Archives For careers

Link: Sandra Bullock taught me everything I need to know about success and happiness

April 2, 2010 — Leave a comment

Op-Ed Columnist – The Sandra Bullock Trade – NYTimes.com

“…just as the old sages predicted, worldly success has shallow roots while interpersonal bonds permeate through and through.”

“The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting.” Streetblogs.net response.

“Most schools and colleges spend too much time preparing students for careers and not enough preparing them to make social decisions.”

“Most governments release a ton of data on economic trends but not enough on trust and other social conditions.” Related: G.D.P. ain’t everything in France | Pursuing happiness is a new idea | G.N.H. | Bhutan is hip to it | Bhutan is still hip to it

My only question is what do people who are filthy rich say about money and happiness? Wouldn’t one’s income affect his or her evaluation of this concept?

 

 

 

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Article in The Albuquerque Tribune: Workers: TV Production Manager

November 20, 2006 — Leave a comment

Around 10:20 a.m. on a Friday, Lester Berman received a cell-phone call informing him of what he calmly predicted would be a $10,000 problem.

An actress on the “Wildfire” TV series, for which he is production manager, was stuck in I-25 traffic. The car snarl had already pushed the shoot back 20 minutes. The minutes, no, seconds, were piling up. On a 200-worker production going through roughly $2.36 a second, seconds count.

Berman smiled and told the caller what to do.

He says 50 times a day, someone comes to him with a problem. A crew member slept late. A piece of equipment failed to arrive. Traffic snared the actress.

As production manager, it’s his job to fix them, often by taking calls on one of his two cell phones (one based in Los Angeles and one for the local production).

When a script needs to be turned into a schedule and a budget, producers go to him. He negotiates salaries with cast and crew. If the plan he comes up gets approved, he’s the one to make sure the production stays in budget and finishes on time.

“The key to my job is organization,” he says. “There are hundreds of elements that go into making one day.”

He loves the work for allowing him to help turn an idea on paper into something people can see. He’s been to places such as Hong Kong, the former Soviet Union and Europe. Kevin Costner’s arm has draped his shoulder. Donald Sutherland bought him an espresso machine.

It’s not all glamour. It’s a lot of 5 a.m. mornings and late nights. Berman warns that the hours and travel can be hard on family, can make it tough to maintain a relationship.

Still, after doing the job for more than 30 years on numerous films and TV shows, he has no regrets.

“I really enjoy producing,” he says.

He got his start while pursuing a graduate degree in film at New York University in the early 1970s. An Italian documentary film crew called a friend of Berman’s looking for help. The friend didn’t want the job, but Berman did. He started off making $3 an hour driving the crew’s van. He quickly moved up in the ranks, and traveled the world while learning the ropes of his job.

He recommends getting any work possible on a production as the first step to landing a job like his. Yes, a degree is helpful for the intellectual background, he says, but getting on a production is where you learn the dirty details behind movie magic.

“It doesn’t matter what position you start at,” he says. “If you spend two or three weeks on a film, you’ll find out all the elements that are necessary to make it work.”

Expect to make $100 to $150 a day starting out, Berman says. Stick with it, and you’ll move up to $200, to $300. Get a job as a production manager, and look for pay of $4,000 to $10,000 a week, if you’re part of the Directors Guild of America union, as Berman is.

You won’t be alone looking for a job like his. In Los Angeles, Berman says, there are 4,000 to 5,000 production managers. Fifty of them may chase one opening.

You’ll need to be organized, Berman says. You’ll need to be able to clearly identify problems and their solutions. People skills are important, too, he says, and he practices what he preaches.

During a visit to the set of “Wildfire,” he greets almost every early-morning worker by name, giving them a smile, a handshake, a pat on the arm. He holds doors open for people.

He’s dressed comfortably in a green plaid shirt, black pants and shoes better for walking than sitting behind a desk. He’s relaxed, but when a worker asks him about the expense of shipping some equipment, he instantly recites the costs as if they’re written on a list before him.

Observing a horse being unloaded for a shot outside a stable, he notes that someone with less experience would be drowning in the hundreds of details that were coordinated to make the scene happen.

There’s no bravado to his statement. He says it matter-of-factly, the same way he describes his encounters with the famous: “They’re just people.”

His ease arises from more than 30 years of experience. He worked on “Superman” when George Reeves played the hero. He worked on “Suspect Zero,” the first production in the state to use New Mexico’s new incentives. Other films on his r‚sum‚ include “The Postman,” “Wild Orchid” and “The Beastmaster.”

The way he sees it, production managers play a big part in making it possible for creativity to happen. No matter how brilliant an artist’s vision may be, he notes, if the cameras, crew and cast don’t know where to go, what to do and when to do it, nothing will ever get made.

And when it comes to the expensive process of making movies, money management can make or break careers.

“If I’m a very creative person and if most of the film didn’t come in on budget, I wouldn’t be working,” he says. “It has be organized in a kind of way that everything has to be perfect.”

SIDEBAR: GET A JOB

Since 2002, hundreds of local film crew workers have been hired due to a slew of film incentives that draw numerous productions to the state.

The incentives include tax breaks and loans up to $15 million. The loans require productions to hire New Mexicans for crew positions.

Lester Berman, production manager on a TV series being shot in New Mexico, says the incentives have been extremely attractive to producers. He suggests anyone interested in working in the film industry get any job he or she can on a production. You can catch up on productions and opportunities coming to the state at www.nmfilm.com, the state Film Office’s Web site.

