Death Panels for Employees an Idea Whose Time has Come

With all the talk of health care reform, it occurred to me that we should implement death panels for employees. The death panel could be made up of 5 people – three executives and two employees voted in by their peers. Better yet, the members of the death panel could be made up of employees appointed by the president of the company with a committee of all of the other employees who would have the opportunity to grill the appointees with questions for days at a time. The employees could then vote on the appointees to confirm or deny their membership on the death panel.

There are a number of cases in which a death panel would be justified. Obese employees, hypochondriacs or people who are accident prone could be candidates for the death panel. These people are costing you 10 times more in medical expenses than those who are in good shape. Employees who are using more of their fair share of the medical benefits, they could be put in front of the death panel to plead their case on why the company should keep them employed.

Others to be brought in front of the panel could be the screamers, bullies or those who can not carry out a civil conversation without raising their voices and having temper tantrums. A management employee who falls into this category should get an expedited visit to the death panel.

We can also see those employees who do not do their job and make it more difficult on their co-workers. The harder working employees would have to nominate their do-nothing co-workers and get at least five other employees to sign a nomination form. These no good employees would then have the option of resigning (so the company does not have to pay for unemployment benefits or provide a COBRA subsidy) or going in front of the death panel.

Others who could be nominated are the chronic complainers, the ones who come in 15 minutes late every day or miss every Monday. Those who are the constant harassers could also be brought up to the death panel. I am sure if we brainstorm for a while, we will be able to come up with a number of other employee types to put in the mix.

What a concept. The more I write about this the more I get excited by it.

Before implementing a death panel, we must keep such things as whistleblowing laws, and equal employment opportunity in mind as we do not want to violate these laws when bringing employees to the death panel. For example, we cannot send an employee who filed a complaint with OSHA on the death panel because this would be retaliation and against he OSHA whistleblowing statute. We must also keep records of the sex, race, age, religion and sexual orientation of the individuals brought in front of the death panel to ensure there is no adverse impact for any particular protected class.

Obviously, this is all tongue-in-cheek and not something that would be done. The reason I bring this up, is that just like the health care plan, there are a number of rumors, untruths and downright lies told through workplaces. Many conflicts are caused by mis-information that is being spead throughout the organization.

I am truly amazed and disheartened at the immature way this health care bill is being handled on both sides of the political aisle. If this is the example of how we handle conflict in this country, than we are all in deep trouble.

I am Quitting Too - For My Own Health

I recently started my own wellness program. Watching the signs on the news stating such things as “Once a Quitter Always a Quitter” targeted at Sarah Palin made me think about my own dilemma. I have decided to quit smoking. So I like the saying that if I quit and if it sticks (I am more determined this time to make it stick) I will always be a quitter. Quitting is a good thing for me. I have the Florida legislature to thank for this as the price of cigarettes went up a dollar a pack on July 1 to help pay for the cost of a child medical plan. So I am being selfish. Instead of giving my fair share to help sick kids, I am saving money and possibly my future lifestyle.

At the same time I feel I should be ashamed of myself. I went to college on a swimming scholarship and was very and athletic through my late 30’s. I lost this athleticism about 15 years ago after moving to Jacksonville. I did not have the same people around who I used to work out with by playing basketball, tennis, racquet ball, swimming, golf, etc. This is an excuse as I lost my “stay in shape” support group. I could have found another support group, but got bored with just going to the gym or swimming laps. I need a competitive purpose. Keep in mind that I smoked cigarettes the whole time, but it did not seem to have a bad effect on me. Luckily, I do not think I have any smoking related illnesses yet, but I was developing a smoker’s cough in the last few months.

When you are young, there are no bad long term effects from living life in the fast lane – drinking, smoking and giving up sleeping for a week at a time are all expected. In fact, most of the people on my college swim team were smokers. As a junior and senior, I was designated to drive one of the team vans. We had 16 people on the team and 12 of them would pile into my van while the other four went with the coach. We would lose the coach on the road, stop at a convenience store, pick up a case or two of beer and drive home while the 12 smoked cigarettes and drank beer. A good time was had by all – except me as I concentrated on driving.

