The Innovation award recognizes organizations that have developed an innovative workforce management strategy that addresses a fundamental business issue. Here are the winners for 2018:
Gold: SmartSimple Software Inc.
As SmartSimple Software Inc. found its team growing, they realized an innovative solution was needed to ensure ongoing employee engagement.
Inspired by the time machine from the movie “Back to the Future,” the cloud software provider built its model to manage the flow of incoming issues, ideas and comments, allow discussion and collaboration and finally output the solution, according to the application. It also provides a structure and concrete road map for fostering and developing innovative thought.
Growth in a company can be good, but it also comes with its challenges. SmartSimple began to gain interest from organizations outside of its traditional clients, causing them to move into unexplored territory and causing the company to face a steep learning curve. Because of this, additional talent was recruited to help provide insight into the unknown fields.
“The Flux Capacitor of Innovation is a concentrated dose of the processes and activities that were part of our everyday when we were a smaller organization and innovative thought flourished organically. It has enabled us to carry on our test-and-learn, curiosity-driven, start-up mentality that has brought us to where we are now,” said Alex Wong, director of marketing at SmartSimple.
Before the Flux Capacitor of Innovation was implemented, communication and ideas weren’t being developed past each team or department. The company realized that communication is key and now encourages every person in the company to share their opinions.
“The Flux Capacitor of Innovation changed this entirely because it introduced an element that every department had common ground in working with — our clients,” said Wong. “The feedback mechanisms that inherently feed the top end of the Flux Capacitor funnel foster inter-team collaboration and communication because every department has a stake in managing the client relationship.”
For its efforts to use the Flux Capacitor of Innovation as a structured road map for communication within the company, SmartSimple Software Inc. is the 2018 Optimas Award winner for Innovation.
Silver: NCSoft
Why not start the first day on the job with a game? NCSoft executives realized they needed to up their game where employee onboarding and retention was concerned.
Their onboarding program, NC Launch Onboarding, is a way to make the process more effective and increase employee retention. The site is filled with characters from the company’s games and takes new hires on “quests” to finish items like payroll, playfully referred to as “loot.”
The gaming business knew it needed a change when departments such as IT complained equipment wasn’t being set up on the first day and there wasn’t enough communication between managers and new employees.
The program has succeeded since launching in 2017. Future plans include incorporating more of an employee’s journey into the program, such as leaves of absence and training.
For its efforts to improve its onboarding process with a new platform, NCSoft is the 2018 Optimas Award Silver winner for Innovation.
Bronze: Riverside Healthcare
For its efforts to use its Well in Mind Employee Support Program to provide strong mental wellness to its employees, Riverside Healthcare is the 2018 Optimas Award Bronze winner for Innovation.
Now that companies have finally settled their core systems into the cloud, HR leaders need to get ready for a deluge of innovation.
The agility of the cloud means technology teams can deliver new features and interactions quickly and seamlessly. Cloud-based HR systems also mean vendors can implement new iterations faster and with a lot less hassle.
That is good news for clients, said Dan Staley, principal HR technology leader for PwC in Atlanta. “Vendors used to roll out upgrades every one to two years, now they are coming out quarterly.” That adds value for users, who get access to the latest features as soon as they are ready, and allows vendors to increase the functionality of their products.
This is allowing them to speed road map timelines, and making it easier for larger vendors to acquire best-of-breed smaller firms and integrate them into their suite of tools. “We expect to see vendors taking their products’ capabilities further, faster,” he predicted. That includes embedding more social and collaboration capabilities and adding new reports and dashboards. It will also allow them to integrate data from multiple sources, to support workforce analytics — which is where the real business value will be generated.
HR management systems vendors have been promising predictive analytics for a long time, without much significant progress. Though that could soon change, said Christa Manning, vice president of Solution Provider Research at Bersin, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “Most platforms are experimenting with machine learning to derive meaningful insights from the masses of employee data they have.”
