In the wake of Friday and Saturday’s horrific, evil events in Charlottesville, the the twitter account YesYoureRacist posted many riot photos and identified many of the rioters. And, as a result, some have lost their jobs.
Question: Does one participating in a Nazi rally enjoy any job protections from said participation?
Answer: Absolutely not.
“But Jon,” you ask, “just six months ago you told us that the National Labor Relations Act protects individuals’ political advocacy during the their own time in non-work areas? What gives?”
What gives is that you missed the key first part of this standard — the political advocacy must be non-disruptive. There was absolutely nothing “non-disruptive” about what happened in Charlottesville. In fact, it was the very definition of disruptive.
Thus, even if Mr. White could argue that the protest was “for or against a specific issue related to a specifically identified employment concern,” (and I would strongly argue that racial purity is not such an issue, see Title VII), the violent and disruptive nature of the protest removes all hope he and anyone else at the rally could hold for any employment protections.
Mr. White absolutely has the constitutional right to hold whatever opinion he wants to hold. And he even has the constitutional right to peacefully express those opinions, no matter how vehemently one might disagree with his point of view. Those rights are what make America great.
Those constitutional rights, however, stop at a private employer’s door. And I, as a private employer, have the right to hold my employees accountable for their viewpoints and terminate when I, in good faith, determine that those viewpoints may bleed into my workplace and create a hostile environment for other employees. I certainly have the right to fire when those viewpoints cross the line into violence or threats of violence.
More deeply, NLRA or no NLRA, free speech or no free speech, if one marches in public exposing a connection to this brand of hate, I would dare the individual to sue after being fired. Do not pass go, do not collect severance, just bring it on.
Because what kind of employer am I if I ignore an employee’s role in what happened over the weekend? What message does it send to my minority employees, my Jewish employees, my Muslim employees, my anyone-but-alt-right employees (not to mention my Title VII obligations to provide a workplace free from racial and religious harassment)?
Silence in the wake of hate at best condones the hate, and at worst participates in it. If it’s my business, I choose not to stay silent.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Philipp Schramm, CFO, VP of HR & IT at Webasto Roof Systems Americas in Rochester Hills, Michigan
Philipp Schramm made it his mission to lead Webasto Roof Systems to a financial turnaround.
Schramm, 37, is an analytically driven realist and compassionate leader. As chief financial officer and vice president of human resources and IT, he motivates more than 2,000 employees but admits he wasn’t born a leader.
“I truly believe we are shaped by the environment we were raised in and live in every day. We learn from everyone who has impacted us,” Schramm said.
This mindset led him to take action when he heard Webasto was projecting a $63 million loss in 2014.
“I’m a glass half-full kind of person. The bad experiences provide the deepest insights. I help make change happen by trusting in the people around me,” said Schramm.
He knew that the link to organizational success is corporate culture and employee engagement. He used his leadership role and human resources responsibility to resuscitate Webasto’s failing corporate culture.
“I’d rather be part of a trailblazing team than of one without drive. If you’re not willing to develop yourself, you will stop improving, and if you stop improving, you will lose,” said Schramm. He implemented new internal communication strategies and practical tools guided in “corporate listening.” Schramm knows listening leads to action, but can only be facilitated in a trusting environment.
He utilized opportunities for employees to be heard in fairness committees and skip-level meetings — sessions where upper-level management bypasses midlevel management to talk directly to nonmanagerial employees.
“I’m deeply energized by caring for and fighting to help others shape their destinies in a positive way,” said Schramm. Listen Like a Leader communication training was implemented for all employees from the shop floor to the executive suite. “Hundreds of colleagues have taken the course and often describe it as life-changing in every aspect of their lives,” said Schramm.
Today, the once-ranked “worst ever seen” corporate culture by McKinsey & Co.’s Organizational Health Index has returned to profitability. “Schramm is the visionary behind our forward-looking corporate strategy which has fueled Webasto’s comeback and ignited a cultural shift,” said André Schoenekaes, president and chief executive officer of Webasto, in his recommendation letter.
“A strategy provides you with a plan to track progress. By establishing SMART goals, you can motivate the broader population of individuals,” said Schramm.
Now the culture has ranked in its second quartile in just under 15 months. These changes indicate a transformational workplace change.
“Schramm’s humility, humor, authenticity and consistency is now written in our DNA,” said Schoenekaes. “We’ve changed from a disengaged organization to a culture that is caring and engaged in a future together.”
