Author: Andie Burjek

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Tracking Workplace Immigration Issues

Immigration reform and H1B visa programs
H-1B visa program reform and immigration reform are in the books for the new administration.

It’s widely recognized that the federal government’s H-1B visa program needs a change. The Trump administration’s executive order draft aims at overhauling work-visa programs and affecting hiring practices, which could impact how tech companies recruit tens of thousands of employees. Currently, it allows them to bring in high-skill workers when they can’t find qualified local workers, and the U.S. permits 85,000 H-1B visas annually for highly technical positions in STEM fields.

Allegations have sparked controversy that companies are abusing the program to bring in cheaper workers for jobs that otherwise might go to Americans. Legislation plans to prohibit companies who are heavy users of the visa program.

Those supporting the changes believe more jobs will be brought back to local workers, but those opposing argue it will burden employers and make it harder for them to access skilled talent, especially highly educated students from foreign universities — the top recipients of the H-1B visas work in the technology departments of large corporations such as Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., highly sought-after positions. Workforce is keeping a running list of important developments in immigration and H-1B Visas.

Updates

April 21: President Donald Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” executive order encourages government agencies and businesses to buy American-made products and hire American labor.

April 19: President Donald Trump signed an executive order on the H-1B visa program. The order will favor American companies for federal contracts and reform the visa program for foreign technical workers.

April 5: The Trump administration issued new guidelines for the work visa program. Computer programmers applying for H-1B visas need to prove the jobs require more advanced knowledge and experience than what U.S. workers with similar education or credentials can offer. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency issued the change.

April 3: The court’s decision on the Save Jobs lawsuit is extended for another 180 days. The suit concerns H-1B visa holders’ spouses, who can currently work under an H-4 employment authorization when they’ve applied for lawful permanent residence. The Save Jobs suit seeks to take away their right to work.

March 20: There remains a lack of clarity surrounding the upcoming April 3 cap on H1-B visa applications. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services confirmed that it will inform the public when the cap hits. The time window for accepting the applications is still unknown.

March 15: Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to announce that five of Chicago’s colleges are collaborating to sponsor H-1B visas for 10 to 20 foreign student entrepreneurs. Loyola University Chicago, Northwestern University, Columbia College Chicago, DePaul University and the Illinois Institute of Technology will adopt individual global entrepreneur-in-residence programs. Students can stay in Chicago to build their startups. Universities around the U.S. are in the process of creating similar programs.

March 13: The Trump administration suspended fast-track processing for H-1B visas, making it harder to bring in foreign workers in a hurry. Companies will have to give entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers. The policy called for the minimum wage payable to H-1B visa holders to be raised to a level comparable to prevailing wages in the U.S. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services advises that applicants and employers complete paperwork prior to the April 1 H-1B deadline.

March 7: President Donald Trump announced a revised travel ban to take effect March 16 that prevents residents of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from getting visas. According to senior administration officials, the new ban exempts citizens of these countries who have valid visas to enter the U.S., including those whose visas were previously revoked. President Trump is still open to a merit-based H-1B or visa program.

March 7: Leon Rodriguez, former director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the Department of Homeland Security, is joining Seyfarth Shaw’s labor and employment department in Washington, D.C. He offered his insight into immigration reform’s future.

[Read: “After Leading Feds’ Immigration Service, Leon Rodriguez Heads for Private Practice”]

March 3: New bipartisan legislation called the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act was introduced in the House of Representatives on March 2. The bill would eliminate the lottery system in favor of a preference system. It restricts companies from hiring more H-1B employees if 50 percent of their employees are already on H-1B and L-1s. According to CNN, it requires employers to make a “good faith effort” to recruit American workers over foreigners and gives the Departments of Homeland Security and Labor more authority to investigate fraud and abuse.

Feb. 28:  President Donald Trump expressed openness to immigration reform in an address to Congress and asked Republicans and Democrats to work together. Trump’s potential bill could grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., according to CNN. It would allow undocumented immigrants who aren’t criminals to live, work and pay taxes in the U.S. without fear of deportation. More details to come.

Feb. 24: A National Association of Software and Services Companies delegation came to Washington, D.C., to engage with members of the U.S. administration on issues like work visas. NASSCOM President R. Chandrashekhar explained to senators and congressmen their contribution in making the American economy competitive through jobs created by Indian IT companies.

