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50% Of Your Employees Are Lying, Cheating & Stealing

It’s a CEO’s worst nightmare: He or she opens the newspaper or switches on the television and watches helplessly as the media dissect and devour the company under his or her control over flimsy ethics and illegal activities. Over the years, a steady stream of scandalous news reports have chronicled the questionable actions of companies like Sears, General Dynamics, Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., NYNEX and, most recently, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. Even after the bad press and legal challenges fade, the results can be devastating. Such a scenario can cost a company tens of millions of dollars in legal fees and lost sales; it can demoralize a workforce and sap productivity. In the end, it can take years for a company to pull out of the tailspin.


Yet, despite more than two decades of intense media scrutiny, public pressure, academic research and corporate ethics programs designed to teach values and integrity, the business world seems unable to curb unethical behavior or improve its own image. Razor-thin profit margins, cutthroat competition, high-pressure sales and bloated workweeks are pushing workers harder than ever before. Combine all this with continued downsizing and a general breakdown of traditional attitudes about trust and loyalty, and it’s not difficult to understand why ethical transgressions are so common. As Michael Hoffman, executive director of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, puts it: “Virtually all companies want to do the right thing, but evidence of unethical behavior keeps piling up.”


The evidence is everywhere. A 1994 Gallup Poll found that among members of the general public, only the government ranks lower than corporations in perceived trustworthiness. A 1996 New Orleans-based Tulane University study, about the effects of personal values and corporate codes of conduct on fraudulent financial reporting, found that two of every five controllers and nearly half of all top executives were willing to commit fraud in role-playing exercises. In fact, 87 percent made at least one fraudulent decision in the course of simulated work situations.


60% of workers feel a substantial amount of pressure on the job.


Glance inside the corporation and things are just as disturbing. An April 1997 study by the American Society of Chartered Life Underwriters & Chartered Financial Consultants and the Ethics Officers Association, based in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, found that 56 percent of all workers feel some pressure to act unethically or illegally. The study, titled “Sources and Consequences of Workplace Pressures: Increasing the Risk of Unethical and Illegal Business Practices,” revealed that a head-turning 48 percent of workers admitted they had engaged in one or more unethical and/or illegal actions during the last year. Among the most common transgressions: cutting corners on quality, covering up incidents, abusing or lying about sick days, deceiving customers, lying to a supervisor or underling, and taking credit for a colleague’s ideas.


And the problem seems to be getting worse. The same study found that more than 60 percent of workers feel more pressure than five years ago and 40 percent feel greater pressure than only a year ago. Exacerbating the problem is an unclear definition of ethics, especially as companies go global. A gift in one country might be viewed as a bribe in another, for example, just as taking credit for a colleague’s idea might be considered business as usual at one company but shunned at another. “Ethics is a broad and often murky area,” says Laura Pincus Hartman, director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics at DePaul University in Chicago. Adds Carl Skooglund, vice president of ethics at Dallas-based Texas Instruments Corp. (TI): “The workplace is full of ethical confusion, dilemmas and issues.”


What in the world is going on? Why, despite the growing attention to ethics—including university teachings and media attention—is the problem so persistent? It’s certainly not for a lack of action. The Ethics Resource Center, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that helped launch many early corporate ethics programs in the 1980s, found the number of firms with ethics training programs has increased from 7 percent to 40 percent since 1994, when it last conducted a survey. Companies with ethics codes have swelled from 13 percent to 73 percent during the same period. In addition, a growing number of companies are establishing ombudsman positions, confidential hot lines and an array of other mechanisms to catch potential problems before they ever occur.


56% of workers feel some pressure to act unethically or illegally on the job.


Obviously, good intentions alone aren’t solving the problem. Says Hoffman: “There’s no question that ethics is an important part of an organization’s identity. Unfortunately, there’s often a disconnect between a company’s objectives and what happens in the real world. The people who set the organizational goals aren’t the ones thinking about ethics and how situations actually play out.”


Today, an ethics strategy must encompass more than hot lines, guidelines and finely tuned human resources policies. A workforce not properly grounded in ethics and a corporate culture not guided by HR managers steeped in making proper decisions is an ethics disaster waiting to happen. Says Michael Deck, a principal at KPMG Ethics and Integrity Services in Toronto: “Decisions are made by individuals. Actions are taken by individuals. Companies are nothing without individual human beings, and that’s where the problems start or end.”


Today’s business climate fosters unethical behavior.
Ethical conflicts are nothing new, of course. In the early 1900s, social pundits debated child labor laws and the idea of improving working conditions at the nation’s factories. That concern spurred a furious national debate on ethics and morality. A half-century later, politicians, government and the courts began scrutinizing sales methods and advertising, hiring practices and equal opportunity. Many of the laws people take for granted today were nothing more than ethical question marks only a few decades ago.


Along the way, the media, shareholders and public watchdog groups also began scrutinizing the activities of companies far more closely—how defense contractors handled government contracts, for example, and how stockbrokers promoted equities to customers. But just as this scrutiny was intensifying, the workplace evolved into a more complex and confusing place than at any point in history.


Ethics programs are a relatively new phenomenon.
Given today’s business climate, the rise of corporate ethics programs hasn’t happened by chance. Although some companies, such as Texas Instruments, began to lay down ethics guidelines in the early 1960s, the idea of training a workforce and offering an ombudsman or ethics officer to handle questions, problems and disputes is a relatively new phenomenon. In the early 1980s, only a half-dozen or so companies nationwide offered ethics training. Today, according to the Ethics Resource Center, 60 percent of all companies have ethics codes, and 95 percent of Fortune 50 firms teach ethics to employees.


At first glance, it might seem like a trend rooted in 1990s sensibility. After decades of a cynical public and the press’ scrutiny of the corporate and political landscape, it could be argued that corporations are finally seeing the light. But other factors also are driving change. The fallout from an Archer-Daniels-Midland price-fixing scandal or Sears’ automotive fiasco (in which mechanics charged customers for service and parts never received) can become a public relations and investor relations nightmare for a company. In fact, the Ethics Resource Center found that two-thirds of its clients asked for assistance in establishing a program only after enduring a front-page scandal.


52% of workers feel more pressure from balanceing work and family.


And then there are the 1991 Federal Sentencing Guidelines. They allow a company with a bona fide ethics program to receive up to a 95 percent reduction in fines if officials are convicted of a felony such as insider trading or fraud. Some say the stampede to ethics programs is little more than window dressing designed to accommodate the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Yet, regardless of the exact motivation or reason, the fact remains that many companies are developing ethics strategies, and some are shelling out as much as $1 million a year to ensure that problems don’t boil up. Indeed, a growing number of organizations are recognizing the long-term importance of building an ethical organization. “Trust is the foundation for any solid business relationship. You can’t form a close and candid relationship with suppliers, customers and the public if you don’t have a track record of integrity and ethics,” says TI’s Skooglund.


Ethics isn’t only good policy.
A track record established by actions, not merely policies, sets an organization on ethical ground. Retail giant Sears, Roebuck & Co. is an example of how culture can influence individual actions. In the early 1990s, the Chicago company came under intense fire for its automotive repair practices. After an investigation by officials in California, Florida and New Jersey, the attorneys general in 43 states charged the company with systematically overselling parts and services to 933,000 customers. Allegations of wrongdoing included making false and misleading statements, fraud, failure to state clearly what parts and labor were on repair invoices, and false advertising. By the time Sears agreed to accept responsibility and settle the matter for more than $40 million, the company was reeling from bad press and dismal public opinion.


Sears found itself under siege for a very basic reason, experts say. It had few safeguards against poor workmanship or unnecessary repairs, and it allowed employees to earn commissions on both selling parts and making repairs—a proven recipe for abuse. With tough sales quotas and a lack of customer-satisfaction checks, employees were rewarded for racking up sales whether parts and repairs were needed or not. It was only a matter of time before the situation spiraled inexorably downward, critics contend.


The way Hoffman sees it, ethics problems often spin a tight orbit around organizational objectives. “When a company sets unrealistic sales targets or implementation schedules, the pressure to meet goals gets pushed down through the organizational structure. All of a sudden, you wind up with people who begin to say, ‘I don’t want to mislead my customers, and I don’t want to cut corners. But if I don’t go along with things, I’m afraid I’ll lose my job or wind up falling far behind when it comes to income and promotions.’ That’s when employees begin to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.”


60% of workers believe ethics and business practices can indeed mix.


KPMG’s Deck has seen plenty of companies that serve up a compelling message but fail to back it with any real actions. Winning the ethics battle isn’t only about how an organization punishes those who engage in unethical behavior, but how the company rewards both good and bad behavior. A company, for example, can provide ethics guidelines and detailed conduct codes; HR can offer superb training and establish an ethics hot line for questions and problems. “But it’s the reward system and the organizational behavior that let people know what the real story is. If a manager turns his or her head and looks the other way when it comes to a top salesman who cheats on an expense account or accepts inappropriate gifts, that sends a powerful message. The desired behavior must start from the top and work its way through the entire organization,” he says.


Such expectations require a CEO who serves as an example of an ethical leader. It means managers are honest and expect honesty from their employees. And, increasingly, it means establishing clear-cut policies, guidelines and rewards—and HR making sure employees fully understand the repercussions of an ethical transgression and that such behavior won’t be tolerated. Remarkably, when researchers Arthur Brief and Janet Dukerich studied executives as part of the Tulane University project, the most disturbing finding wasn’t that executives were willing to bend the rules, but that their personal beliefs about ethics did little to stop them from committing fraudulent acts. In other words, managers almost always knew right from wrong, but didn’t feel obliged to act on those beliefs.


