5MM: Robots and Jobs
For God’s Sake, Think Before You Email
I have lots of readers. Thousands upon thousands. Do you know who doesn’t read my blog, however? Former DNC chair (and Congresswoman) Debbie Wasserman Schultz. How do I know? Because, if she does, she would have read this:
Do I really need to tell you not to ever put something like “do we really want an obese Christian” in an email. Some things are better left unsaid, or, more to the point, un-typed. And, for god’s sake, please read those emails (all of them) before you click send. It makes my job a whole lot easier defending you without that smoking gun.
And this:
Unlike diamonds, email messages aren’t forever, but they are pretty darn close. Employers need to train managers and supervisors to be vigilant in their care about what they reduce to writing in emails. Emails, especially those pertaining to the employment (or impending unemployment) of those in a protected class, must be vetted and re-vetted before being sent. Ask yourself this question: “Would I want this email read to a judge or a jury?” Unless the answer is an unequivocal “Yes”, do not send it.
And this:
Email is a powerful communication tool. It’s also very permanent. I’ve been saying this about social media for years, but perhaps it’s time to remind employers that communication is communication, no matter how it’s transmitted. If you don’t want something to appear on the front page of the newspaper, or to be read in front of a judge or jury, don’t put it in writing. Don’t email it, don’t text it, don’t Facebook it, and don’t tweet it.
Please, please, please, please, please … email should not be your default communication tool. It leaves a trail, and you cannot assume that trail is ever private. Just ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz. If anything you are writing gives you any pause at all as to whether it should be in writing, pick up the telephone, or meet for a cup of coffee. You’d think as ubiquitous as email has become we would all know this lesson by now. Debbie Wasserman Schultz reminds us that this is a lesson worth repeating.
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.
Candidate Experience Tech Is Ticking Them Off
Job candidates, like customers, expect a certain level of service and courtesy when they engage with a company. Yet most companies aren’t even throwing applicants a bone — and that’s not going over well with their talent pool.
A recent study from Future Workplace and CareerArc found nearly 60 percent of job seekers have had a poor candidate experience, and of those 72 percent shared that experience on an employer review site, social networking site or with colleagues and friends. This trend should be concerning to a lot of recruiters.
When candidates post negative reviews for the world to see, it can potentially poison the talent pool, said Dan Schawbel, Future Workplace research director. Today’s job seekers are savvy researchers, reviewing an average of 16 resources when searching for a job, according to CareerBuilder’s 2016 State of Recruitment study. Whether they hear negative reviews from a colleague or read them on Linked In or Glassdoor, it can deter them from applying for a position that may otherwise be a great fit. “Those review can shut off a lot of people who could be good employees,” Schwabel said.
Recruiters may also be surprised to hear what constitutes a negative experience, says Kirsten Davidson, head of employer brand for Glassdoor Inc., the employer review site. It isn’t caused by aggressive interview tactics, or frustrating background check processes. “Most negative reviews come from people who just never heard back,” she said.
And it happens far too often. A whopping 65 percent of job seekers in the Future Workplace survey said they never or rarely receive notice from employers when they submit applications. Similarly, in CareerBuilder’s report job seekers said their biggest frustration is when employers don’t respond to them. “Candidates invest a lot of time preparing an application, yet they feel like the company is investing nothing in response,” Schawbel said. “That sends a bad message about the company.”
Start With a ‘Thank You’
So how do recruiters respond? With many job postings receiving hundreds of applications, there isn’t time for recruiters to send a personal thank you note to everyone who applied. But unless companies have a system in place to at least acknowledge these candidates, employers may be damaging their reputation every time they post an opening.
Even Glassdoor, the company that gives employees a platform to review current and future employers, has struggled to get this one right. A few years ago the site recognized that most of the negative reviews it received were because candidates got no response to their applications.
