Progress Through Business Newsletter
Improving social and economic conditions


Information for you in this issue of Progress Through Business
April 2015 Vol 57
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In This Issue
Companies providing financial education show results that include improvement in workplace productivity, employee morale, and company loyalty while reducing absenteeism, turnover, and workplace distractions. 

Learn more at The Personal Finance Employee Education Foundation, Inc.
How the Poor View the Rich and Relate to the American Dream

By John Hoffmire & Pankaj Upadhyay


The core of the American Dream - equality of opportunity and rewards commensurate with efforts and abilities - has enchanted millions of people across the globe. However, it is important to assess whether the reality bears out that ideal. Although two-thirds of Americans (69 percent) agree with the statement that "people are rewarded for intelligence and skill," there is evidence that a child in a poor family in the U.S. has a smaller chance of moving up than his or her counterpart in many other advanced economies. The Great Gatsby curve suggests a statistical relationship between income inequality and lack of social mobility. Countries with higher income inequality are likely to have lower social mobility.

 

Dominance hierarchies are part of life, and in a limited sense they may even be efficient by coordinating group life, action and division of labor. However, it is when inequities implicit in hierarchies become frozen - when they are based on inherited privilege rather than intelligence and skill - that human sensibilities are particularly repelled.


Clearly such a dysfunctional social landscape cannot be a setting for broad-based social cohesion.
Please click How the Poor View the Rich and Relate to the American Dream to finish reading.
You are Invited to a Conference on Business and Poverty

By Maren McInnes

This summer on July 25, 2015, there will be a free one-day conference on business and poverty put on by John Hoffmire at Wadham College at Oxford University. You are invited to attend this event to learn more about how business can help alleviate poverty and how you can apply these principles and ideas within your own business or organization. The conference is free, but there is a reimbursable fee of $30 or �20 to hold your place. You will be welcome to collect this fee at the event or donate it to the conference.

 

"This conference is about doing things," Dr. Hoffmire said..

To learn more about the agenda, speakers and how to register please click:
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Last Mile Health - Helping Bring the Ebola Crisis to a Close

By Pankaj Upadhyay

As Ebola has begun to slow its pace in Sierra Leone and Guinea, and perhaps disappear for now from Liberia, the perils of pandemics still seem to be more than an imaginary fear. The crisis we have just witnessed from afar captures not only local shortcomings but also the unbalanced way healthcare is distributed in some parts of the world as compared to others.

 

The Ebola stricken regions are lacking in staff, stuff and space to counter the contagion. For instance, in Liberia even before the current crisis claimed many health care professionals, there were fewer than 50 doctors serving a population of 4 million. This amounts to roughly one physician per 100,000 people as against 240 in the United States or 670 in Cuba. The availability of properly equipped hospitals is not as dismal as the situation with staff. As an example, Liberia has about 80 beds per 100,000 people while the United States, with 290 hospital beds per 100,000 people, has more than three and a half times that provision.

 

Dr Raj Panjabi, who founded Last Mile Health, portrays the grim situation very vividly when he says, "If you lived in a place like Gu�ck�dou, Guinea and your two year old became sick you would hoist him on your back, walk to the river, paddle a canoe, get to the other side and then walk for up to two days to the nearest treatment facility."

Please click Last Mile Health - Helping Bring the Ebola Crisis to a Close to continue reading.
Incentives, Ownership and Productivity

By Tara Sabre Collier

 

Regardless of all operational, strategic and management factors, staff productivity can make or break a business. Recruitment and training are thus fundamental to any CEO's efforts to ensure or improve worker output. Still, many firms struggle in these areas, and many others wonder what more can be done. Employee ownership is a complement to recruitment and training, and is gaining ground as a performance incentive. Today, over a fifth of the U.S. workforce participates in some type of employee ownership or holds company stock options, but these models are far less widespread in emerging markets.

 

However, employee ownership's vast potential in developing countries was highlighted recently through a company called Taai Bricks. Taai Bricks is a brick manufacturer based in Gauteng, South Africa. In a country where low worker capacity is listed among enterprises' top challenges, Taai Bricks has improved both the quantity and quality of workers and their output through extensive training and incentives. Nearly half of Taai Bricks's 173 staff are women and, at entry, almost 70 percent of them would be considered low-skilled, with few having found ways to achieve professional advancement. In addition to providing vocational and technical training, Taai Bricks endows workers with shares in the company, which increase in number with seniority and performance. This unique incentive model has helped create a vibrant workforce with remarkably low staff turnover and consistent gains in output, quality of work life, participation in the workplace, labor management relations, and revenue.

Please click Incentives, Ownership and Productivity to read more.
Would You Give Away $15,000,000 to your Co-workers?

By Luca and Simon Sivers

Would you ever think of giving away $15,000,000 to your employees? Keith Dionne did.

 

When Dionne became CEO of Alantos Pharmaceuticals in 2003, the firm was struggling financially but four years later, it sold for $300,000,000. Most importantly, Dionne negotiated with Alantos investors to give an extra $15,000,000 to the forty-five employees who helped create that value.

 

Dionne's childhood story is as interesting as his time at Alantos. At age 14, his stepfather left his mother, leaving Keith to run the family farm in rural Idaho.

 

Between school, extracurricular activities, and farm work, he was an abnormally busy adolescent who quickly learned the meaning of responsibility. However, as Dionne says, "It seemed perfectly natural to take over the farm when my stepfather left. Its only now, when I look back that it seems amazing that a 14 year old could run an 80 acre farm.  It definitely made me grow up quickly." 

Please click Would You Give Away $15,000,000 to your Co-workers? to finish reading.

Since 2004, Progress Through Business has helped in the creation and growth of companies located in distressed and underserved urban and rural communities and assisted residents of those communities to become entrepreneurs.  

 

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