Author: Charlene Solomon

Don’t discount outsourcing as Vendor Management 101. The outsourcing industry in North America heftily rings up around $141 billion a year, according to the Economic Intelligence Unit in London. And HR activities comprise a big chunk of that outsourcing bill—as high as 12 percent of total outsourcing business in North America, according to a 1997 study by Murray Hill, New Jersey-based Dunn &Bradstreet Corp. and New York City-based The Outsourcing Institute.

Given the importance of such functions as the administration of 401(k)s and pension plans, benefits, relocation and expatriate management, the investment should be considered as a priority. With each transaction, the “cha-chings” of the cash register are recording far more than nickels and dimes.

Yet how many HR managers are mentored or trained to work with outside service providers? Far too few of them to make sense. How often have you wondered if you’re really maximizing the time, effort and expense that you and your organization devote to outside services? Learning these skills may be simple and straightforward, but it’s no small change.

Identify your needs.
“Using outside providers is a necessity in today’s environment, in which cost effectiveness and service quality is paramount,” says Lynn Tamburo, a global relocation and compensation consultant who was formerly at New York City-based JP Morgan, in charge of the organization’s entire expatriate program. “It requires you to look for centers of excellence in the services you need to provide. You have to decide what capabilities you have internally and which ones you’re going to obtain from the outside.”

If you’re going to look for an external source to obtain some of the abilities you need, it’s important that you identify upfront what your needs are, what your selection criteria is, and what you’re looking for in a service provider. And cost isn’t the most important consideration. In fact, when you think of the reasons that you’re outsourcing services to begin with, cost is only one consideration among many.

Take a step back and think about why you’re outsourcing the functions. Think about the strategy of your actions. Is it because the area is outside your core competency? Is it because you want to reduce the need for specific in-house expertise, either as a cost-savings measure or because you can’t locate the talent? Is it because you believe outside providers can offer better service, as well as save money?

Match your needs to provider capabilities.
Once you make a list of your needs, move on to the selection criteria—find what’s important to you. This is the time to benchmark against other comparable companies with similar situations. The most effective way to approach this is networking with colleagues. Talk with them about what types of services they receive, whom they receive them from, and what the advantages and disadvantages are.

Next, identify the potential providers and solicit proposals from them. This could be a formal process by which you solicit proposals from several providers and put them through an evaluation process, critiquing them against the information you gathered from your initial examination of your needs.

Surprising as it may seem, some managers feel pressured to accept the conditions of the providers, allowing the vendor’s capabilities to dictate. Your organization’s needs should be paramount in the discussion; foremost is how well the provider can satisfy your needs.

“Personally, I would weigh the objective criteria (cost, services provided or referrals) more heavily than the subjective. But by the same token, I would not ignore the subjective. You need to ensure there’s good chemistry between you and your outsource provider when making a decision,” says Tamburo.

In other words, think of this relationship as a partnership. Have face-to-face meetings with the potential partner to determine if your goals and ways of doing business are compatible.

Manage the relationship with open communication.
Once you’ve honed in on who you think is the best provider, you’ve interviewed for personal fit and negotiated the best deal, then write a service agreement. Specify service levels and costs. What do you expect? What are the timetables? Outline the methods you’ll use to measure effectiveness. Document all of this before you begin to work together.

To manage the relationship, think of it as an alliance that allows you to provide to your clients. It reflects on you, so your clients are the ones who should give you feedback about the service, not the provider. Do this formally or informally, by survey or ongoing discussions.

For example, let’s say you’re looking for feedback on a moving company. After the move takes place, you’re able to call or send a questionnaire to your client and ask for various feedback on aspects of the move. Or you might want to talk to everyone who used that service to get all the information at once. But, particularly with a new service provider, getting immediate and ongoing feedback is preferable. Recognize that it’s particularly noteworthy when feedback comes to you unsolicited—good or bad.

It’s also essential to frequently communicate with your provider. Talk about what it’s doing for you and how it’s doing it. The frequency obviously depends upon the service being provided; if it’s a tax provider, the service tends to be once a year, while in other cases, it’s ongoing.

Continue to be specific about your expectations in terms of what you need and when you need it. Reinforce those messages until your expectations are being met. Ask about other ways in which the provider may be of service to you. Be open and candid about your needs.

Maintain the relationship by evaluating it.
Finally, conduct periodic service-level reviews. Consider annual reviews, which could be based on your evaluation methods and the anecdotal feedback you’ve received. Discuss what’s working and not working, and if improvements are necessary. You’ll also want to conduct internal reviews to find out how your clients think the outsourcing is working.

Repeat the competitive bidding process every so often, on two- to five-year intervals, depending on your confidence with the service provider, the results of your external benchmarking, and how stable your needs are. During this time, benchmark against your colleagues, and always question if the situation continues to work for you.

Outsourcing is more prominent than it used to be, and it’s much more important because the sophistication of the HR capability has increased. In the past, HR facilitated administration as it related to people. Now, the function is more strategic, and needs outside support. HR managers are working with business managers to help fulfill their business goals. Working proactively to identify service needs and how to effectively manage providers is not only important financially, but it can also be critical to the ability to meet business goals.

Workforce, October 1998, Vol. 77, No. 10, pp. 130-132

Loctite Corp. was founded in the mid-1950s by the Kriegle family. Thirty years later, the Hartford, Connecticut-based adhesive-making company became publicly traded. The Kriegles held 40 percent, and began selling shares to the Henkel family in Germany. For 10 years, the Henkel Co. acquired shares from the Kriegles, and the two families maintained a comfortable relationship. Then, the Henkels decided Loctite could give them a global presence. By January 1997, the Henkels owned the company.

