Making the Small Farm Dream a Reality
Office Managers: Start Your Printers
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Kathy Spring and Bart Jackson were prepared for
the April 14, 2004 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Survival Guide
Top Of Page
How Safe? How Free?
Safety has been the rationale for nearly every restriction of freedom
since government began. Pharaoh Ramses II, in 1350 B.C., claimed
safety as his reason for a preemptive strike on the Philistines.
Joseph Stalin, while gaining control of the young Soviet Union and
bringing an entire nation to heel, employed his infamous "Committee of
Public Safety." And in our own nation, the French, the Chinese, the
Japanese, and now some Middle Eastern people have been arrested and
held in the name of safety.
Our leaders know we want, more than anything, to feel secure. At the
same time, we cherish our freedoms. Where does the balance lie? This
issue is on the tabled at Mercer County Community College Conference
Center’s forum "Civil Liberties vs. National Security," on Friday,
April 16, at 8:30 a.m. Cost: $35. Call Lorna Strang at 609-586-4800,
ext. 3856.
Speakers include Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the American
Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey; Kathy Flicker, former assistant
attorney general in charge of the New Jersey office on
Counter-terrorism; Hui Chen, an attorney and second year Princeton
Theological Seminary student; Harold Eickhoff, historian and former
president of the College of New Jersey; Hanad Ahmad Chebli, Imam of
the Central Jersey Islamic Society; and William Atkinson, special
agent for the FBI. Nancy Duff, a professor of Christian ethics at
Princeton Theological Seminary, is the moderator.
ACLU executive director Jacobs states that the Patriots Act I,
Patriots Act II, and a host of covert activities have stepped way over
the line. Born in Washington State, with "two very politically active
parents," she attended Skidmore College, where she obtained a
bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in liberal arts.
She joined the ACLU at age 23 and has crusaded under its banner for
the last 13 years.
Jacobs maintains that the current Patriots Acts and many governmental
security measures are unconstitutional. Others maintain that these
acts are not only justifiable, but are merely formalizing many
existing practices. Issues include:
Covert jailing. One week after the tragedy of September 11, various
governmental agencies profiled some young Islamic males. A number were
arrested and held. The jails would not release their names to anyone.
The ACLU tried to provide lawyers for these people, yet could not get
the names of their clients. They sued New Jersey and Michigan to
obtain the information.
In the federal courts, New Jersey’s non-disclosure was upheld. But in
Michigan, the state lost. The names were turned over to relatives, the
ACLU, and the public, and lawyers were found. This led to the famous
banner line in the Michigan decision: "Democracy dies behind closed
doors."
But arguable issues remained. The FBI claimed that these people,
although profiled, were arrested as illegal aliens, a civil crime for
which the standard Miranda right to an attorney does not apply. Jacobs
argues that many of these people facing deportation faced a threat
worse than any jail sentence served here.
Sneak and peak. In the late l960s, in an effort to control drug
trafficking, many states passed "No-Knock" laws that allowed agents to
break into a suspect’s dwelling without warning. A drug-weary Supreme
Court upheld these laws. But until President Bush’s Patriot Act was
passed, the dwelling’s owner had to be notified. Now he does not –
before or afterward.
Jacobs states that this goes beyond a slippery slope. She sees it as
an outright denial of Constitutional rights. This new right of the
government to spy on its citizens can extend to computer, mail, and
phone communications as well as to planting cameras in public places.
Members of the counter-terrorism task force, however, believe that
these are extraordinary times. By covertly checking a person’s room
and computer, we can uncover not only an individual’s crimes, but also
communications that could lead to the entire terrorist cell. Besides,
enforcement people are quick to point out, each sneak and peak warrant
must be given by a presiding judge.
Patriot Act I & II. The Patriot Act runs 342 pages. Few people have
read it all and former College of New Jersey president Eickhoff is one
of those few. A historian, he makes an interesting comparison. The
first freedom-constricting document passed by the new American nation
came from President John Adams who feared, among other things, French
influence in our affairs. He drew up the Alien and Sedition Acts –
each of which were presented before Congress and passed as a single
page. The Bush tome, Eickhoff notes, "is so much bigger, but
interestingly more vague, giving the president and the government a
very broad range of authority."
Eickhoff has more than an academic’s interest in the matter. Raised in
Kansas, he earned a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree
in government. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri
in American History. From 1979 to 1998, Eickhoff presided over the
College of New Jersey. Upon retirement, he made a dramatic move. He
journeyed to the Arab Emirate and help found Zayhed University — the
first higher learning institution for women in that nation.
