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How HR Keeps Current in Century-old Companies

One hundred years ago, Rudolf Diesel patented the diesel engine, Wilhelm Röntger discovered the X-ray and the U.S. Congress enacted the first peacetime federal income tax. Politically and technologically, the world today is clearly a different place than it was a century ago. But change hasn’t been limited to politics and science. Just as the Millionaire multiplication machine of 1894 has evolved into the personal computer and Bill Clinton has replaced Grover Cleveland as president, corporations that have been around for at least 100 years have changed with the times. As these companies evolve, their HR departments play a vital role in managing this change and ensuring that the companies retain their competitive edge.


For many companies, heritage affects the composition of the work force.
Regardless of a company’s age, changes in the social, political and legal environment affect all aspects of business, including human resources. But in century-old companies, the effects from societal change are magnified. Not only have older companies been around to experience more evolution, but also many agree that company age-and the tradition that comes with it-has an effect on the work force and its composition.


At Santa Fe Pacific Corp., which celebrated its 125th birthday last year, company age translates into a family culture. “Our age brings with it a wealth of tradition and loyalty to the company,” says Carol Beerbaum, vice president of human resources at the Schaumburg, Illinois-based corporation. Loyalty is displayed through low turnover: The average service for Santa Fe’s 15,000-member work force is 20 years, and the average employee age is 45. “It’s part of the tradition of the rail company to have a longer average service,” says Beerbaum. “When we’ve been in business 125 years, it isn’t surprising that we’ve had more people who’ve been here 20 and 30 years. People tend to stay with the company.”


In addition to a high individual retention rate, Santa Fe hires generations of family members. “We have employees who had grandfathers, aunts and uncles who worked with the company,” Beerbaum says. She adds that she regularly hears stories about employees’ grandparents and parents who retired after 35 years with Santa Fe. “I often hear things like, ‘I’m one of five in my family who’ve worked for the railroad,’ or ‘My grandfather was Santa Fe’s first engineer.'”


Mert Hornbuckle sees the same trend at his organization, Deere & Co. “It isn’t uncommon for us to have third- and fourth-generation people in the corporation,” says Hornbuckle, director of compensation, benefits and employee development at Deere. “Also, a majority of our people started their careers with Deere; a large percentage of our work force is in their late 40s and has 22 to 24 years of experience with the company.”


Although Hornbuckle didn’t begin his career with Moline, Illinois-based Deere, he’s been with the corporation for approximately 20 years himself. And he says that an organization such as Deere, with a long heritage, must work extra hard to communicate change to its employees. “It’s clear that a company as old as Deere has a tremendous communications challenge,” he says. “Many of the company’s values become ingrained. If you start to shift those values, or business conditions demand that you modify them, the communications burden is much more substantial than in a fairly new corporation.”


“When Alagasco discarded its old HR policies, the company called it “killing dinosaurs.” Dinosaurs were the outdated practices the company had been holding on to.”


Beerbaum agrees that sometimes Santa Fe’s family tradition has its drawbacks. She admits that when she implements some new policies, people remember how things were done in the past and are reluctant to deviate from the established practice. For the most part, however, she says that the company’s link to the past-and the experience Santa Fe has to build on-helps the HR department implement necessary policies and practices. Because the majority of employees have worked together for many years, Beerbaum says that there’s an intensified atmosphere of cooperation and cohesiveness. “Our people pride themselves on being able to react quickly to change,” she says. “It helps that we’re a really unified group and have a lot of experience behind us. We know what works and what doesn’t.”


Like Santa Fe and Deere, OshKosh B’Gosh, Inc. feels a link to its early years. This is especially true now, as the company nears its 100th birthday. When the company was founded in 1895, Frank Grove of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, aimed to produce high-quality, rugged work coveralls for the area’s farmers and railroad workers. His company, Grove Manufacturing, was renamed several times before adopting its current name in 1937.


For more than 70 years, OshKosh was known for its adult workwear. In the 1960s, however, the company experimented with marketing a miniature version of its full-size overalls. This trial was a success, and the company moved in a new direction.


Today, OshKosh still produces some adult workwear, but clothes for kids represent 95% of the company’s total sales. “Within a 10-year period, we went from a $20-million regional workwear company to a $315-million kidswear business with a workwear component,” says Donald Carlson, vice president of human resources for OshKosh. The business changes affected human resources drastically: “Before the change, the human resources department was basically a maintenance function because that’s all that was needed-hiring, maintaining the OSHA logs and that sort of thing,” Carlson says. Approximately five years ago, top management studied the company and its future and recognized the need for greater HR involvement in business activity. “As we became a more complex business in a more complex environment, we needed to add capabilities in the HR arena,” he adds.


