Author: Garry Kranz

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The Color of Richard Bolles’ ‘Parachute’? Golden

When Crown Publishing approached Richard Bolles in 1972 about publishing his book, “What Color Is Your Parachute?” Bolles
half-jokingly said his book would be a best-seller one day. Having sold more than 10 million copies, his prognostication was spot on.
Photo by Gregory Cowley

Richard Bolles never intended to be the guru of career guidance.

Before authoring what is widely considered the definitive how-to manual on job hunting — “What Color Is Your Parachute?” which has sold more than 10 million copies since 1972, been translated into 20 languages and saw its 43rd edition issued last August — Bolles was an Episcopal minister in New Jersey known for delivering his Sunday sermons verbatim.

All that sermon-writing would pay off big time when Bolles unwittingly found his true calling several years later. In 1966, Bolles was 42 years old and riding high, having landed a plum assignment as canon pastor at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Less than two years later, however, Bolles was abruptly fired in the midst of a budget crunch. Getting sacked turned out to be a blessing in disguise, clearing his path to become one of the world’s foremost evangelists for career change and alternative job-hunting strategies.

Bolles subsequently turned down a chance to pastoranother church, instead taking a job with the Episcopal Church as roving ambassador to counsel Protestant ministers residing on college campuses in nine Western states. The job required extensive travel, another blessing, Bolles said,because it proved instrumental in the birth of “Parachute.”

Despite emerging in the post-Watergate twilight of the anti-Vietnam War era, career experts say “Parachute” remains as relevant as when it first appeared.

“Maybe even more so, considering the structural changes in how work is organized today and the fact many people have a portfolio of multiple careers,” said Rich Feller, a professor of counseling and career development to master’s and Ph.D. graduate students at Colorado State University.

'Some people are very, very aware of how to use alternate ways of doing a job search, while others are still doing exactly what was done 40 or 50 years ago.'

—Richard Bolle, author of 'What Color Is Your Parachute?'

Feller, a past president of the National Career Development Association, added the book has “nudged the field to stay current every year, not only on how to do a job search but also the notion that career development is a lifelong experience. Dick has provided the framework for us to help people transfer their skills to new possibilities.”

“Parachute” has won accolades for its impact on the world of work. The Library of Congress’s Center for the Book names it one of 25 books that have shaped readers’ lives, a list that includes such literary classics as Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and “The Diary of Anne Frank.” The U.S. Labor Department includes “Parachute” among books that shaped work in America since 1758, a collection that includes Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” and John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” Time magazine ranks “Parachute” 22nd on its list of the top 100 most influential nonfiction books.

An Inadvertent Author

But Bolles did not set out to write the book. The idea evolved gradually as he visited with on-campus ministers in his capacity as a roving shepherd. Many of the ministers he counseled also had been fired from pastoral positions and forced to accept the campus jobs — akin to a military general being relegated to a far outpost, away from the action and with little chance of advancement.

“As I talked with them, I realized many were suffering from the same problem. I probably wouldn’t have been as sensitive to it, if it hadn’t already happened to me,” said Bolles, now 87, during a recent interview with Workforce.

Frustrated, most of the ministers wanted to move into professions outside of the church, but with young families to support, returning to college to train for a second career was not a practical option. They also didn’t have much practice pursuing jobs outside of their divinity training.

“They all knew about my situation, so they asked, ‘How do I go about looking for work in secular fields?’ I didn’t know the answer, but I had a handsome travel budget and decided to research it and find out,” Bolles said.

Thus began the initial legwork that would culminate in Bolles’ iconic tome. He spent the next year crisscrossing the country, logging an estimated 70,000 miles to interview academics, business leaders, guidance counselors, hiring managers, recruiters and others on how to change careers without returning to college. “I asked anyone and everyone I thought might know,” he said.

Among the scores of people Bolles peppered with career-related questions, two Washington, D.C.-area thought leaders were most influential: Richard Lathrop, the author of “Who’s Hiring Who” — a career guide first targeted at exiting military personnel — and John Crystal, a career planner who helped popularize the idea that career development is an individual’s responsibility, not an employer’s.

Bolles spent four months interviewing Lathrop and Crystal. Both men, who have since died, became close friends with Bolles, who credits them with providing the foundation for his work on “Parachute.” (Crystal and Bolles co-authored “Where Do I Go From Here With My Life?” in 1974. The 2015 edition of “Parachute” uses one of Lathrop’s refrains as an epigram: “He or she who gets hired is not necessarily the one who can do the job best; but, the one who knows the most about how to get hired.”)

Lathrop and Crystal “didn’t think in big umbrella terms or broad strokes, such as moving from being a mechanic to being an executive consultant. They broke down capabilities into three types: skills, basic knowledge and knowing the types of people you most like to work with or to serve,” Bolles said.

Staying Relevant

Although commonly accepted now, those ideas broke new ground in the tumultuous Zeitgeist of the 1970s. Bolles eventually summarized those and other findings and self-published “Parachute,” which debuted Dec. 1, 1970. The title stems from an off-the-cuff remark he made years before during a ministerial counseling session. A minister stood up to lament the fact that he and his peers were being forced by circumstances “to bail out” of the profession, prompting Bolles to ask the rhetorical question that would yield a best-selling title.

The inaugural 115-page booklet was aimed squarely at ministers and professional counselors. Not long after its release though, Bolles started to receive requests from unexpected sources, including General Electric Co., the Pentagon, the U.S. State Department and UCLA. He expected administrators and counselors to benefit from the book, but was “astonished to be getting orders from so many other quarters. That’s when I started to realize there was a wider appetite for the book.”

Other people took notice, too. Bolles published two editions of “Parachute” on his own before Ten Speed Press (now part of The Crown Publishing Group) approached him in April 1972 with an offer to publish and distribute it commercially. Half-jokingly, Bolles told his publisher the modest little volume one day would be a best-seller. The publisher’s wry response? “He said, ‘Yeah, sure it will,’ ” Bolles recalled with a chuckle.

But Bolles proved prophetic. By 1978, the book had earned its place in the catalog of career literature. By that time, many college and university professors added “Parachute” as required reading for business students, including Colorado State University’s Feller, who said he’s used it in every course he’s taught for more than three decades.

The book has expanded from its booklet size, with the 2015 version checking in at 368 pages.

