Archive for May, 2009

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maxgxl testimonial

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

At 64 years young, Wayne Lloy is grateful for the introduction of Maxgxl into his program, “my training and energy went thought the roof. For the first time in my life I was able to train twice a day with equal intensity, my recovery times were considerable shorter and I actually trained 7 days a week. My knee problem which prevented me from running was gone I was now running intervals with 8 minute miles. I have not run in over 20 years and had surgery on one knee. A problem I had called white hand… woke me up every night to get the blood flow back to my hands was gone.” More on this maxgxl testimonials.

Wayne Lloy found Maxgxl at a health and wellness show in Winnipeg. I took the product faithfully and have reaped the benefits as my body has a tool it always needed and produced naturally and that was already in ever cell increasing it to levels that I had in my 20’s. When my new friend Thomas McKee approached me about sharing this with others and wanted to show me the business end I said that I didn’t need the money. He said to me then do it to help people this was why you got into natural medicine in the first place and this is as natural as it gets you are giving the body the first ever compound patented Glutathione Accelerator in history. Now I just want to share Dr. Keller’s message and the Max products with everyone.

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MaxGXL in Australia

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

Max International is starting it international expansion opening in the Phillipines shortly in July. For those in waiting for MaxGXL in Australia there is a longer wait before Max opens officially here.

However this provides an excellent opportunity for those who want to prepare for the official launch here. Learning about the products and how to market online will help you get off to a racing start when it opens here.

MaxGXL, NFuze and MaxWLX are 3 amazing products that are getting outstanding results with the people that have been using them. MaxGXL is the first Glutathione accelerator with a composition patent because of its unique effect and efficacy,

Search Engine Optimisation is how to get good rankings in the search engine. If you are wanting to markteing online then you would want to start promoting your personal business site now as it takes time to see results.  Contact us at www.maxgxl-australia.net to receive free coaching on SEO and Internet Marketing today.

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Big Mistakes Made in Affiliate Marketing

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

You have heard of all of the positive things that can happen when you start an affiliate marketing website to make money online but have you heard the negative effects of it? There are a few things that can stop a website dead in the water if you don’t know what you are doing. Here are a few tips so that you will aid you in your search to find that perfect business for you and how to make it thrive in today’s sluggish economy because there is still a lot of money to be made and everyone wants to get apart of the money to be made.

One thing you have to make sure you don’t do is to not to pick a dead product. If no one is interested in the product you’re selling then no one is going to buy it. You want to make sure the product you are going to be selling is something you know a lot about and has a good market base. If the market base is there you are going to have no problems in finding the clients that you want. You need to be sure the product you choose is going to be demand for many years because you don’t want have a short term product that sales start dropping off in a month or so.

Another problem that people face in affiliate marketing is that they are trying to promote so many products that they are trying to sell that they can not keep their own merchandise straight. If you have a lot of products that you are trying to sell you want to keep the descriptions of the products short and to the point. The simpler you keep the description the more products you can have but you need to keep them straight. You don’t want to end up putting the wrong description on the wrong product.

Many people who are starting up an affiliate marketing website make the mistake of not taking advantage of the free marketing tools that are offered on the internet. Take advantage of all of the free internet marketing tools you can because it can create a whole new avenue of income that you might not have discovered otherwise.

The other thing that you should not do is to give up. Think positive and keep your head above the clouds because you can make a lot of money working from home and with the affiliate marketing programs that are scattered all over the internet.

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They can’t see the benefit in signing on

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

Many unemployed professionals never go near a Jobcentre, Laura Latham reports, because they think – often with reason – they’ll get little help there

Many middle and high-income earners who have lost their jobs are choosing not to visit their local Jobcentre because they don’t believe they will be offered relevant assistance, either financially or in finding work.

For many of these jobseekers, the perception is that all the effort is going into the lower end of the skills market, with former executive staff left to fend for themselves.

Figures recently released by the Office for National Statistics show that the number of jobless in the UK stands at 2.2 million, the highest for 30 years. Of those, 1.5 million people are registered claimants, which covers those receiving benefits such as Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA). But many are not bothering to register at all.

“For ?64 it’s not worth the humiliation of signing on,” says John Lowe, 41, an IT sales manager from Watford, who has been unemployed for three months. “The Jobcentre staff can’t help me but are required to know all my personal details and monitor my search for work. The whole system is set up to discourage professionals from signing on.”

Magazine editor David Freedman, 38, from London, was made redundant in December and has also struggled to get help. “It’s my first time out of work since I was 24,” he says. “It was quite a shock and, because I’d only been in my job 14 months, I didn’t get redundancy pay.”

Freedman did sign on at his local Jobcentre – but only in order to qualify for the mortgage protection insurance he had taken out while working.

