Category: Archive

Posted on

Insurer Covers Malpractice in Overseas Care

A company offering a new type of liability insurance is hoping to cajole employers into moving a step closer to sending employees overseas for medical care.


Provided by the newly formed, Barbados-based AOS Assurance Co., the patient medical malpractice insurance is intended to resolve the question of what happens when modern medical care promised by a developing country lands patients in a byzantine legal system. Patients who find themselves injured by a doctor in a foreign country may have little legal recourse abroad. The malpractice insurance is intended to provide some financial compensation for their injuries, says Paul Laverty, an AOS director.


The insurance costs 76 cents to $8.15 per member monthly and pays a maximum of $100,000 to $1 million per covered person. Employers can offer it to employees directly or through the company’s health insurer.


“I like to think of our coverage as travel insurance,” Laverty says. “You wouldn’t go out of the country without travel insurance. You shouldn’t travel overseas for medical care without our product.”


Though a handful of hospitals in India, Singapore and Thailand meet international standards for quality and safety, large employers have not yet sent employees overseas for medical care. Laverty says executives are concerned that if something goes wrong, employees would have little legal recourse in foreign countries and could expose employers to civil lawsuits.


“An employer is interested in cost savings,” Laverty says. “Our piece is filling the gap of the litigation component. It would help the employer mitigate their own risk.”


The product, which is being managed by insurance services company AIG, has been available for about a month. Laverty says a number of large health insurers and employers have expressed interest.


It’s doubtful that medical malpractice overseas would subject employers to legal liability, since employers are not usually sued for medical malpractice in the United States, says Tiffany Santos, an attorney with Trucker Huss, a San Francisco firm specializing in employee benefits law.


If anything, says David Frazzini, a principal at Mercer’s health and benefits business, the insurance is an incentive offered by employers looking for employees to voluntarily seek medical care overseas. The insurance doesn’t replace the rights of patients who get care in the United States. He said the insurance could be of interest to companies looking “to dip [their] toes in the water.”


The insurance would only be valid if a patient sought medical care from a board-certified physician practicing at a medical facility accredited by the Joint Commission International, Laverty says


—Jeremy Smerd

Posted on

Gap Has Data Security Gap; Technology Vendor Taleo Says, ‘Not Us’

In yet another problem with data security and job candidates, San Francisco-based retail giant Gap Inc. on Friday, September 28, disclosed that a laptop computer with personal information for some 800,000 job applicants had been stolen.

Gap says the laptop was recently stolen from the offices of a third-party vendor that manages its job applicant data for Gap. Gap also says that contrary to its agreement with the vendor, the information on the laptop was not encrypted.

The laptop contains personal data for about 800,000 people who applied online or by phone for store positions at one of Gap’s brands between July 2006 and June 2007. The affected individuals applied for store positions with the company’s Old Navy, Banana Republic, Gap and outlet stores from the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada. The laptop did not contain Canadian applicants’ “Social Insurance” numbers, Gap says.


Gap says it has no reason to believe the data contained on the computer was the target of the theft or that the personal information has been accessed or used improperly.


“Gap Inc. deeply regrets this incident occurred. We take our obligation to protect the data security of personal information very seriously,” Gap chairman and CEO Glenn Murphy said in a press release revealing the theft. “What happened here is against everything we stand for as a company. We’re reviewing the facts and circumstances that led to this incident closely, and will take appropriate steps to help prevent something like this from happening again.”


Gap spokeswoman Cynthia Lin declined to name the vendor involved. But one of Gap’s vendors, San Francisco-based recruiting software firm Taleo, issued a statement Friday saying that it was not the vendor in question.


Taleo representative Krista Canfield says Taleo had begun to receive inquiries about Gap’s data breach.


“We just wanted to make sure people were clear, and people understood that we were not involved,” she says.


Lin confirmed that Taleo was not involved.


The Gap incident comes on the heels of a security snafu at Internet job board titan Monster.com disclosed in August.


Gap says it has begun notifying the job applicants whose Social Security numbers were included in the information on the laptop and is offering them a year of free credit monitoring services with fraud resolution assistance, along with a dedicated 24-hour helpline. In addition, the company is posting information and updates at Web site it set up for the purpose, www.gapsecurityassistance.com.


