Author: Cindy Waxer

Operating heavy machinery in subzero temperatures in a remote Alberta mining town may not seem like a dream job, but Canada’s oil and gas giants are bending over backward to make it a worthwhile endeavor for qualified candidates.

   With more than 175 billion barrels of oil reserves–second only to Saudi Arabia–Alberta’s oil-sands deposits have courted an estimated $86 billion worth of projects that are now either under way or in the works in the region. Oil sands are deposits of bitumen, a molasses-like oil, that are contained in three major areas beneath more than 55,000 square miles of north­eastern Alberta. That is an area larger than the state of Florida. However, only about 2 percent of the lucrative resource has been produced to date.

   Hoping to cash in on this modern-day gold rush, oil and gas behemoths including Suncor Energy, Imperial Oil, Shell Canada and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. are investing billions of dollars in oil-sands production, creating considerable demand for a wide range of talent from mechanical engineers and project managers to welders and electricians.

   “If you know how to swing a hammer properly, use a blowtorch or weld, the world is your oyster,” says Roger Soucy, president of Petroleum Services Association of Canada, a Calgary-based association representing Canada’s oil-field service, supply and manufacturing companies.

   In fact, according to the provincial government, oil and gas extraction has prompted substantial growth in employment, with a 5,600-person increase from 2004 to 2005. Such record activity, however, has created a labor shortage that is forcing today’s oil-sands companies to develop more creative recruitment and retention strategies. From building airstrips for shuttling shift workers to handing out housing allowances, companies aren’t sparing any expense to find employees for their far-off mining sites.

   But engaging in an arms race for talent comes with risks. After all, companies drove up salaries–and expectations–for an entire generation of technocrats in their quest for dot-com talent. Intent on not succumbing to recruitment fever again, today’s oil-sands companies are attempting to win over employees with longer-term propositions.

Long-distance commuting
   Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) is one company with a strong view of the future. CNRL’s Horizon Oil Sands Project, located 44 miles north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, is an $8 billion undertaking with three phases of development over a seven-year period from 2005 through 2012. Currently in its first phase of construction, CNRL is relying on nearly 20 recruitment agencies to add 3,000 employees to its existing 1,700-person workforce by the end of this year.

   Because the project is situated in a remote part of northeastern Alberta, CNRL is building a trio of three-story dormitories at a cost of about $30 million each. Capable of housing 2,000 workers, each facility includes a cafeteria. Every dorm room features a desk, television and Internet access.

   Shelter only skims the surface of CNRL’s employee offerings. Rather than subject its shift workers to an all-expense-paid, six-hour bus ride home to Edmonton every 10 days for a four-day respite, CNRL opened its own airstrip in September. On a regular basis, nearly 25 percent of the company’s workforce is shuttled back and forth using a fleet of small aircraft. As that figure nears an anticipated 75 percent, a Boeing 737 is also scheduled to run about once a week.

Just how long can the oil companies’ game of one-upmanship last before the well runs dry? “There needs to be a collaborative approach. There’s simply no point driving the costs up for each other, shooting each other in the foot.” –Cheryl Knight, Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada

   “When you only have four days off with your family, it’s nice to be able to quit work and within an hour or two be back home,” says Lynn Zeidler, vice president of Horizon Construction Management, which is owned and operated by CNRL. Although CNRL’s air taxi service represents “a significant investment,” Zeidler says that the company would not have been able to recruit the talent it needs without accommodating employee demand for work/life balance.

   For those workers left on site, CNRL is building a convenience store, a recreation facility, an ice rink, exercise facilities and a training center so that students willing to forfeit their final year of college can serve as apprentices while completing their studies. Even the construction of a Tim Hortons–Canada’s largest doughnut chain and a national icon–is in the works.

   Accommodating a transitory workforce, however, hasn’t played a part in Shell Canada’s strategy for recruiting talent for its Athabasca Oil Sands Project. The Athabasca development is a joint venture between Shell Canada, Chevron Canada and Western Oil Sands that consists of the Muskeg River Mine, located 46 miles north of Fort McMurray, and a refinery situated just north of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta.

   With plans to add 600 new hires to its oil-sands division this year, Shell Canada opted to focus on community, rather than high-cost commuting, to lure qualified candidates to its remote work sites. The company’s inner-city staff is eligible for free emergency day care passes and financial assistance with postsecondary tuition fees. Shell Canada’s oil-sands workers, meanwhile, may qualify for a $17,000 contribution toward a home mortgage. That amount is prorated over a three-year period.

   Providing adequate housing is one of the toughest hurdles that oil-sands companies face. Fort McMurray’s population has grown 70 percent in the past decade to nearly 70,000. According to the Fort McMurray Landlord and Tenants Advisory Board, apartment vacancy rates were as low as 0.7 percent in February, and the average cost of a single-family dwelling is $370,000–steep indeed for this community. By helping employees pay down their mortgages, Shell Canada aims to encourage homeownership as well as a sense of permanence among new recruits.

“Whereas a lot of companies are looking at a fly-in, fly-out workforce, Shell’s position is that we’re in this business over the long term, and we want our operating employees to live in the community where they work,” says Janet Annesley, Shell Canada’s public affairs manager.

   Shell Canada also is seeking to retain employees by investing petro-bucks in its own back yard. To date, the company has contributed more than $1.7 million to the communities of Fort McMurray and Fort Saskatchewan. These contributions include a $390,000 to the local YMCA for greater day care accommodations and enhanced recreational facilities, as well as a $215,000 investment in the construction of the Keyano College Sport and Wellness Centre in Fort McMurray. The community-use complex will include a running track, a gymnasium and indoor playing fields for sports such as indoor soccer, lacrosse, tennis, basketball and volleyball.

   In November, Shell Canada also contributed $645,000 to Northern Lights Regional Health Foundation to assist in the purchase of a magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, machine to provide diagnostic services to Fort McMurray and nearby communities. “Many doctors want to work with the latest diagnostic equipment, and that was actually a limiting factor to attracting doctors to the region,” Annesley says.

