-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

1. Meetings. What is the frequency and duration of meetings? Do meetings have a purpose? Do meetings start and end on time? Do participants respect and listen to all voices? Do individuals demand clarity regarding follow-up actions and accountabilities?


2. Pronouns. What are the prevailing pronouns used in speech and writing? Do they trend toward "we", "us", "our", "ours"? Or are pronouns mostly about "me", "I", "my", "mine"?


3. Work/Life Balance. What do working hours and workweeks look like? Do people typically stay late? Or do they go home at a reasonable hour after a productive day at work, ready to refresh and return another day?


4. Conflict. How does the organization manage conflict? Do people maintain trust, and work to resolve differences on their own? Or do they delegate conflict resolution to a third party, let the conflict smolder, or engage in destructive gossip?


5. Management Structure. How many management layers does the organization maintain? What is the compensation ratio between the highest-paid and lowest-paid employee?


6. Happiness. Do individuals in the workplace seem happy? Are they friendly? Do they smile? Say hello? Make new colleagues and visitors feel welcome?


7. Reading Material. What literature is available in the reception area? Does the organization prominently display items like the mission, vision, values and principles? Are there professional magazines and journals that align with the mission of the organization? Do espoused values seem aligned with observed behavior?


8. Approachability. Are people approachable--especially managers? Do people scatter or scurry when they see a manager approaching? Do individuals appear to be comfortable approaching others, regardless of level?


9. Credit Sharing. Are people willing to share credit for success with others? Do they point fingers when things go wrong? Do people see failures as learning opportunities? Is the environment rife with politics?


10. Physical Facilities and Layout. Are workspaces for managers and executives separate from other workspaces? If so, are those workspaces nicer? Are those spaces located close to the action, where actual productive work occurs? Are there separate bathrooms, cafeterias, parking spaces?


11. Benefits and Perks. Does everyone have access to the same benefits and perks? Or are the benefits and perks stratified according to levels?


12. Environmental and Hygiene Factors. Does everyone have access to appropriate lighting, heating, cooling, safety, sanitation, personal security, comfort? Are any distinctions based on bona fide work conditions, and not management levels?


13. Dress. Are different types of clothing and dress related to bona fide work conditions, and not to management levels? Is there an enforceable dress code? If so, is it related to bona fide work conditions?


14. Internal Stakeholders. Does everyone have a voice in decisions that affect them? Or are decisions imposed from above, with or without input?


15. External Stakeholders. Does organizational behavior reflect awareness of the critical importance of customers, suppliers, community members, regulators and other external stakeholders?


16. Professional Growth. Does everyone have an opportunity for professional growth? Does the organization encourage and support work-related education and training?


17. Innovation. Is everyone free to ideate and innovate? To generate ideas and receive serious, responsible and appropriate feedback? To embrace any leadership opportunities resulting from idea adoption?


18. Leadership. Is everyone free to provide leadership in the organization as circumstances arise? Does the organization support and encourage leaders everywhere?


19. Professional Courtesy. Do people in the organization routinely treat each other with professional courtesy? Do they truly listen to each other? Do they use the appropriate channels of communication for messages?


20. Trust. When individuals request and receive commitments from others, do they trust the other person to either fulfill the commitment, or seek to re-negotiate the parameters? Do individuals in this organization routinely fulfill commitments?


21. Language. Are people human resources or human beings? Do people talk about headcount, direct reports and bosses?


22. Employee Handbook. Is it the size of a telephone book, burdened with rules and regulations that require a lawyer to understand and interpret?


23. Discipline. Is there a "progressive discipline" system in place? If so, who is authorized to administer "discipline" and why?


24. Termination. Are individuals authorized to unilaterally terminate the employment of another person? If so, who is authorized to do so and why?


25. Social Glue. Does the organization sponsor social events that include families, to foster relationships and goodwill?


26. Messages. What messages does the organization send to employees? Does it require mandatory training (i.e., "you're not good enough the way you are")?


