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Table of Contents May 2001

Features

Fight Dirty Hiring Tactics
Unethical recruiters resort to lies, theft, and bribery to woo away your employees. Here are the tools you need to stop them.
By Eilene Zimmerman
 
The New Thinking in Performance Appraisals
HR professionals are abandoning traditional annual performance reviews. Instead, they’re finding new ways to set goals and measure achievement.
By Dayton Fandray
 
A Return to At-Will Employment
A decision by the California Supreme Court might bring business back to real at-will employment. Here’s what it means for you and your company.
By Matthew Heller
 

Special Advertising Section

Leader Summit Series:
Internet Solutions
Human resources wants to free itself from the paper chains and participate in their companies’ strategic decision-making. With its powerful capabilities for recruiting and managing people, the Internet can help. Workforce asked leaders in HR’s Internet revolution to talk about the solutions that can move HR to the next level.
 

Departments

Between the Lines
You’ll get through it.
 
Mailbox
Does age matter? • Why people expect so much from their jobs. • Money isn’t everything.
 
The Buzz
HR lessons for the dot-coms. • Internship diversity • Raw Data: the smuggler’s want ad • Well Done: Unisys and its college partners.
 
On the Contrary
Wouldn’t some chicken be good, right about now? Shari Caudron intends to spend less time on work, and more time mulling her poultry picks.
 
What Works
How a workplace drone blossomed into a motivated, engaged business partner. Tom Terez tells the tale of Walter, an employee you might recognize.
 
Interview
Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith comes with a money-back guarantee. He shares his tips on HR’s role as coach, including how to handle the know-it-all boss.
 
Dear Workforce:
Expert advice on measuring employee worth, workplace mentoring, and configuring a vacation and personal leave policy.
 
Legal Insight
The legal aspects of performance appraisals. • What to do with an employee who reeks of alcohol. • Can you force employees to have lunch together?
 
Small, Medium, Large
Nothing kills business faster than bad service. Here’s how three very different companies created customer-service training that delivers.
 
Think Twice
Todd Raphael isn’t ready to give exclusive tax breaks to ensure a supply of IT workers. Not when other vital professions have such critical shortages.
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Promote Accountability in Your Customer-Service Team

Gulf Breeze Hospital is an acute-care facility with 60 licensed beds. Itopened in June 1985, following five years of research, planning, andconstruction.

SmallCompany
Name: Gulf BreezeHospital
Location: GulfBreeze, Florida
Type of business: Hospital
Numberof Employees: 280

    Longtime administrator Dick Fulford says that the first step toward achievingexceptional standards was to assemble a first-class team ofcustomer-service-oriented managers and staff. It’s what he refers to as hisDream Team.


    Members of the staff were trained early on to make three major pledges toensure better customer service. It all begins with a positive attitude, he says.

  • Never say, “It’s not my job.”
  • Reduce and eliminate hassles.
  • Provide personalized professional care.

    Fulford says that every person working at the hospital has the opportunity tomake a customer’s interaction exceptional. Applicants are immediately told thatif they can’t make this commitment, they will probably not fit in with GulfBreeze Hospital culture.


    Once hired, team participants are encouraged to submit “brightideas,” a training mechanism to foster creative customer-service thinkingon the teams. Various forms of recognition are utilized to keep the staffthinking and challenging existing procedures and policies. Rewards such as mealtickets, mentions in the hospital newsletter, written acknowledgment, andnotation in performance evaluations reinforce the hospital’s customer-servicegoals.


    Ideas that require fine-tuning often are turned over to the Gulf BreezeHospital Satisfaction Team, Fulford says. Hospital staff members representingvarious departments have volunteered to serve on this specialized team toaddress patient, physician, and employee satisfaction issues. To reinforce theideas that emerge, a subgroup produces a newsletter called “BreezeWay.” In this way, employees also are trained to market their successes.