"One of the problems we must guard against now is that our governments
are able to investigate our lives so much more thoroughly," Eickhoff
says.
Inconvenience. We wait longer at the airport. We allow invasive
searches of ourselves and our possessions. We are sometimes treated
like criminals.
Unseen, similar problems jam our ports. Incoming goods are held up for
inspection. Companies not only are late in receiving their goods, but
they sometimes have to pay the government for storage. Food importers
fret over spoilage, and prices go up.
We are just beginning to peer into an unknowable future for
perspective. In 10 years, we may say that the security measures were
excessive, or we may fervently wish that they had been 10 times more
rigorous.
– Bart Jackson
Top Of Page
Making the Small Farm Dream a Reality
As the world wakes to spring, the daydream grows. Why not trade a
cubicle for fresh air, fragrant soil, and green sprouts? Why not build
a business around supplying upscale restaurants with designer
tomatoes, homeowners with native plants, or organic grocery stores
with the purest goat’s milk?
Earning a living from the soil is still possible, even in
uber-developed New Jersey, and perhaps especially in this densely
populated state. Pam Flory has been doing so for well over a decade.
She knows it can be done, and she also knows just how hard it can be.
Flory, along with Laura Sayre, leads a four-session class, "Exploring
the Small Farm Dream," beginning on Tuesday, April 20, at 6:30 p.m.
and continuing through Tuesday, May 11. This is a Mercer County
Community College offering, but classes are held at the Howell Living
History Farm in Hopewell. In addition to the Tuesday evening sessions,
there will be a Saturday tour of area farms on a date to be decided by
the class. Cost: $150. For more information, call 609-586-9446.
Flory grew up in the suburbs, in Massachusetts. Her father owned his
own textile business and her mother was a registered nurse. After a
brief fling with the thought of becoming a veterinarian, she decided
that she wanted to work on a farm. She studied economics at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Class of 1988). Her plan was
to join the Peace Corps and to work in agriculture. To gain the
credentials she needed to pull this assignment, she sought an
internship on a farm. Visiting the Peace Corps recruiting office, she
saw a brochure on the Howell Living Farm, applied for an internship,
and was accepted.
After her stint at the farm, she served in the Peace Corps for two
years. Her posting was to Tonga, a tiny island in the South Pacific
that was in the early stages of getting involved in exporting. "They
were just opening into the Japanese markets," she says. "They were
beginning to export watermelon, a lot of taro, and were just starting
with honey."
She worked with the country’s ministry of agriculture doing financial
and economic projections. Quality was a particular concern because
Japanese consumers are unusually demanding. "It was extremely
interesting," she says of work. But it was not what she wanted. "It
was a turning point for me," she says. "I knew I wanted to be on the
production side."
Returning to the United States, Flory settled in New Jersey, and has
worked on farms ever since. Most recently, she managed Spring Hill
Farm, the Hopewell farm owned by the same group that owns Rats, the
gourmet restaurant located on the Grounds for Sculpture. The farm was
producing so much that it sought out other clients, including Brothers
Moon in Hopewell and Small World Coffee in Princeton.
Before working at Spring Hill, Flory had rented one acre of land from
the North Slope Farm in Lambertville. "I started my own cut flower
business," she says. She supplied farmers’ markets and weddings.
Business was good, and the farm asked if she would be interested in
coming on board as an employee, managing a cut flower business as a
complement to its vegetable business.
Fourteen months ago, Flory and her husband, Rob Flory, director of the
intern program at Howell Living Farm, had a baby. "I had a grand idea
of strapping him on my back and going out into the fields," she says
with a laugh. The plan didn’t work. She took a season off and then
decided that she didn’t want to work full time. She is now managing
flower production at Hopeview Farm in Hopewell.
Flory has found that New Jersey, bursting as it is with roads, houses,
and businesses, is also bursting with opportunities for those who want
to lead a farmer’s life. A plethora of upscale restaurants, a growing
number of farmers’ markets, and millions of sophisticated,
health-conscious consumers have created any number of opportunities.
Still, there are many factors to consider before hopping onto a
tractor:
Markets. Not only do would-be farmers’ have to put the cart before the
horse, but they also have to put the cart’s destination before the
horse. Before buying a single seed, let alone a stead, a farmer has to
know where he will sell his crops.
