Corporate leaders are accustomed to putting out organizational brush fires. Now, they can become firefighters for a day and extinguish the real thing, too.
To sharpen their leadership skills, managers from about two dozen companies in New York and New Jersey joined with some of their employees to play firefighter one afternoon last May. The four-person teams traded in their white collars for gas masks and “turnout gear”—traditional firefighter garb. Under the supervision of New York City firefighters, the teams rushed into burning buildings, rescued passengers from simulated subway accidents or performed other high-pressure emergency drills.
The unusual training took place at the New York City Fire Academy. Learning how to properly hook up a fire hose, gauge the correct water pressure and extinguish flames—all while being timed—took leadership from abstract concepts to the practical realm, says S. Scott Parel, one of the participants who is a private equity lawyer and partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges in New York.
“I honestly didn’t expect that it would foster team building beyond mere camaraderie, but it did a lot more than that,” says Parel, whose crew received the FDNY’s teamwork award for its performance. “Our team was put to the test as to who was supposed to do what.”
The team combined people from Parel’s practice group and the firm’s bankruptcy practice. Although the four lawyers were acquainted as colleagues, the intense experience “proved especially challenging since we had not worked together on a project before,” Parel says.
Dousing actual fires may seem extreme, but the program exemplifies the trend toward making leadership training more creative and engaging. The FDNY launched its Firefighter for a Day Team Challenge last year to share “best practices” on decision-making and problem-solving, says Greg Pfeifer, a development associate with the FDNY who oversees the program. The training has “the feel of executive education,” with companies paying $2,500 to enroll each four-person team. The FDNY suggests organizations form teams that have one senior official and several nonmanagerial employees.
“Firefighting is very complex and interdependent, and that has obvious applications to the business world,” Pfeifer says. “Since our training puts people into crisis situations, hopefully they will be better prepared to handle any crisis that arises in the workplace.” The Fire Department plans to reprise the challenge with a new crop of companies at its second annual leadership training program on May 13. Among the expected participants are some employees in the New York City office of Syska Hennessy Group Inc., an engineering, design and consulting firm whose projects usually involve large numbers of professionals from different disciplines.
The sprawling nature of projects sometimes makes it difficult to communicate the customer’s needs to all parties, says James Callahan, a Syska electrical engineer. “We have to do a better job of talking to one another and coordinating tasks among the different parties on project teams. We expect that working with the firefighters will help us make decisions more quickly, and learn how to delegate.”
Whether such kinesthetic training is more effective than classroom instruction remains subject to debate. Yet more companies clearly are embracing programs that enable leaders to learn by doing, especially in group settings.
To meet that demand, some of the top business schools are livening up their executive education programs. Companies now want executive education to embed “experiential” learning with traditional coursework, says Stephen Burnett, the associate dean of executive education at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Evanston, Illinois.
Burnett says companies realize “there are limits to what people learn in the classroom or even on the Web. For skills such as communication, coaching and enabling team performance, people have to be given an opportunity to immediately apply them.” Spending on leadership programs began dropping in 2008 but appears to be stabilizing, according to research firm Bersin & Associates in Oakland, California. In 2010, organizations devoted 22 percent of their training budgets to leadership, down just slightly from 2009.
Leadership may not seem like a laughing matter, but some companies are seeking comic effect in their training. Many turn to Chicago-based Second City Communications, the corporate consulting division of renowned comedy troupe Second City, whose alumni include Dan Aykroyd, Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Bill Murray and Mike Myers.
Second City Communications began using satire and theatrical comedy for corporate training about 10 years ago, and its business has been ticking steadily upward, according to Tom Yorton, CEO. The consulting division provides comedy-infused workshops for nearly 400 corporate clients, about half of which are Fortune 500 companies. The reason for the growth is simple, Yorton says. “There is a cost of being boring” when learners don’t retain what they hear.
Improvisational comedy serves as a metaphor for how leaders must adapt to the rapid pace of change in business. One minute, a corporate manager might be yukking it up over a joke during a Second City workshop. The next minute, that executive might be roped on stage to perform with the cast and become part of the joke. “When people learn by doing, it tends to have greater impact and staying power,” Yorton says. “Likewise, when we present something in a comedic way, it cuts through the clutter and helps people pay attention.”
