Author: Site Staff

There’s one common denominator between volunteer and event-planning organizations around the country: their reliance on people for success.

However, these organizations can’t hire just anyone who’s interested. Federal regulations require that each volunteer clear a criminal background check to protect youth, employees and the public from potentially dangerous individuals.

Although this is a familiar practice for HR departments with mature hiring practices, it often poses a costly and laborious problem for volunteer and event planning organizations.

Here’s why: Organizations that fund the screenings often pay between $10 and $20 per applicant. This may not sound like much, but multiplied by hundreds or thousands of applicants, this fee can place a strain on budgets for large events and further squeeze volunteer groups that already run on a shoestring.

Some organizations try to save money by having each volunteer pay for his own screening, but often end up paying hidden costs. Their overburdened administrators will likely spend countless hours collecting payments, managing paperwork, entering piles of data and ensuring consistency across all applications.

Despite the painful short-term costs, failing to perform proper background checks can have profound long-term effects. If an organization ignores its due diligence with a background check and hires someone with a problem that could have easily been identified, that organization may be liable for negligent hiring and retention practices, which can have stiff legal penalties.

For example, the average jury award for negligent hiring is $800,000 — a hefty fine that would financially devastate most small companies. Plus, any resulting media exposure could be equally destructive to organizations that count on public goodwill.

Another constraint is time. Most volunteer organizations need every individual they can get and typically want them trained and available quickly. This is equally true for event-planning organizations that are ramping up for a specific event and need to ensure adequate staffing.

A Simple, Superior Alternative

Fortunately, organizations that need customized screening tools can rely on a key component from LexisNexis Screening Solutions, called Specialty Screening.

This customizable, online screening tool enables prospective employees, event staff, coaches, mentors and volunteers to visit a customized Web site to request — and pay for (if desired) — their own background check. Once complete, the results are delivered to the hiring organization for review.

For example, the NCAA uses this tool for its summer coaching program. They set up the screening criteria to decide whether it’s a go or no-go — depending on whether they find any results that would inhibit that person from serving or being “hired.”

The Specialty Screening resource solves several key problems for these organizations. By allowing applicants to pay for their own background check, organizations eliminate the need to process numerous payments and follow-up on any payment problems. Plus, it helps groups avoid the hassle of data entry, coordinating permission forms and fund transfers — all of which takes valuable time and focus away from planning their upcoming events.

“Because each site is applicant-driven, organizations can get the information about each individual without having to have the manpower available to do the data entry,” explains Brent Zajac, Specialty Screening Specialist for LexisNexis. “Plus, they are assured that all information reported is in compliance with the Fair Reporting Act.”

Specialty Screening is equally convenient for applicants. The customized site is accessible from anywhere via the web, enabling applicants to access and complete the request form from the comfort of their own homes, library or copy center.

Custom, Co-Branded Screening

Another feature of the Specialty Screening tool is its ability to be customized. Each company can tailor the custom Web site log-in login page with their logo, business information and specific event details. Business information can also be included throughout the site, if desired, and can be changed whenever necessary.

For example, an organization that has multiple locations throughout the country may want one central site where everyone goes for screening. This tool would also specify which background checks are required for each job function — ensuring that the same checks are being done for a potential janitor in California as are being done for a potential janitor in Ohio. This consistency goes a long way toward effective hiring practices and avoiding even the hint of discrimination.

“No one in the background screening industry offers a product like Specialty Screening,” says Zajac. “Clients have asked for customized background screening sites that can be co-branded with their own logos; they have also wanted a way for applicants to enter their own data. In the past, it would have been too costly for us to do this kind of customization on a client by client basis. With our new Specialty Screening product, however, customization can be accomplished quickly and easily by any client with our online wizard.”

While this feature has tremendous value for event and volunteer organizations, it also appeals to a wide range of large organizations that are trying to simplify the process of performing their own background checks, gain some back-end features, and ensure compliance with the Fair Reporting Act.

