Author: Andie Burjek

Posted on

4 tips for using technology to improve your internal communications strategy

How to use technology in your internal communications strategy

Summary

  • Strong internal communications help employees feel connected and engaged with company leadership.

  • Digital workplace communications are evolving — employees prefer strategies and platforms that help them collaborate with their coworkers and stay up-to-date with scheduling needs.

  • It’s possible to overwhelm your workers with too many pings and updates. Use technology efficiently in your internal comms plan.

An effective internal communications strategy is to your employees like a lighthouse in the middle of a storm: a beacon of light that they can follow even in the midst of unexpected obstacles and turbulence. They can stay focused on the task at hand to overcome any challenges and arrive safely back at port — or, in your company’s case, to seamlessly reach the goals you collectively set out to achieve.

But fragmented communications and radio silence from leadership can make employees feel lost and uninformed. They might not be prepared to face challenges head-on and effectively meet business needs. And, most importantly, they might lack the confidence and the desire to keep pushing forward if they feel like they’re not getting clear directions from company leadership. One study found that 85% of employees say they’re most motivated in their roles when management offers regular updates on company news.

Internal communication mistakes can also lead to low morale, reduced productivity, and increased employee turnover. If you’re using outdated communication methods or ignoring employee feedback about the way your organization communicates, you might already be suffering these consequences. 

And if you don’t have an internal communications plan at all, you’ll want to get one in place so your workers can receive regular insights from your senior management team, understand the company mission and goals, and send dynamic updates about their own availability. Because technology is the linchpin of internal comms in today’s digital-first working world, you’ll need to make sure you’re implementing these tools in your employee communication.

1. Offer a variety of communications channels

Some employees may feel comfortable asking questions over the phone or via a messaging tool, but others prefer to communicate face-to-face. The same truth holds for workplace conversations, from asking about your PTO or health care benefits to reporting harassment. Don’t assume that “young people” prefer digital communication and “older people” prefer in-person conversations. Employees don’t fit into cliched stereotypes like that, and some will need to have in-person conversations about certain topics. 

Still, digital, mobile-enabled communication is one of the key tools to keep an organization’s strategy from being outdated. For instance, in today’s hybrid, digital-first work environments, many employees prefer collaborative platforms to support their communication goals and needs. At least one-third of business users would choose Slack or Microsoft Teams over a traditional channel like email. And for hourly workers, dynamic, real-time communication is often needed to stay up-to-date on schedules and shift openings.

Give employees options, and make sure that one of the options is a communication tool that allows employees an easy, convenient way to reach out privately to their employer — and their teammates — at any time. Your communication tools should make it easy for workers to communicate with each other and their managers about shift changes, availability, task management, and other updates.

2. Consider how you will communicate in response to a crisis

Whether a natural disaster, PR mishap, or global pandemic, crises are a time when employers especially need an action plan to stay on top of internal communications. 

For example, with natural disasters like winter storms and hurricanes — which may disrupt an employee’s commute or comfort level of going into work at all — organizations can communicate with employees through corporate social media channels, mobile communication platforms, or even simple phone trees to keep everyone in the loop. For employees who have to work remotely following the aftermath of a storm or other crisis, workplace communication that keeps them updated on the facts and that shows sympathy for the struggles they’re going through will be appreciated. That’s important for managing your company culture through difficult times.

This is another situation in which internal communication tools will benefit employers and employees. Managers can give employees time-sensitive updates as soon as possible — and post them more frequently. Employees can reach out to their managers to ask about projects they’re working on and shifts they want to pick up to stay informed about quickly changing priorities and plans. 

It’s also really key to offer your workers the opportunity to give feedback about your crisis communications plan. Harvard Business Review writes, “Organizational leaders must communicate the channels available to offer feedback and should emphasize how much they care about hearing from employees at all levels.” Consider creating an anonymous channel for employees to leave their thoughts and make it clear that they can reach out to HR and their supervisor if they want to talk.