There’s also training for crew positions offered by Central New Mexico Community College. Visit www.cnm.edu for more information.

Expect to make $100 to $150 a day starting out, Berman says. Stick with it, and you’ll move up to $200, to $300. Get a job as a production manager, and look for pay of $4,000 to $10,000 a week, if you’re part of the Directors Guild of America union, as Berman is.

SIDEBAR: TRENDS

Since Lester Berman began working as a production manager in films and television more than 30 years ago, the veteran of the field has seen it get a lot more competitive.

“If there are 50 big feature films made in Hollywood, there might be 3,000 people trying to get those jobs,” he says.

Another change came with computers. Working out budgets and schedules moved from pen and paper to computer screens and keyboards. He says it simplified the work.

What hasn’t changed, he says, are the core duties and skills needed for the job.

Production managers still turn a script into a schedule of shoots with a budget. They negotiate salaries of cast and crew. They manage a production to make sure it finishes on time and within budget.

He says those tasks take strong organization abilities, a talent for creative problem-solving and people skills to spare.

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Article in The Albuquerque Tribune: Sticking with one employer has its rewards

September 4, 2006 — Leave a comment

In the job applications that Toni Minoli reviews as general manager of Sadie’s restaurant, she sometimes reads about work stints as short as a few months.

Not much time compared to her 33 years with the restaurant on Fourth Street Northwest.

“People my age were brought up with more loyalty and diligence and quality of work,” she says. “It’s just amazing the kids these days.”

Look at what the U.S. Department of Labor says: Workers between 20 and 24 years old in 2004 had a median tenure of 1.3 years with their employer. Get a little older – 25 to 34 – and their job duration rises to 2.9 years. By ages 35 to 44, the median tenure climbs to 4.9 years.

It keeps climbing as workers get older, but tops out at 9.6 years – drops in the bucket compared to Minoli and two other New Mexico women who collectively have 84 years of one-employer job experience.

When asked about their commitment in a country of company hoppers, these loyal employees talk about about good treatment, good pay and good fun.

Seniority has some perks, too.

33 years

Minoli, 49, never thought she’d be in the restaurant business for so long.

“I intended to go to school, graduate and go be an accountant,” she says while seated in a quiet dining room at Sadie’s. “I never intended on staying.”

But with employers who were more like family than bosses, the career that began as a 16-year-old busser proved to be a good fit.

“It would be like leaving my home if I left,” Minoli says. “They’ve treated me like their daughter.”

The variety of her roles at the restaurant helped, too.

After bussing, the Albuquerque native waited tables, was a bartender and dabbled in the kitchen. In 1981, she took on managing responsibilities.

As general manager today, her tasks include payroll, scheduling, hiring and occasional conversations with the phone company over a bill.

“I have been able to change,” she says. “It’s rewarding.”

For those who skip from employer to employer, Minoli has this message: You’re missing out.

“You don’t know if you’re going to like it in two months,” she says.

Stick around, she says, and you might discover parts of a business that fascinate you. There’s personal growth.

“It helps you learn how to focus . . . how to be responsible,” Minoli says.

And after investing years in Sadie’s, she has a flexible schedule that makes arranging time off easy.

Minoli said she takes inspiration from her mother, who worked for 18 years as an administrative assistant with the Red Cross. She encouraged hard work and loyalty to an employer, and told Minoli that switching jobs could make matters worse.

“The grass,” Minoli says, “isn’t always greener on the other side.”

27 years

For 46 years, Sherry Anderson’s father worked at Sandia National Laboratories.

“Back then, you found people working like that,” says the Albuquerque native, while seated in her office at Berger Briggs Real Estate and Insurance in Downtown. “It’s just not that way anymore.”

Well, not entirely.

After 27 years with Berger Briggs, Anderson can see working another 15 to 20.

“I’m comfortable here,” says the personal lines manager. “It’s a good place to work.”

The pay is right, Anderson says, and there’s not too much pressure. Still, during the first six months on the job in 1979, it was tough. Adjusting to the work stressed her to the point of tears. But her son and daughter depended on her and that kept her focused.

“You can’t be moving around,” she says. “You have to have that income to raise them. I just stayed here and it’s been real good to me, this job.”

There was plenty of opportunity to keep her loyal. Without the chance to advance, things may have been different, Anderson says.

“If you have an opportunity in a company to work up, then I’d say stick it out,” she says. “But if you don’t think you’re going to (advance), you can go somewhere else and move up.”

Now in her 50s, Anderson sees an impatience in today’s young people that she says can hurt their chances of advancing.

“They want to start at the top and that’s just not possible,” she says. “You have to start somewhere at the bottom and work your way up. If you switch around all the time . . . you’ll never get up there.”

24 years

After dealing with some of her customers at Page One bookstore for years, manager Paula Parker has another word for them: friends.

She says it’s a transformation made possible by having the time to develop relationships with them over her two dozen years with the company.

Without those years, “you miss making friends that last,” she says.

It’s a level of commitment she sees missing in younger workers of today.

Parker, 49, isn’t sure why. She guesses it could be that they were given too much, too easily, and now expect too much, too fast.

In her years at Page One, other careers flashed as possibilities.

In 1986, Parker sold half of her pen-and-ink drawings at a solo art show. “I was very proud of that,” she says, but didn’t pursue her art further, and draws little today.

In the meantime, she found joy in working with elderly customers.

“They bring something out in me,” she says. “Maybe I missed my calling, which is what some of the guys here tell me.”