Yes, an ethical environment is possible.
Companies that create an ethical culture frequently avoid sinking into the quicksand. At Texas Instruments, Lockheed Martin and United Technologies, for example, efforts are under way to transform policies into action. Texas Instruments has written and distributed a code of ethics since 1961. It introduced a formal ethics program 11 years ago, after executives at the company recognized that problems were popping up in industry—particularly among defense firms. At the time, about one-third of TI’s business came from defense contracts. “We realized we couldn’t go on autopilot without expecting problems. The simple fact is, there are too many difficult issues and situations for which people have to make judgment calls,” says Skooglund.


While TI’s code of ethics serves as the foundation for the program, it’s not the only tool the company uses. The company communicates with its 60,000 employees by sending a weekly, electronic newsletter over the corporate intranet, and at least one article about ethics is always included. In addition, Skooglund’s five-person staff field questions on everything from benefits conflicts to legal compliance. A toll-free feedback line handles 100 to 120 calls each month, and workers can maintain anonymity, if they so desire. And the company arms employees with a Quick Test that can help guide them through ethics issues.


95% of Fortune 50 firms teach ethics codes to their employees.


TI also has worked hard to create an environment in which the ethics office and human resources personnel work closely with one another to resolve problems. If a question arises about sexual harassment or discrimination, for example, it’s up to HR to resolve it—and the ethics office will pass along any phone call or inquiry that pertains to those issues. If, on the other hand, an employee asks a human resources manager whether a gift from a client is appropriate, the manager will refer the matter over to the ethics department. HR also plays a role in briefing new hires about the ethics program and works with the ethics department and other company officials to refine policies and procedures.


At Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Maryland, the emphasis is on ethics training for all 200,000 employees. Every year, workers receive one hour of training from their direct supervisor or manager. The company uses a top-down approach: the chairman trains his direct reports, they train their managers and so on. All instructors receive training from an ethics officer; there’s one at each of the company’s 70 business units. (Ethics officers come from finance, marketing, human resources and other departments. Each performs the duties on top of his or her regular job.) The end result? “We wind up with each immediate supervisor having an ongoing ethics dialog with his or her direct reports. That way, we’re not sending out a message that there’s only one person in the entire company who’s capable of handling these issues,” explains Carol R. Marshall, vice president of ethics and business conduct at Lockheed Martin.


73% of companies have created ethics codes since 1994.


The company takes ethics seriously. It too provides a toll-free line for answering questions and dealing with issues. In a typical year, more than 4,000 calls stream in. But the backbone of the program remains the training sessions, which include discussions, video instruction and role-playing. Recently, Lockheed Martin introduced a full-fledged board game, complete with Dilbert (TM) characters, that presents ethical dilemmas and evokes group discussion. “The freer the communication and the more open and honest the environment, the fewer the problems,” Marshall insists.


Although Lockheed Martin administers the ethics program separately from HR, like TI it depends heavily on human resources to provide support for the underlying structure. And it’s not difficult to understand why. Approximately 37 percent of all ethics inquiries involve HR issues, and that means ethics officers must consult with HR and use the department’s expertise to interpret regulations, resolve disputes and consult on ways to reduce future problems. In some cases, HR is able to resolve specific ethics problems on the spot, something the company encourages, and thus avoids the time and expense of a full-scale inquiry.


Hartford, Connecticut-based United Technologies Corp. (UTC) has taken a slightly different approach. Since 1986, the $23.5 billion manufacturing conglomerate has offered a corporate ombudsman who’s responsible for resolving problems and mediating conflicts when they arise. Employees can call toll-free and speak confidentially to a trained representative or submit a written question or statement via the company’s Dialog program. The information is forwarded to the appropriate investigative department for further action and the ombudsman ensures that the person making the report receives a written response. “We’re not agents for management,” says George Wratney, who heads the ombudsman program. In the past 11 years, United Technologies has received more than 43,000 Dialog inquiries and tens of thousands of phone calls. Many of the inquiries have led to direct changes in management and business practices.


33% of workers say down-sizings have contributed to job-related stress.


Although UTC won’t launch an investigation without cause (“Employees must document and support their complaints, and we don’t sanction wild personal attacks,” says Wratney), the company does take allegations of wrongdoing seriously. It guarantees that employees who submit a complaint won’t find themselves the target of any kind of recrimination. And it backs that up by communicating with an employee only through a home phone number or address and providing other measures to ensure confidentiality. All this has fostered an environment in which only 11 percent of inquiries and complaints are anonymous, and only 3 percent of them involve questions about business practices.


In fact, questioning of business practices isn’t the norm at most companies—although it certainly pops up from time to time. More often, workers struggle with their own ethical questions in relation to work-related issues. Nynex Corp. has found that nearly 50 percent of the calls that stream into its toll-free phone line deal with such issues as disagreements about how an employee can use one’s benefits and what recourse a worker has if he or she doesn’t concur with a job evaluation and can’t resolve the issue with a manager. Hardly the stuff international scandals are made of, says Hartman. Nevertheless, “It’s the day-to-day personal ethical issues that can sink a company,” she says.


Promote an ethics culture in your company.
Of course, developing a corporate culture that fosters ethical behavior is an enormous task, as HR personnel at the above companies can attest to. The problem, experts agree, is that no single approach or cookie-cutter program works for every company. Many experts argue that ethics is relative and sometimes situational, and recognizing that fact goes a long way toward finding solutions. “There’s something to be said for zero tolerance and the message it sends out,” says Hartman. “But managers better think through all the rules and regulations very carefully because they can easily come back to bite the company. It’s possible to wind up with a company that searches bags and snoops on voicemail and e-mail messages. That can raise an entirely separate set of ethical issues revolving around privacy and trust. It also can affect the way workers view the company.”


Hoffman believes it’s important to view ethics in the proper cultural context—particularly for companies doing business in other countries. An unofficial fee to unload boats in one part of the world might be labeled extortion in another. “You have to determine where it’s appropriate and ethically OK for different cultures to embrace different principles. But you have to maintain your own framework of ethical values and not deviate from them,” he remarks.


Although it might seem that human resources plays a tangential role in the ethics debate, KPMG’s Deck says that simply isn’t so. HR can help design programs, advise on strategy and consult on investigations. HR can play an ongoing role in educating and training workers about ethics, he states. And it doesn’t end with a 45-minute lecture and video. “The underlying values of the company need to be visible—and communicated—during the selection process, employment interviews, orientation [sessions] and performance reviews. Only then can a company create a culture that emphasizes ethics.”


Whether the focus on creating ethical cultures will result in fundamental change in Corporate America remains to be seen. Many, like Deck and Hoffman, believe ethics programs will drive behavioral change and organizational improvement over time. Already, federal sentencing guidelines, Conference Board-sponsored symposiums, the creation of an ethics officers’ association and greater awareness of the problem indicate that ethics is getting the attention it deserves, they say. “There always will be room for improvement and progress,” says Hoffman. “But we have come a long way in terms of knowledge and we’ll likely gain more ground in the future.


“A successful ethics program doesn’t come about as a result of pounding workers over the head and telling them they have to be ethical or else,” Hoffman concludes. It comes from understanding that business ethics involves individual and institutional values and that the two are inexorably intertwined. It also comes from recognizing that problems in the corporate world are often systemic and not the result of a few bad apples in the corporate barrel. A company that finds a way to change the system so people can be influenced to act ethically and responsibly is far more likely to succeed.


Workforce, October 1997, Vol. 76, No. 10, pp. 44-53.


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Building Relationships in Sweden

There’s a lot about the Swedish culture that’s comfortable to Americans. One reason is that U.S. pop culture has significantly influenced Swedish society, making Sweden one of the more Americanized European countries. But delve a little deeper and some interesting differences surface.


In cross-cultural encounters, the people of two nations are likely to find more similarities than differences between their cultures. But problems arise when they don’t anticipate the differences, and they don’t have the skills to bridge cultural gaps once they bump into them. Not surprisingly, this can have serious implications in the business world.


Achieving cultural competence and bridging the gaps require more than memorizing a list of facts about a specific country. It begins with developing an awareness of your own culture, values and biases. It means learning to expect differences and developing an appreciation for (or at least an acceptance of) them. And it means building deeper relationships across cultures that will withstand the challenges these differences bring.


These are a few of the teachings of Gunnila Masreliez-Steen, the president of Kontura Gruppen, a cross-cultural management firm based in Stockholm, Sweden. Here she shares some key differences between the cultures of the United States and her homeland.


Business environment.
Corporate Sweden flattened organizations 20 years ago, drastically collapsing the organizational hierarchy. Today Swedes are accustomed to working with a greater degree of autonomy than Americans. “‘Empowerment’ [in the States] means you’re talking about how to move power from the top to the bottom of an organization, in a hierarchical manner,” Masreliez-Steen explains. “In Sweden, you would find people are talking about cooperation and sharing responsibilities.”


This is consistent with Swedish collectivism. More than any other country in Europe, Sweden embraces the value of sharing responsibility for supporting all members of society. This value is apparent in the cooperative relationship between businesses and unions. “Swedes anchor every major idea or major decision both with the union and the personnel,” Masreliez-Steen says.


Sweden’s flattened corporate structure is successful due, in part, to a free flow of information between unions, employees and managers. Managers share their visions for the future and corporate goals on a regular basis.


