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Three top human resources leaders were among nine executives ousted by Tribune Co. as the Chicago-based media giant continued its housecleaning after the October departure of CEO Randy Michaels, the central figure of an unflattering front-page New York Times story depicting a corporate culture run amok.
A Nov. 2 memo e-mailed to employees announced that the human resources department was being restructured and senior vice president of human resources Barb Buchwald along with HR vice presidents Ken Perry and Louise Sheard were let go. Tribune Co. owns TV stations and newspapers nationwide, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.
The memo, which was written by the four-member executive council that temporarily replaced Michaels, outlined plans to “restructure the company’s human resources organization in a way that will allow us to share best practices and leverage the HR expertise residing in the corporate office and in our business units. We want employees to feel connected not only to their individual business units, but to Tribune as a whole.”
The executive council named three company leaders to head the reorganization of human resources: Gwen Murakami, senior vice president, administration for the Los Angeles Times; Janice Jacobs, vice president of human resources for the Chicago Tribune and Mike Bourgon, vice president of human resources for Tribune Co.
Tribune Co. spokesman Gary Weitman declined to comment on plans for the division, saying only that “HR will not be outsourced. Other than the e-mail, no one will be commenting about the changes in HR.”
The developments have left some HR professionals wondering what role Tribune Co’s. HR department played in what has been described as a fraternity house atmosphere. Michaels resigned Oct. 22 amid reports of boorish behavior from top Tribune executives and an unprofessional corporate culture.
Mary Lynn Fayoumi, CEO of the Management Association of Illinois, a not-for-profit organization that provides human resources service to employers, said that as a longtime Tribune reader and a human resources professional, she has followed the company’s internal struggles.
Fayoumi said she was surprised by revisions to the employee handbook made by Michaels, which was included in the New York Times story.
“Working at the Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the handbook stated. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process.” It added, “This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”
“Did HR write that? Did they approve of it?” Fayoumi said, adding that she’s received a lot of feedback from association members who were equally aghast. “Typically, the HR department, in addition to establishing and enforcing policy, is also responsible for helping organizations assess risk and make sure they are within the line legally. Given the long list of employee concerns, it appears that HR had little or no power or influence on senior managers, or they were part of the team.”
HR leaders at the Tribune were most likely “between a rock and a hard place,” said Ed Lawler, director of the Center for Effective Organizations at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. Lawler said HR’s role in the decline of the company’s culture depends on whether the HR department was a victim or a perpetrator.
“It’s an issue of how front and center HR should be when there are sweeping changes within the organization,” he said. “I don’t think HR should be portrayed as being responsible for it. They should coach management as to what to say, but ultimately they should not come forth and say, ‘Here’s our strategy.’ ”
Lawler didn’t know the details of what happened at Tribune, but after reading revisions to the company’s employee handbook said, “If I was in HR there, that’s the point where I would get my résumé out.”
Are companies trying to drive away their best customers? That may sound absurd at a time when many marketers are struggling to survive. But that’s what I wondered after having endured some of my most horrendous customer service—or rather disservice—experiences ever.
Relocation really exposes you to the good, the bad and the ugly side of customer service. Unfortunately, in my move to Chicago from New Jersey, I have mostly seen the ugly side these past few months—interminable delays caused by back-ordered merchandise and delivery scheduling snafus, shipment of damaged goods or products I didn’t order, false promises and even outright lies. The culprits include some of America’s biggest retailers and a telecommunications giant.
Managers, it seems, have taken their eyes off their most important employees—front-line folks who can either be their best brand ambassadors or worst nightmares. Clearly, companies have responded to the recession by cutting costs in ways that damage customer relationships. Many have pared call-center staffs, reduced training and failed to empower employees to make customer-friendly decisions on the spot.
I wasted hours in the telephone hell of electronic prompts, not knowing whether I would ever end up speaking to a real employee. When I did finally connect with consumer-relations representatives, they usually communicated poorly because they were following a script or were outsourced workers with little command of the English language. After one particularly vexing experience with an electronics retailer, I really cringed when the employee wished me “a wonderful evening.”
