I went out to lunch yesterday with Linda Hahn, executive director of the Metropolitan Career Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit workforce development organization. We were talking about barriers to employment, especially for those moving from welfare to work. One of the biggest? Lack of childcare, she said. Often students can't even complete their training because their childcare arrangements fall apart, despite what seem to be valiant efforts. 

Even when women have a reasonably secure situation for day care, it can fall apart easily if a child gets sick and needs to stay home. You need back-up and back-up to the back-up. None of that is easy. Some people always have an "emergency" and it is easy to wonder whether those people are gaming their employers. But I think people go through extraordinary lengths to work, especially when resources are scarce. What should be done?

When companies give "sick" time, they shouldn't be strict about who is sick. How many people have called in "sick," when they are perfectly fine, but are taking care of a youngster? It's upsetting to have to lie in that circumstance. It is upsetting to have a sick child and it is really upsetting to have to choose between your child and your job. Lying breeds cynicism, but cooperation breeds loyalty and a better ability to manage the demands of the workplace with the realities of life.   

Except for the fact that I love Philadelphia and I want any of our teams to win, I don't care that much about baseball (Go Phillies!!!!!!). But I love any story about management and sports because the lessons apply to any endeavor. So, I'd like to recommend "Money Ball," a baseball book by Michael Lewis. 

Here's how pathetic I am. Even though I read and loved this book, I can never remember the name of the team (it's the Oakland Athletics, way formerly, the Philadelphia Athletics). Anyway, they had a low hiring budget, so their manager, Billy Beane, trusted some number-crunchers who developed a theory about what type of players would create the best success of the team. Success was defined as ability to win games.

The stat the crunchers settled on was not the usual batting average, or runs-batted-in. They looked at on-base percentage (whatever that is) and slugging percentage (another mystery term). The players with high stats in those elements hadn't moved to the top of the draft lists and so were cheaper. The debate was over whether these stats were more predictive of success or  whether the "gut" feeling of scouts had more validity.

Even though I didn't recognize the name of one player and didn't have a clue who Billy Beane is or was, I loved this book, because it raises the question of the value of measurement. 

It seems so easy, in a way. But it is really tricky to come up with a definition of success. (Read a similar discussion in the business book classic "Good to Great.") And then, it is even harder to find the measurement that will match that definition. Because baseball is such a statistics-rich sport with a relative narrow range of goals, Billy Beane's job was fairly easy, although he had to have tremendous courage to overcome immense pressure from his scouts and other baseball old timers.

In the end, .... well, you'll just have to read the book. Meanwhile, go Phillies! Even I know enough to hate the Yankees.        

The Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board, in collaboration with CVS Caremark, is distributing vouchers to 4,000 of its registered participants for free flu shots this fall.

The vouchers are now available daily from 2-4 p.m. at all five PA CareerLink office locations in Philadelphia until all are distributed. The program covers the seasonal flu shot only and not the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccines. Vouchers can be redeemed with proper identification at a participating CVS/pharmacy and at scheduled flu shot clinics inside select stores.

The program started Thursday, so get in there fast if you want a free voucher. CareerLink will give the vouchers to registered individuals with photo identification. Nationwide, CVS is spending $3 million to vaccinate 100,000 unemployed individuals in 20 areas.

Yesterday's blog post quoted a survey talking about wage declines. U.S. Labor statistics confirm the trend.  In New York county (which is the same as New York city), weekly wages declined by 23.4 percent in a year to an average weekly wage of $2,149 during the first quarter. Across the United States, weekly wages dropped by $23, or 2.2 percent, to $882. Locally wages went down 0.5 to 2.4 percent depending on the county. The big exception? Camden County! Wages actually rose by a hair, 0.1 percent, to $877. 

Biggest losers were Montgomery and Delaware County, where wages dropped 2.4 percent to $1,162 in Montco and $941 in Delco. Weekly wages in Philadelphia county, aka the city, dropped to $1050 in Philadelphia, down 1.4 percent.  

The upshot of this wretched economy is that compensation is beginning to decline as people take just about any position to stay employed. For example, in information technology overall, national starting salaries are expected to decline by an average of 1.3 percent, according to a survey by Robert Half International, a staffing company.

Within that, one promising job is as a  network administrators, especially now that cloud computing, voice over Internet protocol and software as service make the job more complicated. Network administrators can expect starting salaries in the range of $54,500 to $80,250. Information systems security management is also big, with top pay hitting $130,750.  Systems engineers are still being hired to maintain complex infrastructures. Their pay ranges from $64,250 to $93,250, the survey said.

Another declining group is administrative and office support. Pay in that category is declining by 2.2 percent next year, the survey shows. Best job in that category is also a tough one to get -- executive assistant. Executive assistants who can support multiple managers and adapt readily to change can earn as much as $47,000. Medical records clerks and customer service representatives are also showing salary increases, despite the general decline in the category, with top pay in those two jobs between $30,750 and $31,500.   