One of the steps OshKosh took to make the change was hiring Carlson: He joined the company four years ago. Since that time, human resources has taken many steps forward. Today, instead of pushing paper, the HR professionals play an essential role in ensuring the success of the company. “We’re businesspeople who have some particular HR skills,” says Carlson of the current department. “We’re focused on helping the organization achieve its business objectives.”


Carlson says that the transformation has been gradual, but the long-term results are obvious. “When you’re involved in the process on a day-to-day basis, it’s difficult to measure,” he says. “If you want to really see the change, you have to step back and look at it long term. It’s similar to going up a mountain and putting a stick in a glacier. If you go back up a year later, you can see that the glacier has moved.”


Despite the slow rate of change, OshKosh’s history and sense of tradition can sometimes make it difficult. Carlson says that when HR began implementing such policies as teamwork and total quality, the department met some resistance. “Our habits were ingrained, and our culture was taken for granted,” he says. “We were dealing with an ingrown set of principles that had to be changed. All of us had grown up together and hadn’t thought much about how things were done in other apparel industries, much less what was going on in other types of industries such as automotives or electronics.” Despite this frustration, Carlson sees the company’s history as its most valuable asset. “We have a consumer franchise that’s based strongly on our history,” he says. “Our people are very proud of that.”


Some companies must break from the past to move into the future.
At such companies as Santa Fe, human resources departments find small ways to affect change. To combat its occasional reluctance to move into the future, Santa Fe’s HR department strives for a mixture of employees-some long term, some new to the company. “That mixture has helped on both ends,” Beerbaum says. “The new people bring in fresh ideas, and the established employees help with training and keeping traditions intact.”


At other companies, greater measures are necessary. Such was the case at the Chicago-based Tribune Co. Since the corporation’s beginnings with Joseph Medill’s Chicago Tribune in 1847, forwardthinking and a sense of adventure have been part of the company framework. In fact, the abolitionist Tribune played an important role in promoting Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860.


The sense of adventure that has prevailed throughout the company’s history led the Tribune to made some drastic modifications to its business identity. In response to societal change, the company has moved away from its position in traditional media and has reidentified itself as an information and entertainment company. Today, the Tribune has 29 business units ranging from the cornerstone Chicago Tribune to the television talk show Geraldo and an interactive service, Chicago Online. “We see ourselves as a growth company,” explains Sheryl Favia, manager of benefits and compensation at the Tribune. “We want to take content that’s created within the company and deliver it to our customers in whatever medium they’d like to receive it.”


The Tribune’s business response to technological and societal change led to a break from the past in HR. Instead of retaining its traditional role as a department focusing on labor relations, human resources did a turnaround. Two years ago, the Tribune formed a human resources service center at the corporate headquarters in Chicago to provide centralized HR functions to the business units nationwide. Although each unit has its own human resources staff onsite, the service center provides corporatewide counsel and helps to facilitate change. “We provide the business units with management development and training, labor-relations advice and counsel, and assistance with employment and EEO,” says Luis Lewin, director of human resources administration at the Tribune. Also, Lewin says that the service center manages a corporatewide job-posting program for managerial positions, so that anyone in the company who has the proper qualifications can apply for openings.


In addition to providing these extra services, the HR service center acts to standardize the company’s benefits and compensation programs. “In an environment in which most companies have started to outsource a lot of their benefits administration, we’ve made a conscious decision to insource,” Favia says. “We feel that our employees can get the best service from fellow Tribune employees who are familiar with the culture in which they work and can relate to the company’s values and long-term strategy.” Not only does the standardized process simplify administration and reduce cost through increased volume, it also reduces legal liability. “We feel that we’re better able to give consistent treatment to employees and avoid the potential pitfalls of each business unit interpreting policies its own way,” Favia adds.


Overall, Lewin says that the service center makes human resources better able to help the company move into the future. “For human resources to be successful, we need to stay flexible and progressive and look into upcoming growth,” he says. “It all comes down to managing change.” Bob Carr, a spokes-person for the organization, agrees: “It’s wonderful to have a 147-year heritage of serving a variety of customers and taking a leadership role in providing credible information, but Wall Street looks at us as a growth company. They don’t see us as a traditional operation.”


The Tribune isn’t the only established company making a huge effort to revamp business and human resources. The same is true of Alagasco, a natural-gas distributor based in Birmingham, Alabama. Ten years ago, the company had what top management now calls a “utility mindset,” which could be traced back to its roots as Montgomery Gaslite Co. in 1852. Dave Self, vice president of HR and administration at Alagasco, describes the previous corporate attitude as paternalistic, yet autocratic, in nature. “The company always knew what was best for employees,” he says. “It was a function of the age of the company and the nature of our business.”