Making matters worse, marketers also have trimmed inventories so much that merchandise may be on eternal backorder. And as for product delivery, companies have cut their own teams of drivers or outsourced the job to vendors with no vested interest in their brands’ reputations.
Recently, I talked with some customer-service experts to glean their insights about recession-related problems. With layoffs, a heavier workload and fewer financial incentives, salespeople and shipping clerks may feel less motivated to deliver top-notch service and may be prone to make more mistakes. That’s the opinion of Robert Dewar, associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “You also might put in the wrong product code because of stress and anger,” he says. “You can’t hit your boss, but you can take it out on customers.”
David Koehler, a clinical assistant professor of managerial studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, blames inadequate training. “Companies are being penny wise, dollars foolish,” he says, “by not training employees properly and not teaching them to offer dissatisfied customers an appealing compromise, like something of better quality at the same price.” Companies mistakenly believe a bit of green can mend relationship rifts. Because of the inconveniences they caused, one company mailed me a $25 gift card while another provided a $25 credit on my wireless bill. Of course, the cost of losing a loyal customer is far higher than a puny $25 penance. The rule of thumb: It costs at least five times as much to attract a new customer as to keep an existing one. That doesn’t include the cost of losing additional customers and potential prospects because of the reputation damage from negative word-of-mouth communications.
The one bright light in my season of wretched service was Apple. Not once but twice the company delighted me with impressive service. First, the tech experts at the Genius Bar at Apple’s Short Hills, New Jersey, store salvaged my teenage son’s ailing laptop. Then during a telephone consultation, technical advisers resolved a stubborn problem I had created in moving my Time Capsule data backup device to a new Internet connection. What’s more, Apple was one of only two companies that followed up with a customer satisfaction survey.
“It isn’t enough to have nice people on the phone,” human resources consultant Jay Weiss of Rochelle Park, New Jersey-based JGI Inc., told me. “Apple hires smart people and gets its money back in customer retention.”
I already was a fan of most Apple products; now my customer loyalty is rock solid. My one beef with Apple: lack of choice in the wireless service provider for my iPhone. Apple could at least teach AT&T a thing or two about training customer and technical service staffs.
Please share your customer service experiences with Ron Alsop, ralsop@workforce.com. He will post the best comments online.
Workforce Management, November 2010, p. 50 — Subscribe Now!
First there was Catbert, evil director of human resources.
Now comes another less-than-positive portrayal of the HR profession in the realm of cartoons and comics: The Human Resource.
A sultry and somewhat sinister figure dressed in a miniskirt and thigh-high boots, The Human Resource is one character in a graphic novel published earlier this month called The Adventures of Unemployed Man.
The 80-page book recasts the recent recession and contemporary corporate life as taking place in a world of heroes and villains.
The Human Resource is billed partly as a seductress to the central hero, Unemployed Man. But despite what affectionate feelings she may have for him, she belongs to the Just Us League with fellow villains The Man, The Boot and The Outsourcerer.
Is this a reason for real-life HR leaders to take offense? Not at all, says Sue Meisinger, former president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management.
“I think it’s a hoot,” Meisinger says. Most HR professionals will look at the satire and laugh as well, she predicts. After all, she says, the job all but guarantees facing some heat. “It comes with the territory,” she says.
Polly Pearson, a consultant and former vice president of employment brand at computer storage maker EMC Corp., says The Human Resource captures the dual nature of HR officials. On the one hand, they advocate for employees. But they ultimately serve management.
“In all humor,” Pearson says, “there’s a seed of truth.”
There’s also a true-life story behind the book for co-creator Erich Origen. He lost his job at a media company in 2009 and has been unemployed since. To Origen, the book is a chance to provoke fresh thinking about flaws in the economic system.
As for The Human Resource, Origen claims no ill will to the profession as a whole.
“I’ve had great HR people on my side,” he says. “That said, I still find the term ‘human resources’ disturbing. It sounds like something the machines in The Matrix would use to talk about their human batteries.”
Origen and co-creator Gan Golan modeled The Human Resource after Catwoman, the wayward anti-hero who has a love-hate relationship with Batman. At one point during Unemployed Man’s job interview at her company, The Human Resource leans in close to the hero, putting her hand on his chest. But in the next panel she rejects him as lacking experience as a “sidekick”—and he falls through a trap door.
