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Strike Forces GM to Idle Detroit Assembly Plant

The UAW strike at American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. that has halted light-truck production at General Motors will push the automaker to close its first car assembly plant and possibly another.


GM confirmed Friday, March 28, that it will shut its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, which builds the Cadillac DTS and Buick Lucerne sedans.


“GM informed employees at Detroit-Hamtramck that production will be idled following Friday’s production,” GM spokesman Dan Flores wrote in an e-mail to Automotive News. “So effective Monday, March 31st, [the plant] will be down.”


GM also may stop building the Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5 in Lordstown, Ohio, by April 4 because of a shortage of a brake parts made by American Axle, the Associated Press reported Thursday, March 27.


GM would not discuss future production at Lordstown.


“Lordstown is running regular production,” Flores said in the e-mail Friday.


GM had a 53 days’ supply of Chevrolet Cobalts and a 110 days’ supply of Pontiac G5 cars as of March 1. Buick Lucerne inventories were at 100 days’ supply and the Cadillac DTS at 59 days’ supply.

Erich Merkle, an automotive analyst with IRN Inc. in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said a shutdown of the plants would be unlikely to force GM’s hand in the monthlong American Axle strike.


“It’s a little bit of an ‘ouch,’ but it’s certainly something that’s survivable,” Merkle said. “GM could still probably afford to stand on the sidelines a little while longer.”


He said that supplies of the affected vehicles were largely in good shape, excluding the Cobalt, and that the big concern for GM is still its pickups and SUVs. Merkle said GM makes much higher profits on the sale of trucks and SUVs, but many remain on dealership lots.


GM truck inventories were equivalent to 106 days’ supply as of March 1.


The 3,650-worker strike at American Axle, which began February 26, has forced seven GM light-truck assembly plants to close, along with 22 parts operations in North America. Several suppliers also have slowed or idled plants that supply GM.


No progress has been reported in talks between the UAW and American Axle, which is demanding deep cuts in pay and benefits to remain competitive with other driveline parts makers.


GM depends on axles from the Detroit supplier for nearly all of its domestic light trucks.


Filed by Ryan Beene of Automotive News, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

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Health Agencies Grapple With Labor Shortage

An outbreak of food poisoning or West Nile virus draws attention to public health agencies. After the emergency passes, they tend to fade into the background as they conduct low-profile work like improving maternal and infant care.


Such anonymity causes a problem when the organizations try to replace their nurses, epidemiologists and laboratory technicians. Those roles fail to spark the imagination of college students and other potential workers—even while demand for health services rises because of worries about pandemic viruses and bioterrorism.


“We are facing a crisis in our public health workforce,” says Michelle Gourdine, former deputy secretary for public health services in Maryland.


Nearly half of the 500,000 people who work in public health nationwide will be eligible to retire over the next five years, according to the Center for State and Local Government Excellence in Washington. Health departments are reporting that 20 percent of their jobs are unfilled and the turnover rate is 14 percent.


Low salaries and competition from private-sector labs and hospitals deplete the potential labor pool. So does the lack of creative marketing by health agencies.


“It’s exciting work; it’s challenging,” says Patrick Libbey, executive director of the National Association of County & City Health Officials. “It’s often invisible, we hope, because it’s often successful. We in public health don’t know how to sell it.”

This lack of interest endures despite the increased emphasis on the field following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.


“If you could spell epidemiologist, you could be one,” Libbey says.


Some states have implemented programs to help increase the number of people who are entering the field, according to Jim Pearsol, chief program officer for public health performance at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.


Alabama has set up a partnership with public health schools at state universities. Colorado has established mentoring programs and tries to rehire retirees. In Indiana, medical residents go through a rotation in a public health department, and doctoral candidates can complete their dissertations after being hired.


On the federal level, Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska, have introduced a bill that would fund scholarships and loan repayment assistance for students seeking a public health job. It also would provide midcareer training for people in the field.


During the last week of February, a House companion measure was introduced for the first time by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-California.


