Watch the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLhnUEBQ0fA

“If I had asked people what they wanted they’d have said faster horses.”

- Henry Ford

If you think about it, all human endeavors involve serving the needs of other human beings, whether those needs are financial, educational, spiritual or otherwise. So, too, at work: all endeavors involve serving the needs of the company or organization you work for. Identification of needs is necessary before they can be addressed and, hopefully, satisfied. If you want to be secure at work, valued at work and successful at work, think about your employer’s needs. Being retained, compensated and promoted all starts there: whether you focus on and fulfill your employer’s needs.

© 2010 Alan L. Sklover. Commercial uses prohibited. All rights reserved and strictly enforced.

“Behind every able man are other able men.”
 
- Chinese Proverb

ACTUAL “CASE HISTORY”: Martina’s skills, education, experience and personality all combined to elevate Martina into an enviable position.  A naturally outgoing personality, an MBA in Marketing, and a background in biology together formed a rock solid platform for her role as Chief Innovation Officer at a growing biotechnology firm. For Martina, her job was fun, fulfilling and full of future growth potential.

As Chief Innovation Officer, it was Martina’s job to help her company’s employees (a) identify, (b) assess, and (c) if of sufficient value, patent innovative improvements they had come up with – or even stumbled upon – in the course of their daily work. What seemed to researchers, investigators and technicians as simple improvements that helped them do their daily work with less effort, less time and improved effectiveness, often turned out to be highly valuable – and patentable – innovations.

If an employee brought to Martina’s attention an innovative improvement that resulted in the issuance of a patent, that employee was eligible for a bonus that might range from $1,000 to $25,000, depending on the patent’s apparent value. Martina’s job was to create a “culture of innovation,” to the benefit of all, which she did with passion and success. During her six years with the company, her department had collected over $11 million in patent licensing and royalty payments from the innovations her team had identified and brought to fruition. In that same time period employees were awarded over $335,000 in rewards for helping do so.

Martina was her department’s first employee. From her first day on the job onward, Martina devoted considerable time and effort to putting together a team of six first-rate professionals who worked together like a well-oiled machine. She depended on each of her team members, and they depended on her, in an interdependent, highly productive way.  

However, one aspect of Martina’s personality did not fit well with her otherwise dream job: an entrepreneurial spirit. For many years she had dreamed of owning her own company. She wondered if she could do what she now did, but as an independent consultant working for many different companies to help each one of them create a “culture of innovation.” To do that she would need to do one thing: either build a new team, or bring with her the team of six people she had developed while working for the biotechnology firm. With this in mind, Martina consulted us on how to do the latter, that is, bring her team with her, and what problems she faced in doing so.

With our guidance, significant forethought, and careful planning, Martina opened her own company, and managed to take with her five of her six team members. Today she’s sitting on top of the world.   

LESSON TO LEARN: Valuable employees are the number one asset of any company. Identifying them, hiring them, training them, motivating them and retaining them are the most important challenges facing employers. In making a move from one employer to another, or in starting a new venture, taking your most valuable colleagues with you might well determine your ultimate success.

Taking your colleagues with you to a new job or a new business venture can be a difficult and tricky task. Companies go to great lengths to prevent the loss of their valuable employees. The law, itself, sets up certain roadblocks to taking colleagues with you. There are, though, certain things to keep in mind, certain steps to consider, and certain precautions to take, to help you take your colleagues with you, with reduced risks and with greater chances of success.

As you would do with any important goal, make a plan that you believe will most likely lead you to that goal, and that takes into account important considerations to lead you along the right “path” to that goal.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: There are twelve steps you can take to increase your chances of successfully taking your colleagues with you when transitioning out of employment. These twelve steps will more likely lead you to a successful transition accompanied by colleagues you wish to “take with you.” 

Continue Reading. . .

Question: There are a couple of levels of management above mine that often have openings company-wide, including my location.

I’m told by HR that I may not apply for any open positions that are above mine and located in my own location because I am required to relocate to a different company location for advancement.

Can I be denied promotion for this reason? One note: during the times that those positions have been vacant at my location, I and my co-workers have been responsible for filling in.
 

 Peter
 Destin, Florida

Answer: Whether or not to promote an employee, whether or not to place conditions on promotion, and what those conditions may be, are entirely up to an employer, with two exceptions:

(1) decisions cannot be based on “improper” reasons, such as race, age, pregnancy, gender, and other “protected categories”; and

(2) unless a contract of employment (including a union contract) provides otherwise.