Now I am 54, out of shape and in the midst of quitting smoking. I have quit about 20 times in the past for as little as a couple of days and as long as a year and a half. There have always been great reasons for starting up again. I got fat and gained 30 pounds, so I had to light up again to lose the weight. It worked and the extra pounds disappeared as soon as I started smoking again.

But, the main reason I started smoking again in the past is the foggy head. For the last two weeks, I have been in more of a stupor than usual. My job requires me to think and if I cannot think, then I don’t work well. The fog dulls my edge which makes me nervous. The websites on quitting smoking tell me this can last for up to 2 months. I know quitting is the right thing to do, but two months of living in a haze hardly seems worth it when my business and the livelihood of my family and employees depends on me to bring in new business during this critical time.

Smoking a cigarette was a way to go outside, take a break and think. Thinking is good. Few of us actually take time to think. Thinking is good especially with a clear mind. Going outside to smoke a cigarette was a time to take a break, get away from the phone and the computer, light up, think and come up with great ideas. Many people say they have their best ideas in the shower. I had my best ideas while smoking.

So, this is the start of my wellness program. I have to spend over $1,600 every month for my medical insurance because I am 54 and a smoker. That $30 to $35 per week that I would otherwise be spending on cigarettes is now going to help offset the cost of my medical insurance.

With the medical insurance costs going up so quickly and the country split pretty much down the middle with how to fix the health care costs, it is time to start our own wellness plan. Lose weight, start exercising or change that unhealthy lifestyle. You have to start somewhere. Just go for it.

Ricci vs. DeStepano Supreme Court Decision

The recent decision by the Supreme Court in Ricci vs. DeStepano is the correct one. When an organization fails to promote individuals because of the fear of litigation on the part of those who were not promoted, this is discrimination. See the decision here - http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-1428.pdf.

In this case, a test was given to a number of employees of the New Haven, Connecticut fire department for promotion to Lieutenant and Captain. After the test was given, it was determined that 17 white employees, 2 hispanic employees would be eligible for immediate promotion. There were no members of other minority groups eligible.

Under disparate impact rules, the promotions would have caused a prima facie case of discrimination and opened the city to a risk of a lawsuit by black firefighters. After much discussion and debate, the city decided to ignore the results of the test and promote no one. The white fire fighters sued and the Supreme Court decided in favor of the white fire fighters by stating they were discriminated against due to their race.

This decision must make all organizations take a hard look at their recruitment and promotional practices. The City of New Have relied solely on the test to make promotional decisions and then negated the results after they saw there could have been a disparate impact based on race. Disparate impact is not proof of discrimination, but it puts the organization in a defensive position to prove the test is based on business necessity.

If the City of New Haven took past attendance and performance into account, or held some sort of in-basket exercises or an assessment center as part of their promotional process, the outcome would probably have been much different.

Too many organizations rely too heavily on assessments and tests to make hiring and promotional decisions. If an employee does not pass the test, then there is no job.

A couple of years ago, I was working with a company looking for a marketing director. The candidates were required to pass a Wonderlic test. They had 35 people take the test - some with over 20 years of successful experience in the industry. Yet no one was able to pass the test. Applicants were interviewed by telephone, brought in for a face-to-face interview and then given the test. If not passing the test was a disqualifier, the company should not have wasted time interviewing candidates and simply had all applicants take the test before moving to the next step. To me, it was a simple case of Wonderlic making the test impossible to pass so they could sell more tests to the client. Wonderlic is an intelligence test and this test was developed with the assumption that a marketing executive should have a certain level of high intelligence to do the job. We all know this is not true as we all know many very stupid people who are successful in the marketing field. Past performance and past accomplishments were totally discounted simply because the applicants could not pass the test.

I met with a guy about a year ago who sold personality assessments. I asked him what percentage of certainty the assessments attained. When he said 100%, I knew he was full of baloney. Under current guidelines in the USA, if a personality assessment is more than 39% accurate, it passes the validity test.

