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How HOK Builds Engagement Despite the Downturn

Doom and gloom this past year left Kimberly Dowdell desperate for some good news.


The 26 year-old had been at her company, the global architectural firm HOK, for just six months when it began layoffs. Over the next several months the firm let go 300 people. In just the New York office, where Dowdell is based, 20 percent of the workforce was cut in three separate rounds of layoffs.


“I didn’t know that something like this could happen,” says Dowdell, who joined the firm as an architectural technician. “I kept asking people, ‘When will it get better?’ ”


A partner pulled Dowdell aside at one point to tell her that her job was safe. But HOK has gone way beyond providing assurances to its high performers, such as Dowdell. Over the past year, the firm has launched a string of initiatives to keep its 2,000 employees engaged and productive in the face of the worst recession that many of them have ever witnessed.


HOK is among a number of employers taking a comprehensive approach to engagement that taps workers’ desire for transparency, career development, meaningful jobs and a degree of employment security. “If you don’t keep people engaged, the minute things start turning around, those people are gone,” says Eli Hoisington, a designer and senior associate at HOK.


Employee engagement in general has sagged during the recession, most studies show. While turnover rates have been low amid the dismal hiring climate, experts agree that employees overall and key talent in particular will look to leave companies that have done little to win over workers during the hard times. What’s more, dedicated, motivated employees can boost the bottom line and may be crucial to sustainable business success. Not surprisingly, engagement has become a top priority for HR leaders.


Trust equals engagement
Even before its first round of layoffs in December, HOK’s HR staff began discussing how it was going to keep morale up and keep its employees excited about what they do, says Marsha Littell, senior vice president and director of training and organizational development in the St. Louis office of HOK.


“When you lay people off, you often lose the best people because they don’t feel like it’s a stable environment,” she says. “Keeping people active is really important because if people are just sitting there in between projects, it just gets worse.”


When business slowed down, HOK had to make particular efforts to keep employees excited about being with the company. That requires a fair amount of internal marketing, Littell says.


At the same time, HOK has made it a point to keep in mind that a large percentage of its workforce is under 35, an age group that’s known for wanting to continuously learn, invest in their careers and exercise their entrepreneurial spirit. Littell and her team have spent a lot of time discussing what could keep these employees excited.


To that end, for example, HOK launched a blog last spring. Littell invited 30 of its employees to regularly contribute to what’s called Life at HOK.


The blog serves multiple purposes, Littell says. For managers and HR, the blog serves as a way of gauging the mood in HOK’s various offices around the world. But it also shows that the company has a significant amount of trust in its employees who contribute to blog on topics ranging from the professional, such as sustainable design topics, to the personal, such as a bicycle race just completed or discussions about a new supermarket in the area.


“No one edits what I am writing and I don’t have to run my ideas by anyone,” says Dowdell, who started blogging in March. “It shows they really trust me.”


Trust overall has been a casualty of the downturn and has become a priority for employees. “Trust/confidence in management” was among the top reasons employees gave for leaving an organization in a recent survey by advisory firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide.


HOK also has made it a point to use its intranet site to promote the various projects the company has won this year, Littell says. “Early in January and February there was really a sense of uncertainty around how bad this was going to get,” she says. “So we made a concerted effort to share new project wins using our intranet site.”


HOK’s management also did everything it could to minimize the number of layoffs it had to do over the past year, Littell says.


Part of that effort was an expansion of HOK’s talent exchange program, where employees can switch positions with someone in another office for three months and have their living expenses paid.


Since HOK managers saw that a lot of projects were winding down, HR made a concerted effort this year to see if it could move employees to other offices for a few months, says Marta Willgoose, an HR manager in the New York office.


Last summer—knowing that layoffs would be coming—Willgoose put out an ad in the New York office seeking employees who would want to move to San Francisco for six months, living expenses paid. “That was a way to reduce headcount here and keep people within the company,” she says. “And it also showed people the bigger picture—that we are doing everything we can to save jobs.”


Globally, HOK has shared 18 employees with other offices to save those jobs.


HOK’s HR team has also held special training for its managers to make sure that they maintain open lines of communication throughout the layoffs. The New York office ran a day-and-a-half seminar discussing the different issues around employee engagement and how to recognize the difference between an issue that supervisors can handle and one that needs to go to HR, Willgoose says.


Similarly, right after the first major round of layoffs in December, an employee complained to Willgoose that there wasn’t enough transparency around the layoff process.


