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Taking Your Work-Life Policy Abroad

As corporate boundaries extend worldwide, an organization’s scope of work/life programs must expand as well. No longer able to view work/life issues solely through American glasses, companies must look at work/life issues from a global perspective. Motivating and supporting today’s global workforce means addressing the diverse needs and desires of all employees. Companies, therefore, must be cautious to offer benefits that are meaningful and are valued across cultures.


Work/life programs are on the rise.
U.S. businesses are getting serious about helping their employees balance work and family commitments. A 1998 survey by Bethesda, Maryland-based Watson Wyatt Worldwide reports that flex options, job sharing and other scheduling alternatives are moving into the corporate mainstream. Half of all large U.S. companies surveyed, and nearly a third of mid-sized companies, are making nontraditional arrangements commonplace.


Work/life benefits are gaining acceptance largely because companies see the link between high morale and outstanding performance. According to this year’s “Best Companies” study by Fortune magazine, 73 percent of those that made the inaugural list of “100 Best Places to Work in America” reported much higher than average annual returns on investment.


It’s also encouraging that work/life issues are receiving high-level attention from some of the country’s largest corporations. Last year more than 70 CEOs gathered in New York City for the first CEO summit on work/family issues. “Our very presence today says something about the new realities of leading a company in the global marketplace,” said Paul Allaire, CEO of Xerox based in Stamford, Connecticut.


A global work/life strategy is essential for worldwide success.
As companies continue to embrace work/life strategies, they must be sure to approach the strategies from a global perspective. Today, more than 100,000 U.S. firms are engaged in some type of global venture with a combined value of more than $1 trillion. One of every five American workers is employed at a company with a global presence, and the number is increasing daily. In fact, U.S. multinational companies employ almost seven million people outside the United States.


To offer benefits and policies that are meaningful to a global workforce, companies must assess work/life issues within the context of their employees’ social, cultural and country backgrounds. Understanding the distinction between U.S. and European views of work/family issues, for example, will help American companies to create valuable work/life strategies for their European employees.


As stated in a recent report by The Center for Work & Family at Boston College, in European countries “work and family issues tend to be regarded as socio-political as well as economic concerns… It’s widely expected that all social partners—including workplaces, governments and trade unions—should be involved in addressing work and family issues. Work and family priorities are not regarded as being primarily a corporate concern.”


In the United States, these issues generally are seen as a combination of professional matters and family concerns. Economic and social concerns typically are considered separately. In Europe, however, work and family issues are closely connected, and economic and social progress is seen as inextricably linked. As a result, European social legislation provides for such basic, family-friendly benefits as national health care, although employers are increasingly looked to for additional family-friendly policies and practices.


European countries provide basic work/family benefits.
Many European countries provide significant baseline support for employees. Corporations doing business in Europe should look at the benefits already provided by individual countries when developing work and family programs there. The following is a look at some work/life issues and how they’re handled in


different European countries:


  1. Childcare:
    Benefits often are addressed at the workplace. In countries such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Portugal, employer-based childcare and childcare allowances are becoming common. In other countries, such as Sweden, universal childcare is publicly provided.
  2. Maternity/parental leave rights:
    Under national health services, basic benefits are provided by all European governments. Very generous attitudes exist toward maternity leaves and, in some countries, paternity leaves, parental leaves and leaves to care for sick family members. For instance, employees in Sweden enjoy 38 weeks of paid parental leave at 90 percent of their pay.
  3. Health care:
    Europe has a national health service program that provides health insurance and dependent health care, significantly reducing the need for employers to provide this benefit.
  4. Telecommuting:
    Because of advances in telecommunications and computer technology, there has been an increase in telecommuting in Europe, most notably in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
  5. Career breaks:
    Structured like a sabbatical, career breaks are offered by companies in France, Germany and Belgium and usually are used for childcare or schooling.
  6. Alternative work options:
    European companies have offered flextime for many years. Use of part-time and job-sharing options has increased in recent years, particularly in the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

While many European countries provide employees with basic benefits, there is recognition that more assistance from employers is needed to help families meet their professional and personal responsibilities. The expectation is growing that companies will assume a greater role in helping employees to balance their work and family lives through employer-sponsored benefits and programs.


As in numerous European countries, many Asian governments and social institutions value the family as an essential institution and are committed to its well being. For example, in Singapore sustaining traditional values and preserving family strength are considered intangible factors in the success of East Asian economies. In support of a family-friendly workplace, government-sponsored benefits offered to employees include:


  • Eight weeks paid maternity leave
  • Four years unpaid maternity leave
  • Four years unpaid childcare leave for parents with sick children
  • Eldercare
  • Childcare subsidies
  • Family resource centers

“Our institutions and basic policies are in place to sustain high economic growth. But if we lose our traditional values, our family strength and cohesion, we will lose our vibrancy—and decline,” states Goh Chok Tong, Singapore’s prime minister.