But she’s a lover of books, and has a simple explanation for why she keeps coming back: “I just like what I do.”

FACTBOX: HOW LONG?

From 1983 to 2004, the U.S. Department of Labor looked at how long employees stayed at a job. Here’s a glance at the median years of tenure for workers 25 and older:

2004: 4.9
2002: 4.7
2000: 4.7
1998: 4.7
1996: 5.0
1991: 4.8
1987: 5.0
1983: 5.0

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics

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Article in The Albuquerque Tribune: Would you rather be a CEO or a `chief realization officer'?

July 31, 2006 — Leave a comment

DuWayne Ordonez believes fun can change the world.

If you doubt his belief, look at Ordonez’s job title: “outdoor recreation CEO of fun” with the city.

“I just made it up,” says Ordonez, who also has the more formal, but far less used, title of “outdoor recreation section head.” “If you’re happy, trying to get along, looking for a way to solve the problem rather than blame somebody, I think it will be a better world.”

Like other professionals around Albuquerque adopting out-of-the-ordinary job titles, Ordonez says the odd moniker helps communicate that his work is more of a personal mission than a collection of money-earning tasks.

The creative combination of words, he and others of titular distinction say, is a playful light: They elucidate responsibilities in such a way to reveal the soul behind the role, and, at worst, generate friendly responses of ice-breaking curiosity.

“People say, `Oh, you’re not really that,’ ” he says, noting his title occurred to him 10 years ago – and stuck – after attending a seminar about management strategies. “They think it’s funny. They don’t believe it. So I’ll pull out my official city business card and say, `See, it’s right there.’ ”

The distinct approach to a title has spread to Ordonez’s team of workers; as of three years ago, they’re “adventure leaders,” not “recreation staff.”

Looking beyond the CEO of fun’s office, it’s apparent he and his crew aren’t the only ones in the Duke City with an interesting calling card.

Creative Warrior

Back in 2002, Albuquerque resident Amy Turner considered putting “Owner” on her business card – after all, the company selling bathroom advertisements was hers – but it seemed pretentious for a one-woman show.

“I thought of it as, `What do I do?’ ” she recalls. “And I thought, `I create.’ ”

With inspiration taken from a deck of cards designed to get the creative juices flowing, she came up with “creative warrior,” a title flexible enough to fit her other work roles.

“I’m a graphic designer, I have a billboard company and I write,” she says. “It’s hard to summarize all that up in a little title that gets tucked under your name. I figured, put two words together that are memorable and instill a feeling of inspiration in the person I would be working with.”

It’s also a window onto her attitude toward her career and life.

“There’s some struggle, there’s some kind of climbing the ladder, so to speak, that exists both in my professional and personal life,” she says. “I’m not very content being stagnant. I always try to reach a little bit higher.

“It’s always something of a fight. It’s not a violent struggle, but a kind of a growth, like a weight lifter who trains a day and takes a day off to let the muscles build. Just in search of something better, a way that could be better. Fighting the good fight.”

Then there’s the moniker’s playfulness, she notes, its laid-back answering of Turner’s question that the sternness of “president” somehow fails to answer.

“What, really,” she asks, “are we?”

Chief Realization Officer

At the Albuquerque economic development group known as Next Generation Economy, one’s title is a crown of description woven by the hands of co-workers.

“They lay your mantle on you based on what you do,” says Mike Skaggs, Next Generation’s “chief realization officer” or – for the occasional client whose raised eyebrows of doubt graze skepticism’s ceiling – president and CEO.

Some of Skaggs’ co-workers have titles such as “research evangelist” and “chief harassment officer.” Skaggs won CRO due to the organization’s raison d’etre: realizing a creative economy driven by innovation.

“If you’re going to realize it, someone needs to be responsible for saying they’re doing that,” he explains. “Most of our customers get it pretty quickly and they’re glad to see we’re not pretentious. We try to do everything we can to remove barriers between us and our customers.”

He says titles such as his are one facet of the movement of the U.S. economy away from manufacturing – evidenced by the closures of plants nationwide – and toward businesses driven by world-changing ideas.

It’s a “creative economy” that values innovation, he says, and labor’s labels are no exception to the change.

“When this creative economy started growing and blossoming, people are trying to create their own job title that expresses who they are,” he says. “Work is coming a lot closer to being an expression of who you are. That’s what we all desire: Let’s make our work experience look like my personal feelings and personal attitudes, because if you’re in a job where that’s not taking place, you’re not very effective.”

When the occasion of a skeptical client does arise, the solution is simple: Flip over Skaggs’ business card, and there lays his more traditional title of president and CEO.

But it’s a rare requirement.

“Most people see it (chief realization officer) and they go, `God, we should do that,’ ” he says.

Storyteller

“Public relations and marketing communications manager” just wasn’t going to work for Marc Orchant.

So the Albuquerque resident came up with this title to describe his job from June 2001 to June 2006 at VanDyke Software: storyteller.

“It will probably be my all-time favorite title,” says Orchant, who’s now preparing to launch his own software company. “It has so many different dimensions to it.”

It fit his experience as a writer, his passion for telling tales, the job’s duties and the industry, he says.

“In the software business, people are taking great liberties with conventional titles and feel a lot of freedom to really describe what they do in picaresque terms rather than adhering to some notion of an organization chart,” he says. “I have always been a storyteller, it’s just while I was at VanDyke, I formalized it by having it printed on my business cards.”

