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Dear Workforce How Do We Evaluate Whether Our Mentors Have Benefited From Training?

Dear Clueless:



Measuring the effectiveness of mentor programs is always challenging. Even if you philosophically agree that mentor programs are a valuable way to develop and retain talent, the question will arise about assessing your return on investment from the program. In establishing a mentor program, it’s important to focus on the following questions prior to establishing success metrics:

■ Who is eligible to participate in the program? Is it restricted to high potentials or managers at a certain level in the organization?
■ What is the overall objective of the program? Is it focused on employee assimilation, development, retention or some other combination of objectives?
■ What type of people should be mentors to others? What specific attributes or skills should they have?
■ How formal versus informal should your mentoring program be?
■ How frequently should the organization measure the effectiveness of the program?

Investing in training for mentors is an important aspect of a successful program. Measuring the impact and effectiveness of mentors can be accomplished in a variety of ways including:

1. Gathering feedback from those being mentored. Do they feel their mentor is helpful in building skills, capabilities and insights that help them be more effective on a daily basis?

2. Measuring performance improvements of those being mentored:
a. Improvement in performance management ratings (year-over-year competency development and business results achievement).
b. Improvement in retention levels of high performers and others that received mentoring.
c. Measurement of the success of mentored individuals upon advancing to new roles with greater responsibility.

In assessing the effectiveness of a mentoring program, it’s critical to go beyond asking for feedback from those who receive mentoring. This feedback is important but needs to be augmented by the types of analysis suggested above. The specific metrics that each organization puts in place should tie back to the stated objectives of the mentor program.

SOURCE: Garrett J. Sheridan, managing partner, Axiom Consulting Partners, Chicago, October 5, 2007.

LEARN MORE: Please read Mentoring Matters to learn how and why more organizations are pairing seasoned employees with promising high potentials.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.


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Cigna Could Set Trend with Doctor Ranking Deal

Cigna Healthcare’s agreement with the New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office to revamp its doctor ranking program may become the standard for similar programs at other health insurers.


The agreement, which was revealed last week, came three months after Cuomo launched an investigation into health insurers’ doctor ranking programs, concerned that the programs might steer members to physicians based on price rather than quality.


Under the agreement, Bloomfield, Connecticut-based Cigna will ensure that its rankings include established national standards to measure quality in addition to cost, and to disclose to consumers and physicians how the rankings are determined, breaking them down by cost, quality and when a combined score is given, what proportion is based on cost vs. quality. The insurer also agreed to submit to outside oversight (see terms of the agreement below).


Although a deadline for publishing the new doctor rankings was not set, Cigna officials said they expect to have something available by early 2009. In the meantime, current rankings, which Cigna asserts “always included both quality and cost” factors, will continue to be made available to plan members until the new rankings become available, a spokeswoman says.


The new ranking system will apply to the 12,247 New York doctors in Cigna Care Network, a so-called high-performance network that is also available in 27 other states.


Although Cigna officials did not say whether the new ranking system would be applied in those other states, Dr. Jeffrey Kang, senior VP and chief medical officer for Cigna Healthcare, says the insurer is continuing to work with the attorney general’s office to establish “a national model for the entire health insurance industry.”


The agreement was reached with input from the Medical Society of the State of New York; the American Medical Assn.; and the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project, a group of consumer, labor and employer organizations, including the National Business Group on Health.


The ranking programs investigated by Cuomo’s office over the past several months, in some cases, lower or waive co-payments and/or deductibles for plan members who use the providers they have identified as being more cost-effective or higher quality.


“Our members believe that quality trumps cost and that good quality is more cost-effective,” says Susan Pisano, vice president of strategic communications at America’s Health Insurance Plans, a Washington-based insurance industry trade organization, of which Cigna is a member.


Employers also have been supportive of the high-performance networks because lower premiums are generally charged for plan members who use them.


In addition to Cigna, as part of the investigation, Cuomo’s office sent letters to Aetna Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc., Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield and several other insurers that use physician ranking.


The letter to UnitedHealth prompted the Minnetonka, Minn.-based insurer to hold off implementation of its UnitedHealth Premium Designation in New York until the fourth quarter of 2007. The program is available in 94 other markets across the country.


Although the agreement reached with Cigna does not apply to any of the other insurers being investigated, the attorney general’s office is continuing to negotiate with them with the intention of using the agreement as a template,  Cuomo said when he announced the agreement last week.


“This rating system could serve as a model for the nation—and for other companies,” he says.


Also during the October 29 announcement, Charles Bell, program director for Consumers Union based in Yonkers, New York, says that the agreement “brings the process for evaluating doctors squarely into the sunlight.”