Leaving college
   Air taxis and housing allowances may attract candidates, but such pampering is also setting unrealistic expectations, according to Duke Anderson, dean of the MacPhail School of Energy at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary. Anderson says that it’s not uncommon for a welder to receive an annual salary of $100,000 fresh out of college, with an added four-year retention bonus that can easily equal a full year’s pay.

   By creating “opportunities that are almost without parallel,” Anderson says that today’s oil and gas industry is prompting many students to abandon school early. That is a decision that could leave workers academically disadvantaged in the event of a market downturn.

   “Our completion rates in some of our programs are concerning to us,” says Anderson, noting that nearly 40 percent of students do not complete their two-year programs. Nevertheless, enrollment in the institute’s energy program is up 20 percent from last year, and there are nearly four applicants for every opening.

Just how long can the oil companies’ game of one-upmanship last before the well runs dry?

   “There needs to be a collaborative approach. There’s simply no point driving the costs up for each other, shooting each other in the foot,” says Cheryl Knight, executive director of the Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada, a not-for-profit organization that addresses human resources issues within the nation’s petroleum industry.

   Some companies are taking steps to band together. Oil refineries require frequent maintenance checks, a process that can take as long as eight weeks and requires the assistance of as many as 2,000 temporary workers. Rather than take on the enormous task of recruiting thousands of workers for these refinery turnarounds, Shell Canada recently joined forces with Petro Canada, Imperial Oil and Dow Canada.

   “Since there’s this large need for labor, we have been able to work with our industry partners and line up the turnarounds in a sequential order,” says Brian Sarkadi, a traction and recruitment manager for Shell Canada’s oil-sands division. Proof that even in the most competitive of times, “business drivers lead to creativity in action,” Knight says.

Workforce Management, April 10, 2006, p. 40-43 — Subscribe Now!

For the past year, Cirque du Soleil’s employees have been feverishly preparing for the February debut of Ka, the latest resident show in Las Vegas, as well as the launch of Cirque 2005, a new touring spectacle scheduled to begin in Montreal in late April.

    Juggling two major openings is just one of the feats the Montreal troupe’s human resources team performs on a daily basis, far from the applause the performers hear. The global human resources group is scattered across offices in Montreal, Las Vegas and Amsterdam, Netherlands, and oversees 3,000 employees who represent 40 nationalities and 25 languages.

    Of those employees, more than 700 are the shows’ artists, impassioned performers who might not literally live for today but don’t spend a lot of time planning for their post-Cirque future. Cirque’s human resources team also is still dealing with the residual effects of an HIV discrimination lawsuit filed in April 2004.

    Cirque du Soleil has grown dramatically since its founding in 1984. Then, it was nothing more than a gaggle of fire-breathing, stilt-walking street-theater performers. Today, it’s a $500 million entertainment empire with nine different tours and five resident shows.

    Cirque believes its unique approach to managing a worldwide workforce that runs the gamut from acrobats to administrative staff suits its business approach. “Guy Laliberte (Cirque du Soleil’s founder) says that we reinvented the circus,” says Suzanne Gagnon, vice president of human resources. “But sometimes you have to reinvent HR.”

    Fueling this transformation is the decentralization of Cirque’s human resources team. In the past, the company’s Montreal headquarters oversaw the recruitment and management of employees in all three locations. While Montreal remains Cirque’s human resources hub, the Amsterdam office now includes five professionals whose job it is to support the European tours. And an eight-person team in Las Vegas works with nearly 1,000 employees based there. A full-time human resources professional accompanies each of Cirque’s touring shows to help with such issues as insurance coverage, immigration and work/life balance.

Bridging cultures
    Improved access to talent was only part of the motivation for granting Las Vegas its own human resources office. Gagnon says the primary purpose was to build an all-American team with an in-depth knowledge of U.S. labor laws. As Cirque’s U.S. numbers multiplied, the company realized it couldn’t depend on its Montreal office to understand the complexities of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s rules, or the peculiar cultural sensitivities of an American work environment.

    For example, Gagnon points out that while kissing good friends and co-workers on both cheeks is de rigueur along the cobblestone streets of Montreal, such behavior could be considered a form of sexual harassment in the United States. And then there are the semi-nude photos of Cirque performers that currently hang on the walls of the company’s Montreal headquarters. In deference to America’s stringent laws on pornography, sexual harassment and obscenity, Gagnon says those photos would never see the light of day in Las Vegas.

    “Although Las Vegas is called Sin City, what is considered by American citizens to be offensive or harassment has a very different definition than in some other countries,” she says.

    Despite this decentralized approach to workforce management, Cirque has taken steps to ensure that the company functions as a unified whole, bonded by a common set of workforce principles and practices. Montreal headquarters calls all the shots when it comes to drafting policies, processing insurance claims and handling immigration issues.

    It’s a difficult endeavor given that many of Cirque’s employees spend a good portion of the year hopping from foreign country to foreign country.

    In the absence of any company policy, Cirque’s touring show employees would be covered by the laws of whatever country they happen to be working in at the time, Gagnon says. For example, a pregnant employee touring in China would only be eligible for China’s own maternity leave and benefits.

    Because factors ranging from maternity leave to health benefits can differ dramatically from country to country, Cirque opted to level the playing field.

    Gagnon says that “if the application of regulations doesn’t seem sufficient to us, then we establish a minimum standard.” Using this as a starting point, further adjustments can be made based on how long an employee has been working in a particular country and their cultural expectations of a health care program.

    Cirque also has unified its recruitment processes. For years, Gagnon says that filling a position meant having to sift through “beautiful piles” of the nearly 50,000 résumés received annually. Frustrated with the volume, the company turned to staffing management provider Taleo for help. Deployed in early 2004, Taleo’s Web-based tool allows candidates to apply for positions online.

    In turn, Cirque can manage the recruitment process electronically, from first contact to final hire. And because Taleo provides a single online source of talent, the staff based in Las Vegas can read through résumés submitted by applicants based in Montreal and Europe, thereby broadening the pool of candidates.

Because our artists are so passionate and so intense, you have to work things a little differently. You can’t just hope to put together a traditional career planning program and have them go with the flow.