“That changed our lives,” says Bruce A. Vakiener, executive vice president of Loctite Corp. and the person responsible for global HR. “We have gone from a billion-dollar, very entrepreneurial, innovative company with a flat management structure to part of a $14 billion German conglomerate. The philosophies of the companies are different. The cultures of the companies are different. And the [cultural differences] between a German organization and a U.S. organization are very significant,” he says.

Loctite faced tremendous HR challenges. For one, Loctite is organized on a regional basis. Henkel is organized in country units. When the Henkels tried to pull some of the business units together, they faced individual country managers who refused to relinquish control to a regional manager.

Another factor affecting unification has been the German desire for knowing lots of details before moving forward on a project. This is especially difficult when American managers are unclear about which decisions the Germans need to approve.

To help with these dilemmas, Loctite uses Chicago-based IOR, an intercultural and global relocation firm. “The No. 1 issue that needs to be addressed is people’s sense of anxiety about loss of control,” says Peter Burgi, a consultant with IOR. “Best practices in merger situations [include doing] as much of the immediate changing as you’re going to be able to do as quickly as possible. Failure to do this will allow political power issues to go underground and resurface as cultural differences.”

Loctite created cross-border teams for people to get to know each other. The company developed a cultural-sensitivity program, and senior managers also take German language lessons. “I think we’re on the road to being successful,” Vakiener says. “However, we weren’t able to reach increased sales figures on the original time frame because we spent much more time focusing on acquisition issues, as opposed to growing the business. We blurred our focus for the last 18 months.

Global Workforce, September 1998, Vol. 3, No. 5, p. 16.

Does the current tight labor market feel like a pressure-cooker to you? It should. From placards in business windows on Main Street to signing bonuses for pubescent employees, wage-earners everywhere know that today’s corporate mantra is “Employees wanted-part-time, full-time, anytime.” With unemployment at a stunning 4.3 percent at press time, there are signs everywhere that show the market is about to blow the lid off our wage complacency.

Consider the ingredients in the pressure-cooker: unemployment is at a 28-year low; there’s been more than 3 percent wage inflation (according to the Employment Cost Index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 1998); and while corporate profits rose 20 percent each year from 1992 to 1995, two million workers lost their jobs and those who were working got skimpy raises, if they got them at all. Doesn’t common sense tell you that serious wage inflation must follow?

Many economists note that you can already see the steam rise. Salaries and wages for executive, administrative and managerial occupations rose 4.9 percent over last year, with the service sector outpacing manufacturing. In the broad areas of professional services and information technology, the markets are fiercely competitive, and have been for the last several years, which drives wages up.

Meanwhile, recent college grads are commanding higher starting salaries than their predecessors. Packages offered to MBAs have skyrocketed 10 percent or more, and even psychology majors are being offered 8.9 percent more than they were a year ago. Mitchell Held, an economist with New York City-based Salomon Smith Barney, suggests that in some sectors, these increases are starting to mirror what we saw in the late 1980s.

Despite these indicators of wage inflation, the government still reports that total compensation, including benefits, is increasing 3.3 percent, which is smack in the middle of the range we’ve seen over the last seven years. “It’s interesting that with such low unemployment, we haven’t seen it driving up wages significantly,” says David Smith, assistant professor of economics at the Glaziadio School of Business at Malibu, California-based Pepperdine University.

So what’s going on? Can we breathe a collective sigh of relief and leave the kitchen, assuming the pressure-cooker can be unattended?

No. Wage inflation seems inevitable, though experts argue about the rate. The real news, however, is that we have to consider wage inflation in ways we haven’t looked at it before.

What’s keeping the market at these levels?
To begin with, the economy is working harder than usual to keep wage inflation in check. Inflation is running 2 to 3 percent, which bolsters the status quo. The real gross domestic product (GDP) plays a role, too. Economists believe growth that is greater than 2.5 percent is healthy, although growth that is greater than 3.5 percent raises fears that an overheating economy will result in inflation. The GDP increased 3.7 percent in 1997, but is forecasted to grow only 3 percent this year-this more moderate growth projection has eased fears of inflation.

There are other competitive forces at work, too. “The strike at General Motors eases the labor market because of direct lay-offs, as well as the related industries that are affected,” says Smith. “The Asian [economic] crisis also has a cooling effect on jobs here.”

And despite the outward cockiness of many employees, they may privately admit to some lingering concerns about job security. Given the incentive options and restricted stock that companies have granted to many employees, it has increasingly become expensive for many people to take a job down the street for just a few dollars more.

The unusual interplay of these elements in the economy is working to keep wages stable, but it is being offset by other elements that are driving wages up. First, history is catching up with us. For the past seven years, employee wages represented the lowest share of national income since 1968; profits during this period represented the highest share since 1968. Today’s workforce is eager to make up for lost time.

In many ways, it’s already happening. Entrants to the job market are earning more than their predecessors, which has turned up the heat beneath the pressure-cooker-and it’s only a matter of time before that group expects wages and those ahead of them demand parity. In addition, we’ve become more creative in how we pay people. Signing bonuses, stock options and giveaways from pizza to vacations are now commonplace, but they aren’t figured into government measures of salary-meaning wage inflation is undoubtedly higher than numbers indicate.

Look at wages in context.
Should you be panicking and planning an off-site meeting to rework your compensation strategy? Should you be making plans for rampant wage inflation and start cutting costs elsewhere to make up for it? Yes and no.

More has changed in recent years than the ways we pay people for their services. The entire work contract has changed. Guaranteed job security is out; a focus on careers and job skills is in. Accordingly, employees are looking at much more than just wages when making job choices (see “Job-hunting Professionals Are Looking for Respect,” Workforce, June 1998). They’re also watching corporate culture, advancement opportunities and other factors. Given that change, it doesn’t make sense for employers to isolate the wage issue, either.