“I called a meeting with all the managers in the office and told them that when we have reductions, we can’t just have a staff meeting. They have to foster the lines of communication and sit down and have conversations with their staffs,” she says. Specifically, Willgoose encouraged managers to sit down one on one with their reports.


Dowdell says that having that open line of communication helped her stay focused. “It was just good to hear that I was going to be OK,” she says.


Commitment to service
Dowdell participates in the ACE Mentor Program, an architecture, construction and engineering mentorship program for high school students. Dowdell’s managers have no problem with the fact that during the school year she has to leave early once a week to attend these classes, she says.


She is also on the board of the National Organization of Minority Architects as well as on the Association of Real Estate Women.


“One of the reasons I came to HOK was because of their commitment to service,” she says. It says a lot about HOK that the firm continues its service efforts amid hard times, Dowdell says. “It means a lot to employees in my age group to have that,” she says.


In fact, HOK keeps track of how active employees are in outside architecture-related organizations to determine how engaged they are, Willgoose says.


“We are currently rolling out an initiative to track how people are reaching their own professional goals,” she says. “Are people out there in the community doing lectures, getting involved with groups, taking interest in teaching? … These are all indicators of how engaged they are.”


Another thing that HOK’s New York office did last fall was to establish a series of networking committees where officers and junior employees could discuss issues. For example, HOK W is a women’s group that also invites outside women in the industry to speak. The Social Committee identifies opportunities for the office to get together socially, and the 4.44 group is a designer network where designers come together every fourth Thursday to discuss designs people are working on.


“In a big firm like this there is a natural tendency for different groups to break into different studios because that is the right way to design,” says Hoisington, one of the founders of 4.44. “The idea behind these sessions is to break down those silos.”


Each of those networks aims to serve that purpose, Willgoose says.


“It’s great to get to interact with women who I normally wouldn’t see,” says Dowdell, who is a member of HOK W.


Even just getting people together for a softball game or after-work drinks keeps people excited about coming to work, Hoisington says.


“I don’t know if you can call after-work drinks engagement, but I think it’s something,” he says.


Although HOK’s HR team prides itself in keeping its culture intact despite the reductions in staff, the company hasn’t conducted a formal employee engagement survey in a few years.


“There is sort of a sense of you don’t want to ask if you can’t do something about it,” Littell says.


However, HR managers like Willgoose make a point to continually have one-on-one conversations with employees and to keep track of the firm’s blog to gauge people’s mood. “We are not a huge corporation,” she says. “I think to overdo it with surveys is to kind of push a more corporate approach, and that’s not what people are responsive to.”


Willgoose and Nikki Duffner, a corporate recruiter at HOK, are putting together groups of employees at offices across the globe who will provide feedback on things they would like to see at their offices as well as things that they would like the entire company to focus on, Willgoose says.


“The idea is to provide a mechanism for conversations regarding professional development, coaching, project innovation, sustainability, resource improvement and wellness to happen and for us to have a means for capturing those ideas and focusing in on what people are really asking for,” she says. The company hopes to establish the groups next year.


For Kimberly Dowdell, one more change has come to pass—and she thinks it’s a good one. In an October 27 post on the Life at HOK blog, she said that she is transitioning from her job as an architectural technician and will instead work in the New York office in a public relations and business development role. She thanked her colleagues, including Willgoose, and the office’s management committee for their vote of confidence in her abilities. “There are not a lot of firms that would give me this opportunity,” she wrote.

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A Skeptical View of Engagement

Increasing employee engagement is a top priority for many HR leaders these days. But some observers warn that fixating on ever-higher engagement survey scores is wrongheaded and may backfire.


Organizations that measure engagement—including Gallup, Towers Perrin and the Corporate Executive Board—have different surveys and formulas for calculating employee commitment. And their findings about engagement overall vary.


Adam Zuckerman, a consultant at Towers Perrin, says it makes little sense to try to pin down a “normal” level of engagement, given variations by geography, industry and job function. The key, he argues, is for firms to raise scores.


“More of it is always good,” he says.


Critics, though, question sweeping claims about engagement. John Haggerty, managing director for executive education at the Center for Advanced Human Resources Studies at Cornell University, argues that engagement surveys that result in a numeric score often amount to hype.


“Too many companies conduct the survey, and then struggle to improve the metric, without any idea of whether their more ‘engaged employees’ are behaving in ways that foster or promote better customer service or higher productivity,” he says.