When spotlight fades
    Setting policies and sorting résumés is only half the battle for Cirque. Managing adults who have made a career out of running away with the circus comes with its own set of challenges. There is currently no sign of the artists vs. management skirmishes that plagued Cirque in the late ’80s. Instead, Cirque deals with contortionists and trapeze artists who refuse to accept that one day they’ll have to bow out of the spotlight.

    Crossroads, a career transition program launched in 2003, helps employees plan for their post-performing years. The program assists artists in identifying alternate career avenues by using Cirque’s own expertise in the backstage aspects of the entertainment business. For example, if an artist is considering a career in stage management, the transition team will arrange an in-person consultation between the artist and one of the company’s stage management employees. This employee will then offer feedback and guidance on what steps the artist needs to take in order to qualify for a position.

    Cirque is also well-versed in what courses or training artists need if they decide to explore careers as fitness coaches, naturopaths or makeup art-ists. And the company is in the process of videotaping veteran artists as they share their thoughts on what career moves have or have not proved successful over the years.

    “Because our artists are so passionate and so intense, you have to work things a little differently,” Gagnon says. “You can’t just hope to put together a traditional career planning program and have them go with the flow.”

    Not all departures from Cirque have occurred as smoothly as the company’s human resources team would like. In April, Cirque paid a record $600,000 to end an HIV discrimination complaint filed by Matthew Cusick, a performer who was fired last year because he has HIV. The settlement not only marked the maximum allowed for a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, but mandated that the circus provide anti-discrimination training to all of its employees and that its records remain open to the EEOC for two years.

    But what began as an incident that could have permanently tarnished Cirque’s reputation as an all-inclusive, gay-friendly organization has since evolved into a unique set of HR policies and practices. “The case called (Cirque’s gay-friendly image) into question for a lot of folks, and justifiably so,” says Hayley Gorenberg, Cusick’s attorney and deputy legal director of Lambda Legal, a gay and lesbian civil rights organization. But, she adds, Cirque has “showed a certain willingness on their part to be fully engaged in making the changes that they need to make.”

    Prior to the settlement, Cirque worked with the EEOC’s San Francisco branch to revise its nondiscrimination policy. And the company hired Dr. Rejean Thomas, an expert on HIV and blood pathologies, to travel to the circus’ sites worldwide to give cast, crew and management two-hour courses about the nature of HIV and other blood diseases, such as hepatitis C.

    In addition, Cirque’s human resources team participated in full-day training sessions during which legal experts educated them on the most recent discrimination laws and what obligations employers face under these regulations.

    Looking back on the unfortunate incident, Gagnon says: “It’s too bad that it did happen, but I think we have better management practices today.”

    By taking swift action, Cirque has managed to walk away from the incident with its reputation-and workforce-intact, says Ernest Albrecht, author of The New Circus, which examines the state of the modern American circus. “The artists understand that this was just an isolated incident and that this is not an ongoing way of dealing with (HIV-infected performers) by management.”

    Despite its efforts to improve how it manages its specialized workforce, Cirque has a host of live-entertainment rivals competing for the same talent and audience dollars.

    “Ten years ago, Cirque du Soleil was the only game in town,” says Dan J. Martin, director of the Master of Entertainment Industry Management degree program at Carnegie Mellon University. “Now, there are all kinds of variations on French-sounding names that build off the (same model).”

    In response, Cirque’s Montreal-based team of talent scouts has broadened its scope. Some recently visited South Africa to investigate talent there, and Cirque continues to court Olympic athletes who wish to parlay their gold medals into Cirque’s glittering productions.

    Cirque’s global human resources team is happy to leave the headhunting to the scouts. As curtain time draws near for the company’s latest endeavors-Ka and its 2005 touring show-the team is busy with the job of running a troupe unlike any other.

Workforce Management, January 2005, p. 52-53 — Subscribe Now!

Nicholas Donohue, New Hampshire’s commissioner of education, has handed out plenty of bad report cards in his 25-year career. But this time, it’s not a pimply-faced teen with an attitude problem that’s about to receive a failing grade. This time, Donohue is giving America’s education system poor marks. By failing to provide today’s high school graduates with the skills they need to succeed in the 21st-century workforce, the system has placed the United States “on the verge of becoming a second-class society economically,” he says.

    “If we’re serious about maintaining our prominence in the world economically, then we have to have much higher expectations for our young people,” he says. “And that means investing in strategies for increasing educational results.”

    Today’s corporations are looking for job candidates with strong analytical and effective communication skills, qualifications that surpass the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic. No longer can a high school graduate expect to land a position on a factory assembly line. Computer automation is slowly eliminating traditionally middle-class jobs, thus raising the bar for America’s workforce. Today, employers are in search of workers who can communicate clearly, use data to solve problems, work well with people of different backgrounds and use computers to carry out simple tasks like word processing. By failing to accommodate these new hiring demands, schools across the country are denying businesses the employees they need to properly compete in the global marketplace, says Kenneth Kay, president of The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a public/private grouping of community and business leaders.

    Desperate for solutions, many companies are getting actively involved. Boston-based law firm Hale and Dorr has its lawyers participate in local after-school programs; IBM offers tutoring and mentoring sessions; and computer manufacturer Dell hosts courses in which students learn how to assemble a computer. It’s either lend a hand now or pay the price later for underskilled workers, as many companies find themselves having to foot the bill for compensatory training or outsource work to foreign labor forces.

“We have a serious problem in America,” says Barbara Dyer, president of the Hitachi Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization. “Young people are graduating from high school without the skills really necessary to be employed in many of the positions that are available.”

    That is why businesses, school boards and busy parents are turning to after-school programs to help bridge the gap between an antiquated curriculum and the modern-day demands of the marketplace. The more than 4,000 hours a year children spend outside school presents fresh opportunities to develop essential skills for the new economy. Far from being glorified babysitting sessions, these programs can teach young participants real-world skills such as creativity, character development, problem solving and the ability to work on diverse teams.

    Congress has caught on to the educational benefits that can emerge outside regular school hours. Federal funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program has jumped from $40 million in 1998 to nearly $1 billion in 2004. In the meantime, businesses are ramping up their contributions to after-school initiatives. At a time when the government’s No Child Left Behind legislation is narrowing the scope of education to focus on reading, writing and arithmetic, Kay says, big business is broadening the definition of “teacher” to include professionals willing to serve as community mentors.