In response, the company created a checklist of ways to improve the candidate experience, which includes sending some level of response to every candidate who applies. “It was important to find a process that we could scale,” Davidson said. Applicants who are clearly unqualified for the role receive an automated email thanking them for applying and letting them know they are not a good fit but to please stay in touch, while candidates who participate in further screenings and interviews receive more personalized notes with feedback on where they are in the application process and/or why they aren’t right for the job. Since implementing this response process, Glassdoor now has a 73 percent positive interview experience rating compared with the 54 percent average across the entire site.
Taking the time to respond to candidates isn’t just polite; it’s good for the company’s overall image as well, said Robin Richards, CEO of CareerArc. “When you treat candidates well they become net promoters of the brand.” That’s marketing-speak for ‘measuring the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships.’ When you consider how many people apply for a given job, building loyalty through something as simple as a thank you email can be a powerful marketing tool, he said.
Companies can also use candidate reviews as a way to assess their recruiting process and identify areas that need improvement. And when negative reviews arise, Davidson said she encourages recruiters to respond in a positive and nonconfrontational way. “When you say you are sorry and share what you are doing to improve the process, it can turn a negative experience into a neutral one,” she said. “It also sends a message to the broader talent community that you care about them.” Glassdoor research shows that 62 percent of employees say their perception of a company improves after seeing an employer respond to a review.
Sending thank you notes to unqualified candidates may seem like an added burden in an already time-consuming job, but taking time to acknowledge people who expressed an interest in working for your company just makes good business sense, Richards said. “In a high-tech, high-volume world, a little courtesy makes people feel valued, and that can have a big positive impact on your brand.”
Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.
8 Remote Meeting Tools That Aren’t a Waste of Time
While you might see PowerPoint presentations, conference tables and paper agendas as the only way to set up a meeting, I see it as a bad choice.
As a remote worker for most of my life, the least efficient meetings have been the ones I’ve participated in while seated around a table. They’re mostly bantering about sport with a vague pep talk at the end — something about “going out there and making more sales.”
The most productive meetings I’ve ever been a part of have been remote — using video chat software, cloud-based documents and file storage resources. We work better in our own comfortable environment with access to the right tools, so if you’re managing a remote team or thinking about putting an end to physical meetings, here’s what’s worked for me.
Tools for Taking Better Meeting Notes
Let’s put a stop to scribbling, photocopying and overwhelming our desks with printouts. Thanks to tools like WorkFlowy, Dropbox Paper and minutes.io, those tasks are now obsolete.
WorkFlowy
WorkFlowy lets you create sharable bullet-point lists with tags and search, which is perfect for taking and organizing meeting notes. The way I use it is to keep a list called “meetings,” with sublists of dates that have the notes inside. By tagging the action items, I can quickly search the tag and bring up everything I have to do after the meeting.
Dropbox Paper
Dropbox Paper offers real-time collaboration over cloud-based documents. You can insert code snippets, images, comments and suggestions. For meetings focused on a particular project’s progress, getting your team to draft their ideas and put their resources inside a Dropbox Paper document can be an easy way to get a quick overview and add comments to each section.
Minutes.io
Minutes.io is lightning-fast note-taking software, specifically engineered for taking meeting notes. It features hot keys and automatic emailing to all meeting members, meaning that after the meeting is finished, the person taking the minutes can send it to everyone in the group in one click.
Tools for High-Quality Video Calls
Skype isn’t the only option for video calls. There are plenty of other players in the space.
Screenhero
Screenhero lives inside Slack and offers high-resolution voice, video and screen-sharing. It’s great for when you’re demonstrating your work on your computer without having to have someone look over your shoulder. However, since it’s acquisition by Slack, you can’t get it as a standalone app.
Appear.in is a video chat service that gives you a permanent room locked to a URL. Members can come and go as they please, but the room remains fixed, making it more efficient than Skype because calls don’t have to be stopped and started. With appear.in, the room is running at all times so the only requirement after setting it up is turning up.