Your employer may have its own reasons – and they are entitled to be stupid reasons –  for placing that condition on promotion. A few times I have heard of employers who have such a rule because they believe a person promoted to become the manager of his (former) colleagues may (a) have a hard time attaining the respect a manager needs to manage, and (b) (former) colleagues who were passed over for that same promotion may be upset, and try to sabotage efforts of their new manager.

The fact that you and your co-workers at times fill in for the higher positions would not change the overall right of your employer to place conditions on promotion and advancement.

If you would like to obtain a “model” memo to help you Request a Raise or Promotion [click here].

Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful. Thanks for writing in.

           Best, Al Sklover

©  2010 Alan L. Sklover, All Rights Reserved.

Dear Mr. Sklover,

I have been reading your blog and I think it’s a great resource. It seems many people who write you are unaware of their rights, and, because of their precarious job position, are probably afraid that talking to an attorney will be accompanied by a large legal fee. The Friday Feedback confirms that when these employees are made aware of their basic rights, they confront their employers with much more confidence. The Unemployment Insurance Benefit video was a good review for me as well.

Regards,

James
Hofstra School of Law, 2011
J.D. Candidate

Just a note of thanks. I’m a 25 year employee being forced out and have technically been laid off. I have an attorney so all’s good but came across your site and you give extremely valuable information to those of us who now find that it’s not always the economy responsible for lay offs but the mere fact that a younger generation has come along and think they know better, i.e., out with the old and in with the new. How little they know and how much they must learn. Thanks again.

Julie

© 2010 Alan L. Sklover All Rights Reserved. Commercial Use Prohibited.

Question: Regarding COBRA, to be eligible, is there a minimum time period you need to be covered under an employer’s health insurance plan to be eligible for COBRA?

Does that change if you leave the company voluntarily? Thanks!

  Daisy
Houston, Texas

Answer: Dear Daisy: You need to be on your employer’s health care plan for One Day before you leave your job to be eligible for COBRA. That’s it.

And it makes no difference if you resigned, or were laid off, or were let go.

However, if you were fired for “gross misconduct,” then you are ineligible for COBRA benefits.

To view our newsletter entitled “Ten Circumstances When COBRA is NOT Available to You” [click here].

Hope that helps. Thanks for writing in. Please tell your friends about our blog.

           Best, Al Sklover

©  2010 Alan L. Sklover, All Rights Reserved.

“The strongest of all warriors are these two – Time and Patience.”

- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, War and Peace

Truly significant achievements take place slowly. They require time, lots of time, to develop, evolve and emerge into our awareness. We may experience a volcanic eruption, or an earthquake, in a moment, but in reality they build up over years, due to imperceptible movements in the earth. Think about it: if you want to “move the earth” at work, simply “move like the earth” at work.

© 2010 Alan L. Sklover. Commercial uses prohibited. All rights reserved and strictly enforced.

“It is not where you serve, but how you serve.”

- J. Rubin Clark

If you have not visited the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., please consider doing so. It is not flashy or grand, but simple and direct, like the men and women it honors. It is not anonymous, but highly personal, containing the names of over 52,000 people killed in service. It can be touched, and powerfully touches back. And it rises out of the earth, and then recedes back into the earth, like each one of us will. It truly serves to remind us of the inhumanity of war, and the humanity of those who served. To all of you who have served in the name of peace and freedom, THANK YOU.

© 2010 Alan L. Sklover. Commercial uses prohibited. All rights reserved and strictly enforced.

Question: I have been with my employer, a not-for-profit agency, since November, 2005. In June, 2009 my son was diagnosed with brain cancer. Our health insurance paid medical bills of over $2 million for his treatments. Because of the way my employer’s insurance works, my employer suffered financial setbacks because of this.

Last week I was retaliated against because of this. I was stripped of my supervisory title, demoted to the lowest position in the agency, and lowered from a pay grade 9 to a pay grade 4. I was also put on a completely unreasonable performance improvement plan (“PIP”).

I was so devastated and humiliated that I resigned the following day. All my peers knew this was done in retaliation, as I am a superb worker.

What are my options for proceeding with a lawsuit against my former employer?

Racquel
Orlando, Florida

Answer: Dear Racquel: First, I would like to express my hope that your son is doing better, and that his illness will go into remission soon, if it has not already done so.