That breakthrough notwithstanding, generating momentum for legislation can be difficult.


“We’re working against a philosophy that the market will take care of workforce shortages,” says Donna Brown, government affairs counsel at the health officials association.


With declining tax revenue caused by the economic downturn, there’s also an attitude at the federal level that state and local governments must do more.


“That’s not a realistic expectation,” Brown says, because they are under their own fiscal pressure.


Operating effectively in those conditions has created another problem for public health agencies.


“We are able to do a lot with limited resources,” Gourdine says. “That may be our Achilles heel.”


—Mark Schoeff Jr.


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Samsung Sells New Product Ongoing Employee Development

Samsung Electronics North America is on a new journey. Although well established as a global organization, it wasn’t until 2007 that Samsung established a full-time training function for its 10,000 employees in North America.


    “We’re really just starting to look at things like providing learning opportunities to employees at all levels, not just high-potential leaders,” says Randy Mase, director of training and development for Samsung Electronics, a North American subsidiary of Seoul, South Korea-based Samsung Group.


    The company is making up for lost time. Samsung is increasing its reliance on e-learning to buttress instructor-led classes. And possibly by the end of 2008, the company plans to issue career maps to all employees.


    “As you can imagine, that’s an extensive project. But we think it’s going to give people a vision [for career growth] that will help us with retention—and in the long term, with recruiting as well,” Mase says.


    These road maps will spell out the knowledge, skills and experiences employees would need to pursue different assignments at any of Samsung Electronics’ eight North American subsidiaries. But employees who continually develop their skills won’t necessarily be in line for promotion.


    “There are lots of ways a person can progress and develop within a job. What we want to do is make people’s jobs richer,” Mase says.

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High Court Lets EEOC Retiree Health Care Rule Stand

As expected, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, March 24, declined to review a federal appeals court ruling that effectively upholds employers’ ability to reduce health care benefits when retirees become eligible for Medicare, putting an end to nearly eight years of litigation and uncertainty.


In a unanimous ruling in June 2007, a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had the authority to implement a rule to exempt retiree health plans from the Age Discrimination in Employment Act when those plans reduce benefits for retired workers after they become eligible for Medicare.


The EEOC proposed the rule in 2003 as a way of counteracting a decision by the 3rd Circuit three years earlier that found the plans were subject to ADEA. That decision, known as the “Erie County” case, exposed employers to age discrimination lawsuits if they cut retiree health care plan benefits when retirees reached age 65.


“Erie County” is a reference to the Pennsylvania County that was sued by older retirees over the design of its health care plan.


The practical effect of the EEOC rule, which the agency finalized last year, is that employers can provide a two-tier system of retiree heath care coverage, with younger retirees receiving richer benefits than Medicare-eligible retirees.


The EEOC feared that without such a rule, employers would equalize retiree health care benefits by reducing younger retirees’ benefits to the level provided to older retirees, or eliminate retiree benefits altogether.


But AARP had asked the Supreme Court to review the 3rd Circuit ruling upholding the EEOC’s right to issue the ADEA retiree health care plan exemption rule.


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



 

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On-Site Care Motivated by Productivity, Cost Issues

Among companies that have set up on-site health care clinics, the most common motivation was a desire to improve worker productivity, a survey shows.


The survey, released March 19 by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, compared the use of such facilities by early and recent adopters, with early adopters defined as those companies that set up clinics before 2000.


Researchers found that, among both recent and early adopters, 67 percent were motivated by an interest in enhancing the productivity of their workers. In addition, reducing medical costs is a growing priority, cited by 70 percent of recent adopters but only 49 percent of early adopters.


Other factors included improving access to care—44 percent of recent adopters and 33 percent of early adopters—and improving quality of care, which was cited by 30 percent of recent adopters and 12 percent of early adopters.


The survey results are based on responses from 84 human resources and health benefits managers at organizations that have at least 1,000 employees and operate on-site health care centers.