A Big Year for Big Data
While true predictive analytics for workforce management is still something of a pipe dream, several vendors, including Workday, Visier, Vista, IBM Watson and SAP Successfactors now offer some data analytics capabilities. These tools promise to provide a range of insights into things like whether companies are meeting diversity goals, where they face turnover risks, and training advice for career development.
Many of them are taking advantage of the vast databases stored in the public cloud to hone these systems. The public cloud holds masses of workforce data, which is critical for creating useful algorithms, which in turn are a set of rules the computer uses to analyze the data. “Algorithms need to be trained on large data sets to understand what information is relevant,” Manning pointed out. “They learn from every exchange and get better over time.”
As these algorithms are able to tap more data sets they will be able to offer more targeted insights, Staley predicted. For example, imagine a single system that can review employees’ overtime log sheets, travel spending and their LinkedIn behavior to determine which overworked employees are most likely to quit — then offer HR advice on what they can do to get them to stay. “There are a lot of possibilities for using predictive analytics for making sure your best talent doesn’t leave,” he said.
Analytics tools in the HRMS will also play a role in managing gig workers, according to Cristina Goldt, vice president of HCM products for Workday in Pleasanton, California. Being able to review data regarding all types of workers and projects in a central location will help companies better analyze where and when to hire contractors versus full-timers, who to choose and what to pay them. “They can match skills to different roles, and make their hiring systems more efficient,” she said.
Some vendors, including Workday, are also offering customers the ability to compare their data insights to industry standards to see where they stand. “It makes it possible to benchmark themselves against their peers,” Goldt said.
Are We There Yet?
All of these scenarios are enticing, though the days when business leaders can predict workforce trends through a cursory glance at an analytics dashboard are still well into the future. Unlike other software that is rolled out and ready to use, machine learning takes time and training, and requires access to linked databases with relevant data, Goldt said. “It’s called machine learning for a reason.”
Customers are also still somewhat uncertain about how they will apply analytics in their own organizations. This is partly due to the lack of meaningful case studies, Manning said. “Every vendor is talking about machine learning for HR, but there aren’t a lot of examples yet.”
For companies hearing pitches from their vendors about the magic of workforce analytics, she urged them to “demand live customer references” and real world examples that prove what other companies are doing, how they did it and what results they saw. “Training algorithms requires strong partnerships with vendors who understand the technology as well as how it can deliver actionable information,” she said. This transformation will take time so choosing a vendor you can trust is important.
In most jobs, employees are likely responsible for a lot of different things, no matter what the job description says.
They must communicate certain information and manage certain tasks and resources. Workers definitely have to manage their time and stress levels and measure their responses to requests.
Their job is not to complete a goal plan or fill out a self-evaluation of their performance, engage in learning and development courses, complete an engagement survey or any of the other HR-type tasks employees are frequently asked to do. But to many employees it probably feels like HR thinks that is their job.
And the frustration of being taken out of productivity to complete these tasks is just part of the workload.
The truth is, human resources has struggled for a long time to figure out how to embed these kinds of tasks in day-to-day work of employees so that productivity is uninterrupted. But they have a mountain directly in their way in the form of the HR technology used by many of today’s organizations.
This technology may comprehensively meet the needs of HR, giving them one automated place to track employee goals, completion rates of performance forms and report on employee data. But when it comes to meeting the needs of the people using the technology to get things done, it almost always falls short.
Here’s a secret human resources technology vendors won’t typically tell you: It’s because we purposely built it that way. For a long time, human resources technology was designed to automate processes, enabling users to get from point A to point B. It was designed to be deployed across an entire workforce, driving consistency and scale across departments and teams. And it was designed to meet the needs of one group: human resources.
So, what happened? Over time the workforce changed, the nature of work changed, and the role of technology in our lives became unrecognizable from one year to the next.
Now solutions that focus on processes instead of people, force consistency instead of choice and meet the needs of one stakeholder while remaining disconnected from the rest of the business are quickly becoming obsolete. Consider today’s employee who can get directions from their phone just by asking, or use a voice command to learn about the weather.
Then they come to work and break away from job-related tasks to edit a performance goal in a clunky, outdated system through a series of clicks and menu options that get them there — but without much of a sense as to how or why. Is this sounding familiar?