Companies focus too exclusively on employee engagement at the expense of other key people matters, says Laurie Bassi, head of consulting firm McBassi and Co. The quality of work processes—how well tasks are divided and carried out—is often overlooked in engagement assessments, Bassi says. She says the same is true for hiring practices, which play a big role in the culture of an organization and its business outcomes. “It is of course necessary to have engaged employees,” she says. “It is, however, not sufficient.”


Bassi adds that it is dangerous to apply a one-size-fits-all model of engagement and its causes to organizations. For example, it may turn out that engaging the employees of two similar retail banks requires very different strategies, she says. One bank may need to focus on the quality of feedback from supervisors, while the other—which is more mature in its performance management practices—should concentrate on professional development opportunities to fire up workers.


Theresa Welbourne, a business consultant and researcher at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California, says improving the engagement scores of a certain class of employees is actually counterproductive. There are “entitled” workers who are satisfied on the job and feel very valued but perform poorly, she says. Increasing their engagement scores through traditional means such as extra rewards will work against them changing their work habits, she argues. “All you’re doing is reinforcing the status quo,” she says.


Welbourne’s consulting firm, eePulse, offers a version of an engagement survey that also measures employees’ level of “urgency,” which she says is a crucial factor in performance.


Dave Logan, co-author of Tribal Leadership, a book about successful work cultures, says companies set their sights too low by obsessing over engagement. At the most advanced organizations, employees feel “alive,” Logan says.


“Engagement is a bit of a remedial variable,” he says. “There are some cultures that go way beyond engagement.”

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Counting on Engagement at Ernst & Young

This recession, professional services firm Ernst & Young has tried to preserve its reputation as a best-place-to-work employer. And employees, it seems, have returned the favor.


As of mid-October, the audit and consulting company had not finished compiling the results of a formal employee engagement survey. But anecdotal evidence suggests that the firm is on the right track with its 144,000 workers, says Kevin Kelly, Ernst & Young’s director of the people team for the Americas.


“People are actually feeling more engaged,” Kelly says. “People feel more loyal.”


Business results indicate Ernst & Young is holding its own in tough times. For the year ended June 30, the London-based company reported worldwide revenue of $21.4 billion, a drop of 6.8 percent year over year in U.S. dollar terms. One of its Big Four accounting firm rivals, PricewaterhouseCoopers, posted global revenue for the same period of $26.2 billion, down 7.1 percent in U.S. dollar terms.


Another global competitor, Deloitte, reported a 4.9 percent drop in U.S. dollar revenue for the year ended in May. Engagement has become central for companies eager to rebound from the recession and deter defections once hiring picks up. Some experts argue that a more engaged workforce requires revamping the arm’s-length, layoff-prone relationship many firms have had with employees for decades.


Ernst & Young, though, has bucked the trend of mere transactional ties with workers. The firm has prioritized workplace flexibility, sought out employee views and stood out for strong training investments. It has made Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list 11 years running. And it ranked fifth in a list of the world’s most attractive employers for business students published in October by employer branding specialist Universum.


The recession, however, has tested Ernst & Young’s reputation as an employer of choice. The firm gave out pink slips during the past year, sparking criticism. Industry tabloid Going Concern reported that “it sounds like it has been a bloodbath at E&Y,” and an anonymous posting at an online message board accused the firm of treating people as “disposable items.”


Ernst & Young declined to say what percentage of the workforce was cut, but it called the reductions “targeted” and defended its employee separation process.


“Every separation requires a written business case and a team of business unit leaders and HR professionals review each individual situation,” the company said in a statement.


The firm also has sought to retain its employee-friendly culture. For example, Kelly says the company “didn’t back off at all on learning and development” investments, which are slated to total $450 million for the year ended June 2010.


One program Ernst & Young has maintained is Milestone Week, an annual gathering of some 1,200 leaders to train and recognize newly promoted managers and executives. Greg Chapman, senior manager in Ernst & Young’s transaction advisory services group, attended the four-day event in Orlando, Florida, last fall. Chapman had expected Milestone Week to be canceled amid the panic gripping the economy.


“Everyone down there was pretty blown away by what the firm did for us, given the environment,” he says.

Workforce Management, November 16, 2009, p. 25 — Subscribe Now!