Tools for Storing Meeting Resources
During the employee onboarding process, it’s ideal if you add employees to a platform containing the assets they’re going to need in the future. This could be slides and notes from previous meetings, style guides or to-do lists. Here are some tools we’ve had success using:
Trello
Trello cards are ideal for storing your meeting resources in one place. Make a card for the meeting date, then add in the recording, the notes, slides and anything else you need. Once the meeting notes are attached to cards, you can link the cards to other projects on the relevant boards, centralizing your resources.
Basecamp
Like Trello, Basecamp is a project management tool. That doesn’t mean you can’t . The difference is that you don’t work inside cards, but inside projects. You could set it up so there is a one project for all meetings, and then attach notes and files in there. You can also chat with your team using Campfire — a chat service from the same company.
Google Drive
The advantage of using Google Drive as the go-to place for meeting resources is that it can link directly to your desktop’s file structure. One member can have the notes from their computer saved inside their Drive folder on the desktop, and that automatically syncs to every member. In my opinion, Google Drive is the ideal solution here because it doesn’t stop you from using project management software with it — both Trello and Basecamp can be integrated with Google Drive.
Getting Your Team to Adopt a New Tool
The choice of remote meeting tools can be overwhelming, but there are plenty of options out there. Explore for yourself. Until next time — meeting adjourned.
Benjamin Brandall is the head of content marketing at Process Street, a software as a service company based in California. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
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HR and IT: The Dynamic Duo in Fighting Cybersecurity Risks
Companies have undergone significant changes in the past few years. Before, employee would come into the same workspace and be connected via the same on-premise system. Now people can work from almost anywhere, bring their own devices, use cloud-based applications and access work files on their mobile devices. The result? An increase in threats to cybersecurity.
However, just because cybersecurity threats affect, well, cyberspace, doesn’t mean a human element isn’t necessary to mitigate them.
“People often mistake security risk in a company as being primarily a technology risk — making sure you have the right systems in place, etc.,” said David Meyer, vice president of product at OneLogin, an identity management and cybersecurity company based in San Francisco. “But it’s just much, if not more, a cultural risk.”
The information technology and human resources department, together, make a smart team in fighting these risks, Meyer said, because most cybersecurity threats come from inside the company.
This is especially concerning because of the great financial effect a security breach can have on a company. For example, there has been a 64 percent increase in security breaches from 2014 to 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the average breach costs a business $3.8 million, according to a 2015 Ponemon Institute study.
The HR department has the skills necessary to mitigate two potential insider threats, Meyer said. The first threat is well-intentioned employees who make a mistake, such as using a personal email rather than a work email or accidentally sharing something classified on social media. HR can deal with these cases by making sure employees are properly trained and educating them on a regular basis.
The second threat is disaffected employees who have ill will toward the company. Because part of an HR person’s job is understanding employee behavior, HR is the best department to notice early warning signs that an employee could be being disloyal or headed in that direction, experts say.
Meanwhile, the IT department has the technical skills to put certain systems in place — another key ingredient to stopping insider threats. There are systems such as Elastic Search, CloudLock, OneLogin and others that can detect when employees access or download documents they normally don’t and alert HR.
The connection between HR professionals and security professionals needs to be the closest it’s ever been in history, said Pete Metzger, vice chairman at executive search firm DHR International. The chief human resources officer and the chief information security officer, for example, should communicate with each other about important security issues, like securing mobile devices, hiring trustworthy people (more of an HR issue) and implementing good kinds of authentication (more of a technical issue), he added.
“If it’s not an important relationship, it certainly should be,” Metzger said.
Moreover, he added, HR and IT should brief all the company leadership on important security issues, keeping everyone updated on any potential risks.
Once HR and IT team up, they can cooperate to put together an effective cybersecurity training program.
HR should educate employees point-blank on the do’s and don’ts, Metzger said. There are certain things employees should always do, such as calling IT about any suspicious emails.
From an IT perspective, Meyer recommends integrating HR with identity systems. If an employee changes roles or departments, the integrated system will automatically give the employee new access and remove old access. This keeps HR from having to manually take old employees out of systems, and it verifies that employees only have access to files or applications that they actually need.
