TO COPE WITH COVID RI ANNOUNCES NEW MASK MANDATES   Here we go again. Just like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, as soon as we think we may be in clear, we get pulled back in. Although we aren't dealing with New York City crime families, it certainly seems like we're back on familiar ground. The latest COVID 19 variant, Omicron, has been found to be exponentially more infectious, although preliminary data indicates it is less deadly. However, if the rate of infection is multiples higher, the numbers of serious illnesses and deaths will be higher due to the sheer number of infections....

All the data, facts, and figures in the world won't make the sale.   Everyone is always looking for ways to close the deal. To make the client sign on the bottom line.   Too often, we fall prey to the notion that the specifications, the facts and figures, the data we've compiled will seal the deal. So we do a data dump on the customer, thinking it will tell the story of our product or service. We think to ourselves "the data speaks for itself".   Although this sounds like a quite logical assessment, as explained by Karen Eber in her TedTalk “How your brain...

Rest assured that Available Staffing Network has no supply chain issues. ASN is ready to supply your workforce requirements when you need them – no bottlenecks, no delays.   Although this seemed to be a bit abstruse at the time, at least part of it can be applied to today’s supply chain difficulties. For many of us, the intricacies of the global supply chain were of no concern. For the most part, we needed what we needed, we ordered it, and it arrived when we expected. Everything was fine, until it wasn’t. How could we not know how vulnerable we were?   A study,...

Plenty of Job Openings But Not Enough Qualified Workers   There are currently 8.4 million unemployed and 10 million job openings. In ordinary times, this would put employers in the catbird seat. However, these are not ordinary times.   It may no longer be enough to simply hire and onboard employees with the normal and nominal introductions to company polices and familiarization with procedures and standard practices. This only works when a company has the advantage of an ample cache of qualified applicants to choose from.   The latest Labor Department data shows that nationwide, most industries have more job openings than people with the required previous...

"If I'd known that the roaring 20s were going to be two weeks in June, I would have done more". - Anonymous   This was going to be the summer where it all turned around. Cookouts, movies, vacations, the works. As it stands now, that was not much more than wishful thinking. Instead of most of the nation being vaccinated and achieving herd immunity, we are again locked in yet another pandemic wave, principally one of our own making. Maybe, just maybe, we could have made it work with the current U.S. (full) vaccination rate of 54.2%, but the even more infectious...