“On continent,” says Lorna Ramsay, Director of TOP-SET® Investigation System, referring to Europe, there’s corporate manslaughter. The CEO can be put in jail if people are injured or killed on-the-job. This concentrates mind of CEO wonderfully,” she added.

This statement got my attention. How about you?

I’m interested in use of ‘gut feeling’ or intuition in workplace, among other skills considered “soft,” and I’d heard Lorna taught engineers who work in nuclear plants, oil and gas, explosives and other high hazard industries, how to stay safe by using their intuition - as part of using TOP-SET® Investigation System.

Perfect, I thought, high IQ employees using their EQ to keep alive. It’s for sure in today’s rapidly-changing workplace, companies all over world are finding intellect alone is not enough. TOP-SET® teaches that indeed it isn't.

As to focus of CEO’s attention, legislation has a way of encouraging ethics and humanitarian values in a corporation where exhortation cannot. Some would call this “soft” side of business, but why wait to be forced to do something good that also positively affects “hard” side of business – employee retention, morale, risk management, team building, productivity and ultimately bottom line?

“SOFT” SKILLS

I’ve been investigating use of “soft” skills to bring results in businesses around world.

· Tom McDorman, managing director of Western Digital (Malaysia) Sdn. Bh.d, believes “emotional intelligence-style management techniques” can bolster faltering Asian manufacturers. Productivity at his Kuala Lumpur factory jumped 20% after he began cultivating ‘soft’ side of his workers …

· University of Queensland professor Neal Ashkanasy maintains that “It’s an easy target in terms of softness and fluffiness, but … failure to recognize emotions in workplace [can] reflect in a demoralized workforce.”

· An article in “The Namibia Economist: Custodian of Business Intelligence,” by a Namibian economist says, “Forecasting is a dangerous exercise and I shall not give myself out as an expert on this terrain. What I’m saying is based purely on my personal gut feeling …”

· An Australian news article began “Top leaders are getting in touch with their emotions and those of their staff as intuition and emotional intelligence become hottest management buzzwords.”

And teaching incident investigation is what Lorna does for a living. She and her husband, David, live in Scotland, and run TOP-SET® Incident Investigation System ( http://www.TOP-SET.com ). They teach how to investigate industrial accidents all over world, and for some very serious industries —explosives, pharmaceuticals, paper, shipping, nuclear engineering, medicine, gold mining, etc. as well as emergency services and medical sector. They and TOP-SET® team also go into field to investigate for clients all over world.

The most rewarding outcome of their work is companies find that being humanitarian affects their bottom line. What they learn through TOP-SET® saves lives, increases business performance, enhances company’s reputation, increases profitability, complies with regulation, and prevents and predicts similar occurrences. And it also affects employee morale and attitude.

I recently had an experience with one of affiliate programs I *was* involved with. This experience did not surprise me, but did however, disappoint me. It is a sad fact that it did not surprise me and I thought maybe an article on this subject might bring it to our attention.

I did willingly join this program and accept terms of which I do understand. However, when customers of this online business owner would email me with complaints about product and fact that owner would not answer any emails, I definitely had to think twice about promoting this product and affiliate program.

So having decided this, I wrote owner and asked if he could send me small amount owed to me. I informed him I would not be promoting his product or program any longer and would like what was owed to me. His reasoning was, he would not pay me because I joined program willingly and he had a minimum amount.

This I had to accept while thinking, "Wouldn't common decency dictate paying small amount he owed to a former affiliate?" The money itself does not change my life in anyway of course, but human side of this really bothers me.

I will credit him with being polite and professional in his emails, and I also did not get upset, but thanked him for learning experience. I also stated that I would in no way run my affiliate program in that way.

Common decency would prohibit me from doing so.

I realize we are running businesses and need to make money, but do we throw away courtesy, decency, respect and consideration to do so? I think not!