“I wanted to know what other help I was entitled to. It turns out there wasn’t a lot,” he says. “I was looking for jobs in the media but there were hardly any listed. The Jobcentres seem set up to help less-qualified workers, so now I only go there to sign on.”

Freedman, whose wife is disabled but works part-time, says it took “forever” to sort out his claim and he was then told he wasn’t entitled to any form of JSA due to his wife’s salary and the fact that she had savings. “I’ve had no income for six months,” he says. “Thank God I took out mortgage protection insurance or I’d have to sell my house.”

According to government guidelines, Freedman should be entitled to weekly contributory JSA of ?64.30, irrespective of his wife’s earnings or any savings. It’s not much but it can make a difference if you are struggling, yet Freedman says he wasn’t told this.

Freedman is not the only one to claim their local Jobcentre has failed them.

Paul Taylor, 46, a risk assessment manager from Buckingham, was made redundant in December and, despite being highly proactive in looking for work, he has found it hard in the current climate. He too has signed on to qualify for mortgage protection insurance.

“If you’re looking for a job paying a high-level salary or requiring any amount of expertise, they can’t help you,” Taylor says. “One staff member seemed flummoxed when I said I was happy to commute out of the area.”

Taylor was also turned down for JSA on the basis his wife was earning and he had savings. “I’ve paid taxes for over 20 years and have been sensible and frugal but now I’m told I can’t claim anything while I’m out of work.” He is adamant that no one in the Jobcentre mentioned contributory JSA to him.

Both Freedman and Taylor say they have not been offered referral to recruitment specialists, an initiative that was officially rolled out in Jobcentres in April.

Tom Hadley, of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, says he has also had feedback that Jobcentre staff are not fully informed.

“It seems to be taking time to trickle down. As soon as professionals walk in they should be referred to a specialist consultant. A lot of people have never been in this position and are looking for guidance when their traditional job-finding avenues, such as professional networks, can’t help.”

A Jobcentre manager, who asked not to be named, agreed that help could not be offered to many people who are coming through the door. “It may be that people have to broaden their search, retrain or be prepared to change career altogether.”

Sandy Fenwick, senior partnership manager of Hammersmith Jobcentre Plus, says she is surprised that the experiences of some professionals have been so negative. She claims that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is actively trying to help those who may not traditionally have sought advice from Jobcentres.

“Lots of employers are registering with us, we have over 1,200 vacancies in west London for professionals,” she says. “We’re also working with recruitment agencies and are redirecting people to specialist support. I can confidently say they are getting a lot of help.”

For those out-of-work professionals who are not too disillusioned with their experience, there is one secure employer looking for skilled staff: the DWP is currently recruiting for people to fill 10,000 new vacancies.

How benefits compare here and abroad

UK Jobseeker’s Allowance is means-tested and varies between ?50.95 and ?64.30 a week, depending on age and income status. Contributory JSA of ?64.30 a week is payable to anyone who has paid national insurance for the preceding two years. If you don’t sign on, you won’t receive national insurance credits, which could affect your state pension (you can buy credits up to six years later to fill gaps in your payment history).

France You need to have worked full-time for at least four months of the two years preceding unemployment (three years if over 50). Benefit is calculated as a daily percentage of your previous salary, with a minimum of €26.66 (?23) per day.

Germany Unemployment insurance is mandatory for the employed (paid jointly by worker and employer). If you have worked and paid contributions over any 12-month period in the preceding three years you are entitled to benefits of up to 60% of your previous net salary.

Norway According to Forbes magazine this is one of the best places in the world to be unemployed. You need to have earned above a certain amount in order to claim unemployment benefits; in 2008 it was 100,218 NOK (?9,700). On average Norwegians get 62% of their previous gross income but can only claim for up to two years.

United States Benefits are based on a percentage (this varies) of your previous year’s earnings. The average weekly benefit is just under $300 (?188), though some states pay less.

  • Work & careers
  • Redundancy
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‘In India they really like older people’

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

Steve Herzfeld crossed continents to find his parents a quality of care they could never have afforded at home. Neasa MacErlean reports

Steve Herzfeld has just spent five years of his life caring for his elderly parents as they succumbed to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, deteriorated and finally died. But the family’s story is extraordinary and even uplifting. Faced with crippling medical costs, Herzfeld took his mother and father from their home in Florida to India and managed to give them such a high level of care in the oceanside city of Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry) that they appeared to regain some quality of life and even dignity.

Herzfeld, 58, is a teacher of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and since 1982 has been involved in long-term research into advanced yoga techniques. Looking after your family is something that the founder of TM, the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, always encouraged in his disciples, so Herzfeld was able to take time out from the project, based in Fairfield, Iowa, without any problem.

