Calculate How Long You’ll Live
Here’s a fun little Flash-based calculator. I’m making it to 80 according to this.
Final Voting for My Bad Boss
I wake up every day and give thanks that I’m my own boss. I’m not really cut out to “work for” the glowing icons of The Peter Principle. (Someday I’ll write a story about when one said “You’re no D***ie Sl***y,” referring to a consultant in another region, to one of my top-performing colleagues when she was talking to him about billing and selling the most work in an entire consulting region. Brutal and Stupid. Not a great combo.)
The final voting for My Bad Boss runs from August 14-21. Here’s the story that’s in the lead:
Cancer Can’t Stop This Boss
My story starts with me being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. I am in my early thirties and have not worked since March of this year. I also have three young children under the age of 8, and a wife who cannot work due to my condition. I think you get the idea.In the industry I work in, disability benefits are available but only equal about one-half of what I normally would be making. These benefits are formulated from a day to day basis for days you have received no other compensation for. Needless to say, every day claimed is extremely important in the basic task of feeding my family and keeping the lights on.
I have been an employee for about 10 years and as such, I have built up some paid time off. I sent paperwork in to take some of my time off, to help pay the bills, but when the paycheck came, I was short on several days. This was compounded when I did not claim disability benefits on the days I thought I was being paid for. As an end result, I lost out on my vacation days AND DISABILITY BENEFITS. Talk about getting hit where it hurts.
My boss threw away the paperwork I sent in and then lied about ever receiving it knowing that filing a grievance for the time I should have received would take months if not years to resolve. Its hard enough just trying to stay alive, let alone trying to pull knifes out of not only my back, but the backs of my wife and children too.
Got anything to top that? And if you do, I will personally go and ninja kick your boss in the neck for you.
NB to HR: Make this right. There are the rules, and there’s what’s right. And if you don’t do anything else this year, GET YOUR PEOPLE TO SIGN UP FOR DISABILITY INSURANCE. Enough with the ridiculous training classes and quarterly meetings. Do something that matters. Get people to sign up for LTD. What are you waiting for? (To make this easy, within a week I’ll post a communication kit that you can use. Free.)
All Work and No Play
How’s that 80-hour workweek working for you? You know, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. (Nope, I’m not going to bother with the PC version — it is what it is.)
Robyn McMaster has a very interesting post on her excellent Brain Based Biz site called Play to Recharge Your Brain. Robyn offers some very good suggestions to put a little play in your day. Plus, she links to a Psychology Today Burnout Test. Yikes. Read it and weep.
Do you have HR programs in place that promote play? Um, no, meetings are not play, I don’t care if each of them start out with a “teambuilding exercise.”
One HR executive I know used to have a daily game of P-I-G in her office with her team. They had a small basketball hoop and a Nerf basketball. The winner usually was the one who could bank a shot off the window, hit the ceiling, and get nothing but net. It was real play…and one of the highest work performance groups ever.
Peddling and Pedagogy: Learning the Connect 18 Way
Here’s an idea for you if you’re in L&D: Combine exercise and learning. Connect 18 combines peddling and pedagogy to arrive at a pretty good destination. Shiny, happy people…who can speak Spanish.
The Connect18 Group Tour program features specialized educational video courses designed to be viewed while riding a stationary cycle. The educational material is integrated with physical exercise instruction and taught in the context of a cycling tour. Riders tour regions of the world that are relevant to the subject matter being taught. For example, on a Beginner’s Spanish Language tour, cyclists may find themselves cycling through rural Mexican villas while they learn language, culture, and history.
What a great idea. You want to encourage healthy living and exercise. Give your employees a payoff; give them a learning experience at the same time. Somehow exercise is so much better when there’s more to it than just exercising. I like riding my bike, but I like riding with Charlie even more. I like walking Snickers the Wonder Dog at 6 am, but I like it even more when one of my neighbors is up and we walk along talking in the quiet of the morning. And I suspect I’d like to learn a little more Spanish while I did some spinning on a stationary bike. Great idea.
Connect 18 say they will offer classes in “current events, foreign languages, health and wellness, history, literature, art history, music, political science, wine, fashion, traffic school, continuing professional education, professional certification preparation, standardized test preparation, and much more.” This is an idea where “spinning your wheels” is a good thing.
Days Off for the Flu
This USA Today Snapshot by Ann Carey and Gia Kereselidze summarizes how many days people call in sick with the flu. Costs for sick days? $600 per employee per year, and that’s just salary lost according to CFO Magazine. That price doesn’t include replacement costs or overtime required to take up the slack.
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