Yes, the wages you pay must be competitive, and it’s safe to assume that you can’t hold the line on wage inflation much longer. But the pressure to recruit and retain talented employees only begins with wages and salaries. Even in such overheated environments as professional services, where a dozen calls a week from search consultants isn’t unheard of, you don’t want to take an ad hoc, reactive approach. “Especially in tight labor markets, when individuals are already working long hours [and] they’re being compensated well, they’re going to value other sorts of things-things that aren’t often taxed,” adds Smith.

“Going to an ad hoc compensation approach just to get people in the door actually works against retaining your broader workforce,” says Fran Engoron, global leader for organizational effectiveness and development at New York City-based Pricewaterhouse Coopers. “We want to be at the high end of competitive pay within the marketplace, but we want to be there for all of our people, not just the new ones,” she says. The company has an overall philosophy that offers a total work experience, including stimulating work content, an enriched personal development program and extensive training-a work environment that’s fun and embodies a sensitivity to work/life balance.

Clearly, golden handshakes and sign-on bonuses will get individuals to join. Equally apparent is the fact that many sectors need a fire to light up some of the wages and keep them fair. Nevertheless, HR’s best approach to the question of wages and salaries is to view it within the total structure of the organization.

Workforce, September 1998, Vol. 77, No. 9, pp. 103-104.

Ideas outside the Norm.

1. Send recruiters to recreational locations where your intended recruits are likely to be, such as ski resorts, summer gathering spots.
2. Design a “Boot Camp” (with pay) to entice people to develop skills for your organization’s needs.
3. Create a memorable identity at job fairs.
4. Go outside your typical target groups for recruiting. Learn which talents and skills can be easily trained to transfer into your organization.
5. Think “low tech” to find employees. Direct-mail items, such as coupons, postcards and giveaways to targeted demographics, can be powerful recruitment tools.
6. Don’t forget the international labor market.
7. Create 12- to 16-hour availability for recruiting and hiring by staggering HR schedules. Accommodate candidates’ needs for before- and after-work interviews.
8. Have senior managers interview candidates.
9. Develop and market strong internship programs to promote your company and also find good talent.
10. Provide an “open house” to showcase your company to the outside world. Promote the values of your company all the time.

Workforce, August 1998, Vol. 77, No. 8, p. 70.

Everyone has an opinion on workplace romance. Here are some thoughts from experts.

Dr. Joy Browne, media psychologist who hosts a daily syndicated radio talk show (“The Joy Browne Show”) to more than nine million listeners in 300 markets responds to this issue often in her daily broadcast. She cautions against romance in the workplace, but also agrees that establishing policies to forbid it can be very hard to enforce for the employer:

“My major concern for both men and women is that work is about competence — and there’s nothing about love affairs that has to do with competence. Affairs have to do with charm, passion, excitement. Anything at work that disrupts other people’s perception of your competence is dangerous. However, I think it’s very hard to implement in policy. Just as I believe that personal life doesn’t belong at work, I don’t think work has the right to determine the personal policy. But work has the right to hold people to a professional standard. That’s where the problem lies, and that’s where the enforcement lies. All you really have to do is take them aside, and say, ‘Look, your personal life is your own, but it can’t occur on company property. If anything that you do is disruptive at work — from stealing paper clips to having an affair, you’re going to be held accountable for it.”

A. Michael Weber, managing partner, New York office of Littler & Mendelson, Fastiff, Tichy & Mathiason law firm:”HR can ensure that a company’s sexual-harassment policy is clear and well distributed. There should be a specific individual to whom someone could go to in the event of a claim and there’s a mechanism for resolving claims.

HR also can provide seminars for managers to educate them about laws and protections and what’s permissible in the workplace. Finally, in the event of a claim, they should promptly conduct a thorough investigation and, if necessary, take remedial action. Objectivity often goes a long way in diffusing the feelings of someone who’s being subjected to harassment.”

Michelle Brackin, human resources manager, Auxiliary Services Corporation, State University of New York, Cortland:

“We have romance issues in the workplace all the time, and they aren’t always issues surrounding people dating. They can be about husbands and wives working for the same employer. They can be about live-in significant others. Some of the issues revolve around the reactions when the relationships sour — fighting in the workplace, verbal abuse — we’ve also had domestic-violence issues. These all pose interesting challenges to the HR department. How do you protect your employees in the workplace when things are occurring outside of work?”

Chris Hargreaves, director of human resources, Chicago Partners Inc.:

“Clearly, some people are responsible enough to have a valuable relationship at work and it may even become more significant over time. They never create any problems for their employers. But, if you’re not a mature person and you don’t understand the downside of it, you can create innumerable problems, and it’s hard to escape when it goes bad. It makes a significant impact on your career with that particular company because you can’t keep the turmoil out of work.”

Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 77, No. 7, p. 46.

Signs in New York’s Times Square flash, “Zippergate.” Electronic banners in London’s Leicester Square guffaw “Ovalgate and Oralgate.” Radios and televisions blare interviews and commentary as sophisticated as teenage locker-room jokes. Rapid-fire e-mail messages around the globe share lewd digitally altered pictures of a lecherous chief executive and his naughty playmate.

Welcome to Workplace Romance of the 21st century, where the global village looks suspiciously like a 1990’s Melrose Place gathering of co-workers gossiping at the water cooler. Where people from all walks of life are captivated by the clandestine meetings of the CEO of the most revered workplace in the world.

Yet, while Larry King, Rush Limbaugh and the Washington Post revel in increased revenues, HR pros know they’re watching a dramatic display of the dangers of office liaisons—threats to worker competence, lowered productivity, demoralized co-workers, secrecy, potential conflict-of-interest, and worst of all, claims of invasion of privacy and sexual-harassment lawsuits. We may titter, but even with all of the problems, we also know it won’t go away. People will continue to meet and date at work.

