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CEO Iannuzzi’s 1-year Review

Sal Iannuzzi’s first year as CEO of Monster has been quite a ride.


    Not long before Iannuzzi took over the Internet recruiting company in April 2007, the U.S. economy was expected to grow at a decent 3 percent for the year. Instead, it expanded by just 2.2 percent and the pace slowed even further this year, taking a toll on hiring and job ads. A scandal over stock option backdating at Monster repeatedly made headlines of the kind that drags down employee morale. And the company decided to ax 700 employees as part of its restructuring.


    But Monster’s financial results for the first quarter of this year beat Wall Street expectations, on the strength of fast international growth. The company says it is getting quicker at turning out new products. And Monster’s alarmingly high employee turnover—upwards of 35 percent a year ago—has fallen to about 25 percent.


    Iannuzzi, a financial services veteran with just a few years in the technology industry, says he can sense improved morale in his workforce of 5,200. At a recent company meeting with some 500 people in the room, it was obvious, he says.


    “You can see when people are turned on and when they aren’t,” Iannuzzi says. “There were a lot of lights on this morning.”


    Here are Iannuzzi’s worst and best days since he became Monster’s main man:


    Worst: “Probably the toughest day was making the decision to let go of 700 people. When we made that decision, you look at it on paper and you look at the numbers, and you know it is the right thing to do for the health of the organization. But when you stop with the numbers and you bring it to people, and you see the faces of some of the people that are involved and the impact you’re going to have on them, that’s a pretty horrible feeling—particularly when you’re the person that’s driving it.”


    Best: “Historically only about 16, 17 percent of the people in the company received equity. And even those who did receive it, except for maybe the top 10 people, let’s just say they didn’t receive much. This year, everyone was eligible for a bonus, and almost 40 percent of the people in the company received equity—and meaningful pieces of equity, where it would really make a difference in their creation of wealth. Probably the highlight of it all was one evening Lise [Poulos, Monster’s chief administrative officer,] and I were walking out of the building. This was back in February, and it was kind of late and three relatively young people were leaving and came up to me. They had just gotten their bonuses. First time they got one. They high-fived and said, ‘Thanks a lot, Mr. I.’ That’s a good feeling.”

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CEO Iannuzzis 1-Year Review

Sal Iannuzzi’s first year as CEO of Monster has been quite a ride.


    Not long before Iannuzzi took over the Internet recruiting company in April 2007, the U.S. economy was expected to grow at a decent 3 percent for the year. Instead, it expanded by just 2.2 percent and the pace slowed even further this year, taking a toll on hiring and job ads. A scandal over stock option backdating at Monster repeatedly made headlines of the kind that drags down employee morale. And the company decided to ax 700 employees as part of its restructuring.


    But Monster’s financial results for the first quarter of this year beat Wall Street expectations, on the strength of fast international growth. The company says it is getting quicker at turning out new products. And Monster’s alarmingly high employee turnover—upwards of 35 percent a year ago—has fallen to about 25 percent.


    Iannuzzi, a financial services veteran with just a few years in the technology industry, says he can sense improved morale in his workforce of 5,200. At a recent company meeting with some 500 people in the room, it was obvious, he says.


    “You can see when people are turned on and when they aren’t,” Iannuzzi says. “There were a lot of lights on this morning.”


    Here are Iannuzzi’s worst and best days since he became Monster’s main man:


    Worst: “Probably the toughest day was making the decision to let go of 700 people. When we made that decision, you look at it on paper and you look at the numbers, and you know it is the right thing to do for the health of the organization. But when you stop with the numbers and you bring it to people, and you see the faces of some of the people that are involved and the impact you’re going to have on them, that’s a pretty horrible feeling—particularly when you’re the person that’s driving it.”


