Category: Archive

Posted on

Lessons from the Men’s Wearhouse

On close inspection, the mysteries we posed at the beginning of this article turn out to be not so mysterious once we realize that doing things differently is the only way a company can earn returns that are also different from its industry.


The Men’s Wearhouse strategy entails differentiating itself on the basis of service, not price, in a price-sensitive, competitive market. Its ability to be successful doing so suggests that simply competing on the basis of price may not be the only viable strategy even in supposedly “commodity-like” markets.


This is an organization that seems genuinely interested in helping people be better than anyone thought possible. It really is in the people development business.


The company understands that talking about customer service, as so many companies do today, and actually delivering service that can provide real differentiation are two different things. What is unique about the Men’s Wearhouse is its willingness and ability to turn its theoretical knowledge about how to obtain higher margins into action.


The actions the company takes, particularly its extensive investment in training, its use of a mostly full-time workforce, and its building of a culture in which people help each other sell and help each other learn and get better, all contribute to achieving its success. The mystery then becomes not why this company has done these things, but why so few have learned from its example.


As Eric Lane noted, “If you look at department stores and…the chain retailers, the emphasis isn’t on the stores or on the people. It’s more on the merchandising and the marketing.” George Zimmer’s insight that you only make money when you sell the merchandise, not when you buy it — which has led to his emphasis on people and store operations — seems incredibly obvious once stated. But it requires a shift in mind-set that apparently few other retailers have been willing or able to make.


The second mystery is also less of a puzzle once we think it through. The apparent paradox is how and why the Men’s Wearhouse has succeeded by focusing on and doing things for a workforce that many companies would view as not very highly skilled and, in fact, not very high quality.


But that is the point. If you are a computer engineer in today’s market, you expect to be wined, dined, courted, and pampered. If you are in retail, you expect to be treated badly. By exceeding people’s expectations concerning the chances they will be given, the dignity and respect with which they will be treated, and the opportunism they will have, the company builds an incredible sense of loyalty and commitment. Doing the unexpected — doing more than expected — earns the company extraordinary performance from its people. If there is a lesson here, it is the power of treating everyone as if they are important and matter.


The Men’s Wearhouse also illustrates a theme we have seen in Southwest Airlines and Cisco: Values come first. This is an organization that seems genuinely interested in helping people be better than anyone thought possible. It really is in the people development business.


The emphasis on people development has had the salutary effect of building organizational competence and capability that has permitted the company to execute a very demanding service differentiation strategy.


There is no question that the business results from implementing the Men’s Wearhouse values — lower shrink, achieved without expenditures on tagging and other security measures, lower turnover, and a higher level of motivation and energy — have included lowering costs as well as providing a service edge. But there is also no question that the values are sincere and are not promulgated as a means to ends but as ends in themselves. In fact, George Zimmer speaks openly about doing things to retain his commitment to a set of ideals, to avoid becoming too materialistic and not spiritual enough.


Most of the Men’s Warehouse’s wardrobe consultants have worked for other retailers. Many came from competitors that went bankrupt. In fact, bankruptcy in retailing, particularly in the early 1990s, was quite common.


What the company has demonstrated is that it is possible to redefine the basis for competition within an industry, and to do so by building a set of competencies that come from how it has chosen to manage its people-management practices that are premised on its values and philosophy.


This article was reprinted with permission of Harvard Business School Press. Excerpt of Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People by Charles A. O”Reilly III and Jeffrey Pfeffer. Copyright 2000 President and fellows of Harvard College; All Rights Reserved.


Posted on

Health Care Costs Increase

Cost is a big part of the benefits decision. According to the Year 2000 Survey of Employee Benefits by Business & Legal Reports, Inc. (BLR), employers’ 1999 costs for health care alone rose to $3,681 per employee, nearly 12 percent higher than 1998. How are companies coping with rising health care costs while attracting and retaining a skilled workforce in the tightest labor market in more than a decade?


Typically, employers try to offset increased costs by passing some of the expense on to employees. Given the intense competition to get and keep skilled workers, however, there seems to be a real reluctance to do so. Two indicators from the survey of 3,051 employers, illuminate this trend:


1. When employers were asked what steps they’d taken this year to reduce employee health costs:


  • 28 percent said they raised the employee premium
  • 18 percent raised the co-pay
  • 13 percent raised the deductible (31 percent of employees now pay more than $300 for health-care insurance deductibles, compared to 15 percent in 1996)
  • 5 percent reduced other benefits

2. In 1998, most employers paid 100 percent of health care insurance premiums. This year, fewer offered 100 percent, with an equal number offering 81 to 99 percent.