Immunizations, screenings and urgent care treatment are the most common services offered by on-site health clinics: 81 percent of recent adopters and 91 percent of early adopters offer immunizations; 78 percent of recent adopters and 88 percent of early adopters offer screenings; and 63 percent of recent adopters and 75 percent of early adopters offer urgent care.


There were disparities in other areas, however. Of the long-established clinics, 44 percent offer physical therapy and 46 percent offer mental health or employee assistance program counseling, while among recent adopters, those percentages drop to 22 percent and 15 percent, respectively. But 44 percent of recent adopters offer pharmacy benefits, compared with 23 percent of early adopters.


The study also showed that significant gaps exist in the integration of data between the on-site health center and other health and productivity initiatives. Thirty-nine percent of surveyed companies link their disease management programs with their on-site health centers, and 30 percent link the centers to their nurse lines. Early adopters of on-site clinics, however, are much more likely to integrate their centers with their EAP—65 percent do so—than recent adopters, at 22 percent.


All on-site health clinics surveyed are struggling to measure the return on investment from such clinics: 68 percent of early adopters and 52 percent of recent adopters either don’t measure or don’t know their return on investment.


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

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An Intriguing Development for Workplace Concierge Services

The concierge benefit that Millennium Pharmaceuticals provides to employees rescued Tracy Simpson several years ago, when her husband’s birthday was rapidly approaching. She called the company’s concierge service, Circles, and the Boston-based company swung into gear, searching nationwide for a signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird for Simpson’s spouse, a writer. Circles provided a menu of birthday options ranging from the out-of-reach (a $29,000 first edition) to a more modest—but collectible—35th anniversary edition ($250) from a rare book shop in Portland.

   That’s what Simpson chose, and the signed book was sent directly from the store. Simpson’s spouse was thrilled and so was Simpson, the biopharmaceutical company’s associate director of human resources. More recently, Circles planned the couple’s first kids-free getaway to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary.


   Simpson says that the concierge service, in short, is a boon for recruitment and ongoing retention at Millennium, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It offers our employees a way to simplify their lives.”


   It’s a great story about a company reducing work/life stresses. But do such anecdotes constitute primarily hype, or an intriguing harbinger of tomorrow’s workplace? Just 5 percent of employers offered concierge services in 2007, up from 2 percent in 2003, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual benefits survey.


   Concierge enthusiasts argue that such programs—ranging from errand services to an on-site concierge—are gaining traction and will follow the trajectory of employee assistance programs. Instead of being perceived as a luxury perk, the argument goes, concierge support will increasingly become a workplace prerequisite, particularly when courting younger—and frequently more work/life sensitive—employees.


   One intriguing sign of a possible future for concierge services is that in late 2007, food and facilities management giant Sodexho announced the acquisition of Circles, making the Boston-based company’s concierge services available to Sodexho’s roughly 3,000 U.S. corporate client sites.


   Still, some questions do persist, beginning with quantifying return on investment. If concierge companies wrap holiday gifts for employees or help service their cars, does that really boost on-the-job productivity? Moreover, how do employers justify such an investment in a cooling economy?


   Circles chief executive Kathy Sherbrooke, who has weathered previous economic speed bumps since co-founding the company in 1997, says a financial case can be made, both in the near and long term. “When your workforce gets lean, you need your workforce to do more,” she says. “You need them focused when they are at work. You need them present and not absent.”


   As for the longer-term horizon, Sherbrooke is quick to categorize employers who cut concierge during the dot-com bust as “fly-by-night” companies. “It’s the companies that are really committed to making their employees’ lives work who will be strongest in the end,” she says.


Work/life juggling
    The hunger among employees for better work/life balance is nearly ubiquitous, Sherbrooke says. More employees are telecommuting, she point outs, not because they prefer working in isolation, but rather to recoup personal time by shedding travel time to work. Middle managers, who could once lean on administrative assistants, have found that crutch less available as support services are trimmed back.


   Employees estimate that they spend an average of three hours each week handling personal tasks at work, according to a 2007 survey by OfficeTeam, a Menlo Park, California-based staffing service. A 2006 survey conducted by ComPsych, the employee assistance program provider, also highlighted the strain of juggling work and personal lives: 22 percent of employees described it as their primary source of stress.