Feb. 13: More than 100 workers from Bay Area tech companies protested President Donald Trump’s recent efforts to keep immigrants from entering the country and deport those already here. The rally was centered largely around nontechnical workers, like custodians, cafeteria workers and bus drivers, rather than software engineers and programmers who carry specialty H-1B visas.

Feb. 8: Texas state senators approved Senate Bill 4, which withholds state dollars for sanctuary cities (cities where police fail to enforce immigration laws at the request of federal officials). The bill will not permit officers to search a business solely to enforce an immigration law.

Feb. 7: Junior senators from Arkansas and Georgia, Tom Cotton and David Perdue, proposed a new law to reduce legal immigration. The bill plans to restrict green cards and eliminate the diversity visa lottery — a program that gives visas to countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.

Feb. 8: More than one-third of organizations have been impacted by the travel ban, according to new research by the Institute for Corporate Productivity. A pulse survey of 261 companies revealed 24 percent expect it will have a negative impact on productivity this year (only 3 percent say it will have a positive impact).

Feb. 6: The tech industry braced for another executive order that could hit business hard. Nearly 100 tech companies support a high-profile legal battle opposing President Donald Trump’s Immigration Ban. The brief says, “Immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list … and employ millions of Americans.” Among the tech companies that signed are Google, Airbnb, Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, Snap, Facebook and Uber.

Feb. 5: The future of Indian tech firms and billion-dollar ideas could be in trouble. At least nine private startups with valuations of $1 billion or higher have a founder of Indian origin. North America is the biggest export market for the country’s $150-billion IT industry, and the possibility of overhauling all American work-visa programs could impact India greatly.

Feb. 1: Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, reintroduced a bill that will eliminate the H-1B visa lottery system. Replacing it would be a preference system awarding priority to foreign students who hold advanced degrees from the U.S. over importing more foreign workers. They will be offered the highest wage for jobs to which they apply.

Jan. 28: A federal court in New York issued a temporary injunction against the federal government’s implementation of portions of the order. The government can’t remove affected individuals from the U.S. just on the application of the order. Removal applies to individuals being sent out of the United States after requesting entry. The order violates the Constitution’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.

Jan. 27: President Donald Trump signed an executive order that “suspends entry” of both “immigrant and nonimmigrant” individuals from the seven countries currently subject to visa waiver restrictions: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. This 120-day hold is an indefinite ban on refugees from Syria. Citizens from the seven Muslim countries are barred from entering the U.S. for 90 days.

Jan. 4: U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) introduced legislation backed by multiple Democrats and Republicans that would change the requirements for the H-1B visa program. New standards will turn the four-tier wage system into a three-tier system and make it difficult for employers to access entry-level workers and exploit the program. Employers will pay foreign national workers more than similarly situated U.S. workers.

Mia Mancini is a Workforce intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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Health Literacy Empowers Employees to Make Better Decisions

health care education, health literacy, stethoscope and book
health care education, health literacy, stethoscope and book
The health care landscape is complicated, and health literacy programs can give employees the knowledge to make more informed health decisions.

When in doubt, ask questions.

That’s what I’ve rediscovered after moving back with my parents after graduating college. The whole set-up allowed me to take a half-hour break from filling out job applications to make time for “Jeopardy!” in the mid-afternoon.

What makes “Jeopardy!” so valuable is that unlike so many other game shows out there, it reveres knowledge and encourages people to ask questions. It’s all about the brain. The contestants aren’t always the most interesting, and sometimes watching them small-talk with Alex Trebek is more uncomfortable than overhearing an awkward first date. This is irrelevant though. What makes “Jeopardy!” lovely isn’t entertaining anecdotes or big personalities. It’s facts, a thirst for knowledge, and contestants that can be anything from stay-at-home parents to college professors. It’s a half hour testament to collecting and questioning information.

Being knowledge-thirsty extends to the workplace, especially in areas like health education. How many people have actually said, “I’ll take health care for 800, Alex!” and asked the question, “What do I truly need to know about my health and the health care system?” The health care landscape is complicated, and something that both employers and employees may have trouble understanding.

“When people have a need to access the health care system, there’s also a need to understand that as a patient, you’re probably going to have a better overall outcome if you are informed about your own situation and understand the options available for your care,” said Debbie Youngblood, wellness coordinator at Hilliard City Schools in Ohio. She spoke with me about the recent effort in her school system to offer a health literacy program for employees.