Predictably, because of the glitz and visibility of recent cases, there’s a rush to prevent similar bad outcomes throughout every level of society. Predictably, they’re often fear-based, knee-jerk reactions that seem as serious as David Letterman’s Top Ten Lists. Scurrying to protect themselves, senior executives have attorneys draft agreements for their potential paramours to sign, stating that quarreling lovers will submit to binding arbitration rather than the 90s version of kiss-and-sue. A software firm has a product that offers drop-down lists of choices for HR’s preferred responses to office romances. One city agency in California requires disclosure before the first kiss. And rumor has it that a Midwest firm prohibits eye-to-eye contact with the opposite sex for longer than 30 seconds!

Maybe someone at the cosmic water cooler ought to explain that we don’t need more rigid policies. Legislating romantic interludes only drives them underground. And, word-on-the-street says about 50 percent of all relationships begin in the workplace. Balancing the individual’s right to privacy with protecting employees from sexual harassment and the company from conflict-of-interest isn’t a situation for which strict policies are called for. It is a situation that calls for careful consideration, communication and common sense guidelines to make the difference.

Workplace romance: Older than drive-in movies; as popular as “Titanic.”
Workplace romances are nothing new of course. Just ask Abigail Van Buren, the woman who has been offering advice for more than 40 years through her Dear Abby column. Here’s one of her earliest letters:

Says Abby in an interview with Workforce: “Office romances have occurred ever since men and women have been thrown together in the workplace.” Indeed, people haven’t changed. Their stories still run the gamut from happy long-term marriages to tearful endings and ruined careers. No, people haven’t changed, but the workplace has. Employees are working longer hours in environments that encourage teamwork and familiarity. And as work becomes increasingly intense and time-consuming, individuals find themselves with less leisure time for outside activities where they traditionally meet new people. In addition, women are 46 percent of the workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And many of them occupy visible and powerful positions. All of these factors have transformed the workplace to a meeting den. DILBERT™ creator and workplace observer Scott Adams had this to say about it in a May issue interview in Playboy: “People always wonder why employees at companies like Microsoft work ungodly hours. It’s not why you think. If you’ve got a good mix of the sexes at the office, you have about the same odds or better of scoring at work as you would if you were to go home…. Similar-minded people of mating age are consciously being brought together in a large community.”

And the general consciousness seems to be approving of workplace liaisons. Indeed, according to a 1994 survey conducted by New York City-based American Management Association, 30 percent of managers responding acknowledged having at least one office liaison of their own; 74 percent approved of dating co-workers, and 21 percent approved of dating subordinates. (AMA Overnight Fax Poll, Exclusive to Money Magazine: “Office Romance”). Most recently, a survey called Love@Work (of nearly 7,000 subscribers of America Online in its Business Know-How Forum, February 1998) revealed similar findings. Fully 71 percent of respondents had dated someone at work, and 50 percent of the managers said they dated subordinates.

Managing the situation is better than ignoring it.
Although workers’ attitudes lean toward acceptance, workplace policy tends to lean the other way. That’s because the results of an acrimonious ending are far more consequential for the company today than ever before. The Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings changed gender relations forever because they brought forth sexual harassment as a workplace issue, catapulting common sense rules of decency, courtesy and etiquette into the legal arena.

Since then, as stated in the February 4, 1998, Wall Street Journal, there has been a change in attitude by companies regarding workplace romances. A double standard used to prevail that officially forbid relationships, yet didn’t interfere unless forced to do so (even if it was between bosses and supervisees). Usually, it was the woman who brought it to the attention of the company—after a sour break-up—and, most often because of the power-differential, she was the one who was fired or quit her job.

Times are different now, and companies are rethinking their positions. They’re opening their eyes to the truth—that people meet life partners everywhere—and organizations are better off if HR manages the situation, rather than ignores it. For one thing, employers risk losing valuable workers if they do otherwise. Also, the stronger the prohibition, the more likely people will keep these relationships secret. And the employer who doesn’t know about these relationships runs a greater risk of sexual-harassment complaints if the romance turns sour.

“For years, some companies have said, ‘This is none of our business; this is a privacy issue.’ And others said, ‘we must prohibit it in some form or another.’ Given the complexity of human behavior in business, neither approach makes any sense,” says Freada Klein, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based consultant who’s a noted authority in the field of sexual harassment. “The idea isn’t to get the right rigid or formulaic approach; the idea is to get the right principles in place.”

What’s the current status in companies? According to a 1998 Workplace Romance Survey conducted of its members by the Alexandria, Virginia-based Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 72 percent of HR respondents say they don’t have a written policy, although 14 percent of them have an unwritten understanding. Thirteen percent have written policies. Of the 27 percent with either a written or unwritten policy, 55 percent permit consensual dating relationships, but discourage them. Consequences include transfer within the organization (42 percent), termination (27 percent), counseling (26 percent), formal reprimand (25 percent) and demotion (7 percent).

And the reasons given by respondents for having such policies? Potential sexual-harassment claims (88 percent); potential retaliation if the romance ends (75 percent); concerns about morale of co-workers (60 percent); concerns about lowered productivity of those involved in the romance (46 percent); and romances at work are viewed as unprofessional (38 percent).

Let good judgment drive reasonable policies.
Why is it so troublesome for employers to work out a sensible framework? “Part of the difficulty is looking at office romance as a separate issue instead of part of a web of an organizational culture,” says Klein. “If you deal with office romance in isolation from sexual harassment and other diversity/respect/privacy issues, you’re going to cause confusion, and maybe outright contradiction.”

Klein, who conducted a 1988 landmark study of sexual harassment for the Fortune 500, [Sexual Harassment In The Fortune 500 or the 1988 Working Woman Sexual Harassment Survey], believes the problem is “… more rules, more rules, more rules, instead of backing up and asking, ‘What are our values, our principles, our approach?'”

