Author: Site Staff

Dear Reluctant:



Congratulations for taking the lead here. This issue affects group morale and cohesion, as well as your ability to retain a potentially valuable employee. Consider these strategic steps:

Start documenting. If you haven’t already done so, begin to informally document any new specific behaviors of concern brought to your attention, including any you observe. Note any clear patterns of ostracism or isolation.

Have a one-on-one meeting with the new employee. Share the feedback you are hearing from other team members. At this point, maintain confidentiality. Ask for the employee’s perception of the situation. She may respond that others are jealous of her abilities. Don’t be afraid to empathize with her sense of exclusion, but ask her to illustrate with specific instances. While soliciting suggestions for improving the work environment, don’t push too hard for solutions at this point. Let her know you plan to address matters by speaking individually with other team members.

Conduct individual meetings with other team members. Give them a chance to express any grievances. In addition, ask each person if they are aware of attempts to ignore or exclude the new team member. Gathering this information gives you a forest-and-trees perspective and enhances your ability to intervene.

Recruit problem-solvers. Enlist two team members for a problem-solving meeting with you and the new team member. Select team members who can be objective and emotionally balanced—people who can acknowledge that at this point both team members and the new employee are frustrated.

Outline solutions. Meet with the new employee and the two problem-solvers to propose steps for helping new employees adjust to your workplace. At the same time, explore whether any team members are uncomfortable with her strengths, feel pressured to improve their performance, etc. Some team members require help adjusting to the new group dynamics.

Meet with the entire team to address perceptions of condescension and exclusion. This should not become a bash session. Acknowledge that change is stressful and offer support to get group buy-in.

Conduct follow-up meetings with the new employee to see how she weathered the team meeting. Plan also to meet weekly with your entire team for the next month to monitor progress. You might also want to consider having offering some communication and conflict-resolution skills training for the entire team.

Provide a failsafe. Should any employee refuse to participate in this intervention, you will need to reaffirm your intention to document unprofessional behavior that adversely affects productivity or team relationships.

SOURCE: Mark Gorkin, LICSW, The Stress Doc, Washington, D.C., May 4, 2004

LEARN MORE:The Problem With Know-It-Alls

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

Coleman Peterson
Founder of Hollis Enterprises and former chief people officer of Wal-Mart

Two years ago, Coleman Peterson held the human resources reins of the world’s largest private employer. He retired after 10 years at Wal-Mart, and now has time for golf on Thursdays in a new life that includes consulting through his firm Hollis Enterprises in Bentonville, Arkansas, and sitting on the corporate boards of J.B. Hunt Transport Services and the ServiceMaster Co., whose divisions include pest control service Terminix.

From a less-hectic perch, Peterson calls for a national plan to deal with soaring health care costs. He also touches on his record at the retail giant. Peterson spoke to Workforce Management staff writer Ed Frauenheim.

Workforce Management: Very few African Americans make it to the executive suite in corporate America. You did. What do you wish corporate executives would do to be more inclusive?

Coleman Peterson: Companies have to be willing to give more than lip service. They have to run the business the way they should run the business, which is to focus on people’s performance—and not on personality. In order to do that successfully, companies have to ensure that they have the kinds of systems in place that allow them to know who is there, what their interests are and to objectively evaluate everyone’s performance on an even plane.

WM: Headlines today speak of various workplace woes, such as companies defaulting on pensions. Has the historical pact between workers and companies completely disintegrated?

Peterson: I won’t say it has completely disintegrated. But it has changed. According to a recent survey, HR professionals think the most important factor in job satisfaction is the relationship with the immediate supervisor, followed by management recognition of job performance. But do you know what employees said was the No. 1 factor? Benefits. Do you know what was No. 2? Compensation.

WM: Do you think the federal government has a bigger role to play in health care benefits?

Peterson: I think it’s going to be very difficult for individual companies to make an impact in this area. There’s going to have to be some partnership between the private sector and a government initiative that relates to management of health care. There has to be some management of the escalating costs. And there has to be some central operation that allows for visibility into the true cost of care at different providers.

WM: What was your high point at Wal-Mart?

