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Halloween HR Horror Stories

Halloween is a good day to share scary stories. Here are five tales of HR horror from Halogen Software, a performance management company. Halogen chose today to release a survey on employee-appraisal nightmares. Pray these creatures don’t haunt your office:


• The mother of a 20-something worker who told HR that her son’s review score should be raised so that he could get a better raise. “She offered to come in and show me reference letters from his teachers and former employers to reinforce her story,” the respondent wrote.


• The boss who said his all-female work group reminded him of a bunch of mares scratching and biting each other. The respondent said the boss’s daughter rode horses, “so I guess he thought that was a good analogy.”


• The reviewer who wrote of an employee: “Bob did pretty good for an old guy.”


• The manager who copied his 12 employees’ self-appraisals … and submitted them as his own.


• The nurse who was being evaluated on how well she delivered medications and told her supervisor she followed what the voices in her head told her to do.


Can you top those? If so, send a note to editors@workforce.com.

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UAW-GM Deal Based On Unrealistic Cost Forecasts

The recently ratified contract between General Motors and the United Auto Workers, details of which were disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission, underscores the precariousness of future retiree health care benefits.


On one hand, analysts say, the deal to transfer $35 billion to an independent trust to manage retiree health care is the best deal the union could have made given the dire financial straits of General Motors. The union will receive 70 cents for every dollar owed to it—allowing GM to offload about $47 billion in liabilities.


At the same time, the deal is based on assumptions that greatly underestimate the cost of health care.


The contract, which remains subject to court and regulatory approval, is based on the assumption that health care costs will grow 5 percent annually—a growth rate significantly slower than in the past 25 years.


From 1970 to 2004, Medicare costs increased an average of 9.1 percent annually. For private sector payers, health care costs increased an average 10.1 percent annually. Gerard Anderson, director of the Center for Hospital Finance and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says such an assumption leaves in doubt the UAW’s ability to pay for retiree health care for the next 80 years, as union leaders have promised.


“The economic trends would suggest it’s not viable in the long run,” Anderson says of the union’s health care trust, known as a voluntary employees beneficiary association.


To make the fund financially sustainable, the union must put its faith in the financial markets, where it will look for returns on par with some of the best-performing institutional investors.


According to GM’s filings, the current health trust is funded based on an expected 9 percent return on investment of the funds assets. That rate of return equals the 10-year return of 9.1 percent for CalPERS, the California state employee pension fund.


Another variable complicating the union’s funding of future retiree health care benefits is that 75 percent of GM’s 74,500 union workers could retire by the end of the four-year contract, significantly adding to the rolls of health care beneficiaries, which today total more than 500,000 people.


The 5 percent estimate is a common accounting technique used by many employers to calculate future health care costs, a GM spokeswoman says, since actual long-term projections yield numbers that are unsustainable for the economy.


In 2005, health care costs totaled 15 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. That number is expected to grow to 20 percent of GDP by 2015.


But VEBA consultant Lance Wallach says the 5 percent increase in health care costs is deceptive, even if it is a necessary target. For most people, especially blue-collar retirees, health care cost increases are significantly higher.


“That’s not even ridiculous, it’s preposterous,” he says of the 5 percent projection. “I’m not just talking for these people, but for anybody.”


—Jeremy Smerd

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Companies Using Compensation Consultants Pay CEOs More with No Shareholder Benefit

Using a compensation consultant is seen by many CEOs as a good business practice to get a fair price for executive pay.


No wonder, according to a study released by The Corporate Library, which found that companies using consultants award their CEOs higher compensation and at levels that don’t relate to increased shareholder return.


In fact, those companies that disclosed the use of compensation consultants in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission were found to have slightly less total shareholder return than those that did not disclose using such consultants. After a regression analysis, the result was a wash—shareholder returns were not found to be any better off for the use of the consultants.


Study author Alexandra Higgins admitted that the study’s results are far from proving that compensation consultants are part of the problem with rising CEO pay. However, she wrote that the findings indicate that such consultants do not increase the effectiveness of incentive plans.


“We did see some patterns,” Higgins says.