3. Keep remote teams engaged

Of course, even outside of pandemics or blizzards, it’s commonplace for employees to work remotely or hybrid. And more effort to communicate is required to help remote workers feel connected with the rest of the team. 

According to previous Workforce coverage, people are most engaged when their jobs provide them with a sense of autonomy, purpose, and mastery. Autonomy means they are able to work according to their own schedule and the way they like to work. There’s no micromanagement, provided deadlines and key performance indicators (KPIs) are met. Purpose means feeling that the work they do matters and that they’re aligned with the values of the organization. Mastery means performing high-quality work and improving every day.

This is a good thing for managers. They don’t need to overdo their digital communication with remote workers, lest they micromanage. Rather, what managers can do to engage remote workers is let them know what is expected and provide them with clear initiatives and timelines so they know what success looks like. Clear, direct communication is appreciated in this case, and an easy-to-use digital solution is an effective way to keep these conversations with remote workers going. 

4. Watch out for digital overload 

Employees must manage a steady stream of virtual messages, from emails to instant messages and pings from project management and shift scheduling apps. It’s easy to get bogged down by this never-ending flood of information. As helpful as technology can be in a good internal communications strategy, the possibility of overdoing it to the point where employees can’t check all their messages in a timely manner is very real.

Employees can work on their time management skills. That might mean shutting down their email or messaging apps while they work on time-consuming tasks to avoid getting distracted by a deluge of notifications. You could also create some type of request system so that people know when to come to them with tasks (or when notifications are muted for deep work), how much notice they need, and a timeframe to complete it. Your internal communication processes should be designed to inspire deeper collaboration and clear up basic questions instead of creating more.

Employers, meanwhile, can address this information overload by being strategic about how they share information and company announcements. Coordinating schedules and plans, sending out announcements, and receiving automatic updates on shift tasks can all be done through one workforce management platform. 

Keep messages brief by finding a digital tool that eliminates manual scheduling via phone calls and texts. Most importantly, listen to employee feedback if communication processes are getting overwhelming.

Take a collaborative approach to your corporate communications

It might seem natural to take a top-down approach to your internal communications strategy, dishing out company-wide news to employees in a weekly newsletter and soliciting feedback only in a quarterly survey. But true communication is a two-way street. As much as your employees need to hear from leadership about business goals, direction, and updates, company leaders should keep up to date with employees. 

What are their career aspirations? Are individuals and departments on track to reach business objectives? An effective IC strategy, powered by collaborative tools and practices, will enable you to listen to employees on key issues and measure their feedback. Together, you can work towards company goals, improve processes, and raise productivity.

Whether you have a mostly remote workforce or a storefront full of shift workers, Workforce.com can help. Its employee communications feature allows managers to share company or team announcements, send important documents, and give feedback to employees — all with the convenience of using your own mobile device.

Book a call today to find out more about how you can boost your workforce’s internal communication strategy.

Posted on

Labor analytics: A how-to guide for company leadership

astronaut with a magnifying glass

Summary

  • Requesting and collecting data in real-time allows your management to make better business decisions and keep costs low.

  • Focus on gathering insights that will ultimately address your business needs.

  • With labor analytics, variety is key. Use and collect data from multiple sources.

Data plays a vital function in all aspects of running a business. It is used in everything, from analyzing and predicting product performance to segmenting and understanding your customers in order to optimize the user experience. 

So naturally, data has an important role to play in workforce management through the process of labor analytics – also known as workforce analytics. Through labor analytics, HR professionals gather and analyze workforce data to:

  • Understand what new roles and functions a company should seek to fill and which ones it should cut. 
  • Understand what roles and functions might require a reduction or elimination altogether.
  • Forecasting the value and success a prospective employee can bring to a company.
  • Obtain actionable insights on how to better manage labor costs.
  • Gain a deeper understanding of the employee experience and what positively boosts employee engagement.
  • Optimize business strategy in a way that increases performance and productivity.
  • Make data-driven business decisions on fair and cost-effective worker compensation and incentives.