SOURCE: BLR, Old Saybrook, CT.

Posted on

Hiring for Fit and Ability

The Men’s Wearhouse has somewhat more staff per square foot than the typical men’s clothing retailer, as a way of executing its customer service strategy. In a typical store of about 4,500 square feet, there are two tailors, two managers (a manager and an assistant manager), three wardrobe consultants, and two or three sales associates.


To encourage employee retention and good service, virtually all the positions are full-time. Overall, including tailors, only 12 percent of the positions in the company are part-time.


Except for sales associates, who are the people who ring up sales and encourage customers to purchase additional accessories, hiring is centralized at the regional manager level.


The company encourages regional and district managers to develop a reserve of people who are interested in joining the company, so that when an opening occurs, it can be filled quickly.


The company trains people how to interview. Charlie Bresler described what the company is looking for: “We’re looking for people who are potentially consultants, not clerks. We’re looking for people who have energy, have a sense of excitement, seem like they care about people, and we don’t care about how much clothing background they have.”


Although the company emphasizes hiring for fit, basic ability, and personality rather than for experience, this policy is not always followed. Under pressure to fill positions quickly, and deluged with applications from other retailers, there is a tendency to hire experienced salespeople. Working to improve the quality of the people in the company is an ongoing challenge and focus of attention.


The Men’s Wearhouse uses relatively few outside consultants and contracts out comparatively little, preferring to use its own people, even for specialized tasks such as information systems development. George Zimmer noted that “if it’s important enough that you would consider hiring some consultant, then it’s probably important enough to do it internally.” He believes that one of the reasons companies use outside consultants is from a fear of making a mistake:


“If every time when you were a kid that you made a mistake, either your parents or the teacher said something that made an emotional impact on you, then you can grow up with a fear of making a mistake, which will bring you to the world of consultants quicker than anything else.


“It’s a way to theoretically avoid making a mistake. I take the position that the best way to grow a business is to encourage people to make mistakes and learn from their mistakes. In fact, our corporate mission statement says we’re a company that wants people to admit to their mistakes.”


This article was reprinted with permission of Harvard Business School Press. Excerpt of Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People by Charles A. O’Reilly III and Jeffrey Pfeffer. Copyright 2000 President and fellows of Harvard College; All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

A New Generation Redefines Retirement

Love, like youth,” wrote Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, “is wasted on the young.”


Love. Youth. In today’s sizzling economy, a forward-looking, HR-minded songwriter could add another thing that’s wasted on the unwrinkled set: career opportunities.


A growing number of experts are warning that the future workforce won’t rely on the peripatetic hotshots of Generation X, but on the ever-expanding pool of older workers and retirees. Part of it is a matter of simple economics; with the unemployment rate hovering consistently around 4 percent, companies are already scrambling to keep up with the demand for qualified employees. And part of it is demographics.


The aging of the Baby Boom generation has already lifted the median age in this country from 28 in 1970, to 35 today, to a projected 40 by the year 2010. By 2006, the number of workers age 34 and younger will dip to 36 percent of the U.S. workforce.


Any company that hopes to keep pace with its competitors in the coming years will have to convince a wary work-force that careers can indeed be more fulfilling the second time around.


Fortunately for employers, the concept of retirement is changing as quickly as the composition of the workforce.


“Right now, depending on which age group you look at, we have about 12 to 16 percent of our retirees who are working after retirement,” says Scott A. Bass, Ph.D., a gerontologist and dean of the graduate school at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “As we look to the future, a recent survey by the American Association of Retired Persons showed that 80 percent of the baby boomers say that they expect to work after retirement. That’s dramatic.”


The employer gets to take advantage of the seasoned employee’s Institutional knowledge and specialized skills while at the same time reducing the considerable costs associated with hiring and training an new employee.


Roughly half of these retirees will be working because they have no choice, Bass says. Lacking adequate pensions or assets, they will linger in the work force as the “have nots” of an aging American population. The other half, however, will continue to work simply because they want to. Missing the social experience of interacting with peers and colleagues, and seeking personal fulfillment, they will stay active in the workforce.