Monday's tragic accident on 21st and Walnut Street where a worker on a lift fell to his death from 125 feet got me thinking about safety and pressures on the job. When people get hurt on the job, it's easy to try to focus the blame -- either on the worker or on the company. And truly, there are really rotten companies who don't take the precautions they should, showing complete disregard for the health and safety of their workers. But I think the situation can be more complex, especially in tough times.

When your job is in jeopardy, as almost all jobs are now, you may push yourself a little harder to stay employed. I see it at our place where people are working longer and longer hours. If you are working in a factory or on a construction site, you may take a little risk, not shut off a machine to grab something or you make a careless move. Why would anyone do that? Because lots of times, you can get away with it. You assess the risk -- maybe not much, compared with alternative, losing a job or being the first guy cut if there's a layoff and you might say, OK, this won't be a problem. You might say that knowing all the company rules and policies and guidelines -- all those things that are correct on paper, but somehow don't always make it to the real world when jobs are at stake.

One person I interviewed for my story in today's Inquirer made the point that when there's an accident, it often happens because two or three things went wrong at the same time. 

In the case of the lift, it's still not clear whether James Wilson, the man who died, moved the lift. If he did, he knew better, because, by all reports, he was highly trained and would have known not to move the vehicle with the lift extended. But, you can just picture being up 125 feet and thinking, I just want to slide over a foot or so to the left. No big deal. I'll take a chance. Who would imagine that just below was a utility panel that would collapse under the weight? What kind of cruel coincidence was that? Who could even see that panel from 125 feet up?  So now we're up to three things wrong -- a move (if that happened), the panel and the sheer bad luck of driving (if there is a move) there instead of a foot to the right or left.If the lift had been low, maybe the machine would have been stable enough to stay upright despite the broken  panel, or maybe the consequences wouldn't have been as severe. Or maybe the machine was sitting on the panel for awhile and the weight of it strained and broke it. 

Then there's the another thing. The company had a man on the ground, which is a standard good safety practice, but he had to watch two machines, which were not in eyesight of one another. He had gone around the corner to check on the other side when the accident occurred. Maybe the economy dictated having one man in that post instead of two? And maybe everyone would have known more about the terrain if they had gotten the proper permits.

Even assuming the best of intentions on everyone's part, we now have multiple contributing factors, with the economy underneath it adding its subtle and perhaps deadly influence.

Please everyone, be careful at work.

One more goofy survey from Careerbuilders, the online job site. I couldn't resist the undone zipper and the "something in your nose" parts.

In a survey of 4,000 workers, 67 percent said they'd tell a peer if a zipper was down. Enough said. It's only interesting if office romance is involved.   

About half would say something if the peer had "something in your nose." Here's my evaluation. Wouldn't it depend on what the something was? Suppose for example, the something was their boss' tuckus, because they were trying to save their jobs. Then it might be rude to say anything, not to mention impolitic. Excuse me, Charlie, but you have Mr. Smith's derriere on your nose -- probably not a good thing to point out. Charlie has probably already noticed the presence of aforementioned derriere and might find your remark cheeky. Who knows, Charlie may be embarrassed, or angry. As a workplace expert, my advice is not to risk it.

I love the delicate language in this survey. What else would be in people's noses? It reads like they park their cars in there. Excuse me Charlie, you have a Nissan in your nose. That's not a problem, but the tire treads are unsightly.  

Looks like the economy is a reason that people are calling in sick. Yup, they are sick of working long hours, sick of the stress, sick of doing the work of three laid-off colleagues, sick of worried that they are going to be fired, sick of looking perky to avoid being fired. Some 28 percent of employers surveyed about "hooky" days think more employees are calling in sick because of stress and burnout according to the economy.

"Longer hours and heavier workloads are common in the current economic climate and employers are becoming more flexible with their time off policies," said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder, the online job site that surveyed 3,163 hiring managers and 4,721 workers in late August and early September. "Sixty-three percent of companies we surveyed said they let their team members use sick days for mental health days."

About a third of the employees admitted to calling in sick at least once a year with most of them saying they just didn't feel like coming in. Nearly a third said they called in sick to go to the doctor. Sleep, housework and errand running were other reasons and one in 10 used the time to spend with their families. Interestingly, 12 percent called in sick because of a work-related reason -- sometimes to give themselves more time to finish projects for work or to avoid a meeting or the wrath of boss, colleague or client.

The part about the economy rings true. But I also like the idea of blaming the economy. At least it's good for something. Do think if the economy were better I could play the violin?

If you are polishing your resume, the old-fashioned chronological resume with the most recent job on top is still the favorite, according to 75 percent of those surveyed by  Accountemps, a staffing firm that specializes in temporary accounting, finance and bookkeeping professionals. The company quizzed 150 senior executives at large firms.

"Chronological resumes allow job seekers to present their career progression to employers in a straight-forward, easy-to-follow way," Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps and author of "Job Hunting for Dummies," said in a press-release about the survey. "Functional resumes, which emphasize skill sets rather than jobs held, are popular among professionals in career transition or who have had lengthy gaps in employment, but they are not a favorite of employers. It is often better to address a career challenge directly than to try to write around it."

Address employment gaps in your cover letter. "In this economic environment, hiring managers understand that people could be out of work through no fault of their own," Messmer advises.