In Saleem v. Corporate Transportation Group (2nd Cir. 4/12/17) [pdf], the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals considered whether a company properly classified a group of black-car taxi drivers as independent contractors, or whether it should have classified them as employees. In ruling for the company, the court gifted employers a game plan to use when classifying workers to minimize risk in making the key determination of whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor.
In so ruling, the court considered three factors to be crucial as to the “economic realities” of the relationship between company and drivers in this case.
1. The drivers had entrepreneurial opportunities available to them.
The fact that Plaintiffs could (and did) work for CTG’s business rivals and transport personal clients while simultaneously maintaining their franchises without consequence suggests, in two respects, that CTG exercised minimal control over Plaintiffs. First, on its face, a company relinquishes control over its workers when it permits them to work for its competitors. Second, when an individual is able to draw income through work for others, he is less economically dependent on his putative employer. … Plaintiffs here possessed considerable independence in maximizing their income through a variety of means. By toggling back and forth between different car companies and personal clients, and by deciding how best to obtain business from CTG’s clients, drivers’ “profits increased” through “the[ir] ‘initiative, judgment[,] or foresight’” — all attributes of the “typical independent contractor.”
2. The drivers were personally financially invested in their work.
Regardless whether they actually purchased a franchise, the record also shows that Plaintiffs invested heavily in their driving businesses — another indication that they were “in business for themselves.” … One Franchisor Defendant estimated expenses for an individual purchasing a franchise as totaling between $68,838 and $89,038.30. Such sums constitute a substantial financial outlay on Plaintiffs’ part, even beyond the purchase or rental of the franchise itself, and in essential facets of Plaintiffs’ business operations: vehicle acquisition, fuel, repair, and maintenance, license, registration, and insurance fees, and tolls, parking, and tickets. CTG did not provide reimbursements for these expenses, never mind for discretionary investment in business cards, advertising, or other ventures designed to attract customers.
3. The drivers maintained a high degree of flexibility in how they performed their work.
The ability to choose how much to work also weighs in favor of independent contractor status. … After purchasing or leasing a franchise and securing a suitable vehicle, Plaintiffs set their own schedules, selecting when, where, and how often to work (if at all). Defendants provided no incentive structure for Plaintiffs to drive at certain times, on particular days, or in specific locations, leaving the decision to work “to the whims [and] choices” of its drivers. Likewise, Defendants required no notice on the part of drivers as to when they intended to work, nor did they make any effort to coordinate drivers’ schedules. … Plaintiffs also exercised considerable discretion in choosing when and where to drive. … Additionally, the record demonstrates that, as a matter of economic reality, Plaintiffs accepted and rejected (despite the penalty of being placed at the end of the queue) varying numbers of job offers, a fact indicative of the discretion and independence associated with independent contractor status.
The court, however, was not without a warning for employers in making this important determination between employee and contractor:
To be clear, we note in conclusion the narrow compass of our decision. Specifically, we do not here determine that it is irrelevant to the FLSA inquiry that the Defendants provided Plaintiffs with a client base, that Defendants charged fees when Plaintiffs utilized Defendants’ referral system, or that Defendants had some involvement, if limited, in rule enforcement among franchisees … In a different case, and with a different record, an entity that exercised similar control over clients, fees, and rules enforcement in ways analogous to the Defendants here might well constitute an employer within the meaning of the FLSA.
In other words, at the end of the day, the key inquiry still remains whether, when examining the totality of the circumstances, the “economic realities” of the relationship dictate that “the workers depend upon someone else’s business for the opportunity to render service or are in business for themselves.” Nevertheless, as the Saleem court makes clear, three of the key factors that you should be examining in making this determination for your workers are entrepreneurial opportunities, personal investment, and flexibility, which clearly help establish the legitimacy of the classification of workers as independent contractors, both in the gig economy and elsewhere.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. To comment, email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
Some 85 percent of workers say that they have gone to the office while sick, according to one recent survey.
An IT guy at a San Francisco tech startup comes to work looking like death warmed over near the end of flu season. He is visibly ill and sweating. Unfortunately, he’s also responsible for installing vital software to everyone’s computers in the office and doesn’t want to take off sick in the middle of the upgrade.
His colleagues beg him to go home, telling him they’ll be OK. Everyone is overreacting, he says, and pretends to lick their keyboards and cough on everything.
The upgrade continues despite his illness and soon people are calling in sick. All told, 20 percent of the workforce was out sick for multiple days; a few had to be hospitalized. He is confronted with this; his response: They’re whining.
This true story unfortunately isn’t that uncommon. Even though 82 percent of HR managers in a recent study by OfficeTeam said their company encourages staff to stay home when they’re sick, 85 percent of workers in the same survey announced that they have gone to the office while sick anyway.