—Ed Frauenheim


Related content: Data Breach Laws: A Wake-up Call for HR

Posted on

New Car Deal UAW Provides Details of Pact With GM

UAW officials on Friday, September 28, distributed details of their tentative agreement with General Motors to local union presidents.


During a press conference at UAW headquarters in Detroit after those meetings, UAW president Ron Gettelfinger said the agreement has “unprecedented product guarantees” and a moratorium on outsourcing.


Here are official details on the tentative agreement between the UAW and GM:


  • GM agrees to new-vehicle programs at 16 U.S. plants.


  • GM will initially fund the UAW’s health care trust fund with $29.9 billion, with an additional $5.4 billion in future years.


  • GM will provide the trust an additional backstop of as much as $1.6 billion over the next 20 years.


  • Workers get a $3,000 signing bonus to approve the contract.


  • Instead of pay raises, UAW rank and file get bonuses equal to 3 percent, 4 percent and 3 percent of their annual pay during the second, third and fourth years of the contract.


  • New hires in noncore, nonproduction jobs would get paid between $14 and $16.23 an hour.


  • New hires get a 401(k) plan instead of the traditional UAW pension plan. GM will create a cash balance defined benefit plan for entry-level workers, by which it will deposit 6.4 percent of workers’ wages into a portable retirement plan, which will accrue interest tied to the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond.


  • GM agrees to bring in-house 3,000 jobs that now are outsourced to contractors.


  • GM agrees to hire 3,000 temporary workers as full-time hourly employees.


Filed by Philip Nussel of Automotive News, and Jessica Marquez of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

Posted on

There’s Big Money in Motivation

I get lots of press releases. Few stop me in my tracks, but this one did because the numbers were so amazing. To wit:

Travel and merchandise incentives for employees is now a $46 billion industry, according to the Incentive Federation’s 2007 United States Incentive Merchandise and Travel Marketplace Study. According to study, $32.7 billion was spent on merchandise incentives and $13.4 billion on incentive travel, in 2006.

The size of that number took my breath away — $46 billion per year on employee incentives?????? Can that be possible? Do all those gift cards, holiday turkeys, and roundtrips on Southwest really add up to that much?

 “The incentive industry is booming,” Frank Katusak, Incentive Federation Board chairman, says in the press release, and some of the numbers broken out of the study seems to back him up:

• Thirty-four percent of U. S. companies used either incentive travel or merchandise incentives in 2006. Almost one third (31 percent) of companies used merchandise incentives, while 10 percent used incentive travel.
•  Incentive travel is seen as an investment by 85 percent of companies with revenues over $100 million in the study. Merchandise incentives are seen as an investment by more than three-fourths of respondents.
• Companies with revenues over $100 million are more likely to use both travel and merchandise incentives than smaller companies.
• The most common incentive travel application is for sales incentives. Other widely-used applications are non-sales employee recognition and consumer/user promotions.
• Merchandise incentives are most often used for non-sales employee recognition and business gifts.
• The average budget for travel incentives was $164,271. More than three fourths of incentive travel end users spent between $100,000 and $500,000.
• The typical budget for merchandise incentives last year was $119,008. Almost half of the merchandise incentive users spent between $100,000 and $500,000.

I’ve always questioned whether a lot of these incentive programs work, but these recent numbers would seem to indicate that they have a much bigger impact than I ever thought. And, as Roger Rickard, senior vice president for incentive travel company Don Anderson Inc. in Rocklin, California, told Workforce Management last September, “An organization, and particularly a public company, has an obligation quarterly to show that they are continuing to drive profits. And if the incentive travel is created to drive profit and is successful in doing that, that’s really not an area that anybody is going to risk changing.”

Posted on

UAW Expects Pattern Contract With Ford, Chrysler

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said early Thursday, September 27, that he expects contract agreements with Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC to follow the pattern set with General Motors.


“We expect this will basically be the same agreement we’ll get at the other companies,” Gettelfinger said in an interview with WJR-AM radio in Detroit. “There’s some modification, but for the most part, it will be a pattern agreement.”