Illustrative of how Bolles keeps his content fresh and relevant, consider this excerpt on how résumés have evolved since the first commercial printing of “Parachute.” A hieratic, paper-based résumé once was the accepted standard for getting the attention of hiring managers. Although paper résumés remain valuable, the rise of the Internet and social media has upped the stakes for job seekers:

On that paper was a summary of where you had been and all you had done in the past. From that piece of paper, the employer was supposed to guess what kind of person you are in the present and what kind of employee you’d be in the future. The good thing about this — from your point of view — was that you had absolute control over what went on that piece of paper. You could omit anything that was embarrassing, or anything from your past that you have long since regretted.

Short of their hiring a private detective, or talking to your previous employers, a prospective employer couldn’t find out much else about you. That was nice. But now those days are gone forever. Since 2008, and even before, there’s been a new résumé in town, and it’s called Google. (Bolles, “Parachute”)

Despite the seismic workplace shifts spawned by globalization and technology, Bolles said people’s habits can be slow to change.

“Some people still think about job titles. Others think the only training you need for job hunting or career change is to know how to write a decent résumé or conduct a decent interview. Some people are very, very aware of how to use alternate ways of doing a job search, while others are still doing exactly what was done 40 or 50 years ago,” Bolles said.

So do the skills career-minded people need today differ vastly from when Bolles first tackled the topic? The answer: yes and no. He breaks skills into three categories, first outlined by Sidney Fine in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles: 1. Transferable skills for managing data, people or things; 2. Character traits; and 3. Various types of specialized knowledge.

“The kinds of skills that change are the knowledge skills. The have to be updated endlessly and continuously to keep pace with the discovery of new technologies. People can acquire traits, such as learning, to be persistent. The transferable skills tend to be immutable — they are things you innately know how to do, and those skills don’t change,” Bolles said.

Feller said “Parachute” will continue to have broad applicability as people seek to find meaning beyond having a vocation. “The only stability people have is being able to look at their skill set and ask: ‘Where can I transfer them?’ And Dick has kept his finger on that pulse for 42 years.”

Garry Kranz is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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MOOCs: the Next Evolution in E-Learning?

tuition reimbursement

Robert Hall doesn’t consider himself an expert on massive open online courses, otherwise known as MOOCs. But after creating learning content through MOOC vendor Udemy, Hall is the go-to guy at Marek Bros., a Houston-based construction company.

Hall, a project manager by trade, used Udemy’s open-source software to develop instructional videos about new processes for managing construction-related bidding data. Frustrated by the inefficient way data were managed, Hall took it upon himself to find a better way. He created 15 videos, each between two and four minutes in duration, that show which formulas and protocols to follow when employees record various information on spreadsheets.

Hall’s co-workers frequently call on him to explain the various new rules. Rather than address each individual inquiry, Hall refers them to the corresponding training content. “If they have a question about a certain process, I’ll advise them to watch my five-minute lecture on that topic. It gives them a good refresher and they can see it as often as they want at their convenience.”

Marek Bros., a company with 2,000 employees and offices in Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas, is emblematic of the small steps companies are taking with MOOCs, a technology that enables anyone with a computer and Internet access to create and consume learning content.

Industry observers believe MOOCs will follow an adoption path similar to that of e-learning, which likewise germinated within universities before being embraced by corporations.

 

Use of MOOCs has been confined mostly to academia, although momentum is slowly building among corporations. In January, Seattle-based Intrepid Learning Solutions launched its branded Agile Corporate MOOC, becoming the first vendor to squarely target the corporate market.

Udemy’s platform provides access to several hundred pre-designed modules, ranging from courses in Microsoft Corp.’s productivity software to management courses from The Jack Welch Management Institute. Organizations can use Udemy’s platform to create customized courses for free, or pay a subscription fee that grants access to branded programs and expanded services.

“We’re a little bit different from academic MOOCs because of our emphasis on skills-based content,” said Dennis Yang, president and CEO of San Francisco-based Udemy.

Here’s how a MOOC typically works: Hundreds or even thousands of students enroll in self-paced digital courses of study, which typically include virtual “lectures,” completing online graded exercises and extensive participation in collaborative online forums.

Industry observers believe MOOCs will follow an adoption path similar to that of e-learning, which likewise germinated within universities before being embraced by corporations.

“There could be a huge demand for MOOCs as the corporate content market gets consolidated. If companies are able to get low-cost to free learning content through a MOOC, they’ll be interested,” said Josh Bersin, president of research firm Bersin by Deloitte.

Hall doesn’t speculate on when MOOCs might go mainstream. His focus is on the videos that should enable Marek Bros. to boost its bottom line. “It gives us a better idea of what our market share is and what it should be, which helps us change behavior to improve results,” Hall said.

Which is what learning is all about.

Garry Kranz is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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Why Yale Had to Learn to Share

Yale University embraced shared services out of necessity.

The Ivy League school of 5,500 students in New Haven, Connecticut, has moved most administrative human resources tasks to a newly created unit, known as Yale Shared Services. Paring costs is critical at Yale, whose endowment was hit hard during the U.S. recession. Yale launched its shared services center in 2010 by consolidating similar HR functions of three different departments: information technology, the provost office, and science and engineering.

The 75-employee division has expanded its scope to manage common business transactions for many of Yale’s academic and other departments. Tasks handled by Yale Shared Services include payroll, accounts payable, vendor compliance, expense and financial management, and credit card reconciliation. “Our goal is to keep administrative costs for departments as low as possible so they can redirect resources to the university’s mission: teaching and research,” said Ronn Kolbash, the assistant vice president of Yale Shared Services.

Yale is a recent example of how organizations are migrating to a shared-services approach, enabling low-value tactical tasks to be separated from higher-value strategic functions. Mounting global business pressures are prompting more organizations to explore the idea. More than 1 in 3 respondents (36 percent) plan to adopt shared services for at least part of their HR function by the end of 2014, according to a survey of 1,025 global organizations by Towers Watson & Co.  

Yale’s shared-services unit includes all employees from the consolidated departments. Still, Kolbash acknowledges there was some “pushback” initially from employees, some of whom imagined the worst.

“We realized pretty early on that moving to a shared-services model requires strong change management,” Kolbash said. “Once people realized they were still going to have a job after the move, it made the transition a lot easier.”

HR’s Share of Responsibility
Kevin Martin, chief research and marketing officer at the Seattle-based Institute for Corporate Productivity Inc., or i4cp, talked to Workforce about how a shared-services model could enable human resources to provide strategic business advice.