    To recognize just how after-school programs are preparing today’s students and tomorrow’s workforce is to understand how economic, educational and employment needs have evolved over the past few decades. Cash-strapped school districts and overcrowded classrooms are only part of the reason why countless young people are entering adulthood without the skills they need to work successfully. Richard Murnane, a Harvard professor of education and society, and Frank Levy, an M.I.T. professor of urban economics, offer an in-depth explanation in their new book, The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market. Murnane and Levy argue that computers are now carrying out tasks that were once performed by blue-collar workers. Long gone are the days when a hardworking high school graduate was practically guaranteed a day shift in a neighborhood factory. Computer technology such as automation software has displaced these workers, forcing them to find work outside the occupations they’ve historically inhabited. Murnane and Levy’s research shows that since 1969, there has been a nearly 10 percent decline in the need for routine manual labor and a 15 percent increase in the demand for complex communication skills.

    “Computers are increasingly doing the jobs that high school graduates used to do, which are the blue-collar assembly-line and clerical jobs,” Murnane says. “Consequently, it’s really changed the kinds of skills humans need to make a decent living.”

    But high school grads need not wind up working at dead-end service-sector jobs that rarely pay enough to support their families. Murnane and Levy say there is a way to prevent schools from churning out students without the qualifications necessary to obtain or move beyond a blue-collar job. The solution lies in teaching today’s youth 21st-century skills such as expert thinking and complex communication. Expert thinking entails being able to identify and solve new problems rather than simply perform routine tasks. Complex communication involves not only eliciting and absorbing information, but also conveying a particular interpretation of information to others. For example, a customer might complain of receiving inadequate service from your company. Rather than simply process this information, a worker with the appropriate 21st-century skills can interpret and weigh a customer’s needs in accordance with global events, economic circumstances, cultural differences and technological factors.

Computers are increasingly doing the jobs that high school graduates used to do, which are the blue-collar assembly-line and clerical jobs. Consequently, it’s really changed the kinds of skills humans need to make a decent living.

    Murnane and Levy aren’t alone in thinking that young adults need new skills to meet the changing needs of the workplace. Seventy percent of Americans believe that teens need to acquire skills beyond reading, writing and math to succeed in the workforce. And a study conducted by the AOL Time Warner Foundation found that 92 percent of the 1,000 adult American respondents think young people need different skills today than they did 10 years ago.

    The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is doing its part by actively promoting the adoption of new skill sets. The organization has defined a framework for the types of skills students require to succeed. Based on feedback from educators, researchers and employers across the country, this short list of qualifications includes effective communication, collaboration, problem-solving and analytical thinking.

    But it is knowing how to learn, not what to learn, that is the key to ongoing success in the modern-day workplace. Kay says technology is constantly changing the way that workers perform tasks and approach projects. As a result, today’s businesses want employees who are willing to become lifelong learners by continually updating their skills and knowledge. “The ability to adapt to change is just the reality of the 21st-century workforce,” Kay says.

    As schools across America continue to focus on the fundamentals of learning, after-school programs are fast becoming forums for students to develop and practice these new skills. High-quality programs offer small-group activities that can help young people develop important teamwork and leadership skills. Students interact with community mentors and learn about different fields of interest. And after-school sessions help students hone their math and literary skills by giving them the opportunity to apply their knowledge in hands-on activities.

    Eddie Locklear, national director of 4H After-School, a division of the National 4H Council, says that after-school programs serve as “a laboratory to allow young people to put into practice the skills they’re learning in school,” such as teamwork, leadership development and conflict resolution. The organization’s learn-by-doing curriculum ranges from teaching teens the basics of balancing a checkbook to discovering the science behind outdoor gardening.  

    If  businesses are hungry for better-qualified employment candidates, Eric Schwarz says, they had better start contributing their time and energy to after-school learning programs. Schwarz is president of Citizen Schools. For nearly nine years, the Boston-based organization has been advocating a learning model that addresses community needs while building student skills through hands-on after-school learning activities. The organization operates 10 after-school programs for more than 1,000 middle-school students in Boston and 11 additional affiliate programs across the country. Citizens Schools’ programs range from field trips to local institutions, neighborhoods and universities to focused homework assistance to strengthen a student’s academic performance.

    But it’s the organization’s hands-on apprenticeships, taught by community business leaders, that promise to have the greatest impact on future generations of the workforce. Schwarz says that business owners have spent far too many years playing “Monday morning quarterbacks and spectators in education reform.” Now is the time, he says, for them to step in where many parents simply don’t have the time, money or energy to participate in their children’s lives. “The after-school program can really play a parenting role by introducing kids to music, art and sports,” Schwarz says.

    Lawyers at the Boston-based law firm Hale and Dorr have been lending both their pocketbooks and expert services to Citizen Schools since its inception. In addition to providing the organization with a $75,000 annual grant, twice a year Hale and Dorr ushers eager middle-school students from the inner city into its plush offices to help them prepare for mock trials. During these trials, students deliver opening statements, cross-examine witnesses and argue their cases before real federal and superior court judges.

    John J. Regan, a senior partner at Hale and Dorr, says that the program serves the community and helps the firm in the future. “Big business that is smart [gets involved in after-school programs] because it constitutes an investment in their future workforce,” Regan says. “Today’s children are going to be your candidates for employment in 10 years or less.”

    IBM is banking on its after-school agenda. In addition to partnering with Citizen Schools, the computer hardware giant is a supporter of TutoringPlus, an organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that fosters the academic and personal growth of youth through one-on-one tutoring and mentoring programs staffed by volunteers. “We want to make sure that down the road, we are able to have an educated community from which to draw our employees and our customers,” says Cathleen Finn, an IBM community relations program manager.

    Dell’s recruiting efforts are off to an early start with Dell TechKnow, the computer giant’s own after-school learning program. Teens from inner-city school districts are selected to participate in a 40-hour course during which they disassemble and rebuild personal computers donated by Dell. Graduates of the program take home the computer they build and receive a year of free Internet access as well. More than 2,000 students have completed the course, 80 percent of them ethnic minorities.

