5 Tips for Securing Your Work Laptop and Mobile Devices

How secure is your information at work? Of the 26 percent of workers who reported having office laptops, 61 percent said they have critical, sensitive information stored on them. According to CareerBuilder’s latest nationwide study, a significant number of workers may be putting their company or themselves at risk by failing to secure their laptop, sharing passwords or clicking on links from unknown sources. The study was conducted online by Harris Interactive© from May 14 to June 4, 2012 and included more than 3,800 workers nationwide.

What type of proprietary information is stored on laptops?

In addition to office-related data and documents, a notable percentage of workers said their laptops currently house a variety of personal files. When asked to identify the type of sensitive information that can be found on their office computers, workers with laptops pointed to: Continue Reading

58% Experience Road Rage Commuting To or From Work

A new study shows workers may have more than heavy traffic to contend with on their way to work. Fifty-eight percent of workers who drive to work said they experience road rage at times while traveling to and from the office, similar to findings in 2006 when the study was last conducted. Nearly one-in-ten workers (9 percent) who drive to work have gotten into a fight with another commuter. The study was conducted online by Harris Interactive© from May 14, 2012 to June 4, 2012 and included more than 3,800 workers nationwide.

The vast majority of workers (83 percent) said they typically drive to work and, of those, 12 percent reported they took a job with a longer commute during or post-recession. While incidents of road rage are more prevalent among those with lengthy commutes, workers with short trips to their jobs aren’t immune. Thirty-seven percent of workers with commutes of less than five minutes said they experience road rage from time to time. The same goes for 54 percent of workers with commutes of less than ten minutes.

Gender and Age Comparisons

Women were more apt to feel road age – 61 percent compared to 56 percent of men. In terms of age groups, workers ages 25 to 34 were the most likely to experience road at 68 percent while workers 55 and older were the least likely to experience it at 47 percent. Continue Reading

Honor Student Has Baby, Loses Healthcare, Becomes Homeless, But Now Back in School

MoniKea Hatten of Glen Ellyn, Illinois had always been a good student and driven to succeed even though she grew up without much support or the means to accomplish many of her goals. She lost her job in 2007 and enrolled at the College of DuPage in an effort to upgrade her education and make herself more marketable to employers and a more productive member of society.

In 2010, MoniKea Hatten was an honor student but also pregnant. She was unable to finish a summer course scheduled to end July 27th because she delivered her baby on July 12th.  Because she didn’t complete the course, she lost her financial aid.

In 2011, MoniKea turned to WorkNet DuPage to see if they could help her find a way to continue school. Many barriers, however, stood in her way. She had no means of transportation and soon became homeless. Paying for childcare was out of the question. Roseanne Deane at WorkNet recommended a program called LEAP at People’s Resource Center. MoniKea called. “My life has never been the same,” she said. “LEAP gave me provisions for transportation and incentives to help pay for childcare. I didn’t have much money, and it was very difficult to travel 4 ½ hours every day using public transportation from a shelter in Villa Park, but I did it.”

PRC taught MoniKea how to network, and today she is working and continuing her education. She credits LEAP for both. Currently, she is looking for housing for her son and herself. “Everything’s a stepping stone to my destiny,” MoniKea said. “PRC is my home, and the people at PRC are my family. Any young person seeking change should check out PRC. They push you forth into your life. Seriously, they will work with you until you are on your way.” Continue Reading

Must Interns Be Paid?

Whether an employer must pay an intern for their work depends on the experience they will receive. Although the Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay at least the minimum wage to employees, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has developed six criteria for identifying which learners/trainees may be unpaid. Note that the DOL’s use of “learner/trainee” is equivalent to the commonly used term of “intern.”

The six criteria are: Continue Reading

Worst Interview Mistakes

In a labor market where a single open position can receive resumes from dozens, even hundreds of hopeful applicants, just getting to the interview stage is an accomplishment for many job seekers. But once one lands the elusive interview, what are the sure-fire ways to make the wrong impression?

Most Harmful Common Mistakes

Hiring managers say the following are the mistakes most detrimental to your interview performance: Continue Reading

Dating Website Helps Managers Sleep With Potential Hires

I founded this business 21 years ago and really thought that I had seen just about everything in the employment world but then a press release crossed my desk today that made my jaw drop. Incredibly, SeekingArrangement.com bills itself as a dating website for Sugar Daddy’s (typically male managers) and Sugar Babies (typically female job seekers). Not sleazy enough for you? These, ahem, matchmakers are now trying to leverage the recent revelations that President John Kennedy apparently had an 18 month affair with a 19 year White House intern.

Which sleaze to tackle first? Well, let’s start with the JFK story. According to her recently published memoir, Mimi Alford had an 18 month affair with President John F. Kennedy when she was a 19 years old virgin, while she was working as a White House intern. Though this revelation may come as a shock to those who thought the White House would be resilient to such clichés, it actually marks the beginning of an upward trend in American society. Today, such workplace affairs between a much more powerful Sugar Daddy, and a much younger Sugar Baby is, unfortunately, already well entrenched in the American popular culture. Continue Reading

Celebrating So-Called Dirty Jobs

Mike Rowe, the host of “Dirty Jobs,” tells some compelling (and horrifying) real-life job stories. Read the transcript or watch the video of his presentation in January 2010 for his insights and observations about the nature of hard work, and how it’s been unjustifiably degraded in society today.

The “Dirty Jobs” crew and I were called to a little town in Colorado, called Craig. It’s only a couple dozen square miles. It’s in the Rockies. And the job in question was sheep rancher.

