Author: Allan Halcrow

I was 11 when we started eating dinner in the doctors’ lounge. The evenings were always the same. My mother got my brother and sister and I into the family car, and we argued about which fast food chain to visit until my mother lost patience with listening to it and just decided. At the hospital, we walked in silence through the stark, smelly halls, carrying bags filled with fried chicken or burgers until we found the door marked “Doctors Only.” We always ignored the sign and barged right in as if the place were ours. The TV was always blaring, usually tuned to a sporting event, and the men (they were all men in those days) in their lab coats or greens were too tired to look away from it when we came in. While the three of us got the food out, my mother had my father paged, and a few minutes later he would join us for a hasty dinner. We talked about our homework and then he was gone again.

The whole experience was about as bleak as it sounds. My father was just out of medical school and in the midst of his internship at a teaching hospital. He was on an insane call schedule that required him to spend nights in the hospital, just in case anyone in the ER might need him. The result was that sometimes we didn’t see him at all for several days.

The internship may be an extreme example, but there are others in this month’s cover story illustrating the same basic problem: employees forced to sacrifice personal relationships to meet job demands.

When I was a kid, no one even gave lip service to the notion of work/family balance. Today, many organizations say they believe in helping employees establish that balance. It often seems, however, that for every step forward there are two backward. Downsizing, mergers, the pace of change and even technology (e-mail, voicemail, laptops, pagers and other devices that make it tough to ever really get away) have all taken their toll.

One giant step backward has been a change in the establishment of expectations. My father’s internship (and subsequent residency) was hard on everyone in the family. What made it bearable was that from the outset we knew what we were in for and why. We understood the necessity of the long hours and when they would happen. We knew how long it would last and what the rewards were. In short, we understood that for my father to ever have a practice of his own, we all had to sacrifice for the short term.

That’s one example of the sort of work contract that used to be common: Do X and your reward will be Y. Few people work under such terms anymore.

Too many of today’s employees are working long hours and making personal sacrifices without really knowing why they’re doing it or how long it will last. Will the extra project lead to a promotion? A lateral move? More money? Another job? Most people aren’t sure. Will the situation last six days? Six months? Forever? Few people know. What they do know is unspoken:Without making the extra effort, the consequences will be dire.

Some job stress is inevitable, and in today’s world we all face it. But stress without context is even more stressful and, unchecked, can be unendurable. HR professionals can work to help clarify those expectations and to communicate them. Done right, that effort can boost productivity, retention and, ultimately, profits. It won’t be easy. But isn’t that what effective HR is all about?

Workforce, September 1997, Vol. 76, No. 9, p. 6.

It was the eighth-century Greek poet Hesiod who first said, “Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor.” Our fast-food society has stripped the observation of its music and left us with, “timing is everything,” a sound bite suitable for T-shirts and bumper stickers everywhere. Still, I’m sure you’ll agree that our push for pith doesn’t diminish the fact that Hesiod was on to something. For me, the most dramatic illustration of his wisdom was my grandmother’s decision to buy long-term care insurance.

The story begins during World War II. My grandmother was a young bride, a thousand miles from home, facing the harsh extremes of Arizona’s climate. She was a new mother, and she was helping her husband recover from tuberculosis. She spent much of the next several years raising two children on limited funds. The funds were so limited, in fact, that family members spent evenings and weekends (imagine the heat in Phoenix) building a home by themselves. I’ll never forget my grandmother talking about the respites of Sunday evenings when, at last, she could unwind at the movies.

She never really got the chance to enjoy the house that she had designed herself and that had been so much work to build. My grandfather accepted a job in San Francisco, and they relocated before her dream house—years in the making—was even completed.

Once in the Bay area, she spent several years helping my parents—both of whom were pursuing college degrees—by taking care of me and my siblings. I have many cherished memories of her picking me up at school and, along with her sister, taking us on Saturday outings.