The good news is that most businesses already have access to massive amounts of workforce data – the catch is that gathering and making sense of this data can be tricky. But in the end, the benefit of utilizing labor analytics significantly outweighs the effort spent organizing the data. 

Research shows the positive impact that workforce analytics has on business outcomes. Case studies show that companies that use labor analytics say they have a clearer understanding of their workforce needs and can identify employees with high potential. They have also noted an improvement in retention rates and are generally happier with their human resources. 

Webinar: How to Stop Employee Turnover

Since the pandemic, attracting talent has never been trickier, and the benefits of labor analytics cannot be overstated. Following these four steps will help you optimize your labor analytics process and put your business in a better position for success.  

Gather analytics data in real-time

It is essential that your C-suite decision-makers have access to labor analytics in real-time, before they need to make critical business decisions. Visibility like this improves response time to frontline labor issues and ensures a more efficient allocation of resources. 

Real-time analytics give managers a clear picture of labor costs as a percentage of revenue across all locatins and throughout the day, allowing them to see where and when their workforce is struggling. This way, they can make better decisions regarding staffing levels, absenteeism, overtime, and more.

Whitepaper: Workforce Analytics

Connect labor analytics with business needs

While organizations should always make decisions on the most current data available, having too much data can hinder decision-making. Labor analysis shouldn’t be aimless in scope. Each research activity should address a specific question that needs answering by the organization. In other words, business outcomes need to guide the analytics process in the right direction.

Use multiple types of data and analytics

To best utilize data analytics, using multiple, targeted sources of data — including business-appropriate performance analytics and HR/talent management analytics — is important. But it’s not enough. In workforce analytics, variety is key.

Internal reports focus on metrics such as completed training hours or satisfaction with training. Predictive modeling uses statistical analysis to project the outcome of various actions. And external benchmarking allows an organization to compare itself against the industry-standard. Incorporating data from a variety of analytics types gives the business a more robust viewpoint, allowing for better-informed decision-making.

Avoid common data analytics mistakes 

Organizations should be sure to avoid common pitfalls when using analytics. The data needs to be organized and cleaned, and organizations should start with small, simple projects rather than something big to help get leadership buy-in. 

They should also be careful not to confuse correlation with causation in research results. For example, if data shows that older employees are more successful at a task than younger employees, that may have nothing to do with age demographics but with years of experience. 

Data literacy – “the ability to read, write, and communicate data in context” — is a vital skill for any business today, according to 2019 Gartner research. Some companies may still have ways to go to maximize the potential of their labor analytics. Hiring a chief data officer or data scientist or outsourcing analytics capabilities to a vendor can help make sense of the data that’s collected. 

The growing importance of data analytics is inevitable. For the unprepared company, this may be intimidating. Getting leadership buy-in and using data analytics strategically to achieve a specific business outcome can help. But once the organization gets a handle on its labor analytics function, it can expect promising business outcomes. 

Optimize your labor analytics process with Workforce.com

Utilizing labor analytics tools like Workforce.com makes it easier to turn your data into real-time, actionable insights. These insights help you more efficiently tackle frontline labor issues like:

  • Predicting future hiring requirements
  • Understanding current staffing needs
  • Managing compensation and overtime
  • Understanding and optimizing employee engagement

If you’re interested in using workforce management software to improve both your labor analytics and your bottom line, check out our webinar below featuring exclusive research from a Forrester TEI report:

Building a Business Case for WFM Software

For more information, get in touch with us now. 

Posted on

The COVID-19 vaccine and race discrimination

employment law

One issue the EEOC omitted from its technical guidance on the COVID-19 vaccine is the issue of race discrimination.

According to one recent study, 57% of African Americans say that they definitely or probably will not get the COVID-19 vaccine. Many point to their distrust of the federal government fueled by decades of medical studies on Black people, including the Tuskegee Experiment, which left hundreds of Black men untreated for syphilis between 1932 and 1972.
If you are going to adopt a mandatory vaccination policy for your workplace (which the EEOC says you can do, subject to reasonable accommodation exceptions under the ADA for medical issues and Title VII for sincerely held religious beliefs or observances), then you must account for the possibility of that policy having a disparate impact based on race. Otherwise, you might be setting yourself up for a potential race discrimination lawsuit.
Posted on

EEOC releases guidance on the COVID-19 vaccine

COVID-19, vaccine, flu

Yesterday, the EEOC published its guidance on the COVID-19 vaccine under the ADA and GINA, in the form of nine Q&As. You can read them in their totality here.

