It’s Not About You

I read an excellent op-ed piece by David Brooks in the New York Times. I have excerpted a few gems below. Please follow the link at the bottom of this post to read the entire piece.

Over the past few weeks, America’s colleges have sent another class of graduates off into the world. They enter a bad job market, the hangover from decades of excessive borrowing. They inherit a ruinous federal debt.

This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Through their childhoods and teenage years, they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree. Yet upon graduation they will enter a world that is unprecedentedly wide open and unstructured. Most of them will not quickly get married, buy a home and have kids, as previous generations did. Instead, they will confront amazingly diverse job markets, social landscapes and lifestyle niches. Most will spend a decade wandering from job to job and clique to clique, searching for a role.

No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness. But this is exactly what has emerged in modern America. College students are raised in an environment that demands one set of navigational skills, and they are then cast out into a different environment requiring a different set of skills, which they have to figure out on their own.

. . .

But, of course, this mantra misleads on nearly every front.

College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments — to a spouse, a community and calling — yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.

. . .

Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life. A relative suffers from Alzheimer’s and a young woman feels called to help cure that disease. A young man works under a miserable boss and must develop management skills so his department can function. Another young woman finds herself confronted by an opportunity she never thought of in a job category she never imagined. This wasn’t in her plans, but this is where she can make her contribution.

Most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.

. . . When you read a biography of someone you admire, it’s rarely the things that made them happy that compel your admiration. It’s the things they did to court unhappiness — the things they did that were arduous and miserable, which sometimes cost them friends and aroused hatred. It’s excellence, not happiness, that we admire most.

. . .

Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly. . . . It’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.

To read the entire op-ed article by David Brooks please go to the New York Times HERE

Workers Compensation and Recreational Injuries

Here in Utah, the “gold standard” for deciding whether or not a recreational injury is compensable under workers compensation comes from a Utah Supreme Court case titled “Blacks vs. McDonald’s”. The court’s decision listed four tests for what constitutes a compensable injury under workers compensation. These four tests are as follows:

1. Time and place. Recreational games scheduled during work hours on company premises are usually found to be work-related. Even when only the first of these four elements is present, the Utah Supreme Court has found that with regard to time and place “the case has made a strong start.” Id. at Sec. 22.24(b). Where games are scheduled off premises and after hours, the burden of proving a work connection falls heavily on the other three factors set out immediately below.
2. Degree of employer initiative, promotion, and sponsorship. When sufficiently present, these elements clearly point toward sufficient control to identify the activity with the employment. Though not decisive, presence of these elements tends to support compensability.
3. Financial support and equipment furnished by employer. Standing alone, these elements are not sufficient to make the recreational activity work related, but will weigh in the aggregate.
4. Employer benefit. This factor plays a supporting rather than an independently decisive role as well. Intangible values, such as increased work efficiency and morale, are insufficient to link the activity to the employment.

Applying these tests is highly subjective. Where the employer or workers compensation carrier might see no coverage, it is always possible that an administrative (labor) law judge will feel otherwise.

Courts in a number of states have formulated similar tests. Although there are similarities, there can be substantial differences. In fact, a number of states specifically exclude coverage for injuries suffered while the employee was participating in voluntary recreational activities, provided that participation was not a job requirement.

Important note: the foregoing discussion must not be viewed as legal advice. We always recommend that this issue be discussed thoroughly with in-house counsel or a labor attorney.

A Revolution of One

“It’s not what happens to you; It’s what you do with what happens to you.”
- Chris Waddell

Our firm hosted Chris Waddell yesterday for lunch and we listened to his inspiring story. He is an incredible athlete, an inspiring speaker and a Gold Medal Winning Paralympian. I would definitely recommend watching his new documentary about his summitting Kilimanjaro if you get the chance.

Details are on his website at www.one-revolution.com or you can follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/onerevolution

ONE REVOLUTION – Trailer from Amanda Stoddard on Vimeo.