    Every month, the publication features the Baptist Health Care Standards ofPerformance. The standards, says Fulford, are specific behaviors that employeesare required to practice while on duty, such as a positive attitude, goodappearance and communication, and commitment to coworkers.


    Scripts are provided to employees. Gulf Breeze Hospital employees receivebooklets that describe the hospital’s code of conduct. For example, they areadvised to say, “May I help you? I have the time.”


    “This last part is very important to say. There’s so much rush, rush inthe health-care industry,” Fulford says.


    Employees are empowered to please their customers in many ways. Any employeecan open the hospital gift shop and spend up to $250 to replace a patient’s lostbelongings or to buy flowers for a patient with a complaint. Nurses carrywireless phones so doctors can contact them without paging over a noisyintercom.


    In the area of customer-service accountability, Gulf Breeze took a major stepin January 1996. It joined the ranks of facilities surveyed by Press, GaneyAssociates, Inc., of South Bend, Indiana. By submitting to the rigor ofcompetition, the hospital has trained its employees to measure its performanceby industry standards, Fulford says. Press, Ganey Associates processes more than4 million surveys annually for more than 1,400 clients. The firm provides morethan 20 different measurement instruments and reports and conducts surveys forhealth-care clients in 47 states. Its Web site reports that it has been selectedby 74 major health-care systems as their satisfaction measurement provider.


    During the first quarter of each year, clients submit theirquality-improvement experiences for its Success Story Contest. The top sixfacilities from each year are invited to present their stories at the firm’sannual client conference.


    The first Press, Ganey Associates report was received in late May 1996, andGulf Breeze Hospital earned an overall score of 95.7. Gulf Breeze ranked tops inpatient satisfaction compared to more than 600 other hospitals nationwide.


    Only a year before, the hospital had been ranked close to the bottom innational surveys. Its turnaround is a national customer-service model. Lastyear, the hospital ranked among the top 2 percent in customer-service surveys.Its market share reportedly jumped by 4 percentage points, and it generated $4.5million in additional revenue in 1999 while reducing costs by $3.5 million.


    “Doctors love to come to Gulf Breeze,” Fulford says. “Theperception is that the patient is going to be satisfied.”


Workforce, May 2001, p. 86— Subscribe Now!

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Results-Oriented Customer Service Training

The scenario has a familiar ring: A frustrated buyer of computer productsfiles a complaint online. His posting says, “TigerDirect.com hasconsistently refused to respond to my faxes, e-mails, and calls about thismalfunctioning motherboard and CPU bundle. I have purchased many items from themin the past, and they are becoming less responsive to me when I have a problem.They take the customer’s money but don’t support their own product.”


    Never mind that the motherboard was purchased online. A new Web site calledeComplaints.com provides a free online forum for customers to air complaintsabout any company’s products or services. It could be a clothing retailer,manufacturer, financial institution, home-gardening company, hospital, or evenyour neighborhood gas station. At the same time, eComplaints.com gives thecompanies a chance to respond to the customers’ concerns and purchasestatistical information from the site in order to identify and remedy troublespots. Interestingly, 6 out of the top 10 companies receiving online complaintson this particular Web site were airlines, among them American and United.


    Roger H. Nunley, managing director of Atlanta-based Customer Care Institute,says American consumers are more knowledgeable and have higher expectations thanmost other people. When a company improves its service delivery, thesatisfaction bar is raised.


    Why the fuss? According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index-compiledby the University of Michigan-customer satisfaction has dropped since 1994 innearly every sector of the economy.


    In many grocery chains, for example, the tongue-in-cheek phrase”customer checkout” has come to exemplify the unsettling trend of poorcustomer service. It means, of course, that customers won’t be checking back inat the store.


    Customer service training begins with how an employer screens candidates forhire, and not only during employee orientation, says a spokesman at ReidSystems, a Chicago-based developer of automated applicant-screening tools. Inconjunction with several large North American grocery chains, Reid recentlystudied thousands of job applicant responses to pre-employment assessmentquestions on customer service. The study then examined the service-orientedquestions and found that:

  • 45 percent said they believe that customers should be told when they are wrong.

