Category: Archive

Dear Hate Losing Them:



No. 1: You cannot buy loyalty, so forget matching competing offers. Once an employee has decided to leave, the emotional bond is broken. Your first step is to begin the diagnosis. Are you conducting exit interviews? If not, consider hiring an outside service–professionals, not telemarketers–to ask questions that will yield honest, candid answers about why people are leaving.

Step two involves conducting a survey of remaining employees. Again, it’s better to hire professionals from outside the firm. Don’t try to do this in-house, as employees may not feel the level of trust required to give you meaningful feedback. Although you may be in a highly competitive market, you need to understand how employees perceive the experience of working for your company. Is it something they value?

This knowledge should provide a clearer picture of how your work environment is creating conditions that prompt–perhaps even encourage–people to leave for other jobs. Your job: Develop strategies that strengthen your defenses and make deliberate improvements to become a less toxic, more attractive employer.

Bonus hint: Employee retention is a management responsibility, not a human resources responsibility. Do your managers understand their retention role? Are they trained and equipped to perform it? You’ll need to get at the root of these questions too.

SOURCE: Roger E. Herman, the Herman Group, author of Keeping Good People, Greensboro, North Carolina, January 22, 2006.

LEARN MORE: Please read another viewpoint that argues companies should influence which employees leave and when.

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.

Dear Bearing Bad News:



Instead of looking at this as a firing decision, view it as a hiring decision. In other words, use this as an opportunity to redesign work, increase employee and customer satisfaction, and select the most qualified people. This makes the process becomes more positive and effective. The negative emotions that surround downsizing help no one.

Start with a clean piece of paper and list all the tasks that need to be done once the downsizing is accomplished. Begin with the results you want, and then list the tasks that must be completed to ensure those results. A thoughtful review of what the customer truly values helps you eliminate non-value-added work that creeps into jobs over time.

Think through each necessary task and estimate the actual time necessary to do it in a quality manner. This activity will help you more effectively communicate which tasks your staff no longer will be able to complete. The reality of any significant downsizing is that some work you currently accomplish must be eliminated. Failing to properly identify and communicate these changes is one of the best ways to end up in a no-win position: less staff and the same workload.

Once you know which tasks remain and how much time each will take, you should design new positions that make sense given these needs. The requirements, skills and experience necessary for each job will flow from the work that must be completed.

If the downsizing has been announced, you may find it helpful to engage current employees in the selection process. Ask each potential candidate to prepare a specific, point-by-point document that details their demonstrated successes and experience with each major job task. Asking employees to self-identify their abilities, rather than just their interest in a position, may result in some candidates voluntarily opting out of the selection process.

If the downsizing must be planned without input from employees, look at performance reviews and other measurements that relate to the specific tasks for each new position to justify your selections. Remember, selections must make sense to you, your superiors and the affected employees. Good performance data describes previous successes and predicts the likelihood of future ones.

If everything else is relatively equal, I typically would keep employees with the most seniority. Employees who have a longer-term commitment likely are more willing to work through these changes if they are for the good of the company.

SOURCE: Richard D. Galbreath, Performance Growth Partners Inc., Bloomington, Illinois, January 30, 2006.

LEARN MORE: Some ideas for inspiring employees when downsizing. Also, 13 Alternatives to Downsizing gives HR directors food for thought. Link to about 75 other items about downsizing.

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.

Executives from among the largest employers in northwest Nevada met at John Ascuaga’s Nugget Casino Resort near Reno earlier this month to figure out how to make smarter bets with their health care dollars and put an end to rising medical costs.

It hardly sounds like breaking news. But what was unique about the October 12 meeting—and possibly a portent of things to come nationwide—was that the usual health care stakeholders of hospitals, including insurance companies and such vendors as pharmacy benefit managers and major health benefits consultants, were not invited.

Only those footing the bill for health care—public and private employers—were allowed to attend to learn what’s needed to make sure the health care they are funding is both high-quality and cost-effective.

“The time for holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ is over,” says Brian Klepper, president of the Jacksonville, Florida-based Center for Practical Health Reform and a speaker at the meeting, which was organized by the Reno-based Nevada Health Care Coalition. “We recognized it was time to put together a meeting that was just payers, not providers.”

Many advocates for health system change argue that medical industry has not, on its own or in collaboration with employers, adequately addressed high health care costs and related issues such as preventable medical errors. Klepper, among others, says employers should use their market power to demand improvements in cost and quality by transforming the way doctors and hospitals get paid for their services.

The meeting was the first of a larger effort to get executives from regional employers to work with other employers to control health care costs for businesses.

“It is really important for people in the C-suite to show visual leadership on this, so that it is not just an HR thing, it is a business leadership thing that is important for everybody in the community,” Klepper says, who spoke after the meeting during a telephone interview. 