    Best: “Historically only about 16, 17 percent of the people in the company received equity. And even those who did receive it, except for maybe the top 10 people, let’s just say they didn’t receive much. This year, everyone was eligible for a bonus, and almost 40 percent of the people in the company received equity—and meaningful pieces of equity, where it would really make a difference in their creation of wealth. Probably the highlight of it all was one evening Lise [Poulos, Monster’s chief administrative officer,] and I were walking out of the building. This was back in February, and it was kind of late and three relatively young people were leaving and came up to me. They had just gotten their bonuses. First time they got one. They high-fived and said, ‘Thanks a lot, Mr. I.’ That’s a good feeling.”

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Sponsor Concedes Defeat on 401(K) Fee Legislation

Legislation approved by a House panel to require greater disclosure of 401(k) plan fees won’t pass this year, the panel’s chairman and a sponsor of the legislation said.


The bill, H.R. 3185, which was approved in April by the House Education and Labor Committee, would require 401(k) plan administrators to disclose fees in four distinct categories: plan administrative and record-keeping charges; transaction-based charges; investments charges; and other charges as specified by the Labor Department.


Additionally, plan administrators would have to disclose any financial relationships among service providers that could lead to potential conflicts of interest as well as information about investment options and risks.


The committee’s chairman, Rep. George Miller, D-California, acknowledges that the bill, which his committee approved on a party-line vote, will not win passage this year, with a spokesman blaming opposition from the Bush administration.


Earlier, Bradford Campbell, assistant secretary for the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, said the legislation would make 401(k) plan fee disclosure more “complex and expensive than it needs to be.”


Employer groups opposed the legislation, saying it would have led to more litigation and higher administrative costs, while overwhelming participants with too much information.


Supporters of the legislation, though, argued that participants now lack the means to accurately compare fees.



Filed by Jerry Geisel of Business Insurance, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

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Talx Accelerates Growth at Equifax

Snapping up Talx last year not only gave credit reporting specialist Equifax an entrance into the red-hot HR software arena, it immediately fired up Equifax’s financial results.


Atlanta-based Equifax acquired Talx in May 2007 in a deal valued at $1.4 billion. Talx, which provides a range of software and services including onboarding tools, contributed to just slightly over six months of Equifax’s annual results for 2007. Even so, TALX represented 12 percentage points of the company’s overall 19 percent revenue growth in 2007. Talx generated $179.4 million in operating revenue for the year, or about 10 percent of the overall Equifax operating revenue of $1.8 billion.


Talx produced $29.3 million in operating income for Equifax last year, or 6 percent of the company’s $486.2 million in operating income. Net income at Equifax last year was $272.7 million, a slight drop from $274.5 million in 2006.


The foray into employment services helps Equifax diversify from its traditional business of providing consumer information products to businesses in the United States. That market niche has been hit by the U.S. housing downturn and economic slowdown. Equifax’s U.S. Consumer Information Solutions division, which includes consumer credit reporting and scoring and mortgage reporting, saw virtually no growth in operating revenue in 2007. The USCIS unit accounted for 63 percent of the company’s consolidated revenue in 2006. That figure dropped to 53 percent in 2007.


Equifax expected a quick boost from Talx, citing its rapid growth when announcing the acquisition last year. For the last nine months of 2006, Talx’s revenue climbed 33 percent year over year to $197 million.

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FAA Survey Reveals Wide Dissatisfaction

For an example of the bitterness that exists between FAA management and air traffic controllers, look no further than the agency’s 2007 employee satisfaction survey.

    The survey was sent to 10,000 employees randomly through e-mail. Since many controllers aren’t online during the day, the agency mailed them cards with the URL to the survey so that they could do it at home.


    “Well, apparently the URL was shopped around to a much wider audience than the randomly selected group, and its new recipients were urged by bloggers to send a loud message about how dissatisfied they are with management,” said Gerald E. Lavey, deputy assistant administrator for corporate communications at the FAA, in an online memo to employees about the survey. “So when the results came in with this unprecedented rate of return from one segment of the workforce, we had more than ample reason to believe something was amiss.”


