"BOSS" - 999 workers in Scotland Yard call centre claim bosses are following them to the toilet to enforce strict 'five-minute' rule

999 workers in Scotland Yard call centre claim bosses are following them to the toilet to enforce strict 'five-minute' rule 

• Workers say bosses sometimes check the time they spend on toilet breaks
• Some claim they are followed to the toilet if they are found to have taken too long
• Call handlers at Metropolitan Police have complained to Police Federation
• 'Monitoring' put in place after some workers 'took ages' on their breaks, it is claimed
• Scotland Yard confirmed that 'time off the operation floor was monitored'
• But spokesman said it was 'unaware' of bosses following workers to toilet
• 
  

By JULIAN ROBINSON FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 12:31 GMT, 16 December 2014 | UPDATED: 13:21 GMT, 16 December 2014

Emergency call handlers at the largest control centre in Britain are being followed to the toilet - to ensure they do not spend too much time away from their desks, it has been claimed.

Workers handling 999 calls to the Metropolitan Police in London have told bosses that they work to a 'five minute' rule when going to the toilet - and that the time they take is sometimes monitored.

Those found to be taking longer than the 'allotted time' on a regular basis claim they are sometimes followed to the toilet, where supervisors wait outside until the worker comes out - before 'logging' the time taken.

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Workers handling 999 calls to the Metropolitan Police in London have told bosses that they work to a 'five minute' rule when going to 

the toilet - and that the time they take is regularly monitored

The control rooms, staffed by 2,000 police staff and police officers, are based at three locations in London, in Lambeth, Hendon and Bow.

Workers have complained to the Police Federation - which represents the UK's 130,000 officers - and the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents 7,500 police staff working for the Met, about the monitored breaks.

Staff at the command centres - collectively called the MetCC - handle 999 calls and 101 calls from the public, taking around 4.5million calls each year.

Given the huge volume of calls, supervisors at the MetCC are cracking down on time staff and officers spend away from their desks.

It is believed the 'monitoring' was put in place after some workers 'took ages' and checked Facebook, Instagram and Twitter on their mobile phones while they were away from their desks.

One worker, who asked not to be named, said: 'Of course some workers take the Mick and go to the loo for ages and come back with funny stories about what pals are up to on social media.

'They are the exception rather than the rule and they are behind this ridiculous monitoring that is going on now.

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Those found to be taking longer than the 'allotted time' on a regular basis claim they are sometimes followed to the toilet, where supervisors wait outside until the worker comes out (file picture)

'There have been some instances when workers have been confronted by supervisors (about how long they have been away from their desk) as soon as they open the loo door.'  

John Tully, the chair of the Met Police Federation, said he was aware that toilet breaks were 'an issue' for control room workers.

He told Police magazine this week: 'I know they are very strict on breaks and have heard about the monitoring of toilet breaks.'

He also said that officers at MetCC found it 'extremely difficult' to take holidays and were getting 'completely exhausted'.

He added: 'Officers have said that at times it is virtually impossible to go on leave or have any time off, which can lead to people getting completely exhausted.'

A spokesman for Scotland Yard confirmed that 'time off the operation floor was monitored', but said it was 'unaware' of supervisors following workers to the toilet.

A spokeswoman for the Met's Territorial Policing Unit said it was looking at boosting morale at the MetCC, saying it was organising a 'Christmas jumper day' and 'cake-bake' to raise spirits.

She added: 'Control rooms are an unusual policing environment, as the operating procedures of call centres need to be run in conjunction with emergency response.'

Chief Superintendent Pippa Mills, who took over the Operation Command Unit (OCU) in March this year, said: 'We have done lots of consultation with officers and staff to identify those issues which would improve morale and working conditions.

'As OCU commander of such a large and diverse team, I value the close but "critical friend" relationship I have with the PCS and Federation.' 

Government guidelines say workers have the right to one uninterrupted 20 minute rest break during their working day, if they work more than 6 hours a day.

