LOST CARDS

If you discover that your credit card, cheque book, debit card or cash card is missing, telephone the credit card company or bank as soon as possible. Follow this up with a letter. If you suspect theft, tell the police as well. In most circumstances, provided you act quickly, you will not have to pay any bills which the thief runs up on your account. Most home insurance policies now cover you against loss from theft and fraud.

Because plastic money is now so common, central registration schemes such as Credit Card Shield and Card Protection System exist to help to monitor the use of lost or stolen cards. These schemes allow you to register all your cards – including cash cards and account details used by shops – with a central registry, for a small annual fee.

Then, if any or all of your cards are stolen, you need to make only one phone call to the register, which will inform all the card-issuing firms immediately. Also, once you have called, your responsibility for any bills 'run up' by the thief ends and the scheme’s staff make sure that all the companies whose cards you hold are notified.

What you stand to lose on a stolen card

• CREDIT CARD: You will not have to pay more than £50 of the bills a thief runs up on your card. If you report the loss before the card is used, you will not have to pay anything.
• CHEQUES AND GUARANTEE CARD: Unless you have been careless – by signing blank cheques – you will not have to pay for any forged cheques drawn in your name. The bank or shop that accepts them will have to bear the loss.
• DEBIT CARD: As with a Visa or Delta card, the banks operate a system similar to that for credit cards, in that you are liable for bills up to £50.
• If your cash card is stolen:
  • Legally, you can be made to pay back any sums a thief withdraws using your card, but only up to the limit of £50. Losses above £50 can be reclaimed, unless the bank can prove gross negligence, such as writing your personal identification number on your card.
  • Never keep a note of your personal number (which checks on your identity) near the card.
  • Never disclose the number if possible. If you must make a note of it, do not write it down in full or keep it where the number may be easily found.
  • The same rules and precautions apply to a credit card used as a cash card.

Recycling at work – handy hints to employers

It is estimated that avoidable waste costs UK businesses up to 4.5% of their annual revenue.

Reducing waste in the workplace is about being efficient. By becoming more efficient, businesses not only increase profits but they also save natural resources.

On the island of Jersey, for example, the amount of waste produced each year has doubled since 1980. In 2004 it topped 100,000 tonnes – and 60% is generated by local businesses. A lot of waste for a small island!

Setting up a company scheme

Waste audit

Before starting a recycling scheme, perform an audit. This will make you aware of how much waste you are producing in the company.

Company policy

Consider switching your office waste contractor to one that provides a recycling service.

Buy recycled paper. Although this is sometimes more expensive, costs can be reduced by lowering consumption and using duplex printers.

Get everyone involved

• Raise awareness internally within the company, perhaps by putting up educational posters.
• Allocate a person to be the point of contact for anyone with queries.

There are also a couple of ways to increase motivation:

• Hold internal competitions between different departments. For example, see which can reduce their waste the most within a specific time period.
• Set up a quarterly newsletter reporting on all waste improvements. Staff will then see the impact their actions are having.

  What to recycle and how

  Paper

  According to a recent survey, 65% of waste produced is paper waste. Waste paper will inevitably be produced in the workplace, but it is not necessary to discard it. It can serve a variety of purposes before it is recycled, such as writing notes. Envelopes too can be re-used for internal mail.

  Plastic cups

  Rather than supplying disposable plastic cups in your workplace, get ceramic mugs that can be re-used. Not only do they make your tea taste better, but they can reduce your office waste by up to 1%!

  Electrical equipment

  Rather than giving up on any old electrical equipment and just throwing it away, why not try upgrading it? This reduces waste, as well as avoiding the need to manufacture a new machine – a process which creates a large amount of waste. You could also consider donating your old computers to charities when it comes to replacing them.

How to answer any interview question

To start, take a tip from consultants who coach executives on how to handle media interviews. They say you can deliver the message you want to an employer, regardless of the question you’re asked.

Unlike some politicians, who take no notice of press questions and immediately introduce a different topic in response, job candidates must answer employers’ queries, says John Barford of the interview training firm Genesis. However, you can quickly make the transition from your answer to the important points you want to convey about your qualifications, he says.

He advises candidates at job interviews to apply the formula Q + A + 1:

Q is the question; A is the answer; +1 is the bridge to the message you want to deliver, and it is the point you want to make.

Diligent preparation is also necessary to effectively answer any interview question, say senior executives. They give a number of useful tips:

• Learn as much as you can beforehand. Ask company employees questions prior to job interviews so that you gain as much insight as you can. If the company is publicly owned, find out how well it is by reading shareholder reports. You can then tailor your answers to fit its needs.
• Describe challenges that gave you a chance to show how you handled difficult situations. These questions remain stressful in response, but it’s important to follow the rules of stating the situation, your role, and the outcome.
• Count on being asked about a past mistake or blemish on your career record. You can show that you have insight if you recognize an error, but are also clear in discussing what you gained from the situation and moved on. Just answer the question and move on.