The study, which examined 2,583 company filings from February to May, found that 51 percent of the companies disclosed the name of their executive compensation consultant. Twenty-nine percent of those companies used Towers Perrin, 22 percent used Mercer and 19 percent Hewitt Associates. SEC rules now require companies to disclose which compensation consultant they use for executive pay.


Pearl Meyer, which was used by 8 percent of the reporting companies, was found to be the consultancy that led to the highest CEO base salary, at an average of almost 19 percent above median CEO salaries among peer companies. Towers Perrin, Mercer and Hewitt were the next in line for high CEO pay, coming in at roughly 17 percent, 15 percent and 15 percent above the median, respectively.


Bonuses and equity awards to executives boomed among companies using consultants. For example, CEOs of companies that used Frederic W. Cook saw an average bonus pay of 194 percent of salary. Pearl Meyer was the leader in terms of favoring equity compensation, paying on average 198 percent of company targets for the maximum number of shares. Companies and compensation consultants set such targets for equity, but often pay more than those targets.


The leading consulting firms were not consistently at the top of compensation in all areas, though. Towers Perrin and Hewitt, both in the top three for doling out the highest base salaries, were among the bottom four firms for the value of stock options granted. That is likely due to philosophical differences among the consultants, in that some may see cash as a higher incentive while others think equity awards are better for execs, Higgins says.


Compensation consultants have come under fire from unions and shareholder groups. One of the most notable examples was Hewitt Associates, which was used by Wyeth and Verizon. After Verizon’s unions challenged the company’s compensation levels and the work done by Hewitt, as well as ties between the boards of Verizon and Wyeth, the telecom giant dumped the firm as its consultant in 2006 and Wyeth chose another consultant in April.


Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California), the feared chair of the House Oversight Committee, earlier this year began an investigation into the leading consulting companies over alleged conflicts of interest in setting executive pay. That investigation is still ongoing, sources say.


This story was filed by Nicholas Rummell of Financial Week, a sister publication to Workforce Management.

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Value-Based Designs Boost Prescription Usage as Much as 15 Percent

A new modeling tool that measures the financial impact of value-based health plan designs may persuade more employers to implement them, its creators hope.

    The tool, which was developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Michigan using several large, national employers as test subjects, initially was used to determine the medical efficacy of implementing value-based health plan designs, which emphasize high-value medication and services by lowering or eliminating co-payments to encourage plan members to use them.


    But Hewitt Associates has found a way to adapt the tool to help employers make implementation of a value-based health plan cost-neutral by projecting the additional plan costs if members avail themselves of the newly discounted drugs and services so that employers can, in turn, raise the co-payments for other less-valued drugs and services.


    Although the value-based insurance design concept is nearly a decade old, the early adopters—such as Pitney Bowes Corp.; Marriott International Inc. and Juno, Florida-based utility company FPL Group Inc.—pretty much did so based on “faith” rather than science, benefit experts acknowledge.


    Although these companies publicly encouraged more employers to follow their lead, “the later adopters are more skeptical and hesitant,” said Craig Dolezal, a senior health care consultant for Hewitt in Atlanta.


    “The universal question that employers ask is if there always is an increased cost,” he said. “This model takes prescription drug cost and utilization data at the most detailed level, calculates and organizes the data to show compliance … then imports the data into a clinical actuarial model” that employers can use “to calculate the cost and utilization impact on their plan and how to spread those costs.”


    For example, “if an employer wants to add incentives for diabetes and heart medications, but it doesn’t have additional money to spend, the tool will help determine how much to increase costs for other therapeutic classes and non-chronic condition-treating drugs to offset the additional cost,” Dolezal said.


    “Value-based designs are attractive because they are designed in a way that removes financial barriers to care and encourages employees to seek and receive the essential care they need to manage their health,” said Melissa Miller, director of employee benefits and services at FPL, which was among the employers involved in the development of the Hewitt tool.


    “But the biggest question for many employers is how to design these programs in the most cost-effective way,” she said in an August statement announcing Hewitt’s release of the tool.


    Before now, most studies have measured the negative impact on utilization of raising drug co-payments, but little research has examined lowering co-payments, said Clive Riddle, founder and president of Managed Care On-Line Inc., an online medical and health benefit technology vendor based in Modesto, California, who was not involved in the development of the Hewitt tool.