    For every student enrolled in an after-school program, there is an office-bound mother or father breathing a sigh of relief. In fact, studies have shown that workday productivity starts to slow down around 3 p.m., just as kids begin pouring out of school doors and onto city streets.

    Donna Klein isn’t the least bit surprised by the strong correlation between after-school programs and workplace productivity. Klein is CEO of Corporate Voices for Working Families, a two-year-old nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of 47 companies that addresses policy makers and Congress on work/life issues. She says that dual-income families and long workdays are factors that have contributed to parents’ increased concern about their children’s after-school whereabouts. “If employees are worried about the safety of their children after school and concerned about whether or not they got home safely, that’s a tremendous draw-down on productivity,” Klein says.

    If providing peace of mind to parents isn’t enough to convince companies to help out, a strong business case can be made for after-school care as well. The National PTA reports that at least 7 million, and perhaps as many as 15 million, American children have nowhere to go after school. Because of this, they are at risk of both committing and becoming victims of crime. However, studies show that the nation’s taxpayers save approximately $3 for every dollar spent on after-school programs by reducing high-school dropout rates and cutting remedial-education costs.

    In the meantime, many companies continue to contend with the problem of poorly prepared job candidates. Kay says the fact that companies are being forced to invest in high-priced training courses and outsource jobs has served as a much-needed “clarion call.” Business leaders, teachers, parents and students are finally waking up to reality and recognizing the need for immediate action.

    “The most effective thing we can do,” Kay says, “is to make sure our students possess the skill sets that are going to make them as competitive as possible.”

Workforce Management, July 2004, pp. 37-40 — Subscribe Now!

F reddie Mac is all for making Americans feel at home. But when it comes to welcoming contingent workers into its busy offices, the Virginia-based home loan mortgage giant plays by the strictest of house rules.

    Currently, Freddie Mac relies on nearly 40 temporary-staffing agencies to fill positions ranging from data-entry clerk to senior accountant. In order to join this roster, however, an agency must contractually commit to subjecting each temporary worker placed within Freddie Mac to a rigorous background check. Not only must these checks be performed by American Background Information Services, Freddie Mac’s consumer-reporting agency of choice, but temporary-staffing agencies must foot the bill for the added service as well.

“It’s the cost of doing business with us,” says Patrick Matus, Freddie Mac’s manager of contingent-workforce contracting. Matus makes no apologies for his employer’s non-negotiable approach to vetting temporary workers. With nearly 2,400 contingent employees working for Freddie Mac at any given time, Matus says, the company simply can’t afford to take unnecessary security risks.

It’s a common refrain among businesses today. Never before has corporate America been so vulnerable to the machinations of ill-intentioned temps. For years, companies invested heavily in the screening of full-time employees to ensure workplace safety and business productivity. Temporary workers, on the other hand, were often regarded as fly-by-night helpers, employees who simply didn’t stick around long enough to warrant in-depth investigation. All that has changed.

Easy-to-access computer systems, and the proprietary information stored on them, have expanded the opportunities for a temp to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting company. Corporate governance has placed enormous pressure on businesses to hold employees–temporary and permanent–to the highest of ethical standards. In the meantime, outsourcing has broadened the very definition of temp to include a range of jobs from a mailroom clerk to a call-center manager situated overseas. But all it takes is one unlawful temp to expose a company to legal liabilities, financial ruin and criminal complicity.

“It’s only been in the past couple of years that companies have woken up and said, ‘We’re very diligent about our own employees, but 40 percent of the people that are on our facilities are [temporary workers]. What am I doing about that?’ ” says Chris Andrews, chief executive officer of American Background.

Temporary-staffing agencies have been quick to offer an answer. Many are willing to retain the services of a consumer-reporting agency on behalf of their clients. At fees ranging from $20 to $200 per name, these agencies sift through courthouse documents for criminal records, examine workers’ employment history, verify education claims, conduct in-depth reference checks, retrieve driving records and obtain credit histories. In turn, companies can conveniently access this information via the Internet from their desktop computers.

Bill Zavatchin, Manpower’s director of business process design, says that requests for background checks on temporary workers have increased more than 20 percent since September 11, 2001. The Wisconsin-based temporary-staffing agency works with a variety of companies that provide employee-screening services, including those specifically requested by its clients. Whether or not Manpower foots the bill for the added service is negotiated on a per-client basis.

Although it is currently one of the most popular approaches to vetting temporary workers, employee screening is far from being a panacea. Background checks can reduce a company’s exposure to risk but can also come at a cost to productivity. Creating a paper trail that details a worker’s employment, criminal and geographical history can be a lengthy procedure for even the most seasoned gumshoes. In fact, the employee-screening process can take as long as five business days, a veritable lifetime for a company in desperate need of temporary help. “The challenge is getting [the background check] completed quickly because…it’s otherwise preventing someone from actually being on the job,” Zavatchin says.

The high price of decent detective work is also dissuading temporary-staffing agencies from making background checks routine. According to Edward Lenz, general counsel for the American Staffing Association, the staffing industry assigns upwards of 10 million employees each year. Screening each applicant on behalf of clients could “conceivably add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of providing staffing services,” Lenz says.

“It’s only been in the past couple of years that companies have woken up and said, ‘We’re very diligent about our own employees, but 40 percent of the people that are on our facilities are [temporary workers]. What am I doing about that?’ “

Nor are there any guarantees that a background check will cover all the necessary bases. Currently, there is no national repository for criminal records in America. As a result, many consumer-reporting agencies rely on researchers known as runners to track down public records at various locations across the country where a temporary worker has lived. This patchwork of information, gathered from various states and culled from correctional databases and sex-offender registries, is all too often riddled with false negatives and dangerous omissions.