The school district in which she works employs about 1,500 people, and it uses an online health literacy program called Quizzify to educate employees. Every month, the interested teachers, administrators, bus drivers, maintenance workers and anyone else who works for the school district can take a new quiz, which asks about a range of topics like health care costs, access to care at hospitals and nutrition.

headshot of Debbie Youndblood, Hilliard City Schools, Ohio
Debbie Youngblood, wellness coordinator at Hilliard City Schools

As a wellness coordinator, Youngblood was enthusiastic to inform and educate employees about bigger issues that relate to accessing health care and making good health decisions. This helps employees not only improve their own individual well-being but also use new knowledge to make the best decisions for themselves and their families, depending on their circumstances. “From my health and fitness background, I’ve always felt that there was a need to have more [information] available to people as they go through their stages of life,” she said. “It always surprises me that we expect people to know how to achieve overall well-being. We’ve given them very little opportunity to know, understand and practice the things that might be beneficial.”

She also believes it’s valuable to educate adults on health-related topics because it drives conversation. She sees employees discussing topics and questioning the information gained through their health literacy program. “I think it’s great to have the curiosity to dig deeper,” she said.

The employees taking these quizzes can take them two times. The first time, they test their knowledge on health-related topics, see what they got wrong and access links to webpages that will provide them more information before they take the quiz the second time. This gives them the opportunity to seek out the information about which they’re the most interested or uninformed. The information itself has been thoroughly vetted, so as a wellness coordinator, Youngblood can be sure employees are getting solid information.

“Curiosity is something we can afford,” she said. Working for a self-insured employer, it’s important to consider the ways in which you can potentially save money. And in theory, if people are better informed, they could make better decisions and utilize the health care system more efficiently.

She gave an example from her own personal experience. A doctor recommended a CAT scan, but because of the knowledge she picked up, she understood what kinds of questions to ask and what she needed to know about her options. She learned how much radiation a CAT scan used versus a normal X-ray, and talked to the doctor about alternative options.

Knowledge has great power to impact people’s health decisions, both when they’re dealing with a simple medical procedure or when their health is in actual jeopardy.

Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below, or email at aburjek@humancapitalmedia.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

 

 

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The Salesforce Pitch for Equity, Equality

 

wf_website_blogheaders-17If you don’t like the answer, you can always change the question. Especially if you have money. Lots of money.

There are a lot of companies across America that struggle with diversity hiring. It’s under-utilized in multiple job families, and even as employers try to attract diverse talent, it hasn’t gone great.

After all, not everyone wants to work for your company. Throw in the fact that you can’t pay new hires anything they want without messing up your compensation equity, and most companies don’t make the diversity hiring progress they’d like to.

Salesforce has the same problems you do. But Salesforce also has innovation in their DNA.

So Salesforce did what any company with progressive DNA (and loads of cash) would do. They changed the answer, and thus the question. Turns out the answer isn’t more DIVERSITY, it’s more EQUALITY.

Confused? You’ll get it soon. TechCrunch recently reported that Salesforce named Tony Prophet the company’s first-ever chief equality officer. That’s equality, not diversity, and the distinction is important to note since the company said that a major focus for it was what it termed “the women’s issue.”

Initial interviews with Prophet yielded the following quote: “The notion of being chief equality officer — now that was very thoughtful and deliberate on Salesforce’s part and on Marc’s [Benioff] part versus being chief of diversity or chief of inclusion because you can have a diverse workplace or a diverse culture in many parts of America that are very diverse but are hardly inclusive and there’s hardly equality. We want to go beyond diversity and beyond inclusion to really achieve equality.”

Translation? Tech companies have huge issues finding enough females and minorities to work at their company, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Earlier this year, Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff revealed that his company spent about $3 million in 2015 to equalize compensation across the company, closing the tech giant’s gender pay gap.

Of that $3 million, the equity increases were smaller and more spread out than you would think. Salesforce reports approximately 6 percent of employees required a salary adjustment, and roughly the same number of women and men were impacted. The HR pro in all of us would assume there’s equity increases embedded in that number that impact diverse male employees as well.

A quick look at Salesforce’s workforce diversity numbers shows the following: 70 percent male and 30 percent female; 67 percent white, 23 percent Asian, 4 percent Hispanic, 2 percent black, and 2 percent two or more races.