The focus of enterprise technology is going from business process automation to delivering exceptional employee experiences that connect them to the business in new and meaningful ways. Where the human resources technology of the past was process-centric, rigid and disconnected, it must now become people-centric, flexible and holistic.
As the owners of employee experience and the ultimate stakeholders in whether the workforce is engaged, performing and thriving, business leaders must give their people tools that help not only processes, but people in doing their jobs — wherever their jobs take them, and whatever it is they’re working on.
This is the guiding principle influencing how human resources technology should be designed. An efficient tool must be built to be people-centric, focused on supporting and enhancing how people think, work, and connect. Solutions should also be flexible, with intelligent, adaptable tools that know who individual people are and what they need most in order to be successful.
Above all, they must be holistic and connected, with multiple channels of access, embedded analytics and emerging technologies like machine learning. By creating a comprehensive ecosystem of business solutions and extensions, organizations can ensure alignment with, and visibility to, the business.
The days of human resources as a hindrance to doing great work are over. The new era of HR technology and tools in the hands of employees and leaders is here.
If HR solutions are designed to be truly people-centric, flexible and holistic, businesses can ensure their employees are getting superior experiences and are connected with the business in meaningful ways.
Gabby Burlacu is a human capital management researcher at human resources technology firm SAP SuccessFactors. Comment below or email editors@ workforce.com.
Lie detector tests, have been all over the news lately. Reports suggest that Donald Trump wants to administer these examinations to the entire White House staff to identify the author of the anonymous New York Times op-ed.
There are no laws prohibiting the White House from using polygraph tests in this manner. The federal law that regulates their use in the workplace — the Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988 — does not apply to the government.
For private-sector employers, however, the EPPA imposes strict prohibitions on the use of any device to render a diagnostic opinion as to the honesty or dishonesty of an individual.
It prohibits employers from:
Requiring, requesting, suggesting, or causing an employee or prospective employee to take or submit to any lie detector test.
Using, accepting, referring to, or inquiring about the results of any lie detector test of an employee or prospective employee.
Discharging, disciplining, discriminating against, denying employment or promotion, or threatening to take any such action against an employee or prospective employee for refusing to take a test, on the basis of the results of a test, for filing a complaint, for testifying in any proceeding, or for exercising any rights afforded by the EPPA.
Despite these strict prohibitions, there are limited exceptions when an employer can administer polygraph tests (but not other forms of lie detector tests).
One exception covers prospective employees of armored car and other similar security companies. Another covers prospective employees of companies that manufacture controlled substances.
Of more general application to most employers, the third exception covers employees who are reasonably suspected of involvement in a workplace incident that results in economic loss to the employer and who had access to the property that is the subject of an investigation. Thus, an employer who reasonably believes that an employee has stolen is able to administer a polygraph test to confirm the employee’s culpability.
Even if this exception applies, employers cannot use polygraph tests carte blanche. There are certain key limits on their administration:
Prior to the polygraph examination, the employer must provide to the to-be-examined employee a written notice
explaining the employee’s rights and the limitations imposed, including the prohibited areas of questioning, restrictions on the use of test results, and the employee’s right to file a complaint with the Department of Labor alleging violations of EPPA;
explaining the specific incident or activity being investigated and the basis for the employer’s reasonable suspicion of the employee’s involvement;
reasonably describing the date, time, and place of the examination and the employee’s right to consult with legal counsel or an employee representative before each phase of the test; and
describing the nature and characteristics of the polygraph instrument and examination.
The employee can refuse to take a test, terminate a test at any time, or decline to take a test because of a medical condition.
The results of a test alone cannot be disclosed to anyone other than the employer or employee without their consent.
The polygraph examiner must be licensed, and bonded or insured. Also, the examination is subject to strict conduct standards.
Employers that violate the EPPA are subject to a civil money penalty of $20,521 per violation, in addition to legal and equitable relief such as lost wages and reinstatement, and, in the case of a private civil lawsuit, reasonable costs and attorneys’ fees.