She continued being a caretaker after my grandfather retired (he was not the self-reliant type) and, still later, helping her sister. After a fall made it impossible for her to live alone, my great aunt moved in with my grandparents. She brought with her additional laundry, cooking and more.

My grandmother has never been afraid of hard work. She has always been willing to help. She has spent most of her adult life taking care of other people, but even she has her limits. After my grandfather died quite suddenly, she grew worried about her ability to take care of herself and her sister, particularly if either of them should develop further health problems. So she called her insurance agent and bought long-term health care policies for herself and for her sister, something my grandfather had long resisted.

Within days, my great aunt had another fall. She has been in a long-term care facility ever since. Several years have passed, and my aunt is otherwise in good health. Even if she weren’t continuing to get care, the care she already has received would have wiped out the family’s financial resources.

I told Nancy Breuer my grandmother’s story while she was researching the story on long-term care insurance for this issue. She, in turn, asked me to share it with you. I thought about whether to do so for a long time, because my grandmother and her sister are very private people. In the end, I decided that sharing the story was a good way to honor my grandmother’s courage, wisdom, strength of spirit and loving heart.

I also hope you’ll take a cue from the “timing is everything” element in the story to take action, soon, on behalf of your employees. In short, I hope you’ll learn from my grandmother’s example—as I have all my life.

Workforce, July 1997, Vol. 76, No. 7, p. 4.

The book arrived, unexpectedly, in the mail. Tucked between the dust jacket and the cover was a handwritten note: “This was J’s last writing—pulled together last summer during her good moments. I know she’d like you to have this copy in memory of better days.” It was signed, simply, “M.”

The book was Jessamyn West’s final novel, “The State of Stony Lonesome.” West, a novelist and screenwriter best known as the author of “The Friendly Persuasion,” was a friend and a mentor. She died, following a long illness, not long after completing the book. Although I knew her readers had one last book to look forward to, I didn’t know when it was to be published, and I certainly didn’t expect an advance copy. But there it was, sent by her widower, Harry Maxwell MacPherson (M). I was extraordinarily moved to receive it.

I first met Jessamyn eight years earlier. I had read “The Massacre at Fall Creek,” which is a historical novel based on an actual trial in which white men who had killed Native Americans stood trial for murder for the first time. The book is remarkable, and helped me to understand in new ways the ambiguities of life, and that what’s right and wrong is not fixed in time. I wrote to tell her how much I treasured the book. Although she had published a dozen books and was an accomplished screenwriter, she wrote a generous note suggesting that as we were both aspiring writers perhaps we might meet at an upcoming lecture she was to give and talk about writing.

I was thrilled to receive such an invitation, so we met and talked about writing and other things. It was the beginning of a remarkable friendship in which she was very giving of her time, talent and wisdom. I learned a lot from her, but perhaps the most valuable lessons were to live life to its fullest and to commit totally to one’s passions. Writing was her passion, and I can’t imagine the joy of putting pen to paper being denied her.

Yet that’s precisely what happens all too often in the workplace:Committed, passionate, skilled employees lose their jobs after being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. In fact, a recent survey conducted by Working Woman and Amgen (a biotechnology firm) revealed that employees with cancer are five times more likely to be laid off or fired than other people. An incredible 7 percent of cancer patients lose their jobs, and still others are stripped of important components of their jobs. Fear of high medical costs is probably one reason for firing these people, but ignorance is another. For example, the survey showed that 85 percent of supervisors believed that patients undergoing chemotherapy suffer from fatigue, but 58 percent of patients actually experienced it.

The saddest finding of the survey is that 81 percent of cancer survivors said their jobs helped them maintain emotional stability during treatment. What does anyone gain by taking such support from people? And beyond the emotional loss, it doesn’t take much to see that real contributions also are lost when people with illnesses are fired or even when they don’t get help navigating the benefits maze or don’t have the sense that they’re valued.