   “People are stressed and overworked,” says Cathy Leibow, vice president of Leverage Life, a national concierge and work/life company based in Pleasanton, California. “How many people drive into work and think about the five other non-work items that they have to do that day?”


   Frayed employees also can undercut their own effectiveness, a point reinforced by research published last year in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. In the study, “Fatigue in the U.S. Workforce: Prevalence and Implications for Lost Productive Work Time,” researchers determined that fatigued employees averaged 5.6 hours each week in lost productive time, compared with 3.3 hours among workers who weren’t tired.


   Employers already have taken some steps to invest in more on-site services, according to an annual Hewitt Associates survey of benefits for salaried employees. In 2007, 70 percent of companies offered some type of on-site personal service—from an ATM to dry cleaning to mail services—compared with 65 percent in 2005. “With our clients, there definitely is a trend toward trying to enhance the workplace,” says Carol Sladek, a principal and leader of work/life consulting at Hewitt.


   Even so, when companies tighten their belts, leaders are more likely to demonstrate their commitment to work/life balance with initiatives that don’t require cash on the table, such as flexible scheduling or telecommuting options, rather than investing in programs like concierge services, says Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit research center in New York.


Measuring the ROI
    If employers do make the investment, the two primary payoffs are likely boosted productivity and loyalty, concierge advocates say. According to a 2007 survey conducted by Leverage Life, 68 percent of employees said that concierge support made them more productive at work.


   At Millennium Pharmaceuticals, employees surveyed after using the Circles service reported saving an average of 2.7 hours each time. Still, that time savings wasn’t necessarily all on the job, a point that emerges in interviews with some concierge users.


   Keisha McDonald, a registered nurse and nurse manager for Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, used a concierge company to get her presents wrapped during the holidays last year. After dropping off the gifts with a concierge rep near the front of the hospital, McDonald could proceed along to another busy shift.


   The perk didn’t save work time, but did eke out some downtime at home. “When I have more time to relax and do the things I enjoy, when I come back to work I’m refreshed and rejuvenated,” she says.


   McDonald’s employer, Memorial Healthcare System, signed a nearly $400,000 annual contract with Chicago-based Errand Solutions in 2007 to provide concierge services for the system’s 10,600 employees. Besides gift-wrapping, Errand Solutions assists employees with a myriad of other tasks, including dry cleaning and car washing and detailing.


   Making a case for increased work productivity “might be a stretch,” since it’s difficult to measure whether that particular task would have been done on the job, says Ray Kendrick, the hospital system’s chief human resources officer. But Kendrick is more than happy to spread the word about the hospital system’s quality-of-life perk in order to promote recruitment and retention in the hotly competitive South Florida labor market.


   He adds: “We are big believers that whatever we do to help the employees translates to helping the patients.”


Shopping for a concierge
   Sherbrooke says employers shouldn’t be quick to dismiss the value of recaptured employee time, even if some of it is technically off the clock. Circles’ surveys show that employees save two to three hours on average each time they use the service. Those are vital hours that the employee can spend with the children, working out, or actually snagging a good night’s sleep. All that energy can be pumped back into the job, Sherbrooke says.


   Across a large company, the time savings can quickly accumulate. If a company with 10,000 employees has a usage rate of 40 percent—Sherbrooke says the rate varies, depending upon how aggressively the service is marketed—that’s 4,000 requests in a given year. Multiple 4,000 by 2.5 hours, Sherbrooke’s estimate of time saved, and that’s 10,000 hours saved annually.


   By early 2008, Sodoexho officials had just begun to market the Circles offerings to its corporate clients. A Sodexho spokeswoman declined to specify how many clients had signed up, saying it doesn’t share that kind of data with the public.


   But the concierge support option, the company says, would build on Sodexho’s array of facilities management services, which includes custodial, mail room and reception services, among others. In recent years, corporate clients have been asking for quality-of-life tools to better support their time-pressed employees, says Ronni Schorr, Sodexho’s vice president of brand management.


