Category: HR Administration

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American Express Optimas Award Winner for Competitive Advantage

For years, American Express’ television ads have touted that no matter where a customer is, Amex representatives can help them. That’s why two years ago, the New York-based credit card and travel services provider wanted to ensure that it was doing everything possible to recruit and retain the best call center representatives.

The company surveyed its 8,000 customer care professionals, asking them to prioritize key things that mattered to them, says Mike Nardone, vice president, senior relationship leader, human resources.

The results were clear. The customer care professionals wanted the ability to develop their careers. They wanted more training. They wanted their compensation commensurate with performance. They wanted the ability to work flexibly.

In response, American Express established a new compensation scheme, developed clear career paths and training programs for employees and is beginning to offer flexible hours—all to enable representatives to help the company reach its goal of offering "extraordinary customer care," Nardone says.

As a first step, Nardone and his team established a hiring profile of the kind of call center representatives that the company needed to achieve its business goals. To recruit and retain individuals who fit that profile, American Express increased base pay for existing employees and new hires. Nardone wouldn’t detail the increases.

The company put together a one-day orientation session for new hires. Traditionally, orientation consisted of a lot of paperwork, but American Express wanted people leaving these sessions energized and clear on the goals for customer care, Nardone says.

Nardone and his team also established specific performance metrics for the call center representatives that went beyond the traditional call center metrics, such as call-handling time.

The key metric that all customer service centers use is based on whether customers would refer the company to a friend. So American Express set up a system that scores associates on how they drive that metric, Nardone says. Employees who exceed goals are eligible for incentive pay.

One of the most groundbreaking elements of American Express’ plan for its customer care professionals involved career development. Historically, there was no clear career path for these employees.

To address this, American Express established a four-tier career path system. Inexperienced new hires would work at level one and deal with the most generic calls, while employees working at level four would deal with the most important clients and handle the most complex calls. An intranet site allows call center reps to see job opportunities and get a better understanding of what a promotion would entail.

American Express’ efforts have paid off. Voluntary attrition among its customer care employees has dropped. For 2007, the company estimates that it saved $8.9 million in U.S. attrition savings as a result of the program. Employee engagement has also increased across the board from 2006 to 2007.

But American Express isn’t done. In December, the company will begin implementing the final portion of this initiative, providing call center workers with the ability to work flexibly. As such, American Express employees will be able to add and drop hours based on the needs of the company and their own availability.

For designing a program that directly resulted in the increased retention and engagement of its call center representatives, American Express wins the 2008 Optimas Award for Competitive Advantage.

   

Based in New York, American Express has 68,000 employees in 130 countries. Founded in 1850, American Express gets its name from the fact that it was among the first express delivery businesses in the United States. For 2007, the company reported net income of $4 billion.
 

American Express is a consumer financial services company that offers global payment, network and travel services to consumers and businesses around the world. The firm serves various types of clients, including large and small businesses as well as consumers and high-net-worth individuals.

   Workforce Management, October 20, 2008, p. 18 —Subscribe Now!

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Edwards Lifesciences Optimas Award Winner for Competitive Advantage

Leaving a powerful parent company as a spinoff organization can be a jolting experience. “We didn’t know whether we were going to have the right type of talent to succeed,” says Robert Reindl, corporate vice president of human resources at Edwards Lifesciences Corp. That daunting prospect was one of the catalysts for why the cardiovascular device maker decided to craft a new workforce management strategy. And it is one, Reindl says, that is closely intertwined with the company’s significant accomplishments.


    Since spinning off from medical products maker Baxter International in 2000, Edwards Lifesciences has seen its stock climb to $50 from an initial public offering price of $14. The company, which invests upwards of $110 million on research and development annually, now boasts sales growth of 7 percent, up from 1 percent at the time of the spinoff. “We couldn’t have achieved any of this without a sound workforce plan in place,” Reindl says.


    One of Edwards Lifesciences’ strategic workforce pillars boils down to a basic yet underused exercise: charting the various functions within a company and pinpointing which operations are critical. After careful analysis, the company identified 75 critical job functions. For competitive reasons, Reindl declined to disclose what those positions are. The workforce population within Edwards Lifesciences, however, is divided into main divisions that include engineering, marketing and clinical.