    As a result, the agency scrapped the survey. “Management still has to deal with the 2006 survey results, and prior survey results, showing that we need to do a lot of work to improve management effectiveness and accountability,” the memo states.


    Indeed, the 2006 employee attitude survey does not paint the picture of a happy workforce. The survey results demonstrate that the controllers are not alone in their distrust and dislike of FAA management.


    Sixty-four percent of respondents indicated that they distrust FAA management. Forty percent of respondents said they don’t believe that supervisors are effective in providing periodic coaching to improve performance. More than half of the respondents said they seldom hear that they do a good job.


    Two-thirds of respondents indicated that they had not seen a positive change in the agency’s emphasis on managing people over the previous two years. Sixty-one percent said they didn’t agree with the statement: “The organization has a real interest in the welfare and satisfaction of those who work at the agency.”


    John Palguta, vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service, isn’t surprised by the employee satisfaction survey results. Palguta helps put together the annual “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” list, in which the FAA ranked 204 out of 222 agencies.


    The rankings in his organization’s survey, he says, are weighted, based on the average of three questions from the 2006 Federal Human Capital Survey, conducted by the Office of Personnel Management: How satisfied are you with your job? How satisfied are you with your organization? Would you recommend your organization as a good place to work?


    “The FAA has been working for years to improve the people skills of its managers and supervisors,” he says.


    Palguta, who has worked in federal government for 37 years, is nevertheless hopeful that the agency can turn things around.


    “Government agencies may not be able to control their own appropriations, but they can control their own fate,” he says. “They just need to figure out what will improve employee engagement and get employees to feel good about themselves.”


Workforce Management, June 9, 2008, p. 21 — Subscribe Now!

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Part-Time Work During Medical Leave

Antonina Lonicki began working for Sutter Health Central in 1989, became a certified technician in 1993, and in 1999 began working part time at Kaiser Permanente in a similar position. After Lonicki obtained a doctor’s note for a one-month leave of absence, Sutter’s doctor determined that Lonicki was able to return without restriction. Lonicki was told to return to work by August 9, or she would be terminated.


She stated she would return on August 27 per her doctor and continued to see a psychologist through August. Sutter sent a letter stating it would give Lonicki paid time off until August 23. Lonicki’s psychologist wrote her a note stating that she was “disabled by major depression” and should not return until September 26.


Lonicki was terminated by Sutter, but she continued to work part time for Kaiser during her leave of absence. While Lonicki’s work at Kaiser was similar, it was “slower.”


Lonicki filed suit in the Sacramento County Superior Court against Sutter for violation of the California Family Rights Act. The court dismissed the case, stating that Lonicki’s part-time employment with Kaiser while on leave demonstrated that she was able to perform her job at Sutter. The California Court of Appeals affirmed. Lonicki appealed.


The California Supreme Court held that Lonicki’s employment with Kaiser was “strong evidence that she was capable of doing her full-time job. … But that evidence is not dispositive, as it is contradicted by [Lonicki’s] treating psychologist.” Lonicki v. Sutter Health Cent., Cal., No. S130839, (4/7/08).


Impact: Continued employment with another employer during medical leave may not foreclose employees from taking family leave under state or federal law. Employers are advised that they should defer to medical opinion, and request second opinions or clarification if necessary.


Workforce Management, June 9, 2008, p. 8 — Subscribe Now!

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The Five Worst Jobs in HR

Some jobs stink. Mine doesn’t. I hope yours doesn’t either. But some HR jobs really do reek.


I’ve wanted to do a list of them for a long time. And now the stars are aligned, just begging me to give the topic the treatment it so richly deserves.


What stars, you ask? Consider that the economy is struggling (which actually may have a silver lining for some HR pros). Every institute with a Commodore 64 is publishing a “HR Gets No Respect” study, and even notable HR bloggers are looking for new gigs.