   Not all concierge services are structured the same way. Some programs labeled concierge services are closer to a telephone-based errand service than a more traditional concierge, which allows face-to-face interactions, says Sara-ann Kasner, founder of the National Concierge Association, based in Minneapolis.


   Kasner recommends that corporate leaders perform due diligence to better understand the concierge provider’s breadth and depth. What types of services would be offered? Does the concierge service specialize in particular areas, such as travel? Is it possible to interact with someone in person or are all the requests handled over the phone or through a Web site?


   Concierge providers also can frequently tailor the menu of services they offer, along with the cost involved. At Millennium Pharmaceuticals, the company’s 1,000 employees don’t pay to tap Circles’ research services, such as to plan a trip or locate a special gift, Simpson says. If they want an errand run, however, a fee would be charged, she says.


   At Memorial Healthcare, employees pay for the retail cost of the service itself, such as the dry cleaning costs, but not the concierge assistance involved. McDonald, the nurse manager, was eager to try out the car servicing option. It would be a productive workday indeed, she says, if she could pick up her spiffed-up car outside the hospital door and return home with sufficient time to regroup and recharge for the next day.

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No Added Bucks Most Corporate Boards Not Renegotiating Severance Packages

At a congressional hearing earlier this month, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, railed against, among other things, the severance packages that marquee chief executives have been receiving of late.


Specifically, Waxman criticized the exit packages given to Stanley O’Neal, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, and Charles Prince, the departed chief of Citigroup.


“Our nation’s top executives seem to live by a different set of rules,” Waxman said.


But generally, it appears the vast majority of companies are not raising the ante when revisiting a severance package with an outward-bound chief executive.


According to a new report from Watson Wyatt, 54 of the 70 companies studied by the consulting firm, or 77 percent, did not provide their exiting CEOs with any termination payments beyond what was disclosed to shareholders in their 2007 proxies.


Watson Wyatt examined 8-K filings for outgoing CEOs between April and December 2007 and cross-checked with the proxies their companies filed in early 2007 to make the determination, noted Ira Kay, the firm’s global director of compensation consulting.


“The SEC required disclosure of potential termination payments for the first time last year, and an overwhelming majority of companies stuck to their proxies,” Kay said. “If companies want to be able to defend large cash and stock incentives to their CEOs, they need to be delivering on these peripheral compensation promises.”


Of the 23 percent of companies that did deviate from their proxies, Kay said some ended up offering CEOs longer non-compete agreements, while others made ad hoc payments to CEOs for “unspecified transition services.” Watson Wyatt found these companies increased compensation for their CEOs at termination by roughly $600,000.


Severance packages have become a hot topic of late.


In addition to Waxman’s hearings, some shareholder groups have complained bitterly about generous packages awarded to CEOs at companies that have performed poorly.


An increase in CEO turnover has also placed a spotlight on the topic. According to consulting firm Liberum, CEO turnover in the first two-and-a-half months of this year is up 22 percent over the same period last year.


Meanwhile, CFO turnover is only up 2 percent so far this year, Liberum found.


Filed by Mark Bruno of Financial Week, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

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DHS Announces New Rule Prohibiting Multiple H-1B Applications

Companies seeking visas for highly skilled immigrants will be restricted to one application for each job candidate, according to a new federal regulation.


U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Wednesday, March 19, that it would prohibit employers from filing multiple H-1B visa applications for the same employee.


The immigration service, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, will deny multiple petitions for the same candidate and not refund filing fees. It will allow a parent company and its subsidiary to make an application for the same worker for different positions.


The rule will go into effect as soon as it is published in the Federal Register—perhaps this week.


The visas, which allow immigrants with the equivalent of a U.S. bachelor’s degree to work in the country, are coveted by technology companies. 


Last year, the 65,000 H-1B cap was exceeded on April 2, the first day that applications were accepted for fiscal year 2008. This year, the cap is likely to be reached on or shortly after the April 1 deadline.