Connect your policy to company objectives.


Global competition requires that American corporations develop a work/life strategy that supports their overall business objectives. This approach becomes even more critical when considering the influx of workforce issues that have emerged in recent years, such as gender equity, diversity, wellness, health and stress management. Add to this mix the issues concerning expatriates, and it becomes obvious that a strategic approach to work/life issues is essential.


One company that has been successful in addressing the variety of work/life issues of its global workforce is SC Johnson Wax, located in Racine, Wisconsin. A manufacturer of household cleaning, personal care and insect control products with more than 12,000 employees and 100 expatriates, the company has developed a program that provides compensation and benefits to globally transferred employees. Covered under a uniform transfer policy, the program links compensation and benefits to an employee’s home country.


In addition to making it relatively easy to transfer employees around the world, the program recognizes the complexity of the social and national health and benefit programs provided by many countries. Under a uniform policy, work/life issues can be easily addressed assuring that the employee’s work/life needs are met.


Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly also recognizes that there are many unique work/life issues involved when transferring families in and out of the United States. “We learned a few years ago how important it is to place a lot of focus on the family’s needs. It’s kind of like a domino effect. If the children aren’t happy, the spouse isn’t going to be happy, the employee isn’t going to be happy, and the company isn’t going to be happy. It can all tumble down on you,” says Samuel L. Pearson, Eli Lilly’s international relocation coordinator.


 


Realizing that schooling is a critical issue and seeking to make the transition easier for inpatriates, the Indiana-based producer of human health and agricultural products helped found the International School of Indiana. Serving children in pre-K through grade three, the school grew from 38 students to 81 in its first two years. “With the help of other multinational companies, we expect to expand the school to a complete elementary school,” says Pearson.


Companies with meaningful programs are rewarded by greater employee commitment.
Studies confirm that people today want more balance between their work and family lives and companies would be wise to adapt. Additional reports show that employees who use work/family programs receive the highest job performance ratings and have the highest commitment to the company. In a business world where corporations are downsizing, merging and restructuring, a motivated and loyal workforce will be a company’s greatest asset.


“Individual energy and creativity are unleashed when changes in work practices benefit employees’ personal lives,” said Xerox’s Allaire. “The best business strategy recognizes that greater employee satisfaction means greater productivity and, in turn, better business results.”


The changing needs of today’s workforce have created unprecedented demands for flexible and diverse programs and policies. While companies are realizing the benefits of implementing a work/life strategy, it is essential that they do so from a global perspective. As U.S. companies continue to expand operations across borders, the ability to maintain a productive and motivated workforce is critical to success.


Companies that incorporate the global perspective into their work/life strategy will have a competitive advantage in today’s global market. For American corporations, the difference between success and failure may be how well they learn to manage their global workforce.


Global Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 24-27.


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Is Your Recognition Program Understood

There used to be a time when rewards and recognition programs were vague, elusive creatures. They could strike at any time, showering plaques, presents and prizes on employees whose managers thought they “did a great job.” There was no definition on what a great job was—it could have meant having a good attitude, helping out another department, even having a long streak of punctuality.


No more. Businesses today are beginning to understand the great gains to be had by linking rewards and recognition to a business strategy. (See “Targeted Rewards Jump-start Motivation,” Workforce, February 1998.) There are specific goals and outcomes expected. But just as important, employees must understand their roles in the greater scheme of things, understand what they must do to get the carrot, and why the carrot is being offered in the first place.


Communication. It all boils down to that one word, but that one word encompasses a lot of things. There’s a great shift in the communication of rewards right now. No longer is it satisfactory to have a once-a-year videotaped message from the CEO talking about company “stars.” Today’s rewards and recognition programs must be communicated in the same strategic manner for which they’re being used. Of course, that opens up a lot of questions. How should a company clarify a rewards system? How should a company communicate it? And how does HR know whether employees really understand the link between performance and rewards?


To get informed answers to these three important questions HR managers need to know, Workforce talked to a group of rewards and recognition specialists. They are:


  • Carl Weinberg, principal in the Kwasha Lipton Group of Coopers & Lybrand LLP, an HR consulting firm. Weinberg is based in Westport, Connecticut and specializes in company rewards programs.
  • Howard Weizmann, managing consultant for the Washington, D.C. office of Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a global HR consulting firm. Weizmann has specialized in benefits and HR for 22 years.
  • Jan Burnham, a consultant in employee communications at the ROC Group (which stands for “Return on Communication”) in Chicago who specializes in return-on-investment for communication efforts.
  • Deborah Gingher, vice president of HR Policy & Strategy for the Prudential Insurance Company of America based in Newark, New Jersey, a company known for its forward-thinking recognition programs. Since her appointment as vice president in July 1997, she has been overseeing a new customer-focused awards program.

The group diverged on some particulars, but agreed on common themes for success: Making sure the company and HR understand what the program is incenting, suitably tailoring the communications to the program, and ensuring employees understand what the criteria for recognition is—as well as the goals recognition represents.


