equality – Page 5

May 15, 2012June 29, 2023

The Women’s Movement in the ’70s, Today: ‘You’ve Come a Long Way,’ But …

A new social movement took center stage in the 1970s. It followed the lead of the civil rights movement, as well as the mounting protests against the Vietnam War. In this volatile era, the women of the nation were determined that their voices be heard above the din of discontent.

“I am woman; hear me roar,” went the lyrics of a popular Helen Reddy song from 1972.

“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” went another popular slogan frequently used by activist Gloria Steinem. The phrase suggests an independence and stature for women that still, four decades later, is not fully realized. Even with a string of laws and legal wins that have advanced women’s positions in the workplace, advocates say there is still a long way to go.

“We take five steps forward and 10 steps back, but we try to keep moving forward and not get too discouraged,” says Nancy Kaufman, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, which supports social and economic justice for all women. “We really try to be advocates, and that’s what the women’s movement has been all about. I feel we really need to stand up for the gains that we’ve made over the last century or so and not let them slip.”

Outspoken leaders of the women’s liberation movement, like Steinem and Betty Friedan, aimed to raise women up from home and work situations that they considered subjugation. And both forward-thinking college students and working women organized marches and protests for equal rights in the workforce. One of the more noteworthy rallies was the Women’s Strike for Equality where an estimated 50,000 women marched in New York and another 100,000 women across the country in August 1970 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave U.S. women the right to vote.

“You’ve come a long way, baby,” was another popular saying of that era, which originated on cigarette advertisements meant to acknowledge the giant strides of the women’s movement.

But judging from a January 1975 article in Personnel Journal, the forebear of Workforce Management, some of the concepts embraced by the women’s movement, including equality in the workplace and the C-suite, were not going over well in tradition-bound workplaces.

In “What Does It Take for a Woman to Make It in Management?” by Marion M. Wood, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California, a list of 10 attributes was offered as requisites for women’s success: 1) competence; 2) education; 3) realism; 4) aggressiveness; 5) self-confidence; 6) career-mindedness; 7) femininity; 8) strategy; 9) support of an influential male; and 10) uniqueness.

Additionally, Wood quoted an unnamed male Equal Employment Opportunity director as saying, “For a woman to succeed, there must be a man in her life who believed it’s the right thing to do.”

The women’s movement of the ’70s was in part a reaction against the type of happy homemaker that was often portrayed in television sitcoms of previous decades. Like it or not, girls growing up in the ’50s would have been exposed to role models such as the housewives in Leave It to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show and Father Knows Best, women whose career goals were getting the kids off to school and serving dinner on time. A working woman as role model didn’t come along until the late 1960s and early 1970s when shows such as Julia—where Diahann Carroll starred in the first nonstereotypical network TV role for an African-American woman as Julia Baker, a single mom who worked full time as a nurse—and The Mary Tyler Moore Show in which Moore portrayed Mary Richards, a career-oriented single woman who is a news producer for a TV station in Minneapolis.

Today, women comprise nearly half of the U.S. labor force. While 70 percent of families in 1960 had a stay-at-home parent, now 70 percent of families have either both parents working or a single parent who works. In two-thirds of all households, women are either the main breadwinner or the co-breadwinners, according to the Center for American Progress. In 40 percent of all households, women are the only wage earners. Yet on average, women in the workplace earn 20 percent less than men doing comparable jobs.

Please also read: Workforce Management Looks Back at Workplace History (1920s-1970s)

Over the past several decades, a variety of laws and rulings have paved the way for more Mary Richards to succeed at work. Among the first was the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

And, truth be told, the wage gap was even wider in the early ’60s. When President John F. Kennedy signed the bill banning wage discrimination, women were making only 58 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

Other landmark legislation followed that was intended to improve worklife for women, while making it easier to meet the dual demands of work and family. In 1978 the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed as an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Title VII prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.) In 1993 the Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, was passed. It entitles eligible employees to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons. In 2009, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law, giving workers more leeway to sue for paycheck discrimination.

Conservative commentators take issue with this act, as well as the validity of the gender wage gap. In a recent article in the online libertarian magazine Doublethink, the Ledbetter Act is said to force businesses “to constantly look over their shoulders” for claims rising up from the past. “This is a trial lawyer/class action lawsuit boondoggle,” writes columnist Nicole Kurokawa Neily, “and that’s bad for the American economy.”