“Specialty Screening sites can feature information-gathering capabilities that help organizations with administrative tasks, such as collecting shirt sizes and assessing special skills — like being bilingual — that may affect the individual’s placement among a pool of applicants. This is especially important to small organizations that don’t have a wealth of labor resources to manage these details,” adds Zajac.

The Power of Customization

As one might expect, setting up a Specialty Screening site is simple.

“Organizations simply go to the site and customize this resource for themselves,” explains Zajac. “They can co-brand the site with their logo, if desired, and quickly select the types of checks they want done for each job title. It’s really simple, and can be done in less than an hour, as long as they know what they want.”

With all its time- and labor-saving benefits, this resource has become highly attractive to smaller companies that are interested in increased simplicity and convenience. But they’re not alone. Many larger companies are also interested in having a co-branded site that offers the customized features they want — while ensuring the consistent application of the screening policies across their entire organization.

In addition to national and country criminal checks, companies of all sizes can rely on Specialty Screening tools for verification of identities, education, credentials and even physician licenses.

“Once organizations see what this resource can do, they see the big picture and realize this tool goes way beyond just volunteer and event planners,” says Zajac. “Companies of virtually any size can use this tool.”

“The bottom line is that Specialty Screening helps create safer work environments,” he says. “It allows organizations to show due diligence in their hiring and retention processes — while doing everything they can to create a safe work environment and protect employees, colleagues and children.”

What Customers Are Saying

When organizations consider the speed, simplicity, convenience, cost savings and labor savings made possible by Specialty Screening solutions, they are quick to tout its benefits. Here are a few comments from a few satisfied customers:

• “We have 33 percent faster turnaround time, and results are more accurate… If you’re looking for a good program to help pre-screen your applicants, give LexisNexis Screening Solutions a look.”
  —Thomas Boyd, VP Surveillance and Investigation, MGM Grand
  
  
• “The most important thing is that this product is a great tool to protect the general public by keeping potential high-risk individuals out of events involving children or events that carry high security risks. We can add a layer of security that for the most part isn’t there today.”
  —Kim M. Kerr, Deputy Director of Security Support for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics
  
  
• “Using the Specialty Screening site by LexisNexis Screening Solutions has made the process of performing background screening checks on our volunteers so much easier and less intrusive. I believe that the easier it is for people to perform a background check, the more background checks will be done and the safer young people will be.”
  —Rev. Allan K. Brooks, Children, Youth and Young Adult Coordinator for the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference, United Methodist Church

In early February, a new federal rule went into effect that requires federal contractors to record demographic information–including race and gender–about applicants applying for jobs through the Internet.

On the same day that the Department of Labor’s rule took effect, nearly 500 Internet job boards formed a new trade association. One of the primary goals of the organization is to strengthen the voice of the industry on policy matters. And while the rule from the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs didn’t inspire the creation of the association, it will be at the top of its list of priorities.

Job board executives say that when employers try to fill jobs through the Internet, they do initial scans potentially involving thousands of résumés before they start to whittle the applicants down to a more manageable number. If demographic information must be kept on each résumé that is sifted, it could overwhelm sites’ storage capacity.

“The data collection they’re asking (for) is almost impossible,” says Don Firth, president and CEO of JobsInLogistics.com and AllRetailJobs.com. “The level is just humongous.” He warns that some sites may start to put restrictions on searches so that they can keep pace with record keeping.

Now that the International Association of Employment Web Sites has been formed, the views of people like Firth can be framed and elevated in the policy debate. Peter Weddle, the association’s executive director, says the group will make its case about the definition of an Internet applicant to Labor Department officials. The job association’s site is at www.employmentwebsites.org. Membership fees range from from less than $1,000 to several thousand dollars, based on the board’s revenue.

“We are going to find ways to meet the letter and spirit of the law without the onerous data collection that would make the searches of online databases too problematic,” Weddle says. “We now have 500 sites expressing their point of view to the government.”

The group includes big general boards, such as CareerBuilder, Monster and Yahoo HotJobs; major daily newspapers with online job listings, such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal; international sites; and niche sites.

