Worcester Business Journal

18 Worcester Business Journal | February 3, 2020 | wbjournal.com 10) Nigerian prince lives. The royalty who wants to send you money is the oldest scam in the book, yet it continues to lure victims. Phishing works by creating false trust to give up log-in credentials, click a bogus URL or download a malware-infected file. 9) Avoid pain. Be aware successful phishing scams can result in stealing your identity, blocking access to your computer, and then demanding a hefty ransom to reinstate access. 8) Scammers too creative. With touchscreens popular now, you may find what appears to be a human hair follicle (digitized) or flea on your screen. Swipe it, and malware is downloaded. 7) Nudges work. We're impatient people driven by a sense of urgency. Scammers exploit your natural impulse to click and be fooled. Emails may appear to come from someone you trust in your contacts. 6) Familiarity breeds trust. Scammers build bogus proxies of known institutions (banks) or payment providers (credit cards), copying logos and modifying the URL to fool you. Their success depends on your too-quick-to-click impulsive behavior. 5) Suspect all URLs. If you are suspicious of a link, take the smart precaution of validating the source and visit the bona fide site directly. Scammers are even falsifying HTTPS. 4) Don't download. Always verify the person who sent you a file actually did send you a file to download. Sometimes distrust is the best policy. 3) Obey your instincts. Trusted sources like your bank or the U.S. Internal Revenue Service will never email you to ask that you reset your password or input personal identification by following a link. Any email asking for private data is most likely fraudulent. 2) Uncharitable charities. Contacts made by alleged charities are suspect, especially those designed to tug at your heart strings. Seek out only known, reputable charities when making donations. 1) Always update. Never ignore requests from Windows or Apple to run updates. Many a million-dollar breach was a result of failing to do simple updates. Set your settings to automatically make these updates. K N O W H O W Young workers can fuel medtech 10 1: E M P L O Y E E S U R V E Y S W hen is the last time you surveyed your employees? Retaining talent, gauging the impact of company policies and finding areas of improvement are some of the value of employee surveys. Ideally anon- ymous, surveys offer managers infor- mation they need to make decisions on the health of the organization and boost morale. Employees love being heard. Here are a few things to remember about employee surveys and using them as a tool for growth. Follow up. Acting on data a com- pany receives from surveys improves employee engagement, and therefore, retention, says research firm Best Companies Group. "Failure to follow up on the feedback from the survey could potentially have the opposite effect … Employees could become angry, disillusioned, and further disengaged, increasing their likelihood to seek employment elsewhere," says a company blog post. Best Companies cites the cost of replacing an employee at about 60% of their salary, not including the lost productivity during transition time. Use surveys to predict the future. Silence can speak volumes in surveys, Facebook executives Scott Judd and Eric O'Rourke told Harvard Business Review. "People who don't fill out either of our two annual surveys are 2.6 times more likely to leave in the next six months," they report. e social-media platform also asks its employees in sur- veys how long they intend to stay with the company. Set benchmarks. Remember em- ployee surveys are a tool. Ensure your company uses survey information to set benchmarks and compare them, show- ing progress over time. According to on- line soware company SurveyMonkey, "e key to getting a good benchmark is using the same survey questions each time with each group." SurveyMonkey suggests comparing departments' results to see where the company's focus would do the most good. 1 0 T H I NG S I know about . . . ...Email scams BY BRIAN RUA Special to the Worcester Business Journal I t's not always easy to find a good, well-paying job with benefits when you don't have a college de- gree or years of experience. It can be even harder if you're new to the U.S. But in my job as a manufacturing director in a medical device company, I get to see the advantages this industry offers employees of all backgrounds and education levels. Not your father's manufacturing We offer many jobs not requiring a degree. Some people, however, have a negative perception about working in manufacturing. But making medical de- vices is different; even in the heart of the manufacturing floor, it's clean, bright, and climate controlled. Medtech com- panies like ours can have cleanrooms where white-coated employees operate machines and assemble parts. Employ- ees know they're part of something important: Creating intricate products improving and even saving lives. Already a supervisor at 24 years old Autumn Nichols is an example of how a great attitude and work ethic can fuel a medtech career. Aer graduating from high school, she briefly worked in a coffee shop before joining us as an as- sembler. We appreciated her attention to detail and work ethic, so we transferred her to an electrical discharge machin- ing position. She was promoted to be a group leader and then supervisor in assembly, where she oversees EDM, and finishing operations. She's so respected and trusted she was asked to join a cus- tomer meeting because of her unique knowledge of making their product. From lavatories to lasers Sonia Avila is another example of medtech's transformative opportunities for someone with no manufacturing experience. Avila, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala, joined Tegra Medical as an office and bathroom cleaner. We were struck by her strong work ethic, positive attitude, and pride in a job well done. It was clear she had the qualities we look for on the manufacturing floor, so we promoted her to an assembly po- sition. A year later she was promoted to be a laser setup operator, which means she doesn't just operate this highly so- phisticated machinery, she sets it up to make different parts, meeting very high expectations in this challenging work. Opportunities to learn and grow Operators like Nichols and Avi- la can learn new skills and take on more responsibility, including moving into supervisory roles. In addition to learning on the job, employees can take advantage of classes taught onsite, like leadership and blueprint reading. Sometimes it makes sense for an employee to seek outside education. Andrew Tavares was a secondary oper- ator interested in joining our toolmaker apprentice program. He enrolled in a community college program to gain the prerequisite machining skills and is now a first-year member of the appren- tice program while we reimburse his continuing education costs. We've found apprentice programs are a great way to help motivated employ- ees jumpstart their careers. In addition to the toolmaker program, we're adding programs for different kinds of skilled machining. With the robust growth of medtech in Massachusetts, these ad- vanced skills will be in high demand. Medtech is an industry with a bright future in Massachusetts; it will contin- ue to offer enviable opportunities for workers from many backgrounds to have solid, satisfying, long-term careers. Brian Rua is the director of manufacturing for Tegra Medical in Franklin. Young employees at Tegra Medical in Franklin: Sonia Avila (left), laser setup operator; and Autumn Nichols, supervisor in assembly for finishing operations BY SUSAN SHALHOUB Special to the Worcester Business Journal By Michelle Drolet Michelle Drolet is CEO of Towerwall, a woman- owned, independent data security services provider based in Framingham. You may reach her at michelled@towerwall.com. W W W

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