    Since “cost shifting to the patient has been the big mantra this decade,” Riddle said, “usually studies look at the opposite: If they raise co-payments, what impact will it have on utilization?”


    Riddle cited a study of two employer-sponsored drug plans published in 2003 that found a significant number of employees stopped taking certain medications—rather than switching to generics—when their employers moved to a prescription drug plan that charged significantly more for brand-name drugs.


    Moreover, any estimates of potential savings of implementing value-based insurance designs “have historically been not research- or tool-based,” he said. “It’s been more quick-and-dirty, comparing projected expenses against actual.”


    “They look at the prior year’s drug spend and try to project, but they’re always off,” Hewitt’s Dolezal agreed. “Quantifying of the investment is a really big step for employers.”


    “For a number of employers, this type of tool would give them a much better comfort level. These kind of tools are required to get the next layer of employers to move” into value-based health plan design, Riddle said.


    Using a tool to reallocate health care expenses also “allows companies to meet cost targets without sacrificing the quality of care their workers receive,” said Michael Chernew, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School in Boston, a collaborator on the tool’s development.


    “The other question is to figure out how much savings would be produced by reducing adverse events that might occur if a person suffering from a chronic condition does not take their drugs,” he said.


    “Value-based design initiatives recognize that it is imperative that as employers continue to control health care costs, they also have the responsibility, and the vested interest, in doing so in a manner that does not jeopardize employee health. The principles behind value-based insurance design, and the tool developed by Hewitt Associates, enable employers to meet these two important goals,” Chernew said in an August statement announcing the new tool.


    “What the tool is designed to do is to allow a firm to meet whatever financial target they want to meet in a way that incorporates value-based insurance design as opposed to across-the-board clinically insensitive ways,” Chernew said in an interview.


    “Before value-based design, they would just raise co-pays across the board to meet a financial target. But this doesn’t recognize the differences in value for different services,” he said.


    Chernew and Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, director of the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Center for Value-Based Insurance Design at the University of Michigan, published the conceptual framework for value-based plan design nearly a decade ago, and founded the center, which was created to promote, implement and evaluate value-based designs.


    New York-based ActiveHealth Management has been using a similar tool, also developed in conjunction with Chernew and Fendrick, in a three-year pilot program involving Marriott, said Dr. Steve Rosenberg, senior vice president of outcomes research at the disease management and clinical decision support firm. ActiveHealth also has technology that identifies patients in particular need of interventions who are not getting them for one reason or another, he said.


    “We use it in two ways: If a company or a health insurer is interested in implementing the value-based insurance design and they want to know the estimate of the cost or savings, we can run this model on their data to produce an estimate,” Rosenberg said. “For customers we already have, we use the model to report to them every six months on the savings their program is achieving.”


    While not divulging individually identifiable health information, the tool “measures how many people receive notices” telling them about the program and “how many comply after getting the notice,” he said. “We also measure the people already taking the drugs to see how many continue taking them.”


    In general, “we find there’s a 10 percent to 15 percent improvement in long-term compliance when co-pay is reduced or eliminated,” Rosenberg said.


    In addition, “what we find routinely is that the cost for medication for the employer always increases, the non-drug costs for the employer are reduced by the same amount or a little more, so it’s basically a wash,” he added.


    In the Marriott study, which was reported at the March annual meeting of the Washington-based National Business Group on Health, generic co-pays were eliminated and brand-name drug co-payments were halved for the types of medication used to treat diabetes, asthma and heart disease.


    Researchers are still studying the experiment’s outcomes, but “as we implement this technology, we are finding these strategies are creating a positive difference in trend,” Jill Berger, Marriott’s vice president of health and welfare, said at last spring’s National Business Group on Health meeting.


Workforce Management, October 22, 2007, p. 23 — Subscribe Now!

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Sexual Orientation Discrimination Bill Draws Veto Threat

A bill that would ban workplace discrimination against homosexuals has drawn a veto threat from the Bush administration on the eve of likely House action on the legislation.


As the House prepares to take up the Employment Nondiscrimination Act on Wednesday, October 24, the White House announced its opposition to the bill, which would extend the same rights to gay, lesbian and bisexual people that exist for gender, race and ethnicity.