Workforce: I4cp’s 2012 HR Trends notes how ‘HR professionals need to think and act as performance advisors to the business.’ How does a shared-services strategy help HR to fulfill this consultative role?
Kevin Martin: Effective HR business partners couple financial and business acumen with a burning curiosity to uncover and address the obstacles that threaten to impede organizational performance. This enables them to develop and enable the line-of-business leaders to be more effective managers of talent, which has a direct impact on market performance. Shifting administrative and tactical tasks enables HR business partners to focus on more impactful initiatives, such as providing insights on talent gaps for critical roles as well as attrition risk among high-potential candidates.

WF: Explain the distinction between outsourcing, self-service and shared services. How are they similar? How can organizations understand the difference?
Martin: These are all means to deliver HR services as well as deliver benefits to the business. Organizations should assess which model best fits their business strategy, culture and operating model. Outsourcing and shared services certainly can coexist as part of an HR service delivery strategy, but one is typically not an enabler of the other.

On the other hand, employee and manager self-service is increasingly a component of a shared-services model, in which both parties have direct access to information, data or programs without being required to first go through an intermediary. For example, a company may use shared services for benefits administration to consolidate and standardize processes, deliver cost savings, and create greater consistency in how benefits policies and programs are administered. This would free up HR to apply its time to other activities.

WF: What about the best metrics to use with respect to these shared-services functions? Should they be focused on cost primarily? Customer service scores (with internal surveys to measure it)? Both?
Martin: Both. Cost management, cost containment is key, but the savings can be wiped out if employees are disengaged due to a poor experience with service delivery. That can have a much larger negative impact than any potential savings. Some metrics to consider include: adherence to service-level agreements; the percentage of employees satisfied with HR service delivery; the number of HR transactions handled; time to resolution for HR service inquiries; cost effectiveness of HR service delivery; and cost avoidance.

—Garry Kranz

Yale isn’t out of the woods yet. In November, school administrators announced that an unspecified number of administrative jobs are likely to be eliminated sometime after 2015 in an effort to cope with a $39 million budget deficit, according to a report published in the Yale Daily News. That’s on top of about 250 jobs slashed in the immediate aftermath of the recession.

Misfires Hinder Adoption
Developing a shared service for the purpose of saving money alone results in lots of disruption, stress and lack of local control, said Josh Bersin, president and CEO of Bersin by Deloitte, an Oakland, California-based consulting company.

“You have to be careful to rationalize the transactional things first — and make sure that your shared-services team has a strong culture of customer support and service, not just low-cost transaction processing,” Bersin said.

Yale isn’t alone among U.S. universities adopting a framework for shared services. The University of Michigan last year announced an ambitious plan to deliver a select number of finance and human-services activities through an on-campus shared-services center.

“The aim is modernize university business processes, reorganize delivery structures and use technology to improve service to students, faculty and staff through the shared-services model,” Rowan Miranda, the associate vice president for finance and formerly the program’s architect, told Workforce last October.

But Michigan’s program, originally slated to launch in 2014, remains in flux. In December, following a firestorm of protest from faculty, Miranda was replaced. The university also had to alter its projected annual savings from $17 million to between $5 million and $6 million. University of Michigan officials did not respond to requests for follow-up interviews.

The fallout at Michigan illustrates what can happen when the process isn’t carefully managed.

Organizations will encounter resistance if they don’t solicit input from the people most affected by the upheaval, said Kevin Oakes, CEO at the Institute for Corporate Productivity Inc., or i4cp, which is based in Seattle. 

'Our research shows that getting middle managers involved in the development and design — and most important, the execution — of HR initiatives is going to be critical to organizations striving for high performance.'
—Kevin Oakes, CEO at the Institute for Corporate Productivity Inc.

It’s an issue HR executives need to begin tackling now, since two-thirds of organizations expect to centralize administrative functions in dedicated shared-services units within five years, according to i4cp’s 2012 Future of HR survey, based on responses of 454 business and senior HR leaders.

“Our research shows that getting middle managers involved in the development and design — and most important, the execution — of HR initiatives is going to be critical to organizations striving for high performance,” Oakes said.

Tactical Now, Strategic Later?
In its study, Towers Watson said most organizations making the move (74 percent) are aiming to improve operational efficiency. Fifty-three percent want quality improvements, 37 percent eye cost savings and 34 percent are changing business strategy. Similarly, 29 percent say the change is impelled by global corporate initiatives.

The study also found that organizations are spending money on technology in their quest to restructure how HR delivers services. More than half (53 percent) said investments in HR technology in 2013 would at least match 2012 levels. More than one-quarter (27 percent) expect to “increase or significantly increase” their HR tech spending.

One in five organizations said they will have up to 20 percent more money to spend on HR technologies. About 8 percent are expecting an even fatter budget.
“HR technology spending tends to be a bellwether of an organization that is going through some form of transformation,” said Mike DiClaudio, the global leader of Towers Watson’s HR service-delivery practice.

At the same time, DiClaudio said outsourcing contracts are coming up for renewal, prompting organizations to look into “disruptive technologies” such as software-as-a-service, or SaaS, platforms for talent management, compensation planning and other HR services.

“From a systems perspective, organizations almost uniformly are looking at software as a service for some function. SaaS is the new operating model for HR technologies,” DiClaudio said.

Although the shared-services concept is hardly new — call centers are a common example of shared services that have been around for decades — the advent of “big data” is fueling increased interest.

High-performing companies realize the importance of distributing talent management roles to functional HR teams within individual business units, said Bersin, who relates a recent conversation he had with an executive of a multinational corporation. As it geared up for recruiting 35,000 new employees, senior executives realized the organization lacked consistent processes and insight into how many existing employees were promotable to the new jobs.

“The real key is to set up an HR shared-services model that is global yet flexible. It has to work for employees in the U.S. as well as employees in Outer Mongolia,” Bersin said.

For now, so-called “early adopters” are content to play defense, moving tedious administration to dedicated service centers in hopes of reaping long-term cost savings or to standardize their HR processes. Kolbash at Yale said his shared-services team is getting set to reveal the full results of its first customer-satisfaction survey and will use it to make adjustments accordingly. “The early results of our survey [indicate] that transparency and partnership are paramount in creating a foundation of trust,” Kolbash said.  

Meantime, more departments at Yale are inquiring about the services. Although using shared services is not mandated, all university departments and schools have fully offloaded accounts payable, payroll and vendor compliance to Kolbash’s unit. It also manages expenses for 40 percent of the school and financial management for 55 percent. “If a department can move work to us and free up resources for its mission, then, by every measure, our shared services will be a success,” he said.

Garry Kranz is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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Is the ROI on an MBA Now MIA?

Obtaining a master’s degree in business administration has placed Carolyn Sweetapple on the executive fast track at North Shore-LIJ Health System.