A spokesman from London-based employment law experts Astute HR said although there were 'no specific rules' to say how long people could spend on toilet breaks, employers were obliged to allow people with medical conditions to have adequate time away from their desks.

He added that employers, who often set out their rules for toilet breaks in the terms of their contracts, had to be mindful of data protection and health and safety legislation when monitoring workers' activities.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2875910/999-workers-Scotland-Yard-call-centre-claim-bosses-following-toilet-enforce-strict-five-minute-rule.html#ixzz3M4GrDW5L 

FLEXIBLE WORKING – Keeping Current With The Times

Posted by Emma Finnegan

Tue, Jul 1, 2014 @ 11.57 AM 

We’re becoming increasingly busy with many of us having more than one job, longing for more hours in the day. The key to achieving this balance is Flexible Working.

How? I hear you ask. Many parents have opted to balance family commitments by working part-time or working compressed hours meaning they work the same amount of time, whilst also keeping a weekday or two free, to spend with their family and to keep on top of household chores!

However this is not the only form of Flexible Working available with common kinds including: change to start/finish times, job sharing, flexitime, working from home. This blogs looks at the positive aspects that all of us face balancing work and life commitments.

From 30th June 2014, the right to request flexible working is being extended to all employees and no longer limited to employees with children under the age of 17 or for those who have caring responsibilities for an adult dependent. The statutory obligations will replace the right to request flexible working procedure with a duty on employers to deal with requests in a "reasonable" manner, and within a "reasonable" period of time.

What does reasonable manner and reasonable timeframe mean?

Employers can choose their own time limits as long as the process is completed within three months.

Under the old rules, strict time limits applied for the employer to hold a meeting with the employee to discuss his or her flexible working request within 28 days of receiving application. In addition, the old bureaucracy gave employees the right to be accompanied to meetings with their employer, be notified of the decision within 14 days of the meeting and then have the right to appeal the outcome!

Of course employers may wish to keep these time limits in place, since the old time limits comply with the new laws too, and allow contingency should there be a dispute during the process. Equally, an employer may still want to follow the process allowing for an employee to be accompanied and the right to appeal, going some way in demonstrating that the request is dealt with in a reasonable manner. But the overriding point is that you don’t have to if it doesn’t work for you!

Be positive about this change…..

Flexible working can address the pressures of running a business, help provide that exceptional service to your clients outside of the conventional 9am – 5pm working hours, assist you in planning resources during seasonal peaks and enable you to become an employer of choice!

Research has shown that employees who work flexibly often have a greater sense of responsibility, ownership and control of their working life, and hence engagement in their work! By agreeing to working patterns that suit both parties, employers are then able to hire and retain experienced employees they need, allowing them to develop their business and increase productivity. In turn, this is likely to help reduce absenteeism and increase employee commitment and loyalty. So a win-win for everyone!

Change?

The rules surrounding Flexible Working are not all changing. So what’s staying the same?

●  The employee must still have 26 weeks’ continuous service with
     the employer to be eligible to make a request.

●  Requests must still be in writing and include certain specified
     information.

●  Employees can still make only one request in every 12-month
     period.

●  The refusal of requests for flexible working must still be for one
     or more of a number of specified business reasons.

●  The time limit for coming to a decision on whether or not to agree
     to a flexible working request can still be extended, typically to
     allow for a trial period of the new arrangement.

●  Acceptance of flexible working request constitutes change to
     terms and conditions of employment and there is no automatic
     right to revert to original agreement.

How do you balance competing requests?

Flexible working requests should be treated in a fair and consistent manner to mitigate any potential tribunal claims on the grounds of discrimination. Below are some practical steps to be considered / adopted to balance the competing requests whilst still meeting your business needs:

1.   Operate a first-come, first-served system and all decisions will be
      made based on the circumstances pertaining at the time.

2.   Agree a review date on any changes made, with a stipulation that
      arrangements will revert to the original terms if there are issues
      on either side and or to allow others to work flexibly at periods
      of particular need.

3.   Consideration of reserving some flexible working capacity for
      employees who are confronted by unexpected occurrences such
      as serious illness of family members.

