Part 3

Handling problem employees is a huge area of help that Silkin Management Group clients and prospective clients are interested in. In Silkin Management Group’s blog site of July 20th & July 21st we introduced Part 1 and 2 of a 5 part series on things staff do to drive their bosses crazy and what to do about them.

In Part 1 we went over the “clock puncher”, the low responsibility staff member. In part 2 we discussed the staff member who spends job time doing personal things and disturbing other employees.
Here is a third type of staff member that can cause irritation to their boss:

“I know you already told me a few times, but can you tell me again, how do I do this?”

These employees just can’t seem to learn anything and are always asking you to solve their problems. They rarely, if ever, offer solutions. They just don’t take the intuitive to seek answers or work out solutions to problems by themselves. Even if you have an easy-to-understand and comprehensive job policy manual put together, they’ve just never read it, but instead bother you and the other staff members with questions that are clearly answered in their job materials.

Solution: For starters, make very sure you have a comprehensive Office Policy and Job Description Manual. Then check the employee out on their job description by asking them to perform some of the duties covered. Do this on a gradient basis, taking the easiest first. If they have trouble with the easy stuff, you know you are going to have trouble generally. More basic, do some literacy testing PRIOR to hiring.

Silkin Management Group provides job description and office policy manuals to its clients as well as various tests for screening applicants. If you’d like more information about this contact us at info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Lyn Ribisi
Senior Analyst’s Assistant
For Silkin Management Group

We’ve written many articles on our various Silkin Management Group blog sites about the economy, the Administration’s economic stimulus program and how that affects small businesses. As all of Silkin Management Group’s clients are small businesses, we like to keep an eye on this activity.

Silkin Management Group is located in Portland, Oregon. $3.9 billion is to come to Oregon from the federal government over three years as part of the economic stimulus program. So far, $2.8 billion has arrived in the state. In checking where this money went, I found the following highlights:

• $780 million went to unemployment payments
• $169 million went to construction projects such as highways, bridges, etc.
• $159 million went to food stamps
• $54.2 million went to pay prison staff
• $20.7 million went to pay for low income child care
• $11.7 million went to low income weatherization assistance

Other than the $169 million for construction project and maybe the weatherization assistance, I don’t see any of this money going to increase productivity in the economy. To me, it has gone to keep people working or having some money while not working.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against helping out those who have gotten bashed and battered in this severe recession. But let’s call a spade a spade – most of the above does not stimulate the economy, it merely helps many people from drowning further. To me, economic stimulus should increase productivity and I’d like to see more of that, not only in Oregon, but throughout the country.

Jack Hennessy
Silkin Management Group Consultant

If you would like more information about Silkin Management Group and the management consulting and training services we offer, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Although Silkin Management Group is not an expert on the status of the banking system, we certainly are interested in the health of the banks we deal with and that our clients use. In fact we do get asked by Silkin clients if we know how to determine the health of banks given the record number of bank failures over the last year or two.

To that end we found the following information that we thought we’d pass along to Silkin Management Group clients and non clients alike. We hope you find it useful.

To check the health of your bank go to http://www.bankrate.com. Go to the section on the first page that says “Safe and Sound Ratings.” They have a service there that ranks banks with 1 to 5 stars. If your bank has 4 or 5 >stars, you should be fine; if it has 1 or 2 stars, you should move banks. If it has 3 stars, you are in somewhat of a grey zone frankly.
You shouldn’t be immediate danger, but keep an eye on the ratings or consider moving banks.

Although your accounts are insured, it could be a lot of unneeded trouble for you if your bank fails.

Dave McKevitt
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For more information about Silkin Management Group, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

In yesterday’s Silkin Management Group blog article, which you can access here http://blog.silkinmanagementgroup.com, we introduced two marketing tips that we use with Silkin Management Group clients (who are primarily single doctor owner/practitioners in a variety of fields such as dentistry, veterinary medicine and optometry). Most of our clients are interested in increasing the number of new patients, and we have a “stable” of successful marketing activities that always help increase the number of new patients coming in the door.

Over the next week or two our consultants will continue to offer a few marketing tips a day to anyone reading our various Silkin Management Group blog sites. If you have any questions about the tips or if you’d like more information about how Silkin Management Group can help you increase your number of new patients and office productivity, visit our website at: www.silkinmanagementgroup.com or email us at info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Jack Hennessy
Silkin Management Group Consultant

Here’s today’s two tips:

1. Do a Quality Control Survey of patients to give you feedback regarding whether or not you’re meeting their expectations and what, if anything, you can do to improve your service to them. Patients appreciate being asked if they are happy with the level of care and service they’re receiving and will be happy that you care enough to ask. You can then rectify any problems that come up with specific people. That type of care always results in more referrals.