“It’s obviously a complicated relationship,” Origen says of the two characters. “Just like Batman’s is to Catwoman.”
She may not be as evil as cartoonist Scott Adams’ Catbert, who takes a kickback, conspires to give bad job reviews and fires an employee by ejecting him with a giant spring,but The Human Resource nonetheless can be a menace.
Her superpowers are detecting strengths and weaknesses, Origen explains. And, he adds, “She can do mass layoffs.”
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About half of white workers in the U.S.— 49.4 percent —participated in an employer-based retirement plan in 2009 compared with 41.6 percent of black workers and 26.7 percent of Hispanic workers, according to a new study.
The Employee Benefit Research Institute study, Employment-Based Retirement Plan Participation: Geographic Differences and Trends, 2009, also found that 70 percent of black and white workers with annual earnings of at least $50,000 participated in a plan, but only 57 percent of Hispanic workers at the same earning level did so.
Also, the percentage of U.S.-born Hispanic workers participating in a plan was twice as high as the rate of Hispanic workers born outside the U.S., 40 percent to 20 percent, respectively.
“What this shows is that plan participation levels between the races vary because of income and cultural differences,” said Craig Copeland, senior research associate at the institute and the study’s author, in an interview. “However, as income increases, these differences appear to go away between black and white workers but not with Hispanics.”
The study used U.S. Census Bureau data.
Filed by Doug Halonen of Pensions & Investments, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.
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As the year winds down, many human resources people are getting ready to lead a companywide performance review process based on an annualized calendar.
Rather than get all high and mighty regarding the effectiveness of an annual feedback loop or waste energy talking about whether performance reviews even work, let’s do something different.
There are ways to help make the effectiveness of the process better. Rather than say, ‘You’re doing it wrong,’ here are some thoughts that can maximize what you have in place.
Let’s start with a list of what most companies do well related to the performance review process. This is going to seem a little mundane, but these things are universal across most companies.
• You have a form. It contains goals and objectives that you hope the team member has reviewed. Hopefully, the team member has actually had a conversation about the goals with his or her manager.
• Your managers know they have to complete the form in question. This is the first part of what many HR pros affectionately term as the “cattle call.” Attention managers: Please complete the form, offering strategic insights while not causing your team members to become openly hostile upon delivery.
• You’ve got a meeting schedule. Managers must have the forms completed and hold meetings to deliver the news to their team members within a particular time frame. This is where you police those who don’t deliver by the date in question, using equal parts begging, intimidation and public humiliation to drive compliance. If none of that works, you do what any reasonable person would do. You tell their director.
• Your managers plow through the meetings. They hope the sessions go well and they don’t get trapped in awkward conversations. How do they do it? They don’t stop talking and limit the session to 30 minutes.
That’s a quick rundown of the common process most companies use related to performance management. It’s how 80 percent of companies in America still approach performance management. Of the remaining 20 percent, 10 percent does nothing—nothing!—related to performance management, and the other 10 percent are experimenting like crazy.
Most of you are in the 80 percent category. The rundown captures most of what you do, which begs the question: What can you do to make this traditional process better without putting your company through waves of change?
Simply, there are four ways you can make the traditional performance review process dramatically better. There’s no dramatic process engineering. And, there are no new forms.
1. Ask managers to provide examples to back up the rating and ensure those examples aren’t what I call “glittering generalities.” You rated Johnny a 3 (on a scale of 1 to5) on his second objective. Now give a couple of examples to back up that rating and make sure they’re specific so they can lead to deeper conversation.
Bad: “Johnny does a good job in this area. Nice work, Johnny.”
Worse: No written examples to back up the rating, which is the equivalent of a caveman grunt.
Better: “Johnny does a good job getting the reporting deck in on time. I especially like the improvements he made in the churn report, which helped us more accurately monitor the segments in which we were losing customers. Nice work, Johnny.”