Most half-day workshops cost about $5,000, while full-day sessions run about $7,500, Yorton says. Second City also produces custom programs starting at about $10,000. One of Second City’s clients is Los Angeles-based Farmers Insurance Group of Cos. Humorous videos provide a fresh way to teach the leaders at Farmers how to be more transparent and how to create an environment that encourages feedback, Yorton says. “A lot of our work focuses on communication skills, being nimble and adaptive.”
Timothy West, an associate professor in the accountancy department at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, asked Second City to provide improvisational techniques for leadership to his class of certified public accountants, whose profession gets stereotyped as “boring, predictable and inflexible.” The workshops force accountants into new roles of communication and on-the-spot collaboration.
At the end of the workshop, accountants create skits in the form of an infomercial, which West says helps them “deliver concepts in ways they would have never considered just a few hours earlier.”
Chord progression
Music, which can also involve improvisation, is being incorporated into some leadership training programs. Minneapolis-based Jazz Impact, for example, has delivered jazz-infused leadership workshops for such blue-chip clients as Credit Suisse Group, IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., the Mayo Clinic and Vodafone Group.
Classical music has been used to illustrate the leader-as-conductor model, but jazz provides different lessons. Michael Gold, the head of Jazz Impact and a former real estate executive, says jazz enables leaders to understand the ensemble nature of work. In a typical workshop, the group starts with a few bars of music, which do not have a scripted ending. Each performer then takes a turn in the spotlight, improvising a solo, while the other band members provide accompaniment. With the solo complete, the musician blends into the background to support the next member’s Louis Armstrong moment.
Although the musicians shine during their solos, it is the interplay and mutual support that create a sense of harmony and completion, Gold says. “There’s a tremendous parallel between a jazz ensemble and the demands placed on businesses, particularly leadership.” One of Gold’s venues is the Kellogg School at Northwestern. Jazz Impact performs in leadership courses taught by Michelle Buck, a clinical professor of management and organization, as part of Kellogg’s Advanced Executive Program for people on track to become senior managers. Tuition for the four-week program is $41,000.
In the weeks leading up to Buck’s final class, participants pursue coursework on various facets of management, including strategy, accounting and marketing. The final class, however, is intended as a surprise. Students are often taken aback when they enter the classroom and see a jazz ensemble tuning up, Buck says.
After listening to some jazz, students can question the performers. But perhaps most important, students also are asked to grab simple percussion instruments and contribute to the musical tableau. The class is designed to push leaders beyond their comfort zone. The pace of business is faster, and the pressure to innovate is increasing, Buck says. Leaders don’t have a lot of ramp-up time, “yet they’re being told: ‘Here’s the template: Go create a new product in a new market.’ ”
Buck also spices up some of her classes with the Argentine tango. The two dancers illustrate the interdependence between leaders and the people they lead, Buck says. “The cliche that ‘It takes two to tango’ is true for a reason: A leader can’t lead alone. The follower has to follow in a way that helps the leader lead.”
Experiential-based leadership development programs have long been popular at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. This year marks the 10th anniversary of Wharton’s Leadership Ventures, in which 20 to 30 people participate in two learning expeditions lasting up to 14 days, says Jeff Klein, director of Wharton’s Graduate Leadership Program.
One program takes participants to Normandy’s Omaha Beach, where Allied troops invaded France on D-Day, during World War II. The students stand on the beach as Wharton instructors conjure up images of the turmoil of the deadly battle, and provide lessons on leading under difficult conditions.
Another excursion proves to be a bit more grueling, with executives trekking across the Mount Everest region of Nepal. The students learn survival skills such as overland navigation, proper hydration and nutrition, Klein says. “When the team succeeds in understanding the environment, performing as a team and acquiring new skills, it also gains confidence and the ability to apply the same concepts in organizations. And they have a vivid and memorable experience to draw upon in the future.”
Not all experiential learning at business schools is quite so demanding. One of the newer offerings at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business in Charlottesville, which is titled Leading Teams for Growth and Change, combines classroom work with competitive rowing on the nearby Rivanna Reservoir. For a fee of $6,900, enrollees receive practical classroom instruction on leadership, followed by a day of competitive rowing.
