If you have any suggestions on other ways in which we can live out what the BWA stands for then please let Cheryl or I know. Finally, enjoy the last few days of the awesome event taking place in our beautiful country.

Remember that what ever happens, South Africa has exceeded all expectations and has shown the world that Africa is capable of great things. The opportunities are endless.

Regards

Sex workers win some unfair dismissal rights from South African Labour Appeal Court
The Labour Appeal Court handed down judgment on 28 May 2010 in the case of a sex worker (referred to as Kylie) who was unfairly dismissed by the brothel employing her. The judgment represents a step forward in the rights of sex workers in South Africa. It overturned the previous judgment of the Labour Court to the effect that, although a sex worker employed by a brothel was an employee for purposes of the Labour Relations Act, such a worker would not be entitled to protection against unfair dismissal.

The Labour Appeal Court held that the constitutional right to fair labour practices is as vesting in “everyone”, which was wide enough to include a person employed in an illegal activity (such as a sex worker). It pointed out that, just because the work performed by a sex worker is illegal, this should not strip the sex worker of rights to be treated with respect and dignity by others, such as the police and the sex worker’s customers. By logical extension, it found that this also meant that the employer of a sex worker had similar obligations to the sex worker, including the obligation to observe fair labour practice in the employment relationship.

That said, the Labour Appeal Court did not go as far as holding that unfairly dismissed sex workers could obtain reinstatement orders when they had been unfairly dismissed. It found that an order of reinstatement in favour of a sex worker would manifestly be in violation of the provisions of the Sexual Offences Act, which criminalises sex work in South Africa. Similarly, the Labour Appeal Court indicated that compensation for substantive unfairness (i.e. where there was no fair reason to dismiss) would amount to the monetary equivalent of reinstatement for the loss of employment, and it would probably be inappropriate for this to be awarded to the sex worker given that the nature of their services rendered are illegal.

If the Labour Appeal Court had stopped the above findings, Kylie’s victory would have been a largely Pyrrhic one as she would have been left with no practical and effective remedy against the brothel that unfairly dismissed her. However, the Labour Appeal Court went on to find that an unfairly dismissed sex worker like Kylie could well be entitled to monetary compensation if her dismissal was procedurally unfair, because such compensation is for the loss by an employee of her right to a fair procedure, and not compensation for rendering illegal services. Awarding compensation for the infringement of the right to fair procedure would not offend the Sexual Offences Act, and as such would be appropriate.

Unless one of the parties appeals against this judgment, Kylie must now return to the statutory dispute resolution body that declined jurisdiction to deal with the dismissal claim in the first place, namely the CCMA, and seek an award of compensation for the procedural unfairness in her dismissal. How much a CCMA arbitrator is prepared to award to her for this, remains to be seen. The maximum possible award is 12 months’ remuneration.

For the brothel owners, it seems that they need not be worried about whether they have a fair reason to dismiss their sex workers - they must just make sure that they follow a fair procedure in doing so.

Susan Stelzner and Stuart Harrison

Looking your Best

Make-up Master Class:

The new look of the decade is understated, fresh and healthy. Even though the make-up looks effortless, you still need apply the make-up with care and skill. Here is how:

You will need:
•Foundation
•Concealer
•Translucent Powder

Brushes:
•Blusher Brush
•Shading Brush
•Framing Brush (eyeliner)

Make-up products:
•Shading shadow (darker than your skin tone)
•Highlighting colour (lighter than your skin tone)
•Framing colour or pencil
•Mascara
•Lip liner
•Lipstick or Gloss

Foundation: Foundation evens out the skin tone and creates a base to work on. Test foundation on a large area of the face and neck. Make sure to blend well into the hairline and under the jaw line.

Concealer: Apply after foundation where more coverage is needed e.g. red patches, blemishes, dark rings and discoloration. The concealer should be a shade lighter than your foundation.

Powder: Powder sets the foundation and concealer. It also gives the face a fresh and matt appearance. Apply with a powder puff or a large brush.
Eyebrows: Shape and define the brows to give the face a more groomed appearance. The ideal shape is slightly arched above the iris and end in a thin line. Use a small brush to fill in the lighter patches or gaps in hair growth.

Shaped and defined eyebrow:

Eye shadow application: The following shapes are the natural contour of your socket line. Follow this natural line with a shading colour (darker than your skin), and add a highlighter on the brow bone and lid.

Round shape

Wing shape:

Blusher: Use a medium sized brush and start shading from the side of the face near the ear, curling under the cheekbone, fading as it ends towards mid cheek. Finish with a pop of colour by using a pinky or peachy colour on the apple of the cheeks.

Diagram for correct position of contouring:

(Notice the curve of application)

Framing of eyes: Fame the eyes to enhance the eye shape. Rule of thumb is all the way on top lash line and halfway under eyes.