    The list of mission-critical functions is updated regularly to reflect shifts in business strategy. Each year, the company’s 15 top-ranking executives meet with CEO Michael Mussallem to discuss business imperatives, organizational challenges and new mission strategies. The outcomes of these assessments are used to determine whether any amendments need to be made to the company’s talent management strategy and critical-jobs list.


    Succession planning is an integral component of the talent management strategy. For each of the 75 critical positions, there are at least two employees who are identified as replacement candidates. Training and development play a central role when it comes to amassing a solid inventory of qualified successors for the most critical positions.


    Reindl says the company spends millions of dollars on various initiatives—including e-learning programs and instructor-led courses—to meet this end. In addition, Edwards Lifesciences each year hosts an intensive weeklong leadership program for upper management and promising talent.


    Training and development efforts have paid off. Almost 70 percent of job openings are filled with internal candidates. As important as internal career mobility is in retaining key personnel, Reindl says that there will always be a need for recruiting externally. “External hires bring fresh ideas and a new way of seeing things,” he notes. “That helps to keep on our toes.”


    Staying on top of workforce strategy is a priority at Edwards Lifesciences—so much so that Mussallem dedicates as much as 20 percent of his time to talent management. Indeed, workforce strategy is woven into the agenda of every board meeting, as well as into the monthly executive team meetings, which assemble the company’s 15 top-ranking decision-makers from 14 offices under one roof. Succession planning, recruitment strategy and organizational challenges are some of the workforce topics addressed during the gatherings.


“Failing to meet our workforce targets is as serious as missing a sales goal for the quarter,” Reindl says.


    For developing a system that tracks talent and recognizes it as being instrumental to company success, Edwards Lifesciences wins the 2007 Optimas Award for Competitive Advantage.


Based in Irvine, California, Edwards Lifesciences has 5,700 employees in 14 offices. In 2006, the company had more than $1 billion in sales. Edwards Lifesciences is a spinoff of medical product maker Baxter International. It sells its high-tech products worldwide through a direct sales force and distributors such as Baxter.
 


The company makes a wide range of instruments for cardiovascular disease treatment, including cardiac surgery and critical care products. Edwards Lifesciences is the world’s No. 1 heart valve company. The organization bears the name of Miles Edwards, co-inventor of the first artificial heart valve.


Workforce Management, March 26, 2007, p. 24 — Subscribe Now!

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Luxottica Group Optimas Award Winner for Managing Change

Four-hour van trips across Ohio smoothed the way for a merger of two of the country’s largest eyeglass chains. After Luxottica Group acquired rival Cole National in October 2004, Luxottica human resource officials made constant trips from their North American headquarters in Mason, Ohio, to the central Cole office in Twinsburg, Ohio. The visits—which typically lasted for a week and continued for several months—were part of a broad effort to prevent a culture clash from undermining the merger from the get-go, says Robin Wilson, senior director of human resources technology and analytics at Luxottica.


    She and about a dozen Luxottica HR officials made the journey to make sure that approximately 600 former Cole employees in Twinsburg understood that they mattered and could get their questions answered.


    “It was all designed to ensure that we demonstrated a culture of inclusiveness,” Wilson says.


    Before the $501 million deal, Milan, Italy-based Luxottica owned major chains LensCrafters and Sunglass Hut, employing 23,100 people in North America. Cole had upwards of 10,000 employees working at store brands including Pearle Vision Optical, Target Optical and Sears Optical. The combined company now employs more than 36,500 people, with nearly 5,400 retail locations in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada.


    Mergers can fizzle when firms flub employee relations. Among Luxottica’s concerns during the integration was retaining key Cole talent. Luxottica immediately made it clear that it was going to close Cole’s Twinsburg headquarters. But vital Cole employees were given retention bonuses to keep them on board during the transition. Luxottica also set up a call center exclusively to field questions from former Cole employees. There also was the consistent presence of the Luxottica HR contingent—one of a number of Luxottica teams that spent weeks in Twinsburg.


