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Posted on April 1, 1996June 29, 2023

Critical Care for Review Process

In 1994 staff members at St. Luke’s Hospital, a 289-bed, not-for-profit Mayo hospital, realized its employee-appraisal system was fast becoming an insurmountable mound of papers. Employees involved agreed it needed to be streamlined and knew this wasn’t going to be a one- or two-person effort. So the hospital mobilized three teams of individuals uniquely talented for the project. These staff members worked together like members of a relay team: piecing together the new performance-appraisal system and skillfully handing off the baton as they moved from one phase to the next.


Performance appraisals are a major tool in the management of employees’ development and in setting goals to help spur that development. Appraisal forms range from simple to complex as organizations continuously try to assure compliance with regulatory bodies, while maintaining a meaningful assessment tool. The job description/ appraisal procedure at St. Luke’s Hospital had evolved over the years to meet numerous federal, state and health-care industry standards. In doing so, the size of the appraisal and supporting documents had grown exponentially to an average of 20 pages per employee.


The steering committee steps up to the blocks.
The voice of technology was calling. LaJuan Aderhold, the director of compensation and benefits, explains, “We looked at our paper-intensive appraisal process and saw we were near the suffocation point. Because this process had to meet a variety of needs for so many customers, we knew that technology would offer us solutions.” So Aderhold assembled a diverse mixture of staff members to form a steering committee. In addition to Aderhold, members included: Doug Cuthbert, the director of information services; Darrell Burke, the director of systems and procedures; Hilary Mathews, the director of training and education; and Nancy O’Keefe, the special projects coordinator.


At the outset in April 1994, the committee approached the new process with three primary requirements: It would be user driven; it would apply technological solutions that required less paper; and it would be a stepping stone toward full automation. Not wanting to fall behind with the next set of annual appraisals, the committee determined it had a three-month window to review the current system, conduct a focus group, and design, train and evaluate the reengineered process.


To establish a common understanding, the steering committee reviewed the chronological sequence of steps required to complete the former appraisal process. A flow chart of the process involved in preparing the appraisal packages showed 36 unique steps. With customer service in mind, the compensation and benefits department had been trying to comply with other departments’ special requests for sorting and delivering appraisals. After distributing the appraisal forms, collecting accurate and timely information was critical; performance was a key factor in determining employees’ pay increases. Managers manually scored performance based on criteria and weights, and the information was summarized by compensation and benefits. It was then reviewed by executive management to ensure that performance ratings were consistent with business results.


The focus group takes the baton.
The steering committee felt that in order to act quickly and decisively, it was important to involve the users in developing the framework for the reengineered process. A focus group of five middle managers was assembled to establish specific user needs and provide feedback about plans for the new process. The group members represented many clinical and nonclinical departments. Sessions were conducted to brainstorm solutions for bottlenecks with the current paper process, to determine what the ideal automated process would look like and to identify business needs not addressed under the system at the time. The enormous amount of paper exchanging hands during various points in time was a consistent theme. Other issues included: system flexibility; peer-based appraisals; lengthening the time to complete the appraisal process; the need for computerization; and identifying competencies within the framework of the appraisal.


The focus group was pleased about the user-driven approach taken by the steering committee. Debbie Leming, director of rehabilitative services, was happy to be involved: “The appraisal process had become quite cumbersome and time-consuming, and I felt there was much room for improvement. As a member of the focus group, I was able to share my ideas and actively participate in improving the appraisal process.”


At this point, the steering committee had a clear knowledge of the current system and what key users wanted. Automation was top priority—it was needed to minimize the manual calculations, tickler files and check lists that were the backbone of the existing system. So the steering committee began searching for an automated appraisal process. This included reviewing current literature, sending out a survey to other hospitals, and reviewing software products advertised in trade journals. The results were disappointing in all three areas. For example: of 167 hospitals surveyed, only two responded—and those two used manual appraisal systems. The focus group also looked into scan readers (bubble sheets), but decided they weren’t flexible enough to meet current needs.


Finding no existing applications, the focus group’s challenge was to develop an appraisal system internally. The work began to achieve the original goals, noting:


  • Constraints of time
  • Existing computer hardware
  • The need to enhance managers’ ability to customize criteria-weights
  • Users’ request to incorporate peer appraisals.

Using ideas generated by the focus group, the steering committee devised two options and presented them to the focus group for consideration. The first option consisted of moving the numerical criteria scores from the individual pages of the job description to a summary sheet allowing:


  • Scoring of up to six employees on one form
  • Calculating scores by computer
  • Moving handwritten comments, currently appearing next to each criterion, to a separate exception-only summary comment sheet available on the computer or in paper format.

The second option was identical to the first, except the format allowed comments to remain next to each criterion in the appraisal. The focus group overwhelmingly chose the first option because of its superior ability to reduce pages and package the information in a clearer format.


Bringing the focus group back at this point in the project served a number of purposes. Focus group member and director of surgical services Trish Aikenhead explains: “We were introduced to the new technologies available and had a voice in the selection of the new process. We were able to review different options and decide what would work best for our areas. This allowed the departments a better understanding of the system.” The steering committee used the needs identified by the focus group to test whether the mock-up solution would be adequate. By presenting the sample packets and obtaining user buy-in, active process design had begun.


In response to Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) requirements, a stand-alone competency management program had been in place. A competency profile for each employee was maintained by the hospital’s education department. Managers were responsible for updating this information and forwarding it to education. After the profiles were updated, the education department delivered copies to HR. These copies were attached to each employee’s appraisal packet. This was a problem. Managers didn’t like having separate competency profiles and appraisals.


A detailed review of the JCAHO requirements led to the conclusion that this information didn’t need to be stored separately from the appraisals. As a result, the competency profile and the job description/appraisal documentation were combined, eliminating the need to maintain a separate database, and getting rid of unnecessary paperwork and frustration.


The implementation team crosses the finish line.
Now that users had provided feedback to the steering committee and the extra database was eliminated, an implementation group was established to make the project a reality. Composed of HR and data processing staff members, this group worked under the direction of Nancy L. O’Keefe, special projects coordinator and liaison between the steering committee and implementation group. The hardest task was the database design. It had to be developed from scratch and had to interface with existing systems in place. An internal senior programmer analyst, Mario Diaz, was primarily responsible for the database and application design. Diaz relied heavily on the specifications provided by the steering committee and focus group to develop both the database and application. He also solicited input and feedback from Doug Cuthbert, the director of information services, and other IS professionals. To test the database and application, Diaz called in O’Keefe and HR staff members to try out various keying and report generation scenarios.


A program was written to use data already entered into the system to do the calculations previously done by the managers. The forms for the whole process were modified to be produced from the database. With approximately 20 pages per employee under the old system, the new process decreased the number to seven pages, a reduction as high as 70% in some cases.


Managers now had the option of using the computerized comment sheets. The on-screen form is in table format and can be expanded to any length. The form can also simplify year-round activity, serving as a documentation tool for noteworthy incidents as they occur. The manager can make a timely entry and review it later for the appraisal. This eliminates the need for a separate anecdotal-note system which many managers had been maintaining.


Because of the time issue, there was no opportunity to do a true pilot project, sampling one department and working out the problems. Instead, database-design problems were addressed behind the scenes as the hospital went live with the automated system. “Even though it meant more work for the implementation group, the members pulled themselves together to develop and deliver the best process in three short months. All goals were achieved or exceeded,” O’Keefe says.


Since this was a new process, manager education was key to the success of the effort. To assure training compliance, managers didn’t receive appraisal packets unless they attended a training session. O’Keefe communicated the vision from the steering committee to the implementation group and then managed the training process. Consistency was achieved by having only two instructors teach the 15 classes. One-hour training classes were held up to two times a day for two consecutive weeks. The broad range of times classes were offered enabled all managers to attend, regardless of the shifts they worked. This training blitz achieved a 97% attendance rate (94 of 97 managers attended). The remaining 3% were trained individually.


A sample package consisting of appraisal forms, a check-off time line, a resource list and directions for using online forms was given to each manager at the beginning of the class. Sessions included an explanation of the reason for the change and the steps involved in making the changes. Each new form was reviewed with examples, and at the completion of the class the managers received their actual performance appraisal packets.


St. Luke’s comes out the winner.
To determine if the original goals of the steering committee were met, a five-question evaluation tool was developed. This was distributed to managers when they received their score-approval forms. More than 50% of the managers returned the survey. Approximately 90% felt the total process had been streamlined. Specific comments included:


  • Easier to understand
  • Prevents math errors
  • Much more clear and concise
  • Recording comments online is significantly reducing paper volume.

Responses to a question concerning additional future improvements included:


  • Put everything online
  • Start training earlier
  • Start the whole process earlier.

Nell E. Robinson, director of food services, is happy with the new system: “I work with a large group of diverse individuals who look forward to their annual performance reviews. The new process allows our supervisors to spend more one-on-one time with their team members, rather than filling out forms.” With comments like these, the steering committee felt it achieved the goals for 1994.


In early 1995, the steering committee and implementation group reconvened to identify areas for improvement. Database enhancements were a major issue. HR staff members performing data entry worked with data processing staff to resolve problems they had encountered. The implementation group was included in future meetings to quickly facilitate changes and identify issues. Cuthbert, now the manager of financial and administrative applications, believes that this openness to feedback has enabled the system to continue to evolve, becoming more valuable at every stage. “The key to the success of the project has been the incremental goal-setting by a diverse group, the ability of technical staff to creatively apply technology, and the willingness to seek and respond to continuous feedback,” Cuthbert says.


In response to user needs, the 1995 process started in August, versus September as it had in 1994. The large clinical departments also were given four extra weeks to complete the process. Programming efforts centered on assuring speed and flexibility of the data-entry process, simplifying production of reports, and simplifying interfaces to and from the HRIS.


HR staff members who do data entry report that shortcomings have indeed been removed, and trouble-shooting requirements are now only minimal. For 1996, updates to computer hardware and software are under way, and data-entry screens have been further simplified for end-users. At least some supervisors will enter their appraisals on-screen during 1996, and the steering committee has set its goal to complete the automation process by 1997. Darrell Burke, the director of systems and procedures, explains: “Our success is a result of selectively using the right tool at the right time…. We combined pieces of customer service, process analysis, marketing, training and software design using a highly motivated, self-managed work team. I plan to use this approach in future opportunities.” With that philosophy, St. Luke’s Hospital will continue to be a front-runner.


Personnel Journal, April 1996, Vol. 75, No. 4, pp. 115-120.


Posted on April 1, 1996July 10, 2018

Testing at Odds with Diversity Efforts

It isn’t easy to choose the right person for a job. We all know of high achievers who don’t perform well on tests. We’ve had experiences hiring brilliant people who have had dazzling recommendations but who show up to work late or perform poorly on the job. Enter: employment tests (commonly used tools for hiring, as well as training and placement decisions).


When the hiring of a diverse workforce is of paramount importance, however, the appropriateness of pre-employment testing for a multicultural workforce takes on a different cast. The major question, of course, is: Are these tests impartial?


Human resources executives are concerned that written and verbal aptitude, personality and achievement tests may not give them the accurate information they need when applied to applicants from diverse backgrounds. For example, can employers assume that a foreign-born bilingual applicant would select the same right answers as a person would who was born in the United States and whose native language is English? What about cultural factors that may persist, even when language isn’t a problem?


Some companies use no paper-and-pencil tests. They rely strictly on interviews and recommendations. At the other end of the continuum are businesses that buy packs of tests, administer them, score them and key the results into a computer. The tests and assessment services run the gamut from inexpensive skill examinations that can be scored and interpreted in minutes to in-depth personality assessments that require extensive time and judgment on the part of both the test taker and examiner.


Regardless of the scope of pre-employment tests, some are better predictors of success than others; some are more fairer to all groups than others are. Most experts believe that tests should be only one component of the hiring process.


“In our opinion, it’s best to take a battery approach. Look at all aspects of the person—as much as is feasible—and make decisions with everything in mind,” says Scott G. Howard, president of Reid, Merrill, Brunson & Associates in Denver. The company provides tests for pre-employment, promotion and internal career-development purposes. The assessments include:


  • Interest surveys
  • Skill and aptitude tests
  • Behavior and personality measures.

“We try to compare [potential employees] with people who are or have been successful in the position to be filled. We look at strengths and weaknesses, and make recommendations for improvement,” says Howard.


Strengths and weaknesses, similarities and differences. These are key factors in a person’s employment desirability. In this time of diversity awareness, many people find that one of the advantages of conducting assessment is that tests point out differences between people.


“We’re in an era of international competitiveness. We’re looking for a variety of people to run our businesses, and to sell and make our products,” says Charles F. Wonderlic, Jr., vice president of Wonderlic Personnel Testing in Northfield, Illinois. “It means identifying the superb, not just the norm or average.” This involves asking such questions as:


  • “How are you different from me?
  • What do you like?
  • What are you best at?
  • What are you not best at?
  • Where will you accelerate?
  • Where are you not going to fit?

“These are questions that tests can begin to answer,” says Wonderlic.


Although generalizations are risky, most experts agree that testing is far more sophisticated today—and more valid, in most respects—than ever. Still, human resources professionals who must use tests and nevertheless are interested in hiring a diverse workforce need to know how to employ testing to their best advantage.


Job-specific tests are best.
“Some employment tests lead to significantly different passing rates for minorities when compared with majorities,” says John W. Jones, vice president of research and service for McGraw-Hill/London House, a leading assessment publisher located in Rosemont, Illinois. “Companies seeking a culturally diverse workforce prefer tests that don’t discriminate unfairly.” In addition, some employment tests clearly are job-specific, and others are more general, according to Jones. General tests originally were developed for clinical or educational settings, rather than for occupational settings. “Research shows that tests developed specifically for the workplace tend to be more accurate predictors of employees’ on-the-job performance than the more general psychological tests are,” says Jones.


Therefore, job-relevant tests that have no between-group differences are the ones to use. According to Jones, an example of this type of test is a multidimensional selection test that measures job applicants’ attitudes toward a wide variety of workplace behaviors, including integrity, dependability, service, safety and productivity. Jones says that job attitude tests usually are fair to all protected subgroups. “They’re ideal for the age of cultural diversity in the workplace,” he says.


Jones says that general psychological tests that do yield differential scores for certain subgroups might include a clinical personality test that was designed to assess personal values, family adjustment or emotional health. There also are some intelligence tests that have been scientifically validated in the workplace, but which have an adverse impact on protected groups, and therefore are controversial. In addition, there are some tests that aren’t accurate predictors of employees’ behavior, although they don’t impact any group adversely.