Masreliez-Steen points to perhaps the most striking difference in the business environment: “You can’t fire people in this country. If you’ve employed them, you have to live with them.” The result is something that in the States would be considered insubordination: Employees who don’t agree with a manager may simply disobey him or her. This means that Swedish managers are more interested in consensus-building than their American counterparts. In order to pre-empt disagreements, establishing a rapport among team members is of great importance.


Communication style.
The Swedes practice this idea of consensus-building in politics, as well as business. The result? Sweden hasn’t been to war in 200 years. Masreliez-Steen says: “Our problem-solving model is very diplomatic and nonconfrontational.” She explains that Americans might view the Swedish people as “afraid of conflict,” but the Swedish perspective is that it’s better to find mutual ground on which to build solutions than to engage in conflicts.


This will be important to remember when you’re negotiating with your Swedish colleagues. The desire to avoid conflict and the importance of consensus-building among Swedish team members means that reaching a final agreement may be a little slower than if it were two American companies involved in the deal.


When it comes to casual conversation, Americans should restrain themselves from asking the usual series of personal questions: Where did you grow up? What school did you go to? What religion do you practice? Although Swedes may answer these questions, they won’t reciprocate with similar ones. An exchange of information like this doesn’t usually take place until Swedes know each other quite well.


One fact that should put both Americans and Swedes at ease is that most people of Sweden not only have strong English-speaking skills, but also really enjoy the opportunity to practice speaking the language. This applies to taxi drivers and sales clerks in addition to your business contacts.


Building relationships.
Building strong relationships with your contacts in other countries is like taking out an insurance policy against cross-cultural mishaps. Always take the time and invest the energy to do it the right way.


Fortunately, your colleagues in Sweden will make relationship-building easy. Many have at least a basic level of exposure to other cultures through language-training and travel during school. This means they’ll be more comfortable with cultural differences than those with no prior experience.


Swedes also are familiar with U.S. management styles, having studied from American training materials. Masreliez-Steen explains that when it comes to conducting business, managers from both countries will proceed similarly.


The basis for a sound working relationship is to get off on the right foot. Begin with a handshake and a “Hello.” Discuss nonpersonal current events or pastimes and then move into your business discussion. Be sure you’ve come well-prepared for the meeting.


One particularly Swedish trait that Americans should keep in mind is that at the final stages, if a Swede shakes hands on an agreement, he or she absolutely will stick to the bargain. “Honesty is one of the basic values in this country. If you’re dishonest, the punishment is enormous,” Masreliez-Steen explains.


Instead of reading these points as a laundry list of do’s and don’ts, take a broader perspective. These ideas should help you form the right questions to ask as you interact with people of any culture.

Global Workforce, October 1997, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp.19-20.

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Become a Global Communicator

You’re a U.S. business person who has just begun negotiations in Antwerp, a city in northern Belgium. Your Belgian counterparts have taken you to lunch at an outdoor cafe. When the food comes, one of them turns to you and says, “Have some of these french fries; they’re so much better than the terrible fries you have in America.”


How do you respond? As business becomes more global, a greater and greater number of business people find themselves communicating internationally. For example, in 1995 at a U.S. insurance firm owned by a European alliance, nearly 20 percent of employees surveyed reported they communicate outside their continent more than once a month.


And HR professionals are certainly no exception. Whether you’re communicating with colleagues overseas yourself or directing the training and preparation for your expatriates, it’s a smart idea to invest some time in learning the dynamics of international communication.


When business people communicate across cultures, they bring to that communication their views of themselves and the world, or their own paradigms. Four such paradigms are prevalent in international business communication. By understanding the paradigms, and by recognizing them in ourselves and others, we can become more effective global communicators, helping ourselves and our organizations survive and thrive.


Acommunication matrix.
In his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen R. Covey argues that all our interactions are colored by two things: the amount of courage we have to display our feelings and convictions and the amount of consideration we have for the feelings and convictions of others. He graphs these two variables against each other in a matrix that defines the four paradigms of human interaction.


Covey suggests that in low-courage, low-consideration transactions, both parties lose. By not having the courage to express our feelings and convictions, we don’t get what we want, and by not considering the feelings and convictions of others, we aren’t able to give them what they want.


Similarly, high-courage, low-consideration transactions are attempts at win/lose bargaining, and low-courage, high-consideration transactions are attempts at the reverse. Covey’s matrix shows that win/win transactions take place only when we adopt a paradigm of both high courage and high consideration.

Making the matrix international.
We have found that these same four paradigms dominate international business communication. So the same matrix can be used to define the four main kinds of international business communicators: isolationists, ugly tourists, gone natives and global communicators.


In the lower left cell of the matrix is the isolationist. Isolationists are low-courage communicators, bringing a low embodiment of their own cultural identity, feelings and convictions. They also bring a low consideration for the cultural identities of others. As a result, real communication never takes place.


In the lower right cell is the ugly tourist. The phrase is adapted from the title of William J. Lederer’s novel “The Ugly American.” The book’s title has become a common phrase for a certain kind of American traveling overseas, one with a high assertion of his or her own culture but with a low consideration for the host culture — complaining, loudly, for example, that “You can’t get a good hamburger in Tokyo.” Our phrase, ugly tourist, reflects that such behavior isn’t restricted to Americans.


Far too many business people fall into the ugly tourist category. They work hard for a win, but by not allowing their international partners to win as well, they lose in the long run. They see the world through their own cultural filters, unaware the filters exist.


For example, we talked with a Canadian businesswoman who complained that the Dutch with whom she deals answer her questions with too much information. “When I ask what was the 1994 price, I expect to get the 1994 price, no more,” she said. In the same interview, however, she called the European belief that North Americans are too literal “not a fair characterization.”


In the upper left cell of the matrix is the paradigm we call gone native. The phrase likely originated in the days of the British Empire to describe a foreign-service officer who became so immersed in the local culture that he stopped being of service to the Crown.


The temptation to go native exists for the modern international businessperson as well. In any company, people with international interests tend to be attracted to international positions. Such positions, in any country’s corporations, are occupied by more than their share of Anglophiles, Francophiles or “Americophiles.”


But when a communicator couples low embodiment of one’s own culture and one’s own interests with a high consideration for others’ cultures, the result is a lose/win bargain — ultimately no bargain at all.


The global communicator.
We suggest, of course, that the most effective paradigm lies in the upper right cell of the matrix. We call this paradigm the global communicator: the business person who brings high courage for accepting his or her own culture and also high consideration for others’ cultures.


We interviewed such a global communicator recently. He’s a Portuguese businessman working in Amsterdam to create structures for sharing knowledge across a multinational company. This manager clearly asserted his own culture; he seems proud of being Portuguese as he speaks of his culture’s distinct characteristics. But he also speaks admiringly of the strengths of the other cultures represented in the company.


His high-courage, high-consideration paradigm emerged most clearly when we asked if he liked being greeted in Portuguese before switching to English, the working language of his company. “Yes,” he said, “it’s a nice token gesture. But attitude is more important — to be a joyful person, to be open-minded. And there are other ways to convey that attitude.”Using the matrix.
 So let’s go back to that Antwerp cafe and the french fries challenge. How do you respond? The matrix suggests four possible ways.


If you’re an isolationist, you ignore the challenge and say nothing. Perhaps you change the subject. Conflict is avoided, but communication doesn’t happen. The result is lose/lose.


If you’re an ugly tourist, you rise to the bait. “You call these french fries? In America, we wouldn’t feed these to a pig.” In the right relationship, built over time, a good laugh may follow. But in most cases, the result will be win/lose. You’ve satisfied your offended honor, but lost a chance to build a relationship.


If you’ve gone native, you roll over and play dead. “You’re absolutely right,” you say. “These are much better than we have in the States.” You may have ingratiated yourself to your hosts, but you’ve probably diminished yourself in their eyes. The “lose/win” result has no long-term payoff.


But if you’re a global communicator, you say something like, “Ah, I’m sorry that you haven’t found good french fries in the United States. Next time you’re there, I hope you’ll let me take you where you can get some very good ones. Or better yet, I hope you’ll let me treat you to some more typically American food. But meanwhile, I certainly enjoy these fries; they’re very good indeed.”


The result is win/win. You’ve shown the courage of your own convictions and a consideration for your host’s culture. More important, you’ve opened a door to furthering your relationship.


So give the matrix a try. Examine your international communication. With practice, you and your colleagues will become global communicators.


Kenneth W. Davis, Teun De Rycker and J. Piet Verckens have conducted communication training and consulting on four continents. They were part of a team that designed and taught the world’s first international course in global business communication in 1994 in Belgium, Finland and the United States. All are associates of Komei Inc., an international communication consulting and training company in Indianapolis. Davis is also a professor at Indianapolis-based Indiana University-Purdue University. De Rycker and Verckens are on the faculty of the Antwerp Business School in Belgium.


Global Workforce, October 1997, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 10-11.

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Return on Investment What Are Your International Assignments Worth

Peer behind the walls of today’s corporations and you’re likely to find executives analyzing and scrutinizing a constant stream of bits and bytes from their spreadsheets. As they sift through return on investment and net margins, long-term debt and capital expenditures, they struggle for ways to eke out ever-greater profitability and productivity. Managers know the value of their assets; they know the worth of their capital expenditures. They can print out simple arithmetic equations that show measurable results. They can produce clear statements about performance management objectives.


Yet, when the topic turns to international assignments, it’s as if someone has pulled the plug. There’s a disconnect. In an era in which everything needs to be value-proven and cost-justified, many corporations don’t even know the number of international assignees they have. Nor do their HR managers track the real costs. Equally important, these managers can’t tell you the value contributed by these international assignees.


