Author: Site Staff

Listening to HR’s Critics
Rather than relishing a seat at the table, HR must transform from top to bottom and learn to act solely as a business-impact function.

HR’s New Opportunity: Removing Barriers to Productivity
Identifying and removing roadblocks to productivity produces real results immediately. And it makes HR look proactive.

The Data Sleuth
Peter Fasolo has made it his business to dig into turnover statistics and satisfaction surveys to discover why top performers leave. Hint: Money isn’t everything.

Capturing the State of Human Resources in an Annual Report
Human resources annual reports can reveal trends, illuminate plans for the future and be used for persuasive purposes with line managers. But they are far from universal.

Jac Fitz-enz, Metrics Maverick
In 1978–in this publication–Jac Fitz-enz proposed a radical, anti-establishment idea. Human resources activities and their impact on the bottom line could–and should–be measured. The reaction was apathy, disagreement and disbelief. Now, after arguing the importance of measurement and accountability for three decades, Fitz-enz is acknowledged as the father of workforce management metrics, and the accolades bring a pleasant satisfaction.

Strategic Human Resources Actions
Being strategic is sort of like the weather–everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. Here, San Francisco State University professor John Sullivan gives some examples of actions that he says have proven to be strategic.

The Right Kind of Human Resources Talent
For too long, says the University of Connecticut’s Dennis Lee, the human resources function has settled for less than optimal candidates. He suggests new selection criteria for hiring the talent necessary to build a strategic human resources function.

Human Resources’ Goals Work Best When They’re Tied to Company Success
People talk about aligning corporate, departmental and employee goals, but not many actually do it. There are companies, however, that have concrete methods to manage and measure the performance that makes lofty goals a reality.

Seven Steps Before Strategy
In the rush to get a seat at the corporate table, some HR professionals skip the basics. That ruins HR’s credibility and holds it back. Here’s what you must do before you can strategize.

The Changing HR Profession
Academics, HR consultants and executives at major outsourcing firms describe a future in which the growth of outsourcing, advances in information technology and bottom-line pressures may lead to the demise of the traditional HR generalist.

The 30 Highest-paid HR Leaders Their Stock Is Rising
With increased regulation placing greater demands on workforce executives, companies are showing their appreciation through richer compensation that often includes valuable awards of restricted shares.

Your Wonderful, Terrible HR Life
There’s almost nothing you haven’t handled: the twice-fired employee, fashion tips for transvestites, and a confrontation with the snake woman.

A Stress Survival Guide for HR Professionals
Survival strategies for dealing with crises; ever-changing technologies; multiple roles, privacy requirements, and more.

Commentary: Human Resource Management–At the Table, or Under It?
In order for the HR function to maximize its impact on the organization, HR-related issues and HR executives need to be “at the table.” The question is whether HR has “made it” yet: Is HR at the table, or under it? If it’s under the table, is it holding up the table, or hiding?

Jobs Disappear When Work Becomes More Important
It’s becoming more and more apparent that traditional job descriptions are too rigid for today’s evolving workplace. HR must reinvent employment structure as work roles become less defined.
 

A week after announcing a plan to make prescription drugs more affordable for Wal-Mart customers and employees, the retail giant confirmed Wednesday (September 27) its plan to eliminate its lowest-deductible health plan for new employees.

Beginning January 1, new Wal-Mart employees eligible for health plans will see their lowest-deductible plan rise to $1,000 annually from $350. Wal-Mart employees can expect to pay lower premiums of $11 to $23 a month if enrolled in this plan.

New employees are eligible for health insurance after six months of full-time work or after 12 months for those who work less than 34 hours a week. Wal-Mart, which called the new benefits package a matter of “streamlining,” will continue to offer a high-deductible plan with a health savings accounts for those who have been eligible for health care benefits for a year. In areas where an HMO is available, new hires would have the HMO plan as a third option, Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman says.

Wal-Mart has attempted to repair its sullied image as an employer that is generous to customers but stingy to employees. To do so, the company earlier this year cut by half, to 12 months, the waiting period for part time employees to become eligible for health insurance. Last week, it announced that consumers will pay $4 per prescription for 291 different generic drugs.