What goals do you want employees to reach?
Before you roll out any kind of program, before you start the communication efforts, our panel says it’s absolutely key that top executives and HR professionals all have the same vision. Have a few meetings where you all share your idea of company goals and rewards program alignment. Executives should speak to where they want to go, HR can speak to how to get employees to get the company there. This is the meeting in which you’ll decide the best approach—monetary or not, broad-based or departmental.


Carl Weinberg:
“I like a monetary approach. Some of the most successful types of rewards systems are equity rewards, like stock options or profit sharing. Here’s what we advise employers to do: Start with the compensation committee deciding how to allocate equity between shareholders and employees. Should employees get a 2 percent stake or a 20 percent stake? If you’re a young company, you should be up at the higher end of the range. If you’re in a turn-around, in a time in which you’re asking people to take a considerable risk by coming to work there, then you should be at the higher end. A well-established company will be at the lower end. The next decision is how to allocate among different employee groups.


“Most companies do this pretty badly. They start by deciding how much they’ll give to the CEO, then how much to give to senior management, then everyone else gets whatever is left over. That ignores the central question of where the value is being created. In a pharmaceutical industry where the value is being created in the R&D trenches, you want to make sure a great deal of the equity is going there. A company should identify the positions where having someone outstanding in the role creates enormous value. In many positions, having someone outstanding is better than someone just good, but in a few key positions it makes all the difference. That’s much better than the traditional model where everyone in the same salary grade gets the same amount.”


Howard Weizmann:
“There’s a very simple premise: If you measure it, people will do it. If you measure it and pay for it, people will do it in spades. If what you measure matches up corporate goals and strategies, the company will be successful. That in sum total is alignment. The most effective way to guide a company is through rewards strategies. To decide a strategy, decide what’s going to make employees happy. [A company] with unhappy employees has as a consequence unhappy customers, and as a consequence won’t do very well. An increase in employee satisfaction leads to an increase in customer satisfaction and translates to an increase in revenue. That’s what you’re trying to do. That’s where the world is going.”


Jan Burnham:
“An effective incentive program targets different groups of the workforce on narrowly focused goals—it’s a rifle shot versus a shotgun approach. The advantage is, employees feel they can reach a specific business goal. It’s a focus they can have and measure and link to over the course of a year. This is as opposed to the old incentive programs which were difficult to communicate, because people felt like the targets were so big they couldn’t have an impact—they were vague “improve the bottom line” type of goals. So by narrowing the target, people are feeling like this is a portion of the objectives they can make a difference around.”


Deborah Gingher:
“We decided rather than to have one companywide program, our many businesses would emphasize their own criteria for rewards. For example, the formal recognition program of our operations and technology function is very specific to rewarding innovative, technology-based solutions for internal business clients. The unit is trying to incent technology folks partnering with business customers and providing creative technological platforms for their business solutions. The auditing function is trying to instill integrity, ethics and leadership among the audit staff. So it has the Extra MILE Award—Merit, Integrity, Leadership and Excellence. At Prudential, we [focus] on incenting specific behaviors unique to each function instead of a broader ‘you’re doing a hell of a job’ kind of thing.”


How do you tell your workforce what you want?
So you’ve decided on a rewards system, and all the executives are in agreement on the business goals the system is rewarding. Now you’ve got to present it to the employees in a way that makes sense to them.


Carl Weinberg:
“A lot of companies say you have to go super-creative to roll out any new employee program these days: You have to have videos and handouts and themes. I frankly disagree. The most important point is that the message is clear, not that the presentation is flashy. If the company is a ship, and the employees are guiding the ship through the rudder, you need to tell them the exact destination of where you’re going, and exact instructions for guiding the rudder. So be very specific in what you want them to do, and how you will reward them if they do it. Now creativity does have one largely unrecognized advantage. It shows that senior management is taking the program seriously. Employees see all the time and energy that went into it and think, ‘They really mean this.’”


Howard Weizmann:
“We have a saying that a good program poorly communicated is much worse than a mediocre program well communicated. You can have all the goals in the world but if you don’t tell people about them you’re never going to achieve them. For the actual communication, it should be sort of a food chain. The first thing you start with is a pay philosophy. Why are you paying people? Ask yourselves what activity your success is measured by. What are you about as a company? Once you’ve done that, you have to communicate those basic objectives. Tell employees, ‘We’re paying you to ship packages in good condition on time.’ For packers, that means this; for drivers that means this. Then link that with your program.”