It’s time for this list, people. You may be on the street looking for your next gig this year. In a moment of weakness, you’re going to come across some opportunities included on this list that look great on the surface. The list is full of jobs that you can probably land if you put your mind to it.


Don’t take them! It’s not that the people currently in these roles aren’t smart, credible and professional, because most of them probably are.


The real issue is the level of challenge and the perception of your career path once you’ve landed in one of them. The five worst jobs include career killers and work components that would crush the soul of most HR pros. Here’s a primer on the elements common to the five worst jobs in HR to get you in the mood to explore:


  • The worst jobs are so niche-oriented your mom can’t explain what you do. I understand a rotation through a specialty is a good thing, but these roles are generally subcategories of a specialty, making it tougher to bounce out to a generalist role when you are ready.


  • The worst jobs often involve heavy administrative work. If the work product you can point to at the end of the day is a report or a file, run like crazy. The problem with many of the worst jobs is that once you are done outlining your role for future employers, the person interviewing you envisions you filing papers four hours a day. Not exactly a momentum builder for your future.


  • The worst jobs involve tasks that are soul-crushing work for most HR pros. Every job has components you don’t like doing. That’s life, and you’ve experienced it before. Now take the soul crushers in your current job and multiply them by 50. That’s the strategic opportunity many of these jobs provide.


By now, just out of curiosity, you might be ready to jog over to your PC to drop some keywords—”soul-crushing administrative niche HR,” for instance—into Monster or Salary.com. Feel free to do that. Just don’t apply for anything you find. You never know what might happen—they might just hire you. To further dissuade you, here, by name, are the five worst jobs in HR, fed to you in countdown style like I’m Casey Kasem (I always encourage you to keep reaching for the stars, by the way):


  1. Corporate wellness professional: A surprise entry on the list, the wellness title is a fairly new one in corporate America and a natural reaction to a health care environment that serves up double-digit cost increases on an annual basis. The wellness job seems like a cool one, but avoid it like a supersize combo. Once you become the wellness guru, you’ll find yourself sandwiched between the unhealthy and the healthy, neither of whom has much desire to listen to you.

With notable exceptions, the unhealthy generally have belief and behavior structures that you can’t change with the time and resources you have available. The healthy are already doing most of what you’re focused on and are wondering when you’re going to build the on-site workout facility. You’ll need to take a long jog to relieve the resulting frustrations.


  1. EEO/AAP administrator: Before you attack me with e-mail, I’m not talking about the concept of diversity, because I’m a supporter of diversity as a business need. I’m talking about the limited upside of being an EEO/AAP administrator. In corporate America, being an affirmative action administrator is a thankless job. First up, you’ll be asked to collect reams of data and format it into hard-to-understand reports. Once that’s done, the communication begins, often with you informing business owners that they are “under-utilized” in a certain job category.

What happens once you tell the business owner that they are “under-utilized” in a certain job group? They’ll blame you for not being able to fill the job in a reasonable time frame. You become the symbol for a barrier rather than the solution. Nice.


  1. Call center recruiter (for a consumer call center): Can you say “cattle call”? The issue with the call center recruiter role isn’t the type of work, it’s the quantity and the economics of the situation. As a consumer call center recruiter, you’ll be asked to recruit new hires for a large call center (generally 300 to 1,000 seats). You’ll use your recruiting skills and innovation initially, then your excitement will wane as you realize the ugly truth—you’re being asked to produce 15 to 30 new hires every two to three weeks from a stretched labor market.

Add a marginal hourly rate (it’s a consumer call center) and no schedule flexibility for the candidates you’re attempting to recruit, and it’s a widow-maker of a job. Pay your dues and apply for the HR manager role when it becomes available.


  1. Safety manager: There’s no question that this role is needed, especially in manufacturing environments. No question employees are safer as a result. No question that safety professionals save their companies untold amounts of money. Unfortunately, there’s also no question that safety professionals, especially those who are one-person departments within a facility and not part of a corporate safety function, are some of the loneliest professionals in existence. Enforcing safety regulations and modifying employee behavior can make you feel more like a parole officer than a strategic manager.