I’m grateful to have Jessamyn’s last book. The world would be a diminished place without it, and without Spencer Tracy and Henry Fonda’s last films, George Gershwin’s last songs, Mondrian’s last painting and so much other work done while fighting a life-threatening illness. In each case, the decision to keep working was theirs to make. Imagine what we lose when that decision is denied anyone.

Workforce, May 1997, Vol. 76, No. 5, p. 4.

Anyone—anyone at all—can edit a magazine. Or design one. Or sell ad space in one. That’s what I’ve learned in more than a dozen years of hiring staff members of Personnel Journal. Do you doubt it? Just ask the candidates.

In cover letters sure to amaze and amuse, candidates go through contortions to rival anything seen at “Cirque du Soleil” in an effort to demonstrate how they’re qualified to work as publishing professionals.

Those sports columns written for the high school newspaper 20 years ago? Ample qualification to write a magazine cover story. That unproduced play filled with scintillating dialogue? Surely more or less the same thing as reporting. And if you haven’t noticed the remarkable similarity between our cover stories and technical manuals that explain how to take apart a photocopier and reassemble it, job candidates have.

And those were the prospects with relevant skills. They certainly came closer to the mark than the myriad other people who argue—sometimes with a fervor that almost compensates for their missing credentials—that they are just perfect for us: The hand model tired of being exploited for her beauty, the food stylist weary of sculpting mashed potatoes, the mortician looking for a job with a little more life in it. (I promise you, I am not making these up.)

I particularly admire the candidates who have no faith in our ability to see the connection between previous work they’ve done and the available job and clarify the link for us: The auto mechanic whose cover letter assured us that fixing carburetors and grammatical errors employ essentially the same skills, the housewife whose handmade Christmas cards always elicited praise (as our covers surely did not), and the Girl Scout cookie sales champ who was ready to work her magic on ad sales.

I’m sure that you’ve read equally inventive job applications; anyone who has done any hiring has. What’s alarming to me is that, proportionately, these applicants now dominate. A decade ago, these candidates were the oddballs that offered a welcome smile while sorting through stacks of resumes from qualified applicants. Today, these off-the-wall prospects outnumber the serious applicants. I cringe every time we have turnover (which, mercifully, isn’t often) because finding qualified people to hire gets harder and harder.

Part of the problem is that we’ve all raised the bar. As knowledge has become the currency of today’s marketplace, we’ve redefined jobs to focus as much or more on thinking as on doing. We want people to take risks and work autonomously within the parameters of our corporate culture, and to keep up with a faster and faster rate of change. It’s no secret that the number of people prepared to meet those challenges is not as large as we would all like.

Fortunately for all of us, Contributing Editor Shari Caudron has found some HR professionals who have taken giant steps toward solving the problem. Her report offers several ideas that were new to me (and will be put to use next time I’m faced with a stack of resumes from short-order cooks) and I hope will be helpful to you.

As with most HR issues facing business today, there is no one solution. But working together, and sharing ideas, I do believe that we can make progress. If you have other ideas for how to face the staffing drought, we’d love to hear from you.

Personnel Journal, November 1996, Vol. 75, No. 11, p. 4.

We Americans are particularly good at viewing the past through rose-colored glasses that obscure the less-pretty details and romanticize the rest. The Revolutionary War, which was actually a tax rebellion by petulant upstarts, is now seen as a noble experiment to create a finer political order. The Civil War, in reality a brutal and costly fight over states’ rights, has been recast as the last gasp of chivalry (see “Gone with the Wind”) and the dawn of racial equality. Even the Great Depression, a period of economic despair and blight, is often seen as an opportunity for us to discover the nobler side of ourselves (see “The Grapes of Wrath”).

This tendency isn’t all bad. Whatever their original impetus, the Revolutionary and Civil wars left legacies of good to the nation, and the Depression taught us new ways of working together to solve problems. But there are inherent dangers, too, in gazing too long at the rose-colored view. One risk is that the present looks less and less appealing in comparison to the ever-more-perfect past. It’s one reason that we—the wealthiest, safest, healthiest, best educated society in history—now face the great malaise that has infected us.