The “Byzantine structure of court records,” as Andrews of American Background describes it, is only part of the problem facing companies that wish to thoroughly vet their temporary workers. Andrews adds that businesses must also contend with “an incredibly confusing tapestry of regulatory burdens,” as well as restrictions regarding what types of information they can gather and how they may use this information. The Fair Credit Reporting Act, for example, requires that subjects give their permission for a background check and receive copies of any records used in employment decisions. The flip side is that performing a background check can expose a company to allegations of discrimination, especially if it then declines to hire a job applicant because of information gathered via the employee-screening process.

To circumvent this legal land mine, many companies are turning to online outfits such as InstantPeopleCheck.com to vet their temporary workers. There are more than 450 companies currently offering background checks on the Internet. But promises of delivering background reports at record speed and with unparalleled accuracy often fall flat.

It’s a problem familiar to Shawn Bushway, a criminologist at the University of Maryland. As part of his research, Bushway recently gathered the criminal records of 120 current parolees in Virginia and submitted their names to an online employee-screening company. Sixty-four of the names came back displaying no criminal record at all.

There will always be temporary workers who slip through the cracks of poorly executed background checks. But companies need not be easy prey, especially when it comes to protecting their computer systems. Sean Martin recognizes the importance of proactively safeguarding one’s proprietary data and intellectual property from today’s tech-savvy temps. Martin, a senior consultant with Deloitte and Touche’s human capital advisory services practice, says that companies should start asking themselves, “How valuable is my data and what steps am I going to take to protect it?” After all, Deloitte’s 2003 Global Security Survey reports that nearly 40 percent of respondents had experienced a security breach during the previous year.

Martin recommends creating an individual profile for each temp who is granted access to a company’s computer system. This profile should include details on an individual’s overall access to a system, what user names and passwords he/she has been assigned, and what controls are in place if the need arises to swiftly terminate access. What’s more, a company’s information technology department should maintain detailed audit logs of network activity so that peculiar behavior can be flagged immediately.

Gathering all the necessary information on a temporary worker, however, calls for enormous cooperation between a company’s human resources and IT security departments, a relationship that has long been plagued by “opposing cultures” and an unwillingness to work collaboratively, says Vince Pascarella, general counsel at HRPLUS, a Colorado-based provider of background reports. “HR is sort of the warm and fuzzy feel-good department. But the security department tends to be more law enforcement and rules oriented,” says Pascarella, accounting for the rift that often exists between these two departments.

These barriers must be overcome, however, if a company wishes to safeguard its computer systems. Holding monthly meetings, exchanging information on computer-network vulnerabilities and sharing knowledge of a temporary worker’s access to a computer system can help forge a united front.

The simplest route to mitigated risk, however, doesn’t involve meticulously combing through court documents or keeping tabs on mission-critical computer systems. Instead, the age-old practice of soliciting feedback is sometimes all that is required to assess the suitability and safety of a temporary worker. Companies must be willing to provide temporary-staffing agencies with feedback on a worker’s performance and behavior. In turn, agencies should maintain detailed records of client feedback and ensure that these documents are readily available to their clients.

Detailed background checks, computer-security measures and relationship-building exercises might seem drastic given that the majority of today’s temporary workers complete their assignments without incident. But according to Monica Barron, who recently left her position as research director at AMR Research, the risk of property and identity theft have raised the stakes. “I don’t think you can be too careful about really knowing who’s coming onto your facilities and what they are doing,” she says.

Workforce Management, June 2004, pp. 84-87 — Subscribe Now!

Nearly five years ago, Lorraine Ramos was hired to work as a housekeeper at the Colorado Central Station Casino. At the time, her husband, Jorge Flores, worked the night shift at the 50,000-square-foot gaming establishment nestled in the small town of Black Hawk. But what began as a convenient work arrangement ended in anger, humiliation and a million-dollar legal settlement.

    Shortly after Ramos was hired, the casino’s human resources director ordered the housekeeping manager and supervisors to enforce a blanket English-only language policy in the predominantly Spanish-speaking housekeeping department. Any housekeeping employees who uttered so much as a word in Spanish were to be given a written warning or fired outright.

    The new rule posed problems for Ramos and her monolingual, Spanish-speaking husband. “Just to say good-bye, either my husband would have to follow me outside or we’d have to speak in the housekeeping closet, which was crazy,” Ramos recalls. “We were afraid that if they caught us even saying ‘adios,’ we’d get in trouble.”

    Matters worsened. Senior-level managers and non-Hispanic casino employees soon began shouting “English, English” at the Hispanic employees when encountering them in the halls. Humiliated and verbally harassed, a group of Spanish-speaking housekeepers at the casino, including Ramos and Flores, took their plight to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC filed a class-action suit on behalf of the casino’s angry housekeepers in March of 2001. Six months ago, the Colorado Central Station Casino was ordered to pay $1.5 million for subjecting its employees to unlawful English-only rules.

    The judgment was heralded as a victory for foreign-language-speaking workers everywhere. But it also underscored how today’s controversial English-only policies are dividing America’s ethnically diverse workforces into warring factions. Last year, the EEOC received 228 charges challenging English-only policies in the workplace. Ernest Haffner, an attorney adviser to the EEOC, expects that number to grow as more languages are spoken in the workplace. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the number of Americans who speak English poorly or not at all has increased 65 percent since 1990 as immigration rates rise.

    But while hefty settlements might slow the spread of English-only policies and prevent discriminatory workplace practices, many argue that these rules also serve to unite and protect people of different origins. Mauro E. Mujica is CEO of U.S. English, a citizens’ action group with 1.7 million members whose lobbying efforts include petitioning the U.S. government to make English the official language of the United States. An immigrant himself, Mujica believes that English-only policies “encourage communication and prevent people from being suspicious of other people speaking another language.”

    Even the EEOC makes allowances for English-only policies under certain circumstances. According to agency guidelines, requiring employees to speak English can conflict with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on national origin. The EEOC is the federal agency responsible for enforcing Title VII. However, the agency’s guidelines also state that English-only rules are permissible when: a) speaking a common language is imperative for safety, and b) it’s a matter of business necessity, for example, if a person’s lack of English skills would have a detrimental effect on job performance.