And Dr. Nancy Nielsen, president-elect of the Chicago-based American Medical Assn., says the agreement was “a balanced approach that acknowledges physician ratings have a risk of error and should not be the sole basis for selecting a physician.”


She adds that “the AMA expects this agreement will influence other states to implement careful and independent oversight and evaluation of physician performance measurement projects to assess their integrity and fairness.”


“If the goal is really to improve the care and help patients make informed choices, then we’re all for it. If it’s done in a fair, accurate and transparent way,” Nielsen says.


The other insurers under investigation also commented positively on Cigna’s agreement and said it was consistent with their physician ranking programs.


“The principles of our Premium Designation program are also at the core of this agreement,” says a spokesman from UnitedHealth.


“The outline of the New York attorney general’s agreement with Cigna appears consistent with the general principles of Empire’s transparency efforts,” says a spokeswoman for Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield.


“We welcome working with the New York Attorney General on a similar agreement and to sharing details of our program with a nationally recognized external entity to help make these physician ranking programs the best they can be for consumers,” a spokeswoman for Aetna says.


“The guidelines aren’t far from what many of the plans were already doing,” says Laurel Pickering, executive director of the New York Business Coalition on Health. However, she acknowledges that “the process may not have been transparent, which is definitely what we need.”


She also says that the coalition’s employer members are relieved that an agreement was reached.


“We were concerned that these programs might be in jeopardy,” she says. “We’re guessing that others are going to follow suit. So it’s good all around.”


“It’s new and I think that there are going to be bumps,” said Susan Pisano of America’s Health Insurance Plans. “The business community and consumer community have been advocating for there to be information for consumers, and my sense is that they have wanted to make sure we are moving ahead in this area, but we can’t wait for the perfect system. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”


Terms of the Agreement (click to return to the top of the story)


Under an agreement with the New York attorney general’s office, Cigna Healthcare will:

● Ensure that doctor rankings are not based solely on cost and clearly identify the degree to which any ranking is based on cost.


● Use generally accepted national standards to measure quality, including measures endorsed by the National Quality Forum.


● Employ several measures to foster more accurate physician comparisons, including risk adjustment and valid sampling.


● Disclose to consumers how the program is designed and how doctors are ranked, and provide a process to register complaints about the system.


● Disclose to physicians how rankings are designed and provide a process to appeal incorrect ratings.


● Nominate and pay for a ratings examiner—subject to the approval of the attorney general—to oversee compliance with all aspects of the new ranking model and report to the attorney general’s office every six months. The ratings examiner must be an independent “national standard-setting organization” and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.


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

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Résumés Paper Please

There has been a good deal of discussion recently about the need to transition from paper résumés to video résumés. If you’ve been involved in recruiting for a while, you know the concept of accepting video résumés was also hot during the late 1990s.


    Although leading firms like Hewlett-Packard and Intel experimented with it, the approach died rapidly. Curiously, most of those who now seem to be supporting the switch are not recruiters, but career counselors, academics, and vendors that provide video resume services. Instead of rushing to acceptance, corporations need look at any new technology or idea through the lens of practicality.


    The primary flaw with the concept is that you just can’t get managers or recruiters to view these videos. Their main issue is time. While traditional résumés can be scanned in a minute or so, videos cannot be easily scanned. If each video resume is only five minutes long, for a position with 30 prospects that’s an eternity.


    A second problem is that managers and recruiters are generally resistant to change, and it’s almost impossible to treat video résumés the same way that you would handle traditional ones. For example, using paper résumés, you can highlight certain key items for others to see or even make notes on them for later follow-up investigation, but neither option is possible on video résumés.


    It’s a common practice for those involved in screening to place paper résumés literally side by side on their desk. You can’t instantly compare multiple video résumés in the same easy manner. In short, I have found that managers hate video résumés and simply reject or ignore them.


    A second area of concern involves legal issues. In the U.S., we long ago dropped attaching pictures on résumés for EEOC reasons. But almost by definition, video résumés are pictures of the candidate. As a result, there are numerous possibilities to identify an applicant’s sex, race, disability, age and other characteristics that should not be available to those assessing résumés.


    To make matters worse, some might voluntarily include information that should be excluded from résumés, such as hobbies and religious affiliations. Even the fact that an individual can actually afford to provide a video resume probably tells the firm a lot about the applicant’s economic status.