It’s an important role, but landing in this job will convince you that Mike Tyson has more friends than you do. Give a high-five to your safety professional the next time you see him. That happens so rarely that he’ll remember you for life.


  1. LOA/FMLA administrator: Oh, the humanity. This administrator is a centralized control point for leave of absence and FMLA applications in your enterprise. That means this job sees all the trials and tribulations that employees (and their families) go through. You name it—disease, death, dismemberment— this person sees it. To be sure, there’s good that can come from it, in that an empathetic person in this role can calm employees moving through the leave process.

That’s negated by the reality: This person has to make a call on whether to challenge a suspect application, and that is one of the most confrontational situations you can find in the HR world. As part of this, you also get to question multiple FMLA applications that are 100 percent legit, meaning you’ll be seen as evil. It’s also one of the most administrative positions available. Stay away!


There are undoubtedly some talented professionals in these roles across corporate America. Don’t be one of them. Take your talents to an area of the HR practice where you can leverage your experience to bounce to other areas you develop an interest in, and to positions of leadership and authority.


Or you can spend the rest of your career figuring out if you are going to grind on me for additional FMLA certification. Maybe you’ll even get the opportunity to tell Alice in Accounting that her body mass index of 36 suggests she shouldn’t be worrying about retirement planning.


You deserve better. Stay away from these thankless jobs, but be kind to those currently serving.

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Tiered Mentoring at Infosys

The Infosys Leadership Institute in Mysore, India, pumps out executive talent for Infosys Technologies, the global IT solutions provider with fiscal 2008 revenue of $4.18 billion and year-over-year growth of 35 percent. Infosys employs 91,187 people and has offers out for an additional 18,000.


The HR function is responsible for the institute’s curriculum and an on-site staff of 80. HR is also responsible for all leadership development programs, including designing the curriculum and monitoring the results.


“Our underlying philosophy is that leadership cannot be taught, but it can be learned,” says Girish Vaidya, Infosys, head of the institute. “Leaders must first master themselves, but we all have blind spots.”


Infosys splits its leaders into three tiers. Tier 1 leaders are the top 50 people in the organization, including the heads of the business units, who have an average of 20 years of experience. Board members mentor these 50 leaders. Tier 2 consists of 180 leaders with an average of 15 years of experience. They are mentored by Tier 1. Tier 3 represents 550 people who average 10 years of experience and are mentored by Tier 2.


Employees from all three tiers apply for formal leadership training. “Applicants are evaluated on the basis of their achievements within a nine-dimension model and selected on that basis,” Vaidya says. All of the leaders selected move through an anonymous 360-degree feedback analysis, which becomes the basis for constructing a personal development plan.


They also attend sessions with senior leaders, who discuss their own learning within the company. Some are sent out for educational programs at the top universities in India or Ivy League universities in the United States.


Every quarter, HR reports to the board on the number of personal development plans in progress and the status of the leadership development programs. Infosys also conducts an annual survey of the participants from all three tiers. HR reviews the list of participants and determines whether anyone should be dropped from the program for performance reasons.


To gauge the results of the leadership development program, HR uses a leadership index based on the nine dimensions and rates each participant on a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 as the highest rating. The rating hinges not only on each leader’s actions but also on the leader’s efforts to share learning with others in the business unit or function.


“When leaders share what they have learned, you get alignment with others in the unit,” Vaidya notes. “The rating is two-sided: It reflects what you have learned and achieved and how well you have communicated it to others. For example, strategy development is important, but getting buy-in from the rest of the organization is also important.”


” ‘Leadership’ is an overused term,” he says. “You must begin with a clear definition of what a leader is in the context of your company. You have to define the competencies required, and that will define the path you need to take.”