Darden partners with Dan Lyons, a former Olympian who rowed on seven U.S. national teams and now runs Team Concepts Inc., an experiential training firm near Philadelphia. David Newkirk, CEO for executive education at Darden, believes rowing helps teach leaders trust and teamwork. Each eight-person team is taught to sweep and scull by listening intently and following the directions of the coxswain. Because the teammates face away from one another, they learn to trust each other and to collaborate. “The physical experience of rowing makes leadership lessons come alive in a powerful way,” Newkirk says. “Plus, it shows how useful a great coach is in providing the coaching and feedback” needed to pull together.
Workforce Management, May 2011, pgs. 28-30, 32 — Subscribe Now!
Dear Workforce How Could We Effectively Measure the Productivity of Newly Promoted Employees?
Dear Promote First, Pay Later:
This type of pay-for-performance approach is an excellent way to focus newly promoted employees on generating desired results. Good measurements provide employees with real-time information on how well they are performing. It also provides with the data needed to determine their new rates of pay.
The best measurements are those that are:
• Self-reported
Involving employees in the measurement process increases the credibility of the measurement—it is not your measurement; it is theirs. The higher the credibility of the measurement, the more employees commit to improve it. While all but a small percentage of employees are honest, smart organizations do periodic, random audits of self-reported results to ensure their accuracy.
Employees for the most part will try to be as candid as possible. Even so, smart companies do periodic audits of self-reported results to ensure their accuracy.
• Important
Many organizations don’t measure output at the employee level; others attempt to measure too many things. Both practices lead to less emphasis on the critical few measurements that help employees gauge their success and make required adjustments. Recommendation: select no more than three important aspects of a position, then develop and implement measurements for each.
With newly hired or promoted employees, measuring activity rather than end results is often best. Results in many industries and professions depend on multiple factors, some of which are beyond the control of employees. Measuring what employees can control enables them to perfect the fundamentals of their new job more quickly.
• In real time
The quicker people receive performance feedback, the faster they will be able to either celebrate successes or begin working on improvements. Scores delayed by days, weeks and months are as helpful in business as they would be in a basketball game.
• Simple to understand
If you need a computer to figure out how employees are performing, then your measure probably is needlessly complex. Although simple measures are rarely perfect, they do deliver understandable guidance that employees need.
The method of measurement should be easy, as well. You rarely need to measure every action for a prolonged period of time. Good random sampling techniques, if consistently employed, should provide what you need with a minimum of work.
Most employees want to excel. Given the right tools and support, most employees will. Your ability to measure performance and provide employees with relevant performance information they need, makes a difference—both to them and your firm’s profit line.
SOURCE: Rick Galbreath, Performance Growth Partners Inc., Bloomington, Illinois
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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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Straight Talk and Patience Are Key When Discussing HSAs With Workers
When CommunityAmerica Credit Union introduced a high-deductible health plan with a health savings account for the 2008 plan year, 50 percent of its employees signed on.
“We never expected that level of participation the first year,” says Jean Claytor, vice president of human resources for the Lenexa, Kansas-based company. She believes that a strong communications plan focused on alleviating the fears employees might have about using an HSA while touting benefits played a large role in the plan’s success.
“It’s important to get employees beyond the perception that they are going to pay more for their health care costs out of their own pockets,” Claytor says. “We made sure that the high-deductible/HSA plan premium was significantly less than our other health option, and we emphasized the tax- and long-term savings benefits of using an HSA.”
Communicating with employees early and often during the upcoming fall benefits season is essential when introducing a high-deductible health plan with an HSA, says Bonnie Hauck Evelyn, national practice leader, employee benefits, for Cleveland-based CBIZ Inc.
“We spend a lot of time talking to our clients about the communications tools we offer or that they need to develop internally,” Evelyn says. “Some clients are producing DVDs to send home to the spouse, and, of course, they are doing a lot of employee meetings so the message is consistent.”
Evelyn says that some employees are fearful about prescription drug costs.
“These kinds of plans also tend to have separate deductibles for prescription drugs, which is an obstacle employers can address by contributing to the account for the first year or by providing diabetic supplies or zero copays on generics to ease the pain,” she says. “Employees need to understand what their out-of-pocket costs might be during the year, so financial modeling is an important part of any communications plan, as is education on what expenses are reimbursable and which are not.”
