Today, President Obama appointed two pro-union attorneys, Craig Becker and Mark Pearce, to the National Labor Relations Board. Obama made these appointments unilaterally, using what is known as a recess appointment, which is an appointment made while Congress is not in session that does not require Congress’ assent. Brian Hayes, a third nominee and member of the GOP, was left behind to be voted on by Congress.

These recess appointments do not bode well for employers. Becker, a controversial pro-union advocate, most recently was employed as Associate General Counsel for the Service Employees International Union and prior to that worked was an attorney for the AFL-CIO. Pearce also is a pro-union attorney. With these appointments, the NLRB will now have a 3-1 Democratic majority. Because these appointments were made during a Congressional recess, the terms for these appointees will end in 2011 whereas appointments with Congressional approval last five years.

Through this ‘blog’ I will ‘cherry pick’ research papers or books for leadership information and put my particular take on these items. I will also review them in the context of my own experiences, now working in civilian street after 24 years in the Navy a different kind of management and leadership is required along with a different kind of humour, uniform, reporting structure etc.

The most important and exciting part of the blog for me is the feedback that I hope to receive and hopefully this will initiate discussion regarding the different aspects of leadership. I consider myself a capable manager developing my leadership ability and I hope this allows my insight to be informed at the very least.

Leadership is such a difficult subject due to the many different perceptions surrounding what is a great leader. In many cases when we ask people about great leaders or influential leaders the normal suspects arrive; Ghandi, Churchill, Eisenhower et al. or the smattering of sports coaches/managers. At a leadership seminar a couple of years ago the facilitator quite often used sporting coaches (particularly rugby coaches, even more particularly All Black’s coaches) as great leaders, shining examples of modern leadership techniques. At the time being still new to the concept of leadership as a ‘seminar subject’ I listened and took on board the message but I had a fundamental problem with some of the messages.

Sports coaches enjoy such a niche position that some if not many of the leadership approaches employed do transfer easily into everyday business needs. But for a manager of the All Blacks rugby team, a fundamental difference with his team is that every one of the squad desperately wants to be there, it is the fulfilment of their dreams a pinnacle of their career. Being an All Black carries a great deal of kudos and obviously many other benefits. For the average engineer, corporate assistant, labourer or cleaner, some of these items may be lacking. This is not to undermine the values of these roles just to say that a different kind of leadership is necessary for these roles. This establishes to me at least that leadership is very contextual and this is important particularly when attending seminars or reading books or articles on leadership.

Richard Banfield, the owner of Fresh Tilled Soil, the developer of NextUp Careers, was recently featured in an article in Smashing Magazine entitled “What Makes a Great Cover Letter, According to Companies?” While the magazine is targeted towards web developers/designers, the tips that Richard provides in the article are relevant to our community of Reliability Engineers and predictive maintenance professionals.  Richard outlines 8 key tips:

1. The old way: copy/paste = personality free
2. Structure your cover letter to be short/sweet/highlight and to the point while providing all the key information a company needs
3. Choose your words carefully and make sure your spelling/grammar are correct
4. Demonstrate your knowledge of the company you are sending your letter to
5. Be relevant to the job
6. Be creative, but not too creative
7. Know your audience
8. Use common sense

More detailed insight into these tips can be found in the article or by checking out Fresh Tilled Soil’s blog.

This just came into my in box this morning and I thought I would share it as it provides job seekers who are looking for reliability engineering jobs with a great case study of how people are using social media to get them noticed.  As I noted in a previous post, the reliability engineering and predictive maintenance community has a lot of activity in twitter and on LinkedIn.

My apologies to the people are Slideshare for cutting/pasting this, but they didn’t link to the story in the email.

Resumes are Old School, Use SlideShare & Twitter to Get Hired
Laura Gainor wasn’t always the PR & Social Media Strategist at Comet Branding and this is the story of how that came to be.

When Laura found out she and her husband were moving from Charlotte to Milwaukee, she reached out to companies in the area, including Comet Branding who tweeted about a job opening.

Laura set out to get herself hired by launching a #LauraGainorToMilwaukee campaign that mixed in Twitter, FourSquare and SlideShare.  Laura and her husband had already planned a trip to Milwaukee. She made a poster out of the Comet Brand logo and posted pictures of the poster in various venues at Milwaukee with a Foursquare check-in and a tweet. The campaign was fun, spontaneous and creative and showcased Laura’s personality and creativity.

But Laura also wanted to showcase her experience as well as creative and strategic talents. So she uploaded a presentation to SlideShare and periodically tweeted links to that presentation.