But other observers defend the Ledbetter act as vital to fairer pay for women. And advocates say there is more to do to make the workplace a level playing field for both sexes.

“I think the current laws are important and a great start,” says Emily Martin, vice president and general counsel for the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C., “but I don’t think they’re the end of the conversation by any means. They’re a good baseline structure that establishes the crucial principle that women are entitled to equal treatment on the job.”

For example, Martin recently testified at an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hearing on pregnancy discrimination, which was ostensibly outlawed in 1978. Yet the EEOC reports that complaints from pregnant workers are on the rise, with 5,797 complaints in fiscal year 2011 alone. Most complaints stem from wrongful firing, while about 10 percent are from unlawful failure to hire.

At the Feb. 15 hearing, EEOC general counsel P. David Lopez stated, “At the core, all of these cases involve employers who held stereotypical assumptions about pregnant women.”

Adriana Kugler, chief economist at the U.S. Labor Department, tells Workforce Management that lingering stereotypes and biases play a large role in keeping women from achieving equality in the workplace. “There are expectations from employers that women want to have a family and won’t be as committed, and so they’re not even offered an opportunity,” she says.

Women tend to outperform men academically, while they are held behind in the workplace. According to the 2010 census, 36 percent of women age 25 to 29 had college degrees compared with 28 percent of men in that age group. A December 2011 report by the Harvard Independent states that since 1980 not only are more women than men enrolled in higher education, but also more women graduate with honors.

Yet, in Fortune 500 companies women account for just 7.5 percent of top earners, and only 3.6 percent of those companies’ CEOs are women.

Kugler says that, among employers, there’s a widespread but unexpressed belief that women cannot fully commit to job responsibilities, work-related travel and time away from home. She points to a 1997 study by two women economists from Harvard and Princeton universities of major orchestra auditions that showed that when the auditions were blind, women were as likely as men to be hired as musicians who would be expected to go on the road and to make considerable time commitments to the job. But when interviewed in person, men were hired more often than women.

“You know,” Kugler says, “the sound of a beautiful instrument should be the same whether it’s played by a man or a woman. But the employer has stereotypes about what kind of a commitment a woman is willing to make.”

To make it easier for a woman to commit to her job, especially when trying to juggle work and family, existing laws need to be updated, some observers say. Dina Bakst, co-president of A Better Balance, a legal team in New York City specializing in work-family issues, says, “Our laws and policies are really out of date. The FMLA was a monumental piece of legislation, but it doesn’t go far enough. We need paid leave and workplace flexibility.”

Bakst says 178 countries have paid family leave for new mothers, and 50 countries give paid leave to new fathers. Meanwhile, some states have passed their own legislation. Laws requiring paid family leave are on the books in California, New Jersey and Washington. A similar law has been introduced in New York’s Legislature.

“Paid family leave is a seriously important policy that many companies recognize as being good for the bottom line and have for their own employees,” Bakst says. “You’ll see many fantastic companies that do provide some form of paid leave because they know it’s good for business.”

As for the disparity between wages earned by men and women, there was slow but steady improvement in closing that gap after the 1963 Equal Pay Act became law. But once the female equivalent of a man-earned dollar passed 70 cents in 1990, progress began to sputter. “The pay gap really narrowed for about 30 years, and it has stalled for the past decade or so,” Kugler says.

The issue has not lacked attention. Indeed, it has its own unofficial holiday, April 17, which is meant to show how long a woman must keep working into the next year to earn the equivalent salary earned by a man in the previous year. And this year on Equal Pay Day, the U.S. Labor Department announced seven winners of its Equal Pay App Challenge. Teams of software developers devised their own free mobile phone applications to apprise job hunters of pay disparities and to offer tools, such as negotiation skills, for improving one’s chances for landing a better-paid job. (Links to the Equal Pay Apps can be found at tinyurl.com/78ycsgu.)