He began caring for his parents full-time in 2004. His mother, Frances, then 87, was virtually unable to speak coherently, he says, as Parkinson’s disease gradually reduced her to “someone who was as helpless as an infant and also, in many ways, as lovable”.

His father, Ernest, then 91, despite still being able to converse in German, French, English, Italian and Swiss dialect, was also incapable of looking after himself, as he had lost his short-term memory to Alzheimer’s. “Like Mom, his disease was progressive and, towards the end, he was mentally like a two- or three-year-old child,” Herzfeld says.

Initially, Herzfeld was able to care for his parents in their Florida home. But when his mother had a fall, he realised he needed far more help than he could give them. Putting them in the cheapest acceptable home available would have cost $6,000 (around ?3,700) a month, and they did not have that kind of money. More than that, Herzfeld did not want to take this route: he had noticed a marked deterioration in his mother’s contentment when she had to spend a few weeks in a home after the fall.

Looking at all possible options, he considered Mexico and India as affordable locations. A host of reasons – including knowing India well and having friends there – made him opt for Puducherry, where the climate is similar to that of Florida and there is a supply of English-speaking care professionals.

But every step of the move had to be planned in detail. The airline agreed to take Frances and Ernest only because a doctor friend flew out with them and took responsibility for them door to door. Another friend organised a house for them and set up the electricity, cable TV, air conditioning, furniture and broadband.

Looking back, Herzfeld says the main thing he would have done differently would have been to hire staff before their arrival: it took him five difficult weeks to find a nurse.

But once staff had been found, he could give his parents a much higher standard of care than would have been possible in the US for his father’s income of $2,000 (?1,200) a month. In India that paid for their rent, a team of carers – a cook, a valet for his father, nurses to be with his mother 12 hours a day, six days a week, a physiotherapist and a masseuse – and drugs (costing a fifth of US prices), and also allowed them to put some money away.

Herzfeld does not claim that his parents were happy – but says they were able to get pleasure in the smaller ways that become more important when one’s horizons narrow.

Ernest – always a strong character, who had been a single-handed sailor to the age of 82 – still wanted to make decisions in his life. He enjoyed discussing the menu with the cook and adapted so well to a healthy Indian vegetarian diet that he was able to come off his cholesterol-lowering medication.

Frances’s devoted nurses spent 12 hours a day trying to make her comfortable and did things like braiding her hair.

“In India, they really like older people,” says Herzfeld, describing how the staff seemed to regard his parents as their own family.

Frances died in 2007, eight months after they arrived, while Ernest died last August. Herzfeld has returned to his previous life in the US. He does not recommend his path to everyone – there are, clearly, huge cultural differences. But he believes that India could teach the US and UK a lot about care of the elderly. “In America, healthcare is done for profit, so that skews the whole thing and makes it very inhuman in its values,” he says.

  • Paying for long-term care
  • Older people
  • India
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Would better parental leave harm employees?

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

Would more generous parental leave actually be worse for employees?

Yes says Sue Evans, partner with law firm Lester Aldridge LLP

The possibility of an employee taking maternity or paternity leave is most likely a factor considered by a number of employers (albeit subconsciously).

Maternity leave involves both pay and absence for the employer. As the majority of pay can be recovered from the government, it is often the issue of absence, and return to work, which causes greater practical problems.

Under current provisions, qualifying women receive 90% pay for their first six weeks’ maternity leave, with the lesser of a prescribed statutory rate (currently ?123.06 per week) or 90% pay for a further 33 weeks. An additional 13 weeks’ leave is then available, bringing the total up to 52 weeks.

Paternity leave is for two weeks and is paid at the lesser of the statutory rate, or 90% pay. Either parent can take unpaid time off up until the child is five years old in qualifying circumstances.

The recent proposals from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (“Working Better” report) provide that for the first 26 weeks of maternity leave, a woman should be paid at 90% of her salary. Beyond that, leave can be taken in three blocks of four-month periods: one for the mother, one for the father and the third for either parent.

The proposal is that the first eight weeks of each block would be paid, half at 90% and half at the statutory rate. Long term, the plan is for this leave to be paid at 90% for 26 weeks, or 50% for 52 weeks. These blocks could be taken any time up until a child’s fifth birthday.

The EHRC is also proposing that the qualifying period of employment for entitlement to statutory maternity and paternity pay be dropped, and that the two weeks’ paternity leave be paid at 90%.

An employer can recoup the majority of maternity and paternity pay from the government. However, the employer will still have to devote resources to recruiting and training suitable cover for those on leave.