“SlideShare allowed me the opportunity to publicly explain what I did and how I did it, to get the attention of Comet Branding,” said Laura.  Laura pulled together photos to create a virtual resume as well as screenshots of her Foursquare check-ins from Milwaukee.

“My goal for my SlideShare presentation was to create a story about who I was, my professional experience, showcase my talents that would make me a good fit for Comet Branding, as well as pull together my #LauraGainorToMilwaukee story into one place,” Laura explained.

The very day Laura’s presentation was uploaded, it made it to SlideShare’s ‘Most Popular’ and was passed around on SlideShare and the Twittersphere. She got tweets and direct messages from all over.
There were even teachers downloading the presentation to show their classes and example of presenting yourself as a brand to possible employers.  Comet Branding also noticed Laura. They contacted her to setup a first interview. On March 1st she went in for a second interview and was immediately offered the position!  Laura says, “I feel very honored to have had my first day in my new desk at Comet Branding on Wednesday, March 3rd.”

If you are looking for a job, take a lesson from Laura’s book – showcase yourself through a presentation and use Twitter or Facebook to get the attention of the company you want to work at.

Last week, the United States Senate approved a tax extender package, which contains provisions that would extend the COBRA subsidy to December 31, 2010. The Act also would extend emergency unemployment benefits and allow for certain tax breaks.

The Senate bill is slated to go to a committee for further debate and consideration, which obviously will delay its ultimate enactment. We will keep you posted on any developments.

Recently, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination awarded $100,000 in emotional distress damages in addition to an award of back pay to a Complainant who resigned from her job after she alleged no one would accommodate her disability (coronary artery disease). In MCAD et al. v. Codman & Shurtleff, Inc., an MCAD hearing officer concluded that the company had sufficient notice of a need for accommodation and, then, despite that notice, failed to engage in the interactive process. Because of that failure, the Hearing Officer determined that Complainant was justified in quitting her job.

In this case, Complainant claimed she had made several requests for a reduction in her workload both to Human Resources and her supervisor. On one occasion, she told the Human Resources Manager that if her workload was not reduced, she would “suffer a heart attack and die.” When her workload was not reduced, she requested a leave of absence for cardiovascular distress, which was granted. Complainant took a total of three leaves of absence for this condition. Following her leaves, Complainant continued to request that she have a lighter workload and, ultimately, when that did not happen, she quit.

Thereafter, Complainant sued for disability discrimination, asserting that her former company had failed to engage in the interactive process with her and, thus, compelled her resignation. In its defense, the company claimed that it had no notice of her disability and, because of that, the duty to engage in the interactive process was never triggered. The company also asserted that it had nevertheless accommodated Complainant by providing her with three leaves of absence.

The Hearing Officer disagreed with the company’s position and, instead, found that Complainant’s statement to Human Resources and subsequent leaves of absence was sufficient to put the company on notice of a need for accommodation. The Hearing Officer further found that after Complainant’s “numerous requests to revise her job duties and three medical leaves resulting in large part from the stress of the job,” Complainant had no other avenue but to quit her job because Respondent refused to engage in a dialogue about the ways it might try to alleviate her burdensome workload.

Although the result in this case is frustrating because there is obviously no requirement that an employer change the nature of the job or remove essential job duties in order to accommodate someone with a disability, the case itself serves as a good example of how crucial it is to have an interactive dialogue with an employee in which different accommodations are discussed, regardless of whether or not the employee’s initial request for accommodation seems reasonable. Indeed, perhaps in this case there was no accommodation that ultimately would have worked for this Complainant short of changing her job altogether; nevertheless, the act of engaging in the process itself is what might have saved this company from a large judgment.

Everywhere you turn, someone is talking about social media. Your kids and your spouse are probably on Facebook and that Twitter thing is constantly mentioned.  For reliability engineering and predictive maintenance professionals, LinkedIn is huge as there are thousands of professionals using it every day.  They have established literally dozens of industry specific groups that talk about industrial maintenance, reliability engineering and predictive maintenance.  You can find a list of many of these groups on our site in our link directory.

All these groups and interactivity between people is great, but it leads to the real question of how does it help in my job search?  The website Mashable had a great post the other day entitled “How Job Seekers are Using Social Media for Real Results“.  It is a pretty informative article because beyond the kind of obvious advice (get out there and match your style to your position) it gives some great examples of how people are using social media to find jobs.