I know of no law in any state that prohibits “discrimination” against a parent for having a sick child. Anti-discrimination laws usually protect people who are in “protected categories” from being discriminated against for being in those “protected categories,” which include age, race, gender, pregnancy, national origin, etc. I know of no known “protected category” of “parent with sick child.”

However, there is a developing body of law some people call “family responsibility discrimination law” or “caregiver discrimination law” which combines elements of various existing laws, state and federal, to help people in your category: parent of sick child.

It is a kind of law being developed by creative, caring attorneys who seek to combine parts of employment law, family law, discrimination law, disability law, and civil rights law. 

This is the step-by-step argument that has been presented to courts around the nation – sometimes successfully, to help parents in your circumstances:
 
(1) The law in most states protects people from discrimination on the basis of marital or family status.
(2) The federal Family Medical Leave Act law protects people who want to take time off to attend to the medical needs of family members.
(3) A powerful, natural part of being a mother or a father is the desire to take care of your children.
(4) Surely, employers cannot expect a mother or father not to take care of their sick children.
(5) Surely, employers should not be permitted to act against mothers or fathers who do.
(6) Our laws should protect parents who help their children.   

This legal and common sense reasoning is slowly catching on in more and more states, and apparently in Florida, too. I would recommend you speak with attorneys who are familiar with this exciting new and developing trend in the law.

You might start by contacting The Amlong  Law Firm, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida at (954) 462-1983. On their website [www.theamlongfirm.com] they describe themselves as “Family Responsibility Discrimination Lawyers.”

If anyone deserves to be treated fairly at work, it is you. I will pray for your son.

           Best, Al Sklover

©  2010 Alan L. Sklover, All Rights Reserved.

Question: I have been bullied by three co-workers for the last three months. One has even threatened “I will take you down.”

Recently, I was injured on the job because two of these colleagues refused to assist me in an assigned task I was doing by myself that required two people.

Because of that injury, I have been placed on a Workers Compensation leave of absence. My manager told me not to mention to the Workers Compensation Board that my co-workers contributed to the cause of the injury. 

How can I stop these people from bullying me?

 Diane
Brantford, Ontario
Canada

Answer: Dear Diane: Like all human beings, employees can be both very nice, and very mean, to each other. Sooner or later, we all “bump into” bullies.

Fortunately, the law in most states of the U.S., and in most of Canada, too, says that employers must take reasonable steps to halt hostility at work, PROVIDED they have first been made aware of it. For this reason, the very first thing you need to do is to make your employer aware of it, in a way that cannot be questioned, doubted or denied: in an “email record” of what happened, and that you reported what happened, including your manager’s refusal to intervene to stop the bullying. This you should do in an email addressed to the CEO, President, Board of Directors or owner of the company. Name the bullies, describe their tactics, and demand an immediate halt.

Once you’ve done this, your employer then knows that, if it does nothing to stop the bullying, it can be sued for allowing a “hostile workplace environment.” And once you’ve done that, if the bullying does not stop, you then can either (a) file a complaint with your local labor board, or (b) consider hiring an attorney to assist you in suing the company.

I think you should also include in your “email complaint” that you are being urged to lie to the Workers Compensation investigators, which would be a crime, and that your manager may be trying to get you to quit to cover up what he or she is demanding of you: that you lie.

I think you should also make a report with local police authorities that you have been threatened with bodily harm by your colleague who threatened to “take you down.”

Most people shy away from filing written complaints about illegal or improper behavior, out of fear that they will just be harassed more. However, reporting the behavior in a verifiable way is the only true way to stop it.

In their hearts, most bullies are cowards. They are so insecure in themselves that they only feel good when they have “power over” others – the power of fear and intimidation. Once a bully knows you don’t fear him or her, the bully usually feels bad, and no longer bothers you, but instead finds another person to victimize. Standing up to a bully – by reporting everything the bully has done and is doing to authorities – is the strongest weapon you have against the bully. It is hard to stand up to bullying. But inside, I think you know that not standing up to a bully will only continue the bullying, or make things worse. Not standing up to a bully only makes him or her feel more powerful, and encourages them to continue. 

Going to work each day must be very hard for you. I pray you will have the courage to stand up for yourself in this way, and then go on to a more peaceful and productive life at work.

Hope this helps. I really do. 

           Best, Al Sklover

©  2010 Alan L. Sklover, All Rights Reserved.