Author: Janet Wiscombe

With a workforce of 12,000 full-time and 24,000 part-time employees—largely young men in their 20s with far more interest in video games than in benefits selection—GameStop Corp. faced this challenge: how to verify and update employee records for new regulatory requirements and to make benefits enrollment mandatory.

In response, the world’s largest video game and entertainment software retailer created a comprehensive electronic campaign. Working with Univers Workplace Solutions, GameStop created a video of a worker playing a benefits video game. The protagonist in the game deals with unplanned injuries and illness to show employees the importance of being prepared.

“Our employees are techies. They are very energetic, passionate and game savvy,” says Faye Saenz, director of employee benefits at the Grapevine, Texas-based company. “They weren’t going to look at written communication. They like things that are edgy and a little dark. They’re connected to several electronic devices at once. We knew we had to change our ways.”

Full-time employees now receive benefits information through e-mails and automated telephone messages, texts, online videos, Facebook and Twitter pages, Flash presentations and other electronic materials. When full-time employees received a call about benefits, they were automatically connected to the Univers call center to review benefit choices and update their information using an interactive screen.

Part-time employees received similar communications, but the information was even more narrowly tailored in a three-week campaign titled Build Your Arsenal. The communication strategy used slightly irreverent information, such as a 60-second Flash movie mixing video game imagery with the real-life peril of getting into an accident and not having health insurance.

Employees responded in unprecedented numbers. HR professionals were in touch with almost every eligible full-time employee. Counselors helped them understand their benefits in scheduled 15-minute, in-person visits.

Benefits participation rose 38 percent for medical, 162 percent for flexible spending accounts, 100 percent for accident insurance and 211 percent for life insurance. For solving an HR challenge with originality and having a clear understanding of its employees, GameStop wins the Optimas Award for Innovation.

Workforce Management, December 2010, p. 24 — Subscribe Now!

Mothers can be a military recruiter’s worst nightmare. They tend to be leery of those who make promises to their children about life-changing decisions and to be mistrustful of recruiting brochures and websites.

For U.S. Navy recruiters, the nightmare is also about making numbers. The Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower, Personnel, Training and Education is charged with signing up 3,750 new recruits every month. To meet that target when less than 12 percent of young people are inclined to enlist, the lowest percentage since 1976, the human resources professionals in the Navy had to get creative.

Military recruiters realize that parents—particularly moms—play a major role in influencing their sons’ and daughters’ choices. So they set out to develop a more direct and intimate way to communicate with families. The result is a highly successful social website, NavyForMoms.com. As part of the initiative, the Navy’s HR department recruited 16 “Ambassador Moms” to spend a few hours a week on the website answering questions for mothers and loved ones of people currently enlisted in or considering the Navy.

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Since March 2008 when it was established, the website has attracted a network of 36,000 mothers who talk about subjects ranging from fear and loss to birthday gifts.

“I am overwhelmed by how much this website has meant to me,” writes one Navy mom. “It carried me through boot camp … and most importantly, stood in my shoes when my son was seriously hurt last March in Florida. I went on the site and put out an SOS for moms to be with him until I could get there from Connecticut. The response was unbelievable. I am forever grateful to the moms and dads who rushed to his side.”

The mom adds, “This forum is what has been needed for so long. We’ve had our group on Yahoo for about 19 years, but this is the type of thing that was needed most.” For creating an outreach program that will help the recruitment efforts of the entire organization, the U.S. Navy is the winner of the 2010 Optimas Award in the Service category.

Workforce Management, December 2010, p. 28 — Subscribe Now!

At Protective Life Corp., every step counts. Since beginning a walking program at work, one company director lost 69 pounds. A technical analyst lost 9 pounds and reduced his body fat. A senior vice president reports that he’s less stressed out and more productive, and his clothes fit better, too.

All are participants in a program that was developed two years ago in partnership with Virgin HealthMiles, a company that specializes in getting employees up from their desks and out for a walk. For the past 25 years, Protective Life has focused on wellness and has kept health care cost increases at 3 percent per employee per year, well below the national average, says Michele Pawlik, director of health and employee assistance program services.

Still, with 2,300 employees in mostly sedentary jobs, the Birmingham, Alabama-based insurance and investment products firm knew it could cut health care costs by helping employees increase their physical activity.

