Power Tools and Databases

My power tool of choice is a sander.  Whenever I paint, it’s time to choose the right sander. This time I was removing old oil paint from a window sill.
That’s a job for a sheet sander

For small nonprofits and for individual use in any government agency, your power tool of choice is a spread sheet.  You use as a database.  It does the trick but if you’ve got a lot of data it gets easy to lose data, hopelessly mix up data when you sort (even though the spreadsheet asks if you are sure), get harder to use the larger the spreadsheet. \

1)   Use a spreadsheet if you have a small amount of data, perhaps up to row Column AA and 200 or 300 Rows.  Yes, you can use it for much more but…

Turn to an alternative, the rotary sander.  I’ve used this on large porch railings.  It helps you work on larger surfaces without creating lines.  The equivalent is Access or an open source cloud-based program.  These are true databases.  I’ve seen many employees fail to take the leap from a spreadsheet to a true database because the learning curve is high or you need to pay for a host website.  They move to a shared spreadsheet such as google sheets, but that isn’t the rotary sander equivalent. It just allows you to share more easily.  Databases are great for donor or member data because it is easier to handle large amounts of data and you’ll never sort it and have to start over.  I’m familiar with an open source data bases for housing museum and library digital collections and another for GIS data  

2)   Use a database to easily sort and filter data y, create queries, and routine reports but…

Sometimes you’ve grown enough and need to get out the belt sander.  It only goes one way and is designed for the big job.  The problem is it can get out of control.  I once used my belt sander on a cottage porch.  Don’t take your hand off or away it goes.  That is,  if you decided to ask a vendor to build a database for you, you will need to be hands-on in the development, ensure that you have follow-up, and routine updates.   You are probably familiar with infamous builds of state health and human service agencies.  They often have to be dumped because they fail to do what is needed. 

Belt Sander Source: Home Depot

I recently entered travel reimbursement using a proprietary web-based software for my university-based work.  I had to have a staff member specifically assigned to assist employees set up employees in the database.  I had to have that same staff member help me go through the database process to enter my miles, receipts, conference fees, etc.   It was clearly a product set up for a wide variety of customers.  It had lots of cities in the database to use for your start and stop destinations, but when I couldn’t find mine, I had to put in cities close by.  I couldn’t add in a new location.  Then I had to put in mileage to and from locations. The database didn’t use the cities I had already entered to determine my mileage automatically. Nor did it attach the hotel fees paid by a university credit card.  It had an unwieldy interface to put in cost centers.

1)   Use new builds to do multiple tasks for multiple departments that has continuous support from the vendor.

2)   Use an interface appropriate for your organization but…

Sometimes you just need a simple form.  Don’t automate what doesn’t need to be automated.  Travel reimbursement might well be one of these jobs.  I’m sure it was created to move to the paperless office, but is someone analyzing the costs of attendance at conferences, travel?  I doubt it; that is the true use of a database, to query and report.

The paper travel reimbursement form I filled out for my nonprofit volunteer work took a matter of minutes.  No employee had to guide me through.  It’s the equivalent of the washable sanding block. It works great for little jobs and to touch up those big jobs.

Do you have a misguided use of a database at your work? Let me know.

To Pay or Not to Pay

We’re almost through the snow season in the North.  A lot of the country witnessed battering snow storms.  Of course, we are all familiar with the school closings, but most other nonprofit and public employers are more hesitant about closing than schools are.  What does the decision to close mean for your employees?  That was the question one county employer asked.  For the first time ever, I witnessed a nonprofit hospital in Maine announce it was closed for a day and half.  The hospital announced that the emergency room was open but all outpatient procedures were cancelled and satellite health clinics except one were closed. 

Winter in Maine 2017

Closures for snow, or for that matter hurricanes, or other unusual situations make you look at your personnel policies.  Should you pay your hourly employees that are sent home or told not to come in?  The first answer is no.  They are not working so there is no need to pay them.  They do not get paid for other times they don’t come in.  You may be paying others overtime to handle essential functions and to pay for extra storm related work.  You calculate these costs minus the unexpended costs of not paying hourly employees.  You will be paying your salaried employees during the snow day, but they are to make up any work they miss and some of them will be able to work from home.  If you are a public employer, you need to consider the taxpayers monies in the calculation if you pay employees to stay home.

When the Maine governor, Governor LePage, came into office, he said he wouldn’t close state offices if the company in which he was once an executive didn’t close its stores.  That's an argument for solving the problem by having all employees prepared to come in no matter what the storm.  The reality is letting all state employees out during between 4 and 4:30 whether salaried or hourly causes serious traffic problems.  That idea has gradually faded now that he is in his second term. 