The title went over so well, Orchant says he became the go-to guy for dreaming up titles for his colleagues. One of his favorites was “connector of dots” for a product manager who found new ways to coordinate her colleagues’ work.

But the adventurous wording was nothing new to the company.

Just as Orchant wielded two business cards – one with the funky title, the other with the predictable one – so did some of his colleagues. There was already a “marketing wizard,” he says, and a “weekend code jockey.”

“It’s a great conversation breaker,” he says. “When the conversation is kicked off by people inquiring to something relatively off-topic to the matter at hand, it takes all the feeling of there being a pitch or sales call in play out of the equation, and starts a much more sincere and personal conversation.”

At one meeting with intellectual property lawyers, he figured – just as he figured with bankers – that the attorneys would look askance at someone going by the title of storyteller. He handed out the more staid business card, but they wanted to see the other one.

“The lawyers said, `I heard you had a cool title,’ ” he says. “When the IP attorneys tell you that, you know you’ve hit a sweet spot with describing what you do.”

FACTBOX: FUN OR CONFUSING?

An unusual business title might be quirky and refreshing, but it can also confuse or alienate a client. Here’s some perspective on the good and bad of odd titles.

The good: Highly personal job titles bring fun and higher morale to the workplace, according to Joyce Gioia, president of the Herman Group, a North Carolina consulting firm that advises clients on how to prepare for the workplace of the future.

“I believe it helps people to understand that they’re hired for more than their hands and their muscles, that they’re not just work machines, but they’re valued for who they are as people,” she says. “They add joy to the workplace is what they do, because whenever we hear them, we can’t help but smile, and that’s not a bad thing.”

The bad: Unusual job titles, though, run the risk of obfuscating the position’s true responsibilities and alienating workers, warns Roberta Matuson, president of Massachusetts consulting firm Human Resource Solutions. “It doesn’t take long for an intelligent employee to quickly realize that they may have a fancy title, but the work is still the same as if the job was just titled `secretary,’ ” she wrote in an e-mail. “Most leave when they figure this out and you are back to square one.”

Another risk arises when co-workers – and the rest of the world – try to figure out just what a co-worker with a distinct title does, said Donna Flagg, principal of the Krysalis Group, a business and management consulting firm in New York City. “These highly unusual titles are fine and dandy and may have significant individual meaning, but they make it very difficult to define roles and situate the organization in any kind of structure or context that is understandable to other employees and the outside world,” Flagg wrote via e-mail.

ENTITLED

Marc Orchant, who held the title of “storyteller” with VanDyke Software from June 2001 to June 2006, has encountered several distinct titles in the software industry. Here are a few off his list:

• Undoer of evil
• Marketing wizard
• Weekend code jockey
• Connector of the dots
• Counter of the beans
• Chief mobility officer
• Chief technical evangelist
• Reality check

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Article in The Albuquerque Tribune: Workplace challenge: mental illness stigma

August 15, 2005 — Leave a comment

Stigma against mental illness can make the workplace a tough place to be for those battling the health problem.

People dealing with mental illness say some co-workers unfairly assume colleagues with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia will blow up or won’t be able to handle their jobs.

But a New Mexico lawyer who prefers to be identified only as Jane overcame those prejudices.

She controls her bipolar disorder through a combination of medications, therapy and careful management of stress, excessive amounts of which can upset her mental health.

The strategy works well enough to allow her to practice law.

“But what you have to remember – it’s very different for everyone,” she says. “Some people are incapacitated with their disorder more than other people are. I happen to respond very well to medication, and other people who have bipolar do not respond as well to medication.”

Jane recalls her first psychotic break as something like this:

“I was at my computer,” she says. “It was like this instant transformation where everything was just fine, and all of a sudden I felt as though something bizarre was happening where . . . the information was being picked up off my computer.”

Medication helped her emerge from the psychosis in about 10 days, she says.

Although her employer knows of her illness, she wouldn’t recommend other people follow her example.

“I feel fortunate to be in a place where people have accepted me and my limitations,” she says. “However, I’m a realist. I know that people stigmatize anyone who says that they are bipolar and immediately believe that they have a totally unstable person.”

Such stigma against people with mental illness is still prevalent, particularly in certain offices, says Mary Graham, senior vice president of development and strategic alliances for the National Mental Health Association.

But things are changing, she says.

“In general, over the last 10 years, there’s a lot less stigma for mental illness,” she says. “Our culture, our generation is more open to talking about it – talking about everything – than previous generations.”

The only prejudice that Pete Goldberg, owner of Pete’s Auto Care in Albuquerque, says he had against people with mental illness was that he thought they needed more help than they actually did.

Goldberg hires people with mental illness to work at his shop through Adelante Development Center Inc., a New Mexico nonprofit that helps people with mental illness and other disabilities get back to work.

“I’ve learned a lot about mental illness over the last five years,” he says. “They’re (people with mental illness) not bad-intentioned. It’s just their mental illness doesn’t allow them to do certain things.

“We don’t look down or feel bad or treat them any different,” he says. “They come in. They joke around with all of us, have a good time, but still get the job done.”

Getting a job done can be good therapy in and of itself for those with mental illness, says Melinda Garcia, director of employment services with Adelante.

“I don’t think we realize . . . how we identify with who we are by what we do and the self-esteem level that gives you and the confidence that builds within you,” she says.

“It can just be really good therapy for a person to be out there and have a purpose and need to be needed.”

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Article in The Albuquerque Tribune: Heading off breakdowns

August 15, 2005 — Leave a comment

Eric Morgan knows about stress.

