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Generic or Non-generic Job Descriptions

Charlie Jones, an adjunct professor of compensation management and labor relations at Boston University, says:
Have you ever heard the comment, “It’s not my job”? I have, and when I heard it, I wondered how the person knew it wasn’t his or her job. Did someone tell the individual, or did the person learn of the responsibilities through a job description? If so, what kind of description was it?


I believe the generic approach provides a better management tool than the specific approach because it’s more flexible and easy to maintain.


Fortunately, several software and hardware products currently on the market provide generic descriptions to assist companies in creating job descriptions. One of the oldest, “The Dictionary of Occupational Titles,” is a book that was originally published by the Department of Labor in 1949; it has since been published in newer editions. The descriptions usually require some tailoring to fit the individual organization, but such commercial products are a starting point and a viable, cost-effective alternative.


With a generic job description, one gains flexibility because the description addresses expectations and accountabilities and doesn’t get into the details of how a task should be performed. As more and more companies try to improve their products and services, generic descriptions keep employees focused on results rather than tasks.


Generic job descriptions also are much easier to maintain because they don’t have to be modified for minor changes in tasks. They can be used to cover employees performing the same function in different departments.


Although each organization is different and has its own approach to job descriptions, the purpose of a job description essentially is to serve as a communications vehicle. It should be the vehicle used to help describe a job to an applicant; facilitate communication between supervisors and employees concerning an employee’s role in the organization; outline the principal expectations and specific accountabilities associated with the position and form the basis for performance reviews; and identify work flow.


Glenn Nosworthy, an industrial psychologist with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, says:
The amount of work required to write useful job descriptions has led some HR professionals to turn to generic cut-and-paste descriptions as an alternative. But this practice doesn’t come without a cost.


Because job descriptions are used for a variety of functions, sometimes you may require more detail. A job description not founded on a systematic job analysis within the host organization can’t provide all the necessary information on the context and specifics of the job.


There also are important legal considerations. Courts in the United States and Canada have repeatedly ruled that personnel systems must be supported by job analysis. Consequently, using generic job descriptions in lieu of job analysis may place an organization in a legally vulnerable position.


In conducting job analysis sessions for one of North America’s largest police services, we’ve found that job descriptions often don’t reflect the actual requirements. On many occasions, we’ve gathered groups of job incumbents with identical job titles and descriptions only to find the nature of their work varied substantially. Given that generic job descriptions tend to use job titles as their starting point, this approach gives us much cause for concern.


There are no quick fixes in HR management. If an organization wants to have an effective, legally-defensible human resources system, there’s no substitute for a systematic job analysis. While job analysis can be time-consuming, its multiple benefits more than justify the investment. With generic cut-and-paste job descriptions, on the other hand, you get what you pay for: potentially erroneous or misrepresentative information. In today’s litigious climate, this isn’t a risk that organizations can afford to take.


Personnel Journal, February 1996, Vol. 75, No. 1, p. 102.


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Lessons from HR Overseas

We hear a lot these days about “thinking outside the box;” about searching in new places for new ways of solving our companies’ problems. It’s a useful concept. Our organizations aren’t the same as they were 20 years ago, so why should our management practices be?


But when you think of that box, that set of parameters that dictates conventional thinking, what does it look like? Is it your job? Your company? Your industry? To come up with truly innovative solutions, you probably have to search outside the boundaries of all three of these entities. However, there’s one more box you may want to consider peeking out of, and that’s the United States of America. As Michael Marquardt, professor of global human resources development at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., explains: “American companies think they’re the keepers of the best management practices. Consequently, they don’t try to learn as much as they can from other places.”


Whether U.S. business executives are arrogant or simply myopic is open to debate. What’s irrefutable, however, is that there’s a lot North American HR professionals can learn from their counterparts in companies overseas.


Granted, there’s a lot we do superbly in this country as well. “I think we’re considered the best country in the world in the practice of HR development,” says Marquardt. Adds Ron Kirchenbauer, vice president of HR for Ericsson, a Swedish tele-communications firm with a U.S. division in Richardson, Texas: “I think the pay-for-performance movement in this country is among the most progressive anywhere.” And HR consultants agree that management concepts we’ve pioneered, such as reengineering and the learning organization, put us on the cutting edge.


“Things aren’t working out very well in the States in a lot of areas, including health care, unemployment, homelessness and worker uncertainty.”


Our skill in these areas entice business people from around the world to visit our companies. In fact, many people attribute the success the Japanese have had since World War II to the fact that they came to the United States on study tours, looked at the best management practices American companies had to offer, and then adapted those practices to their own organizations. “They were under no illusion that the Japanese had all the answers,” Marquardt explains.


Unfortunately, American managers don’t appear quite so eager to learn from their foreign colleagues. “We tend to think U.S. companies are the most dynamic,” says Andy Craggs, international practice leader with The Wyatt Co. in San Francisco. “We’ve got the most research. Everybody has MBAs. We think we’ve got everything figured out. But in fact, things aren’t working very well in the states in a lot of areas, including health care, unemployment, homelessness and worker uncertainty. If something isn’t working with our system, let’s look outside and see what we can learn from others.”


Few international HR managers are naive enough to think that just because an HR practice works well in another country it will work just as well here. You can’t indiscriminately import a management practice into the states any more than you can casually export one—as many U.S.-based multinationals have discovered, albeit the hard way. You need to take a look at differences in cultural expectations, the legislative environment and labor-force economics when considering whether a practice that works in, say, Germany, would also work in the United States.


Furthermore, a management practice with tremendous upside potential probably also has a downside. Many European companies, for example, provide greater benefits and job security to their employees than we do in the states. But the cost of doing business is higher, the government bureaucracy is overwhelming and companies are slower to respond to marketplace opportunities. Simply put, there are two sides to every coin.


Given these caveats, what can we learn from HR practices in companies outside the United States? How are employees treated differently or better than here in the states? How are the HR functions managed? And are there HR programs in other countries that we have yet to consider?


To learn the answers to these questions, Personnel Journal asked international HR consultants, academics and practitioners what they considered to be the best—or at least better—HR practices in other countries. The wide array of responses indicate that American personnel professionals can indeed learn much from other countries.


Look around the world for ways to involve your work force.
So what are some of these better practices? For one, European and Japanese companies do a better job soliciting input on business decisions. “Even though in the United States we claim to be participative, I think we still tend to put all the power in the top executive levels,” says Craggs. “There’s such a focus on business results that we’re forced to make decisions that are tough on employees without looking at all the options. We can learn from companies in Europe, where employee input is sought on nearly every business issue.”


In many countries, such as Germany, worker input actually is mandated by law. Any company there with more than 100 employees has to set up a works council, which is made up of employees elected from various parts of the organization. German employers must gain the consent of the works council before they can appoint or dismiss employees, set working hours, introduce overtime or even change prices in the lunchroom. In addition, councils have the right to be consulted on a wide range of planning issues, such as decisions to open new plants or close existing ones. They also are entitled to information on company performance.


“These countries are learning new ideas at a faster pace than I’ve seen in the U.S. They may surpass us in terms of innovation in the next 10 years.”


U.S. managers might see this as a real pain in the neck, but there’s little evidence that German managers feel constrained by the works councils. “In the end, you have to establish a good working relationship with the councils, and if you do, you have no problems,” says Thomas Ranft, personnel director of the London, England branch of Deutsche Bank AG.


Although worker input isn’t quite as rigidly mandated in Scandinavian companies, employees there do have a great deal to say about management decisions, particularly those related to compensation, safety and capital expenditures, explains Alex Hainey, president of Drake Beam Morin Canada, Inc., who has served on the boards of two Norwegian companies.


And the participative management style of Japanese companies is well documented. Within Asian manufacturing firms in particular, workers are more attuned to business results than they are here. U.S. firms are picking up on the bottom-up communications style engaged in these firms, but Craggs says, “we’re still a bit behind the times.”


Furthermore, human resources operations tend to be more entrepreneurial in Asian companies (with the exception of Japan) than they are here. The economies in countries such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are expanding so rapidly that HR managers have to constantly create and innovate just to keep up with their expanding work forces. They create new programs out of necessity. “In terms of compensation and benefits, these countries are assimilating new information and learning new ideas at a much faster pace than I’ve seen in the United States,” says Jacque Vilet, senior international compensation and benefits manager with National Semiconductor in Santa Clara, California. “I predict they may surpass us in terms of innovation in the next 10 years.”


Explains Vilet: “There are companies over there that are doing skill-based pay although they don’t call it that. They don’t know what skill-based pay is. What they’ve done is reconfigure their factories to improve the work flow. This has resulted in a team model where a group of employees handles a particular process from start to finish. As a result, managers are realizing they have to change the way they pay people because now employees are doing multiple tasks and they have to learn all these new skills. The key is that they have thought this through themselves.”


Human resources professionals in other countries also are more willing to informally share information with one another, whereas HR managers in American companies are often reluctant to ask colleagues about their companies’ HR practices, preferring instead to rely on formal market surveys. “We’re more close to the vest,” says Jack Fitzhenry, human resources director for Cupertino, California-based Apple Computer’s Pacific division. Why? Because we like to have lots of data, we’re concerned with confidentiality, and we’re fearful of violating U.S. antitrust laws, he explains.


“My staff members, whether they’re in Canada or Hong Kong, seek information from their colleagues on a regular basis,” Fitzhenry says. For example, Apple was looking to hire a general manager for a plant in Hong Kong. The top candidate wanted a car and housing allowance that matched what he was getting at his current position. Apple’s HR managers thought the allowances he requested were high, but instead of searching for market surveys to validate the amounts, they called the HR manager at the candidate’s existing company and asked about the standard car and housing allowances. Turns out, the candidate was telling the truth. “Just by making a couple of phone calls, we were able to put our minds at ease,” says Fitzhenry. “We couldn’t do that as easily here.”


Continuous learning is an established practice overseas.
According to Marquardt, the concept of continuous learning is much more enthusiastically received in companies in Asia and the Middle East than it is in North America. Why? Because in both regions of the world, teaching is considered the most important thing a person can do, much of which has to do with the cultural legacies left by Confucius and Mohammed. Because teaching and learning are regarded so highly, the role of managers is seen as being one of teaching or facilitating; of being someone who helps the people around him or her learn.


For instance, in many Asian corporations—specifically those in Japan—whenever one’s subordinates are being trained, the manager is there. “This indicates that I think the learning that’s occurring is important,” Marquardt says.


Because of this strong emphasis on learning, mentoring roles in companies such as Toyota are taken very seriously. In fact, for a year or two before retirement, managers make a great effort to pass along their experience and wisdom to new people. “They realize the past has some value that we can learn from,” he adds, “where-as in the United States we tend to look only toward the future.”


