Human resources is going back to the roots of an employee-centric workplace culture — and it’s about time.
According to Tom Haak’s HR Trend Institute, one of the major HR trends for 2018 is a switch from please the boss to employee intimacy. This trend is arguably the most important one HR has made since switching from personnel administration to HR management.
Many HR pros read “Human Resource Champions” by management guru Dave Ulrich. Unfortunately, many readers are left with one key message: Become a strategic partner. That meant chief human resources officers had to get close with management. This left out Ulrich’s biggest and most influential point: You need to focus on developing employee champions.
Now that CHROs are getting the message, it’s time to start developing a workplace culture revolving around employees’ needs.
The workplace should never feel stagnant to an employee. However, when HR is more focused on pleasing the boss, employees often resort to simply checking off one rote task after another.
In an “employee intimacy” setting, HR can shift the focus to each employee’s journey and experiences. This makes room for a better understanding of soft skills, offering more independence and allowing motivation to naturally skyrocket.
When employees are motivated by their own actions and passions, a ripple effect is created. This fills the entire company with employees who are improving companywide goals without extreme pressure from the top.
Create a workplace culture where leaders empower employees to feel in control of their own paths within the organization. Set aside your own and leaders’ agendas when establishing goal meetings. Start making employee-led one-on-ones the new normal in short-term and long-term goal setting.
Inform employees they’ll have 30 minutes to lead a meeting on any topic of their choice. Your role is to assist them in any way needed. If they’re struggling with a task, offer advice or resources. If they’re completely honest and say they’re getting bored in their responsibilities, find effective ways to reinvent their role together.
Empower Productivity
In recent years, HR pros have focused heavily on recruiting new talent to take on capacity problems. However, hiring quickly to fill roles leads to a decrease in the quality of talent. It also takes the focus off of your “A” players, leaving room for underdeveloped potential.
Creating a more employee-intimate workplace culture empowers your already-hired, talented employees to increase productivity, decreasing the need for constant recruiting. And when you’re able to stop filling holes with quick-fix hires, A-players are enabled to form indestructible A-teams.
Power up productivity using people analytics. Measure performance to understand what traits your top employees have. Once you have these traits pinpointed, use them to develop an efficient training solution for your entire team.
Explain to managers what traits you discovered that are propelling top employees forward and how the training will help all employees. By gaining a deeper understanding, managers have the ability to continue helping employees develop in the field. This increases their chances of creating a well-oiled machine.
Give the Power of Communication
Technology is constantly focused on improving our ability to communicate. Unfortunately, effectively communicating company news to employees remains a serious challenge that 73 percent of communication professionals reported facing in communications technology company Dynamic Signal’s “The State of Workplace Communications” report.
Many HR pros continue using easily accessible email to get information to employees. In fact, the majority of the study respondents cited email as the most effective way their organizations communicate with their teams. But cutting through the noise of hundreds of other daily emails is extremely challenging.
Surprisingly, company intranets came ahead of social media, break room posters and even mobile apps.
Stop letting your companywide messages become hidden among hundreds of other “high-priority” emails. Set up a company intranet system that puts your messages front and center. Send out messages celebrating employees’ accomplishments, short checklists for a healthy work-life balance and reminders for important forms that need filled out and signed.
Challenge managers to keep the discussion going on messages throughout the week. The more that managers focus on the message, the more enticed employees will be to open them up every day.
Val Matta is the vice president of business development at CareerShift. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Remember Bailey Davis? She’s the New Orleans Saints cheerleader fired for violating the team’s social media policy.
Her offense? This photo, which she posted to her personal Instagram.
She’s already filed a civil rights complaint, and now she’s speaking out about her alleged discriminatory treatment and discriminatory policies in professional cheerleading in general.
If you think your male employees are “predators,” the answer isn’t to punish your female employees, or apply to them a different set of rules intended to protected them. Instead, you simply should deal with the predators.
I understand that we are talking about professional sports, and the predators are the money makers and meal ticket, but that in no way justifies condoning their behavior, or discriminating against your female employees.