Last summer, Kansas City, Missouri-based Lockton Cos. began communicating to employees that they would have one option—a high-deductible plan with an HSA in the 2011 plan year.
Theresa Schnelle, vice president and manager of compensation and benefits at Lockton, says her team distributed educational communications bit by bit: “Here’s what it is, here’s how it works as well as the short- and long-term benefits.
“We wanted our 2,200 eligible employees to ask informed questions by the time we had open-enrollment meetings and not be so focused on the money aspect of the plan,” Schnelle says. “Our meetings went smoothly and so far we haven’t hit any rough patches.”
She believes that the key is to provide more information than less and be honest about why you are making a change. For Lockton, it was a result of health care reform and the costs related to it. Lockton contributed to its employees HSAs for plan year 2011 but has not made a decision yet about its contributions in 2012.
“We don’t anticipate short-term savings but in the long term we think that this plan will reduce our trend from double to single digits,” Schnelle says.
For CommunityAmerica Credit Union, the reason for implementing the high deductible/HSA plan in 2008 was simple: a heavy claims year in 2007 with a 100 percent loss ratio, which resulted in a potential increase in premiums of 30 percent. Claytor says the company was looking for a plan that would offset the high cost of health care for all participants. After enrollment in the plan remained at 50 percent in 2009, her team launched an aggressive education plan for 2010.
She says the company spent a lot of time demonstrating the high-deductible/HSA plan’s value through case histories and life-stage examples. They conducted group and one-on-one meetings to everyone enrolled in the preferred provider organization (132 employees) to ensure individual employees understood how the plan would affect them personally.
“Our participation increased to 70 percent for the 2010 plan year, and at that point I felt confident that we could migrate to a single high-deductible/HSA plan,” Claytor says.
To sweeten the offer, they enhanced plan benefits and offered to contribute to the HSAs in 2011.
“This year, the company contributed $400 individual/$800 family into employee HSAs or into their flexible spending accounts, if they are more comfortable with the ability to be reimbursed for expenses as of Jan. 1 using the FSA instead of waiting to accumulate dollars in their HSA accounts,” Claytor says. “I don’t want to portray that everyone in our organization loves using an HSA, but I know all of us were glad not to see increases in our medical premiums for 2011.”
More employers are embracing high-deductible plans with HSAs, with some tying them to wellness plans, says Todd Berkley, HSA business leader for OptumHealth Financial Services, the largest custodian of HSAs by asset size in the United States.
“Ten million people contribute to health savings accounts right now, and that number could easily increase to 12 million this year,” he says, adding that he’s seeing a lot of requests for proposal activity around high-deductible/HSA plans.
“I also see a deepening in account balance growth, which is a sign that people are beginning to understand how these accounts work and the value of using them for present tax savings and for future financial needs,” he says.
Employers considering a high-deductible/HSA plan need to gauge their employee population to determine if it’s a realistic option, but for small employers, it may be the only way they can continue to offer health insurance, Evelyn says.
“This is not a short-term strategy, but something employers need to think through and work toward,” Claytor says.
Workforce Management Online, April 2011 — Register Now!
Detroit 3 Are Expected to Add 36,000 Tier 2 Jobs by 2015
The Detroit 3 are expected to add 36,000 factory jobs by 2015, all of them paying new-hire wages and benefits that are half of what is typically paid to traditional United Auto Workers employees, economist Sean McAlinden said on April 12.
The carmakers are producing near the limits of what the current UAW work force of 102,000 can do on maximum overtime, said McAlinden, who spoke with reporters on the sidelines of a lecture at Wayne State University in Detroit.
They will have to hire to increase production once all laid-off UAW members nationally are back to work by September, he said.
“They’ll all be Tier 2 hires,” said McAlinden, executive vice president of research at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The Detroit 3 are authorized under their current contracts with the UAW to have up to 25 percent of their hourly workers in the lower-wage category. Those provisions extend until 2015, even though the Detroit 3 are beginning informal contract talks with the UAW to replace the current four-year contracts that expire in September.
McAlinden said UAW contract concessions in 2007 and 2009 have reduced the average hourly UAW compensation with wages and benefits to about $58 an hour, just $2 more an hour than that of Toyota at its massive Georgetown, Kentucky, assembly plant.