In Asian companies, the focus on learning also includes an emphasis on developing international management talent, as opposed to just developing local talent. Management training courses frequently include language training, international diplomacy and etiquette. In other words, it’s assumed managers will be working across borders. This is because companies there view the Asia-Pacific as one business region, explains Paul Morris, international consultant with The Wyatt Co. “Companies in the United States might have a regional manager who covers several states,” he says, “but there, they’re trying to develop managers who are able to do business in all of Southeast Asia or all of Greater China.”


The focus on learning in Scandinavian and Nordic companies begins when employees start new jobs. More specifically, Ericsson’s Ron Kirchenbauer believes these companies do a more thorough job in helping new employees integrate into the company culture. “In the United States,” he says, “we tend to let employees find their own way through the company.” In Scandinavia, however, companies help new employees understand their internal customers, their suppliers and where to go for certain kinds of information. “It’s more than simply passing out a contact list,” Kirchenbauer says. “New employees are taken around, introduced to people and given a thorough understanding of their role as it relates to everyone else’s.”


In many parts of the world, training incorporates a greater respect for and acknowledgement of the employees’ personal lives. Companies in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, for example, regard their employees as whole people, who have needs and interests beyond professional and technical ones.


Take an organization like Hitachi. When Hitachi conducts management training courses, participants are given skills in management techniques just as you would expect. But, according to Marquardt, who co-authored the book, The Global Learning Organization, participants might also be taught to create haiku—the unrhymed three-line Japanese poems—to give them a sense of creativity and poetry. They might also review the rules of decorum for Japanese tea ceremonies, in which peaceful, simple living is encouraged. In addition, the courses could include book briefings, in which participants are exposed to a fairly diverse group of books in an effort to expand their knowledge of current literature. The point is that an effort is made to develop the whole person.


In many parts of the world, respect for the employee as an individual includes a high regard for the employee’s family. Latin American companies in particular are very concerned about family members. “When they hire a person, they’re also hiring that person’s family,” Marquardt says. At Carvajal Inversiones, a printing company located in Cali, Colombia, the family is so important that the company is in the process of developing a kindergarten where it plans to enroll employees’ children in an effort to detect talents and teach parents how to help develop those talents. Indirectly, the program is intended to help employees acquire the skills to build stable and solid families.


Sam Bernstein, international consultant with Hewitt Associates, L.L.C., in Lincolnshire, Illinois, confirms that respect for a person’s family life is greater outside the United States. “When a European goes on vacation, he or she isn’t reachable. There’s a clear dividing line between work and family. The same is true of Mexico. The Mexican executive on vacation is spending time with family and doesn’t want to be bothered by the office,” he says. When an American executive goes on vacation, however, everybody in the office usually has access to that person’s phone number. “American companies pay a lot of lip service to the importance of being family-friendly, but it just isn’t as natural to our culture,” Marquardt says.


How to learn from the practices of other countries.
What are HR professionals in the states supposed to make of all this? Primarily, it’s food for thought; a way to think outside of that proverbial box and look at ways to learn from the practices of companies in other regions of the world. When deciding how to integrate innovative or better HR practices into your own company, however, you need to start, well, inside your own company.


Applied Materials, Inc., in Santa Clara, California, for example, formed a series of global task forces that are charged with identifying the best HR practices in the company, regardless of where in the world they originate. There’s a global compensation task force, a global job-grading task force, and global mobility, benefits and training task forces. The goal, according to Carol Kaplan, manager of global compensation and benefits, is to look at which HR practices can be standardized across the 14 countries in which Applied Materials operates, and which practices need to managed on a local or regional level.


In coming up with recommendations, HR managers from each of the firm’s major divisions met for one week during each business quarter in 1994 to brainstorm and share information about successful country-specific practices. By the end of the year, members of the task forces presented their recommendations to company executives.


“By working together as a group, we’re able to come up with programs that meet all our needs,” she says. “In the United States, we’ve made a mistake in thinking that because we’re U.S.-based, what’s good for us is good for everybody around the world. What happens, then, is that we export programs that aren’t culturally sound and that ends up creating animosities toward corporate headquarters. It’s hard to restore those relationships once they’ve been broken. By coming together, we’re learning from each other, and finding better overall ways to do things.”


Apple Computer is also learning to listen to input from its HR professionals located outside U.S. borders, although the process has been slow. According to Fitzhenry, the first step has been for Apple’s American HR managers to be sensitive to their counterparts overseas and allow them to implement the kinds of programs that make sense for their cultures, as opposed to “cramming our programs down their throats.” Has the company begun to import any successful programs? “Not yet, and shame on us for not doing that,” Fitzhenry says. “Right now, we’re at the stage of sharing information about our programs; we haven’t taken the best of what they do and tried to make it work here. But as Asia, in particular, becomes more and more important to our business, we’ve got to wake up and understand that there’s a lot we can learn from the things they do extremely well.”


Of course, the truth of the matter is that HR practices are becoming more standardized, and differences, where they exist, just aren’t as great as they used to be. Look at the analogous trends under way in many parts of the world relative to flexible benefits, teamwork, flatter management structures, the decline of corporate paternalism and the increasing use of contingent workers. HR professionals are well on their way toward creating their own global village, and the village leaders are those who aren’t boxed in by their thinking.


Personnel Journal, February 1995, Vol. 74, No. 2, pp. 88-93.


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Legal Insight Making Sense of the Regulatory Maze

Within the last few years Congress has enacted a plethora of employment laws, each requiring careful review for their impact on the employment relationship. These laws regulate a host of issues, including: management-labor relations; benefits; wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment; leaves of absence; and the obligation to reasonably accommodate the disabled in the workplace. The list goes on and on.


Congress has, in most cases, instructed federal agencies to develop regulations regarding employee and employer rights and obligations under these new laws. Agencies then publish proposed and interim regulations, and it may take months—even years—for the regulations to become final.


Here, Wayne E. Barlow, a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Barlow and Kobata, representing management in areas related to labor, personnel and employment, takes you through the process of developing interpretive regulations for a recently enacted law—from its assignment to a federal agency to where the agency publishes final regulations—and shows you how and why your company should be part of the process.


What first happens after Congress enacts a law and assigns a federal agency to create regulations?
Once Congress requires an agency to develop interpretive regulations, the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA) provides that regulations are to be developed in accordance with a fact-finding technique known as notice and comment rulemaking.


The notice and comment sequence ensures that agency regulations will be subject to public comments. The process is intended to ensure that the public and persons regulated are given an opportunity to participate, provide information and suggest alternatives so the agency is educated about the impact of the proposed rule and can make a fully informed decision.


What steps must an agency follow in developing interpretive regulations?
First, a notice of the proposed rulemaking must be published in the Federal Register. The notice must include a statement of the time, place and notice of the public rulemaking proceedings, reference to the legal authority under which the rule is proposed, and either the terms or substance of the proposed rule or a description of the subject and issues involved.


After publishing the notice, the agency must give interested persons an opportunity to participate in the rulemaking through submission of written data or testimony at public hearings.


Following the period of public comment, the agency will then publish interim regulations. After publication of these regulations, the agency provides the public with another opportunity to comment before taking final action in the form of publication of the final rules.


Finally, the APA requires final regulations to be published in the Federal Register.


For what laws have federal agencies developed interpretative regulations that impact the employment relationship?
Within the recent past the following laws have been enacted: Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN); Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988; Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988; Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA); Civil Rights Act of 1991; and the Older Worker Benefit Protection Act amending the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.


In each of these laws, Congress has chosen a federal agency to develop regulations that explain and interpret the new law.


In addition to these laws, there are: the National Labor Relations Act and the Taft-Hartley Act (interpreted by the National Labor Relations Board); the Fair Labor Standards Act (interpreted by regulations developed by the U.S. Department of Labor); and the Occupational Safety and Health Act.


Are there examples of how the regulatory process works?
Take the FMLA. In the case of the Family and Medical Leave Act, Congress directed the U.S. Department of Labor to develop regulations that state employer obligations and rights. The FMLA requires employers with 50 or more employees to provide up to 12 weeks unpaid, job-guaranteed leave in a 12-month period for childbirth, adoption, and serious personal illness of employees or close family members.


The FMLA was enacted on February 5, 1993. Portions of the law applicable to non-union employees became effective on August 5, 1993, and the FMLA required the Department of Labor to issue regulations to implement the law by June 5, 1993.


To obtain public input and assist in the development of the regulations concerning FMLA, the Department of Labor published a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register on March 10, 1993, inviting comments until March 31, 1994, on a variety of questions and issues.


The Department of Labor issued an interim final rule on June 4, 1993, which went into effect on August 5, 1993. Further public comment on the interim rules was invited until December 3, 1993.


However, final regulations were not published until this year when on January 6, 1995, the Department of Labor published its final rule in the Federal Register. The total elapsed time was 18 months.


Is it important that the employer community monitor this process?
Regulations provide the details regarding laws passed by Congress and are intended to guide the public, including the employer community, to their rights and obligations. Particularly for larger organizations with sufficient resources, the employer community has every incentive to carefully monitor the development of agency regulations that will control the way it does business.


The discussion above shows, with respect to the Department of Labor’s publication of final rules regarding the FMLA, that the regulatory process is not only time consuming and protracted, but the agency authorized to develop the regulations often does not publish final regulations until well after the law itself has become effective. From the date the FMLA became effective on January 6, 1995, covered employers were required to comply with the FMLA, and incur potential liability for erroneous decisions in granting employee leaves, even if they were made in good faith.


Given this delay, it is critical that employers remain current on developments involving the regulatory process.


Must employers comply with proposed and interim federal agency regulations?
Generally, yes. The validity of a proposed rule, interim rule or final rule depends on whether the agency is empowered to adopt the rule and whether the rule is consistent with the statute passed by Congress. Absent a specific basis to believe the regulations are invalid, employers should comply with the regulations.


Employers may generally rely upon and act consistent with proposed and interim regulations. However, if the proposed regulation conflicts with case law interpretation of the statute, little weight would be extended to the regulation.


Before being declared void, a court must find the regulation to be inconsistent with the law passed by Congress. A court construing an Act of Congress will give substantial deference to the agency’s interpretation of the law so long as it is reasonable and not in conflict with the statute.


Most important for employers, for enforcement purposes, the agency charged with ensuring compliance will rely upon any proposed regulations.


May an employer submit comments or suggestions to a federal agency developing regulations and, if so, how?
The rulemaking process is an invaluable opportunity for the employer community and permits an organization to submit comment on proposals being considered.


Referring to the employer community’s experience with the FMLA, the Department of Labor received a total of 393 comments in response to that agency’s notice of proposed rulemaking. The agency received 900 comments on the interim final rules from such diverse groups as employers, law firms, management consultants, temporary help and employee leasing companies, professional and trade associations, universities and individuals. Comments were also received from advocacy groups, unions, family counselors and therapists and clinical social workers.