The Virgin HealthMiles program provides employees with pedometers to track the number of steps they walk each day and allows them to monitor their progress through an online portal. Pawlik says it’s the first time that Protective Life has had an effective tool for tracking participation. With that ability, it instituted a pay-for-performance program to reinforce positive behavior and ensure that rewards are earned.

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Participants receive cash rewards in increments of $50 to $150, with the opportunity to earn up to $400 a year based on the number of steps they walk.

“This has been a huge incentive to get moving and watch my progress over time,” says Amy Gunter, director of direct investment at Protective Life. “It brought out the competitive side of me that hasn’t been there since high school.”

Pawlik says the level of employee engagement is unprecedented. Sixty-one percent of the company’s employees participate, and the number of “active” members has increased from 27 percent to 43 percent. Additionally, this year the number of participants at the company’s annual spring fitness event jumped from 500 to 800 .

“It’s absolutely true that participation has increased my productivity,” says Jack Simon, the company’s senior vice president and chief product actuary. “When I exercise, I not only feel like I’m reducing stress, but I have uninterrupted time to think things through. I’ll concentrate on a presentation or think through options to solve a problem. Bottom line for me is that exercise is the fountain of youth.”

For working with Virgin HealthMiles to develop a wellness strategy that effectively engages employees in their health and well-being, Protective Life is the winner of the 2010 Optimas Award for Partnership.

Workforce Management, December 2010, p. 26 — Subscribe Now!

If you’re looking for stars, you might enlist a few to help in the quest. Operating with the assumption that it takes one to know one, Ultimate Software Group Inc. knew it had to involve some of its own proven leaders if it was going to successfully revitalize and ramp up its product development team.

 
   With 1,000 employees and a Weston, Florida, address, the software firm faced the challenge of how to attract young superstars to a midsize company far from high-tech hot spots such as Silicon Valley.

The internship program Ultimate Software created—TechStars—was designed and largely executed by three of the company’s engineering leaders with help from the human resources department and president and CEO Scott Scherr. The objective was to build relationships with talented students before they joined the mainstream job market. Key to the strategy was creating connections with professors at several colleges in the area, including Florida International and Florida Atlantic universities and the University of Florida.

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Greg Miller, the director of engineering talent who is the mastermind of the project, and his team visit colleges several times a year to give presentations. They discuss how the company develops software and do a demonstration. They also present workshops for professors at colleges across the country and sponsor high school programming competitions.

Because students are asked to come to the front of the class to tackle real problems, Adam Rogers, Ultimate Software’s chief technology officer, says much can be learned about their technical and social skills. “They have to have a mindset for learning,” he says.

Ultimate Software culls the students it believes are the most intrinsically motivated and offers them internships. Once in the workplace, the students are placed on high-performance teams responsible for maintaining and developing primary software. “If you study what motivates people, money is not as important as autonomy, mastery and purpose,” Rogers says. “That’s what we give our interns. That’s what makes the program so unique. It gives us a chance to kick the tires, and that goes both ways.”

The company credits the program with helping to expand its customer base in the “under 1,000 employee market” by more than 300 percent since 2006 and boost annual revenue 71 percent between 2006 and 2009—from $114.8 million to $196.6 million. The full-time offer acceptance rate for interns is 100 percent, and the program has helped save more than $3 million because of lower turnover.

For its ability to hire a galaxy of autonomous stars capable of swiftly helping to increase the company’s competitive advantage, Ultimate Software is the 2010 winner of the Optimas Award for Financial Impact.

Workforce Management, December 2010, p. 22 — Subscribe Now!

Like other financial services firms, OppenheimerFunds Inc. has been associated more in recent years with risky deals and plunging assets than conservative investments and sustained value.

As customer confidence slid and 10 percent of its workforce was laid off over the past three years, the subsidiary of MassMutual Financial Group launched a new workplace model to educate the staff. Based on an analysis of customer feedback about the New York City-based, 2,000-employee firm, the Leadership Engine program was designed to respond to increasingly complex client questions; develop questioning, listening and feedback skills; break down silos; and generate ideas.