He said General Motors Co., if it could get its current 49,000 hourly workforce to 20 percent Tier 2, would bring its average hourly compensation to $48 an hour. That would mean greater profits for the carmaker, he said.
McAlinden said Ford Motor Co. has a 50-50 chance of being the UAW’s first target for negotiations since the company is the most profitable of the Detroit 3 and workers have the right to strike.
He added that Alan Mulally’s 2010 compensation of more than $26 million has galvanized Ford rank-and-file to demand more money in this year’s talks. It is a symbol that every worker recognizes. “It didn’t help,” McAlinden said
Top 15 Ways to Engage Your Workforce
Employee engagement can present itself in a variety of policies and practices within an organization. Experts in the field offer 15 ways to engage workers:
1. Onboarding experience. As the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a good first impression. “You never have higher engagement than when the employee starts,” says Alice Snell of Snell Research in Raleigh, North Carolina. The onboarding “process signals to the employee that this is an organization that cares about you and that you are going to be taken care of during your career here. It’s not good to start a new job and you don’t have a computer or a desk and you’re filling out forms for the fifth time.”
2. Offer clear lines of sight or alignment. Make sure an employee understands the goals of the company and where they fit into the plan.
3. Feedback/communication. This engagement tool often is rated in surveys as the best reward for doing a job well. Positive feedback can be as important, if not more so, than salaries and bonuses.
4. Feeling of community. This can be shown through social media, company bowling leagues or a team project that blends the talents of groups of people.
5. Opportunities for job advancement. “What kind of strategies does an organization have for people to move freely within the business and within your company?” says David Wilkins, vice president of research for Taleo in Dublin, California. “What are you doing to actively develop your employees.”
6. Commitment to developing the employee. “There have been great improvements [since the recession] in that employees feel good about their future at a company, that the right people are being retained,” says Ilene Gochman, national director of Towers Watson & Co. in Chicago. “Companies have to pay attention to the people who are still here. You can’t assume that [after] all those cutbacks that people will think they have a future.”
7. Treating professionals like professionals. Autonomy and self-direction have proven to be terrific motivators, Wilkins says. Companies such as Mountain View, California-based Google Inc. and Sydney, Australia-based software developer Atlassian, which also has an office in San Francisco, offer employees 20 percent of their workweek to spend on individual projects. “At Google, one of the outcomes was Gmail and Google Reader,” he says. “Atlassian had zero percent turnover of engineers the last couple of years. It’s amazing what can happen when you unleash people’s creativity, their passion.”
8. Compensation. This goes well beyond pay, particularly for work that involves cognitive skills. “After a certain point, pay doesn’t work,” Wilkins says. “Companies need to work on nonmonetary rewards like giving employees more decision-making, more challenging work assignments and higher levels of influence and recognition in the company.”
9. Genuine investment in people. “When a supervisor or executive shows an interest in you and your future, you tend to be more open and receptive to that person,” Wilkins says. “When people leave an organization, survey after survey shows that one of the top five reasons is the lack of career growth and mobility. People want to get better at their job and develop a mastery of it. Employers need to get out of the way and give employees a chance to invest in themselves.”
10. Shared purpose. “Fulfilling someone else’s goal is a job,” Wilkins says. “Fulfilling your own goal is a reward. When you get directives from the top down and you are not bought into that process, it is somebody else’s goal. You want employees to be connected to a goal and be part of a shared vision.”
11. Relationship with peers. This goes beyond colleagues at your level to include managers. Wilkins says one of the main reasons employees leave a job is a poor relationship with the boss or co-workers.
12. Leadership. “The most important element is having strong managers and strong leaders,” says Judy Whitcomb, assistant vice president of learning and organizational development for Chicago-based Vi, which owns and operates senior-living facilities. “You have to have managers who are engaged. Without competent managers, everything else falls apart.”
13. Career development. “There has been great improvement in employees feeling good about their future at a company and a sense that the right people are being retained,” Gochman says.
14. Empowerment. An employee, Gochman says, must have “the feeling that you can speak up, that you have input in changes that can affect your job.”