“I believe in valuing diversity and using the very differences that we were supposed to avoid,” says Lewis Griggs, president and executive producer of Griggs Productions, a San Francisco-based company that produces diversity training films. “I feel that any test of anything is, of course, biased by its maker—it can’t be otherwise. Still, any test is legitimate for what it tests. The individual using the results merely has to have the perspective to use that information responsibly and understand what he or she is testing for.”


For Griggs, this means giving a woman the opportunity to prove that she can lift 100-pound hay bales or giving a man the chance to be a good cross-cultural Avon salesperson in predominantly minority areas of the city. “But, isn’t it a legitimate question to ask, ‘Are you strong enough to lift the hay bales? Are you bicultural enough to be the appropriate salesperson for Avon or to sell insurance to Vietnamese immigrants?'” asks Griggs. “If we don’t ask those obvious questions, we’re putting our heads in the sand. We’re denying the real differences. We’re also denying the opportunity to discover differences that can be competitive advantages, all else being equal.”


Identify skills needed for specific jobs.
First, analyze the job. Find out which activities the person must accomplish. What does he or she have to do adequately or superbly? Focus on the things that the person has to do that require a high level of competence. Look at the necessary skills to achieve success on the job. In general, what qualities must that individual have if he or she is going to accomplish that success?


Then back off from there and remember that you aren’t just assessing a person, you’re assessing a specific person for a specific job. For instance, the job may require extensive contact with people. The employee has to perform customer-service-related activities and make customers happy. Find out what types of measures would reveal whether an employee would be good at serving customers and whether he or she would be happy doing that type of work. In this case, you would need a personality test.


“Another crucial element is to be sure test publishers track EEO and ADA data—continuously tracking adverse impact and updating norms.”


In other cases, testing is obvious and is used simply to weed people out. For example, if one skill required is the ability to type a minimum of 45 words per minute and the candidate can only type 20, it’s clear that the person isn’t adequate for the job. “At that point, regardless of your status or whatever the unique attributes are that the individual brings to the organization,” says Wonderlic, “if he or she doesn’t have the minimum skills required—and what we’re really looking for is someone who has the maximum, who types 85 words per minute, who can also write, who has an understanding of the people in the community—then the test will help the human resources professional make the rejection.”


Once the job needs have been identified, the next step is to look for a company that can be an information resource—a test vendor or publisher that will help determine your company’s assessment needs and help put them into action.


Howard suggests you look at the testing company’s research. What types of studies has it done? What groups did it use in these studies? What control groups did it use? What was the level of detail?


“Ask the company to give you a description of the groups used in its studies, including the majority groups. Were they all males who have had two jobs each and who have been on the job for 15 years, or is there a good representation of the entire population? Ask which protected groups were studied,” says Howard. The answers should come back to you in easy-to-understand language that a businessperson can use, not psychobabble, he says.


Howard suggests employers that routinely hire people who either don’t have a lot of work experience or whose first language isn’t English (in manufacturing, for example) ask the test publisher if it has analyzed that specific population. See if there’s adverse impact built into the test results.


Another crucial element is to be sure that test publishers track EEO and ADA data. If the company is good, it will up-date statistics, continuously track adverse impact and update norms. (See “A Glossary of Testing Terms,”)


“A good consulting provider can help people decide what they need,” says Howard. Engage in a relationship with the provider. Some people call Reid, Merrill, Brunson & Associates (Howard’s testing firm) saying they need one thing when really they need something else, which becomes evident after they’ve described it.


You also should ask about alternative forms of specific tests. “A good test publisher will have many alternative formats for each test,” says Wonderlic. For example, Wonderlic’s tests are translated into foreign languages. One test is available in 16 languages. Wonderlic says the company could make use of the test translated into even more languages.


Language isn’t the only area in which differences can affect test taking. There are other subtle, but very important related differences among people. For example, people who come from Puerto Rico use decimal points as Americans do, and those who come from Mexico use commas, although both groups are Hispanic and speak Spanish A test should allow for these differences. “We want to make it as easy as possible for them to understand the questions,” says Wonderlic.


McGraw-Hill/London House has formed an alliance with Berlitz and other companies that do translations. Jones says this is crucial because multilingual versions of tests are becoming important. Test designers are becoming more culturally sensitive as a result. “We aren’t assuming that everyone should be forced into the English version,” says Jones.


There’s more to assessment than meets the eye, however. For instance, it isn’t simply the translation. Let’s say the human resources manager identifies a Vietnamese woman who doesn’t speak English but has an I.Q. of 140 and is perfectly capable of handling any management learning objective. She could learn at a high level and solve problems on the level of a manager. “You can assess her English speaking ability or ability to learn English,” says Wonderlic “but you also have to assess her potential for integration into the workplace. You have to do the follow-up. How do you incorporate a person who scores well on a version of the test translated into her native tongue, but doesn’t speak the language of the workplace?” He continues by saying, “We want to maintain and promote diversity. We also want to maintain and promote productivity. We want to find a way to do both.”


The test format is another important criterion. This can mean large print, Braille or audio. This is especially important because of ADA requirements.


Finally, be sure there’s scientific norming. This is a process that assures tests are equivalent across cultures. For example, all test questions should have the same meaning regardless of a person’s background.


“Testing allows you to set up training programs to modify or develop skills that the individual brings to you, and to help him or her become a productive employee.”


Although there’s a lot to consider when deciding whether to use pre-employment testing when hiring members of a diverse workforce, many human resources executives deal with such considerations all the time. And these professionals don’t always have the same opinion about pre-employment testing.


Kraft General Foods considers that testing is an investment.
Charles Reid, director of diversity management at Kraft General Foods Inc. in Northfield, Illinois, always has been a proponent for pre-employment testing. The reason? “I think testing can provide information that’s valuable to an individual or the tester but couldn’t be obtained under other circumstances,” he says.


When Reid came into the business world from the education arena in 1972, he says that tests weren’t being used correctly by business and industry. The courts ruled that some tests were discriminatory. When companies stopped using many of these instruments, interviewers were thrown into a quandary. They didn’t know how to check for the sets of skills individuals had, what they were permitted to ask prospective employees, or what information they could look for to help them make valid decisions.


“A properly constructed test looks at the elements of the job and then measures the finite characteristics of the candidate that guarantee relative success. Those are the things that ought to be looked at in testing,” says Reid. “For the past 20 years, when people have asked me about tests, I’ve encouraged them not to throw them out.”


At Kraft General Foods, the company looks at testing from an entry-level perspective. It also uses tests to answer work-related questions, such as mechanical skills. The organization’s attitude is that it’s better to test in the beginning for skills that will be used on the job, than to invest the time and energy in hiring people and then discover six weeks later that they can’t do the job.


Reid describes himself as an African-American who has worked in industry for about 20 years and is trying to take an honest look at who the entrants are to the workforce and what skills they’re bringing. He supports the use of testing because he’s finding that employees are lacking skills. “When you look at blue-collar workers, nonexempt clerical workers or professional managerial workers, you’ll see that each situation is a little different. Because roughly 80% of the workforce in most companies [in a manufacturing environment] is blue collar, however, this group has a greater impact. I think that the skill level of the blue-collar workers coming in today is less than it has been in the past,” says Reid.


He says you can’t assume that just because a person has completed a four-year secondary program, he or she has adequate skills. Reid, who has also served on the National Board for the Literacy Volunteers of America, points out that at least one adult American in five is functionally illiterate. “If you don’t use paper and pencil testing, you may miss the fact that the person is unable to read. I think a paper and pencil test gives you at least an indication of whether you have a problem.”


Reid quickly adds that he isn’t intimating that just because a person can’t read doesn’t mean he or she isn’t skilled, because many illiterate people today are functioning adequately in their jobs. It’s important, however, to have that information. A verbal interview generally wouldn’t discover this fact, Reid says, because many illiterate people have outstanding coping skills.


“Tests have a lot of key indicators that offer a profile of the successful candidate. Only part of the assessment process is a paper-and-pencil cognitive test.”


“When you think about what’s happening in the educational system, people, especially people of color, are being undereducated. Therefore, we lack the skills that we need for a high-quality workforce,” says Reid. He goes on to explain that whenever there’s competition for the highest-quality people, it means that companies are competing for the same people. When the applicant pool includes individuals who don’t have adequate skills or who will need retraining if the company does employ them, testing is a way of establishing the level at which each person comes into the company. “It allows you to set up training programs to modify or develop skills that the individual brings to you, and to help him or her become a productive employee,” says Reid.


Cahners Publishing Company tests only for some positions.
As a general rule, Newton, Massachusetts-based Cahners Publishing Company doesn’t do pre-employment testing. The company does conduct some testing for sales positions and for certain management positions. “When we do test,” says William Stevens, Cahners’ director of human resources “it’s only to provide an additional tool to use in the employment process—in addition to such information as experience, things they may have published (for writers) and territories they covered for other companies (for sales).”


Cahners uses tests only with finalists in the selection process. If the company can narrow the field down only to 10 people, for example, it might use testing to narrow the candidate list further.


On the sales side, Cahners uses testing to find out if the individual is self-directed, motivated or needs guidance. And if guidance is indicated, the testing determines what kind is needed. Once the person is employed, the company uses the test results as a tool for the manager to help the person develop professionally on the job.


Cahners continues to use the tests from time to time to focus on training needs and to help managers understand and pay attention to certain facets of the individual’s personality. It’s helpful to know, for example, if a worker doesn’t like to work while someone looks over his or her shoulder.


Stevens, however, emphasizes that testing is merely one component. “You can talk to a recruiter and the recruiter will say, ‘You can give me all of the test results you want, but there’s something inside me that gives me a good feeling or a bad feeling about somebody. It’s that gut feeling,'” says Stevens. “On tests, an individual can have a good day or a bad day, but in the interview process, if it’s done properly, there’s enough diversity that a person who doesn’t do well with one manager might do better with another. In a test, you don’t have that opportunity for variation.”


Stevens believes that tests won’t weed out particular cultures. In fact, he says that the problem for recruiters is having enough cultures to draw from in the beginning. “The problem is getting [diverse individuals] into the loop, and it’s more difficult in different parts of the country,” he says.


Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble also believes that any testing procedure should be supplemented with other hiring tools. The company hires only at the entry level. “The use of testing at Procter & Gamble is of paramount importance,” says Lynwood Battle, manager of corporate affirmative action. “Selection is critical because we grow all our management from inside the company.”


Like the other companies mentioned, Procter & Gamble uses tests as part of a total assessment of job candidates. “It has a lot of key indicators that offer a profile of the successful candidate,” explains Battle, “and only a part of that process is a paper-and-pencil cognitive test.”


For the previous four years, according to Battle, the company has recruited minorities at a rate of 20%, which is significantly higher than the percentage of available minorities who are receiving college degrees. The process must be working because, according to Battle, women and minorities are moving up at a rate commensurate with their representation in the population.


He believes that skill tests generally are valid, although he says, “I can’t emphasize enough that the test (a 45-minute cognitive test) is only one aspect of the total assessment process.”


The assessment of a candidate will take several days, beginning at the college placement office on campus. It can proceed for a period of several weeks. The paper-and-pencil test is administered along with the other components of the company’s job-hiring procedures. Only after all of the information is compiled and evaluated is the prospective employee reviewed. “The determination is based upon a total assessment process,” says Battle.


It seems clear that within the proper framework, testing is a valuable tool for human resources professionals. Tests give reliable data about skills, and will point out deficits as well as strengths. When employers go outside the skill-testing arena, it becomes important to choose assessment professionals who can help meet their specific needs and focus on diversity.


Note: Kraft General Foods is now known as Kraft Foods Inc. Charles L. Reed is currently the director of ethnic external relations, Kraft Foods Inc.


Personnel Journal, April 1996, Vol. 75, No. 4, pp. 131-140.


Posted on March 1, 1996July 10, 2018

Site Shutdown One HR Leader Tells Her Story

In January 1992, I was notified, along with 900 co-workers, that the semi-conductor plant I worked for would be closed by the end of the year. A month later, (as the human resources manager) I began to document the process that I helped carry out and that ultimately left me without a job.


The following account is excerpted from my book, “Sizing Down: Chronicle of a Plant Closing,” to be published this month. It details lessons I learned during the process of preparing for a plant closing at the Signetics semiconductor plant in Orem, Utah. Signetics became known as Philips Semiconductors (based in Sunnyvale, California) in 1993. Philips is a division of Philips Electronics NV.


Here, I discuss the management decisions that helped retain the company’s essential human resources and contributed to its overall viability. I also outline problems we could have avoided by paying closer attention to such issues as flexible work schedules, release dates and productivity incentives.


Many of the steps we took in planning for the plant closure were both necessary and effective in preparing for the year that followed. While several of these steps or processes were straightforward and, for the most part, fulfilled their purposes, as the downsizing progressed there were some interventions required that were neither foreseen or facile to implement.


Preparing an employee retention plan.
One of the first concerns for the managers of a plant that’s closing is how to retain key employees until the plant actually closes. This became a particular problem for our plant because we had only one year before the doors actually closed. Because the plant was a high-tech manufacturing facility, our technical and engineering people were crucial to the continuing operation of the plant for the remaining year. At the same time, these were the people we knew would have the easiest time finding work elsewhere. The number of calls from headhunters to employees shortly after the closure announcement reinforced that concern. How would the company be able to provide enough incentives to these individuals to entice them to stay?


The corporate staff, grappling with this issue, came up with a retention package that would apply to all employees who remained until their completion dates. Given the plant employees’ high average years of seniority, double severance pay as a completion bonus seemed a reasonable retention package on the surface. As the plant staff began to review the list of key people, it was clear that not all these individuals had enough time with the company to make this generic package attractive. The plant staff proposed another retention bonus be applied to selected individuals. Because the corporate staff had already prepared a severance budget, there was apprehension about considering more money. After negotiations, the corporate staff finally relented. But they did insist on a cap on the number of people who would be offered the additional retention bonus.


Despite the incentives, some key engineers chose to accept other offers, leave the plant and forfeit their bonuses. This was expected, given the higher job-security needs of some. As these key people left, however, it became important to retain those who would take their places. Rather than forfeit the amount budgeted for the people who left, the plant staff made a good case for holding onto the plant retention bonus budget—as long as the forecast amount wasn’t exceeded and employees weren’t added to the list who didn’t meet the original criteria established for more incentives. About 70% of those designated to receive the additional bonus stayed until the end, making the program vital in keeping critical employees.


