Safety Procedures

I recently had to attend a seminar on workplace safety that was given in-house where I work.  In my industry, there are numerous hazards that one can run into on a daily basis.  For myself, its mostly has to do with the different types of chemicals we work with on a daily basis.  At a minimum I have to wear safety glasses and a labcoat while I’m in the laboratory.  Occasionally we have to wear aprons and/or face shields if the chemical we are working with is particularly hazardous, a concentrated acid, or a concentrated caustic.
Something that surprised me during this seminar/class was the addition of a lockdown procedure.  It was something that caught me off-guard but looking back seems to make a lot of sense.  We now have a system outlined that we are supposed to follow if there is an event or a person in the building or on the property that has a weapon and intends to do harm.  It’s not something that I normally think about, or ever really thought of for that matter, but it is definitely a reality in today’s day and age.  It’s rather scary to think that if something like this were to happen, we as employees are pretty much defenseless.  I’m not sure if anyone else has any experience with this type of policy at their company, but I’d love to hear more about it.
The lockdown procedure and recommendations found on this site: http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-School-or-Workplace-Shooting  are very similar to the ones that were covered the seminar I attended.  I think what bothers me the most is how helpless most people would be in these types of situations.  I believe everyone should be able to fight back when they have to, but in cases like this where someone is armed and you are not, it just wouldn’t be logical.   I’m not sure what can be done about that, but it bothers me a great deal…

Title Structure Reorganization

Its interesting to see the different types of employee title structure that are used by different companies, particularly those companies within the same industry.  In my industry (biotech) employee titles typically vary a great deal from one employer to the next.  For instance, at my first employer, I started as an Assistant Scientist and was promoted to Scientist 1 my first year there.  Then I jumped around a bit to two other companies and when I landed at my last company (previous to my current company) I was an Associate Scientist II.  What's interesting about all of this is that I was a full Scientist at my first job within a year.  By the time I started at my last employer, I had 5 years experience and was lower than a full Scientist yet I had a much higher salary than when I was a full Scientist before.  It really didn't make any sense.  The point of all of this is that there is no standard by which you can compare titles for positions from company to company, and it would be ideal if there was some sort of standard.

On the bright side, some biotech and pharmaceutical companies have taken steps to harmonize with the industry as a whole.  My company recently reorganized its title and salary structure to have a much smaller number of titles and created a more streamlined and transparent system for its employees.  It gets tricky however, when you start putting employees with varying backgrounds and varying years of experience into the same title/pay grade.  You'll sometimes have employees who were at different titles (scientist 1,II, and III for instance) and then lump them together at the same level under the new system.  This can cause some issues in the sense that someone who once had title seniority no longer does.  There can be a lot of bruised egos with changes such as this and some employees will be a bit disgruntled.  

I found this website on creating salary structures which I thought was rather relevant:

http://internationalhr.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/ten-steps-for-building-a-salary-structure/  but I'm still at a loss on finding anything to combat the troubles of the title situation.  I'm not sure how to solve this problem, and I'd be interested in hearing your comments about how to fix it.  

Final Paper Abstract

A literature review was performed on publications relating to management practices in the biotechnology field, focusing on the prevalence of toxic management and its effects on employees.  This paper details the findings and possible reasons behind how these toxic situations develop, such as a lack of management training, degree requirements not related to leadership roles, lack of transparency, and detrimental personality traits.  The paper also addresses different courses of action that can be taken in order to attempt to remedy these types of behavior, specifically management education requirements and mentoring programs.  These strategies are by no means guaranteed methods to overcome toxic management, however they can help promote productive management styles in individuals who have difficulty adapting to a manager mentality in the biotechnology workplace.