It might not be that easy.


Unlike GM, Ford and Chrysler have different CEOs from the ones who negotiated the last UAW contract in 2003—Alan Mulally is now the Ford CEO and Bob Nardelli is heading Chrysler. Chrysler also has new ownership with Cerberus Capital Management LP now holding an 80.1 percent stake.


And last year, Chrysler was unable to get midcontract health care concessions that GM and Ford negotiated in 2005. A few months later, DaimlerChrysler AG put Chrysler up for sale.


Labor negotiators at Chrysler and Ford said they are waiting to hear which automaker will be next to work out a new contract with the UAW. Spokespeople for both automakers said Thursday they had not heard from the union.


“The decision is totally up to the union,” Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans said.


Gettelfinger said he would begin meeting with his top officials Thursday afternoon to discuss the situation with the other two automakers. He expects the pace of negotiations with the companies to accelerate soon.


“There’s no reason at this point why we can’t get both of those done at the same time,” Gettelfinger said. “If we run into difficulty at one or the other, then we’ll make a decision. I would hope we could do that. I’m not saying that’s what we will do.”


A Chrysler spokesman said the company had not seen details of the union’s agreement with GM. He declined to comment on any elements of the deal that have been reported.


Filed by Dale Jewett and Philip Nussel of Automotive News, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

Posted on

Young and Unhealthy Urgent Care Required

Health experts are worried that employers underestimate the cost threat posed by increasingly unhealthy younger workers.

In the past five years, according to the Hartford Financial Services Group, the percentage of disability claims among workers under 40 increased. The percentage of claims for people over 40, meanwhile, has dropped.


“I think there’s reason to be concerned,” says Carol Harnett, national group disability and life practice leader at the Hartford. “We’re just starting to see the tip of the iceberg; we’re starting to see people get disabled in their 30s.”


Employers should take a hard look at what they can do to defuse these health care time bombs, says Michele Dodds, vice president for health and wellness at employee assistance and wellness company ComPsych.


“Looking at overall disability claims and other indicators, we’ve begun to see a stabilization with boomers, but not with Generation X and Generation Y,” Dodds says. The message has not reached them, she says. “They still see themselves as invincible.”


Employers with younger populations, like Nike and Google, have been particularly good at creating a culture of fitness aimed at younger people. Some employers make bicycles available rather than providing shuttle services to get around a corporate campus. Others, like Pitney Bowes and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have redesigned their buildings to make staircases a central feature and have focused on offering healthy foods at work.


The upside is that this generation is, in Dodds’ words, “particularly good at sitting at the computer for hours and hours on end,” so communicating health information using the Web, text messaging and instant messaging is a very effective approach.


Employers also may want to tailor incentives to the sensibilities of younger workers, who, Dodds says, want good behavior rewarded immediately with cash and prizes—not with discounts on health insurance and gym memberships.


For most employers, however, the health of younger workers is an afterthought, if only because, in absolute numbers, older workers represent a larger percentage of chronic illnesses and those costs are threatening productivity and competitiveness today.


According to the CDC, the prevalence of chronic illnesses, which often represent the highest health care costs to employers, is greatest among older workers. Among Americans age 56 and older, 24 percent have a chronic illness. Half of them have diabetes, and 25 percent have two or more conditions. That number drops to 11 percent for people age 40 to 55, and to 5 percent for people 25 to 39.


With the exception of asthma, rates of chronic illness and medical costs are significantly higher for older people, according to the CDC.


Campaigns aimed at making younger workers aware of their health risks may not resonate with them, even if it’s a message they need to hear, says Tony Merlo, national practice leader with disease management company HealthDialog.


“You can imagine that with younger people there’s less of a sense of urgency,” he says.


This lack of urgency is exactly what worries health experts, who say young workers—and some employers—live in the false belief that because of their age, young workers are not at risk for chronic illness.


In the past 30 years, obesity rates have climbed in every age group, according to the CDC. But with new research showing that obesity tends to increase among people with obese friends, the social network of the workplace can play an important role in reducing health risks.