Lashes: Use mascara to finish off the eye make-up application. Apply a lash thickener to create fuller lashes. Wait for the lash thickener to dry before coating with mascara.

Lips: The colour and finish of lipstick depends on the overall look. Strong eyes will balance better with a soft mouth and a soft eye application will balance better with a stronger lip application. Lip liner will give a better definition to lips as well as prevent the “bleeding” of lipstick. Do not draw a hard lip line, as it will look artificial.

Ps: A lip brush is necessary for an accurate and polished application.

Anneline Black, Brushstrokes

Will your lifestyle survive an audit?

Pravin Gordhan in his first budget speech didn’t make any changes to the existing tax policies that will directly or dramatically affect the property industry. However, the introduction of “lifestyle audits” may dampen the spirits of those potential property buyers whose tax affairs are not up to scratch.

Even though “lifestyle audits” have been hyped in the media recently, no where in his speech did Pravin Gordhan limit such audits to loud-mouthed politicians and government officials.

Lifestyle audits, a means of matching the lifestyle of taxpayers with their tax return, have been successfully employed by the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) in America for many years and have proven to be an efficient way of identifying those who are “creative” in declaring their taxes.

Currently, when purchasing a property the attorney attending to the transfer of the property has to obtain a tax clearance certificate from SA Revenue Services (SARS) for the agent, the seller and the buyer. Should the tax affairs of any of the parties to the transaction not be up to date, they will have to “pay up” before SARS will allow the transaction to proceed. This opens the door to the effective implementation of “lifestyle audits”.

How can you purchase a property of R3 000 000, when you are declaring an income of only R45 000 per month? Even if you obtained a 100% mortgage bond, your income must be between R80 000 to R100 000 to qualify for such a bond. And SARS is not oblivious to this! If your income doesn’t match you lifestyle of choice, SARS will assist you in identifying such income, taking their fair share of course.

If reading this gives you palpitations, don’t fear. All is not lost yet! Pravin Gordhan has given you a window period of a year as from November 2010 to “come clean”. However, if you head remains stuck deep in the sand thereafter, expect to pay a 200% penalty fee.

Suze Orman once said “the more tax you pay, the richer you are getting”. In order to obtain true financial freedom and grow your asset base, you need to rid yourself of your guilt shackles. Avoid having you lifestyle questioned by living within your means and “paying to Caesar what is due to Caesar”.

For more information contact Tess Rodrigues on 082 893 2610 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              082 893 2610      end_of_the_skype_highlighting / 0861 106 306 or email info@propertyfactor.co.za

Online social media has become part of our everyday life. Most employers have limited the use of Facebook, Twitter, My Space and other applications to avoid unnecessary distractions in the working day. However, the great number of people that belong to social media groups, have reinforced the fact that humans are ‘social’ animals. We need interaction with other people. This is a fundamental need.

Another unexpected consequence of the use of social media, is that real life ’meetings’ (as a result of the social connections) have increased. The question now is: How do we use this fact and harness it to benefit our businesses?

1.Information sharing: Encourage your employees to connect with other industry related individuals. This will lead to information sharing. Your employees will benefit from others’ expertise and knowledge. This will directly benefit them and your business.
2.Industry platforms: Specific interest groups often arrange to meet regularly. Meetings are arranged via dedicated ‘Pages’ on Facebook and other media. This is an excellent way to promote your business, establish your company as an ‘expert’ and is an opportunity for your employees to learn from others.
Within Silicon Cape for example (www.siliconcape.com), there are specific interest groups (ie. Entrepreneurs, Press, Events, ICT Professionals). Encourage your employees to join these groups.
3.Meeting a fundamental need: Employees can benefit on a professional and personal level from interaction either on social media sites or from the meetings and events that follow their social media connections. This adds another dimension to your employee’s wellbeing.

Effective integration of social media into your company means:

• Structure and control access to social media pages. Uncapped ADSL has removed the obstacle of social media site ‘eating up’ our bandwidth. However, it is easy to get ‘lost’ on social media sites and to ‘forget’ to leave.
• Limit the number of groups or events your employees join. This will also limit their time involvement and time spent away from the office.
• Encourage discussions (i.e. at staff meetings) about the various social media pages, sites and events.
• Solicit regular feedback from employees regarding their social media visits or ‘real life meetings’ to evaluate the effectiveness and contribution to your employees and your company.

Janine Nel

Three critical conditions for an intrinsic motivational environment: 3

1. Autonomy: Give people autonomy over what they’re doing and how they do it, including choosing their time, tasks, team and techniques.
2. Mastery: Give them an opportunity to master their work and make progress through deliberate practice.
3. Purpose: Make sure people have a sense of purpose in their work - preferably to something higher and beyond their job, salary and company.