It’s something the employees he supervises battle every day as they field hundreds of calls inside Public Service Company of New Mexico’s customer care center.

The calls can get heated, Morgan says. Customers might want something the company simply cannot give them. There can be verbal attacks.

“Some (employees) become very upset and take it personally,” says Morgan, customer care coordinator. “Some understand it’s just part of the job.”

If things get too bad, there’s an escape for employees just down the hallway: a quiet room with green and white walls that holds an air hockey table, mini-arcade basketball, red and white beanbags, board games and colorful chairs that look like giant hands flexed to catch a boulder-sized baseball.

Called the Power Lounge, it’s a place where PNM employees can go to regain their peace of mind. And measures like it to protect an employee’s mental health – for example, reducing stress levels in the workplace or providing professional care for serious mental illness – can prove invaluable to businesses.

In a single year, untreated and mistreated mental illness costs U.S. businesses $150 billion in lost productivity, according to the National Mental Health Association. In a typical workplace with 20 employees, the association estimates four will likely develop a mental illness annually, and mental health conditions are the second-leading cause of workplace absenteeism.

Despite the problem’s prevalence, mental illness still evokes strong prejudices, advocates say, and maintaining mental health in the workplace can be a complicated process for employees and employers alike.

Albuquerque business people say it can mean pep talks, job perks, time off, open doors, kind ears and, when the problem is something more serious than a temporary dip in mood, calls to trained mental health professionals.

“As a person in the field of any industry, you spend a lot of time at work,” Morgan says. “A lot of times that support system comes from your peers and co-workers. I need to respond or at least listen to what’s going on in their (employees) life.”

The grumpytrons

Elissa Breitbard, owner of Betty’s Bath & Day Spa, has a name for the bad mood that occasionally grips some of her employees: the grumpytrons.

“There is a sort of infectiousness to the grumpytron state,” she says. “So we try to nip it.”

Nipping means asking employees what’s bothering them and finding out what can be done to alter it – particularly important, she says, for a spa where an employee’s bad mood could hijack a customer’s attempt to feel good.

If the mood persists, Breitbard says she’ll get employees out of direct contact with the public. Sometimes she’ll give them time off. She’ll encourage them to get a spa treatment, one of their job perks. But she says she would never want to see her employees become emotionless robots.

The goal, she says, is confronting the grumpytrons and trying to understand them to make sure her employees are happy – which helps keep her customers happy too.

“The direct communication thing is very effective,” she says.

When it’s clear employees are dealing with a mental illness, Breitbard will encourage them to get professional help. For her, that can include include therapists and yoga practitioners.

“I really do think it’s a serious issue we need to deal with,” she says.

For Heath Riddle, general manager of Shoes on a Shoestring’s store on the West Side, employees’ mental health weighs heavily on the store’s success.

Again and again, he says he has seen employees dealing with so many stressful situations outside of work that they abandon their jobs in the middle of the workday.

“It can hurt us bad,” he says “It’s important to nip the problem in the bud.”

Like Breitbard, he talks to employees, finds out what is affecting their work performance. If the problem was not a temporary one of sunken spirits but a more serious case of mental illness, he says he would help the employee find professional care as much as he “possibly can.”

However, he says achieving mental health comes down to the employees “wanting to be healthy themselves.”

“You can only do so much before it really is out of our hands,” he says. “It comes down to them.”

Reaching out

When workers do seek care, one resource they can tap is employee assistance programs.

The programs give workers – often along with their spouses, partners and family members – confidential assistance with a wide range of mental health issues. Both PNM and University of New Mexico Hospital offer them.

“There’s no question about it, employees do use this service, and it has increased in terms of both the numbers of companies that we contract with and the request for services,” says Jane Hertz, executive director of Outcomes Inc., an Albuquerque agency that provides the employee assistance program for UNM Hospital.

“Mental health services are becoming more acceptable. . . . We understand that people need to deal with depression, anxiety.”

Jim Pendergast, administrator for human resources at UNM Hospital, said the employee assistance program has been “extremely successful.”

“We use the EAP (employee assistance program) for any problem that an employee has outside of the workplace that is hurting their performance in the workplace,” he says.

“We don’t want supervisors to try to diagnose and/or treat employees. What we want to do is get them to the employee assistance program.”

In an average month, he says about 50 workers or their family members out of 4,000 employed by UNM Hospital use the employee assistance program.

Other approaches to employees’ mental health focus on creating healthy lifestyles that discourage illness, both mental and physical.

PNM Resources, parent company of PNM, brings in massage therapists to its Downtown offices, says Laura Patterson, director of compensation and benefits for PNM Resources.

Besides 15-minutes massages, PNM Resources employees can also attend stress management seminars, take part in exercise programs and, down the line, get catered meals if they’re working extremely long hours – a scenario experienced by the company’s accounting department in the wake of the recent merger with a Fort Worth energy company.

“I’ve become more and more concerned with the food issue,” Patterson says. “If you’ve got people working long hours, they tend to eat very badly for several months, and that really can impact your health.”

Another player in employees’ mental health is the balance between work and social life, says physician Susan Romanelli, a director at the Menninger Clinic in Houston, which specializes in inpatient psychiatric treatment for adolescents and adults.

She mentions a seminar run once a year by one of her colleagues; he asks a group of doctors to schedule 10 pleasurable activities into their datebooks.

“The datebook has no pleasurable things in it,” she says. “Our work ethic sometimes interferes with our ability to have the best life we could. I think we all need to continue to work on some type of balance.”