Important issues regarding employer obligations were determined in the rulemaking process. The final rule, for example, broadened an earlier definition of an employee’s serious health condition for which family leave must be granted. The law itself defined a serious health condition as an illness, injury, impairment, or physical or mental condition that involves certain hospital or similar treatment by healthcare providers. In interim proposed rules, the Department of Labor described a serious health condition as a period of incapacity of more than three days, and defined continuing care as involving one visit to a health-care provider that results in a regimen of continued care under the provider’s supervision. In the final rule, serious health condition was broadened to cover both short- and long-term conditions for which treatment and recovery are lengthy, such as for chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes. The Department of Labor determined to stick to the “more than three days” policy, reasoning that the law was intended to provide that conditions lasting only a few days were not intended to be included as serious health conditions because such conditions are normally covered by employers’ sick-leave plans.


However, as a result of the rulemaking process, the final regulation gave special consideration to chronic conditions which continue over an extended period yet often cause periods of incapacity of less than three days. The final rule covers such conditions.


Does the term “legislative history” include the rulemaking process and does it provide guidance useful to employers?
No, legislative history refers to the debate in Congress leading to enactment of legislation. Such history includes committee reports, floor dates in the House and Senate and messages to the President.


However, in developing interpretative rules, agencies often look to such legislative history to determine what is meant by key terms found in law. Such history is useful to the employer community only if an employer believes that specific provisions of a law are not explained by the law itself or an agency’s interpretive regulations of the law.


How can I locate proposed and final federal agency regulations?
Proposed and final regulations can be found in the Federal Register. It is suggested that a company’s HR or legal department monitor regulatory developments contained in the Register for their impact on day-to-day personnel decisions and policies.


Personnel Journal, February 1995, Vol. 74, No. 2, pp. 100-102.


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Partnerships Help A Company Manage Performance

Most managers and employees consider the performance review to be, at best, a necessary evil. Everyone anticipates it with dread. Although it’s supposed to help the employee and promote learning, most view it as a process of finding and recording guilt. The supervisor, in turn, feels awkward playing a quasi-parental role and doesn’t relish placing the employee in the position of reprimanded child.


Although the performance review is often the single most important work-relevant discussion that a supervisor and employee have during the year, in its traditional form, it fails as a learning tool. Even if the supervisor handles it ideally, asking open-ended questions and checking for agreement, it simply isn’t easy for people to learn in a situation permeated by judgment.


Performance management, for the most part, is a carryover from prehistoric times, when hierarchy and control were the watchwords. No wonder it makes people uncomfortable-especially in organizations trying to replace hierarchy with networks and control with commitment.


The managers and staff of Rosemead, California-based Southern California Edison wanted-in fact, needed-to change this dismal scenario. Like many other companies in these turbulent times, SCE has been restructuring and simultaneously attempting to redefine its corporate culture.


Corporate human resources determined that, to support this culture change, the entire performance management process needed a major overhaul. The problem? SCE’s new values emphasized empowerment, calling for “challenge, candor and commitment.” But employee attitude questionnaires had indicated that the current performance management system was counterproductive in all respects.


In the spirit of empowerment, corporate HR left it up to each operating department to design the performance management system that suited its business strategy best. There were only two stipulations:


  1. Each system should include a way of encompassing employee and team goals, evaluating individual contributions to strategic priorities and building commitment to corporate values.
  2. Three milestones should be observed: filing a performance plan at the beginning of the appraisal year, conducting a mid-year review, and producing a final evaluation at year’s end.

Before retooling his department’s performance management program, Ron Juliff, head of health care and employee services, used interviews and focus groups to collect more in-depth data on the current performance management system. Results confirmed the negative attitude, and helped guide the way to necessary changes. Employee comments included:


  • “My manager is removed from my performance. I’ve got 17 projects I’m working on, and my manager has no idea how I’m doing on them.”
  • “One month before my review, my manager gives me a list of goals.”
  • “Basically, everybody gets the same rating, so why all the fuss about this stuff?”

The health care and employee services department reviewed the comments carefully. Rather than feeling daunted by the problems, the department saw them as an opportunity to embody SCE’s new spirit of empowerment. The department decided to surpass the company’s mandate: Rather than tweak or enhance the old system, it would create a new one from scratch.


A task force guides the way to a new performance management process.
The first step was to call for volunteers to participate in a consultant-facilitated task force. Surprisingly, 40 people of the 335-person department-managers and non-managers from various functions-offered their services, even though everyone in the organization was overwhelmed with work. Did this eagerness indicate a profound dissatisfaction with current performance reviews, or a strong desire to influence the work environment? Both, as it turned out. One volunteer said, “Who better than us to solve our problems with performance management? It’s up to us to become fixers rather than finger pointers.”


Initially, all the volunteers were involved in determining key problems and defining the parameters for a new system. Then Juliff, working with the consultant and managers, slimmed this rather unwieldy group to 20. To ensure an effective cross-section of the work force, it identified the characteristics of its ideal task force:


  • It would be a complete representation of processes, functions and levels in the department
  • It would contain more non-supervisors than supervisors
  • It would involve people who were not only concerned with the current system but who had ideas for improvement.

The remaining volunteers continued to help on an ad hoc basis.


At first, it was difficult to convince the task force that they were really in charge-that they could start with a blank slate and design a completely new system based on what performance management ought to be. This was the first time they had had an opportunity to influence how they and their colleagues would be assessed. But soon they were working enthusiastically, meeting once a month as a group and also working in subgroups on discrete issues such as format and training.


Along the way, the task force helped ensure buy-in by regularly soliciting supervisors’ and employees’ opinions. They were, the task force reasoned, the performance management system’s final customers. Although it’s never easy to make such a big change, the task force pointed out that no one was happy with the current program. It encouraged everyone in the department to provide input regarding the new system’s creation. Supervisors and employees were continually asked, “Do you like how the new performance management system is shaping up?” “What do you like about it?” “What would you change?” By asking for direct input, the task force eased the new paradigm in gently and positively.


Assisted by the consultant, who provided process guidance and information on the best systems used by other companies, the task force maintained their enthusiasm during the six months or so it took to implement the new system. Finally, they came to a consensus. What was needed, they concluded, was a process in which:


  • Employees as well as supervisors assume responsibility
  • Both supervisors and employees learn new skills so that they can work better
  • The steps are “doable” for both
  • The focus is on values and future growth, not past problems
  • Both parties are honest and candid
  • The discussion is not a control tool, but rather supports a partnership between employee and supervisor.

“The main objective was to get rid of judgment,” says John Stimson, a supervisor and task force member.


To signal the creation of a new way of managing performance, the department wanted to give the process a new name. To reinforce the new system’s egalitarian, positive qualities, the task force quickly scrapped the title “performance appraisal” and even dumped “performance management,” because both implied that one party does something to or for the other. The title they came up with was Performance Enhancement Process (PEP)-and they meant the performance of the supervisor as well as the employee. Together, the two would need to plan and act with the interests of the business in mind.


Before implementing the PEP, the task force knew it would have to work on departmental communication, which had been its weak link in the past. For the PEP to succeed, sharing thoughts and ideas would have to become a natural part of working together, rather than just an initiative. So the task force upped the communication requirement, adding two discussions to the three prescribed by corporate human resources. This problem addressed, the department was ready to try out its new Performance Enhancement Process.


In the new system, supervisors and employees improve their performance together.
PEP discussions begin with an active examination of the question, “Who are we here to serve?” This is a simple way to clarify the nature and aim of the work. Although the first impulse may be to answer, “Our boss,” the true answer has to do with mission, vision, values and customers. Both supervisors and employees need to address this issue-together.


Then, the employee and supervisor collaboratively define objectives that lead to the accomplishment of business strategies by asking questions like, “Where are we going?” and “What will it look like when we get there?” These objectives can be measured with time limits, productivity gauges and/or desired


outcomes.


“I’m aware now that I actually have goals, that they’re in sync with the company’s goals, and that I need to monitor them, not just do my job rote.”


Once objectives have been collaboratively defined and agreed upon, the employee has an opportunity to suggest the best people to assess how well he or she is doing. These sources of data and measurement may include supervisors, peers, customers, suppliers or colleagues in other departments. This shifts assessment away from supervisors only, to include others who may actually be better sources of information.


The employee and supervisor then decide which of them will do the interviewing, which sources will be interviewed, and what questions will be asked. For example, questions might include:


  • Do you feel this objective has been accomplished on time and within budget?
  • I have a concern about this problem; how do you feel about it?
  • What can we do to improve our service to you? Give me specific examples.

These sources are contacted throughout the year; thus, feedback becomes part of day-to-day work life.


At the follow-up PEP meeting, the supervisor and employee compare notes on the interviews, come up with an assessment, share ideas and define what each person must do to pursue the issues. They focus on opportunities, not judgment, posing such questions as: “How will each of us handle this differently when the situation arises next time? Let’s create a scenario.”


Also at each milestone during the appraisal year, employee and supervisor clarify that they are still in agreement. This helps make sure they are not surprised at the end of the year. And since priorities may change during the year, the employee won’t energetically pursue goals that may no longer be appropriate.


As in any productive partnership, the performer can request help along the way rather than attempting to cover up limitations at the back end-the only written evaluation that goes into the employee’s personnel file comes at year’s end.


And the health and employee services department continues to fine-tune the program. It’s adjusting its rewards and compensation system to further support the PEP-which employees are lauding for giving them more control over their destinies. Says Stimson,”This process makes me feel more accountable to myself and the company. I’m aware that I actually have goals, that they’re in sync with company goals, and that I need to be monitoring them, not just doing my job by rote.”


Learning new mindsets and habits is rarely easy. But follow-up discussions indicate that both supervisors and employees feel energized by moving from passive recipients to active participants, and by the continuous improvement in candidness that pervades the department. By learning to work together to plan performance, supervisors and employees have eliminated the us-vs.-them feel of traditional performance reviews to become true partners in improving their business.


Personnel Journal, January 1995, Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 104-108.


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Take the Fear Out of Termination

There’s no such thing as a quick, clean-cut termination any more. The very act of firing has become embroiled in legal complications so sticky that many employers find it difficult to even make a move toward firing an employee. One of the lawsuits most likely to hit an employer is wrongful termination.


And likely is the key word. The Dunlap Commission, which was created by Labor Secretary Robert Reich to study labor laws, issued a preliminary report of its findings in May, and it’s not optimistic for employers. The Commission stated that about 10,000 wrongful termination complaints are filed every year in state court. Employers need to protect themselves if they don’t want to be among those 10,000.


Michael J. Lotito is the West Coast coordinating partner for the New York City-based law firm of Jackson Lewis Schnitzler & Krupman, a practice limited to representation of management in labor, employment and benefits law. Here, Lotito offers advice on warding off and dealing with wrongful termination suits.


