Like many successful companies, WAHVE (Work at Home Vintage Employees) was a business created to solve a specific problem. Founder and CEO Sharon Emek had been mulling over the conundrum her industry, insurance, had been facing for years: the imminent loss of a huge segment of the workforce through retirement. Fifty percent of workers in the insurance industry are baby boomers.

“There had been many articles written over the last number of years, saying that the industry is going to face a big crisis with all our baby boomers retiring, that we’re going to lose all this institutional knowledge,” Emek said. “We did not have young people come into the industry over the last 10 years. They went to Wall Street or elsewhere. No one sees the insurance industry as a very sexy industry.”

Emek, an Upper East Sider, has a long and distinguished career in insurance and knows the industry inside and out. She had been the chair of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of New York and started her own firm in 1988. She regularly spoke at industry events and networked with other agents and brokers, and saw firsthand that everyone was facing the same hurdle.

“We’re all fighting over the same qualified people,” she said. “I woke up with the idea one day.”

The idea—to utilize newly retired professionals at a lower cost by having them work remotely—became WAHVE, a company that Emek believes can help not only the insurance industry but the seniors it employs. The company only hires people with 25 or more years of experience—no exceptions. Emek said that she settled on calling them “vintage employees,” evoking the category of fine wines or cool cars, after tossing out other names that just pointed to old age.

“We’re vintage. We’re not retiring, we just want more life-work balance and to work in a different way,” Emek said. “I’ve always been very technologically advanced in my industry. I’d already been working remotely at home for 10 years.”

The company hires contract employees, most of whom have been working in the industry for their entire career and want to either return to work after retiring or who are transitioning from full-time office work. They get matched with insurance companies on assignments of varying lengths, full time or part time, and work from home or wherever they want to set up. Emek said that they’ve developed software that matches employees with clients based on very specific criteria, not unlike a dating service system.

“It’s unbelievably simple,” said Frank Sentner, the company’s chief operating officer. “The hardest thing is to get it through the heads of the business people that there’s really no difference between managing personnel in your office or managing personnel who you’ve never met who work remotely.”

When he talks to potential clients, Sentner focuses on the cost benefits of hiring virtual vintage employees through WAHVE.

“It costs about 40 to 50 percent less. [Employers save on] office space, heat, light, electricity, computer systems, bandwidth. Pretty much every cost in an insurance firm is directly related to personnel, to headcount,” Sentner said. “Our people are all of a certain age, they are working to supplement a retirement income, so they’re willing to take less because they’re working from home.”

Emek said that many of their employees are happy to trade the higher salaries for the flexibility to live near family and take on the amount of work they want to at any given time. She also said that many of the clients, forced to cut costs somehow, are thrilled to be able to hire older Americans.

“Brokers win because they get amazing talent at a lower price and they don’t have to outsource overseas—a lot of them feel terrible in this economy outsourcing overseas,” she said. “The retiree feels wonderful because instead of having to work in a local hardware store, they’re actually a real insurance professional. Many of them have designations and licenses, and so they feel that they’re still important, they’re still involved in the industry, they’re supplementing their retirement income.”

Statistics show Emek’s observations are right on the nose. This summer, AARP and the Society for Human Resource Management conducted a survey of workers over age 50 to find out what they’re looking for in potential employment. The survey found 78 percent of respondents plan to continue working for financial reasons, like money and health insurance, as opposed to working solely for enjoyment or the desire to remain productive. The survey also found that 52 percent of those who are currently unemployed would prefer to find a job in their professional field instead of changing careers or starting their own business. In addition, 62 percent of workers rated alternative work arrangements as “very important” in considering jobs, and 44 percent rated telecommuting as “important.”

Emek hopes that WAHVE will soon be expanding into other white-collar industries, like law and accounting, and she’s committed to the model of sticking with vintage employees. For one thing, she said, hiring people with over 25 years of experience means that they don’t need extensive training. She’s also convinced that every industry needs to take another look at how they define and utilize older workers.

“The word isn’t ‘retirement.’ People say, ‘I don’t see myself as sitting on my porch in a rocking chair,’” Emek said. “We need a new lexicon to define what’s happening. Because we’re living longer, the definition of work is changing. I don’t know what will replace retirement. That’s why I’m using the word ‘vintage.’”

The NYC Council is proposing yet another mandate to add onto the backs of our city’s small businesses, which are struggling to stay afloat. With NYC already having some of the highest costs of doing business in the country, they want to force small businesses to provide five paid sick days and “large” businesses with 20 or more employees to provide nine paid sick days!

We applaud Council Speaker Christine Quinn for recognizing the detrimental impact the paid sick leave measure will have, and support her continued leadership in not allowing the bill out of the committee. Rather than stoking fears of getting the flu with your cup of soda (like a few of the council members have been discussing in the past several weeks), let’s first identify the problem.

How many people are actually getting fired when calling in sick? No one is asking the business owners why they fired the person—perhaps the employee had other personnel issues. After all, what business owner wants to get rid of a good employee?