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Research Highlights Disengaged Workforce

Most researchers have documented a drop in overall engagement during the recession. In September, Workforce Management conducted a survey of about 525 readers at companies with 1,000 or more employees. Roughly 45 percent of respondents reported that engagement had decreased a little or a lot at their organization since the recession began. Nearly 27 percent said engagement had stayed the same, and 28 percent said it had increased.


Organizations with layoffs were more likely to see a drop in engagement, Workforce Management’s survey found. Of the 313 respondents who said they had experienced layoffs, 63 percent said the layoffs decreased employee engagement among the “survivors.”


One HR manager at a large travel industry company says engagement has dipped at her firm during the downturn. The organization went through a major restructuring with significant layoffs about three years ago. Then the recession hit. “It did lead to more job losses, more reduced security,” says the manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Employees are just feeling nervous.”


In a study of employees from across the globe, the Corporate Executive Board found that the percentage of employees who are highly disengaged climbed from 8 percent in the first half of 2007 to 21 percent in the second quarter of this year.


Unlike other studies, surveys by advisory firm Towers Perrin have not documented a slide in engagement during the downturn. But Towers Perrin research has shown signs of trouble for employers. In the second quarter, according to the firm, slightly more than one in five employees said it would not take a lot to make them look for a job elsewhere.


Workforce Management, November 16, 2009, p. 22 — Subscribe Now!

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Dear Workforce What Is the Secret to Fostering Career Development for Top Performers

Dear Planning for the Future:

It is good that you are focusing on employee retention. When people leave because organizations have failed to engage them, it costs money—sometimes as much as 200 percent of a person’s base salary. Furthermore, the close and causal links between employee engagement, customer satisfaction, operating efficiency and business profitability are well documented. Finally, turnover is a growing issue, with voluntary turnover in the U.S. increasing from 19 percent in 2002 to 23 percent in 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As a result, companies that don’t focus on employee retention may find themselves playing catch-up.

By contrast, the 2 percent turnover you reported clearly shows that you are actively managing retention. Below are some best practices for retaining staff, based on our research:

Lead from the front. Employees’ confidence in the ability of senior management is one of the most important predictors of retention. Employees want to feel proud at being part of a successful, well-led company, where they feel the business is in good health for the future and therefore worth an investment of their time. Therefore, look for ways to make leaders more visible to employees through regular interactions, rather than e-mails or “one-off” scripted meetings.

Invest in your staff. Employees who are not improving their skills are at risk of compromising their future employability. As a result, if you are not providing an environment where employees grow and develop, expect them to look elsewhere. Build on the success of your technician development program to identify similar skill-enriching initiatives.

Develop people management skills. Through coaching and regular performance feedback, managers can help employees identify their development needs, enhance their performance and shape their career paths.

Ensure support for success. A proportion of your good performers may simply be looking for an enabling work environment where barriers to doing their job effectively are low. Too many barriers can lead to frustration and, ultimately, turnover. As a result, you should look at the optimum organization design, management structure or processes that are needed in your workplace to support success.

It’s not all about pay. Contrary to popular belief, pay and benefits are rarely the main reason why people leave an organization. Still, it is important to keep abreast of the market and make sure you are paying at least market rates.

The above are just a few ideas. Which ones work best depends on your organization. Therefore, the first step to managing retention is to understand what motivates your employees and to use this insight to create the right kind of organizational culture. In short, ask employees what is important to them, listen to what they say and, most important, act on it.

SOURCE: William Werhane, Hay Group Insight, Chicago

LEARN MORE: Career development exerts an impact on employee performance.

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

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Ford, GM Face $2.5 Billion First VEBA Bill


When Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. hand over health care for hourly retirees to the United Auto Workers on December 31, they also will hand over checks totaling nearly $2.5 billion.


Ford owes the most.


As a first installment on a $13.2 billion obligation, Ford is scheduled to pay $1.9 billion to a UAW-administered health care trust. That total includes at least $1.3 billion in cash, with the remainder in Ford stock.


The automakers’ health care trusts are known as voluntary employee beneficiary associations.


GM and Chrysler Group have less onerous terms, largely because of concessions they extracted from the UAW on the eve of their Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings last spring.


GM, which had a $20 billion VEBA obligation before the concessions, is scheduled to pay $585 million to its UAW trust fund December 31.


Chrysler’s first-year cash payment, pegged at $315 million, is due July 15.