    Unlike with printed résumés, questionable material cannot be marked over or cut out, and proving that these characteristics were not used in the screening decision would certainly be difficult. In addition, because video résumés are verbal and visual, rejecting individuals on weaknesses in these areas could be problematic if the job itself doesn’t require excellent verbal and visual presentation skills.


    There are certainly technology issues. First, most applicant tracking systems just can’t handle them. Next, some IT systems might actually block them because video files can carry viruses that are difficult to detect. If they are received, not all video résumés will even be viewable because they can be produced in various formats that not all corporations support. Because video résumés would have to be stored as part of record retention requirements, finding a way to economically store these large files would be difficult.


    A final area of concern is assessment. Accurate assessment is difficult because there is no standard format. As a result, the content of video résumés varies widely. To make comparisons even more difficult, only a percentage of applicants will actually utilize the video format, so accurately comparing video résumés with those in the standard resume format will be difficult. If your company gets a significant number of international résumés, the fair assessment issue becomes even more complex. Finally, even though they shouldn’t, bad video production values will likely negatively influence the selection decision. I’ve reviewed many of them, and it’s rare when one actually impresses.


    I’m a big fan of technology, but at this time, the pitfalls of video résumés outweigh the benefits. In this case, 1,000 words are worth more than a (moving) picture.


Workforce Management, October 22, 2007, p. 50 — Subscribe Now!

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Companies Open Up Once-Taboo Talk of Pay Scale

Before Pete Herrera received a job offer from Accenture, he went online to gauge what his peers in the field earn. Among other sites, he visited PayScale.com, a five-year-old compensation information company, where he bought a personalized report.


    As negotiations replaced interviews, Herrera was prepared to show his future employer printouts detailing the market value of the job. But in the end, he felt “very comfortable” with the offer because it fell within the range provided by Web sites, says Herrera, who recently retired after 23 years in the Air Force and who began working as an instructional design manager for Accenture in September. Still, he used the information to help negotiate an earlier performance review in hopes of earning a merit increase.


    For years, as far as many employees were concerned, pay scales were created with secret formulas. Some employers tried so hard to keep workers from comparing pay that handbooks forbade them from discussing it, a practice that landed several employers in court for violating the National Labor Relations Act.


    Now compensation information permeates the Internet, placing data a click away from Herrera or anyone else who has a few minutes for research. The result is that from small businesses to multinational firms, companies are tweaking workforce strategies so highly sought candidates understand their total rewards. They also are training supervisors to turn questions about pay into opportunities to re-recruit workers.


    “Information doesn’t ruin the business,” says Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation for Salary.com, which market-prices 3,500 jobs every month using employer-reported data. “It just levels the playing field and gives everyone an intelligent perspective from which to have a conversation.”


    Kettley Publishing, a 30-employee firm that offers software and Web-based products for professional financial advisors, embraces that idea. “When we’re recruiting employees, when we’ve drilled down to one or two candidates, we explain to them the process we use to arrive at compensation and the process we use in annual evaluations regarding compensation,” says CEO and CFO Ken Kerr, who uses Salary.com to guide his pay scales.


    “I want to be very open about how we make our decisions so they can determine for themselves that we’re treating this matter fairly and openly and objectively,” Kerr says.


    Motorola Inc., meanwhile, has prided itself on being open with its 950,000 employees, but the pay sites have prompted the No. 2 manufacturer of wireless handsets to adjust its practices. Motorola has taken deliberate steps to educate employees about the concept of market pay so they understand both what they find online and Motorola’s compensation philosophy, says Regina Hack, global compensation director.


    Green Mountain Coffee Roasters has gone even further. It sends its new hires through “financial literacy training,” which includes sessions on reading profit-and-loss statements and understanding “you and your pay.” All 940 employees of the Vermont-based company, whose coffee is sold under the Newman’s Own Organics brand and its own label, have attended the training since it began three years ago.


    “Clearly those sites are basing [pay scales] on some kind of survey,” says Kathy Brooks, vice president of human resources and organizational development for the coffee company. “They say it may be a typical benefit package, but what’s a typical benefit package? We’re trying to be careful about educating our employees about what the total compensation is really made of.”


    All employees at Green Mountain Coffee, for example, are eligible for a profit-sharing plan of up to 5 percent of their salaries. They receive up to $500 a year in “wellness reimbursement” for expenses such as joining a health club and are paid to volunteer up to 52 hours with the nonprofit of their choice. When someone cites numbers found online, Brooks wants to make sure they’re “comparing apples to apples.”


    Mike Hayes, vice president of business solutions for PayScale, which uses employee-reported data, says human resource professionals should probe the subject with job candidates or employees who make salary demands based on data found online.