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Action Learning Teams, a centerpiece of the program, were created specifically for the technology and operations division, which includes about 1,500 employees at Oppenheimer’s Denver campus. The teams are composed of processing associates, phone representatives, managers and executives, says Tamara Haynes, assistant vice president of operations.

In a company video, one phone rep recalls the first time she served on an eclectic, 27-member team: “They said everyone’s titles would be checked at the door.” Initially, she didn’t buy it, she says. “It was really awkward.”

“It was very terrifying,” declares another young woman who, to her astonishment, challenged her manager head-on about the company’s awards program, arguing—successfully—that employees don’t want points for merchandise; they want cash for things like diapers and food.

“She was passionate,” Haynes says. “Later she said she felt she’d really made an impact. At Oppenheimer, it used to be one officer pushing down on someone on the front line. Now it’s collaborative. Everyone’s coming up with solutions,” such as reducing the ratio of supervisors to phone reps from 14 to eight so that individual team members can get more attention and help. For the company, that means hiring five more supervisors by the first of the year.

Adds Ben Hetrick, an assistant vice president: “The level of employee engagement across the entire organization has been tremendous. Employees now have vastly more skills to deal with customers who might want to know more about subjects like price fluctuations. The Action Teams have completely changed the company dynamic.” 

For its ability to swiftly respond to the economic downturn, restore customer confidence and increase employee skills with a new corporate model, OppenheimerFunds is the winner of the 2010 Optimas Award for Managing Change.

Workforce Management, December 2010, p. 26 — Subscribe Now!

With founder Bill Gates as widely known for charitable giving as for business genius, it isn’t surprising that Microsoft Corp. is actively involved in humanitarian projects throughout the world—from raising money for a Boys & Girls Club in Seattle to helping build a school in the slum area of Nairobi, Kenya.

Microsoft also has developed an initiative called Front Lines, which exposes senior leaders to other cultures and deeper ways of connecting with partners. “Microsoft’s future leaders engage directly with international organizations to apply their consulting and business acumen toward pressing social and economic development challenges,” says Frank McCosker, managing director for global strategic accounts. “In return, Front Lines teaches participants that successful leadership is about being a catalyst for positive change versus the traditional figurehead role.”

The Front Lines program is preparing Microsoft for the future, says Shannon Banks, leadership development manager at Microsoft U.K., where the program was launched. “The rapid growth of emerging markets will increasingly shift the balance of power away from the U.S. Exposure to emerging markets will increasingly be a requirement for senior leaders.”

Participants—among the top 4 percent of Microsoft’s sales, marketing and services group—assemble for three- to four-day workshops in developing countries, such as one held earlier this year in Nairobi with 30 “high potential” Microsoft employees. The leaders met with United Nations agencies, information technology providers and not-for-profit organizations. They also visited destitute communities, met with local community representatives and toured successful businesses such as a flower farm in Kenya. And while visiting Mukuru, a slum area in Nairobi where an estimated 600,000 people live, program participants donated cash to help buy construction materials and desks for a ramshackle elementary school.

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Banks says the overarching goal of the human resources program is to “develop leaders while providing benefits to external partners and supporting the company’s African strategy.”

“Experience in the complexity and dichotomies of Africa have opened my mind,” wrote one participant. “I have learnt that citizenship is a competitive differentiator.”

For its efforts at helping leaders see how corporate citizenship can be strategic, Microsoft is the winner of this year’s Optimas Award for Corporate Citizenship.

Workforce Management, December 2010, p. 20 — Subscribe Now!

For most human resources executives, the notion of hiring 25,000 employees in six months is unfathomable. But in India, in the information technology and outsourcing services industry, it is an imperative.

Most people in HR couldn’t comprehend how to process that many applicants or “be a fundamental driver of a $6.3 billion company that is still growing,” notes Gartner Inc. vice president Partha Iyengar, who is a distinguished analyst and the firm’s head of research for India. “The scale and pace of recruiting in India is unprecedented. They do it better than anyone on the planet.”

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Tata Consultancy Services, part of India’s largest industrial conglomerate, is the winner of the 2010 Optimas Award for General Excellence for its ability to recruit and train a huge, multilingual workforce and to align its workforce strategy with swiftly changing business demands. In past years, companies outside North America have won honors in other categories, but TCS is the first overseas company in the Optimas’ 20-year history to receive the top prize.