So, who cares? Senior managers, that’s who. And they’re putting lots of pressure on HR. As greater sales are generated by companies’ global operations, and as the United States moves from an era during which international assignments were an anomaly to one in which they’re a daily business reality, senior managers will watch more carefully the revenue generated by these transferees.


It’s clear that international assignments account for an ever-growing portion of today’s corporate growth. The “1996 Global Relocation Trends Survey” by the National Foreign Trade Council and Windham International, both based in New York City, suggests that 43 percent of corporate revenue is generated outside of headquarters’ countries. But, it’s not enough to examine and cut expenditures, and it’s no longer adequate simply to guess that assignees are accomplishing the business task at hand. Today’s HR managers face a more complicated job: determining whether international assignments are yielding a positive return on investment (ROI).


The critical first step is to assess and assign value and expense. Next, HR must weigh the value against the cost. But caution. We’re heading into uncharted territory. The process is likely to require a paradigm shift supported by a combination of hard, quantifiable data, technology, and good, old-fashioned intuition and management experience.


Quantify the return.
Assigning a dollar amount to the value, or the return, from an international assignment is the greatest return-on-investment challenge facing global companies today. It’s such a tough proposition because companies and consultants are still struggling to create systems and standard processes to assist with calculating value.


“It’s difficult to measure value if you take an isolated view. You need to take a holistic viewpoint across your corporation,” says Andy Johns, head of expatriate employment policy and services at Shell International in The Hague, Netherlands. For one thing, departments that incur the costs don’t necessarily acquire the value. Costs are immediate, and value is derived over the long term. Furthermore, costs are visible; value is intangible. For example, to groom an individual as general manager of a large European operation, it’s common practice to develop that person first with an assignment in a smaller operating company. Most often, that employee is charged to the operating company for which he or she currently works, although that unit is only accruing part of the value. The value attained by other parts of the company needs to be accounted for as well.


Add to that the challenge of attributing value in such situations as when you send “Employee Jim” to establish the marketing of a new product in Poland. How do you quantify Jim’s marketing expertise, his flare or his management capabilities? How do you decide if you really need to have an expatriate in the location or if a business traveler or a long-distance “virtual expatriate” would be equally effective? You can collect data, you can use past experience, but at some point, you must rely on judgment and intuitive sensibility.


It all starts with setting clear objectives. “Measuring success depends on what you’re trying to achieve,” says Lauren Attinelly, consultant for Expatriate Policies and Practices for Shelton, Connecticut-based General Electric Co. “What are the objectives that one is trying to measure against? In some respects, they’re going to be in the eyes of the beholder. You’ve got success based on what the employee thinks, what the family thinks, and what the business and company goals and objectives are. I even wonder if there can statistically be a correlation between an individual’s performance and the company’s revenue.”


Calculating ROI for an international assignment in the typical sense is certainly difficult, as Attinelly points out, but not impossible. Johns suggests examining what he calls, the value drivers—the reasons for sending transferees. First is governance, or sending someone to translate corporate culture. Second is technology transfer, which involves teaching the local national staff how to use a new technology and then leaving it with them. Third is a skills shortage. There aren’t enough drilling engineers in a country, for example. And, finally staff development assignments focus on developing a future cadre of individuals capable of running a global business.


Employees sometimes fulfill more than one of the value drivers—other than governance, which typically would be restricted to senior levels. Once an employee has been with the firm for a while, he or she can transfer internationally to fill a skills gap. The employee can teach skills (accomplishing technology transfer), and, at the same time, he or she is also learning. If all three of these activities are occurring at the same time, you need to figure out how to put a price tag on each one.


Notice the different kinds of value offered by each of the four types of assignments and how each must be measured differently.


  • Governance assignments communicate the corporate vision.
  • Technology assignments bring technological know-how to new regions. This can be accomplished in different ways, rendering different types of value. The short-term choice might be to bring a local person to a technological center and transfer the technology to him or her. For example, you could bring a Malaysian to The Hague. Or you could send an expatriate to Malaysia who could transfer technology to three or four Malaysians.
  • Skills shortage assignments bring needed skills to another region. The value of this type of assignment is easiest to quantify because it’s unambiguous. You can price the skill in the open market as if you were hiring an individual from a competitor. The questions then become: Is a competitor’s employee cheaper than an expatriate of yours? And will the company continue to need those skills after the international assignment is finished?
  • Staff development assignments cultivate management skills for the future. In terms of measuring, the value here is a little less obvious. “You can look at the alternative cost this way: If I had to go out and buy that finished product [employee] on the open market, how much would it cost me?” says Johns. The cost might be in terms of executive search or the salary premium one would have to pay in comparison with a home grown employee.

So far, so good, but there’s more. “The clear-cut business decision becomes a little more difficult to make when you move away from the production arena and get into areas of marketing and similar types of activities,” says Johns. “For example, [let’s say your company’s] pricing structures across Europe and strategies for market penetration need to be integrated, so you begin to build a European cadre of marketing experts. But it’s not easy to prove why you should be putting that German in Paris or that French [person] in Madrid. It’s not a skills shortage. Instead, you’re saying, ‘I’m building an organization for the medium-term that’s able to change its game—getting out of a national game and into a European game and, if necessary, into a global game.’


“Establishing the hard-wired link between the value proposition and the cost is where it gets really tricky,” concludes Johns.

Use performance management systems to define value.
“When you think of companies looking at their return on investment, they usually have a dedicated group measuring it,” says Attinelly. “Have organizations really set up the infrastructure to be able to measure ROI [for international assignments]? Are companies really setting objectives when they send people overseas? Are they communicating what those objectives are? And, are they measuring against them? And, if that group of expats is helping the mission, [have the HR managers figured out how to] tie in those individuals to a percent of growth?” In most cases, the answer is, “No.”


“There’s a mismatch,” says Alan Chesters, consultant with London-based ECA International. “Typically, domestic HR operations expend tremendous effort measuring performance and do a superior job in developing performance objectives and appraisals. But HR doesn’t spend much time looking at the individual cost of an employee. In other words, you don’t take one secretary and compare that output at the end of the year with other secretaries. No one worries about the unit cost of an employee; HR looks at the collective cost of an activity.”


The opposite is true for international assignments: There’s less effective performance management and greater focus on cost. “We need to reconverge those two intentions,” Chesters says. “In international assignments, we must have more exacting performance reviews and then correlate them with cost and value.” For example, you may worry about the high cost of a geologist doing oil exploration as an expatriate in Vietnam, but if he or she discovers oil, the cost is infinitesimal compared with the return.


“[Senior] managers are putting pressure on the HR function about the costs of expatriates because that’s the only thing they can really get their hands around; whereas domestically, they have all the measures for working out whether they’re actually getting value from that cost,” Chesters explains.


Chesters enumerates four categories of data collection that HR needs to improve to provide a sensible analysis of the value of individual assignments. HR managers should ask themselves—before, during and after the assignment:


  1. What are the expectations? HR should establish and record appropriate objectives before assignments begin.
  2. What commercial benefit will the company achieve from the assignment?
  3. What will the individual gain? Consider the value of the expat experience that wouldn’t have been available to the employee if there hadn’t been an international assignment. (This should be measured by the perceptions of the employee and the organization.)
  4. How will the organization as a whole benefit? How is it going to use the expertise the employee has gained and added to the enterprise?

“If you can find ways of measuring these factors and demonstrate the growth commercially, organizationally and individually, then the difference [in cost] between $10,000 in tax and $20,000 in tax for an assignment is insignificant. That’s why identifying costs and placing value on the assignment is critical. The qualitative elements can be measured, and although I’m not as sure of the accuracy of [those] quantitative results [on a one-to-one basis], you can attribute them to the influence of expatriates as well as from others,” says Chesters.


It shouldn’t be a surprise to discover that efforts at performance measurements are meager. As a matter of fact, a survey by New York City-based William M. Mercer Inc. indicates that only 15 percent of 52 U.S. companies that responded to the survey have formal procedures for measuring success. Yet Mercer’s April 1997 survey, “The Management of Internationally Mobile Employees,” states that there’s an increasing recognition among participants (who represent Australia, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States) that value is as important as cost.


Measure the investment.
If the first hurdle in the ROI process is to determine why you’re sending an assignee and to identify the value of the assignment, then the second one is to monitor the costs, or the investment. Unfortunately, most companies don’t keep detailed records of everything that’s spent on expatriates. They usually have a good handle on reportable information for tax returns or compliance, but that’s just a part of the equation.


“When companies look at their investment, they may run a cost projection to see the expense of having an expatriate, but they won’t include many items or associated manpower costs to keep that person there. They look at actual cash spent and paid directly to the expat or on behalf of that expat. But they don’t look at the staffing requirements in HR to keep track of all this: the payroll resources, the system resources,” says Carolyn Gould, partner-in-charge of expatriate compensation and administration services for the Morristown, New Jersey, office of Price Waterhouse LLP.


As surprising as that oversight may seem, it makes sense historically. It used to be that headquarters staff sent expats. It was easier to track costs because the company was dealing with one nationality coming from one place: the headquarters country. But as firms became multinational and sent individuals from different locations, what may have started as one national policy developed into several regional policies. For example, European transfers have one policy and Asian transfers have another. The policies were administered within local regions and may have been completely different. Consequently, headquarters staff wouldn’t even know who was moving around the region. Some companies are so decentralized they don’t even have a complete list of international assignees.