The takeaway? If managers want to keep their teams healthy, they’ve got make the message a lot clearer, and also practice what they preach.
According to that same survey, people say they work while sick because they feel well enough to work and they don’t want to fall behind.
It’s tricky to determine whether a person who thinks they don’t need to call in sick is, in fact, right. When people have been sick and are on the mend again, they might still sound terrible but feel much better. But conversely, people are often contagious a few days before they start exhibiting symptoms. “It’s those days when they’re still coughing but their fever has broken that an employee might think, ‘I’m lethargic, but if I go ahead and drive in, I could get my work done,’ ” said Claire Bissot, managing director of CBIZ HR Services.
Not having sick days, saving sick time in case they need it later, and not wanting to burden co-workers with extra work were other common survey responses. “A lot of times, people feel guilty about making colleagues take up the slack for work they’ve left behind,” said HR consultant Arquella Hargrove of Meta Training and Consulting in Houston. Whatever the reason, as Lisa Oyler, HR director at Access Development Corp. in Salt Lake City points out, workers would be much better served taking real time off to recuperate fully. “If you take care of yourself, you’re going to get better quicker.”
Again, it’s not just about the worker but also their colleagues. “When you’re contagious, think about your community and stay home.” Oyler said. When employees don’t heed this advice, management needs to intervene. Oyler recalled a time when a colleague came into work with a scratchy throat. “As soon as everyone found out his kids had strep, our manager sent him home.” Not every boss reacts so well, though. Bissot was stunned at the story about the office epidemic at the San Francisco tech startup and said, “Shame on that manager. I would have said, ‘Here’s a mask and gloves, now teach me how to do what you need to do so you can go home.’ ”
Managers can avoid having to take a forceful stand against sick colleagues by making it 100 percent clear it’s OK for anyone to be out sick. “Deadlines are deadlines, but employees’ health is also important,” Oyler said. “You can’t make employees feel guilty. If an employee wakes up sick, there should be no doubt in their mind that they should stay home.”
Prevention Plans
Companies can do a lot to encourage wellness in the workplace. Influenza costs the American economy $87 billion in lost productivity each year, but only about half of Americans get vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Getting vaccinated is the No. 1 way to prevent flu, according to the CDC. It’s especially important for pregnant women, senior citizens and people with asthma, diabetes or certain other immune-compromising conditions, as they’re at higher risk for flu-related complications.
The CDC recommends hosting a flu vaccination clinic in the workplace to provide shots at low cost or no cost. That makes it as easy as possible for employees to protect themselves and check off that annual task from their to-do lists.
Bissot’s company opens up its flu vaccine clinic to family and friends of employees as well. “I think inviting the whole family in is a great idea, because if the kids are sick, the parents stay home sick,” she said.
There’s no such thing as emphasizing it too many times: “Stay home if you’re sick” is a message that employees need to hear again and again. “HR can communicate it but it doesn’t really mean anything unless employees hear it from their managers,” Oyler said.
Posting fliers encouraging thorough hand-washing and healthy sneezing hygiene can help.
“The more places you remind people to wash their hands and use hand sanitizer, the better off you are,” Bissot said. “During this season, you can make a fun gift out of it,” she added. “You can print a reminder and deliver it to everyone with tissues and two Emergen-Cs to raise awareness.” She recommends that companies buy hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes and facial tissues in bulk to make them easily accessible in the office.
Beyond influenza, diseases such as norovirus can spread like wildfire in a workplace. Often described colloquially as “stomach flu” or “food poisoning,” the gastrointestinal malady is highly infectious and spread both by direct contact and through the air.
Knowing that germs can live on hard surfaces for up to 72 hours, Bissot recommends talking to the office’s cleaning crew to make sure they are sanitizing doorknobs, kitchen appliances and vending machine buttons. “It may cost the company a little extra,” Bissot said, “But one hour of a cleaning crew compared to having seven to 10 people out of every 50 sick is worth it.”
Staying Flexible
It’s one thing for a staff member to come to work sick to avoid falling behind, but managers should also be aware of employees’ economic reasons for working while sick. “Nonexempt people might not be paid for sick days, so if you have someone that really needs to be paid and be working, they’re going to come sick,” Hargrove said. The same goes for people who have run out of days in their PTO banks. She advises managers to be as flexible as they can to keep infectious workers out of the office. “If they come in and you have to send them home, maybe you can allow them to make up that time in the same payroll period.”