To begin with, could you explain the types of complaints that could fall under a wrongful termination suit?
It could be contractual claims: violations of so-called expressed contracts of employment, based upon either formal written contracts or employee handbooks; or it could be implied contracts based upon a pattern of conduct or verbal representations that might have been made. It could be [termination after] promises of long-term employment or guaranteed employment. It could be violations of so-called public-policy complaints, such as individuals being terminated for attempting to exercise a right that was guaranteed them, such as making a complaint to the labor commissioner or fulfilling their duty to do jury duty. It could be [termination for] the refusal to do something that the law says is wrong, such as refusing to lie in connection with a financing statement that a company files with the Security and Exchange Commission when trying to go public, or when an employee refuses to engage in behavior that would pollute a stream and violate an environmental law.


In its broadest definition, are those all the cases that could fall under a wrongful termination suit?
If you want to broadly define wrongful termination, that could include anything from sex discrimination to race discrimination and all those sorts of [actions dealing with] protected classes as well. So it really depends upon how broadly you want to define wrongful termination. It could be a wide variety of issues. I think that wrongful termination today is usually defined in the broadest sense, although there is customarily a distinction made between a claim based upon the public policy complaints as opposed to the statutory violations, which are the complaints that [involve] race, color, creed, sex, etc.


What is the time frame in which a former employee may legally file suit against a company?
It varies depending on the [type of claim]. I’d say as a general rule the individual has around a year. [The opportunity to file suit] doesn’t go on forever. Ordinarily if you haven’t heard from the employee within a year, it’s very unlikely that you’re going to hear anything at all. And it usually happens faster than that.


How common are wrongful termination lawsuits?
We know, based on a study that was concluded about a year ago, that over the last 20 to 25 years, we’ve seen an increase of about 2,000% in the number of these types of complaints being filed. Some predictors suggest that any major company is going to at least get threatened with one of these actions—if not hit with an actual lawsuit—about once every seven years.


Will the likelihood of a company being involved in this type of suit increase?
Wrongful termination is widely perceived as one of the most rapidly expanding areas of any legal practice, and it is literally spawning the development of law firms for the defense of these types of cases. It’s a major complaint of businesses today. So this is a big, big deal, and when it’s combined with the type of money awards that can be issued, it’s a significant concern to management.


Is the number of complaints increasing because a lot of employers are in the wrong, or are there other factors?
I’ve maintained for a long time that employment law has less to do with law than it does with money and emotion. These cases tend to be extremely emotional, and the amount of money involved is huge. The damage awards are very, very significant, and that’s one of the things fueling the onslaught of litigation in this arena.


Of the complaints filed, how many would you say actually get to court and receive these huge awards?
I’d say 98% of these cases are never tried, and maybe 90% are never even heard about. But there’s a tremendous onslaught of threatened litigation. And because they’re so expensive to try, and management tends to lose about 70% of them in front of juries that really don’t understand the employment relationship, many companies find it’s easier to settle than it is to defend their principles. As a result, we have many, many confidential settlement agreements with companies paying out very large sums of money in order to rid themselves of the time, the aggravation and the bad publicity that can come as the result of a negative verdict.


Conduct such as racial discrimination and harassment is clearly wrong. But what types of activities could a company engage in quite innocently that may get it into trouble down the road?
The overwhelming majority of these complaints come not from discrimination, but rather improper personnel actions. For instance, in order to persuade a tryer of fact—a jury, a judge or an administrative agency—that what they did was correct, a company has to have supporting documentation for its decision. When the supervisor [in explaining a termination] says, “The individual did something wrong, and that’s why I [terminated the employee],” and the employee says “I did it right, and the supervisor is wrong in saying I didn’t, and the real reason was because of my race” or whatever, the tryer of fact, looking at these two stories, has to find some other way to determine who’s telling the truth. And they usually look to documentation.


What is usually wrong with the documentation that could hurt an employer’s case?
Oftentimes the documentation that employers have to back up the decision is either non-existent, incomplete or downright inconsistent with the stated reason. Often that comes about because supervisors don’t know how to conduct a performance appraisal—they haven’t been trained. As a result, the supervisor, in sitting down with somebody, will conduct a performance appraisal, and to avoid conflict says that the individual is fully satisfactory when that really is code for “I wish that I’d never hired him or her in the first place.” And then when the documentation is inconsistent with the stated reason, the company is put in the unconscionable position of being asked the question: “Were you lying then or now?” And as a result the company loses.


What are the steps that a company should take to protect itself before terminating an employee?
I think that what companies have to do is what I summarize as my ABCs. They always must: be consistent, document everything, treat people equally and to the extent that they can, be fair. Those are my ABCs. I think that before you make a decision to terminate, the company should first suspend, in order to be able to conduct an investigation.


What should companies cover in the investigation?
Have someone who’s skilled in these issues take a look at the decision before it’s made. Make sure it stacks up to those ABCs, that there is indeed consistency and that the supporting documentation is going to be consistent with the personnel decision. Then after that check has been done it’s OK to go ahead and make that decision. But it’s very frustrating as a practitioner to be called in after the decision has been made and to try to justify something that you wish could have been much more properly documented or defended.


So an employee’s winning a wrongful termination suit is often a result of employers not thinking a termination through?
It’s because employers don’t go back to the basics, to have well-schooled, well-trained, educated supervisors who from a preventive standpoint can make a decision with the anticipation that it is someday going to be reviewed by a jury. If so, how will the jury look at it? Until you pass that test, I suggest you not terminate anyone.


So should companies train supervisors more on these issues?
I don’t believe that the supervisors, however well-trained, can do it themselves. I believe that in any organization, the most authority that any one person should have is the right to suspend an employee pending termination. I believe that there should be a designated central source within every organization that is responsible for reviewing these terminations. Who that central source is will depend on the organization’s complexity. But there should be somebody designated within the organization—because there’s so much at risk here—to review the decision before it becomes irretrievable and somebody says two years down the road, “If I only knew then what I know now.”


You mentioned the importance of documentation. How much should you document to protect your company?
In the best of all worlds, having an essential-function job description that’s also utilized as a basis for the interviewing of candidates, and then is matched to the performance appraisal form where employees and other end-users of the product give input [as to how] the employee is producing so that you have uniform feedback from everybody involved and it’s very clear and consistent from one person to another—that’s what’s best.


What other forms of documentation does a company need?
An employee handbook that clearly states what the rules are, what the progressive discipline is, what the results of inappropriate behavior can be—that should certainly be in place. The employee should sign a receipt for that booklet that says “I agree to read the regulations and abide by them, and if I breach them then I agree to be subject to the penalties provided.” All of that should be there. If your work force is 95% non-English speaking, it’s a good idea to have a handbook in a language that they speak. These things may sound like just common sense and the answer is, well sure it is. The only problem is that common sense is very uncommon.


You say many of these suits are fueled by emotional issues. When you terminate someone, how can you ensure the employee doesn’t feel wronged?
All companies should consider what’s known as ADR or alternate dispute resolution—sometimes known as avoiding disastrous results, also sometimes known as achieving desirable resolutions. In essence it’s an alternative to filing a governmental complaint or going to a plaintiff’s lawyer and filing a lawsuit. It can include such things as arbitration clauses, mediation, peer reviews. The central theme is that employees are entitled to due process. They’re entitled to have some tribunal make a judgment as to whether or not the employee was treated properly and consistently. You don’t necessarily have to go outside the organization in order to have that sort of a review. The organization can provide it. Organizations that have their employees represented by unions have done that for years with grievance and arbitration procedures, and you don’t need a union necessarily to have those type of procedures in place. That, it seems to me, is the No. 1 thing companies ought to do to avoid these types of complaints.


What else can you do for an employee to ease the transition?
Make sure that the emotion has dissipated. One way is to ensure that you do have this ultimate form of due process. Another way of dissipating the emotion is to call upon professionals who know how to do it. Those are the outplacement agencies, the individuals who can work with the person in structuring their resumŽ, in figuring out how to go on with their life. [It’s important to] do these things in a very humane way because there’s hardly anything more frightening than not having an income to provide for you and your family.


Anything else a company should consider to protect itself?
There’s insurance that can be purchased today against these types of complaints where counsel is provided and different damages are covered. That’s certainly something that from a preventive standpoint companies should consider doing.


Let’s say the worst happens and an employer is taken to court. How can the company prepare?
If you have not worked with counsel, now would be a good time to consult with one. There needs to be an independent assessment of the facts which involves an independent investigation. Then there needs to be what I call a risk-assessment meeting—what’s the likelihood that something [illegal] happened? What’s the likelihood that the individual is going to succeed? How much is it going to cost to defend? What are the implications of negative publicity? And other practical issues become involved, such as, is your primary witness a supervisor who himself is about to be subjected to discipline and discharge? That does not make for a good lawsuit when your primary witness has been fired three months after he or she has fired the plaintiff. Those practical types of concerns are very, very important.


Anything else that’s important for employers to know?
Just to summarize, this is an area of the law that still doesn’t get a proper degree of respect in most organizations. Until 10 years ago, employment decisions were not viewed as a high-risk ventures. Today they’re extraordinarily high-risk ventures. They need the attention of the organization’s top executives, not necessarily in making every single decision, but in making sure systems are in place so that when these decisions get made, they’re made in the most intelligent, defensible way that they can possibly be made.


Personnel Journal, January 1995, Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 123-126.


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How To Determine Future Work-force Needs

After extensive downsizing, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s top priority was to create a degree of employment stability despite continual turmoil from skill-mix changes and technological advancements. TVA developed a work-force planning process it defines as “the systematic assessment of future HR needs and the determination of the actions required to meet those needs.” The process, described by David E. Ripley, manager of work-force planning, serves as a model for companies hoping to align their human resources with future business goals.


Work-force planning is identifying and responding to future HR needs and can be implemented in almost any organization. It can provide a rational basis for developing and funding HR programs needed to support organizational objectives. Initially, the process used should be simple, and should reflect the size and complexity of the organization.


Successful implementation requires strong support from HR, involvement and ownership by line workers, and commitment from senior management. The degree of automated support needed depends on the size and complexity of the organization, as well as the hardware and software currently being used.


Work-force planning involves two major activities. First is developing and analyzing data that identify HR needs. This will include such data as future gaps and surpluses in the work force, diversity statistics, population demographics, health and safety statistics, turnover rates and causes, and employee-opinion survey results. The organization’s mission, values, strategic goals and business objectives must also be considered data, as should federal and state laws and regulations.


The second major activity is developing responses to the identified needs. These responses may be action plans (such as recruiting or training plans), or may require developing special programs. Responses normally include both organizationwide activities and programs designed to address the specific needs of various business units.