The TL;DR: yes, you can force employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of employment (although the should is an entirely different issue), subject to limits on reasonable accommodations for employees’ disabilities and sincerely held religious practices or beliefs and subject to limits on pre-vaccination medical questions.

That’s more or less aligned with everyone’s collective conventional wisdom on this issue. What is new in this guidance is the agency’s position on what to do with employees who refuse the vaccine for medical or religious reasons.

If an employer requires vaccinations when they are available, and an employee indicates that he or she is unable to receive a COVID-19 vaccination because of a disability, the employer must accommodate that request unless the employer can show that “an unvaccinated employee would pose a direct threat due to a ‘significant risk of substantial harm to the health or safety of the individual or others that cannot be eliminated or reduced by reasonable accommodation’ … with a “determination that an unvaccinated individual will expose others to the virus at the worksite.” Even then, an “employer cannot exclude the employee from the workplace—or take any other action—unless there is no way to provide a reasonable accommodation … that would eliminate or reduce this risk so the unvaccinated employee does not pose a direct threat.” Moreover, a direct threat determination and an exclusion of an unvaccinated employee from the workplace does not necessarily equate to termination. An employer must in this case consider alternative accommodations, including remote work or an unpaid leave of absence.

Sincerely held religious practices or beliefs present a different problem for employees since Title VII does not offer a similar direct threat defense to an accommodation request. According to the EEOC, “If an employee cannot get vaccinated for COVID-19 because of a disability or sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance, and there is no reasonable accommodation possible, then it would be lawful for the employer to exclude the employee from the workplace.” As is the case under the ADA, however, this lawful exclusion does not necessarily equate to termination, and alternative accommodations should be considered.
The bottom line for employers? The COVID-19 vaccine is here and will be available within months for your employees. Now is the time to figure out how you will handle it for your employees. Will you require it or recommend it? Will you offer it on-site or send employees elsewhere for the vaccine? What will you do when an employee objects for medical or religious reasons? Planning is everything, and with an issue this important there is no reason to be caught unprepared.
Posted on

Coronavirus update: Don’t be this a-hole

COVID-19, coronavirus, public health crisis

According to Cleveland.com, a pair of Ohio parents are facing possible criminal charges after piling 60 maskless teenagers into a party bus to celebrate their son’s 14th birthday.

Police learned a parent had arranged for the party bus, which originated in Cincinnati…. The parent had posted an open invitation on social media, police say.

The parents involved have been identified and might face charges for violating the state’s orders on the coronavirus. Police say they are consulting with the prosecutor’s office about additional charges.

“Mount Healthy police will not tolerate blatant law violations especially when such action endangers our community, our officers, and public health,” the department said in a news release.

Don’t be this a-hole. No one needs to have a birthday party right now, especially one that requires people to cram into a party bus. This is the height of entitled stupidity.

Do your part to slow the spread of this dangerous virus. Wear a mask, maintain distance, wash your hands, avoid gatherings, stay home, and for God’s sake don’t hold a birthday party for your child and 60 of his friends that requires them all to cram maskless into a party bus.

Posted on

Building Workforce.com: An interview with Leon Pearce

Leon Pearce

Organizations have countless options for workforce management vendors, making the vendor selection process overwhelming and complicated. But Leon Pearce, software engineer at Workforce.com, knows it’s more than just features and functionality a platform must have to be relevant to the workforce both now and years in the future. 

Workforce: How does Workforce.com technology help HR?

Leon Pearce: Human resources and workforce management professionals need to be so much to so many people. On a surface level, many people, whether it’s inside or outside the organization, tend to underestimate the sheer volume of work HR professionals and frontline managers have to do just to keep the status quo of a business running smoothly.

