Butler Manufacturing, a manufacturer and builder of metal buildings for self-storage and other industries, has named Taso Pantoulis its newest global corporate accounts manager. Hell develop a portfolio of corporate accounts within the mid-Atlantic sales territory. As a global corporate accounts manager, Pantoulis will identify, develop and manage relationships with multinational corporations, large buyers of construction and key influencers headquartered in eastern Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Pantoulis comes to Butler Manufacturing with experience in managing high-profile customer relationships, construction management, and metal fabrication and finishing applications on complex projects. Most recently, he served as vice president of operations and business development at Architectural Columns and Railing Systems. He also previously worked at Corporate Executive Board and The Hartford.

Butler Manufacturing, a division of BlueScope Buildings North America, designs, manufactures and markets metal-building systems for commercial construction, including self-storage. The companys systems are marketed through a network of more than 1,200 full-service contractors with local trade areas.

Home Handy Storage, a 432-unit, 42,000-square-foot self-storage property in San Diego, sold for $3.5 million. The single-story facility was built in 1977 on just over an acre at the corner of Home and Euclid avenues. It also offers outside parking for boats, RVs and vehicles. The facility will be rebranded SuperStorage and undergo renovation.

The seller was Catherine Hullman, acting as trustee of the Grace 1991 Family Trust Marital Trust, and J.R. Enterprises Inc., of which she is president. Hullman was represented by Cody Evans of South Coast Commercial.

The buyer was Home Avenue Storage LLC, a California-based liability company. John R. McGrath Jr. and Dennis Levitt serve as the companys managers. Purchase financing of $2.4 million was arranged by G. Andrew Graham III of Cornerstone Realty Finance Inc. for Manufacturers Bank.

SuperStrorage operates 11 self-storage facilities in Central and South California. In addition to residential and commercial self-storage, the facilities also act as drop-off locations for electronic waste and collection sites for Cell Phones for Soldiers, a non-profit organization that provides  communication services to active-duty military members and veterans.

Apple Self Storage in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, held a Meat & Greet event on Saturday to benefit Kingston Interval House for Women and Children in Crisis, a local organization that provides shelter and counseling to abused women and children. The event featured free hamburgers and refreshments in addition to collecting donations.

Representatives from Kingston Interval House were also on hand to educate community members about its services. Founded in 1975, the organization has a long history of service to the community and regularly partners with local businesses to raise funds and broaden awareness about abuse, Apple Self Storage officials said in a press release.

Apple Self Storage has 15 locations across Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The Kingston facility is the companys newest, offering more than 35,000 square feet of storage space.

The development committee for the Northland Community Council (NCC) in Columbus, Ohio, rejected a proposed 124-room hotel and self-storage project last week because members believed the zoning request was too broad. However, the landowner may consider a revised request for both an extended-stay hotel and self-storage facility, according to Jeffrey L. Brown, an attorney with Smith and Hale LLC, which represented the potential developer Ellis Co. Ltd.

During a presentation to the committee, Brown said the NCC had previously approved zoning for self-storage on the 13.5-acre site, but that plans for an earlier project had fallen through. The latest request would have changed the zoning from commercial-planned development to limited manufacturing.

"The committee ultimately decided unanimously to recommend disapproval on that application," Chairman Dave Paul said. "The reasoning was not that they were opposed to the hotel there ... or even so much that they were opposed to outdoor storage, but they felt that the zoning that was being requested, limited manufacturing, was overbroad."

Paul said individual projects for a hotel or self-storage facility may have been approved. The committee would like to see more exclusions listed on the zoning request to better define what could be developed on the site.

In addition to objections from the NCC, a resident of the nearby Strawberry Farms subdivision also voiced disapproval for the project, fearing a drop in property values and an increase in safety issues.

"That site has always been very difficult to develop due to the number of utility easements that run through the property," Brown said.

Update 7/8/13 - North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed parallel bills (House Bill 243; Senate Bill 263) last week that amend the states self-storage lien law. Updates to the law will enable self-storage operators to use e-mail when notifying defaulted tenants of impending lien procedures, impose new late fees, place public advertisements of a lien auction in media other than a local newspaper, and use online-auction websites to conduct a lien sale. The new law goes into effect Oct. 1.

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The North Carolina General Assembly has passed parallel bills (House Bill 243; Senate Bill 263) that amend the states self-storage lien law. Updates to the law will enable self-storage operators to use e-mail when notifying defaulted tenants of impending lien procedures, impose new late fees, place public advertisements of a lien auction in media other than a local newspaper, and use online-auction websites to conduct a lien sale.