Another consideration became essential in retaining employees. Virtually the entire engineering staff of one product division worked at the Utah plant. Originally, the plan was to offer them transfers to corporate headquarters in California. It became apparent that few, if any, would even consider relocation there because of cost-of-living factors. However, the vice president resisted providing financial provisions to make this move more attractive. When the engineering managers told the vice president they wouldn’t support a move unless he reconsidered the location, he realized he faced losing most, if not all, of his engineering resources. The Utah engineering staff made a proposal which claimed the New Mexico plant was the only viable option for employees and sought more relocation incentives. After some heated discussion and negotiation over numbers and the budget, corporate finally approved a plan that would facilitate transfer of nearly 85% of the engineering group.


The most important element in planning for employee retention was the ability to negotiate. Budgeting finances is vital. But at the same time, there must be budgetary leeway to accommodate issues that arise and the influences of market forces.


Above all, it’s crucial to monitor the forces affecting displaced employees and their decisions to stay with the company or leave. Sometimes the rationale behind these decisions isn’t as logical as we might hope.


Formulating an effective employee communication process.
The plant staff anticipated there would be numerous questions from employees soon after the closure announcement. We formulated a schedule for the closure stages, including operations phasing down. Some preliminary written questions and answers enabled employees to prepare for how the timing of a reduction-in-force would affect them. We held meetings with employees on each shift to review information and elicit concerns.


We researched answers to the questions provided timely responses to employees. Because most of the first wave of employee concerns dealt with benefits-related issues, meetings were held within a week to provide information on this topic alone. Each month, we held employee communications meetings. Along with monthly operation meetings, these kept the employees abreast of any new developments.


The employee communication meetings proved an invaluable means of keeping in touch with employees’ feelings and allowing employees to express their fears and problems and seek affirmation that they weren’t alone. The meetings also served to break down barriers between management and workers. As time passed, the meetings became less useful as an information tool and more beneficial as a venue for employees to air their frustrations. Sometimes just gathering as a group comforted people.


As questions were asked and answers communicated, an information packet took shape. Many employees asked the same questions at different times, so the packet became a tool to ensure consistency was maintained. There was a real effort to answer all questions, in a timely way, and to minimize misinformation. The information packet became an ad hoc downsizing policy manual and was helpful to supervisors who fielded many questions. We learned that communication was crucial in helping employees cope during this difficult period. If employees are to make good decisions about their plans, finances and development opportunities, then timely and relevant information is vital. Communication must be frequent, open and honest, and should allow for give and take. The easiest way to build resentment is to bluff an answer to a question. Management must take pains to focus communication on what matters most to employees. Any self-serving behavior by management will trigger instant hostility and distrust and lead toward a downward spiral of productivity and morale. Depending on the stage of the reduction-in-force, once this occurs, there may never be a chance to recover. We learned that managers and workers pulling together as a team during the downsizing can be both cathartic and liberating, providing them with a sense of empowerment and accomplishment. This cooperation definitely helped employees weather difficult times, it provided them leverage in securing re-employment and it helped make a success out of what most would consider a disaster.


One area about which the company failed to communicate effectively involved forecasting work schedules and staffing needs. Some good people left early when they grew frustrated at not being told when they could expect their release dates. In some cases, this was unavoidable. But more often than not, a date could easily have been projected early on, which would have avoided both the need for negotiations and the mounting anxiety about the unknown. Although we in management couldn’t have prevented individual extensions beyond release dates, we could have done a better job of keeping these to a minimum. Particularly in the fab operation, more initial effort in planning and communicating with employees to project area phase-downs, and the subsequent need for certain job functions, may have precluded the need to send some people home early to wait out their release dates with pay. This would have prevented a major morale problem.


Providing outplacement and retraining services.
The plant staff sought and obtained approval from corporate to provide both outplacement and retraining services to employees. We recognized the comfort these services would provide, so this was one of the first announcements we made to employees after the announcement of the closure. As part of the closure schedule, the retraining program was set to start up the following month and then continue throughout the year, as needed. A formal onsite outplacement center opened at the same time the first operation began to shut down.


As the first step in preparing employees to seek re-employment, classes were offered in career management, job-search strategies, interviewing and preparing a resume. An online system allowed employees to enter their resumes on a computer and to eventually transfer them to the outplacement center for refinement and printing. Eventually, nearly 85% of all employees attended the outplacement training classes.


Next, we administered a retraining needs-assessment survey to determine the type of training most employees desired. This was coordinated with a local college technology center to pinpoint employees’ interests and match them to the kinds of jobs available in the local market. Because of the constraints of the retraining budget allowance, the classes were targeted to support the greatest employee needs. Most of the classes were computer software and programming classes. Because not all the employees’ needs would be covered by these classes, we offered an additional program to provide flexibility for the few employees who identified different career paths. Through this program, called career reimbursement, employees received $600 as a reimbursement pool if they could provide evidence of another kind of training or educational program that led to their targeted career objective. Through these two retraining services, all employees could benefit from retraining tailored to fit their needs.


Both programs were used extensively. Although most employees found jobs through means other than the onsite outplacement center (mainly through networking with former employees or friends), the center was useful in providing resume services, and coaching and counseling, to employees who weren’t confident about their job-search abilities. The center promoted the company’s workforce to other employers and greatly heightened the community’s awareness of the plant’s impending reduction-in-force. By acting as a focal point for employment information and contacts, the center became a convenient place for employees to pursue job searches. Although some graveyard-shift employees complained about the lack of availability of the retraining classes and outplacement center for their shift, these services were the greatest single factor in helping employees work through the anxiety of the closure.


We achieved this advantage through early negotiations with corporate to obtain a liberal budget for these services. Our research and effort to make a case for such services paid off handsomely, for both the company and the employees. This is one function that companies planning to downsize can’t afford to treat lightly. If possible, companies should err on being too liberal and offering too many services to employees. In the long run, the gains far outweigh the expenses.


Managing the unknown.
Not surprisingly, our company failed to pay attention to unanticipated events. This is an aspect of planning which most companies faced with plant downsizing or closure also neglect. For example, as I mentioned earlier, if at the outset the plant had forecasted a specific work schedule by operation, and revised it as needed, there could have been more precise planning of release dates for employees. As it was, only a general schedule had been created at the point when notification letters were sent to employees. Consequently, extension letters, rather than adjustments of release dates at some earlier point, became necessary. Careful thought should go into planning for contingencies, such as how exceptions to policy might be regarded. The company received many requests from employees for exceptions to continue working beyond their release dates. Each request evoked prolonged debate among managers. Guidelines could be spelled out and communicated in advance. With some forethought to granting exceptions, some rules of thumb can permit a smoother decision process and a less volatile atmosphere between managers and workers.


Also, some of the plant’s problems with employee theft and unauthorized use of company property could have been avoided. The process used to track property passes to employees was sorely inadequate; it should have been revamped long before the need to retrieve company property became apparent. With early anticipation, a system could have been set up to control property coming and going from the plant. Some theft would have been likely, regardless of careful measures, but much more could have been done to discourage dishonesty and solicit cooperation among employees. Although the company didn’t experience much employee sabotage, companies that announce reductions-in-force or closures must be prepared to take measures to avoid or control this problem as well.


Obviously, no company or manager can be expected to anticipate and plan for every contingency that may occur during a downsizing. Nevertheless, measures can and should be taken early in the process to avoid potential problems. A task force can be established to look into areas where problems might arise and plan as much as possible for contingencies. Assign probabilities to each potential problem, and take steps to avoid the problems or minimize their impact. Above all, the plant managers should be prepared to deal with exceptions to and deviations from the expected. A number of planning models and tools are available commercially to help managers deal with contingency planning. One lesson our managers learned was to be flexible and not rely too heavily on precedent. As the plant manager himself stated, a plant closure can sometimes be extremely liberating for a manager considering the best course of action.


Make sure requests are dealt with consistently and equitably.
Employees made a number of special requests during the closure period that raised the issue of how to maintain equitable treatment of all employees and still accommodate special circumstances or needs. Typically, the requests were related to bonus and severance or job accommodations to allow for new employment negotiations. For example, one group of engineers had managed to secure employment quickly after the announcement was made. Up to that point, no release dates had been established. Each of these employees asked that he be granted a sixty-day release date at the time of the request. This was troublesome for management, who had not yet forecast the need for the engineers’ work, and it advanced the concern that other employees, once they found employment, would want to follow suit. The company could simply have turned down the request on the grounds that if management allowed any individuals to negotiate special deals, there would be no end to them.


The need for a general guideline quickly became apparent. Fear of potential class-action suits and litigation loomed large. Normally, this fear is well-grounded and is good cause for circumspect decision making. Nevertheless, circumstances in a downsizing or closure are not, and should not be considered, normal business operating procedure. Individuals will lobby hard for their interests, especially during a difficult time when easy answers and rational decisions aren’t appreciated. Management has more to lose by being overly conservative than by striving to be more compassionate about employees’ needs. Granted, me-too employee requests will follow whenever an exception to normal practice is allowed. Management must nevertheless weigh the pros and cons of each request and rule its merits. Despite legal counsel (undoubtedly received from corporate headquarters) to take a hard line and be consistent on policy administration, management must share employees’ perspectives and give consideration to individual employees.


As the downsizing progresses and needs for employees’ work changes, so will the need to review prior positions on policy or practice. It may be more practical to arrange for job accommodation requests later in the downsizing process than earlier. Employees should understand this and try to bring their personal needs in line with those of the plant. Employees who fail to heed business realities and department needs should pay the consequences when they advance their separate requests for special treatment. In general, both employees and legal services will regard business needs as legitimate guidelines in determining whether to grant individual employee requests involving exceptions to policy. Managers should be careful to ensure that requests aren’t refused or granted on the basis of illegal discriminatory factors such as age, sex, race or disability.


Finally, managers should be prepared to provide the rationale for each ruling on individual employee requests. These considerations should involve a group of managers so as to better represent all viewpoints, and ensure that each decision meets the reasonable person rule. This may not guarantee that fault won’t be found with the decision, but it certainly will increase the chances that employees will find the rulings equitable.


Maintaining morale and productivity.
Depending on the length of the downsizing period, it may be a struggle to maintain previous levels of employee morale and productivity. At our plant, as soon as employees discovered their work was fruitless and wouldn’t lead to future returns, they tended to stop putting forth an honest effort. This will be more true for some employees than others, but it’s a real factor once reductions-in-force announcements are made.


Since our plant closure period was rather extended, this became a significant problem, given that product schedules were to continue as normal for some time. The plant endured a short period after the closure announcement during which both morale and productivity suffered—and then rebounded. Once reality set in, the plant experienced several months of almost business-as-usual atmosphere. Then, as the final weeks approached, morale and productivity took a turn for the worse.


Because morale and productivity tend to have a linear relationship, management should focus on building a positive work climate. By fostering a climate of support, particularly for employees who are experiencing difficulties, plant managers can help create a sense of community among employees that will allow them to vent their frustrations and share their fears. Team meetings are a good forum to discuss these concerns. It’s important that employee concerns not be taken for granted or deprecated in any way. Informal get-togethers within work groups or departments should be encouraged, if not actively organized, by the company. These informal parties can provide an upbeat climate with the right balance of work and distraction—and can be very cathartic. Recognition committees can plan activities to celebrate continued examples of excellent performance during the downsizing process. Award ceremonies can also help to maintain a sense of accomplishment and achievement.


As employees cope with increasing family and financial pressures, flexible work arrangements should be considered as a way to provide some slack. If necessary, additional compensation programs may be instituted to encourage productivity or work attendance. Signetics was able to offer an enhanced overtime-pay program to provide incentives to employees who put in additional hours to accomplish scheduled production needs.


Supervisors need to be sensitive to the special needs of their employees. If employees are treated with respect and provided sound incentives, supervisors can be the most effective tool to ensure that employee morale will be maintained until the end.


Managing transitions and the adaptive process, month by month.
Each employee ultimately found his or her own way to cope with the plant closure. Some employees had a relatively easy adjustment period. At the other extreme, many employees continued to have difficulty coming to terms with the closure and its impact on their lives. These employees faced more stress and anxiety as they resigned themselves to circumstances they didn’t like. They felt helpless to pull themselves out of a cycle of bitterness and despair. Most employees went through a transition process that began with initial shock and denial, and progressed to making changes and plans that would lead to new beginnings. This transition process is not unlike what people experience when a serious disease or death occurs in the family.


Interestingly, these stages seemed almost to correspond by month with the events that took place during the final year. After the announcement in January, most people were astounded and struggled to recover from the shock of the news. Through February, most employees felt some degree of anger and hostility toward the company or plant that would do such a thing to them. In March, employees made every attempt to bargain and negotiate with the company to ensure that they would receive all available benefits and special offers, assurances of what they could expect if they stayed to the end. By April, a number of events and experiences at the plant left many employees feeling alienated from each other, from management and from the company. From then until June, the plant experienced its lowest point in both morale and productivity.


Perhaps the turning point came when job prospects and recruiting efforts by other electronics firms were advertised or promoted through the outplacement center. Hiring activity had always tended to pick up each year in the late spring and early summer when families were more willing to move. Maybe the advent of summer helped pull employees out of their despair and gave them renewed hope and energy. It even might have been the plant’s focus on recognition and morale-building activities in June that contributed to the renewal process. No matter what the cause, after that point only a few employees continued to suffer from inertia and disillusionment.


July brought with it the first set of departing employees, primarily those who were relocating to the New Mexico plant. As the engineering services area began to shut down in August, employees began to reconcile themselves either with unemployment or new employment elsewhere. Not until September did most of the remaining employees confront the consequences of their actions, plans and decisions, or their failure to take steps. At this point, they knew full well they could no longer postpone facing the future. As October activities in the plant commemorated its history, employees found that nostalgia brought both acceptance and reconciliation. At times, however, when employees watched others leave, they realized their own lack of preparation. Remembering happier times at the plant, some employees momentarily re-experienced the pain of the downsizing process.


Efforts by plant managers in November and December showed particular sensitivity to employee needs. Each area of the plant tried to be more flexible and understanding as the last of the work was completed and work demands diminished. In many cases, local area celebrations and informal discussions with co-workers and supervisors helped provide an outlet for frustration and anxieties and facilitated networking. The last plant communications meeting reinforced the great efforts and success of plant employees to the end. Almost everyone felt a sense of relief and camaraderie that we had all made it through.


By helping employees understand and become aware of the transition process and stages they’ll experience, companies can contribute to a healthier and speedier adjustment period for most employees. This education can also help them discern what is normal and what is not. If counseling resources are available from the beginning (our company offered these through our employee assistance program and through classes on managing transitions), employees will tend to feel less victimized and not blame the company for their troubles. Counseling also will help them feel empowered and become more proactive in dealing with the necessary business of re-employment.