The arrangements would be a massive change for employers. The blocks of leave would be like sabbaticals to care for the child. The timeframe of five years, within which parents could take leave, could make this difficult. It is likely to have a significant impact upon an employer’s ability to undertake strategic planning for the future. Only short-term planning may be possible with the looming possibility that an employee may opt to take substantial periods of leave.

At present (and as unpalatable as it may be), when considering two equally qualified candidates for a role, an employer may be minded to chose the male rather than the female. This could obviously be discriminatory.

If the government goes ahead and changes the law as proposed in the equality bill, an employer will be able to do precisely the opposite – choose the woman (as a form of positive discrimination) and this would not be discriminatory!

However, in conjunction with the EHRC proposals, this will not actually assist either the employer or employee, since it could be the male or female employee taking a block of leave. The risk therefore, is that it is employees with young children generally who are a cause of concern for employers.

This dilutes the intended impact of the positive discrimination.

No says Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrat party

Parental leave in this country doesn’t suit mothers, or fathers, or kids. But whenever anyone suggests designing it around what families need, critics pop up to claim that it would make life too difficult for employers. The implication is clear: you can’t be a good parent and a reliable employee.

But let’s look at this another way: if we don’t change the current arrangements for parental leave, who is it that misses out when the pay rises are handed out or the promotions decided? It’s women. Because our grossly unfair system gives fathers a measly two weeks to spend with their newborns compared to up to a year for mothers. And for employers that, all too often, makes women a liability.

As long as parental leave is divvied up so unequally, simply imploring companies to treat the sexes fairly won’t get us very far. Because the way leave works perpetuates the idea that retaining and promoting women is bad for business, while male employees are a much more rational investment.

Hence the widening pay gap. Hence the glass ceilings. Hence the scandalous persistence of the notion that gender equality at work is all well and good but when push comes to shove, it’s better for everyone that men take responsibility for bringing home the bacon.

And while women lose out at work, men lose out at home. Many fathers would love to take on a more involved role with their young children. But the division of labour entrenched by maternity and paternity leave emasculates those who seek to.

I’ve seen it first-hand at Westminster. Earlier this year, when I would mention that I’d be taking two weeks off following the birth of my son, eyebrows were raised. It’s ironic that this is where we legislate on improving the country’s “work-life balance”.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s proposal for sharing leave much more evenly is a massive step in the right direction. Instead of asking employers to put their better nature ahead of their business nous, it takes away the temptation to do otherwise.

But I do accept that planning around the EHRC’s proposed blocks of leave would take a bit of getting used to for companies. That’s why my party has its own, more straightforward, proposals. We would introduce 18 months of interchangeable parental leave, with no parent taking more than a year. Parents could divide it between themselves, perhaps taking nine months each, or they could choose to take time together. And by insisting the leave is shared – essentially on a “use it or lose it basis” – we avoid the trap of mothers feeling under pressure to take the whole year and a half. It’s also crucial to introduce these changes over time. They would represent a revolution in work-life balance in Britain and could not be introduced overnight.

Although I differ on the detail with the EHRC, I share the principle. Men and women with young children, as well as those who are likely to have children at some point, make up a major part of the workforce.

In the long run, it is in the interests of employers to get the best out of these people. Companies benefit from loyal, long-serving staff. Understanding and facilitating their family needs is one way to get that return.

What do you think?

Are you happy with the new parental leave proposals in the equality bill? Or will it just lead to more confusion and added potential for discrimination?

Write to Cash, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, email cash@observer.co.uk

  • Employee benefits
  • Maternity & paternity rights
  • Pay
  • Work & careers
  • Nick Clegg
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How to Make Money Online With “SEO”

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

Guest post by Shaun Connell

Let me explain how to make money online using a method I started in September of last year: building a blog, putting an advertisement on it (I get paid a dollar or so every time the ad is clicked), and then getting traffic from a search engine.

This is also known as “SEO” – ranking your website on the search engines.

Does it Work?

I know it works because I’ve been doing it less than a year, and I’ve already got my college paid for, and the income keeps increasing – meaning I’ll be graduating college with a fantastic income already. That’s more than most college graduates can say.

But don’t think I’m trying to build up a bunch of hype: this method of making money online will take a lot of hard work, planning and determination. If you’re willing to work hard to make money then this is for you – otherwise, you’ll have to find another way to make money on the Internet.

An SEO Income is a Passive Income
Ranking high on the search engines provides a steady source of traffic. For example, one of the keywords I’m result #2 for brings in about 800 visitors per day. These visitors consistently click on my advertisements, in the end making $40-50 per day. It’s not much, but it’s nothing to cough at.

The cool thing about this is that it’s a passive income – once you rank for a keyword, you don’t have to work every day to get paid. As long as your page is ranking for that search keyword, you’ll make the money. That’s why I’m a fan of SEOing for money.