Jan Burnham:
“Most [employers] want to start by talking about the new program and its features. It works best if that’s not your first step. I’d say there are four key steps. One: Make sure that when you talk, they’re willing to listen. You need to establish where the level of trust is. Do baseline measurements and focus groups to see where employees are in their openness to a new program, so when you talk to them they’re ready to listen. Two: Clearly articulate the business case—how the features of the plan link to it. Make sure they understand where the company is. Three: Describe the specifics of how the plan works. [Companies often make] the mistake of starting with the third step and leave the first two out. Four: Don’t introduce the plan and walk away. People need ongoing understanding throughout the year of how the business is doing relative to the goals. A lot of time it’s forgotten. Plan designers get the idea that it’s done once they roll it out.”


Deborah Gingham:
“Our communication is helped in two ways. First, employees are nominated by internal customers. For instance, HR people can be nominated for excellence in their four HR roles: administrative expert, change agent, employee champion and strategic partner. Then we do a videotape of the customer talking about why the person was nominated. The tape is shown to all 1,000 HR professionals across the country, so they get a very clear picture about what the customer requires. Then we do a lot of employee communications—marketing, e-mails. Most rewards are quarterly so every quarter employees see the nomination process and reward process. E-mails and the company magazine talk about what the criteria is so employees are constantly being barraged by the criteria and specifics on why the winners win. So they get lots of examples. Winners of those awards have a very clear idea of what makes them a success. My advice to other companies would be: Be very specific about the behaviors you’re trying to incent; stay away from broader ‘you did a good job’ programs—they’re too vague and too hard to communicate effectively.”


How do you know employees ‘get it’?
Finally, it’s important to know whether, three or six or 12 months down the line, employees are still making the connection between their behaviors, their rewards and the business.


Carl Weinberg:
“The best way to know whether the message has sunk in is to listen to what your employees are saying and see if they’re using the same rhetoric. If they’re using the same rhetoric—hopefully not in a sarcastic way—then you know the message has sunk in. If they use it in a sarcastic way, you know some message has sunk in but probably not the one you wanted. Or management can ask people, ‘How are we doing on xyz?’ when they’ve communicated that xyz is important. If people have to fumble for the answer, then they haven’t gotten the message. If they give you a crisp response whether things are going well or not, that shows it’s something they’re thinking about.”


Howard Weizmann:
“We have a very large client in the delivery industry, and we did a film. We interviewed random employees on the street. We found they were very much aware of what was important. Drivers said, ‘If we don’t get there first our competitors will be there.’ Then we interviewed people in shipping. They said, ‘If I don’t get the right package to the right place our competitors will.’ This showed they understood what the company was all about. So ask employees. If they give [those kinds of answers], the company has been successful in communicating and orienting its goals.”


Jan Burnham:
“Always follow up with meetings; this starts a focused dialogue about the business. Soon the talks become less about the rewards and more about the business as a whole. That’s when you know they’ve got it: It’s less about the program and more about the good of the business.”


Deborah Gingher:
“We do quarterly employee surveys with questions that get to recognition and compensation. And we see that the [program works]. People are really excited and proud and incented when they win these things—even if it’s just a teddy bear. Because we’ve so tailored the competencies that will make [employees] win, we’ve done a better job versus a broad-based approach. People understand what the company expects from them. Rewards and recognition programs are only as good as employees’ understanding of them. Make sure the executive team is in agreement on the program’s goals, make sure they’re communicated clearly and strongly, and follow up later to ensure the workforce really ‘gets it.’”


In short, recognition programs require money, time and energy to create—following up can help ensure they actually get some use.


Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 77, No. 7, pp. 30-35.


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Building a Self Service Culture that Works

America is fast becoming a self-service society. These days self-serve gas pumps far outnumber full-serve pumps. Our banks encourage us to use ATM machines for 24-hour service. And the “free refills” slogan brought us self-serve soda fountains at fast-food restaurants. A little more slowly, a little more quietly, Corporate America is making the same shift.


Employee self-service. The mere mention of the words elicits joy in the hearts of human resources professionals everywhere. And it’s not difficult to understand why. Buried under an avalanche of forms and phone calls, HR historically has been relegated to a messy corner of administrative hell. Processing an endless stream of requests, updates and clarifications has allowed little time to become more efficient, let alone strategic. Thus, the idea of introducing technology that can automate processes to let employees handle functions themselves sounds like a passport to The Promised Land.


Yet, buried beneath all the glowing reports about how self-service can transform an organization lies an important and all too often ignored fact: Achieving outstanding results requires a significant change in cultural mindset. It’s not good enough to roll out the latest and greatest form of employee self-service (ESS) and leave it to employees to adopt the technology with wide-eyed enthusiasm. And it’s certainly not good enough to introduce the concept and smugly think that advantages for human resources translate into gains for the entire organization.


“No matter how important an employee self-service project is and how great a concept human resources believes it is, the cultural and sociological impacts can’t be ignored,” states Susan Obijiski, an analyst for Gartner Group, a consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut. She says, “If you get off to a disastrous start, the battle to implement the technology becomes far more difficult.” James Hatch, a partner in the Workplace Transformation Practice at Arthur Andersen LLP in New York City, adds: “The thing that many organizations don’t understand is that self-service affects behavior and the way employees think about the company.”