SIDEBAR: GROWING NEED

Outcomes Inc., a nonprofit mental health and social services agency in Albuquerque, has seen the number of employee assistance program contracts it provides grow by 23 percent since 2001. The number of workers using the services of such programs – which offer confidential assistance to people seeking help with mental health issues – has grown at a similar rate:

2001: 1,005 employee assistance program users

2002: 1,250 employee assistance program users

2003: 1,320 employee assistance program users

2004: 1,540 employee assistance program users

Source: Outcomes Inc.

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Article in The Albuquerque Tribune: Your own assistant

May 23, 2005 — Leave a comment

It didn’t go so well the first time Gerald Maytea went to a job center.

It was 1977, and he had just left the military after serving in the Vietnam War. He needed help finding employment, but it wasn’t working out. He said the center in Pennsylvania suffered from poor organization. The way it posted job opportunities – pieces of paper stuck to a cork board – made it difficult to find what he was looking for.

Worse, he said, was how the center’s staff treated him.

“It was like, ‘You’re unemployed – you’re nothing,’ ” he said.

“But it’s changed a lot since then, and it’s changed for the better. Compared with today, that was like the Stone Age.”

Today, 52-year-old Maytea can find all manner of high-tech help inside the Workforce Connection of Central New Mexico One-Stop Career Centers and the New Mexico Department of Labor Workforce Development Centers.

Workforce Connection is a federally funded program administered by the Mid-Region Council of Governments in Albuquerque. It shares some space and programs with the state’s Workforce Development Centers.

Together they offer help at five centers in Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Los Lunas and Moriarty.

Free of charge, Maytea can send faxes, make long-distance calls, make copies, search job databases and surf the Web.

But those are just a few of the centers’ tools. Also available are staff members to consult with people looking for work and with the employers doing the hiring.

For people dealing with issues besides the lack of a job – perhaps a disability, perhaps the care of a child – there are a number of programs that hook people up with assistance, and more might be on the way.

And with an increasing focus upon training New Mexicans for jobs in up-and-coming industries, the Workforce Connection One Stop is getting more proactive about putting the state’s residents to work.

“Now we’re starting to look at tailoring the programs,” said Lawrence Rael, executive director of the Mid-Region Council of Governments. “It’s really moving in a positive direction.”

Evolution

In the past, training at the one-stop centers lacked the precision the centers are striving for today, Rael said.

When clients walked in, they generally got whatever skills they sought, sometimes without a careful analysis of whether those skills would be in demand. But with Workforce Connection’s recent, experimental grants – up to $20,000 – to economic development groups, the centers are looking to get a handle on hot and emerging industries, he said.

With the resulting increase in input from businesses and economic development groups, the center can train people for jobs that will be in demand, he said, a draw for companies wondering if they’ll be able to find staff in New Mexico with the needed skills. Health care and technology are two fields being closely looked at.

“That’s a really smart way of using the dollars,” Rael said. “You’ve got to put all your resources together to attract these companies.”

The Workforce Development Center at 501 Mountain Road N.E., already gives incoming clients a blue card that lists 42 different categories of aid – offered by the Labor Department or Workforce Connection – with a check box next to each one. They include apprenticeships, r?sum? assistance, tax credits, child care and more. Depending on a person’s income, he or she can be eligible for up to 104 weeks or $7,000 in training assistance, whichever comes first.

Getting the aid, however, is not instantaneous, said Robert Whitaker, office director for the Workforce Connection Workforce Investment Act program at the center. People looking for help undergo a review of their career goals and how to best reach them. He said the process can take two to three weeks.

Being a one-stop career center, the location is about more than just landing a job. People lacking formal education can get advice on how to acquire a GED, for example. Others juggling child care with going to work can get directed toward help. Ditto for workers with disabilities.

And in the near future, it’s possible that one-stops will become more one-stoppish as the centers look at incorporating services for the federal welfare program known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Rael said.

Additionally, this summer will see the startup of an in-school, prototype program for young people in Valencia county that matches them with members of the National Guard, Rael said.

Also running will be the second go-round of a summer work program for young people that gives them jobs in the public sector that pay more than minimum wage, he said.

In 2004, 180 graduating high school seniors entered the program and landed jobs. About 200 are expected to participate this year.

Employers aren’t left out of the loop. An on-the-job training program will pay 50 percent of wages a business pays for employees to undergo training. The center connects businesses with skilled workers and offers tax information on top of that.

“From a structural perspective, we are much further ahead than we were three years ago,” Rael said.

Starting again

It’s a Monday morning, and people old and young alike fill the sunny lobby of the job center on Mountain Road. Some wear slacks and ties, others T-shirts and jeans. Many hold paperwork in their hands and look expectantly around the mostly quiet room. A few bend over tables and counters, gripping ballpoint pens and filling in blanks with their names, phone numbers, addresses and other facts of their lives.

Maytea – wearing a tie – waits next to a gate leading back into the field of cubicles where would-be workers sit down with job consultants to discuss their futures. Because of health problems, a small tank hangs from Maytea’s shoulder, delivering bursts of oxygen through a tube in his nose every 20 seconds or so.

In a few minutes, Robert Whitaker with Workforce Connection walks up to Maytea and invites him back, offering a hearty, “How you doing, man?” as the two head back to Whitaker’s cubicle.

“Well, I completed that program,” Maytea said.

“How was it?” Whitaker asked.

“Excellent.”

