Tag: politics

A Letter to My Employees

July 16, 2014Comments Off on A Letter to My EmployeesBlog

In the 18 years that I have owned my own business and been your employer, I have never had this conversation with any of you. In light of the recent news regarding health insurance benefits and coverage, I think it is time I explain my thought process as I sit down with my partner each year to go over the health insurance renewal options we are presented. I saw a couple of you in the hall the other day having a respectful debate about the Hobby Lobby decision and could tell that you were really having a debate about abortion and Obamacare and not health insurance benefits.

One of the promises we make to you as your employer when we sit down at the conference table with all of the options in front of us is to never bring our personal politics or beliefs to that table. Before Obamacare and after, we have always faced premium increases each year and had to either accept that or try to find another carrier with similar coverage and lower premiums, or absorb the increase ourselves. Through the years we have done both as long as we didn’t decrease your benefits in any way. Moving forward, those premium increases may be bigger or they may be smaller with the new law changes, but either way we have always felt the obligation to provide you (our employees) with health insurance benefits that would best protect you and your family. We want you to be healthy and happy. We respect you as people and we need you working at your best to serve our clients – effective health insurance contributes to your overall well being.

You will never have to worry that my political party affiliation, or my religious beliefs, will be brought up when those decisions are being made. We are all entitled to believe what we feel is right and those beliefs come from a lifetime lived by each one of us. We all have different parents with different backgrounds and have grown up influenced by a myriad of different things. How can I be an effective employer if I don’t honor those differences and respect your life journey, and how you arrived as an employee for our company? Our company functions like a family and our clients benefit from that because we do respect everybody in this company. We don’t single people out for living with someone when they aren’t married, having a child too young, getting divorced or dating someone of the same gender. Honestly, as your employer I don’t think about it all. I just want you to be as peaceful as you can be working for our company. As long as you aren’t breaking the law, we intend to stay out of every decision you make outside of these doors.

Last year we were given an opportunity to renew our premiums before Obamacare was effective. It was a lower increase if we acted prior to January 1. As we do each year, we looked at all of the carriers and premiums before we arrived at our decision. The only reason that I even looked at the list of doctors and prescriptions was to be sure that everybody was going to be covered if we made a change. I am aware of some of the health issues that you have because I work with you and we refused to change if it was going to impact you in any way. We feel that way because you are the life of our business. If I was going to subject you or your benefits to my personal or religious feelings on any issue, I would be disrespecting how hard you work every day to get up and get kids off to school and then show up here to make sure our clients are getting the best possible service.

I would feel this way if I had two employees or 50,000. You would all be human beings that deserve effective leadership no matter how big our company might be, or what services we deliver. I don’t care if you are a young employee or one of the top paid managers. You all deserve my best efforts to lead this company. My best efforts will keep things like government and religion and bias out of the workplace. You don’t want it here impacting you and neither do I. We show up each day as a team to accomplish tasks that will better all of our lives. We don’t show up to judge each other or fight over who is right or who is wrong in how they choose to live their lives.

When we pick the health insurance benefits for you, we will find the most comprehensive plan we can and let the insurance company decide on the particulars of each of the prescription drugs and doctors. If they just so happen to cover a pill that assists with abortion, I leave it up to you as to whether or not you want to use that benefit. My only concern is to make sure that if you are sick, you will be covered. We will make sure your doctor or specialist is available through the plan we select. We will absorb increases if we have to so that you can pay your bills and feed your family. We will not push our political or religious agenda on you in any way. If we start doing that, we have lost our ability to lead and shouldn’t be your employer. Thank you for working here. You can rest easy tonight knowing that we will always honor this commitment to keep out of your personal life whether we agree with it or not.

Let’s Not Pick Sides

May 21, 2014Comments Off on Let’s Not Pick SidesBlog

I feel like I am part of a massive conspiracy on the part of our government to keep all of us fighting amongst ourselves so that we can’t see what is really happening. Democrats believe that their way is best. Republicans believe they have the upper hand. We all argue back and forth on social media, the news, and in blog posts, and I don’t understand what the fight is about or what we think we are going to accomplish.

None of this makes sense to me and watching the politicians makes me realize that the only way they can continue to get away with their total lack of leadership is to cause the people to fight amongst themselves. Every single day on the news or on Facebook I see posts bashing liberals and conservatives and graphs and charts that prove that one side is better than the other. The side that you are on is of course the side that is right. What if we took the argument deeper? Republicans and Democrats aren’t that far apart if you sit down and start having conversations. People are complex and see the world differently but I think we all could try to agree on some basic ideas to help end the useless fighting:

1) Living in the United States should allow you to be free. As long as you aren’t breaking the law, you should be allowed to live your life the way you see fit. That means you can live where you want, drive what you want, work where you want, date who you want, and yep, here it comes, marry whomever you want (and don’t be crazy people I’m just talking about humans marrying humans). We should all be able to agree that law abiding citizens should be rewarded with freedom of choice.

2) You should be able to choose what works best for you and your family in terms of spirituality or religion. The point is to be a good person and treat everyone you meet with kindness. None of us require a book to tell us that but some of us might want it and should feel free to attend church. We should also agree that if you don’t go to church it doesn’t make you a bad person nor does it take away your ability to be ethical.

3) Fiscal responsibility is important for every single person in this country and every single business (that counts the government). The more people that learn to only spend what they have, the better for others. This means that we all have to work unless we are plainly just too sick to work. This means we all have to pay taxes. This means we all have to be responsible for our lives and any children we bring into the world. If we don’t want the big corporations to make so much money then we all have to stop buying their products (yep, there goes your Grande Java Chip Frappuccino).

4) Everyone should have a right to see a doctor when they are sick. We need to work together to make these costs affordable and provide insurance to the people that want it. This is going to require us to stop fighting and start educating people how to use the health care system most efficiently. Whether you agree with it or not, we have a law that needs some revisions or it is going to fail and then we have even bigger problems. We have to work together to get those revisions in place. Start with the things we all agree on and compromise through the rest.

5) There are always going to be people that are down on their luck or need a helping hand. We should provide that helping hand along with education and tools to help them back up so that they can feel good as a contributing member of society. We can’t make this help endless to able bodied people.

6) Having a child is a personal decision. It is not the government’s decision. There are excellent ways to prevent pregnancy and they should be used if you don’t want a child. If you screw this one up (which you shouldn’t), you have to decide what to do next. You have three options. All of them take careful consideration and none of them are easy. If you don’t want to take the risk of getting pregnant, I think you know what not to do.

7) If you have that child, make sure to remember discipline. They need rules, boundaries, structure, and respect for authority. Don’t be afraid to make sure they behave. This doesn’t require beating them but it does require your time. So put down your phone or your wine glass and take care of your children. Please don’t expect teachers or coaches to raise your children. That’s not their job. You children need to be home. With you. Lots.

If we all could agree on some basic principles, it seems like it would be easy to elect leaders that will be ethical and responsible. We need to understand that many of our current leaders are bought and paid for no matter what party they say they are representing. The whole system is broken and until we stand up as Americans and stop fighting each other and demand change, we are stuck with a country that is slowly but surely losing everything it once stood for. We need men and women who understand budgeting and how taxes work. We need accountants and scientists and teachers and stay at home Mom’s to go and run the country. We don’t need any more lawyers or lobbyists in Washington. We need to stop picking sides because the answer is right in the middle staring at all of us. Do your homework, research the candidates, and maybe this time vote for a name you don’t recognize. If we just keep picking the same leaders and get the same lousy results, haven’t we proven that we support insanity?

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