2. Design a series of questions you can ask of potential patients to find out what they need and want – find out such things as what services they are interested in receiving, what they value most in a health care provider and what has disappointed them in previous practices. Enclose this survey in your new resident letters and use the information you get back to help you write and design ads, brochures and other promotional items.

We’ve written recent articles on the problems small businesses may soon experience with existing health care plans as a result of the new guidelines put out by the Obama Administration. You can read these previous articles on two of Silkin Management Group’s blog sites: http://practicemanagementblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-rules-for-existing-health-care.html & http://silkinmanagementgroup.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-information-on-new-rules-for.html

The following is a short summary of this issue for anyone who hasn’t read what we’ve previously written and/or who is unfamiliar with this recent turn of events for small businesses with existing health care plans.

Under the new regulations, any business that has an existing plan will be able to keep their current plans as long as they don’t significantly cut benefits, raise co-insurance charges, or increase co-payments by more than five dollars. Such plans also will lose their status of being “grandfathered in” if deductibles are raised appreciably or if employers reduce their payments to employees’ premiums by more than five percent.

As mentioned in our previous blogs noted above, we are keeping an eye on any further updates and information about these new regulations as it affects Silkin Management Group clients with existing plans. Today I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that I thought I should pass along to any Silkin client or small business owner reading this site. You can access this article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703513604575311013340405940.html?mod=dist_smartbrief

This article points out another aspect of these new regulations that is not helpful for small businesses with existing plans. These new regulations could easily end up limiting what an employer can do about his plan costs and, at the same time, prevents him/her from getting a new plan at a lower cost because he/she would then lose the benefits from the “grandfathering” rights of existing plans.

As the article points out, “Many small businesses would like to keep their grandfathered status but can’t afford the premium increases. Benefits consulting firm Mercer LLC says increases are averaging about 10% in 2010, and a Deloitte LLP estimate puts the range between 11% and 15%.”

With premium increases happening now, small businesses are forced to make difficult decisions to control their costs, many of which may not comply with the new regulations and which could then result in losing their “grandfathering” advantages. Truly a lose-lose situation.

I suggest all Silkin Management Group clients read the attached article, as well as the previous articles noted in the blogs sites referenced above in order to stay on top of this issue.

Dave McKevitt
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For information about Silkin Management Group, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com

Anyone who has been reading our various Silkin Management Group blog sites knows that we’ve been writing for months about various aspects of the health care reform bill and its effects on small business. (Silkin Management Group clients are all small businesses.)

Many of you may be aware that some states decided to sue the federal government in the attempt to get this legislation thrown out. Some of my Silkin Management Group clients were curious about this suit, whether it had any merit and, maybe most importantly, what the basis behind the suit was.

Along those lines today I found an interesting article that covers the basic philosophy behind the suit. I found it quite fascinating and wanted to pass it along to our readers. I think you’ll find it interesting whether you agree with it or not.

There are several points to the argument, but the most basic seems to be the following, as pointed out by the author of the article:

“At the core of the lawsuit is the requirement that all individuals purchase qualified healthcare or face a fine. Forcing individuals to purchase something simply because they are alive is unprecedented, and we believe ultimately unconstitutional. The military’s draft is the only exception to this, and Congress’ authority to enact the draft is explicitly provided for in the Constitution, unlike this mandate.”

I suggest Silkin Management Group clients and anyone else reading this blog site read the article and form your own opinion about this suit. The full article can be found here: http://njtoday.net/2010/06/16/why-small-business-joined-the-healthcare-lawsuit/

Bill Hickey
Consultant for Silkin Management Group

For more information about Silkin Management Group visit our website at: www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

One of the most frequent areas of concern for new Silkin Management Group clients is dealing with employees. Who to hire, how to train them, what should written office policies and job descriptions look like, who do you fire and how, how do you deal with discrimination and harassment, etc. are the common areas of concern.

As Silkin Management Group deals with business management, we have to be familiar with the various legalities surrounding these various issues. At the same time, we aren’t attorneys. Therefore we keep ourselves informed and educated through research as well as interaction with attorneys we know and trust.

We have presented articles on past Silkin Management Group blogs from an attorney, Timothy Bowles, whom we have worked with for many years and whose expertise is in employment law. Below you will find a very interesting article by him that will answer the question posed in the title above. If you are a business person who has employees to deal with, you should find this interesting.