“There’s a certain utility in not having to remember in what language to yell, ‘Look out!’ “

    English-only policies for the sake of safety are common sense, says Jim Boulet, executive director of English First, an organization whose 150,000 members lobby for a broad range of issues on English language policy. “There’s a certain utility in not having to remember in what language to yell, ‘Look out!’ ” Boulet says. He adds that speaking a common language such as English should be made a top priority in dangerous work environments.

    Mike Hansen, a supply utility worker for the Military Sealift Command, a branch of the U.S. Navy, agrees with Boulet. The MSC operates the cargo ships that supply Navy ships around the world with food, fuel, equipment, ammunition and medical supplies. Hansen, who works with his wife, Karen, oversees the storage and delivery of the Navy’s ammunition. It’s a dangerous job that calls for enormous attention to detail and clear communication, and he strongly believes that safety levels are constantly being compromised by his non-English-speaking crewmates. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t have an issue with the language barrier,” laments Hansen, who estimates that 75 percent of the ship’s workforce originate from the Philippines and are Tagalog speakers.

    Weekly fire drills are complicated by confused crewmates who don’t know how to respond to supervisors’ commands. And many shipmates fail to understand instructions while performing significant tasks such as working on deck, loading heavy equipment, maintaining the ship’s engine-room machinery and handling satellite communications. Hansen says that although he and his wife have voiced their concerns to the ship’s superiors, their complaints aren’t taken seriously. “Most reply comments usually end up with ‘This is the way it is’ or ‘If you don’t like it’ or ‘There is nothing you can do about it,’ ” Hansen says.

    In one well-publicized case, Richard Kidman, owner of R.D. Drive-In, a burger joint in Page, Arizona, displayed a sign warning his employees not to speak the Navajo language after female workers accused male coworkers of sexually harassing them in Navajo. Workers complained and the EEOC investigated. Kidman was slapped with a lawsuit. The case is scheduled to go to trial next year.

“What is an employer supposed to do? He’s liable if the employees insult the other employees. He’s also now liable if he takes steps to prevent that. It’s darned if you do and darned if you don’t.”

“What is an employer supposed to do?” Boulet asks. “He’s liable if the employees insult the other employees. He’s also now liable if he takes steps to prevent that. It’s darned if you do and darned if you don’t.”

    Selena Solis has little sympathy for the plight of employers caught in what Boulet describes as a catch-22. Solis is a public defender in Texas and a former attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She served as co-counsel in the Colorado Central Station Casino case with the EEOC. She says that English-only policies shouldn’t be used to monitor harassment in the workplace. Instead, offending parties should be fired or brought to the attention of legal authorities. Nor does she agree with using “business necessity” as a defense for establishing an English-only policy in the workplace. Although the EEOC’s guidelines state that English-only rules can be enforced for business justifications such as “supervision or effective communication with customers,” Solis points out that a large percentage of non-English speakers work at menial jobs and aren’t communicating with customers.

    “Where we have been seeing these English-only policies take shape is in low, unskilled low-wage work environments on the assembly lines, among janitors, among housekeepers,” Solis says. “It’s just hard to accept the argument that there’s a business justification for that.” She points out that non-English-speaking immigrants are a perfect target for employers that wish to discriminate using English-only policies. These employees are often poor and unaware of their rights, and are more likely to suffer in silence than to express their views, for fear of losing their jobs.

    Employers interested in implementing an English-only policy would also be wise to know their rights as business owners. Peter Miscovich, a principal partner at Saratoga Institute, a human capital management firm, says there are steps that business owners can take to avoid future litigation. He suggests that employers document any and all language policies from the very beginning in clear and concise terms. In the event of litigation, business owners must be prepared to support an English-only policy by demonstrating that specific circumstances in the workplace necessitated the decision and that alternative resolutions were explored and exhausted. Employers also should communicate to employees the consequences of breaking the rule in no uncertain terms, and clearly specify whether there are exceptions during lunch and breaks.

    “Trouble arises when you have made arbitrary decisions that aren’t properly validated and allow for the risk of litigation,” Miscovich says. “That can be avoided with clear communication and documentation.” Despite the best-laid plans, the controversy surrounding English-only policies shows no sign of disappearing. With non-English speakers making up a growing component of America’s workforce–2.3 million new immigrant workers since 2000–there will be increased room for acts of discrimination, personal humiliation, safety hazards and business risks. It’s a reality that employees and employers alike must learn to accept.

    As Solis says, “Employees are becoming extremely translingual, and that’s a new form of the workforce whether employers like it or not.”

Workforce Management, January 2004, pp. 57-59 — Subscribe Now!

Linda Zumstein still remembers the anger on a former client’s face. As branch manager of a staffing agency, Zumstein had been asked to fill an order for five temporary workers. The job entailed little more than photocopying legal documents for a local company. But what began as an easy enough assignment ended in absolute disaster. “Every day I walked in there, the client was in my face screaming,” Zumstein recalls. “It was getting worse by the minute.”

    What went so horribly wrong? Zumstein says that she made the honest mistake of providing her client with contingent workers who simply couldn’t do the job. That was 20 years ago. Now she runs her own training and testing firm, L. Zumstein & Company, but the effects of the mismatch long ago still reverberate.

    “We were kicked out, and I could never get back into that client’s company,” Zumstein says. “None of my sales reps could ever get past the lobby. It was awful.”

    To this day, she doubts that her former employer has been able to win back that company’s business, and the experience taught her this: No organization can afford to take any chances on the quality of its contingent workforce. The right temps can help increase revenues, whittle down labor costs, enhance productivity and improve employee morale. Failure to match a candidate’s qualifications with a position’s demands, however, can result in ruin.

    Marc Pramuk, program manager for human resources management and staffing services at IDC, says, “Depending on their role, temps can touch a lot of things that really impact a company’s brand, reputation in the marketplace and customer experiences.” Poorly trained customer-support representatives can chase consumers into the arms of competitors. Temps who don’t quite fit in with a company’s corporate culture can anger and frustrate full-time employees. And disgruntled temps can lead to high turnover rates.

    Laura Sarna, president of Dallas Training and Consulting Services Inc., says that a high turnover of temps necessitates the constant training and initiating of new temps, all of which can result in a long-term drain on productivity.