If you weren’t angry about this issue before, you will be now.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
The war for talent may be raging on, but that’s good news for HR tech startups. For yet another year, venture capitalists have poured money into deals to bootstrap the latest generation of vendors offering innovation software to support recruiting, talent management, onboarding and workforce management.
By the end of 2017’s third quarter, venture investment in HR tech companies surpassed $800 million across nearly 90 deals, according to George LaRocque, founder and principal HCM market analyst for LaRocque LLC in New York.
These include a few massive deals — Namely, an all-in-one HR platform, payroll and benefits services vendor for mid-sized firms secured $50 million in January; Yello, a talent acquisition firm raised $31 million in June; and Move Guides, a global relocation and mobility management company raised $48 million in July — which it used to acquire Polaris Global Mobility, a software company focused on ex-pat program management and payroll. And the big deals appear to be continuing in 2018, most notably with Degreed, the employee training platform, which secured $42 million in March.
The ongoing investment in HR tech is a reflection of the challenges companies face in finding and retaining top talent in this market, according to LaRocque. “The continued talent gaps and super-low unemployment has created a skill shortage,” he said. These emerging software companies promise to ease some of these woes, which is appealing to customers and venture capitalists alike.
Human capital management systems are also easier to sell than other more complex workplace technologies, said Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst for Constellation Research. “Every venture capitalist was once a manager, so they can relate to how hard it is to find and manage talent,” he said. They also likely remember how frustrating old HR technology was. “It’s one of the biggest advantages HR tech firms have.”
The ongoing demand for better and more innovative talent management software has created room for a lot of new vendors, especially those that integrate artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies that promise to disrupt the marketplace. “We are seeing an uptick in AI across the board, in benefits, learning, recruiting and core HR,” LaRocque said.
Many of the deals are focused on the recruiting side of HR as companies struggle with market competition for talent. Mueller pointed to the constant pressure recruiters face to fill open positions and their willingness to try something new if it promises better results. “Recruiters may have two to three weeks to fill an opening,” he said. If their current software isn’t helping them close that deal, they are quick to move on to the next one. That’s creating opportunities for companies to get a foot in the door and to prove their solution is better than their peers’, he said.
HR tech vendors that serve small and mid-sized businesses are also popular, as more small firms seek vendors who cater to their specific HR technology needs. “In the past, the small and midsized market was predominantly served by payroll and job boards, or watered-down versions of enterprise solutions,” LaRocque said. Now he estimates 98 percent of new HR tech firms focus on middle-market customers.
Bigger but Later
While interest in HR tech hasn’t waned, the timing of the current deals and the companies receiving big investments has changed. Early on in this trend, VCs focused on young startups with big ideas and a few talented engineers. But today’s recipients of venture capital are more seasoned. “The hardest money to raise now is early funding,” LaRocque said. “The larger investors want companies that are further along because they are safer bets.” They are looking for firms with an established customer base, strong workforce, and a few years of solid performance to win their attention.
This trend could signal a future slowdown in the HR tech marketplace as the next generation of start-ups struggles to secure the seed funding needed to get them going.
In the meantime, while having so many options can feel overwhelming, industry professionals should look at the bright side. “There are so many opportunities to leverage new technologies to address talent issues that have been difficult to deal with in the past,” LaRocque said. And because these tools are primarily cloud based, they may be easier to access and integrate with existing HR systems. “It’s an exciting time to be in HR.”
Though to avoid wasting time with novelty tools that won’t add real value, he encourages HR leaders to stay current on the latest trends, read industry reports and talk to their peers before making an investment. They also should try not to be closed off to new ideas. “Many of today’s talent management problems can’t be solved using old software capabilities,” he said. “So look at what is possible before setting rigid requirements for your next system.”
Sarah Fister Gale is a writer in Chicago. Comment below or emaileditors@workforce.com.
Once again, someone in an organization made a poor behavior choice whose harmful consequences were recorded and made public.
This time it was coffee giant Starbucks, and once again, people are freaking out. Starbucks is freaking out so much, the company is investing millions of dollars to close 8,000 stores and send 175,000 employees to racial bias training the afternoon of May 29.