My role on the show, for those of you who haven’t seen it — it’s pretty simple. I’m an apprentice, and I work with the people who actually do the jobs in question. And my responsibilities are to simply try and keep up and give an honest account of what it’s like to be these people, for one day in their life. The job in question: herding sheep. Great.

We go to Craig and we check in to a hotel and I realize the next day that castration is going to be an absolute part of this work. So, normally, I never do any research at all. But, this is a touchy subject, and I work for the Discovery Channel, and we want to portray accurately whatever it is we do, and we certainly want to do it with a lot of respect for the animals. So I called the Humane Society and I say, “Look, I’m going to be castrating some lambs, Can you tell me the deal?” Continue Reading

OSHA Fines Refinery $3+ Million

Continuing the increased enforcement promised by the Obama Administration, OSHA is proposing more than $3 million in fines for 42 “alleged willful violations” at an Oregon, Ohio refinery.
The refinery “often ignored or severely delayed fixing known hazards,” according to Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. “There is no excuse for taking chances with people’s lives.”
OSHA began inspecting the refinery in September 2009 as part of its National Emphasis Program. For more on the process and the specific allegations, click here. Under OSHA regulations, the company has 15 business days to comply, request an “information conference” with OSHA or contest the findings with the OSHA Review Commission.
The Lesson? The message from the government is loud and clear: it fully intends to follow through on its promise to enforce employment laws much more aggressively. It has invested millions of dollars and created dozens of new enforcement-focused positions to do exactly that.
Now is not the time to be lax in complying with the law — particularly in the area of employee health and safety.
Article by Mark Toth, Chief Legal Officer of Manpower’s North American operations, and courtesy of Manpower Employment Blawg. Mark also serve as Chief Compliance Officer and Vice President of Franchise Relations and serve on our Global Leadership Team, North American Lead Team, Executive Diversity Steering Committee and Sarbanes-Oxley Steering Committee.

Electronic Monitoring Bracelet? Consider a Background Check

This story out of the Palm Beach Post caught my eye because it involves so many warning signs that an employer missed or failed to follow up on and ultimately resulted in disaster. Erika Morales showed up for her first day of work at a medical supply company with an electronic monitoring device courtesy of Palm Beach county. When asked, she said that she needed to resolve a domestic issue. The employer never followed up. Ms. Morales was given access to the personal information of hundreds of clients and in turn used that information to commit identity theft and steal from them.
She is now in jail and charged with 25 counts of identity theft. See story.
Here’s what we learned in the wash. The employer says that they conducted an employment background check. Of course the first signal that perhaps the check was flawed would have been the lovely jewelry she wore around her ankle. Here’s what they missed:

• If they would have conducted employment verifications or professional reference interviews they could have known this from her past employers:

• Walmart: stole two $500 gift cards.
• Yellow Cab: stole more than $4,000 by logging phony trips and running customers’ credit cards more than once.
• Kauff’s Towing: stole about $2,500. Prosecutors declined to prosecute.

• If the would have run a credit report, they would have seen that she had over $78,000 of liens and judgments against her.
• Add to that 6 arrests for fraud and a two year stint in prison that might have been revealed if a proper criminal background check was completed

Who knows how much this will cost her employer or how badly their reputation has been damaged. It could have been avoided with an inexpensive, but thorough employment background check.
Article by, Nick Fishman and courtesy of EmployeescreenIQ

Government Contractor Fails to do Proper Screening

Bunker 22 was supposed to be the place where weapons and ammo intended for use by Afghan National Police would be kept.
But for Blackwater contractors in country to train Afghan forces, Bunker 22 became a kind of ATM for pistols and AK-47s — with many weapons withdrawn, some not returned, and some used in bloody incidents that left one contractor partially paralyzed and, later, two Afghan civilians dead.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has been looking into the work environment of the company at the heart of a May 9, 2009, shooting of Afghan civilians that officials say jeopardized U.S. diplomatic relations with the Karzai government. While officially known as Paravant, the contracted company was a wholly-owned operation of controversial Blackwater and was doing business in Afghanistan under contract from Raytheon Technical Services Company. (Blackwater now goes by the name of Xe.)
Former Paravant officials, along with Army officials connected to the Raytheon contract and the Afghan training program, were scheduled to be questioned Tuesday morning by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which has been investigating the shootings. Two Parvant employees, Justin Cannon and Christopher Drotleff, have been indicted by the Justice Department in connection with the May 2009 shootings.
During a press briefing at his office in Washington, committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., described an operation that was out of control and without proper supervision, where weapons were checked out without authorization and put into the hands of men unauthorized to carry them, and where one training team’s “wild idea” in December 2008 to practice firing from the back of a moving car resulted in an AK-47 round to the head of one of their own. That contractor was flown to Germany for treatment; he survived but is partially paralyzed.
While Raytheon reported the incident to an Army contracting officer, there is no indication the Army followed up, according to Levin, and so it did not become known “that Paravant contractors were using weapons unsafely, improperly, with inadequate supervision, [and] were carrying weapons that were not supposed to be in their possession at all.”
He also said Blackwater failed to properly vet contractors it hired, saying the two men indicted had poor military records. Court records refer to Drotleff having an “extensive criminal history,” and a “propensity for violence,” according to Levin, who also noted in a written statement a media report that Cannon had gone UA from the Army and tested positive for cocaine.
More
Article by, Jason Morris and courtesy of EmployeescreenIQ