    “The HR manager has to ask all of the questions that the employee will ask them: ‘Where did you get the data?’ ‘What makes up the data?’ ‘What in the data set tells you that you should be earning at this level?’ ” Hayes says.


    And employers should be ready to do something many organizations have never done before: Explain the strategy driving pay for a particular position, whether it’s paying above 50 percent of the market for mission-critical jobs or below 50 percent for less key spots.


    “There is a strategic decision companies have to make in terms of what their pay policy is going to be for various functions within an organization,” says Jim Stoeckmann, practice leader for WorldatWork. “And it is entirely appropriate to share with employees what that pay policy is.”

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Retirement Income Technology Leaves Much to Be Desired

For the most part, the current crop of software programs aimed at helping financial advisors manage their clients’ assets through retirement fall short of their goals, according to a leading technology analyst.


    The distribution phase of retirement is “an entirely different planning scenario than accumulation,” says Robert J. Ellis, a senior analyst at Celent. “It’s a lot more complex and is underserved by the technologies available.”


    Boston-based Celent is putting together a report that assesses the technological tools aimed at retirement income distribution. The report is expected to be released early next year.


    “This is really a calculus process,” Ellis says. “There are so many moving parts that you can’t look at any single technology in a vacuum.”


    To be sure, post-retirement planning isn’t easy.


    For starters, most clients enter retirement with multiple sources of income, including individual retirement accounts, 401(k) retirement plans and Social Security. In addition, advisors must take into account such variable costs as day-to-day expenses, health care and long-term-care insurance.


    “You have to look at health, longevity, living expenses,” Ellis says. “It really comes down to working on budgeting with the client.”


    Helping retirees prepare a workable budget is something that most advisors find particularly vexing, Ellis says.


    “Advisors are not used to having to say, ‘You shouldn’t buy that car or that house or that $250,000 boat,’” he says.


    At least one advisor admitted to being unimpressed with the retirement income software that is out there.


    “What I’ve run into are programs that are too simplistic around taxes, for instance,” says Marc E. Henn, senior vice president at Cincinnati-based Haberer Registered Investment Advisors, which oversees $800 million in assets.


    “I’ve got an overabundance of complex tax rules to deal with,” he says. “Most of the tools available say, ‘Here’s your average tax rate,’ and that’s it.”


    Another frequent complaint among advisors is that such products are little more than thinly veiled sales tools.


    “We’ve found relying on prepackaged products has the potential to make the user a glorified message boy, having little to no understanding of what they’re talking about,” says Howard S. Haber, a certified financial planner and president of Apollo Wealth Management, a fee-only financial planning and investment management firm in Lansdale, Pennsylvania.


    Software makers face the challenge of avoiding making programs that are overly customized.


    “We do handle a lot of tax rules and withdrawal ordering, but at the same time we must walk that fine line to maintain the regulations at the institutional level that have to be adhered to,” says Lisa Burns, a product manager at Boston-based FundQuest, which unveiled its own retirement income planning tool in August.


    Programs intended to capture information about a client’s health status, or future spending plans, can help advisors chart a course for their clients’ retirement.


    Several products are leading the way in that regard, Ellis says.


    SunGard Data Systems Inc. of Wayne, Pennsylvania, for example, recently launched the Retirement Income Simulation Expert.


    Among other things, the program features a tool that allows advisors to work through the subtleties of asset distribution with their clients, Ellis says.


    Another solution is NorthStar 5.0, the latest version of wealth management software available from NorthStar Systems International of San Francisco. Users license software or gain access through the Internet.


    This system is available through many broker-dealers and custodial companies, including BlackRock of New York, Legg Mason of Baltimore, Merrill Lynch & Co. of New York, Schwab Institutional of San Francisco and Wachovia Securities of Richmond, Virginia. Also, Boston’s Fidelity Investments recently launched the Retirement Income Evaluator to a limited number of its advisors. By year-end, the company expects to make the tool available to its more than 100,000 advisors.


    The tool allows advisors to run client data through Monte Carlo simulations to see how their retirement plan will hold up against their post-retirement income needs. OppenheimerFunds of New York is another company that sees value in providing a retirement-income distribution tool to advisors. The OppenheimerFunds Retirement Income Manager has been available since 2005, but version 2.0 was unveiled just last year.


    So far, about 2,000 advisors have used the tool to create 5,000 plans, says Keith Hylind, a vice president with the retirement income group at Oppenheimer.


    “Our tool really focuses on income needs post-retirement, and it is meant for the advisor to use in actively monitoring where the investor is throughout the distribution phase,” he says. “We envision this being an interactive tool, probably reviewed with the client on an annual basis.”