Incidentally, encouraging female workers to learn salary negotiation skills is not a new idea. In Wood’s Personnel Journal article from 37 years ago, lack of such skills was cited as a reason women were often held back from management positions. “Traditionally, women have not been trained to bargain,” she wrote. “Most have not learned that a salary offered is not a constant, but a starting point for discussion. Men … will continue considering women ‘cheap help’ as long as women continue to accept lower offers than they are worth.”

Disparities in men’s and women’s paychecks still exist in most professions. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey of 2009, the gap was greatest in the financial services industry, with women making about 70 cents to a man’s dollar. Even in teaching, which has traditionally been a woman’s profession and today is 80 percent female, women’s wages are lower. “In 2010, women in teaching professions were earning only 80.9 percent of their male counterparts’ wages,” says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.5 million people.

Making its way through Congress now is the Paycheck Fairness Act. It would require disclosure of compensation while outlawing retaliation against employees who seek information about other workers’ salaries. According to Martin of the National Women’s Law Center, it would “tighten some of the loopholes” in the Equal Pay Act, namely loose interpretations that have allowed some employers to justify wage discrimination.

The case of Sheila Davidson of Philadelphia illustrates what the Paycheck Fairness Act is all about. Last November Davidson won her wage discrimination claim against her employer, Amtrak. Davidson had just been promoted when she learned that a man, doing the same job she had previously performed, was being paid a higher salary, higher even than what Davidson was earning after her promotion.

What gave Davidson an advantage is that she works in human resources for Amtrak and thus has access to compensation information. If the Paycheck Fairness Act gets passed, average employees would have access to similar data.

Philip Kovnat, the EEOC lawyer who represented Davidson in her lawsuit against Amtrak, remarked that it was not uncommon for HR people to file their own EEOC complaints. In fact, Davidson had been filing EEOC complaints on behalf of other employees for the previous eight years and had worked as an HR professional for 25 years. In the end, a federal court in Philadelphia directed Amtrak to pay her $171,483 in back pay, along with damages and attorney fees, and raised her pay by $16,505.

Susan G. Hauser is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

September 7, 2011June 29, 2023

Intergenerational “Humor” Has Its Risks in Age Discrimination

Issue: Following a bitter proxy battle, X Corporation is taken over by Jim Smith, a 30-year-old entrepreneur who made $500 million by developing violent video games.

On his first day as CEO, Jim calls into his office all persons over the age of 50, all of whom have been superb workers, and says: “My old dad told me I was nuts wasting my time playing with computer games. Hah! I really don’t believe people that old have any sense. You will have a tough time proving to me that you can fit in with my 21^st century philosophy. Time to get some new blood into this stodgy business!”

For the next few months, Smith constantly made disparaging remarks about the ability of older workers to do the job. At one meeting, he presented the 55-year-old supervisor of the loading dock with a cane and a walker, called another older executive “Methuselah,” and suggested an afternoon nap time for all of the “old codgers.” In addition, the younger employees and supervisors, egged on by Smith, regularly taunted the older workers with ageist remarks. At the end of four months, all the workers over the age of 50 had quit. Was the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) violated?

Answer: Obviously. The work environment at X Corporation made it very difficult for older workers to perform their duties with skill and dignity. The constant harassment by Smith and the younger employees and supervisors resulted in the constructive discharge of every employee over the age of 50. A constructive discharge is when an employee quits in order to escape illegal and intolerable employment practices or conditions.

As an HR professional, you know that the ADEA protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older from discriminatory conduct based on their age. While courts have held that isolated remarks by supervisors might not rise to the level of discrimination, any employer who permits or encourages—even in jest—conduct similar to that related above is actively seeking a lawsuit. More importantly, however, employers who do not implement procedures to prevent harassment because of age or correct any harassment that occurs are also at risk of being found in violation of the ADEA.

Source: This egregious example is taken from “Age Discrimination,” part of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Technical Assistance Program. May 1999 (Revised).

Source: CCH Incorporated is a leading provider of information and software for human resources, legal, accounting, health-care and small-business professionals. CCH offers human resource management, payroll, employment, benefits, and worker-safety products and publications in print, CD, online and via the Internet. For more information and other updates on the latest HR news, check our Web site at http://hr.cch.com.

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.