Too many employers make employees take a Myers-Briggs, DISC, Personality Index, or Occupational Personality Questionnaires or any one of the thousands of assessments available on the market. There is no such thing as an assessment test that is more than 50% accurate. By relying on personality assessments, we may be dismissing half of the qualified candidates.

If an experience interviewer cannot be more that 50% accurate in his or her assessment of a candidate, then the interviewer ought to find another line of work.

Don't become a Victim of the Victims

When you look at the number of charges of discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2008 compared to 2007, you will notice that the number of charges were at an all time high of 95,402 in 2008 compared to 82,792 in 2007 (http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/charges.html). This is a huge jump of over 15% and it seems that the only people in the United States who care about it are the employment attorneys who want to scare the crap out of business owners so they can sell their services. I have seen lawyers kind of push the panic button before - most recently with the Lilly Ledbetter Act as most HR professionals polled, me included, feel that the Lilly Ledbetter Act will be a big nothing.

The EEOC statistics are different, though and the big jump is scaring me and I don't scare easily.

The number of charges in 2008 should make business owners do the JoBeth Williams thing from Poltergeist by screaming "WHAT'S HAPPENING??" at the top of your lungs.

Oh, we can justify the high increase by stating that it is due to the economy and the laid off people are just looking for some easy bucks. If you are in this justification mode, then how do you explain a mere 5% increase in 2002 when the country had the last huge downturn in jobs.

Here's another reason to scream - the largest weeks of payoffs in the last year occurred during the first 4 months of 2009. Job losses during these months were much higher than they were in the last three months of 2008. So it follows that the trend will continue through the rest of the year. You can justify things any way you want. The truth is businesses are seeing a retaliation pandemic from exiting employees.

Here are a few ways that you ensure that you will be victimized by the victims:

1. Treat employees badly and when you let them go, do not give them any advanced notice and do not give them any wages in lieu of notice.

2. Fight their unemployment benefits.

3. Have someone else deliver the layoff message to them and do it in a cold and uncaring manner.

4. Don't give them any information on how to apply for unemployment or where to go to get some help with resume preparation and job searching tips.

5. Keep putting your head in the sand and pretend that there are no problems.

6. Continually remind your employees that they ought to be lucky to have a job.

OK this is a very sarcastic entry, but I am tired if hearing the horror stories of how employees are treated when being laid off.

The personal injury attorneys are circling like vultures and their waiting for you to make a mistake.

Don't be a victim of the victims.

PEO's - Who's on First?

The National Association of Professional Employers Organizations describes a co-employment relationship as:

"When evaluating the employer role of either the PEO or the client, the facts and circumstances of each employer obligation should be examined separately, because neither party alone is responsible for performing all of the obligations of employment.

Each party will be solely responsible for certain obligations of employment, while both parties will share responsibility for other obligations. When the facts and circumstances of a PEO arrangement are examined appropriately, both the PEO and the client will be found to be an employer for some purposes, but neither party will be found to be "the" employer for all purposes.

Both the PEO and the client company establish employment relationships with worksite employees. Each entity has a right to independently decide whether to hire or discharge an employee.

Each entity has a right to direct and control worksite employees."

WHAT???!!!

So, let me get this straight, each party is responsible for some, both parties share responsibility for some but neither party is responsible for all, but then again each party can hire and fire employees independently of the other pary and each party can control worksite employees.

Does this sound a bit confusing? Isn't this the same as Abbott & Costello's Who's on First comedy routine?

How can a business owner manage their workforce when another party can come into the mix and independently fire one of the employees?

If I am in a PEO, what am I responsible for managing and what areas am I not able to manage?

How much am I being charged to not manage some things and manage others?


If you know someone in a PEO, have them take the time to look at what they are being charged versus what they can get on the open market.