    Another update, which will include additional inputs for sources of income, is slated for release during the first quarter of 2008.


    This story originally appeared in Investment News, a sister publication of Workforce Management.

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On Mixing Family, Business

In her book The House of Mondavi, Julia Flynn-Siler tells the story of how family politics ultimately destroyed the Mondavi Corp. The book, which details how the Mondavi family founded the hugely successful winery of the same name, brought it public and ultimately ended up losing it, serving as a warning to executives in family owned businesses of what to avoid. Flynn-Siler, a writer for The Wall Street Journal, recently spoke to Workforce Management New York bureau chief Jessica Marquez.


Workforce Management: What does the story of the Mondavi family say about the dynamics of running a family business?


Julia Flynn-Siler: The big picture is that mixing family and business can be very challenging. Oftentimes, business decisions get mixed up with emotions. In the Mondavi family, you saw recurring sibling rivalry ending with Robert Mondavi pitting his sons to compete for the CEO position.


WM: What’s the key to making it work?


Flynn-Siler: Early on in my book, one of Mondavi’s advisors tells Robert that he needs to make decisions with his head and not with his heart. That was in the late 1970s and Robert wanted both of his sons to be part of the business. I think the lesson is that if you have outside advisors telling you that your son is not the right person to run the business, then it’s probably wise to listen to them. Robert had some of the best advisors that money could buy, but in the end, he didn’t listen to them.


WM: The House of Mondavi demonstrates how difficult it is to plan for a successor to the CEO in a family-operated business. How can this be done without family politics and emotion getting in the way?


Flynn-Siler: One pattern that I have seen is that many families give the job of managing the succession planning process and the final decision to an outsider. So instead of Dad making the decision, he hands that out to someone who is neutral. This could be a consultant or it could be someone on the board of directors.


WM: Are there advantages to running a family-owned business? Or is disaster inevitable?


Flynn-Siler: The ultimate value of the Mondavi Corp. is a positive testament to families working together. In the beginning it was Robert and his son Michael, and they worked really hard and well together. Even though it ended so sadly, the business did very well.


WM: What processes can family-run businesses put in place to make sure that emotion doesn’t get in the way of the company’s success?


Flynn-Siler: One pattern that I saw with the Mondavi Corp. was that often family members played by different rules than the rest of the employees. For example, there was a rule they put in place that employees couldn’t date each other. But then Robert Mondavi had a long-standing relationship with an employee and Timothy had an affair while he was married with an employee. But then a vineyard manager had an affair with his secretary and she ended up getting fired. That’s a double standard and it caused problems for the company.


Workforce Management, October 8, 2007, p. 8 — Subscribe Now!

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As the Table Turns How to Maintain the Upper Hand When Conducting a Workplace Investigation

One of the most critical aspects of any investigation into workplace misconduct is the demeanor of the interviewer, who must always appear composed, confident and in control as he or she sets out on a mission to uncover the facts.

    But what happens if the interviewee, be it the complainant, a witness or the accused, turns the table on you, the interviewer, by asking a relatively simple and straightforward question? Don’t allow yourself to appear nervous and unprepared, or worse yet, flustered and confused. As the saying goes, “Forewarned is forearmed.” Having a brief reply in your back pocket will allow you to assuage any of the interviewee’s concerns while maintaining a level of control that is crucial to the fact-finding process.


    The following are some fairly common questions, along with suggested responses, that can help you better prepare to conduct just such an interview.


    1. “Who is going to find out about this? Will everything I tell you remain confidential?”


    Assure the interviewee that you will treat all information conveyed to you with the utmost sensitivity. While you understand the interviewee’s concerns, you cannot promise complete confidentiality. But you will attempt to keep the number of people involved with the situation to an absolute minimum.


    In addition, be sure to remind the interviewee of the responsibility to not discuss the situation with others during the course of the investigation. Water cooler and lunchroom chitchat encourages rumors, gossip and “telephone game” miscommunications that ultimately can affect the impartiality of the investigation and may subject the interviewee to corrective action.


    2. “What is going to happen to me?”


    The typical response to this question usually goes along these lines: “The purpose of this investigation is to determine and to understand exactly what has occurred. My primary focus is to conduct a fair and complete fact-finding process. I need you to focus on answering my questions candidly and honestly. I can’t reach any conclusion on my own and it would be premature for either of us to focus on the outcome at this point.”


    Your role is to get the interviewee focused on today’s interview. When you answer this question in this way, you usually provide enough of a response to move forward.


    3. “Can I tape record this interview?”