The IT and outsourcing giant, with nearly 175,000 employees representing 88 nationalities in 42 countries, was recognized by Workforce Management in several categories including innovative recruiting and staffing programs, career development partnerships with colleges, a sweeping foreign language and cross-cultural initiative, expansion of its programs to help educate poor communities, and creation of a streamlined digital system to link people management with business strategy.

Like other firms that hire and train huge numbers of employees quickly, TCS faces pressing shortages of talented people. Traditional technical skills no longer suit burgeoning business demands. As Diane Morello, Gartner vice president and fellow emeritus, observes in a written statement, “The intersection of business models and IT requires people with varied experience, professional versatility, multidiscipline knowledge and technology understanding—a hybrid professional.”

In one of several noteworthy HR programs, TCS created a plan called Ignite to expand and deepen its recruiting reach beyond the larger cities to attract students at lesser-known colleges.

India produces about 2.3 million college graduates every year, 690,000 of whom are math and science majors, TCS reports. The Ignite program team—initially composed of only six people—established a program in nine months to capitalize on the potential of the science talent pool. The seven-month high-tech, high-touch program, which combined electronic instruction with face-to-face contact, was structured to broaden the company’s talent sources beyond engineering and technology, create new learning models for recruits and increase the company’s social impact in rural communities.

Highlights of the program include metrics to better identify people with skills ranging from computer programming to general business acumen. Reaching out to a broader talent base also necessitated a significant shift in how employees are developed and trained.

TCS moved from the traditional teacher-student approach to a “learner-centric” model designed to create a culture of high energy, active participation and collaborative learning. Trainees not only learn at computers, where they can revisit lectures and self-monitor their progress, but also work with personal coaches and in teams.

In 2½ years, 2,517 math and science graduates were trained and deployed throughout the company. Many in this new talent pool are women, who now comprise 65 percent of program trainees. More than 60 percent of the trainees have come from rural towns in India, communities where TCS plans to provide more educational and economic opportunities.

Another HR program that has significantly affected business results is TCS’ service initiative to better align the company’s workforce strategy with changing business demands. In a major digitalization effort, the company managed to become more agile and accurate in staffing and to cope better with the recent global economic downturn.

The initiative involves trying to ensure that the right person is in the right place at the right time. Because employees are cross-trained, they have many skills and can perform a variety of tasks. This minimizes downtime because employees are always working on a project and honing their skills. The company estimates that by significantly reducing the amount of “unutilized” employee time, it saved $50 million in fiscal 2010.

CEO Natarajan Chandrasekaran says that all new TCS hires go through an initial learning program of several months. “Additionally, we have in place a very well-established talent development program that ensures our associates are continuing their skills development throughout their career,” he says. “Our investment in our associates has resulted in TCS having” what the company believes is the highest retention rate in the industry.

Other successful HR initiatives include the company’s career development partnerships with groups such as AIESEC, the largest international student organization with 50,000 members. The one-year program—which partners with students in countries ranging from Uruguay and Ecuador to Hungary and Finland—encompasses application screening and interviews with prospective TCS leaders in fields such as IT, HR and marketing. Participants receive cross-cultural training, work with individual mentors who advise and support them in their personal and professional development and meet with members of senior management at an annual conference.

This approach will be critical to TCS’ long-term success, Gartner’s Iyengar says. “This is one of TCS’ key cultural challenges. In the U.S., people in sales and marketing are the rock stars. In India, it’s the techies who are the rock stars. India might need to recruit more in the U.S. and Europe, or how are they going to move the whole culture more to sales and marketing?”

Perhaps nowhere is TCS’ global response more important than in its language and cross-cultural programs. Over the years, TCS has created a vast spectrum of classes blending learning via its intranet, the Internet, telephone and face-to-face instruction. A few years ago in Japan, for example, TCS began an offshore center to develop bilingual training and business skills in the local culture. The program was not only implemented ahead of schedule, but also TCS estimates that it helped expand its business in Japan by more than 50 percent in six months.

Despite all of TCS’ sophisticated HR programs designed to handle large numbers of employees, Iyengar says, the company will continue to experience the same problems organizations—large and small—will face in the coming years: finding and developing skilled, versatile employees.