"You need a market before you grow it!" Flory exclaims. "Almost
anybody can grow, but it’s hard to sell." Using the cut flower
business as an example, she says "You will cut 25 buckets of flowers
every third day. What are you going to do with them?"
Answer the question before quitting your day job.
Land and equipment. Flory already had contacts in the farm community
when she started her cut flower business. She was able to rent land
for a nominal cost, and also got a great deal on the use of a
greenhouse and equipment. The new farmer has to figure all of these
elements into his start-up costs. None are inexpensive, but at the
same time, not all need to be purchased.
"You don’t have to have a greenhouse," says Flory. "You can buy your
seedlings." Flipping that around, someone with a greenhouse does not
necessarily need acres of land or a shed full of tractors. He could
make a business of selling those seedlings.
Health and zoning codes. One of Flory’s students had planned to
produce and sell goat’s cheese. She found out, however, that the
health code requirements she would have to satisfy were just too
onerous and too expensive. But she did not let the information plow
under her farm dream. She decided to use goat’s milk to make and sell
soap, a newly hot specialty niche.
Towns have a number of ordinances governing the use of land,
especially as it pertains to raising animals. Check them thoroughly
before building pig pens or ordering a truckload of exotic chickens.
Marketing. When Flory started her cut flower business, she targeted
both brides and farmers’ markets. She got in contact with high-end
wedding planners, but got no business from them. All of her wedding
business came from the farmers’ markets, where brides who admired her
flowers asked her to do their weddings.
In yet another flip, the marketing tool turned out to be incompatible
with the business it generated. "It’s a lot of work," says Flory of
the business of supplying flowers to brides. "It’s a big day," she
says. "People want a specific thing." The mark-ups were good, but the
clients needed so much attention that she realized that serving them,
and at the same time tending her fields and selling at farmers’
markets, was impossible.
She dropped most of her wedding business to concentrate on growing and
on selling at farmers’ markets.
Still, a farmers market – a wonderfully relaxed, very personal setting
– is a good place to promote a farm. Brochures giving directions and
touting shares in the farm’s crops or highlighting special events find
an usually receptive audience.
Trend spotting. "If there are chartreuse petunias on the cover of
Martha Stewart Living, that’s what people want," Flory says. The
domestic doyenne may be headed for a prison cell, but, at least so
far, her followers continue to hang on her every pronouncement. If
shriven of Stewart, they will find another style guru. Farmers, who
sometimes get into the field as a way to do their own thing far away
from the materialism of Madison Avenue, need to be aware of the
public’s changing whims.
Whether it be snow white tomatoes or organic soap, if consumers must
have it, successful farmers must pay attention.
People skills. The farmer growing soy beans on 1,000 acres doesn’t
have to worry about chatting up his customers. The New Jersey farmer
selling at farmers’ markets does. Flory says that some farmers, after
an initial outing, are prone to exclaim; "What! I have to talk to
these people every week!"
Yes, indeed. farmers market customers are a garrulous bunch. Anyone
with a low tolerance for chit chat would do well to check into
wholesale markets for their products. The margins are smaller, says
Flory, but the work may be much more pleasant for those inclined
toward solitude.
Standard of living. Income from Flory’s cut flower business was enough
to keep her going. But, she says, that was only so because she lived
rent free at the Howell Living Farm in return for doing chores. It
would not be easy to support a family on a farmer’s income.
"In 85 percent of farm families, someone works off the farm," says
Flory. Growing wealthy from selling organic eggs is probably not a
viable goal.
Flory’s class is designed to lead those interested in farming through
an analysis of whether their projected endeavors are realistic.
Completely happy in the agricultural life she has carved out, Flory
realizes that it is not for everyone.
"It’s okay to say no to farming," she says. "If someone goes through
our class and decides it’s not for them, that’s a success too."
Top Of Page
Office Managers: Start Your Printers
When it comes to offering comparisons with competitive products,
salespeople are limited by the size of what they sell. Two vacuum
cleaners – the one being sold and a competitor’s model – can be stowed
in the back of a car. So can two cutlery sets.
But how to compare products side by side if they don’t fit into a
briefcase? Car manufacturers do it by setting up proving grounds for
test racing. Manufacturing companies sometimes set up benchmark labs.
But Xerox is taking it one step further. At a road show on Wednesday,
April 21, at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the Westin at Forrestal Village, it
will stage a printing race, a competitive roadshow that ends in a
"shootout." It is open to the public; for information, call Michelle
Williams at 609-987-5596.
"We started out bringing customers to our benchmarking lab," says Bob
Davis, "and they liked it so much that we are taking it on the road."