Get ahead of the game!

●   Don’t throw out your old flexible working policy just yet! This
      still applies to on-going requests and those submitted prior to
      30th June 2014.

●   Agree what system will be adopted when considering requests.

●   Create the new policy and communicate to employees.

●   Inform / train managers of the new policy on requests for flexible
      working.

●   Generate a new flexible working request form to ensure a
      consistent approach.

●   Decide on time limits for dealing with flexible working requests.

●   Continue to offer employees the right to be accompanied at
      flexible working meetings if you can.

●   Continue to offer employees an appeal stage if you can.

●   Have evidence to support your decisions and have a written
      record of everything.

One final thing to remember….

It is important to remember that the Flexible Working legislation does not currently, nor will it, create a right to flexible working; rather it is a right to have the request considered. Therefore an employer can refuse a request for one or more of eight permitted reasons below:

1.   A burden of additional costs.

2.   A detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand.

3.   An inability to reorganize work among existing staff.

4.   An inability to recruit additional staff.

5.   A detrimental impact on performance.

6.   Insufficient work during the hours the employee proposes to
      work.

7.   Detrimental impact on quality.

8.   Planned structural changes.

We are here to help you!

What with our new ways of working and taking the brave step in closing down our office in the West End of London and moving into our office club with the team primarily working from home and on client sites, we’ve experienced first-hand the changes of how a business may be affected whilst still retaining the high level of customer service. We really are in a position to help you undertake a similar level of change in your organization.

Should you require any guidance or support around managing flexible working requests, please do not hesitate contact us on 020 3743 9525. We have a dedicated team of HR Advisors, Managers and Consultants who have a vast amount of practical business experience in dealing with flexible working requests, adopting best practice, policy writing and development, how to implement trial periods as well as supporting you in refusing requests.

Source://www.plushr.com/flexible-working-keeping-current-with-the-times/#sthash.Te9dQawF.dpuf

TALENT MANAGEMENT - Productivity and Inactivity

Despite some advancement in modern management 
thinking, many insidious corporate habits remain,

in many instances putting significant drag

on productivity and performance.

Take a tour of a manufacturing facility these days, and there are certain things you simply won’t see. Scrap laying on the floor, wasted time and motion, rework and inventory. These are all the wastes of the industrial era, and they have largely been eliminated by the principles and practices of Quality, Lean and Six Sigma.\

On the contrary, enter any office and you will find a new set of wastes that are much more insidious than those of the industrial era — and in many instances no amount of Lean or Six Sigma can change them.

Consider things that happen in many corporate meetings. By design, most meetings are intended to plan for or solve some sort of business problem. But even in an age of stand-up meetings and wellness-conscious walking meetings — design elements aimed to strip away waste and minor disrupters — many of the usual characteristics most dreaded about the medium are poised to show up.

First, there’s the person who called the meeting. Because he or she likes to feel important, a lot of times this person tends to call many more meetings than are necessary. Then there’s the person who loves to hear the sound of his or her own voice and can’t stop talking; the class clown who can’t restrain the need to make wise cracks; the person who shows up late with great fanfare; and those who just can’t put down their smartphone.

There is no clear agenda, no discipline to the conversations, no clear actions designed and thus nothing much gets done — except that, in many cases, everyone goes back to work a bit deflated.

Meetings of this ilk might not happen at every company, but when they do, they serve as an example of things that get in the way of real productivity. This is just a small example of what waste looks like, and there are tremendous financial and psychological costs associated with these silent killers.

But how did these things come to be? What propelled organizations to function in such a way that these modern management disrupters were able to grow into common corporate habits?

Accumulating Coordination Waste

Many trace the roots of such annoyances to the modern management theories and practices first developed in the early 1900s, just as the Industrial Revolution took shape. In those days, work meant going to the factories or the fields. Workers were largely uneducated, unsophisticated and most worked for survival, as there was no social safety net.

Flash forward 100 years. Although the industrial era is far behind, many organizations still think about and practice management the same way. These organizations are essentially working in the net-speed flat world with Model T management practices.

