Category Archives: Workplace / Security / Legal

By Noreen DeWire Grimmick, Esq.

An important piece of new legislation was executed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in April 2016 providing paid family leave.

Paid leave will be phased in over a 4 year period beginning in Jan. 1, 2018. To be eligible, employees must work a minimum 26 consecutive weeks prior to applying for paid leave.

Paid leave may be taken to provide care to a family member suffering from a serious health issue; to bond with a child during the first 12 months after birth, adoption, or foster care placement; or to attend to obligations because a spouse, parent, or child is on active duty or has been notified of a pending call into active duty in the U.S. armed forces.

Notably, this law does not provide coverage for an employee’s own serious health condition, but that event would likely trigger already existing disability insurance coverage and is, of of course, subject to FMLA under federal law.

Phasing in of these new regulations begins in 2018. Employees who qualify for paid leave under the act will be entitled to 50 percent of their pay (with a pay cap equal to 50 percent of the statewide weekly average pay) for a period of 8 weeks. When fully phased in, in 2021, eligible employees will be entitled to 12 weeks of paid leave at 67 percent of their weekly pay (capped at 67 percent of the statewide average weekly pay).

Intermittent paid family leave is also available under the new law.

This legislation will impact more employers in New York state than the FMLA. All employers who fall under the scope of the state Workers Compensation Law will be obligated to provide paid family leave. New York employers may either self-insure for paid leave, or they may purchase an insurance policy from their disability benefits carrier to finance paid leave. This program is financed similarly to the way that workers’ compensation benefits and disability benefits are financed, through payroll deductions.

By Michael Cruz

Hiring the right people for your organization is critically important, right? And, interviewing people is the way we determine if they are the people you want.

Typical questions often include – Where do you see yourself in 3 years? How do you handle conflict? What are your strengths (or weaknesses)? These are terrible questions. Don’t ask them.

I often work with clients on hiring issues. We work on ways to ensure new hires are a 90 percent fit to their company. Good interviews take preparation. Few people take the time to prepare to ask purposeful questions. Before we figure out what to ask, we need to understand why you should not ask the questions above.

Where do you see yourself in three years? What do you want them to say? How does their answer tell you much about them?

Judy Brinkman is a business coach and owner of Life’s 2 Short LLC.

Courtesy Life’s 2 Short LLC

By Judy Brinkman

If you have a boss, employees, co-workers, friends or even family members, especially kids, there are monkeys all around you, just waiting to jump on your back. They are sneaky and you have to be very careful and stay alert because they are difficult to handle and even harder to get rid of once they have attached themselves.

According to William Oncken Jr., a leader in management training, “a monkey is anything that should be someone else’s next step.”

According to Kenneth Blanchard, William Oncken, Jr, and Hal Burrows, authors of “The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey,” it goes something like this: A co-worker or employee comes to you with a problem while you are working. You want to help, so you stop what you are doing and listen for as long as you can. You learn enough about their situation to know you will need to be involved, but not long enough to make a decision on the spot. So you say, “I don’t have time to make a decision right now, so let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you.”

Bam! Monkey jump. The other person walks away feeling 30 pounds lighter and you now have a 30 pound monkey on your back.

Sometimes you are the best person to handle that monkey, but often times the other person is capable of handling it himself and would really grow and learn and be more responsible if he did. If you had asked, that person could have given you some proposed solutions along with the problem, but too late. Now it’s your monkey and you are in charge of its care and feeding.