27. Evaluation. Does the organization adhere to the industrial age annual performance review (which everyone hates, on both sides of the table)? Or does it allow people to develop and communicate meaningful metrics and evaluate themselves and the peers with whom they work?


28. Rewards. Does the organization compensate appropriately and provide engaging work, or does it brandish carrots and sticks to provide external motivation?

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Adair Turner, Chairman of the Board of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and former Chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority (2008-13), is the author of a new book that takes aim at economic and political orthodoxies, Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance. As Turner sees it, policy makers and economic thinkers across the globe remain in thrall to the belief that only unfettered financial markets deliver the best for societies. The resulting bias favors fixed rules and mathematical models often wildly out of touch with real world conditions. Turner calls for a reality check — the recognition that circumstances change, that the future is uncertain, and that we need flexible approaches to shifting market circumstances at a time of inequality and instability. He warns that taboos against printing money and disproportionate fears of fiscal deficits are keeping central banks from taking crucial measures to stimulate economies. These taboos and fears also make us blind to the threat of out-of-control private debt and credit wasted on real estate and speculation rather than growth that lifts everyone. For Turner, thinking radically is the most practical way forward. *This post was originally published on the blog of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Lynn Parramore: You’ve noted that economies have become dangerously focused on credit in recent decades and that rising inequality is connected to this trend. Can you explain the link?

Adair Turner: If you look back at the story of advanced economies over the 20 years before 2007, you see an interesting pattern. During that period, the total value of national income — what economists call “nominal GDP,” meaning income unadjusted for inflation —grew at about 5 percent per year in a reasonably steady fashion. The central banks patted themselves on the back and said: This is great! Things are running smoothly. We’ve got the “Great Moderation.”

Yet during all of that time, the value of all credit, unadjusted for inflation, grew at about 10 to15 percent per year. At the time, it seemed like we needed that pace of credit growth, but when you think about it, if your credit is going to grow at 10-15 percent per year in order to get your 5 percent GDP growth per year, eventually you’re going to have a problem. This isn’t a stable system. In my view, one of the reasons that it seemed that credit had to grow faster than total income was rising inequality.

LP: Why are people borrowing more when inequality is rising?

AT: The richer people, when they get another $100,000, or another million, or 10 million, don’t tend to spend it as much as the poorer people would if they got another $100 or $1,000 or $5,000. All the empirical evidence suggests that the rich tend to consume a lower proportion of income than middle and lower-income people. So rising inequality can lead to a major problem with the demand for goods and services. The rich aren’t spending their additional money, so overall, more money gets taken out of the economy. Unless the richer people decide to invest their money, there would be a slowdown in the economy. This idea goes back to economists like John Maynard Keynes and Alvin Hansen.

But before 2007, we didn’t have a slowdown. Instead, the savings of the rich ended up going through the financial system and being lent to middle and lower-income people, who had 30 years of no real income increase whatsoever. The figures for the U.S. are really quite startling. If you look at the bottom 20 or 25 percent of the population, their real wages haven’t gone up for about 35 years! Meanwhile, the incomes of the top 1 percent have gone up 200 percent. This is a dramatic increase. The savings at the top have to go somewhere. At the bottom, there is a group of people who don’t feel that they’re participating in the growing prosperity, so they become very vulnerable to the delusion that if they borrow the money and buy a house, they’ll make up for their lack of real wages by house prices always going up.

LP: For a while, it seemed to work. People felt like their house was the ticket to prosperity.

AT: Yes, for the decade leading up to 2007, a whole lot of people who weren’t getting raises felt that they were doing ok because they managed to buy a house that was going up in price. But it all came to and end, a catastrophic end. Rising inequality can create a more highly leveraged economy, and it can then make the economy vulnerable to a crash like 2008. And in that crash, the really malign thing is that the crash itself tends to further increase inequality because it tends to be the people at the lower end of the wealth distribution who were highly leveraged and had to borrow lots of money to buy their house. In the downswing, they lose all the wealth they’ve got.