    All the reaching out came in the wake of an earlier merger mistake. When Luxottica bought Sunglass Hut in 2001, the acquisition was hampered at first by a cultural rift, Wilson says. “It wasn’t a better-together mentality going into it,” she says.


    “Better together” was the slogan Luxottica used for the Cole acquisition. But it was more than a slogan, says Mark Hess, senior manager of compensation programs at Luxottica. Hess was director of store operations for Pearle at the time of the merger. He says Luxottica treated Twinsburg employees honestly and fairly. The 2004 merger was much more respectful than what Hess experienced eight years previously, when he worked at Pearle and it was gobbled up by Cole. “Cole to me seemed to act as the conquering hero that came in to save our company,” he says.


    Hess is one of more than 200 employees from Cole headquarters who landed jobs at Luxottica. Fifty-five percent of the Cole employees in Twinsburg who were offered posts in Mason accepted.


    According to Luxottica, integration efforts held down store-level turnover. From October 2004 to October 2005, just 15 percent of the more than 6,000 Cole retail associates at optical stores resigned. The overall U.S. retail industry quit rate was 35 percent in 2005.


    In addition, the combined sales of Cole and Luxottica Retail grew 13 percent in 2005 versus 2004. Combined operating income grew by 44 percent.


    For not losing sight of the value of cultural integration during a major merger, Luxottica is the winner of the 2007 Optimas Award for Managing Change.


Milan, Italy-based Luxottica Group designs, makes and distributes prescription frames and sunglasses with a focus on luxury eyewear. Its North American retail division, Luxottica Retail, employs more than 36,500 people and has nearly 5,400 retail locations. For the first nine months of 2006, the group’s sales totaled $4.4 billion. Net income was $409 million.
 


Luxottica Group makes frames and sunglasses under its own brands, which include Ray-Ban and Revo. Through license deals, it also makes eyewear for such brands as Dolce & Gabbana and Polo Ralph Lauren. Products are designed and manufactured at six plants in Italy and two wholly owned plants in China.


Workforce Management, March 26, 2007, p. 29 — Subscribe Now!


 

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Infosys Technologies Optimas Award Winner for Service

A t tech services firm Infosys Technologies, benefit programs designed to boost morale and promote healthy careers are so treasured that employees keep track of them even after they’ve left the company.

    Bikramjit Maitra, vice president of human resource development at the Bangalore-based company, ran into a former employee recently. The worker suggested Maitra take advantage of an Infosys fitness program launched after the employee had departed. “He was more aware of some of our facilities than I was,” Maitra says.


    He and other leaders of the fast-growing company are smiling these days because it’s relatively rare for “Infoscions” to leave in the first place. Attrition at Infosys was just shy of 10 percent last year, a figure considered low for the burgeoning Indian software industry. An internal survey in late 2004 found that three-quarters of Infosys employees were satisfied with the company. And last year, Indian publication Business Today called Infosys the best company to work for in India.


    Low turnover, high employee satisfaction and a reputation as an employer of choice are critical to a company whose chief assets are the programming and problem-solving skills of its employees. Maitra attributes much of the company’s success in these areas to a group of workplace initiatives that fall under the company’s Employee Relations Program. The program includes counseling services, celebrations of cultural events, athletic contests and health fairs open to employees’ families.


    To further accommodate the strong family ties prevalent in India, Infosys invites employees’ parents and other relatives to visit its campus—which rivals the headquarters of U.S. tech firms with its lush lawns and amenities such as a gym and swimming pool.


    Overall, the Employee Relations Program aims to create an atmosphere of professionalism yet mimic the best aspects of university life.


    That goal stems directly from one of the big hurdles Infosys faces: engaging a young workforce. In part because India’s software outsourcing industry has taken off in just the past decade or so, the average age at Infosys is 26.


    With its focus on creating bonds among employees, the program also tries to help Infosys avoid becoming impersonal and bureaucratic amid remarkable growth—headcount has soared by 40,500 during the past five years to the current level of 49,400.


