Facts and Myths of Zenith

At Zenith, we believe knowledge is power. We want to educate you about workers' compensation so you can separate fact from fiction and make smart choices in running your business.  Here are some of the common facts and myths of workers' compensation. FACT: Workers' compensation is a "no-fault" system. Employees who are legitimately injured as a result of their work receive benefits as set by law, regardless of whose fault the injury is. FACT: Workers' compensation covers two categories of work related injuries and illnesses. Injuries or illnesses (including death) that result from a specific work-related accident; and Injuries or illnesses that occur over a period of time that are directly related to employment. For example, repeated lifting of heavy items at work that causes shoulder strain can be covered. FACT: Some injuries or conditions may not be covered by workers' compensation. Injuries or conditions that develop over time can be harder to define. For example, a back strain could result from years of yard work at home, mental stress could result from personal problems that have nothing to do with the job, and a heart attack might date back to prior medical history. FACT: Workers' compensation covers more than medical bills. Serious injuries may require hospitalization, the use of medical specialists and longer periods of recuperation, resulting in time off from work. Workers' compensation benefits may include: Payment of all appropriate medical costs; Payment of a percentage of an employee's pre-injury salary; Vocational rehabilitation (as required); and Assistance with helping the employee return to work, possibly in a temporary, transitional work assignment or in a modified or alternative job. MYTH: I have had no claims so my insurance costs should stay the same. THE TRUTH IS...insurance costs are not just about your business. Your premium pricing reflects the pool of costs for all customers, including, but not limited to: Healthcare costs, which are rising at a much greater rate than inflation; Businesses that have claims; Fraudulent claims; Evolving types of workplace hazards such as asbestos, carpal tunnel and terrorism; and Economic factors. To the extent that Zenith's expertise can impact this pool of costs, our customers will pay less over the long term for workers' compensation insurance. MYTH: You can't do much to control your workers' compensation premium. THE TRUTH IS...the choices you make influence how much you'll ultimately spend on workers' compensation coverage, as well as the hidden costs of injuries to your business. By promoting safety, you reduce the odds of employee injuries. By reporting a claim to us promptly, you let us help you keep claim costs down. By encouraging an injured employee to return to work in a transitional role, you can cut claim costs. All of these actions can lower your premium. MYTH: Fraud isn't that big a deal in workers' comp. THE TRUTH IS... workers' compensation costs employers and insurers nationwide millions of dollars. Help us address this problem by learning to recognize red flags that might indicate fraud and then by contacting us as soon as possible. MYTH: When an employee is ill or injured, you should butt out. THE TRUTH IS...your active involvement plays a big role on many levels. By you and your employees keeping in touch with your injured co-worker, you show you care and send a message that everyone values his or her contribution to the team. By discussing transitional work with the employee's doctor, you can craft a plan to get the employee back to work faster. By keeping Zenith in the loop, you help us help you manage the process. MYTH: The less you bring up workers' compensation with your employees, the better. THE TRUTH IS...you have everything to gain by helping employees understand their workers' compensation rights and benefits—and your rights as their employer. Raising awareness reduces confusion and clarifies everyone's role in ensuring that injuries are, first, prevented, and when they do occur, that the claim process flows smoothly. Not talking about workers' compensation doesn't make the issue go away. In fact, it often leads to ignorance and misunderstanding among employees. MYTH: All doctors charge roughly the same for their services, so it doesn't matter which medical provider your injured employee uses. THE TRUTH IS...the same medical services can vary in price by hundreds—even thousands—of dollars. In fact, some doctors and medical clinics over-bill us and even charge us for phony procedures. We scrutinize medical bills to help reduce your claim costs, which in turn can lower your premium. We also work hard to identify doctors and medical providers who are honest and focus on providing quality care. MYTH: When we ask you to keep accurate records — such as classifying employees' job duties properly — it helps us more than it helps you. THE TRUTH IS...we're in this together. We share the same goals: to keep your business running productively with minimal disruption by employee injuries. By keeping accurate records, correctly classifying employees' job duties and reporting payroll in a timely manner, you avoid surprises in your premium cost and enable us to serve you better.

Read More

Horse Puzzle

The puzzle is there are 25 horses among which you need to find out the fastest 3 horses. You can conduct race among at most 5 horses to find out their relative speed. At no point you can find out the actual speed of the horse in a race. Find out how many races are required to get the top 3 horses. The answer for this puzzle is given below.

Answer :

         Seven.
The first 5 to find the 3 fastest in each group and the sixth with the winners of each group.Now we know the fastest horse.
The second fastest horse must either be the second fastest in the sixth race or the second fastest horse in the final winners first race.
In the first case, the third fastest horse can either be the third fastest horse in the sixth race or the second fastest horse in either the fastest or second fastest horses first race.
Otherwise the third fastest horse could either be the second fastest horse in the sixth race or the third fastest horse in the final winners first race.
This makes for a total of five horses for the seventh, and final, race.

