The Negotiation: The Two Most Important Steps You MUST Take Before You Start
You’ve been on three interviews and are about to obtain an offer of employment from the company. Hopefully, the offer will be for far more money, prestige and opportunity than you wanted.And it may not be.What should you do BEFORE you receive the offer?Review the factors that went into your decision to leave. What was wrong with the job? With the people? What was the wound that finally brought you to the decision to change jobs? I believe it is important to do this in order to be sure that the factors that went into the decision to leave are resolved. You may never know with certainty but you can know that they are addressed to your satisfaction.For example, would it be wise to take a job next door to your current employer if your sole reason for changing jobs is to reduce your commute? How about accepting an offer from a company that requires extensive travel and hours if your number one reason for change is to spend more time at home?You may decide that it is worth your while to accept an offer like this IF (and that’s a big IF) you learn reasons to do that overwhelm the reason why you shouldn’t.Decide w

Hidden Traps for Life Partners Who Work Together
Neither couple I describe knows the other couple, but their stories are strikingly similar.                                                                               Craig and Warren are both recently retired executives. Craig’s wife, Marcy, owns and operates a website design firm.  WarrenAs corporate profit margins get tight and companies begin to squeeze their labor dollars, one will find that the first line item of scrutiny for any financial officer is the amount of money spent on a training budget. Experts on both sides of the issue argue daily about the indirect financial impact of well-trained employees vs. the direct expenditures of having them trained. For many companies, the trend of relying on video training and computer-based training programs (CBTs) has been the perfect blend of information dump and cost-efficiency.

In many cases these media provide maximum information in a minimum amount of time. They are usually well-made, presented by articulate narrators and possess the added leisure of being able to train at will without chewing up trainers' man-hours.

But in the realm of forklift and other industrial safety subjects, they are a ticking bomb.

What many companies fail to consider when discussing the options of video training and CBTs is that workplace safety is NOT a place to cut corners. The money saved by using these methods may be far overshadowed by the cost to your business if something goes wrong. Some of the main items to consider are:

• OSHA's requirements for training on these subjects
• The liability aspects of accidents, which are more likely if training is weak
• The inability of these media to promote information retention and thereby keep people safe

Because OSHA Said So, That's Why.

Since 1999, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has required that all forklift safety training in particular (and many other equipment safety instruction requirements reflect this decision as well) must be site- and equipment-specific (operators must physically demonstrate to a trainer that they can safely operate their machinery in the exact workplace where they will do so) and training and evaluation must be done by a knowledgeable person qualified to teach adult students. Roughly translated: if you rely on a video tape or CBT only as your training program and then walk away, the first time something goes wrong (and it will), OSHA is going to take a look at your training system, deem it inadequate, and hold your company responsible.

OSHA realizes that people need to have the benefit of safety training that does more than check off a box on a to-do list. Their job is keeping people alive at work, period. That's why they developed this rule. They want the assurance that a person who can react to specific n

d cost-efficiency.

In many cases these media provide maximum information in a minimum amount of time. They are usually well-made, presented by articulate narrators and possess the added leisure of being able to train at will without chewing up trainers' man-hours.

But in the realm of forklift and other industrial safety subjects, they are a ticking bomb.

What many companies fail to consider when discussing the options of video training and CBTs is that workplace safety is NOT a place to cut corners. The money saved by using these methods may be far overshadowed by the cost to your business if something goes wrong. Some of the main items to consider are:

• OSHA's requirements for training on these subjects
• The liability aspects of accidents, which are more likely if training is weak
• The inability of these media to promote information retention and thereby keep people safe

Because OSHA Said So, That's Why.

Since 1999, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has required that all forklift safety training in particular (and many other equipment safety instruction requirements reflect this decision as well) must be site- and equipment-specific (operators must physically demonstrate to a trainer that they can safely operate their machinery in the exact workplace where they will do so) and training and evaluation must be done by a knowledgeable person qualified to teach adult students. Roughly translated: if you rely on a video tape or CBT only as your training program and then walk away, the first time something goes wrong (and it will), OSHA is going to take a look at your training system, deem it inadequate, and hold your company responsible.