If that happens, the immigration service will allocate H-1B visas through a lottery system, just as it did last year. The first 20,000 H-1B workers who have a master’s degree from a U.S. university are exempt from the H-1B cap.


Each year, technology firms chafe at the hiring limits placed on highly skilled foreign nationals. They argue that there are not enough U.S. workers to fill open positions. They also say that the United States should retain foreign science and engineering students who matriculate at U.S. colleges and universities.


Critics of the visas say that they rob U.S. citizens of jobs and allow companies to depress high-tech wages by hiring foreign workers.


In congressional testimony last week, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates warned that if H-1B caps are not increased, the U.S. will lose its technology edge.


“American companies simply will not have the talent they need to innovate and compete,” he said.


Companies are becoming discouraged by the H-1B logjam, according to Bob Meltzer, CEO of Visanow, a firm that provides automated immigration services. Meltzer said the number of Visanow clients has risen by about 40 percent since last year, but the number of H-1B applications they’re filing has gone up only 15 percent.


Companies are put off when they lose out in the H-B process.


“It’s a big cost in terms of money, resources and energy,” Meltzer said. “A couple [companies] are saying, ‘Heck no, we’re not going to do that. We lost a lot of money last year.’ ”


Gates’ testimony spurred action on Capitol Hill to change H-1B policy. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, introduced a bill that would raise the cap to 130,000 for fiscal year 2009 and later to 180,000. It also would eliminate the 20,000 cap on H-1B visas for immigrants with master’s degrees.


Reps. Patrick Kennedy, D-Rhode Island, and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, have introduced a measure that would make it easier for foreign nationals who have earned a doctorate from a U.S. university to gain U.S. residency.


Congressional skeptics of H-1B visas also have offered legislation. A bill written by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, would require all companies applying for H-1B visas to certify that they have tried to hire U.S. workers first.


Their bill would mandate that employers pay a prevailing wage and prohibit them from outsourcing H-1B employees to other companies. It also would strengthen Department of Labor enforcement.


Grassley and Durbin have released an analysis that shows the three biggest users of H-1B visas in fiscal year 2007 were Indian companies—Tata Technologies, Wipro and Satyam Computer Services.


Immigration legislation may not be viable on Capitol Hill. The atmosphere for the issue is volatile and brittle following the collapse of a broad Senate bill last year that would have strengthened border and work-site enforcement while creating a path toward residency for the approximately 12 million undocumented workers in the country.


—Mark Schoeff Jr.


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Toyota Embraces E-learning—and Change

In 2004, Toyota Motor Europe was in a quandary. It was releasing an increasing number of new vehicle models each year, each with long lists of environmentally friendly technologies and other manufacturing selling points, and the amount of training necessary for its sales, marketing and engineering teams also was surging. Toyota’s sales and marketing organizations in countries across Europe needed quick, easy access to product training before new models were released to the public. But Toyota Motor Europe had no centralized way to deliver that content.

Brussels, Belgium-based Toyota Motor Europe combines three prior Toyota entities on the continent and is responsible for the company’s marketing, sales, manufacturing, and research and development there. It works with 29 independently held national sales and marketing companies based in 48 countries scattered across Europe. At the time, each company had its own system for collecting and disseminating new product information.


According to Sann René Glaza, Toyota Motor Europe’s senior manager for the Learning Technologies Group, some of the more established national marketing and sales companies had their own e-learning or classroom-based systems and fully staffed training departments, while others, particularly those in emerging markets, had little or no formal training in place. Adding further complications was the fact that product and training materials had to be translated into 30 different languages to meet all of their needs.


“Every country launched new products in their own way, with their own training and sales events, which was not cost-effective,” Glaza says. “It was imperative that we develop an entirely new network to get the same product information out to all of the local sales and marketing companies.”


To manage the flow of information and streamline the education process, Toyota Motor Europe implemented a centralized learning management system developed by Certpoint Systems, a global learning management software solution provider headquartered in Roslyn Heights, New York, with offices in Belgium. The new system, branded Toyota Connect, includes access to frequently updated e-learning modules, content management tools, online registration, assessment tracking and an integrated user-friendly authoring tool to develop unique regional content.