That makes sense, of course. Yet, these days, organizations are busy introducing ESS without understanding the full impact on the workplace. How do employees typically respond to these systems? How do they feel about having fewer interactions with HR? Is accuracy a concern? And, amid all the rhetoric about human resources becoming more strategic, what’s really happening?


At a time when organizations are desperately struggling to define and redefine themselves, self-service technology offers incredible opportunities… as well as remarkable risks. “It’s an absolute change in mindset for everyone involved,” says Jerry McLaughlin, CEO of Enwisen, a Novato, California company that sells employee information systems software used for ESS.


ESS brings rewards.
According to the Bethesda, Maryland-based consulting firm Watson-Wyatt, about 60 percent of all organizations are now using some form of Web-based employee self-service technology. Approximately 35 percent cited improved service to employees and better communication as a primary goal. The Gartner Group estimates that 40 percent of traditional HR activities will be handled by ESS by 2000.


It’s no secret that most companies introduce self-service technology for one primary reason: It can save huge sums of money by eliminating unwieldy processes that devour time and resources. Of course, other benefits can result from employees taking control of their own transactions, including helping them take greater responsibility and ownership of their careers. But, let’s face it, that’s hardly a justification for spending millions of dollars on sophisticated hardware and software.


Although the return on investment varies greatly from one company to another—partly as a result of how each organization reengineers work processes—various studies have shown that ESS can result in a savings of 20 percent to 80 percent per transaction. Many systems can pay for themselves in a year or two, and subsequently produce multi-million dollar gains. ESS can also free HR from the administrative treadmill while providing a more convenient way for workers to make changes to their own data.


Eliminating manual data entry and a steady stream of visitors to the HR department has removed an ongoing need for temporary workers in human resources, and subsequently helped the department spend more time coaching and counseling employees on career matters. “There was a lot of concern when we introduced the first self-service program in 1993,” admits Kenneth S. Wagner, director of worldwide information technology at Bristol Myers Squibb of Princeton, New Jersey. “But today it’s a non-event. Nobody is asking for the ‘nice’ people who help them fill out the forms.”


The end result? An HR department that actually is becoming more strategic. Using technology to reengineer processes, human resources recently has introduced several notable changes. One of them is the elimination of paper-based annual appraisals. Instead of managers filling out a form and handing the paperwork to HR for approval, they now engage in a meeting with each employee and discuss mutual goals, objectives and challenges. “It’s opening new channels of communication,” states Wagner.


ESS also brings risks.
When it’s done right, employee self-service can achieve remarkable results. But it doesn’t always work out that way. As employees begin to conduct business transactions through computers, “they can easily lose their connection and identification with the organization,” says Hatch. Instead of speaking to a live representative in a call center or an office, they’re left to fill out forms on their PC. Ultimately, by taking HR out of the equation, the formal and informal channel of communication can be lost if there are no attempts to remedy the situation with new forms of communication. “The relationship between an employer and employee is the foundation for a company’s success. If workers begin to lose the link, the effects can ripple throughout the organization,” states McLaughlin.


In fact, the mere introduction of cost-saving technology such as employee self-service can introduce problems—if an organization hasn’t devoted time and effort to mapping out the process and understanding the changes that will take place. As corporations embraced a business model that engenders less loyalty between employer and employee, workers are finding that the “fulfillment and sense of belonging they get out of work is more important than ever before,” says McLaughlin. Thus, the question can ultimately become: “Does any of the money saved go toward employees or improving communication between managers and workers?”


But that’s not the only potential land mine. When the Gartner Group’s Obijiski consulted for one large company on an ESS implementation, she found a curious disconnect between employee perceptions and reality. The company had successfully introduced a module that allowed employees to update their own records. Surveys indicated the workers genuinely liked the system and preferred it to traditional methods. After the company introduced several other self-service capabilities, however, surveys turned decidedly negative. “Employees, particularly in human resources, were afraid they weren’t going to have jobs in a few years. The fear was born out of the company using ESS to downsize HR staff. The people who left became extremely disgruntled and communicated their displeasure to the rest of the workers,” she explains.


Be sure your system works well at rollout.
If you take a proactive approach, you can guard against these negative first impressions. “In today’s business environment there’s an overwhelming need to do more with less. But there’s also an awareness that employee self-service has to serve everyone’s interests,” says Eric Gelman, director of marketing at PDS, a provider of HRMS and self-service solutions. To be sure, it’s a fine line between success and failure. Although a human resources department might recognize the value of ESS for the organization, that enthusiasm doesn’t necessarily translate into gains for workers.


That concept serves as the foundation for ESS at a growing number of companies. In fact, many organizations are learning that employees actually prefer a well designed employee self-service program to pen and paper. At Bristol Myers Squibb, 24,000 American employees can update records, conduct flex enrollment, update emergency information and more through an intranet or over the phone. Checking on 401(k) balances also is a snap. Workers can access account information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by connecting directly with Fidelity Investments of Boston, Massachusetts.