This is what happens when the ancient “downstairs brain” is running the show. While this part of the brain is very effective at “fight or flight” in situations of imminent physical danger, it should not be in charge of leadership decisions. While the danger to Starbucks’ brand is clear, and their leadership is right to take responsibility and respond quickly, spending millions and losing millions in revenue to send employees to a half-day training is a knee-jerk reaction likely to produce few results.
Effective leadership is usually more about responding well than reacting quickly. Responding well in crisis requires two things: (1) pausing and (2) using that pause to bring the more sophisticated “upstairs brain” back online to critically examine the data.
Here are the data: On April 12 two African American men were waiting in a Philadelphia Starbucks for a third person to arrive for a business meeting. They asked to use the restroom and were denied because they hadn’t purchased anything. The manager asked them to leave and when they refused, she called 911. Police arrived and arrested the men for alleged trespassing, even after the third party showed up for their meeting.
Based on these data, here are five reasons why racial bias training won’t help.
We don’t really know the problem. Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” As a culture we have this backwards, especially when the “downstairs brain” is in control. Some questions that need to be answered are, what are Starbucks’ policies for public restroom use? Why? Are those policies working? How are they to be implemented? What is their protocol for when to call police? To call 911? Why? How are managers and staff trained on those policies and protocols? Is that training effective? How are they held accountable to those expectations? Did the Philadelphia manager know the policies and protocols? If not, why not? If so, did she follow them? If not, why not? What is the protocol for police to follow when called to a situation like this? Why? Why were police compelled to make an arrest in this situation, instead of de-escalate? Are these police procotols working? Having answers to these questions gets us to the root cause of the problem, and professionals in process improvement and root-cause analysis are the experts to engage.
Training is a solution only when lack of knowledge and skills is the problem. I’ve written often about the costs when leaders just throw training at “diversity” problems (see “When Diversity Training Is a Waste of Time and Employers’ Money”). If the Starbucks manager and police lacked necessary knowledge and skills, was this a glitch, or does it point to a systemic flaw or gap? If so, then training may be an effective solution. But if they were correctly following policies and procedures, the policies and procedures need to be changed. Then those must be hard-wired in the organization’s processes, modeled by leadership and integrated into systems of accountability.
Systems drive behaviors much more than individuals will. U.S. culture is highly individualistic, so we fixate on eliminating or “fixing” individuals instead of addressing how the larger environment sets us up for success or failure. Mahzarin Banaji, the co-creator of the 20-year-old, scientifically robust Implicit Association Test, says the test picks up on “the thumbprint of the culture on each of our minds” and cautions against focusing on individuals as the problem or the solution to bias. Banaji herself has said she doesn’t think implicit bias training makes a difference. What the research shows that does make a difference are individual practices like pausing for 20 to 30 seconds before acting and getting enough sleep to exercise “cognitive control” in the moment. (I cover six other research-based practices in this 2014 article). But systemic approaches tend to be easier, cheaper and more reliable. Examples include automated reminders at key decision points (like a computer notifying a doctor of racial disparities in how a drug is prescribed, before they prescribe that drug), eliminating bias triggers (removing names from resumes to eliminate racial bias in hiring practices) and prompting supervisors to ponder their biases before conducting a performance evaluation.
Racial bias training is only effective if created and delivered by people qualified to do so. Starbucks bringing in famous people like Bryan Stevenson, Sherrilyn Ifill, Eric Holder Jr., Heather McGhee and Jonathan Greenblatt is impressive. They are brilliant pundits, lawyers, business people and thought leaders on policy. All but Greenblatt are African American. But these qualities and qualifications don’t make them experts in implicit bias, adult learning, organizational development or change management. No one would ask a surgeon to do their taxes, or an accountant to do their knee surgery. And yet it’s common for organizations to invite respected but unqualified people to conduct mission-critical employee trainings instead of those who are less famous, but actually possess the required expertise. Highly ethical subject matter experts are best qualified to conduct a rigorous needs assessment, identify organizational gaps, make recommendations, define goals, conduct necessary training and leadership coaching, and assess results.
Racial bias training is only effective if focused on clear, concrete actions that are supported back in the office. I’ve seen firsthand how even some well-known firms providing unconscious bias training do not define clear, measurable training goals; do not provide concrete tools or clear action plans during training; do not assess training results and don’t work with clients to ensure their systems and office culture support the knowledge and skills employees gain in training. Awareness and knowledge alone don’t move change or shift cultures. (For more, read Six Ways to Set Up Training for Success.)