These activities will add value to any organization. For one, work-force planning contributes to the successful accomplishment of an organization’s strategic goals and business objectives. Every strategic goal and business objective has a human element that needs to be identified and provided for in a company’s business plan—just as surely as that strategic goal or business objective’s financial requirement needs to be identified and provided for.


But most organizations, somewhere in their value statements, also stress creating an environment that enables employees to develop their potential to the fullest, or words to that effect. Work-force planning provides a means to address these employee needs as well as business needs. For example, skill-gap and surplus information projected during the work-force planning process enables any organization to do a better job in such areas as career counseling, training, recruiting, diversity and retraining—both for employees’ needs and for tailoring such programs to the specific needs of the organization and its business units. At TVA, this information has helped the agency implement cross-organizational placement and retraining as alternatives to job cutbacks in the individual business units.


Another way that work-force planning helps add value to the organization is when business plans must be modified to deal with the unexpected. When such circumstances occur, the work-force planning process can provide the knowledge to make intelligent decisions.


Developing a work-force plan requires going through an eight-step process.
Before starting into a work-force planning process, an organization should define its desired goal. A goal could be defined as something like: “To develop human resources strategies that respond to identified employee needs and make the necessary HR contributions to the organization’s strategic goals and business objectives.” This definition addresses both employee and organizational needs, and points clearly to the kind of data that needs to be gathered and analyzed.


Once the desired goal has been determined, process development should begin. If work-force planning is being done for the first time, the process should be kept as simple and as “doable” as possible. Start out walking and run later.


We developed an eight-step methodology. The number of steps isn’t particularly important. What is important is that there is an understandable methodology that guides business units through the process.


The steps are:


  • Lay out a plan and a schedule
  • Perform a staffing assessment
  • Develop demand data
  • Develop supply data
  • Compare demand and supply data
  • Develop the work-force plan
  • Communicate and implement the work-force plan
  • Evaluate and update the plan.

Laying out a plan and schedule will facilitate accomplishing the next seven steps better. For example, you should create planning teams and management oversight teams for each business unit during this phase that will aid in the implementation process later on.


The staffing assessment involves benchmarking your organization’s staff size and skill mix against selected criteria. To do so you must decide on the specific processes or functions to be benchmarked and identify the companies with which to compare. Or, you can focus the staffing assessment internally by examining work drivers, outputs, processes and tasks. Either way, the results can be used to develop a model organization.


This activity may only need to be conducted every few years, but the results need to be continually reviewed as the organization and the business environment change. The larger and more complex the company, the more complex this step will be. Conversely, for a smaller organization—perhaps only dealing with one major function—it may be a relatively quick and simple process.


Next, you need to develop demand data by projecting, over the planning horizon, the numbers of employees and the skills that will be needed to meet business objectives. Although one would expect to move toward the model organization developed in the staffing assessment, it may take some years to get there for any number of reasons. Think of it this way: The staffing assessment model is a destination, while the demand-data projections describe the journey to get there.


Developing supply data is done by projecting the current population over the planning horizon, as if there were no new hires. This requires attrition assumptions concerning resignations, transfers, retirements, deaths, and the number of technical trainees who fail. Assumptions may need to vary by business unit. For example, there may be a unit that has a high number of employees eligible for retirement.


After compiling both the demand data and supply data, you’ll need to determine the future gap and/or surplus situation, in both numbers and skills. A gap indicates that the demand will exceed the supply; a surplus indicates that the supply will exceed the demand. Employees in occupations that are projected as surplus are considered to be “at risk.” Here, it’s important to identify projected gaps in skills critical to the success of the organization and to identify at-risk occupations or employees.


From here, you need to analyze the data to identify issues in three major areas:


  • Demand and supply data, such as skill gaps and at-risk occupations
  • Overall corporate issues, such as strategic goals and corporate values related to the work force
  • Organization-specific issues, such as business objectives or an aging population in a particular business unit.

You then can develop a work-force plan by identifying future HR needs in these areas and developing strategies and action plans. For example, at TVA, to facilitate cross-organizational placement and retraining of at-risk employees, we developed a system for inputting supply-and-demand data at the department level that’s accessible agencywide.


The work-force plan should become a part of the organization’s business plan. Communicating it will bring it to life. Effective communication is vital for employees to understand its value. Therefore, you should communicate the basis of the plan, as well as its elements, to all employees. That is, communicate the business-plan strategies and assumptions that the work-force plan is based on, as well as communicating the work-force plan strategies themselves. Make the tie to the organization’s business plan clear to all.


Implementation and follow-through will demonstrate your commitment to the plan to employees.
Although the logic for work-force planning is sound, that doesn’t mean it automatically will be embraced by managers who have many other things to do. No matter how good an idea, it probably will fail unless the organization is ready to accept it.


In addition, moving to a more proactive approach that will get you ahead on the curve involves a shift in thinking and a degree of culture change. The middle of the organization usually drives the implementation of work-force planning, and change driven from the middle—particularly when it involves a shift in culture—normally can’t succeed without top-management support.


In our case, work-force planning was viewed as a vehicle to help stabilize employment, so the organization was ready for it. Support was present and has since been reinforced by our new chairman.


As mentioned earlier, a major factor in the successful implementation of work-force planning is how well the organization begins the planning process. Creating a management oversight team for each business unit during that first phase will help drive the process because managers are more likely to take ownership of, and provide support for, a work-force plan that they had a hand in developing. Each of these teams should be headed by a senior manager selected by the organization’s senior executive. These teams would be responsible for ensuring that each business unit’s planning team develops implementation plans that address such issues as:


  • Key milestones in plan development
  • Clarification of accountabilities
  • Resolution of integration issues associated with the plan, such as discussions with unions
  • Schedules for completion of activities needed to produce the work-force plan
  • The need for a comprehensive communications plan to inform employees of the plan’s content, and the business and other assumptions upon which it’s based
  • Organizational critical success factors that the plan must address
  • Performance indicators to measure work-force action plan progress in addressing critical success factors and meeting business objectives.

The function of management oversight is more important than the particular composition of the teams. In a smaller organization, the chief executive may take this responsibility personally.


There should, however, be planning teams for each business unit, rather than one for the entire company. These teams—also created during the first phase of the process—should be headed by the organization’s senior human resources official or designee. Or, some organizations consider this an excellent developmental assignment for other managers. Either way, the teams should have representatives from all key units of the company and should be standing teams, although membership periodically should rotate.


The planning teams’ primary responsibility is to manage the actual development of their units’ work-force plan and to monitor its implementation. Further, the teams should build ongoing status reporting into the process so that the plans can be modified when necessary.


The planning teams can have subgroups work on particular issues. This is an excellent way to involve a significant number of employees at all levels in the effort. For example, several task teams can be given the job of developing recommended action plans to deal with all identified human resources issues. Another team can deal with integrating action plans with business-plan objectives and the demand forecast with projected budgets. Yet another team might take on development of the communications plan.


The planning teams must stay focused on key issues. Every action plan developed should tie to an identified HR need that in turn ties to strategic goals, organizational values and critical success factors, business objectives, or the like. Action plans should have a clear objective, and progress toward accomplishing the objective should be measurable by an identified performance indicator. It’s critical to avoid the activity trap, where the objective can become simply the check-off of activities completed rather than accomplishments.


Implementing work-force plans successfully requires corporate support and automated systems.
To be effective, work-force plans need to belong to the business units. The demand forecasts and action plans in particular must be owned by the business units. However, there’s a need, particularly in the first few planning cycles, for significant internal consulting support from the corporate staff in developing business unit work-force plans. This support group need not be large, nor should it be doing the business units’ work-force planning for them. It should, however, provide the business units with tools and functional support during the process (see “Staffers Support Business Units’ Work-force Planning”).


One of the tools a corporate support group should supply is a sufficient automated system and the training to use it. Of course, if an organization is small enough, work-force planning can be carried out with a tablet and a hand calculator. As the organization grows, however, it probably will need to go to a PC spreadsheet to input demand data directly and pick up supply data from PC-based human resources information systems (HRIS).


There is an increasing number of good PC-based shelf systems coming available for the small or even midsize organization. However, in a larger and more complex company that needs a number of people at many locations to access the data, an extensive automated support system may be needed. Without it, rolling up data organizationwide, and analyzing it, becomes very cumbersome.


The system an organization installs also may be driven somewhat by its existing hardware and software. In our case, we could see our best option was to go to a mainframe system. Our HRIS existed on mainframe, and although this data could have been downloaded to PCs, many of our potential users didn’t have PCs. These users did, however, have access to the mainframe. In addition, we needed to keep the supply data base up-to-date. Because supply is, at all times, current population projected forward, it changes daily.


We developed an SAS mainframe application, which we call WorkForcePlanner, that goes directly to HRIS and extracts supply data as of that moment. Thus, the supply data base is maintained.


Another factor that will impact automated support-system development is the type of data contained in the organization’s HRIS. At TVA, our basic planning matrix is job titles and organization codes. Demand data (staffing projections) are entered on this basis and compared to supply data generated from HRIS. The system compares the two and generates gap and surplus data over the planning horizon. We can print and analyze reports on supply and demand or gaps and surpluses on a number of HRIS criteria.


A case can be made that we need more detail on individual skills in our system. Currently, we’re working to develop a skills inventory system that will allow us to integrate into our planning system more data on existing population skills and projected position skill needs.


A word of caution on automated support systems: Don’t forget that every number the system produces, except for today’s actual data, is a guess—a very good guess, perhaps, but still only that. Also, the further out the projection, the more the data degrade. Building an automated system that defines future gaps or surpluses in very specific detail implies a degree of precision that simply doesn’t exist.


Having an automated support system does better enable you to update and revise the work-force plan annually. Keep in mind that, above all, the planning process should serve the organization’s needs. If, in the middle of the normal cycle, conditions change significantly, there should be no hesitation to modify the work-force plan and its strategies accordingly.


Each action plan should be evaluated frequently. The activities aren’t an end in themselves, but are intended as an appropriate response to an identified issue. If they’re being properly executed but not generating the desired result, revisit the issue.


There’s no reason the process can’t be expected to evolve over time as users become more sophisticated in work-force planning. The above steps, for example, have a clear internal bias, with major emphasis on staffing projections. Over time, we expect to put more emphasis on external issues, such as external supply demographics. It’s probably wise to start, however, with an internal focus. To repeat, walk before you run. And if you take one step at a time, you should be able to successfully plan for your future HR needs.


Personnel Journal, January 1995, Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 83-89.


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Repatriation Up, Down or Out

Nina and David Cissell are the lucky ones. For 2 1/2 years, David was business director for the chemical division in Brussels for Monsanto Corporation—a company that takes international human resources planning seriously. Consequently, when the Cissells returned to St. Louis, they were among the first participants in Monsanto’s repatriation program.