Polygraph tests provide employers a powerful tool to confirm and confront employee certain limited employee issues. Employers must carefully follow the EPPA’s requirements so that a slam-dunk termination does not turn into a sure-fire lawsuit for the employee.
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.
In August 2017, Patrick McMullan and more than 50 of his employees had microchips inserted in their fingers live on NBC’s “Today Show.”
McMullan, the president of Three Square Market, a Wisconsin-based company that sells self-service break room vending machines, said it was one of the most exhilarating and nerve-wracking experiences of his life.
An employee who was to be chipped approached him 10 minutes before he was going on air and asked, “Should I do it today or not?” McMullan said “No,” to the employee’s surprise.
“If you’re asking me, it means you’re not certain about it,” he said. “And the answer is ‘No’ until you can be at peace that it’s something you want to do.”
Three Square Market received a lot of media attention after its chip party — both negative and positive, McMullan said — but in the past year Three Square proved that it’s possible to be forward-thinking with technology while also contemplating and respecting employees’ privacy.
“What that has done is inspired our employees to be far more innovative in finding solutions,” he said. “It’s helped all of our businesses in the past year. We’ve had a phenomenal 12 months.”
As more monitoring devices — phone or video recorders, wristbands, microchips, and wireless sensors that measure employees’ brain waves — are developed, and as these tools become more powerful, there’s greater potential for invading employees’ privacy.
Perceptions toward monitoring devices depend on what type of analysis is being done — an issue that becomes more complex as devices with elaborate capabilities enter the market, said Laurel McNall, associate professor at The College at Brockport, State University of New York. Her research interests revolve around employee attitudes, specifically around perceptions of fairness in the workplace.
“I do think there is a danger of setting up an electronic sweatshop,” McNall said.
What once appeared a dystopian, futuristic theory is a reality, at least from a technology perspective.
It would be naive to believe that companies will curb their use of monitoring devices that they think will improve business. But it would also be naive to assume that there aren’t organizations or managers that would take advantage of surveillance technology — and the lack of oversight — and cross a line when monitoring employees. In many cases workers are stuck in the middle, feeling as if they don’t have a choice in the matter or any sense of privacy at work.
As employers face the scattered legal landscape of employee monitoring and the often-skeptical reaction of their employees — Three Square Market workers notwithstanding — they must tread carefully and respectfully to find success.
Employee Comfort Levels Toward Monitoring
Most employees find it unacceptable to monitor personal, non-work-related activities, according to a 2018 survey conducted by the HR Metrics & Analytics Summit, “Workplace Privacy & Protection: Is Your Employer Watching Your Every Move?” It’s inappropriate to monitor physical movements around the workplace, for example through wearable technology such as a Fitbit, said 57 percent of employee respondents, while 56 percent said it’s inappropriate to monitor personal interactions with these devices.
The survey also found that 48 percent of employees don’t trust their company to protect their data.
Contextual factors are important in how employees will likely react to monitoring, said Dave Tomczak, an industrial-organizational psychology doctoral student at George Washington University who researches electronic monitoring in organizations. One of his most recent studies analyzed workers with highly complex jobs requiring a lot of creativity and whether they respond the same way as employees with less autonomy in their role.
“When someone has a flexible job, they expect the organization is going to give them the discretion to carry out their work,” he said. “Some of these people will see monitoring as hindering their ability to do their job. They perceive less autonomy in their day-to-day operations.”
It has the opposite effect on people with low-complexity jobs, like cashiering, he added, where it’s more likely that people will feel as though it helps them perform better.
“When monitoring gets in the way of people doing their jobs, that’s where the problems come in,” he said.
People find monitoring that is close to the body — for example, devices underneath employees’ desks that sense body heat to tell how long employees are away from their desks — as the most invasive, he added.
Tomczak’s adviser, Tara Behrend, associate professor of I-O psychology at George Washington University and an expert on privacy and ethical implications of workplace monitoring, said that not all surveillance is equal, and not all people respond similarly to it.