I applaud Starbucks for taking the community’s concerns seriously. I hope the millions of dollars and thousands of employee hours invested in their racial bias training produce results beyond good PR.
Perhaps participants will gain some skill in cognitive control so they can disrupt their downstairs brain next time it hijacks their decision making ability under perceived threat. But training won’t change the culture imprinted on all of our minds — a culture where people of color are perceived as threats when they’re just going about their lives, where it’s acceptable to call 911 whenever their presence is deemed inconvenient, and where it’s common for police intervention to exact life-altering tolls on those people of color.
Until we all commit to doing the long-term, un-sexy tasks of clearly defining the problem, doing what actually works to increase equity and inclusion and being dogged about accountability and broader systems change over time, we will see incidents like this again and again.
What will you do today to ensure your organization won’t be next?
Susana Rinderle is president of Susana Rinderle Consulting and a trainer, coach, speaker, author and diversity & inclusion expert. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Last week, the Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division resumed its practice of publishing Opinion Letters.
One of the first it published answers an interesting question about the intersection of the FLSA and the FMLA.
Must an employer pay an employee for FMLA-approved breaks taken during the work day?
I’ve taken some journalistic license and paraphrased the questions. The answers, however, are verbatim from the DOL Opinion Letter FLSA2018-19 [pdf]
Q: We have an employee who is on an approved intermittent FMLA leave for back issues. When he experiences a flare-up during the day, his FMLA papers permit him to take an unscheduled break. These breaks typically never last more than 15 minutes, and the employee is able to return to work. Yet, they are occurring eight times per day, resulting in only six hours of work during an eight-hour work day. I know that under the FLSA, breaks of 20 minutes or less must be paid. Yet, FMLA leave is unpaid? What do I do? Which law trumps, FLSA or FMLA? Must I pay this employee for his unscheduled medical breaks during the work day?
A: “The specific FMLA-protected breaks described in your letter, however, differ significantly from ordinary rest breaks commonly provided to employees. As you note in your letter, the 15-minute breaks at issue here ‘are required eight times per day and solely due to the needs of the employee’s serious health condition as required under the FMLA.’ Because the FMLA-protected breaks described in your letter are given to accommodate the employee’s serious health condition, the breaks predominantly benefit the employee and are noncompensable.”
Q: Got it. We don’t have to pay this employee for his FMLA-related breaks. Since he’s already taking two hours of breaks during the work day, I assume we do not have to permit him to take the two paid 15-minute breaks we provide all of our other employees. Right?
A: Wrong. “Employees who take FMLA-protected breaks must receive as many compensable rest breaks as their coworkers receive. For example, if an employer generally allows all of its employees to take two paid 15-minute rest breaks during an 8-hour shift, an employee needing 15-minute rest breaks every hour due to a serious health condition should likewise receive compensation for two 15-minute rest breaks during his or her 8-hour shift.”
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
Yesterday, I came across the very cool video for a new Speedy Ortiz song, “Villain.”
The song tackles issue of harassment, assault, and consent.
Rock music has always tackled the important social issues of the times, and #MeToo should be no exception.
Which got me thinking, what are some other songs that take on similar themes and issues? I came up with five.
War on Women, “Say It”
Sublime, “Date Rape”
Camp Cope, “The Face of God”
Bikini Kill, “Liar”
Liz Phair, “F*** and Run”
So what’s on your #MeToo playlist? Share in the comments below, or hit me up on Twitter with the hashtag #MeTooAnthems.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
One side says that employers cannot discriminate against minorities. The other says that employers cannot discriminate against non-minorities in favor of minorities.
For example, Title VII does not define “African American” or “men” as protected classes; it merely says “race” and “sex.” Thus, if you discriminate against a white person in favor of an African American, or against a man in favor of a woman, you’ve violated Title VII no differently than the converse.
If, however, you are going to include “LGBT” in Title VII’s definition of “sex,” then, just as employers cannot discriminate against LGBT employees in favor of non-LGBT employees, employers also cannot reverse the equation.