Allowing people for whom it’s practical to work from home to do so is one option to get teams through contagious illnesses unscathed. “If they really need to be there, though, we can come up with a creative solution like setting them up in a private office on a critical day,” Oyler said.
It’s important for leaders to have a contingency plan for flu season and beyond. It’s safe to assume a few folks will get sick at any given time. Managers should know in advance what resources are at their disposal. “Be proactive and make sure there’s a backup plan, so if someone is out, someone else can pick up the slack,” Hargrove said. “If people can work from home, that’s fine. If you have someone out for too long, maybe bring someone in on a temporary basis.”
And managers should remember that employees will follow the boss’ lead: Supervisors need to be willing to call in sick themselves.
“It all starts with managers,” Bissot says. “You can’t try to enforce a rule when you aren’t following it yourself. If you contaminate other people, you’ll just make things harder for yourself.”
Brandi Britton is a district vice president for OfficeTeam, a staffing service company based in the Bay Area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Checking off core competencies is as important as ever to develop leadership skills.
While no one can see the future with perfect clarity, we must be prepared to adapt to whatever we encounter, not just what we expect. It is crucial then that business leaders need to start developing critical competencies now in order to be prepared for future business and leadership challenges.
Ten years ago, and again in 2016, our organization, the Center for Creative Leadership, queried its most recent database of 360 assessment responses and asked the bosses and coworkers of tens of thousands of leaders three key questions:
What leadership skills and perspectives are critical for success?
How strong is the leadership bench in these critical skills and perspectives?
And what potential pitfalls lie ahead for these leaders?
The studies included data from more than 40,000 executives rated by more than 400,000 coworkers and bosses. Using the language of the 360 assessments we deployed, they told us that leading employees; strategic perspective; decisiveness; composure; change management; and building relationships were the most critical skills in order for the organizations to survive and thrive. Interestingly, 10 years later, the list looks about the same, with composure dropping out of the top six and being a quick study replacing it.
We also asked about the skills that are most needed to ensure career success. Then and now, managing change; learning agility; interpersonal relationships; and collaboration led the list of critical skills. It’s safe to assume that as we go forward, these bedrock core competencies will remain important.
As we examine these skills that are shaping how organizations are beginning to operate differently and will operate in the future, we see the convergence of new generational preferences, new forms of technology-supported collaboration, globalization, flatter organizational structures, more open organizational boundaries, rapid advances in knowledge of all kinds, and the use of big data analytics shifting the landscape within which leaders (and others) exercise influence.
As indicated by the subtle shifts in the most important skills needed today, in today’s hyperfast world of constant complex change, there are some competencies that will rise to even greater prominence than in the past.
Discovery-based learning.
While the ability to learn has always been a desirable trait in leaders, the criticality of learning will grow in a world of fast-paced, innovation-driven change. The type of learning that will be required is not just learning from books or even experience, which in our research has accounted for about 70 percent of what leaders say they know about leadership. Now, learning agility is important, combined with learning from experiments versus relying on experience alone. This competency is exhibited through:
Curiosity and openness to new ideas and points of view.
Willingness to take calculated risks in order to learn.
The ability to structure learning experiments that produce fresh insights.
Encouraging dissent, challenge and sustained tension during the period that new ideas are being fermented.
Actively seeking input from a wide variety of sources inside and outside the organization.
Challenging the status quo; maintaining a state of perpetual interest in making things better.
Collaborative strategic decision making.
Engaging others as partners in making decisions is something that good leaders have always done. However, this was balanced in the past with a healthy dose of “willingness to take charge and make the tough calls” as an individual leader in the face of confusion or disagreement. The need to provide “leadership” was an excuse for control-oriented leaders to exercise authority even in situations where collaborative leadership might have produced better decisions. In the future, flatter organizational structures, cultures of equality and teamwork among knowledgeable contributors in and outside the organization, and less willingness on the part of members of the new generations to put up with positional power over knowledge-based power will force leaders to adapt. In his book “The Open Organization,” CEO Jim Whitehurst of software maker Red Hat describes in detail how he needed to shift his leadership style from the time that he led a turnaround at Delta Airlines to accommodate the non-hierarchical, collaborative culture of Red Hat. It is a shift that many leaders will need to make, and it requires the following capabilities:
Understanding the value of collaborative decision-making and being able to lead processes that bring out the best in what people have to offer.
Instead of “influencing without authority,” learning how to influence with authority to create interdependent rather than dependent organizational cultures.
Demonstrating authentic support for people working together to make and own decisions of importance to the future of the enterprise, when it really matters.
The ability to recognize when the need to reach consensus is driving out dissent and overpowering high-quality decision-making.