“Talking about what those variables are that make the difference is really critical,” she said. “We don’t want to give into hysteria, we also don’t want to ignore the potential dangers of doing this the wrong way.”
Three Square Market has tried to keep a healthy balance between taking advantage of the new chip technology while respecting the boundaries of some employees, McMullan said.
The radio-frequency identification, or RFID, chips that were implanted don’t track employees’ movements or location but do store data that allows employees to open doors, unlock computers and make payments. The next iteration of this chip technology will store medical and health data, and Three Square is conducting beta testing on that technology. Religious and privacy concerns are two major reasons employees express disinterest, McMullan said, and such objections can’t be ignored.
“Our mission is not to tell people to go get chipped,” he said, adding that one of his key staff members is adamantly against it and keeps him in line.
“Having that voice that said, ‘I’m not comfortable with this,’ has been one of the most valuable pieces because we’re in constant communication, talking back and forth, how would you do this?” McMullan said.
The Privacy Legal Landscape in the U.S.
Policymakers are likely to face confusion on how to deal with the challenges that arise from emerging technology, according to the 2018 “Emerging Tech Trends Report,” written by Amy Webb, founder of The Future Today Institute. The report explores emerging technology trends that will likely impact business, government, education, media and society in coming years.
As this tension between privacy and security continues, the report states, both large tech companies and small tech startups could face problems with “rules and legislation that are either too restrictive or don’t acknowledge that science and tech are in constant motion.”
While this is the prediction, though, and while that might have some truth in Europe with the advent of GDPR — General Data Protection Regulation — the current landscape in the United States is relatively devoid of regulations.
There’s no federal law regarding employee privacy, and if there are any rules, they’re on a state-by-state basis, said employment law attorney Jeffrey Dretler, partner at the Boston office of law firm Fisher Phillips. The closest federal law is the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. While the act protects wire, oral and electronic communications in transit, it does not protect privacy and was not intended as a privacy protection regulation.
Across the country, if an organization gets an employee’s consent, especially in writing, it can monitor anything. When there’s no consent, that’s where employers run into risks.
Many states have two-party consent laws, meaning both parties have to agree, while others have single-party consent laws, in which an employer could essentially monitor without notifying employees. Still, Dretler advises that best practices dictate that employers get consent no matter the state they’re in.
“It’s not always necessary to get consent, but it’s better to because it insulates the employer from potential cause of action an employee might try to bring,” he said.
Certain states have created explicit laws for specific types of monitoring. States including California, Missouri and North Dakota have passed laws prohibiting the use of microchips, while Illinois and Washington state have protections on employees’ biometric data.
“As tech advances, certainly states pass laws regulating what can and can’t be done,” he said. “But for the most part, the laws focus on informing employees of what the company wants to do, informing employees on how the data will be used and getting employees’ consent for it. They’re not express prohibitions. The prohibition is on doing it without telling anybody or doing it without consent.”
This poses a challenge for privacy-concerned employees, who can’t bring a claim saying they want to work at a company but not have their data collected. The idea is that, as long as an employer tells a potential employee what it intends to monitor, the employee can agree and work there or not agree and find another job.
“As more and more companies start to collect and use this kind of data it becomes harder and harder for employees to find a place to work that doesn’t do it,” Dretler said.
Best Practices for Employee Monitoring
Just like the technology itself will continue to advance, ethical concerns among employees also will increase. Organizational psychologist McNall said there are steps an organization can take to reduce this idea of an electronic sweatshop.
Psychologists are interested in people’s emotional needs and how to develop a workplace environment that meets those needs, said McNall, who studies employee attitudes specifically around perceptions of fairness in the workplace. Two major needs are autonomy — the ability to have freedom and independence over how to do something — and competency — the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.
Technology is supposed to help employees be more productive at their jobs, thus increasing their competence. But they still want autonomy at work, McNall said.
“Autonomy is at risk; competence potentially could be enhanced,” she said. “How do you help make people feel like they’re still autonomous, that they still have some degree of control?”