“They’re young enough that they’re just going to cost a lot before they die,” Dodds says. “Don’t kid yourself: The poor health habits of a 28-year-old may soon turn into diabetes.”


Workforce Management, September 10, 2007, p. 36 — Subscribe Now!

Posted on

High Court Set To Take Up Pair Of Age Bias Cases

A controversial ruling on a wage discrimination case during the Supreme Court’s last term caused critics to assert that the majority ignored workplace realities.


As the justices convene October 1 for a new session, one of the employment law matters on the docket provides another opportunity for the bench to wrestle with workplace discrimination—this time age bias—in an era in which mistreatment is more often subtle than blatant.


In Sprint/United Management Co. v. Ellen Mendelsohn, the plaintiff alleges she was fired in a downsizing process prejudicial to older workers.


Mendelsohn lost her job in 2002 when the company laid off 15,000 employees. She was 51 and worked for Sprint/United since 1989. To support her claim, Mendelsohn wanted to call to the stand colleagues who believed age was the cause of their dismissal.


Such a move is typical, says William Deveney, a partner at Elarbee Thompson in Atlanta. “It allows an emotional argument to be made to the jury,” he says. “That issue arises in just about every reduction-in-force case.”


But the trial court didn’t allow the other employees to testify because they had a different supervisor. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Denver, overturned the jury’s decision in favor of the employer.


The testimony of Mendelsohn’s colleagues may have been the best way to show that the layoffs unfairly targeted older employees, says Joseph Sellers, a lawyer with Cohen Milstein Hausfeld & Toll in Washington.


“Direct evidence of discrimination is increasingly rare,” Sellers says. “Most often, evidence of discrimination comes from circumstantial evidence. It’s hard to claim that the experience of other workers who were subject to the same [layoff] policy is irrelevant.”


Charles Craver, professor of law at George Washington University, says the Sprint case will be a difficult one for the court.


“This is a close call,” he says. “I don’t know where you draw the line. At what point do you say that this seems to be evidence of a firm practice?”


Another employment case is more procedural than substantive.


In Federal Express Corp. v. Holowecki, Patricia Kennedy and other colleagues made an age discrimination claim against the courier. The participants filed an intake questionnaire with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and attached a sworn affidavit.


But the agency did not open a case or notify FedEx of the charge. In a subsequent federal court proceeding, the company asserted the case had no merit because an EEOC charge was never filed. A trial jury ruling in favor of FedEx was overturned by the 2nd Circuit Court in New York.


A victory for FedEx ultimately could be a setback for business, according to Craver. It might result in the EEOC handing claimants a questionnaire and charge form at the same time.


“In the long run, it won’t necessarily help defendants,” Craver says.


But allowing an intake questionnaire to be a charge “is really neglectful of the agency’s role as it was initially conceived in screening out meritless claims,” says Manesh Rath, an attorney with Keller and Heckman in Washington.


Sellers, however, says the affidavit was a legitimate charge. If the case against FedEx is dismissed, “people will lack confidence in the integrity of the process and that will be the beginning of the end of the effectiveness of the EEOC,” he says.

Posted on

How Your ZIP Code Determines Your Employees Legal Rights

Most employers know that employment laws vary across the country. How much of a difference is often surprising to business owners and human resource professionals. Sometimes, what law applies to employees and how the law is interpreted by the courts is more a function of your ZIP code than anything else.


Take, for example, my home state of Kansas. While the state’s flat plains have plenty of blue sky overhead, the ceiling on discrimination claims is very low: Damages are limited to $2,000 for any lawsuit brought under the Kansas Act Against Discrimination. And for most lawsuits filed pursuant to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, damages are capped at $300,000. Across the border in Missouri, the potential for plaintiffs’ damage awards, according to Missouri state discrimination laws, is sky high—no caps. It’s obvious: Your company’s ZIP code may determine which discrimination laws apply to you, as well as how they apply.