There’s a wonderful illustration of this by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi in their book, House of Debt. They show that the process of debt-fueled booms and busts is a very effective way of periodically redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich.

LP: What can we do about this? Are we making any progress in stabilizing the financial system and getting all this private debt and inequality under control?

AT: I do think that we need far more radical policies than we’ve had so far. I spent 4 ½ years of my life from September, 2008 to March, 2013 deeply involved in all of the details of the re-regulation of the global financial system. I was the chair of the main policy committee of the international Financial Stability Board and deeply involved with designing Basel III, which overhauled rules on banking. I was knee-deep in the nitty-gritty. I would defend what we’ve done and I think that the job we did has helped make the financial system itself more stable, and therefore less likely to cause a rapidly-developing crisis of the sort that developed in 2007-8.

That is the good news, but I think we’ve made almost no progress at all in dealing with the fundamental drivers of economies that are too reliant on debt. We have not dealt with the fundamental fragilities that arise from inequality, from the bias of the lending system towards real estate, and from global imbalances. I think we are still stuck in a post-crisis malaise — you see it less in the U.S. but you can clearly see it in Europe or Japan. Even in the U.S., the pace of job creation has picked up, but employment rates are still well below what they were in 2007. Real wages have not gone up. The capitalist system is not delivering those decade-after-decade increases it promised. We’re not where we should be in terms of our national economies. We don’t know how to get out of this malaise and I think we now have to consider more radical policies. That’s key to moving forward, particularly in Europe and Japan.

We need more radical policies so that we don’t just repeat the debt-fueled booms all over again and do another blow-up in 2025 or 2035.

LP: If you could wave a magic wand and put one of these radical policies into action, which would you choose?

AT: Today, because the Eurozone is in a very vulnerable position, I would like to see a small, coordinated fiscal expansion in all the countries of the Eurozone simultaneously. We would have to do it in that coordinated fashion across all member states because there isn’t a central federal budget within the Eurozone system. We could have a proportionally equal fiscal expansion in each of the member countries, financed as a one-off by the European Central Bank. Now if you print that, many people in Germany will just sort of explode over their morning coffee! But I have argued this in Germany and I have very good relationships with many German economists. Lots of them share my analysis of how we got it into this mess but they are very wary of agreeing to my proposal for how we get out.

LP: Do you think it could really happen, this expanding of public spending?

AT: There’s a very particular reason why this won’t happen in Europe. You asked me if I could wave a magic wand, right? Waving a magic wand means that you are free from all the classic, nasty, tricky bits of politics. In Europe, those are even more difficult than in any other country. Suppose you said, ok, I’m going to expand public expenditure in all these countries simultaneously. The German taxpayer, with perfect legitimacy, will say: Do you promise me that this public expenditure is honest and clean, and not some of the corrupt practices that we’ve seen in Greece? Can you really credibly promise me that this is one-off? That it will be moderate? That having agreed to it this year, you won’t come back next year and say, oh, let’s do a bit more of it? Convincing people is difficult enough even in one country with one central bank and one electorate that feels it’s part of one nation.

To achieve that degree of coordination and trust within the extraordinary, wonderful, and yet difficult thing that is the European Union — it is probably just impossible. What I say in the book is that the Eurozone will have to progress to a much greater degree of federalization with an element of a federal budget, federal taxation, and federal expenditure. If it can’t agree to that, it would be better to break up.

There need to be changes in who does what. There need to be changes to the constitution of Europe. I fault myself: I didn’t get it right in the late 90s. I was, in principle, in favor of European monetary union. But I think the experience has clearly shown that this is an incomplete political and economic union. The unsustainability of the political constitutional form has made the impact of the debt overhang even worse in the Eurozone than in countries such as the U.K. or the U.S. In the latter two, debt overhang has still created huge problems, but they haven’t been multiplied and made even worse by an inappropriate set of constitutional structures.

LP: To move forward, do we need to fundamentally change the way we think, particularly about the financial system?