Who should control policy decisions?
In a plant the size of ours (900 employees in four operations areas), the issue of locus of control may arise. Should every decision concerning the downsizing be made centrally by plant management? Or should some decisions rest with separate operational areas within the plant? This can be a difficult issue and can turn volatile when employees decide they don’t like the answer they get from one or the other. In the extreme, departments can turn against each other, leading to general confusion and disharmony.


A plant steering committee, in which each area is represented, can create a forum for discussion of issues that affect plant policy and practice. At Signetics, this group was most effective when meetings were held regularly and all members attended. In the beginning, meetings might be held three times a week. Later on, a weekly or biweekly meeting may be sufficient. The steering committee should decide which issues have broad, plantwide implications and need central control, and which issues don’t affect other parts of the plant. Those issues that affect only specific operational areas may be returned to the departments for local decision-making.


Some examples of issues that may surface where locus of control is relevant are time-off practices, work schedules, pay practices, recognition activities, safety and health practices, release date extensions and special requests.


The issues of pay and safety and health practices had far-reaching impact on the plant and, therefore, were decided centrally. Issues such as time off, work schedules and recognition activities can be determined at the local department level, although some coordination may need to take place plantwide. With regard to release dates, extensions and special requests, the plant found that general policy and guidelines needed to be set by the central plant steering committee, but interpretation could be made case by case by local area management.


Some factors that may be relevant when determining locus of control are timing and implementation. At the beginning of the downsizing period, it’s important that areas show unity and consistency in applying policy. It’s at this point that most of the important downsizing issues will surface and be decided.


Later, as areas slow down and issues become more mundane, local areas should be given maximum control to manage employees’ needs. If the implementation of a policy or practice appears problematic, each area should be given discretion in how best to carry out the particular decision. If employers are given a chance to influence something they feel is important to them, they’ll more readily support the decisions. In general, the more discretion that can be given to local areas, the more positive and supportive these areas will be on downsizing decisions and the more positive employees will tend to feel about how they have been treated overall.


SOURCE: Copyright (c) 1996 by Cornell University. Excerpted from the forthcoming book, “Sizing Down: Chronicle of a Plant Closing,” by Louise Moser Illes, to be published by Cornell University Press in March, 1996. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.


Personnel Journal, March 1996, Vol. 75, No. 3, pp. 95-107.


Posted on March 1, 1996July 10, 2018

1996 Quality of Life Optimas Award Profile Hallmark Cards Inc.

Let’s admit it: If any company has a right to be a little warm and fuzzy, it’s Hallmark Cards Inc. Consider its credentials. To begin with, its core mission, its very purpose for existence, is to promote affection, friendship and love-in the form of greeting cards, gift wraps and party favors (to name just a few products). Very warm. Then there’s the family issue: Hallmark started out as and continues to be a family-run business, from its 1910 founding under Joyce Hall as Hall Brothers Incorporated (in the hands of Joyce, Rollie and William) to its current chairmanship under Donald Hall, son of founder Joyce. Very fuzzy. And of course, we can’t dismiss the telling sign that the company is nestled in The Heart of America-Kansas City, Missouri, a town that was recently hailed as one of the best places in the United States to raise kids. Sounds like a cute little company, huh?


This cute little company also just happens to be the world’s largest greeting-card manufacturer-boasting annual sales of $3.8 billion, ranking it 31st on Forbes magazine’s listing of the largest privately held U.S. companies.


A delicious irony? Hardly. Any Hallmarker will tell you it’s the company’s cozy, homey qualities that provide the real muscle in pushing Hallmark on to the $4 billion mark. That’s because it’s the warm, friendly atmosphere that attracts the best people-and keeps them carefully snuggled deep in the folds of the company.


It’s a theory that holds water. For instance, Hallmark is loaded with literally thousands of Quarter Century Club members-people who have been with Hallmark for 25 years or more. Around Kansas City, the company enjoys a reputation as a peach of a Bermuda Triangle-folks enter its hallowed halls and never want to leave. A recent union flirtation failed because employees simply didn’t demonstrate enough interest in changing anything about the company. And why should they? Thanks to a generous profit-sharing program, employees now own one-third of the company.


Is it all becoming too much? Feel overwhelmed by visions of sugar-sweetened greatness? We really haven’t even started: Hallmark has scads of offerings that lure and hold the cream-of-the-crop employees. And when you have bragging rights on the best workforce in the industry, that $4 billion sales mark can be a pretty easy reach.


HR at Hallmark is a matter of individuality.
Dave Pylipow, director of employee relations and staffing, believes he knows just why Hallmarkers tend to be a satisfied bunch: “The most important thing is that Hallmark employees believe the company cares about them as people.”


This nod to individuality manifests itself in a variety of HR standards-beginning with HR policies, one of Pylipow’s main stomping grounds. He has a hand in writing them, updating them, and most often, interpreting them. That’s because they’re constructed to act more as guidelines than very strict rules. Let’s say an employee wants a leave of absence not covered by the FMLA. Or maybe a snow storm keeps half the workforce at home while the others manage to get in. Pylipow is more than happy to interpret the company guidelines on a case-by-case basis. “Doing that gives us a great deal of flexibility. It helps our employees and shows we care about them individually,” he explains.


Another strong demonstration of commitment to employees turns up, ironically enough, in Hallmark’s approach to job termination. Employees know the company doesn’t take their jobs lightly. For instance, anyone (at any level) employed at the company for at least two years can’t be terminated until Pylipow himself has reviewed the situation. Five years’ or more company experience guarantees that an employee’s division vice president, as well as the vice president of HR, Ralph Christenson, must sign off. Pylipow says this, in the very least, ensures all sides get a chance to talk.


“Around Kansas City, the company enjoys a reputation as a peach of a Bermuda Triangle-folks enter its hallowed halls and never want to leave.”


Just as employees know their jobs won’t be snatched away due to a misunderstanding or a simple mistake, they also know jobs at Hallmark don’t disappear because of a slow year or a slipping product line: Amid the rubble of today’s corporate downsizings, Hallmark stands tall with a no-layoff history. Instead, Hallmarkers at any site that’s low on work have several options. First, they can take some time off without pay, with their benefits intact. Other employees can redeploy themselves to work units that need some extra hands: One group of Hallmarkers recently helped paint an operating plant while receiving their standard wages. Finally, employees can opt to do some community activities, also while pulling in their usual paychecks. Why pay folks big money to do things like touch-up painting and literacy tutoring? Pylipow says it all evens out-although there’s a temporary cost factor, the sense of goodwill and employee security make it worthwhile.


These general HR standards are backed up by a prevailing atmosphere at Hallmark-one that celebrates the relationship between employees and the company. “A lot of it stems from the style with which our managers manage,” says Pylipow. “Managers know that if employees talk to them, they’d better make time to listen. Division heads will walk through the factory and just talk to people. That sends an important message to the managers that you’d better be in touch with your people.”


Just as the company encourages sharing information, it also encourages sharing affection and recognition. You can, for instance, imagine the number of birthday cards that exchange hands in the place. But in addition, other tokens of appreciation abound. Whenever an employee or department goes above and beyond the call of duty, there’s sure to be some form of congrats, be it gift certificates or passes to a Kansas City Chiefs game.


Then of course, there’s the coup de gras of employee recognition: initiation into Hallmark’s Quarter Century Club upon reaching 25 years of service, marked by an office celebration to which an employee can invite all his or her company friends. Then, once a year, Hallmark throws a heck of a party for these folks at a nearby posh hotel. All employees who’ve spent 25 or more years with the company are invited-the 3,100- strong group now comprises almost one-fourth of Hallmark’s U.S. workforce. Many retirees fly in especially for the occasion. “It’s great,” says Pylipow. “It’s like a big family reunion.” Family. There’s that word again.


A family-run business backs family-supportive programs.
Every Christmas season, employees are invited to head up to Donald Hall’s office to meet the family. The whole Hall clan tends to show up, greeting employees and chatting as toddlers crawl around on the carpet and babies coo back and forth at each other. The whole thing looks like a-well, like a Hallmark card. Who wouldn’t expect the family-friendly atmosphere to trickle down through the ranks?


And it certainly does. As Andrea Zeorlin, work and family program representative, explains, “If you walk around here at Hallmark, you can always see family photos. Plus, our products are based on enhancing relationships. It just stands to reason that Hallmark would be supportive of a family-friendly environment.” Indeed: The company’s strong work and family services department does such a good job helping employees care for their own that in 1995, Hallmark celebrated its 10th year on Working Mother magazine’s “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers” list (making a perfect 10-for-10 record). Hallmark’s work-life programs also have played a big part in placing it twice in the top 10 in “The 100 Best Companies To Work for in America,” by Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz (see “Robert Levering Tells Why Hallmark Is One of ‘The Best'”).


The work and family services area, established in 1990, has three main spheres of influence:


  • Family care assistance
  • Counseling and education
  • Alternative work arrangements.

For the family-care assistance arena, the emphasis is on assistance. This is no hearts-and-flowers program by any means. The company has definite business motives behind assisting families. So what the program does, and does well, is help employees make care arrangements they feel good about so they can come to work (physically) and stay at work (mentally).


For instance, Family Care Choices is a service designed solely to assist Hallmarkers in locating care for their children, family members with disabilities and aging parents. Zeorlin says that elder care is one of the fastest growing concerns among employees. To access Family Care Choices’ free assistance, all an employee needs to do is pick up a phone. Run by Heart of America Family Services-a non-profit human services program-Family Care Choices assigns a family care specialist to everyone who calls, and that specialist remains the point person throughout the search. “We have some instances in which employees in our rural areas need care,” says Zeorlin. “I know the specialists have gone as far as running newspaper ads to find [caregivers].”


But a care service won’t cover all needs all the time. Maybe a school takes a snow day, and suddenly an employee’s 6-year-old has nowhere to go. Or maybe a child gets ill, and his usual daycare can’t take him. This is where Hallmark’s emergency back-up care and sick-child care step up to bat. The back-up care program, Moment’s Notice, is made possible through a partnership Hallmark struck up with a nearby day school. The school has agreed to keep spaces open for Hallmarkers’ kids-all employees need do is call and reserve a spot (the school operates on a first-come, first-serve basis). Hallmark subsidizes a portion of the cost-up to half for children 4 years and younger.


Zeorlin says the sick-child care is one of the most popular services among Hallmarkers. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that almost 4,000 employees (of the company’s 12,500 U.S. workers) have children 15 or younger. And most of these kids at some point are going to be ill, prohibiting them from their usual daycare or making parents reluctant to leave them at home on their own. Again, Hallmark solves the problem through a partnership arrangement-this time with the pediatric units of six area hospitals where children receive some TLC (as well as hot dogs and popsicles). The first day of care is free; every day after costs only $3 to $3.50 an hour.


Hallmark goes beyond child-care placement, however. As a member of the American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care, the company has access to a resource van. A Hallmarker whose child is at a family day-care home may request that this van stop by. There, kids can sift through a veritable treasure trove of goodies, from science equipment and books, to toys and games. They can check out these items library style, for up to three months. Caregivers also are invited to grab a few things: strollers, cribs, cots as well as resource books.


As much as the company is willing to make employees’ lives easier, it continually sends a strong message: Hallmark helps those who help themselves. The company is willing to meet employees halfway, but they’re expected to do some of the work themselves. Hence, the company sponsors an abundant array of counseling and education programs. Many of these link back to family situations. One of Zeorlin’s favorites just started this past fall. Playfully tagged The Doctor Is In, this program recruited a child behavioral specialist to provide Hallmarkers with twice-weekly onsite consultations. Although the service is fairly new, already more than 60 parents have used it. During the 45-minute one-on-one session (partially subsidized by the company), parents may ask for guidance on any number of behavioral issues, from toilet training and temper tantrums to sibling rivalries and shyness. Zeorlin thinks it may be the only service of its kind in the country. “I’m really excited. People stop me in the halls and say, ‘It only took one visit and already it’s made such a difference in our household.’ Little things like that make you feel so good. You know, you’re not giving them a raise or anything, but you’re easing something in their family life so they may become more productive in the workplace.”


Hallmark’s twice-monthly brown bag Lunch and Learn seminars also tackle family topics: from elder-care issues to “Maternity Matters,” designed to answer questions about maternity disability or parental leaves. The Lunch and Learn sessions covering parenting issues have been extremely popular, but Zeorlin was getting two main complaints: They weren’t detailed enough because of time constraints, and many times the topics dealt with information both Mom and Dad should hear. So Zeorlin introduced quarterly Saturday parenting workshops, which are offered at no cost and open to Hallmarkers’ spouses. Recent topics have included “Parenting from the Heart”-on instilling positive values in children-and “The Role of Fathers.”


Hallmark continues to help employees on more directly personal levels. The Personal Assistance Program pays the cost for up to four sessions with a trained psychologist for problems such as marital difficulties, substance abuse or emotional and mental distress. Employees who have lost a loved one may enter a company counseling and support group, which offers an informal network. “They know each others’ phone numbers and can lean on each other if they’re having a bad day,” explains Zeorlin. “Then there’s somebody there who knows what they’re going through.”


The final piece of the department’s package is facilitating alternative work arrangements. Although the company is just now getting its feet wet in telecommuting waters, for more than 10 years it has offered to arrange part-time schedules for whomever deems them necessary. While part-timers are no new creature to the workforce, Hallmark maintains a strong commitment-not only in encouraging the arrangements, but also in keeping part-timers fully integrated in the workforce. Many women in the company, for instance, have chosen to go part-time-often in a job-sharing capacity-just until their children hit school age. Upon their return to full-time schedules, Zeorlin surveys these employees to ensure they feel they’ve maintained their career track, and most report positively.


Hallmark has proof of its word. Several of its unit directors are former part-timers. One director currently remains in a part-time capacity. Zeorlin herself works a 60% schedule. (In fact, she gained her current position largely because of her extensive personal experience in job-sharing situations in another Hallmark division-they realized she could be an important liaison between managers and employees who want to play with their schedules.) Finally, Donald Hall himself has offered evidence that non-traditional job arrangements are accepted: His secretary is part of a job-sharing duo. “If he can support and work with a job-sharing team, I think the rest of our managers can do the same,” says Zeorlin.


The lines of communication are open.
The Kansas City Star puts out the town’s most widely received newspaper. Hallmark Cards Inc. puts out the second. And Andy McMillen, internal communications and publications manager, will tell you this isn’t just a set of quickly Xeroxed tidbits typed up at the last minute. Noon News is a professionally designed, professionally printed newsletter replete with slick photos and graphics. “When we tell other people in the corporate world that we have a daily newsletter-it just blows them away,” he says. “Noon News has been around about as long as I have-40 years-and we crank it out every day. It’s not just a tradition. It’s an institution here.”