Good temps save big bucks 
    Despite the problems inherent in hiring temps, the demand for contingent workers shows no sign of waning. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, 122,000 new temporary jobs have been created since April. There were 42,000 new temp jobs in July alone. Using the year 2000 as a benchmark, the agency predicts that the contingent workforce will double by 2010, compared to a 15 percent increase in full-time workers during the same decade. Yet questions remain about how to get the most out of contingent workers. Who should be responsible for ensuring that a temp is really right for the position? Is it the staffing agency or a hiring manager? How can you quantify the impact of using temps?

    Julie Sorci has some answers. Sorci, manager of staffing at MidAmerican Energy Holdings, says the Iowa-based company made every mistake in the book when it came to finding suitable candidates for its call center. An antiquated pen-and-paper test was used to assess most temporary workers. For every 15 hires, 40 candidates were tested at an administrative cost of $150 each, a total of $6,000. The company’s hiring managers relied on as many as 25 different staffing agencies, thereby failing to ensure consistency in quality-of-hire and hourly wages. And temps that were fed up with MidAmerican Energy’s disorganized recruitment process accounted for a turnover rate of 25 percent.

    “It was a nightmare,” Sorci recalls. The situation markedly improved when MidAmerican Energy teamed up with Manpower Inc. in 1998. Today, Manpower administers a series of tests to assess a candidate’s skills in areas such as typing, customer service and problem solving. The staffing agency then issues a report outlining each candidate’s job suitability according to standards set by MidAmerican Energy itself. The process has enabled the company to dramatically reduce its turnover rate from 25 to 7 percent.

“There are many organizations out there that are great at filling the job quickly, but they’re just getting a warm body in the chair for you. They’re great at time-to-fill but poor on getting the right fit.”

    “The turnover rate is critical,” Sorci says. “There are many organizations out there that are great at filling the job quickly, but they’re just getting a warm body in the chair for you. They’re great at time-to-fill but poor on getting the right fit.” Manpower not only promises Mid-American Energy a good match, but it also pays for pre-employment testing. This partnership has resulted in huge cost savings. Sorci estimates that for every 15 temps Manpower places, the company saves $6,000 in testing, $29,000 in such costs as Social Security and benefits, $1,200 in in-house recruiting costs such as having to pay administrators to sift through résumés, and $4,000 in advertising expenses–a total savings of $40,200.

    Finding the right fit for a temporary position requires looking beyond technical prowess, says Julie Ward, branch manager of Abigail Abbott in Santa Ana, California. She says that it’s a staffing agency’s responsibility to select candidates who not only have the necessary technical skills but also can mesh with a client’s corporate culture. Abigail Abbott accomplishes this by hiring customer-service representatives whose sole responsibility is to visit clients once a month. These customer-service representatives assess temporary workers’ productivity, meet with supervisors and human resources administrators, and familiarize themselves with the company’s corporate environment.

    “Having our staff supervisors filling orders out there, working with a customer one-on-one, allows us to make a better match,” Ward says. “Having clients trying to communicate their corporate culture over the phone is difficult.”

Determining intentions
    Assessing corporate culture is only one part of the puzzle when searching for suitable temps. Stan Redman, senior human resources manager at American Suzuki, says that it’s important to ascertain a temporary worker’s long-term employment goals. For example, is a temp willing to maintain a flexible work arrangement or does he view a part-time assignment as a possible bridge to full-time employment?

    Given American Suzuki’s seasonal business model, it’s easy to understand why temporary workers’ intentions are important to Redman. His company has long relied on Abigail Abbott to find temporary workers for its call center. Suzuki specializes in the sale of motorcycles, and its call-center demands are strictly seasonal. Because of these temporal constraints, Redman says, it’s not uncommon for call-center workers to seek full-time, year-round employment within the company. It’s a never-ending source of frustration for Suzuki’s call-center manager, who provides temps with 30 days of intense training and then often finds himself back at the drawing board as temporary workers make their way onto the company payroll.

    So how can a recruiter learn what a temp’s intentions are? There is no easy answer, Redman says. But he will say that hiring managers, staffing agencies and contingent workers must all learn to be as precise as possible when communicating temporary workers’ long-term goals, companies’ expectations and skills requirements. Melanie Holmes, senior vice president of assessment and development at Manpower, agrees that communication is integral to the matchmaking process. She says that companies play a significant role in the placement of temporary workers. Finding the perfect fit means that they must provide a staffing agency with sufficient information about a particular job.

    “One of the challenges we have is getting customers to take enough time to really give us detailed job descriptions and information about the work the temporary employee is going to do,” Holmes says. “If a customer doesn’t give us that information, it’s very difficult for us to make a good match.”

    Finding the right candidate often entails partnering with the right staffing agency. Denny Clark, senior vice president and director of recruiting solutions at Wachovia Corporation, recalls a time when the financial services company relied on literally hundreds of vendors for its contingent workers. “We had so many vendors who were out there doing business with us, we couldn’t get our arms around what they were charging us and what kind of quality they were bringing to us,” Clark says. Desperate to whittle down the company’s roster of vendors and to gain control of costs, Clark turned to White Amber’s workforce-management software.

    This Web-based tool enables companies to streamline their staffing-agency process, from gathering bids to negotiating prices. By providing increased visibility into the procurement process, it helps companies identify those staffing agencies that provide the best workers. White Amber’s customers typically save 12 to 20 percent annually by ensuring that each position is filled with the right person at the most cost-effective rate.

    Since implementing the software last year, Wachovia has seen significant benefits, including cost savings, reduced turnover rates and higher-caliber contingent workers. The company now depends on about half the vendors it once used for its nearly 7,000 temps and has greatly simplified its staffing-agency sourcing process.

    There are those, however, who argue that technology cannot measure up to a long-nurtured relationship between a staffing agency and its clients. “We’re not trying to replace the human element,” says Michael Cruz, executive vice president, client services, at White Amber. Technology cannot determine a great cultural fit, Clark adds. “What it does do, though, is give you the ability to take the data that you’re gathering about performance and analyze that data so that you can then assess the companies that are giving you great talent.”

Workforce Management, October 2003, pp. 49-51 — Subscribe Now!