    The Employee Relations Program also helps the company ward off the likes of IBM and Oracle in India, which may try to poach workers trained by Infosys. And activities like movie screenings and staff tug-of-wars aim to help workers cope with the strains of occasional late hours needed to serve U.S. customers and the “crunch” periods common to software projects. Crunches refer to long hours required to solve complex problems and finish the code.


    “There are times when people go through extra professional stress,” Maitra says.


    A point of pride for Maitra, 50, is to help young people establish a sense of work/life balance early in their careers. Among his current goals are to get more employees to take half-hour exercise breaks and get them back home at a reasonable hour. The latter aim should prevent burnout and improve productivity, he thinks. “Coming on time and going on time are equally important,” he says.


    For its success in developing workforce management programs that help keep attrition low and the company reputation strong, Infosys wins the 2006 Optimas Award for Service.

Founded in 1981, Bangalore-based Infosys has 49,400 employees and is one of the major Indian firms providing software-outsourcing services to clients in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the year ended March 31, 2005, it posted revenue of $1.6 billion and net income of $419 million.
The company provides services including application development, systems integration and product engineering. Its clients are in industries such as health care, energy and financial services. Infosys subsidiary Progeon offers business process outsourcing services like handling call center tasks. Infosys also has a consulting division based in Fremont, California.

Workforce Management, March 13, 2006, p. 28 — Subscribe Now!

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J.M. Smucker Co Optimas Award Winner for Ethical Practice

From the days more than a century ago when a budding entrepreneur named Jerome Monroe Smucker personally signed the lid of every crock of apple butter he sold, the name J.M. Smucker Co. has been associated with quality products and good people. For the fourth-generation company, family and business values are one and the same. And even with increasing short-term performance pressure in the marketplace, those principles won’t change.

   “Our strategy is built on the foundation of our basic beliefs,” says Robert Ellis, vice president of human resources. “It provides the integrity to our bottom line.”

   The Orrville, Ohio, manufacturer wants to ensure that its signature comfort foods–fruit spreads, frostings, juices and beverages–remain American staples, and that honesty, respect, trust, responsibility and fairness guide daily operations.

   That’s why the firm steeps potential employees in its ethical standards even before they’re hired. Smucker officials refer frequently to company values and how they relate to the particular position a job candidate is seeking, Ellis says. Ensuring that the company meets the highest ethical standards starts with hiring people who already have a strong personal value system. The company tries to make this determination through rigorous reference checks.

   Once an applicant is hired, the ethics emphasis intensifies. Each of the company’s 3,500 employees started his or her career by attending a daylong training seminar. The event includes presentations by company officials, videos and breakout sessions on moral awareness, moral courage and values.

   The discussions go much deeper than a trite review of how to be a good person. One session concentrates on three ways employees can make a decision when faced with a dilemma. An option is consequential utilitarianism, or seeking to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Or an employee can choose a rules-based approach in which the decision he or she makes will set a standard that everyone else follows. The final alternative is to use the Golden Rule.

   Such sessions also delve into the complexity of ethics. Usually, an employee won’t be in a clear-cut situation where right and wrong easily can be defined. Ethical decisions are more likely to involve a nuanced balance between right and right. For example, the choice an employee might have to make may involve questions related to the pulls between truth and loyalty, the individual versus the community, short-term versus long-term approaches to business decisions.

   “All things being equal, they should go with truth over loyalty, go with community over the individual and long-term over short-term” company interests, Ellis says.

   After employees are trained, the company’s standards are reinforced by their supervisors and work teams. They go through the ethics program every three to five years and sign a nine-page ethics statement annually. “It’s spelled out in a lot of detail so that employees truly understand the level of performance we would expect from them in the work environment,” Ellis says.

   The guidelines are adhered to each day. They might be used to help sort out an employee performance issue, as managers reflect on the ethics paradigms. “It’s truly a working document,” Ellis says.

For putting honesty, respect, trust, responsibility and fairness at the core of its daily operations, and reinforcing high standards with a comprehensive ethics program, the J.M. Smucker Co. is the winner of the 2006 Optimas Award for Ethical Practice.
 

BASED IN ORRVILLE, OHIO, at One Strawberry Lane, the J.M. Smucker Co. has 3,500 employees worldwide and distributes products in 45 countries. In 2005, it generated revenue of $2.16 billion. Timothy Smucker, chairman and co-CEO, and Richard Smucker, president and co-CEO, are fourth-generation leaders of the family-run company.