They won’t necessarily want to shoulder the same responsibilities they had when they were younger, but they will want to stay professionally active just the same.


Those who want to tap into this pool of employees will not only have to remember that the reasons for seeking employment vary greatly according to individual need. They also will have to keep in mind that the terms “older worker” and “retirement” refer to stereotypes that no longer have any useful meaning. Depending on whom you ask, older workers today are variously considered to be anywhere from their 50s through their 80s.


And given the rash of mergers, consolidations and restructurings we’ve seen in recent years, a retiree could as easily be 55 as the 65 we traditionally peg as retirement age.


“One of the things about the older population is that it is extraordinarily diverse,” says Bass. “There will be people who want to work just like they did when they were younger. There are going to be those who say they’re leaving at age 50. There will be those who have retired and take what we call ‘bridge’ jobs — temporary, transitional jobs without benefits or security. There will be those who go into new careers and go through re-training. And there are going to be those who create new companies and new businesses that we hadn’t imagined. All those things are going to happen.”


Despite the tight labor market and the inexorable aging of the nation’s workforce, it is surprising to find that very few American companies are actively courting older workers.


In its most recent survey of the issues facing employers and older workers, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that 65 percent of the companies surveyed do not actively recruit older workers to fill open positions, and only 45 percent actively attempt to retain older employees. A full 81 percent of the employers reported that they do not offer any provisions or benefits that are designed specifically with the older worker in mind.


A similar survey, conducted by AARP and FGI, Inc., corroborates these findings. This study found that only 40 percent of human resource managers interviewed have implemented any of the policies that they believe would be most effective in better utilizing older employees. The approach deemed most likely to appeal to older workers — benefits packages tailored to meet their specific needs — had been embraced by only 18 percent of the respondents.


“For the most part, employers have not been taking many steps toward thinking about what their future workforce will look like,” says Deborah Russell, AARP’s senior program coordinator for economic security and work issues. “Knowing the demographics the way we do, the majority of the pool of workers available to choose from are going to be older workers.


And whether it’s because they want to or because they need to, the fact of the matter is that the boomers are completely redefining the whole idea of what retirement is all about.”


Perhaps because this pool of workers is so diverse, and expects so many different things from its retirement years, the companies that are actually reaching out to older workers are reaching out to the older workers they know the best — their own senior employees and recent retirees.


In the SHRM survey, 62 percent of the respondents reported that they are currently hiring retired employees as consultants or temporary workers. Twenty- nine percent provide opportunities for workers to transfer to jobs with reduced pay and responsibilities, and 19 percent have instituted a phased retirement program that enables workers to ease into retirement by reducing their work schedules.


In each case, these initiatives make a great deal of sense for both the employer and the older worker. The employer gets to take advantage of the seasoned employee’s institutional knowledge and specialized skills while reducing the considerable costs associated with hiring and training a new employee. The employees get an unprecedented opportunity to define retirement in a way that suits both their financial and emotional needs.


“What we want is to have a worker not feel like work is an all-or-nothing proposition, that they’re either going to work five days per week or they’re going into retirement,” says Bill Miner, retirement practice leader in the Chicago office of Watson Wyatt, an international human resources consulting firm.


“When they reach the point where they no longer want to work five days a week, it’s the option to retire in stages rather than fall off a cliff, to go from high-intensity work to no work at all.”


Indeed, a 1999 survey conducted by Watson Wyatt found that three out of four older workers indicated that they would rather reduce their work hours gradually than face the traditional all-or-nothing sort of retirement that is the norm today.


Phased retirement, part-time employment, and consulting arrangements all imply an unusual degree of flexibility on the part of employers, and flexibility is a term that comes up repeatedly in conversations about what employers will have to do to meet the needs of older workers. You can talk about elder care: A growing number of 55-year-old Americans have 85-year-old parents to look after. You can talk about child care: A lot of 60-year-old Americans are looking after their children’s children.


Name a traditional work/life benefit and chances are it will appeal to an older worker as much as it appeals to an employee who has been in the workforce just a handful of years. This, perhaps, explains why so few employers in the SHRM survey (11 percent) reported that they offer benefits tailored to the needs of older workers.