People are most productive when their work puts them in what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a state of “flow” — more commonly recognized as being “in the zone” Flow can be achieved only when leaders provide autonomy, time to practice and improve mastery, and a sense of higher purpose. Committed time given to transformative practice and improve mastery, and a sense of higher purpose – where self awareness and connectedness and alignment to spirit, soul, body, mind, emotions and action or input throughput and output leads to behavior delivered on the outside experienced as=the same thing.

Core values are fundamental and so is trust and passion and being released to execute and deliver what is meaningful in order to leave their thumbprint in the arena of their influence for that leader.

Sadly, intrinsic motivation theories aren’t palatable to everyone. Our notions of what constitutes proper motivation are often too entrenched to be flexible. Some companies have given lip service to worker “empowerment,” without actually letting go of control.

Many leaders will resist giving up their carrots, and many workers will find it hard to imagine a world without incentives. But leaders who can implement intrinsic motivation can expect a whole new workplace — and an entirely new definition of work.

Motivational Coaching or on the bench during March Madness?

Every player has a coach but not all coaches have a coach. Why is that?
The short answer is coachless coaches have bumped up against the glass ceiling.

Who are these coachless coaches? In the game of major college basketball, they are the ones whose teams were not invited to participate in the NCAA basketball tournament that begins this week. Coaches who talk the talk but whose teams can't walk the talk. They have developed a false sense of security, by thinking they know how the world works, which leads to “CEO Disease” This disease occurs when a chief executive officer or a head coach is isolated from reality because no one (except maybe the media) tells them how and where they need to personally improve.

Just as every Olympic and professional athlete has a personal coach, every coach needs someone who can provide reality checks on a week-to-week basis. Getting to that area of self-awareness (where there is great leverage for positive change) requires a trusting and confidential relationship so both the person-being-coached and the coach can say the "unsayable" to each other. This happens because both the person-being-coached and the coach have no other relationship or role in each other's life (that must be protected) and therefore can be completely honest yet safe with each other.

Coaching is an important part of Leadership.
Basketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. Great basketball coaches, military commanders and business leaders know that practice of the rules of engagement coupled with split-second decisions in execution by their team can make the difference between winning and losing. Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestseller, “Blink” (Little Brown), tells us that great leaders know that if you can create the right framework (by everyone knowing the rules and practicing them), when it comes time to perform, your players will engage in fluid, effortless, spur-of-the-moment dialogue and action. The leader provides the overall guidance and intent to the team, coaches them in mastering tools and general techniques through practice and then allows them to use their own initiative and be innovative as they move forward.

Placing a lot of trust in your subordinates has an overwhelming advantage:
Allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves within the rules of engagement, focuses their energy and opens the possibility for extraordinary leaps of insight and instinct in decision-making. When the team is "in the flow," or congruent, split-second decisions are unconscious flashes of insight that drive extraordinary performance on the basketball court, battlefield or shop floor.

It is the leader's job to keep the momentum going; so as not to lose the flow. Without Emotional Intelligence and the skill of empathy this is not possible. Without the ability to listen at a deeper level this is impossible. The greatest skill of a leader is to shift themselves out of the way sufficiently, so they may turn up and be fully present to be there for the conversation to focus on what the other person needs for that moment to hear them, connect authentically and mobilize in a win- win situation. No leader can claim to do this without the help of a coach and no coach and do this without a coach.

Insight is not a light bulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out by external means. Know that these kinds of fluid, intuitive, nonverbal experiences are vulnerable...and...your players can drop out of the "zone" or "flow" or congruence when you, as their leader cannot find your own flow, be in your own zone or cannot walk in your own congruence and work from this place with them.

Be mindful were you have not gone as yet – you cannot lead others to go to: This could stifle the opportunities – so take the leap! Get connected! So how do you learn to re-connect then?

It is a matter of stilling your mind and slowing down your inside. Being aware of your thoughts. Journaling is a good practice to start doing this. Body sensations can be re-connected. Learning that the senses you cut off because way back then they were uncomfortable and vulnerable or emotions were uncomfortable – Emotions are a gift and handy and are meant to help you – they are backdrop to providing important information to guide you – whilst we are not to act out of emotions but find a more constructive manner to channel them and learn from their information that provide very important information. The sensations in your body are meant to give you important information – intuitive information about yourself, others, about your surroundings, the situation at hand, negotiations, interactions with others. Besides professor Tim Noaks simply states it is a leadership responsibility or health hazard!

When cut off from all your signals or senses – you are isolated – if you cannot be sensitized and know your own feelings and identify them – how will you be able to know or identify the senses or signals of others - trust relationships are at risk as followers are not “heard” as we don’t release their gifts or we miss their talents or we could be miss understood as we don’t put ourselves fully into relationships with our senior partners?

As the leader, start to become reflective about this rapid cognitive process. Get emotionally intelligent. Get Coached.

Martie Lancellas, Strong Foundation