Peterson: A dramatic reduction in the company’s turnover. It was in excess of 70 percent annually when I joined, and we got it to below 35 percent. Our objective was to literally cut turnover in half.

WM: There’s a notion that you left Wal-Mart as a fall guy amid criticism of the company’s pay and benefits. Do you wish you had pushed for stronger benefits?

Peterson: On the contrary. I wish I had more successfully articulated to the market and to the naysayers the plans Wal-Mart had, which were comparable to those of others in the industry. Having already spent 20 years in retail, I told my family I would make a 10-year commitment at Wal-Mart. I joined April 30, 1994, and left April 30, 2004.

Workforce Management, December 12, 2005, p. 11 — Subscribe Now!

When it comes to integrating older employees into the workforce, the Cendant Car Rental Group has the right idea.

As it begins to establish neighborhood rental centers–those not located at airports–the owner of the Avis and Budget brands is looking for workers 50 years or older to run the businesses.

“They’re going to bring all of what makes a 50-plus worker valuable in terms of relationships, knowledge and maturity” that it takes to build a business, says Mark Servodidio, executive vice president of human resources at Cendant.

Servodidio is trying to tap into older workers’ entrepreneurial spirit by giving them a cut of their franchise’s profit. “The more successful the business is, the more money they make,” he says.

Cendant’s approach is exactly what new reports recommend that all businesses do to retain older workers. The more that 50-plus people can control their hours, exercise autonomy and find opportunities to learn, the more likely they will be to continue working, according to two new reports by the Center on Aging and Work/Workplace Flexibility at Boston College and the Families and Work Institute.

The key to retaining older workers, who are likely to be in demand as the U.S. population ages and its labor force shrinks, is for companies to structure jobs creatively.

“Flexibility doesn’t just mean flextime,” says Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute. “Flexibility means thinking in new and creative ways about dealing with issues like the pace or the timing of work.”

The studies found that workers 50 or older are significantly more likely than their younger cohorts to be self-employed or run a small business. In addition, more than a quarter of wage –and salary employees and 43 percent of employees under 30 plan “to be their own boss” one day. The reports’ findings come from an analysis of the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce. The study, conducted every five years, samples about 3,500 workers.

The new reports were released in Washington on December 12 in conjunction with the White House Conference on Aging. Cendant’s successes with older workers were cited in Washington in November, when the company was recognized as a featured employer by AARP.

In another finding, the reports indicate that older women earn 55 cents for every dollar that men make across all hours and all jobs, including part-time and temporary positions. When only “primary” jobs are compared, women earn about 69 cents of a man’s dollar. The difference is due to older women having less education and working fewer hours.

This earning disparity continues into retirement, as women are more likely to have amassed smaller savings because of lower contributions to 401(k)s.

“Women are going to have to work longer or turn to other sources of income in ways that men will not have to,” says Michael Smyer, co-director of the Center on Aging and Work/Workplace Flexibility.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Michael Schlein
Senior vice president of global corporate affairs, HR and business practices at Citigroup

After Citigroup was hit with scandals around the globe, CEO Chuck Prince implemented a five-point plan to get the company’s 300,000 employees focused on long-term goals rather than short-term pressures. The program, which Schlein helped develop, entails training, communications, talent development, performance appraisals and controls. Schlein recently talked to Workforce Management staff writer Jessica Marquez.

Workforce Management: How did you come up with the plan?

Michael Schlein: Chuck Prince and I met with chief executive officers at different corporations, such as General Electric, Dell, Xerox and Johnson & Johnson, and asked them what were their best practices, and then we worked from there.

WM: Why is the focus on long-term goals and how do you change employees’ mindset?

Schlein: One thing that the recent events showed us was that there was too much focus on short-term business pressures and not enough on the long-term franchise. The first thing we did was make all of our employees across the globe watch a film about the history of Citigroup. We wanted employees to recognize they play a part in the entire organization to balance the short-term pressures of their daily lives. Until recently, all that we had to tie people together was stock price, so we needed something more. We also created a common performance appraisal system for all managers that requires them to write down their goals for the year. At the end of the year, each manager will have conversations with their supervisors about their goals. The hope is that every year those conversations will get better.