OSHA realizes that people need to have the benefit of safety training that does more than check off a box on a to-do list. Their job is keeping people alive at work, period. That's why they developed this rule. They want the assurance that a person who can react to specific

he money saved by using these methods may be far overshadowed by the cost to your business if something goes wrong. Some of the main items to consider are:

• OSHA's requirements for training on these subjects
• The liability aspects of accidents, which are more likely if training is weak
• The inability of these media to promote information retention and thereby keep people safe

Because OSHA Said So, That's Why.

Since 1999, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has required that all forklift safety training in particular (and many other equipment safety instruction requirements reflect this decision as well) must be site- and equipment-specific (operators must physically demonstrate to a trainer that they can safely operate their machinery in the exact workplace where they will do so) and training and evaluation must be done by a knowledgeable person qualified to teach adult students. Roughly translated: if you rely on a video tape or CBT only as your training program and then walk away, the first time something goes wrong (and it will), OSHA is going to take a look at your training system, deem it inadequate, and hold your company responsible.

OSHA realizes that people need to have the benefit of safety training that does more than check off a box on a to-do list. Their job is keeping people alive at work, period. That's why they developed this rule. They want the assurance that a person who can react to specific

tration (OSHA) has required that all forklift safety training in particular (and many other equipment safety instruction requirements reflect this decision as well) must be site- and equipment-specific (operators must physically demonstrate to a trainer that they can safely operate their machinery in the exact workplace where they will do so) and training and evaluation must be done by a knowledgeable person qualified to teach adult students. Roughly translated: if you rely on a video tape or CBT only as your training program and then walk away, the first time something goes wrong (and it will), OSHA is going to take a look at your training system, deem it inadequate, and hold your company responsible.

OSHA realizes that people need to have the benefit of safety training that does more than check off a box on a to-do list. Their job is keeping people alive at work, period. That's why they developed this rule. They want the assurance that a person who can react to specific

you rely on a video tape or CBT only as your training program and then walk away, the first time something goes wrong (and it will), OSHA is going to take a look at your training system, deem it inadequate, and hold your company responsible.

OSHA realizes that people need to have the benefit of safety training that does more than check off a box on a to-do list. Their job is keeping people alive at work, period. That's why they developed this rule. They want the assurance that a person who can react to specific needs of the trainees and the company is on hand to fill in the gaps and personally ascertain that the student has learned what he or she needs. Videos and computers don't do that. They keep plugging along. They'll talk to no one and still think they did the job well. A human trainer will look for that light bulb over the head of his or her students before moving on. When the subject is safety, OSHA wants to see far more than lip service thrown at the problem.

So you reduced the training budget by $3,000 and cost yourself $3.5 million in fines and damages. How much did you save again?

How much can one forklift accident cost you? Well, let's break it down:

1) OSHA fines can be between $7,000 and $70,000 per willful safety violation. If they visit (and after an accident, it's highly likely) and find that you have 10 forklifts and no one is wearing the safety belts on them, that's 10 fines. And those operators weren't trained properly? 10 more fines. And they all drive too fast? 10 more fines. You see the pattern.

2) Medical bills. These can get very expensive, and usually warehouse-type injuries can involve weeks or months of recovery time. The bill is getting larger.

3) Lost man-hours. You now have one or more experienced workers out of commission. Now work is not getting done. Productivity suffers.

4) The possible lawsuit. What if the person injured was hit by a forklift driven by a poorly-trained individual? Now his or her lawyer is drooling over your bank account. To make matters worse, if OSHA finds you at fault for willful safety violations, the plaintiff's legal team will have that information in hand going into court.

5) Punitive damages. At the end of the lawsuit comes the largest hit of all. This number can have many zeros at the end of it.

6) More training. Ironically, now that you have injured your experienced worker, you have to spend money to train a less experienced one to do his or her job.

So, tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands in fines, another couple