Employers can provide that independence by giving employees the ability to turn the monitoring on and off in a protected space in the office, which helps deter feelings of invaded privacy. The caveat is that employees often need to take home and use some tracking devices — like wearables to count steps or track health data — so there may not be a truly protected time or space for employees to disconnect.
Employers can also be smart about communicating the technology, how it works and its ultimate purpose, she said. The decision to monitor employees requires thoughtfulness and strategy, and organizations should not track for the sake of tracking but because it brings value to both the employer and employee. Employees should know that the potential value is for them.
“Make sure you spend time,” she said. “Be intentional and deliberate in how you word it. Have an adequate, well-thought-out explanation.”
Employers should tell employees what they plan to do with their data and give them a voice in the process, allowing them some level of participation, George Washington University’s Tomczak said. If employers aren’t giving their workforce this information, employees may be skeptical about what’s going on in the background.
“If it’s not transparent, if it’s not feedback-based, then it’s authoritarian,” he said.
McNall also emphasized the importance of building this trust. Although monitoring technology is itself neutral, there’s potential for of privacy invasion and lack of fairness.
“There’s no way monitoring is going away,” she said. “So how can we take an issue like that — this is reality; this is where we are right now — and still make the workplace a better place using science?”
Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
While employee negligence (that is, employees not knowing or understanding how their actions risk your company’s data security) remains the biggest cyber risk, another is growing and also demands your attention—the malicious insider.
According to one recent report, malicious insiders are responsible for 27 percent of all cybercrime. Over at her Employment & Labor Insider Blog, Robin Shea suggests that one recent workplace embarrassment for an employer was the result of internal cyber-vandalism, and not external hacking.
Dark Reading reports on a recent survey, entitled, “Monetizing the Insider: The Growing Symbiosis of Insiders and the Dark Web.”
“Recruitment of insiders is increasing, and the use of the dark web is the current methodology that malicious actors are using to find insiders,” explains researcher Tim Condello, technical account manager and security researcher at RedOwl.
Cybercriminals recruit with the goal of finding insiders to steal data, make illegal trades, or otherwise generate profit. Advanced threat actors look for insiders to place malware within a business’ perimeter security. …
There are three types of people who fall into the “insider” category, says Condello: negligent employees who don’t practice good cyber hygiene, disgruntled employees with ill will, and malicious employees who join organizations with the intent to defraud them.
No amount of training, however, will stop a disgruntled employee with ill intent, or a malicious employee who joins to do harm.
These latter two categories need more specialized attention—an insider threat program. The Wall Street Journal explains:
Companies are increasingly building out cyber programs to protect themselves from their own employees.… Businesses … are taking advantage of systems … to find internal users who are accidentally exposing their company to hackers or malicious insiders attacking the company. These “systems,” however, can prove costly, especially for the small-business owner. While investment in a technological solution is one way to tackle this serious problem, it’s not the only way. Indeed, there is lots any company, of any size, with any amount of resources, can do to develop an insider threat program.
Aside from the expense of costly monitoring programs, what types of issues should employers include in an insider threat program? Here are seven suggestions:
Heightened monitoring of high-risk employees, such as those who previously violated IT policies, those who seek access to non-job-related business information, and those who are, or are likely to be, disgruntled (i.e., employees who express job dissatisfaction, who are on a performance improvement plan, or who are pending termination).
Deterrence controls, such as data loss prevention, data encryption, access management, endpoint security, mobile security, and cloud security.
Detection controls, such as intrusion detection and prevention, log management, security information and event management, and predictive analytics.
Inventories and audits for computers, mobile devices, and removable media (i.e., USB and external hard drives), both during employment and post-employment.
Pre-employment background checks to help screen out potential problem employees before they become problems.
Termination processes that removes access as early as possible for a terminated employee.
No company can make itself bulletproof from a cyber-attack. Indeed, for all businesses, data breaches are a when issue, not an if issue. However, ignoring the serious threat insiders pose to your company’s cyber security will only serve to accelerate the when.
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.
Companies love to tout their employee resource groups as a way to prove their commitment to diversity and inclusion.