A good place to begin is to be sure the practice matches the corporate culture. Says Cara Finn, vice president of employee services for Silicon Valley-based Remedy Corporation, “Trying to regulate where people meet potential life partners is nonsensical. People at Remedy work long hours. We have an informal, friendly atmosphere, so we’ve upped the ante on the chance factor of two people meeting each other. We can’t regulate if this happens, but when and how it happens.”

Workers are a close-knit group at the eight-year-old software maker’s offices. In the spirit of Silicon Valley openness and looseness, it’s not unusual to have lots of small parties among the 700 employees. Groups go to Disneyland, play miniature golf, even attend slumber parties. “We work hard and we play hard together,” says Finn. “These outside activities help people let off steam and also establish a new level of communication within the group. But it does rev-up the possibility that two people are going to find a synergy between themselves professionally and personally; and then, you’re off to the races.”

Remedy has a very brief, but written statement regarding romance between co-workers, which was established early in the company’s history. It’s not a formal, strict business environment, so the practice mirrors the corporate culture. “We put a great deal of value on the company principles. We articulated them in a simple set of tenets to help us make decisions as we go forward,” says Finn. Building on these principles, sweethearts can’t be in the same reporting structure, and one can’t have undue influence over the other’s career. That’s all. Furthermore, since communication is so highly valued in the company, individuals are encouraged to be open about their relationships, and company celebrations frequently herald a new wedding or engagement among co-workers.

The policy fits the personality of the group. It also recognizes the complexities of relationships by not over-regulating situations that can’t be anticipated. “You can’t legislate love or emotions. They just happen—whenever and wherever,” says Finn. “I feel very strongly about not having rules you can’t enforce. You shouldn’t try to control things you can’t control.”

Remedy employees come forward all the time with news of co-worker relationships. They usually tell their immediate managers first. Neither individual would be reassigned unless they were in the same reporting structure or had influence over each other’s career. It hasn’t happened yet, but if it does, the managers and employees would handle the transfer situation collaboratively as in any work condition in which an individual believes it’s no longer conducive to continue in the same department. The well-conceived policy also is designed to avoid the perception of favoritism and bias, and the way it’s communicated encourages forthrightness.

“I believe very deeply that if you give people an environment in which they can be their whole selves, you get more. But if you invite them to be their complete selves, then you’re going to get the whole package—and that means people will bring their extracurricular life and their home life, but you’ll get some wonderful creativity with it,” says Finn.

Anticipate conflict-of-interest and sexual-harassment claims.
One of the reasons Remedy’s romance policy works is because the organization also has a clear, firm policy regarding sexual harassment. The company has had very few complaints, but takes immediate action when it does so the situations don’t escalate. Both managers and employees are taught that one of the best ways to prevent any sort of harassment is to articulate the discomfort to a supervisor promptly. The underlying philosophy assumes everyone is adult and can be honest and forthright.

Not so everywhere.

“A lot of sexual-harassment complaints result from consensual relationships that went bad,” says Christine Amalfe, a director [read as partner] at the Newark, New Jersey-based law firm of Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, who specializes in employment law. “If romances are prohibited, the employer doesn’t really know what’s going on. And a year after a consensual relationship breaks up, some woman walks into the office and says, ‘I’m being sexually harassed by my superior.'” For this reason, the more enlightened employers are creating policies that allow for consensual relationships, but require the most senior person involved in a relationship to disclose it if it’s between superior and subordinate.

Amalfe’s 300-person firm is a good example of an organization that tries to avert disasters by avoiding unreasonable practices. Its romance guidelines, which don’t prohibit romantic relationships, are part of the overall diversity policy (although Amalfe says the guidelines could fit under the nepotism section as well). The policy, which is always communicated upon hiring, reads: “Those who engage in those [consensual] relationships should be aware that concerns may later arise regarding the actual freedom of choice of one of the parties, particularly when a superior/subordinate relationship exists between them. In these cases, the firm requires the senior-ranking person in the relationship to disclose the relationship to the co-chairs of the Diversity Committee.”

Disclosure serves two purposes. One: “We can confirm with the participants of the relationship that it is, in fact, consensual; that there’s no intimidation or pressure on the junior person,” says Amalfe. “If the relationship ever goes bad, no one can say he or she was forced into the relationship by the person in the more senior position.” The second reason is to be sure that the supervisor has no input into the junior person’s workload and raises. As in the case of Remedy, either the reporting structure would alter or one of the individuals would change departments. The policy also requires employees to notify the co-chairs if the relationship terminates or no longer is consensual. “I can’t tell you how many times I have served as counsel and start investigating a plaintiff’s claim for sexual harassment and find that the plaintiff and the alleged harasser were previously involved,” says Amalfe. “One of them decides to break it off. The other continues to pursue and it becomes something other than consensual, and the person claims he or she is being sexually harassed.”

Protect competence, productivity and morale.
As worried as managers are about sexual-harassment litigation, the more frequent culprit is lost productivity, lowered morale and loss of valuable workers whom the company values and has expended time and money training. “Companies should always keep in mind the possibility of a sexual-harassment suit and take precautions to protect themselves, so in case it occurs, they have a defense,” says Amalfe. “But the bigger expense to employers is people leaving the workforce because they’re unhappy that they work alongside someone who’s being favored because she’s having an affair with the boss.”

This usually happens when the lovers are in a reporting relationship, and not when they’re peers. Thus another reason for policies to focus on relationships in which power is an issue. “What you’re trying to do as an employer is to manage these relationships in a way that maintains a productive, happy workforce on the one hand, and doesn’t overly intrude into the employee’s private life on the other hand,” says Michael Karteles, partner and head of the Employment Law Group at Chicago-based Goldberg, Kohn, Bellblack, Rosenbloom & Marin. “Employers can legitimately be concerned that there’s not going to be an objective evaluation process if the supervisor is personally involved. Co-workers know about these things and get worried about favoritism.”