There are11 circuit courts of appeal in the U.S. judicial system, each comprising a handful of states. The 8th Circuit, for example, takes in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. Next door, the 10th Circuit includes Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming. But those neighboring appeals courts may have wide splits for many years on particular legal issues. For example, a ruling from the 8th Circuit on an individual’s rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act will differ from the 10th Circuit’s interpretation of the same set of facts. Your ZIP code, which circuit governs your company’s location, may be the determining factor in whether you, as an employer, have violated the ADA.


The federal ADA requires most employers to make a “reasonable accommodation” for “qualified” employees who can no longer perform the essential functions of a job. A “reasonable accommodation” is defined as “job restructuring, part time or modified work schedules, reassignment to a vacant position, acquisition or modification of equipment or devices, appropriate adjustment or modifications of examinations, training materials or policies, the provision of qualified readers or interpreters, and other similar accommodations for individuals with disabilities.”


Sounds pretty simple. But the 8th and 10th Circuits have issued widely differing rulings defining the simple phrase “reassignment to a vacant position.”


The 10th Circuit, in the case of Smith v. Midland Brake Inc. (180 F.3d 1154 [10th Cir. 1999]), ruled that a disabled employee must be automatically reassigned to an existing vacant position. Robert Smith was employed by Midland Brake when he developed a disability that prevented him from performing the essential functions of his job. Smith was ultimately fired by Midland. As you might expect, Smith sued Midland for discrimination under the ADA. Midland successfully proved to the trial court that it could not accommodate Smith’s disability. Smith appealed, and the 10thh Circuit took up the appeal.


The 10th Circuit focused on the definition of “reassignment to a vacant position.” The court relied on the EEOC’s Interpretive Guidance: “Does reassignment mean that the employee is permitted to compete for a vacant position? No. Reassignment means that the employee gets the vacant position if s/he is qualified for it. Otherwise, reassignment would be of little value and would not be implemented as Congress intended.”


And in doing so, the court determined that a reassignment of a qualified person with a disability was required if a vacant position was available and no other reasonable accommodation could be made. A disabled employee did not have to compete with other applicants for a vacant position, but the employee should be moved into the position by default. Although there were other factors in its decision, the 10th Circuit found the EEOC’s guidance in favor of an automatic reassignment to be particularly persuasive.


But next door at ZIP code 72716, in the case of Huber v. Wal Mart Stores Inc., decided in May 2007, the 8th Circuit came to an entirely different conclusion and ruled that a disabled employee is not automatically granted reassignment to a vacant position. Pam Huber, a dry-grocery order filler for Wal-Mart Stores, suffered a permanent disability to her arm and hand and could no longer perform the essential functions of her job. Huber requested reassignment to a vacant router position, but her request was denied and Wal-Mart instead hired another applicant for the job, following company policy that the most qualified applicant for a position be hired. Huber was later reassigned to a janitorial position, with a pay cut of nearly $7 an hour.


Again, as might be expected, Huber filed a lawsuit against her employer, and using the 10th Circuit’s ruling in Smith as precedent, argued that she should have been automatically reassigned to the store’s vacant router position. Wal-Mart used the 7th Circuit’s interpretation of “reassignment to a vacant position and cited EEOC v. Humiston Keeling Inc. (7th Cir. 2000), which stated that a reassignment is not required if a more qualified applicant has applied for the position. The 8th Circuit adopted the 7th Circuit’s ruling and held that a disabled employee is simply given the ability to apply for a vacant position, but is not guaranteed reassignment to a vacant position. To me (and probably most employers’ lawyers), the 8th Circuit decision makes the most sense to employers that want to employ the most qualified folks for open jobs.


One law, two circuits, two rulings, two different results for employers. Only action by Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court on this issue will remedy the ZIP code phenomenon of different results from the same law. Until that happens, employers, corporate counsel and HR professionals know that “location, location, location” are important guiding principles in what and how the country’s employment laws apply.

Posted on

Land and Leadership

With a portfolio containing 19 million square feet of commercial property, Federal Realty Investment Trust knows the importance of laying solid foundations. The Rockville, Maryland-based company develops and manages retail shopping centers in select U.S. markets, including the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, Texas and California. Top managers in the organization are given solid foundations too—in the area of professional growth and development.