What contemporary management is missing in some cases are the value generators in today’s world of work, “coordination workers.”  Unlike the workers of the industrial area, coordination workers are educated, sophisticated, agile, mobile, creative and innovative, with a penchant to solve complex problems. As such, they don’t respond well to industrial-era management practices based on supervision, control, predictability and standardization, all of which were intended to avoid mistakes, surprises or disruption.

The cumulative effect of these outdated practices is what can be called “coordination waste.” This includes things like unproductive moods; poor listening skills; bureaucratic work practices and structures; marginal leadership competence; teamwork as a slogan but not a practice; inadequate practices for cooperation and collaboration; weak meeting practices; outdated project design and management skills; and a pervasive lack of innovation.

Part of what enables these things to persist is that in a lot of cases our thinking about the nature of waste is still stuck in the industrial era. As a result, companies remain blind to them as destroyers of productivity.

To be sure, there have been many major innovations in the practice of management in the past 50 years. Most have come from Toyota Motor Corp. and its Toyota Production System. Quality, Just-in-Time, Lean and Six Sigma all came from the TPS. These practices were designed by automotive engineers to be effective in manufacturing, where interactions are mostly between machines or man and machine. Each was also designed to eliminate waste. 

However, unlike the wastes of the industrial era like scrap, excess inventory and unproductive time and motion, coordination waste is much more insidious; you can’t necessarily see it, thus their labeling as so-called “silent killers.”

A Deeper Look at Silent Killers

Degenerative moods: A mood is a predisposition for action. Human beings are always living in some mood, as they are an inescapable aspect of life. Moods are the foundations from which people move in the world. Too many organizations today are in the grip of degenerative moods. Some combination of distrust, resentment, resignation, cynicism, arrogance and complacency is all too often the norm.

These degenerative moods become the foundation for a wide range of unproductive behaviors, which in turn consume or waste lots of resources as organizations are forced to work around or attempt to correct them.

Degenerative or unproductive moods are tremendous yet invisible killers of productivity, because people simply cannot or will not perform to their potential when they’re in the grip of them. Current human resources theory has little to offer beyond motivation and engagement work, neither of which is likely to make a difference because they’re treating symptoms, not causes.

Lack of listening: Listening does not mean merely hearing or paying attention, but it is a specific type of active interpretation that shapes one’s reality. Listening is a specific critical skill that is largely unknown and certainly unrecognized as central to the new business environment. By blindly creating or tolerating working conditions in which people do not and often cannot effectively speak and listen to each other, managers kill productivity.

Bureaucratic styles: Bureaucracies pay attention to the correctness of their practices and adherence to their standards. Within a bureaucracy, tremendous wastes may not even be visible.

Current hierarchically oriented structures are relics of the industrial era. They are too slow and rigid for today’s demands. In the emerging coordination era, bureaucratic practices are becoming increasingly dangerous, as they directly kill not only productivity but also the generative moods of ambition, confidence and trust that are essential to building consistent competitive advantage.

Worship of information: As business leaders rush to make their enterprises more efficient, they’ve mistakenly oriented themselves, their actions and their attention around information and information systems. In many instances, business now values data and measurement above people.

Managers have come to tolerate the illusion that the most essential matters of work can be invented, managed and sustained through the creation, storage, retrieval, display and publication of information. But in some instances contemporary information systems are blind to many key drivers of productivity, leaving them to fail in their quest to integrate the diverse operations of a company.

Suppressing innovation: Many organizations have tolerated ways of working that suppress new ways of doing things. In light of this, it becomes all but impossible to develop flexibility and evolve practices for dealing with a changing world.

So what can talent managers do?

Start with the notion that the way to attract and keep top-level coordination workers is by providing them with autonomy, not systems and processes. In bureaucracies everything is about adherence to process. In a coordination-worker company it’s about mobilization, agility and performance, which often means working around or outside of existing processes.