The plan changes were first disclosed by WakeupWalmart.com, a critic of the Bentonville, Arkansas, company’s health care benefits. A spokesman for WakeupWalmart.com, Chris Kofinis, says the limited offering will force employees with high health care costs to choose a plan in which they would face larger out-of-pocket costs. For an associate making $10.11 an hour, the $5,000 out-of-pocket limit could eat up close to 30 percent of that person’s $17,874 annual salary.

Kofinis says the company is shifting more of the cost of health care to its sickest workers and their dependents.

“Here you have a company that is setting a terrible health care precedent that other companies will want to follow,” Kofinis says.

Fogleman says the change, which he calls a matter of “streamlining,” came about because most workers who enrolled in the plan with the lowest deductible of $350, opting to pay as much as $1,040 annually in premiums, never met their deductible.

“Over half of our associates did not meet their annual deductible, which means they were paying for insurance coverage they weren’t using,” Fogleman says.

The low-premium, high-deductible plan, known as the value plan, includes three doctors visits and three prescription fills with a co-pay and is available to more than 40% of Wal-Mart workers in America for $11 a month.

“We are doing all we can to make sure our plans are accessible and affordable,” Fogleman says.

Wal-Mart also plans to increase this year its “spousal surcharge”, a levy that is becoming increasingly popular among employers who want to save money on dependent health care. The surcharge at Wal-Mart will cost $1,800 and will be assessed if a spouse who has health care benefits through their current employer chooses instead to enroll under Wal-Mart’s plan.

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest private employer, with 1.3 million employees. It is the second-largest provider of health care benefits, covering about 1 million people, trailing only GM. Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott has spoken openly about the need to reduce health care costs.

—Jeremy Smerd

Event: The Motivation Show 2006–Business Solutions That Motivate People
Date: September 26-28, 2006, McCormick Place South, Chicago

What: The Motivation Show touts itself as “the world’s largest exhibition of motivational products and services.” It features nearly 2,000 exhibitors of incentive and recognition programs, promotional and branded products, gift cards, and motivational destinations and attractions. In addition, the show has a number of educational seminars and paid workshops on how to create more effective, measurable programs to get the most out of relationships with customers, channel partners, salespeople, employees, vendors and shareholders.

Conference info: For more about the Motivation Show, go towww.motivationshow.com.

Conference Notes, Day 2–Wednesday September 27, 2006

Dr. Bob on motivating and incentives: Dr. Bob Nelson, author of a number of books on motivating workers including “1001 Ways to Reward Employees,” had two well-attended seminars on the second day of the Motivation Show. Nelson, who is frequently quoted in Workforce Management, had one session on recognizing and motivating employees, and another on the hows and whys of rewards.

Employees, he says, leave a job primarily because they don’t feel recognized for what they are doing. Nelson gave numerous examples of the power of recognition (formally, informally and day to day) and said that “recognition can’t be optional”–it must be ongoing, consistent, spontaneous and sincere.

If you ever get a chance to hear Bob Nelson at a conference or seminar, do it. He has an important message that more managers and leaders need to hear.

Sessions I wish I could have attended: One of the frustrations of this show is that the seminars are scheduled four or five at a time. This means you have to pick one even though there may be another one that looks equally promising.

Here are a few of the ones I wish I could have attended:

• “The Effects of Employee Satisfaction on Company Financial Performance”

  
  

• “Attracting, Motivating and Keeping the Most Loyal, Productive and Talented People”

  
  

• “The Secret Language of Influence”

  
  

• “The Future of HR Management”

  
  

• “The Economics & Advantage of Employee Engagement”
  
  –John Hollon

  
  

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Conference notes, Day 1–Tuesday, September 26, 2006

First-timer shock: First-timers to the Motivation Show (like me) get a little bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of vendors in the exhibit hall touting gift cards, food goodies, and all manner of motivational gifts for companies to give to employees doing a good job. All of them are giving out free samples, drinks, food or goodies of some kind, but it is far less frenzied than, say, the mad scramble for swag at SHRM’s annual conference.

The show organizers say there are at least 1,800 exhibitors in the main hall, and a good third of those are from travel destinations–Hawaii, Mexico, Jamaica, Aruba–travel packagers, hotels, convention bureaus and trade councils, airlines, cruise lines and destination management companies. Which makes you wonder: Who is getting sent to all of these places? I can count the number of people I’ve known who have gotten a reward trip on the fingers of one hand, but clearly, a lot of people must be getting a lot of trips somewhere. And, some of the places touting themselves here are headscratchers. For instance, the Zagreb Tourist Board? I’m sure Croatia is lovely, but as an incentive gift for an employee doing a good job? I’m guessing that Aruba would be a little more motivational.