Seeking the best solution versus the most expedient one.
Shaping work for meaning.
Millennials are looking for challenging assignments that provide opportunities for learning and growth. As only about 13 percent of the workforce is highly engaged, there is much work to be done. It’s not that young people want to flee large bureaucratic organizations to join startups; most would prefer to continue to work where they are but won’t if opportunities to learn, grow and advance seem limited or a long way off. There are plenty of meaningful challenges to be tackled in large organizations but this work can’t be reserved for the few versus the many. Leaders can support and develop this organizational competency by:
Stimulating and then listening to ideas that can be translated into meaningful opportunities by those who invent them.
Acknowledging and rewarding efforts to make the organization better or more successful, especially when it is beyond job requirements or expectations.
Providing time, space and resources for innovation that anyone with a worthwhile idea can access.
Removing barriers that exist to people exploring ideas with others across the organization and outside of it.
Allowing people to assume positions of influence based on their ideas rather than their titles alone.
Activating Open Networks.
Organizations of the future will rely more on networks of temporary contributors from outside the organization much more than organizations do today. Beyond outsourcing jobs to reduce expenses, leaders of the future will recognize that the expertise and capabilities that can be captured via full-time employment are but a microcosm of the total expertise available in the global labor pool. Knowing how to create and leverage open networks will be a key differentiator between successful leaders of the past and those of the future. To realize the value of open networks, leaders must begin by:
Defining and structuring meaningful projects in which experts outside of the organization can assist.
Activating and facilitating networks of individuals collaborating virtually to bring out the best thinking and fastest speed to market.
Ensuring adequate engagement from internal resources in supporting open networks and capitalizing on their innovations to help the organization achieve optimal diversification and growth.
Influencing the activities of voluntary network contributors to “steer” them toward valued outcomes.
Learning to build more powerful open networks that seize key knowledge assets and translate them into high-payoff investments.
Leading complex and continuous change.
Leading a single complex change is difficult, but leading multiple, simultaneous complex changes requires skills of a higher order. Today, the success of single change efforts remains stuck at about 33 percent, a figure that hasn’t moved for decades despite years of research, executive education and acknowledgment that there is a serious problem here. In the future, change will be key to every major breakthrough, of which there are potentially very many. To seize these opportunities, leaders will need to up their game concerning change by taking the following steps:
Get ahead of the change curve by identifying and prioritizing opportunities more quickly.
Building greater capacity in individuals, teams, units and networks to undertake successful change.
Understanding the interdependencies of multiple simultaneous changes and address them rather than hoping that the competing demands for resources, time and attention will somehow sort themselves out.
Continuously increase the speed of change by doing it better, not pushing harder.
Pursuing vertical development.
Vertical development is adding more complex thinking capacity versus simply adding more skills to a repertoire. Since the complex challenges of the future will require systems thinking at a much higher level, leaders must be able to elevate their ability to see the entire picture and take actions that will enable long-term shifts in strategy and capabilities. Instead of breaking things down into discrete short-term activities, leaders will need to be able to balance the here and now against preparing for the future, by:
Developing the ability to see patterns and shift systems and processes to enable future possibilities.
Learning to think in terms of paradoxes or polarities instead of focusing exclusively on the ends of a continuum.
Envisioning long-term possibilities rather than being paralyzed by current limitations or barriers to innovation.
Understanding the potential of technology to transform the organization and the world.
Seeing beyond personal achievement and advancement in order to ignite collaborative efforts to achieve what would otherwise be impossible. These are just a few areas in which workforce competencies are shifting. As we begin 2017, people managers and leaders should resolve to be nimble in identifying and addressing the changing competencies for the success of your employees and your organization.
Sylvester Taylor is director of assessments, tools and publications for the Center for Creative Leadership. Bill Pasmore is an adviser to CEOs, boards and senior teams at CCL. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Organizations are transforming how they manage their workforces, and women in C-suite human resources positions are leading the way.
As you read each profile, you’ll see how these women are ending formal annual performance reviews, closing the wage gap, improving gender parity and diversity, and increasing employee engagement, among other initiatives.
It’s also the only leadership role that is predominantly female. Seventy-three percent of HR practitioners at the manager level are female, according to 2015 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, compared against 43 percent in marketing and 27 percent in IT.
Although the numbers dwindle at the highest level of HR, women still hold an employment edge when compared to their male counterparts. CEB, a best practice insight and technology company, analyzed 382 HR executive appointments between 2011 and 2016 and found that 55 percent of these new hires are female. This coincides with separate data from executive search firm Korn Ferry, which found that from a sample of top 1,000 U.S. companies, 55 percent of CHROs are women.