At a more basic level, do away with the annual performance review. This is a throwback to the industrial era. For feedback to be useful, it needs to be timely. Develop a simple dashboard for employees that can be updated and go over it every six weeks. Have clear short-term performance goals as well as long-term developmental goals. These simple reviews don’t take more than 15 minutes and are much more useful.

In the coordination company, work isn’t about making things. It is the effective coordination of action to complete projects and generate results. That means that there is a new set of competencies that managers must learn.

Source: http://talentmgt.com

TALENT MANAGEMENT - Silent Killers’ Measurable Cost

Unmet productivity is costing companies millions.

Talent professionals often struggle to track the financial value of their work. Figure 1 shows in real-dollar terms what the “silent killers” could be costing a company. 

Here’s how the numbers were derived. As an example, say the company in question is a manufacturer of electronic devices with 26,000 employees. From that take out the administrative, support, manufacturing and lower-level employees; that leaves roughly 7,000 so-called coordination workers.

Then, say they’re being paid an average annual salary of $90,000. Take $90,000 and multiply by 7,000 to get a total expenditure of $630 million annually for the coordination workers.

According to research by the American Management Association, Gardner and McKinsey & Co., the typical American worker fulfills his or her commitments — meaning that work is completed on time, as scoped and as budgeted — somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of the time. This example will be generous, assuming 60 percent completion.

Sixty percent of $630 million is roughly $378 million, meaning there is $252 million that the company is spending without the promised return. This isn’t entirely waste, however, as workers in the example are still likely producing something, just not entirely what the company is paying for.

What would it be value to the organization if it could free up some or all of that productive capacity? 

Interviews with 10 chief financial officers asked to give their estimated opportunity cost of $252 million resulted in a conservative composite figure of $126 million, which is then added to the $252 million cost-without-return figure. Based on this estimate, the company is leaving a total of $378 million on the table every year

Chris Majer is the founder of consulting firm HP2. He can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com.

Source: http://talentmgt.com

TEAM BUILDING - Five Key Performance Factors

Many of the factors highlighted by Herzberg, Hackman, and Beer are not things that you as a manager have direct control over. For example, you will need to work within existing organizational policy with regard to working conditions; your executive may not be prepared to adopt a culture where ‘silent barriers’ can be openly discussed; and you may not be able to respond to market pay increases when you have a defined salary/bonus budget.

However, there are some general symptoms that you can watch out for as manager. These will indicate that your team, or a member, is not performing as well as you would expect.

• Absences from the team and its activities that are lengthy and cannot
   be explained
• More frequent displays of conflict and frustration, often unjustified
• Lack of enthusiasm and motivation to perform tasks
• Rumors and gossip heard on the organization’s grapevine about your
   team are on the increase
• A clique develops so that these people protect themselves from the
   stigma of poor performance.

You will need to be constantly monitoring and observing how each of your team members is performing and look for signs of reduced productivity. Assessing how well your team’s performance compares to other teams in your organization is also an essential part of your role. If you notice a reduction in performance, understanding why this has occurred and addressing it are essential.

The most common reasons teams or individuals underperform are:

• Lack of clarity and focus
• Lack of ability
• Lack of confidence
• Lack of direction
• Lack of motivation

Lack of Clarity and Focus
If team members keep on asking exactly what they should be doing, by when, and how they should actually perform the task then this indicates that their responsibilities have not been specified clearly enough.

This type of behavior may also imply that they need more feedback from you so that they understand how well you want them to do the job. Many jobs can be expanded to fit the time available, and you should regularly review the team’s work to prevent this from happening. It is quite common to see team members spending a lot of time ‘perfecting’ things that don’t really need it rather than doing an adequate job and then moving on to another task. For example, if a team member is preparing a document for use within the team, then you might consider accepting a less polished format than if it was going to be more widely circulated.

Lack of Ability
One of your members, or the team itself, may be underperforming because they have been assigned a task that they are not skilled or knowledgeable enough to undertake.

To prevent this situation arising, you should have an appreciation of each team member’s capabilities. You can assess how much additional training and coaching you can offer to help develop their skills, but in the end you need to make a judgment on how well their skills match the task requirements. This inability to perform the task may also be due to a lack of resources, whether it be in terms of people, materials, or funds.