Within the stories, the use of Twitter seems to be a common one which makes sense given the kind of overwhelming raft of information instantaneously spread through it.  We use the NextUp Careers Twitter account quite often as a way to get information about new blog posts and open positions out.  The use of LinkedIn is also common as its become a great way for a large group of recruiters to reach industry professionals.  There are many job postings on LinkedIn and its a great way to network with people you might now.

However, of all the suggestions identified within the piece I thought the best was the use of blogs.  Blogging is a great way to provide insight into who you are, your talents and your skills.  As the stories demonstrate, blogging, when combined with some of the promotional aspects of social media provides a great way to be found.  Here at NextUp, we offer free blog hosting to industry professionals who want to share their knowledge with the community. If you would like to host a blog, please let us know.

Scheduling and planning is a must in the drive for reliability improvement.  In today’s competitive business environment, it is highly unlikely additional resources will be added to increase reliability.  Resources for reliability will need to be found in the current maintenance resource pool.

The only way to create reliability resources without adding to the maintenance resource pool is either by decreasing the work load or working more efficiently.  A planner-scheduler will increase departmental efficiency.  Without a planner-scheduler, departmental efficiency trends from 30% to 40% as a rule of thumb.  With a planner-scheduler departmental efficiencies generally trend from 60% to 80%.  With the increased efficiencies, a planner scheduler can come from personnel on the floor.  Additionally, the added efficiency creates further manpower to address reliability strategies.

Maintenance foremen generally are too highly involved in reactionary maintenance management or maintenance quality work assessment to be effective planner-schedulers.  If the department is small, it is better to have a planner-scheduler instead of a foreman.  Maintenance can report to production for reactionary management. 

Rules of thumb for planner-schedulers:  1 planner-scheduler for every 20 technicians.  The planner scheduler should assign work from the prioritized work order list.  If the CMMS prioritized work order list is implemented properly, assigning work directly based on priority is the best reliability strategy.  As the work is scheduled, the more complex work should be planned. 

Planning involves writing step by step work procedures, parts lists, tool lists, prints and schematics, confined space permits, roof permits, and anything else needed to perform the work efficiently.  Parts should be kitted and staged.  The planner should keep this data together for repetitive work, so all this can be pulled from a file for performing this same task in the future.

As the planning-scheduling function becomes robust, resources will be freed because of increased departmental efficiencies.  In addition, because the proper work is being addressed, reliability should increase thus decreasing reactive work load.  This further frees up resources.

A strategic decision needed before implementing the planner scheduler strategy initially is how to manage reactive work.  The reactive work load once determined may be assigned to dedicated personnel.  It may also be handled by personnel with assigned work schedules.

As the maintenance function becomes more disciplined and planned, efficiency and reliability increases.  This creates resources to re-deploy for reliability improvement initiatives.

Late on Tuesday, President Obama signed the Temporary Extension Act of 2010, a bill that extends the COBRA subsidy to March 31, 2010 and applies retroactively. Extended once previously, the subsidy had been slated to expire on February 28, 2010. The Temporary Extension Act contains various provisions that are intended to clarify portions of the previous law. The Act also extends unemployment benefits.

After several postponements and amendments, Massachusetts regulations 201 CMR 17, Standards for Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth, went into effect today. These regulations create very specific obligations for businesses that own or license personal information about any Massachusetts resident, regardless of the size of the business or the number of employees that business employs. All businesses are required to be in full compliance with the regulations by March 1, 2010.

The first step business must take to get into compliance with the new regulations is to implement an information security program. This program must be in writing and must outline various steps the business will take to protect personal information, whether that information is stored electronically or in paper documents. The regulations require numerous specific provisions that must be included in the program, such as a secure method of assigning and selecting passwords; encryption of all data containing personal information that is transmitted wirelessly or across public networks; and maintaining reasonably up-to-date firewall and malware protection.

Once they have their program in place, the next step businesses must take is to educate employees who handle personal information about their role in protecting that information. Additionally, businesses that retain third-party vendors such as payroll administrators or document disposal companies must take reasonable steps to ensure those vendors are properly safeguarding personal information.

Royal & Klimczuk, LLC continues to conduct seminars detailing businesses’ obligations under the new identity theft regulations and how businesses can come into compliance with the regulations. Details on these and other seminars can be found at: http://www.rkesq.com/upcomingseminars.html.

For more information about planning for compliance, please contact Amy B. Royal, Esq. or Kimberly A. Klimczuk, Esq. at (413) 586-2288. Amy and Kimberly may also be reached by e-mail at aroyal@rkesq.com and kklimczuk@rkesq.com, respectively.