 
First VEBA Fund Payments From Ford and GM to the UAW
 
 
Amount Due 
Due Date
Ford$1.9 billion 12/31/09
GM$585 million  12/31/09 

Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said the payments,although much less than those negotiated during the 2007 UAW contract talks, are still substantial for companies trying to weather the worst auto recession in 25 years.


After the negotiations in 2007, UAW president Ron Gettelfinger said the VEBAs would provide top-flight benefits to hourly retirees for at least 80 years. Gettelfinger has now backed away from that assertion.


“That 80-year timeline has fallen off the table because of the meltdown, because of the company [GM] going into bankruptcy,” he told Reuters this month.


GM had about 493,000 UAW retirees and surviving spouses in August. Ford finished 2008 with about 175,000, and Chrysler had 93,434 in July.


Ford, which lacked the threat of bankruptcy as leverage for greater UAW concessions, has the largest total VEBA obligation of the Detroit Three: $13.2 billion over about the next decade. Ford can pay about half of it in stock.


GM has agreed to pay its UAW VEBA with a promissory note of $2.5 billion and $9 billion in preferred stock. Chrysler owes a note of $4.6 billion. With other equity consideration, the Chrysler UAW VEBA now owns 55 percent of Chrysler, and the GM UAW VEBA now owns 17.5 percent of GM.



Filed by David Barkholz of Automotive News, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.


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Court Rules New York Can Recognize Other States Same-Sex Marriages


New York’s highest court has upheld the state’s recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states.


The New York Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Thursday, November 20, in two cases, Margaret Godfrey v. Andrew J. Spano and Kenneth J. Lewis v. New York State Department of Civil Service, in upholding decisions by the appellate division of the state Supreme Court.


Godfrey challenged a 2006 executive order issued by Spano, Westchester County’s executive, to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. Lewis challenged the New York State Civil Service Commission’s and its commissioner’s recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages.


In both cases, the New York Court of Appeals ruled against the plaintiffs’ contentions that same-sex marriages should not be recognized because they cost the taxpayers money.


Referring to Godfrey, the court decision noted that Westchester County “already insured same-sex domestic partners and dependents of county employees before the executive order was issued.” The plaintiff’s claim “failed to allege an unlawful expenditure of taxpayer funds,” it said.


In Lewis, the court also concluded that the Civil Service Commission president has “broad discretion to define who will qualify for coverage” based on legislative history.


The opinion also urged the New York Legislature to “address this controversy.”



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


Stay informed and connected. Get human resources news and HR features via Workforce Management’s Twitter feed or RSS feeds for mobile devices and news readers.


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Black & Decker Reinstating 401(k) Match


Black & Decker’s employees are getting a little something for the holidays: The company is reinstating its 401(k) plan match effective December 1.


The tool and accessories, hardware and home improvement products manufacturer will return the match to its prior level, which was 50 percent on the first 6 percent contributed, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.


The match had been suspended in April, said Roger A. Young, vice president of investor and media relations.


Young said the reinstatement is unrelated to the November 2 announcement that Towson, Maryland-based Black & Decker plans to merge with The Stanley Works, which is based in New Britain, Connecticut


“It was always intended to be temporary,” he said of the suspension.


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


Stay informed and connected. Get human resources news and HR features via Workforce Management’s Twitter feed or RSS feeds for mobile devices and news readers.

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Taking a Tailored Approach to Dental Benefits

Dental coverage, traditionally a one-size-fits-all benefit, is becoming more complex. For interested employers, though, the more nuanced options may provide better prevention and related cost savings than does the cookie-cutter approach.


The plan designs, which range from new covered services to better coverage of existing treatments, have emerged from an evolving body of research called evidence-based dentistry. As the field develops, one of its central tenets is risk stratification.


Rather than offer the same dental services to everyone, the plans more closely align coverage not only with the individual’s cavity and gum history but even with other non-dental conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease. By providing broader coverage upfront, the goal is to forestall or prevent more costly dental work later, according to the providers and dental consultants interviewed.


Frequently, though, employers haven’t caught up with the new world of dental coverage, says Doyle Williams, DDS, chief dental officer at Delta Dental of Massachusetts. “I give about 150 lectures a year to employers,” he says. “To watch their eyes pop open tells me that they don’t know this, they don’t get it. They have no idea that dentistry can be tailored—that there is a risk status. That some people are at higher risk.”


Tailoring coverage
The specifics of tailored coverage vary depending on the plan involved, as well as what the employer has negotiated. Along with providing more stratified coverage options, insurance providers also are striving to better educate employees about their own dental risk and the related benefits available to them.