The Great Neck, New York-based hospital network provided full tuition payment so she could pursue an MBA in quality management at Hofstra University in nearby Hempstead. Sweetapple has been promoted twice since earning the degree in 2008. Her latest climb up the corporate ladder came in May when she was named the assistant vice president of operations at North Shore-LIJ’s system project management office.

More so than the promotions, though, Sweetapple said the “cohort-centric” nature of an MBA program — small groups of upwardly mobile, like-minded executives across varied sectors learning together — proves invaluable. “You’re networking with different people and are immediately challenged to apply what you learn. I know it’s enhanced my critical thinking and my ability to synthesize complex ideas,” she said.

Sweetapple is one of more than 300 leaders to be given a full ride since Hofstra launched its MBA program in 2006. North Shore-LIJ’s generous investment in executive education stands in stark contrast to the prevailing corporate attitude. Only 26 percent of students in executive MBA programs received full sponsorship from their employers in 2012, according to a survey by the Executive MBA Council, a trade group based in Orange, California. That’s down from 33 percent who received it in a similar survey taken in 2008. The survey is based on responses from 3,200 students at more than 100 MBA programs.

Seventy years have elapsed since the first executive MBA was unveiled by the University of Chicago’s business school (now known as the Booth School of Business) in 1943. Yet companies appear to still be searching for a formula that connects the dots to the bottom line. “What’s the return on investment? It’s the question we get asked the most,” said Sarah Perez, executive director of EMBA programs at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

It also could be the wrong question to ask, she said. “Do employers reward and motivate their high potentials after they finish the program? Are they being challenged and given growth opportunities? If not, those new MBA grads may not stay for long — and that’s a real ROI issue for companies,” Perez said.

There is value in cohorts of leaders learning together, but more and more companies are unable to wait for an executive to finish a degree, said Jim Kauffman, a consultant with Development Dimensions International, a human resources consulting firm based in Pittsburgh.

“The key word is acceleration. Companies know if they wait around for leaders to mature, they’ll never be able to grow fast enough,” Kauffman said.

The recession is partly to blame for short-term declines in full corporate funding, although the changing nature of the employee-employer relationship is the biggest factor, said Michael Desiderio, the Executive MBA Council’s executive director.

“Executives are saying, ‘Listen, we want our people to have some skin in the game.’ The days of taking any class you want and having your company pay 100 percent are pretty much over,” Desiderio said.

Executive Education Minus the MBA

Only 18 percent of companies say they have sufficient leadership depth for sustained growth, according to “Global Leadership Forecast 2011,” a report by human resources consulting firm Development Dimensions International.

Adding MBA grads is one strategy, although the demand exceeds supply. Plus, lack of visibility may discourage companies from sponsoring an executive toward an MBA, said Jim Kauffman, an executive consultant at DDI. “If an executive is taking an MBA program, you can’t really see what it is he’s learning or how it’s relevant to his job.”

To accelerate the development of leaders, Kauffman said companies want their existing training to be reconfigured to “address specific business themes that drive growth,” such as speed to market or business agility. Chief executives want their top leaders to learn collaboratively in settings that mimic the “cohort” approach favored by MBA programs. That includes project teams charged with tackling real, pressing business issues.

Another trend: rising use of assessment centers — a method that uses simulations, in-basket exercises, case studies and feedback — to give leaders a “day in the life” experience.  

—Garry Kranz

Return on Retention, Recruiting
Still, North Shore-LIJ illustrates that companies in fast-moving sectors or disruptive markets are willing to make sizable investments in up-and-comers. Joe Cabral, the health system’s chief human resources officer, said the MBA program at Hofstra is one component of accelerated development of high performers. The initiative arose from the need to rapidly identify future executives, particularly with 20 percent of senior leaders nearing retirement. North Shore-LIJ plans to launch in January 2014 a similar MBA program in conjunction with Baruch College in New York.

“Getting an MBA gives them the three things they need: an understanding of the business side of health care, strong leadership skills and technical proficiency. In that order,” Cabral said.

The high-potential program includes first-time leaders all the way up to decision-makers, Cabral said. MBA candidates, though, are primarily experienced leaders at the team, operational and strategic levels. Cabral said 311 employees have earned an MBA at the company’s expense thus far. The diverse group includes physicians, nurses, allied health care professionals and administrators — even engineers who manage the infrastructure for North Shore-LIJ’s 16 hospitals and 400 ambulatory and physician practices in the New York metropolitan area.

Keeping the pipeline filled is a priority. Each year, 80 to 100 leaders are methodically chosen and encouraged to get their graduate degree, with North Shore-LIJ paying full freight. Those tapped for the program can elect to pursue an MBA with a focus on quality or health care, respectively, Cabral said.

He added that North Shore-LIJ spends an estimated $500,000 annually on MBAs alone. “For us it’s well worth the investment. If they don’t have it already, we encourage our high-potential leaders to go get their MBA — on us.”

The sizable investment is more than a nice gesture, though. The retention rate of newly minted MBAs is 96 percent, and 8 in 10 grads have advanced to positions of expanded authority, enabling the company to pivot quickly when planning for succession, Cabral said.

“Anytime you can reduce turnover, it’s a great thing. It’s also a great thing to be able to promote from within. And because we’ve seen such incredible growth in a short time, being able to deepen our leadership bench makes this program a no-brainer,” Cabral said.

While North Shore primes internal leaders, Deloitte Consulting LLP is trying to skim the proverbial cream off the annual MBA crop. The New York-based professional services firm is in the midst of aggressive MBA recruiting.

Approximately 500 full-time MBAs will be hired in 2013, along with up to 250 MBA interns in 2013, said Chris Franck, a principal at Deloitte who leads national MBA recruiting for its strategy and operations practice.

“We’ve seen an increase in our demand for MBA talent year over year, and we expect that trend to continue,” Franck said.

Deloitte is recruiting MBAs across all of its businesses, including positions in its human capital, strategy and operations and technology consulting practices, Franck said. MBA graduates with leadership skills, the ability to think analytically and outstanding communication skills are highly prized.

“And we’re always looking for people who have the ability to collaborate and work effectively on diverse teams,” Franck said.

Decades ago, sponsoring companies often paid full freight, but that is less and less common, experts say.

Tuition costs have been on the rise for several decades, prompting companies to review how, and in whom, they invest precious MBA dollars, said Patty Keegan, the associate dean of the executive MBA program for North America at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

“When we see companies invest in an MBA student, it’s typically done as part of an integrated long-term development plan for high potentials. It’s not a perk: Companies are much more selective than they used to be about whom they send through these programs,” Keegan said.