Representatives for IBM and 3M, in fact, told Workforce that these perennial leaders in innovative work/life initiatives simply offer a broad range of employee-friendly benefits. If they appeal to older workers, so much the better. A representative from a third industry leader noted, however, that even if a company did actively seek to recruit and retain older workers, it might well prefer to avoid publicizing the fact.


Singling out any group of employees for special treatment in today’s litigious environment is just asking for trouble, said the representative, who asked not to be named.


In the absence of specific initiatives, then, employers are simply advised to be flexible when forced to contemplate building a business on the shoulders of an aging workforce.


“You need flexibility,” says Barry Dym, Ph.D., president of WorkWise Research & Consulting. “Flexibility of work, of space, of time. It’s customizing work to fit different people’s needs. So if you think of that with older workers, you would want to think about having them work part-time; you would have them work from home. A lot of people want to be with their grandchildren and travel more. Yet they really want to work. They could put in a tremendous amount of time.”


Beyond making it easier for older workers to balance the demands of work and life, there is a growing sense that employers also need to make them feel good about themselves, to help them see that they are not dinosaurs lumbering around in a world increasingly dominated by quick-witted mammals.


To that end, 55 percent of the human resources executives in the AARP survey listed “Skill Training for Older Employees” as one of the top five approaches to more fully utilizing older employees. Forty-seven percent of the respondents in the SHRM survey indicated that their companies already provide training to upgrade the skills of older workers. Thirty-eight percent said that they plan to offer such programs in the next five years.


Ongoing education and retraining can help keep older workers engaged and productive, but it is equally important to show them that their years of experience — both on the job and in the community — count for something as well.


“There’s a wonderful thing that a lot of employers are doing,” says Kathleen Conroy, vice president of client relations at employeesavings.com, a provider of Web-based work/life programs. “They’re beginning to reach out to their retiree populations, bringing them back and creating mentoring relationships. They take a retired executive, for example, and match him up with one of the younger professionals, somebody who might be a rising star but who doesn’t have the same kind of executive experience and acumen and doesn’t know all of the boardroom politics.”


Mentoring relationships demonstrate to older workers that their experience is valued. Such relationships also foster continuity in an organization. For this process to work, however, managers must be especially sensitive to issues of intergenerational conflict. If older workers feel threatened by the new ideas advanced by their younger colleagues, or if the company’s rising stars sense that they’re being patronized, trouble is sure to follow.


“Senior leadership is best served if they reinforce a partnership model of leadership,” says Bob Turknett, president of Turknett Leadership Group in Atlanta. “Then, when you’re mixing up older and younger workers, it doesn’t become as big a deal. I would encourage leadership to create a culture and an atmosphere that promotes partnership, that says we’re all part of a team, that we have different roles and we have to organize this way to get things done more efficiently, but it doesn’t matter what age a person is. It’s more determined by who’s on the job and what needs to be done. Everyone is highly valued.”


Turknett also believes that the primary responsibility for making these relationships work must be borne by the younger employees. Generation X, in particular, is known for being brash and self-confident. But according to Turknett, a little respect and humility can go a long way toward bridging the gap between the generations. Successful organizations will be sure to instill these qualities in their younger employees even as the proportion of older workers inevitably grows.


Respect. Flexibility. A chance to do something meaningful. Ultimately, it seems, older workers want the same things that all employees want. The companies that do the best job of attracting and retaining them will most likely be the companies that have already shown a strong commitment to innovative human-resources strategies. Whether it’s their first time around or their second, or even their third or fourth, employees are attracted to employers who appreciate them.


It’s a fundamental truth, perhaps, but one that employers ignore at their own peril.