How to Rank on the Search Engines
This isn’t just theory – this is what I’ve done successfully. I don’t put much stock in theory – I just want to make sure you can actually do what works, without wasting your time.

Let’s get to the good stuff: how to actually rank on the search engines for your term that you want to rank for. There are literally two steps for ranking where you want to rank, once you have a website.

Get Content.

Search Engines deliver relevant content for people who use the engines. Google, for example, pays tons of attention to the text that’s on a website. The more new articles and posts, the better. It gives Google plenty of content that searchers might be looking for.

What Google likes the most are long articles about a specific topic. I’m extra cautious and I make my articles 850 words targeting two keyword phrases, like “financial planning” and “financial advice”. This is long enough and specific enough that Google likes it.

Your website will need quite a bit of content before it can rank well in the search engines – of course, every website differs a little. I try to get 30 articles on my site before I move on to step two…

Get Links.

Google ranks articles on the basis of how many links go to the article. For example, if I have an article on “financial tips” and there are 1,000 links from 1,000 trusted websites pointing to that article, I’ll probably be ranked first.

There are tons of things to learn about links, but for the purpose of this article, I’ll keep it short: your links need to be from websites that aren’t spammy, and look “legit”. Also, you’ll need a lot of links. The more the merrier.

For example, getting a 5 links from national newspapers like the Wall-Street Journal and New York Times is probably more important than getting 5 links from Spammy-Money-Internet-Riches-Get-Quick.org. ;-)

Also, the “anchor text” is extremely important. Your keyword that your trying to rank for needs to be in the links. Try to target a few different keywords – if all the links have the same keyword, Google might get suspicious.

How to Build Links to Your Website

But how will you get links? This is the hard part, and takes mostly just a lot of patience, in my experience. Here are a few ideas:
Guest Posts. Write an article for blogs that are also writing about your keyword. These links will be powerful – much more so than most links. The best links come from the biggest blogs, usually.

Article Marketing. Write an article and publish it on websites like ezinearticles.com. There are programs that let you write one article, put it into the program/software, and it’ll automatically go to literally hundreds of websites. I have a software that I use that sends out my articles to nearly 2,000 websites. Make sure to look around my make money online website to learn more.

Link Trading. Find websites about the niche you’re writing about, and offer to trade links. This isn’t as useful as it used to be, but if you can get a bigger website to link to you, you’ll be doing great.

Buying Links. You can even pitch an offer to bloggers for a link to your website. This is considered a little dangerous, in case the search engines find out. I stick exclusively to the above three link building techniques – though there are hundreds of ways to get links to your website.

Author Bio
To learn more about this strategy for making money online, check out my website about making money online. I only describe what I’ve done to make money with a website – no theory, just facts.

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Ageing Britain: Stuck in the middle

Friday, May 29th, 2009

As the ’sandwich generation’ juggles the demands of children and elderly parents, Cath Janes says more firms should be aiming to appear on the Top Employers for Working Families list

If you meet Mike Molloy, ask him what he does. He’ll tell you he is a risk manager for a government department. But what he won’t tell you is that he’s also the father of a 16-month-old daughter and the carer for his 80-year-old mother.

“It’s a three-pronged attack,” he says. “The job is stressful, but even harder on the days I worry about my daughter and mum. I have to be lots of things to lots of people.

“It has impacted enormously upon work. Before I was married and when mum was younger, all I focused on was my career. Now I’m missing meetings and leaving work for emergencies. Just last week, I had to go to an appraisal and didn’t think about it until I was driving there. It’s all about plate spinning but, when the pressure gets really bad, the plates hit the floor.”

Welcome to the sandwich generation: mid-career employees “sandwiched” between supporting the demands of their children and their parents. According to support organisation Carers UK, 2.5 million people in England and Wales juggle jobs with caring and 90% are over 30.

Research by Lloyds TSB insurance has also found that there has been a 7.6% increase in the number of homes housing three generations of the same family. This figure is rising, as dependent children live at home for longer, and the population has a longer life expectancy.

Molloy is living the statistics. “My mother had a fall and I dropped everything to help. Each day I’d work, then do an 80-mile round trip to visit her, before going home to my wife and baby. The pressure was terrible.­

“That’s when you discover what sort of employer you’ve got. Organisations talk a good game, but prolonged support soon becomes a problem. The odd day off for emergencies helps, but what then? That’s when their bluff falls flat.”

Flexibility in the workplace

Some employers go out of their way to create a flexible and understanding workplace environment. Earlier this week, 20 companies were commended by work-life balance charity Working Families for their family-friendly policies, in its list of Top Employers for Working Families sponsored by the Guardian (see table overleaf).

