JPTearsheet January, 2020 Vol. XII No. 1
“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”
– Robert Frost


Whistle
While You Work
The workforce is an amazing ever-changing phenomenon. It’s been studied and measured up one side and down the other, and it still remains as bewildering as ever.

Today, the glass of work is full. According to cnbc.com, U.S. employers posted 7.3 milliion jobs in December which is greater than the 6.3 million people who are unemployed.

People lose their jobs for any one of a number of reasons. Sometimes jobs are eliminated after an acquistion. However, Axios.com reports that when a private equity firm takes over a company, the average job loss is only 4.4 percent after two years which results in a 1.7 percent decline in wages.

Acquisition is not the only reason. The Brookings Institution predicts that 36 million Americans face a “high exposure to automation” in the coming decades, meaning they will have more than 70 percent of their role at risk of being substituted by artificial intelligence.

Is that any way to treat your employees? Don’t ask Google. According to The Wall Street Journal, roughly half the workforce at Google’s parent company, Alphabet – which is regularly rated as one best companies at which to work – is outsourced.

So, who is faring well in today’s work-force? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the fastest growing age/gender workforce category is women over the age of 55.

Watch where you step.  Retail environments are now more dangerous than manufacturing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, injury or illness affected 3.5 of every 100 retail workers compared with 3.4 of every 100 factory workers.
–  bloomberg.com

Gimme five.  The ancient Egyptians were the first to use the business handshake. 
–  QI

Pull the plug. A federal hotline asking citizens to report crimes committed by “criminal aliens” was shut down after it was overwhelmed with prank calls about UFO sightings, abductions by extraterrestrials, and visits by Bigfoot, Superman and “Muggle-borns.”
–  The Week

The Golden Apple. You can buy a “fully-loaded” Apple Mac Pro desktop for a mere $52,000. 
–  bloomberg.com

Holiday payoff. The Hallmark Channel produced 40 holiday movies at about $2 million each. Ad revenue for Hallmark was $600 million.
–  QZ.com

More bang for your burger.  A Bangkok restaurant is offering “the world’s largest burger.” Topped with onion rings, bacon and mayonnaise, it weighs 13 pounds and promises 10,000 calories.
–  Reuters

Omega. As of 2017, more Americans who die of natural causes are doing so at home than in hospitals.
–   New York Times

Never at The JPT Group. A British marketing agency allows its mostly-younger staff to take “hangover days” to recover after nights out entertaining clients.
–  bbc.com

If a tree falls at Christmas… After rising 23 percent between 2015 and 2018, the average price of a Christmas tree for the holiday season just passed was $78.
–  USA Today
MONTH OF DECEMBER
Quote of the Month:
“The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.” 
 – Antonin Scalia


Month of the Month:

When you think about January, think about International Brain Teaser and Creativity months. On the other hand, you don’t need to think about it being National Polka Music Month.


Question of the Month:

Do you suffer from chionophobia? This is typically a bad month for it if you do. It may give you a chill.

Rebranding
Originally known as "Doghide" after the Doghide River, the town of Tisdale, Saskatchewan was created on February 1, 1904. The town is famous for the production of honey and rapeseed, “a crop used to make animal feed and bio fuels.” For 60 years, until October 2015, Tisdale was known as the "Land of Rape and Honey." 

Apparently it took them 60 years to realize that this was not a viable slogan. Therefore, on August 22, 2016, the town adopted a new motto "Opportunity Grows Here."

A definite improvement.

Hard Hitting Lessons
A gridiron MBA? OK, maybe that’s not possible, but see how much you can learn about business from football in my book, Hard Hitting Lessons.  The subtitle says it all, “Some not-so-obvious business lessons learned from playing football.”
Most people associate football with learning things like hard work, discipline, teamwork, etc. That’s all very true. But what can you learn about business from football? According to Hard Hitting Lessons , a lot. This book will explain it all – from human resources to strategic planning and more. Yes, there’s a lot to be learned from playing football about business – and even about life itself. 

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