Recently, we have found that some PEO's are charging more for group insurance than can be found on the open market. Others are totally and completgely ripping off their clients with exhorbitant workers comp rates. We found one that should be charging $0.39 per hundred dollars of payroll and they are charging $8.49. This amounts to a mod rate of 21.77 - there is no such thing as mod rates do not go that high. I wonder how it is possible for a PEO to charge this much for workers comp.

We have many more examples, so if you are in a PEO or know someone who is, please - for your own sake, take a look at the costs. The time to do this is now.

Happy Memorial Day - Hire Former Military

Growing up in the Vietnam Protest Era, it took me a while to warm up the military. I was one of those who opposed the United States involvement in Vietnam and thought Country Joe and the Fish (whose only claim to fame was appearing at Woodstock in 1969) were heroes. Check out their website http://www.well.com/~cjfish/ as they make the claim that they single handedly ended the Vietnam War. Their website states, "Welcome to the official World Wide Web home to the 60's band that stopped the war in Vietnam." That message seems so bizarre to me today.

I never joined the armed forces as the draft was abolished the year before I turned 18. My father and my uncles fought in World War II and my father in law was a Korean War veteran. I have a lot of respect for these people. I am in awe of their willingness to serve and die for our country.

About 15 years ago, I took my wife and kids to visit Washington D.C. I walked the Wall. While looking at all of the names, I broke down and cried uncontrollably. My 9 year old son did not know how to take the sight of his father crying to the point of getting down on his hands and knees. The thought of the thousands of people who were in my same age bracket who lost their lives was just too overwhelming for me to bear. I remember my wife took the kids away from me as she knew I needed my space.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. The hand was that of a man who was about 6 feet, seven inches tall (I am 5'6"). He, too, was crying uncontrollably. I stood up and he put his arm around my shoulders. I put my hand on his back (I couldn't reach his shoulder). We did not say anything to each other. We just stood there for a few minutes. The mere act calmed both of us down. Once we were able to regain composure - we just gave each other a slight nod and went out separate ways. We did not say anything to each other. We did not have to. Oh, by the way, this man is black and I am white. I thought about the significance of black and white men standing arm-in arm crying. Then I also thought that our different races did not matter and it should not have even been thought of as significant. Afterward, my son asked who the man was. I told him, I did not know his name, but he is a friend. It was an important thing for my son to see - so that's all that matters.

From then on, I had a new appreciation for the lives that were lost to allow all of us to keep our freedoms intact.

My son is in the Navy now. He is an Intelligence Office stationed in Korea. He had his weekend filled with the excitement as North Korea tested a nuclear weapon. He called today. My wife and I love talking to him and are making plans to visit him in a few months. I could not be more proud of a human being than I am of my son - especially today.

I love the military and have the utmost respect and admiration for anyone who has served our country in the armed forces.

Being in the Jacksonville, FL area where there are two major Naval Bases, I meet many former militray people. These bases are excellent sources of excellent employees. I volunteer often with the Transition Assistance Programs and can tell you that all employers should do everything they can to team up with the military transition groups. Since there is not a lot of hiring going in, it is a perfect time to get to know the individuals who are responsible for helping former military obtain jobs in the civilian world.

They are not as busy now - so get to know them before you need employees. If you wait until you need people, it will be too late to develop that necessary relationship.

To all of the people who have served and currently serving in the military. THANK YOU - from the bottom of my heart.

It has been a while

We've been pretty busy the last few months and given the current economic situation, I am happy about it.

I am seeing the stuggles of the small business people all over the place and keep wondering how long many of them will be able to last. The news is somewhat depressing as I saw an article in the Jacksonville Business Journal yesterday stating that the bankrupcies in Florida are running at about 3 times the national average.

So what are we to do? We just have to work harder to find te clients and meet their needs. We have dropped prices a little to lure clients and that has worked to some degree, but we also have to vigilently look at ways to reduce expenses. We moved into our new office 18 months ago when our revenues were twice what they are today. I leased a bigger space because I saw we were growing at a good clip. Unfortunately, the economy did not share our vision.