Davis, a marketing manager, works at Xerox headquarters in Rochester,
New York, with the daughter of a U.S. 1 editor, Barbara Fox.
Kevin Reilly is the marketing manager for the tristate area, including
the 80-person regional headquarters at Princeton Overlook. A former
middle line backer for the Philadelphia Eagles, he has been with Xerox
for 28 years, but he also does the Eagle postgame radio shows with
John Miller and Bill Bergey.
Reilly has invited clients who work in a 50-mile radius from
Princeton, everyone from small businesses to the public sector and
major accounts, "anyone who would be interested in seeing how these
machines run," he says. "This year we are going to include scanning
and color printing," says Reilly. "It is interesting to see how the
vendors match up and what they consider to be running time. We fare
well when doing complex jobs."
On display will be five machines with the Xerox brand, and five
competitive models with labels like Canon, Sharp,
Hewlett-Packard/Konica, and Ricoh. They range in price from less than
$1,000 to over $10,000 and all have similar ratings for printed "pages
per minute." Some of the competitive products are even rated faster
than the Xerox versions.
At the start of the show the audience sees six machines being loaded
with a job suite – 15 jobs, eight in color. Audience members get to
press the "start" buttons. Then, thanks to cameras and a giant video
screen split four ways, everyone watches the bins as they fill up.
It’s not a real race, because the people in charge are sure of the
outcome. They’d be fools if they didn’t.
"Everybody knows we will win, but what is amazing is by how much we
win and why," says Davis, who is scheduled to be the April 21
presenter. Davis says he is always surprised by the enthusiasm. "You
can tell by the audience whether it is a good presentation, and this
show keeps them spellbound."
Davis has these suggestions for staging a road show that will feature
your competitor’s products.
Utilize an outside judge. Buyers Laboratory in Hackensack was
commissioned to design a test to reflect a real office environment. It
created a suite of jobs – a variety of files, E-mails, and PDFs. "Any
competitor can create a set of jobs that will display their product in
the best light," says Davis, "but this was an independent test suite
designed to level the playing field and fairly test products from any
manufacturer."
Start small. It costs about $15,000 to stage this show, and Xerox
worked out the kinks in smaller venues last year. This year Princeton
is one of the stops on a big city tour that includes Philadelphia and
Washington, D.C.
Pre-sell the audience. Reilly and Chuck Schweitzer, manager of the
Princeton Overlook office, are responsible for being sure the room is
full of clients and potential clients. They expect about 150 guests in
the morning and from 90 to 120 people in the afternoon.
Tailor your pitch for different subgroups. For instance, the decision
makers in attendance may have information technology, procurement, or
financial jobs, and you should incorporate a message for each of those
specialties. Also in the audience will be those who spend their days
operating the machines. In sales parlance they are known as
"influencers," and you need to rev up their enthusiasm.
Compare yourselves favorably without denigrating the competition. "Of
the competition, we say ‘These are all very good copiers,’" explains
Davis. "Of our product, we say ‘This is a very good copier.’ It should
be – we have been doing it for 45 years. When it comes to printing,
Xerox is a clear cut winner."
Limit the jokes. Davis, who lives in Rochester, New York, often starts
his demonstrations with a weather quip: "We have so much snow up there
and the roads are so full of salt, that what people do for
entertainment is listen to their cars rust in the garage." And then he
gets down to business.
Pace your story like a play. Be like Paul Harvey, says Davis. "Don’t
tell ‘the rest of the story’ at the beginning."
One pacing tactic that Davis uses is to gradually reveal the Xerox
advantage. Competitors may reproduce a single copy as fast or faster
as Xerox machines can, Davis admits, but when it comes to printing
multiple jobs – switching from one job to the other – Xerox is going
to win. That’s because the Xerox machines are engineered with two
processors instead of one. While the printer works on one job, the
extra processor is preparing the second job, and the printer continues
with no lag time.
"Printing on a Xerox machine gives our customers a tremendous
advantage," says Davis. "Our machine, rated at 45 pages per minute,
will do the suite of jobs in two minutes and 38 seconds, and the
competition, rated at 50 pages per minute and above, takes more than
four minutes or even longer. They see it and their jaws drop."
Top Of Page
Earth Day Focus: Clean Rivers
Point source pollution is nasty. It involves chemicals, industrial
by-products, and unsavory waste materials flowing from pipes into
bodies of water. Unpleasant as it is, point source pollution generally
is easy to trace. "Just look for the pipe and follow it," says Noelle
MacKay, deputy director of Stony Brook Millstone Watershed
Association.