“Many times divisions resist centralizing these functions because they want to make their own decisions. But the purpose of centralizing the administrative function is strictly so that a single group is monitoring and implementing what the business unit wants,” says Gould. “It isn’t necessary to give up autonomy in order to gather data and control expenditures,” she explains. So the first step in finding the information for the cost half of the formula is to consider centralizing data.


Next, begin to identify costs, the obvious ones and the hidden ones. There are three different types according to Gould: 1) Administrative costs include the time costs of everyone who has some interaction with the expatriate and would have had this interaction whether the employee was international or domestic. An example is payroll. 2) Actual cash and allowances include what the company spends on the expats. 3) Lost work time includes the cost of administrative-system breakdowns that create questions and complaints. For example, if you look at the hourly rate for an expatriate with all the allowances, what’s the cost of each phone call regarding errors? Gould says she has one client that had more than 200 expats who logged 3,000 phone calls, e-mails and faxes between themselves and management. Almost 57 percent were related to payroll errors. “That’s a waste of time,” she says.


HR managers need to take the time to examine overall procedures and processes, making sure they’re tracking everything that’s important. According to Gould, timing is a critical factor, especially for residency. HR may miscalculate its tax costs, for example, if it doesn’t understand and track specific time sequences. For instance, in Japan, if an expat is in the country on the first day of the year, the individual will be taxed on the entire prior year; if the expatriate leaves prior to January 1, he or she doesn’t have the same tax liabilities. This example may seem simple, but only if you know who is where and when they arrived.


Measuring ROI for international assignments is indeed a tremendous endeavor that extends throughout the scope of the global organization. It begins with identifying the strategic aims that managers believe the transferee is supposed to accomplish. Next, HR needs to develop a system for measuring value, including instruments to monitor and measure performance. Finally, it necessitates developing systems to track expenses, both long- and short-term, obvious as well as hidden, to obtain a complete picture of the costs. The process is demanding and requires careful thinking and planning, along with all the aids available today: technology, current workable systems and good, solid judgment.


Global Workforce, October 1997, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 12-18.


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Amoco Trains Its HR Team Members To Be Internal Consultants

Consulting skills are all about personal efficacy,” explains Bill Clover, manager of training at Amoco Corp., a $32 billion (current revenue) petroleum and chemical company based in Chicago. Internal personnel consultants, as individuals, must be able to make things happen.


Since January, Amoco’s HR educators have been working diligently to help the company’s “internal partners” (the term the company likes to call its HR people) do just that. They’re also helping HR individuals achieve HR’s new mission, which is to: “Provide leadership and support to management by developing, integrating and implementing HR strategies that maximize employee and organizational effectiveness in concert with Amoco’s goals.” Of the company’s 525 HR professionals, 100 have already gone through an “intervention process” (Amoco managers feel that they’re providing their people a higher level process than just a “program”) that’s edu-cating them on internal consulting skills, especially those involving change management and business acumen. “We’re trying to create an intervention, not just teach skills,” says Clover.


It all started with Amoco’s senior HR leader, Wayne Anderson, several years ago, when he envisioned the organization’s human resources department moving from an administrative function to a consultative function. It’s his vision that HR professionals spend their time in the following areas: 25 percent on strategic HR planning, 50 percent on consultative and developmental projects, and 25 percent on administrative HR tasks. Currently, however, HR professionals at Amoco spend 65 percent of their time on administrative HR tasks, 25 percent on consulting and developmental activities, and only 10 percent on HR planning. That’s not what senior HR managers at Amoco think is the right role for their HR staff members.


Amoco’s HR executives want their HR professionals to move from focusing their efforts on developing and administering a wide variety of people processes and tools to addressing organizational capability and people issues that are directly related to business strategies and results. They also want them to move toward diagnosing problems, developing integrated solutions, marshaling resources and delivering specific expertise to particular business issues. They want them to focus on being sig- nificant contributors to achieving business results in a world-class corporation rather than just developing world-class HR programs in a vacuum.


The intervention consists of a weeklong course that involves HR professionals learning about Amoco’s general business model, getting specific feedback about their capabilities, understanding HR’s role and mission and interacting with their peers and executive managers.


Although only one-fifth of the company’s HR professionals has gone through the intervention process, those who have participated are reporting good results. “People are coming back and saying that after they got back from their session, they were faced right away with challenges they were systematically able to focus their skills on,” says Clover. Amoco HR professionals are generally feeling that their skills are becoming better honed and refined through this intervention process.


As a result, Amoco’s 42,000 employees are begin- ning to experience the effects of their internal HR con- sultants’ newly enhanced professional capabilities. It must be making a difference for the human resources people and their customers.

Workforce, October 1997, Vol. 76, No. 10, p. 58 .

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Charge Managers With Inspiring Loyalty

TThe discussion participants have worked together for nearly 15 years, meeting first at NBC Television’s New York City-based Division of Standards and Practices during Grant Tinker’s distinguished tenure as chairman. This article is a free-wheeling conversation about what managers, HR and others can do to win employees’ respect and trust, the preconditions of loyalty in a working environment. Listen in as these colleagues share ideas that you can use to prevent the kinds of ethical challenges that arise when leadership doesn’t inspire loyalty.


Loyalty among employees is wearing thin. Several reports bear witness. In 1993, writer Ethan Winning conducted an informal study of employee satisfaction for his book “Labor Pains: Employer and Employee Rights and Obligations.” Sixty-seven percent of the 121 employee respondents drawn from six industries reported that their sense of loyalty on the job decreased over a five-year period. Research in Britain by Sanders & Sidney, a London-based career management firm, shows similar results. Why? It could be that corporate leadership is undermining employee loyalty in a variety of ways.


There are serious ethical implications of this problem of shrinking loyalty. A disloyal workforce inspires employers to adopt ethically questionable practices. The American Management Association reported this year in a survey of 900 mid-sized and large member companies that 63 percent of companies are using surveillance or monitoring procedures that include listening in on phone calls, reading employees’ e-mail and running spy cameras. What’s more, one in four companies don’t tell workers about the spying-and by law, they don’t have to.


Employers’ secret cameras, taping machines, e-mail audits and even undercover agents, violate the expectation of privacy that lies at the heart of American culture. Employers become instruments of coercive practices that Americans often associate with oppressive societies and despotic governments.


How have so many companies landed in this position? In part, through a misguided reaction to diminishing loyalty in the workplace. Surveillance treats the effect. To treat the cause, advocate that your company’s managers lead the way in regaining employee loyalty.


Selnow:
What did the most effective managers you’ve known do to generate team loyalty?


Gilbert:
In my experience, the home base of loyalty is honesty. Nine out of 10 employees interviewed told researchers James Kouzes and Barry Posner that truthfulness was at the center of the trust they placed in leaders who not only must be honest but also must be seen being honest in their own habits. If they demand an honest expense account from employees, they must submit honest expense accounts themselves. If they want employees to respect company property-for instance, using computers only for company business-they must respect company property themselves. And people must see them doing this.


Selnow:
Another value, near the top of the list, is holding a positive attitude even in tough times. A good manager is stalwart under pressure like a military commander who doesn’t oscillate between the euphoria of victory and the bitterness of defeat. He or she stays the course with a positive attitude. Napoleon put it simply: “A leader is a dealer in hope.”


Gilbert:
A positive, hold-the-course sense carries people through bad times, and just as important, it keeps them from getting too cocky in good times. That’s not easy to do on the job, or in life for that matter.


People think of dynamism as Armani suits, A Tiger Woods smile and a flashy personality. Instead, I think it emerges from vision.


An additional activator of loyalty is providing your employees with encouragement and direction. I remember how much people wanted to please Grant Tinker at NBC. He had a way of inspiring them to do their best. People worked their hearts out simply to please him. It had to do with his upbeat personality. For him, nothing was so bad that he couldn’t crack a joke about it, and nothing was so good that it couldn’t be done a little better. One time, Gary David Goldberg, who wrote “Family Ties,” handed Tinker a script. Grant looked it over and said something like, “This is good, but I can get this from any good writer. Go back and give me what only Gary David Goldberg can write.” Goldberg told me that he floated out on air.


Selnow:
A twist on encouragement is investing trust downward. First, it sets a tone of trust throughout the organization. It’s reciprocal: If I trust you, you’re more likely to trust me. Second, downward trust can offer unforeseen compensations. And a company that doesn’t look to its employees as creative thinkers may be throwing the next great idea out the window.


Gilbert:
You, of course, know my former boss at NBC, Ralph Daniels, senior vice president for standards. He applied the attitude of respect downward in two ways. He looked to his employees for ideas and creative input. No pretense. It was a genuine belief in his people that, given adequate support, they could deliver their best work. Second, Daniels was always one to give employees plenty of credit. He never hogged the glory for himself. If someone else carried out an idea of his, he gave them full credit. People worshipped him for it.


Selnow:
When I think back, I remember Daniels’ competence. Everyone recognized that he knew television and TV standards like nobody else. That was an unspoken truth, especially unspoken by Daniels. He never reminded you of what he knew. I believe that if you have to tell people you’re good, maybe you aren’t.


Gilbert:
Can people ever be fully committed to an incompetent superior? When they come up with something really good, people have to know that the boss will correctly evaluate it. Moreover, they have to know that when the work falls short, the boss will be the first to note it honestly, to critique it objectively and to suggest how to improve it in practical ways.


Selnow:
Some of us have had bosses who are dynamic. Is that quality-often called charisma-essential to build loyalty? Or is it just window dressing?