We also had a sub-tenet who leased part of the space we did not need at the time. He was a mortgage broker and now is mortgage broke -so he moved out resulting in less money coming in.

The thing that keeps us going is the belief that we have a great service to offer. The word will continue to get out but we have to make sure it does.

Tax season is almost over for the accounting firms and we will be agressively pursuing them for referral sources as well as what I believe to be our biggest advantage - taking clients out of Professional Employer Organizations. Four years ago, I saw them as a threat to our business as many companies could not wait to get into the co-employment relationship. Now payroll companies and benefit brokers are coming after us becasue they do not offer HR services. We fill that gap.

Here's to hard work and optimism.

Layoffs - Deal with the Survivors

In the current economy, layoffs are inevitable. We can point fingers at the greedy Wall Streeters, rich business owners or whoever you want. But finger pointing does not bring in revenue. Revenues in just about all sectors of the economy dropped significantly in 2008 when compared to 2007. Just this past week, it was announce that about 100,000 people would be losing their jobs soon at a number of large companies. Of course, this number does not include small businesses which make up a great majority of the American workforce.


Business owners we talk to are agonizing over what to do with their business and their employees. An owner of an insurance firm we work with has taken a 75% reduction in his own pay, so he does not have to lay off any of his employees. His employees are like family to him.


We see the struggles. HR people are calling me to vent about how depressed they feel when telling employees that their jobs are going away.


Unless one has the mind of Attila the Hun, it is impossible not to feel bad about the people who are being laid off. But what about the people who stay with the company? These people, also known as the survivors, need some help too. Many feel guilty. Many strong friendships and support mechanisms are made at work. When a friend and a confidant leaves, there is a feeling of grief. Others are unsure of what they are supposed to do. Too often there are layoffs without plans on how the operations are to continue or a plan on addressing the emotions of the employees who are staying.

There must be communications with the survivors. Tell them exactly what happened, why it happened, plans for the future and expectations of the survivors. Yes, I do have another article that can assist with the planning and communication check it out here - http://mckenziehr.com/enews/august2008.htm

Bob's First Blog - Stop The Employee Free Choice Act

I have been told for a few years now that I should start a blog. So here goes. I have read a number of blogs and they are basically pretty boring and who knows, by now you may already be bored with this one.

I am an HR geek and like it.

If, after telling you that I am an HR geek, you are still reading, then you just may be one of the people who will read this now and again.

I am also a bit of an activist. I get bothered by things that I think are wrong and want to reach out to others to help me get the word out. My latest mission is to stop the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) bill from becoming law. This bill, if passed, would take away an employee's right to vote for or against a union with a secret ballot. Since 1947, employees had a choice to vote for or against a union to represent them to negotiate contracts regarding wages, hours and working conditions. Votes were cast on a piece of cardboard behind a screen or with a curtain around them so no one could se how the employee voted.

Employees have always been FREE to vote as they please. The new law is not a free choice at all as all of the union organizers would know who signed for a union card and who didn't. The union organizer will also put undue pressure on those who do not sign a card until they sign one. As soon as the union gets one more than half of the employees to sign a union card, the union will be certified as the bargain representative for the employees. Not allowing secret ballot elections is un-American and just plain wrong. Are our esteemed lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate so naive that they think that union organizers will play nice and not use threats and intimidation to force people to sign union cards?

Unions have started advertising on TV about job security and better wages and benefits. Who are they kidding?

Put yourself in the shoes of a small business owner who has built a decent business and employs 15 people. You find that 8 of them have just signed union cards and now, instead of dealing with each person individually, you have to ignore your business for three months to negotiate a contract with a union. Why would you do such a thing? Would you consider closing your business, selling it or maybe moving the operation to another country?

Every time I see the Employee Free Choice Act commercial, I get sick. There's a good chance it will pass. Check out this article - http://mckenziehr.com/enews/december2008.htm

Or write your Congressional Representative and your Senator - follow the links below:

Members of the U.S. Senate -http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Members of the U.S. House if Representatives - http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml


Thanks for Reading Bob's First Blog