Non-point source pollution is more difficult to pin down. It occurs
when fertilizer, pesticides, loose soil, plastic bags, and
light-weight garbage of all kinds moves across macadam and lawns and
slips into streams, lakes, and rivers. Fouling water, killing fish and
birds, and giving birth to algae, non-point source pollution can
degrade drinking water and make fishing, canoeing, and swimming a
whole lot less pleasant.
To cut down on this pollution, Stony Brook has instituted a River
Friendly Business Certification program. On Earth Day, Thursday, April
22, at noon, it awards its first certificate at a ceremony at the
Titusville offices of Janssen Pharmaceutica, the first company to earn
this certification. There will be a tree planting and speeches.
MacKay has been with Stony Brook for eight-and-a-half-years, first as
a volunteer and then as an employee. A native of eastern Canada, she
received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Mt. Allison University in
New Brunswick (Class of 1990) and a master’s degree in environmental
studies from Dalhousie University in Halifax. She arrived in New
Jersey in 1994, working as a consultant before joining Stony Brook.
She has been working on the River Friendly Business Certification
program for several years. It has enrolled a number of corporations,
including Bristol-Myers Squibb, ETS, and Johnson & Johnson. It has
also reached out to housing developers, and counts Montgomery Woods
among the organizations working toward certification. There is a
separate golf course certification program, and a number of local
courses have signed up. They include the Tournament Players Club at
Jasna Polana, and the Bedens Brook, Cherry Valley, and Hopewell Valley
country clubs.
The land that drains into the Stony Brook-Millstone River is
distributed across five counties and 26 municipalities. There are, of
course, any number of homes and small businesses in this area, but the
river certification program is aiming to enroll big corporations,
housing developments, and golf courses first. The reason is simple.
The typical corporate campus sits on something like 400 acres – and
sometimes twice that amount of land. Housing developments and golf
courses also sprawl across large areas. Getting these large landowners
to implement environmentally sound practices can make a big
difference.
But, MacKay emphasizes, it is important that small businesses and
folks whose Cape Cod houses sit on a quarter of an acre use the same
river-friendly techniques in tending their property. Requirements for
obtaining the business certification include education. The hope is
that employees will learn from their employer, and will take the
lessons home to their own yards. Some practices that can make a big
difference include:
Keep it wild. Those long, sweeping, oh-so-green corporate lawns are
gorgeous, but they are not, generally speaking, a wise use of the
land. Maintaining a flawless, pure green appearance requires
substantial fertilizing and frequent application of pesticides. When
the rain comes, all of those chemicals move across the lawns and into
the parking lots. From there, it is often just a short trip to the
nearest stream.
Let loose. Plant native plants and grasses instead of lawn.
Corporations that do this, says MacKay, report sharply lower
maintenance costs. They also attract a multitude of song birds and
small animals. Employees out on a noon-time stroll can spot bluebirds,
otters, and diving ducks.
If it is not feasible to let the whole lawn go wild, at least allow a
no-mow, wild buffer near any streams, suggests Mackay.
Think before spraying. Many businesses – and homeowners – spray
automatically, whether they need to or not. "Establish your
tolerance," says MacKay. Maybe a few dandelions are okay. If not,
perhaps pulling them out by hand would be easier, and less expensive,
than spraying the whole lawn with pesticides. Maybe a whole field full
of the yellow flowers could be seen as esthetically pleasing. Maybe
they could just be left alone.
On the other hand, Mackay acknowledges that some pests can indeed
destroy a lawn, and that most landowners want them gone. When that is
the case, she suggests researching the least damaging way of getting
rid of them.
Water only when necessary. Don’t automatically water every evening, or
every other day. Check weather conditions, and only water when
absolutely necessary. Also, realize that brown grass is only playing
dead. It will come back as soon as it rains. And in New Jersey, a good
rain storm is rarely long in coming.
Putting in drought resistant plants and grasses is another good way to
cut down on watering.
Recycle water. Capture rain water and direct it onto flower beds.
Stony Brook has researched rain barrels and sells one that is child
safe, and that keeps mosquitoes out. It costs $125, and Stony Brook
will deliver it.
Practice your rough shots. Golf courses are afraid to offend their
patrons with tall grass or brown spots on the fairways. Golfers who
want to preserve the purity of nearby rivers might lobby for less
aggressive mowing and spraying. Letting roughs get a little rougher,
especially near streams, could be a good thing.