15. Company image. A good reputation can permeate throughout an organization. “If you feel the company has a good image,” Gochman says, “you are more likely to keep [or stay on] your job.”
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U.S. Employment Index Continues to Climb
The Conference Board’s U.S. employment trends index rose in February to a reading of 101.7, its fifth straight monthly increase. January’s revised reading was 100.1. The index is up more than 8 percent from a year ago.
“In the past half-year, the economy has been adding, on average, about 110,000 jobs per month,” said Gad Levanon, associate director of macroeconomic research at the Conference Board.
“The strong growth in the employment trends index suggests that the pickup in jobs may accelerate in the next couple of quarters. However, with a shrinking government, a stagnant construction sector, and a manufacturing recovery that has only a small impact on overall employment, overall job growth will still be modest.”
Filed by Staffing Industry Analysts, a sister company of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.
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The Last Word: Youth and Consequences
Some cynics have taken to calling today’s teenagers and 20-somethings “the lost generation.” They believe unemployed and underemployed members of the millennial generation will never recover—financially or emotionally—from the deep recession.
It’s a pessimistic view that I don’t share. I will acknowledge that some scarred millennials have retreated back home to their parents, and those young people spend more time on social networks chatting with friends than using the same social media to reach out to potential employers. But I believe many other millennials can be highly resourceful. They will keep banging on employers’ doors and may eventually try starting their own enterprises if companies continue to reject them.
Although millennials may not possess the same intense work ethic as baby boomers, they have set very high expectations for themselves. That’s why the abysmal job market came as such a shock. Used to succeeding by doing all the right things, millennials assumed attending a good college and achieving a high GPA would just naturally result in a fabulous job. Unemployment was unthinkable.
Unfortunately, it has turned out to be quite real and far-reaching. Last December, the U.S. unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds was a stunning 25.4 percent, and for 20- to 24-year-olds, the rate stood at 15.3 percent. In some countries, the jobless rate for millennials is even higher. Spain’s youth unemployment rate topped 40 percent last year, and it exceeded 30 percent in Greece, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Addressing the urgency of global youth unemployment last month, Manpower Inc. chairman and CEO Jeffrey Joerres recommended more training programs, more incentives for entrepreneurship and more aggressive promotion of skilled trade careers.
At least for well-educated millennials, the job market is starting to loosen up. Our story this month about the MBA recruiting rebound offers hope, but many recruiters are only in hot pursuit of the best and brightest at the top tier universities. Students at many colleges and business schools still struggle to find any job; too often they wind up in positions that don’t match their qualifications. What a dramatic change from little more than a decade ago. When I was writing about business education at the tail end of the dot-com boom, recruiters were showering MBA students with rich signing bonuses, stock options, tuition reimbursement, mortgage assistance, luxury car leases and other goodies.
I understand why many cautious companies remain reluctant to hire anyone of any age until the economic recovery really takes hold. Yet, such thinking is shortsighted. Employers should realize how much is at stake if their future talent becomes discouraged and feels disenfranchised. Ultimately, companies will desperately need millennials to fill the void left by retiring baby boomers. They can’t afford to let this generation drift and delay the professional seasoning they will need to thrive and mature into strong leaders.
At the very least, employers should consider creating more internships for high school and college students as well as recent graduates. It’s an inexpensive, risk-free test-drive that lets both employer and prospective employee check each other out and decide whether they’re a good fit before considering a more permanent arrangement. Some smart companies have continued to make internships the focus of their recruiting strategy because they know it’s a terrific matchmaking tool. Steve Canale, a recruiting manager at General Electric Co., declared to Workforce Management: “If I had my budget slashed and only had $100 to spend, I’d spend it all on my internship program.”
The winner of the Workforce Management 2010 Optimas Award for financial impact also clearly believes in the value of a well-crafted internship strategy. To attract technology superstars, Ultimate Software Group Inc. offers students challenging internships in software development and maintenance. The program is so successful that the company boasts a 100 percent rate for converting its best interns into full-time hires.
For most students, intern recruiting is just getting under way, but I welcomed an intern to Workforce Management last month. James Walsh, who joined the editorial staff as part of the journalism residency program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, will write and edit stories for the magazine, website and newsletters this winter. I look forward to his contributions and the chance to help him gain valuable experience in today’s turbulent media business. Indeed, for me, it was an internship that launched my career in business journalism a few decades ago when the summer job turned into a full-time reporting position at The Wall Street Journal.