The North Carolina Self Storage Association and national Self Storage Association have been working with lawmakers since March to amend the existing lien law. The amended bill passed the House 92-10 last week and awaits Gov. Pat McCrorys signature. If the governor signs the bill, it will go into effect Oct. 1.

Under the new lien law, tenant notifications can be sent by Certified mail or verified e-mail as long as the tenant agrees to accept e-mails via a signed rental agreement. Verified e-mails will be considered delivered once transmitted.

Currently, self-storage operators in North Carolina must publish auction notices at least five days prior to a sale in a newspaper of general circulation in the county where the auction will be held. The amended law removes the stipulation of using a newspaper or another publication with classified ads to advertise the auction. An auction will be deemed commercially reasonable as long as at least three independent bidders attend the sale at the time and place advertised, according to the laws new language. The update would also allow lien sales to be held on an online-auction website.

Other changes to the bill include the ability to assess late fees of $15 or 15 percent, whichever is greater, after five days delinquency. In addition, new language adds boats and RVs to the motor-vehicle lien clause, which will enable operators to have watercraft and trailers towed after delinquency exceeds 60 days.

By Shelly Anderson

If youre hoping social media will go away, it wont. And dont make the mistake of considering its use as strictly for the under-30 crowd either. Yes, 92 percent of that age group is on Facebook, Twitter and the like, but 57 percent of those 50 to 64 years of age and even 38 percent of those over 65 are also engaged on at least one social network, according to an article on FastCompany.com.

Much of the hiring discussion today centers on the future of recruiting and sourcing, focusing on Twitter, Facebook and other popular social media platforms. Social media is changing the way people interact with each other and employers. According to the CareerXRoads 2013 Source of Hires Report  (based on staffing-leadership survey results), hiring-trend projections for 2013 indicate a 17.3 percent increase in hiring of full-time positions in the United States. But before you jump into the social media frenzy to recruit talent, lets consider several key points:

• Without a website, you wont get anywhere.
• Dont jump into the fray thinking social media for employers is cheap.
• Any social media involvement should be based on a social media policy and communications plan.
• Start with the end in mind.

Before You Start the Car

Do you have a website that allows you to establish your organizations online identity? Is it functional? Is it visually appealing, consistent and professionally designed so its a positive experience for the end user?

Since branding begins on your home page, your website is a perfect place to begin recruitment efforts. Branding should be consistent through every possible touch point, so if your careers page differs significantly in feel or layout from other pages on your website, seekers will sense a disconnect.

Here are some essential components to have on your website:

• Offer easy access to end users to your careers link on your home page.
• Maintain your company logo and color schemes throughout the website.
• Restate your core company values or vision statements on your career page.
• Offer clear information on your careers page about current job openings and instructions on applying.
• Identify your employee value proposition. This defines the type of work the candidate will be doing, the environment in which hell be exposed, the management style within the organization, its culture, and the benefits hell receive from being part of your organization.

Social media cant take the place of other forms of sourcing techniques, as youll still need to advertise and drive traffic to your website. Just be sure your communications, brand and online appearance are consistent.

Preparing for the Road Trip

Facebook has trumped the U.S. population with its number of members, and Twitter is growing at an incredible rate. Annual LinkedIn research conducted in 2010 through 2012 show that at any given time, 10 percent to 20 percent of the fully employed workforce is comprised of active candidates seeking new jobs, while 80 percent to 90 percent are passive candidates. As an employer, you should take the time to understand the media, develop a road map that uses each platform to its best advantage, and then experiment.

This includes adopting a social mindset. Recognize its not about your company pushing messages out to an audience; its about engaging in dialogue with your audience, listening to what they have to say and replying in kind. What do you want to say? Where? When? Why? How? Once you answer these questions, you can begin exploring the great unknown, using social media to turn your organization into a source of relevant information and news to attract passive and active candidates. Keeping your recruiting focus in mind, consider what impression a job seeker will have when he views your online presence.

Monitor media to understand whats being said about your company as an employer. Facebook pages, postings, blogs, Twitter comments, YouTube videos and employment reputation sites like glassdoor.com and vault.com as well as forums on websites such as SimplyHired are good places to start.

However, this means that when you hit a road block such as a candidate complaint and other unpredictable behavior you respond authentically, acknowledging when your company makes a mistake or when a candidate just wants to vent. Your goal should be to influence the discussion, not control it.