They attended a repatriation training program in which they learned what they should expect upon re-entry. They were warned about the culture shock of returning home, about how colleagues and friends might be different, about how the office environment might have altered, about how much the expatriate experience had changed them and their three children.


Monsanto’s program included an opportunity for the Cissells to showcase their new knowledge in a debriefing session. Cissell invited five people to a meeting and shared with them what it was like to have lived abroad—personally and professionally—and what it was like to return home. Nevertheless, he and his family admit there were times when they still felt as if they were in a timewarp. They returned to familiar surroundings in the United States, but they were quite changed.


Luckily, the Cissells were surrounded by people who took an interest and maintained it as the expats transitioned back into American life. Cissell was promoted to the position of director of finance for the Latin America World area. The vast majority of re-entering expatriates don’t experience similar HR planning and repatriation programs to help them.


“Repatriation has been the classic step-child in international HR management,” says Nancy Adler, professor of organizational behavior and cross-cultural management at McGill University, a noted researcher and author of articles and books, including most recently: Competitive Frontiers: Women Managers in a Global Economy (Blackwell Publishers, 1994) and Strategic Human Resource Management: A Global Perspective, (published in Human Resource Management in International Comparison, deGruyter, 1990).


If any aspect of globalization points out the complexities of international assignments as well as the systemic weakness and lack of planning within the international HR function, it’s repatriation. Repatriation is usually overlooked instead of being seen as the final link in an integrated, circular process that connects good selection, cross-cultural preparation, global career management and completion of the international business objective. Indeed, instead of employees coming home to share their global knowledge with others and encourage additional high performers to go the same route, expatriates face an entirely different scenario.


Often when they return home after a stint abroad (during which time they have typically been autonomous, well-compensated and celebrated as a big fish in a little pond), they face an organization that doesn’t know what they’ve done for the past several years, doesn’t know how to use their new knowledge and, worse yet, doesn’t care. In the worst cases, re-entering employees have to scrounge for jobs, or companies will create stand-by positions which don’t use the expat’s skills and capabilities and fail to maximize the business investment the company has made. The situation often is exacerbated by downsized and restructured organizations.


Furthermore, the expat has changed dramatically and wants to share his or her experiences. Usually few people are interested. Add to this unrealistic expectations by the expats, their having lost touch with the domestic office’s technological and personnel changes, and the enormous family upheaval, and you begin to have an idea of the tremendous challenges awaiting individuals as they re-enter the United States after assignments abroad.


“Repatriation has been the classic stepchild in international HR management.” —Nancy J. Adler, McGill University


Statistics bring the situation into bold relief: According to the 1994 Global Relocation Trends Survey Report published in January 1995 by the National Foreign Trade Council and global relocation management specialists Windham International, while 75% of the companies surveyed address repatriation (up from 45%), “repatriation services” can range from simply shipping household goods (97%) to homefinding assistance (55%) to career development (33%). The 110 surveyed companies, which employ collectively more than 24,000 expats, said that given the massive 30% increase in the numbers of expatriates going on international assignment, lack of job guarantee is one of the most critical challenges they face.


In research J. Stewart Black and Mark E. Mendenhall cite in their book, Global Assignments: Successfully Expatriating and Repatriating International Managers (by Black, Hal B. Gregersen and Mendenhall, published by Jossey-Bass, 1992), 60% to 70% of repatriating employees didn’t know what their positions would be before they returned home. Sixty percent said their organizations were vague about repatriation, about their new roles within the company and about their career progression. Moreover, they felt the firms disregarded their difficulties in adjusting back to life in the United States. When American expats found jobs within their companies, 46% had reduced autonomy and authority. And contrary to the reason that many Americans take international assignments—the idea of advancement—only 11% were promoted. Black and Mendenhall found that 77% of Americans actually took jobs at lower levels than their international assignments.


It’s no wonder that 10% of expatriates leave their company within a year after returning home and 14% leave between two and three years, according to the Global Relocation Trends Survey Report. These figures aren’t only unfortunate, they reveal poor HR planning and a dramatic loss of talent for the business that sent these individuals.


“I don’t think people really understand yet that assignments are a process,” says Carol Jones, Monsanto’s human resources specialist in international assignments. “They pick it up in the middle. They don’t think about why they’re sending out the person, what will make that person successful, what they’re expecting. They don’t realize that successful assignments begin with repatriation planning at the time of expatriation.


In other words, rather than looking at the process in fragmented pieces, assignments have a higher chance at success when the practitioners link the elements together from start to finish. According to Adler, you should be able to see how any one part of the process links with others. The elements of the process include: assessment selection, company orientation, cross-cultural training, dual career support, relocation/move assistance, in-country orientation and support, development, re-entry planning and assistance, repatriation and reintegration.


Understanding international assignments as a process, and realizing that planning helps its success, is critical for human resources professionals. “Clearly the caliber of human resources planning that’s done by a company really shows up in the international assignment area,” says Eric Campbell, director of global human resources for Avon Products, Inc. “In a company that does excellent HR planning, these types of situations [poor repatriation] don’t arise as much. Even though individuals may not be high potentials, if they’re considered strong enough for international assignments, the groups that sent them in the first place will be held accountable for their repatriation.”


On the other hand, he says, if you’re a company that doesn’t have an effective HR planning system, these people going on international assignment are essentially taking a leap of faith.


As organizations move into the international arena, human resources staffs will become more adept at recognizing their company’s global expansion objectives and plan international assignments more thoroughly. Only then will HR be able to develop company structures and policies that truly support each aspect of an international assignment. Some firms—large and small—are already doing that.


HR planning is key.
Monsanto’s repatriation program is a model of HR planning. It was created with the idea that all the pieces of the expatriate process work together. The $7.9 billion agricultural, chemical and pharmaceutical company has 30,000 employees with approximately 50 expatriates and 35 international employees working in the United States. International human resources managers get involved in predeparture assessment, cross-cultural counseling, performance management (see October 1994 issue for details) and other administrative aspects of the international assignment.


One of the strongest features of Monsanto’s program is that employees and their sending and receiving managers develop an agreement about their understanding of the assignment and how it fits into the company’s business objectives. The focus is on why they’re sending the assignee to do the job. This not only assures they have the same understanding, but also ensures that they’ve done serious thinking about the global assignment.


John Amato and Carol Jones, responsible for international assignments, developed the company’s repatriation program in the fall of 1992. “We did it because the attrition rate was high,” says Jones. “People felt they went out and were expecting career advancement and utilization of their knowledge. When that didn’t happen, they would feel dissatisfied.”


Now, says Amato, manager of human resources for international assignments, the repatriation piece creates significant movement toward globalization.


“This isn’t touchy-feely stuff,” he says. “We spent a lot of money to send this person out. By saying, ‘Let’s tap into them, let’s give them a chance to tell others what they’ve learned,’ the organization learns, and they feel valued. They know we appreciate their value, and the company sees a return on investment.”


Expatriates who have international experience know the company values their expertise. They meet with cross-cultural trainers during debriefings and showcase their experience with their American peers, subordinates and superiors. “Because folks here know there’s a resource they can tap into, it creates opportunities for that person to infuse knowledge back into the domestic organization,” says Amato. “That gets you back to the employee’s expectations and results in retention. It results in a circle.” For example, he says expectation management is to create a clear understanding on the part of the employee about the kind of job they’re coming home to. Says Amato: “When you say to an employee, ‘we value you and we expect the assignment to develop you. This is a career path move,’ that means one thing.” On the other hand, if supervisors are clear that the move is a project or technology transfer, expectations of the re-entry job is more likely to be in line with the company’s future plans for these employees.


Monsanto’s repatriation program focuses on more than just business—it attends to the family’s re-entry. Sometimes the difficulty with repatriating has more to do with personal adjustment than with work-related matters. But, the personal matters affect the business.


Which is why Monsanto offers repatriating employees a way to work through personal difficulties. Approximately three months after their return, expats like David Cissell meet for about three hours at work with several colleagues of their choice. The debriefing segment is a conversation aided by a facilitator who has an outline to help the expatriate cover all the important aspects of the repatriation. Says Cissell, “It sounds silly, but it’s such a hectic time in the family’s life you don’t have time to sit down and take stock of what’s happening. You’re going through the move, transitioning into a new job, a new house, the children may be going to a new school. This is a kind of oasis,” he says, “a time to talk and to put your feelings on the table. The counselor (who is a consultant) leads you through and helps you understand what you’re experiencing.”


The debriefing segment serves several purposes: to allow the employee to share important experiences, to enlighten managers, colleagues and friends about his or her expertise and to share information so that others within the organization can use some of the global knowledge.


Cissell was moving into his current position. He invited his new boss (Monsanto’s vice president of Latin America) as well as other colleagues and a friend. “It was pretty powerful,” he says. Cissell talked about the business environment and how he saw European culture impacting that. “My boss had not lived internationally, and although he had an appreciation for cultural changes and things that go on as you move people around the world, he said that he had not really thought through some of it.” That conversation really helped open up his eyes.


“We’re trying to get the expatriates to be the shining stars out there to radiate their light,” says Amato. The debriefing helps others who travel overseas and teaches them how to get more knowledge while they’re out there. “In that way, repatriation builds on itself.”


Returning assignees need to know the next step.
One of the most important questions that anyone can ask an expat is, “What is the next assignment going to be?”—the one after the international assignment, says Avon’s Campbell. “The problem is that often the assigning manager doesn’t pay attention to what the person is going to be doing next.”


The issue becomes particularly important during these days of reengineering and downsizing because often the job this person left has been cut as part of cost-reduction maneuvers. Even though organizations have more difficulty planning far ahead, if companies carefully monitored their expats, they could better prepare for their return.


“Everybody blames this process [poor repatriation] on ineffective career pathing and career planning, which companies have a hard time doing because we’re in such a changing environment,” says Michael Schell, president of New York-based Windham International. “We can’t even tell people who are in the U.S. that if they finish a particular assignment, they’ll have a specific job, let alone people who are going on assignment and who will be out of sight.”


It’s too difficult to do. Therefore, what becomes very important is to watch the performance of the person while on assignment. Then, when there are openings they’re qualified for, the employee can be moved into those positions. “That monitoring of career progress doesn’t usually take place effectively when people are on expatriate assignment,” says Schell. “Therefore, we don’t know how well they succeed; how much they fall, or what they can do for us when they come home.”


“It’s such a hectic time in your family’s life you don’t sit down and take stock of what’s happening.” —David L. Cissell, Monsanto Corporation


In this complex system, there’s a strong relationship between a successful assignment, adequate performance management and good repatriation. Effective HR planning that includes accurate performance evaluation (by someone who understands the assignment and its specific limitations) is one of the underlying requirements for a successful assignment and reintegration into the organization. In addition, employees feel they’re being considered and aren’t being forgotten while out of the country.