Workforce Management, February 2011, p. 42 — Subscribe Now!
Using Worker Focus Groups Carries Risks for Employers
For years, management gurus have touted employee focus groups as the answer to improving cooperation and communication between workers and managers on issues ranging from downsizing to designing compensation policies.
But the thought of employee focus groups makes Bill Altman cringe. As a labor lawyer with Bingham Farms, Michigan-based Vercruysse Murray & Calzone, Altman has spent the past 15 years counseling companies on how to avoid federal labor law violations and trying to extricate the unlucky ones from complaints filed by union organizers.
He warns that focus groups, even when set up by managers with the most noble motives, can easily backfire and expose a company to a litigation nightmare.
“It’s OK to get a bunch of engineers together to discuss the best way to design a truck axle,” Altman says. “But as soon as you get away from the product and into work relationships and employee relations, you’re just asking for trouble.”
What companies often don’t realize, Altman says, is that when they select a representative group of employees and ask them to give recommendations that management may act on, federal regulators may decide that the focus group qualifies as a labor organization—the legal equivalent of a union. And that’s a big no-no. Federal law expressly bars companies from setting up or running such labor organizations to prevent them from subverting employees’ rights to collective bargaining. “If you’re an employer, you’re not allowed to create your own company union,” Altman explains.
Daniel O’Meara, a Berwyn, Pennsylvania-based labor lawyer who is a partner in the law firm Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads, agrees that employer-organized focus groups can pose potential labor law problems.
But he says a 2001 National Labor Relations Board decision, in which the board found that Crown Cork & Seal Co. did not violate the law by maintaining employee committees at a Texas plant, can provide employers with a “good faith” defense. It’s critical, however, that there is no intent to undermine a union organizing effort.
O’Meara says companies can keep themselves out of trouble by making sure that focus groups don’t evolve into permanent organizations that can appear to be employee-run unions.
“If it’s an ad hoc, one-time event, you’re safer,” he says. O’Meara also advises that companies suspend focus groups the moment a union organizing effort begins and explain the reason to the workforce.
Companies dig themselves into a deeper hole by naively using focus groups to discuss issues such as work rules and compensation. Altman cites the case of a past client that set up a plant council, originally with the vague purpose of discussing various workplace issues. “It evolved into talking about work rules, wages and benefits,” Altman says. “The group’s members were selected by the employees, and they served in the group for a term of one year. And when management met with them, it would take their recommendations and say either yes or no to them.”
The company ran into problems when union organizers tried and failed to organize a segment of the plant that was represented by the council. “When they lost the election, they went straight to the National Labor Relations Board and complained about the council,” Altman says.
Ultimately, the NLRB decided that the council was an illicit, employer-dominated ersatz union and ordered it disbanded. While the company wasn’t hit with a monetary penalty, it suffered the embarrassment of having to post a notice in all of its facilities informing the workforce that it had violated labor laws. “I haven’t met an employer who would want to have a poster like that in their cafeteria,” Altman says.
“There are ways to do focus groups and not run afoul of the law, but you have to be very cautious,” Altman says.
For example, members of such a group should be randomly selected and should not report back to other workers or present proposals on their behalf. Also, it’s important to rotate frequently the membership to discourage the perception that the members are designated representatives of the workforce.
And employers should avoid doing anything that regulators might see as exerting influence upon such a group. Letting the members meet on company time, providing a meeting space for them or even serving them lunch can get a company into trouble.
The safest bet may be to use a simpler method of getting feedback, Altman says. “If you want to poll the workforce, for example, it’s a lot less risky.”
Workforce Management, January 2011, p. 14 — Subscribe Now!
Four Things to Consider Once Your Company Opens Up Social Media Access
When it comes to social media and your organization, you probably fall into one of two camps: You’re either sick of hearing all the hype related to what social media can do for your firm, or you’re frustrated that your company doesn’t trust you enough to allow you to check your personal e-mail or Facebook account at work.
Because I can’t help myself, I’m offering up the following morality play performed millions of times daily within the bowels of corporate America:
Your employee: Opens up browser to post something witty on Twitter or Facebook.