Free? Dont Forget the Tolls

While the upfront costs of various social media may not appear very expensive, there are very real costs associated with a proper investment. Lets start with the opportunity costs connected to the time you invest in crafting the perfect message to elicit responses. Now count the time needed to respond to the prospects and manage the messaging on the various social media channels. Remember social media is not like broadcast media and is interactive by the very nature of what it is and what makes it so appealing. That interactive connection with prospects should be consistent from media to media so they begin to associate your online presence across platforms.

If not properly handled, social media can backfire with negative or unforeseen results, so make the investment in time to understand the platform on which you are embarking. Make sure to budget enough in terms of resources, staff and money to use social media in a way that returns the most on your investment, as a platform for dialogue with your prospects. Work with legal counsel to ensure you have solid policy that everyone at your company is familiar with and which supports your strategy.

A recent study by Deloitte LLP, a firm that offers auditing, consulting and other services, found only 17 percent of companies surveyed had a program in place dedicated to monitoring social media. Only 22 percent had a formal policy on how employees may or may not use social media.

Hit the Social Media Highway

You have your website up and ready to go. Youve developed your strategy, explored the various sites and have a social media policy in place. Social media platforms are launched and youre revved up and ready to go. Enjoy the ride, but make sure you continue to check the oil.

The effectiveness of your efforts can be measured in many waysby reviewing your site counters, blogging comments and responses, and soliciting feedback from staff you trust as well as impartial colleagues. Be sure you have an idea of how many qualified candidates are applying before you begin this journey and where theyre coming from so you have a benchmark to compare against the number of qualified candidates you receive after all measures are deployed.

Its important to understand that social media and other sources of hire categories arent independent of each other, rather they work together to impact most other sources. In fact, respondents to a recent CareerXRoads survey believe that social media influences, drives or combines with seven out of 11 other sources. This includes referrals, company career sites, job boards, college boards, temp-to-hire and career fairs. You may need to make some adjustments as you analyze the data over several months, but dont move too quickly as you may need to give the campaigns more time to gain traction.

Dont Get Pulled Over

Last but not last, employers must be careful with social media because employment law is really still in its infancy with respect to these platforms. Social media wasnt around when anti-discrimination laws were passed in the 1960s. Unless job applicants have strict settings on their social media accounts, they may routinely broadcast revealing details about their lives including protected characteristics such as race, age, religion, disability or sexual orientation.

Make sure you have legitimate business reasons for looking at any job applicants social media identity, have an established screening and hiring process you follow consistently, and separate any social media inquiry from the hiring process. This means keeping the review of social media pages separate from the person making the final hiring decision, according to an article in "The Daily Circuit."

Today, as you speed down the social media highway, the medium and message can get blurred in ways you may never imagine. However, good people will make all the difference to your companys bottom line and are well worth the investment. Good luck!

Shelly Anderson, CEO of Michaels Wilder, has more than 20 years of experience across multiple human resources disciplines. She has worked within Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 organizations as well as overseas in Australia and Venezuela. Michaels Wilder is a full-service, marketing-communications agency specializing in online marketing, local search advertising, social media marketing, mobile media, brand development, research and consulting, media planning and talent management, with more than 20 years of experience in the self-storage industry. For more information, call 800.423.6468; visit www.michaelswilder.com or its sister division www.s2esolutions.com.

By Lois Lang

Hearing about embezzlement in a public company rarely shocks anyone, but when it happens in a family business, people are often stunned. How could he steal from his own family? Doesnt she know shes hurting her siblings/cousins/parents?

As tough and painful as embezzlement is, its not as uncommon as many of us would like to think. Sure, the kind of embezzlement that results in jail time is rare, but other levels of it happen daily.

How could this happen? Many factors lead to embezzlement, including chronic financial strain, a general sense of family entitlement, lack of internal company controls, and the reality or perception of being overworked and underpaid. To make matters worse, often the embezzler doesnt even know what hes doing is wrong.

Heres an example of how embezzlement can start small and quickly grow. Jim, the business owners son, fills up his gas tank once on a Friday and pays for it with the business account, knowing the miles he drives will be primarily for personal, not business use over the weekend. He tells himself its OK because hes filled the tank on his own some weekends and used his gas for business on Monday and Tuesday.

Then he takes a few vacation days and doesnt record it as paid time off. He picks up gift cards for employee recognition and pockets a few for himself. He knows Dad pays him less than local competitors, and this is the way he evens it out. He notices other family members treating the business the same way, so it simply becomes the way we do things around here. Its their company culture, not embezzlement.

The misuse of company assets, time and money escalates. Soon, Jim adds a non-working family member to payroll, petty cash disappears, one out of 10 customer checks are rerouted to Jims personal account, and personal items are consistently charged to the business credit card. Eventually, an employee in accounting notices and agonizes about who and when to tell.

