
In the last year, the Senate and the House have passed broad bills pushing for wider use of electronic health records. Supporters, including many big technology firms and insurers, said the plan would increase efficiency, reduce error rates and provide earlier warnings about public health problems.
Such a system could also make correcting medical errors easier — but only if patients catch them beforehand, and only if the service providers agree to change them.
As the web of electronic distribution expands beyond the current pilot projects, more people will see medical records. That could increase identity theft while making existing errors harder to resolve, said Joanne McNabb, chief of the California Office of Privacy Protection.
“There is added risk that we’ve seen all over the place with electronic data,” McNabb said. “It can go to the wrong place at the wrong time very easily.”
Corra found this article to be particularly scary. Not only will you feel victimized when someone commits healthcare fraud with your medical insurance policy, but you will spend eons of time trying to straighten it out. We all know how long it takes to get a simple answer from a health care provider. We all have spent hours in phone menu hell, listening to bad music while waiting for someone to talk to. Just imagine trying to explain to the first three people you talk to that someone identity thief used your insurance policy for his or her medical needs. Years, and I mean this literally, could pass before your straighten things out.
Then there is the matter, mentioned in the article, that the hospital or doctors can mistake your medical condition for that of the identity thief. Suddenly, you could find yourself taking the wrong pills or worse, much worse, udnergoing the wrong surgery. This kind of treatment happens on a good day, yet alone when supported by an erroneous but official medical file.
As we have said before, identity theft begins with two pieces of information–your date of birth and your social security number. These two bits of information are the keys that can potentially unlock your credit and finances, and your health care policy. Not only is this a painful experience, and not only can you spend years awash in red tape, it can also be terribly expensive.
Do yourself a favor and run a Social Security Trace, periodically. The Social Security Trace will inform you who else may be representing your number as their own. Awareness, after all, is the first step toward being proactive, and the SSN trace will make you aware of interlopers.
Run a credit check periodically to see who else may be using your hard earned credit. Run your credit and look for names other than your own. If you find any, notify the credit agencies right away. If the identity thieves have taken cards in your name, then notify the credit providers immediately. Certain undocumented workers may get hold of your number and use it to pose as legal workers. This may be benign and simply stop there, or they may become more creative and try to open up credit on your account. More often than not, it is simply for work purposes, although they can pass it out to their twenty best friends. We have seen it at Corra, and have reviewed more than our fair share of undocumented persons with criminal records in possession of someone else’ social security number.
Remember, all this talk about Homeland Security and Personal Security isn’t just talk. Bad stuff is really happening out there and, largely, you are on your own in finding protection from the predators and identity thieves that have no compunction about causing you grief.
Corra says–You have one identity. Keep it for yourself.
Fri, September 22nd, 2006 - 10:59 am - By Gordon Basichis
We saw this most interesting article on Inc.com
Congress Approves Online Database to Track Federal Contracts
The system seeks to place greater scrutiny on small-business contracts erroneously awarded to larger firms.
By: Angus Loten
Congress has given final approval for a Google -like online search engine designed to track more than $1 trillion a year in federal contracts, loans, and earmarks.Small-businesses owners and trade groups have long complained about a lack of transparency in the federal procurement process. Despite a mandated goal of awarding 23% of all federal contracts to small businesses, many say the process is marred by miscoding and mismanagement.The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which seeks to boost public access to federal spending data by creating a single online database, passed the House in a procedural voice vote on Sept. 13, after receiving unanimous consent in the Senate a week earlier.
President Bush, who has shown strong support for the measure, is expected to sign it into law within the next few months.
By making the data more accessible, lawmakers hope to “reduce wasteful spending by empowering every American to be a citizen investigator capable of holding the government accountable for spending decisions,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the bill’s co-sponsors, said in a joint statement last week.
“This reform would help improve the legislative process by making sure both lawmakers and the public are better informed before Congress votes to spend the taxpayers’ money,” President Bush said in a statement released after the House vote last week.
Business and trade groups had rallied behind the bill in August when two senators put an anonymous hold on a vote days before the congressional summer break.