In light of all of this, consider Philadelphia’s Mazzoni Center, an LGBT-focused health care and wellness nonprofit.
It recently took some heat in Philly’s LGBT community for hiring a straight woman, Lydia Gonzales Sciarrino, as its new CEO. Some have criticized her lack of LGBT-specific health care experience (which, if true, would be a valid criticism), while others are more pointed, claiming that her hiring is a shameful “act of violence and deliberate silencing of the very communities Mazzoni is funded to serve.”
When it comes to matters of employment, Mazzoni Center does not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, age, sex, gender identification or gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, marital status or any other protected status covered by federal, state or local law. Thus, all employment-related decisions are made solely on the basis of a candidate’s skills, ability, experience, education, training, and other legitimate factors related to the requirements of the job.The Mazzoni Center’s Board considered Ms. Sciarrino the most qualified person who applied. If Title VII covers LGBT-status as sex (which I, and most courts, argue it does), then neither the Mazzoni Center, nor any other employer, can favor an LGBT applicant over a more qualified straight applicant. That would be illegal sex discrimination.
Diversity is a laudable goal. Let’s strive to make sure we are not taking positions that undermine it.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
It’s official. We’re in a talent war, and employees are no longer conscripted soldiers — they’re volunteers. They’re with their company because they want to be.
Although it’s counterintuitive, companies need to stop focusing on recruitment. Instead, they should focus their efforts on creating the type of environment employees want to work for — a more human workplace that embraces the employee’s whole self, which leads to high levels of engagement, productivity and retention.
Here are three ways companies can create a more human workplace that attracts and retains top talent.
1. Put Employees First. Organizations that succeed put their own people first because they recognize that their employees are the key to creating long-term value. It’s not just giving employees free food. It’s feeding their souls and creating an environment where they can have an impact.
Listen to your employees to inform your culture. As Pinterest’s Head of Culture Cat Lee told me, “We created Pinterest by collaborating with our Pinners, and similarly we create our culture by collaborating with the people who are at Pinterest.”
Define your company values and connect daily work back to the mission. For example, freedom is one of the five values at Grokker. Every week we have Work-From-Home-Wednesday, and the whole company participates. We give employees the freedom to take care of themselves and their families, and in response they commit to the company.
Lorna Borenstein, CEO of Grokker
2. Prioritize Employee Well-being. The more effectively leadership supports employee well-being, the more likely employees are to experience engagement, loyalty, job satisfaction and positive energy at work. This in turn lowers stress and increases overall positive sentiment toward the company.
The cost of presenteeism — where employees show up for work but don’t perform at full capacity — is 10 times the cost of absenteeism, according to a Global Corporate Challenge report. Rather than focusing on how to keep employees from taking sick time, target productivity while employees are already at work by prioritizing well-being.
Employees expect a wellness experience that is built into every work day, like nutrition awareness and exercise-friendly workplaces. You don’t even need to spend money to see impact. Employees who are able to take a break every 90 minutes report a 30 percent higher level of focus than those who get no breaks or only one. They also report a nearly 50 percent greater capacity to think creatively and a 46 percent higher level of health and wellbeing. Identify low-budget, high-impact ways to prioritize the wellness of your workforce. Companies can, for example, schedule 10-minute group stretch breaks at 10am and 2pm daily or stream a video to do together
3. Rethink the Employee Experience. IBM’s Employee Experience Index study found that employees with a sense of purpose and enthusiasm in their work are more likely to perform at higher levels and contribute “above and beyond” expectations for their performance — and are less likely to quit.
Move beyond perks and one-off engagement programs to create a seamless, holistic employee experience that inspires people to do their best work. Instead of thinking about how to solve specific problems, brainstorm ideas that focus on the greater goal: creating a powerful employee experience.
Here’s a very simple metric you can employ to measure your employee experience: Employee Net Promoter Score. Inspired by the gold-standard metric for consumer satisfaction, eNPS is used to understand employees’ overall engagement with the company. Have employees rate their feelings on the simple statement, “I would recommend my workplace to others” on a 10-point scale. Employees with 9+ ratings are generally considered promoters, while those with ratings ranging from 0-6 and 7-8 are labeled as detractors and passive, respectively. Use this formula: Employee net promoter score (eNPS) = % promoters – % detractors.