So while embezzlement starts small and often innocently in a family business, it can quickly escalate to something big that damages the business, hurts non-family employee morale, and breaks family trust.

Take Action

What do you do when you realize a family member is embezzling from the business? Action is obviously required, and taking a cautious, thoughtful, respectful approach is wise. To begin, have a pre-meeting of key leaders, without the suspect family member present, to address the following:

• Do we have clear, hard, verifiable facts before we assume fault and intent?
• Who will be at the meeting to lay out the facts?
• Are we going to involve the legal system?
• If we continue employment with this family member, do we need to change his job position?
• Will we message this to the rest of the family and how? To other employees? To the board of directors?
• Did the company contribute to this problem and how? If the company did, what steps will we take to prevent it in the future?

• Did the family contribute to this problem and how? If the family did, what steps will we take to prevent it in the future?
• Has this family member had chronic, known problems with finances?
• Generally, how can we protect the company from future misuse of company assets or embezzlement?
• How do we protect the whistleblower?
• Do we talk openly in family council about our responsibility to financially protect and care for company assets? Do we give specific examples of what is and is not allowed?
• Do we have a solid non-compete clause in our employment contracts and/or employee handbook in case we have to release the family member from employment?
• Do we consistently run a professional background check on applicants?
• If we need to walk the family member out the door, how do we prepare? What will we do about computer security, locks, passwords, current company asset retrieval, bank-account access protection, social media tracking, last paycheck, etc.
• Do we need to involve our attorney, board of directors, accountant or a business psychologist? If so, when and how?

Once youre clear on these aspects, its time for the second meetingthe one with the suspected family member. When you begin the meeting, keep it at the level of discovery. Lay out the facts and ask the family member his perception of what happened. Really listen to what he says and how he says it. Remember, its common for family members not to realize theyre indeed embezzling. If this is a first offense, and if the embezzlement is not excessive, some education may be the best course of action. However, if you believe the family member knew what he was doing and did it anyway, or if the embezzlement is substantial, termination may be the only option.

During the meeting, you need to check yourself by asking, What would I do if this wasnt a family member? and Is this at a level where I will be able to trust him again? Your answers to these two questions will reveal a lot about your best action plan.

Keep Your Family and Business Strong

Of course, education of all employees (family and non-family), strict policies about how the companys assets and resources can be used, and enforced controls that can spot any wrongdoing are the best ways to reduce your family business chances of falling victim to embezzlement. Acknowledging what could happen, along with some planning to prevent it, will keep your family and business strong, successful and honest.

Lois Lang is a speaker and consultant with Evolve Partner Group LLC, where she helps organizations become high-performance workplaces. She works with clients on management-succession readiness, organizational/team strengthening, executive coaching, executive compensation design, wage studies and mediated conflict resolution. For more information, call 209.952.1143; e-mail [email protected] ; visit www.evolvepartnergroup.com .

Self-Storage operator Oakley Executive RV & Boat Storage held a ribbon-cutting ceremony and grand-opening celebration on June 29 at its facility in Oakley, Calif. The event included a disc jockey, food, games and prizes.

The boat- and RV-storage facility at 5220 Neroly Road is built on 11 acres and will serve the recreation-storage needs of the Delta region and greater San Francisco area. It features more than 170,000 square feet of canopy parking designed and built by Baja Construction Co. Inc. to serve as the backbone to its Solar Support System, engineered and constructed by Cenergy Power, a commercial solar integrator based in Carlsbad, Calif. The 1.68 megawatt solar facility uses high-efficiency, 295-watt solar modules from Korean manufacturer S-Energy to provide shaded parking for stored RVs and boats.

Under Pacific Gas & Electrics (PG&E) Small Generator Feed-in Tariff program, the electric company will purchase the solar power generated at Oakley Executive RV & Boat Storage under a 20-year contract. The solar power purchased by PG&E will be credited toward Californias Renewables Portfolio Standard, which requires that total procurement of PG&Es power from eligible renewable-energy sources be at 33 percent by 2020.

The fully paved facility also offers angled units, 24-hour video surveillance, computerized gated access, a 14-foot perimeter wall, dump station, propane station and onsite fire hydrants. Tenant amenities include WiFi and use of a conference room, shower and bathroom.

Based in Martinez, Calif., Baja Construction designs and engineers solar-support structures and light-gauge steel structures, including those used at self-storage facilities. The company has built carport and steel structures for more than 25 years and has installations in 34 states.