One goal of the association is to set its members apart from questionable sites among the some 40,000 employment boards on the Web by requiring them to adhere to high standards of customer service and ethics. “We wanted to provide legitimate job boards a way to differentiate themselves from those who were dabbling in a back bedroom,” Weddle says.

The association hopes that its logo on a job Web site will save employers from costly mistakes. “The fact that there’s a stamp of approval for job boards will save companies money,” Firth says. “It shows legitimacy.”

Beyond bestowing an imprimatur of quality and addressing issues like privacy protection, the association also will be a conduit for communication about best practices and changes in the industry.

“The great thing about IAE is that it will provide a forum for discussion of things that have yet to be played out,” says Cecilia Dwyer, president of TrueCareers, a job site connected to Sallie Mae, the student loan organization.

The association also will bolster the case for job boards as they face increased competition from vertical search engines like Google. Boards are “one of the most robust areas of e-commerce that has ever been created,” Weddle says.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Recruitmax, which recently changed its name to Vurv Technology, keeps expanding beyond its recruiting software roots.

Having pushed well beyond recruiting, the firm outgrew its moniker and on February 28 became Vurv, a name that the company’s management says is derived from the word verve, which means “a creative energy, talent, passion.” The new name better describes the company and its products, says Kevin Marasco, Vurv’s vice president of marketing.

The Jacksonville, Florida-based company recently formed a partnership with assessment specialist the Devine Group and acquired InScope, which focused on job competencies. In December the company said that it sold a set of software products targeted at small businesses. All told, the actions reveal a company focused on large customers and determined to offer a wide variety of workforce management applications.

Founded a decade ago, Vurv now offers software for tasks including recruitment, performance management and compensation.

The firm is taking one of two roads available to the smaller makers of hiring software systems, says Katherine Jones, former analyst with research firm Aberdeen Group. Given the similarity among these systems, Jones says, these providers have to offer either a deeper set of hiring-specific features or broaden their range of talent management applications. Taleo has taken the depth route with its ability to handle contingent, hourly and professional workers, Jones says, while Vurv has opted for breadth. InScope amounts to “another arrow in the proverbial quiver” for Vurv, she says.

With InScope came its “library” of some 1,700 competencies and more than 39,000 behavioral indicators. These are descriptions of skills, knowledge and traits that are important to different jobs. Companies can measure people against these standards to guide both hiring and promotion decisions.

The Devine Group, meanwhile, assesses people with questions designed to determine behavioral traits. Vurv said it will integrate Devine’s technology into its recruitment and performance management applications.

Behavioral assessments can benefit companies with large numbers of hires, in particular, by prioritizing candidates who show promise in areas such as customer service, says Jim Holincheck, analyst with research firm Gartner. Holincheck says that competency content and assessments together are more and more vital to companies as they face possible bidding wars over scarce workers.

“It’s important to understand what talent you really need, and characteristics of that talent, so you’re spending your money on the right resource,” he says.

Recruiting software products, sometimes called applicant tracking systems, have been criticized for being difficult to use and for poor performance. In recent years, the field has been shrinking through consolidation. Kenexa, for example, swallowed Webhire in January.

Recruiting technology also has drawn the attention of the big guns in HR technology—SAP and Oracle. Vurv remains a fraction of the size of those giants, with about 360 employees. But it boasts about 300 large business customers, and its revenue doubled for the year ended January 31, 2005, marketing VP Marasco says.

—Ed Frauenheim

The shooting deaths at a mail distribution facility last month by a former employee are a sad reminder of the importance that violence prevention should play in workforce management–from candidate selection to employee termination.

Jennifer Sanmarco, who had left her job as a clerk three years ago at the Goleta, California, facility, fatally shot six postal employees before turning the gun on herself. Based on a psychological evaluation, she was on “involuntary” medical disability retirement, says Don Smeraldi, a U.S. Postal Service spokesman. Sanmarco gained access to the processing and distribution center by using the key card of a worker she held at gunpoint.

Investigators are still piecing together Sanmarco’s actions leading up to the deadly rampage, but experts say previous cases show why organizations must recognize problems and address them head-on, and not just hope the trouble goes away.