One other thing: At first glance, one would think that this show is just about hawking incentive goodies, but the hidden secret of the Motivation Show is that there are a number of free seminars going on and many of them seem informative and compelling. For example, “The Effects of Employee Satisfaction on Company Financial Performance” and “Driving Performance Through People” are pretty meaty topics for a show like this, and from the number of people I saw in the seminar sessions, many of them were well-attended.

Employee engagement, again: You can’t go to any workforce-related conference anymore without getting bombarded by talk about how to drive more employee engagement, and Mike Ryan of the Madison Performance Group put on two different sessions dealing with this topic. The one I attended (“The Role Employee Engagement Plays in Driving Adoption and Utilization of New Business Practices”) was focused on the role more highly engaged employees can play in driving change.

Ryan admitted that employee engagement was “the flavor of the year” and being talked to death at conferences, but he made a compelling case for why it is important, showing that the intangible value in most American businesses was 85 percent in 2005, up from 30 percent in 1930. This intangible value, he noted, is primarily the human capital in a business, and more engaged human capital increases the intangible value.

He also defined employee engagement a little better than I’ve heard in the past, saying it is defined by two key principles:

1. That the employee believe what they do is appreciated by the business or organization.

   
   

2. That the employee believes in the mission and values of the organization, and more importantly, embraces them.

   
   

In other words, “It’s not just about hands, but it’s about heart and mind,” Ryan said. “It’s about mind-set, and engaged employee thinks a lot more about the common good of the company. They think more like a CEO.”

So long, baby boomers: The best-attended seminar of Day 1 was on “Rewards & Recognition: Solutions That Work,” presented by Razor Sufeman and Jason Fisher, CEO and director of marketing, respectively, at ILoveRewards.com. This was clearly a hot topic with a good three times more people than at any other seminar.

The focus of the presentation, however, was only on Gen X and Gen Y employees and how to motivate and reward them. If you wanted to find out how to motivate a baby boomer or older worker, well, tough luck. The presenters clearly felt that there’s no reason to try to motivate boomers, which was a little disconcerting if you’re in that age group. It’s hard to tell if this was a sign of the times and things to come, or just an odd blip in a conference schedule, but these guys from ILoveRewards.com were clearly tone deaf when it came to talking about strategies to motivate the entire workforce.
–John Hollon

 

When Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley killed an ordinance that would mandate wage levels at large local retailers and had his veto upheld by the largely Democratic City Council in early September, it marked a victory for businesses like Wal-Mart and Target.

But community groups that pushed the measure vow to keep fighting as the city moves toward municipal elections in February. Their determination should send a signal to corporations that are in the cross hairs, according to one expert.

“We’re still in the first or second inning with this,” says Mike Flynn, legislative director at the Employment Policies Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that studies entry-level employment. “Business still thinks it is about the wage rather than recognizing that it is a political movement.”

On September 11, Daley scuttled an ordinance that would require large retailers to pay their employees $10 an hour and provide fringe benefits of at least $3 per hour by 2010. Daley, who exercised his first veto in 17 years, argued such a law would drive stores to the suburbs.

The ordinance passed the council 35-14 on July 26. But a veto override, which would have required 34 votes, fell short by three votes September 13.

While anti-Wal-Mart sentiment is quiescent on Capitol Hill, unions are targeting state legislatures and city councils to promote health care and wage standards for a company that has resisted organized labor.

“They’re trying to do through government mandate what they can’t do in the marketplace,” Flynn says.

Working at the local level helps galvanize the movement. “If you want the policy, you go to Washington,” he says. “If you want the politics, you focus on the cities and the neighborhoods.”

The proponents of the so-called big-box wage ordinance, heartened by the close council vote, say their message is resonating.

Now they have their sights set on February, when the City Council and Daley are up for re-election. Daley, whose administration has been stung by scandal allegations, may face his biggest challenge since being elected in April 1989. One of his potential foes, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., has come out in favor of the wage ordinance.

“It’s going to be a defining issue in these local campaigns,” says Ken Snyder, coordinator of the Grassroots Collaborative, a group of 35 organizations backing the wage ordinance.