Gilbert:
Too much of the time people think of dynamism as Armani suits, a Tiger Woods smile and a flashy personality. Instead, I think it emerges from more solid traits like inspiration and vision. Again, the Kouzes and Posner study reported that seven-in-10 employees want leaders who can communicate their long-range goals and their sense of the future in words that stir emotions.


Selnow:
George Bush called it “the vision thing” and this may be the most difficult of the traits to cultivate. Bush feels that either a person has it or he or she doesn’t, but I’m not sure I buy that. All of these traits, to one degree or another, can be developed, even the vision thing.


Gilbert:
Sure, managers have to recognize how important it is for employees to have a clear and well-formed vision of the future. Vision becomes the polestar of the organization. Without it, leadership is incomplete and employees get lost in the ambiguity of the direction the company is taking them-if anywhere. Lack of vision can kill the spirit of good workers.


Coach “Bear” Bryant would ay to his team: “If anything goes bad, then I did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it.”


Make sure your company’s managers understand their role.
Polls and headlines tell us that loyalty is wearing thin, but through strong leadership, a company can reverse or prevent the decline. And if it does, HR is much less likely to face a wide range of ethical dilemmas involving surveillance cameras and tough sanctions for monitoring employee behavior. In short, what should HR do to build worker respect and loyalty? It should start by advocating that all managers, including HR, adopt the following characteristics:


  1. Managers must be conspicuously honest-always.
    A small lapse of honesty, like a ripple in a pond, can spread throughout an organization. If a manager sidesteps the rules, he or she loses the moral authority to impose those rules on employees.

  2. Managers should keep a positive attitude toward the mission and their people.
    An old saying states that anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. The test comes when the winds pick up. Managers need to be a reliable source of stability, confidence and positive attitudes, especially in tough times.

  3. Managers must provide encouragement and direction.
    Voltaire wrote that it’s good to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others. That may have worked for the Navy in the 1700s, but positive encouragement and inspiration of workers is more productive today than tactless threats and fear. Managers should inspire workers to do their best, support their efforts and give them the direction to focus their creativity.

  4. Managers must be trusting.
    Ronald Reagan used to say: “Trust everyone, but always cut the cards.” No doubt managers will be deceived occasionally if they trust, but if they don’t, they’ll never lead. Managers need to trust their employees to come through for them-and they need to let the employees know they trust them.

  5. Managers should give plenty of credit.
    Managers need to explain expectations, provide clear-minded evaluations of employees’ work, give credit downward and report credit upward-and in writing. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, the University of Alabama’s legendary Coach “Bear” Bryant was a credit-giver. He would say to his team: “If anything goes bad, then I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it.”

  6. Managers should improve their skills.
    It’s skill, not strength, that grows loyalty. Managers should be knowledgeable, informed and competent. Harvey Mackay, the highest paid motivational speaker in America, has a speech coach critique his major seminars. Those who are the best, he says, are always improving.

  7. Managers must have a vision.
    Managers need to know what the destination is and have a plan for getting there. How can a person lead if he or she isn’t up front and looking ahead? Like most people in business, we’ve served with those who, justly intent on making profits, still found ways to embody the values of honesty, optimism, encouragement, trust, credit-giving, competence and vision. In discovering that what works for people and what works for profits aren’t mutually exclusive, these leaders, like Daniels and Grant, gave their companies a soul and an ethical foundation. It’s time more corporate leaders do the same.

Workforce, October 1997, Vol. 76, No. 10, pp. 85-87.


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Solve the Dual-career Challenge

Nancy Carter and her spouse were a dual-career couple on assignment in Taipei, Taiwan, and Vienna, Austria. As an accompanying spouse in Austria she worked on dual-career issues for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the Atomic Energy Agency. She also managed the international assignment policies and programs for two multinational financial services institutions and worked with an industry wide initiative by the companies to address the dual-career issue from legal, tax, immigration and selection perspectives.


Over the last ten years, the number of dual-career couples employed in the United States has grown to three million, representing approximately 20 percent of all employed couples. As a result of these changing demographics, work/ family programs have become more commonplace in the last five years.


To function effectively in the workplace, partners in a career couple must be able to negotiate a balance between the demands of work and family. So family-friendly policies make good business sense. Proactive corporate programs — including child and elder care, flexible benefits, job sharing, part-time work, telecommuting, parental leave, personal time and employee assistance programs — all have reflected the changing perspective of corporate interest and involvement.


But what happens when the business needs of the corporation disrupt this equilibrium and an international transfer of an employee places the business needs and the family needs at loggerheads in their differing expectations of work/family support? Do the same programs offered to domestic employees have relevance? They do. But unfortunately, they’re offered far less frequently when an international relocation occurs.


Factors that influence a relocation decision.
As early as the mid 1980s, several financial services companies recognized the issues of spousal employment abroad and established a formalized network to bring the problem to senior managers. The issue was finally given credence because of the number of female expats and the spousal work concerns of their husbands.


The issue of international relocation is critical, as is any relocation, for the dual-career couple because couples can’t sustain multiple relocations for one person’s career without the sacrifice of the other’s career. So before couples accept an assignment, they need to engage in extensive negotiation about the relative significance of each person’s career, the meaning of family and career balance, and the definition of their dual-career relationship.


The demographics of international assignments show a reduction in the number of mid-career transfers as corporations use international assignments for developmental purposes. These days, assignments tend to occur earlier in careers when employees aren’t as likely to be encumbered by home ownership, family, education and career disruption. This makes things a little easier for companies sending expats and spouses overseas.


These newer members of the workforce don’t have the same expectations of career employment or corporate support, and desire international experiences for their own personal and professional development. These couples recognize the rewards of international business and social development that will give them the tools to compete in the global marketplace and an edge over their counterparts who haven’t had this international exposure.


These factors may make it easy for spouses to agree to an assignment, but it’s difficult for them to anticipate some of the struggles they’ll face. Their primary challenge will be maintaining their sense of identity when the identities of their professional lives are absent. It’s important that a company’s policy encourages active involvement in the expatriate community in which social, professional, family, recreational and educational lives are intertwined.


Components of a spousal-assistance program.
Firms such as Organization Resources Counselors Inc., Windham International and the National Foreign Trade Council have undertaken many studies on the challenges of moving dual-career couples internationally. A resounding number of companies report increased concern over the expatriate spouse career issue, but a person can count on one hand the number that have actively developed assistance policies with perceived benefit by the transferee and spouse.


Companies typically limit assistance programs to setting up spousal accounts against which a spouse can draw to cover educational, professional or legal expenses that he or she might have during the assignment to keep up with peers at home. Examples of costs covered include tuition expenses for continued education, fees in connection with securing a local work permit, resume preparation and job-search assistance.


Many companies skirt the dual-career issue by providing total family-assistance accounts which can alleviate the expenses and concerns of caring for elderly parents, children’s special education requirements or medical/ disability requirements as well as spousal employment issues.


What about financial assistance to compensate for lost income of the career spouse? Most corporations have ignored this issue or refused outright to address it. International HR professionals have worked through their networks of peers in other companies to attempt to find employment opportunities in the countries of their expatriates’ assignment.


Some companies have made financial contributions by allowing for dual households and commutation, and rotational or short-term assignments as alternatives to traditional expatriate assignments if these variations don’t increase the corporation’s costs.


Human resources at global companies should consider each of these components of a spousal-assistance program when formulating a company policy.


The value of the international experience.
A popular misconception is that accompanying partners have difficulty adjusting because they don’t have enough to do if they aren’t employed. This is far from true. Spouses are by necessity and commitment the most flexible, energetic and entrepreneurial of international assets. They must make an effort to be self-fulfilled, often through volunteer work or new business ventures. They often develop a talent for resourcefulness, negating the myth that years spent abroad automatically damage a person’s career progression and development.


Repatriated employees who succeed to positions of influence within their corporations surely will take the issue of dual-career programs for international transfers more seriously. After all, a company recognizing global business skills as critical to its future success should be encouraging spouses to focus on the value of the experience abroad and the skill sets they’ll develop during the transfer.


And it’s HR’s role to make sure the company’s relocation policy supports this viewpoint. Throughout the expat assignment, HR should reinforce the message that entrepreneurial ventures and uncompensated social contributions made during the years accompanying an expatriate abroad also carry a great deal of value.


Then when it comes time to fill a staff vacancy, HR professionals share responsibility with line managers for recognizing this value in applicants who have accompanied their partners on international assignments. The independence, adaptability, flexibility, and political and cultural awareness gained through life overseas are attributes seldom found in people without international experience. Voids in the chronology of work history will be more than compensated for by the attributes and experience gained through their ancillary role.


Global Workforce, October 1998, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 21-22.

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Julia’s Story Accommodating an Employee With Schizophrenia

Julia, 37, is a full-time pharmacist in a busy Alabama hospital. She received her schizophrenia diagnosis about 14 years ago, and once was out of work ill for seven months. When she returned to the work world soon after passage of the ADA, her first interviewer called her back after the interview and asked why she had been unemployed for seven months. When she pointed out that he hadn’t made an offer yet so the question really wasn’t appropriate, he replied, “Then I guess you don’t want the job,” and hung up. Julia then decided to be straightforward with subsequent interviewers. Most employers lost interest right away when she told them she has a mental illness that’s a disability.