“We really wanted to make this something that the marketing and sales companies could manage on their own,” Glaza says of the new system. “We have a grand total of four people in training and support [at Toyota Motor Europe headquarters]. It was important for us to be able to concentrate on refining the curriculum.”


Road show
    The greatest challenge in developing the learning system for Toyota Motor Europe was that it had to be both centralized and decentralized, says Kenneth Fung, senior vice president for Certpoint. “Each sales and marketing group was autonomous with different maturity levels, staff size and languages, but they all needed access to the same global content.”


Each national marketing and sales company would also have to pay for access to the new system—and participation was not mandatory.


Going into the project, Glaza knew it would be a hard sell. “I’ve found, as a program manager, that getting people to embrace e-learning is much more about change management,” she says. “It’s bigger than making people to use the system; it’s about changing the way they think about getting information.”


Toyota Motor Europe began to introduce the system in early 2005, and to ease into the change, Glaza went out on the road with her IT people and representatives from CertPoint to educate executives, managers and training managers about Toyota Connect and the value it would bring to their businesses. “We demoed the system and showed them the time and cost savings,” she says. At the end of the presentation, Glaza’s team asked for letters of commitment from the national marketing and sales companies.


“It was a difficult process,” notes Fung, who was a member of the road show. “They had to see the value of the system and it took a while to convince people.”


As part of the lure, Toyota Motor Europe gave all of its national marketing and sales companies access to a “light” version of Toyota Connect, so that they could try out the e-learning content. Once they bought in fully, they could take advantage of all the courses and assessments, as well as the tracking, notification, learning management and authoring tools. At that point, the marketing and sales companies could decide which functionalities to use, how they wanted to track assessments and which courses they would make mandatory for personnel.


Key members of each country’s training staff were also brought into headquarters for a three-day training session on how to use the system and the authoring tools.


“It was all part of the change management process,” Fung says. “The change management is almost as important as the technological pieces, because if you are not able to get buy-in and convince people to change their behavior and attitude about learning, what’s the point?”


By the end of the road show, 26 markets had signed up, Fung says. “That’s incredible for a non-mandatory tool that they have to pay for.”


Leveling the playing field
    Today, through Toyota Connect, Toyota Motor Europe’s central training office develops core content that is disseminated to all of the regional offices, where the course material is translated and tweaked for local users by regional training personnel. Each national marketing and sales company has its own domain and the ability to localize its content. But the core content is the same across Europe.


“In this way, they all receive the same training to ensure the message we are giving our retailers is consistent in quality,” Glaza says. “It really does help to maintain our brand image. Even if they make some minor tweaks and changes to localize the material, we can still maintain control of the message.”


The translation tools in the system have also delivered valuable benefits to local dealers. Before the e-learning system, it took the national marketing and sales organizations 10 weeks to translate course content and new product information from headquarters, which meant training materials often weren’t ready until well after a new model hit the market. With the Toyota Connect templates and tools, the translations can be completed in several days. “That means they are getting product knowledge to sales people 90 percent faster,” Fung says.


Early success
    Many of the national marketing and sales companies saw early success with the new system, particularly those in France, who have been the greatest champions of the system, Glaza says. They participated in an early pilot program, measured results and shared their numbers with the rest of the organization.


Their measures of success include the reduction of a four-day classroom training course to two days, replacing the two days of instruction with e-learning modules. The marketing and sales companies estimate each day an employee spends in off-site training is the equivalent of €1,000 billable time, and there are 12 to 20 participants in each session. “That savings adds up quickly,” Fung says.


The dealers in France have also seen a 90 percent reduction in administration time for training because employees sign up directly for courses online and receive automated confirmations and notifications of courses, eliminating the need for the training department to handle course management.


“Toyota France was able to show significant numbers in terms of time and administrative savings,” Glaza says. “That helped us generate a lot of excitement.”