J.M. SMUCKER MAKES fruit spreads, peanut butter, shortening and oils, ice cream toppings, health and natural foods, and beverages. Famous brands include Smucker’s, Jif, Crisco, Pillsbury and Hungry Jack. The company was founded in 1897, when Jerome Monroe Smucker sold apple butter from the back of a horse-drawn wagon.

Workforce Management, March 13, 2006, p. 19 — Subscribe Now!

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Workforce Management February 2004

People problems on every aisle
By Douglas P. Shuit
The world’s largest retailer is beset by allegations of discrimination, overtime-law violations and turnover that is “spiraling in the wrong direction,” to the tune of some 600,000 employees a year. For a company that practices what could be called HR lite, it might be time for a change.

Love hurts
By Sheila Anne Feeney
Romance may be in the air at your company, but passion can have its price. Affairs that end with allegations of harassment can put companies in the middle of million-dollar lawsuits. If they’re well publicized and bitter enough, companies can expect to see drops in productivity and even impacts on profitability. Dating policies are one answer, but even they might not save your company from the turmoil of workplace love gone bad. Also: A look at “love contracts,” which lawyers offer as a way to insulate companies from liability.

The five-alarm job
By Samuel Greengard
What makes a hot job hot? It’s not always money, prestige or glamour. A hot job, more than anything else, offers opportunity and meshes with the current values, attitudes and desires of the workforce. Companies that understand the timeless ingredients of a hot job can slash turnover, pump up productivity and bolster the bottom line. Also: Generation Y, the youngest workers in the population, don’t view jobs as their parents do. Money isn’t everything. Flexibility might be.

A second act for e-learning
by Joe Mullich
 
The first generation of e-learning left a bad taste with many of its users. It sucked up bandwidth. Or it bored the learners to death. Or, worst of all, no one used it. But e-learning is making a comeback. While spending for corporate training remained flat in 2003, e-learning expenditures rose 22 percent. Companies are trying e-learning again, with greater attention to ROI and more awareness of how to use online training.

Between the Lines
The snoop in the machine
You can monitor every employee’s every keystroke. But why would you want to?
   Reactions From Readers
Letters on Verizon’s early retirement program, Myers-Briggs and learning to fire people.

In This Corner
The burden, alas, is yours
Congress is using employers to accomplish its politically correct social goals. And until it stops, you must be prepared to defend adverse employment actions.

Legal Briefings
Age-biased comments are proof of discrimination; FMLA protections.

Data Bank
The high price of recovery.

Reaching out to shadow workers
Many employer groups were cheered by the news of President Bush’s guest-worker plan. But others continue to support a plan that would give illegal workers already here a means of attaining citizenship. Also: Reservists find few job problems upon their return from duty. Recent surveys show employees doubt they are getting the whole truth from their employers. The Hot List sizes up applicant tracking system software providers.
  
 

Benefits
No race to the bottom for these stores
While some supermarket chains slash benefits to cut costs and stay competitive, two specialty grocers, Wegmans and Stew Leonard’s, are bucking the trend. The two chains, which are very profitable, are working on another model. They enrich their wage and benefits packages, which draws a higher caliber of employee. They say that those workers are more productive, and more attuned to customer service. That means the stores see better bottom-line results.
  

Relocation
Companies weigh the cost of prepping expats
Even though the cost of a failed relocation might be more than a million dollars, many companies are bypassing pre-relocation cultural counseling. Instead, they opt for intervention if employees melt down once they’re overseas.
  

Recruiting & Staffing
Cap management for H-1B visas
No more than 65,000 H-1B visas will be issued in fiscal 2004, and immigration experts say the cap will likely be reached by spring. Companies that want to hire foreign professional workers should pay the price of “premium processing” to secure the visas that they need.
  

Legal Issues
The Supreme Court’s workplace docket
The court will consider such issues as reverse age discrimination, ERISA’s primacy over state-court lawsuits and the limits of existing sexual-harassment case law.
  