“Citizens should no longer be forced to navigate the confusing labyrinth of bureaucracy just to find out how their tax dollars are spent,” John Berthoud, the president of the National Taxpayers Union, said on Sept. 6, in a letter to Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on behalf of a broad coalition of over 80 national interest groups — including the American Association of Small Property Owners, Friends of the Earth, and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, among others.
In July, a report by Democrats on the House Small Business Committee claimed that as many as 2,500 large companies received federal cash set aside for small businesses in 2005, accounting for nearly $12 billion in federal contracts.
Earlier this month, the Court of Federal Claims stripped an Arlington, Va.-based firm of a $17.4 million federal contract to upgrade FedBizOpps.gov, an online listing of government contract opportunities.Symplicity, an 8(a) designated information-technology firm, was re-awarded the contract in July 2005, after competitors successfully challenged an earlier decision by the General Services Administration.
The latest ruling, which will be released in detail later this month, reopens bidding on the lucrative eight-year contract for the third time since March 2004. Over 100 small businesses have identified themselves as interested vendors.
If the Federal Government finds it difficult to keep track with whom it is actually doing business, just imagine what your chances are about obtaining background information about potential partners and joint venture prospects. The government affiliate system is labrynthine, bogged down by endless paperwork, hoop jumping, bureacratic meddling and, all right, possibly a touch of corruption.
With the speed of business as fast as it is, you don’t want opportunities to get away from you. Yet you don’t want to enter the wrong deal with the wrong deal, which can create unforeseen challenges and liabilities. So if you are contemplating joint ventures or stratigic partnerships, perhaps the first thing to run is a background check. You can run run criminal checks on the partners and principles, or see if there are any bankruptcies, liens and judgments.
Corra offers the business partner/owner check that some of you will find very handy. The business partner/owner background check will list ownership of properties, bankruptcies, liens and judgments, business associations, licenses and a host of other topics.
Remember, it pays to check them out before you do business.
Tue, September 19th, 2006 - 2:17 pm - By Gordon Basichis
Every day, it seems, we are greeted by headlines that describe how government agents thwarted yet another terrorist threat, or how a new group of malcontents have transformed themselves into a terrorist unit. We are told how so many terrorists and would-be terrorists in the Western Nations are not invaders from the outside but are in fact home grown idiots who are angry over something. More than a few are well educated and from proverbial “good†families who find their militancy through ideology rather than social or material deprivation.
Some act independently while others are influenced by terrorist infiltrators who filter through our borders for the purposes of sabotage and creating dissension. This group of infiltrators and “sleepers†are usually the more dedicated, the better trained, who have devoted themselves to the destruction of Western civilization. Nevertheless, despite all their worst intentions, and whether or not they are home grown, they still have to make a living.
True, some are supported by terrorist funding, be it Al Qaeda or some other group that conveniently believes their piety supersedes any true form of civilized behavior. They are fanatics who decided it is time to rise out of the woodwork and destroy the infidel. Who is you. Just think back to the quaint times when it was only your kids who dished on your values. Now it is a significant minority in a more significant part of the world. It’s a strange feeling, walking around like you have a target on your back.
But as I said earlier, even fanatical terrorists have to eat and keep a roof over their heads. Besides their need to maintain themselves in the world they seem to hate so much, they may well find strategic merit in infiltrating the work place where they can convert and convulse during lunch and the all important fifteen minute breaks. Although the odds are against it, one of our terrorist operators could have a day job. He could be working for you or your company. What a dilemma if he is your hardest worker.
All right, so we shouldn’t make fun of serious matters. Why not? I don’t know really, especially when nothing else seems to be effective. Who said you couldn’t destroy your enemy and laugh at him all at the same time? To digress, during the halcyon days of the British Empire, where the sun never set and all that, soldiers used to wrap their religious fanatics in pigskins and drag them behind a horse. I’m not saying it’s all that funny, but compared to most military tactics or for that matter general entertainment, it might at least be worth a brief reprise. But, as I said, I digress.
Okay, so I am getting off the track here. Back to the fanatical terrorists and their need to hold a job in the world they hate so much. While, as I previously noted, the chances are slim in finding a terrorist filling the cubicle next to you, it would always be nice to have a little hint. Even if he is not a terrorist, he may be a convicted murderer or thief, or even a pedophile who lives in the house where the rodents serve as curiosity pieces.