Even more impressive were the success stories coming out of emerging markets. Romania in particular saw great results among early adopters, and used those early successes to persuade skeptical managers to more fully embrace the system.


Camelia Strete, training manager for Toyota Romania, says that prior to 2006, her group offered only classroom training and had no tools or system for self-study. When Toyota Connect was launched, she attended the three-day training and was so excited that she went back to Romania and delivered a presentation on the new system at a dealer conference, showcasing its benefits and educating managers on the technology they would need to invest in—including computers and office space—to give employees access to the new content.


Unfortunately, her enthusiasm for e-learning wasn’t contagious. “They didn’t say it out loud, but a lot of managers were reluctant,” she says. Most of the dealers agreed to implement the system, which launched in February 2006 in Romania, but their usage of the e-learning modules varied significantly.


To prove the system’s value, Strete spent the next year collecting information about usage and impact among local dealers. In December 2007, she went out on a road show of her own with a graph that she was certain would change the minds of those reluctant dealers.


The graph ranked dealers in order of the amount of time their employees spent online, and compared it with the same list of dealers in order of sales rankings.


“The two rankings were extremely close,” Strete says. Her data showed that those national marketing and sales companies that spent the most hours training had the highest sales. “It was very realistic for them. It showed the direct link between training and sales results.”


That presentation won over the managers, whom Strete relies on to foster a work environment that places value on learning.


“So much of e-learning is about management’s attitude,” she says. “If managers encourage people to use the training and reward them for it, the whole team will do it. That’s when you see results.”

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HR Leader Libby Sartain Leaving Yahoo as Web Giant Feels Heat from Microsoft’s Merger Bid

Libby Sartain, the head of HR at troubled Internet company Yahoo, plans to resign at the end of the month.


Sartain, among the highest-profile human resources leaders in the nation, said her decision to step down after roughly seven years at Yahoo was not prompted by pressures on the job but fulfills a long-discussed plan to spend time on her Texas ranch.


The 53-year-old intends to take off the rest of 2008 and then consider other options including non-profit work.


“My work is done here,” Sartain told Workforce Management in an interview Tuesday, March 18. “I’m just taking a little bit of a break.”


Sartain says she will be replaced as “chief people Yahoo” by David Windley, who has served as a Yahoo vice president of HR.



Yahoo, a pioneer on the Internet, has weathered tough times over the past year, including slumping profits. It reportedly has laid off more than 1,000 employees this year. And the company recently was targeted by Microsoft in an unsolicited takeover bid.



Sartain came to Yahoo in 2001 after serving as head of HR at Southwest Airlines.

She served as chair of the Society for Human Resource Management in 2001 and has co-written two books: HR From the Heart: Inspiring Stories and Strategies for Building the People Side of Great Business and Brand From the Inside: Eight Essentials to Emotionally Connect Your Employees to Your Business.



Under her watch, Yahoo was named one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in America in 2006, 2007 and 2008.



Sartain also has come under criticism. Kara Swisher, a tech columnist for The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital Web site, wrote last year that “Sartain does attract an unusual amount of ire from some in the company for not being as supportive as one might hope.”



Sartain said Tuesday that she was not worried about popularity, but results. “I didn’t feel any pressure to leave,” she said.



Sartain said she has talked about leaving the Internet company for some time, but firmed up plans last fall as the company began a restructuring effort. She said it was clear that the effort, led by co-founder Jerry Yang, would last three or four years.



Recognizing that she wouldn’t be there for the entire project, she told Yang she’d leave in about six months. Sartain came up with the end-of-March departure date in January, she says.



She says her proudest accomplishments at Yahoo include shepherding the firm’s rapid growth in personnel, from some 3,000 employees when she arrived to 14,300 at the end of 2007, even as Yahoo competed for talent against the likes of Google.



After a 30-year career in HR, she’s planning to relax on a ranch outside of Austin that once was occupied by her great-great-great-grandfather.


“I want to take some time off and watch my cows graze,” she says.


—Ed Frauenheim