Certainly a drop in morale and retention of workers in the same work unit as a person having a workplace romance is an issue. It’s also an issue when it comes to the lovers themselves—even if it’s not a romance between boss and subordinate. Many times a relationship will start, and as it sours, one or both of the individuals can become distracted, highly emotional, depressed—and eventually, even decide to leave his or her job.

What’s acceptable? What’s not?
Consider the case of Deana and Nicholas (not their real names). Deana is a 30-year-old PR professional who lives in San Francisco. Her heady love affair with a handsome colleague started simply enough when they went out for drinks with others after work. Next, he sent e-mails to which she responded. The relationship became more and more intense. They were both happy.

At first, it was uncomplicated because they worked on different floors of the building and had different clients. But six months into the romance, it became tense when Deana wanted to move in together, and Nicholas did not. The flurry of e-mails from Nicholas dwindled, but Deana continually checked for them. When they weren’t there, she’d become upset and distracted. Her work suffered. Then, his division moved to the same floor as hers. She began to use the stairs and avoid the elevator because it was near his desk. She would ruminate over looks he cast her way. She’d worry that he could hear her on the phone.

“Even things like making a trip to the bathroom became uncomfortable be-cause I’d have to walk past him,” she confesses. “I’d think, ‘I don’t want to see him.’ I would definitely go out of my way to avoid seeing him,” she says. “If we broke up, I don’t think I could work in the same place.”

No one could have stopped Deana from falling in love with Nicholas. Indeed, love can’t be regulated. Yet, nor should it be ignored. HR can create policies that assure work is being accomplished, co-workers aren’t being adversely affected and conflicts aren’t taking place. The policies for one company can’t be lifted and completely adopted by another because they must be tailored to the type of employees and the corporate culture. And once reasonable guidelines are created, they must be communicated clearly, and frequently, to the staff.

Perhaps love is blind passion. But for the workplace to survive employee romances, HR must take a deliberate, reasonable approach in defining what’s acceptable and what’s not.

Suzanne Danner doesn’t think of herself as a groundbreaker. But the soft-spoken, articulate manager, who is a partner in Price Waterhouse’s Audit and Business Services in Warsaw, Poland, blazes new trails and shatters myths wherever she goes.Not only is Danner a female expatriate in the world of finance, but she’s also a human resources partner for the firm’s Audit Practice, which gives her a crucial role in establishing new personnel and benefits practices for much of eastern Europe. Indeed, Danner, with her three children and working husband in tow, serves as a role model for other expats as well as for eastern European women she meets. She’s such a strong believer in work/family balance and flexibility that she’s trying to forge new alternative work policies that are considered radical in Eastern Europe.

Ask Danner if she believes the notion that there are so few female expats because of prejudice or a global glass ceiling. Ask her if she has experienced negative consequences overseas as a result of being female. She’ll pause, wrack her brain for examples, and then give you an unqualified, “No.” In fact, she’ll tell you that her gender may actually afford her advantages that allow her to be more effective in her job.Danner’s future is bright. According to New York City-based Catalyst’s 1996 study, “Women in Corporate Leadership,” almost 50 percent of Fortune 500/Service 500 CEOs say international experience is crucial to upward movement. But not many women are in a position to take advantage of an overseas assignment to boost their corporate careers.Women comprise only 14 percent of the expatriate population according to the “1996 Global Relocation Trends Survey Report” conducted by Windham International and the National Foreign Trade Council (both in New York City). Why the disparity? It’s more a reflection of the U.S. domestic glass ceiling than anything to do with women’s effectiveness on international assignments or their willingness to go. Expatriates often are selected from upper-middle to senior corporate ranks, where women are still striving to achieve gender parity.Then women face additional hurdles before landing in the expatriate candidate pool. They must challenge two commonly assumed misconceptions. First: Women face overwhelming cultural barriers on international assignments. Second: Women don’t want global postings because of career or family concerns.

Guess what? The world is changing, and while some of the same difficulties remain as they have in the past, it’s time to re-examine assumptions, question why women’s numbers are small and consider ways to make greater use of this valuable labor resource.

The numbers show an upward trend.
The number of female expats is growing. Catalyst’s research shows that only 5 percent of expatriates were women prior to 1993. The “Global Relocation Trends Survey Report” also indicates a positive trend, albeit a slow one. These reports for the last several years show the percentage of international assignees who were women to be: 10 percent in 1993, 12 percent in 1994, 13 percent in 1995 and 14 percent in 1996.

“Progress is slow, but there’s a steady increase in women who are being considered for — and who are accepting — overseas assignments,” says Nina Segal, manager of cross-cultural services at Windham International and previously assistant dean for Career Services at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York City. “If you look at organizations that have made special efforts to recruit and promote women, you’ll see a larger number of female expatriates.”

Indeed, according to Nancy J. Adler, a professor of organizational behavior and cross-cultural management with McGill University in Montreal, the global arena may be more receptive to female managers than the domestic one. Global corporations are in such a highly competitive business environment that they must select the very best people regardless of gender. Furthermore, she says in her book “Competitive Frontiers: Women Managers in a Global Economy” (co-authored with Dafna Izraeli, Blackwell Business Press 1994) that the less hierarchical, more inclusive structure of global firms is very conducive to women’s success.So, let’s examine those outdated beliefs.