New software is enhancing the accountability of employee resource groups.
However, most ERG programs are run in such an ad hoc fashion, most leaders have little idea what they are up to.
“The typical ERG program has minimum governance and no consistency,” said Tommi Paris, diversity and inclusion manager for Southern Company Gas. Even when these groups receive support and funding to host events or invite speakers, HR rarely has processes in place to track them, she said.
That can create problems — for the ERGs and the business, said Alex Shubat, CEO of Espresa, an employee program automation company in Silicon Valley. Lack of structure around how ERGs are formed, governed and promoted reduces their value for companies and employees, he said.
Shubat co-founded Espresa three years ago with Raghavan Menon after Menon found that even when he worked at Google, the ERG experience was cumbersome and difficult to navigate.
“Information was hard to find, they all used different vendors, and the groups were all owned by different departments,” Shubat said.
That made it hard for employees to learn about events, and difficult for the company to track whether programs were thriving and where funding was being spent.
“Employees are used to modern consumer apps where they can find everything they need a few clicks,” he said. Expecting them to search through multiple sites, and wikis to learn about programs or sign up for events is unrealistic, and can cause a lot of well-meaning programs to fizzle out.
Menon and Shubat launched Espresa to solve this problem. The platform gives employees a single portal where they can launch and manage employee groups and programs, and get the word out to the rest of the company.
“If someone wants to host a garden club, or invite an expert to give a talk, they can go on the platform, set up the event and start promoting it,” Shubat said. “It automatically reduces friction, and makes it easier for employees to make these events happen.”
These kinds of platforms also make it easier for HR to keep track of ERGs, said Paris. When SCG acquired Nicor Gas in 2015, Paris’ team decided it was time to formalize its ERG management program. So they created a formal governance structure, and implemented ERG Insights, a cloud-based ERG management solution from Cockerham and Associates.
The platform now houses impact plans for all of the company’s 17 ERGs, which lay out the goals of the groups and provides Paris with a dashboard to keep track of their activities. She uses it to keep executives updated on what the ERGs are doing, how budgets are being used and which ones could use additional support or sponsorship.
She likes that all the information is in one place. “If they want member numbers, I can rattle them off in minutes,” she said.
Still Just Software
While this area of HR technology is still relatively new, it’s a natural evolution for companies that want to formalize their ERG programs, and track them in the same way they track other elements of HR, said Holger Mueller of Constellation Research. “It’s an interesting area of technology that traditional HR software doesn’t cover.”
He sees these platforms as a way to manage disparate employee activities and to create greater governance of budgets and compliance — all while encouraging employee engagement. He warns that ERG software alone won’t make these groups thrive. “People build engagement,” he said, “the software just helps.”
Paris encourages HR leaders to check out the technology and think about whether their current ERG programs are getting the management and oversight they deserve.
“ERGs are a business resource,” she said. “How you invest in them tells an important story about what your company values.”
Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in Chicago. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Gaming disorder: Uncontrollable and persistent playing of video and digital games, that is harmful to an individual’s well-being at the cost of fulfilling daily responsibilities and pursuing other interests, and without regard for negative consequence.
Smartphone addiction: An unstoppable and uncontrollable desire to use one’s smartphone, which interferes with one’s daily life.
Notice something in common to these three “addictions?” Each requires an interference with one’s daily life. Sounds like an ADA-protected disability to me.
What does this mean for your workplace? If forms of “digital addiction” qualify as a diagnosed psychiatric disorder, then employees who suffer from it may be protected by the ADA. This development has potentially significant implications for your workplace.
Do you have employees who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time online? Is it affecting their performance and inhibiting their ability to perform the essential functions of their jobs? If so, might you have to engage those employees in the interactive process to determine if there exists a reasonable accommodation that enables them to perform those essential functions? For example, could you deny computer access to employees who do not need to use a computer for their jobs, and require that such employees leave their cell phones outside the work area?