Your network: Blocks the employee from accessing the social network in question, perhaps with the digital equivalent of a little finger wagging at the employee (bonus malice points if the message the employee sees refers to the social network in question as “the” Facebook/Twitter).
Your employee: Promptly swivels in chair to access the social network in question through the browser on his or her smart phone. Your company isn’t blocking cell towers in your buildings, right?
The verdict: Employee continues to think they are smarter than you. Based on this morality play, they have a decent case.
But I digress. With all the workplaces blocking social media, it’s evident that the irony of the social media workaround outlined above hasn’t hit home yet. But it will. It just takes time.
As the percentage of companies allowing access to social networks grows, you need to realize there are strategic things related to social media you’ll need to figure out as a progressive human resources pro. No one else in your organization is thinking about the issues necessary to have a meaningful approach to social media related to human capital strategy.
What issues, you ask? Consider the following gems that will kill you if you don’t figure them out:
1. Purpose. When you grant access to social media across your company, are you doing it because you’re benevolent, or do you think there’s actually a business opportunity in that decision? If you’re simply doing it because it feels good, stop reading now. If you think there’s a business opportunity in granting access, read on. You need to figure some things out quickly.
2. Portability. If you thought portability only referred to moving your cell number across wireless providers, you were wrong. Portability in social media refers to who owns what related to social media, and whether the intellectual capital related to social media moves with employees when they leave your company or stay with the firm. As you might expect, portability is reflected in the following details of ownership:
• Do accounts used in any way for company purposes belong to the employee or the company? The most effective use of social media seamlessly blends company brand and individual personality. While that works from a branding perspective, it’s hell when attempting to lay claim to social media accounts initialized by employees or the resulting networks built over time.
• Who owns the networks established by an employee on company time? When team members capture new members of a social network or a utility like LinkedIn, who owns the network? Do they own it or does the company? You need to figure out what you’re comfortable with now before a recruiter leaves with 60 percent of your recruiting network on his or her LinkedIn account, then disables the ability for you to view the connections. Ouch.
The earlier you figure out portability, the better off you are. Once you figure out the importance of portability, you’ll want to pay attention to the next item on our list—naming.
3. Naming. As you open up access to social media across your company, you’ll find that there are three types of activity, including the following:
• Totally personal. I just had a Pop-Tart for lunch. Who cares? You are correct—no one. Move on, because there’s nothing strategic to do with this segment. You opened it up, so they use it, like the toilets in the bathroom.
• Totally corporate. You couldn’t wait to activate the ACME twitter account. Congrats, it’s active and has the personality of Ben Stein on downers. Play on, because there’s no sizzle to this steak—no one will ever try to steal it from you. It’s yours.
• A mix of personal and professional social media activity. Danger! Here’s the type of social media activity where a naming strategy really comes into play. Looking to engage recruiters or marketing pros to start using social media in a way that develops them professionally and builds the company’s brand? Naming is the main issue you need to figure out before they start. If you’re going to underwrite the investment of time and focus related to social media, get in front of portability issues with a naming convention that makes sense.
Here’s an example of naming issues in the corporate social media realm. Let’s say you engage one of your recruiters to become active on Twitter in hopes of augmenting your recruiting efforts. Her name is Jen Smalls and your company’s name is ACME. Do you require her to do all Twitter work under the twitter handle @ACMEjen or @ACMErecruiter, or do you allow her to do the work under the decidedly personal @jensmalls?
Each name means something different related to portability and Jen’s ability to develop an interesting and compelling presence related to your company’s brand and her personal credibility. Allow the presence to be built via the @jensmalls handle and you have no shot at claiming the brand equity on behalf of your company.
4. Personality. Once you’ve analyzed your purpose for opening up social media access, sorted out portability issues and the naming decisions for social media accounts that follow, you’re free to develop some personality related to your company’s social media presence.
Remember one thing: Unless you plan on doing all company business through a fully corporately branded social media presence, there’s always some probability the social media equity that’s built belongs more to the employee than to you.
If you decide that’s the best path to getting business results for your company through social media (and many companies have been successful with that strategy), play on.
Just make sure you ask the questions before you get started.
Workforce Management Online, February 2011 — Register Now!