Assumption No. 1: Women are less effective because of cultural biases against them.
Laura Simeone has a broad perspective on the international experience. As senior manager of human resources in Asia for Palo Alto, California-based Cisco Systems, Simeone has supervised dozens of Asians and Europeans during her tenure at headquarters and is currently an expatriate in Singapore.“There’s an interesting dynamic,” Simeone says. “Western women are in a unique position and are generally well-received in other countries. They’re foreign — and therefore not expected to conform to the same standards that local culture dictates for women. They get the opportunity to function more in their normal roles because they aren’t constrained the way local female counterparts would be; they aren’t in a subordinate position to men.”Simeone continues, “If people are going to have a difficult time in specific cultures, it’s going to be all of the Westerners, not just women Westerners.”According to Simeone, women have the opportunity to succeed in several ways. “It has always been said that women have to be at least as good as men in order to prove themselves. I think there’s a natural tendency [among expatriate women] to want to do high-quality work and it speaks for itself. Furthermore, if a woman has strong support from senior management in her organization, it lends her credibility. Other managers and employees in the country will take their cue from that.”

While some cultures are more challenging to women than others, most are manageable with flexibility and planning. For instance, many societies conduct business in environments where there’s heavy alcohol consumption. “The tension between a woman wanting to appear to fit in and be on equal footing with local males, yet at the same time not wanting to be viewed in a pejorative way, always brings up tricky dynamics,” says Simeone. “Women are going to have to decide how to handle the situation before they get into it.” Business networking can become a tough cultural issue. But its one that women can handle with predeparture cross-cultural training.

Nancy Laben is a powerhouse. Based in Hong Kong, she is general counsel for Andersen Worldwide, providing legal support and services to 13 countries in the Asia region. Trotting between Japan, Southeast Asia, Australia and China, she helps negotiate contracts with clients and assists with personnel questions. Laben, who spent part of her childhood in Japan, shows that ingenuity and cultural wisdom can overcome many cultural difficulties.“In Asia, much of the business-generating activity occurs in surroundings where women are typically not accepted,” Laben explains. For example, in Japan it’s on the golf course. Although she doesn’t see herself teeing off as part of a high-powered foursome, she does construct other opportunities. “What I try to do is to arrange circumstances [requiring us] to work late. Then we go and grab dinner. I try to turn it into a team-building exercise.” Others create family barbecues and dinners with couples as a way to network. They take advantage of every occasion that’s gender-neutral to build business relationships.These women acknowledge that cultural sensitivity and awareness are crucial. Women who don’t have that cultural experience may not be aware of how to create opportunities and may become severely frustrated.

Assumption No. 2: Women managers with families aren’t eager for global assignments.
Moving a family internationally isn’t an easy task. And, it becomes extraordinarily complicated for expatriate women in dual-career marriages. This is because typically women — even working women — carry the majority of the responsibility for taking care of the family. To emphasize this point, the “1996 Global Relocation Survey Trends Report” shows that of the 71 percent of married expatriates, married men outnumber married women nine to one; but single males outnumber single females only three to one. Clearly, single women have less complicated hurdles to overcome than married women.But this disparity is a changing reality as well, and it doesn’t mean that women who have families don’t want international assignments. Just ask Eleanor Haller-Jorden, managing director of the Paradigm Group, a Zurich, Switzerland-based international human resources research and consulting firm. “With the rise of dual-career couples, companies obviously will need to confront this issue more directly,” she points out. “I think there have been some dated assumptions in terms of the willingness and ability of male spouses to travel.” Line managers and HR professionals need to be more open and direct, speaking to employees about what might be of interest to them and what might get in the way of their taking assignments.

Haller-Jorden, who has two children and a husband who is an international banker, is in the midst of conducting a 10-year longitudinal study on international dual-career families. She’s able to reel off examples of couples who have eagerly sought assignments, as she and her husband did.

And why wouldn’t they be eager? As stated earlier, CEOs want to see international experience in their executives. In the same Catalyst report, 50 percent of senior women said that high-visibility assignments were important, and 33 percent wanted cross-functional job rotations. Adler’s research underscores these findings. As she puts it, there may have been differences in the past, but today, both men and women are equally interested in expat assignments.Despite this interest, many line managers assume women won’t want to move their children overseas. But talk with women who have relocated their children internationally, and they’ll wax poetic about the advantages for their children. They’re thrilled about providing them with new surroundings, the sense of being an international citizen, and the language and educational opportunities. Although it’s not exactly an easy adjustment, most parents claim their children soak up the foreign culture and adapt to it quickly.By contrast, it’s the spouse or partner who has trouble. When Danner landed in Poland she was immediately thrown into a bank privatization. Within three days she was on a plane to Gdansk, working every night until midnight. Her husband and children were living in a hotel. But, she says, even though it was tough for her, it was extraordinarily difficult for her husband. He’s a marketing expert who decided to take advantage of this opportunity and agreed to help the children adjust first before looking for work.“It took him six to nine months to get through the whole shock of language barrier, culture problems and just learning to get around,” says Danner. “He’d never been alone with the children in the same way, either,” she says. Although the family had some cultural orientation, Danner believes it wasn’t enough. “There needs to be more assistance as to what it’s going to be like,” she says.

An overseas relocation isn’t a quick adjustment, and it isn’t an opportunity for everyone. But when women with families come forward and express their eagerness for expatriate assignments, they shouldn’t be faced with managers who had assumed they wouldn’t be interested because of the age of their children or their spouses’ careers.

Don’t assume anything.
Just as the global marketplace changes constantly, so do the individuals who work in multinational firms. Greater opportunities and greater knowledge of the expatriate lifestyle will encourage women to step forward.“I’ve seen how important international assignments have been in a lot of women’s careers in terms of increased mobility and visibility for them in the workplace,” says Segal. “There needs to be encouragement and proactive behavior on the part of the organization to empower female executives to feel they have some control over where their careers are going.” If career management and effective mentoring of women is successful, if sufficient support and education become commonplace, there will likely be more female expats and more women in the foreign work environments altogether.But old assumptions won’t move the corporate culture or the global business effort forward. HR managers, along with managerial women and their line managers, must shatter stereotypes and create an action plan that works toward making full use of all individuals in the workplace.