AT: My work suggests two particular areas which economic theory has not paid enough attention to. One it used to pay attention to, and then it forgot. This strange amnesia concerns the role of the banking system in creating credit, money and purchasing power. It is absolutely fundamental to how a monetary economy works.

There were economists of the early 20 ^th century like Knut Wicksell, Friedrich Von Hayek, and John Maynard Keynes to whom that was obvious. Also Irving Fisher, Henry Simons, and Milton Friedman in his earlier writings. Then something very odd happens in the 1960s and 70s — economists stopped talking about the banking system and the credit system. We then develop a set of modern monetary economics—whether New Keynesian Economics or New Classical Economics — where we imagine that we can think about the dynamics of the macroeconomy without a rich understanding of the banking system and without understanding that the banking system creates credit, money and purchasing power.

We have got to go back to that. We’ve got to integrate that within our models and integrate that within our thinking. And reading some books written as much as a hundred years ago is a good starting point. In my book I quote, at some length, a book by Knut Wicksell called Interest and Prices, published in 1904. Remedying this amnesia is one of the priorities of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, so ironically we have to start by reminding ourselves of some old thinking.

The second crucial area of economic theory, which I think is more new because the phenomenon is new, is that we need to focus on the importance of what economists refer to as irreproducible existing assets, and particularly land. Everybody’s probably heard of Thomas Piketty and his Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a very important book. Piketty describes very significant increases in the ratio of wealth to national income, rising in many advanced economies from about 2 to 3 in 1950 to about 4 to 6 today, and he develops a theory of why that occurred. But what is striking, when you look at Piketty’s own figures, is that in countries like the U.K. and France and in several others, though not quite to the same extent, the majority of all wealth resides in the value of urban real estate. And the vast majority of the increase in the wealth-to-income ratio, which Piketty describes, comes from the increase in the value of urban real estate. The majority of that increase derives, in turn, not from new construction investment but from the increase in the value of land.

If you pick up an economic textbook, it will always describe capital like this: capital in year two is the same as capital in year one, plus net investment in that period. We have complicated mathematical theories of the determinants of returns on capital, returns on labor, in which we talk about two factors of production, capital and labor.

Well, it turns out that there is a lot in the economy that you can’t think straight about unless you add a third thing, which is land, where the value of that in year two has got nothing to do with new capital investment. It’s the land in the previous year, plus or minus what happened to the price. That makes land quite different in the economy.

LP: Are these two things related, the role of the banking system and the distinct role which land plays in the economy?

AT: Yes. You need these two things together to understand how modern economies really work. Instability mostly comes from the interface between the fact that the banks (or shadow banks) can create credit, money, and purchasing power in infinite quantities if we don’t constrain them, and the fact that credit is primarily created to fund the purchase of urban real estate and land, which is somewhat fixed in supply. In economics, when you put together a highly elastic thing and a highly inelastic thing, you create extraordinary potential for turbulence, volatility, and for unstable prices. Both of those issues are largely absent from the way we have taught economics over the last 50 years. 

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You hired a part-time tech employee because you needed help in a pinch. But you might be surprised on how much he or she has to offer. Here's how to get the most of the short time your part-time hire is with your company.

Explain the objectives of your company in detail and in an exciting way. Make sure to present your expectations clearly and offer a motivation for great performance. - Evrim Oralkan, Travertine Mart

If possible, set aside a designated time for that hire to come into your office on a weekly basis. Even if it's just for an hour or two every week, a little bit of facetime goes a long way. It keeps the hire on track and creates a sense of loyalty to your company. - Cassie Petrey, Crowd Surf

Part-time technical hires can feel remote and detached given their temporary status. Make an extra effort to make them feel as much a part of the team as everyone else. If possible, have them meet the team and especially their leader. Part-time hires are effective when they feel comfortable to proactively engage the full-time team to hit their objectives. - Andrew Thomas, SkyBell Video Doorbell

Whenever I hire a part-time programmer to work for us, I explain the entire project, including goals, requirements, relevant teams, challenges and timeline. I make sure that they fully understand it. Once they understand, I ask them to complete the project in smaller tasks. This way, they can start delivering faster, and we can start measuring their quality. We increase the task size as they grow but still stay small. - Piyush Jain, SIMpalm