    As interviewer, you are under no obligation to allow the interview to be taped—and in fact, this practice should be firmly discouraged whenever possible.


    Even the most adept interviewer can say something that later can be misconstrued or taken out of context, and that is risky business when the comments are played for a jury during litigation. You should know whether a company policy exists that may preclude tape recording in the workplace. This provides an easy out for you, allowing you to say, “Sorry, but company policy specifically forbids tape recording.”


    If the company does not have such a policy, and you decide to allow the taping to occur, insist that you receive a copy of the tape and a transcript of the session as a condition for proceeding with the recording.


    In addition, state laws that govern tape recording in instances such as this may apply. Check with an employment lawyer to ensure that you are within applicable state guidelines in regard to tape recording in this situation.


    If you suspect any covert recording of the session, ask the interviewee if he or she is using a recording device. If the answer is “no,” be sure to document it in your notes. Should a tape later be introduced into evidence, you can certainly compromise the interviewee’s integrity by relating the lie told to you when you asked about recording the interview.


    4. “Why are you taking notes? Can I have a copy?”


    It’s best to answer this one before the interview actually begins. Explain that you have been given the task of fact-finding for the investigation, and that taking notes will assist you with recalling the more important details of the interview.


    As to providing a copy of your notes, it’s usually sufficient to simply say, “No, I do not provide copies to preserve the confidentiality of our discussion.”


    5. “Can I have another person (perhaps my lawyer) with me during the interview?”


    Explain that this fact-finding interview is much the same as any other workplace matter. As such, and because of the confidential nature of the investigation, it is inappropriate to have another person sit in on the interview, just as it would be inappropriate to have someone else sit in on a performance appraisal.


    If the interviewee insists on having an attorney present, disallowing it may be construed as an unreasonable response if you are later taken to court on the issue. Make it perfectly clear, however, that the attorney will not be given any opportunity to speak or to ask questions during the interview. Be sure to document it if the attorney does interfere.


   One exception: If the employee is a member of a collective bargaining unit, a union representative may have the right to be present, if set forth in any contract terms or conditions.


    As the interviewer, you must remain in control of this discussion in order to uncover the facts. Do not allow the interviewee to ruffle your feathers. You need to project confidence and authority to be able to clearly determine the circumstances involved in any accusation of misconduct.

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Open Enrollment 7 Strategies for Success

Open enrollment season is becoming busier and more complex. There’s a growing array of options to present, legally required notices to distribute and, often, bad news to bear about increasing costs to employees.

Even so, it’s a precious opportunity to showcase for workers how well the company is taking care of them, according to benefits and health care experts. And it’s an opportune time not only to educate workers about how to choose coverage wisely, but also to be sure they know doing so can preserve their health and perhaps save them (and the company) money.

Here are seven strategies that employers should consider for open enrollment season—either for your upcoming session, if that is still in the planning stages, still have time, or certainly for fall 2008:

Expand your views of the open enrollment goals. “During open enrollment, most employers focus on workers choosing health plans,” says Lenny Sanicola, benefits practice leader for WorldatWork, based in Scottsdale, Arizona. The organization focuses on total rewards, compensation, benefits and work/life issues.

It can be much more than just a time to make sure everyone has chosen a PPO, HMO or high-deductible plan.

“Don’t miss the opportunity to highlight dental insurance, pet insurance, life insurance, your retirement plan,” Sanicola says, “even though no decisions [may] need to be made in those areas.” Laying out “the big picture,” he says, can help get the message across to employees that the benefits package the organization offers is a good one. This is especially true, he says, if a company has had to increase the employees’ cost share for health insurance. Pointing out all the other benefits can ease the sting and make it easier for workers to look at the pluses, not just the increased costs, Sanicola says.

Rethink the big meeting. Open enrollment also provides an opportunity to explain how health care works and to help workers understand what is behind the numbers, Sanicola says. Don’t assume that one big group meeting will do it, say Sanicola and another expert, David Stefan, executive director of healthcare for J.D. Power and Associates in Phoenix, which has recently begun rating health plans.

Instead, use a variety of methods to educate employees, taking into account workers’ different learning styles. “Some learn best by hearing things, some in writing, some need to see it in pictures,” Stefan says. Some need one-on-one interaction rather than, or in addition to, a group setting. “People are often embarrassed to ask basic questions if they think everyone else understands,” Stefan says. “The company doing an effective job is going to cover all those bases with their employees.”

That might mean conducting a meeting, posting online or sending out in other ways such tools as a glossary of health care terms, opportunities for a one-on-one question-and-answer session with an HR person, a telephone hot line, or all these options.