Translation: The company still has a lot of work to do, but by changing the conversation to equality, not diversity, they’ve effectively changed how they’re measured by the outside world.

I’m not saying diversity hiring in tech isn’t important. I am saying that Salesforce is working toward a related, equally important goal and now will be considered in a different light than other major tech companies, whom I would expect will follow suit soon enough.

Most companies subscribing to this publication can’t afford to write a huge check to support equality increases similar to the Salesforce initiative. But just because you don’t have $3 million lying around doesn’t mean you can’t do anything on the equality front.

The first and easiest action you can take is to make sure your offer process is less subjective. Most companies are turning over 20 percent of their workforce annually, which means you could be well on your way to resolving half your equity issues in three to five years.

The next tool in your pay equality arsenal is to stack rank the departments you want to fund equity increases for and start budgeting funds on an annual basis to take care of those over time.

If you can’t find enough diverse hires, it makes sense to ensure the ones you have (including women) are paid on equal footing to everyone else.

Then you obviously want to get your message out.

At Salesforce, that message includes the fact they’re changing the conversation from diversity to equality, with an emphasis on pay equity.

By focusing on pay equity/equality, Salesforce has created a masterstroke to relieve some of the diversity hiring pressure and is going all in, with first mover advantage and everything that comes with it.

I’m a cynic on most things. Even the cynic in me has to respect how Salesforce is controlling the narrative here.

Does this move from diversity to equality make Salesforce an employer of choice or a ninja/Jedi of public relations? I’ll let you decide.

Kris Dunn, the chief human resources officer at Kinetix, is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

 

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SHRM Announces the Retirement of CEO Hank Jackson

Henry “Hank” Jackson has been leading SHRM since 2010. Credit: SHRM/Chris Williams

Henry G. “Hank” Jackson, president and CEO at the Society for Human Resource Management, will retire Dec. 31, announced SHRM on Jan. 19 in a press release. Executive search firm Spencer Stuart has already begun the recruitment process for the next CEO, and SHRM’s board of directors will choose Jackson’s successor from the candidate list created by the search firm.

Jackson, 65, has been leading SHRM since 2010. His colleagues value the contributions he’s made to SHRM and the HR profession, according to the press release. And his work is not over, said Coretha Rushing, chair of the SHRM Board of Directors and corporate vice president and CHRO at Equifax. “During his final year, he will continue to lead SHRM and ensure that the goals set out in its strategic plan are met. Come December, we will wish him well in his retirement. He will be greatly missed,” she said in a statement.

Please also read: SHRM’s Current and Former CEOs Discuss Their Administrations

Please also read: SHRM’s Door Swings Open for Whom?

Please also read: SHRM Names Henry Jackson as New President and CEO

In the years that Jackson has led SHRM, the HR association grew to a record 289,000 members, the release stated. His tenure also marks the most popular SHRM annual conference in 2015 in Las Vegas. Almost 16,000 people attended. It also marks increased HR interest in the younger generation, as SHRM saw student membership rise to 23,000 in his tenure.

Kris Dunn, the chief human resources officer for Kinetix and a Workforce contributing editor, said SHRM played it safe when tapping Jackson as president and CEO in 2011.

“SHRM thought Hank Johnson was a safe, responsible choice,” Dunn said. “Turns out they were probably right, but the fact he wasn’t a former HR leader left many in the membership a bit jaded and questioning whether SHRM believes top HR leaders are incapable of running an organization with a mere $100 million in annual revenue. Expect them to course correct this time around, locating a champion/leader within the profession rather than a professional manager with a CPA.”

Sharlyn Lauby, president of consulting firm ITM Group Inc. and previously a member of SHRM’s Membership Advisory Council, said Jackson’s background in finance helped the association. Before becoming CEO and president, he served as the chief global finance and business affairs officer.

“As a human resources professional, we hear a lot about the need to understand the business and the numbers,” she said in an email interview.  “Hank was able to show the value by bringing his finance expertise to his role as CEO, not simply saying it was important. SHRM benefited and as a result, so did HR.”

Scott Washburn, vice president of human resources at Tree Top Inc. and former SHRM board member from 2014-15, said Jackson had a lot to do with the growth of the association, both from a membership perspective and a financial stability perspective. He also helped expand reach both globally and domestically.