“In the modern era where employees are using every app on every device,” he added, security “comes from a combination of good IT systems, which protect employees and give them the right guard rails and effective cultural training.”
Andie Burjek is a Workforce editorial intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.
IBM Sets a New Checkpoint
For IBM Corp. employees, performance review time may come with a little less hand-wringing as the global technology and consulting company tapped into its workforce for ideas on how to make a better review system.
With the Feb. 1 introduction of its app-based performance review program called Checkpoint, IBM says there’s more flexibility — employees can change their goals during the year — and a more constant pulse on personal performance with discussions on shorter-term goals and feedback at least every quarter. The system also offers an evaluation against a list of general work priorities that a majority of staff agree on.
To gain insight into employee preferences for the new system, IBM’s human resources department started a conversation about performance management through the company’s internal social media site Connections last summer. Staffers participated in a “continuous, transparent feedback loop of discussions, debates, updates, design iterations and user experience testing,” according to a written statement from IBM.
Workers covered such topics as the nature and frequency of feedback, how individual contributions affect a team’s success and the appropriate basis for evaluation.
“IBM has a long tradition of inviting our employees to co-create on major initiatives. We’ve been doing this for more than decade,” said Michelle Rzepnicki, director of IBM performance management. “So when it came time to reinventing performance management, we knew we’d get lots of dialogue and engagement among 380,000 employees.”
What resounded was a “loud and clear” call for change aligned with IBM’s transformation, she said. Themes that emerged included employees’ desire for ongoing two-way feedback with managers as well as a more nimble, real-time approach to setting goals. Other employees reflected on how IBM works with clients or how to highlight a team-based culture.
Checkpoint replaces IBM’s traditional performance evaluation system Personal Business Commitments, which was in place for more than a decade, according to the company. Previously, IBM employees set goals at the beginning of the year, had a midyear review and were assessed at the end of the year with a numeric rating.
The new system looks at five dimensions of employee performance including business results, impact on client success, innovation, personal responsibility to others and skills. At the end of the performance year, employees are evaluated on whether they’ve exceeded or achieved expectations for their role based on the five dimensions. What IBM calls a hallmark of Checkpoint is that the evaluation of each dimension isn’t combined into one rating.
Aubrey Daniels, president of Aubrey Daniels International, said IBM’s overhaul of its evaluation is a step in the right direction but not enough. In his view, performance evaluations have outlived their usefulness and place blame on employees rather than examine the strength of what promotes their success.
“I tell people all the time, eliminate performance appraisals period,” Daniels said. Data shows they don’t help the performer and they’re certainly not favorable. “Where we’re going is toward a coaching culture.”
Hotline Turf War: Compliance or HR’s Territory?
As an employer, what would you have if you could train 100 percent of your employees? Or if a direct line of communication with your employees was always open, or if every employee could sincerely attest to the values and principles of your organization?
Besides a highly engaged, informed and knowledgeable workforce, you would have an unequaled opportunity to strengthen your organization’s culture. But enhancing culture also takes an air of cooperation.
And at many large organizations, the relationship between human resources and the compliance function hasn’t exactly been a cozy one. Yet that connection is crucial to building a successful corporatewide culture.
Every organization involved in health care, defense contracting, publicly traded equities or international trade is required to have a corporate compliance program. While the source of this requirement varies, the recipe for an effective compliance program is a constant. This recipe includes annual training for all employees, an anonymous hotline and attestation to a code of ethics.
Sometimes known as the ethics or integrity function, responsibility for the compliance program usually falls to this team. While compliance functions were rare 20 years ago, they’re now an entrenched part of most large organizations.
If compliance and HR were to work together to meet the requirements of an effective compliance program, there would be a unique opportunity to advance the organization’s culture. But instead of working together, there’s an uneasy peace at best.
Accepting this tenuous relationship locks HR out of the organization’s largest sustained culture effort. Compliance is left leading the organizational culture effort with little direct knowledge of how to do so.
The antipathy between compliance and HR starts with the handling of hotline calls, many of which concern HR-related issues. Nonetheless, compliance often wants to investigate the reported concerns.