And, companies don’t have to be large to have successful expatriate programs. Coherent, Inc., a $200 million Santa Clara, California-based company that makes scientific and medical lasers, has an innovative approach to repatriation. The company has 1,500 employees overall and about 400 in the medical division, with sales and service offices in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan and Hong Kong. With only six expatriates and one third-country national (TCN) in the medical division, the department had been handling expatriates on a case-by-case basis until 1994, when they began formalizing their policies.


The company’s inventive programs brings people back to the United States on a short-term project before they’re repatriated. Employees who are ready to come back to the United States return for a couple of months to do projects that they’re very qualified to do. Then, they go back to their host country to wrap things up and then come back full time.


“It allows them to get to know the area, to spend some real time back here instead of just a five-day house-hunting trip, and allows them to get reacquainted with people in the office, the lifestyle and the work style,” she says. They’re even doing it with a third-country national.


Coherent, Inc. factors in one other critical component—maintaining close contact with the expats. “It’s not like they’re gone and forgotten,” says Chan. They come back on a regular basis a couple of times a year as well as for the annual sales meeting. In addition, during quarterly sales meetings, directors talk about these employees. Their work is visible and talked about.


There are two crucial parts underlying their repatriation policy, says Chan. First, “These people are super-duper employees. Their expertise is needed here, so they’re an excellent resource for a project when they’re asked to come back and work here.” Secondly, when they spend time here, their faces become more familiar to the rest of the employees and it makes the transition into their new role easier when they return.”


Chan believes that expatriate assignments are attractive to employees not only because the assignments themselves are good, but because expats know they will be repatriated well. Because excellent employees are sent on international assignment, typically there are jobs awaiting their return.


Coherent, like Monsanto, has strategies in place to make the repatriation process go more smoothly. Furthermore, they only send their best people.


Whether the company is large or small, this is a fundamental contribution to good repatriation. Says Richard P. Randazzo, Asea Brown Boveri, Inc. (ABB’s) senior vice president of human resources of the America’s region, “The first step to successful repatriation is don’t send anybody anyplace that you’re not willing to take back. Ninety-nine percent of the repatriation problem—if you have a problem—is caused by sending somebody someplace that you’re looking to get rid of.”


If they’re good, says Randazzo, the sending organization generally starts to make noise about getting them back even before their global assignment is completed. Wherever that next assignment comes, the knowledge they’ve acquired on their expatriate job is valued. ABB, the $30 billion transnational giant with more than 220,000 employees around the world, designates the sponsoring manager with the responsibility of finding a new position for the international assignee (although it usually falls to the local HR manager). The process starts about six months prior to the conclusion of the expatriate project. First, as the succession-planning process occurs each year, they devote time to talking about expats—who is out, who is coming back and when. In some cases, the individual will send resumes to a select group of HR managers that may have an opportunity for a person with those skills. Or, Randazzo may know of opportunities.


“The rule is that good performers always will find opportunity within the company,” says Randazzo. “If somebody is very good, invariably they’ll come back in good shape.”


Personal difficulties also affect business adjustments.
Even if employees do well in business, some of their trouble readjusting may come from family difficulties. Part of their difficulty in readjusting may be because they’ve been disconnected from domestic headquarters and left out-of-touch. Consequently, they don’t know what to expect upon return.


Intel, the $8 billion-plus computer chip maker located in Santa Clara, California, with almost 30,000 employees, makes a strong effort to keep expats involved in the organization throughout the international assignment. Employees in the company’s sites around the world keep in touch frequently via phone, E-mail and video conferencing. They do this as part of their ongoing work assignment, whether they’re in California or in Europe. In an effort to keep employees and their families informed—and aware of Intel’s business agenda, the company created several books detailing various aspects of the expatriation experience, including information about considering an assignment (for the family as well as employees) and a tool kit for managers regarding selection and preparation. One important component deals with repatriation.


The book details the cycle of re-entry shock and why re-entry may be difficult. It raises questions that people may not think of on their own, such as the letdown that occurs upon return and the life-style/benefits that will change when they go home. It prepares them for feeling alienated and distanced from their friends and colleagues, and addresses the family issues such as children who might have a difficult time fitting in when they go back to school.


“The repatriation piece is probably the most often overlooked part of the assignment,” says Sharon Richards, intercultural training program manager, who created the expatriate books and is instrumental in the company’s training programs. However thorough the repatriation booklets, Intel’s re-entry process begins well before repatriation. “We believe in training because you need to set realistic expectations for the employee and the family. You’re going to have a better shot at success.” Intel had a large number of people on a project in Ireland. Before their return, the company conducted a road show. They gathered people and had a day-long training session about taxes, relocation, shipping goods. Half the day was spent talking about what it would be like to return home.


“We help expats identify tow or three key things they want to communicate with others.” —Sharon Richards, Intel Corporation


One key area that Richards believes is often overlooked is the culture shock expats experience during re-entry. To facilitate the adaptation process, it’s critical for expats to know that repatriation is likely to be difficult. “They think, `My friends are there. It shouldn’t be any problem at all.’ In fact, they’re likely to have the initial sense of euphoria they did when they went on assignment, and to enjoy all that they missed when they were gone, but then they will also make comparisons in reverse. They’ve grown and changed, and they go through an adjustment period similar to the one they experienced when they first went on assignment.”


Another important component is putting the assignment into perspective. People are so full with what they want to tell others, that it’s overwhelming. They don’t anticipate that friends and co-workers may not be interested in their adventures, and may in fact be envious when they try to recap them. “We help expats identify two or three key important things they want to communicate with others,” says Richards. “Then, we suggest that they be sensitive to other people. Before launching into a story, ask what has changed in their life and what occurred while the expatriate was gone.”


In order to take advantage of the international experience—and to continue to acknowledge the expat’s knowledge—Richards has repatriated employees participate in predeparture training and culture-specific training whenever possible. Not only do the expats enjoy it, but their words of wisdom help the prospective international assignee.


Job security brings expatriates full circle.
Beyond the crucial personal aspects of repatriation, Richards acknowledges that having a job upon return is probably one of the most important factors to a successful return. At Intel, she says, they’re careful to move people only when they have a specific reason—such as training, a project or a special assignment. Although there are no job guarantees, they make efforts to use the experience of international assignees as much as possible. In addition, because HR planning works in tandem with the business objectives, expats are monitored and performance is managed and appraised.


Indeed, not all organizations today, however, are able to be as sure as they once were about having a job awaiting an employee’s return. “There are so many double-edged swords,” says Noel A. Kreicker, president and founder of International Orientation Resources. International HR is aware and committed to resolving and supporting the repatriation issues as well as creating supportive programs and clarifying policies. However, in many cases, HR’s hands are tied because corporations are still so busy sorting themselves out. Usually, it’s the people who are repatriating who have been forgotten. Not only does HR face the task of helping to prepare and maintain the individual on international assignment, it plays an important role in bringing the employee back to the United States and helping the company to capitalize on its investment. “It’s one of the most difficult realities now,” he says. But no matter how challenging, there are organizations, large and small, that are meeting it. In companies like Monsanto, Intel, Coherent and ABB, people who are selected well, monitored carefully and shown that the company recognizes and values them, feel rewarded, recognized and will continue to make contributions when they return.


Personnel Journal, January 1995, Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 28-37.


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Successful Sabbatical Programs Offer Varying Terms

Terms of sabbaticals can be as different as the people who apply for them. The following list offers a sample of that diversity.


COMPANY

TIME ALLOWED

COMPENSATION

ELIGIBILITY

McDonald’s

8 weeks after ten years, 16 weeks after 20 years

Full pay and benefits

All full-time employees

Tandem

6 weeks after 4 years

Full pay and benefits

Full- and part-time employees

Apple

6 weeks after 5 years

Full pay and benefits

Full- and part-time employees

AT&T

9 to 24 months after 5 years

No pay, most regular benefits

Full- and part-time employees

Hewitt

5 weeks after five years for partners, 3 weeks after 5 years for associates

Full pay and benefits

Full-time employees

Wells Fargo

Social Service Leave: up to 6 months after 3 years, Personal Growth Leave: up to 3 months after 10 years

Full pay and benefits

Full-time employees

Xerox

Up to 1 year after 3 years

Full pay and benefits

Full-time employees

Time Inc.

3 to 6 months after 15 years, 3 months after 20 years

50% pay after 15 years, 75% pay after 20 years

Regular full- and part-time employees

Personnel Journal, January 1995, Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 38-48.


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Making Part-time Work Effective

It’s no secret that more and more companies are hiring low-wage workers on a part-time basis. Many, especially retailers, banks and restaurants, find that a part-time work force allows them greater flexibility in scheduling and makes them less affected by turnover.


Although shorter hours may suit many students and “mommy trackers” just fine, some people who find themselves in part-time arrangements don’t always consider the situation ideal. Not only do they wind up with fewer hours than they need to make ends meet, they don’t receive the benefits that full-time employees do. “You have to make a distinction between voluntary and involuntary part-time workers,” says Phil Rhones, chief of the Division of Labor at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C. “And there are certainly a greater number of people now who are involuntary part-time workers than at any time in the past.”


Today, Chicago-based Sears Roebuck & Co. has virtually all its non-commissioned associates working part-time. In fact, a part-time work force is the industry norm, as retailing giants such as K-Mart, Wal-Mart and J.C. Penny have adopted similar strategies. “In terms of attracting and retaining the best people, part-time work presents some difficulties,” admits Sally Hartmann, manager of measurements and assessment systems at Sears. Adds Janet Fuersich, director of compensation consulting for New York City-based Coopers & Lybrand: “Workers who receive lower pay and fewer benefits are less likely to feel committed to their employer.”


Some companies are trying to change all that. They’re working to have the best of both worlds: employees who feel linked to the company, but don’t expect the same benefits package as full-time workers. To accomplish this, companies such as Sears and Irvine, California-based Taco Bell Corp. have implemented an array of programs and activities that make the work environment more exciting and fun. For example, they have employee-of-the-month awards, for which winners receive cash or merchandise. They also give prizes, such as gift certificates or travel packages, for meeting certain sales criteria or reaching specific objectives. In addition, some facilities hold optional, after-hour activities, such as picnics or softball games, for their workers.


Other companies, such as Seattle-based SeaFirst Bank, have tried to build some equity into the process. Its “casual” workers—those who work less than 17.5 hours a week—receive a 15% pay premium to compensate for their lack of benefits. Casual workers include tellers, phone operators and others. The firm’s full-time and part-time workers (the latter work more than 17.5 hours a week but less than 40), receive regular benefits.


What’s more, the bank—which pays its workers the prevailing market rate for the Seattle area—also provides an abundance of training opportunities so that casual workers can improve their skills and move up in the organization. And these employees are entitled to use any and all of the company’s programs—whether it’s the bank’s health club, career counseling or child-care facilities.