January 31, 2001June 29, 2023

Religious Accommodation for Muslim Employees

Most HR management would agree that a happy workforce environment is a productive environment. And though many companies have gone to some lengths to ensure that their employees are happy, one area often missed in dealing with multiculturalism and diversity is religious accommodation in the workplace. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 entitles all employees to reasonable religious accommodation by their employers.

In 1998, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received 440 complaints from Muslim employees, an increase of 42 percent since 1994. Most of the cases of discrimination have been against female employees who wear the religious head scarf or males who wear beards for religious reasons.

The majority of these cases have been resolved upon explanation of religious beliefs or through threatened lawsuits. Legal action was taken in the case of seven women employed by Argenbright Security Inc. as security personnel at Dulles International Airport, who were sent home after refusing to remove their head scarves.

Each worker received a letter of apology, back pay for time missed, an additional payment, and payment of legal fees. Argenbright also provided sensitivity training on religious accommodation and sent out a notice to all employees about the significance of Islamic dress.

In October 1999, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing Muslim police officers to wear beards for religious or medical reasons. The case involved the suspension of two New Jersey Muslim police officers for failing to shave their beards. A Muslim employee of Sprint Corporation (NYSE: FON) in Kansas City, Missouri, received a monetary settlement after he was denied the right to attend mandatory Friday Islamic prayers.

The employee was allegedly fired for going over his supervisor to make a request for religious accommodation. Upon hearing of the supervisor’s actions, Sprint corporate officials contacted the Muslim employee and offered a settlement.

Several companies have already taken steps to accommodate their Muslim employees. Watermark Donut Co., a franchisee for Dunkin’ Donuts, has provided religious accommodation for its Muslim employees, who make up 40 percent of its workforce. Employees are allowed flexible schedules for Ramadan (month of fasting), religious holidays, the opportunity to perform their five daily prayers, and time to attend Friday prayers. Many other companies have followed suit and altered their policies to accommodate their Muslim employees, starting with sensitivity training.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based Islamic advocacy group, published a booklet called “An Employer’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices,” to help employers devise and implement policies that can create a culturally sensitive working environment. It provides information on U.S. legal protections of religious rights, common Islamic religious practices, and ways in which employers can accommodate their Muslim employees.

Employers should become familiar with Islamic practices and the Islamic dress code to ensure religious accommodation in the workplace. Islam prescribes that women and men dress modestly. Muslim men are to be covered from the navel to the knee. Some men might also wear a beard and/or a small skullcap. Muslim women wear loose, non-revealing clothing, which includes covering of the hair and neck with a head scarf. Styles vary, but women wear clothing that covers the entire body except for the face and hands. Company dress code policies may have to be modified so that religiously mandated attire is addressed as a diversity issue.

Some tips from the CAIR guide for accommodating Muslim employees:

- Provide time for employees to perform five daily prayers and washing before prayer. It takes about 15 minutes to perform the washing and prayer. Muslim employees can pray in their offices and worksite or any other space that is quiet, clean, and dry. Other workers should not walk in front of or interrupt worshippers during prayer.

- Allot time to attend Friday congregational prayers at the local mosque during a slightly extended lunch break. The prayer takes place at noontime, lasts a total of 45 to 90 minutes, and includes a sermon at the end. Work missed can be made up later in the day or in the early morning.

- During the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast (refraining from eating, drinking, and smoking) from sunup to sundown. Work shifts can be shortened if the lunch break is not taken. Muslims break fast after sundown.

Muslims take off one day twice a year to celebrate the Eid (festival), which follows the lunar calendar. The first Eid is celebrated at the end of Ramadan, and the second is celebrated beginning on the 10th day of the 12th Islamic month. No undue penalty should be given since this is a religious obligation.

Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. For information or to obtain a copy of “An Employer’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices,” call 202-659-CAIR.

September 1, 1997June 29, 2023

12 Steps to Building a Best-practices Ethics Program

In Part I of this report, it stated that, more than in the past, employees feel pressured to meet organizational goals.

And when employees presume those goals are unreasonable, they may resort to unethical means of reaching them. When managers see employees’ apparent success in achieving results, they assume it’s appropriate to raise the goals, eventually ensuring no one can achieve them by legitimate means. The bottom-line result is an organization infested with distrust, rationalizations and unethical behavior.