New Privacy Rules a Gamechanger?

India’s Proposed New Rules Will Change the Game for International Business

We do a lot of business with the Beazley Group out of the UK and they recently sent a message detailing new features of the proposed changes that India is adopting. The information provided by Beazley follows:

The Indian government has finally taken a step toward creating a comprehensive set of data protection rules to safeguard privacy, but the proposed regulations released this spring are likely to have a major impact on the global enterprises doing business with Indian outsourcers.

The draft regulations, which deal with the protection of personal information, are more stringent than either the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in the U.S. or the EU Directive in Europe and would create new requirements for companies that outsource to service providers in India or maintain their own operations there, say Miriam H. Wugmeister, partner in the law firm Morrison Foerster and Cynthia J. Rich, senior international policy analyst with the firm.

“Given all the personally identifying information, confidential information, and sensitive data collected by organizations, both purely online and in the course of doing business, it was about time that the Indian government took action to update its policy,” says Tony Filippone, research vice president with outsourcing analyst firm HfS Research. He notes that India’s privacy legislation has remained largely unchanged for more than 100 years.

The entire offshore outsourcing industry has been slow to protect personal data, says David Rutchik, partner in outsourcing consultancy Pace Harmon. Offshore outsourcing companies’ lack of urgency around data protection has created a lot of uncertainty for outsourcing customers. (For more on China’s draft data privacy regulations, read IT Outsourcing in China: What CIOs Need to Know About New Data Privacy Guidelines.)

The new rules are intended to showcase a new commitment by India to rigorously protect data, but they could dampen offshore outsourcing business. Most notably, prior written consent will be required-without exception-to collect and use sensitive data about Indian citizens and about any person who’s personal information is collected within the country.

The specifics and timing of implementation and enforcement have not been clarified-and may not be for some time, “which puts every outsourcing client in limbo in the interim period,” Filippone says. Companies with operations or data in India should take the following seven steps to prepare for possible implications.

1. Review current data protection policies and procedures. What data is being captured and stored in India? What opt-in or opt-out policies are in place? Document all existing internal rules.

2. Create a response team. Identify who would be involved with defining and implementing a response to India’s privacy act once the details are clarified, says Stan Lepeak, director of research in KPMG’s shared services and outsourcing advisory group. Team members might include CIO, legal counsel, outsourcing governance teams, and external consultants.

3. Take a closer look at customer-facing activities in India. Processes like order entry, customer service, collections, and outbound sales will be hardest hit if the new privacy law is enacted. “[Companies] will need to secure prior written consent from customers prior to collecting personal data over the phone, and even then, sensitive personal data won’t be permitted to be shared unless it is deemed necessary,” says Rutchik. “These types of issues may significantly impede an enterprise’s ability to properly and efficiently interact with its customer base.”

4. Consider the impact on IT’s internal customers. Little notification is given to employees regarding collection and use of their personal data, even though systems supporting human resources, payroll, and help desk operations all contain sensitive personal data that could fall under the new privacy regulations. “I doubt every organization makes notifications to employees or writes privacy policies to include employee data so some back office operations are likely exposed to risk under this law,” says Filippone.

5. Get on the same page with providers. Review all data protection policies and procedures in your offshore outsourcing contracts. “Obtain the service provider’s interpretation of the act and have the providers explain how they plan to respond to the act’s requirements,” says Lepeak.

6. Prepare for increased standardization.“With these new regulations in place, offshore providers will likely become more rigid in how they operate and more reluctant to tailor their processes to meet customer needs,” says Rutchik. “These restrictions could, in fact, make offshore providers less attractive as a result.”

7. Protect yourself. IT outsourcing vendors may seek to impose data security obligations on their customers to ensure that the customer complies with Indian law, say Wugmeister and Rich. “The new regulations may begin showing up in offshore outsourcing contracts as enterprises will want to be indemnified from specific actions by offshore providers,” Rutchik says.