In your role as team leader you need to ensure that higher levels of management are made aware of the skill level of your team, manage their expectations of what tasks your team can accomplish, and feed back when constraints exist.

Finally, to ensure you only have capable members added to your team you should take an active role in the selection and induction of new members.

Lack of Confidence
Your team may find itself performing a new role or task following a reorganization or merger. This may result in a lower level of performance as the change causes the team to lose confidence in their abilities to handle the new tasks and processes.

Sometimes as a manager you will notice that an individual, despite having the right qualifications, just doesn’t seem to perform as well as you expected. This can be because they don’t possess the required behavioral skills, or they lack the interest to adjust and learn the new skills that are necessary for their role.

This person could also just not fit into the social make-up of your team even though they have the right skills. In this instance often the individual begins to feel unappreciated, and they may even feel ostracized by the rest of the team. As a consequence their performance declines, and the situation deteriorates because the rest of the team resent carrying an underperformer.

Lack of Direction
This is probably one of the most common reasons for underperformance. As a manager you should make certain that the goal and task descriptions you provide are as clear as possible. For more information on this topic you should see our eBook ‘Effective Goal Setting’ which can be downloaded from this website.

If your own goals are poorly defined it will not help the performance of your team. This could be due to one of the ‘silent barriers’ described by Beer and his team of researchers. Often this results from senior management having hidden agendas, which undermine performance and bring about a culture of mistrust.

Lack of Motivation
Some of your team may just not care about doing a good job, and they may even avoid working altogether. This lack of motivation can have a variety of causes, including personal problems, lack of career development opportunities, and increased pressure because of reduced resources.

Motivating your team will often be handled as part of their appraisal system, but this is not enough in itself. You also need to be monitoring and feeding back to each individual how well he or she is doing on an ongoing basis. If the team is involved in boring or repetitive work then motivation may be your number one priority.

Source: http://www.free-management-ebooks.com

TALENT MANAGEMENT - What About Culture?

While we talk about millennials and globalization as 
today's big driving forces, it is great individual events that

truly change our culture.

I have the irritating habit of looking past current development programs to issues that should be shaping talent management. When people ask my opinion regarding the latest program of the month, I can’t comment, because all activity from programs to rewards should be a reflection of the organization’s unique needs and problems, not what someone else is doing.

That is not a brilliant idea. Seminal thinkers in motivation and management psychology are being supplanted by researchers claiming to have found the secret. Among them are Tom Peters and Jim Collins, both of whom suggest that what worked for famous companies should be copied.

Unfortunately, a review of those holistic remedies often shows that the exemplars of yesterday have fallen away today.

Most of these companies found a set of factors that worked for them and never wavered. In effect, they designed their management system based on the vision they had of the market and the culture they wanted. This second point is the closest thing to ultimate truth we have: They stumbled or fell because they failed to realize that the market’s culture had changed.

When benchmarking became popular in the 1990s, some companies said they were unique; therefore, the benchmarks did not apply to them. They may have been onto something. These companies recognized that the benchmarked firms were likely very different. Even those firms in the same industry could be — and often were — weak comparisons.

What is it that makes example companies so successful for longer than the average organization? Vision and culture — not programs. Today, the issue of market culture is paramount. Who would argue in the world of big data and changing values that culture is just an esoteric platitude?

We talk constantly about millennials, globalization and big data as today’s driving forces. We’re right. But there is something more. These phenomena are looked at as discrete events, trends and conditions. I submit they are, en masse, the collective definitions of the new market culture.

Great events change culture. Consider World War I and the Jazz Age, events that replaced the American way of life with new values.

Additionally, following World War II, the G.I. Bill and the Federal Housing Administration made possible higher education and widespread home ownership. The impact of those events today is hard to understand, but they laid the foundation for arguably the greatest wealth-building period in history.

Likewise, the 20th century ended with a dot-com revolution. Today, we look on it as a failed experiment, but the era foretold the arrival of new organizational forms. The dot-com bubble failed largely because the IT at the time wasn’t mature enough. Today it is.