“We’ve never seen a case where someone just snapped,” says Marc McElhaney, a psychologist and director of Critical Response Associates in Atlanta. “In every single one, there are a series of events that either someone ignored or did not respond to adequately.”

That’s why McElhaney, author of Aggression in the Workplace, says the No. 1 step that employers should take is to adopt an anti-violence policy, explain it to employees and make them aware of their responsibility for notifying management of “antecedent signs” of workplace violence. Employees need to know whom to tell about troublesome incidents, McElhaney says, and organizations should have threat-management teams trained in how to respond when a problem arises.

Psychologist William Berman says it’s difficult to predict workplace violence because it’s rare, but having a zero-tolerance policy helps companies spot workers in trouble. “If you limit the amount of aggression or abusive language or hostility that you tolerate, the people who can’t control themselves become more obvious and it’s easier to intervene with them,” says Berman, a director at Applied Psychological Techniques in Darien, Connecticut.

Violence prevention can begin even before a candidate is hired. Berman recommends conducting background checks and asking references whether the applicant has a history of violence, abusive behavior or substance abuse.

Out of fear of lawsuits, many former employers will not give anything more than a confirmation of employment, says John Reese, marketing director for HireRight, a background checking company based in Irvine, California.

Nevertheless, he says, it is not a bad idea for a prospective employer to ask former colleagues of the candidate about their knowledge of any past incidents of workplace violence. Some recent case law suggests that a former employer could be exposed to liability for withholding factual information that could have prevented a later incident, he says.

Co-workers and employers should take all threats seriously, says Doug Kane, a former FBI agent and co-founder of Risk Control Strategies. Perpetrators often discuss their plans. “They’re telling you that for a reason. They’re crying out for help,” Kane says. “If you don’t recognize that and instead think they’re just blowing off steam, you’re going to be front-page news.”

Employers also risk lawsuits if they don’t take measures to prevent workplace violence. “Generally, if an employer had some type of warning signs that the employee who started the incident had a propensity for violence, then the employer likely can be held liable for anything that happens because of that employee’s behavior,” says Charles Wilson, an associate with the law firm Epstein, Becker, Green, Wickliff & Hall.

Despite public perception, postal facilities are no more prone to workplace violence than anywhere else, experts say. In fact, the U.S. Postal Service studied the safety of its workplaces after several shooting. The findings, issued in August 2000, indicated that postal facilities were as safe as the average U.S. workplace.

” ‘Going postal’ is a myth, a bad rap,” said the report’s introduction by Joseph Califano Jr., chairman of the U.S. Postal Service Commission on a Safe and Secure Workplace. “Postal workers are no more likely to physically assault, sexually harass or verbally abuse their co-workers than employees in the national workforce.”

—Todd Henneman

The risk of employee defection is rising, according to studies from MetLife and Salary.com released in late January. But the two reports contain different lessons for how employers can hang on to talent.

Insurer MetLife’s annual Employee Benefits Trend Study finds that employees’ top consideration when deciding to join or remain with an employer is “the quality of co-worker and/or customer relationships,” followed by the opportunity for work/life balance and “working for an organization whose purpose/mission I agree with.”

Compensation research firm Salary.com, meanwhile, finds that inadequate compensation is the top reason dissatisfied employees cite for leaving. No opportunity for advancement is second, followed by no recognition for work, according to the company’s 2005-2006 Employee Satisfaction and Retention Survey.

MetLife’s report polled some 1,200 employees and 1,500 company executives. Salary.com’s study involved roughly 350 company representatives and 15,000 individuals.

Salary.com finds that it costs employers more to replace employees than it would to keep them. On average, HR professionals estimate that turnover costs about 27 percent of the annual salary of the person being replaced, but most employees say they could be persuaded to stay in their current job for another year for as little as 10 percent to 15 percent extra pay annually, according to the study. Meanwhile, Salary.com finds that about one-third of employers never make counteroffers.