At any rate, to best determine if someone really is who they say they are, it is best to order a background check. You should order a pre-employment screening check for every job candidate and with it perhaps the Nationwide Criminal Data base search that includes with it the sexual offenders’ registry. It’s always good to know that the person you just hired for the admin gig is more prone to sniff a bicycle seat rather than sit in one. Maybe I’m a little crude here, but that happens when Corra is paid to monitor for catastrophe in the employment landscape.
I don’t wish to frighten you. The news media does that quite well at regular intervals throughout the day. But the news media can also desensitize us and render us inured to violence. But in fact there are a lot of bad guys out there, be they infiltrators, sleepers or home grown militants. And with the exception of the ones who are paid through covert funding, they have to make a living. Sleepers, especially, have to keep up appearances for perhaps years on end, before they are awakened for some awful deed.
Then there is the possibility they have chosen your business because you have desirable databases, proprietary information of intellectual data they believe is worth stealing. More companies try to conceal the theft of sensitive information, rather than admit they have been compromised. Sometimes the stealing has been going on for months or even years, before it’s discovered.
So be sure to run a pre-employment background check on all your job candidates. You may consider also running periodic background checks on your present employees, just to make sure they have been well behaved.
In addition to the criminal, civil and financial background checks, you may want to consider the OFAC. Here is a list of items the OFAC covers–
1. OFAC Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) & Blocked Persons
2. OFAC Sanctioned Countries, including Major Cities & Ports*
3. Non-Cooperative Countries and Territories*
4. Department of State Trade Control (DTC) Debarred Parties
5. U.S. Bureau of Industry & Security (formerly BXA) -
a. Unverified Entities List
b. Denied Entities List
c. Denied Persons List
6. FBI Most Wanted Terrorists & Seeking Information
7. FBI Top Ten Most Wanted
8. INTERPOL Most Wanted List
9. Bank of England Sanctions List
10. OSFI - Canadian Sanctions List C of Global Terrorist Report
More sanction reports are being added as the United States and other governments release them.
Playing the odds is good for gambling. But it is different when you play the odds and one missed guess leads to major catastrophe. Instead, be safe, be secure, and run background checks on anyone in your work place. If one thing 9/11 has taught us, we can never be absolutely safe again.
But we can work to reduce our risks.
Mon, September 18th, 2006 - 9:50 am - By Gordon Basichis
| We found this articles on mediapost’s marketing dailyCMO Council Finds Link Between Data Breach and Brand Trust |
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There is the inside job and the what? Outside job. The outside job is the break in, the burglary or the hacking and cracking of your computer systems in order to steal your valuable data, intellectual property, and proprietary information. While certain security systems can help prevent the outside job, Corra believes the inside job should always begin with a background check. Every new job candidate should be subjected to a rigorous background check and perhaps even your current employees. As reports show, perhaps as many in four in ten are willing to steal. It would stand to reason they would steal more than pencils and staplers, preferring valuable data and proprietary information that could make them some real money.
Frankly, in today’s world you have to be crazy not to require background checks for everyone you hire. If you are not crazy, then you must exist in a glass bubble in a fantasy world where there is no crime nor duplicity. But here on Earth as many as thirty percent of the failing businesses fail because of employee theft. Then there are the other little things for which you are liable and subject to loss, like substance abuse and violence in the work place.
So before you see your stock take a dive and your company embarrassed by glaring headlines that announce how your data has been compromised, tighten up in this age of Homeland Security. Run a comprehensive series of bankground checks, ranging from criminal and civil, through credit and driving. Bad credit risks are often more susceptible to outsiders wanting a shot at your valuable data. Substance abusers? Well, you can do the math.
Check them out before your hire.
Fri, September 15th, 2006 - 10:43 am - By Gordon Basichis
We saw this article on Topix.Net
U.S. hiring prospects to remain steady
U.S. employers expect to end this year as they began, with steady hiring plans, an industry group said Tuesday.
The latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, conducted quarterly by Manpower Inc., said that 11 quarters of consistent survey results show that the job market in the United States is not prone to radical swings at this stage.