Eventually she interviewed with her present supervisor, himself a pharmacist. He knew her supervisors at her previous jobs and knew her reputation as a worker. He agreed during the hiring process to reasonable accommodation in principle without stipulating what the accommodation would be until after her three months’ probation. Julia is one of only two night-shift pharmacists in the hospital, which runs a number of specialized intensive care units that keep the pharmacy busy. She works seven nights in a row and then has seven nights off, trading weeks with the other night pharmacist. Her accommodation is that she has an extra week off every nine to 12 months to adjust her medications. She never calls in sick and never misses work, and she gives one to two months’ notice when she needs the extra week off.


Julia enjoys her work and is proud she finished pharmacy school after receiving her diagnosis. “[My job] keeps my skills fine-tuned. Just me and my technician are there all night, which I like. I get uncomfortable when the day shift comes in.” Her accommodation has been successful throughout her five-year employment with this hospital. “Most people turned me away. My present boss was more receptive.”

Workforce, October 1997, Vol. 76, No. 10, p. 32.

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Must HR Diagnose Mental Disabilities

Around the time the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990, an employee at MICOM Communications Corp., a computer company in Simi Valley, California, suffered a series of panic attacks- sudden surges of overwhelming fear that come without any apparent reason. The employee had what’s known as panic disorder, a mental disability. But the employee’s supervisor didn’t understand the condition and shared the general impression that the worker was using the panic attacks as a crutch. Sometimes the employee became so angry with the responses he was getting from his co-workers and supervisor that he walked out for two to three hours at a time. Because of the time lost when he had panic attacks, the employee received poor performance reviews. He responded with long, angry letters to management. Management began to fear the possibility of a workplace violence incident.


The employee did mention to HR that he had a medical problem, and he did go out for a short time on disability. He believed that when he had these attacks, he should be given some leeway. But the company’s stand was that in a lean and mean, competitive industry, if a worker didn’t carry his or her full share, it wasn’t fair to others. When a larger firm bought the company and insisted on staff reductions, the employee was downsized. After his termination, he came in once more to read his personnel file. While he sat in an unused office leafing through the file, the HR staff worried and wondered what was coming next.


They had good reason to worry. Had the employee chosen to sue the company for employment discrimination under the ADA, his case probably would have been successful. The company’s human resources staff had made no effort to accommodate the employee’s psychiatric disability. Having no clear understanding of what comprises mental disabilities was HR’s first error. Having no clear accommodation strategy was it’s second problem.


But, seven years after the ADA became law, HR is still wondering how to accommodate workers with psychiatric disabilities. Because so many business professionals, especially human resources managers, needed more guidance about the psychiatric disabilities that always have been covered by the ADA, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) drafted a 40-page document of guidelines intended to answer the most frequent questions arising from attempts to accommodate psychiatric disabilities. Those guidelines were published in April 1997 as “Enforcement Guidance on the Americans with Disabilities Act and Psychiatric Disabilities.” They have been raising a dust storm despite the fact that they aren’t mandates and don’t add new provisions to the ADA. Instead they’ve renewed a simmering debate about how far an employer must go to accommodate a person with a mental disability.


Ever since passage of the ADA, segments of the business community have been critical of its requirements for reasonable accommodation of both mental and physical disabilities. Objections have focused on cost and complexity because every person with a covered disability requires consideration of his or her unique needs in a particular workplace. Now the criticism from business owners who have disliked the ADA from the beginning is mounting. What was the HR staff at MICOM supposed to do with the man having panic attacks? Clearly, they should have responded better than they did.


Under the ADA, business owners may not discriminate against otherwise qualified workers with mental illness. The act limits what employers can ask applicants about their history of mental illness, yet, requires they take reasonable steps to accommodate employees with psychiatric disabilities. Do the guidelines mean, then, that HR managers are required to diagnose or assess mental disabilities? No. But they offer a road map to employers managing an employee who has a mental disability. There are practical, tested suggestions for HR managers who may be uneasy about dealing with employees who have such a disability. Understanding the EEOC’s guidelines is a good place to start.


How can HR apply the guidelines?
The EEOC guidelines clarify the application of the ADA through hypothetical cases and indications of how the EEOC would likely rule on them. Assistant Legal Counsel for Coordination Carol Miaskoff at the EEOC’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, notes that questions from employers and EEOC investigators about the ADA and psychiatric disabilities led to the drafting of the guidelines. The guidelines don’t introduce new law, she explains. “It’s a fairly conservative document in that it doesn’t break new ground. The ADA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 before it have always covered psychiatric disabilities. The section on particular accommodations is meant to be a helpful guide for someone looking for ideas about how to accommodate a particular employee.”


Miaskoff believes much of the angry mail the EEOC has received since releasing the guidelines has been generated by media reports that are inaccurate, not by the guidelines themselves. Some writers apparently have the impression that conditions that aren’t disabilities would be protected, that “being ‘blue’ one day, or just being weird, would give someone all these special protections,” says Miaskoff. Being blue or weird aren’t protected conditions. The EEOC relies on the American Psychiatric Association’s 1994 revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) for definitions of mental or psychiatric disabilities. Stated briefly, these disabilities represent the consequences of brain malfunctions, just as physical disabilities represent the consequences of physical malfunctions.


At issue is whether individuals will be able to feign mental illnesses and take advantage of the system. Also at issue is to what extent employers must go to accommodate what they can’t always see, or what they can see but can’t understand. Further, some are wondering if the requirement to reasonably accommodate an employee’s psychiatric disability is asking too much of HR professionals. Is obeying the law an automatic financial drain, a requirement to continue to pay a less productive employee?


“At first glance, it’s nothing but another nightmare money pit,” acknowledges Donald Hantula, an organizational psychologist whose teaching and research at Temple University in Philadelphia focus on human resources issues. But Hantula believes the greatest barriers to these accommodations are matters of attitude, not cost or difficulty. An employee who has a nonphysical disability is more likely to need closer supervision, more feedback and more conversation about the project at more steps along the way than an employee with a physical disability. The employee with a psychiatric disability needs an involved supervisor. “Accommodating most nonphysical disabilities isn’t as much a matter of arranging the environment as for physical disabilities (the accommodations are usually social), but these employees are as entitled to feedback and positive reinforcement as employees in wheelchairs are to wheelchair ramps.”


Often lost in the debate over how to accommodate psychiatric conditions is the fact that a disabled employee must be able to perform. “Managers shouldn’t lower the hurdles,” explains Peter Petesch, a management-side labor and employment attorney with Harrison and Ford LLP in Washington, D.C. “A company should hold the employee to the same standards for customer service as other employees in similar jobs. And mental illness isn’t a shield for making violent threats. I don’t think there’s a lack of freedom to fire someone who isn’t performing or who violates the employer’s workplace violence rules. HR should stick to managing performance, not diagnosing conditions or supervising medications.” How to achieve parity in accommodating individuals who have psychiatric disabilities, Petesch insists, is clarified by the ADA. He believes people object because of the learning curve on which these guidelines put everybody in our society. “Everyone is fumbling for answers, including the courts.” No clear shared understanding about psychiatric illness governs the conduct of American public life. How much do most of us really know about schizophrenia or clinical depression? Jokes that reveal our discomfort about mental illness are far more widespread than accurate information and attempts at understanding are.


How common is psychiatric disability in the workplace?
The idea that the EEOC guidelines force a new, unstable population into the American workforce is wrongheaded. People with mental disabilities are already in the workforce. They just may not be visible.


For example, in any given year, according to a 1994 report of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, more than 51 million adults in this country live with a diagnosable mental disorder. One of those mental disorders is schizophrenia. Two million American adults have this mental illness, according to the Center for Mental Health Services in Washington, D.C., a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Many of these people are in the workforce.


It’s a question of degree. The truth is, most people experience occasional panic. Most would acknowledge occasional depression or sometimes having feelings of uncontrolled elation. Many people would admit to feeling confused at times or having a poor ability to concentrate. Whether these conditions are disabling is a matter of degree. Employees who are disabled by these conditions experience them more often, or longer, or to a greater extent than the general population. Supervisors and co-workers accommodate these conditions in their mild forms as a matter of their daily business conduct with most people, writing them off as idiosyncrasies or bad days. In their diagnosable forms, these conditions cause great pain to those who suffer from them, and they’re truly disabling. When these conditions interfere with the employee’s ability to perform the essential functions of the job, they require formal accommodation by employers-even when these conditions aren’t visible to the untrained observer.


Nat Fuchs, vice president for human resource development at the entertainment company Showtime in New York City, believes HR’s job becomes more daunting when disabilities-physical or psychiatric-are invisible. He suggests that when the disability is easily observable, the observer crosses an important psychological barrier and accepts the disability.


That barrier remains when the disability can’t be confirmed visually. When the disability is mental, the barrier can feel insurmountable unless something in the culture has softened it, made it acceptable. “[Unacceptance is] born of ignorance. We [in America have] made it okay to say you have a learning disability. That’s cool. But if I referred to it as a mental disability, I’d get a different reaction,” Fuchs explains. “[For example,] I can’t keep directions straight-I continually confuse north, south, east and west. If I told people I had a mental disability, they’d respond completely differently from the way they respond to my claim that I have a learning disability.”


The even more challenging issue for businesses, and especially for HR, is when an employee isn’t willing to reveal the exact nature of his or her disability.