It's important that you leverage their time on your team by understanding and quantifying their contributions. The key is to get the most from that resource while you have it available to you. If you hire someone to complete a task over a certain period of time, ensure that's an achievable, realistic goal. Manage your own expectations and maintain structured work environments. - Blair Thomas, EMerchantBroker

Learn as much as you can from them, and encourage your techs to learn from that person as well. Assigned tasks will be completed, but the knowledge they share can be reused again and again. Also, keep a line out to them for the future. You never know when the opportunity will arise to ask a part-timer to fix something in a pinch. - Zoe Barry, ZappRx

Even part-time hires should know that they're an investment in your company's future. Let them know that if they perform well and exceed expectations, there could be a full-time place for them in your company in the future. If they do their part and your business grows, make good on your promise. A really valuablepart-timer will be motivated if they see long-term possibilities at your company. - Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com

Pair programming is a software development technique in which two programmers pair together on one workstation (or virtually through screen-sharing). It's a great technique for getting someone new up to speed on your code base quickly, making sure that at least one other person understands any code that they write, and it significantly improves the quality of any code written. - Mattan Griffel, One Month

I recommend doing reference checks even on part-time hires. Not only does it help you decide if you should hire them, it also allows you to understand what they're best at so you can target their scope of work accordingly. - Douglas Baldasare, ChargeItSpot

Full-time people tend to put a lot more energy into "making the boss happy" while part-time hires don't have as much incentive to go above and beyond. As a result, incentives can get misaligned even if no one is "at fault." The easiest way to avoid that is to be as detailed and specific as humanly possible to ensure that the deliverable is what you're looking for. - Erik Severinghaus, Simple Relevance

A part-time hire should get as much attention and perks as a full-time employee. You shouldn't focus on the amount of hours they work. Instead, focus on the tasks they perform. Make your part-time staff a part of the team. Don't make them feel less valuable than the rest of your team due to their part-time schedule. You hired them for the skill set (obviously not their availability), so hone in on that. - Reuben Yonatan, GetVoIP

Pair part-time hires with existing full-time teams, managers and systems, and gain some feedback from your new employee. Discover what their opinions are on office hours and when they feel teams are getting the most done during the day. They may provide feedback that spurs change within the current full-timesystem that you are using -- encouraging more remote or part-time employees. - Miles Jennings, Recruiter.com

These answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

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A rhetorical question for consumers worldwide: When did excellent customer service become a luxury?

When did the primacy of the consumer fall victim to the capriciousness of indifferent employees, rude personnel, and complacent executives? When did the expectation that anonymity should be the currency of the Web, and accountability would be the first casualty of electronic commerce, become so shockingly acceptable?

I pose these queries to remind companies and consumers that such behavior is the downfall of commercial success. Running an online business requires greater, not less, attentiveness and personalization. While perfection may be the enemy of the good, the passive approval of the generic -- the failure to have a distinctive identity, with a website that is visually powerful and easily navigable -- is what makes your business vulnerable to falling into that ever-expanding abyss of the forgettable and dismissible.

Take, for instance, the post "Why Truly Responsive Design Must Be Customer-Centric" from LCN.com, a UK-based Web hosting provider and manager of virtual and dedicated servers.

By performing my own search for results relating to this subject, the topic of customer-centric products and services, I am happy to report that, as the above post demonstrates, there are still some professionals with common sense.

There remain a humble few willing to speak truth to power. Put a different way, there are professionals out there -- their posts are free, and available for everyone to see, read and share -- who do not shirk from stating the obvious.

Indeed, their job is to do just that: To remind business owners that consumers deserve an experience, a positive and convenient one, when they seek to buy (or have questions concerning) anything from an everyday household appliance to a specialized brand of software to a limited edition of themed collectibles.