  • 46 percent said customers have to follow the rules if they are going to help them.

  • 34 percent said they would prefer to work behind the scenes, rather than with customers.

  • 13 percent said they believe that if customers don’t ask for help, they don’t need it.

  • 10 percent said they do not feel it is necessary to help a customer if the request falls outside their area of responsibility.

  • 6 percent said they have repeatedly argued with customers and coworkers in recent jobs.

    Is it any wonder that customer-service training-especially with a newgeneration of workers-is taking on greater importance? According to the AmericanSociety for Training and Development, in Alexandria, Virginia, service providersspent an average of $833 in education per employee in 1997, the most recent yearthat figures were available. This is nearly 30 percent higher than the nationalaverage for all industries.


    There was a time when customer service meant hiring an individual to sitbehind a complaint desk. Today, customer-service training is more comprehensive.It requires that employers hire the right employees, create a customer-serviceculture, view customers as high-maintenance “guests,” and trainemployees on select technologies-without sacrificing the human touch. GulfBreeze Hospital, Wild Oats Markets, and the PPL Corporation are examples ofsmall, medium, and large companies, respectively, that are moving away fromhandling complaints to proactively anticipating customer needs-before troublebegins.


    Remember, whatever method or innovation you choose, your customer-servicetraining should be aligned with your company’s own policies, procedures, andculture.


Workforce, May 2001, pp. 84-90— Subscribe Now!

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How Dot-coms Learned To Value Tried and True

In hindsight, the first wave of dot-com companies was rife with humanresources problems. The famously laid-back work environment, which madecompanies especially appealing to younger workers, also bred lax attitudestoward morale, sexual-discrimination issues, and interdepartmentalcommunication.


    After the dot-com crash of 2000, it was easy for observers to pick throughthe remains of crashed online companies to see where things had gone wrong. TheIndustry Standard magazine, for example, noted that several companies had leftthemselves wide open to sexual-harassment charges by not even having the properpolicies in place. This was corroborated in The New York Times, which inFebruary reported several incidences of mistreatment of female employees.Examples included women being referred to as “bimbos” by coworkers,forced to view Internet pornography, and threatened with a loss of employmentafter they broke off relationships with male executives.


    Other human resources problems were more procedural, but nonethelessrelevant. Many companies eschewed performance evaluations, according to TheIndustry Standard, and were left unable to “document against employeelawsuits claiming they were underpaid and overworked, not promoted, or let gounfairly.”


    The dangers of ignoring HR came to a head during the recent rash of masslayoffs, when several dot-com businesses such as Foodline.com and APB Online,Inc., found themselves being sued by former employees for wrongful dismissal. Wall Street Journal business writer Kemba J. Dunham reported that “manydot-coms lack seasoned human-resources managers or even written human-resourcespolicies.”


    Sheri Cardo, public director of relations for KnowledgePoint, says herclients tell her that most start-ups wait until their second wave offund-raising before they pay attention to HR — and then it’s too late.KnowledgePoint produces HRMS software, including performance-evaluation programsthat are used by several small companies, among them MyWebcast.com.


    With 33 employees — a number that increases at a rate of about one or two newpeople a week — MyWebcast.com is too small for a full-fledged HR department, andtoo big not to have one. Kathie Pierro, assistant to the company’s CEO and theperson responsible for the company’s HR programs, has a strategy that beginswith outsourcing all the “mechanical” functions of HR — such as payrolland benefits management — to a single company. This, she says, is less expensivethan hiring a second HR person.


    Pierro says that outsourcing and the use of HR computer programs lets herdeal with the more human HR issues associated with any new company. “Whilea creative team — and all dot-coms are essentially creative companies — needs theright type of environment in which to flourish, team members are still human andneed a certain kind of structure to feel secure. When explosive growth surroundsyou, you need to know that at least certain rules apply.”