Benefits
Little impact from Massachusetts gay marriage ruling
The court ordered employers in the state to offer same-sex couples the same benefits as those enjoyed by heterosexual spouses. But many companies nationally already offer gay partner benefits. It costs very little, and builds their images as inclusive employers.
  

 
January  2004

December  2003
November  2003
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Dear Workforce Do People Offer Only One Kind of Noncompete

QDearWorkforce: 


   Can you do two kinds of noncompetes in one company? Management is requestingone type for the support people and another for thesales reps. (The support people have a stricter policy…fashion that!) 


 -Denise 


ADear Denise: 


    In today’shighly competitive, job-hopping market, forging noncompete, non-disclosure andnon-solicitation agreements between employer and employee are certainly commonpractice. The purpose of such agreements is to bolster an employee’s”duty of loyalty” to their employer. In general terms, these agreements are an attempt to quell employees frombecoming unrestricted, “job-hopping” free agents armed with proprietaryand/or protected information. 


    With thatsaid, you may wish to consider agreements tailored to an employee’s jobfunction. As employees have varying degrees of access to company information andexposure to clients, your company may find it necessary to use two, three, oreven more types of noncompete agreements. 


    Case inpoint, an employee in an engineering management position may have greaterexposure to proprietary company information compared to a sales representative,and conversely, the sales representative will have greater exposure to clientsand the protocols and intellectual property associated with the company’sclient relations programs.


    Therefore, per this example, each employeewould warrant a different agreement to best protect the company’s assets.What’s more, as a person changes positions, you should consider whether newresponsibilities require a change in the noncompete. 


   As you draft a noncompete agreement, ensure it is obvious what interests yourcompany is trying to protect and why. The agreement must give the employee clearand unequivocal notice of what post-employment activities are restricted. Tofind out if the noncompete clause that you signed is enforceable, consult withan attorney who has experience with employment or business law. 


 


SOURCE:Benchmark HR, Salem, New Hampshire. 


E-mailyour Dear Workforce questions toOnline Editor Todd Raphael at raphaelt@workforce.com,along with your name, title, organization and location. Unless you stateotherwise, your identifying information  maybe used on Workforce.com and in Workforcemagazine. We can’t guarantee we’ll be able to answer every question.


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Dear Workforce How Do I Design a Survey

Q

Dear Workforce:


We have done a number of surveys in the past. Our last one was done in 1996with a recommendation that we not complete another one for three years. Before1996, we used to complete surveys annually.


In part, our decision to delay surveying again was based upon our inabilityto process the data, analyze it and effectively communicate to employees theresults and recommendations/changes stemming from the survey each year.


Since 1996, we have had top management re-structuring (more than one!) andthe survey process has been left languishing. Recently, a renewed interest hasbeen shown and I and my executive are charged with making a recommendation. Theold survey instrument does not seem to fit with our new organizational structureand I would like to develop or find a new one. Have you any criteria fordefining the purpose of a survey?


It seems to me that I could survey with a focus on organizational climate,employee opinion, job satisfaction, employee attitude and so forth. I need someway of assessing what I should focus on so that the scope is not as broad as inpast years’ and we can obtain clear evidence of issues which we can then tackle.What approach do you suggest I take?


— Vicki


 


A Dear Vicki:


An organization such as yours which has experienced more than one topmanagement restructuring over the past few years is bound to have a number ofimportant issues (e.g. high turnover, lack of clarity about the organization’sstructure, low employee morale) for which you may want employee feedback.


A survey can be a very effective tool to measure employee attitudes regardingthe critical issues currently facing an organization. The first step indesigning a surveyto address organizational issues is to define the purpose of the survey. To dothis, consider the following criteria:

  • Determine the key issues
  • Define how each issue is impacting the organization,
  • Identify which issues are the most critical,
  • Prioritize the issues based on critical impact, and
  • Determine what information is needed to support the issue.

Using this criteria, you should take an approach which will help focus yoursurvey on one or two main themes. For instance, if job satisfaction/turnover isa common theme in your most critical issues, you can design a survey instrumentspecifically centered on that issue.