As outlined in the previous article, examples of unethical behavior include:
Disconnecting sales and service calls to reduce the average time per call
Adding unordered items to customer requests to increase the average dollars per sale
Deleting customers from the market research sample when they have been the subject of the preceding behaviors.

Fortunately, many of today’s most successful organizations have combated the forces that cause employees to believe they have to lie, cheat and steal to survive. These companies have confronted the pressure-to-perform dilemma and have established some forward-thinking best practices for doing more and better work with fewer people.

The formula derived from these best practices is fairly straightforward. But be forewarned. Best practices are easier to describe than to implement. These practices require a desire on the part of all involved to build a working environment based on respect and concern for doing the right things in the right ways.

The 12 elements of a best-practices ethics program include the following. Each element is described in reference to the pressure-to-perform scenario.

Vision statement. A vision statement defines the long-term, most desirable future state for the organization. The vision gives employees and managers a first screening test for decisions. They should ask themselves: “Will this decision or action move the organization closer to its vision?” Example: When setting performance goals HR should question whether the goals further the vision. But this alone is an insufficient test of the appropriateness of a set of goals. For example, “stretch” goals can further the vision in ways that are inconsistent with company values. A better measurement of the appropriateness of a goal would be: If meeting the goal will require unethical actions, the goal should be rejected.
Values statement. A values statement defines general principles of required behavior. It’s the standard against which decisions and actions are evaluated to determine if they meet the company’s and employees’ requirements. Example: An organization that adopts the simple values of fairness, honesty and integrity would set only those goals that employees can achieve through honest means, and would require that employees refrain from “gaming the system” and that communication among all parties be truthful.
Organizational code of ethics. A code of ethics gives organization-specific definitions of what’s expected and required. The code of ethics should clarify the organization’s expectations. The code also defines the consequences for failure to meet the standard. Example: In detailing the values of honesty or integrity, the code of ethics would specify that reporting of sales and work times be accurate and truthful, and that failure to meet this standard can be cause for dismissal.
Ethics officer. An ethics officer ensures that the ethics systems are in place and functioning. This person monitors the organization to determine if it’s making a good faith effort to abide by its stated values, that the code of conduct supports those values and that violations of those values are prevented or detected and addressed. The ethics officer usually oversees the ethics communication strategy and mechanisms for employees to obtain guidance and report suspected wrongdoing. Example: In the pressure-to-perform case, the ethics officer should encourage and receive communication from employees about the performance standards and determine whether or not those standards constitute an impetus to violate the organization’s values and code of ethics.
Ethics committee. The ethics committee oversees the organization’s ethics initiative and supervises the ethics officer. It’s the final interpreter of the ethics code and the final authority on the need for new or revised ethics policies. Early in the ethics initiative, it also may act as an ethics task force, creating the infrastructure it will eventually oversee. Example: The ethics committee receives information regarding any patterns or trends in employee comments about goal-setting, measurements and rewards, as well as instances of reported misconduct. It’s responsible for initiating the organization’s response to those patterns and trends, which likely includes a review of the goal-setting guidelines and a test of the reasonableness of current goals. The committee also initiates steps to reverse the pressure to violate the code of ethics to meet artificially high performance standards.
Ethics communication strategy. If employees are to know what’s expected of them and what resources are available to them, the ethics officer must create a cohesive ethics communication strategy. This strategy ensures that employees have the information they need in a timely and usable fashion and that the organization is encouraging employee communication regarding the values, standards and the conduct of the organization and its members. Example: Employees require information about what’s expected and how to safely raise their concern if the goals, as set, are unattainable by any means that the organization would condone.
Ethics training. Ethics training teaches employees what the organization requires, gives them the opportunity to practice applying the values to hypothetical situations and challenges, and prepares them to apply those same standards in the real world. Example: Ethics training enables employees to recognize the ethical dilemma of unreasonable goals and ensures they know what resources are available for safely raising the issue. It also makes it evident to the managers setting those standards that doing so creates an unacceptable condition in the workplace.
Ethics help line. Help lines aren’t just for reporting unethical conduct. They also make it easier for the organization to provide guidance and interpretation of its expectations when the intent of an ethics policy is unclear. Example: In the pressure-to-perform scenario, a call to a help line alerts the organization to the problem and ultimately leads to restoring reasonableness to the sales and performance objectives.
Measurements and rewards. In most organizations, employees know what’s important by virtue of what the organization measures and rewards. If ethical conduct is assessed and rewarded, and if unethical conduct is identified and dissuaded, employees will believe that the organization’s principals mean it when they say the values and code of ethics are important. Example: Appropriate rewards and measures prevent the unreasonable goals that are the motivation for the lying, cheating and stealing.
Monitoring and tracking systems. It isn’t enough to track and monitor employee behavior. It’s also critical to assess the extent to which employees accept and internalize the organization’s values and ethics code. Do they agree with their importance and appropriateness? Do they believe they apply to all employees at all levels? Example: If employees suspect that managers know employees are cheating to reach goals and are looking the other way, this may suggest that looking good on the sales reports is more important to managers than doing the right things in the right ways.
Periodic evaluation. It’s important to assess periodically the effectiveness of any initiative, especially an ethics program. Is the commitment still there? What has been the impact of recent changes? Are ethics-related goals and objectives being met? What new challenges are emerging? Example: With periodic ethical climate evaluations the pressure to improve sales and service performance can be anticipated, preventing an ethical mess to follow.
Ethical leadership. The bottom line is that ethics is a leadership issue. Leaders set the tone, shape the climate and define the standards. If managers are trustworthy and trusted, if their motivations are honorable and their expectations crystal clear, and if they’re paying attention to ethics as an integral element of every business decision, then ethical problems will be rare. Problems arise when the leaders are distracted by other elements of running the organization and fail to ensure that the ethical systems are in place and are effective. Example: The pressure-to-perform scenario can develop because managers are sidetracked by competition and inadvertently communicate that nothing is more important than sales. The message they should be communicating is that sales, honestly made and honestly reported, are crucial, but that dishonest sales dishonestly reported serve no one.