Even the economic pressures of 2006, such as rising interest rates, energy costs and inflation, were not enough to rattle employer confidence. Employers are also experiencing difficulty in finding skilled people, which is contributing to the moderate hiring plans, said Jeffrey A. Joerres, chief executive of Manpower.
Of the 14,000 U.S. employers surveyed, 28 percent expect to add to their payrolls during the fourth quarter of 2006, while 8 percent expect to reduce staff levels. Fifty-eight percent expect no change in the hiring pace, while 6 percent are undecided about their hiring plans for September through December.
Manpower also said those looking for work are likely to find the strongest job prospects in the West, and the weakest hiring market in the Midwest.
As this article reflects, the job market looks good for this autumn. With a proliferation of jobs, however, there is fewer candidates that will apply for each job, and human resources departments are sometimes pressed to find qualified personnel. This is when Corra warns human resource departments to be cautious with your hiring process.
While you are in need to staff your workplace,don’t allow desperation to replace discrimination where you are hiring high risk candidates. We urge your to always conduct background checks, but with a brisk job market your hr department should consider perhaps adding reports to your standard employment screening routine.
One background check we would suggest, what with the conditions of the world being what they are is the OFAC report, or the Global Terror Report as it is variously known.
Remember, Check them out before you hire.
Thu, September 14th, 2006 - 1:18 pm - By Gordon Basichis
We spotted this in a bright new magazine Tango, and we excerpted part of the article. Michael Shnayerson wrote the article that alerts you to the twelve red flags that should discourage further engagement
2:The Dirty Dozen
Watch out for the Fling-o-matic, the Parent Trap, the Anger Hum, and these other stop signs.Chronic lateness.
For clarity, “chronic†here means “three dates in a row.†If your date arrives more than ten minutes late each time, don’t wait for his (or her) fourth arrival. Be gone. No doubt your date will have wonderful excuses, and one or two may even be sound. But three in a row is a pattern, and what the pattern says is: I don’t want to get into this. So neither do you.
Ketchup on eggs.
If one of those ï¬rst dates is brunch, and your new friend reaches for the ketchup to put on her eggs, RED FLAG! I realize this may seem arbitrary or fussy. Or perhaps you think I’m making a class judgment here. Well, maybe I am! What’s wrong with that? All I know is: Nothing good ever comes of ketchup on eggs. And it’s really gross.
Rudeness to waiters.
And taxi drivers, and any-one else in a service job. I shouldn’t even have to explain why this is a dealbreaker. Just remember that it is.
Scary divorce stories.
It’s amazing how much a new prospect will tell you about her life on a ï¬rst or second date—much more than she knows she’s saying. The question is: Do you hear it? If she launches into the story of her messy divorce, is her ex the villain in every respect? To me, that’s a red flag right there. Anyone who’s emotionally grounded should be able to see that two people, not one, contributed to a divorce.
A deep attachment to disturbing pets.
A golden retriever is ï¬ne, and cats are all right if they don’t do much. But I’m still haunted by the memory of an ancient, hairless dachshund that would manage to jump up on the bed during inopportune moments and bay. Not until the dog-owner chose to disengage herself from me and comfort the dog instead did I know that this was trouble.
Fling-o-matics.
During a ï¬rst, incredibly romantic lunch with a new prospect some time ago, I mentioned that my most recent relationship had ended after a year. “A year,†my new friend marveled. “That’s so impressive! All of my relationships end after three months.†Of course I resolved to be the exception. Over the next weeks, which happened to include Christmas and New Year’s, we had an amazing time, both in New York City, where she had a charming Hell’s Kitchen walk-up, and at my house in the Hamptons. One Sunday, after I’d put her on the train home, I came back to ï¬nd the most tenderly romantic note on my pillow, something about soul mates joined. The next week, for no outward cause, she called to break up with me. No argument, no terrible time, just end of story. Only later did I realize it was week 12. Lesson: When a woman over 35 tells you all her relationships have ended after a few months, RED FLAG.
Demon children.
Children with an issue or two? Maybe. Children who hate you? Watch out. Hopelessly spoiled or angry children, like D—’s? Head for the door.
Money matters.