An online business cannot, in other words, automate everything because it will then alienate almost everyone. Meaning: Technology is cold and impersonal; it has a set of pre-programmed function -- to process credit card transactions or email confirmation of an online purchase, or recommend (according to some algorithm) additional items of interest or highlight exclusive discounts and promotions -- but none of those things constitute interest in or respect for you as a human being.

So, if you do not place a premium on design, and if you have a set-it-and-forget-it approach to marketing and communication, the customer will soon feel like -- that man or woman will become -- a disposable number, to be replaced by capturing (through spam or junk email) another consumer with a similar profile.

We must, therefore, reset our demands about technology and design.

We must recognize the long-term value of engaging consumers on a more direct and intimate level, where we are sympathetic to the challenges people face and the aid they seek or desire.

Without a visual expression of those beliefs -- in the absence of a customer-centric design -- businesses will be blind to honoring the needs of these individuals, who also have the potential to be powerful word-of-mouth marketers and "evangelists" for a product or service.

Writing as a customer, for and to my fellow customers around the globe, I think companies can do better -- I know they must do better -- when it comes to retaining my loyalty and earning my trust.

If these online businesses want to become brands of everlasting influence and value, and should they see the light and find religion, so to speak, then they will become more successful and expansive.

The customer may not always be right, but companies need to act as if that consumer is, in fact, correct.

Welcome to the new age of customer-centric service.

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Dear Steve,

I currently owe Navient $163,000 on my private student loans. After graduating in 2009 with few job prospects, I put these loans into forbearance for the first two years while I could. This raised my original debt total from $153,000 to the current figure of $163,000. I have paid interest-only repayments for the past four years and have made every payment of around $500.

I have seven loans in total, six of which have interest rates of 2.75 percent - 3.25 percent. My last loan which is about $21,000, has an interest rate of 7.25 percent.

Now that my interest only repayment period has ended with Navient, they asked me to pay a total of $1,511 per month to pay off the debt in just over 10 years. I called to see what I could do to lower the payment and they offered me a term of just over 20 years for $850 a month. While $850 a month is far more reasonable, it is still very high for what I can afford.

They asked for my living expenses and what I currently take home, but as a freelance producer I do not have guaranteed monthly income. Therefore I would not always know if I could make an $850 a month payment.

All seven loans are private student loans, which I used for tuition and living expenses throughout my four years of undergraduate college. The first two loans that I took out have a cosigner, and I am tempted to default on my Navient Loans unless I can come up with a more reasonable payment plan with my lender.

Given my situation, I am unsure of how to proceed with paying off these loans. I was told that no matter what I do, Navient will not extend my term, even though at this point I would be willing to pay more throughout the life of the loan if I could reduce my monthly payments. Is there a possible way to get a lender to extend the repayment term even further? Would I have to intentionally default to do so?

Also, since one of my loans has a much higher interest rate, is it ever possible to negotiate that particular interest rate with the lender? Can I get a consolidation loan for that loan, to pay a lower rate somewhere else?

Any advice would be extremely helpful.

Manny

1. Your private student loans may be able to be discharged in bankruptcy today. Even if the loans may not be fully dischargeable, the amount of the loans that was used above what would have been "qualified higher education expenses" may be.


2. If you other consumer debt that is preventing you from making the payment and all or none of your private student loans is not dischargeable as explained above, then you still might have to consider bankruptcy to clear the decks and make room for the student loan payment. Keep in mind that most of what you assume about bankruptcy is just plain wrong. Click here to get the facts.


3. Faced with an impossible situation, defaulting on your private student loans can give you other options. You should probably read "Top 10 Reasons You Should Stop Paying Your Unaffordable Private Student Loan". I will agree that is an imperfect solution to an imperfect problem but it can and does work for some.


4. Despite of what some people say, Navient will settle student loan debt for up to half of what is owed. The kicker is you will typically need to repay them over a short period of time or they might give you a year or two to make all the payments. The key to this approach is you really talk to someone who is experienced in dealing with this type of situation. My friend Damon Day is one of those experienced people who I mentor. Navient will tell you they don't settle, but they do if you know how to go about it.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Getting to know people is an extremely difficult task. There are so many intricacies and traits for every individual that we'll probably never see two people that are exactly alike.