Both reports point to increased job hopping. According to Salary.com, 65 percent of employee respondents plan to look for a new job in the next three months. What’s more, the percentage of employees who describe themselves as “very likely” to leave their current job increased more than 50 percent in the past year, to 38 percent of employees, Salary.com reports.

According to MetLife, 22 percent of all employees changed jobs over the past 18 months, up from 17 percent in 2004 and 16 percent in 2003. Among young families with children under 6, the churn is even greater, according to MetLife: 31 percent of employees in this “life stage” report a change of employer over the past 18 months, up from 26 percent in 2004 and 14 percent in 2003.

“To retain top talent in today’s competitive job market, employers need to do more than loosen their purse strings,” Maria Morris, MetLife executive vice president for institutional business, said in a statement. “They must create a work environment that reflects their employees’ life-stage needs and values.

“As the demand for experienced knowledge workers intensifies, employers need to understand what motivates–and inspires the loyalty of–today’s high-performing employees. In most cases, it’s not the corner office or a large paycheck, but rather, the opportunity to work for a company that fosters strong workplace relationships and inspires a sense of balance and/or purpose.”

—Ed Frauenheim

Dear Enthusiasts Only:



The characteristics you mention–passion, commitment and promptness–would be desirable in just about anyone, so your question may be on the minds of many employers.

While the three terms have something in common, it is possible for someone to be prompt but not passionate, passionate but not committed, and committed but not prompt. Let’s look at behavioral questions that focus on each of the characteristics individually.

Passion springs from a person’s deeply felt convictions. It is visible in the emotional response of the candidate. To assess the candidate’s passion for the type of work you offer, ask:

• What do you like most about your current job? What part of your job is most fulfilling? Why? Follow up with: Can you describe a work opportunity that meant so much to you that you put everything else aside to be involved in it? What did you do? How did it work out?
  
• Please give me an example of a time when your heart wasn’t in your work, and describe what you did about the situation.
  
• Have you ever worked for an organization whose mission did not match up with the things you really feel strongly about? Please describe the situation and how you handled it.
  

Committed people follow through on the promises they make and take responsibility for the achievement of plans, sticking with work until it is completed. Committed people take responsibility for the consequences of their actions and do not blame others for their own mistakes or failures. To assess this competency, ask questions such as these:

• What plans were set for you in that job? What plans did you set for yourself? Please describe a situation where the plan was set by your manager and you were accountable for completing it. What happened? How did it work out?
  
• Describe a situation where your role was to set the direction for the work and things didn’t go as you’d expected. What setbacks did you experience in that assignment? How did you respond?
  
• What did you do to achieve your goals? How well did you achieve them? Please give an example of a time when you exceeded your goals.
  

Promptness requires good planning and time management. People who are prompt make sure they allow enough time to accommodate unexpected changes. They place a high value on the importance of other people’s time, and avoid inconveniencing others. Here are some good questions to assess a person’s promptness:

• Please give an example of a situation when the timeline for a project was cut short, but you were still expected to deliver. How did you handle this situation?
  
• How do you keep your calendar under control? Have you ever been unavoidably detained? How did you handle it?
  
• What have you done to avoid missing deadlines? Please tell me about a time when your best efforts failed. What did you do?
  

Listen for candidate responses that include a description of the problem the individual faced, the actions taken to address the problem and the results of the actions. To evaluate candidate responses, give extra weight to those that have:

• Multiple job-related examples
  
• Recent, challenging examples
  
• Examples with a significant impact
  
• Examples in which the candidate took accountability for the outcome
  

To check your thinking on how important these qualities are within your own organization, ask your top performers how they would answer your interview questions. Use their responses as a guide for evaluating new talent.

SOURCE: Patsy Svare, Managing Director, the Chatfield Group, Glenview, Illinois, April 22, 2005.

LEARN MORE:Gimme Attitude

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Dear Workforce Newsletter

Dear Rock the Boat:



Get a grasp of your current organizational culture. Although this may seem obvious, many companies are so eager to make changes that they hurry through this preliminary step or skip it altogether.