Noon News carries the standard newsletter updates, such as anniversaries, births, marriages and promotions. An issue may cover the outcome of the Toy, Clothing and Food Drive that Hallmark sponsored this past holiday season. It may contain several pages of want ads, acknowledgment of blood-drive donors and reminders of health-plan enrollments. It also contains “about as much business news as we can squeeze out of this place,” says McMillen, referring to product and financial information.


Supplementing this companywide communication is Directions, a 7-year-old newsletter targeting managers. Both the length and the schedule of Directions depend on the information flow in the company: It can be published as often and can cover as many pages as necessary. Reaching about 1,500 Hallmarkers, the newsletter is published for two reasons: First, it alerts them to information they need to know before it becomes public knowledge; second, it provides a tool for them to use in transferring that information to their work groups.


Directions tends to cover more in-depth company news than Noon News. Twice a year, it offers up the company’s financial performance progress. If Hallmark is about to make an acquisition or a divestiture or launch a new product line, that also will warrant an issue. “We’ll [cover] just about anything that will be more broadly known soon but that we’d like managers to know about.”


Finally, any info that doesn’t make it into Noon News or Directions can be disseminated through the dozen computer-monitor signboards sprinkled around the headquarters building. The bottom line: Hallmark has its bases covered when it comes to communication.


But while Hallmark, by its very nature, feels a special niche in reaching out through the written word, the company knows that true face-to-face exchange also is important. One such communication program is Hallmark’s CEO Forums, which have been in existence in one form or another for a decade now. Approximately 10 times a year, President and CEO Irvine Hockaday meets with a group of workers for 90 minutes. To ensure pet employees don’t dominate the discussions, the attendees are chosen randomly by divisions. And to ensure employees feel free to say what’s on their minds, senior management is barred from the meetings. “The forums are purely for midmanagement and below so there’s no intimidation factor,” McMillen explains. “You can talk to Irv about anything, and you don’t have to worry about your VP sitting there taking notes. It’s a terrific opportunity for dialogue.”


The company tries to keep the forum groups near 50 participants, because with more than that, the sheer mass can make communication a little intimidating, while a smaller group wouldn’t allow enough people to take part at a time. “The main purpose is to achieve meaningful two-way communication between employees and the top management. We want employees to have the opportunity to hear directly from their leader what’s going on in the company, and we want him to hear directly what’s on their minds.”


On a similar note, if not a similar scale, are Hallmark’s Corporate Town Hall meetings. Initiated just last year, the plan is to host these gatherings quarterly, with three meetings in one day and 400 employees attending each. Again, the main attraction is Irv Hockaday. He is joined by other top management team members when necessary. Hockaday talks for 30 minutes on some company topic and then opens the floor to discussion for the next hour. The two Town Hall meetings held in 1995 both covered basic progress reports. The first, in July, gave an update on the doings of the new management team that started up in January. The second focused on 1995 product goals and initiatives.


These two-way communication efforts give a lot of employees an unusual opportunity to chat with the top figure in their company.


“If you combine the Corporate Town Hall meetings, which reach almost 5,000 people a year, with the CEO Forums, which [reach] another 500, then that’s better than 5,000 people a year who have a chance to sit in a room and engage in dialogue with the CEO,” says McMillen.


Is there any form of communication that Hallmark hasn’t completely saturated? Well, yes. McMillen concedes the company’s internal communications are lagging behind in joining the Electronic Age. For instance, currently, only a lucky minority in the building have access to e-mail. In fact, not all employees even have computers. Surprising? Probably not, when you stop and think about it. “We communicate on paper,” says McMillen. “That’s our business and we do it well, so it’s not surprising that a lot of our efforts go into a published or print medium. But we’re not ignoring electronic communication.”


Another challenge to getting information across to employees is the very corporate culture itself. Because Hallmark has always been under private ownership, there’s been a history of reluctance to reveal too much business and financial information, lest it fall into competitors’ hands. “When you have decades of that close-to-the-vest behavior, breaking that pattern is very difficult,” says McMillen. “But from a communications [standpoint], it’s important because Hallmark employees own a third of the company.” McMillen admits it’s a difficult dance between giving employees the information they’re entitled to without revealing too much to hungry adversaries. This restraint is compounded by Hall family members themselves: “The Hall family is a family of few words,” says McMillen. “They’re not Chatty Kathys-they’re terrific people who have a colossal impact in the community in which they do business, yet they aren’t quick to talk about or brag about their company, so there’s a bit of reticence that translates into the corporate culture.”


Still, McMillen says the company has come a long way in its communications efforts since the ’80s. He believes the progress is largely a combination of the two-way communication programs along with top management’s admission that they need to loosen their grip on the information flow. “Employees receive far more information today than they received 10 years ago,” says McMillen. “Far more.”


Hallmark builds a multi-layered diversity initiative.
Some department has, under one name or another, addressed issues such as affirmative action and equal opportunity for the past 20-plus years. However, it’s been only in the past four years that a department specifically concentrating on “corporate diversity” has existed. But the places it’s gone in those four years…


To begin with, this department has broadened the traditional boundaries of diversity. At Hallmark, diversity “includes, but is not limited to: ethnic origin, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, lifestyle, economic background, regional geography, employment status and thinking style.” To give these definitions more context, the Corporate Diversity Council (CDC), formed in November 1993 (and comprised of senior management from every division of the company), has articulated a “Business Rationale for Diversity,” explaining that diversity sustains Hallmark’s competitive advantage: the company’s financial success depends in part on its ability to provide products that meet the needs of a diverse and global consumer base.


But, Hallmark, not known for its passivity, didn’t want to just place these thoughts on a shelf for good looks. So the CDC identified nine short-term initiatives and programs that will receive attention from 1994 through 1997. Next, it defined an “Ideal Future State” for each. The CDC then conducted a gap analysis to see where Hallmark currently was in relation to the Ideal Future State. It then identified the necessary steps to close the gap and assigned accountability, completion dates and effectiveness measures.


There are nine initiatives:


  1. Education and Training:
    Two courses specifically address diversity. The Managing Diversity Workshop is a required session for managers. Accepting Differences is required diversity-awareness training for employees. Managers have been trained to teach the course to their own divisions.
  2. Communication:
    The company’s internal publications, Noon News and Directions, cover diversity issues. In addition, a Manager’s Communication Packet, which helps managers foster two-way communications, includes guides for facilitating discussion of diversity topics.
  3. Executive Action:
    Top management must set an example for employees; walk the talk.
  4. Employee Career Development and Planning:
    Managers are encouraged to talk with employees about performance, objectives and future goals. Hallmark also encourages mentoring relationships by division.
  5. Management Style:
    Management must be able to work with a diverse group of people; programs are in development to support this goal.
  6. HR Policies, Compensation and Benefits:
    Hallmark is conducting a pay equity audit, and a complete review of benefits and policies is in the works.
  7. Commitment to the Business Rationale:
    Hallmark commits to supply the necessary resources to make diversity a top priority.
  8. Developing Ongoing Assessment Tools:
    Hallmark is creating a process that reports monthly to the chairman of the CDC on progress in various diversity components.
  9. Employee Involvement.
    Obviously, employee involvement is a big piece of a diversity program. It’s the employee involvement initiatives that Mary Towse, director of corporate diversity, will be setting her sights on in 1996. Let’s just say she’ll have a busy year. To begin with, there are the Division Task Forces, now mostly in start-up stages. These groups focus on diversity efforts within their own areas. “Diversity has to be owned by line management,” says Towse. “It can’t be viewed as an HR function or nothing will happen. This is a means of pushing it out.”

But also gaining steam is the Hallmark Multicultural Exchange (HME), which serves as a bridge-building and service organization. The group’s mission is to promote recognition of minority contributions in the workplace and community. It also sets out to provide opportunities for professional and personal development and social interaction among its 100-plus members. In 1995, the organization sponsored such events as a basketball-competition fundraiser for the Kansas City Parks and Recreation program and Mother’s and Father’s Day projects with area nursing homes. There were also plenty of development courses, such as internal resume preparation and interviewing skills. The big selling point of HME is it’s a grassroots employee organization, entirely self-run with the help of an operating committee and a chairperson who’s elected every year. “I think it’s one of the neatest organizations we have here in the company,” says Towse. “If you go to a meeting, you’ll see people in custodial uniforms sitting next to vice presidents. The idea is that if you bring people of difference together and they get to know each other, bridges are built.”


Also in the works for ’96 is the formation of networking groups for people who share common interests and concerns: women’s groups, ethnic minority groups, even white male groups. As long as the networks support Hallmark’s corporate values and objectives, Hallmark will support them (no militia groups need apply). “Our sense is that the best ideas come from grassroots,” says Towse. “We feel strongly that these kinds of [networks] need to happen, but everything I’ve read says they need to form on their own. I think the answer is to give corporate sponsorship to communicate the company is supportive of the process, and then I think they’ll form.”


Spreading the diversity message at all levels will likely deter a repeat of an ugly 1990 incident at Hallmark: Several minority Hallmarkers, mostly African-American men, were targets of anonymous hate mail delivered through the interoffice mail system. Hockaday issued a strong statement in Noon News immediately, promising a speedy dismissal for the culprit. Unfortunately, the sender was never found. “It’s the kind of thing you hate to think would happen anywhere, but when it happens under your nose, it’s absolutely horrifying,” says Towse.


Counseling was made available to those who had received the hate mail, and Hallmark rallied to action. “It’s almost like a case study of how a company responds to a crisis,” says Towse. “The company responded exactly the way it needed to, but something like that always leaves permanent scars.”


Yet the gains of diversity within Hallmark should help the healing. In the past few years, three women were promoted to corporate officer level; six women were promoted to senior management; two African Americans were promoted to senior management; and one African-American was promoted to vice president; the Board of Directors was expanded to include a woman from the creative community and a man of Hispanic heritage.


In addition, the company is addressing diversity among external groups it has dealings with. Its Ethnic Business Center creates products for African American and Jewish consumers. And its Minority and Women Supplier Development program is closing in on its 30th year. The program focuses on all suppliers to Hallmark-with the goal that 5% of total purchases be placed with minority suppliers.


Often, a team of Hallmarkers will work with the supplier to identify the challenging issues. If the supplier needs help developing a computer system, the team might get someone with an information technology background to help. The supplier program is personally championed by Donald Hall, who started the program himself 27 years ago. In addition, his son, David Hall, sits on the Corporate Diversity Council. In fact, it’s the continued upper-level support of her department’s efforts that Towse truly appreciates. “I don’t know that everyone in my position has that kind of support. It’s just unquestioned that the company is behind diversity.”


As far as continuing the complete cultural transformation required to support diversity 100%, Towse is proud of Hallmark’s current status. She believes that by continually building awareness, a mass of change agents eventually surface, who each go out and make a difference in their own sphere of influence. “A process of cultural change doesn’t come easy,” she says. “It’s like turning a very big ship. Hallmark historically has had a wonderful culture in so many ways, we feel we want to go at it with a laser, because there’s so many things we don’t want to change.”


Towse highlights a concern that seems a common theme at Hallmark: How to keep growing and getting better, without sacrificing all the qualities that make it such a great place to work. But as far as conundrums go, this isn’t such a bad one to have. How many companies can have so little to improve upon that they actually begin to worry about change negatively impacting the current culture?


“We’re just lucky here,” says Pylipow. “There’s a sense of respect in the way we do business, and it’s just a good place to work. Hallmark hopes to be a good example for other companies to follow in terms of really taking advantage of the relationship between the company and employees, and making it as mutually productive as possible. Then everybody wins.”


Sounds almost good enough to be on a greeting card doesn’t it?


Personnel Journal, March 1996, Vol. 75, No. 3, pp. 50-61.


Posted on March 1, 1996July 10, 2018

When Downsizing Brings Your Employees Down

The Dilemma:
Your company went through its second round of layoffs six months ago—dismissing 245 employees, or 6% of your work-force. As expected, you’ve started to notice a change in morale. Employees seem disinterested in the company’s 50th anniversary celebration, there has been an increase in sick days and enthusiasm about next month’s new product release has dropped off considerably.


You’ve kept up to date on this topic, and you recognize the symptoms: Your company has a bad case of survivor syndrome. You’ve come up with some ideas about a few programs you’d like to implement, but you know you’ll face a great deal of resistance from senior management. After all, the downsizing was intended to save money, not generate expenses. With all the effort being put into getting back up to speed, should you “bother” senior management with your ideas, or just encourage employees to seek help outside on their own?


Readers Respond:
You should bother senior management with your ideas. Ideally, a plan to deal with survivor syndrome should have been part of the downsizing program. Since the HR person in this situation expected the change in morale, it would have been wise to plan a little preventive medicine and follow-up care. Now that the problems must be dealt with after the fact, it will cause even lower morale if employees are expected to look outside the organization for support. If the organization believes in the benefits of strong morale, it must see the value of letting the employees know it cares and understands how they’re feeling.


There are many inexpensive ways to do this and research shows a lot of goodwill can be gained by a little effort. Even something as inexpensive and simple as lunch-time meetings to discuss the issues would make a significant difference. Often you’ll be able to find experts in these areas who will do a session in-house inexpensively. Or you may have people on your own staff who can do an excellent job of this. Even having relevant videos or books available for department managers to include in their regular staff meetings will be helpful. Getting the support of managers to incorporate simple inexpensive programs is crucial.
Karin Wills
Employee Relations Coordinator
Nordion International Inc.
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada


I would not hesitate to bother senior management with my ideas on how to help our employees cope with the very difficult situation they have now been placed in. Any assistance we could offer subsequent to the hits that are going on around them would have to be better than the rampant rumor and innuendo that now permeates the water cooler discussions.


It’s far better to have open and frank dialogue with the remaining staff about the state of the business than to have them operate in the dark, not knowing what each new day will bring. An informed staff is a prepared staff.