But while many employers are increasingly aware that employees are unable to sacrifice the personal for the professional, theory doesn’t always withstand practice. Which employee doesn’t dread requesting an early finish for a fourth day in a row? And how many employees have been granted that early finish, only to hear their manager’s exasperated sigh as they grant it?

“The needs of employees are changing,” warns Colin Tenwick, chief executive of StepStone which provides HR services for businesses. “In the current economic cycle people are working harder to maintain their jobs. When the economy picks up, if employers aren’t supporting the sandwich generation, they’ll look for alternative employers. Most of us will go through this generational phase and employers ignore that at their peril.”

Sally Butterworth is going through it now. She is a designer caring for two teenage sons and a 75-year-old mother with Parkinson’s disease. Her GP has warned her about serious illness if the pressure doesn’t end.

She says: “Today, when I got to work, I was told that a colleague had died. Then I had people messing me about on jobs. I got a call from my son who was panicking about exams and had to console him from an open-plan office. After work, I took my other son to football and visited my mum. Dinner was a piece of toast and now my feet are up on the ironing board. Sometimes I think that if I just lie on the floor nothing else can knock me over.”

Butterworth needs her fair share of help and while colleagues are supportive she believes that “the hierarchy has forgotten about me”.

She says: “It’s draining. I never know what I’ll have to deal with next. Mum recently had five hospital appointments in four weeks and I hired help to take her to two because I couldn’t leave work. But one was for scan results and I told my boss that I was going. What else could I do?”

This is why those who employ the sandwich generation need to do more than simply dole out childcare vouchers.­

Adding value

Justin Spray is a chartered psychologist and director at Mendas, an organisation of occupational psychologists who provide people development services. For him, employers should help add value to an employee’s life.

Throwing more time at them isn’t a solution when that time is filled with yet more caring responsibilities.

“Employers need to have difficult conversations about what employees want from their lives,” he explains. “For people to be efficient and fulfilled they need to have several aspects of their life in place. If employers can help staff be fulfilled, they’ll create a more efficient workforce.”

Employers must also realise that when a carer is in work their mind can be elsewhere. Caring takes an emotional toll, and Butterworth admits to attending meetings when she’s thought of nothing but her son’s exam results.

She isn’t alone. June Taylor is a full-time, shift-working police officer and winner of a Nivea inner beauty award for caring for her daughters and parents. She finds it hard to ignore or forget her caring roles while at work. “My 17-year-old daughter who has juvenile arthritis, passed out and is now in hospital. I went back to work and visit the hospital after my shift.

“You never clock off from caring, though. People tell me that I look exhausted­ but I always think I have more to give. Night shifts are best because, up until 9pm, I am there for the family and after that, they are in bed and I can just work.” So the inevitable question is whether the sandwich generation is more trouble than it’s worth. Surely it’s easier to hire the commitment-free?

According to Steve Williams, head of equality services at employment advisory service Acas, if that’s what employers think, then they’re missing a trick. For him, the sandwich generation can give employers much needed security and loyalty – reasons why little effort is worth a lot of gain. “These employees have a great sense of responsibility and duty,” he says. “They are unlikely to disappear for a jaunt around the world, and are there for the duration because they have people to care for. They are great employees and now, more than ever, employers need to remember that.”

Some names have been changed


Top employers for working families

Earlier this week, the Working Families charity identified 20 of the best family-friendly employers, chosen for their flexibility, assistance with child and elder care, and overall support to working parents and carers. Here is a snapshot of what some of the top 20 employers offer their “sandwich generation” employees:

• Centrica set up a carers network in 2004 to encourage employees with caring responsibilities to share their experiences. It also reviewed its carers’ policy to expand the definition of carer to include paid leave for carers of a close friend. The company also offers a series of career break and sabbaticals which can be used to extend a period of carer’s leave.

• Hertfordshire county council (HCC) launched a work-life balance strategy in 2000. It offers carers time off to attend external support groups as well as access to CareWell, a confidential support service available to other household members and employees. HCC also runs an annual conference for employees who are carers.

• B&Q supports working parents by offering childcare vouchers, enhanced maternity and paternity payments and, where both parents are employed by B&Q, the partner is allowed to take some of the extended maternity leave too. It also offers “term-time” contracts to parents and grandparents and offers employees a job share scheme.

• Britannia Building Society offers a confidential service, Lifeworks, to help employees find care facilities for children and elderly relatives. It also runs a framework of flexible working arrangements that includes job-sharing, part-time work, flexible hours, compressed working weeks, homeworking, family leave, short-term leave and employment breaks.

