Jim Thomason's "The Business of People"

Each time I go to my neighborhood Publix I experience two pricing models. The difference between these goes to the heart of what's wrong with our health care costs as a nation. I drop my prescription off at the pharmacy, and then head off with my wife (without whom I couldn't find the front checkout much less any food item, but I digress) to grab our food for the week. When it comes time to check out I swing by the pharmacy and pay three $10 co-pays for three generic maintenance drugs. Then we go to the checkouts and pay for everything else. By the time we're at the checkouts I can tell you almost to the dollar how much we're going to spend because I've watched that with each item that's gone into the cart. I have absolutely no idea how much my prescriptions actually cost me because "they're $10 each." That's a lot of what's wrong with health care costs, and why HSA accounts are reshaping our thinking. With FSA accounts and PPO plans we...

As usual the headlines on the job market are dire. News agency after news agency reported that "March job losses were 61% higher than February." Surely all signs point to a slow recovery for jobs in the near term, but long-term the outlook is outstanding. Here's the rest of the story. March job losses were sharply higher than February's because February's 40,090 jobs lost was the lowest in four years . March's 67,611 was not great news, but let's dissect that further. First of all it was 55% lower than March 2009's 181,183 jobs lost. Now of that 67,611, 50,604 were government job cuts announced in prior months and finally implemented. The media got to count these twice as bad news: once months ago when the various federal, state and local entities announced the cut and again in March when they happened. Furthermore of these 50,604, just over 30,000of those are at the U.S. Postal service. So take out the USPS and the governmental sector cu...

I've never tried this before but, hey, why not. I am currently looking for a part-time Admin for a temporary spot that could work into a full-time job. Right now I need someone about 20 hours a week who would work as my AA about half that time and spend the rest of their time working for Travel and HR doing clerical support work. Before you ask, no, my current AA Dawn isn't going anywhere. Our work load has expanded as has Travel, and we need to slide Dawn over to help Jack in the more traditional HR work. This position would pick up some of her slack while she's working for Jack. As to who I'm looking for, we'd like someone who has previous Assistant experience (HR is a plus but not necessary), is professional in appearance and demeanor, has good instincts (we deal with people, after all), and is service-oriented so that our internal customers are treated well. As an added incentive to find the right person, we're okay with someone on the "Mommy track...