Posted on

Table of Contents July 2000

cover Story


Gray Matters
A tight job market means that smart employers will increasingly relying on older workers. Here’s how to court them, keep them, and make them happy. By Dayton Fandray



Features


Legislating an IT Fix
From tax credits for training to federal matching funds, Congress is looking for ways to close the IT gap. Can new laws really solve the problem? By Paul Gilster


HR Over the Border
Mexico is home to more than 4,000 maquiladoras, or foreign-owned assembly plants. Business is booming, and so are the challenges for a U.S.-based HR executive. Here’s how to cope when your company goes south. By Brenda Paik Sunoo


Can We Talk?
It’s hard to imagine anything getting done in an organization without honest-to-goodness conversation. It’s exciting to imagine how much more could get done (and get done better) if genuine dialogue happened every work day. By Tom Terez


Departments


On the Contrary


The Coach Approach


InfoWise


Virtual Paper Cuts


The Buzz


Express Service for Nursing Moms;


Resume for Disaster


Forte


HBO Programs Partnerships for Inner-city Teens


Legal Insight


Employers Can’t Look Away from Workplace Violence


Your HR Career


Resume Wranglers


Working Wounded


Ways to Win Them Over


In Every Issue


Between the Lines


Mailbox


Dear Workforce

Posted on

iDear Workforce-I Should Pay Be Shown as Annual or Monthly or Hourly

Q


Dear Workforce:


Which is most widely used on pay schedules and personnel records for exempt employees–monthly salary or annual salary? Our organization has always shown monthly minimum & maximum rates. Federal laws quote weekly rates. Most surveys, etc. ask for annual. Payroll has to convert to hourly. What is standard practice? I would appreciate any information on this subject.


–Fern Deatherage (formerly Hartman), Human Resource Officer, Missouri Valley Human Resource Community Action Agency, Marshall, MO


 


A Dear Fern:


Unfortunately, no easy answers on this one.


When it relates to standards, the best approach is to adopt a standard practice to track the rates that meet regulatory requirements and work best for your company and you. The following is some broad background information on the complexity of payroll considerations.


Personnel records usually track the employee’s hourly, monthly and annual rate. Payroll records usually track the employee’s pay period/cycle salary rate, which is based on their pay frequency/schedule (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly or annual). In addition, Payroll tracks the details of the employee’s pay, i.e. gross pay, taxes, other deductions and net pay.


Salaried applicants are usually quoted an annual rate when they receive a new salaried job offer. Pay grades usually include a minimum, mid-point and maximum salaried rate. There are certain compliance requirements to consider, too. For example, in the United States, The Fair Labor Standards Act includes requirements to maintain employee records. The term “usually” is used intentionally to demonstrate that compensation rates are tracked for multiple reasons.


 


SOURCE: Ceridian, Minneapolis, May 11, 2000.


E-mail your Dear Workforce questions to Online Editor Todd Raphael at raphaelt@workforceonline.com, along with your name, title, organization and location. Unless you state otherwise, your identifying info may be used on Workforce.com and in Workforce magazine. We can’t guarantee we’ll be able to answer every question.

Posted on

HR Over the Border

Each week, Rita Soza crosses the Mexican border, headed for a place that a growing number of HR professionals may soon call their second home: the maquiladora, or foreign-owned assembly plant.


When Soza, vice president of HR for Astec Power’s North American and European operations, goes to Tijuana to meet with the human resources manager of Astec’s plant, the agenda


almost always includes a discussion about recruiting and retention. “We’re constantly working on strategies to attract and retain new employees,” says Soza, a U.S. citizen and San Diego County resident, whose firm manufactures power-conversion equipment.


For HR people overseeing maquiladoras, retention and recruiting — from the workers on the shop floor to top border-commuting executives — are not easy tasks. Nor are they the only ones. Workers’ health and safety issues and corporate security fill out the challenging list.


There are 4,000 maquiladoras operating in Mexico today. Most are clustered near such border towns as Tijuana, Mexicali, and Juarez, and are operated predominately by U.S. companies eager to benefit from Mexico’s proximity, cheap labor and tax breaks. But establishing a stable maquiladora requires business savvy, cultural sensitivity, and social responsibility. So if your boss assigns you to set up your maquiladora’s HR functions, here’s a primer on what you face, and strategies for dealing with this special challenge of global HR. Crossing the border doesn’t have to mean crossing your fingers.


First, some history and an update.


Maquiladoras were first established in 1965, and since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the tax breaks enjoyed by the industry have expanded throughout Mexico.


“The Mexican workforce is highly productive and turns out high quality goods,” says Dennis Briscoe, professor of international human resource management at University of San Diego. The media and politicians, he says, have fostered misperceptions of maquiladoras only as sweatshops. Advocates of maquiladoras contend that most of the plants today are modern and sophisticated places to work.