Some women managing these changes are well known. One is IBM CHRO Diane Gherson, who helped Big Blue end performance reviews based on stack-ranking employees. Another is Kathleen Hogan, the Microsoft human resources executive vice president who in 2016 closed the gender pay gap at the company so salaries for women are 99.8 cents for every $1 earned by men.
But people management power players are as likely to work at enterprises with fewer than 5,000 employees as they are to head HR at companies with hundreds of thousands of workers.
Workforce contacted professionals at business schools and HR associations, along with six female CHROs, to explore the position further: Why are women faring better in this field than others? What roadblocks still exist? And what does the future of HR look like?
Despite the fact that the equality of the position in terms of gender is unparalleled in other fields of business, there’s still ample room for improvement, said Bill Greenhalgh, CEO at the Human Resources Professionals Association. Male HR managers make about 40 percent more than female HR managers, according to the 2014 U.S. Department of Labor statistics, and in 2013, only 11 out of the 50 highest-paid HR leaders were female despite the fact that it is a female-dominated profession.
Regardless of company size, the women profiled here exemplify how HR and CHRO roles have evolved over the past decade. A competitive job market and technology advances have seen the function shift from practical and administrative to strategic.
Still, there remains the so-called “glass elevator,” said Matthew Bidwell, associate professor of management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. That is, men tend to fare better in female-dominated roles than females in male-dominated jobs.
“What you see in female dominated industries is they become progressively less female as you rise up [the career ladder],” said Bidwell. “Our stereotype of a manager or a leader is too often a man.”
In general, male CHROs tend to spend the most time on strategic activities (i.e., adviser, counselor, coach) while female CHROs tend to spend more time as “talent architects,” said Greenhalgh. In the current talent economy, where attracting and retaining the best talent is increasingly a challenge, this has positive implications for female CHROs.
“There’s a great opportunity here, because female CHROs spend more time in that area,” he said. “It’s an area where they can really add value.”
Just as the field of HR is shifting to become more strategic, HR leaders are moving in the same direction. When HR was more people and process driven, the cliché of an HR practitioner generally had those stereotypically female traits, like caring about other people and being communal. Now, as HR leaders gain more strategic and analytic roles, the skill set needs to be successful in shifting as well.
“This has implications for the profile of HR people,” said Bidwell. “The people who will do the best will have a combination of [these skills]. We’re looking for people who blend the understanding of how people work and also have the ability to analyze and understand data and make data-driven decisions.”
The female CHROs showcased in this feature represent a variety of industries, company sizes and business challenges, and they have that unique blend of people and strategic skills that HR professionals need to succeed in the modern workplace.
Read about the Women of HR highlighted in our January/ February issue:
Ellyn Shook, Chief Leadership and Human Resources Officer, Accenture.
CEO Pierre Nanterme broke the news when Accenture switched up performance reviews in 2015, but the heavy lifting fell to Ellyn Shook, the management consultancy’s chief leadership and human resources officer.
Accenture isn’t the first U.S. multinational to move away from once-a-year ratings-based reviews. But with 375,000 employees worldwide, it is among the biggest.
The reasons were simple. Accenture was reshaping its business units to meet changing customer needs, and the firm’s existing performance management system and talent pipeline weren’t producing employees with skills that fit.
Accenture’s workforce spans five generations, but 72 percent are millennials, and annual reviews didn’t give younger employees the regular feedback they desired. Then there was the amount of time spent on reviews: 2 million hours a year, 75 percent of it on paperwork and only a quarter on people actually talking to each other.
“The amount of energy and time that went into this distribution curve was not time adding value to our people or helping them be better,” Shook said.
She crowdsourced — a millennial favorite — to find out how employees wanted Accenture’s people practices to change. They said they wanted real-time feedback on how they were doing, personalized career training, opportunities to provide input on how business got done, and for the firm to be more transparent about diversity and other company practices.
Shook used the input and Accenture’s objectives to transform the existing performance management process into what she refers to as a performance achievement culture. Instead of rating employees along a distribution curve, Accenture switched to using Gallup’s StrengthFinder to identify and build on what people are good at.
In-house software developers built an app called Accenture People that employees use to set priorities and share them with work teams. The app works on iOS and Android phones and has voice recognition. That makes it fast and easy for an employee to ask a coworker for feedback, “and they can speak it into the app so it’s captured, and they’ll see it immediately so they can improve their skills,” Shook said.