Keegan and other MBA program directors trace the drop in full funding to the early 2000s — around the time the dot-com bubble burst and sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin. It got jolted again when a global recession hit in 2007.

As they are wont to do in tough economic times, many companies slashed corporate training budgets, including MBA programs. They focused on short-term goals such as trimming expenses and finding new revenue, “and the idea of long-term succession planning kind of became an afterthought,” said Kristin Polito, director of the executive MBA program at Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School in Boston.

Polito said MBA programs also may be a victim of their own success. MBAs graduate and return to work prepared to take on additional responsibilities, yet too often their employers haven’t mapped out a career path. The frustrated grads leave for greener pastures, which in turn causes frustrated companies to pare back sponsorship or pull the plug altogether.

“I won’t name names, but I know of some pretty blue-chip companies that have begun to question the value. Some even consider it a distraction for an executive, as opposed to really helping advance their leadership development,” Polito said.

Paying Their Own Way  
Before receiving tuition, North Shore-LIJ’s MBA students are required to sign a contract that binds them to the company for two years. It’s actually a pretty common practice, although Perez said it can present a challenge for some organizations.

“A lot of students at UNC-Flagler prefer to self-fund,” Perez said. “That way, they don’t have to make a multiple-year commitment to a single employer” in exchange for full funding.

According to the EMBA Council, 39 percent of students self-funded their MBA pursuits in 2012, meaning they received no corporate financial sponsorship. That figure is up from 32 percent who self-funded in 2008, although the number is skewed by the inclusion of entrepreneurs who typically bear the full burden of tuition.
Chris Thomas bootstrapped his way through an MBA at Smeal College of Business at Penn State University, using competitive merit scholarships, a graduate assistantship and personal loans. Thomas said he has no regrets: It helped him land an internship with General Electric Co., which hired him full time as a marketing associate in 2007.
Thomas spent 2008 to 2010 learning a number of different sales and marketing functions at GE as part of a rotation-based development program known as the Experienced Commercial Leadership Program — the same program he now leads as global recruiting director. The ECLP, as it’s known at GE, is an accelerated leadership program for commercial professionals with five to eight years of experience.

People recruited for the ECLP are required to have already obtained an MBA or a relevant master’s degree. “GE has such a diverse product line that it’s important to find high potentials with both a business education and good consultative selling skills, especially in emerging market,” Thomas said, noting that roughly two-thirds of candidates recruited for the ECLP come from outside the U.S.

Do Raises Equal ROI?
Companies may not be providing the same level of financial backing as in previous years, but they are willing to pay for the brainpower associated with earning the degree.

The EMBA Council says the average salary and bonus package for an executive starting an MBA program was $141,000 in 2012. At its conclusion, the combined pay climbed to $165,000.

The increased earning power may not be a direct connection to bottom-line return on investment, but it does suggest companies still recognize the important role an MBA plays in a leader’s career.

“The fact that an employer is willing to pay these people more speaks well about the value of the degree,” Desiderio said.

That’s the case at Deloitte, whose aggressive MBA recruiting is being fueled by surging demand for services globally. People who have the tenacity to finish an MBA possess skills that are highly valued, Franck said.

“Because we are in a client-service business, we need professionals who have the confidence, curiosity and intellect to innovate solutions that solve the complex challenges organizations face,” Franck said.

North Shore-LIJ, meanwhile, is gearing up to assess its next batch of internal high-potential candidates. Cabral said the company solicits nominees each year from department heads, a process that generally yields 150 to 175 candidates. The list is whittled to about 80 to 100 finalists following a three-month vetting window. “We put a lot of rigor around the process,” Cabral said.

It’s the same process North Shore-LIJ used to identify Sweetapple, who was among the first 100 leaders handpicked to receive the fast-track development. She said it was both humbling and empowering. “Getting an MBA has had an immediate impact on my career and, of course, it makes me extremely loyal to North Shore-LIJ. Now it’s my turn to give something back to the company.”

Garry Kranz is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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Wal-Mart Drafts Leaders for Military-style Training

Attending Wal-Mart Leadership Academy rekindled Tracey Lloyd’s memories of boot camp.

Although hardly dangerous, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s training program for top leaders has a military air that gets participants “thinking two ranks above their level,” says Lloyd, a retired Army captain and Bronze Star recipient who joined the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer in 2008.

Lloyd embodies Wal-Mart’s fast-track approach to selectively developing new leaders. Since completing the academy training in 2009, Lloyd has been promoted three times, including her current role as one of the directors at the academy.

The 16-weeklong program puts Wal-Mart’s store managers, merchandising managers, operations managers and shift managers through their paces. Different learning objectives are set for each week, ranging from how to win the trust of employees to selling mass merchandise in Russia. Just like boot camp, the intense program “breaks you down so it can build you back up again”—a necessary experience in adjusting to the pressures of running a retail store.

“It’s designed at the outset to overwhelm you, which can be frustrating. Then again, running a store can be frustrating. As a leader, you must learn to push it deep down in your belly until you get the hang of it,” Lloyd says.

In addition, managers gained a newfound appreciation of different roles inside Wal-Mart, Lloyd says. “As a store manager, it’s easy to think everything is up to you. The academy experience showed us how the various functions need to work together to make the store successful,” Lloyd says.

By providing focused development for new leaders, Wal-Mart is trying to avoid the fate common to many other companies: Promoting people without adequately preparing them. Nearly 40 percent of first-time leaders ultimately fail, according to a comprehensive study in May by Development Dimensions International Inc., a Pittsburgh-based consulting firm.

The report, Be Better Than Average: The State of Frontline Leadership, is based on a survey of 300 human resources executives.

The No. 1 reason for failure is a lack of training on interpersonal skills, including listening, empathizing and involvement. “Leaders are not receiving the development or support that they need to succeed given these new expectations,” says Richard Wellins, a senior vice president at DDI.

The academy was launched about five years ago at the urging of President and CEO Bill Simon following a determination that Wal-Mart lacked the leadership depth needed to meet anticipated growth. Wal-Mart posted revenue of $469.2 billion in its fiscal year that ended in Jan. 31, 2013. In the U.S. alone, Wal-Mart operates more than 4,100 retail stores and distribution centers.

“Our analysis showed we were capable of building new stores faster than we could prepare new store managers,” says Celia Swanson, Wal-Mart’s senior vice president of talent development.