Do you have a policy that prohibits non-work-related Internet use? If so, such a policy might run afoul of the ADA, just like hard-capped leave absence of policies. It’s not that employers cannot place reasonable limits on workplace computer use. By instituting a ban, however, employers are avoiding their obligations to engage in the interactive process, thereby violating the ADA.
What might this look like in your workplace?
Employer to employee, “Our IT department tells us you’ve spent 20 hours a week for the past three months surfing the internet on non-work-related sites. We’re going to have to let you go.
Employee responds: “But I’m addicted to the internet.”
Employer: “Sorry, your non-work use of the internet is stealing.”
Employee’s lawyer: “We’re suing you for disability discrimination.”
Likelihood of success (or at least a court buying this argument and setting this claim for a risky trial) aside, this scenario is not all that improbable to occur. Rest assured, though, that even if the DSM recognizes internet or other digital addictions as a bona fide mental disorder, employers should still be able reasonably to regulate use at work without running afoul of the ADA. Just as the ADA does not entitle an employee who claims sex addiction to sexually harass co-workers, or alcohol addiction to drink on the job, the ADA is almost certainly not going to permit a digital addict not to perform his or her job.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Kyle Arnold, systems director, analytics/talent at Mercy Health in Cincinnati, pictured with his family.
When Carol Dweck unveiled her groundbreaking research on the growth mindset in the mid-2000s, the renowned Stanford University psychology professor did not have Kyle F. Arnold in mind.
Considering Arnold was a barely out of his teens and a student at Ohio University at the time, that’s not a surprise.
But today Arnold, 34, is described as the “walking example” of Dweck’s growth mindset by colleague Stacey Marroso, systems director support services and employee experience at Cincinnati’s Mercy Health.
Arnold is responsible for advancing Mercy in workforce analytics and a performance management system allowing Mercy to serve its patient population. Arnold also delivered to Mercy’s board an advanced people analytics toolkit to boost workforce planning.
He also is directing a new performance management system named GPS — Grow, Perform, Succeed.
That sure sounds like something Carol Dweck would agree pushes the boundaries of a growth mindset.
Eric Mackaluso joined HR software and services company ADP in late 2016, and according to nominator Jarrod Schwartz, he hit the ground running.
Eric Mackaluso is VP, Head of People Analytics for ADP in Roseland, New Jersey.
“Eric has done more for ADP in a little over a year than we could have ever imagined,” Schwartz, ADP’s vice president of HR strategy and planning, said in his nomination letter.
“He continually drives the adoption of data science, data visualization and storytelling as part of HR’s decision-making process.”
Mackaluso, 39, made a big impact at ADP in his first six months alone, which earned him a promotion to vice president, head of people analytics. Through monthly audits, he and his team cleansed the data of more than 57,000 associates that already existed in ADP’s system.
He also introduced the Tableau platform, through which his team created consistent dashboards for reporting across all business units and functions.
His analysis and presentation of key data metrics allows ADP business leaders to make informed decisions for the company.
“Eric is by virtue a Workforce Game Changer, and we are privileged to have him,” Schwartz said.
Inspired by the time machine from the movie “Back to the Future,” the cloud software provider built its model to manage the flow of incoming issues, ideas and comments, allow discussion and collaboration and finally output the solution, according to the application. It also provides a structure and concrete road map for fostering and developing innovative thought.
Before the Flux Capacitor of Innovation was implemented, communication and ideas weren’t being developed past each team or department. The company realized that communication is key and now encourages every person in the company to share their opinions.
Their onboarding program, NC Launch Onboarding, is a way to make the process more effective and increase employee retention. The site is filled with characters from the company’s games and takes new hires on “quests” to finish items like payroll, playfully referred to as “loot.”
Bronze: Riverside Healthcare
Most employees find it unacceptable to monitor personal, non-work-related activities, according to a 2018 survey conducted by the HR Metrics & Analytics Summit, “Workplace Privacy & Protection: Is Your Employer Watching Your Every Move?” It’s inappropriate to monitor physical movements around the workplace, for example through wearable technology such as a Fitbit, said 57 percent of employee respondents, while 56 percent said it’s inappropriate to monitor personal interactions with these devices. 