• In 2008, KPGM launched a support package that includes: cover for up to 20 days emergency childcare costs where they were incurred through demands of the job; a family support website; comfort rooms for pregnant women; first aid classes for parents with young children and coaching on work-life balance issues.

• BT supports the sandwich generation with its Carer’s Passport, a document that helps set out the needs of the employed carer, work-life adjustments, actions in emergencies and agreed communication between carer and BT if they are unable to work.

• The National Grid offers employees a seven-week childcare break with an allowance of £45 per child per week. It also has an advisory and support group run by parents which offers a one-stop shop for advice on work-life balance and a buddy network. It is also planning to launch a carers’ network to support employees who care for someone with a permanent or temporary disability or illness.

• Others organisations included in the top employers for working families list are: Accenture, Addleshaw Goddard, American Express UK, Ford, Halcrow, Happy Ltd, Jaguar Land Rover, Lloyds TSB, Metropolitan Police Service, the Ministry of Justice, the National Health Service, Nationwide building society and Wragge & Co. For more details visit Topemployersforworkingfamilies.org.uk

  • Work-life balance
  • Paying for long-term care
  • Older people
  • Long-term care
  • Health, mind and body
  • Work & careers
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Is the AA taking you for a ride?

Friday, May 29th, 2009

The AA is charging customers as much as £186.50 for its breakdown and recovery service – yet similar cover can be found elsewhere for just £35. Patrick Collinson asks if the traditional providers are just laughing all the way to the garage

When Peter Ludlow from Gelligaer in south Wales received his AA membership renewal docu­ments last week, he was taken aback by the cost, which had risen steeply from the year before. The AA wanted £186.50 for joint membership for Ludlow and his wife, to cover roadside assistance, home start and relay, compared with £136 last year.

So Ludlow started digging around. On the AA’s website, he found that, if he was a new customer, the motoring organisation would charge him just £120.19. He rang the AA to ask if he could have the same rate as shown on the website. The year before, he had done the same thing, and the AA had agreed. Yet not this time. It offered him a “loyalty discount”, as he has been an AA member for 19 years. But as this would bring down the cost to just over £130, not the £120 quoted online, he decided to cancel his membership.

Ludlow has now used his Tesco Clubcard vouchers to buy membership of the RAC, with the same level of cover he had at the AA, for £49.

“I wonder how many people just renew their membership automatically without checking on the web?” says Ludlow. “Probably quite a lot, otherwise they would not give these high renewal quotes.

“I can’t understand the logic of having a higher renewal rate for existing members than is advertised on the web for new members. The administration costs to renew an existing membership must be much lower than processing a?new application.

“Also, as more and more people check the prices on the web and realise how much more they would pay if they just automatically renewed, they would have to deal with more queries, taking up staff time, or more people will do as I did and leave.”

We asked the AA why it was charging long-standing loyal customers more than new customers. It said: “The size of our membership is important in controlling the overall cost to all members. Periodically we run introductory offers to new members in ­order to increase our total membership. Over time we seek to equalise pricing for all members.”

Critics of the AA, including former patrolmen, say the organisation ­became too profit-focused after it was sold to private equity owners in 2004. This was followed by 3,500 job losses, including 500 patrol staff. A debt-heavy merger with Saga in 2007, at the height of the private equity bubble, netted a paper profit of £1.6bn, including around £40m for its then-chief executive, but has left the combined organisation burdened with billions in loans.

The RAC charges approximately the same (without Clubcard vouchers) as the AA, but drivers facing £180-plus ­renewal bills can save nearly £150 a year by switching to alternative providers that promise to match the service of the big recovery specialists.


The best value basic deal

The Green Insurance Company offers a roadside repair service or will tow your car to a local repairer within 20 miles for £21.95 a year. It promises an average call-out time of 40 minutes and a refund of £10 if a mechanic doesn’t reach you within an hour. It gives 5% of its profits to good causes, and offsets the carbon emissions of any recovery vehicles used.

The next best offer we could find was from Rescuemycar.com, which was formed in 2000 and claims to have a national network of more than 4,000 breakdown recovery experts. It does not charge a flat rate. Instead, it takes into account individual circumstances, such as the make of the car, its age and the driver’s age, and calculates a prem­ium accordingly. We asked for cover on a five-year-old car and were quoted £28.75.


The best value full-service deal

For just a few pounds more, you can buy a policy that includes home help, provision for alternative travel and car hire and hotel accommodation if necessary, as well as basic roadside ­assistance.

The Green Insurance Company again came top, following a check on ­gocompare.com. It offers roadside repair, recovery, and home start for £34.95. Next best were tickdirect.co.uk (in association with EuropAssistance) at £37.90 and Rescuemycar.com at £37.95.

The AA asked for £135.38, and the RAC wanted £134.63.