Mexico, with a population of 97 million, is a developing country undergoing dynamic, turbulent change. Approximately 26 million are reportedly living in extreme poverty. That’s a major concern as the country simultaneously seeks to become less authoritarian, less centralized, and more open to the world. Meanwhile, the country continues to be plagued by disturbing headlines of assassinations, drugs and regional strife.


It’s no wonder that potential U.S. recruits will have reservations about working in Mexico. HR can overcome these obstacles, however:


Partner with executive recruiters.


HR directors say they can barely keep pace with the growth of maquiladoras. “We’re always looking for ways to improve recruiting, but it’s never enough,” says Ana Sotomayor, a Mexican citizen and director of personnel administration for Saft America Inc., which produces rechargeable batteries in Tijuana. With low unemployment [2 percent in Tijuana], the market for workers at all levels is extremely tight, she says.


For its higher-level jobs, companies including Saft turn to executive recruitment firms such as Barbachano International, a San Diego-based firm whose American clients include Tyco International and Johnson & Johnson.


Seventy-five percent of the firm’s recruitment efforts are targeted at maquiladoras, says Fernando Ortiz-Barbachano, general manager and vice president. Of those, 80 percent of the positions are in U.S.-owned operations, not only in the border towns, but also in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey.


Ortiz-Barbachano’s clients are primarily searching for professionals who are either in upper-level plant positions (general manager or vice president of operations) or middle-level positions (materials managers, production managers, controllers, and HR managers). Bilingual candidates are especially sought for the mid-level jobs because these employees interface with workers on the shop floor.


In working with executive recruiters, ask them to provide information and materials that address


several key issues, including safety in the host city, politics in Mexico, housing and education, and cultural differences.


Sotomayor, who was already working for a maquiladora when Barbachano International recruited her, has the best of both worlds in her job. She currently lives in San Diego on a working visa and expects to soon acquire permanent residence. Many HR executives whose plants are along the border enjoy the flexibility of being able to commute to Mexico while living more comfortably in the United States. But that’s not an option for those execs employed in the interior.


The benefits of settling in Mexico, however, can definitely be enticing. In a recent The Wall Street Journal article, Mexico’s border towns were headlined as “Perk Paradise for U.S. Middle Managers.” Managerial salaries are reportedly rising at a rate of 8 percent a year, three times the U.S. average. And extras, such as golf-club memberships, free tickets to fly home, housing allowances, and fast-lane passes that avoid long lines at U.S. Customs have become standard.


Partner with security experts.


Although the majority of Americans assigned to maquiladoras live in the United States and commute across the border, they still worry about their personal safety, says Rolando Soliz, director general of Vance International Mexico, an integrated security service firm in Mexico City. Mexico, he says, has the distinction of being No. 2 in the world in kidnappings. Although Soliz says that while the maquiladoras are safe, city crime and violence surrounding the factories are the greatest threats.


HR directors can alleviate an employee’s security worries by taking steps that include:


  • Providing the employee’s family with a security awareness briefing before arriving in Mexico.
  • Ensuring secure transportation.
  • Providing a 24-hour Emergency Response Service by a local security vendor for those living in Mexico.
  • Providing employee vehicles with satellite tracking.

Partner with health and safety advocates.


Maquiladoras are a magnet for low-skilled workers from the country’s interior, but wages are low by U.S. standards (between $3 and $4 per day on the border). Employee turnover is subsequently high, reaching 80 percent in some cities, says George Kourous, program director of Silver City, N.M.-based Interhemispheric Resource Center, a non-profit organization that focuses on U.S.-Mexico border issues and U.S. foreign policy.


Companies might have to make peace with attrition because of wage competition, but there are other reasons employees quit: Occupational health and safety issues and sexual harassment, Kourous says. Attrition for executives and managers falls within the range of two years. But workers, mostly women between the ages of 17 and 25, often quit their jobs within months. Employers say it’s not uncommon for a worker to walk across the street, quitting one maquiladora for another. Advice from the pros? Don’t lose employees because they believe the work environment is hazardous to their health.


The Berkeley, California-based Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network (MHSSN) is one group that would like to work more with HR managers in maquiladoras. The volunteer organization of 400 occupational health and safety professionals provides information and technical assistance on workplace hazards.


