Starting this week, if you decide to friend or follow someone on social media you don’t recognize, they might surprise you with a debt collection notice in the app’s tiny font. That’s because for the first time, federal regulators have given debt collectors the ability to legally contact debtors via email, texts, and their social-media messages.

The new regulations went into effect Tuesday. In theory, they’re to “modernize” the decades-old rules under which debt collectors must operate when pursuing debtors. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was passed back in 1977 to stop abusive debt-collection practices, before there was internet or Facebook. These changes that just rolled out were introduced over a year ago by the Trump administration, whose Consumer Financial Protection Bureau took a friendlier stance toward the business community. In her first major speech in 2019 as head of the CFPB, director Kathleen Kraninger said it was very important to her to “modernize the legal regime for debt collection.” After the changes happened, she released a statement that announced: “We are finally leaving 1977 behind and developing a debt collection system that works for consumers and industry in the modern world.”
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To reassure consumers it hasn’t created a shark-feeding-frenzy situation, the CFPB posted an online explainer titled “Understand how the CFPB’s Debt Collection Rule impacts you.” But consumer groups fear that by arming debt collectors with these additional avenues for debt collection, Americans will be exposed to millions of threatening or harassing emails, texts, and social-media messages they wouldn’t have received otherwise.

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​Year-end can come with holiday presents, parties, and year-end bonuses. It's also quite normal to do annual pay increases effective at the first of the new year.
These things are all good, but it may impact what the Great Resignation looks like at your office. 

If year-end bonuses and raises are the norms in your company, your employees may hold off accepting that new job until the money is in their pockets. While companies shouldn't base new hires' salaries on their previous salaries, many do, and employees can use it as a negotiating tool. After all, why would they leave a job for less money than they make now? And who wants to quit three weeks before bonuses hit the bank account.
This isn't to tell you not to give people raises and bonuses--you'll undoubtedly lose your best employees if you do that. This is to tell you to prepare and plan. Here's what you need to think about.

Look at actual market rates for raises, not just general cost of living Inflation is a huge problem--it's affecting everything, including salaries. You can't ignore the reality staring at you in salary surveys. Yes, it's more work to have your human resources department look at what it would cost to replace someone than it is just to allot a small percentage to everyone. Still, if you don't do it, you'll not only lose more employees, you'll also end up paying the higher rate for their replacements.

Remember, when you look at salaries, you're not looking at competitors but at companies that use the same types of employees. Your warehouse employees can easily move to a package delivery service or a grocery store. Every business needs IT and accountants. It's worth the work to figure out what new salaries should be.
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Consider long-term incentives Yes, people want their year-end bonuses, and heaven knows everyone has been through enough these past two years and could use the bonus. But if there isn't a reason to stay long term, people will be more likely to leave right after they get the bonus.

Make sure you have compensation that takes time to vest (stocks or 401(k) matches, for instance). If you make that valuable enough, you can increase your employee loyalty and help keep people around longer term. Read more...

​Dr Spencer Johnson tells us a story about 4 characters who live in a maze and learn to deal with unexpected change. This is a business classic although the lessons it teaches are not limited to just managers and employees.