Global Workforce, May 1998, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 10-14.

Catalyst, the New York-based national nonprofit research and advisory organization, last year published important research called “The 1997 Catalyst Census of Women Corporate Officers and Top Earners,” a report about the advancement of women in Corporate America. Catalyst’s first landmark study on this topic was published in 1996. The study researched corporate officers in Fortune 500 companies because they have responsibility for policy as well as legal power to compel an organization to follow certain guidelines. Information regarding corporate officers and top earners is public and can be compared.

The study was designed to establish a data-based benchmark to:

• Provide an accurate measure of women’s progress as corporate officers and, specifically, top-earning officers


• Begin tracking this information


• Support or eliminate perceptions about women in large corporations.

Parity for women is lacking. The findings show that women made up 10.6 percent of Fortune 500 officers in 1997, an increase from 10 percent from the previous year. However, only 51 held the highest-ranking positions compared to 1,677 men (chairman, vice chairman, CEO, president, COO and executive vice president). In the top-10 companies with women corporate officers, the highest representation is in the services sector.

However, only 61 women (2.5 percent) of 2,458 were top earners. This is up from 47 women in the previous year. More than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies have no women among their five most highly paid officers.

Only 20 percent of all women (compared to 41 percent of men corporate officers) have profit-and-loss or revenue-generating responsibility. These are the line jobs that offer valuable experience for upward mobility. In response to that finding, Catalyst President Sheila Wellington says: “There’s still a glass ceiling, but equally important, this census documents the existence of glass walls. These are the invisible barriers in the corporate culture itself that keep women from obtaining the jobs with line responsibility that lead to the executive suite.”

In 1989, after a new leadership team took over the Toronto-based Bank of Montreal, managers identified that female talent was underutilized. A 1991 survey of the 32,000 employees uncovered five myths that stood in the way of women having full representation in senior positions:

Myth 1 was that women were either too young or too old to compete with men for promotions. Reality showed the men and women were, on average, the same age.

Myth 2 was that women had babies and quit; there was a perception that they were less committed to their careers. The reality was that although they did take time off for childbirth, they had longer service records to the bank at every level except senior management.

Myth 3 was that women needed more education. It turned out that the women in feeder positions to upper-level jobs had more degrees than the men in those positions.

Myth 4 was that they didn’t have the “right stuff,” which wasn’t clearly defined, but the results indicated that women averaged higher performance ratings overall.

Myth 5 was that women would soon catch up. They did projections and found it was going to take far too long for this to occur.

After uncovering these myths and misperceptions, the bank’s team of HR professionals and managers went to work to effect major changes for the advancement of women in the organization.

Workforce talked with Jim Hardeman, corporate EAP manager for Polaroid, about the company’s domestic-violence program. The highlights:

Q: Why do you believe domestic violence is an issue businesses should respond to?
A: In 1992, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health stated that approximately 750 workplace homicides occur annually, and that 4 percent of these acts of violence involve intimate relationships. If 4 percent can be translated into an actual number of deaths, is 30 [4 percent of Polaroid’s workforce] female employees’ deaths insignificant? Then, there are an estimated one million workers who annually become victims of nonfatal workplace violence. Incidents such as intimidation, sexual harassment, stalking, assaults, battery and rape carry no price tag. No dollar amount can balance the impact of depression, panic disorders, post-traumatic stress, eating disorders and other addictive illnesses stemming from incidents of workplace violence.

Q: Aren’t there significant costs incurred from domestic violence?
A: Oh yes. Victimization in the workplace can cost an estimated $55 million annually in lost wages.

Q: Why don’t more businesses take action?
A: For the most part, businesses don’t have the knowledge to deal with family violence incidences in the workplace and many businesses still maintain the view that what occurs in partner abuse is a “private family affair.” No internal protocols are in place as a response, and furthermore, no training for employee assistance program workers or human resources personnel administrator professionals are recommended.

Q: What advice do you have for other organizations interested in putting together guidelines for handling incidents of domestic violence?
A: Protocols, guidelines and policies that address [domestic violence as it manifests into workplace violence] need to be developed through a formal, well-thought-out process; skipping a crucial step could result in communicating “false hopes” of safety to employees and serious liability concerns. In fact, issues of liability must be of considerable concern when formulating plans of implementation, as well as associated training of management and educating the workforce. Knowledge of company personnel policies and grievance procedures are a must.

Q: What other lessons can you share with HR?
A: A company’s materials [regarding domestic violence] should be clear and straightforward. For example, in our Recommended Procedures for Safety and Protection in Family Violence Situations, we have a definition [of family violence]; a detailed description of how employees, managers, HR and EAP counselors should respond; elements of a safety plan; and resources. [Polaroid has consulted with hundreds of companies about these plans.] We take extraordinary effort not to victimize employees further.

Q: How do you guarantee continuing employee involvement?
A: You have to continuously improve your materials. You also want to issue statements periodically that remind those in the workplace that the issue is still alive. You can’t just say, “We did that last year.” You have to keep making it better.

Q: Do you encounter any resistance when you try to implement these programs around the country?
A: People sometimes think it can’t happen in their workplaces. You simply need to talk to them and show them that it can happen anywhere.

Q: Can Polaroid’s guidelines be adapted in company’s with foreign operations?
A: We recommend that management in non-U.S. sites develop their own geographic and culturally appropriate policies to manage any workplace violence issues.

Workforce, February 1998, Vol. 77, No. 2, p. 84.