Read More

EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION COMPARE IN ACROSS COUNTRIES

Executive Compensation:

Executive compensation packages consist normally of various components. In order to categorize executive compensation, several distinctions can be made. It is possible to distinguish between fixed and variable compensation, between compensation in cash and non-cash compensation and between deferred and immediate compensation.Fixed compensation comprises in the first place the salary of the executive which may be regarded as the basis of the compensation package. In addition, many companies grant their executives certain benefits and allowances in kind, including the private use of company cars, aircraft's, financial counselling and home security. Certain companies also provide for are imbursement for tax liabilities produced by other components and perquisites obtained by the CEO. The determination of fixed compensation is usually based on a “competitive bench marking” which employs a general salary survey and detailed analysis of specific industries or market peers (Murphy, 1999, p. 9).2 Variable compensation can be structured in a variety of ways and may be granted on an annual or a long term basis. Annual variable compensation is either accorded on a discretionary basis, or based on predefined performance criteria.3 Performance criteria can be based on individual, business unit or corporate performance and may include thresholds or ceilings limiting the amount of payment (Lynch and Perry, 2003). Criticism in some countries, for instance in the UK, has focused on the fact that the bonus targets remain frequently unpublished. Further, Bruce et al. (2007) find an increasingly complex structure of bonus targets which is linked to higher bonus pay but not to higher shareholder return.

EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION   COMPARE   IN ACROSS COUNTRIES

This section looks at executive pay in six countries where disclosure practices permit comparisons. The six countries in question cover a wide geographical scope. They are Australia; Germany; Hong-Kong, China; the Netherlands; South Africa; and the United States. For each of these countries, executive pay in the 15 largest companies is examined. The companies are selected on the basis of the “Forbes’ “Global 2000” ranking of 2008”.4 This helps to identify companies according to the same uniform for all the countries. As suggested by theory (Murphy (1999)) and established by empirical research in various countries, including in the US (Tosi et al 1998), Australia (Merhebi et al (2006)), Portugal (Fernandez 2008) France (Dardour 2008) and Germany (albeit with mixed results according to Haid and Yurtoglu (2006); Rang 2006), executive pay increases with company size. This implies that the level of executive pay in the 15 largest companies is likely to be higher than average executive pay for the economy as a whole. The purpose of the data provided here is not to furnish an all-embracing account of compensation practices but rather to provide a snapshot of developments in the countries concerned in order to show structural similarities, differences and common trends.5 Because of the above-mentioned methodological difficulties concerning the calculation of share-based remuneration, the comparisons are confined to pay components which do not depend directly on share values (i.e. salary and perquisites, bonuses and deferred compensation). On average, CEOs earn between $ 1.4 million and nearly $ 10.3 million per year (plus stock options), that is between 71 and 183 times the wage of the average worker Executive pay in 2007 for the 15 largest companies in the six selected countries is shown in Table 1. The best paid executives are in the United States. In that country, average CEO pay exceeds $ 10 million per year, that is about 183 times the wage of the average American worker. Executives in Hong-Kong, China and South Africa are paid much less than their US counterparts. However, even there, CEO pay represents between 54 and 148 times the wage of the average worker in the two countries.

Tab. 1:

 Average Compensation by employee category, 2007

 CEO Average Executive

USD Ratio of compensation per employee USD Ratio of compensation per employee Australia 6,001,060 135.3 2,415,012 54.5 Germany 6,796,643 147.8 3,767,554 81.9 Hong Kong (China) 2,723,425 160.2 1,075,757 63.3 Netherlands 3,578,286 71.4 2,171,016 43.3 South Africa 1,370,824 104.4 934,378 71.1 United States 10,309,701 182.6 6,297,870 111.5

It is important to note that these data provide an underestimate of the total remuneration of executives. Indeed shared-based compensation is not taken into account. A rough estimate based on available information suggests that the represent between 25 percent (in Germany) and 60 percent (in the United States). This rough appreciation illustrates that the total amount of executive compensation would be considerably higher if share-based compensation were taken into consideration. To a significant extent, executive pay depends, in principle, on individual and firm performance. In Australia, German, Hong-Kong, China and the United States, the variable component exceeds the fixed component. But even in the other two countries (the Netherlands and South Africa) the variable component is significant.