Shook, 53, tested the new feedback system on 20,000 employees in multiple business units and countries for four months before introducing it to the entire company in January 2016 along with other changes, including a new on-demand online learning program. Early results have been positive. Employee mood improved along the way and remains high, Shook said. Accenture recruiters mention it in job interviews as a selling point of working there.
Change of such magnitude takes time and resources. Shook estimates she spent a third of the past year restructuring reviews, which she calls “probably the most significant talent transformation we’ve ever undergone in our history.” She got help from a cross-functional team of 2,500, and an outside communications firm. An Accenture spokeswoman declined to say how much the firm spent on the retooling.
As part of the new performance achievement culture, Accenture is spending thousands of hours training managers to coach employees to reach performance goals, because “looking ahead is different than providing backward-looking feedback,” Shook said. Time will tell if the investment pays off.
It’s only the 4th day of January and we already have an early contender for employee of the year. I cannot do this story any justice better than the original article in the New York Post.
This human resources director is taking legal action to find out who wants her to eat a bag of d–ks.
Melody Lenox filed a lawsuit Tuesday after she was less than amused to receive a package of gummy penises. Lenox, who works for Axxess Technology Solutions in Dallas, alleges this is not the work of a generous individual, but someone trying to harass her.…
The package, which came from a company aptly named D–ks By Mail, was sent to her on Dec. 7. She sued the company demanding it reveal the prankster’s identity so she “can put an end to the harassment,” according to the suit.
On the company website, D–ks By Mail markets itself as a “great way to tell your friends, family, loved ones, or enemies to EAT A BAG OF D–KS.”
OK, 2017, you are officially on the clock to find a worse employee. There are 361 days and counting.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
I once had two employees whose working relationship blossomed into a workplace romance.
At first it was an all-out lovefest; footsies under the table during staff meetings, goo-goo eyes at each other at lunch … ain’t love grand? It sure was; until it wasn’t.
Their chocolate kisses turned sour. Tart words and icy glares soon took a toll on the staff, who soon asked if I would help end the hostilities. I did; and it didn’t go particularly well.
It was clear that there was no mediating this one. Back and forth they went with terse accusations. Exasperated, I finally blurted: “Stop it; just, stop it.”
I was reminded of this nasty affair when late last year newly elected President Donald Trump was confronted by “60 Minutes” reporter Lesley Stahl’s question regarding his supporters’ harassment of Latinos and Muslims. Trump’s response: “And I say, ‘Stop it.’ If it — if it helps, I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: ‘Stop it.’ ”
I’ll admit, Trump’s statement had conviction — arguably more than mine did. While his “stop it” may temporarily soothe an edgy nation and workplaces teeming with potential to boil over in bias, there’s another two-word phrase Trump is known for that strikes fear into every worker’s heart. “You’re fired” of course is the catchphrase from his reality TV show, “The Apprentice.” But which two-word phrase — a more reassuring “stop it” or brusque “you’re fired” — will define the man running our country for the next four years?
Like Trump, as workplace leaders we must toggle from “stop it” to “you’re fired.” It’s also on us to deliver the workplace tone for clarity, set an example of fairness and honesty. Our new president gets no pass on this, either. The initial days and weeks of Trump’s tenure will provide that roadmap for our nation’s workplaces.
That there’s a massive shift ahead for our political landscape under Trump is without question. His impact on the workplace however, is less apparent.
Let’s define what we know: The courts and their interpretations of employment law will undergo a massive philosophical shift.
Laws and regulations affecting our lives and jobs, from the Affordable Care Act to H-1B immigration policies to minimum wage laws, parental leave issues and especially organized labor, will come under intense scrutiny. The Family and Medical Leave Act and Fair Labor Standards Act will be under the microscope. Boards and agencies including the NLRB, OSHA, the EEOC and the Department of Labor face substantial overhauls.
That much is clear. What remains hazy is how our CEO-president’s provocateur-business leader-outsider persona will influence behavior in workplace corridors and on job sites across America.
When an unknown boss is tapped to lead an organization we check their LinkedIn profile; search for images and background; glean Glassdoor; perhaps even email a friend of a friend who may have a shred of insider knowledge.
There’s no need to play cyber-Sherlock Holmes with Trump. If we were in the dark about his leadership skills, abilities and attitudes, two years of campaigning and his time as president-elect are clarifying his management style.
Building a multibillion-dollar real estate empire is impressive. Beyond that remarkable bottom line, what does a peek into his supervisory toolbox reveal? Under organizational skills: withholding subcontractors’ pay and years of skirting tax laws. Checking the leadership box — a dizzying example of bullying, intimidation and name calling on social media. As a manager … ogling and belittling his beauty pageant contestants and taking “locker room banter” to near-obscene levels.