Most executives would argue that the culture of their company is greatly different from that of their competitors. But beyond their internal artifacts and values, do they take the time to dig into the new culture of the market?

Rapidly evolving communication capability is underpinning young-worker values just as greater mobility and freedom of expression did in the 1920s. The market culture of 2015 is likely going to be incredibly different from 2005 — and its difference is growing at an exponential rate.

If this thesis is only half right, what does it mean for organizations and talent development? What does it mean in terms of workplace culture? More important, what does it demand of an organization that desires to grow faster and more profitably than its neighbors? Anyone who can foretell tomorrow would be incredibly wealthy.

Lacking that, can you look at the culture issue within your organization? Does it mean that customer service must move ahead of the old model of organizational efficiency? Or does it mean that worker mobility needs a new model? What about organizational power and management control — is that changing?

Culture is the bedrock of an organization. In the same vein, the marketplace culture is both the limiting and growth opportunity for organizations. In the end, talent development must be shaped by both.

Jac Fitz-enz is founder and CEO of the Human Capital Source and The Predictive Initiative. He can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com.

Source: http://talentmgt.com

PEOPLE - Study Reveals 10 Most Terrible Office Behaviors

Jeanna Bryner   |   October 05, 2007 08:51am ET

A coworker who takes credit for someone else's work or rattles off obnoxious jokes is engaging in one of the top 10 most offensive workplace no-no's, according to survey results released this week.

These and other workplace misdeeds earned spots on a "Terrible Ten" list of rude working-world behaviors. While discrimination topped the list as most offensive, other highly ranked job-related transgressions occur beyond the office entrance, such as crazy driving.

"The research suggests that people are bothered more by the transgressions of coworkers and strangers than by those of family and friends," said study team member P.M. Forni, director of the Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, which began in 1997 to evaluate the significance of manners and civility in contemporary society.

Out of 30 examples of rude behavior, survey respondents most often indicated the following 10 as most offensive in this order:

1. Discrimination in an employment situation

2. For commuters, erratic/aggressive driving that endangers others

3. Taking credit for someone else’s work

4. Treating service providers as inferiors

5. Jokes or remarks that mock another, including remarks about race, gender, age, disability,
    sexual orientation and religion

6. Children who behave aggressively or who bully others

7. Littering or spitting

8. Misuse of handicapped privileges

9. Smoking in non-smoking places or smoking in front of non-smokers without asking

10. Using cell phones or text messaging in mid-conversation or during an appointment or
      meeting.

For this survey, Forni and his colleagues polled 615 employees of two Baltimore-based companies, along with employees and students at the University of Baltimore, in May 2007. The participants rated 30 examples of rude behavior from 1 (not offensive) to 5 (most offensive).

The top-10 list will be published in Forni's upcoming book, "The Civility Solution: What to do When People Are Rude," due out next spring.

Source: http://www.livescience.com

RETIREMENT PLANNING - 5 Common Mistakes You Make in Your Retirement Planning

By Kelly Campbell | U.S.News & World Report LP

There is no denying that retirement planning is a complicated undertaking. It's unsettling to give up a steady paycheck and flip the switch from saving to spending. Due to the complexities of retirement planning, everyone is going to make some mistakes. Here are some common missteps that I've seen those nearing or already in retirement make:

1. The absence of a financial plan. I know this sounds like an old refrain, but let me try and put it another way. Retirement is an approach/avoidance situation for most of us. People have a tough time seeing too far out ­­into the future. We can see five years or 10 years into the future just fine, but it's harder to anticipate 20 or 30 years out, which is the typical period of time most people spend in retirement. As a result, we can often be unintentionally shortsighted.

This is why a financial plan is extremely beneficial. A good plan will show you how certain financial decisions you make today, tomorrow, or five years from now will affect your retirement 25 years down the road. Much like your car's GPS plots a course, alerts you when action is needed, and recalculates should you miss a direction, so too does a routinely updated financial plan guide you through retirement.