I raise the issue because our penchant to romanticize the past now threatens our ability to see earlier business practices clearly. In particular, there’s been a wave of nostalgia for what’s being called the old employment contract, now characterized as an era of benevolence in which doing a good job was rewarded with lifetime employment. Yes, but ¼

Was the old employment contract really all that wonderful? No. Our wish to make it so is borne of our innate distrust of change and the need to cling to something familiar. In doing so, however, we lose sight of our own progress.

The progress is most apparent to me when I think about my grandfathers, both of whom were signatories of that so-called contract and both of whom suffered, to some degree, from its now-forgotten clauses.

My father’s father was a lifetime civil servant, locked into a hierarchy that re-warded length of service more than initiative. Without a promotion to the next level there was little or no hope for significant salary increases or other compensation. Yes, he enjoyed job security and a steady paycheck. But he was bored for at least the last 15 years of his working life, and may never really have reached his potential. I don’t think he would’ve found a contract that included lateral moves, skill-based pay and other current practices all bad.

My mother’s father had a less linear career, but spent most of his working life as a salesperson. At 65, he was forced to retire, despite the fact that he was then the company’s top salesperson and among the top nationwide in his industry. Yes, he enjoyed job security until that point, but what good is a contract that runs out before you or the company really want it to? I don’t think he would find a contract that allowed top performers to keep working all bad.

Yes, the economy has forced us to give up some appealing ideas, lifetime em-ployment among them. We have gained as much as we have lost, however, and we’d do better to remember that and to communicate it to employees. We can win back their commitment if we help them see beyond systems and protocol that stopped working and to recognize the benefits of the new system. For some ideas on how to do that, please see the cover story.

Personnel Journal, August 1996, Vol. 75, No. 8, p. 4.

Orwellian is an adjective perhaps unique to our times. It conjures images of Big Brother watching our every move, each of us stripped of privacy and, consequently, of dignity. By now, an image, a phrase or a disembodied voice may be all that’s necessary to stir a primal fear.

Our cover this month is certainly Orwellian, and deliberately so. It’s a frightening and even repugnant image, but we selected it because it succeeds in making us squirm. Given the potential that technology now gives us to obliterate personal privacy as it has been defined for millenniums, we should be uncomfortable.

Sam Greengard’s cover story is equally unsettling. Sam shares stories that include a criminal-record mix-up that led to the firing of one man who had done nothing wrong other than to share a similar name to a stranger with a drug conviction on his record, and an employer who saw fit to turn over copies of voicemail implicating an employee in an extra-marital affair to his spouse. Although it would be comforting to dismiss these examples as nothing more than extremism, there isn’t a lot of historical precedent to tell us that given the opportunity, society will take the high road.

Consider, for example, an article in the March 7, 1996, issue of People Management, a business magazine published inLondon. The article explores the future of genetic testing and its role in the workplace. Specifically, it wonders whether people genetically predisposed to certain health conditions might be denied employment. Lest we find that scenario too improbable to give us a sleepless night, it mentions that a woman in the U.S. already has been fired after her employer discovered she carried the gene for Huntington’s chorea. The disease results in mental degeneration. Although the woman fired is in her twenties, is healthy and has only a 50% chance of developing the disorder, her employer decided she was too great a risk.

There’s nothing in Sam’s article to suggest that this woman’s fate is likely to be common any time soon. Still, once we’ve opened the door to say that any and all information is fair game, where do we draw the line? Although we might all agree that employers need information about their employees (particularly in such a litigious society), how much information is enough? And who should have access to it?

These are questions that I suspect it may take a decade to answer. That doesn’t mean, however, that we can afford to put the issue out of our minds until “they” have determined it’s a crisis. Now is the time for all of us in HR to begin thinking about privacy and about how to balance our need to know with employee dignity. And it’s time to start asking the tough questions about the real value of an individual’s worth.