WM: How have you changed employee training and orientation?

Schlein: Our training has been different in different places. Starting next year there will be one orientation focusing on the company history to welcome everyone to that common language. We have a whole series of leadership development programs that can range from an off-site with Chuck Prince to online training for 30,000 managers. Next year every new manager will go through consistent training so that it means one thing to be a Citigroup manager.

WM: How do you measure the success of the program?

Schlein: Every month we report to our management committee, CEO and regulators on the execution of our program. We also look at employee surveys and surveys outside of the company as well as public perception. There is no single answer.

WM: How do you encourage more open communications within the company?

Schlein: Our senior executives are spending a lot of time traveling the world to speak to employees and get their feedback. Also, every two months, we have a call with senior managers where employees can talk to Prince directly. And whenever a significant event occurs, we have a call. We also do surveys every September where we ask every employee a whole list of questions about their perceptions of how we are doing. We do smaller polls to survey how our five-point plan is doing.

Workforce Management, November 21, 2005, p. 9 — Subscribe Now!

UPS starts planning for the holidays at about the same time Santa Claus does–in January. It must start thinking about the season early because it hires 40,000 to 60,000 temporary workers to meet the holiday surge.

“We look for more efficiencies in how we’re going to recruit,” says Mike Johnson, UPS vice president for human resources for U.S. operations. Last year, UPS automated holiday staffing by hiring through its Web site. This year, it is strengthening its cyber-recruiting efforts.

“It has allowed us to expand our reach for applicants,” Johnson says. “Everyone has to apply through the Web. We’ve gotten completely away from a paper-based system.”

UPS hires delivery truck and tractor-trailer drivers, driver helpers and clerks to augment its 348,400 U.S. employees during the holiday season. The company needs the extra hands to keep up with the flood of packages that reaches a peak on December 20, when 20 million parcels will be delivered.

Another major shipper, FedEx, will experience its peak day on December 12, when it is scheduled to deliver 8.5 million packages. It will hire 8,000 temporary workers at FedEx Ground for November and December. FedEx utilizes its Web site to match applicants with job vacancies, while also conducting campus recruiting and placing newspaper advertisements.

“Each HR field manager does what works best in their area,” says Allison Sobczak, a FedEx Ground spokeswoman.

Not all businesses that need extra workers staff up for the holidays. Borders relies on part-time employees and students it hires throughout the year to work additional hours to meet increased traffic in its bookstores, according to Anne Roman, company public relations director. “Our hiring for the holidays year-over-year has not grown,” she says.

The number of shoppers is expected to increase this year. The National Retail Federation forecasts that holiday sales will rise 6 percent. Sales for the Thanksgiving weekend surged by 21.9 percent.

To meet customer needs, Wal-Mart will tap 50,000 temporary workers this season, which is about the same level as last year. Although each of its stores may take a slightly different approach to recruiting based on the local labor market, Wal-Mart’s holiday staff is likely to represent the same demography as its regular hires—students, second-income earners and seniors.

“Those are the groups of people who will want extra money for the holidays,” Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman says.

UPS hopes its relationship with seasonal workers goes beyond Christmas. About 25 percent of holiday hires become permanent UPS employees, gaining medical and 401(k) benefits even at the part-time level.

“They’re very interested in doing well so that they can be recommended for potential rehire,” says Johnson, who began his UPS career as a holiday loader-unloader during the Thanksgiving holiday in 1975.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Anticipating waves of retirements from baby boomers and skills gaps in the workforce, Deloitte Research predicts that critical talent will become scarcer. To ensure their organizations have an adequate supply of high-performing talent for important jobs, Deloitte says CEOs should ask company human resources leaders the following questions:

4Which segments of the workforce create the value for which we are most rewarded in the marketplace?

4Which areas of our business will be most impacted by impending waves of retirement? What are we doing to prepare successors? What impact will anticipated retirement have on the skills and productivity necessary to meet future demand?

4In what areas is the talent market heating up (i.e., demand will outpace supply)? Which segments of our workforce will be most impacted? What are the potential top-line and bottom-line implications?