    Debbie Sotelo, an HR manager for TrueSAN.com, has found that communication isan underlying problem for many start-ups. She points in particular to problemsin the interview process, when a candidate receives different job descriptionsfrom different supervisors, and in production, when project managers receivedifferent instructions from different project team members.


    The HR problems that plagued the first wave of dot-coms were hardly the onlyfactors that contributed to their downfall. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author ofthe bookE-Volve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture ofTomorrow, believes that marketforces were responsible for the lion’s share of the damage. Still, she seesplenty of opportunities for good HR policies to contribute to a start-up’sstrengths.


    “The new wave needs to focus less on greed as a motivator,” Kantersays, “and focus more on the long-term creation of meaning and value, alongwith long-term economic value…Some of the early start-up owners thought theywould make their money by selling the company to someone else.”


    Kanter says that HR can create an attractive start-up environment byemphasizing learning opportunities, paying attention to individual needs, andpromoting a sense of meaningful work. “The money has to be fair, but itdoesn’t have to be everything.”


Workforce, May 2001, p. 15— Subscribe Now!

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Web Sites Related to Recruiting of Women

H

ere’s a list of Web sites that can help you when hiring female IT professionals.

AFL-CIO’s Working Women’s Page
The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations(AFL-CIO) is the voluntary federation of America’s unions, representing workingwomen nationwide.
 
Association for Computing Machinery
ACM is the world’s first educational and scientific computing society,offering publications, pioneering conferences, and visionary leadership.
 
Catalyst
Catalyst offers training, research, mentoring, networking and informationresource development for non-profit agencies.
 
GirlGeeks
GirlGeeks provides jobs, high-quality career, training and motivationalservices and products for women using IT to prosper and grow. Women come toGirlGeeks to advance their careers, find appropriate training and connect withother women who have similar experiences.
 
Information Technology Association of America
The ITAA web site provides information about the IT industry, its issues,association programs, publications, meetings, seminars and links to othervaluable web sites.
 
Society of Women Engineers
SWE is a non-profit educational service organization dedicated to publicizingthe need for women engineers and encouraging young women to consider anengineering education.
 
U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau
The U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau, established by Congress in 1920,is the only federal agency mandated to represent the needs of wage-earning womenin the public policy process.
 
Women in Technology
WITI offers a vertical portal site on the Internet for women who have a highreliance on technology in both their careers and their businesses.
 
WorldWIT
WorldWIT offers a free resource for women in the form of information andadvice from other members of its community. It operates 29 e-mail lists aroundthe world.
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Use Technology as a Tool, Not a Replacement

PPL Corporation is a Fortune 500 company that markets wholesale or retailenergy in 42 states and Canada. It also delivers energy to nearly 6 millioncustomers in the United States, United Kingdom, and Latin America.

LargeCompany
Name: PPLCorporation
Location: Allentown,Pennsylvania
Type ofbusiness: Energyservices
Numberof Employees: 12,000

    About half of PPL’s workforce use computers to conduct their jobs, accordingto Denis Esslinger, Help Center supervisor in the Information ServicesDepartment. Considering that large number, anything can go wrong. An employeecould have problems preparing a spreadsheet, creating a PowerPoint presentation,writing a report to meet safety regulations, or simply connecting a laptop to ahome office. PPL thus created a Help Center, a team of 30 “analysts”who provide all of the computer support for these 6,000 employees.


    “Last year, they received 90,000 calls at the Help Center,”Esslinger says. This special team was expected to resolve 70 percent of theproblems on the first contact. But the problem was that new members of the teamweren’t properly trained.


    In order to improve and accelerate their customer-service practices, PPLworked with Raleigh, North Carolina-based Productivity Point International (PPI)– oneof its strategic alliance partners. Previously, new team members had beentrained by shadowing experienced consultants and receiving support material asneeded.


    This method presented several problems, Esslinger says:

  • There was no consistent and qualitative message from the Help Center.

  • Training was too informal.