Maybe you’re all about results and the soft stuff doesn’t matter. Go ahead and look the other way. But with those qualities, Trump as a CEO looks like a lawsuit and extremely pricey settlement waiting to happen. It’s also behavior that I find unfit for any leader, let alone the president.
It would be a shame if HR has to play hall monitor rather than work as a strategic business partner during a Trump presidency. Policies will change; managers have learned to handle that. It’s the toxic attitudes and mounting disrespect for people that present such an ominous challenge during the next four years.
Fortunately, a handful of CEOs and leading employers have already publicly committed to policing their workplaces. President Trump could aid these leaders’ efforts and help curb growing workplace bias by turning his provocative rhetoric into more meaningful dialog with a few more emphatic, heartfelt “stop it” moments.
In your workplace it may take a “stop it” to promote cohesion. A “you’re fired” could even ease fear and distrust. How that message is conveyed will speak volumes about your leadership skills and the quality of your workplace. In this new era, how you say it is just as important as the message you deliver.
Rick Bell is Workforce’s editorial director. Comment below or email rbell@workforce.com.
Paradigm for Parity is a new coalition that aims to level the workplace gender gap.
By Andie Burjek
Jewelle Bickford was frustrated; despite corporate efforts toward parity and promises to tackle gender inequality in leadership, women as a group weren’t making progress.
Bickford, partner at Evercore Wealth Management, is one of the founders and co-chairs of the Paradigm for Parity movement, which launched earlier this month as a vehicle to accelerate the pace of gender equity in senior executive roles. The ultimate goal is gender parity in leadership by 2030.
Bickford along with Sandra Beach Lin, former president and CEO of Calisolar, and Ellen Kullman, former CEO of DuPont, created the movement.
“It was our view that if a solution were to be found, women would need to do it for themselves, and for the rest of the women out there,” said Bickford. This prompted the organization of the Paradigm for Parity movement, which so far has partnered with 27 companies, all of which have publicly promised to take on gender parity as an organizational goal and to use Paradigm for Parity’s guidelines to do so.
Bickford and a group of highly regarded female CEOs and business executives, many of whom are CHROs, put together the actionable-items plan. The group created a measurement for success that could realistically be implemented within a company. These measurements are how many women the company attracts, retains, promotes and sponsors. Many companies don’t track sponsorship, which is an important aspect in the action plan.
Getting other companies interested in the plan wasn’t difficult, noted Bickford.
“There are a lot of men and women out there who are as frustrated as we are,” she said.
The five-point action plan includes:
Minimize or eliminate unconscious bias.
Significantly increase the number of women in senior operating roles.
Measure targets at every level and communicate progress and results regularly.
Base career progress on business results and performance, not presence.
Identify women of potential and give them sponsors and mentors.
Jewelle Bickford
What’s key about these five points, said Bickford, is that they reinforce each other and have to be implemented together to have the desired effect. For example, if a company makes a point to attract female candidates but not promote or sponsor them, then the number of women leaders won’t shift significantly.
One takeaway from meetings Bickford has had with executives is the importance of unconscious bias training, which can’t be done just once but must be continually reinforced.
Also important is that company leaders support the plan and publish statistics internally in the organization. For example, Bickford mentioned McKinsey & Co. CEO Dominic Barton, who willingly shared diversity numbers and acknowledged that the company wanted to do better and had a plan.
One item not noted in this plan is closing the wage gap. This was intentional because many other organizations already tackle that issue. Also, Bickford said, “We believe that if you implement all five of the action items, the wage gap will disappear. Our goal was to go where other people have not.”
One of Paradigm for Parity’s partners is global professional services company Accenture, which has a long-standing commitment to inclusion and diversity, according to CHRO Ellyn Shook.
“Most recently, 30 percent of our newly promoted managing directors are women, a record percentage for us,” she wrote in an email interview. “Paradigm for Parity is anchored by an actionable roadmap for change, and we look forward to sharing best practices and collaborating with leading companies to achieve gender equality.”
Among other companies that have committed to Paradigm for Parity’s action plan are Bank of America, Cargill, VF Corp., the Huffington Post, Nordstrom and LinkedIn. The organization’s goal is 50 companies by March 2017, said Bickford.
For companies interested in creating more gender equality in their workplace, whether they formally partner with Paradigm for Parity, Bickford said: “That would be my advice to any CHRO; just get started. You’ll see it will be very positive.”
Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below or email at aburjek@humancapitalmedia.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at@workforcenews.
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