Workforce.com technology exists to support that. In essence, we build the software with the purpose of improving workforce compliance, automation, engagement and productivity. This helps HR stay compliant with ever-changing labor regulations, automate administrative processes, build trust with frontline staff and improve business productivity.

We want to help tackle these complex problems and streamline those processes so they can focus on the essentials of managing their workforce: worker happiness, welfare, and efficiency. People are the most significant competitive advantage any business can get, so they need to be engaged for long-term success.

WF: Where does Workforce.com technology fit into the big picture of people management?

Pearce: For me it’s all about where the world of work is heading, and where HR is heading alongside it. Technology is changing how people approach their work and their relationship with work. So we’re engineering to build a future where teams can perform better through improved workflow and feel empowered with the right technology.

For frontline employees, it means intuitive mobile apps to see future work hours, swap shifts, provide company feedback and apply for things such as time off and unavailability. For managers, it’s being able to easily build, send and optimize schedules against forecasted demand while tracking actual hours worked. And for HR and workforce professionals it means being able to manage and oversee this in one place that they can customize perfectly to their way of doing things and integrate with their existing payroll and technology stack.

On the whole it means building a platform that leverages the very best technology to help the workforce win and reach its potential.

Leon Pearce

WF: What are the key questions people should ask before implementing any software?

Pearce: Software and technology really is only as good as you can use it. You could own Thor’s hammer, but it’s not very useful if nobody can lift it.

The first question I think should be asked is: What problem are we trying to solve? Do we need to move away from paper-based workforce management? Are we changing to a more intuitive and user friendly system for better engagement? It’s crucial to hammer out the details of what needs to be addressed first and what outcomes are expected.

Software is fundamentally going to change how your business operates. It’s also important to make sure the partner you choose aligns with the vision you have for your teams, especially with the emergence of software as a service as the future of technology adoption. You are not necessarily buying into what this product is today, but its ability to improve and help your company reach its potential in the future.

Questions to ask about potential vendors include:

  • How many features did they ship in the last 12 months? 
  • Who’s their chief technology officer? 
  • Do they understand the future of work and what’s your product road map for the future? 
  • What improvements to the user experience have been made recently? 
  • What percentage of revenue do they commit to new research and development compared to supporting old infrastructure? 
  • In essence, are they going to grow and improve their product as you grow and improve your business?

In terms of implementation, one of the most common complaints we hear about HR software is when it purely serves management, not the rank-and-file employees. Is there a trial or demo period for the solution you’re eyeing? Ask to see it live in a demo. Test the software by placing it into the hands of the end user and get their honest feedback.

In my experience in the software world, there are lots of techniques you can use to understand if users like a product. Most of these techniques are flawed. For example, you can compare companies based on revenue — but then are you evaluating how good the product is or how slick the salespeople are? 

The most objective and useful metric I’ve found is app store ratings. It gives a voice to the people who actually use the software. Often these people didn’t choose it, so they will be very honest with their opinion.

The biggest mistake we see is when software is chosen because it ticks the boxes of a proposal and not how it works and is used by the frontline employees. Make sure to evaluate whether it enhances or detracts from the employee experience.

WF: When software is working really well, how do you know?

Pearce: My definition of it would be that you’re genuinely enjoying the process, learning better ways of doing things and everybody around you is enjoying the outcome. Does this technology make my life and the lives of my team easier and happier?

Happy, engaged staff will result in a more successful team, so you should be able to feel the pride of getting work done and discovering how you can optimally manage your time to do it even better. 

WF: What would you tell people who are apprehensive about technology becoming too intrusive in their work lives?

Pearce: I’d say that like anything, technology can either consume your time or produce more time for you. You have to evaluate each technology that you and your teams interact with and ask if this is helping or hindering you.

Fortunately the workforce management software industry is built around the idea of streamlining processes and doing things like building schedules faster, making sure people are paid correctly, and completing core administrative tasks. 

Technology should be there to replace those things and make them quicker and easier to do, giving people more time to be present, involved and human.