Snyder says that when Wal-Mart and other big retailers pay low wages, they’re essentially making the government pick up health care and living expenses for their employees. “The reality is, they’re getting massive taxpayer subsidies,” he says.

A Chicago employment lawyer disputes that assessment.

“You don’t see Wal-Mart employees complaining about what they have,” says Jim Hendricks, a partner at Fisher & Phillips. “If they wanted to organize, they would. It’s not that difficult.”

Hendricks praised Daley, saying the mayor has his finger on the pulse of the neighborhoods. “There are people in the city who are crying for these jobs,” he says. “I applaud what he did.”

Companies don’t clap when wage floors are instituted, but they usually aren’t hurt either, according to Flynn. But people entering the workforce are set back, he says.

Flynn cited an EPI-commissioned study of a Santa Fe, New Mexico, living-wage ordinance that found that the city’s unemployment rate increased by 16 percent following the law’s passage. “Every one of those jobs lost was held by someone with a high school education or less,” he says.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Employers who pay for health care are not getting their money’s worth and universal coverage and participation is the best way to improve both the quality and cost of the system, according to a report released Wednesday by the Commonwealth Fund.

The health care scorecard released by the New York-based think tank rated 37 measures of American health care on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being best. Though American health care is the most expensive per capita in the world, it underperforms its peers by a wide margin.

The health care system fares poorly in its ability to promote healthy and productive lives, scoring a 67. The quality of care also is below average, rating a 71. Poor care for blood pressure and diabetes treatments result in an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 preventable deaths at a cost of $1 billion to $2 billion in avoidable medical costs.

The need for better quality controls was brought home during the past week in Indianapolis, where three premature babies died at Methodist hospital because they were administered an incorrect dosage of a blood-thinning drug.

A spokesman for the hospital, Jon Mills, says the fees for hospital services will not be passed on to the insurer or employer in light of the preventable deaths.

What the health care system lacks in quality it also lacks in efficiency, as the U.S. scored 51 out of 100 on efficiency measures. The fund’s report said that as a share of total health care cost, insurance administration totaled three times more than countries with the most efficient insurance system.

The report said improvement will require a focus on health care quality, not simply cost reduction. The fund also said that chronic illness, which composes a majority of health care costs, should be remedied with a system designed to encourage the management of chronic illness. This is especially important as the population ages.

Attempts to reward doctors for giving patients the right care, following guidelines for certain chronic conditions, are coming to the market. Last week, a collaboration of health care experts announced the launch of Prometheus Payment Inc., a nonprofit payment system that is designed to reimburse doctors for following guidelines for caring for certain cancers; chronic illness such as diabetes, hypertension and depression; interventional cardiology; joint replacement; and routine and preventive care.

Prometheus is intended to minimize a physician’s financial incentive to prescribe unnecessary tests and procedures. It is also aimed at discouraging “capitation,” which pays doctors on a per-patient basis and encourages doctors to spend little time and effort on patient care.

—Jeremy Smerd

Wal-Mart announced today that it will sell some generic drugs for $4 per 30-day prescription to employees and customers, including people without health insurance, at the company’s pharmacies.

Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, says it will launch the program at its 65 stores in the Tampa, Florida, area and expand it to all stores statewide beginning in January, and to as many states as possible next year.

“This will help all of our customers and all of our associates from all walks of life,” says Bill Simon, an executive vice president. “Associates” are Wal-Mart employees.

Whether this move will benefit employers footing the bill, however, appears unlikely. Any savings will be indirect.

Coming from the largest retailer in the world, the effort could pressure other chain pharmacies to lower the prices of similar prescription drugs, creating market competition that could help wean patients off expensive brand-name drugs.

“Wal-Mart is a smart organization and they are not going to depend on more conventional health care organizations that have been raking purchasers over the coals” to create a more robust market for consumers, says Brian Klepper, president of the Center for Practical Health Reform.

Such an occurrence would coincide with the expiration of a bevy of patents on brand-name drugs that is ushering a wave of generic drugs onto the market that could also lower costs and increase the use of generic drugs.

“This is going to help employers somewhat,” says Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change. “To the degree that employees are going to pay less for generic prescriptions will help employers move more of their employees to generic drugs.”

The way the program will work is simple. The drugs will cost $4 per prescription for those with or without health insurance. Employers could conceivably save money if their employers choose not to file insurance information with Wal-Mart. Simon said the company would not bill health plans for the difference between normal co-pays, which range from $10 to $50, and the $4 that Wal-Mart charges.