2. Once managers have provided specific examples, have them weave in language that clearly ties the examples to a specific rating. Now that you have an active example of someone’s work in the area in question, you have a shot to tie it to the rating. Believe it or not, this actually helps set expectations with the team member and sets your manager up to ask for more in the future.
Example: “Johnny does a good job getting the reporting deck in on time. I especially like the improvements he made in the churn report, which helped us more accurately monitor the segments in which we were losing customers. Getting the reports in on time and occasionally looking for improvements is consistent with what I expect out of Johnny to meet my expectations in this area. Nice work, Johnny.”
3. Once managers have specific examples and have linked those examples to the actual rating, they should coach the team member by asking for more performance. Your managers want to deliver the review and get out of the room. You need them to be more—to be a coach. Have the manager list at least one example of what the team member could do to raise his or her rating. By doing this, they have a visual reminder of the need to coach for improved performance:
Example: “Johnny does a good job getting the reporting deck in on time. I especially like the improvements he made in the churn report, which helped us more accurately monitor the area in which we were losing customers. Getting the reports in on time and occasionally looking for improvements is consistent with what I expect out of Johnny to meet my expectations in this area. Moving forward, Johnny can get to the next level in this area by reviewing each report in the deck on a quarterly basis to determine if improvements can be made and executing on the changes he recommends. Our company would benefit greatly from that type of continuous improvement. Nice work, Johnny. Look forward to seeing more!”
4. Give managers the skills to deliver in-person coaching from the written comments they’ve generated. Work hard as an HR pro and you can implement the changes above and improve your existing performance review process in a dramatic fashion.
But your work’s not complete. To this point, the improvements you’ve made have been accomplished by enhancing the written product.
To truly capitalize on the potential of the enhanced written performance review, your managers need to be able to deliver the performance review verbally as well as in writing.
That means they need to be comfortable having a free-flowing conversation with the team member, using the rating, the supporting examples listed and the areas the team member can grow in as talking points. They need to let the team member share their feelings. It takes time, and the best place to start is through controlled practice in a training environment where they can get feedback.
You’ve got forms. You’ve got deadlines. Don’t have time to revamp the process in its entirety? Focus on these four things and you’re on the road to maximizing the benefits of the performance review process.
Workforce Management Online, October 2010 — Register Now!
You’ve said it before as you’ve contemplated a tough move on the people front within your company: “What will this look like to our employees and customers if we take this action?” Or, you may ask, “What will this look like to the same groups if we don’t take action?”
Like the Spike Lee film, you always want to do the right thing as a human respurces pro. However, it’s a tough world, and you have to think about how any people move (or lack of a move depending on the situation) is going to be perceived.
Face the facts: Part of the job of good HR is good PR. Want proof from the big leagues?
When Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Mark Hurd resigned, one of the outcomes that came out in the after-the-fact discovery was that Washington-based public relations firm APCO Worldwide Inc. worked with the HP board every step of the way as they moved toward the decision to separate Hurd from the company.
According to Fortune magazine, it was the PR strategists at APCO who helped the HP board decide how to handle harassment charges against Hurd. One of the tools was PR influence at its best: APCO presented a mock newspaper article illustrating the potential damage to HP’s reputation if the board failed to take action swiftly and decisively.
In short, PR people played a vital role in making an HR decision. Shocked? You shouldn’t be.
APCO has worked with high-profile clients like UPS Inc. and Pfizer Inc. The same APCO specialists who advised HP on people issues advised Merck & Co. on its Vioxx lawsuits, WorldCom on its bankruptcy restructuring, and Ford Motor Co. when Explorer SUVs with Firestone tires were blamed for crashes.
Consultants from PR shops such as APCO tell clients to “think like journalists” while presenting mock stories or dummy TV reports to show how the press might treat their crisis.
Some of you will reject that notion on first sight. “We don’t manage by approval polls,” you say. I get it. But you do. At times, you’re a PR person who does HR and talent management as a hobby.
Need more proof? Here are six ways you’ve been a PR expert in the last week:
• You’ve assessed the risk of terming an underperformer without taking a single step in your progressive discipline process. What would the PR person ask? The same thing you’re asking. “What’s it going to look like down the road? Are we likely to get sued? Are our team members going to be influenced by the fact the underperforming team member never got a formal warning?” It’s up to you not only to figure out what to do in balancing the needs of the business vs. the liability, but also to figure out how it’s going to play on the street.