Employees with a cavity track record, for example, might get more than two covered cleanings annually. Other plans might pay for deep cleanings of diseased gums (also known as scaling and root planing), rather than asking the employee to pick up part of the tab. Depending on the employee’s risk, other products might be offered, including fluoride varnish or a special prescription mouth rinse.


Investing in Prevention
As evidence-based dentistry evolves, some plans and employers are expanding prevention, in some instances footing the bill for some products or procedures. A few examples:
 
Fluoride varnish: This sticky concentrated fluoride, which is applied by the dentist, adheres longer than fluoride rinses.
 
Deep gum cleaning: Also called scaling and root planing, these cleanings reduce bacteria that have collected in gum pockets. Prescription products: They include an antimicrobial mouth rinse and a fluoride toothpaste to help protect vulnerable gums and teeth.
 
Prescription products: They include an antimicrobial mouth rinse and a fluoride toothpaste to help protect vulnerable gums and teeth.
 


In recent years, the Massachusetts Public Employees Fund has expanded preventive coverage for the approximately 76,000 enrollees, including dependents, who are covered by the fund’s dental and vision plans. The fund, which is self-insured, uses Delta Dental of Massachusetts to administer its dental coverage but has designed its own network of affiliated dentists and related benefits.


In recent years, the fund has started paying for a prescription antimicrobial mouth rinse after deep gum cleaning treatments. It also covers 100 percent of the cost of fluoride varnish—a sticky coat of fluoride applied to the tooth’s surface—for both children and adults who are considered to be at moderate to high risk of tooth decay.


Susan Fournier, the fund’s executive director, can’t point to any precise cost-savings data. But she remains hopeful, based on some early indications of improved dental health. “It just makes sense that if you can move them [enrollees] out of that higher risk status and get them into a low risk status, it will be less expensive,” she says. “But we also know it will take a lot [of care] upfront.”


Weighing risk
By 2008, 176 million Americans—slightly more than half the U.S. population—carried some type of dental insurance, a 1.3 percent increase from the prior year, according to a survey published this summer by the National Association of Dental Plans and the Delta Dental Plan Association.


Employers are becoming more aware of dental care’s value, says Evelyn Ireland, executive director of the National Association of Dental Plans, a trade group. In 2008, 62 percent of employers surveyed described dental as essential to their benefits package, compared with 53 percent three years earlier. That’s a nearly 10-point jump, Ireland points out. “The message about the connection between dental benefits and overall health is really getting through.”


Still, providing coverage doesn’t guarantee that employees will use the benefits, whether the underlying reason is dental-chair nerves or simply an overbooked schedule. Just three-fourths of those with dental insurance (and half of those without) have gotten at least one checkup in the prior year, according to a 2007 consumer survey conducted by National Association of Dental Plans. “There’s a real hard core of patients who will not seek dental care no matter what,” says Marv Zatz, DDS, a senior dental consultant at Towers Perrin.


In truth, though, not all patients face the same dental risk. Risk can be altered by the patients’ history of cavities and gum disease, whether they smoke or drink, and even vulnerability to conditions like dry mouth. Cigna is among those insurers that offer online risk assessments, such as this cavity risk tool.


Emerging research also indicates that untreated gum disease may be associated with other medical conditions, including heart disease and diabetes. As a result, some plans have made it easier for those at-risk groups to get scaling and root planing, when needed, by covering it at 100 percent, Ireland says.


Cigna offers that option for at-risk individuals who are enrolled in both their medical and dental plans. “I’ll be very frank: The studies that are out there show a strong association,” says Miles Hall, DDS, chief clinical director for Cigna Dental. “At this point, they do not necessarily show a causal relationship. But it’s significant enough that we took a step to be proactive about it.”


But to capitalize on the latest research, employers need to regularly re-evaluate their dental coverage, says Vincent Graziano, a Boston-based vice president and dental expert at Segal Co., a human resources consulting firm. “I see a lot of dental plans that are out of date,” he says. Plans left on autopilot, he says, run the risk of incorporating deductibles and co-pays that discourage employees from preventive steps that could save money later.

Educating employees
It’s not just employers that can give dental benefits short shift. A MetLife survey found that employees spend just 25 minutes on average on dental coverage during initial enrollment. During re-enrollment, that average drops to just five minutes, according to the 2009 online survey of 500 employees.