The company spent the time and resources to build an easy-to-use system—with Web-based ESS software from Austin-Hayne of San Mateo, California and IVR software from Santa Clara, California-based Edify—and workers are reaping the benefits. Processes, such as generating 401(k) statements, that used to take days, now take place in seconds. “People don’t miss the interaction with human resources because they are getting better service,” states Wagner.


The project can mean getting rid of file drawers and forms that have been part of the [HR] department’s collective psyche for decades. It means rethinking work and retraining individuals.


Of course this only works when the service is good. A poorly designed interactive voice response (IVR) or Web interface can dismantle a program as quickly as workers click on tasks and become frustrated by a poorly designed user interface or lack of functionality. Unclear menus or a system that requires employees to resubmit the same information every time they update a record or submit a report is a surefire way to fail. Even worse is a system that allows a worker to choose, say, a health plan, generates a confirmation but later rejects a claim because the person selected an invalid option while signing up.


In fact, system integrity is a core issue. Although inaccurate data is rarely a problem—when employees manage their own records electronically fewer errors actually occur—it’s the way the software handles information that can make or break ESS. When employees enter data and the system doesn’t process it properly, word quickly gets around. “People lose confidence and find ways to avoid using it,” says McLaughlin. Another sticking point is when a worker spends several minutes filling out an electronic form, only to have the system reject the transaction or force the person to start all over again. Likewise, a system that can’t instantly update a change in withholding or can’t display the latest pay stub information is likely to sink under the collective weight of employee disapproval.


“The time savings for a well implemented self-service project is immeasurable,” says Tom Meadows, a vice-president at Ceridian Source Empowerment of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, a provider of self-service and IVR solutions. Yet, experts agree, the technology requires a well-defined strategy. In most instances, it’s best to first offer a “killer app” that can convince workers that self-service offers them notable benefits. Once employees are convinced the system works and it can save them time and effort, it’s possible to expand the offerings. “Most companies that succeed start simple and continually look for ways to draw employees in while leveraging their assets and resources,” states Obijiski.


That was certainly the case at Richmond, Virginia-based LandAmerica Financial Group, a company that processes title insurance. In the fall of 1997, the company rolled out an online address change form using Ceridian Source Empowerment’s software. Since then, the 4,000-employee company has added modules for benefits and enrollment, taxes, company policy information and internal job postings. Last fall, when the company used the benefits module to introduce a paperless enrollment environment for workers at its headquarters, the entire process took place without a hitch. “Employees now view HR as a progressive department rather than paper pushers,” boasts Carol Gentry, HR information systems manager.


Take employee self-service to a higher level.
Not surprisingly, the success of an employee self-service system often hinges on several other key issues. Obijiski believes that no matter how dazzling the technology is, it’s necessary to overcome several common obstacles. Information technology (IT) professionals often see the project as a winning proposition, but do not take into account the cultural factors surrounding the change. As a result, they’re likely to design the site without human factors in mind. “The same work processes that existed with paper become part of a Web-enabled application. Instead of an employee viewing only the two or three relevant fields, they’re bombarded with 25 fields and they wind up overwhelmed and confused.”


Resistance to change is often the biggest headache of all. In a typical implementation, about 20 percent of employees are likely to dig their heels in and battle the new way of doing things. An additional 20 percent are likely to resent the change but use the system with a bit of cajoling, says Obijiski.


And the human resources department is hardly exempt. After all, the project can mean getting rid of file drawers and forms that have been part of the department’s collective psyche for decades. It means rethinking work and retraining individuals to handle entirely different tasks. And then, if the project succeeds, it could eliminate jobs.


But the greatest resistance can occasionally come from the most unlikely source: management itself. It’s particularly a concern at large corporations with entrenched ways of doing business. Although it would seem logical that senior managers would embrace employee self-service, it thoroughly muddles the idea of who’s responsible for record keeping and who’s to blame, says Obijiski. “There’s nobody to point a finger at and say ‘fix it’ if employees aren’t using the system right or if records are a mess. ESS crosses departmental boundaries and gets to the root of the company’s culture.” she states.


Training can help you sell the change.
Alexia Martin, a management consultant for The Hunter Group, believes education and training are paramount to success. Employees have to understand what’s coming, why it’s coming and what’s in it for them, she says. If a worker realizes how much easier it is to enroll in training, request vacation time or check on a 401(k) balance through the company’s intranet, he or she is likely to embrace the technology and use it. And once the person’s sold on the capabilities of ESS, he or she is likely to approach future changes with a positive attitude.


Obijiski insists an ESS rollout shouldn’t be rushed. Not only can it take months—sometimes a year or more to plan and implement—it’s essential to beta test the program, measure feedback and thoroughly understand the cultural ramifications at all levels of the organization. It’s also crucial to develop an overall strategy and timetable for implementing new technologies—and, as much as possible, understand the underlying financial issues.