At Infosys, however, accountability for leadership development rests with the individual. “The organization can provide access to all the tools that are needed, but in the end, the individual must take on the responsibility,” Vaidya says.

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The CEO Incubators

CompanyEmployeesCEOs produced Odds
McKinsey & Co.11,000161-in-690
Deloitte & Touche17,17081-in-2,150
Baxter International48,000111-in-4,365
PricewaterhouseCoopers 47,750101-in-4,775
Ernst & Young103,000121-in-8,585
Merrill Lynch62,20071-in-8,885
Motorola 66,000 71-in-9,430
Intel 88,100 81-in-11,010
Procter & Gamble138,000121-in-11,500
General Electric300,000 261-in-11,540
Honeywell 118,000 101-in-11,800
Novartis 100,735 81-in-12,590
PepsiCo 168,000 131-in-12,925
Disney 133,000 91-in-14,780
ExxonMobil 106,400 71-in-15,200
Johnson & Johnson122,200 81-in-15,275
IBM 366,485 181-in-20,360
AT&T 301,840 131-in-23,220
Citigroup 332,000 111-in-30,180
Note: The company that rounds out the top 20, Arthur Andersen, is now defunct.
Source: Capital IQ, based on Securities and Exchange Commission public filing data

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Training the Top at GE

General Electric’s leadership training alumni include the CEOs of 26 of the largest companies in the United States. GE does not use an ROI metric to evaluate its leadership development programs, but the market does. A Harvard Business School study of 20 GE-trained executives poached by other companies between 1989 and 2001 found that 17 produced an instant spike in the hiring company’s stock price, with an average gain of $1.1 billion across the group.


“We don’t want to lose people and we work hard to provide them with opportunities,” says Jeffrey Bucklew, the company’s manager of executive development. “Compared with other companies, we are extraordinarily open about those opportunities, and if their ambitions outstrip what we can provide, we are honest about that. When we lose big names, there is some little upside in being able to increase talent attraction and draw in the best candidates. It helps our reputation as a great place to build a career.”


Although GE’s best practices for leadership development are widely studied and emulated by other companies, the results are rarely duplicated. “The gap between GE and other companies in leadership development lies in an operating system that is wide across the organization and deeply rooted, and in the commitment of top leadership,” Bucklew says. CEO Jeffrey Immelt spends 30 percent of his time on leadership development. HR owns the global learning organization, including the entire leadership development curriculum.


GE runs with 197 corporate officers worldwide who lead the large revenue-generating businesses or critical functional groups. Most of these have spent at least 12 months in training and professional development. In 2006, GE launched its Leadership, Innovation and Growth course for senior business leaders worldwide.


Participants are selected through the annual “Session C” process, a leadership analysis that includes a specialized performance review. Human resources owns the Session C agenda, but the business leaders control and conduct the actual reviews.


“Immelt, senior vice president for HR John Lynch and vice president and head of executive development Susan Peters basically spend all of April visiting the 20 businesses in GE doing Session C, and then they do videoconference follow-ups,” Bucklew explains.


The top 197 executives move through three cornerstone courses lasting two to three weeks each and progressing through three levels. For the third course, Immelt chooses the topic. “Last year, it was the regulatory environment, so this was an action-focused course on how we can do better in working with the regulatory agencies and other related issues.” Bucklew says.


An additional course is a weeklong training program for intact leadership teams of 15 to 20 people. The course focuses on marketing, leadership, segmentation and innovation. “We use an outside speaker—usually a top expert from one of the top business schools—and an inside speaker,” Bucklew reports. “At the end of the training, the team submits a report to Immelt about what the team learned and what they plan to do to implement that learning.”


With half of its revenues and employees outside the U.S., GE is now focusing on leadership development abroad. A team from Crotonville, GE’s corporate training facility in New York, is permanently based in China to serve Asia, and another team is based in Europe.


Workforce Management, June 9, 2008, p. 23 — Subscribe Now!