It may be that they spent so little time because they weren’t offered much plan detail. Only one-third felt they had sufficient information about their coverage or to select a plan. And comprehension did drive satisfaction, the MetLife analysis found. Those employees who reported an excellent understanding of their benefits reported a threefold higher overall satisfaction level; 53 percent were very satisfied, while 17 percent said they had a fair to poor understanding of their dental plan benefits. Early this year, MetLife launched an online dental resource to help employers better communicate dental benefits.


While it’s not uncommon for medical plans to cover 80 percent of an expensive procedure or surgery, dental insurance may only cover half the cost of such care. To guard against sticker shock, some dental plans offer online calculators so employees can estimate the out-of-pocket cost of that looming root canal. Employees also can use online tools to calculate the relative tax benefits of flexible spending accounts.


Employees who don’t bank enough in advance may set themselves up for bigger—and more painful—bills later, says Alan Vogel, DMD, national dental director for MetLife. For example, an employee might invest in a root canal, but postpone the crown that protects the tooth involved from fracturing. “I think a lot of people think that dental care can be delayed ad infinitum,” Vogel says. “Sometimes that delay can be problematic.”


The cost-savings question
As insurers take steps to redesign their plans, they can outpace the dentists themselves, as Fournier of the Massachusetts Public Employees Fund discovered. The fund, for example, covers fluoride varnish for enrollees who are at moderate to high risk. But there are no universally accepted criteria for determining risk, she says. And not all dentists are accustomed to making the assessment.


Even so, Fourier is intrigued by the progress made by some fund enrollees, who use a designated oral health center that provides additional preventive coverage. “We’ve seen over the years, as we get into the data, that there is definitely a reduction in the risk status of those patients,” she says.


And that reduction can translate to dollars and cents. The annual claims cost for a low-risk dental patient is $175, according to fund data provided by Fournier. The cost for a high-risk patient—someone who has undergone at least three procedures in as many years—runs about four times higher, roughly $800 annually.

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The Rueff Truth on ‘Abusive’ Employers and the Talent Flight Ahead

 

By and large, HR consulting firms have stepped lightly around the issue of how well their corporate clients have cut costs and employees during the past year. It’s rare to hear outright criticism that businesses botched the job.

But Rusty Rueff doesn’t mince words on the subject. Rueff, the former head of HR at video game giant Electronic Arts and now a board member of workplace feedback site Glassdoor.com, remains appalled that so many firms chopped workers between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays last year.

“You just don’t do that,” he says.

What’s more, some companies made “cosmetic cuts” designed to please Wall Street with little sense of whether they were appropriate, Rueff says.

Rueff, who also served as CEO of digital music distributor Snocap and worked in HR at Frito-Lay, isn’t a stranger to layoffs. Nor is he opposed to them. But he thinks companies should try to do them once, and cut deeply enough so that no others are needed.

Last year, the initial cuts companies made often were 7 percent or less of the workforce, Rueff says. As a result, firms often required another round or more of layoffs later on, he says. In addition, some leaders have taken advantage of the fact that employees have had few job options during the downturn, Rueff argues.

At some firms, an “abusive” relationship has taken shape, Rueff argues, with employers the guilty party.

“They’ve been callous,” he says. “They’ve been insensitive.”

Rueff and I butted heads some when I reported about overtime concerns in the game industry several years ago. And I’m inclined to think many companies could have gotten through the recession with minimal or no layoffs, partly through furloughs and other methods to trim expenses.

But I appreciate Rueff’s refreshing candor on the question of job cuts. There’s a fair amount of evidence that employees, including top performers, have felt mistreated or let down by their employers over the past year.

A recent survey of 500 U.S. employees from consulting firms APCO Worldwide and Gagen MacDonald found that more than 80 percent of respondents say they are extremely loyal to their company and personally motivated to do all they can to help their companies succeed. But less than half of employees say they completely agree with the statements “My company is loyal to me” and “My company values its employees.”

And many workers say they are ready to bolt. Sixty percent of employees intend to leave their firms as the economy improves next year, and an additional 27 percent are networking or have updated their résumés, according to a recent survey of 904 workers in North America by advisory firm Right Management.

Rueff likens the situation to how an abused spouse may stick with a partner as long as there is no financial alternative. The minute they see light at the end of the tunnel, they’re gone, Rueff says.

“We will definitely see people pick up and start to go,” he says.