The measure prohibits employers from basing hiring, firing, promotion or compensation decisions on sexual orientation. Last week, the House Education and Labor Committee approved the bill, 27-21, mostly along party lines.


In its statement of policy, the White House criticized the bill for using “imprecise and subjective terms that would make interpretation, compliance and enforcement extremely difficult,” echoing concerns outlined by Republicans on the House committee who opposed the measure.


“For instance, the bill establishes liability for acting on ‘perceived’ sexual orientation, or ‘association’ with individuals of a particular sexual orientation,” the White House said. “If passed, [the bill] is virtually certain to encourage burdensome litigation beyond the cases that the bill is intended to reach.”


The administration also asserted that the bill would curb religious liberties because its exemptions for religious organizations are too weak. Other objections centered on the bill allowing the federal government to seek civil damages against state entities and on provisions that would “purport to give federal statutory significance to same-sex marriage rights under state law.”


Despite White House opposition, the bill is likely to win narrow House approval. That outcome was bolstered when Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts and the bill’s author, removed provisions from the original bill that would extend protections to transgender people.


A measure including that dimension would not have garnered enough support from conservative Democrats to achieve House approval. In failing to address transgender policy, however, the current bill will lose support from some liberals.


To assuage their resentment, a transgender amendment is likely to be offered during floor deliberations.


In some respects, corporations are ahead of this public policy debate. About 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies have inclusive employment policies that encompass sexual orientation. In addition, 46 big companies supported the original sexual orientation bill.


During last week’s committee action, Rep. George Miller, D-California and chairman of the House labor panel, praised large corporations such as General Mills, Cisco Systems, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Citibank, Morgan Stanley and Time Warner for implementing inclusive employment policies that cover sexual orientation.


“While this is an encouraging trend, our entire workforce and our nation’s competitiveness will benefit from making sure that every state and all large workplaces are covered,” Miller said.


But the side of the aisle most often associated with big business is resisting the bill. “The legislation raises several complex questions about how it would impact employers, whether it would encroach on employee privacy, and how it comports with existing anti-discrimination statutes,” said Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-California and the labor panel’s highest-ranking Republican.


The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest employer group in the nation, is neutral toward the bill. It does not take a position on gender identity.


Its concerns about the broader bill were addressed when language was removed that potentially would have allowed local governments to mandate that companies provide benefits for same-sex partners.


“Our approach has been to be sure that the bill provides appropriate protection without unintended consequences,” said Michael Eastman, the chamber’s executive director of labor law policy.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

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PEO Gevity Bids CEO Farewell

Gevity HR Inc., a national professional employer organization, has replaced its CEO after disappointing financial results and a sharp slide in its stock price.


A few years ago, Bradenton, Florida-based Gevity and CEO Erik Vonk were hot properties in the field of “co-employment,” a specialized niche in which companies turn over most staffing and human resources functions, including payroll and benefits administration, to an outside company. But over the past two years, the company has tried to branch out into other staffing fields, with limited success.


On Friday, October 19, the company announced that Vonk, its CEO and chairman since 2002, was stepping down, and that COO Michael Lavington would take over both positions. Lavington, a British citizen whom the company appointed COO in August, still needs to finalize U.S. work authorization before he can officially take up his post.


The leadership switch is the latest in a series of recent business and executive changes at the company that have thus far done little to assure investors that Gevity is back on track. The company’s stock traded as high as $30 a share in early 2006. But after Gevity reported lower-than-expected revenue and earnings in June, the stock tumbled to a low of $9.85 in September, and has been trading recently at around $11.


Vonk, who in February was recognized as one of HRO Today’s 2007 “superstars in human resources outsourcing,” found himself the brunt of criticism from Wall Street for the company’s poor financial performance.


“The biggest problem the company has had is its inability to drive sales,” says Gary E. Bisbee, a Lehman Bros. analyst who covers the business and professional services sector. “Somebody has to take the blame for that.”


Vonk’s departure follows that of Peter Grabowski, who resigned as senior vice president of national sales in July.


Gevity’s problems stemmed in part from the full-service nature of its operation. Gevity has traditionally been a company that serves as a “co-employer” of workers at small and midsize companies, providing benefits like health and workers’ compensation insurance.