Larry Silver
President, Silkin Management Group

For information about Silkin Management Group, visit our website at: www.silkinmanagementgroup.com. You may also contact Silkin Management Group at: info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Religion in the Workplace, Have Faith in the Law

Bill, a hospital supervisor, learned that one of his subordinates, Harvinder, has been wearing a miniature sword strapped to and hidden underneath her clothing. Harvinder is a baptized Sikh who wears the 4-inch dull and sheathed sword (called a kirpan) as a symbol of her religious commitment to defend truth and moral values. Bill instructed Harvinder not to wear the kirpan at work because it violated hospital policy against bringing weapons in the workplace. Harvinder explained to Bill that her faith requires her to wear a kirpan in order to comply with the Sikh Code of Conduct, and gave him literature explaining the kirpan is not a weapon. Harvinder also allowed Bill to examine the kirpan so he could see it was no sharper than a butter knife.

It may be surprising to learn that if Bill were then to inform Harvinder she would be terminated if she continued to wear the kirpan at work, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) would consider the hospital liable for religious discrimination in the workplace. In the face of a potential conflict between a religious practice such as Harvinder’s and an employer’s policy, in this case the company’s obligation to maintain a safe and secure workplace, that employer must almost always take the initiative to see if a reasonable accommodation for that religious practice can be reached. Only where an employer can show that any accommodation for religious practice would impose an undue economic hardship is that company excused from permitting that practice to continue. Employment laws establish that resolution of religion in the workplace issues is a case-by-case proposition. An undue hardship is found where the proposed accommodation imposed more than a de minimus (trifling or minimal) cost to the employer. Examples where courts have found accommodations imposed undue hardship include “additional costs in the form of lost efficiency or higher wages.” Balint v. Carson City, Nevada (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals [9th Cir] 1998) 180 Federal Reporter, Third Series (F.3rd) 1047, 1051, note 4.

Thus, faced with Harvinder’s request to continue wearing her kirpan in the workplace, Bill would have to explore whether the company could accommodate the request without a disruption in operations that would amount to more than a minimal or trivial distraction. If Harvinder’s request was to carry a loaded gun based on her religion’s principles, Bill would obviously have a much easier decision since such a weapon creates a hostile work environment to say the least, nearly certain to significantly divert fellow hospital workers from full attention to their duties. However, a ceremonial object no sharper than a butter knife – and kept out of sight of other workers in any event — can probably be accommodated since it would be difficult at best to distinguish between that object and the eating utensils brought by other workers and utilized daily on the premises.

If you have any questions, please contact me or any of our other employment law attorneys.

Timothy Bowles
Law Offices of Timothy Bowles, P.C.
One South Fair Oaks Ave., Suite 301
Pasadena, CA 91105

Phone: 626-583-6600
Fax: 626-583-6605
Email: information@bowleslaw.com

Part 2

Yesterday, on this Silkin Management Group blog site, which you can link to here: www.silkinmanagementgroup.blogspot.com, we discussed some of the aspects of the new health care legislation relative to how it affects group health plans. All of Silkin’s clients are small businesses and many of them have group plans. Therefore wanted to relay the information we have found on this aspect of the legislation.

Here are 5 additional points that are important to know if you have a group health plan:

1. You insurance company should provide you with a summary of benefits as you are required to distribute such a summary to all employees covered under your plan.

2. There are some preventative care benefits that are required to be covered 100 percent. Which ones? That is still being figured out although vision and dental exams for children might be included. Any plan “grandfathered” will have the same preventative care benefits until 2014.

3. Any employer with 25 or less employees with an average wage less than $50,000 per year may be able to use the tax credit to deduct up to 35% of the premium payments from their taxes.

4. Employers with 2 to 50 employees may be eligible for a federal grant program to help with providing wellness programs for their employees. The details of this are still being figured out.

5. Emergency services (the definitions of which are still being figured out) will be paid at the in-network level whether or not the provider is preferred or non-preferred. Grandfathered plans will continue with the same emergency services benefits until 2014.

Bill Hickey
Consultant for Silkin Management Group

Please visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com for more information about Silkin’s services.

On several of our Silkin Management Group blog sites, we’ve posted articles about what was once a hidden and unknown portion of the health care legislation that has nothing to do with health care. This hidden stipulation requires all businesses to file 1099’s for every purchase of over $600 with any and every company they deal with.

Besides the fact that this has absolutely nothing to do with health care, why the heck was this slipped into the legislation behind everyone’s back? The simple answer is that it is the government’s next attempt to find more money. Unfortunately for the government, this little “move” is no longer hidden and is causing quite an uproar.

