Monday, April 20, 2009

7 Ways To Work With Your Spouse and Live to Tell About It

Workign with your spouse could be great. It could also end your marriage. No matter how well you both get a long things can get hectic running a business together and emotions will sometimes take over for common sense. Same as they do at home, but this time it is both your livlivhoods.

HEre are some tips to make the workplace with the spouse as happy as at the home :).

1. Stick to Your Role- If your spouse is an expert at something and you really have no idea how to do it leave them alone. If they are good at cad drawing and you can't even make a fancy doodle, then you probably don't have any reason to be giving them pointers on how to do it now are you?

If your spouse is trained in a specific area of expertise, don't try to do his or her job. They're in that position for a reason. "When we got into arguments, it's almost always because one of us would come over to the other person's side of the business," Ken Wright, co-founder of Dinner A' Fare, says. "It's about the other person's responsibilities and trusting that the other person was going to complete those tasks."

6 more tips

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Employee Salary Transperacy

IT should come as no surprise to you that most employers want to keep your fellow employee's salries a secret from you. Many times when you are hired they tell you not to discuss how much you make with the other people you work with. They don't want to deal with complaints about some people making more than others when certain employees feel they are underpaid. Doesn't matter if your beef is legitimate, or not employers try to keep the peace by hiding the truth Overdramatic? Maybe a little, but to the point with a lot of truth.

It is hard to go to work everyday and be one of those guys that is a fat burner, someone who goes above and beyond to work hard while they are there. Then watch as another employee doing the same job puts in half the effort. Some people are just built to work hard and will keep doing it. Others that find out they make less may even become disgruntled and slack off like everyone else. Ever try that? It's like getting a technical foul in basketball. The first guy never gets caught, but the second guy always does. So when they see the big difference in your effort most of the time they take it out on you even if you are just following the crowd. It rarely pays off.

So what kind of transperancy do you think employers should have in regards to employee salry? How do you think employees should be paid? Based on the job title, or based on their work?

That is a debate that can rage for hours, but 1 employer I read about is all for high transperancy. The short of it is that this company believes that everyone who does a job gets paid the same amount. If one gets a raise they all do for that job description. So essentially everyone knows how much everyone is paid.

IS this a good way to go about salaries? Certainly it helps transparency, but is it really a great motivator? Read their full disclosure on how employees get paid at Fog Creek Software to form your own opinion of their practices.