Vonk tried to move the company into staffing services without health and workers’ compensation insurance, hoping to find a more stable and simpler business model. But the effort backfired, as some clients left and the company faced lower revenues and profits.


“A primary goal of the former CEO was to get the business out of the co-employment model,” Bisbee says. “As the company took several steps toward that goal, they clearly created periods of very big turnover among their existing clients.”


Bisbee viewed Vonk’s departure and the arrival of Lavington as a welcome sign that Gevity will renew its emphasis on the co-employer model, a specialty that Gevity knows and understands.


But while Gevity will continue to offer co-employer services, it will likely continue looking to expand into other niches, according to Patrick Lee, Gevity’s director of investor relations.


“An increased emphasis on co-employment does not necessarily represent a departure from other HR products,” Lee says. “In fact, we intend to continue developing additional offerings while strengthening our co-employed business.”


Irwin Speizer is a contributing editor for Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.
 

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Lights, Camera, Coaching

The late Aaron Spelling never made a TV series about employee coaching. But the legendary producer would have enjoyed The Firm, an in-house miniseries created by consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers.


    Dramatizing real-life workplace issues, The Firm (think of NBC’s The Office, except with a worthwhile purpose) follows the interaction of six fictional employees at the company as they learn valuable lessons about accountability, appropriate business attire, giving and receiving feedback, bridging generational differences and other key behaviors.


    You won’t find The Firm on cable or satellite. The target audience is the 30,000-strong U.S. workforce of PricewaterhouseCoopers. The episodes come complete with a catchy theme song, recurring characters and even a bloopers episode. The inaugural “season” of 10 programs concluded its run recently, and the second season hit the company’s internal airwaves on October 17.


    The specific goal of season one was to entertain employees while educating them about the pivotal role coaching plays in the organization, says Kym Ward Gaffney, the national coaching leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers.


    “We wanted to create coaching messages that were authentic to the PwC experience. We wanted this to be fun, not preachy or pedantic,” Gaffney says.


    Headquartered in midtown Manhattan, PwC provides assurance, advisory and tax services to many large corporations, including the Fortune 500. It is the third-largest private company in the U.S., according to Forbes magazine, with 2007 sales topping $25 billion.


    Each program runs only a few minutes, often using humor to deliver serious points. The overarching theme: Almost every workplace situation presents an opportunity “to coach and be coached.” A narrator (Gaffney) sums up the main idea at the end of each episode.


    Portraying the main characters are actual PwC employees from the New York/New Jersey area, giving the production the desired air of authenticity. About 60 employees auditioned for the roles of the six characters. The ethnically and gender-diverse cast consists of Amy, an associate; Blake, a senior associate; Carl, a senior manager; Bob, a partner, Sally, an executive assistant; and Mukesh, a newly hired employee.


    The series debut introduces the characters, who are viewed mainly through the eyes of Amy, a 20-something with a propensity for twirling strands of her hair as she candidly assesses each of the other characters. She says of Blake, a party animal who occupies the neighboring cubicle: “I guess he gets work done some of the time. But he really doesn’t seem to do much.”


    After a cutaway to a shot of Blake leaving the men’s room, she adds: “Plus, he smells.”


    It is a bit of foreshadowing that pays off, in a serious way, in a subsequent episode. It features Blake and Carl, the senior manager whom everyone likes for his honesty and helpfulness. The episode, “Difficult Conversations,” opens with Blake explaining to the camera why he is shaving in the men’s room. A round of all-night partying prevented him from going home to clean up for work. Carl walks in, easing into a critical coaching moment.


    “We need to have a talk,” Carl tells Blake. He then voices the concerns raised by Amy and others: “You smell like a bar” on arriving at work, he says. He tells him, politely but firmly, to shape up or ship out.


    The message takes hold. Several episodes later, Blake is the first one to arrive at the office. He credits Carl for providing honest and direct feedback to “help me clean up my act.” When Amy arrives, she peeks around her cubicle wall and is surprised to find Blake there ahead of her, hard at work.


    The conversation in the men’s room served as a turning point for Blake. The point was clear: As important as formal evaluations are to help employees grow, it’s often in the unscripted, informal moments that the most meaningful coaching occurs.


    Giving precise feedback is the theme of another episode. It begins innocently enough with Sally telling Bob she’s going for coffee.