Ultimately, employee self-service requires a major behavioral change. “You can never go backward once you’ve introduced employee self-service. It will have a profound impact on the organization,” McLaughlin observes. Yet, whether that impact is positive or negative has as much to do with how human resources manages the process as it does with the hardware and software that’s deployed. Employee self-service is more than a technology, it’s a state of mind.


Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 77, No. 7, pp. 60-64.


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Employee Turnover is Expensive

Employee turnover isn’t only disruptive. It also can be expensive, a survey confirms. Forty-five percent of 206 medium to large U.S. companies report that turnover costs them more than $10,000 per employee who must be replaced, according to a survey conducted by New York City-based William M. Mercer Inc. One-fifth of the respondents peg such costs at more than $30,000.


Asked to identify the two groups with the highest turnover, 38 percent of the participating company executives identified technology workers and 35 percent identified administrative workers. Among employees with the lowest turnover rates are those in management (according to 49 percent of survey participants) and professional (32 percent) positions.


For employee groups with the highest turnover rates, dissatisfaction over compensation was identified (by 59 percent of responding executives) as the major reason for employees leaving. Other often-cited causes were unhappiness with “job fit,” the culture of the company or manager-employee relations.


Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 77, No. 7, p. 19.


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Workplace Romance Words of Wisdom For HR

Everyone has an opinion on workplace romance. Here are some thoughts from experts.

Dr. Joy Browne, media psychologist who hosts a daily syndicated radio talk show (“The Joy Browne Show”) to more than nine million listeners in 300 markets responds to this issue often in her daily broadcast. She cautions against romance in the workplace, but also agrees that establishing policies to forbid it can be very hard to enforce for the employer:

“My major concern for both men and women is that work is about competence — and there’s nothing about love affairs that has to do with competence. Affairs have to do with charm, passion, excitement. Anything at work that disrupts other people’s perception of your competence is dangerous. However, I think it’s very hard to implement in policy. Just as I believe that personal life doesn’t belong at work, I don’t think work has the right to determine the personal policy. But work has the right to hold people to a professional standard. That’s where the problem lies, and that’s where the enforcement lies. All you really have to do is take them aside, and say, ‘Look, your personal life is your own, but it can’t occur on company property. If anything that you do is disruptive at work — from stealing paper clips to having an affair, you’re going to be held accountable for it.”

A. Michael Weber, managing partner, New York office of Littler & Mendelson, Fastiff, Tichy & Mathiason law firm:”HR can ensure that a company’s sexual-harassment policy is clear and well distributed. There should be a specific individual to whom someone could go to in the event of a claim and there’s a mechanism for resolving claims.

HR also can provide seminars for managers to educate them about laws and protections and what’s permissible in the workplace. Finally, in the event of a claim, they should promptly conduct a thorough investigation and, if necessary, take remedial action. Objectivity often goes a long way in diffusing the feelings of someone who’s being subjected to harassment.”

Michelle Brackin, human resources manager, Auxiliary Services Corporation, State University of New York, Cortland:

“We have romance issues in the workplace all the time, and they aren’t always issues surrounding people dating. They can be about husbands and wives working for the same employer. They can be about live-in significant others. Some of the issues revolve around the reactions when the relationships sour — fighting in the workplace, verbal abuse — we’ve also had domestic-violence issues. These all pose interesting challenges to the HR department. How do you protect your employees in the workplace when things are occurring outside of work?”

Chris Hargreaves, director of human resources, Chicago Partners Inc.:

“Clearly, some people are responsible enough to have a valuable relationship at work and it may even become more significant over time. They never create any problems for their employers. But, if you’re not a mature person and you don’t understand the downside of it, you can create innumerable problems, and it’s hard to escape when it goes bad. It makes a significant impact on your career with that particular company because you can’t keep the turmoil out of work.”

Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 77, No. 7, p. 46.

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Eight Tips to Stay Out of E-mail Trouble

Be careful about what you and your employees write. Memorize these facts to help your company stay out of trouble:


  • Legally archived or deleted messages can be acquired by a court of law or government agency in regard to antitrust, discrimination, termination or copyright infringement investigations.

  • E-mail is not the place for discussing sensitive issues, such as suspicions, employee performance, hiring or firing. If you do use this venue for such issues, always consider it a formal and permanent form of communication.

  • Stating a negative opinion or feeling about an employee while using e-mail lends merit in a legal proceeding related to discrimination or termination.

  • Prosecuting attorneys count on the fact that your e-mail archives will be ripe with incriminating information. They want you to be careless with your e-mail—disappoint them.

  • Certain comments, suggestions and even graphics delivered by e-mail to others can give merit to a harassment claim.

  • Be careful what you write about others. You can’t control who will read your documents.