• You’ve thought about internal candidates who will be interested in a new open position but aren’t ready. You’re thinking about what to tell them. You’re wondering if it’s better from a PR perspective to put them through an interview process in which they have no chance of succeeding or if it’s better to not post the position at all, plug in the favorite and take the backlash. If your final decision differs from that of the hiring manager, you’re crafting your talking points related to why your approach is the best.
• You’ve received feedback on the way your CEO is perceived in one of your remote locations. You’re assessing the credibility of the views and wondering if you should present the data to the CEO while wondering if the messenger figuratively will be killed. You know your message has to be right to avoid that. You’re also evaluating whether you’ll hurt innocent team members in that location by sharing the information with the CEO, since your lead person is likely to be down on anyone from that location for a long time.
• You just got the application for “Best Places to Work.” You know your company offers much to employees, but you also know it’s not a perfect place. You’re wondering about the positive and negative impacts of chasing the “Best Places” designation. Is it better to have the award regardless of the perception by some internally that you chased the award for PR benefit?
• You looked at your LinkedIn profile and think it could use some spice to enhance your recruiting effectiveness. You’re thinking about what you will write to make candidates want to talk to you and position your company as an employer of choice.
• You’re changing your medical insurance options, premiums and coverage levels again. Change happens, but this is the fourth time you’ve gone back to the well to reduce coverage, ask for more of an employee’s paycheck and say, “It’s not us; it’s the cost structure of the medical industry.” How do you share the story in a fresh and unique way?
It’s also your task to deliver negative news yet attempt to focus the perspective that team members have it better with you than they could get at the firm across the street.
So you think you’re not a PR person? Some would say you’re more PR than HR.
I say roll with it. If you’ve been in the game for a while now, chances are you’re a pretty good PR pro. And, spin-master skills are valuable elsewhere if the career in HR doesn’t work out.
Workforce Management Online, October 2010 — Register Now!
In the dark days of 2009 when business meetings focused on chilling financial forecasts and inevitable layoffs, SAS Institute Inc. co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight did something almost unheard of. Despite the economic uncertainty, he declared: There will be no layoffs. Goodnight didn’t want any of his 11,000 employees to live in fear. “It was a very gutsy move,” says Jenn Mann, vice president of human resources at the business analytics company, which is the largest privately held software company in the world.
For anyone who knows anything about the Cary, North Carolina-based company, the announcement was pure Goodnight. The towering 6-foot-5-inch executive, who has been at the helm throughout the company’s 34-year history, has created a company that has consistently received accolades for employee loyalty and strategic employee benefits. In the past decade, SAS has nearly doubled its staff—to more than 11,000 from about 6,000—and more than doubled revenue—from $1 billion to $2.31 billion last year. It has made Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For ranking every year since it was first compiled 13 years ago. This year, SAS ranked No. 1.
SAS received Workforce Management’s Optimas Award for general excellence in 2000, largely for programs related to its ability to attract—and keep—talent. At that time, the technology industry struggled to fill gaping labor shortages as new jobs were being created at dizzying speeds. There were five jobs for every skilled worker. Turnover averaged about 20 percent industrywide; at SAS, it was only 5 percent.
Today, turnover at SAS is 2 percent, which is the lowest in the industry, Mann says. Forty percent of SAS employees have been with the company 10 years or longer. And last year while other companies were forced to slash benefits and staff, SAS actually added employees and expanded benefits. Goodnight says that from the beginning it was his intention to create the kind of company that he himself would want to work for, a place where creative people could develop new ideas in a supportive, respectful environment—whether serving customers or writing software code. Because of its exceptionally low turnover, Mann and industry watchers estimate that SAS saves hundreds of millions of dollars a year. That provides a lot of money to offer perks to employees.
“We have great HR at SAS in two areas,” Mann says. “One, we understand how to attract talent and are very connected to university students who often become employees. And, two, we have very innovative benefits.”