    “Can I get you anything?” Sally asks.


    Bob gives her a litany of Starbucks requirements:


    “I’d like a venti, skim latte, no foam, extra hot. Oh, and bring some of that yellow sweetener, not the pink stuff.” Amazed at the specificity of Bob’s order, a dazed Sally is shown in the elevator carrying a tray of coffee cups, and she shares her thoughts.


    “Venti, skim latte, no foam, extra hot; it never fails to amaze me how specific we can be about stuff that doesn’t matter. But when it comes to just talking to each other, we’re experts at being totally vague. Tell me specifically what I need to know to do my job better; [don’t just] say, ‘That’s fine.’ ”


    The concluding narrative reinforces the point, “When you say exactly what you mean, you get exactly what you want: the yellow sweetener, not the pink.”


    Episode nine finally introduces Mukesh, a new employee who has appeared in the opening credits but is largely absent from the previous episodes. That is by design. Most of the other characters don’t even recognize Mukesh’s name, although he’s been with the firm for six months. Ironically, it’s Blake who takes Mukesh under his wing and tries to ease his assimilation into the organization.


    Portraying the characters were Tim Abrahams (Carl), Deirdre Connors (Amy), Don Favre (Bob), Blake Neiman (Blake) and Mukesh Luhano (Mukesh). The woman who played Sally has since left the firm and PwC did not provide her name.


    The final episode features bloopers, closing with a simple message: “We tried to tell the truth. We tried to encourage important conversations. We had fun.”


    Although many companies use online video to aid employee learning, the concept of a TV program is highly unusual, especially for a conservative and serious-minded company like PricewaterhouseCoopers. Internal coaching is well-established at PwC. For example, each employee is assigned a personal coach, but the company sensed a need to reinvigorate its message.


    “We’re not producing widgets. We’re sending our people out to work with clients,” so it’s critical they demonstrate the attitudes and behaviors deemed critical for success, Gaffney says.


    A TV-style format was used to deliver the training messages because it is both immediate and universally appealing, according to Gaffney.


    The 10 episodes were filmed during a three-day period. Another three weeks were devoted to voice-overs, editing, mixing and other technical aspects. All told, Gaffney estimates the company spent about $125,000 on the production, which included hiring scriptwriter Bill Heater.


    Employees were notified by company e-mail each time a new episode was released and which installments were available for viewing on PwC’s internal computer networks.


    The first episode attracted 8,500 viewers, and the numbers rose steadily with each successive episode. Attesting to its popularity is a growing overseas audience of PwC employees. Although intended mainly for PwC’s U.S. workforce,The Firm has been seen by PwC employees in Canada, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere.


    Season two of the series focuses on fictional PwC staffers in the Los Angeles office. Again, they’re played by real PwC employees. And while the first season’s episodes addressed the organizational value of coaching, PwC says the second season zeroes in on business issues, such as “the tension of losing a client because we failed to deliver behaviors that lead to high-quality service,” according to Gaffney.


    The employees who participated in season one, meanwhile, have attained the status of in-house celebrities. In real life, Tim Abrahams is a certified fraud examiner in PwC’s computer forensics division. And co-workers he’s never met now seek him out.


    “They’ll stop me in the cafeteria and say, ‘Hey, you’re Carl, the guy from the video,” Abrahams says.


    More important is the fact that the video series has heightened awareness among employees about the important role of coaching, Abrahams says. He actually does coach five PwC employees.

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Sexual Orientation Bill Passes House Committee for First Time

In a historic vote, a House committee approved a bill on Thursday, October 18, banning workplace discrimination against homosexuals.


The measure would extend the same rights to gay, lesbian and bisexual people that exist for gender, race and ethnicity. It prohibits employers from basing hiring, firing, promotion or compensation decisions on sexual orientation.


The vote was the first ever on sexual-orientation discrimination legislation. But the bill that passed the House Education and Labor Committee in a 27-21 vote was narrower than the one that was introduced in April. The original included protections for transgender people.


The bill’s author, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, decided to remove the gender identity portion because there was not enough support in the House to pass a broader bill.


When it reaches the House floor in coming weeks, the new bill will have to overcome opposition not only from religious conservatives, who proposed four amendments that failed in committee, but also from liberals who contend that the bill is too weak without the gender identity language.