  • Resources were not centralized, and instructions were hard to find.

  • Previous training did not lead to a new analyst’s self-directed action.

    PPI designed a customer-service training program for the 30-member team thatincluded instructor-led training with mentors, Web-based self-study, andon-the-job practice. While the training was specifically designed for newemployees, it was delivered to the entire Help Center team.


    The one-week training program produced positive results. New Help Centeranalysts were productive in half the time previously required to get them up tospeed. And they were able to resolve the required 70 percent of customerproblems during the first call.


    “I found the blended solution to be very innovative,” Esslingersays. “We not only solved computer problems but exceeded our customers’expectations of our service.”


    Clearly, a company’s customer-service practice may be an employer’s bestcompetitive edge.


Workforce, May 2001, pp.88-90— Subscribe Now!

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The Real Costs of Performance Appraisals

Performance appraisals can be expensive, and it’s not because of thesoftware. KnowledgePoint’s Performance Impact 2.0 Hosted Edition starts at$4,500 for one year, and a site license for the Intranet Edition starts at$8,000-a paltry sum in the grand scheme of things.


    The real costs are in the time spent:

  • preparing appraisals

  • setting goals and objectives

  • conducting reviews

  • conducting higher level reviews of lower level appraisals

  • designing, printing, copying, filing and distributing appraisal forms

  • designing and communicating the appraisal process

  • training supervisors to conduct appraisals

  • dealing with post-appraisal appeals and grievances

    As a rule of thumb, Fred Nickols, senior consultant with DistanceConsultants, in Robbinsville, New Jersey, estimates performance appraisals tocost $1,500 per employee. That may be a low figure, however. Two seniorexecutives with overseas firms who responded to Nickols’ 1997 Internet surveyfor HR professionals cited actual costs of $1,945 per employee and $2,200 peremployee.


Workforce, April 2001, p. 81SubscribeNow!

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Objective Appraisals

The old-fashioned, paper- and-pencil performance review didn’t workwell for us,” says Steve Nadeau, vice president of human resources forGwinnett Health System. “Evaluations were late, employees said it was toosubjective, and managers didn’t like the system,” he says. The problemscarried over into other areas also, potentially affecting the hospital system’saccreditation by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of HealthcareOrganizations, which evaluates more than 19,500 health-care organizations in theU.S.

LargeCompany
Name: GwinnettHealth System
Location: Lawrenceville,Georgia
Type ofCompany: hospital
Numberof Employees: 3,300
System: KnowledgePoint’sPerformance Impact

    Nadeau saw KnowledgePoint’s Performance Impact solution at an HR conferenceand decided to do a demonstration project with some of the hospital system’smanagers. About nine months later, the system was installed. At the time, Nadeausays, it was simpler to integrate new hires and departing employees into thesystem using their own mainframe than it was to use KnowledgePoint’s server as ahost. “This allows automatic updates using our mainframe,” he says.


    The hard part came at the very beginning. A development team was formed,consisting of managers and employees, to sort each staff member into one of ninebroad job categories, and to develop evaluation criteria for those specificcategories. Performance Impact has eight industry-specific competency modules,including one for health care. Many of the competencies were already built intothe program, including patient care, diagnostic testing, safety and infectioncontrol, food service, and housekeeping. These were combined with criteriadeveloped by the hospital, as well as with standard competencies built into theprogram. As a result, evaluation criteria are based on the actual jobs atGwinnett Health System.


    As part of the changeover, Nadeau says, the Performance Impact rating systemwas incorporated into the hospital system’s appraisal program. It uses a 1-5rating, based on standards set by managers, “and ties pay to performance.Employees have liked it from the start, because it’s less subjective than theold system,” Nadeau says. Gwinnett Health System uses the evaluationsoftware for employee self-evaluation, too.