When discussing a mistake, focus on what you overcame. You learn much by getting things wrong, says Ms. Murphy, president of the Murphy Training firm, says that it’s important not to steer away from mistakes, but focus on the positive outcome. You learn far more by making a mistake than by getting it right, says senior executive Hal Friendman. When he was being interviewed for his current job, he mentioned he had been involved in many successful turnaround changes that failed. “And I told how I’d benefited in many ways from going through that experience,” he says.

TALKING POINT

Learning a second language fuels children's intelligence and makes their job prospects brighter. But the fact is, in New Zealand, as in many other English-speaking countries, speakers of two or more languages are in the minority. Eighty-four per cent of New Zealanders are monolingual (speaking only one language). This leaves a small number who claim to speak two or more languages—a small percentage of whom are born in New Zealand.

No matter how proud people are of their cultural roots, to speak anything other than English is a marker of difference there. That’s why eight-year-old Tiffany Dvorak no longer wants to speak her mother-tongue, German, and eight-year-old Ani Joumaa will not speak to her mother in Arabic: “At home, it is not cool to speak Maori,” as Ani Joumaa's mother points out. “In Europe, it is not unusual for kids to be bilingual. But if you speak another language to your children in New Zealand, for some reason people think you are not helping them to become a better society.”

But in fact, the general agreement among experts is that learning a second language is a good for children. Experts believe that bilingual people who switch between languages have a clear learning advantage over their monolingual schoolmates. This depends not on the amount of each language they can speak, nor on which language is used, so it doesn’t matter whether they are learning Maori or German or Chinese or any other language.

Catie Elder, a professor of Language Teaching and Learning at Auckland University, says, “A lot of studies show that bilinguals think more flexibly and that there is an improvement in IQ among those who acquire another language”. But how this was all lost for monolingual schoolmates, she said, is unclear, but it is linked to the way that their brains function.

Dr Brigitte Hardt, a professor of linguistics at Freiburg University in Germany, agrees. “Bilinguals tend to perform better at school. They have also displayed better creativity and problem-solving ability, and have more enthusiasm for learning other languages.”

So with all the benefits, why do most who grow up monolingual? Some say peer pressure—friends casually ridicule classmates and teachers involved in English-speaking countries, and problems in the school system.

In New Zealand, immigrants face the possibility of putting their languages aside, along with the language of their country of origin. Tiffany’s mother, Susanne Dvorak, has experience with this. When she and her husband left Germany six years ago to start up a new life in New Zealand, they thought about how best to prepare for their new home. They planned that their daughter would speak two languages. But families in Germany were not informed and Susanne had read all the books she could find on the subject.

The idea was to have home as a German language environment and for Tiffany to learn English at nursery school. But when Tiffany went to nursery school, she stopped talking completely. She was quiet for about three months. Then, when she took up talking again, it was only in English. Concerned for her language development, Dvorak started speaking English in disagreements while Susanne continued in German.

Today, when Susanne speaks to her daughter in German, she still answers in English. Or sometimes she speaks half in each. I checked with her teacher and she very seldom mixes up German and English and that she speaks English like a New Zealander. It’s her German that’s behind, says Susanne.

Professor Hardt, also a mother of two bilingual children, says, "It’s normal for kids to refuse to speak their home language at the stage when they start to socialize with other children in another language". But, she says, how deep that lack of fondness for the home language is depends on their monolingual societies, like New Zealand’s. Kids want to be like all the others and sometimes see bilingualism as one of the battlefields for finding their own identity in contrast to that of their parents.

She supports Susanne’s approach of not pressuring her daughter. "Never force the child to use a specific language", just keep talking yourself. The child will accept that. There is often a time when children or immigrants need to establish their own identity as different from their schoolmates and they may use their mother tongue to do so.

Catie Elder thinks immigrant parents should only speak English to their children if they are able to use it fluently in whatever language they would speak next. That may include understanding when their children want to speak the local language, but it’s more important that they do it. She believes parents who mix two languages when they are not really fluent may cause language confusion for the child.

Studies have shown a positive decline in attitudes to learning languages. Susanne Dvorak’s background was Denmark, a society where signs of speaking German and English are still rare. In Denmark, bilingual students are admired. Ani Joumaa’s father, who speaks Arabic at home, says his daughter started speaking mostly in English when she began primary school.

Joanne Powell feels the same way about her daughter, Ari. "At the moment she may not want to speak Chinese. But that knowledge will pick up again in her own time. It’s more important that she has the ability to understand who she is. By learning another language, she can then pass on the extra advantages."

Chantelle Wong, a doctor in Auckland’s IBT, admired her with parents from Hong Kong when she was four. She also remembers refusing to speak Chinese when she started primary school. But now she appreciates the edge that it had to be bilingual. "It was an advantage when applying for language in my job. Last year, my company sent me to Hong Kong because I could speak Chinese. Being bilingual definitely opens doors," she says.