In today’s society change is inevitable. As HR professionals we must be prepared to deal with the questions as they’re asked and, if needed, be able to refer employees to qualified professionals, such as the organization’s employee assistance program.
Horace C. Boyington
Employee Relations Officer
Detroit Water and Sewerage Dept.
Detroit, Michigan


The problem must be addressed in some fashion or it’ll take more time and effort to address it later when it’s inevitable. If it’s recognized that bringing the problem to senior management would be a challenge, then be prepared with a good plan. There must be a focus on the debilitating impact on the health of the company. Tie it back to the significant drivers for your company: If immediate bottom-line results are critical, then sell it on a dollar savings comparison. You need to capture the attention of senior managers with something that’s important to them. The value and cost of the morale issue would be factored into the plan. And be prepared with a back-up plan. Keep it short, keep it simple and do your homework. A good cost comparison is the expense for absent time and potential medical expenses as a result of stress. And don’t whine! Speak with confidence and authority.
Robin Noah
VP HRD
Crest Financial Corp.
Cerritos, California


Yes, by all means, bother senior management! If they don’t listen, at least later you can say, “I told you so.”
Ronald J. Cori
Vice President of Human Resources
Healthcare Mgmt. Alternatives Inc.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania


The decision to downsize is a last resort taken to protect the viability of the organization and its ability to provide products or services while maintaining employment for the remaining staff. After a layoff is the time to show commitment to employees.


We have significant evidence to demonstrate that survivors are under great stress. From other’s experiences and our own, we know that survivors worry about the impact of change, the loss of friends, the disruption of routine and loss of a sense of control. After the traumatic event of the layoff, senior management and all leaders need to demonstrate that the employees are valued members of the ongoing organization. This demonstration can’t be talked, it must be walked. After the downsizing is the time to implement broad-based assistance programs designed to rebuild the loyalty and sense of community damaged by the layoff. Without this type of proactive support, I would expect to see an erosion of morale and company support.
Robert Foldesi
Assistant VP Human Resources
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois


How Would You Respond to This Dilemma?
You’re the director of HR for a company with 75 employees. So, naturally, Ted came to you to seek help with a work-life issue. Ted’s youngest child recently developed a serious health problem that requires a great deal of home care. Ted and his wife both work full-time jobs and they can’t afford to give up either of their incomes. So, Ted’s idea is to reduce his workweek to 30 hours. He’s willing to telecommute a few additional hours, but is concerned that his workload, without adjustment, will swallow up 60 hours a week as usual.


The challenge? Ted is a supervisor of seven full-time employees. He’s extremely well-respected and well-liked by his co-workers, which has led to a successful six-year career in management with your company. The trouble is you’re worried he may be setting a dangerous precedent. Telecommuting has been a popular option, but never job-sharing or working part-time. Should you find a way to work with Ted and create a schedule you can both live with? Or should you let Ted know that his job requirements can’t change based on the demands of his personal life?


Personnel Journal, March 1996, Vol. 75, No. 3, pp. 126-127.


Posted on March 1, 1996July 10, 2018

Ten Tips for Getting Net Results

Here are some tips to help you get results on the ‘Net:


  1. Provide content.
    Users browse a corporate site looking for information. If they’re considering an organization for employment-or simply want to know more about it-then they want to find information about the company’s philosophy, its mission and goals, what kinds of benefits it offers and what employment opportunities exist.
  2. Keep it organized.
    There’s nothing worse than trying to navigate a site that has information and data poorly organized. The idea isn’t to force a user to browse the entire site, it’s to provide them with the data they need as quickly as possible. If you’re putting together a particularly large site, consider setting up a table of contents page with hypertext links or create a search engine.
  3. Stay current with technology.
    The capabilities of the Web are growing at break-neck speed. Today’s state-of-the-art site is tomorrow’s hopelessly outdated homepage. Be aware of what other top sites are doing. And be sure to use the latest HTML features. Make sure they work with the majority of those browsing the site and provide a less spectacular display for those who don’t have the viewing capability built into their browser.
  4. Provide needed tools or offer links.
    If you’re going to post positions online, make sure the applicants can find your e-mail address. Better yet, provide an online resume form that routes the data into your department’s e-mail or database. If you want to provide a video clip or an audio message, make sure the necessary viewers or players are available for download from your site, or provide direct hypertext links to sites where they’re available.
  5. Make it attractive.
    Like it or not, the Web is supposed to be hip and cool. Although a site doesn’t have to look like a return to the psychedelic ’60s or a scene from an MTV video, colors and graphics do count. Make the site look corporate, but lively.
  6. Avoid overly elaborate graphics.
    Yes, graphics are what makes the Web so appealing. But waiting three or four minutes for an image to load is downright annoying. Make sure a logo or graphic element loads within 30 to 60 seconds at 14.4k bps and provide text to view while the image is loading. If it’s necessary to offer a large graphic image, allow the user the choice whether or not to view it: provide a thumbnail or offer a text only option.
  7. Update often.
    Old job listings and outdated company information does more harm than good. A site that isn’t maintained looks like a poorly maintained house for sale: it’s unattractive and unlikely to garner much interest. Your credibility rides on the data that appears on your site.
  8. Create a feedback form.
    Sometimes overlooked, a feedback form is a valuable way to glean information about how users perceive the site, and it’s a way to receive suggestions and ideas for improving it.
  9. Provide necessary information.
    It’s amazing how many sites promote a company’s products and even offer job listings but don’t include a telephone number or physical mailing address. An e-mail address is an excellent start, but it definitely shouldn’t be the only way for someone on the Web to contact your organization.
  10. Get registered and indexed.
    Domain names-the address you use to identify yourself to those using the Web-should be intuitive (such as www. microsoft.com). If the site resides on your own company’s server, the domain name should be that of your own firm. If you’re leasing space on another server, it might be necessary to provide a pointer from the host service to your company. Either way, you need to register your domain name with the Internet Registration Service (mailserv@rs. internic.net), which currently offers the service for free. Finally, let the Web’s well-used search tools-Yahoo!, Lycos, WebCrawler and others-know you’re out there. That’s how Web surfers find a new site.

Personnel Journal, March 1996, Vol. 75, No. 3, p. 28.


Posted on March 1, 1996July 10, 2018

Learn Seven Ways HR Can Facilitate the Move

Here are seven ways that HR can facilitae the move:


  1. Encourage families to spend a lot of time on pretransfer preparation of their children.
    If the parents choose the international school without the children, have them take videos and photographs of the school. Obtain school literature. Have them get the sports calendar. Load the kids with this information. They desperately want it.
  2. Try to connect families who have been in the location with new ones relocating.
    If kids can talk with others who have been there they can ask questions, such as “What do the kids wear?” “What do they talk about?” “Do they have a prom, a debate team, a football coach?” Don’t underestimate the value of these simple connections.
  3. Involve the children in the planning phase.
    This will be even more helpful for older children who may not want to go in the first place. Cross-cultural counseling for children pays big dividends.
  4. Provide families with computers and access to e-mail and the Internet so they can stay in touch with their families and friends.
    Consider EAP possibilities internationally or at least via phone.
  5. Be on the phone frequently with the expatriate and the spouse.
    Develop a personal relationship to whatever extent is possible. Try to visit the expatriates and see their living situations.
  6. Be sure that community networks are available if a family has trouble—make that suggestion at the outset before any problems arise.
    HR can go so far as to add this reading material and community resource information to the written material they hand to the expatriate family.
  7. Critical to reentry to their society, children need to identify with their own cultural and national identity.
    Suggest that parents subscribe to many American (or home country) magazines that keep the family up-to-date on popular culture—Sports Illustrated, People are a few. Suggest their friends send videos of current American television programs.

Personnel Journal, March 1996, Vol. 75, No. 3, p. 84.


Posted on March 1, 1996July 10, 2018

Relocating Employees HR Managers Must Take Charge of the Process

If large numbers of employees are going to be relocated to other company sites when one site closes, the company should anticipate certain issues. Employees will want to communicate with a central person—someone who’ll be attentive to their concerns and fears about moving.


They’ll want to be briefed on the new environment into which they’re moving and be allowed to take their families to investigate the new area.


Some employees will have special family needs or personal interests that need to be addressed. There also will be a need to distinguish between the considerations the employee will be responsible for and those the company will be responsible for. Lastly, employees and their families will have general anxiety about relocating, and this may become a serious issue—depending on how it’s handled and the strength of the support systems.


A company would be wise to appoint a relocation coordinator who’ll be a central contact for employees and ensure consistency in how relocations are managed. This central person can also give feedback on how others are doing and suggest resources that may address the specific needs of families. At the suggestion of our coordinator, we initiated seminars on moving for the whole family. They provided useful information about what a family might expect, along with tips for making the move a more positive experience.


The relocating employees themselves can form a powerful support system to help facilitate the relocation process. Encouraging relocating families to get together informally can help establish invaluable contacts that will greatly foster a sense of community within the group. An informal relocation newsletter, sponsored either by the company or the relocatees, can provide useful information and tips and offer suggestions to employees on what works well and what doesn’t. Sometimes this information is more valuable to relocating employees than any the company might provide.


Depending on the new location and availability of housing, families may have problems finding adequate temporary living arrangements. If feasible, the company can intervene and negotiate with realtors to secure temporary arrangements as a block, with a specified number of units and a time commitment. This approach necessitates prior awareness of employees’ housing needs through data-gathering. In the long run, families have one less headache to contend with, and the arrangements can prove cost effective for both employees and the company.


One process that could have been implemented more smoothly during our closure process was the relocation of transferring employees to our New Mexico site. Before the actual relocation period, only a cursory relocation policy and procedures handbook was produced. This did nothing but foster questions and attempts by individual employees to negotiate with both the corporate and plant human resources departments. Complicating matters further was the inconsistency in the answers from each of the relocation representatives at the three sites. Had issues and potential problems been more carefully evaluated and dealt with earlier, there would have been less need for individual counseling and problem-solving throughout the relocation process.


Personnel Journal, March 1996, Vol. 75, No. 3, p. 97.


Posted on March 1, 1996July 10, 2018

What You Can Do About Weapons in the Workplace

These are dangerous times, no doubt, due to a variety of factors. For one thing, the nature of the workplace is changing—people are no longer guaranteed they can make a living on assembly-line skills. Jobs are vanishing. Employees are dislocated and unable to retrain. People are burnt out, frustrated and angry.


Couple that with greater access to weapons—40 states now make the carrying of concealed weapons legal—and you’ve got the makings of an ominous workplace situation. But employers have more control in the outcome than they may think.


Donald W. Savelson, partner in the labor department of the New York City-based law firm Proskauer Rose Goetz & Mendelsohn, takes a look at how employers can protect their employees—and themselves.


When the figures for workplace violence for 1995 are tabulated, what will we see?
The top officials in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have indicated there are more violent incidents in the workplace than ever before.


It’s a topic that unfortunately is very real for a lot of our clients and a lot of employers in the country. Certainly, there’s not a day that goes by in which you don’t read about or see something on the news with respect to violent episodes in the workplace. It’s a very big problem. When we run seminars on workplace violence, we’ll get 500 different companies coming to them. It’s astounding.


Are certain industries more inclined to experience violent incidents?
Yes. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is in the process of setting guidelines, and maybe eventually a standard, for preventing and dealing with violence in the workplace. It has focused on two or three specific industries.


The highest incident seems to be in retail stores, particularly in the evening-hour operations. The health care field also has become one of the increasing areas of violence, particularly in [functions] that deal with emotionally disturbed patients. Generally, however, violent incidents cover a broad spectrum of industries.


Forty states now allow carrying of concealed weapons. How easy is it to get a permit?
It depends on the state. There’s legislation in the majority of states that allows individuals to carry concealed weapons. For most of them, we’re talking about handguns, not shotguns, not machine guns.


In terms of carrying concealed weapons, most states require a waiting period when you apply for a permit because they want to check whether you have a criminal record. The waiting period varies. I understand you can get it in three to five days in some states.


So an employee who wants to carry a concealed weapon can get a permit fairly easily? Or does it again depend on the state?
[It depends.] New York, like a lot of other states, passed a “legal activities” law. Employers have been more restrictive in how they structure the workplace environment. For example, some employers have policies on not hiring anyone who smokes. In New York state, the legal activities law [makes it legal] to smoke, not on the premises, but outside of work.


This law would also cover [owning] guns and belonging to a gun club. [Employers can’t make employment decisions based on gun ownership]. So that may give encouragement to individuals who want to own guns or weapons.


Can employers force employees to tell them if they’re carrying a concealed weapon?
The answer is emphatically: Yes. That is, of course, if an employer is going to allow employees to carry concealed weapons on the premises [in the first place]. It’s inviting disaster.


But if the employer is going to allow [the carrying of concealed weapons], it’s lawful to require the employee to first and foremost advise the employer that the employee is going to be carrying a concealed weapon while doing work duties.


Does this apply to weapons outside of handguns?
Weapons are more than simply handguns: They could be long knives, brass knuckles, box cutters—which are currently the weapons of choice for many, particularly young people. They’re easily hidden, easily purchased (you don’t need a permit), but they can do a lot of damage.


So an employer can legally ban weapons altogether—even for employees who’ve obtained a concealed-weapon permit?


There’s no constitutional right to carry a concealed weapon into a workplace. The mere fact a state would allow people to carry a concealed weapon doesn’t allow a person to carry it when he or she enters a workplace, which is not in the public domain. The workplace is controlled exclusively by the employer—the employer can insist the employee disclose the nature of the weapon and where he or she is going to carry it.


Assuming employers want to ban weapons in the workplace, what’s the best approach?
The large majority of employers absolutely ban weapons in the workplace, and they do it in a number of ways. The easiest way is to have a written policy that’s communicated to employees and is contained in an employee handbook or in a set of rules and regulations that govern conduct.


It’s very important to communicate that in writing—not just in an e-mail message—so that everyone can look at that continuously. Employees need to know what the expectations are. It wouldn’t be unusual for an employee in a state that allows the carrying of concealed weapons to bring that weapon and put it in a locker or carry it around because they feel they live in a bad area outside of work or they’ve been threatened outside of work. You want that workplace rule of conduct to be clearly communicated so workers know it’s prohibited and could lead to discipline, including termination.


Does a clear policy ensure the legality of terminating an employee who does bring a weapon to work?
Employers that clearly communicate that type of policy are in a much sounder legal footing in disciplining or terminating employees for bringing weapons into the workplace. Obviously, unionized employers with collective bargaining representatives may have some more difficulty in discipline or in terminations if they don’t communicate that kind of policy or rule to employees. But an employer would never have a problem warning an individual: “You are not to bring a weapon into the workplace.”


What about background checks for criminal records—is that advised?
An employer hiring for something like a delivery [position]—for which the employee will be going into people’s homes—doesn’t have to hire someone with a criminal record of violence.


But some states are very restrictive for employers on what kind of convictions you can even consider: how old the conviction is, whether it relates to the job. That’s not counting arrest records, because there are no states that I’m aware of that would even consider allowing an employer to use arrest records in employment decisions.