These 12 best practices can prevent the vast majority of ethics violations, large and small, if they’re systematically and systemically applied. Nothing has proven effective in preventing the rogue employee from perverting any system. But these practices can ensure that an organization is doing nothing to encourage good people to do bad things.

Workforce, September 1997, Vol. 76, No. 9, pp.117-122.

August 1, 1997June 29, 2023

Are Your Employees Cheating to Keep Up

There’s an epidemic spreading across our society.

It’s a condition that strikes employees in all types of organizations and at all levels. Its symptoms are well-documented, but no one yet has claimed to have found a cure.

The symptoms are familiar: Employees who are distrustful of leadership, who view the workplace as uncertain and/or hostile and who feel entitled to do what they know to be wrong.

For some leaders it’s easy to blame the employees. Some employees find it easy to blame the leaders.

As an observer of this process, I offer this perspective: Both groups, leaders and employees, are right, and being right is irrelevant. What is relevant is that these mutually destructive perceptions are creating a counterproductive reality in many organizations.

Watch as the system breaks down. Let’s use the example of one of today’s most pernicious management cliches: “doing more with less.” Every employee is expected to be more productive while consuming fewer resources. If an organization buys the myth that it can do more with less, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when the company experiences something like the following scenario.

1) The company has a sales quota for its sales representatives.

2) The quota is reasonable and all or nearly all representatives achieve the stated goal.

3) Managers, seeking to stretch the sales force (or: get them to do more), raise the quota.

4) The quota is challenging but still attainable, and all or nearly all representatives achieve the stated goal.

5) Managers ratchet the quota up another notch.

6) Some of the marginal sales reps fall short of the goal.

7) Managers threaten the sales representatives with disciplinary actions for failure to meet the goal. Managers, however, don’t offer training on how to do more, add tools or technology to facilitate doing more or develop improved products or marketing to make it easier to do more.

8) The sales representatives figure out how to “game” the system to protect themselves from the threat of discipline-appearing to do more, but actually doing the same or less.

9) The reps still appear to be reaching the sales goals, so managers up the quota another notch. Middle managers may suspect that sales representatives are cheating on their results, but they fear the consequences of broaching that reality.

10) Now fully competent employees are failing to reach the goal, so they adopt the game as well.