Watch for employee resistance. This is the most common barrier to making cultural changes. Often rooted in fear of the unknown, resistance reflects people’s desire to keep the status quo, as well as a belief that the change will not be successful anyway. Changing the culture of business is inherently threatening and stressful because it challenges employees’ long-held beliefs.

For employees to accept change, they need to understand the external and internal pressure on the company that makes change necessary. Otherwise, they can be very resourceful in sabotaging efforts to implement change, often by demonstrating unwillingness to commit to change. They may be pretty cynical, especially if the organization has attempted changes before that turned out unsuccessfully.

In your particular situation, the change journey is just beginning. Educate your employees regarding the need for changes and involve them every step of the way.

Create the awareness that an existing situation is becoming unsatisfactory. The situation and the awareness must be significant enough to produce the motivation to do something about the problem. Tell the employees what is effecting the organizational change, whether it’s competition, new regulations or something else. Let them know that top management is involved in supporting and in implementing the change efforts. Share with the employees any operating, behavioral or organizational performance data to persuade employees to strive for change.

This whole process may be rocky; management and employees must be willing to put difficult, uncomfortable issues out in the open. It may be necessary to bring in an outside expert to facilitate the discussion. They often play a role in analyzing a company’s existing structures and fostering communication on issues and attitudes that managers find difficult to identify or would prefer to ignore.

Here is a checklist to examine as you progress down the road of organizational change:

• Ensure the endorsement or involvement of high-profile executives.
  
• Identify early adopters of the new behaviors and have them champion change throughout your organization.
  
• Establish a communication strategy.
  
• Communicate the reasons for change.
  
• Educate employees on how to accept change.
  
• Encourage responsibility without risk of failure/loss of job.
  
• Examine the use of current systems and structures (such as performance management and incentives) to foster desired behaviors.
  

SOURCE: JJ Thakkar, consultant,Capital H Group, the Woodlands, Texas, March 28, 2005

LEARN MORE:Success Rates for Organizational Change provides a chart listing different types of organizational changes and the success rate of each. Also,77 articles on change management.

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Dear Workforce Newsletter

Fortune’s new list of America’s 100 Best Companies to Work For notes an interesting trend: Even the most employee-friendly firms are trimming back benefits. In 2001, for example, 33 companies on the annual list paid 100 percent of employees’ health care premiums. Today, 14 do. Since last year, 27 companies on the list have cut what they pay in health care premiums. And the number of companies on the list offering a defined-benefit pension to new employees has dropped from 40 to 27 in three years.

Fortune attributes the cutbacks to global economic competition. “It’s obvious why being a great employer is getting so hard,” the magazine writes. “Globalizing everything creates merciless cost pressures no one can avoid.”

Along these lines, Fortune makes an interesting observation: Most of the com­panies on this year’s list are in “place-based” industries such as retailing and construction, which are buffered to some degree against global competition.

Another common attribute among the winners, according to the magazine, is their skill at finding inexpensive, employee-friendly ideas–like personal con­cierge services and flexible work policies. In 1999, just 18 companies on the list allowed telecommuting, compared with 79 today. Only 25 firms on the list in 1999 offered compressed workweeks, such as four 10-hour days with Fridays off. Today, 81 companies do. “Such benefits do make a difference,” Fortune writes, “and they’re a lot less expensive than health insurance.”

A sense of purpose also matters, according to the magazine. This year’s top employer, biotechnology company Gen­entech, marshals workers to battle diseases. “We are a science-based company, and that is our core,” CEO Arthur Levinson said in a statement. “But the real job satisfaction for employees is when great science becomes something that helps patients. Every employee in the company is a part of our continual quest to translate great scientific research from our labs into breakthrough therapies for patients with serious diseases like cancer and blindness.”

Even mutual fund firms, apparel com­panies and soda pop sellers can make workers feel like they’re part of a worthy mission, Fortune says. “Timberland is about more than boots,” the magazine writes. “It’s about outdoors and the environment; that’s why it gives employees $3,000 to buy a hybrid vehicle.”