WF: Talk about competitive advantage. What, in your opinion, makes one product — specifically HR technology software — better than another?

Pearce: The benchmark for software in this space would be a solution that can follow best practices for each particular industry and help teams get to where they want to be, while being fun and easy to use.

Going a step further, the benchmark is a solution that supports an organization while they find their way forward and enables them to operate in ways that create new competitive advantages. 

Our strategy is to build our software that provides adopters with a starting point of industry best practices but also is flexible enough to evolve with these standards. Stagnation always ends in failure, which is why enabling our users to keep tweaking their functions and improving the way they operate is so important to us.

WF: Please explain how Workforce.com technology integrates with research and content.

Pearce: When building the Workforce.com platform, we’re faced with many decisions about where we’re going to take it next and what the future is like for particular features. We’re very active in pursuing feedback from current customers and prospective customers.

One important way we can go about this is through our industry research and content teams as they analyze the future of work. Being integrated into these teams allows us to not only solve the problems of today but also  move the industry forward by building the features our clients may not even know they want or need yet. It’s all about distilling the theory down into hard science and engineering the future of work.

WF: We all understand the pride an artist gets when their artwork hangs in a gallery. What is it about creating software that gives you a big sense of pride?

I do agree that it’s like art. You’ve got to have a creative vision for where the product is going to end up. However, what we’re wanting to build and the outcome we deliver for our clients is very much the opposite. We think about it as turning workforce management into an exact science. Taking the guesswork out of labor allocation and delivering predictable and scalable results so businesses can grow, achieve their vision and have the confidence to employ as many people as they can.

Seeing people use the software I helped build definitely gives me pride, but I think more to the point is the knowledge that I was involved in hopefully making people’s lives just a little better. I thank our customers every day for giving us that opportunity.

Interested in learning more? Watch this two minute introduction to workforce.com here.

Posted on

CDC cuts recommended quarantine period from 14 days to 7 – 10 days (sort of)

COVID-19, coronavirus, public health crisis

Yesterday, the CDC amended its guidance on the duration of quarantine for individuals in close contact with someone else positive with COVID-19. We need to pay close attention to the fine print. All of the headlines are reporting that the CDC has shortened its recommended COVID-19 quarantine period. That’s not, however, what happened.

Previously, the CDC recommended a 14-day quarantine period in all cases for someone in close contact. Now, however, the agency has made available the option to shorten quarantine as follows:
  1. Quarantine may end after Day 10 without testing and no reported symptoms during daily monitoring.
  2. When diagnostic testing resources are sufficient and available, quarantine may end after Day 7 with a negative test and no reported symptoms during daily monitoring.
  3. Persons can discontinue quarantine at these times only if: (a) there is no clinical evidence of COVID-19 detected during daily symptom monitoring during the entirety of quarantine up to the time at which it is discontinued; (b) daily symptom monitoring continues through Day 14; (c) persons strictly adhere to all recommended mitigation measures (masking, physical distancing, etc.) through Day 14; and (d) if symptoms develop the person should immediately self-isolate and contact their healthcare provider.
Despite this optional shortening of the quarantine period the CDC still advises, “Persons can continue to be quarantined for 14 days without testing per existing recommendations,” which “maximally reduces risk of post-quarantine transmission risk and is the strategy with the greatest collective experience at present.”
The CDC made these changes based on scientific evidence of diminishing spread from one percent down to near zero percent during days 11 – 14 without testing and days 8 – 14 after a negative test, and further based on the concern that “a 14-day quarantine can impose personal burdens that may affect physical and mental health as well as cause economic hardship that may reduce compliance.”
That said, in the middle of a deadly surge of this virus I’ll opt to keep the spread as close to zero as we can. Despite this new guidance, I think that in most cases businesses should still keep exposed employees out of work for the full 14-day quarantine. We need to be doing everything we can to slow the current surge. To me, a one-percent risk of transmission is one percent too high if we can reduce it to zero merely by waiting at home for a few more days.
Posted on

The 12th nominee for the “Worst Employer of 2020” is … the Bad Bettor

Do you remember that scene from The Deer Hunter where Christopher Walken plays Russian roulette in a betting parlor, while the patrons place bets on whether he’ll live or die with every pull of the revolver’s trigger? That’s what I thought of as I read the allegations in Fernandez v. Tyson Foods, and not in a good way.