Simple triggers can make someone angry, joyous, sad, or happy. We also cognitively develop triggers over time that allow us to feel a certain way during certain events. Example: you know when to laugh at a joke, you know that when it's 5 pm on a Friday, you get excited.

All these emotions and triggers are what make us unique, but it's also what makes being a leader or a (good) manager so damn hard.

A true leader must have enough emotional intelligence to gain an understanding of the people that are following their lead.

Unfortunately, some employees believe their bosses are not only bad but so terrible that they cause employees to feel disengaged at work. A problem that is costing the US workforce over $400 Billion in lost productivity per year.

One of the worst parts about managers lacking empathy or emotional intelligence is the fact that they don't know it.

It's a narcissistic behavioral pattern that doesn't allow them to see past their own biases and beliefs.

Managers that lack empathy will not only discourage the people around them but make life a living hell for an employee that just wants to keep on advancing and producing.

Employees with bad bosses hate a lot about their managers, but not considering the feelings of the people that are working their hinds off is a no-go for any organization.

Make sure you get an accurate psychometric assessment that will let you know if an employee is a good fit for your organization. Not everyone is cut out to be a leader, and having the wrong candidate for an important position can mess up the culture at your office.

One of the beauties of living in the information era is that we have so much knowledge at our disposal. We can validate assumptions that would've otherwise gone unnoticed.

The world of work has shifted drastically in just the past 20 years. We've made a lot of progress in enterprise technologies, labor/job standards, and markets have sprung up (mobile phones, social networks, video conferencing) that have had a massive influence on the workforce.

The one thing that has remained constant is the low levels of job satisfaction.

The narcissism displayed by unempathetic leaders who lack emotional intelligence will lead employees, at any pay grade, to feel dissatisfied at work.

As mentioned earlier, billions of dollars are being lost because people don't feel motivated to work for the people who manage them. Even if you have the best team surrounding you, the person that is in charge has to believe in holacracy and autonomy.

Let the talent bloom and surround them with good personalities and leaders.

Emotional intelligence is something that is usually inherited as opposed to taught. The kinds of characters that lack empathy and emotional intelligence lack one other thing, patience.

If you or someone you know is trying to develop emotional intelligence, the best way to go about it is to take things one step at a time. Slow down and acknowledge what is happening.

Get to know the people around you and gain an understanding of what's going on and why people react to things in a certain way. The more you get to know about the people around you, the more you'll get to see what are their true motives and how they can be better.

People that are emotionally intelligent are motivators. Whereas those who aren't tend to be demotivators.

Have you or any of your colleagues dealt with management that didn't necessarily treat people as good as they could've? What can be done to improve management in some companies?

Let us know in the comments below!

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-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

More than 25 years. That's how long Tyson Foods and its predecessors have ignored rulings that its "gang time" payment system for meat production workers is illegal. A recent Iowa jury found that the company's wage theft amounted to 5.8 million dollars for 3,000 Iowa workers over just two years. This follows decades of cases, court orders and USDOL investigations finding that the company owed millions to its workers. And yet this week, Tyson Foods will argue to the U.S. Supreme Court that its meat processors, all treated the same, cannot prove their newest wage theft claims as a group.

This case is just the most recent example of corporate wage theft and outright greed and the actions companies take to stop worker complaints. Earlier this year, an Amazon staffing firm secured a ruling from the Court[scotusblog.com] saying it's permissible to make Amazon warehouse workers stand in security screening lines for upwards of 30 minutes a shift to make sure they aren't stealing--and pay them nothing for their time. Retailers[cnbc.com] press salaried employees to "volunteer" to for unpaid weekend or after- hours work to handle holiday surges, and still others persist in labeling[forbes.com] their employees "independent contractors" to avoid paying them minimum wage or overtime, despite repeated successful challenges to the charade.