Ongoing policy debates on Executive Compensation

 In many countries proposals have been put forward with a view to mitigate the problems regarding executive compensation which have been illustrated by this study. Given the strong differences across countries regarding executive compensation, the proposals are highly country specific. A number of proposals deal with the institutional framework in which executive compensation is determined. Some of those proposals argue for an enhanced role of the shareholder meeting, usually referred to as “Say on Pay”. The focus of the debate in the United States is current on a non-binding vote of share-holders on executive compensation matters. While not providing shareholders with a veto on compensation packages, shareholders would have an institutionalized platform to express their disagreement with the remuneration policy of their company (Gopalan, 2007).24 Similarly, a recent proposal of the Austrian trade unions argues for the strengthening of information rights of the shareholders on executive compensation matters (Arbeitnehmerkammer Wien, 2008). Other proposals favour an enhancement of the committee in charge of determination of compensation. For instance, German trade unions argue for a stronger role of the German supervisory board and in particular for a more intensive participation of the employee representatives in the compensation determination process (German Trade Union Federation 2008). Certain proposals also deal with the amount and the criteria employed to fix executive compensation. Proposals from German and Austrian trade unions suggest that, when determining executive compensation, not only personal performance and firm performance but also other criteria such as social and environmental sustainability should be taken into account (German Trade Union Federation 2008 and Arbeitnehmerkammer Wien, 2008). A third group of proposals deals with a more rigid taxation of executive compensation. It is suggested that companies should no longer be able to deduct executive compensation as a business expense. According to these proposals, this would set a negative incentive for excessively high executive compensation by increasing the compensation costs of the company. Proposals along those lines have been put forward, among other, in the US and in Austria (Anderson et al. 2007 and Arbeitnehmerkammer Wien, 2008).

Read More

DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2015

#1: Content Curation Tools

With micro and visual content giving the highest impact, tools to manage the creation and publication of this content from different sources become important to fuel the content marketing machine.

#2: Content Recommendation, Personalisation, Retargeting and Effectiveness Review Tools

Even if you have won the battle to create outstanding content, site managers still have the challenge of connecting audiences with the most relevant content. Site personalisation technologies have been used for a long time for targeting products and offers to visitors to customer sites, but these have not been used so widely outside the E commerce setting. New tools make this possible.

Examples include:

• idio (B2B and B2C content recommendations)
• Barilliance (Ecommerce content and offer personalisation)

#3: Content distribution services

Here content distribution means organic and paid sharing via social networks. The tools featured here focus on organic distribution

• Hootsuite
• Sendible
• Oktopost

There are surprisingly few tools to help advertise or remarket across social media. AdRoll is one of the best known featuring remarking via Facebook, Twitter, plus mobile and media sites. 

#4: : Integrated SEO, Content and Social Media Management?

There is a question mark here since this is an, as yet unachievable goal. The tools I recommend here originated as SEO told for reviewing keywords and back links, but are now expanding into social media and content management. They’re also featuring more management tools and workflow for multiple people in a tool. Analytics SEO is a leader in this area.

Examples include:

• Moz
• Raven Tools
• Analytics SEO

 #5: User Engagement and value optimisation

Most businesses use a web analytics services to track visitors to their site, with Google Analytics most popular as a free, but very powerful service. While they can tell businesses the number of users, their source and their journeys through the site, their limitation is that most data is shown in aggregate for different segments. These tools, which have been available for several years now offer a user-based, value-based focus which Google has been applying.

• Kissmetrics
• Mixpanel (Mobile focus plus web)
• Chartbeat (Publisher focus)
• Ecommera (Ecommerce)

#6: Actionable Analytics and intelligent analytics

Google Analytics and the other analytics services require a good deal of experience to know HOW to apply the data they present. Only skilled analysts can really mine actionable insight. Tools that present data more clearly to novice and management users and integrate action can help here. Google hasn’t evolved its Intelligence service, but new tools are becoming available including a new dashboard and recommendations service that will launch from Smart Insights.

• Google Analytics Intelligence and Alerts
• Quill Engage
• Smart Insights

#7: Wearables, Augmented and Virtual reality

Finally we come to what’s cool and Hot in technology. I’ve kept this ’til last since I suspect it will make the smallest commercial difference to most companies. All of these are due to be launched in 2015, so watching the popularity of mainstream adoption and marketing applications of their apps should be fascinating!

• Apple Watch Apps
• Google Glass
• Facebook Oculus Rift

Read More

Employee Compensation the real meaning

Employee compensation is what employees receive in return for what they contribute to the organization. The first thing that comes to mind is, of course, wages or salary. But there are many other ways to compensate employees for their work. Some individuals may be willing to take slightly lower pay in return for better benefits or hours. 

Compensation is determined first by laws put forth by the government that make sure that all employees are treated equitably. For example, compensation should not vary based upon race, creed, or gender. Next, it is determined by state laws and then it is determined by the policies of the organization. Lastly, the human resources department and managers determine the final compensation that an employee will receive.

The total compensation for an employee includes more than monetary compensation, including benefits, retirement contributions, stock options, deferred compensation, paid vacation, and the cost of special employee perks. Average total compensation as a metric is distinct from the cost per employee or employee overhead, which can include figures such as the cost of location and technology for each employee.

The most obvious reason for compensating employees is that an organization should not expect something for nothing. But by giving generous compensation, an organization attracts better employees and retains them for longer. Compensation is what organizations use to compete for top talent. 

Both monetary and non-monetary compensation options are available for organizations to consider. Organizations and managers can be as creative as they need to be in order to generously compensate employees.

Employees today do not work for cash alone but they expect something “extra”. This “extra” is known as employee benefits or fringe benefits, they are non-financial form of compensation offered in addition to cash salary to enrich their work life.

Therefore apart from the fact that employee compensation is a social and legal requirement it also brings benefits such as job satisfaction, employee motivation, low absenteeism and controlled turnover.

Read More