Maytea came to the center in March 2005 after the private security company he worked for went out of business. With his health problems preventing him from working in the same field, he needed new skills.

“I can’t just sit around the house,” he said. “I have to have something to do.”

Through classes arranged through the job center, he picked up certificates of expertise in Internet searching, customer service, Windows XP, résumé writing and interviewing.

“The training was absolutely excellent,” he said.

He visited Whitaker to arrange classes in Microsoft Word and Excel within the next couple of weeks. He hopes the additional skills will land him a clerical job that his health problems won’t prevent him from doing. But being older and disabled, he said it’s a challenge.

“The key to it is don’t get depressed,” he said. “Don’t get disillusioned. Just keep trying.

“Something will come through.”

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Article in The Albuquerque Tribune: Reel state

March 14, 2005 — Leave a comment

Inside Room 101 of Ted Chavez Hall on the main TVI campus in Albuquerque, students are studying magic.

Eager learners zip, zoom, hustle and bustle around the room, weaving among cameras, tables, cords, microphones, chairs, tripods, lights and each other. Instructors bark out strange incantations, phrases such as, “I want power to all my taps!” and “Video village is up and hot!”

It’s a controlled chaos, an orchestrated explosion. No subdued pontificating in front of a chalkboard; no quiet students locked behind a desk. No, this is magic – the moviemaking kind – and for all intents and purposes, Room 101 is not a community college classroom but a movie set where about 60 New Mexicans are preparing themselves for jobs in the state’s rapidly growing film industry.

“I love it,” says Rebecca Stover, a 45-year-old student who entered the training program in hopes of finding better-paying work to lead her into retirement. “You can only do theory for so long. It’s good to get practical experience.”

Since 2002, a slew of financial incentives has helped draw in enough media makers to create a $246.3 million economic effect on New Mexico’s economy, according to the New Mexico Economic Development Department.

That translates to 50 films, documentaries and TV films since 2002, with five being worked on or completed this year.

But industry professionals say there could be even more media productions in the state, and students like Stover in the 39-week film technician training program – begun at Santa Fe Community College in September 2004 and under way at TVI since January – might help make it happen.

Seducing the silver screen

The state’s current package of financial temptations for film productions includes a 15 percent rebatable tax credit and a 5 percent to 7 percent gross receipts tax deduction. On top of that, more than 800 state-owned buildings are available for film shoots at no charge.

Moviemakers can also use the state’s mentorship program. It allows them to get a 50 percent reimbursement from the state on the wages – up to 1,040 hours – of New Mexicans they hire and train in new positions.

But there’s more: In 2000, the Legislature set aside money from the state’s Severance Tax Permanent Fund to finance up to $7.5 million of a film production.

However, the program struggled, and the state tweaked it in 2002 into a no-interest loan to make it more attractive, says Lisa Strout, director of the New Mexico Film Office.

But it’s not free money. The state won’t give the loan unless its principal is fully guaranteed. Companies accepting it must have at least 60 percent of their crew’s payroll made up of New Mexicans when shooting in New Mexico. And the kicker? The state will share in a small percentage – anywhere from 2.5 percent to 6 percent – of any profits the film might generate.

Bingo.

By 2003, after the loan program and 2002′s 15 percent tax credit had time to percolate through the industry, the number of film productions soared.

In fiscal year 2003, the financial effect of film productions on the state – $79.1 million – grew almost 800 percent from the $8.8 million of fiscal year 2002, according to the New Mexico Film Office. And though the effect dipped in 2004, fiscal year 2005 to date has brought in $97.7 million.

The combination of the tax breaks and the no-interest loan is “beautiful,” says Jon Hendry, business agent with International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Studio Mechanics Local 480, the local branch of the union for film industry workers.

The sudden influx of productions also brought a rocketing demand for skilled film crews. “Too many movies, not enough people,” in Hendry’s words.

Strout estimates there were about 70 crew members available to work toward the beginning of fiscal year 2002. About 600 crew members are in the state today, she says. About 150 people make up a crew, although some crews can bulge to 200 people or more.

The mentorship program has answered some of the calls for crew members, but Strout says more are needed. The film technician training program – a joint project between the New Mexico Film Office and Local 480 – is making them.

The magician’s rabbit

The first semester of the three-semester program at TVI gives students a basic knowledge of film terminology and most of the “below the line” areas of a film production.

A below-the-line worker is generally concerned with handling the nuts and bolts of executing a director’s dream. They are, so to speak, the people who catch, feed, groom and place the rabbit inside the magician’s hat. Need a ditch dug? Below the line. A power cord wrapped up? Below the line. A light checked? Below the line.

By the second semester, students choose a specialization, which can include handling sound, running a set’s electricity, building props and preparing meals. In the third semester, they develop even more expertise in their chosen area. Throughout both semesters, and for some of the first, students work on real productions to hone their skills.

The classes are taught by certified members of Local 480, the film workers’ union. Working so closely with union members gives students a big advantage, says Hendry, business agent with the film workers’ union. He explains: Union membership is essential for acquiring work on film productions, and relationships developed in the class will help launch careers.

“We’re not only teaching people how to work; we’re getting them hired,” he says. “There’s a career path now in New Mexico.”

A tough job

Grubb Graebner, a film industry veteran who is coordinating the curriculum for the training program at TVI, says working in the movie business can be like going to war.

“It’s different from an 8-to-5 job,” he says. “They (film workers) have to be able to work long hours for intense periods of time and be able to take off time and adjust to whatever the industry brings through.”