These practices enrich employers by billions of dollars a year, and often go unchallenged due to fears of retaliation or lack of employee resources. Adding insult to these real injuries, companies now increasingly require employees to sign mandatory arbitration agreements waiving their rights to sue in court or to proceed collectively as a condition of taking a job. A New York Times investigation found that of the 1,179 federal class actions filed between 2010 and 2014 that companies sought to push into arbitration, judges ruled in the company's favor in four out of every five cases. In 2014 alone, judges upheld class-action bans in 134 out of 162 cases. No one knows how many thousands of workers weren't able to pursue their claims, or how many millions companies saved by this trick.

But Tyson Foods is in a class by itself. Its stubborn adherence to forcing free labor via its off-the-clock factory practices has continued more than 25 years, and it could fix the problem if it wanted to. All it has to do is keep records of the time its workers spend donning and doffing the protective gear required for their jobs. Keeping records of time spent working is neither a burdensome nor new requirement: The Fair Labor Standards Act and most state wage theft laws have imposed this duty as long as these laws have existed - more than 75 years.

Rather than keeping track of employees' actual time, Tyson brands its gang-time system as "K-Code" time, which automatically pays workers for four minutes of prep and close-out time. At trial, the Iowa workers showed that it took more like 18-21 minutes per shift. Even though workers in previous cases have successfully challengedthis K-Code system, Tyson hasn't altered its practices. The Iowa workers in this week's suit filed a lawsuit in 2007 and the district court certified an FLSA collective action and a state law class action under Iowa wage payment law. After the jury's verdict finding that Tyson's wage theft in this one plant amounted to $5.8 million, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.

Tyson and its amicus supporters the Chamber of Commerce and others style the case as an unfair "trial by formula," where more than 700 low-wage immigrant workers' specific evidence was used to prove the rest of the class damages. This claim is cynical in the extreme, since it is precisely Tyson's recalcitrant record-keeping failure, that necessitates the workers' use of statistics and time studies.

Wage theft is a persistent problem that hurts workers and their families struggling to make a living, as well as law-abiding companies that don't make it a business practice to steal. National and state-level studies paint a dire picture. A seminal 2009 study[unprotectedworkers.org] of 4,307 low-wage workers found that more than two-thirds experienced at least one pay-related violation in their previous work week, including one-fourth paid less than minimum wage, three-quarters denied overtime pay they had earned, and nearly three-fifths not receiving paystub information about their hours and pay. This theft adds up quickly: low-wage workers in just the three cities of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles lost over $56 million per week in unpaid wages.

Violations and losses are even more egregious in the meat industry[hrw.org], where Tyson is a leader. A DOL investigation of the poultry industry[ufcw.org] found that 100% of the 51 processors it had previously investigated continued not to pay for all hours worked, and 65 percent of the plants had misclassified workers as exempt from FLSA. A common practice in the DOL study was not paying employees for "donning and doffing" protective gear, the issue in the Tyson appeal.

As is clear from the Tyson case, neither underfunded and resourced USDOL enforcement nor individual claims are adequate to enforce wage and hour protections. Without the protection of collective action for workers like the Iowa pork processors, companies like Tyson will continue to rip off workers, benefit from doing so, and cry foul when they get caught without records the law requires them to keep.

And maybe that's the answer to the question: Tyson is still stealing from its workers because it can. The Supreme Court should put an end to this farce and rule that Tyson can no longer hide behind its own recordkeeping malfeasance as justification for wage theft.

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• Saving up for a down payment.


• Repairing credit history.


• Expecting higher income in the future, want a larger home than you can buy now.

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Convergence may still proceed but not because of fast growth in emerging countries but because developed countries will grow little in the foreseeable future.

A glance at the draft documents for the Paris agreement -- which I have done -- should reinforce a rather pessimistic outlook for the outcome of the COP 21.

China's pragmatic participation in the international order has served its own interest but also has helped to preserve the good aspects of that order.

China needs others and others need China if the outlook of much slower growth for all in the years to come is to be improved substantially.

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