“TCS is known to be best in training,” Iyengar adds. “But if they still have a goal of achieving revenues of $10 billion by 2012, and if their linear model continues, they will have to employ another 350,000 people. That isn’t tenable.” The company’s revenue for fiscal 2010, ended March 31, totaled $6.3 billion.

The quality of hires is another major challenge, Iyengar says. “In India, only 20 to 30 percent of college graduates are employable. Most degrees aren’t worth the paper they are written on.”

But Ajoyendra Mukherjee, TCS’ global head of HR, says he believes the company manages to attract many of the most talented graduates. “Our model of recruiting 50 to 55 percent of our annual talent requirement from the top universities in India and abroad and then training them and grooming them to become top-class IT professionals has proven to be very successful,” he says. “We are very proud of the fact that in a year when the business environment was very challenging, we went ahead and recruited 38,000 people and all of them joined TCS in the same fiscal year.”

TCS’ Chandrasekaran knows better than anyone how complex it is to run such a huge organization. “This fiscal year we expect to hire around 50,000 associates around the world, adding to our already sizable employee base,” he says. “Managing this enormous growth across multiple geographies is an ongoing challenge and one that we continue to learn from and improve upon.”

Workforce Management, December 2010, p. 18 — Subscribe Now!

In the dark days of 2009 when business meetings focused on chilling financial forecasts and inevitable layoffs, SAS Institute Inc. co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight did something almost unheard of. Despite the economic uncertainty, he declared: There will be no layoffs. Goodnight didn’t want any of his 11,000 employees to live in fear. “It was a very gutsy move,” says Jenn Mann, vice president of human resources at the business analytics company, which is the largest privately held software company in the world.

For anyone who knows anything about the Cary, North Carolina-based company, the announcement was pure Goodnight. The towering 6-foot-5-inch executive, who has been at the helm throughout the company’s 34-year history, has created a company that has consistently received accolades for employee loyalty and strategic employee benefits. In the past decade, SAS has nearly doubled its staff—to more than 11,000 from about 6,000—and more than doubled revenue—from $1 billion to $2.31 billion last year. It has made Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For ranking every year since it was first compiled 13 years ago. This year, SAS ranked No. 1.

SAS received Workforce Management’s Optimas Award for general excellence in 2000, largely for programs related to its ability to attract—and keep—talent. At that time, the technology industry struggled to fill gaping labor shortages as new jobs were being created at dizzying speeds. There were five jobs for every skilled worker. Turnover averaged about 20 percent industrywide; at SAS, it was only 5 percent.

Today, turnover at SAS is 2 percent, which is the lowest in the industry, Mann says. Forty percent of SAS employees have been with the company 10 years or longer. And last year while other companies were forced to slash benefits and staff, SAS actually added employees and expanded benefits. Goodnight says that from the beginning it was his intention to create the kind of company that he himself would want to work for, a place where creative people could develop new ideas in a supportive, respectful environment—whether serving customers or writing software code. Because of its exceptionally low turnover, Mann and industry watchers estimate that SAS saves hundreds of millions of dollars a year. That provides a lot of money to offer perks to employees.

“We have great HR at SAS in two areas,” Mann says. “One, we understand how to attract talent and are very connected to university students who often become employees. And, two, we have very innovative benefits.”

SAS was born in academia and continues to recruit many students from nearby colleges such as North Carolina State University, which offers a master’s degree in analytics. SAS leaders make frequent trips to campuses to build relationships, search for talent, support technical academic programs, and promote SAS internships and science and technology “boot camps.”

The company also forms strong links with high school science and math teachers who are invited to bring their classes to the SAS campus to learn more about technology. Special emphasis is placed on reaching out to young women while they are still in high school. Because women continue to be underrepresented in science and engineering, a special effort is made to reach out to high school girls and to bring them to SAS to visit the campus and talk with them about career opportunities.

Expanding their horizons
Mann says one of the biggest HR changes in the past decade has been its expanded business focus. In addition to fulfilling traditional HR responsibilities, she and members of her team now play a larger role in broader business areas such as customer service. They’re responsible to customers just like employees in other areas of the business. For example, HR is expected to conduct three client meetings a month, such as a session with a customer’s CEO task force, to address subjects like risk taking or health and wellness.