  • Downloading and viewing graphics that are personal in nature are not appropriate at work.

  • Common sense will usually tell you what you should or should not do. If you even wonder if something is inappropriate—don’t do it.

SOURCE: American Media Inc., West Des Moines, Iowa

Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 77, No. 7, p. 40.


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Government Bolsters IT Initiatives

The U.S. government has been playing an increasingly active role in an effort to promote the information technology profession. Spurred on by the Arlington, Virginia-based Infor-mation Technology Association of America (ITAA) and other concerned industry groups, the Departments of Education, Commerce and Labor have issued reports, generated publicity, and sponsored major conferences to address the issue. Major funding and other incentive programs have also been launched.


Here are examples of the U.S. government’s current IT development initiatives:


President’s Educational Technology Initiative

This initiative is designed to encourage the advancement of technological literacy among all students by the beginning of the century. The four specific goals of the program, called the “Four Pillars” are:


  • Modern computers and learning devices will be accessible to every student.

  • Classrooms will be connected to one another and to the outside world.

  • Educational software will be an integral part of the curriculum—and as engaging as the best video game.

  • Teachers will be ready to use and teach with technology.

Other government steps include:

  • Expanding industry involvement in school-to-work: The Department of Education and the Department of Labor will provide up to $6 million in grants for industry groups that expand private-sector involvement in school-to-work. This will give more young Americans the academic and vocational learning they need to pursue high-skill, high-wage jobs in industries such as IT.

  • Upgrading the skills of the existing workforce: The Labor Department will invest $3 million in demonstration projects—in partnership with employers and training providers—to train dislocated workers for high-tech jobs.

  • Continuing the national dialogue: The Department of Commerce will convene four town-hall meetings this year where representatives of business, academia, state and local governments, and employee organizations can discuss IT workforce needs; identify best practices; and showcase successful models that others can replicate.

  • Promoting the use of technology in teaching and learning: The De-partment of Education established a $2 billion Technology Literacy Challenge Fund. The fund will be distributed over a five-year period. The 1998 disbursement was in the amount of $425 million to the state.

Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 77, No. 7, p. 56.

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Romance Has To Happen at Work

Consider this workplace: Two employees had a long-term romantic relationship. The woman is still unhappy that it ended, and hasn’t completely resolved her feelings. She isn’t shy about sharing that fact. The man, meanwhile, has married someone else and his wife also works in the office. The lawyers (this is a law firm) have been known to talk about their romances in open court. The managing partner moons over his failed relationship in staff meetings. There’s a secretary so interested in other people’s lives that she openly eavesdrops and uses listening devices to catch every detail. And the whole office shares their personal lives with one another in the unisex restroom.


Aren’t you glad you don’t work there? Fortunately, you can’t—it’s the workplace on “Ally McBeal.” It’s TV, so it has no bearing on reality, right? Or does it? Television has never been known as a leader of social change, only a reflection of it. I’m not aware of any real workplace quite as lovesick as Ally McBeal’s. But it’s impossible for any office to be chaste when the President’s extramarital affairs are fodder for Jay Leno’s monologue.


Is this progress? Sort of. Generally, it’s better if employees are allowed to be fully themselves at work. If we take off the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, we can admit that it never really worked to ask employees to set aside all semblance of a personal life at the front door.


But we’ve taken the wrong path to get to the right place. I would be all for this new openness if it were borne of healthier attitudes toward love, sex, relationships, and communication. But it isn’t. Instead, it springs from the need to adapt to perverse circumstances.


Ideally, employers would have embraced flexibility and other ideas of the ‘90s because they recognized that employees allowed to be themselves were ultimately more creative, more productive and more committed. In short, they would have invited more of each employee in and drawn from the resulting strength.


Instead, just the opposite has happened. Flexibility and other ideas have been embraced to help employees cope with the fact that businesses haven’t really invited anything in. They have just expanded out and swallowed up much of the employees’ personal time.


In a recent issue of Playboy (I really only read the articles), DILBERT(TM) creator Scott Adams talked about the phenomenon. “Work and home and leisure have melded into one thing. That counts for people who say they have to work all night,” he says. “If I go to the office cafeteria at 2 a.m., I’m going to run into some eligible person I have a lot in common with. I won’t if I go home.”


Adams isn’t alone in his assessment. Over breakfast one morning, an HR director at a national software firm told me, “Our corporate culture demands that employees be here nights and weekends. They can’t meet people anywhere else. Then when they meet people here, we interfere. It’s a double standard, and it costs us big in lawsuits and other problems. It’s a mess.”


There are many explanations—tougher competition, tighter margins, globalization—but a mess is still a mess. Some companies are finding moderate success trying to regulate the mess. But ultimately, we’d be better off if the energy spent trying to regulate were instead spent trying to find a way to give employees their personal lives back. I’m enough of a romantic to think it can still happen. Are you?

Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 77, No. 7, p. 4.