What if you’ve already hired an employee who begins to show violent tendencies?
Often you’re going to come across current employees who exhibit violent tendencies. You have to establish a program to monitor those individuals. When necessary, prevent them from going out into the workplace where they’ll deal with the public, and limit their interaction with fellow employees.


What if you have reason to believe an employee may be violent—how do you find out without committing invasion of privacy?
One of the things you may have to do is conduct an investigation to determine if an employee is exhibiting violent tendencies—whether he or she is stalking other employees, whether the person is sending messages across your e-mail or voicemail system, whether he or she is using the employer’s premises to engage in prohibited and unwelcome conduct toward other employees.


The best thing to do is to make sure there’s a clear policy enunciated to employees that the employer reserves the right to access his or her computer and e-mail and voicemail. You can do this by just having the policy flash on the computer screen when you turn it on in the morning.


Let’s say, despite necessary precautions, a violent incident occurs. What liability does an employer have toward employees who are hurt in workplace violence?
The exposure depends upon who was injured and what the circumstances were leading to the injury or assault by an employee who has a weapon. Under state law, liability is determined by whether an employer is negligent in the way it hires employees, and in the way it supervises and trains employees. Employers are required to carefully hire and screen employees as well as supervise them.


The problem is a Catch-22 for employers in the sense that employees have a lot more protections against discrimination in the workplace today in their hiring and continued employment—ADA and state equal opportunity laws may give them protections.


If you look at the normal profile of the violent employee today, it’s a white male in his forties who has had a troubled background, marital problems, medical problems—a lot of those qualities could lead to discrimination if you were to try to screen out those individuals. But employers still are required to make sure that employees who exhibit violent conduct are carefully monitored and channeled into employee assistance programs.


Doesn’t the workers’ compensation law keep many employers from being sued?
Every state normally has a restriction under the workers’ compensation laws that prohibit employees from suing their employers directly. If an employee is injured on the job, the exclusive remedy is workers’ compensation. Now the question arises, what happens if an employee is injured by a co-worker? In most cases workers’ compensation is the exclusive remedy.


In what cases would the remedy be different?
There are two ways employees get around this restriction on suing their employers if there’s violence in the workplace. The first way is they sue a third party, claiming it was the third party that was negligent, like an independently contracted security force. That contractor in a number of states is then allowed to sue the employer, claiming that if the contractor is negligent and found liable, then the injured can collect from the employer, who also was negligent—perhaps the employer didn’t advise the third party of an employee’s violent tendencies or provide adequate precautions or screening measures.


In addition, some states allow employees to sue employers directly if there’s gross negligence: The employer knew of violent tendencies in an employee and didn’t take adequate steps to protect the workforce. Say a supervisor knows an employee is carrying a concealed weapon, and doesn’t tell anyone about this. The employee continues to bring the weapon into the workplace, and sooner or later becomes angry and uses the weapon. That employer may have been guilty of gross negligence.


What if the injured party is not an employee?
The employer would also have liability to customers and the public at large if the employee has violent tendencies and the company should have known but didn’t do a careful screening. [This would also be the case] if the employer is told about violent tendencies and doesn’t reasonably supervise that employee. This is the same kind of liability as when the employer sends an employee out into the workplace and says: “You’re free to do whatever you want to the public at large.”


What can employers do to protect their employees, their customers and themselves?
First, establish a good violence-prevention program. Adapt a proactive strategy by establishing a plan that makes security and violence prevention an essential function of everyone’s job in the workplace. Develop a written policy describing the organization’s philosophy and approach to workplace violence. Make sure if an individual exhibits signs of violence that lower level management doesn’t cover it up, but reports it—because it’s important to document these.


Discuss security considerations with employees in the workplace and decide what the program should look like. You certainly want to implement a security-risk assessment program. Identify those locations where you may need additional security. What areas present the most security risk for employees?


Finally, create a climate that’s characterized by communication, sensitivity and respect toward employees. You’ll often find there are certain institutional events that give rise to workplace violence: reductions-in-force, individual terminations, disciplinary actions, major changes that will cause upheavals. Make sure that your supervisory force treats individuals with respect and dignity when they’re carrying out any of these actions.


Personnel Journal, March 1996, Vol. 75, No. 3, pp. 122-125.


Posted on March 1, 1996July 10, 2018

Downshifters Workers Are Scaling Back. Are You Ready

There’s a trend on the horizon so new you probably haven’t heard about it yet. But you will. Believe it or not, there are some people who actually aren’t worried about losing their jobs. In fact, some of them aren’t particularly worried about having jobs, lots of money or even having ties to the civilized world. They’re a new breed of workers who are neither mommy-trackers, daddy-trackers nor fast-trackers. They’re called downshifters. And they want to slow down at work, so they can upshift in other areas of their lives.


It’s not the same old workers just trying to juggle an increasingly heavier load—it’s actually a group of people who want to bring the whole race at work down to a slower speed, so they don’t have to “get a life.” They can enjoy the ones they already have—at home and in the community.


For human resources professionals, downshifting can be interpreted as the next level beyond work-life balancing. It requires that companies be even more creative in their concept of what jobs are—and the time it takes to do them—and what it means to integrate business needs with employee motivation, talent and the pursuit of happiness.


And here’s the kicker: You may have actually helped to create this particular breed of shuffle-footed workers. Over the past several years, as Corporate America has downsized, reorganized and reshuffled itself into oblivion, it has told employees: Here are all these nice work-family benefits you can take advantage of to balance your life.


On the other hand, we’re going to work you so hard that they won’t mean much.


What it boils down to is this: If employees are overworked, they can’t balance the rest of their lives, no matter how many perks we give them. It’s as if we’ve said: We’ll give you a gourmet meal but no time to enjoy it. Talk about dangling a carrot on a stick.


These workers aren’t angry, per se. They don’t want you to figure out the meaning of life (or at least the meaning of their lives). They just don’t fit into the traditional fast-track mold anymore. They’re measuring success by their own standards. And they’re demanding companies be more flexible in how they deal with them—and their greatest asset: their time. It was just a matter of time before these workers started drifting out to sea. It’s going to take a pretty impressive tactical net to reel them back in.


What exactly is this downshifting thing, anyway?
There are two camps of downshifters: those who want to break out of the corporate mold—temporarily or permanently, and those who just want to work less.


Azriela Jaffe is a downshifter. A former human resources director for Lutheran Social Services of New England, Jaffe, 36, recently downshifted from a secure corporate job, to being a work-at-home mom in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “I always found HR to be a meaningful career to me in parts, but, like any job, I would spend perhaps half my day doing what I loved to do and the other half of my day doing what my job description said I had to do,” says Jaffe. Increasingly, what she found was that she loved the coaching and writing parts of HR, but not everything else that went with it.


And she could never quite get herself in sync with corporate timing. “I’m not somebody who molds well to an organizational schedule” she says. “I found it very difficult to constrict my natural flow, my natural way of being, to an organizational culture—and there was always tension between me and my employers because I got my job done really well, but I found my natural rhythm wasn’t to be sitting in an office for eight hours, five days a week. I really wanted the freedom to be able to work when and where I chose.”


A little more than a year ago, she left to pursue her passions. She founded a coaching and consulting firm that helps individuals reach personal and business success and authored her first book, “Honey, I Want To Start My Own Business, The Essential Guide for Couples on an Entrepreneurial Journey,” which will be published in June.


“I’m not somebody who molds well to an organizational structure. I wanted the freedom to work where and when I chose.”
Azriela Jaffe,
Recent Downshifter


Susan Truman, 34, another downshifter, left the corporate world in 1990 after having her first baby. At the time, Truman was a senior business administrator at TRW Inc. in a Los Angeles suburb, but wanted to stay home with her baby. So she resigned—and doesn’t plan on returning to another corporate job for several years, if ever. “I quit at a time when the company was cutting back, so people were feeling insecure there anyway,” says Truman. “Many people were glad to leave and move on to something else.”


In addition to now being the mother of two, she’s the president of her former college sorority and coordinates a local chapter of Mother’s International for 109 women at her church. “All of them come from professional careers and have left business,” she says.


And while the company had just started providing child care onsite, it wasn’t enough to make her stay. “I definitely think there are women who would continue working if they were given a more flexible work schedule—like three days a week or something like that,” she says. She and a co-worker tried a job-sharing arrangement, but it didn’t work out. “When you’re at a responsible level, they need somebody there all the time to handle the job.”


When Truman and her husband bought a modest home a few years before their first baby arrived, it was in anticipation of her quitting and their being able to live on one income. It’s one variation on a theme being called “voluntary simplicity” or “simple living.” The Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, New York says voluntary simplicity is one of the top trends of the ’90s. Experts say it’s probably the most fundamental shift in lifestyles since the Depression. In some ways, voluntary simplicity somewhat resembles a Depression era lifestyle. These people are living in more modest homes, often driving used cars and sometimes even wearing thrift-store clothing. It’s almost as if they’re taking a vow of poverty. To them, consumerism is a dirty word.


At the core of the movement are values. People are valuing money and possessions less, and valuing time, health and peace of mind more. Regardless of the degree to which people scale back at work, pare down their lifestyles or relax the overall pace of their lives, downshifting is about people separating what they want from what they need to be happy.


“I know some people who actually are saying, ‘I’m not going to work for a Fortune 500. I’m not going to get into that,'” says Andrea Saveri, a research director specializing in workplace issues and technology for the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California. “It’s happening for a number of reasons,” says Saveri. “The economy, the kinds of jobs that are being created, what technology allows an organization to do, what technology allows an individual to do and all the burn-out. So you get this weird kind of convergence of factors.”


Part of this trend may be a subtle reaction to modern advances. Humankind has taken two giant steps forward. Downshifters want to take a step back. “Technology can actually be used to help people downshift,” says Saveri. Cell phones, fax machines, pagers and personal computers linked to remote networks certainly give people more options about when and where to work. But technology can, and does, create problems. Because people can work anywhere, they are working everywhere. Worse: They’re expected to work everywhere. The result is that technology itself has increased, rather than decreased, the workload and the expectations. People literally get stuck in the virtual office, from which there’s no respite. People are saying: Stop the world, I want to get off.


A November 1995 poll conducted by U.S. News & World Report found that 48% of Americans have done at least one of the following in the last five years: cut back their hours at work, declined or didn’t seek a promotion, lowered their expectations for what they need out of life, reduced their commitments or moved to a community with a less hectic way of life.


The phenomenon is, in a word, hot. It has been on the covers of magazines such as Working Woman, and has been the subject of talk shows by Oprah and Phil Donahue. Books such as “Your Money or Your Life” by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, a primer on achieving financial independence and considered a handbook of the movement, are selling by the thousands.


And the trend doesn’t seem to be generation-based. Granted, the front-runners of the movement are aging hippies in the Pacific Northwest who never lost their ’60s yen for barefooted pleasures. But currently, a not-so-scary 4% of the country’s 77 million baby boomers—men and women between the ages of 31 and 50—have already started living these simpler lives. A total of 15% of the boomer group (11.5 million people) are expected to join the movement by the year 2000. And no one knows how many others will join in.


But many non-boomers are also finding voluntary simplicity a happier way to live and a scaled back way to work. Companies increasingly are seeing people at various ages and stages of their lives wanting more time than money. “I definitely think people want more time outside of the work environment,” says Vivian Johnston, director of human resources and employee relations for Campbell Soup Company based in Camden, New Jersey, which employs 26,000 workers in the United States and 16,000 more worldwide. “I guess it would depend on what the demographics in your organization look like, but I really haven’t noticed any [particular] age associated with downshifting.” The company has offered various flextime arrangements to employees for years, but has seen people use the time-off programs more in recent years.


And it isn’t just the rank-and-file who are seeking time out of the office. Management guru Tom Peters is taking a sabbatical this year. And Anna Quindlen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist, left her job a year ago to write books full time at home.


One thing that does seem to separate downshifters from others who are less fortunate is they have embraced their power of choice. While some individuals are perhaps forced into lower-budget lifestyles through matters beyond their control—they’re laid off or can’t find full-time jobs—downshifters have found their voices and are using them to say they’ve had it with the corporate rat race. They don’t need, or want, 80-plus-hours-a-week jobs. They may not even want 40-hour jobs. And they don’t mind giving up big chunks of their paychecks to change their situation either.


They’ve dared to ask the bigger question: Who am I and what’s my life all about? Some are saying: I like my job, but why am I working so hard? Why do I have a big home, fancy cars and high-tech toys but no time to enjoy them? Or, they’re saying: I hate my job. Life’s too short to do what I hate—I’m leaving for greener pastures, or I’m going to work less here so I can have more time for these other interests over there.


Short of helping people find their true meaning in life, companies are forced to conform by giving people the time and flexibility to pursue their interests outside work. And companies are trying to make work as meaningful a pursuit as any other.


Quality of time vs. quantity of time.
The issue at stake is time. Workers want more personal time. But you need them on the job. It’s a struggle to see who’ll win. The struggle is a particularly modern dilemma.


“The American family subsidized Corporate America during the ’50s and ’60s with women staying home and literally doing a lot of unpaid work and allowing a male workforce to work their butts off,” says Saveri. Now, some men and women in the workforce are saying: Why am I working my butt off doing something I don’t enjoy and making more money than I really need?


“Downshifting refers to people shifting out of what you might term a single focus—a corporate focus—and into a more balanced-life focus. That’s not so much downshifting as it is shifting. It’s more of a focusing on what success means to [them], rather than on [how] somebody [else] defines success. I think there’s a lot of people reflecting on that—what will be meaningful success to them—and then trying to work out a life pattern that fits that,” says Eric Lane, director of worldwide staffing for Mountain View, California-based Silicon Graphics Inc., a leading manufacturer of visual computing systems.


With a workforce of 6,300 employees worldwide (4,500 in the United States), Silicon Graphics delivers three-dimensional graphics, color, audio, video and real-time technologies to the technical, scientific and creative computing marketplaces. Founded in 1982, the firm has doubled its revenue in the past two years, from $1 billion to more than $2 billion. With operations worldwide, the company works hard to attract the best people in the industry. Providing an environment in which creative collaboration flourishes is central to its strategy. Its culture is marked by an open communications style that embraces change and encourages risk taking.


“We’re definitely seeing people who are not only interested in their careers, but also are interested in being a whole person—having their family lives, [their work lives] and their community lives,” says Lane. “I personally was elected to a school board here—59 schools, 34,000 kids. I have two daughters who are in the school district, so I’m dealing with that same kind of balance thing myself. And I know a lot of people here at Silicon Graphics who are doing the same thing. They’re involved in their communities. They’ve got a family or a family life. Or they’re taking care of [an aging] parent. And the whole thing about making a meaningful contribution to people around them is an important aspect of who they are,” says Lane.