According to the lawsuit, while COVID-19 was running rampant through Tyson’s Waterloo, Iowa, facility, the Plant Manager “organized a cash buy-in, winner-take-all betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager how many employees would test positive for COVID-19.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg of allegations in this wrongful death lawsuit, originally filed by the family of the late Isidro Fernandez, one of at least five employees who died of the virus. Indeed, according to their local health department, more than 1,000 workers at the plant, representing over one-third of the total workforce, contracted the virus. The lawsuit claims that Tyson Food demonstrated a “willful and wanton disregard for workplace safety.”
The recently filed amended complaint, which includes allegations concerning the betting pool, adds even more meat to the bone of these unsafe working conditions.
  • Despite the rampant spread of the virus within the plant, Tyson Foods required its employees to work long hours in cramped conditions without personal protective equipment and without following other workplace-safety measures.
  • In mid-April, just before the betting pool was created, the county sheriff visited the plant and reported that the working conditions inside “shook [him] to the core.”
  • An upper-level manager directed employees and supervisors to ignore COVID-19 symptoms, not to get tested, and to continue working, and supervisors falsely denied the existence of any confirmed cases or positive tests among the workforce.
  • Tyson paid $500 attendance bonuses, which actually incentivized sick employees to continue working.
  • All the while, managers avoided the plant floor for fear of contracting the virus, and executives lobbied Iowa’s governor for COVID-related liability protections.
For it’s part, Tyson Foods vehemently denies these allegations and suspended all managers accused of taking part in the betting pool (seven months after the fact).
If you place bets on which of your employees will contract a deadly virus, while you continue to take active steps that expose them to a greater risk of contracting that virus, you might be the Worst Employer of 2020. And thank you to all of my readers who sent me this very worthy nominee.
Posted on

Disclosing human capital data is now an SEC requirement

scheduling; time and attendance; forecasting

Thanks to the new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules that went into effect Nov. 9, publicly traded companies are required to disclose human capital information such as workforce cost, human capital ROI and turnover rate, among others. 

There is no grace period, so publicly traded companies must begin disclosing this human capital information starting with their Nov. 30, Dec. 31 or Jan. 31 quarterly or annual public financial statement, noted David Vance, executive director for the Center for Talent Reporting, in a blog post on Chief Learning Officer.

What this means for publicly traded companies is: they must be prepared with the right data for their next public financial release. The SEC does not require specific metrics but wants appropriate information for employee attraction, development and retention at minimum. 

There’s leeway in the metrics you can report

Various resources and reports suggest what types of measurements employers can rely on. Vance suggested the following in Chief Learning Officer:

Attraction: Time to fill, time to fill critical positions, percentage of positions filled internally, percentage of critical positions filled internally.

Development: Total cost of training and development, percentage of employees who receive training in compliance and ethics, percentage of employees who receive any training, average hours of formal training per year, percentage of leaders who receive training, percentage of leaders who receive leadership development.

Retention: Turnover, turnover for critical positions.

Additional recommended metrics: Employee engagement score, leadership trust score, diversity by gender, age, disability, race or national origin, leadership diversity, pay equity, human capital ROI, total workforce cost, number of full time employees, contingent/contract and temporary workers.

The idea behind this is so that potential investors or stakeholders have all the information they need about a company before they make their investment or voting decision. A PwC report clarified that specific metrics aren’t required so that these human capital disclosures “will be tailored to a company’s own business or industry using management’s judgment and that they may evolve over time.”

Human capital disclosure has been gaining traction the past few years, with the International Organization for Standardization passing the first-ever standard for human capital reporting in November 2018. The decision prompted HR analytics expert Jac Fitz-enz to explain what this means for the field of HR. “An ethical code, a body of research, specialized education and performance standards are the basis of a profession. The adoption of ISO standards supports human resources’ claim to be a profession,” he said. 