Federal Realty is a real estate investment trust, or REIT. These companies have large holdings of commercial real estate and usually are traded on public stock exchanges. (Federal Realty’s New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol is FRT.) Among its 90 shopping centers is Pentagon Row in Arlington, Virginia; Bethesda Row in Maryland; Assembly Square in Somerville, Massachusetts; and, in California, such properties as the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and the Fifth Avenue shopping area in San Diego.

Federal Realty, like many real estate trusts, is keen to develop the competencies it needs from within. One reason is the complex nature of its industry, which requires employees to possess a range of skills and knowledge in various industries, including commercial real estate, private equity markets, government regulations, insurance and economic development.

A second and more pressing reason is an acute shortage of capable people.

Earlier this year, Federal Realty launched Foundations of Leadership, a yearlong program intended to help elite performers enhance their skills and put themselves in line for promotions. Eight managers were selected to participate in the inaugural class after being nominated by vice presidents who recognized their leadership potential.

“Vice presidents inherently know which employees are high performers with bright futures. By having them nominate people, we get the cream of the crop,” says Philip Altschuler, Federal Realty’s vice president of human resources.

The Foundations of Leadership program is broken into three modules, each one stretching over four months. During the first segment, participants polish their leadership skills, including communicating with people and learning how to motivate them. Subsequent training sessions are intended to complement the “soft skills” training by deepening managers’ competencies in finance and real estate.

The leadership portion focuses on presentation skills, how to negotiate leasing prices, and performance management.

“People aren’t going to leave this program [ready to be] CPA candidates or HR professionals. But we believe they will come away with a better understanding of how the different functions in our company are interconnected,” Altschuler says.

Managers are excited about the learning opportunities. Baris Ipeker, director-legal counsel for Federal Realty, says he has already adopted some of the lessons he learned in his day-to-day work.

“I am amazed that our company thinks so much of growing its employees that it has dedicated resources to support and ensure professional development from within,” Ipeker says.

The training initiative was developed to plug a hole in Federal Realty’s leadership pipeline. Although its managers possessed excellent technical skills, many were deficient in the skills needed to coach and motivate other employees to higher levels of performance.

Consequently, top brass grew frustrated when trying to fill senior-level positions from its middle-management ranks. “We just didn’t have people ready to step into those roles,” Altschuler says.

Talent shortages are endemic to the industry, experts say. In fact, REITs present a classic example of the “buy versus grow” conundrum of acquiring talent. Consolidation and shrinking capital markets have intensified the battle for top-flight candidates, with companies trying to find talent in an increasingly shallow labor pool, says Anatole Pevnev, an analyst and editor of REITCafe.com, a research firm in Cleveland.

“More and more REITs are discovering that they have to train their own people. They’re coming up with methods to internally mentor those who can lead them forward,” Pevnev says.

The problem of finding leaders isn’t confined to U.S.-based REITs. Canadian Hotel Income Properties Real Estate Investment Trust, or CHIP REIT, runs a “GM School” each year that provides targeted skills training to the general managers who run its 32 luxury hotels.

In addition, the Vancouver, British Columbia-based organization conducts a leadership boot camp to prepare potential GMs who have been nominated by regional vice presidents.

“Training needs to begin with our leaders,” because they set the tone for other employees at their hotels, says Sharon Mackay, CHIP REIT’s senior vice president of culture.

Learn by doing
   Managers at Federal Realty attend four-hour classes every other week. Company trainers deliver the content alongside consultants including business professors from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

Another important aspect is the makeup of the team, which consists of professionals with different backgrounds and expertise. That enables people from different disciplines to share their experiences, thus becoming “students as well as teachers” for one another, Altschuler says.

Between class sessions, managers from different professional areas team up to complete the project assignments, which are intended to reinforce classroom instruction. Altschuler likens the regimen to a “customized MBA for federal employees,” albeit with a more promising return on investment.

“I know we’re getting a good ROI because I know what we’re teaching. We’re assigning [teams of] managers to real projects, so they’re getting work done at the same time they learn,” Altschuler says.

The work is challenging. As part of a session on negotiation, managers were required to read two books and complete various business projects—and that was before classes began.