In fact, a January ’96 article in The Wall St. Journal explains that “Rocky” Rhodes, a co-founder and chief engineer at the firm, has cut back to a part-time schedule—after years of working seven-day weeks. A sticky note on his refrigerator lists his and his wife’s priorities—God, family, exercise and work—and speaks volumes about what downshifting is all about.


Lane says Silicon Graphics gives its managers a lot of flexibility in creating an environment that works for people rather than trying to fit people into a preset mold. “It’s a talent focus,” says Lane. The firm optimizes that talent focus by not having firm policies such as “thou shalt telecommute.” Rather, it allows managers to work with individuals on helping them succeed. Whether that means letting workers shift their schedules so they can pick up their kids from school or working out a job description that makes sense for a woman coming back from maternity leave, so be it. “The key issue in a company like Silicon Graphics is access to great talent. And the flexibility around how to best access that talent is what we give managers a lot of leeway in,” says Lane. “I’m not convinced that a policy is the trigger for that. I think the ability to have an organization with managers who can be trusted is the first step.”


An idea that’s being tossed around in work-life management circles is having employees manage their own time. Throw out timecards. Forget about punching in and out. Simply pay for outcomes, not face time. “Instead of having traditionally structured work schedules, it’s based on output, not so much how much time you spend in an office,” says Madeleine Baker, manager of work-life strategy for Fort Wayne, Indiana-based Lincoln National Corp. So far, Lincoln is just considering the idea along with other forward-thinking companies in the United States. “Until we get the nitty-gritties all fine-tuned, it would be alarming for me to [make the blanket statement] that employees could be hired and then come and go as they please,” she adds. “That would be quite challenging and alarming to managers.”


While there may be constraints—legal and practical—around implementing such an idea, some variation of it may be the wave of the future for certain types of work and certain types of workers. For instance, some clothing manufacturers already allow frontline teams to manage their own time. Employees still need to turn out a certain number of pieces, but how they achieve that number is completely up to them. At the other end of the scale, exempt employees essentially have managed their own time since the concept was created. What’s new is giving employees the flexibility to scale back on all fronts, if they want to, yet meeting the objectives of the company.


A more adult view of employees, work and time.
Downshifting is causing organizations to rethink the very nature of jobs: What’s a full-time job? What’s a part-time job? What’s an as-needed job? What does non-exempt mean? What does exempt mean? Exempt from what? From being asked to work as long and as hard as it takes to get the job done? And who defines when the job’s done? If we aren’t paying by the hour, what are the measurements by which we are paying? These are questions worth considering, because the jobs of the future probably won’t look like the jobs of today. Even companies themselves won’t look the same. Reorganization has seen to that.


Silicon Graphics doesn’t focus much energy on career tracking and career pathing because its industry is moving so fast. “For one thing, many careers [in our industry] didn’t exist a year ago,” says Lane. “So if you wanted to be a Web master three years ago, people would have looked at you like, so what?” Instead of trying to steer people into certain career paths, Silicon Graphics focuses on providing people with flexibility in combining their learning and interests.


“If you focus too much on the needs of the individual only, then you don’t balance what’s really important [for the business].”
Eric Lane,
Director of Worldwide Staffing;
Silicon Graphics Inc.


People can switch to other departments (or work on projects in other departments) that blend their skills and interests. “For example, if someone was interested in the education market and they were in technology, they could get involved in a product line that was dealing with the education market,” says Lane. It helps them integrate their work with what they think is important in life. People no longer compartmentalize their lives. Now they can combine work they’re passionate about and get a paycheck.


Such an idea follows in the footsteps of the empowerment trend. Take Lincoln National, for example. It allows people to map out their own individual career-development processes, but gives them the tools (training and rotational assignments) with which to accomplish their personal objectives. “It comes down to telling employees: ‘You need to set the course in accomplishing your objectives, and these are the resources we make available to you,'” says Baker.


People just want to be seen as adults, capable of managing their own careers and their own lives. And they want the freedom to manage their work as they see fit. That’s why people are flocking to companies with less stressful, and more open environments like Chicago-based Morningstar Inc., an 11-year-old company that produces 15 publications and products giving data and analysis on various investments. “A lot of people have come to us because of our [more relaxed] lifestyle, growth opportunity and more dynamic atmosphere. People are leaving those bigger, bureaucratic and more stressful [corporate] environments,” says Bevin Desmond, Morningstar’s recruiting coordinator.


Morningstar, which employs 350 workers, also offers a six-week paid sabbatical after people have completed four years of service. “It’s something that was put in place to reward people for the time they spend here, to give them a chance to breathe and perhaps to get perspective on their work and life. We feel like it’s pretty valuable for people to come back from their sabbatical with a new perspective,” says Desmond.


“Part of the nice thing at Morningstar is that there aren’t set office hours [for individuals],” she adds. While the office does have certain core hours, staff members can basically come and go as they see fit. And it tries to make the practice as fair as possible throughout its many departments. Obviously, customer service representatives have to be there to take phone calls during certain hours, but work groups can schedule their own hours within that framework.


“People here work the hours they need to complete their work,” says Desmond. “They don’t feel funny about taking an afternoon off or staying home one day with their child or deciding to take a week off. People don’t get second glances and their commitment to their work isn’t questioned.”


You’ll need to be more flexible than ever.
Corporate America already has made huge concessions toward work-life balancing by providing myriad flex options such as telecommuting, job sharing, part-timing, flextime and sabbaticals. But downshifters are demanding even more innovative solutions to modern life’s dilemmas. And companies are beginning to respond with even more creative ideas.


First Tennessee Bank based in Memphis, Tennessee employs 8,000 workers in 30 states. A year and a half ago it started allowing employees to rearrange work schedules and hours—and even restructure their jobs—based on people’s personal needs. “We’ve really tried to build workplace flexibility into each of our departments and use it not only as a tool to improve employee satisfaction, but also [to improve] customer satisfaction,” says Pat Brown, vice president and manager for First Tennessee’s Family Matters program.


For example, the company cut the number of days the ARP department needed to reconcile customer accounts from 10 to four, as a direct result of flexible scheduling. Following a schedule they helped set, employees now work extended hours early in the month, when the load is heaviest, and take a day off during the slow period at the end of the month. “What they really wanted was time—a day off during the week to take care of everything from running errands to spending time with their children,” says Brown.


The bank also gives workers who’ve been with the firm for at least one year another innovative flex benefit called prime time. People can reduce their hours and still maintain full benefit coverage. They can cut back to 32 hours or even down to 20 (a true part-time job). Most are using the option for six months to two years. “We do have employees starting to take advantage of it,” says Brown. Working mothers particularly like it. They use it to ease back to work after a maternity leave or to work reduced hours while their children are young. But the firm is also seeing older workers use it to transition into retirement—by slowing work hours gradually. And it isn’t just frontline workers—some managers also are looking at cutting back on their hours.


Such flexibility obviously creates staffing challenges for management. What’s important is for employees and their managers and team members to work together to come up with workable schedules for each individual. And the jobs themselves must be scaled back along with the hours. But that can be difficult without the department or company incurring additional expense.


“The area that we’re going to struggle with the most is probably with people with managerial responsibilities,” says Brown. “I would rather reduce someone’s schedule down to 24 hours, versus losing the person totally. That’s the decision you’re having to make. It’s not, can I force them to still work 40-plus hours? We’re doing this because we want to retain folks—that’s very much our focus,” says Brown. “It’s a challenge the firm is ready—and willing—to deal with. This is our fifth year of record profits, so we feel we’re staying profitable even though we’ve been very flexible,” Brown explains. Campbell Soup Company also sees many professional and managerial level workers wanting—and arranging—to work part-time hours instead of full-time. The firm is ready with options when the questions are asked.


Of course there’s more than one way to be flexible. Many companies allow employees to vary their schedules weekly or monthly. Silicon Graphics gives sabbaticals for U.S. workers who want them. Every four years, people can take six weeks off—paid. They can combine the time with vacation time for total leaves of two or three months. Lane says some people prefer to take big chunks of time off, rather than say, coming in three days and being off for four. “So, some of the issues around balance can be intensity of balance,” says Lane. “I think some of the things about what balance means could be cliche and could be a lot different in terms of how people really want to do it.”


Some companies aren’t afraid to let go of workers for as long as it takes. Organizations—like Vancouver City Savings Credit Union (VanCity) in Vancouver, British Columbia—are taking the long view of the benefits of extended leaves. VanCity allows workers to participate in what they call a return-to-work program. Workers can take off for one to three years (unpaid). Since February 1991, approximately 80 people of its 1,100 member workforce have taken time off using this program. About 67 of those workers have been women. Although only a few people took advantage of the program in its first few years, people have participated more in recent years.


“We’re an organization that recognizes that people have to find a balance between work and family, and develop themselves as people,” says Linda Heep, a personnel officer for VanCity, Canada’s largest credit union and a two-time winner of the Financial Post’s “100 Best Companies To Work for in Canada” award. The company sees employees using the program to take time off to care for young children, to go back to school, to travel or to pursue other personal interests. “They need to take that time out without jeopardizing having a position with the company,” she says. Although the company doesn’t guarantee the same position or previous salary to employees who take this extended leave, they are guaranteed a job when they come back. “To us, they’re valuable employees and potentially, they’ll come back as even more valuable because they’ve gone through different types of life experiences,” says Heep.


So that they keep up with technology, policy and product changes, employees must return to work for two, two-week periods each year that they’re out. They can do that on weekends, during the summer or all at once, depending on what works best for them.


Experts say companies need to follow VanCity’s lead and change their concepts of what sabbaticals and leaves of absence are—that down time isn’t necessarily slack time. It’s a time for personal renewal and to take care of the other business of one’s life that can’t be accomplished on weekends only.


Is HR ready for downshifting?
“It’s not so much whether HR’s ready for it. It’s what the business and what managers can support,” says Lane. In some departments, flexibility is limited. Manufacturing plant workers probably can’t telecommute, for instance, because they can’t take their work home or to the beach on laptops. But they might be able to scale their hours back.


“There are functions and certain environments that are more inclined toward certain formats of flexibility. So what we’re looking at is how do you make that equitable in an organization and make individuals feel it’s equitable?” asks Silicon Graphic’s Lane. “That’s something that has to be dealt with as a manager and dealt with within the comfort zone of the team.”


And does the trend concern HR professionals? “It doesn’t concern me, because in a corporation the size of ours, you always have people who are coming in and out of the workforce anyway,” says Campbell Soup’s Johnston. People leave the workforce for short or long periods all the time. “We’ve tried to create an infrastructure that will allow managers to work with the work-life balance [challenge],” says Johnston.


Whether it means people transitioning back from maternity leave by working part-time or people wanting to telecommute because of medical limitations, it’s important to give people options.


“It comes down to telling employees: You need to set the course in managing your objectives.”
Madeleine Baker,
Manager,
Work-Life Strategy; Lincoln National Corp.


Companies must rethink workloads when people work reduced hours. “That’s where we step back and ask ourselves: Will this [reduced schedule] work for the business? Can we work it so that a person can reduce his or her time? And, are there ways we can all work smarter, because it’s not realistic to think that somebody is going to do a full-time job in half the time. So, we do make adjustments as necessary,” says Johnston.


Usually, Campbell managers agree ahead of time on the length of flextime arrangements and reevaluate how well they’re working at six-month intervals. “For instance, in a job-share arrangement in my own department, we’ve agreed that we will review the situation in six months—not only from a business standpoint, but also from the employees’ points of view. Is this really working out the way they thought it would? Are they happy working with a scaled down employment situation? Have their needs changed? Do they need to come back full-time?” asks Johnston. “We’re really flexible—but we have these milestones just to make sure we’re staying on top of keeping a balance for everyone.


“What I would say to other HR professionals is to be open to the [flexibility] concept and give it a try because there are many rewards in it—not just for the employee, but also for the corporation—that aren’t necessarily visible up front,” says Johnston. “So I would just say, ‘Keep an open mind and give it a try where you can. It’s clearly not appropriate in every situation.'”


Where do you draw the line? Lane recommends thinking ahead about what the business needs to accomplish. “If you get away from why you’re in business—from the standpoint of growing the business—and focus too much on the needs only of the individual, then you don’t balance what’s really important [for the business],” he says. If the business folds, then there won’t be any jobs and the issue of whether somebody wants to work 32 hours instead of 40 will be a moot point.


“It’s that delicate balance between the business and what needs to get done to stay competitive and be successful and the people you have behind it to make it all happen,” says Johnston. “If you can balance that creatively, then I don’t see any problem. But if that balance gets tipped one way or the other, then I think we would have to scale back on our creativity.”


Lane says companies probably won’t go out advertising that they’re looking for people to work only 30 hours a week or fewer. And they probably won’t have 30 hours or less as the regular workweek format. But they are needing to be more flexible than ever—especially with those individuals who are highest on the talent chain. Where talent is tight (like in the Silicon Valley) employees essentially drive the process—not the employer. You may need them more than they need you.


Certainly, you can’t keep people working for you if they don’t want to work at all. But if they have chosen to give you some of their precious time, your challenge is to figure out how to keep people from drifting away further. “It goes back to the idea of how do you best create a work environment that allows people to feel the most dedicated, committed and effective that they can feel,” says Lane. Studies show that the more fulfilling you can make the workplace, the more commitment you can get from people, the more likely they are to stay and the more value they’ll feel from the whole relationship.


Money alone isn’t enough anymore. “Now more than ever, [people have a] life-enrichment view of what a job is. [Their job] needs to not take away from [their] development, but actually allow for more complete development,” says Lane. And, you have to be careful about hiring the right people in the first place.


Lane tells the story of Picasso. Picasso loved to paint in a blue room. That’s where he did his best work. “What would happen if a typical corporation hired Picasso, is they’d say, ‘We know you like to paint in a blue room, but we do yellow. You’ll get used to it.’ At Silicon Graphics, we’d say, ‘Well, we don’t have any blue rooms, but how could we get one?’ If you set up an environment that really believes in accommodating the talents and needs of an individual, then that framework gets pretty creative. If you do yellow rooms and you hire blue talent, it doesn’t work as well,” says Lane.


In fact, you’re no longer just competing with other companies for the best talent anymore. You’re competing with campouts, kayaking trips, spiritual awareness seminars, community fundraisers and white sandy beaches. While it may be more challenging for managers, it very well could be a more civilized way to work. And, in the end, an even more civilized way to live.


Personnel Journal, March 1996, Vol. 75, No. 3, pp. 62-76.


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