“He led some pretty hard decisions, some high-level strategic decisions around implementation of the new competency programs and the new certifications, that were met with different types of responses from different people, but I think they absolutely were the right decisions,” said Washburn.

Moving forward, he added, “I think the board of directors will be looking for a strong leader who can continue of the path that Hank has helped forge. At the same time, they’ll want somebody who has an idea of what that next level of performance looks like for the organization and where the HR profession is going and help lead the association there.”

Carol McDaniel, president of the HR Florida State Council, a state affiliate for SHRM, also admired Jackson’s work with the SHRM certification model.

“That took courage and a strong sense of what was to be the future of our industry,” she said. “While the beginning may have been somewhat rocky, the communication, talking points and his ability be steadfast supporter of the new competencies will a big part of his legacy.”

Sheryl Simmons, chief human resource officer of Chicago-based Maestro Health, said SHRM has prospered under Jackson’s leadership and is grateful for his contributions to the organization, including the new certification program launched under his watch.

“Despite a rocky launch, the introduction of a new certification provider has helped to elevate the HR industry overall,” Simmons said. “Looking ahead to the future of SHRM, the organization needs an individual with strong leadership skills, C-suite strategic talent and deep knowledge of the HR industry. While this doesn’t necessarily need to be a career HR professional, SHRM needs a leader who understands the challenging and evolving world of HR. Between ever-increasing competition for talent, the shifting benefits landscape, and complex regulatory and compliance requirements, the role of the HR professional has grown tremendously, and SHRM must continue to evolve with it.”

Hilary Constable, principal consultant at Constable HR, saw Jackson’s hiring six years ago as a logical one given his background as a CPA.

“I think that there is potential for the field of HR to learn from the developments in our peer organization of finance over the last few decades,” said Constable, who is certified as an SPHR from HRCI and SHRM-SCP from SHRM. “SHRM added their own HR certification system, in addition to the existing HRCI system, to address business as a whole rather than only HR topics, but they missed the mark.”

Constable is eager to see where SHRM’s as-yet unnamed replacement for Jackson takes the profession.

“I’m excited to see where HR will go from here and how we will build on the progress we’ve already made, from being thought of as the ‘girl in HR’ or the ‘Benefits Lady’ to having the credibility to lead business initiatives that add real value to the bottom line and improve our workplaces for the people in them.”

Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Editorial director Rick Bell contributed to this article. Comment below, or email at aburjek@humancapitalmedia.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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Making a Business Case for Mental Health

Set in Seattle, Frasier is full of witty dialogue and honest conversations that normalize mental health problems. Outside of sitcom-land, the DMEC is one organization which aims to normalize them as well.

This is my first “Frasier” blog of 2017. I’ve decided it’s my mission to remind people what a treasure this 90s gem is. It explores everything from serious mental health issues to complicated familial dynamics to silly everyday misunderstandings. I did my research this weekend and discovered that no blog exists that is dedicated solely to “Frasier.” No CafeNervosa.net. No MartysChair.edu. No SherryPlease.com. Oy vey. Time to step up my game.

As I write this, I think of a particular podcast that rises to a similar challenge. “Frasierphiles” describes itself as the only show with a “Frasier First Focus,” the first time that phrase has ever been used, realistically. It’s hosted by Mark Robison and Darren Mitcheem, one of whom says, “All I think about every night is how f****** good Frasier is.” (Me too!) The other describes the television series with the phrase, “It’s like looking at a beautiful cabinet!” in the first podcast episode. A beautiful cabinet full of sherry, perhaps, or cans of Ballantine? I’d say a beautiful cabinet full of witty dialogue and honest conversations that normalize mental health problems.

A stretch, perhaps, but it brings me to the heart of this blog, a conversation I had with Terri Rhodes, CEO of the Disability Management Employer Coalition. The DMEC recently released a report about mental health in the workplace, and its primary thesis was the importance of making the business case for mental health and normalizing mental illness. One in five people deal with a mental health situation on a daily basis, according to the report.

Currently, many employers offer mental health services such as screenings through health risk assessment programs or EAPs, but being able to make a business case is important if employers want to put together a new program that specifically addresses mental health, said Rhodes. Using aggregate (not individual) data from disability claims and FMLA claims, for example, can help put a dollar sign to the impact of mental illness in terms of absences, productivity and presenteeism. In this way, using data identifies that there is, in fact, a problem.