It can mean days that start 2 a.m. in the middle of nowhere with rain pouring down, one instructor warns. It can mean months away from family and friends. It can mean months without work.

But Stover, the middle-aged student who brings distinctive talents to the class, isn’t scared.

“I’m a blacksmith,” she says. “I can hammer for six hours straight.”

She’s also working two jobs and going to school, and she doubts working a movie could be any harder. When she’s done, she’s hoping to end up in the art department of film productions.

“I have a real good sense for architectural style and different design styles,” she says. “It’d be nice to be able to use that.”

When and if she gets her first job, she’ll be paid handsomely. Hendry of the film workers’ union says union technicians make between $20 and $27 an hour. But he says overtime – 12-hour and longer days are standard – can crank a year’s wages into the $60,000 to $100,000 range, depending on how many projects someone chooses to work on.

Blockbuster numbers

When Stover joins the industry, she’ll be far from alone.

In 2003, film productions by companies that were part of the Motion Picture Association of America employed about 183,500 people, according to the latest data available from the association.

In the same year, the average cost of making a major studio film was $63.8 million, and 593 of them were produced. Box office gross receipts for the association’s members’ films hit $9.5 billion.

Jean Prewitt, president and CEO of the Independent Film & Television Alliance, a nonprofit trade association for the independent film and TV industry, says independent filmmaking is thriving too.

“We’re on an upswing,” she says. “Whenever there are substantial incentives, you see more films get made.”

In New Mexico, film productions generated 58,567 worker days – a single day worked by a single crew member – in fiscal year 2003, according to the New Mexico Film Office. In fiscal year 2004, there were 40,087 worker days and 38,355 in fiscal year 2005 to date. In fiscal years 2000, 2001 and 2002, there was a total of 37,612 worker days.

“Everybody knows about New Mexico,” Prewitt says. “It really is one of the easiest to deal with and one of the most attractive for filmmaking.”

Star power

As with anyone else, the people working on a movie need to eat, sleep, get around and have fun. That can mean a big boost in revenues for New Mexico businesses ready to serve them.

“It’s been pretty good for us,” says Sydney Kennedy, the local market area manager for Advantage Rent-a-Car in New Mexico who works primarily in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. “I think it’s going to be a steady business down the road.”

He says an average month at the rental agency will see about $70,000 in revenue, and film productions, depending on their size, can add from $10,000 to $25,000 a month to that number.

However, there are standouts. “The Longest Yard,” a big-budget movie shot in 2004 that starred Adam Sandler, Burt Reynolds and Chris Rock, brought in about $100,000 a month for the agency, he said.

One of Kennedy’s strategies to capture film business is to lend cars free of charge to producers scouting New Mexico.

Area hotels, such as the Sheraton Old Town, have a similar technique; they comp rooms to visiting producers in the hopes of picking up the $10,000 to $150,000 in revenue their movies might bring, says Ed Pulsifer, vice president of sales and marketing for Heritage Hotels and Resorts, which includes the Sheraton Old Town.

He says film productions’ steady business – they typically stay every night for anywhere from one month to three – helps alleviate an average hotel cycle that sees periods of high room occupancy followed by periods of heavy vacancies.

“I’ve already hosted just this year probably two or three (film productions),” Pulsifer says. “I’ve never seen in 20 years anything like the last 12 to 24 months, especially the last 12.”

Strout of the film office points out “The Missing,” a 2003 Western directed by Ron Howard, as an example of what movie productions bring to the state. It spent $1 million on hotels, $1 million on lumber and $1 million on food, she says.

Coming attractions

If $7.5 million seems like a big loan, how does $15 million sound?

Should Senate Bill 916 pass, that’s how much money the state would dangle before filmmakers. It would also double the total amount of money – currently at $95.5 million – available to loan from the state’s Severance Tax Permanent Fund.

“It would help attract TV series, which is definitely the goal behind the program,” says Charles Wollmann, spokesman for the State Investment Council, which handles the funds flowing to film productions.

“If we do that, then all of a sudden it’s a different ballgame. You have training going on constantly . . . a more consistent type of work being done. You get into a much bigger deal than even a very big movie if you have a series shot here.”

Other bills circulating this legislative session, which ends this week, might sweeten the state’s film production incentives even more.

Strout says the 15 percent tax credit might be expanded to include post-production work, which happens after a film has been shot and the raw materials get assembled into the final version moviegoers see in theaters.

The state is also looking for a way to lend a production company 80 percent of its expected tax rebate up front – essentially a way to get incentive money to a production sooner rather than later, Wollmann says.

And outside the Roundhouse, a $50 million digital media production facility is to begin construction late this year on Albuquerque’s old Santa Fe Railway yards. It would provide a controlled shooting location and post-production options for a number of media projects.

A big concern for Strout is competition from nearby states – Texas, Utah and Arizona – for film dollars. She says they are considering financial incentives like New Mexico’s, and with their geographic similarity to the state, could snatch film dollars.

But in the meantime, the film office is busy looking at 150 potential projects.

“That’s healthy,” Strout says. “In the old days, we’d be happy when we got a script in. Sometimes now we look at eight in a day.”

If 15 of those projects were made, the state would be doing great, she says, but there is still a need for more skilled film workers.

With the film technician training program spreading to other community colleges throughout the state, producing that labor force should get easier; Strout estimates 300 crew members will be joining the fray by next year.

“The work force part of this is crucial,” she says. “That’s the biggest thing at the moment.”

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