The academy is geared to leaders deemed to have high potential, Swanson says. Those tapped to participate are pulled out of their daily role and immersed in hands-on exercises and work projects. The training blends theory with practice, using business-case scenarios to expose people to a range of different experiences.

The program works this way: Participants spend two weeks at a time at Bentonville, followed by two weeks back in the workplace. The process repeats itself up to four times, for a total of 16 weeks.

The endgame is to get people ready for promotions within 30 to 90 days after graduating. Since its inception, more than 500 leaders have graduated from the academy. That is a fraction of Wal-Mart’s 2.2 million employees—1.3 million of whom are based in the U.S.

“It’s a small group that we’ve put through the training, but that’s the point. It’s an accelerated development that enables them to step more quickly into a broader role,” Swanson says.

To develop its training, Wal-Mart turned to global consulting firm McKinney Rogers, whose clients include Wirtz Beverage Group and ITV, the largest commercial television network in the United Kingdom.

The academy borrows liberally from military training, which blends theory with practice, says Damian McKinney, CEO of London-based McKinney Rogers. Store managers are exposed to simulated situations that commonly occur in retailing, forcing them to think critically and make decisions under pressure. “It’s similar to how military leaders plan strategies for defending and defeating an effective attack,” says McKinney, a former operations commando with the U.K. Royal Marines.

Military-style training complements Wal-Mart’s approach to developing leaders, Swanson says. “The military has application to us in the sense that we have to teach lots of young leaders very quickly. The military also no longer relies as much on a command-and-control structure, and similarly, our leaders need to know how to get a new store and community [of employees] up and running quickly.”

Community projects are a key part of Wal-Mart’s leadership academy, Swanson says. For example, leaders often participate in community projects to build homes for low-income families, volunteer at children’s hospitals and similar initiatives.

“Our store managers are usually one of the largest employers in the markets we serve, so the role they play as community leaders is influential. We have to prepare them for it,” Swanson says.

Lloyd joined Wal-Mart shortly after retiring from the Army in 2008. She made a list of desirable employers and then winnowed it down to about a dozen companies. She says Wal-Mart’s commitment to professional development was the clincher.

“That commitment to developing people resonated with me because of my time in the military. Investing in technology and innovation is important, but it’s not nearly as important as investing in the people that drive business forward,” Lloyd says.

Wal-Mart hired Lloyd as a developmental store manager in Jacksonville, Florida, shortly after retiring from the Army. She was invited to the leadership academy about 10 months later and was one month into the program when Wal-Mart named her general manager of its supercenter store in Palm Coast, about one hour south of Jacksonville.

Lloyd served as GM from August 2009 to January 2011, leading a team of 425 hourly workers and 12 managers. The Palm Coast store generated revenue growth topping $100 million.

Wal-Mart’s executive team was impressed enough by her store’s year-over-year revenue growth that Lloyd was promoted to director of store innovations. During those 18 months, Lloyd’s store of 425 hourly workers and 12 managers generated annual revenue topping $100 million. Wal-Mart’s executive team was impressed enough to bring Lloyd to Bentonville as director of strategy for store innovations.

She subsequently served a year as director of hiring and placement solutions for a year before becoming an academy director. Her present job includes developing content for Wal-Mart’s varying levels of leadership.

Says Lloyd: “The leadership academy is not a one-time thing. It’s designed to help leaders progress a career at Walmart.”

Garry Kranz is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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Stihl Instills Manufacturing Skills Into High School Students’ Learning Via Summer Camp

Stihl Inc. is trying to train potential employees well before they hit the job market.

The Virginia Beach, Virginia, maker of power tools runs an annual summer camp in which area high school students turn raw materials into finished goods. All told, 40 high school students from grades nine through 12 participated in Stihl’s camp in 2012.

During the four-day event, five teams of students competed against one another to build a chassis, a printed circuit board and a parts kit. The teams spent the first day figuring out what they needed and securing resources.

On day two, the students toured Stihl’s high-tech factory to learn about manufacturing steps they must execute and how to develop a production timeline.

Projecting market demand—the number of units that will need to be made—and completing a prototype occupied day three. The camp concluded the following day with a competition between the teams, with local dignitaries, academics and business leaders serving as judges.

During the camps, teams compete against each other and are evaluated on various categories, including production efficiency, inventory management, quality standards and innovation. “There is one clear winner,” says Simon Nance, Stihl’s manager of learning and development and the camp’s director.

Although Stihl does not use the event to directly recruit students, Nance says the hope is that at least some of the participants will consider manufacturing careers. A larger goal is to help usher in a “renaissance in manufacturing” in the United States by immersing them in the details of the process.

“That’s not being taught in high schools or anywhere else,” Nance says.

Some camp participants have inquired about the prospect of internships or even jobs with Stihl upon graduation. “We’re staying in contact with them, because these young people could be our future workforce.”

Stihl launched the camp in 2011 in which students collaborated on teams to build clocks. Stihl has not yet decided which item it will have students make at its 2013 camp but is weighing five possible projects. Whichever one is chosen will require student teams to perform computer numerical control machining, drilling, tapping (cutting internal threads), assembly, testing and packing.

Garry Kranz is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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Stihl Tools Its Training to Olympic Standards

Although he’s not employed by Stihl Inc., Jon Stumpf is one of its best-trained representatives.

Stumpf’s company, Sunrise Agricultural Co-Op in Pierz, Minnesota, is one of 8,000 retail businesses in the U.S. authorized by Stihl to sell and service its line of hand-held power tools, which includes chainsaws, drills, leaf blowers and trimmers.

Stumpf also is part of a select group of 1,200 retailers awarded “gold” status—Stihl’s highest level of certification for equipment repair and service of its hand-held power tools. He earned the designation in 2010 after completing a demanding dealer-training program at Stihl’s U.S. headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Stihl customers are savvy and recognize the meaning behind the gold-service credential, Stumpf says. “We have a lot of competing dealerships in central Minnesota. The gold certification puts us in a different category than other shops.”

To hear such endorsements delights Eddie Anderson, Stihl’s technical training supervisor in charge of developing dealer-based learning programs. Stihl markets its line of 130 power tools exclusively through specially chosen retailers—you can’t buy Stihl equipment at mass merchandisers—and it depends on a cadre of nonemployee technicians for its success.

“The average shop-labor rate at Stihl dealerships is $65 an hour. At that rate, it’s important that we teach technicians to examine a product and know within 10 to 15 minutes if it’s fixable or not,” Anderson says.

