There’s been a lot of changes recently to Internet security done mostly by browsers to improve the online safety of Web users. Even though I have a security background, I have some serious issues with the stance browsers and other technology companies have been taking in improving Internet security. My major concern is that not enough is being done to educate end-users.

I understand that there has always been an epic battle between businesses, tech people, and end-users, in regards to educating the everyday computer user. I know it has been a losing battle and understand that companies often resort to “well, if the user is going to be dumb, then I’ll just do everything I can to prevent them from making a mistake”. This mentality is, in an of itself, a mistake. Non-educated users are prone to finding innovative ways to make mistakes, regardless of the safeguards we put in place, despite the amount of preventive security that is put in place.

If you’ve ever seen a site that looks like this, you’ve been “saved” by a browser’s attempt to block “bad” sites. The problem with this is that your safety net, as a user, is dependent entirely upon a browser‘s ability to scan millions of sites and be able to differentiate between those that are good and those that are bad.

Unfortunately, browsers will never be able to catch all bad sites, some are going to get through and users will be defenseless. At some point, we will need to weight which losing battle we will want to fight. So far educating users has not been a popular choice of action, however, there are some changes in the horizon.

I came across a new Web site by Verisign, Phish or No Phish, which quizzes users on which sites are phishing Web sites, and which are real Web sites. It then promotes the use of EV (Extended Validation) SSL Certificates (the green bar on the browser) to identity secure domain names. I like that the approach taken was to educate the end-user on the reality of bad online and how to spot those sites that are bad. I also thought that the Verisign quiz was biased towards having users miss more questions than normal so that they can then show how bad the problem really is. Again, I have a security background and admit that I did not get 100% of the phishing sites on the quiz.

The problem, really, is that most phishing Web sites come from non-standard domain names for the company being copied. Verisign, on the otherhand, user man-in-the-middle (same domain name on both screenshots) for all but one of their quiz questions. Hate to break it to Verisign, but very little of the phishing sites out there operate this way. Most are coming from the garbage domain names. In any case, the overall, the positive effect here is that more emphasis is being placed on educating users.

As technology professionals we can only do so much. Eventually, our users will be left on their own and will have to stand on their own two legs, the question, then, is “will they do the right thing?” I certainly hope that we see more of this from technology companies.

Many times small and medium-sized companies have a difficult time keeping talented employees because of the lack of career growth for the employees at the company. With all management positions filled, and without the prospect of vertical growth at a company, a talented employee can become discouraged at the lack of prospects in terms of his or her career growth. These individuals are much more apt to be shopping for a new position with another company rather than focusing their talents and skills on helping the company grow in the long term.

The key to overcoming this dilemma is to develop multiple career paths at the company. Developing non-managerial career paths at a company will allow employees who are not currently in a management position to continue to grow in their career within the company and helps the employee to continue progressing and resolve to remain with the company rather than looking for a better opportunity elsewhere.

To develop multiple career paths, there are a certain key elements to remembers and put into place:

Look at your company’s environment and see what types of tracks are currently available—Almost all organizations have a management track, but you should look at what additional tracks you could potentially offer your employees.

Kelley Zanfardino with HRTools, recently wrote the following:

“If your company has an IT department, you may want to create a technical track for those employees to follow. You may also want to create a professional advancement track for employees who want to move up in their jobs without having to take on a management role. If you’re in the bio-technology or healthcare field, you may also want to consider a scientific track.”

Managers who find themselves in organizations where there are steep learning curves or if high employee turnover would be detrimental to operational efficiency should especially focus on ensuring that all employees are on a progressing on a career path else they will find the employee will, in time, become dissatisfied, disinterested, and will leave the company.

Next, you’ll want to develop the levels that are within each track—These alternative tracks should balance against your management track. Since the management track has been in existence the longest, and people understand it, it’s a really solid matrix to balance your other tracks on.

Zanfardino again says that: “when you look at taking an employee from a line worker to a lead worker to a supervisor to a department manager to an area manager, you have to see what’s equivalent to that in the alternative tracks in order to provide equal levels to employees.”

After that, you have to look at your internal equity—You must ensure that there is equity between all career paths. If you put these dual-career ladders together, you need to ensure that each ladder is close to the others in what we call “internal equity.” If you don’t and employees perceive them as not as valuable, you’ve missed your mark.

Simply a title or some additional responsibilities won’t do the job here. It requires actual commitment to career growth, with the added bonuses and benefits. A title and new responsibilities will make an effect on the short-run, but in the long-run, then employee again will see the inequality in the positions and will take the alternate career path as a lesser-valued position within the company.