The list of 291 generic drugs offered for $4 includes antibiotics like Amoxycillin and drugs for chronic illnesses such as asthma (Albuterol), high blood pressure (Lisinopril) and diabetes (Metformin). The savings for uninsured customers normally forced to pay the average retail price could be as high as 67 percent, Simon says. The 291 drugs represent one of every five prescriptions Wal-Mart fills.

The move will likely to take political pressure off of Wal-Mart to make its health plans more widely available to its employees since those without insurance pay the same for certain drugs as those who are covered. Cheaper drugs could bring more customers to Wal-Mart’s in-store clinics that treat basic illnesses.

Simon says Wal-Mart was not in discussions with manufacturers to get lower prices on the drugs. The company said it could deliver reduced prices cost-effectively by increasing sales volume and by employing the highly efficient technical and logistics infrastructure it uses to sell other items at deep discounts.

“We are geared up to deal with a significant volume increase,” Simon told reporters during a conference call. “We expect a lot of folks will be interested in this program.”

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, who has long criticized the inefficiency of health care markets, hinted earlier this year that he would like to harness Wal-Mart’s efficiency to help bring down health care costs for consumers.

—Jeremy Smerd

People moving into key executive positions
	Kathy Barton has joined the Adler Group as senior vice president of business development and marketing. She was previously with Peopleclick as senior vice president of marketing and product management.
	Katy Murray has been appointed CFO of Taleo. Murray brings nearly 15 years of accounting and executive management. She most recently was with EXL Services as finance chief.
	Michele Sciortino has joined Right Management Consultants as vice president of human resources. She most recently was manager of human resources and manager of learning and development at Binney & Smith.
	Dana Waring has been appointed managing director in the Washington, D.C., practice of Resources Global Professionals. Waring has been with the company for more than seven years. Prior to joining Resources Global Professionals, she was with Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse.
	Suzi Stanton has been named mid-Atlantic regional director for Resources Global Professionals. Before joining the company, Stanton was a senior manager in the audit practice for Deloitte & Touche.
	Phil Moen has joined Unimax as vice president of sales and marketing. Prior to joining Unimax, Moen held executive business management posts at various technology companies, including SoftBrands.
	Michael Whitmer has been appointed chief information officer of Hudson North America. He most recently was vice president of information services for Spherion Corp.
	Peter Hotz has been appointed as senior vice president of sales and account development for CHD Meridian Healthcare. Hotz is founder, president and CEO of Atlantic Health Group.
	Amy McGeorge has been appointed COO of Vurv Technology. Before joining Vurv, McGeorge was COO of CitiStreet and, prior to that, managing consultant at Hewitt Associates.
	Andrea Fenster has been named vice president of human resources for Fotolog. Fenster was director of strategic staffing at Liz Claiborne for four years.
	Elaine Leuchars has been named vice president of human resources at Vision Service Plan. Leuchars has been with VSP for 12 years, most recently as director of human resources.
	Pete Alcide has been appointed COO of Lee Hecht Harrison, an Adecco Human Capital Solutions company. He was chief of staff for Adecco Staffing and, before that, CFO of Adecco Staffing North America
	Gregg Klofenstine has joined the Executive Staffing Group as senior recruitment manager.
	Ian Alexander has been named vice president of marketing and public relations for Cytiva Software. Alexander was with KnowledgePoint and CCHKnowledgePoint in various marketing positions before joining Cytiva.
	Michael Beygelman has been named senior vice president of business development for Adecco Group North America. Most recently he was executive director of the HR Outsourcing Association.
	Mike La Voy has been promoted to vice president of operations for ACI.
	Feng Li has joined Personnel Decisions International as senior consultant. Li most recently was vice president and general manager for Talent Shanghai.
Douglas Kish has been hired as a consultant to DAK Associates. Kish has more than six years of experience in sales and operations roles. He most recently served as regional sales associate as SEI Investments Distribution Co.
Rachel Glickman has joined Fotolog as vice president and chief revenue officer. Glickman most recently was vice president of global marketing for Time Warner.
Robert Besancenez has joined Buck Consultants as director in the health and welfare practice. He was a senior consultant with Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
Nancy Eid and Keith Weaver have joined Mercer Health and Benefits as principals in the managed pharmacy group. Eid was vice president of strategic relations at Express Scripts. Weaver was a senior underwriter of large group health insurance programs and served as a consultant representative on the Employer Market Advisory Board prior to becoming a consultant.
Christopher Reidy has been appointed CFO o ADP. Prior to joining ADP, Reidy was controller and chief accounting officer of AT&T Corp.
Lisa Caravella has been appointed executive vice president for Countrywide Home Loans. Caravella was director of strategic partnerships for CitiMortgage before joining Countrywide.
Mike Hood has joined Acco Brands as senior vice president of finance. Prior to joining Acco, Hood spent 20 years with Procter & Gamble.
Robert Goode has been named director of human resources for USC Consulting Group. He most recently was director of human resources for AmeriPath/Center for Advanced Diagnostics.
Mark Schneiderman has joined Chernoff Diamond & Co. as principal partner and director of compensation and the human resources practice. Schneiderman is a noted advisor to corporate executives and boards of directors on the use of executive compensation, alignment strategies and organizational processes.
Karen Stoneman has been named vice president of human resources at Sysmex America. She also will become a member of the company’s senior leadership team. Prior to joining Sysmex America, Stoneman worked at Baxter Healthcare for 10 years in a variety of HR and talent planning posts.
Robert Knowling Jr. has been named to the board of directors for Bartech Group. Knowling is CEO of Vercuity.
Wallace Greene has been promoted to vice president of global client strategy at Korn/Ferry International. Prior to joining Korn/Ferry in 1994, Green was marketing and sales director of Publishers Video Group.
Stewart Lawrence, senior vice president at the Segal Co., has been appointed national retirement practice leader for the company.
Michael Moehle has joined the Segal Co. as vice president of the West region retirement practice. He was principal and consulting actuary for Buck Consultants.
Dean Rischitelli has joined Prudential Relocation as vice president of business development. Rischitelli was vice president of Channel Management for SIRVA.
George Puig has been appointed as president of North America for Futurestep. Puig has more than 25 years of experience in business process outsourcing.
Submit your move