Known as the Gold School, its training deals with other important topics, including understanding warranties, Anderson says. Dealers that don’t understand warranty provisions could be forced to eat the repair expense and lose out on reimbursement. “If a technician believes an item is covered by warranty, he needs to be able to justify his decision to us.”

Anderson was hired by Stihl 10 years ago to develop the training curriculum, which Fred Whyte, the company’s president, determined could differentiate it from other power-equipment-makers. The training content had to be delivered almost from scratch.

Existing training literature hadn’t kept pace with technological advances in hand-held power equipment, Anderson says. Plus, to differentiate itself, Stihl wanted customized training that enabled it to continue selling products through private dealers.

“We don’t need technicians who are hammer mechanics,” meaning those who are impatient and easily frustrated by new technologies. “We need technicians who are willing to embrace new technology,” Anderson says.

Stihl developed its training by using an Olympic-style approach. Three levels of training are provided for dealer-technicians: bronze, silver and gold. Each level of training focuses on different aspects of Stihl’s products and service standards.

The bronze certification is a requirement of all Stihl dealerships, which technicians earn by completing a series of online modules through Stihl’s iCademy e-learning portal. The content provides information on warranties, product liability, parts and other basics.

Technicians next can pursue silver-level training, in which they are presented with malfunctioning equipment and challenged to correctly diagnose the cause. Silver-level courses are delivered in a face-to-face setting by service managers at Stihl’s 12 regional distribution centers in the U.S.

The Gold School represents the final level of Stihl-certified training. Dealerships pay a nominal tuition (about $250 for the three days) to send their technicians through Gold School while technicians must pay their own airfare, lodging and other costs, as well as the cost of the class. The intensive course includes product troubleshooting and other hands-on diagnostic exercises. Participants also must pass a written exam. Stihl schedules about 25 Gold School sessions each year, and “classes are always full,” Anderson says.

Technicians that achieve the gold service level are certified by Stihl for three years, after which they can retake the course. Anderson says the learning content changes to keep pace with technological, regulatory and other changes that affect the power-tool industry.

Dealerships that pay for their technicians to attend the Gold School may receive higher reimbursement levels. “But we have never intended for that to be the big reason that our dealers participate.

“We have worked hard to create a reputation that the Gold School provides them with the best-trained technician possible,” Anderson says.

Acquiring the certificate is no easy feat. Stumpf was frustrated after failing the written exam during his first visit to Virginia Beach in 2008. But he used the setback to his advantage, acing the exam when he returned in 2010.

“It was the best money I ever spent,” he says.

Garry Kranz is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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As Career Development Lags, Workers Grow Restless

Organizations have their work cut out to develop and retain employees in 2013, new research shows.

During the past six months, slightly less than one-third of U.S. employees received training and development to better perform their jobs, according to a December survey by Cornerstone OnDemand Inc., a human resources software vendor. Other findings: Only one in four workers had met with their managers to hammer out an individual career plan while two-thirds of employees aren’t receiving feedback or recognition.

“Most employees want to do a good job, but many told us they aren’t getting the training they need to improve or to build a sustainable career. If individuals don’t get what they need, eventually they could wind up leaving,” says Jason Corsello, Cornerstone’s vice president of corporate strategy and marketing.

Corsello says the findings are a wake-up call to U.S. organizations, especially those that curtailed spending on training and development during the economic slowdown. The survey of nearly 500 U.S. employees took place Nov. 23 to 26 in conjunction with research firm Kelton Global.

The dynamics point to a looming problem for employers: 19 million Americans plan to change jobs this year, or 13 percent of the total U.S. workforce, according to the survey. The churn will cost U.S. businesses an estimated $2 trillion to recruit and train new workers.

Fourteen percent of survey respondents said they plan to leave their current job within six months to a year. About 25 percent are eyeing a move sometime in the next three years. Just 46 percent of those surveyed acknowledge having a long-range career with their current employer.

“We’ve been hearing for years how the performance-review process stinks, but what we found interesting is that employees have a strong desire to be developed. They want to get better, but companies aren’t giving them the resources to improve or to build sustainable careers,” Corsello says.

Classrooms and other formal modes of training remain important, but Corsello says companies have been slow to integrate informal methods like social media, coaching and collaborative tools. They also are struggling to roll out social tools that make learning content available to employees “when and where they want it,” including via mobile devices and smartphones.

The results suggest a need for more robust training of managers and adoption of “crowdsourcing” as a way to gather feedback about employees’ performance, which Corsello says could help close the gap and potentially boost engagement.

Good managers are the key reason employees stay, cited by 48 percent of respondents. Appreciation from managers and other employees (46 percent) is a close second, followed by career opportunities (39 percent) and the chance to develop new skills (32 percent).

“Nowhere did people say they are motivated by more money; that tends to be lower on the scale of importance. Mainly they want to know they’re doing a good job and to be recognized for it,” Corsello says.

Garry Kranz is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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Whirlpool Adopts E-Learning for Leadership

Corinne Gorenchan learned a lot during a yearlong training session for leaders at Whirlpool Corp., but the most important realization is that she is not alone.

Gorenchan was one of the first supervisors to graduate from “Leading People at Whirlpool,” which immerses managers in the nuts and bolts of leadership. It blends virtual and live classroom learning, plus job projects designed to let managers apply their newly acquired knowledge. Supervisors and their managers also are held to a higher level of accountability.

“Each of us is new in our leadership experiences, and it was awesome to be able to share, gain insights and learn from each other,” says Gorenchan, a consumer scientist who leads a team of six people. “It is one of the best training sessions I’ve ever been involved in.”

Among other things, the leadership training provided help on key management issues, such as setting expectations, building credibility, communication and assessment.

Rolled out in 2010, Leading People targets 6,500 managers at Whirlpool, an appliance-maker in Benton Harbor, Michigan, near Kalamazoo. It is a concerted effort to strengthen Whirlpool’s bench and prescribe competencies for managers who lead other employees, says Tamara Patrick, director of Whirlpool University.

It also marks a change of attitude toward online learning at Whirlpool. Until recently, the company relied almost exclusively on face-to-face classroom instruction to deliver learning about innovation, marketing and other business imperatives. “We didn’t think e-learning was engaging enough to be effective,” Patrick says.

Whirlpool’s move online mirrors national trends. Two-thirds of learning executives believe e-learning will increase “moderately or substantially” within six months, according to a report by the American Society for Training & Development, or ASTD, a trade group in Alexandria, Virginia. The Learning Executive Confidence Index, released in August, includes responses of nearly 350 learning leaders.

