Posted on: Monday, July 26, 2004

Watch out for identity theft at work

By Carol Kleiman
Chicago Tribune

• Identity theft: When you consider taking preventive measures to make sure someone doesn't steal your credit-card information, Social Security number or driver's license, you usually don't think of protecting yourself on the job.

Yet, according to Melynda Dovel Wilcox, writing in Kiplinger's Personal Finance, of the 10 million cases of identity theft reported last year, the most common crime scene was the workplace. The magazine suggests that you black out your credit-card number and driver's license on your expense account.

Another tip: Have your Social Security number removed from your paycheck, parking permit, staff badge, time sheets or any similar documentation.

• Salary secrets: Every time I urge job seekers not to give their salary history in advance of the job offer, I'm flooded with complaints — mostly from employers who want job applicants to tell all but who won't give any information in advance about the pay range.

But George Kuehn, a freelance instructional designer and technical writer from Oak Lawn, Ill., says, "I am in complete accord with your negative view of the practice."

Kuehn, who is a former teacher and college professor, adds that "given a choice, a thoughtful person would avoid working for a business whose first action was to jerk around applicants for financial gain. Not given a choice ... a person might comply with the request but have mental reservations that preclude any future sense of loyalty or trust in the motives of the employer."

And Kuehn makes this final observation, with which I'm in complete agreement: "Whether intentional or not, the salary history requirement does have the effect of perpetuating the lower compensation received by women and minorities. For this reason alone the practice should be discontinued."

• Getting ahead: About 40 female executives nationwide are going to get help in cracking the finely honed safety glass of that infamous glass ceiling. That's the number of women who will be accepted into a new Women's Senior Leadership Program to start in October. It's being launched by the Center for Executive Women at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, supported by a $500,000 grant from The Allstate Foundation.

"Despite the increased number of female corporate officers and the ... expertise they possess, the highest levels of corporate leadership are still populated overwhelmingly by men," said Victoria Husted Medvec, executive director of the center and a professor of management and organizations at Kellogg.

Women enrolled in the program will attend four 2›-day sessions over two years. The fee is $16,000.

My advice: Get your company to pay it.

• What lies ahead: "Regardless of the particular approaches used to shorten the workweek, the nations of the world will have no choice but to downshift the number of hours worked in coming decades," according to Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Work Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era" (Tarcher/Penguin, $15.95).

"As machines increasingly replace human beings ... the choice will be between a few being employed for longer hours while large numbers of people are jobless and on the public dole, or spreading the available work out and giving more workers the opportunity to share shorter weekly work schedules."