Research demonstrates that when we give our employees what they want — purpose, belonging and balance — the business sees success. Since 1998, the companies on the Fortune ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ list have consistently outperformed the S&P 500 stock index by a ratio of almost two to one. There’s a reason the same companies consistently make these lists. They recognize that listening to their employees, putting their needs first and promoting their strengths and capabilities promotes happiness and produces results.
Lorna Borenstein is the CEO of employee wellness technology company Grokker. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
We’ve all done a lot of talking over the past six months about sexual harassment.
We should not forget, however, that our laws make harassment unlawful if it’s based on membership in any protected class.
A federal jury in Detroit just provided employers a very real reminder of this fact.
It tagged Ford Motor Co. with a $16.8 million verdict. The plaintiff, a former Ford engineer, proved that the automaker created a hostile work environment based his Arab background.
“There was a high-level executive at Ford Motor Co. that my client reported to … that would berate him and criticize him week after week about his English,” said Carol Laughbaum of Sterling Attorneys. Khalaf, who was born in Lebanon, had been with Ford since 1999.
“It wasn’t a matter of ‘Please, can you repeat this?’ but ‘What is wrong with you? Why don’t you understand this?’ ” Laughbaum said, noting that her client’s supervisor, who has since retired, would “literally pound his fist on the table and yell” at Khalaf over his English. …
The trial shed light on other problematic workplace practices, according to Laughbaum. She said Fowler, during a high-level executive meeting, handed her client a note that simply read “S 2+2.” Khalaf, who holds a Ph.D. in industrial engineering, later found out that the note meant: “Small coffee, two sugars, 2 creams.”
We’ve spent so much mental energy and workplace capital focusing on sexual harassment that it’s easy to lose focus on the myriad other classes of unlawful harassment — race, national origin, religion, age, disability, etc.
This large verdict serves as an excellent reminder.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
Human resources is working overtime to address accusations that practitioners have been on the wrong side of the #MeToo movement.
The wide-scale makeover of processes, policies and the profession’s image comes in the wake of revelations of widespread sexual harassment at U.S. employers of every size and in virtually every field, from entertainment to academia to government. They include incidents or alleged incidents at high-profile startups such as ride-hailing company Uber, women’s hygiene products maker Thinx, retail jewelry chain Signet Jewelers and casino operator Wynn Enterprises.
One of the most well-known cases is The Weinstein Co., where allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and rape against co-owner and one-time Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein kicked off the #MeToo movement and led the entertainment firm to the brink of bankruptcy.
Report after report portrays weak HR functions that helped create a breeding ground for harassment and other toxic workplace behaviors. Victims accuse HR of failing to adequately deal with complaints of improper or illegal behavior, provide proper reporting channels or take other actions as warranted. In the most egregious cases, employees, potential employees or independent contractors who report harassment or abuse — the vast majority of whom are women — claim HR representatives aided or covered for the harassers.
In some cases involving startups, there was no HR person or department for victims to turn to, or the function was added only after problems were made public. In other cases, alleged victims or their representatives have linked HR problems related to harassment to personnel who had been promoted into HR roles without adequate experience, credentials or training.
Elizabeth Bille, general counsel and corporate secretary, SHRM.
Even as more new accusations come to light on a regular basis, HR departments are stepping up their responses by increasing sexual harassment training. They are hiring outside contractors to perform workplace culture audits, provide independent whistleblower services and set up other types of HR tech to support better harassment reporting.
“There’s been a lot of self-reflection about what we have been doing and what more we could be doing,” said Elizabeth Bille, general counsel and corporate secretary of Society for Human Resource Management, the industry’s largest professional group. “There’s momentum and increased awareness and sensitivity that more may need to be done in this area.”
Industry influencers are using the moment to advocate for elevating the profession. They want companies that don’t already have an HR manager in the C-suite to boost the position to that level. They want companies that already have chief HR officers to make sure those executives report directly to the president or chief executive officer.