SAS was born in academia and continues to recruit many students from nearby colleges such as North Carolina State University, which offers a master’s degree in analytics. SAS leaders make frequent trips to campuses to build relationships, search for talent, support technical academic programs, and promote SAS internships and science and technology “boot camps.”
The company also forms strong links with high school science and math teachers who are invited to bring their classes to the SAS campus to learn more about technology. Special emphasis is placed on reaching out to young women while they are still in high school. Because women continue to be underrepresented in science and engineering, a special effort is made to reach out to high school girls and to bring them to SAS to visit the campus and talk with them about career opportunities.
Expanding their horizons
Mann says one of the biggest HR changes in the past decade has been its expanded business focus. In addition to fulfilling traditional HR responsibilities, she and members of her team now play a larger role in broader business areas such as customer service. They’re responsible to customers just like employees in other areas of the business. For example, HR is expected to conduct three client meetings a month, such as a session with a customer’s CEO task force, to address subjects like risk taking or health and wellness.
“At SAS, we share what we do,” Mann says. “We’re always looking for ways to connect with our customers. Over the years we’ve found that our own extensive employee programs and benefits make a powerful impression on our customers—and prospective customers.”
SAS’ laundry list of benefits includes 90 percent coverage of health insurance premiums; free health care at an on-site medical center staffed by 56 employees, including physicians, nurse practitioners, nutritionists and dietitians; a 66,000-square-foot fitness center and natatorium; unlimited sick days (which has never been an issue, Mann says, as company data show the average employee uses only four a year); flexible work schedules; three weeks of vacation for entry-level employees—not including the week between Christmas and New Year’s; an on-site child-care center that costs employees a below-market price of $410 a month, which is roughly $900 less than average in the market, Mann estimates; a summer camp that served more than 100 children last summer; and a work/life center staffed by eight social workers who offer services ranging from adoption and parenting classes to disease management and elder care.
Then there are the numerous goodies and services, not thought of as perks, but as expressions of employee respect. Mann calls them “programs that eliminate stress and attract talent.” Included in this category are: a hair and nail salon; a car detailing service; a restaurant and bakery honored with culinary awards where employees and family members can eat during the day or order dinners to take home; break rooms stocked with snacks and beverages; art classes; ski trips; and a special nursing room for new moms equipped with cozy chairs and a sound system that plays classical music.
Lisa Arney, a corporate communications manager who has worked at SAS for nine years, enrolled both of her children at the child-care center. Now pregnant with her third child, she says she can’t fathom how she could have been such a happy, productive mom if she had stayed at the other companies she worked for.
“SAS understands that your life doesn’t stop when you come to work,” Arney says. She’s in touch with her children during work days, can take them to the SAS medical center if they’re sick, receives e-mails with photos of what her children are doing during the day, and has a lunch date with her daughter every Thursday at the SAS cafeteria just steps away. “My children’s teachers are my co-workers,” Arney says. “They get the same benefits I do. Some of them have been here for 25 years.”
Ten years ago, the average age of employees at SAS was 30. Today it is 45. Consequently, SAS has refined its workplace programs, Mann says, adding more wellness and elder-care information and a listserv to help retirees stay in touch with one another.
Milton Moskowitz, co-founder of the Great Places to Work Institute and co-author of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For, says that great benefits are a symbol of how much a company cares about employees. But it’s the broader culture that sets SAS apart, he says. SAS, for example, maintains staff in all areas and doesn’t outsource. All employees—whether landscapers, food service workers or software engineers—are treated the same and have a vested interest in the company.
SAS faces more competition in recruiting employees as companies such as Google Inc. also offer a wide range of workplace benefits. Still, as a privately held company, SAS can provide employees with more security than public companies driven by quarterly results and stock prices.
Gareth Herschel, research director at Gartner Inc., has studied SAS and says the company is strong because it has always had a very clear focus and a very consistent management team.
“I asked the CEO, Jim Goodnight, a couple of years ago how he viewed his role in the company,” Herschel says. “He said, ‘The value of SAS walks out of the building at 5 every night. My job is to make sure they want to come back.’ He sees his people as his biggest asset. He views his job as supporting the needs of his people.”