The result? Lower turnover than competitors and a better reputation as an employer. Two years ago, the bank ranked among the 10 best employers in Seattle. Not surprisingly, all this translates directly to improved bottom-line profits. Says Vicki Rohr, SeaFirst’s work, home and health coordinator: “We want to do everything we can to help people work together as a team. We want everyone to feel that they’re an important part of the organization.”


Personnel Journal, January 1995, Vol. 74, No. 1, p. 92.


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Align HR To Serve the Customer

In the spirit of the new year, many companies are taking a look at their business, and one of their resolutions may be to continue improving the HR department. Reaching the level of success you want means aligning the department with the customers it serves.


San Ramon, California-based Chevron Chemical Co. has developed a unique system for HR alignment-a system it has used with much success. The process can be divided into three major stages. The first is identifying the customers’ needs for HR products and services, and their current satisfaction with HR’s performance of these services. The second is comparing where HR needs to go with where it is. Third, HR must create a prioritized plan that will take it to where it wants to be-a completely aligned function.


Successful alignment demands that HR first know its customer.
How can HR possibly ascertain what its customers want and need? Easy. Ask them in a Customer Needs Assessment (CNA)-an easy process for identifying, measuring, and aligning the HR function with customers’ needs and expectations.


A Customer Needs Assessment:


  1. Identifies the HR products and services that are most and least important to the customer.

  2. Rates the customer-satisfaction level with HR’s performance of each product and service.

  3. Helps show where HR is falling short in meeting its customers’ needs, as well as where it’s excelling.

  4. Establishes watermarks for other HR issues, such as communications, policy deployment, customer balance, etc.

This may seem like a fairly rigorous list of goals, demanding a complex series of initiatives. It’s not. Performing a CNA involves seven simple steps (see “The Seven Phases of a CNA,” this page).


Before plunging into the process, sit down and define the objectives and magnitude of your CNA. A cross section of the HR department may serve as a CNA team to ensure total involvement in the development stages, as well as buy-in to the results of this process.


Some of the pieces of the puzzle that should be discussed are:


  • The direct sponsor of the assessment (typically HR management);
  • The benefits of the assessment;
  • What the end product of the CNA will look like;
  • A CNA team mission statement;
  • A deployment flowchart and timeline for completion.

Next, the team must identify which customers and HR products and services to include in the assessment.


This step determines who will be included in the assessment and what will be assessed. The decision is best made by the assessment team with the input of the entire HR organization, to ensure that no customers, products and services are left out.


When creating the list of HR customers, be sure to keep in mind:


  • Persons or groups who directly benefit from HR products and services;
  • Persons or groups who indirectly benefit from HR products and services;
  • Persons or groups who could benefit from your HR products and services; Customers outside your company.

When creating the list of HR products and services, it’s not unusual to generate more than 100 products and services. The assessment team may wish to reduce the amount of products and services to a workable number of categories, typically between 15 and 20.


Next, the best means for implementing the assessment must be identified. Options include written surveys, computer-assisted surveys, one-on-one interviews, focus group interviews and phone interviews. For large logistically diverse customer bases, written or computer-based surveys tend to provide best coverage. For smaller, logistically limited groups, interviews can be used.


With these preliminary decisions made, you are ready to design the assessment instrument. Two key areas to address in the survey include:


Customer profile/demographics. This allows HR to address issues particular to certain customer groups. However, it’s important to avoid over-identifying to the point of hurting confidentiality and obscuring analysis. A rule of thumb is to exclude any demographic identifiers which may define a group of less than 50 customers.


Assessment of the importance and performance of HR products and services to customers. Assessment of importance identifies how much a customer values an HR product and service in relation to their business goals. Assessment of performance measures the level of customer satisfaction with these same products and services.


Customers’ unaddressed needs and desires may be best ascertained using open-ended questions regarding customers’ HR priority issues, HR products/services not currently provided but needed, and HR products/services currently being provided but not needed. Questions such as:


  • What are the three most significant actions HR can take to help you meet your business goals?
  • What should HR be doing that it is not doing now?
  • What is HR doing now that it should not be doing?

Perhaps the most important step in the design of your assessment instrument is the pilot. The pilot will save significant time spent on reworking and clarifications associated with survey analyses. Based on the pilot, final revisions should be made, consensus of the assessment team obtained, and the survey finalized. With the survey complete, it’s now time to implement the assessment.


For successful alignment, HR must compare where it wants to go with where it is.
Knowing your customers’ future needs and wants is only part of the picture-you must also measure current HR resource allocation.


Data gathered in identifying how current resources (manpower, equipment, technology and finance) are being allocated will be used during the analysis phase to define over- and under-utilization issues.


Collection of this data requires an examination of how HR personnel currently spend their time, based on the same products and services evaluated in the CNA. This process should be completed by every HR employee within the scope of the assessment. Total HR costs can then be applied to percentages of time spent on products and services to obtain general costs per HR product and service. With this information gathered, you are now ready to analyze the data. Here are suggestions for interpretation of the CNA survey and HR resource allocation data:


  1. Review response demographics to ensure that representative samples of customer populations exist in the data.

  2. Compare importance and performance ratings for HR’s products and services. This will provide two important data points. The first will provide a general prioritization of the HR products and services. The second will identify products and services important to customers yet falling below satisfaction expectation levels.

  3. Compare customer importance and performance ratings (gathered by the CNA) to current allocation of HR resources (gathered by the HR resource allocation process). This may identify under- and over-utilization of current resources in areas that customers find of high/low importance and high/low performance.

  4. Customer specification of HR products and services offered but not needed and needed but not offered may lead to conclusions regarding HR resources utilization and emerging issues.

  5. Segmentation of all of the above inquiries by customer demographics may be the most revealing of all analyses. You will be able to quickly identify those customer groups and corresponding issues which warrant preferential attention.

The team should be able to identify numerous opportunities for improvement from analyses above-probably more than the organization can possibly address. To narrow opportunities to a manageable level will demand prioritization of findings. At this stage, you are ready to embark on the HR planning process.


Once the customers identify what they need, alignment is a matter of connecting the dots.
Planning work activities based on customer needs and strategies is the key to alignment. A successful planning process must include phases for assessing customer needs, alignment with the overall business objectives, prioritizing aligned activities, and allocating available resources. This is not, as it may seem, an intricate, scientific planning procedure involving the latest in technology and a cast of thousands. Rather it’s a simple process described as funneling, which can be completed with minimal resources in a matter of days. The “Funnel” process is designed to involve the right people, ensure alignment and customer focus, base decision-making on data, and use proven quality tools throughout.


For HR planning and alignment, it’s necessary to finish identifying customers’ current and prospective needs. In addition to the Customer Needs Assessment, important sources of customer input include:


  • Face to face discussions with business partners;
  • Long-term strategic business plan reviews;
  • Short-term business plan reviews;
  • Internal departmental development and improvement needs;
  • Focus groups of customers;
  • Field HR personnel;
  • Pending legislation.

Aside from the CNA, the most important of these sources are discussions with business partners, from senior management to first-line supervisors. It is here that true alignment with prospective business activities begins. While these discussions should center around business needs and events, it is the responsibility of the HR tactician to translate business activities into related human resources issues. For example, a planned plant expansion may translate into HR activities including recruiting, contractor employment, training, succession planning, labor negotiations, etc.


In order to adequately prepare for planning, it’s imperative that fundamental data is captured for each prospective HR activity. This data should include:


  • A description of upcoming business events and associated HR activities; Source or driver of the business events (Who’s the customer?);
  • Estimated HR staff time required to satisfy the HR need;
  • Other associated HR resource costs;
  • Required completion date;
  • Whether the need is mandatory;
  • The impact that completion of the HR requirement has on the success of the company’s business objectives;

This information then becomes the basis for the planning process.


Once customers’ current and prospective needs are identified, there are five steps to the HR Funnel planning process.


The first step in planning is to consolidate and clarify customer needs. This requires an examination of the company’s upcoming business events. It is important that all planning process participants (typically the HR management team) examine and understand each prospective business event and the resultant HR actions required. Participants must agree on HR activities required, resources required, completion dates and impact before proceeding to subsequent planning steps.


When a consensus is gained, the next step is to align with customers’ business objectives. Alignment cannot occur by chance. Alignment only occurs when a conscious evaluation of planned HR initiatives versus the organizations’ business objectives is undertaken. You must consider HR initiatives in regard to the business’s primary goals. If an HR activity cannot be classified in alignment with a business objective, it should be dropped from immediate consideration.


You are then left with only those HR actions that are fully aligned with business needs-the Funnel has begun to converge items for further consideration, adding focus to those vital to attainment of business objectives.


Once you’ve weeded out HR actions that don’t fuel the business, you can prioritize the remaining issues. In deciding which HR issues are most important, it may help to use such criteria as:


  • The action’s impact on achieving the business organization’s vision/mission;
  • Cost;
  • Ease in delivery;
  • Capacity to deliver;
  • Timing requirements.

After you’ve prioritized the primary issues, you can allocate your resources. We all have limited resources to apply to prospective requirements, whether these resources are manpower, expertise, financial, or otherwise. As an example, consider that manpower is the resource to be allocated: Allocating resources involves calculations to estimate the total manpower required for completing the prioritized HR activities, total manpower currently available, and a comparison of the net manpower available to the manpower required for completing the planned HR activities. The result is an estimate of the surplus or deficit of manpower for completing all remaining planned activities. In order to finalize the HR plan, prioritized items must be deleted from the plan in order of lowest to highest importance until the resources required equals the resources available.


Your HR plan is now complete. The HR department has been aligned. The only action remaining is the actual deployment of the prioritized, resource-distributed plan. Assignment must consider personnel availability, expertise, capability, etc. to ensure completion and quality delivery of activities.


Gathering HR customers’ needs and funneling them into a final business plan gets HR where it needs to go. For instance, one problem Chevron HR discovered in its alignment process was the staff’s limited availability. To respond to its customers’ needs, it assigned a staffer to uncover the root causes of the complaint. They discovered that employees’ main problem was that it was difficult to find a live HR person-communication was too often conducted through sticky notes and voicemail. To become more accessible, the HR staff made several changes. To begin with, each staffer posted his or her schedule for all to see, including definite in-office times. HR also adapted its voicemail system to have a “rollover” function: if a phone rings three times in one office unanswered, it will “rollover” to the next office until the caller is connected with a live person. HR at Chevron is now on its way to fulfilling its customers’ needs.


By combining customer focus with the company’s bottom-line issues, you can continually improve your HR function. Successful HR planning and alignment is really just a matter of following the old business adage: Give the customers what they want.


Personnel Journal, January 1995, Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 61-64.