And, of course, HR views this as encroachment, planting the seeds of a bad relationship. In one large organization, the HR staff routinely referred to the compliance department as “Fortress Compliance.” The compliance staff paid them back by referring to “Fortress HR.”
No matter who is responsible for the uneasy turf war between compliance and HR, it’s in human resources’ best interests to take the lead in lowering the barrier. It is only by getting a consistent message across to employees that HR will be able to develop the organizational culture. There are three important strategies to bring HR and compliance together.
1. Work Together on Compliance Training.
Compliance departments often struggle to meet the requirement that there be (the equivalent of) at least one hour of compliance training annually. Compliance professionals often have backgrounds in audit, law or law enforcement.
The skills that make them successful in these fields ordinarily do not include the design and delivery of training. Even though they often lack training expertise, compliance professionals seldom seek help. They often develop a set of slides emphasizing that employees face dire consequences if caught breaking the rules.
They hope to motivate employees using fear as their primary tool. What they are actually cultivating is a don’t-get-caught mindset. This approach is not likely to promote compliance or the organization’s overall culture, which, hopefully, is not a culture of fear.
Because compliance struggles with the annual training, an offer of assistance from HR is likely to be welcome. Were there consultation between compliance and HR and potentially the learning and development department, this universal training could be used to build the organizational culture, including its compliance component.
The first step is to set clear objectives for each year’s training. Too often the only objective for compliance training is to meet the requirement that the training be given. Once it’s clear what you want to accomplish, a training module can be designed that incorporates the organizational culture while conveying key compliance messages. Corporate compliance will make more sense to employees as part of what the organization is about.
The Council of Ethical Organizations has conducted published survey research on compliance programs since 1986 (Editor’s note: the author is the CEO of this organization). This research shows that close to 90 percent of employees of organizations with compliance programs recall participating in annual compliance training six months after participating in the training. However, only 34 percent recall key themes of the training.
2. Cooperate on Hotline Calls.
No part of a compliance program stirs more controversy than the ubiquitous compliance hotline. This is a toll-free number that employees can call anonymously to report concerns. And they do call. Our data show that the number of hotline calls per year in large organizations is equal to about 3 percent of the total number of employees. And no one disputes that the majority of these calls address HR issues.
A key goal of the hotline is to encourage employees to report concerns internally instead of becoming external whistleblowers. There are huge financial incentives for employees who become external whistleblowers in many industries.
In a recent case, a whistleblower received $2.2 million for blowing the whistle on NuVasive Inc. allowing the government to recover $13.5 million. Some whistleblowers have made tens of millions of dollars by revealing their employers’ misdeeds, raising the stakes for keeping compliance concerns inside the company.
So the job is to engage employees in an internal process until you can determine if the concern is real. HR is used to working through issues with employees and can usually do so without turning employees into whistleblowers. If HR can persuade compliance that it can investigate calls to the hotline on HR issues, a great burden will be lifted from compliance. And HR can handle issues reported to the hotline in a manner likely to prevent external whistleblowing.
3. Create a Positive Code of Ethics.
Another component of a compliance program is the code of ethics. Most organizations require that all employees attest annually that they will read and comply with the code. The reason to have employees attest is to show that everyone is aware of the rules.
However, this attestation is often a meaningless gesture. Why? In many cases, the reading level of the code exceeds the reading level of most of the employees to whom it applies.
Council of Ethical Organizations data reveal that while nearly 100 percent of employees acknowledge receiving the code of ethics, fewer than 20 percent actually read it. The document is often long, filled with legalese and HR jargon and contrary to the organization’s culture.
The belief is that if you tell people that they are supposed to follow a few dozen laws, the company cannot be blamed when failures occur. Example: “We told them to follow the Dodd-Frank Act right there in the code of ethics.” A frivolous thought. A signed document that the employee cannot have understood is an ineffective legal excuse.