A current problem regarding mental illness in the workplace is stigma, said Rhodes, who seeks to normalize it in the workplace and show that for the most part it is treatable. “Not all mental illness is, ‘The sky is falling!’ Those are outliers,” she said.

We also discussed what mental health training for managers should look like. “In the past, even in HR, we’re told, don’t say anything, don’t ask somebody how they’re doing, don’t talk to them,” she said. “What that does is increase the stigma.”

Terri Rhodes, CEO of the DMEC

It’s important to teach managers and supervisors that mental illness is not bad and train them how to address it in their workplace. Rhodes recommended, for example, a couple of free training programs offered through the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health and Stamp Out Stigma.

This type of training should hit a few key notes, according to Rhodes. For example, managers should be able to look out for signs that somebody may be having an issue. They should be able to speak about mental illness rather than avoid the topic.

Related article: Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs in the 21st Century

The communication-avoidance paradigm seemed a bit impossible to me at first. As unhelpful as avoidance is, how open can communication regarding mental illness actually be without seeming invasive? What is the right way to communicate without probing?

Rhodes recommended that managers be inclusive and friendly rather than be afraid of asking any questions at all when it comes to mental illness. Appropriate questions could be, How are you doing? Or, is there anything you need that will help you do your job better?

Rhodes also mentioned that 10 years ago, employers seemed to lose interest in mental health, but she’s seen a shift in attitude in the past couple years. Employers have been more willing the address mental illness. The problem itself — the high cost mental illness can have on the workplace; stigma; etc. — hasn’t changed, she said. “But employers’ awareness of their ability to make an impact is different.”

Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below, or email at aburjek@humancapitalmedia.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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The Benefit of Setting Work-Related Goals

 

WF_WebSite_BlogHeaders-18It is the new year, which means it’s time to snap out of our indulgent holiday habits and get back to real-life goals and aspirations.

For my team, this means launching 2017 campaigns for our clients. After all, this is an ideal time to get employees engaged in benefits! There are countless benefits and programs that can be easily promoted and tied to the typical New Year’s resolutions: losing weight, eating healthier, actually using that meditation app on your mobile phone, paying off that holiday-induced credit card debt, finally getting your will or estate in order and many more.

What’s a little more challenging, though, is creating a set of personal work-related goals. For anyone in benefits and HR, this is an excellent time to plan ahead, reflect and prioritize. I’d like to suggest a few aspirational resolutions for you and your team.

I will carve out time to think strategically. 

Oh, peace and quiet. Time to think and reflect. As I write this — on a plane where the Wi-Fi is fortuitously not working (because I need to focus on this article!) — I’m reminded of how hard it is to have just a little time without interruption. Uninterrupted time may be our most precious resource. And it’s one that you must create and protect. More than likely, that means scheduling it on your calendar, prioritizing it as a team and building it into the way you work. What better time to start than now?

I will help my team think about the employee experience as a whole.

As each area of HR gets more sophisticated, and as the complexity of integrating systems and vendors persists, it is more important than ever to think holistically about the employee experience. What are you asking employees to do, step by step, to meet certain goals? Is there a consistent feel, emotion or brand experience across your programs? Can you create more value by connecting tools and resources? These are hard questions to ask and hard to dig into, but they can start to change the overall value of HR. If you’re overwhelmed deciding where to start, look at your new-hire experience. It is an obvious area of opportunity for most companies and one where your efforts will almost certainly create an immediate and measurable ROI.

I will not blame employees.

When I talk with HR and benefits leaders, I often hear these frustrations about employees:

“They just don’t care.”

“They don’t understand.”

“They won’t take the time to learn it.”

“They don’t seek information that’s out there.”

While most of this is true, it most definitely is not because employees don’t care. Rather, it’s because we have created insanely complicated systems and we’re asking average people to figure them out — largely on their own.

So in 2017, let’s stop using the employees-will-never-get-it excuse and start building systems and programs that they can use with confidence. A tall order? Yes, for sure, but not if you commit to the following resolution, too.

I will prioritize making it easier for employees to make good decisions.

I’ve spent my career trying to help employees “understand” our health care and financial systems. But, in the past couple of years, I have gradually let go of the idea that they can actually understand them.