Top Of Page
Un-Happy Hour For Gender Pay
In Lauren Berman’s home the subject of equal pay for women is a hotly
debated topic. "My husband feels that in his office people are paid
equally," she says. A fair-minded person, she concedes that this may
be true, but she has doubts. The nationwide statistics, after all,
show that a woman would have to work well into the new year – until
April 20 this year – to earn as much as the average man made in
calendar 2003.
Equal Pay Day has been created to highlight this disparity. It falls,
naturally enough, on April 20 this year. The Hightstown/East Windsor
Business and Professional Women, in concert with the Trenton chapter
of the organization, is set to celebrate the day. Their "Un-Happy
Hour" takes place on Thursday, April 22, at 5 p.m. at Katmandu. There
is a free buffet, and the first 50 women to arrive receive a free
drink. For more information, call 609-426-4490.
Berman is co-president of the Hightstown/East Windsor chapter of BPW,
which has made equal pay its signature issue. She is a self-employed
graphic artist. Her perceived pay status begins to point up the
complexity of the issue of equal pay for women.
"I suspect that I make less than the men in my field," she says. Like
many women, she knows that her desire to please sometimes causes her
to underbid. "Men play hardball," she says. These differences in style
and personality, whether caused by nature or nurture, contribute to
unequal pay, both for independent contractors and for employees.
But there are other factors as well. Berman’s husband, Skip Berman,
works in the software industry as a consultant. It is a male-dominated
field, and perhaps that is one reason why the women in his office are
not underpaid.
"The biggest issue," says Berman, "is that whenever women are
concentrated in a field, they are lower paid. I point out to my
husband that day care workers make chicken feed, but garbage men make
a lot."
Skilled tradesmen, as a whole, make far more than skilled secretaries.
Elementary teaching and social work, where women make up the bulk of
workers, pay significantly less than construction management or bond
trading, where most workers are men.
The pay disparity stands at about 23 cents an hour, and has hovered at
just about a quarter for 25 years. The national Business and
Professional Women’s group has determined that, while the hourly
difference can be expressed in pennies, the disparity adds up to
$500,000 over the term of a working woman’s life.
And while personality plays a part, and institutionalized patterns
that lead women into lower paying fields is a tough problem to tackle,
there are relatively easy steps that could erase disparity in any
individual company. A corporate motive for doing so could be the
avoidance of an equal pay audit by the Department of Labor. Here is a
10-step guide for the company that wants to make sure it is not
inadvertently undercompensating women:
Recruitment. Make sure that your hiring process is designed with
diversity in mind. Post advertisements with groups where women and
minorities are represented.
Internal compensation. Put in place a method for ensuring consistent
pay for people with substantially similar levels of experience and
education who hold jobs calling for substantially similar degrees of
skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.
Industry competitiveness. Determine the market rate for any given job,
and make sure that market rates are applied consistently. Be confident
that men are not being compensated at or above market rates while
women are compensated at or below market rates.
Job descriptions. In updating job descriptions, establish criteria for
assigning values to skill, effort, responsibility, and working
conditions. Challenge basic assumptions about the value of skills
before assigning points or grades. For example, consider how caring
for sick people, small muscle dexterity in typing, and other such
skills may have been undervalued in jobs that have been traditionally
held by women.
Job scores. Take a look at how long men, women, and minorities stay
within job grades before moving up, and take action to ensure that all
workers have equal opportunity for advancement.
Data on incoming hires. Evaluate at what grades and positions men,
women, and minorities typically enter the company. How does
negotiation affect entry-level salaries? Are men able to negotiate
higher salaries more effectively than women or minorities? Changes may
be needed to ensure that new hires are treated consistently and
incorporated into existing compensation systems on a compatible basis.
Commissions and bonuses. Check to see whether men, women, and
minorities are assigned projects or clients with a high commission
potential on a consistent basis. Do a similar check for bonuses. Are
opportunities to earn them equal?
Raises. When it comes time to award raises, be aware of whether men,
women, and minorities with similar levels of performance are being
given similar raises.
Training, development, and promotion. Time off to pursue an executive
MBA or to attend an industry conference can create opportunities to
move ahead on the pay scale. Are men, women, and minorities given an
equal crack at these experiences?
Changes. After an honest look at parity issues, start in on the work
of change. Some adjustments will be easy, but others, especially as
they apply to institutionalized perceptions of "women’s work," will be
more difficult.
Corrections or additions?
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