Federal government initiatives don’t usually jump to mind in the category of innovative thinking. But even if Washington is following the private sector, its sheer heft makes a difference when it jumps onto an issue.

This might be the case for President Bush’s executive order instructing four government agencies, including the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to provide health care price and quality information to beneficiaries. The instruction also compels them to improve health information technology systems and make them work together to produce more transparency into quality of care and pricing.

In addition to Medicare and Medicaid recipients, the plan participants covered by the order are those in the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs and the Office of Personnel Management. Together, they represent about 25 percent of the health insurance market. Some of the information also will be available to the public.

With the president demanding more price and quality data, businesses may follow suit in their contracts with health providers.

“These things are already happening without a government mandate, but they will be further encouraged with the executive order,” says Katie Mahoney, manager of health care policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

One of the major health care providers, Aetna, is already offering price and quality information to its plan participants in select markets. The company is confident that other providers will do the same.

“This will be embedded. This will be a way of doing business,” says Robin Downey, head of product development at Aetna.

The business community embraced Bush’s move because it gives momentum to consumer-driven health care. Proponents of consumer-driven health say the success of such plans hinges on the ability of individuals to save money by making decisions based on price and quality.

“You might see more companies willing to make this the (only) type of health plan they offer rather than just a choice,” says Ted Nussbaum, head of group and health care consulting with Watson Wyatt North America.

The key to price transparency is to get providers to divulge the dollars and cents they paid, which they often see as a competitive advantage. “The challenge for the private sector will be to have price disclosed as opposed to cost,” Nussbaum says.

On the quality side, there likely will have to be much give-and-take among interest groups as they grapple with definitions of quality care.

Two organizations—the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance (AQA) and the Hospital Quality Alliance—have brought businesses and health providers together to work on benchmarks.

“Having the government say, ‘We’re going to do this (price and quality transparency)’ makes it all the more urgent for hospitals and doctors to work with HQA and AQA to come up with consensus measurements,” says Steven Wojcik, vice president of public policy for the National Business Group on Health.

Seattle might be one community that takes the lead in the transparency process because of interest from major employers in the area, says Maria Ghazal, director of public policy at the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of large corporations.