    The writer’s block that often accompanies performance reviews is virtuallyeliminated by the Intelli-Text Designer. That module prompts managers to provideobservations about their employees’ performance using a high-low scale and turnsthose observations into evaluation text. Managers have the options of generatingtheir own supporting text or customizing the existing text to ensure that”cookie-cutter” evaluations are avoided.


    Although Performance Impact is designed to include 360 degree reviews,Gwinnett’s version focuses on the formal, manager-to-employee annual reviews.For 360 reviews, a paper-and-pencil check-off system is used. “Commentsaren’t needed, so it’s easier for employees to do,” Nadeau says, notingthat only about one third of the hospital workforce has routine access to PCs.


    Version 2 of this system, released last November, moves the software into theperformance-management category by supporting multi-level, cascading goals forstrategic integration through the organization, as well as individualdevelopment plans, goal setting, and tracking. It also has a log to documentperformance year-round, helping the entire staff to focus on the organization’skey goals. That version features an optional integration module for automaticdata synchronization with the HR information services system, more than 2,000competency-specific coaching ideas, and automatic notification of tasks that aredue.


   Additionally, says Ian Alexander, KnowledgePoint vice president ofmarketing, “the new Performance Impact empowers employees to manage theirown performance and see how their actions support the entire organization,”which has “a powerful effect on employee retention.”


    At Gwinnett, classes to train employees and managers to use the softwarelasted about two months. “For ongoing training — especially for new hires– we have a ‘train the trainer’ situation with an expert in eachdepartment.”


    For the physical implementation, Gwinnett Health System formed a team ofmanagers and employees from throughout the hospital, to work with the HR andinformation services departments. “The biggest issue was getting all thepieces in place, planning the information services side,” Nadeau says.


    Nadeau hasn’t measured the differences in outcome between Performance Impactand the old paper-based method. That will come once the system has been in usefor a full year. Early indications, however, look promising.


Workforce, April 2001, pp. 79-81SubscribeNow!

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Making Reviews More Efficient and Fair

Ideally, performance-appraisal software streamlines the evaluation process,reduces paperwork, and encourages objectivity. But the gains aren’t givens.Managers have to spend some time tailoring the systems to their own workforces.If they don’t, says Gene Drumm, senior partner with the Vector Group, Inc. inDenver, “it’s a more efficient way of doing a bad process.”


    The problem, Drumm says, is that many software programs have a generic set ofquestions that too often aren’t customized for the jobs being evaluated. Itdoesn’t have to be that way. Despite charges of “cookie-cutter”evaluations, managers have the option of customizing most programs so theyaccurately reflect the goals and values of the organization and, perhaps moreimportantly, so they fairly evaluate the jobs being appraised.


    Independent research on performance-appraisal software, as yet, is virtuallynon-existent. Anecdotal reports tend to focus on speed and objectivity. Forexample, Walker Information, a survey firm in Indianapolis, developed its own360-degree appraisal software for in-house use only, three or four years ago,according to Ray Becker, senior vice president for organizational effectivenessand ethics. “It’s easier, faster and uses less paper.”


    Appraisals donewith paper-and-pen would take about six weeks from the beginning of the processto the time that final reports were issued. Now reports can be completed in oneday. As a result, Becker says that more appraisals are completed on time. As forthe outcomes, “Some employees don’t like the results, but they’re happywith this system.”


    For managers, many of whom are uncomfortable giving feedback,performance-appraisal software helps to pinpoint areas that need improvement andto communicate the information to their staffs. According to the “2000Performance Management Survey,” conducted for the Society for HumanResource Management, only 33 percent were satisfied with coaching efforts. Thesurvey also found that only 34 percent were satisfied with their developmentalplanning.


    Yet, if companies focused on the developmental side of performancemanagement as identifying training needs or coaching, they got far more out ofthe evaluation process, says Scott Snell, professor of business administrationat Penn State University. When goals are agreed to by the employee and themanager, he says, employees are more likely to accept the standards, becausethey had some input.