If HR and compliance collaborated on the code, it could be a useful document that fits the organization’s culture. For example, most HR professionals know that you bring a document to life with illustrations of situations that employees may actually encounter. And a code that fits the values and culture of an organization is more likely to make sense to employees.
It is time for HR and compliance to get on the same page. Both functions are trying to influence employees in areas that pose risk to the organization. In many cases, compliance approaches its domain of risk in ways that can potentially undermine efforts to develop the culture of the organization.
Compliance gets away with this because there are certain things it must do every year to satisfy external regulatory requirements. It needs to do these things — but it need not do them poorly. Everyone wins when the silos in which compliance and HR so often exist are torn down.
Compliance and HR professionals can also collaborate on internal investigations. Compliance is required to follow up on all credible reports it receives by means of the organization’s hotline or through direct reports to the department. This can be a heavy burden as the number of reports received annually is approximately 3 percent of the total employee population.
Many of these reports — typically more than half — focus on HR issues. Employees try to achieve through the hotline what they cannot through traditional organizational processes. Compliance tends to want to investigate all of the reports, including the reports on HR issues. This is because those who report to compliance are entitled to do so anonymously and to have their concern investigated on a confidential basis.
Compliance is fearful that HR will not honor these reporting conditions if allowed to investigate the HR concerns reported through compliance. But this assumes that HR cannot understand the unique conditions under which compliance reporting operates.
If compliance and HR can get past this issue, there is much to be gained on both sides. Compliance professionals often have forensic investigative skills not represented in a typical HR department, and HR often has more insight into the organization’s culture and processes and is also usually more knowledgeable than compliance when it comes to employment law.
Even more important, HR knows how to investigate the many HR reports compliance receives. When compliance insists on investigating these reports on its own, it often creates more issues than it resolves. If compliance focuses on genuine compliance issues, it can do a better job addressing these issues while allowing HR to handle its own domain of concerns professionally.
Human Capital Insights: HR Technology (October 2015)
In the ever-changing corporate HR and talent management domain, one of the most exciting developments occurring in recent years is the emergence and growing adoption of integrated talent management product suites. Traditionally the human capital management (HCM) technology market has been highly fragmented with a variety of point solutions, each focusing on individual talent management functions.
Is Digital ‘Shunning’ Illegal Retaliation?
Wired tells the story of an Australian tribunal, which ruled that an employee was illegally bullied at work, in part because a co-worker had unfriended her on Facebook.
Transfer this case to America, and assume that the employee is claiming retaliation based on the unfriending. Supposed Employee A complains to HR that Employee B is sexually harassing her, and, as soon as Employee B finds out about the complaint, he unfriends Employee A on Facebook. Does Employee A have a claim for retaliation based on the unfriending?
The answer is likely no.
As a matter of law, an adverse action sufficient to support a claim for retaliation merely must be an action that would dissuade a reasonable worker from complaining about discrimination. Yet, the Supreme Court has stated that the adversity to support a claim for retaliation must be “material,” and that petty slights, minor annoyances, or a simple lack of good manners normally will not count:
We speak of material adversity because we believe it is important to separate significant from trivial harms. Title VII, we have said, does not set forth “a general civility code for the American workplace.” … An employee’s decision to report discriminatory behavior cannot immunize that employee from those petty slights or minor annoyances that often take place at work and that all employees experience…. It does so by prohibiting employer actions that are likely “to deter victims of discrimination from complaining to the EEOC,” the courts, and their employers…. And normally petty slights, minor annoyances, and simple lack of good manners will not create such deterrence….
A supervisor’s refusal to invite an employee to lunch is normally trivial, a nonactionable petty slight. But to retaliate by excluding an employee from a weekly training lunch that contributes significantly to the employee’s professional advancement might well deter a reasonable employee from complaining about discrimination.
Thus, an ostracism or shunning from a social network—one that serves no work-related purpose other than fostering congeniality among co-workers—likely should not support a claim for retaliation.
YourForce: It’s Benefits Season
It’s open season!
On benefits, that is. Every fall, HR departments look forward to open enrollment season with excitement — and trepidation.