The enthusiasm is shared by corporations throughout the country. “Our CEOs have been pushing for a year now for greater transparency in the health care system,” Ghazal says.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Two recent studies differ on whether Oracle or SAP is king of the HR software hill. But the trend line from each report shows strides for SAP and lost ground for Oracle.

An August 15 report from AMR Research shows Oracle on top in 2005, with a 26 percent share of worldwide revenue in human capital management applications. SAP ranked second with a 23 percent share. In June, research firm Gartner Dataquest found SAP was the market-share leader in 2005, with 24.1 percent of worldwide human capital management software revenue. Oracle was a distant second with 14.4 percent market share. AMR’s figures include revenue from professional services, while Gartner’s do not.

Despite the divergence on who was tops in 2005, both reports show SAP as having the momentum.

Gartner Dataquest says Oracle’s HR software revenue fell nearly 32 percent in 2005, while SAP’s rose 10 percent. AMR predicts this year that SAP will grow faster than its rival and pull within one percentage point of Oracle in revenue share for human capital management applications.

Jim Holincheck, an analyst at Gartner, says a factor behind SAP’s progress is improved product usability. During the past two years, SAP has worked to make its applications more intuitive for average employees, who might use the software for self-service tasks such as choosing benefits.

In addition, Holincheck says, customers until recently may have been leery of buying new applications from Oracle for fear that a major upgrade would be required with the arrival of Oracle’s Fusion products, which are slated to begin hitting the market next year. Several months ago, Oracle announced its Applications Unlimited program, in which it pledged to keep improving its individual product lines even after Fusion goes on sale.

Oracle declined to release revenue figures for HR applications. The company says AMR’s overall assessment of market share is about right, but it disputes the trends found in both studies. Especially in the wake of the Applications Unlimited announcement, customers are eager to buy Oracle HR products and the PeopleSoft products it acquired last year, says Glen Tillman, director of analyst relations for Oracle’s HCM applications. “That pretty much cleared away any fears they may have had,” he says.

Oracle also notes that for the quarter ended May 31, new license sales of applications overall—not just HR software—rose 83 percent. SAP, meanwhile, said in July that its software revenues overall fell short of its expectations for the first half of the year.

Mark Lange, SAP’s head of human capital applications in North America, says those broad snapshots do not capture SAP’s surge in HR software, especially in North America. He says his operation grew revenue by 45 percent last year and will come close to that level this year.

Despite the sparring, both SAP and Oracle have reason to be happy when it comes to HR applications. AMR says human capital management is one of the fastest-growing areas of business software, with revenue rising 10 percent annually through 2010, to $8.7 billion.

—Ed Frauenheim

Titles for what essentially are the largest companies’ chief environmental officers are anything but standardized today. But that mishmash won’t last long.

A specialist who studies job titles and compensation says he expects uniformity will reign within the next five years.

“When a new position is in its infancy the titles are all over the board,” says Jason Kovac of Scottsdale, Arizona-based WorldatWork, a global nonprofit professional association for human resources professionals. “You’ll see alignment of these job titles within certain industries first, then within companies.”

He wouldn’t be surprised if Home Depot eventually incorporates the terms “sustainable,” “corporate responsibility” or “environmental affairs” into a job now handled by the vice president of merchandising, lumber.

Kovac compares this eventual evolution on the environmental front to the brief history of the chief information officer. What’s now often included as part of the C-suite had its humble beginnings in the information technology boom of the 1990s. Once the title was elevated within high-tech companies, it began spreading into other industries.

New positions with potential heft often begin at the manager level. As new responsibilities are added, the name morphs into director, then vice president, and then senior vice president before reaching the hierarchical pinnacle of a specialty title.

“Titles give people instant credibility,” Kovac says. “They let people outside of the organization know that what they have to say is important.”

Among the 25 largest U.S. companies, 15 of the environmental head honchos are vice presidents, six are directors and five don’t staff that position. Women seem to have found a gap in the glass ceiling as they fill nine of the chief environmental positions.

Kovac recommends that companies stay far away from the plethora of goofball titles, like “minister of progress,” that bubbled up in the 1990s at dot-com startups. So, companies should junk any ideas about appointing a “minister of clean” or “doctor of green.”

“That’s absolutely the wrong direction to take,” Kovac says. “As soon as that title comes out of your mouth, you couldn’t be taken seriously.”

—Elizabeth McGowan
McGowan is a correspondent for Waste News, a sister publication of Workforce Management.