Even as far back as 2015, Deloitte Consulting Managing Director and workforce management expert Lisa Disselkamp said, “To say workforce management outcomes affect shareholder value and business strategy is no understatement.” 

Collecting human capital data 

The right workforce management software can help organizations collect appropriate metrics for SEC disclosure. Workforce.com allows organizations to easily compile metrics including:

  • Level of compliance with wage and hour laws.
  • Employee feedback scores.
  • Employee star ratings and performance scores.
  • Data security for employees.
  • Employee retention rates.
  • Absence management and absence rate (i.e., rate of not showing up).
  • Schedule flexibility.
  • Payroll error rate and amounts.

Human capital data collection is simple with this tool. Data on employee feedback scores or schedule flexibility can give employers insight on employee engagement or satisfaction. Plus, employers can easily keep track of how many hourly employees they have in the system versus contract or contingent workers. Rates of employee absenteeism can inform organizations on how engaged employees are and how to help predict turnover.

Don’t fall behind on your new reporting requirements. If you’re in the market for a new workforce management software, Workforce.com can provide those needs while also giving managers access to key human capital metrics. 

 

Posted on

Breaking down the potential liabilities in Ohio’s new mask rules

essential workers; workers' compensation, mask

During yesterday evening’s statewide address, and amid dangerously rising COVID-19 infections and hospitalization, Governor Mike DeWine, announced the reissuing and restating of Ohio’s mask mandate. The order now contains four specific rules for businesses to follow regarding mandatory masking.

  1. Each business will be required to post a Face Covering Requirement sign (version 1 / version 2) at all public entrances of the store.
  2. Each business will be responsible for ensuring that customers and employees are wearing masks.
  3. A new Retail Compliance Unit, comprised of agents led by the Bureau of Workers’ compensation, will inspect to ensure compliance.
  4. First violations will receive a written warning, and a second will result in a 24-hour closure of the business.
construction, mask, mobile technology, COVID-19First and foremost, before the disabled and their advocates start screaming that this order violates the ADA, it doesn’t. Yes, Title III of the ADA requires that businesses that are open to the public make exceptions to mask rules for those with disabilities that prevent them from wearing a mask. That accommodation, however, need not be letting them inside the business unmasked. You can offer online ordering and curbside pickup. You can have shoppers at the ready to make purchases on-call and bring them outside to the customers, or otherwise meet the customer outside to transact business. As long as your service is made “readily accessible” for someone with a disability, you’ve met your obligation under the ADA, and there are many ways to accomplish this without letting someone inside maskless.
The same applies to employees. Title I of the ADA allows employers to modify work rules as a reasonable accommodation for an employee’s disability. If a mask causes an issue for someone with a disability, the solution is to offer that individual an accommodation. Maybe you segregate the employee so that he or she does not come into contact with anyone else. Maybe you permit that employee to work from home. Maybe you grant a leave of absence until the risk abates. The point is that the employer and the employee have options other than allowing them to work freely without a mask.
Secondly, the combination of numbers two, three, and four have me concerned if an employer is going to place compliance and enforcement responsibility on its employees.
For reasons that still befuddle and escape me, some people become hostile when told to wear a mask. Yet, your employees are not professionally trained in diffusing hostile situations. Don’t leave it up to your untrained employees to try to enforce these rules and potentially deal with escalating hostilities and violence. You wouldn’t send an amateur to defuse a bomb, lest you risk an explosion. This situation is no different. (It also might violate OSHA’s General Duty Clause.) Instead:
  1. Deploy trained personnel (ideally security, but at least someone at a management level) to enforce this mandatory mask rule and ensure 100 percent compliance within your business; and
  2. Train all other employees not to engage and instead to summon a designated responder.
This rule is long overdue. We all agree that masks are the number one thing we must do to slow the spread of COVID-19. Let’s mask up and all do our part.