While that might be good advice for larger companies, it may not apply to tens of thousands of U.S. HR professionals who, according to SHRM, work as “departments of one,” predominately at smaller companies.
Ultimately, HR can only do so much. A company’s owner or upper management sets the tone for what is or is not acceptable workplace behavior. Although companies like Uber, Thinx, Wynn and The Weinstein Co. have removed CEOs who employees claim were harassers or created work environments that allowed harassment to happen, others have yet to take such assertive measures.
Some practitioners are suggesting that HR professionals should be prepared to quit rather than stay at companies with CEOs or boards that are unwilling to make the changes necessary to rein in questionable behavior or to take steps to prevent it from happening in the first place.
“My hope is that all HR folk know where they’re comfortable ethically and then stick to it even if that means leaving a job,” said Kate Bischoff, a Minneapolis employment lawyer, during a recent #HRHour Twitter chat.
A Threefold Increase in Requests for Sexual Harassment Training
Next to suspending or firing harassers, the #MeToo movement’s biggest impact on HR has been bumping up sexual harassment trainings.
Kelly Marinelli, an employment lawyer turned HR consultant, said requests for trainings have increased threefold since early 2017. Marinelli, president of the Boulder, Colorado, SHRM chapter, presents everything from 90-minute webinars to half-day on-site sessions for companies, law firms and other organizations. “People want something they can do right now to make it better, and that’s a first step,” she said.
Kelly Marinelli, president of the Boulder, Colorado, SHRM chapter.
Training that Marinelli offers goes beyond identifying and addressing sexual harassment. It also educates companies on actions they can take to create a workplace where employees feel comfortable because bullying and power plays aren’t tolerated. “Sexual harassment is about power, not sex,” she said.
A workplace harassment resource page on SHRM’s website has gotten “millions of views” since it was launched in early November, according to Kate Kennedy, an organization spokeswoman. The resource page launched only weeks after initial reports of Weinstein’s alleged harassment and abuse, which victims claim goes back decades and includes cover-ups by company staff.
Sexual harassment-related calls to a separate SHRM Knowledge Center also are higher today than they were at the same time in 2017, Kennedy said.
In recent months, SHRM has increased the number of training sessions it sponsors, and is advising state legislatures on sexual harassment policies, said Bille.
“There’s recognition that as a baseline matter, HR professionals need to go back to their anti-harassment and retaliation policies and make sure they’re strong enough,” she said. “Does the policy fully address all the behaviors we’re seeking to prevent that constitute sexual harassment? Do we have enough reporting mechanisms so individuals have not just one but several people they could go to to report concerns? Do we have an investigation procedure in place that’s ready to be used in the case of sexual harassment?”
Women who claim to have been harassed have characterized HR as only caring about protecting corporate interests. It’s not a notion that sits well with many HR practitioners who see themselves as champions of employees, said Anne Tomkinson, an HR generalist and board member of SHRM’s Washington, D.C., chapter.
Long-time HR executives such as Tomkinson are using social media and private online forums to support each other. Methods for handling the issue and making employees feel supported are popular topics on a private Slack messenger channel frequented by HR veterans. “We collaborate a ton on all these things, and it comes down to helping people feel good about their work and doing the best work they can,” said Marinelli.
Companies are hiring law firms and other outside services to audit reporting procedures or to set up whistleblower hotlines, following the likes of Uber, which launched an internal sexual harassment audit following allegations of misogyny and harassment chronicled by a former employee in a now well-known February 2017 blog post. Uber’s audit, conducted by an employment law firm and headed by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, resulted in 20 employees being fired, including many senior executives, and reprimands for 40 other employees. Since then, organizations such as the New York City Ballet and Metropolitan Opera also have hired law firms to conduct audits. Other lawyers have started posting information about audit services they provide on their websites.
HR tech vendors are capitalizing on the situation by offering cloud-based harassment training and related services. One is Vantage Point, a startup created by a two-time survivor of sexual violence. Vantage Point sells virtual reality-based sexual harassment training videos.
HR Departments of One Can Lead to Knowledge Vacuums
A number of high-profile sexual harassment cases cited HR personnel who lacked education, experience, training or credentials for the job.