11) Managers, seeing reports of increasing sales and a near-zero failure rate among the sales reps, assume there’s still more room for stretching and ratchet the goal once more.

12) Soon the goal is totally unreasonable, even for the exemplary employee. All employees are feeling “required” and therefore “entitled” to cheat on their sales reporting to protect their jobs in an environment of unreasonable and unacceptable performance pressures.

13) The system is totally infected with fear, deception and distrust.

One company was so used to cheating that it had shorthand names for the three most frequently used strategies.

Recognize any of these games? Consider this real-life example, as reported in “Human Dilemmas in Work Organizations, Strategies for Resolution” (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1994), a book written by Abraham S. Korman and Associates. One company’s sales force had so institutionalized cheating on sales that it had shorthand names for the three most frequently used strategies.

Silent sales: Sales reps were measured on average dollars per order. If the average fell below the quota, employees would add items to a customer’s order. The extra product would be shipped and in most cases the “error” discovered and the extra shipment returned and restocked (at the company’s expense). Of an estimated $130 million in sales approximately $7.5 million was fraudulent.

Intentional disconnects: Telephone sales representatives also were measured on the average duration of a sales call. If a representative’s average was too high, he or she would intentionally disconnect the next several incoming calls to drive the average call time down. This took on racial overtones when employees started to intentionally disconnect Asian customers (or those believed to be Asian). The operative stereotype was that these calls took longer due to language difficulties, and that Asians were less likely to buy supplemental products and services, driving down the average dollars per sale. In the company’s main office alone, it was estimated that as many as 500 customers were intentionally disconnected each day.

Coding the customer: Sales representatives could exclude customers from the database used to conduct customer-satisfaction surveys by entering a code which indicated that the customer had specifically requested that he or she not be surveyed after the sale. Supervisors then used customer-satisfaction survey results to “motivate” employees. (This prompted one employee to post the notice, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”) Sales representatives routinely coded any customer who had been the victim of a silent sale to prevent managers from learning of this method for reaching sales goals.

Go ahead and snicker. This could never happen in your company, could it? But before you get too confident, consider these data. After a landmark survey of 4,035 U.S. employees, the Ethics Resource Center, based in Washington, D.C. reported that in 1994:

Twenty-nine percent of respondents reported that they feel pressure to engage in conduct that violates their companies’ standards of business conduct to meet business objectives.

More than one in seven said they believe that their companies’ policies encourage unethical behavior in the pursuit of business objectives.

One quarter reported that their companies’ managers look the other way and ignore unethical business conduct to meet business objectives.

Redirect this costly behavior. Employees in an unethical work environment often feel powerless. They believe the company is generating unmanageable change and its managers are imposing unreasonable demands. The employees consider leaders to be out-of-touch implementers of ill-conceived strategies. Soon staff morale deteriorates, and some employees begin to make bad choices.

It can be expensive. The losses associated with these types of unethical behavior average more than $3,000 per employee per year in tangible, measurable costs. That doesn’t count the losses in customer confidence, damage to the organization’s reputation, loss of employee commitment to and confidence in leadership, or other, less-tangible costs.

The first reaction of most managers when hearing about silent sales, intentional disconnects and customer coding is to look for ways to tighten controls. That’s an exercise in futility. Managers can’t make the controls foolproof, because employees can find a way to game any system they can create. So, instead of an irrational initial reaction by management, the more productive goal is to redirect employees’ creativity and energy toward solving organizational problems.

This redirection requires that managers look beyond the symptoms and uncover the causes of these behaviors. Too many employees are distrustful of their leaders; they’re uncertain of their future and feel vulnerable and out of control. They’re both angry about how their managers have been treating them and fearful that their jobs are in jeopardy.

What they need from managers is open communication. Employees need to know what’s happening. They need to believe that their leaders have the competence to lead and the integrity to do so honestly. They need to know what’s expected of them for success and that those expectations are within reach. They need to know that although this job may not last forever, when they’re again “in the market,” they’ll have skills and competencies that are in demand. They need confidence as well as competence, and they need their managers to believe in them.

Fortunately, there are exemplary companies that have developed best practices for addressing these employee issues.

Workforce, August 1997, Vol. 76, No. 8, pp. 58-61.