Simply put, if you are going to run out of money, wouldn't you want to know this very instant, so you can begin to make changes that will have an effect on your future? Wouldn't you like to know you've planned well and saved appropriately? Done correctly and consistently updated, this plan will be your greatest ally in planning for your retirement and keeping you on track.

2. Are bonds still a "safe" investment? This question has more to do with the current interest rate environment than anything else. Holding bonds in your portfolio was not considered a mistake during the 30-year bull market for bonds from 1980 to 2010, but in our current low interest rate environment, it could cost you. The possible liability, in a portfolio overweight in bonds, stems from the inverse relationship between bonds and interest rates.

Because interest rates are hovering near the bottom, it follows logically that bonds are currently priced near the top. Therefore, when interest rates begin to edge higher, people with large holdings in bonds stand to lose a significant amount of their value.

The lesson here is this: Just because a particular strategy has worked in the past, doesn't mean that it's going to continue to work in the future. Folks nearing or entering retirement need to be confident that the plans they've made are going to be successful. They can't simply rely on something that has worked in the past, without evaluating it from various angles.

3. Not purchasing long-term care insurance. As the cost of health care continues to rise, retirees will face some tough choices. No one wants to face the possibility of a long-term care event happening in the twilight years of retirement and not being able to afford care is an increasing concern. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that, of people aged 65 and over, nearly 70 percent will need long-term care in the future. But does that mean that you should go out and purchase long-term care insurance if you don't already have a policy?

I would caution you to consider this decision very carefully. During the last few years, long-term care insurance premiums have soared, and we've seen rates increase by 40 to 100 percent. These rate increases are potentially just the tip of the iceberg, because the majority of these policy holders have yet to access continuous care and benefits. As more boomers retire amid rising health care costs we could see additional rate increases, adjustment of policy benefits or both.

If you are weary about the rising costs of long-term care insurance, an alternative is to start a "long-term care fund," that can be used to reserve funds in order to cover long-term care expenses. Using resources like the "MetLife Market Survey of LTC Costs," you can discover just how much an annual stay would cost for a particular type of care, then see if your financial position can handle that expense.

4. Not guarding against a market decline. How many people take precautions to protect against a market downturn? If you're nearing retirement and not thinking about how to protect your portfolio, you're making a dangerous mistake.

If you're 30, 40 or even 50 years old, you have a broader time horizon, which allows you to weather the storm and wait until the markets recover. If you were 100 percent invested in the Standard & Poor's 500 index from June 2009 to now you would have about a 113 percent net return. However, if you're in your 60s or 70s and have already retired, not only has your time horizon decreased, but you no longer have the wages to reinvest and are relying more on your shrinking assets to provide necessary income.

Consider this. If you have a $1 million portfolio and lose 50 percent in a downturn, while also taking out a 4 percent income stream per year, you'll need a 117 percent return to get back to where you started. As you can see, it's very easy for an individual to get behind the curve by chasing returns and carrying too much portfolio risk in retirement.

A well-diversified portfolio consisting of non-correlating asset classes is a good first start. Having an evacuation strategy to go to cash, or another asset class if the market dictates, is another. These are must haves for any portfolio in retirement, whether you're managing your own assets or you have hired an advisor.

5. The four key personal economic factors. There are four important factors that everyone must take into account when considering retirement, or any long-term investment, for that matter.

-- rate of return on investments

-- inflation rates

-- tax rates

-- personal expenditures

Of all the factors on that list, there's only one thing we can really control. We like to think that we can control the rate of return on our assets, and we can to some extent, but there are factors outside of our control that affect this. We just have to think back to the "great recession" when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 51.1 percent from Oct. 7, 2007, to March 9, 2009.

We know we can't control inflation and taxes. The only thing that we can control is our spending. Of course, there will be unexpected expenses, but by having a thorough understanding of what your expenses are and where you can cut back, if needed, can help you make tough decisions.

This is just a basic introduction to the factors that we see folks struggle with. The more familiar you are with information like this, the better positioned you w ill be to not just gain a better understanding of your situation.