Trusting employees and recognizing their achievements are two other elements in a great place to work, according to Fortune. Recognition is “probably the fattest pitch managers miss,” the magazine writes. “Telling employees they’re doing a great job costs nothing but counts big.”

And doing a bit more for employees is easy, according to Fortune: Technology retailer CDW gives employees bagels and doughnuts twice a week; food giant General Mills washes workers’ cars; and Internet company Yahoo takes employees to a movie on Friday.

Being a good employer can translate into a sustainable business and pay off for investors, according to the magazine. The 100 best companies this year, on average, are 85 years old. Fortune says the average American business lasts less than 20 years before it fails or gets bought. And the magazine says a study of shareholder returns of the 56 publicly traded firms on its 2005 list found that Fortune’s best employers “not only consistently beat the S&P 500, but walloped it.”

—Ed Frauenheim

Few settings present as great a challenge for protecting workers against sexual harassment as hospitals. Each day, nurses come into close physical contact with dozens of virtual strangers–their patients–who aren’t employees of the hospital and who haven’t gone through a vetting process. It is difficult to predict how patients are going to treat nurses, and it is impossible for hospitals to enforce anything like an employer’s code of conduct on them.

This lack of control, however, doesn’t immunize hospitals against the actions of a nonemployee, says Jim Hall, partner at Barlow, Kobata & Denis, an employment law firm based in Los Angeles. The law is clear: An organization is liable for the behavior of a third party if it knows–or should know based on experience–of improper conduct and fails to take immediate corrective action.

This legal precedent has been reinforced time and again. Most recently, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago found a hospital liable for the sexual harassment of a nurse by a doctor who was not a hos­pital employee.

One way for hospitals to protect themselves is by educating and coaching employees. Hospitals may not be able to control how patients interact with nurses, but they can try to manage how nurses react in the face of sexual aggravation, says Debbie S. Dougherty, assistant professor of organizational communications at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Dougherty is a proponent of what she calls “coffee chat training.” It entails having experienced nurses sit with no­vices in a casual environment to talk about their experiences with sexual harassment in the workplace. Coffee chat training could prove to be very effective in hospitals because it meshes well with the professional culture of nurses, which often involves trading stories, Dougherty says.

Employee training is particularly crucial in a profession like nursing, where frequent bodily contact could lead to tricky situations. In their role as caregivers, nurses must determine the balance between closeness and distance with their patients. Discussing this delicate equilibrium among peers is important, Dougherty says. She explores this topic in a forthcoming research paper with a slightly intimidating title: “Paradoxing the Dialectic: The Impact of Patients’ Sexual Harassment in the Discursive Construction of Nurses’ Caregiving Roles.” In it, nurses discuss how they handle sexual harassment.

In addition to training employees, hospitals should have a policy for coping with third-party sexual harassment firmly in place and enforce it vigilantly, Hall says. They also should provide an avenue through which nurses can file complaints. The process should include reassurance that job security won’t be compromised if they complain.

The key is to be proactive and not wait until something bad happens, Hall says. “The worst thing that a hospital can do is sit on its hands and do nothing.”

—Gina Ruiz

It seems a lot of employees think they are worth more than they actually are, according to a recent Salary.com report. The survey of 1,500 employees found that 65 percent of respondents plan to look for a new job in the next three months. And 57 percent of those employees say they are looking to leave because they feel that they are underpaid.

However, according to Salary.com’s research, only 19 percent of these workers are actually underpaid. Further, 17 percent of those employees are actually being overpaid by their companies.

The reason for this disconnect is that often employees are given inflated titles or have a misunderstanding of what their industries pay, says Bill Coleman, senior vice president at Salary.com.

In the late ’90s employees grew accustomed to getting 20 percent raises, along with better titles. But when the market turned, a lot of companies continued to give better titles instead of better pay, which resulted in many employees having inflated titles, he says.

To address this, companies need to create a more transparent compensation structure that rewards employees based on performance, Coleman says.

“It’s important for employees to understand what goes into the decisions around their compensation and what is expected of them,” he says. “Often the way employees perceive their performance and the way their managers perceive it are very different.”

—Jessica Marquez