How does the employer learn that the employee has a psychiatric disability?
Much of the confusion about parity in accommodating mental disability arises over the employee’s legal requirement to self-identify as disabled to the employer if he or she wants to request an accommodation, whether the disability is physical or psychiatric. According to the EEOC guidelines, it’s sufficient for the employee to use “plain English” to self-identify. This means that the employee doesn’t have to say, “I’m having difficulty with this task and request reasonable accommodation because I suffer from a disability as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act.” It’s sufficient for the employee to say, in the language of an example in the guidelines, “I need time off because I’m depressed and stressed.” The guidelines continue, “This statement is sufficient to put the employer on notice that the employee is requesting reasonable accommodation. However, if the employee’s need for accommodation isn’t obvious, the employer may ask for reasonable documentation concerning the employee’s disability and functional limitations.” Experts advise that the documentation should detail the employee’s functional limitations and recommended accommodations, not the disability itself.


Some employees choose not to disclose their mental disabilities because of the stigma attached to them. Darrell, 43, a computer programmer, learned in 1984 that he suffers from schizophrenia. He was in the Army when he became delusional and received his diagnosis-and a medical discharge. He hasn’t disclosed his diagnosis at work. “I think people have less trouble [dealing] with [someone who has] AIDS than [dealing] with [someone with] psychosis. When you say ‘psychosis,’ everyone thinks of the Norman Bates shower scene in the movie ‘Psycho,’ but it’s not like that. For the most part, I do real well at work. I doubt that any of my co-workers know or suspect what I have. People need to realize we’re already here. I’ve been employed as a civilian since 1984.”


Darrell hasn’t identified himself as disabled or asked for formal accommodations at work. Because he doesn’t wish to disclose his condition to his co-workers, he manages his own accommodation. His schizophrenia is controlled by medication, but when he becomes too stressed at work, he takes vacation days he has saved for this purpose, sometimes on short notice.

When Darrell has searched for work, prospective employers have asked him why he left the Army on a medical discharge, probing the nature of the medical condition. The question is illegal and Darrell knows it, but rather than challenge the interviewer, he just responds that he has a chemical imbalance. Anyone with a psychiatric disability could give the same response.


Darrell may not be aware that he can identify himself as having a covered disability without revealing his diagnosis. He copes very well, but in a company where employees haven’t been educated about the requirement to identify themselves if they need an accommodation, Darrell is understandably concerned about how he would be treated if he did identify himself as disabled. There’s no clear company policy about nondiscrimination based on psychiatric disability at his current workplace. This general lack of information about how the ADA works-and about what will happen if an employee does request an accommodation-perpetuates the workplace atmosphere in which Darrell believes he’s wiser just to keep quiet.


Is HR responsible for assessing a mental illness?
It’s HR’s responsibility to make sure all employees, including those like Darrell, are comfortable disclosing their needs, if not their diagnoses, and what they, as managers, can and will do to help when asked. Psychiatrist Richard Kunnis is head of the managed-care practice and a partner in the Boston office of Ernst & Young LLP, a large accounting consulting firm. Kunnis served for several years as head of the Social Security Administration’s disability evaluation program, bringing in panels of experts from medical faculties and surveying professionals to determine the capabilities of persons with particular diagnoses. He suggests that HR professionals who have felt burned by the disability assessment process may have undue expectations of themselves. HR professionals, he explains, can’t see if someone’s depressed, or if they suspect depression, how depressed the person is. Similarly, they can’t assess how much a person with congestive heart failure-a physical disability-can do. In fact, on his Social Security Administration medical panels, there was greater consistency among responses from experts about the functionality of a person with depression than a person with congestive heart failure. So where does that leave HR?


Assessment, he insists, isn’t human resources’ job. But MICOM managers, who didn’t accommodate the former employee who was having panic attacks, for example, could have done a better job without trying to diagnose and assess their worker who had panic attack disorder. Noting that, of course, he doesn’t have all the facts of the case, Kunnis explains what could have been done differently-on both sides. In short, “The employer has an obligation to minimally investigate, not just call the employee a liar.” According to Kunnis, the employer needs to get the facts.


HR’s function is to implement accommodations, not to asses the disability. HR is a key player in the process.


First, the employee has the obligation to self-identify as a person with a disability. A reading of the EEOC guidelines suggest that the MICOM employee did that by telling HR that he had a medical condition and needed some time off for treatment. However, he could have provided documentation of his requests from his health-care provider rather than writing long diatribes to management. The documentation doesn’t necessarily include the specific diagnosis, but it should identify the condition as a disability and suggest possible reasonable accommodations.


Kunnis suggests that if the employee doesn’t provide this documentation, then the employer should approach the company’s health provider for a referral to an occupational psychiatrist to get an evaluation of an employee’s functional limitations. The occupational psychiatrist is a specialist whose report should answer these four questions:


  1. How frequent and acute are the symptoms?
  2. What are the prospects and the costs of treatment?
  3. What are the employee’s functional limitations?
  4. Are there recommended accommodations? If so, what are they?

The evaluation should cost approximately $300, Kunnis reports. It’s the first step to learning what the employee is capable of and is not capable of. From there, HR needs to assemble an accommodation team to help the employee succeed.


HR creates the accommodation implementation team.
Hantula recommends a clear course of action when an employee self-identifies as having a nonphysical disability: Create a team comprised of the employee, the employee’s supervisor, the medical practitioner, an HR manager and the employee assistance plan (EAP) representative if there is one. HR should bring together these resources to gather information and present all the options. Although these people don’t need to be in the same room together, the plan works best if they all work to plot a strategy to make the relationship work. Then human resources and the employee’s supervisor develop the eventual plan.


Hantula believes that managing the team is an appropriate role for an EAP representative because issues of medication compliance may fall under the purview of the EAP. HR needs to make certain the plan is consistent with the employer’s approach to reasonable accommodation and that it will work for the company. Hantula suggests the team review these four questions:


  1. What is the employee capable of doing?
  2. What in the work environment is allowing the employee do what he or she can do?
  3. What in the environment is preventing him or her from doing what he or she can do?
  4. What changes to his or her job or work environment can reasonably be made?

Petesch advises, “The accommodation implementation team needs to stick to job performance issues. It should only get into issues of accommodating a disability when an individual raises the issue and asks for an accommodation.” His advice on the best practice when a manager suspects a disability may be interfering with performance is to ask, simply, “Is there anything you need to be able to keep doing [your job] or to improve your performance on the job?” The question opens the door for the employee to identify a disability or ask for an accommodation, or to disclose any number of other problems, such as that his or her supervisor is harassing him or her. This, Petesch insists, is much safer than leaping in to suggest accommodations when the worker hasn’t requested them.


Then HR’s function, Kunnis explains, is to implement the plan, not to assess the disability. For example, if the MICOM employee’s panic attacks occurred only once a month and lasted about a half-hour, Kunnis explains, that could have been accommodated by having the employee make up the lost work time. If the employee needed to take a half-day off, he suggests the employer could have accommodated a significant portion of that lost time with annual sick leave. HR managers should think along the lines of how they usually accommodate a person with a physical disability, and then translate that into what makes sense for the individual in question and the employer as an organization. HR is a key player in the accommodation process, which can be a moving target.


HR sets the limits and decides on the accommodation.
In all of these discussions, HR’s key role is to remind everyone on the team of the requirement to keep information about a psychiatric disability confidential. Confidentiality is especially important because accommodation of a psychiatric disability isn’t a one-time event, but is more likely to be a process. People can be tempted to talk more casually about an ongoing process. Then HR has the final say on what the accommodation will be, understanding that the employer and employee may need to try several accommodations before they find one that works.


Petesch reminds HR professionals to consider that as technology changes the nature of all jobs, job descriptions will be changing along with accommodations and the competencies of the people in those jobs. Finding the best fit between people and jobs is one of the competencies that HR brings to the table. The complexity of accommodating psychiatric disabilities makes HR’s involvement critical.


What has changed since former President George Bush signed the ADA seven years ago? The atmosphere has become more charged as business owners take on the challenges of accommodating psychiatric disabilities. But American business continues to move up the learning curve on this troubling issue. At MICOM, the human resources staff believe that if they faced an employee with a psychiatric disability again, they would take it more seriously and make sure that everyone involved made an honest effort to understand. As the law requires, they would seek to accommodate the employee. The new EEOC guidelines will help.


Workforce, October 1997, Vol, 76, No. 10, pp. 30-37.


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When an Employee’s Mental Condition Requires Medication

Some HR managers who have an employee with a psychiatric disability have made compliance with medication a condition of continuing employment. Most experts in the field caution against that approach. Here’s why:


  • Focusing on compliance can distract the manager from the real focus: the employee’s performance.
  • Compliance with medication is an issue between the employee and the treating health-care professional. Whether the employee is compliant or not, the manager’s job is to evaluate performance.

Carol Miaskoff, assistant legal counsel for coordination at the EEOC’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, says that every time an employer monitors medications, the employer may have to justify that decision later.


Supervising compliance with medications can open the door to unanticipated legal liabilities. Donald Hantula, an organizational psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, points out that one potential side effect of some major psychiatric medications is the development of serious facial tics and spasms. If that happens, and the employer has enforced compliance with the prescribed medication, who’s liable?


There have been cases decided by the courts in which a person who refuses to take medications is still a qualified individual with a disability. Besides, holding an employee to a regimen not required of others can give the employee reason to file a complaint against the employer.


If the performance of an employee who has identified a psychiatric disability begins to suffer, the effective supervisor won’t ask, “Have you been taking your medications as directed?” The effective supervisor will ask, as Peter Petesch, a management-side labor and employment attorney with Harrison and Ford LLP in Washington, D.C., recommends, “Your performance is slipping. Is there anything that can be done to get you on track?”

Workforce, October 1997, Vol. 76, No. 10, p. 33.