Pay and reclaim

This is the name given to insurance-based services that will organise a?­recovery for you, but expect you to first pay the bill, then reclaim the money later ­using receipts. The leading player here is AutoAid, which gained hundreds of thousands of members when it launched. Today its deals start at £37, which, although cheap, is no longer the absolute cheapest on the market. If you’re ­forgetful or hopeless at paperwork, this deal is not for you.


Old cars and young drivers

If you’re young and your car isn’t, you might want to try First Call. It has a full-service deal that is priced at a flat rate of £42.50, no matter how old the vehicle or how young the driver.


European cover

European breakdown cover offers roadside assistance and recovery back to the UK. On gocompare.com, the cheapest deals we found for a five-year old car were £64.75 at rescuemycar.com (for UK plus maximum 60 days in Europe) and £64.99 at tickdirect.co.uk. Vehicle Rescue Direct has single-trip policies from £12.50, or UK plus up to 90 days in Europe for £67.95, supported by the Axa Assistance network.


Buy it with your car insurance

In some cases, UK and European breakdown cover is included as standard with motor insurance policies, so you may not need to pay extra for it. For ­example, Marks & Spencer’s car insurance includes cover for the individual in both the UK and Europe with their motor policies. And other providers, such as More Th>n, offer deeply discounted breakdown cover when you take out their car insurance policies.


Bear in mind call-out times and limits

The most frequent complaint about recovery services is having to wait a long time at the call centre, and even longer for a vehicle to come out. Most providers now give average times for call-out, but, as they are nearly all bunched in the 35-40 minutes range, it is not very helpful when selecting a provider.

Also, many providers cap the number of call-outs each year. For ­example, First Call’s policy (see above) is limited to six a year.

  • Motoring
  • Consumer affairs
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The £400m compensation claim ‘rip-off’

Friday, May 29th, 2009

An online law firm says it can marginalise costly claims management companies by directing applicants straight to a lawyer. Tony Levene reports

Claims management companies are raking in £400m a year for doing nothing more taxing than passing on customer details to solicitors, according to the lawyer behind a new legal website. The CMCs, which often advertise on daytime television, offer to sort out compensation for anything ranging from accidents at work to financial mis-selling in return for a percentage of the winnings, an upfront fee, or both.

They also came under fire this week from the financial ombudsman which has accused some of causing consumers with good cases to lose because the claims managers concentrate on obscure technicalities.

But now an online law scheme promises to bypass CMCs. The big, unnecessary costs, according to lawyer Costas Andrea, are led by the up-to-£750 that CMCs charge solicitors for each case they refer.

He says: “Lawyers are paying big money to buy in cases. Based on recent injury claim statistics, CMCs earn £400m from the fees solicitors have to pay them for introducing new customers. These charges do not benefit consumers because these costs have to be found from somewhere.”

This week Andrea launched a website to take on “rip-off claims farmers” and potentially return money to those needing legal help. “I intend to change the way personal injury and other legal claims are handled in the future,” he says. “Why should lawyers pay middlemen a fee for your business, when people could go direct? The savings could result in the claimant being paid by the lawyer who takes on their case.”

Andrea, 46, has been a solicitor for 20 years. He realises that most will find choosing a lawyer a daunting task.

“They need to look at costs, specialisms, and other factors. Ordinary consumers really have no way of checking lawyers. Even if they find out hourly rates, they have no idea of how many hours they will pay for,” he says.

The new site, The Law Bazaar, intends to take on the claims farmers and legal insurers. The idea is to help the claimant and the lawyer come together directly via the website, with both benefiting financially. “I created The Law Bazaar to highlight the greed of those who are cashing in on the unsuspecting public. There is nothing a claims management company does which the solicitor handling the case cannot do, and therefore there really is no need to involve them,” Andrea says.

With The Law Bazaar, the claimant registers the injury, or other case, online. Andrea explains: “An experienced lawyer will contact the claimant directly­ and pay £150 to The Law Bazaar when taking on the case. The lawyer, who is around £600 better off than buying claims from CMCs, is in a position to offer money to the claimant in addition to the damages relating to the case. Our site is free and anonymous.”

But Barry Fitton of The Claim Squad, which specialises in accident and injury compensation, disputes some of these assertions. “We’ve been around for over 10 years, so I don’t have a problem with competition. But it has to be like-for-like. We do charge lawyers more because we offer more. We only get paid once a case is accepted, so we have to filter out the no-hopers.

“We put together a lot of the documentation, so saving lawyer time and we give many hours free advice. And because we spend a lot on selecting the right lawyer for the right client, we can offer the best possible service.”

t.levene@guardian.co.uk

  • Insurance
  • Consumer affairs
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