That decision has been inspiring and motivating. Here’s why: we know it is almost impossible to get people to fully understand all the things they need to do to live happily ever after. But we can design programs and systems that make it easy for people to make good decisions and a little harder to make bad ones. This is the essence of the whole field of behavioral economics, an area of study that has really made its way into the workplace in the past several years and one that we employ in our own work. Behavioral economics offers a more strategic — and practical — approach to helping employees, and it can be applied across all areas of HR.

I will celebrate success with my team.

Just as focused time is a scarce resource, in too many organizations recognition is uncommon as well. Plenty of organizations are working on systems that promote workplace recognition, or they’re finding ways to build it into their culture. Just as important, though, is to create rituals among your closest team members. Find ways to recognize each other more often this year, and watch how much that helps you fulfill all the aspirational goals we’ve just talked about.

 

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RPO Customers: We Want More of Everything

Big companies are increasingly relying on recruitment process outsourcing as part of a strategic approach to recruiting that allows them to tap best-in-class technology, top recruiting talent and advanced performance metrics.

This is good news for RPO vendors, who’ve seen their businesses steadily grow. But it has also put them on the hook to provide an increasingly sophisticated set of tools and services to keep these clients engaged.

Today’s RPO customers want their vendors to do more than just fill seats, said Stacey Cadigan, principal consultant for Information Services Group, a market intelligence firm. They are looking to them to build their employment brand, increase passive candidate engagement and improve personalization in the application process without losing efficiency.

“Those services used to be differentiators,” Cadigan said. “Now they are expected.”

RPO vendors are responding. In recent years they’ve added a variety of recruiting technologies to drive engagement and brand awareness for clients, including digital marketing tools, video interviewing, and mobile job application and follow-up features. They are also working with clients in a consulting capacity, adding “brand specialists” who work with clients to help them highlight their brand message across all of their candidate touchpoints.

“Branding has become such a critical part of the RPO delivery model,” Cadigan said. “It filters into every aspect of the recruiting process.”

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The Challenge: Merging Good and Fast

Clients may want a more robust suite of services from their RPO providers, but that doesn’t mean they are letting go of the key performance metrics that drive this business model. Time to hire and cost to hire are still key measures of RPO success, said Dan Oakes, senior vice president and general manager of Randstad’s RPO business in North America. That’s forcing vendors to juggle sometimes competing demands to create a personalized and engaging candidate experience that is also fully automated to increase efficiency.

“The challenge is how to best combine the technology and the human experience,” Oakes said.

One way Randstad is addressing this issue is by developing more complex talent community tools that proactively seek out and engage passive talent, so they are already warm when a position becomes available. It is similar to a talent community, but rather than passively storing data on anyone who applies, they seek out specific kinds of talent and sort them according to skills and experience, Oakes said. “It will help us get candidates to the client as fast as possible.”

Clients also are giving up on their desire to see proof that the RPO is meeting deadlines and cutting costs. “Analytics are a big part of that,” Oakes said. Most RPOs have rolled out a variety of analytics tools including dashboards and weekly reports to track candidate status and other measures. Though Oakes admitted, “No one has really mastered it yet.”

He would like to see the industry get to the point where data is available in real time, and appears as a tickertape running along the bottom of his screen showing constant performance updates. “We aren’t there yet.”

Part of the challenge is the disparate data sets. Much of the data that would provide recruiters with insight into where the best hires come from and the best ways to engage them live inside the company’s applicant tracking system or HR management system. Without that data, it can be hard for RPOs to make connections between past successes and future hires.

This challenge is further complicated by the increasing use of contingent labor, said Stephen Clancy, director of workforce strategies for Staffing Industry Analysts. The company’s data shows contingent workers represented 29 percent of all U.S. workers in 2015, representing $792 billion in staffing buyer spend.

“The penetration of contingent labor is pushing recruiting trends toward total talent management,” he said. That means RPO vendors need to get more creative in the way they source and engage candidates, leverage their networks and keep track of talent once these contracts have ended. “It is generating a lot of debate about the role RPOs play in finding contingent talent.”

Inside Intel: Adapt to Contingent Labor Trends

Most RPOs aren’t yet integrated into the total talent management process, but Clancy predicts they will move in that direction as contingent labor becomes a bigger part of the workforce. “RPOs need to think about how they are going to innovate to take advantage of this ‘known talent’ pool,” he said.