Especially at small companies and startups, it’s common for a co-founder or owner to handle payroll, benefits and hiring until the work becomes too much to handle and they pass it off to someone who’s proficient at administrative tasks. But knowing how to run payroll doesn’t mean knowing how to handle a sexual harassment complaint, Tomkinson said.
Anne Tomkinson, HR generalist and board member of SHRM’s Washington chapter.
SHRM estimates that about 55,000 of its 290,000 members work as HR departments of one, with sole responsibility for personnel matters, including providing harassment training.
For the majority of the 10-plus years Tomkinson has been in HR she has been one of those one-person HR departments at a variety of small businesses. Tomkinson holds SHRM certifications and a master’s degree in management. But many people who are moved into HR jobs at small companies don’t have previous experience or training and might not be aware of resources available for guidance and support, she said. Oftentimes they’re working in isolation and making their best guess.
“A lot of what feels like common sense isn’t best practices,” she said.
As an example, she said employees might come to HR with a problem and ask that the conversation be confidential or that no action be taken. If it’s a difference of opinion with a co-worker, Tomkinson said she might listen and offer counsel if they ask for it. “But if it strays into something that sounds like it could be harassment, I say I can appreciate that you want it to stay confidential, but I am required to do some sort of investigation.”
The nature of the allegation drives the type of investigation. “There’s a difference between the president of the company pressuring someone for sex if they want to get a promotion, and someone who says a co-worker is hitting on them and they don’t like it,” Tomkinson said.
‘HR Can Only Go So Far’
All the training, internal audits and other compliance fixes won’t work if upper management doesn’t live and breathe them.
Many larger companies that have come under scrutiny had formal HR departments with sexual harassment policies and training and still weren’t able to avoid these problems, said Beth Steinberg, chief people officer at cloud-based workforce app company Zenefits.
“The root of the issue is often the leadership team,” she said. “Are they engaged in these kinds of activities themselves? Do they encourage proactively addressing issues or make positive changes when issues come to light? If not, HR can only go so far.”
The personnel problems that tripped up Zenefits several years ago didn’t include sexual harassment allegations. But the company had a frat-party atmosphere led by its co-founder and former chief executive officer that included employees having sex in stairwells and doing shots after closing sales.
It also was fined by multiple state regulators for letting unlicensed employees sell insurance policies. In the past two years, Zenefits parted ways with the CEO and pivoted away from benefits to selling cloud-based HR tech software. The reorganization included hiring Steinberg, an HR heavy hitter who has advised numerous startups on people issues.
In late 2014, a Zenefits board member invited Steinberg to discuss creating a chief people officer role at the company and the possibility of taking on the role. But “there wasn’t an alignment” with top management over the value such a role could bring, and she passed, Steinberg said. That changed under current CEO Jay Fulcher, she said.
Zenefits previously had a CHRO, but when Steinberg came onboard in August 2017, it was as the chief people officer reporting directly to Fulcher, and she thinks there’s a big difference. “It signals the importance of this role to the company,” she said. “If the person leading people strategy is less valued than a technical leader or another leader, it says a lot.”
When corporate ethics and values don’t line up with what an individual believes, people need to ready to act.
Vivian Maza, CHRO of Ultimate Software
Michael Rasmussen, a compliance consultant in Waterford, Wisconsin, left a former employer a decade ago after the organization invited a senior executive at an adult entertainment company to deliver a keynote speech at one of the company’s conferences. “I thought this was a slap in the face to the women that worked in the company and were our clients. I protested and it was the foundational reason I left,” Rasmussen wrote in a recent blog post.
He’s not alone in urging HR practitioners to act on their convictions. HR leaders must commit to what they think is right, said Vivian Maza, chief people officer at Ultimate Software. Maza advocated for women employees during a panel at an HR technology conference last fall.
“As HR professionals, you have to feel it and fight for it every day to do the right thing for employees,” she said. “If [your job] doesn’t align with what your philosophy is or what your gut is telling you, you’re in the wrong place.”
Create a workplace culture where leaders empower employees to feel in control of their own paths within the organization. Set aside your own and leaders’ agendas when establishing goal meetings. Start making employee-led one-on-ones the new normal in short-term and long-term goal setting.