Let’s consider the woman fired because she might develop Huntington’s chorea. If the employer lost five years of good service, was it a wise decision? Thirty years? What if she might have had the idea that saved the company millions or led to the launch of a key product? What if she never develops the disease and works at the employer’s competitor? If an employer can’t answer these questions, does it have a right to know about the gene in the first place?

Reasonable precautions are one thing, but the search for the perfect employee is another. Working to help employees reach their full potential today is one thing, but gambling on the future is another. Can we afford to waste time watching these angels dance on the head of a pin? I think not.

There’s ample room in this growing debate for someone to assert a leadership role. HR has much to gain by doing so.

Personnel Journal, May 1996, Vol. 75, No. 5, p. 4.

Them’s fightin’ words! That was the hackneyed, ungrammatical (yet entirely heartfelt) retort that popped into my mind when I first read page 105 in the January 15 issue of Fortune. There it was at the beginning of the third paragraph: “I don’t mean improve HR. Improvement’s for wimps. I mean abolish it.”

There was more. Much more. A man listed in the masthead as sitting on the Board of Editors of one of America’s leading business publications compared the HR department to “the asp in Cleopatra’s bosom.” He noted that, “just as Georges Clemenceau said, ‘War is much too serious to be entrusted to the military,’ so human capital is too important to be left to Personnel.” And he argued that everyone would be better off if the entire HR function was simply outsourced.

Some of Thomas A. Stewart’s comments were clearly little more than attention-getting rhetoric. Nonetheless, his basic premise could not be misinterpreted. In disbelief, I checked the cover date once more. Yes, it did say 1996 and not 1986.

Many of the charges he levels against HR—that it is out of sync with the needs of the business, that it is a policy-enforcing bureaucracy—were still true in the mid- ’80s and, I’m sure, are still true in a few organizations. Overall, however, I would argue that HR has done a better, more compelling job of reinventing itself to face the ’90s and beyond than most other corporate functions.

Stewart’s argument begins to fall apart when you consider just some of the HR departments that we’ve written about in the past couple of years. Does he really believe that HR at Levi Strauss, which exists to support the values and aspirations that have driven the company to record profits, is nothing more than a bureaucracy? That the City of Hampton, Virginia, would be better off without the job redesign, cross-training and reward systems that have helped the city compete with the private sector? Or that the training that’s so clearly been instrumental in the success of Disney’s theme parks could just as well be outsourced?

I’m sure Stewart doesn’t believe any of those things, but feels that these examples are the exceptions that prove the rule. Even if he were right about that, though—and he isn’t—his suggestion to simply abolish HR doesn’t make sense. Consider the issue raised in this month’s cover story: gangs infiltrating the workplace. This is a serious problem that must be addressed. If HR doesn’t face the challenge, who will? If HR doesn’t figure out how to stop violence on the job before it happens, who will? If HR doesn’t figure out how to staff up for overseas expansion, who will? And on and on.

Even Stewart acknowledges toward the end of his piece that employees are the “competitive advantage in the new economy.” Sadly, he continues by asking whether HR is a worthy trustee for such an asset. “Nothing is more dangerous than a group of people trained in the art of monitoring compliance with rules, fluent in a language that does not include a word for ‘customer,’ and who have time on their hands and are looking for something to do,” he says.

Angry yet? I hope so. Stewart’s ideas are outdated, misguided and smug. But I believe he’s earnest, which means that somehow we’ve all failed to reinvent HR’s image as effectively as we’ve reinvented the function. Now’s the time to change that. Read Stewart’s piece, then fight back. Refute it throughout your organization and refute it to Stewart directly. Tell him what you’ve accomplished. I plan to do just that. It’s time HR enjoyed the respect it deserves.

Personnel Journal, February 1996, Vol. 75, No. 1, p. 4.