This crucial period is not just an opportunity for employees to review benefit options, but also a golden opportunity for HR to renew relationships.
Managing such a crucial initiative can be daunting, but that’s why Workforceis here to help. Beyond our ongoing magazine coverage, we’ve launched a new event that will explore the future of benefit management.
Coming to Boston on Nov. 9, Workforce Focus puts you in direct conversation with fellow HR professionals for a one-day, in-depth examination of the technology transformation reshaping how we communicate and manage employee benefits.
For more information, visit WorkforceFocus.com.
I hope you’ll join us there!
Reader Feedback
Responding to “Work in Progress” columnist Kris Dunn’s story in the July issue titled “Meet the Aggregator Killer,” reader Jonathan Duarte wrote:
So is your intent to send automated ‘cease and desist’ and copyright infringement emails with links to all the ‘old’ jobs? I haven’t aggregated and distributed much for job ad content in the last five years, but from what I can tell, the ‘old’ jobs probably isn’t the biggest issue. The bigger issue is probably the ‘lesser’ aggregators that mandate job seeker registration under the guise of ‘apply for this job’ and then never redirect or submit an application for the position, but instead put job seekers on automated job alerts and marketing automation email campaigns that they never opted into.
Regarding the Workforce August story “Rub Some Dirt on It: Why Workers Are Forgoing Treatments,” reader Dan983 said:
Prior to HDHPs, employer population health plan member expense distribution ratios under PPO plans indicated the sickest 5 percent of members annually spend 60 percent of plan dollars and the top 10 percent account for 70 percent. This top 10 percent are not impacted by any deductible as ACA makes plans reimburse 100 percent after members have $6,600 in out-of-pocket cost. What about the other 90 percent? The bottom 50 percent only account for 2 percent of plan expenses. High-deductible plans cause members to forgo physician visits, screenings and prescription therapy. These plans have been dishonestly sold to employer plan sponsors. Now, by plan design, members are being lured into worsening states of chronic disease. Remember, the max employers can shift is $10,000 on the HSA option. What’s the max employers are liable for to pay the impact of chronic disease? Unlimited!
Our August Dear Workforce newsletter posed the question: “How Do We Make a Supervisor Deal With a Problem Employee?” to which reader Michael Toebe responded:
The supervisor obviously dislikes conflict engagement and might be intimidated by the offending person. Yet avoidance is not an effective conflict strategy. It allows the status quo to continue to great work culture, process and legal detriment. What could prove helpful is suspending judgment and asking the supervisor what concerns they might have in investigating the emotional drivers about the employee’s unsavory behavior. Learn the “whys” behind the resistance, question the limiting beliefs, ask if they feel they need additional resources to problem-solve and express confidence in their ability and ask for a commitment to be assertive (not aggressive) in addressing a critical problem and why it is critical. Set a date to talk again later that day or the next morning to review what happened. What the supervisor might need is understanding, support and encouragement. Or they might also need skill set development in conflict strategies, as in how to talk with, not at, the employee.
Workforce blogger James Tehrani asked: Is it OK to compliment people at work to which reader Denise Gamble replied:
I compliment people all the time. I’ve been told I have a gift for recognizing the good in others and for providing positive feedback. I am female and agree it’s considered more acceptable for women to compliment either gender in the workplace.
I’ve lost about 90 pounds this year and receive regular compliments. I’m fine with them. My appearance is so changed that often someone will blurt out, ‘Wow! You look great!’ It’s heartfelt and not creepy. Creepy is the guy that followed up with, ‘I’ll bet you look great in a swimming suit!’ (Fortunately, that wasn’t from a co-worker.)
Some thoughts based on my own experience: I believe it is OK to compliment people you work with on a regular basis if a) the compliment is authentic, brief and not related to gender, race, religion, etc. b) is not contrived or based on any underlying, self-serving motivation and c) part of your character.
We welcome your comments on these stories and others on our website. Be sure to follow us and give us a shout on Twitter at @Workforcenews, too.
Hope to hear from you!