In the two-hour meeting, which was closed to the media, Klepper says he laid out what he calls “the conceptual framework” of today’s health care system. First, doctors and hospitals are not paid to provide cost-effective high-quality medical care, he says. They are paid either for each service they provide or, in the case of capitation, a lump sum for each patient, allowing them to pocket the money left over after care is given. Either way, care is not compensated based on quality, Klepper says. Second, employers have not used their claims data to hold doctors and hospitals accountable for the kind of service they provide.

Jerry Reeves, a pediatric oncologist, spoke about the value of using claims data to evaluate the cost and quality of medical providers in the region. Doing so can help create networks of high-performing doctors. This is something Reeves, former medical officer for insurance company Humana, has done as the chief medical officer for unionized hotel and restaurant employees in Las Vegas.

The meeting was intended to increase the Nevada Health Care Coalition’s pool of medical claims from 30,000 lives to 100,000 lives, a number that would total about 25 percent of the population in northwestern Nevada.

“That is significant,” says Michael Ginder, the coalition’s executive director. Ginder also spoke by telephone with Workforce Management after the meeting.  A large data pool would allow the group to examine how the cost of medical treatment varies among providers, how different benefit plan designs increase the use of drugs for chronic diseases like diabetes, and the difference in the quality and cost of care of hospitals and doctors. Ginder says data is the key to forcing change; and collecting the data requires a collaborative effort among employers.

Medical providers “start acting differently once you have the data,” Ginder says.

Employers that band together can use their market power as purchasers of health care to pressure hospitals and doctors to improve their services, he says.

“We have to assume that these doctors are well-trained and can diagnose and treat effectively,” Ginder says. “But they have to understand the cost implications.”

—Jeremy Smerd

A ruling by the National Labor Relations Board this month that outlined the definition of a supervisor is unlikely to be the final word in a matter that has vexed employers, unions and courts for more than two decades.

The decision, which may make it easier for companies to classify millions more workers as management and therefore be ineligible for collective bargaining, angered union representatives. They’re likely to appeal in a circuit court.

A permanent resolution may depend on Congress changing the legislation that has governed unionization since 1947. That legislation defines a supervisor as anyone who has the authority to “hire, transfer, assign … or responsibly to direct” other employees.

It’s the assigning and directing that were at the heart of the NLRB decision. The panel held that permanent charge nurses at Oakwood Heritage Hospital in Michigan should be designated as supervisors because they assigned patients to other nurses, influenced their work hours, were responsible for their performance and exercised independent judgment.

In two related cases, however, the board found that nurses at Golden Crest Healthcare Center in Minnesota and lead workers at Croft Metals Inc. in Mississippi did not meet the Oakwood test.

Unions asserted that under the NLRB parameter, a nurse who spends as little as 15 percent to 20 percent of his or her time in the charge role could be considered a supervisor.

Congress may have to sort it out. “Serious consideration ought to be given to amending the statute,” says Sarah Fox, a lawyer and former NLRB member.

The NLRB used the three cases to respond to a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in NLRB v. Kentucky River Community Care Inc. In that action, the high court rejected the board’s reasoning when it upheld a union request to include six registered nurses in a bargaining unit.

“Employers should be satisfied because they have more clarity in what (responsibility) to give to individuals if they wish them to be a supervisor,” says James Redeker, chair of employment services at WolfBlock, a Philadelphia law firm. AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said in a statement that the NLRB decision was the latest step by the Bush administration “to deny as many workers as possible their basic right to have a voice on the job and improve their living standards through their union.”

The three Republican appointees to the board voted in favor of the supervisor definition. The two members backed by Democrats dissented, writing that the decision threatened to create a class of workers who “have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees.” Peter Kirsanow, who was appointed to the NLRB by President Bush in January, maintains that the board is not overtly political.

“There’s an effort to incorporate the views of everyone before you come to a conclusion on a particular case,” he said in an April interview.

The NLRB ruling could have a wide impact. Computer scientists, engineers and other skilled employees could be defined as supervisors in today’s collaborative offices.

“It’s all about pushing authority down to frontline workers,” Fox says.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Donna Leonard, a sales manager for Rainbow Play Systems, implemented a dress code requiring men to purchase and wear denim shirts with the company’s logo and women to purchase and wear navy blazers over polo shirts. In implementing this policy, Leonard said that women needed “to cover up their boobs” and “rear ends.” Michelle Rohaly was fired from her job as a saleswoman when she refused to purchase and wear a navy blazer.

Rohaly sued under Title VII and claimed that the dress code was discriminatory against women. The company argued that the dress code was not discriminatory because it required all employees to purchase specific types of clothing and imposed financial burdens on both sexes.

The Washington State Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment for Rainbow Play Systems because Leonard’s sexist comments evidenced that sex may have played a role in the decision to implement the dress code. Therefore, the dress code policy might constitute disparate treatment on the basis of sex. Michelle Rohaly v. Rainbow Playground Depot Inc., Wash. Ct. App., No. 56478, No. 56478-1-I (8/28/06).

Impact: Because one manager’s sexist comments could show that the company’s reasons for its policy are a pretext, employers should consider periodic training of managers and supervisors about how they conduct themselves in equal employment opportunity matters.