Business & Legal Reports, Inc.
141 Mill Rock Road East
P. O. Box 6001
Old Saybrook, Connecticut 06475-6001
April 1990 - December
1992:
As legal editor, wrote news articles, features, and policy guidance
on legal compliance in employment for What to Do About Personnel Problems
in (Your State), with focus on plain-language explanations and practical
applications of legal principles for human resources professionals.
The
service, consisting of an encylopedic looseleaf reference book, two monthly
newsletters, state and national, and annual surveys of compensation and
benefits, covers the full range of federal and state employment laws. In 1990,
the service extended to 29 states, with a team of three editors, two of us
lawyers, handling all editorial functions.
In addition to writing and
editing, the job involved considerable legal research, news gathering,
attendance at professional conferences and conventions (as an exhibitor and as a
reporter), review and editing of free-lancers' submissions, and frequent
telephone contact with customers, who are invited to call the editors for
counsel. Edited BLR Workers' Compensation Encyclopedia (1992) and
SB195 Compliance Handbook (1993).
In 1992, I took on
additional duties as surveys editor, planning mailings of questionnaires,
overseeing data processing, laying out survey reports, writing articles based on
survey findings, and generating salary ranges from survey data for publication
in Employee Compensation in
(Your State), a looseleaf service directed at compensation managers.
As surveys editor, I devoted most of my attention to BLR's Annual
Survey of Exempt and Nonexempt Compensation, summarizing data on 81
benchmark jobs, and the Survey of Employee Benefits, describing
trends in benefits policies and practices, each based on data collected from
over 3,000 employers nationwide. I learned the Foxbase computer program and
gradually took on all of the data processing tasks. I continue to function as
surveys editor, publishing five reports per year, several of which have
attracted national press
attention.
December 1992 - July 1996: Team Leader/Managing Editor.
Supervised all editorial functions in connection with What to Do About
Personnel Problems in (Your State), eventually expanding coverage from
29 to 50 states and spinning off Quick Guide to Employment Law in the 50
States, a looseleaf reference consisting of tables of state employment
law abstracts. Supervised a team of six attorneys and an assistant editor.
In 1994, with my appointment as managing editor, I took full charge of
Employee Compensation in (Your
State), then published in 16 states, along with the rest of BLR's
human resources product line.
July 1996 - 2001: Senior Developmental
Editor/Managing Editor. The focus of my job was narrowed to BLR's compensation
product line. Supervising one full-time assistant editor, I streamlined our data
collection process, enabling expansion of Employee Compensation
from 16 states to 46 states; rewrote, reorganized, and redesigned the text and
layout of the looseleaf service; invented a computerized job evaluation tool and
a set of interactive computerized personnel forms; and added 32 jobs to our
annual compensation surveys. I consulted
with readers every day by telephone, and I was widely considered an authority on
employee compensation and employment law compliance. I managed all expenditures
for my project, and I prepared a budget every year. I continued to perform most of these functions as a free-lancer from 1999 through 2001.