Cover the basics—and then some. Many employers grossly overestimate what their employees know about health plans, research suggests. For instance, only about two-thirds of consumers understand how a deductible works, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2007 National Health Insurance Plan Satisfaction Study. And 45 percent of those surveyed said they needed help understanding how best to use their health plan.

So employers shouldn’t be afraid to cover the basics, such as co-payments, coverage limits and exclusions. Another common pitfall is getting stuck in health care jargon. Employers should consider asking someone outside HR and benefits—such as a media relations, communications or marketing person—to look at materials that an employer plans to distribute and see if they are understandable, suggests Patty Cartwright, an attorney and principal at Mercer in Los Angeles. “Or have an internal focus group,” she says. “Give them the materials and ask, ‘Do you get this?’ “

Reach out to employees’ families.Once the materials are approved, don’t just distribute them to employees, Sanicola says. Reach out to their families, too. “Involve the dependent members,” he says. “Often it’s the spouses who make the decisions. Invite them to the open enrollment meetings. Send information to the home to their attention. Often the decision has to be made as a family.”

Get help from your service providers and others.Employers might be surprised to hear it, Stefan says, but employees might not consider them the best source of information for their health care.

In J.D. Power research conducted in 2007, only 2.5 percent of health plan members surveyed said they trust their employers for information on health and staying healthy, but up to 20 percent trusted their health plan. Capitalize on that trust, Stefan suggests, and ask your health plan representatives to come in and give an open enrollment presentation. You can also refer your employees to check out for themselves health plan ratings from reputable organizations. For instance: The National Committee for Quality Assurance a private, not-for-profit organization, collaborates with U.S. News & World Report to rank health maintenance organizations and point-of-service plans. J.D. Power and Associates released its newPower Circle ratings of health plans in March 2007. By expanding into health care, the company hopes to meet a largely unfilled need: independent information on health plans obtained directly from consumers, Stefan says. (Zagat Surveys and WellPoint recently announced that a more limited service—one that would rate doctors—will be available in January 2008 to about 1 million of WellPoint’s 35 million members.)

Reinforce the messages. No matter how understandable the open enrollment information packet is, “be aware not everyone will read the stuff,” Cartwright says. That’s why she suggests employers switch to the “reinforcement” mode right after the initial blast of open enrollment information is out there. “Repeat, repeat, repeat,” she says. “If you are doing something great like enhancing a benefit, keep saying it over and over in different ways—postcards, e-mails, supplementary booklets. We have one client who has electronic enrollment, and it is keyed in [to the system] to send out reminders” to employees on the verge of being tardy.

Keep communicating year-round. Even after open enrollment ends, keeping up the stream of information about health and other plan choices is wise, benefits experts say. It could be as simple as a monthly tip covering a different practical topic each time, such as how best to access preventive care, Sanicola says. Keeping up the communication effort year-round might just make next year’s open enrollment season a little less hectic.

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Plans May Differ, but Politicians Push Health Care Overhaul

Five members of Congress showed that you don’t have to be a presidential candidate to propose health care reform.


Speaking at a health care forum at the New School in New York on Monday, October 29, the four senators and one congressman agreed that a change in the employer-sponsored health care system is needed, though they differed on the details.


All said increased openness in the price and quality of health care are necessary to reduce costs.


“We don’t have health care transparency,” said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah. “So we don’t know who has the best quality and the lowest cost.”


The forum was titled “Reforming Healthcare: The Latest Solutions from the United States Congress,” though it was far from clear whether any proposals were either politically or economically feasible.


Republicans—echoing proposals by President Bush and presidential candidates Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani—said offering tax deductions for individuals to purchase health insurance would eliminate a bias toward employer-sponsored health benefits.


Bennett and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said the Healthy Americans Act, a proposal they co-sponsored last year, is the first plan to sever ties between employment and health insurance. Employers would be forced to pay the amount they currently spend on health care as wage increases to workers. 


The plan would create regional health care pools from which people would be required to buy health insurance. Employers would not provide health insurance or manage it. They could make a regional health insurance product available to employees. But the tax deduction employers receive for providing health care would be eliminated.


“If you are in control of health care, you do not have to stay stuck in a job you hate,” Bennett said.


To which former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, president of the New School, later said, “I know employees who are only here because they need the health insurance.”
 
Tax deductions for individuals purchasing health insurance are a feature common to health plans proposed by Sens. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, and Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, who also is a physician. Tax deductions could make it cheaper for employees to insure themselves rather than pay the premiums offered by an employer.