But maquiladoras have denied such organizations access, says Garrett Brown, an industrial hygienist who works for the State of California’s Department of Industrial Relations and heads MHSSN. So Brown’s group usually works with activist Mexican workers off-site, where they don’t feel at risk of losing their jobs.


He suggests that HR managers:


  • Send Mexican health and safety managers to Spanish-language OSHA training institutes in the United States. Or hire Spanish-speaking consultants, private and governmental, to conduct on-site training.
  • Encourage the maquiladora associations that represent the corporations to monitor these issues more closely.
  • Work with corporate headquarters’ health and safety representatives to ensure that Mexican operations meet U.S. standards.

The principles for managing HR are basically the same for any place in the world,” says Jesus Luis Zuniga, an executive advisor for Sony Centro de Manufactura de Mexico. “What is needed is to apply them within different labor laws, cultures and economies.”

Posted on

Keeping in Close Contact With Your Customers

Not long ago, I was redesigning a marketing brochure. The designer I chose to work with was very skilled and knowledgeable, had even won awards for graphic projects. He created a wonderful design with a lovely color scheme. There was only one problem.


When I showed the draft to my clients, those people the brochure was designed to interest and entice, it failed rather spectacularly, to serve the purpose for which it was created. The initial design of my brochure actually interfered with getting the key information across to the reader. The color scheme unintentionally obscured the message I wanted to relay.


Surprisingly, expertise can get in the way of effectiveness and the attainment of the objective. During the redesign process he would often say, “In keeping with design principles….” However, what matters in the end is whether new clients will; first open the brochure; second read the contents and; third ideally save it for future reference or even better pick up the phone and call. Ultimately their input overrode design principles and in some cases my personal preferences.


Lydia Messerhammer, an HR professional with a large consumer products company had a similar experience. She was writing a question and answer page as part of an employee orientation package. Her team sought input from another department and believed that they had a clear message. After printing and distributing the brochure, they received calls indicating that the written information to the uninitiated new hire was still unclear.


This experience reminded me yet again of how critical it is to make sure you get feedback from your customers, clients or end users. The higher you are in the organization the more critical it becomes to make time for direct customer/client contact. Your clients’ direct words, not the words filtered through three layers of managers, will tell you everything you need to know. So much is lost in the filtering process.


A supervisor in a large manufacturing firm explains. The company holding the maintenance contract for the copy machines had such poorly trained service techs and bad response time, that they canceled the contract for one year. Unfortunately their direct competitor was even worse. So they were forced to return to the original company.


When a customer service rep called to follow-up on a written satisfaction survey, what happened? The supervisor explained the problems and the history of poor service. The representative tried to fit the comments into the survey but there were no handy checkboxes to reflect his experiences with the company.


You can imagine that the service manager reading a summary report of the survey results would gain a very different impression of his departments performance than had heard directly from his real live customers.


Conduct Field Research


Asking customers directly what they feel or like about something is useful but sometimes they don’t know why they make the decisions they do. William B. Helmreich reported in Marketing News, that a Chinese Ginseng company wondered why its American consumers consistently ranked their product as best but bought a competing brand.


The field researchers found out that the Korean ginseng competitors used a red label. Red, the researchers concluded, is associated with a Chinese symbol. Buyers thought they were purchasing the Chinese product. Think about ways you and your employees can conduct field research to gage true customer satisfaction.


One excellent strategy is to watch customers using a product. For example, radios commonly called boom boxes were initially offered in a whole range of colors. During focus groups, teenagers indicated that color choices would be great. As they were leaving the focus groups as a reward for participation boom boxes were available to take home.


Almost universally the kids chose black boom radios, not the ones in colors, even though they said they would like them. That is why you find in the marketplace almost exclusively black boom boxes.


It is so easy to become engrossed in what we do on a daily basis that we distance ourselves from the customer. We become blind to our own product or service. The best information in the world comes from the people who use your product. Stay close to them. Hear from them directly as Lee Iacocca did with the convertible. He drove a prototype and watched people react. That was all he needed.


 

Posted on

The Good and Bad Faces of Customer Service

As much as I dislike having to say this, it appears to me that good customer service is extremely rare. Often what is called customer service is actually more accurately described as “screw-up repair.”