“At SAS, we share what we do,” Mann says. “We’re always looking for ways to connect with our customers. Over the years we’ve found that our own extensive employee programs and benefits make a powerful impression on our customers—and prospective customers.”

SAS’ laundry list of benefits includes 90 percent coverage of health insurance premiums; free health care at an on-site medical center staffed by 56 employees, including physicians, nurse practitioners, nutritionists and dietitians; a 66,000-square-foot fitness center and natatorium; unlimited sick days (which has never been an issue, Mann says, as company data show the average employee uses only four a year); flexible work schedules; three weeks of vacation for entry-level employees—not including the week between Christmas and New Year’s; an on-site child-care center that costs employees a below-market price of $410 a month, which is roughly $900 less than average in the market, Mann estimates; a summer camp that served more than 100 children last summer; and a work/life center staffed by eight social workers who offer services ranging from adoption and parenting classes to disease management and elder care.

Then there are the numerous goodies and services, not thought of as perks, but as expressions of employee respect. Mann calls them “programs that eliminate stress and attract talent.” Included in this category are: a hair and nail salon; a car detailing service; a restaurant and bakery honored with culinary awards where employees and family members can eat during the day or order dinners to take home; break rooms stocked with snacks and beverages; art classes; ski trips; and a special nursing room for new moms equipped with cozy chairs and a sound system that plays classical music.

Lisa Arney, a corporate communications manager who has worked at SAS for nine years, enrolled both of her children at the child-care center. Now pregnant with her third child, she says she can’t fathom how she could have been such a happy, productive mom if she had stayed at the other companies she worked for.

“SAS understands that your life doesn’t stop when you come to work,” Arney says. She’s in touch with her children during work days, can take them to the SAS medical center if they’re sick, receives e-mails with photos of what her children are doing during the day, and has a lunch date with her daughter every Thursday at the SAS cafeteria just steps away. “My children’s teachers are my co-workers,” Arney says. “They get the same benefits I do. Some of them have been here for 25 years.”

Ten years ago, the average age of employees at SAS was 30. Today it is 45. Consequently, SAS has refined its workplace programs, Mann says, adding more wellness and elder-care information and a listserv to help retirees stay in touch with one another.

Milton Moskowitz, co-founder of the Great Places to Work Institute and co-author of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For, says that great benefits are a symbol of how much a company cares about employees. But it’s the broader culture that sets SAS apart, he says. SAS, for example, maintains staff in all areas and doesn’t outsource. All employees—whether landscapers, food service workers or software engineers—are treated the same and have a vested interest in the company.

SAS faces more competition in recruiting employees as companies such as Google Inc. also offer a wide range of workplace benefits. Still, as a privately held company, SAS can provide employees with more security than public companies driven by quarterly results and stock prices.

Gareth Herschel, research director at Gartner Inc., has studied SAS and says the company is strong because it has always had a very clear focus and a very consistent management team.

“I asked the CEO, Jim Goodnight, a couple of years ago how he viewed his role in the company,” Herschel says. “He said, ‘The value of SAS walks out of the building at 5 every night. My job is to make sure they want to come back.’ He sees his people as his biggest asset. He views his job as supporting the needs of his people.”

“SAS is paternalistic,” Herschel continues. “Some people would find that disturbing, the kind of ‘Big Brother’-is-watching-you aspects—going to the company doctor, sending your kids to the company school.”

Until now, Herschel says SAS has been the 800-pound gorilla in the field of business analytics. But as new players emerge and competition intensifies, he believes the company eventually will be “more like one of the seven dwarfs.”

“Now that the market is changing, it will be a challenge for management to remain competitive,” Herschel says. He expects it to be “fascinating” to watch how the company changes when Goodnight is no longer running the show. Even if experienced leaders already are in charge when the boss is away, Herschel says, it’s “still like there’s a babysitter in charge. Everyone knows the parent is coming back.”

Now 66, Goodnight is spending more time away from the office on global projects. But he is not the kind of leader who has to micromanage, SAS’ Mann says. Company executives are already accustomed to being in charge and to understanding every facet of the organization. Succession planning isn’t an issue, she notes, adding simply, “At SAS, we grow organically.”

Workforce Management, October 2010, p. 37-38 — Subscribe Now!