“SAS is paternalistic,” Herschel continues. “Some people would find that disturbing, the kind of ‘Big Brother’-is-watching-you aspects—going to the company doctor, sending your kids to the company school.”
Until now, Herschel says SAS has been the 800-pound gorilla in the field of business analytics. But as new players emerge and competition intensifies, he believes the company eventually will be “more like one of the seven dwarfs.”
“Now that the market is changing, it will be a challenge for management to remain competitive,” Herschel says. He expects it to be “fascinating” to watch how the company changes when Goodnight is no longer running the show. Even if experienced leaders already are in charge when the boss is away, Herschel says, it’s “still like there’s a babysitter in charge. Everyone knows the parent is coming back.”
Now 66, Goodnight is spending more time away from the office on global projects. But he is not the kind of leader who has to micromanage, SAS’ Mann says. Company executives are already accustomed to being in charge and to understanding every facet of the organization. Succession planning isn’t an issue, she notes, adding simply, “At SAS, we grow organically.”
Workforce Management, October 2010, p. 37-38 — Subscribe Now!
The Walt Disney Co. is locked in a high-profile dispute with an employee who claims the entertainment giant is restricting her right to practice her religion.
Imane Boudlal, 26, a hostess at the Storyteller’s Cafe in Disneyland’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, says Disney is discriminating against her by forbidding her to wear the head scarf that her Muslim faith compels her to don. She filed a religious discrimination complaint August 18 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Interestingly, Boudlal began her job at the theme park two years ago and in June asked to wear a hijab, or head scarf, to work—a request her supervisors denied. Disney directed its costume shop to design a special hijab-incorporating hat for Boudlal’s costume (all “onstage” Disney theme park employees who face the public are called cast members, and their uniforms are called costumes), but she reportedly felt that the hat-and-scarf accessory was inappropriate and embarrassing.
Boudlal then wore her non-Disney-approved hijab to work several times and was removed from the work schedule. Disney decided to fight it rather than depart from its long-standing policy requiring cast members to appear in regulation costumes onstage. That policy, known as the “Disney Look,” defines everything from the size of a cast member’s earrings to pantyhose.
The Disney case calls to mind another lawsuit that pitted Costco Wholesale Corp. against an employee whose numerous body piercings violated the company’s appearance policy five years ago. That case, in which the employee with multiple piercings claimed religious exemption from the appearance policy by virtue of her membership in the Church of Body Modification, was decided in Costco’s favor, though it lasted four years and cost $2 million in legal fees.
These cases raise the question: What is an employer’s obligation to support its employees’ desire to express their religious beliefs through dress and physical appearance?
Boudlal’s quarrel with Disney has one twist that keeps religious-freedom and human resources pundits chattering. She worked at her job for two years without complaint, wearing the standard costume to work every shift. Boudlal says she experienced an awakening of her faith and realized that her beliefs required her to cover her head on the job.
As an advocate for inclusion at work and an even bigger advocate for rational and consistent policymaking, I’ve got to side with Disney on this one.
Were Disney theme parks not as well-established in their culture and rules for employee/cast member appearance, I might be more sympathetic to Boudlal’s cause. But I have to ask: Why work at one of the country’s (if not the world’s) most steadfastly consistent employers in the “This is how we dress here” arena if the dress code doesn’t conform with your beliefs?
The law requires that employers accommodate employees’ religious obligations up to the point where that accommodation interferes with the employer’s ability to conduct business. I can’t see how Disney could have been clearer in articulating its requirements for employee costuming over many years or imagine an accommodation beyond the two already offered (besides the failed hat-plus-hijab experiment, Disney also offered her a backstage job without customer contact, which she refused). The company, after all, is in the entertainment business.
I see Disney between a rock and a hard place in this case, guessing that its leaders would have liked nothing better than for the whole thing to be amicably resolved and avoid sparking a national discussion about religious tolerance and the changing workforce. At the same time, I can only imagine the flurry of special-costuming requests had Disney agreed to her petition.
I’ll be watching the case with interest, as its implications may have big consequences for HR leaders in 2011 and beyond.
Workforce Management Online, September 2010 — Register Now!