Lastly, you need to identify development paths for your dual-career ladder employees—These steps need to be spelled out very specifically so that employees interested in taking this dual-career path will know exactly what they need to do to get from point A to point B.

Employees need to know exactly what is required of them in order to be considered for a position. Otherwise, there appears to be favoritism within the company. With specific guidelines, employees not only work on improving themselves in order to qualify to be considered for a position, but it encourages them to improve themselves outside of work through acquiring new skills, learning new things pertaining to their current position, keeping up on industry news and readings, etc.

Overall, there seems to be little drawback to developing clear career paths in the workplace. Having alternatives to traditional management cuts down on employee turnover by giving employees a sense of having a career and not just having a job. Work, each day, then become an investment to the employee, rather than a chore to be done in order to collect a paycheck.

I read an article recently regarding employee recognition and incentive programs in the workplace and what employers can do to keep employees happy and products. I have to say, the suggestions by the HRTools author were lacking in real substance to really keep top talent interested in working for the company long term.

I understand that for organizations currently not employing ANY incentive or recognition program for employees everyone has to start somewhere. Too often, however, companies wanting to implement recognition programs or incentives, do so improperly or poorly. The result being that the incentive or recognition does not have a positive effect on employees and many times, has a negative effect on employees and employee morale.

These programs, incentives, and awards have their right place at work and can be extremely useful in showing your employees appreciation, recognition, and has great power to continually motivate employees to maximize their efficiency in their line of work and become a more productive professional.

HRTools recently discussed the usefulness of these programs and stated that:

Recognition programs and positive reinforcement are needed in every organization.

Creating a balance of formal and informal recognition programs is a recommended practice and is an effective way to keep employees motivated and happy.

There is a great fallacy in that ANY recognition and incentive will keep employees motivated and happy. I think some HR experts and the managers who truly believe this are living in a fantasy business world that doesn’t exist. Here are the suggestions to keeping employees “happy”, according to the article:

Service awards based on tenure—This type of reward is pretty common in lots of companies.

Employee of the Month/Quarter/Year awards.

Performance-linked bonuses.

Monetary awards for money-saving suggestions that improve the company’s products, services or processes—oftentimes these suggestions can save a company millions of dollars; therefore, you want to make sure that the award is reflective of the cost savings for the company.

Annual trips or conference invitations based on outstanding performance.

At first glance, I admit, we may think that these suggestions are great, and that they do actually fulfill the implied result of keeping employees happy and motivated. As we really begin thinking about this, however, I think that we come to the realization that these suggestions may only be successful if they are used to call-center atmosphere where they are regularly abused and neglected. Or if they are used to hard-labor with task-masters over them who berate employees and squeeze out every single drop of productivity from employees until near the point of exhaustion.

Here’s why:

Service awards based on tenure - Awards based on tenure are nearly useless now-a-days. Research by the U.S. Bureau of Labor & Statistics (1979) has shown that employees currently are changing jobs about 10 times in their career. Since the data is old, it is thought that currently that number is probably higher than previously stated in the study. Rewards for employees at their 5- and 10-year mark have little value since most employees may not have plans to be in that specific position in 5 or 10 years.

Employee of the Month/Quarter/Year - This is another ineffective program that will either polarizes your outstanding employees and your mediocre-performing employees. Think about it, if you are truly rewarding your best employees, you may have a handful of excellent employees who will always win the award. This will not motivate the mediocre employees because despite all of their effort, they will won’t match the best performing employees for some time. At the same time, if you spread out the reward so that when the mediocre employee who shows a little improvement gets rewarded, the top-performing employees will no longer be excited about maintaining their top performance since others who don’t perform that high level are also rewarded.

Performance-linked bonuses - Now we’re getting somewhere, as long as the bonuses are not linked to group performance. Group performance-based incentives will reward mediocre when generally the bulk of the work done will be completed by the top-performing employees.

Monetary awards for money-saving suggestions - This idea sounds great, until the employee realizes that they just received a $1000 bonus for saving the company hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. Most of the time, when the employees sees the bonus compared to the amount he just saved the company, he’ll feel like he got the short-end of the stick.

Annual trips or conference invitations - This is another suggestion that, again, sounds great until you begin to think of the implications it has on the group of employees. What will everyone think when you have one or two employees who always get the company trip at the end of the year? What implications does that have on the entire team at the company? On the surface, it’s a good suggestion but one that will, in the end, only manage to hurt your employee base more than it will help.

The next time you’re thinking about implementing an incentive program for employees, think of the real implications that it will have on your employees in the entire company, and determine if the incentive program is really just “throwing peanuts” at your employees or if your program is really targeted to drive your employees to become better, smarter, more successful, efficient, and motivated at driving the company forward.