A prolonged global recession prompted Whirlpool to re-examine its learning strategy. Squeezed by dwindling consumer demand for its big-ticket items, Whirlpool, whose brands include Maytag and KitchenAid, has laid off 5,000 employees since 2008, according to a recent securities filing.

At the same time, the 101-year-old company in 2009 purchased a new learning management system and migrated most training online, Patrick says. The inaugural program was Foundations of Whirlpool, a set of nine 30-minute online modules that informs employees about the company’s specific growth strategies.

The self-paced modules in the Foundations program are designed to familiarize employees in advance of classes at Whirlpool University. Patrick says it also helps when onboarding new employees and serves as a prerequisite for all learning and development pursuits.

A natural outgrowth of Foundations is Leading People, which provides targeted training to supervisors deemed to be up-and-comers at Whirlpool. Supervisors invited to participate complete a series of online modules that prepare them to attend in-person classes at Whirlpool University.

To ensure the leadership training sticks, each supervisor’s manager also participates in coaching workshops to learn ways to help the supervisor put their learning into immediate practice.

“When the leaders graduate, their managers are asked to come and explain how they are going to support the continued learning and application of the supervisory skills,” Patrick says.

Convincing leaders and their managers to devote 12 months to a single training initiative was at first a tough sell. “The feedback at the start was: ‘A 12-month program? You’ve got to be kidding, right?’ Patrick says.

But spreading the coursework over one year enables better learning results through ongoing feedback, managerial coaching and periodic assessments, Patrick says. “In the past, we would bring leaders into a classroom for three days to teach them basic supervisory skills. Then, we sent them back to the job and never talked about it again,” Patrick says.

During the first two months of the program, leaders invited to the program are required to complete a series of three e-learning modules, created by consulting firm Development Dimensions International of Bridgeville, Pennsylvania. The content focuses on building essential leadership skills and coaching.

During the third month, a class of 20 to 40 participants gathers for the first time at Whirlpool University, a 100-acre campus at the company’s headquarters. Members of Whirlpool’s training team are on hand to facilitate group sharing of their experiences. In-classroom learning labs and collaborative exercises are used to address Whirlpool’s most pressing strategic issues, such as the importance of innovation, how it manifests itself, and the role the supervisors play to nurture it.

The process of preparatory e-learning and classroom activities repeats itself several months later. During the break between physical classes, teams of managers work together on business projects. The course concludes with a final in-class meeting at which leaders make group presentations to an audience that includes their managers and senior leaders.

Throughout the year, each supervisor’s manager receives coaching to help their supervisors put their skills to use on the job.

Leaders like James Crawford say the Leading People program provides a framework for learning how to manage other people. “It helped me pinpoint weak spots in my leadership practices and then gave me a strategy for turning those weaknesses into strengths,” says Crawford, a senior training producer at Whirlpool’s Chicago division.

“I learned the impact communication has in driving a high-performing team,” Crawford adds.

Whirlpool is soliciting the opinion of graduates on tips to improve the experience. Among the suggestions: establish formal mentors for supervisors—including leaders other than their direct managers—and provide face-to-face learning more frequently, with greater exposure to executive leadership, Patrick says.

Employees that demonstrate leadership potential soon may get the chance to pursue the training as well. Whirlpool this year plans to pilot the Leading People course to select employees who have demonstrated leadership potential.

Leading People also is the best example of Whirlpool’s new “closed loop” approach to employee development, which governs the creation of learning programs “from initial design all the way through to implementation,” Patrick says.

The learning activities open the loop, while practice, coaching and periodic assessments help to complete the circle. Blending the strengths of online learning with face-to-face activities is a key part of that loop. “It’s a really powerful combination that is reshaping our approach to learning and development,” Patrick says.

Garry Kranz is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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Study: Disability Claims After Intermittent FMLA Indicate That Caregivers Are Finding It Hard to Cope

Here’s a heads-up to human resources pros: If you have employees using the Family and Medical Leave Act, don’t be surprised if they soon ask for short-term disability too.

In a forthcoming report, Westminster, Colorado-based Reed Group says employees who are granted FMLA leave are three times more likely to file short-term disability claims within six months than employees who don’t request FMLA. The report is based on analysis of 112,000 FMLA claims that were closed from 2008 to 2011.

The full report is set to be released in October, although Reed Group released excerpts in advance to the media this month.

Employees who care for sick family members shoulder a stressful, angst-ridden responsibility. Although the FMLA safeguards their jobs, the report suggests that many employees-turned-caregivers suffer a lingering emotional toll that ultimately sidelines them not long after they resume work.

“HR directors typically have viewed FMLA as a ‘have-to-do’ part of compliance, but they haven’t spent enough time focusing on the root causes behind subsequent disability claims,” says Kevin Curry, a senior vice president of Reed Group, which provides products and services for leave administration and return-to-work programs.

Employees sometimes get worn out by the physical labor of caring for another person, while stress and anxiety wreak havoc with their emotional well-being. As a result, employees often return to work but realize they have their own issues to deal with first, Curry says.

The report cites musculoskeletal conditions and behavioral health as the most common reasons employees seek disability following intermittent FMLA leave.

According to Reed Group’s analysis, 51 percent of the FMLA claims during the study period involved intermittent leave, in which an employee is granted time away from work, returns to work briefly, only to be away again, usually in connection with caring for a loved one who is ill.

Of employees who were granted intermittent leave, 21 percent were more likely to file for short-term disability, or STD, within six months than did employees on continuous leave (8 percent), Curry says.

Although Reed Group is still examining the financial impact, Curry says intermittent leave is a huge drain on profits and disrupts business productivity. The financial data will be released with the full report in October, along with demographic breakdowns to help HR administrators slice and dice the data.

Other research already indicates that planned absence remains an inveterate challenge to organizations, consuming nearly 9 percent of payroll costs, shows a joint survey of 276 organizations in 2010 by Kronos Inc. and Mercer.

The spike in disability claims by those coming off FMLA does not suggest employees have figured a way to scam the system, Curry says. Abusers typically don’t stay off work longer than the maximum period allowed, Curry says, because doing so requires a formal medical approval.

“The average length of a [post-FMLA] disability claim was 20 percent higher than it was for other claims,” reflecting the fact that a doctor has diagnosed the employee’s need for time off to rest and recharge, Curry says.

Reed Group says its findings underscore why companies should take an integrated approach to employee-assistance programs, health and wellness initiatives. The full report is expected to provide HR administrators with a detailed breakdown of FMLA-related impacts by gender, age and other demographics.

Garry Kranz is a Workforce Management contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.