Burr’s plan, called the Every American Insured Health Act, gives Americans a flat tax refund of $2,160 for individuals and $5,400 for families, similar to the tax credit proposed by President Bush in his 2007 State of the Union address.


Burr said the tax credit would create a financial incentive for Americans to purchase the kind of coverage they need. With the aid of cost-and-quality information about health plans and doctors, Americans would have a financial incentive “to go out and negotiate coverage” that fits their medical budgetary needs.


Burr is also a co-sponsor of Coburn’s bill, the Health Care Choice Act of 2007. The plan introduces tax breaks for individuals purchasing health care and increases the taxes that can be deducted for contributions to health savings accounts.


Coburn said he opposes individual mandates that require people to buy health insurance, which have been used in Massachusetts and are compared to laws requiring drivers to carry auto insurance. Coburn said 15 percent of drivers don’t buy insurance despite the mandate.


“Mandates don’t work,” he said.


The plan by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Michigan, to create a single-payer government-run health care system drew the most enthusiastic response from the audience at the New School, which bills itself as a “progressive” university whose goal is “to prepare and inspire its 9,300 undergraduate and graduate students to bring actual, positive change to the world. “


The United States National Health Insurance Act would pay for a single-payer health care system with what Conyers calls a “modest” 3.3 percent payroll tax per employee. Employees and employers would pay a payroll tax of 1.45 percent. The wealthiest 5 percent of Americans would pay a “health income tax.”


Though Coburn said the taxes needed to fund such an entitlement program had been underestimated, Conyers said health care was a “human right,” and that the employer-based system was part of the problem.


Conyers said he wants to “take the profit motive out of health insurance and make it a human right.”


—Jeremy Smerd

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Kronos Acquires Deploy Solutions in Bid to Expand Services

In a move to establish itself as a dominant force in hourly staffing software, Kronos announced Wednesday, October 31, that it is acquiring Deploy Solutions, a provider of selection and hiring software.


The purchase is strategically significant not only because Kronos can broaden its portfolio of services or gain access to a set of high-profile clients that includes Home Depot, Securitas and retailer Wawa, but also because Kronos now controls the top two providers of hourly staffing software—Unicru, which was bought last year, and now Deploy.


“I’m not going to lie: It is always a good day when you are able to take one of your main competitors out of the market” said Jim Kizielewicz, senior vice president of corporate strategy and chief marketing officer at Kronos.


Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.


Industry observers say the acquisition is a mixed bag. From the perspectives of Kronos and Newton, Massachusetts-based Deploy, it makes sense. Deploy gets to benefit from the Kronos brand and the company’s ability to create market buzz that could help to drive up revenue. Meanwhile, Deploy can offer Kronos its innovative software, says Naomi Bloom, managing partner at Bloom & Wallace, a consulting firm in Fort Myers, Florida.


Clients, however, run the risk that ongoing consolidation will stifle innovation in an industry that desperately needs a shot of creativity.


“The hourly staffing software space is in desperate need of new ideas,” says Jason Averbook, CEO of consulting firm Knowledge Infusion. “These types of big consolidation moves often create a mishmash of functionalities that creates confusion among clients and dulls innovation.”


Kizielewicz says that one of Deploy’s attributes as an acquisition target is its ability to be creative, and that the company will implement measures to make sure that innovation doesn’t go by the wayside. One such step will be to leave Deploy as an independent company, following in the footsteps of the Unicru acquisition.


“We pretty much left Unicru alone to do its own thing and expect to do the same in this case,” Kizielewicz says. “Deploy, along with Unicru, will form part of the independent Kronos Talent Management Division.”


Some market analysts question the acquisition because Unicru and Deploy deliver similar capabilities. But Kizielewicz says that while both companies are in the business of hourly staffing software services, their strong suits are very different.


Kronos is adept in assessment technology and analytic capabilities, which can help an employer select high-potential candidates and compare the company’s talent management performance with that of industry competitors. Meanwhile, Deploy’s forte lies in its core technology platform, which runs the system, Kizielewicz explains.


“We plan to combine the strongest elements of each company,” he says.


Despite Kronos’ well-defined strategy for domination, players like Vurv Technology and Taleo should stay on their toes, industry observers say.


The consolidation creates an opportunity for those rivals to innovate, Averbook contends. “They are smaller, which allows them to be faster,” he says.


Averbook says creativity is scarce in hourly staffing, particularly when it comes to meeting the expectations of Gen Yers, a key hourly applicant pool. “Right now, the providers haven’t even begun to address the needs of these individuals,” he notes.


—Gina Ruiz