It is frightening when taken in the aggregate, the number of misfilled orders, broken equipment, incorrect or just plain wrong information a customer or client receives in simple day-to-day living. The picture is not all bad, but the few glimmers of light are few and far between. Consider two of my recent experiences.


The Bad


I once purchased a new Macintosh Performa 6400 computer. I have had constant problems from the beginning. Soon after installation, I began to experience frequent crashes and freezes, sudden document corruptions, unreliable keyboard commands and printing difficulties, to name a few.


On an average of every six weeks, the computer broke down. We initially believed that the problems were software related, but no matter what we did, they recurred. Each breakdown caused work disruption, delays and frustration. Attempting to solve the problem was expensive, whether that meant taking equipment in for repair or having repairs done on-site.


Finally, in July, I tried to return the computer to the store from which I purchased it. They suggested that I contact Apple directly since it was under a one year warranty. In August, I called the Apple hotline and spoke to a technician who refused to acknowledge the history of the problem and would not help me unless I agreed to repeat the exact same, time consuming and costly software reinstallation and debugging.


By this time it was very clear to all the repair people that had seen the computer, that it was a hardware not a software problem. My request to have an Apple technician sent to make a final determination was denied.


For the next two months, problems continued and I wrote my first complaint letter to Apple in November. I explained the history of the problem, requested a technician be dispatched and a refund issued for the futile repairs. I never received a response. One month later, in December, I wrote again and heard nothing.


I finally tracked down a real, live person in “customer care” who also refused to send a technician, referring me back to technical support. The tech support person required that I go through the exact same software reinstallation that is so costly in time and money.


Once again we reinstalled the software, the problems continued and finally a technician was sent to my office. He determined that I was having hardware problems and replaced the logic board and the hard drive of my computer. Six days short of the end of my one year warranty, I finally had a working piece of equipment. We have still not resolved the reimbursement issue.


The Good


I have a great postal carrier who delivers to our office in downtown Oakland. Our letter carrier is incredibly attentive to his work.


It always arrives by 11:00 a.m., he remembers the names of my staff and any special instructions he is given. I get only the mail for my suite, unlike on those days when he is off and I get mail for other buildings. One incident comes to mind, which illustrates outstanding customer service.


A couple of months ago, I received a panicked phone call from my travel agent. She had mistakenly mailed two tickets to my address that actually belonged to two other people. She needed them returned promptly.


When I explained the situation, he took the tickets back with him. Once back at his station, he sealed and re-addressed the envelopes and placed them in the correct outgoing bin so that the travel agent would have them the next day. He then checked back with me to be sure that the tickets had arrived safely. They had. When I expressed my appreciation, he did not feel that he had done anything unusual or extraordinary. It was simply his job.


Great customer service experiences revive my hopes, but they seem ever more rare. Tell me your customer service experiences. I will be happy to share them in a future column.


 

Posted on

iDear Workforce-I What if You Have 1,000 Employees and No HR

Q


Dear Workforce:


We have just merged with another company and now have over 1,000 employees and no human resources department. We are a retail chain located throughout the country. Each store has approximately 6 to 10 employees. Where do we begin to develop an HR department? We have one benefits analyst and the payroll department. We have one HR consultant who is part-time and answers questions related to employee relations, but that is the extent of our HR workforce. Please help!


—Sherry


A Dear Sherry:


Your company appears to have two of the core HR functions covered: payroll and benefits. In most organizations of 1,000 employees, you would also find an HR person dedicated to compensation (philosophy, determining salary ranges, guidelines for salary increases, etc).


A staff of maybe three to five HR generalists, covering regions of the country where your stores are located, might make sense. A generalist could lend assistance in recruiting, employee relations, training, and any other HR needs. And there should most likely be a “head” of HR located in your headquarters.


This person would supervise the generalists and payroll and benefits functions; manage HR budgets; provide expertise around HR strategy and organizational development needs; and be a member of your organization’s leadership team. He or she should report to the CEO and be a critical advisor to the CEO, given the current labor market.


 


SOURCE: Cathy Nelson, Personnel Decisions International, Minneapolis, May 10, 2000.


E-mail your Dear Workforce questions to Online Editor Todd Raphael at raphaelt@workforceonline.com, along with your name, title, organization and location. Unless you state otherwise, your identifying info may be used on Workforce.com and in Workforce magazine. We can’t guarantee we’ll be able to answer every question.