He believes that the vendors who figure out how to integrate contract labor into the broader recruiting and talent management program will gain a competitive edge going forward.

In the meantime, clients should continue to push their vendors to deliver more robust analytics around their recruiting efforts, and keep track of all the talent that moves though the organization, Cadigan said. “Clients should expect their RPOs to innovate, and to provide real-time data to support the decisions they make on their clients’ behalf.”

Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

 

 

 

 

 

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Corporate Yoga: A Vehicle for Emotional Health

Lyndsey Morash was working at a long-hour, high-stress job in Boston in 2012. Meanwhile, she was also taking classes to become a certified yoga instructor. She soon started a business based on her experiences as an employee and a yoga enthusiast.

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83 percent of consumers said they needed the most support for emotional well-being, according to a 2016 Aon survey.

“I was working full-time and, after I finished my yoga training, I knew that I wanted to marry the two worlds: the corporate world and the wellness world,” said Morash.

She founded Chasing Nirvana, a mobile yoga studio that brings wellness to corporate offices, along with meditation and health coaching. She has a staff of instructors who have been properly trained, certified and insured so that an organization doesn’t have to do the background work.

Morash and her yoga business fit into the larger corporate wellness trend. Employers want to address emotional health and well-being, according to Stephanie Pronk, a senior vice president who leads Aon’s U.S. National Health Transformation Team. In the broad field of wellness, 83 percent of consumers said they needed the most support for emotional well-being, according to Aon’s 2016 Consumer Health Mindset Survey, which surveyed 2,320 consumers — including employees and dependents covered by employer health plans.

This broader interest in mental and emotional health initiatives can be partly explained by the generational aspect of the workplace, Pronk added.

“The millennial generation has much more depression than even the baby boomer generation,” said Pronk. “They’re going to need different ways of working through those issues, and the traditional ways that worked for baby boomers won’t work for millennials.”

Pronk said baby boomers are more likely to avoid acknowledging or discussing these problems than the younger generation, who have been around for certain medical advances and who are more open to tackling mental health issues. While some behavioral health systems and employee assistance programs were designed for older generations, they need to change to support new generations.

Bringing in things like yoga, mindfulness, meditation and resiliency training could help employees and organizations with emotional health, she added. It’s about organizational behavior, too, not just individual behavior.

“This is an area to watch. It’s on the cusp of starting to make some significant changes. It’s been a status quo industry for a while, but we’re seeing indications that it’s starting to change,” she said. “Some of that is demand. Some of it is recognition that the old tried-and-true approach to emotional health is not necessarily working. What can we do differently?”

It’s a great time to have ideas addressing emotional well-being, she added. “It’s not one thing, it’s a variety of things to meet individual needs.” Not everything will work for every person, but there’s a certain amount of trial and error to see what makes an impact.

Morash’s nook, yoga, is appealing to employers for several reasons. First, she and her team work with interested companies in the limited space they have to host classes. Second, participants don’t need much equipment. Third, they can get creative with pricing options. A company can pay for the whole class, interested employees can split the cost or the employer and employee can share the cost.

“Larger companies have the ability or the funds to put in a gym or use a management company to manage these things,” said Morash. “[But] Chasing Nirvana is there for the company that wants to give their employees wellness options but doesn’t have the funds to install a full-on gym.”

wf_0117_fyb_yogafoto2Yoga classes fit into the structure of an employee wellness program. One of Morash’s clients is the Pine Street Inn, an emergency shelter for homeless and displaced people. Last year the inn put together a formal wellness program, and yoga was one of the top options employees sought, said Jayne Hamilton, manager of benefits and employment at the Boston shelter.

Creatively enough, the inn provides incentives for yoga participants through “yoga bingo.” Everyone gets a bingo card and can cross off whatever the “yoga pose of the week” is if they’ve attended the class. The winner gets a prize.

About 10 employees overall are dedicated and go every week, making yoga one way to meet individuals’ needs. The participants “look forward to it because it’s a way for them to reduce stress and find balance in their day,” said Hamilton.

Meanwhile, in the vein of meeting others’ needs, Pine Street Inn also offer programs in stress reduction, mindfulness training and sleep workshops in its wellness program.

[Related blog- Corporate Wellness: Get Your Namaste On]

Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below, or email at aburjek@humancapitalmedia.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.