How many people are not formally getting paid sick days? Most employers already offer this. Perhaps there are “unwritten” agreements between employers and employees where they work out sick and vacation days without being in writing. Or perhaps, in the case of one small business owner, she gives her employees three days, as that is all she can afford.

There are widely fluctuating numbers tossed around by the proponents from studies all over the place. Why doesn’t the City or State first truly study the scope of the issue to determine if there is a problem before creating mandates based on insignificant polling numbers and studies?

And how does this incentivize small businesses to hire? There are three tiers based on the number of employees: five or fewer, six to nineteen, or more than twenty. Why should company size affect the number of sick days? Why grant five or nine paid sick-leave days, when the national average for sick days taken by workers with paid sick leave is four days, and without leave, the average is three days? Am I going to get sick more because I work for a larger company? This makes no sense at all.

There are bills in Connecticut, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco and again, the proponents are saying that there has been no ill effect. But in Connecticut, businesses with fewer than 50 employees are exempt. In Washington, seven categories of workers are exempt, and they even provide for a financial hardship exemption. And San Francisco does appear to have been negatively affected.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that for 2006-2010, quick service restaurants in San Francisco saw a decline of employment by 7.8 percent, whereas those in the surrounding counties without paid sick leave saw employment increase by 2.5 percent. Also, other private sector employment not affected by paid sick leave added 2,300 jobs, while quick-serve restaurants in San Francisco lost 1,300 jobs.

The supposed new bill amendments being discussed for NYC include a one year grace period for new companies and five unpaid sick days for businesses with fewer than five employees. But these points are not consistent with what the proponents are saying. What they are saying is that the economic impact has been minimal. But if that is the case and they think it will be minimal in NYC, then why should new companies or small businesses be exempt at all? If it is not going to hurt them, then why exempt them? Again, this makes no sense.

And the entire cost of the bill would be borne by the employer, who will be forced to freeze hiring at a time of 10 percent unemployment, cut benefits, cut jobs, raise prices on goods, or finally pack up and leave. Existing businesses struggling to survive cannot handle the additional burden of paying nine paid sick days for an employee, paying the overtime to the employee’s replacement, and paying added payroll tax costs.

And take a look at the empty storefronts along First, Second and Third avenues on the Upper East Side. Do you think those small businesses that are keeping their doors open don’t worry every day that with the high cost of doing business in our city, they will also have to close their doors? Can the businesses in the Second Avenue subway construction zone like us shoulder any more financial burdens? My business and many others in my neighborhood are already struggling with the construction issues and lack of customers.
We all support the intentions behind this idea, but as noted, it does not make good business sense for employers or employees. The speaker should continue to oppose this onerous bill.

Eva Matischak is the owner of Heidelberg Restaurant.

By Laura Shin

One year after Hurricane Irene paved a destructive trail through the Caribbean and up the Eastern Seaboard, the storm is no longer a top headline or major concern for millions of Americans. For individuals in the field of emergency management, however, there is still work to be done and countless lessons to be learned.

“That’s the job of emergency managers—to learn from past experiences, to organize and write cogent plans,” said Chuck Frank, deputy director of the master of public administration in emergency and disaster management program at the Metropolitan College of New York (MCNY) in Lower Manhattan.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, some colleges began offering programs in emergency management, preparing students to handle response, recovery, mitigation and planning in a wide range of emergency situations, from natural disasters to terrorist attacks.
MCNY’s emergency and disaster management program enrolled its first students in 2004. Today, there are more than 250 emergency management higher education programs in the country, according to the Emergency Management Institute (EMI) of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Emergency management can cover many different areas, including public administration, environmental sciences, social sciences, public health and engineering, according to the EMI.

There are still a limited number of programs related to the field in New York City. MCNY is the only school in Manhattan that offers a degree in emergency management. John Jay College offers a master of science degree in protection management, which focuses on “theory, design, management and operation of fire and security protection and emergency management systems,” according to the school’s website.

The program at MCNY leads to a master of public administration degree. It is a 16-month, 45-credit program split over four semesters.
“It started out as a visionary major with just a few students, but now at any given time, we have about 70 to a 100 students going through the program,” Frank said.

There is a mix of students, but most are working adults, Frank said. The school offers classes on Friday evenings and Saturdays to accommodate these students.

“We work predominantly with people who are in a career who either want to change or take what their experience has been so far and morph it into a whole new area that has a vast new horizon of opportunities,” Frank said.

While some recent graduates have found jobs with government agencies, such as the city’s Office of Emergency Management, private companies and nonprofit organizations also seek emergency managers.

Though there is a demand for workers in the field, Frank notes the job market can still be challenging.

“There’s no denying that we’re in a rough economy,” he said. “What we’re seeing is that if they go through the program and they take advantage of the ancillary opportunities such as doing an internship and adding at least a half of a dozen certifications to supplement their degrees, these are the things that are a winning track for people looking for jobs.”

Frank said that because the field is a new frontier with many different aspects, it’s a great opportunity for anyone to transition into the field. He gave the example of one incoming student who is an 80-year-old woman.

“When a disaster hits, the most vulnerable people are often the elderly or the very young,” Frank said. “I think this woman wants this training so she can find some way to help.”