Another way to look at it is based upon equity.  Equity theory states that an employee will judge how much work to do compared to others.  Perceptions are important in the calculation of the fairness and the adequacy of pay.  Further, if you have hourly employees who are unionized, are you paying unionized employees but not paying non-unionized employees who are sent home?  This argument is one of equity.  Even if salaried employees can work from home your non-unionized hourly employees will perceive not being paid unfair.

Do you have a pay policy for emergency situations or do you decide each time what to do?.  Does it matter if employees are sent home for part of the day or miss a whole day?  Do have a different policy for union and non-union employees?

Alternative Facts And Other Sources Of Disagreement At Staff Meetings

I don’t usually weigh in on politics because I consult with public and nonprofit managers.  When I heard Kellyanne Conway use the words, alternative facts, it brought up and old paper a professor of mine, Robert Sahr, had written on sources of disagreement in public policy making.  Usually we think about the dynamics of staff meetings from a psychological perspective, but you can apply the language of policy making to your staff meetings as well.

 

Ms Conway wasn’t so wrong when she said there were alternative facts.  I’m not talking about incorrect, inaccurate, or confusing facts.  If your organization uses performance measures, you’ve surly disagreed about whether you have the right measure, whether you can include or exclude certain data, what outside factors affect your measurement.  Say, you train people for jobs.  You can disagree on what number characterizes the economic situation your client faces, the unemployment rate, people who are not working but are looking for a job; the number collecting unemployment, a portion of those looking for a job; or the number of discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job.  None are wrong.

Related to that disagreement is a disagreement over the interpretation or consequences of the fact.  Do any of these ways to measure unemployment have consequences for your ability to find your clients jobs.  Do you think it matters how many are collecting unemployment, nationally, in your state, in your area? 

Another source of disagreement is based upon your ideology, your belief system.  If you train prospective workers, you are probably pretty sympathetic to the difficulty of your clients finding jobs.  You may have a cynic amongst you who is a naysayer about any new ideas for training and employment.  Those outside of your program may say there are plenty of jobs available.  This program is not necessary.

As you sit around the table, you may disagree based upon your professional backgrounds. Admittedly, this is more likely to happen at your board meeting or town council meeting.  When you received your degree, particularly a professional degree, you began to see the world through that lens.  A minister seeks to solve problems through the church and god while a social worker seeks to solve problems within the family and community and if that doesn’t work through government intervention.  I sit on my town’s budget committee, a citizen review committee.  Those who have been in detail oriented careers, engineering and architecture, keep saying that the increases in the cost for our schools are unsustainable.  They look rationally at the increases each year.  Yet the voters keep approving the increases to the school budget.

Finally, your self-interest affects how you react in your staff meeting.  You want the program to succeed; you want to keep your job.  You agree with one person rather than another.  We even use the word, you act politically.  It makes political sense to agree with that person versus another person. 

Before I started writing this, I googled sources of disagreement and certainly there are others who have found ways to describe disagreement, but do any these hit home?

Nepotism. That dirty word. 

Hiring relatives. Jared Kushner, son-in-law and Ivanka Trump, daughter, are going to work without pay in the White House for Donald Trump to avoid violating any federal no nepotism policy.  

The Governor of Maine hired his daughter to be his executive assistant. A hospital dietary director said stop when too many of the same family were working in that department.  (If a wedding or funeral occurred she would have a hard time staffing.)  A friend couldn’t work at the same public school as his wife, but when the couple divorced they could work in the same school. A city manager says yes, nepotism occurs in hiring, but it can ‘t be stopped. The city can’t enforce a no nepotism policy with so many of its current employees being related.

A hospital takes a different approach. It says that it welcomes referrals of friends (that’s known as cronyism) and relatives. In the small population area it serves, it is going to hire relatives. 

Usually no nepotism policies are put into place because it is unfair to others to hire relatives. It is particularly a problematic if you are seeking diversity in your workforce.  No nepotism policies also are put into place because hiring relatives may lead to unqualified people taking the jobs. 

Many of these policies have qualifications. It’s ok to hire relatives if the relative doesn’t supervise another relative. Defining whether relatives include a son-in-law or cousin or step-child becomes the problem.

Source: Source: ABC 7 News San Francisco

What do you think: is nepotism a problem for your nonprofit or government agency? Did you ever get a job because a relative referred you or even hired you?