4What skills will we need over the next five years that we don’t currently possess? How will we create that capacity? What happens to our business if we don’t?

4What is our turnover within critical areas? How much is it costing us? In customers? In productivity? In innovation? In quality? What are we doing to resolve the root cause?

4Are we actively developing talent portfolios or workforce plans that will help us to understand and communicate the financial consequences of talent decisions on our business?

Source: It’s 2008: Do You Know Where Your Talent Is? Copyright 2004 Deloitte Development

Workforce Management, December 12, 2005, p. 14 — Subscribe Now!

 Top business executives, presidents of major universities and policy experts gathered in Washington

“We need to refine, refocus, in some cases re-engineer our policies,” Richard Templeton, president and CEO of Texas Instruments, said December 6 at the National Summit on Competitiveness at the U.S. Department of Commerce. “These issues must become more of a priority for the leaders of our nation.”

More than 50 business, academic and congressional officials called for increasing federal spending on long-term basic research in the physical sciences, engineering and mathematics by 10 percent annually for the next seven years, with an emphasis on high-risk, high-return initiatives.

It also recommended doubling by 2015 the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded annually to U.S. students in science, math and engineering; increasing the number of math and science teachers in grades K-12; allowing more international science and engineering students to study and then work in the United States; and increasing funding for nanotechnology, high-performance computing and energy technologies.

The recommendations echoed those recited in a slew of recent reports by business associations and think tanks. Conference participants stressed that action must be taken soon or global competition will harm the U.S. economy.

“The last thing we need is another report,” said Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Michigan, a member of the House Science Committee and a driving force behind the conference. “We need lobbying across this country and education across this country to get the word across that the world has changed. The wars of the future are going to be wars of hard work and innovation.”

The form of the conference—assembling business, education and government leaders on one stage—reinforced the theme that each area has to contribute to improving U.S. workforce and research capabilities.

As an example, Texas Instruments’ Templeton cited his company’s decision to build an electronic-wafer manufacturing plant in suburban Dallas. Texas Instruments will invest $3 billion to $4 billion in the facility to keep its research and manufacturing close together so its products can get to market faster.

The environment for that operation was enhanced when the state of Texas spent $300 million to strengthen technology programs at the University of Texas at Dallas. The school’s faculty, students and research labs help create a “research ecosystem,” Templeton said.

But Templeton and other business officials warned that companies are being forced to look abroad to fill high-tech jobs because of the lack of qualified U.S. candidates.

The fact that foreign-born talent can be had cheaper is not the reason for such searches.

“This is not a cost issue. This is a competitiveness issue,” said R. Keith Harrison Jr., global product supply officer for Proctor & Gamble. Addressing the issue will take a chunk of federal money—at least several billion dollars by some estimates—at a time when Washington is trying to rein in spending.

“The budget is very, very large, and, on a grand scale, we’re not asking for a huge amount,” Ehlers said.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

When the new Medicare prescription drug benefit starts in January, most companies will continue to provide drug coverage to their retirees that is equal to or better than the government program, according to a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Hewitt Associates.

By offering their own drug plans, companies will receive a 28 percent federal subsidy for costs between $250 and $5,000, generating savings of $626 per retiree.

Seventy-nine percent of the companies in the survey said they would take the subsidy; 10 percent said they would augment the Medicare benefit; 9 percent indicated they would drop drug coverage; and 2 percent said they would sponsor their own Medicare drug plan. The results came from a poll of 300 large private-sector employers.

The Medicare drug benefit was approved by Congress in 2003. The move has been controversial because the estimate for the cost of the program was at least $100 billion too low at the time Congress voted on it. In addition, seniors must choose from dozens of prescription drug plans, creating confusion and leading to town hall meetings where mystified constituents sought help from members of Congress.

The fact that employers are not abandoning drug coverage with the advent of the Medicare program “is mostly good news for retirees,” says Tricia Neuman, co-author of the study.

Opting for the subsidy while keeping current drug benefits in place was the least disruptive approach for companies, according to Frank McArdle, head of Hewitt’s Washington research office. The survey was conducted from June to October, when firms were making decisions about next year’s coverage.