Money stirs up so many issues, conscious and unconscious, far more than any magazine article can cover. For now, let’s just list two red flags you can spot early on. One: If a man suggests splitting the tab on a ï¬rst date, the woman should pay—then bolt. I don’t say this is fair, especially if, for instance, the woman is a CEO and the man is a freelance writer. But it’s the way it is, and any man who tries to worm out of his society-given role as tab-picker-upper on the ï¬rst (or second or third) date for the sake of saving a few bucks is a creep to be ditched. For men, an early red flag about money may not start waving until the third or fourth date. A lot of women begin life as daddy’s girls; a few stay that way. They feel men should provide them with the lifestyle to which they’ve grown accustomed from other men who did just that. If you’re a sugar daddy yourself, have fun. If not, back off. Over time you’ll only be despised—and dropped.
The Parent Trap.
Powerful emotions about one’s parents—positive or negative—are a huge red flag. For men, mother-worship is relationship death. One 50-year-old man I know has dated every single woman in New York and found, to his bafflement, that none is good enough—for his mother, that is. (She’s still calling the shots at age 85.) One of this guy’s many castoffs is a very attractive, successful woman of 42, whom I later dated myself. Now that I know both, I can only wonder who was the ï¬rst to reject the other. It must have been like two gunï¬ghters at the O.K. Corral. N— rejected me after three really nice dates because she decided my eight-year-old daughter, whom she hadn’t yet met, would be an “encumbrance†to our relationship. (Since she hadn’t met her, she couldn’t claim my daughter was a demon child.) Only after we became friends did I learn how much she resents both her parents. Coin-cidence? I don’t think so.
Bad sex.
I don’t need to go into detail here, do I? Except to say that bad sex may get better after a ï¬rst, fumbling time, but bad sex two or three times in a row is sex that only gets worse. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that sex is just one part of a relationship, that laughter and shared values are as important, etc., etc. They’re not. Red flag. BIG red flag.
Dirty underwear and socks.
Your mother was right. They have to be clean. Dirty underwear is the hallmark of a secret slob, and every secret slob has many worse habits you don’t even want to think about—but will all too soon get to know if you don’t leave now.
The Anger Hum.
As he or she talks, not just about past romantic relationships but about work, friends, and family, listen for a low hum of anger, like a third rail running along the tracks of your new prospect’s life. For reasons I never quite ï¬gured out, I used to be attracted to women who had that vibe. Maybe it seemed sexy; maybe it reminded me of my mother. But I now know how to recognize anger—not shows of temper, which may be healthy in moderation, but the deeper, more destructive hum—and to back off when I hear it.
We think these are great words of wisdom. We were especially taken with thewarning about ketchup on eggs and quite agree that no good comes of it. We are also aware of a recent study where the study demonstrates that those who are rude to waiters and service help are usually terrible in supervising staff. They are not only terse, insulting and often dismissive, but they lack the essential communications skills necessary to relate to their allged “underlings.” One more thing we don’t need is a lover with an attitude problem.
Dirty underwear and socks, etc., aka a slob, well let’s say for graphic reasons we can see where dirty underwear and bad sex can go hand in hand. We are always puzzled that when we live in a world of millions of showers, how few of our citizens choose to use them on a regular basis. And while the writer is at it, perhaps they should include the wearing of too much cologne and perfume as the baker’s dozen warning signs. If the perfume scent arrives several minutes before your date, then perhaps you should beat a retreat.
There are other warning signs, some are obvious and some more esoteric. Some of you can read them, and some cannot. In any event, before the B.O. the ketchup or the late arrivals overwhelm your senses, run a background check on your new romantic prospect. If nothing else, it helps make sure they are who they say they are and tips the guessing game in your favor. And if you see something that raises the proverbial red flag, like time in prison for sexual abuse, embezzlement, domestic violence, confidence scams, all the fun things we confront in this modern age, you will know it is time to leave before it ever begins.
There are a lot of predators out there. When you open your house to predators they will take advantage of you and any situation you offer. They will steal your identity, take your money, and then there is always the possibility of physical harm.
Corra offers special background checks for singles and people interested in dating. Look at the packages and see what one is maybe best for you. If not, we will customize a package for you. No matter what, cover your assets.
Check them out before you date them.