In our past articles we’ve discussed a variety of ways that this activity will cause greatly increased administrative burdens to both small and large businesses. As Silkin Management Group clients are all small businesses, we felt it important to keep everyone educated on this matter.

Today, I read maybe the best write up of how intrusive this legislation will be. You can link to this article here: http://www.naturalnews.com/028854_1099_small_business.html

As the author points out, “Remember: The new law will require 1099s to be issued to both individuals and corporations. This means that a musician who buys an expensive new guitar will have to send the retailer a 1099 at the end of the year for that purchase. A florist will have to send 1099s to each of her suppliers as well, including the flower growers, the ribbon company and even the place where she buys tape and scissors if those purchases exceeded $600 throughout the year.”

“Can you imagine having to track and tally every single business purchase you make throughout the year and send 1099 forms to all of them? How about having to collect names and taxpayer identification numbers from every vendor or payee that you dealt with? Can you imagine how long it would take on the phone with Wal-Mart customer service to try to obtain the company’s tax ID? Multiply this by the other five hundred companies you do business with, and you start to get an idea of the new burden this is going to place on small businesses across America.”

Read the whole article and you’ll find it eye opening, or should I say eye popping.

You can be pro-active about this by writing your Congressman and Senator about this absurdity. Maybe someone will listen.

Jack Hennessy
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For more information about Silkin Management Group or Silkin Management Group’s services, visit our website at: www.silkinmanagementgroup.com and/or email us at: info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Silkin Management Group has worked with thousands of clients in the health care profession throughout the United States and Canada for close to 30 years. One of the areas that we continually train and consult our clients in is dealing with employees. Hiring the right staff is a technology unto itself. Hiring the wrong staff can be very costly, so time spent learning how to attract and pick the correct staff is very important. Training staff and dealing with some of the common workplace problems can also be a challenge.

We have worked with a several attorneys over the years as well as referred clients to a variety of lawyers when an employment issue raises its head. There is one attorney whom we have dealt with on employment issues for the entire time we have been in business. He is an expert in employment law and advised us in our early years in the development of our extensive 400 plus page office policy and job description manual. He writes very good articles on employment law, and I wanted to start passing along his advice and wisdom to those of you reading Silkin Management Group’s various blog sites. To that end, today I will begin presenting some of his written advice and add to it over time on our various Silkin Management Group blog sites.

If you are having any employment issues, I highly recommend his services. Although we all make lawyer jokes, there are a few good ones around. This is one.

Larry Silver
President Silkin Management Group.

Visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com for more information about Silkin’s services.

AVOIDING WORKPLACE HELL

For Heaven’s Sake: Document, Document, Document!
Written by Tim Bowles

Lawyers are in sales, they are not in management. They don’t sell widgets to consumers of course. Rather, competing attorneys each “sell” a conflicting reconstruction of events and actions to juries and judges, with the most plausible version of such occurrences the winner.

This firm defends employers daily on lawsuits for, you name it, (alleged) discrimination, (purported) retaliation, (supposed) harassment, (asserted) unpaid wages or overtime, and just about every other workplace accusation imaginable. More common than not, management’s inappropriate or illegal behavior is not the source of such court battles. Rather, suits often generate and grow from company failures: i) to have and follow simple, written policy; and ii) to promptly and fairly document workplace misconduct and its resolution.

Pile on the clichés and maxims if you wish. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” isn’t bad. “If it isn’t written, it isn’t true” is better.

An employer which does not structure workplace production, organization and procedure around sound, sensible, easy-to-understand written policies is prone to finding itself sooner or later in the midst of an expensive court controversy. If written policy does not exist or if it is not followed, if disruptive incidents and the fair addressing of them are not documented promptly and consistently, then that disgruntled, and perhaps disreputable, employee and his/her lawyer can easily invent practices and versions of events to fit their sales pitch.

Very few jurors are employers. Almost all of them have been former employees at one time or another. At the end of a trial over alleged employee mistreatment, it will be these sworn-to-be-neutral citizens who will gauge whether employer or worker is telling the more credible story. For a business, no written policy and no documentation in these circumstances are a recipe for very expensive disaster.

For the actions employers can take to avoid this nightmare scenario, including access to our workplace forms and model personnel handbooks, please see our article “Why Written Policy is Good Policy.”

Contact Information:

Law Offices of Timothy Bowles, P.C.
One South Fair Oaks Ave., Suite 301
Pasadena, CA 91105

Phone: 626-583-6600
Fax: 626-583-6605
Email: information@bowleslaw.com