Targeting the survey in this way also helps to ease the processing of thesurvey responses, analyzing the data and communicating the results,recommendations and changes. After you determine the purpose of the survey, youneed to establish the goals of the survey, determine the sample and developquestions to specifically elicit the information you want to obtain.


Finally, if you’re looking for a way to improve the efficiency ofconducting a survey and communicating the results, consider using availabletechnology. Today, many leading-edge companies are using e-mail surveys. Theyoffer some distinct advantages over traditional survey methods. An e-mail surveyoffers:

  • Speed — you can gather responses quickly within a day or two,
  • Economy — once the set up has been completed there are no printing or distribution costs,
  • Greater response — the ease of an e-mail survey generally stimulates higher response levels than ordinary mail surveys, and
  • Quicker turnaround — you can tabulate data and communicate results faster.

Hopefully, these ideas will be helpful to you in making your recommendation.


 


SOURCE: Gerard Nazzaretto, Strategic CommunicationsConsultant, Teaneck, NJ, PricewaterhouseCoopers Unifi Network.


E-mail your Dear Workforce questions to Online Editor Todd Raphael at raphaelt@workforce.com,along with your name, title, organization and location. Unless you stateotherwise, your identifying information may be used on Workforce.com andin Workforce magazine. We can’t guarantee we’ll be able to answerevery question.

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Dear Workforce How Do We Cope When Human Resources Is the Problem?

Dear On Edge:

Bullying is both a potential cause and classic warning sign of physical violence. Most federal agencies include policies that address this. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management specifically prohibits “not only acts of physical violence, but harassment, intimidation and other disruptive behavior” in its workplace.

Make it your task to advocate for the development of a policy designed to prevent workplace violence at your company. Get senior management to commit to the policy.

Drafting a policy is one thing, but you also must ensure that it is effectively communicated–and reiterated–to all personnel. Perhaps emphasize the policy, and the reasons for its existence, during violence-prevention or code-of-conduct training sessions.

Third, ensure that the policy is consistently enforced. Here you will need the active participation of the human resources staff and the management team. It may very well entail changing your organizational culture. Management training sessions that clearly convey the devastating consequences of all forms of (and precursors to) violence, including bullying, should help.

If changing your corporate culture proves impossible, however, then at least offer employees some assertiveness training. That should help them learn to stand up to organizational bullies.

SOURCE: Don and Sheryl Grimme, coauthors, The New Manager’s Took Kit.

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.

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Dear Workforce How Do I Handle an Employee’s Drinking Problem?

Dear Hard to Swallow:

Don’t delay. If you have good reason to believe an employee is drinking before coming to work, act immediately. This situation could have a negative impact on morale, is a potential safety issue and does nothing to promote an engaging work environment.

Leverage the conversation. There is nothing wrong with asking the employee if he or she has been drinking, provided you have credible reason to believe so. You have safety on your side, more than likely company policy, and applicable state laws. These conversations are best conducted when at least two company representatives are present, along with the employee.

Examine the policy. It is important to have sufficient detail in the policy to cover most situations, and if it needs to be adjusted to be more comprehensive, then the company should move to make that happen. Taking a look at the company policy regarding drinking, you will know the exact parameters.

Consider safety. Employee safety is paramount. An employee who is drinking prior to work puts people at risk. This is especially true in organizations that use heavy equipment, but could certainly apply in an office environment as well.

Offer help. If the employee admits to drinking, then do your best to offer help if you are able to through your organization’s employee assistance program. HR directors do themselves a favor by not offering counseling themselves to a person drinking. Let professional drug and alcohol counselors apply their skills instead.

Seek discipline. An employee is suspected of drinking. The employee says that he or she was not drinking and will not admit to doing so. If you still suspect drinking occurred, then have the person take a blood-alcohol test. (Some organizations have relationships with medical units that provide these services.) It is important that an HR representative escort the employee. The results of the tests will determine whether you need to take disciplinary action.

Promote a healthy work environment. People drink for a variety of reasons that could be lessened by an engaging, healthy work environment. Some companies use vendors that provide programs focused on healthy living. These could include assistance with alcohol reduction, tobacco cessation, weight loss and physical fitness.