More than 80 percent of the companies surveyed said they would take the subsidy again in 2007. The number falls to 50 percent in 2010, but that doesn’t mean that companies are going to drop drug coverage altogether.

The typical company in the survey saw its average total retiree health costs increase by 10.3 percent to $69.6 million over the past year. Most firms paid $212 of the $340 average monthly premium.

But rising costs are putting pressure on companies that cover their retirees. During the past year, 71 percent of employers increased retiree contributions to premiums and 34 percent boosted co-insurance or co-payments, while 12 percent terminated retiree health plans for people joining the company.

“It has been an ongoing trend to change the way benefits are provided for future hires, but with much more continuity for current retirees,” McArdle says.

Seniors who receive drug coverage from their former employers may be spared the hassle of parsing the Medicare offerings. “You can keep the (plan) you have today,” McArdle says. In fact, if retirees do sign up for Medicare coverage, they may lose all or part of their company benefit.

Although the status quo is prevailing for retiree drug coverage, Medicare changes are creating a whirlwind for companies and individual seniors. “It’s been a steep learning curve for everybody,” McArdle says. “It’s been a monumental change in the program in a very short period of time.”

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Dear Mystified:



First, let me caution you about the metrics you mentioned. Metrics come in two primary categories–those used for reporting purposes, and those used to power operational and tactical decisions. At best, the metrics you mentioned are operational in nature. While they may warrant cursory glances, they fail to tell a story, enable a decision or inform you regarding whether you measure up to the best practices.

Percentage of filled positions per month
This metric is a raw volume indicator that is both easy to manipulate and devoid of value. As a metric it completely ignores the most important goal of the staffing function: to recruit quality hires. Using only this metric and benchmarking it would be equivalent to a candy manufacturer producing the ordered quantity of candies without regard to their taste, appearance and safety. It’s quite possible to fill every position with below-average people very quickly, but history tells us that wouldn’t bode well for the company.

Percentage of performance appraisals completed on time
Again this metric ignores the quality of the appraisal completed. In many organizations, managers have been known to “Christmas tree,” or copy, the previous year’s appraisal just to meet the deadline. Of greater importance are answers to these two questions: 1) What percentage of the performance appraisals are accurate; and 2) Did the performance appraisals actually achieve the goal of changing the behavior and the results produced by the individual?

Retention might seem like a good measure, but retaining poorly performing employees is actually a negative. Consider tracking the voluntary turnover rate of key people in key jobs as well as measuring the turnover rate of bottom performers.

Getting comparison data
The best place for comparison data is your competitors, but getting that data can be a little tricky (competitors will generally supply it in an anonymous fashion if you also share yours with them). The second-best source is direct from other companies that share your interest in achieving world-class performance. Consider asking a local university professor to serve as the intermediary and form a consortium of companies willing to benchmark performance.

To entice others to participate, the metrics you want to benchmark must have value and look at more than raw volume. If that seems like too much work, pull out your checkbook. These days there are numerous sources of relatively high-quality benchmark information, but the data doesn’t come cheap. Some sources to check out include:

• The Saratoga Institute (now part of PricewaterhouseCoopers)
  
• Corporate Leadership Council (CLCMetrics, formerly the HR Measurement Lab)
  
• Watson Wyatt and other consultancies
  
• APQC
  
• Hackett Group
  
• Staffing.org
  
• PeopleReport (Restaurant Industry)
  

If your checkbook is a little short on funds, many industry associations track benchmark information and make it available to members. The SHRM/BNA Annual Survey provides some very broad benchmark numbers. Magazine articles also are a great source of benchmark information, albeit not a primary source. To find magazines that mention what you are searching for, try conducting a search on the Internet using the name of the firm you are interested in and the name of the measure.

On a closing note, remember that even when you get comparison information, it only tells you where you stand relative to the other parties providing the data. If they are mediocre and your results are better, you too may be mediocre.

SOURCE:Dr. John Sullivan, head and professor of the Human Resource Management College of Business at San Francisco State University, February 16, 2005.

LEARN MORE:All Numbers Are Not Metrics. Also information onquality of hire;Jac Fitz-enz;tying human resources goals to company success; and themetrics movement.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.