    Since software-based performance-appraisals tend to focuson results and actions rather than personality traits, employees are more likelyto view them as fair. They provide objective facts that can be used to craftindividual development plans, and to help employees not only improve performancebut also focus more closely on achieving the organization’s key goals.


Workforce, April 2001, pp. 76-81SubscribeNow!

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Sports and Salaries Lets Get Real

With the dawning of spring comes many things — daylight savings time; rain,flowers and birdsong; uncontrollable sneezing; and the rebirth of the nation’spastime. However, along with baseball come baseball players and theirpocketbooks.


    The overblown salaries of baseball players today should cause us to pause andask questions. Why, in an age when hardworking individuals are struggling tomake ends meet, are there grown men playing a game that pays them millions ofdollars? Why do we stand by and let it happen? Why do we feed this nationaladdiction of sports heroism? Why am I the only one who cares?


    Does it concern anyone else that America is now laying off thousands ofworkers at the same time that Alex Rodriguez begins the baseball season with acontract that will pay him $252 million over 10 years? Shouldn’t we all beconcerned? When it comes down to it, we’re really all to blame for thisout-of-whack financial sense. Yep, I said we.


    Any one of us who patron baseball games, buy team merchandise, and pay theridiculous $4 for a hotdog at the stadium are fostering the unnatural and highlycontagious disease of overblown salaryitis. While it pains me to admit it, I tooam guilty of the offense. There’s something about the peanut dust clinging to myhands and the way spending $7 on a beer can make the most basic of domesticstaste like the purest of brews. Once per season I have to make my way to theballpark to breathe in the dust from the infield.


    Can I justify my actions? No. Every year the urge to see the boys of summerplay some long ball overwhelms me and I give in. Yet, the more I think about it,the more irrational and ridiculous my actions seem. And the same could be saidfor all of us who patron baseball games and feed into the mindset that it’s okayand normal to pay people millions of dollars to play a game.


    Can you picture yourself justifying to your CEO how you offered a potentialemployee $252 million for an average of four hours of work a day for fivemonths? No? Me neither. No one in his right mind in the HR world would ever dosomething as crazy as that.


    Or would they?


    Look at all those crazy dot-com companies who offer newemployees gamerooms, swimming pools at work, and brand new sports cars. The companies had themoney to spend (obviously), but should they have done so?


    Companies, like professional sports, flex their monetary muscles by spendingexorbitant amounts on new recruits, believing this was the only way to wooprospective employees away from competitors. Also, they believe it is the onlyway to keep current employees away other companies. Are we surprised to see thebusiness practices of professional sports bleeding over into the corporateworld? We shouldn’t be.


    Which leads me to the $252 million question: Why do we accept and even expectthe huge salaries paid to professional athletes?


    Maybe we shouldn’t. Instead of letting the sports world lead our nation’seconomic mindset, we should create a new trend and let the business realminfluence the way people think of money and salaries. And when I say businessrealm, I don’t mean those dot-coms that flooded society with over-compensatedemployees. I mean the real business world, the one most of us work in.


    So here’s my idea. Instead of paying players great sums of money for littlework, professional sports should take a page out of the HR manual at anybusiness — a lot of work for little money. That’s the way the world really works.


    We’d like to pretend we work for companies that would pay us handsomely andallow us to take every Monday and Friday off, but this isn’t a movie. It’s life.I’m sorry to have to be the one who breaks the news to you, but those types ofjobs don’t exist.


    The majority of people know (that is to say we working stiffs out there) thatit’s damn tough work to hold down a 9 to 5 job. We have to show up for work dayafter day, week after week and two weeks’ vacation, which half the time we feeltoo guilty or are too busy to use. Yet, we still patron functions that pay theiremployees millions of dollars, rubbing in our faces that we will never make asmuch for doing so little as those professional athletes.


    So while the boys of summer go out there and play a game, I, on behalf of allthe other poor working schleps out there, feel justified in my tirade thatplayers are overpaid and under worked. Workers of the world, unite! Professionalathletes of the world, get real jobs.