In the committee, four Republicans supported the bill and three Democrats opposed it in what was otherwise a party-line vote.


Supporters say a federal statute would close a gap created by the 30 states that do not have sexual orientation discrimination laws on their books.


“It is hard to believe that otherwise fully qualified, bright and capable individuals are being denied employment or fired from their jobs for … completely nonwork-related reasons,” said Rep. George Miller, D-California and committee chairman. “This is profoundly unfair and, indeed, un-American.”


Miller praised large corporations such as General Mills, Cisco Systems, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Citibank, Morgan Stanley and Time Warner for implementing inclusive employment policies that cover sexual orientation. About 46 big companies supported the original sexual orientation bill.


“While this is an encouraging trend, our entire workforce and our nation’s competitiveness will benefit from making sure that every state and all large workplaces are covered,” Miller said.


But the side of the aisle most often associated with big business is resisting the bill. Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-California and the panel’s highest-ranking Republican, said, “The legislation raises several complex questions about how it would impact employers, whether it would encroach on employee privacy, and how it comports with existing anti-discrimination statutes.”


The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest employer group in the nation, is neutral toward the bill. It does not take a position on gender identity.


But its concerns about the broader bill were addressed when language was removed that potentially would have allowed local governments to mandate that companies provide benefits for same-sex partners.


“Our approach has been to be sure that the bill provides appropriate protection without unintended consequences,” said Michael Eastman, executive director of labor law policy at the Chamber of Commerce.


The business community’s equanimity is not shared by conservative Republicans, who strenuously oppose the bill.


Rep. Mark Souder, R-Indiana, asserted that language referring to “actual or perceived sexual orientation” could potentially drag employers into court to defend against a vaguely defined term.


“If we get into the whole question of what’s perceived, we’re going down the road of an incredible litigation nightmare,” Souder said.


Souder argued that the bill would effectively curb religious freedom to express opposition to homosexual lifestyles. He and other colleagues said it also would threaten religious organizations.


“This bill is an aggressive attack on people of faith and faith-based institutions in this country,” said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Michigan.


But Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Virginia, said the exemptions provided for religious organizations are stronger in the sexual orientation bill than they are in existing discrimination law.


Rep. Danny Davis, D-Illinois, cited the Golden Rule in defending the bill. “The most basic of all human desires is the desire to be treated fairly with respect, with equal opportunity and with equal protection under the law,” he said.


But there was opposition to the bill from Davis’ side of the aisle, too. Some Democrats said it should have included gender identity. “This legislation is incomplete,” said Yvette Clark, D-New York.


Some who expressed the same concern but voted for the bill anyway said they will support a gender identity amendment during the House floor debate.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.
 

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Landmark Tech Speeds New Product Development

After about two years of development, Lawson plans to release a suite of HR software products in the coming months. If not for a set of coding tools, that launch might have been scheduled for much further down the road.


    Lawson’s new HR applications were built using a technology it calls Landmark. Company chief executive Harry Debes estimates the Landmark tools made coders at least 10 times more productive. “It’s like going from horses to tractors,” Debes says. After a pause, he adds, “Horses to buses is better.”


    The Landmark tools allow developers to generate lines of code automatically, by describing what they want out of the software at a higher level. The time-saving technology is the result of a roughly five-year effort at the company that involved co-founder Richard Lawson.


    Landmark technology bears some similarity to “object-oriented programming,” a method of creating software that allows for coding to be reused and can reduce development time.


    But Larry Dunivan, Lawson’s vice president for human capital management, says Land mark stands head and shoulders above comparable tools.


    In fact, the company has been touting the technology as it drums up interest in the coming HR applications. It’s relatively rare for software vendors to talk up the process behind their products. But in Lawson’s case, the discussions may serve as advance marketing. That’s because the company is thinking about selling a version of Landmark as a product, Dunivan says.


    It could help companies more quickly stitch together their different applications or create composite software tools, he says. An example of a composite tool would be a program that allows a company to identify automatically which of its training programs leads to the greatest improvements in employee performance ratings, or which leads to the greatest increase in sales generated by employees.


Workforce Management, October 8, 2007, p. 36 — Subscribe Now!