After completing the leadership track this fall, participants will spend the balance of this year honing their financial literacy skills. The program concludes with real estate training in spring 2008.

Getting feedback
   Mackay says pervasive talent shortages have prompted her company to accelerate the promotion of high-caliber employees, perhaps before they were completely prepared for the advanced responsibilities. To boost their chances of success, CHIP REIT is providing them with extra coaching and leadership training.

The company created an in-house 360 survey tool, called LEAD, for managers to evaluate their progress. The acronym stands for Liveliness, Engagement, Anticipation of customer needs, and Delivery.

The survey “asks managers to evaluate their own competencies on 49 behaviors to see how well they’re doing,” Mackay says.

Those self-assessments serve as a basis for benchmarking. It helps HR develop just-in-time training curricula to address shortcomings, she says.

At Federal Realty, those enrolled in the Foundations of Leadership program could advance to an even more exclusive leadership initiative. Also known as LEAD, here standing for Leadership Education and Development, the four-year-old initiative is designed to prepare promising managers for senior-level executive positions. Only two managers are currently enrolled in LEAD.

In addition, the company is developing a mentoring program to pair newly hired employees with seasoned company veterans. The object is to help newcomers assimilate more quickly into Federal Realty’s business culture, Altschuler says.

Posted on

UAW Strikes GM Plants

Members of the United Auto Workers walked off the job shortly after 11 a.m. EDT Monday, September 24, in the first nationwide strike against General Motors since 1970.


The strike is a sharp turnaround in the contract negotiations that had been extended beyond the contract deadline of September 14. Reports over the weekend noted that the two parties were working on an all-important trust to manage retiree health care costs, which are estimated to be between $90 billion and $105 billion.


But in a press release issued Monday at 1:40 a.m., union president Ron Gettelfinger said GM failed to address concerns among union members about job security. It is widely believed among observers that in exchange for the creation of a health care trust, which was seen as a concession by the union, GM would ensure the stability of the workforce at its U.S. plants.


“We’re shocked and disappointed that General Motors has failed to recognize and appreciate what our membership has contributed during the past four years,” Gettelfinger said in the press release.


It remains unclear how many of the 73,000 UAW members left their posts. This is the first unionwide strike against GM since 1970 and the first work stoppage by the union since a 54-day walkout in 1998 at a parts-making facility in Flint, Michigan, that cost GM $3 billion.


GM spokesman Dan Flores said in a statement: “The bargaining involves complex, difficult issues that affect the job security of our U.S. work force and the long-term viability of the company. We are fully committed to working with the UAW to develop solutions together to address the competitive challenges facing General Motors.”


Despite the strike, the union said it would remain at the negotiating table with GM.


Past experience may have created different expectations for each side. Last year, GM and the UAW established a $15 billion health care trust for retirees through 2011. Retirees, for the first time, are expected to pay $792 in annual health care costs they weren’t paying a year earlier. The savings equaled $3.1 billion—enough to help GM make a profit. The UAW saw it as a concession that would be returned in kind; GM, on the other hand, saw it as precedent, says Kristin Dziczek, senior project manager at the Center for Automotive Research in Detroit.


“The UAW, going in, was like, ‘We’ll help you on health care if you give us job security and other things,’ ” she says. “And GM’s position is, ‘You’ll help us on health care and you’ll help us on a lot of other things.’ And that’s a hard place to be.”


Negotiations also appear to have reached an impasse regarding the future of the union’s jobs bank (in which GM pays workers during a layoff or pays them to perform “nontraditional work” like community service); the creation of a two-tier wage system; and the outsourcing of non-production jobs to third parties, which the UAW agreed to do at a plant in Dundee, Michigan, operated by the Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance.


The GEMA plant, which makes engines for Chrysler, Mitsubishi and Hyundai, has UAW-represented contractors who work alongside UAW line workers. The unprecedented arrangement breaks the longstanding union tradition of having all employees at the same plant work under the same contract agreement.


That concession, made in 2001, could come back to haunt the union as it takes the unusual step of calling its first nationwide strike in 37 years.


—Jeremy Smerd