Even though this mindset was part of the company’s history, it wasn’t something that management wanted to continue. “We had some new leadership in the company that recognized the fact that not only was our industry in the midst of change but the pace of that change was going to significantly increase in the years to come,” Self says. “If we were going to be successful in the future, it called for a radical transformation in our philosophy and in the ways we treated our people.”


Under the leadership of its new president, Mike Warren, Alagasco discarded its old HR policies in 1984. The company called it “killing dinosaurs.” As Self explains, “Heroes in our company were those who found the dinosaur and killed it.” And how does he define a dinosaur? “A dinosaur is the ancient way things were done around here,” Self says.


The transformation started at the top. Warren made himself available to the company’s employees, visiting all of their worksites and talking to them in small groups. He explained that he was determined to get rid of the utility mindset and change the company’s overriding philosophies. “We knew that we had to depend on empowering the employees who were closer to the customers,” Self says.


Employee feedback helps to keep HR up to date.
Many established companies, including Alagasco, rely on employee feedback to help them remain competitive. At Alagasco, one initiative is an employee-suggestion program. When Warren joined the company, he was determined to remain accessible to employees at all levels. He knew, however, that he would have limited time and wouldn’t be onsite at the employees’ worksites as often as he’d like. His solution was the “Hey, Mike” program, which he began in 1985. As an alternative to the traditional employee suggestion box, the company printed 5″ x 7″ cards and distributed them to all worksites. Each card had an introductory line that read, “Hey, Mike, have you ever thought about….” Still today, Warren and the company encourage all employees to respond. “Whenever employees have an idea, a suggestion or a complaint, they write out their comments and send the card to him,” Self says. The comments can be anonymous; however, if they are signed, Warren guarantees a personal response. “He either writes, calls or stops by the worksite the next time he’s in the area,” Self says.


Warren does more than simply read the cards-he considers each suggestion seriously. In fact, the program has resulted in changes that include company-car upgrades for lower-level management, no-smoking sections in company breakrooms and a variety of new training programs for employees. This consideration of employees’ feedback may be why interest in the program continues. In the first month of the “Hey, Mike” program, Warren received more than 100 responses from employees of all levels. Nine years later, he still gets approximately five suggestion cards per month. “Employees can see that we care about their expectations and needs,” Self says.


Alagasco also relies heavily on employee input to remain current in other aspects of business. For example, the company has conducted several quality-of-life focus groups to identify work/ family issues that need attention. As a result, the human resources department is looking into such initiatives as instituting alternative work schedules, redefining its sick and family-care leave policies and adopting alternative dispute-resolution programs.


Just two months ago, the company also created a diversity council to address diversity-specific issues. The council is made up of employees who represent the diversity of the company and are from all levels of the organization. Although the council has only 14 members, more than 50 employees volunteered to participate.


Self says that the council will meet in a working-lunch format approximately once every two months. Warren and Self both will attend every meeting, the first of which was held in July. “It’s more than a training program,” Self says. “We’re bringing diversity into the culture of the company. We’re using the council to help evaluate where we are as an organization with respect to diversity, and how we can improve day-to-day worklife.”


All of Alagasco’s progressive initiatives help to further eliminate the antiquated utility mindset. And despite drastic change, Alagasco’s employees are accepting. Under the new practices, their input is more highly respected, and they’re empowered to make a greater difference in the organization.


Santa Fe Pacific has similar efforts. To obtain the most honest and useful feedback from its employees, the company conducts frequent employee surveys. The surveys, which were started approximately two years ago, are designed to help HR determine employees’ concerns: what’s important to them, what areas can be improved and how Santa Fe can be more successful as a business. Following the first survey, the human resources department identified several areas that needed some attention, and these areas became priorities for change.


“As older companies look to the future, they will require even greater self-reliance and competency from their employees at all levels.”


One area that was of specific concern was compensation and benefits. “Santa Fe had been through so much restructuring-we’d sold off businesses, we’ve downsized, we’ve made so many changes during the past five years-that people felt compensation hadn’t been looked at and wasn’t as equitable as it should’ve been,” says Beerbaum. Santa Fe responded to the employees’ concern by updating the compensation package. “All of our programs now are driven by Santa Fe’s success,” she says. “In compensation, we tied our incentive programs to Santa Fe’s business objectives.”


The result is a very different package than in the past. One difference is that all salaried employees at Santa Fe are on an incentive plan that’s tied to net revenue from operations. Beerbaum says that before the program, many Santa Fe employees didn’t think that they needed to understand these financial aspects of business. Now, the net revenue affects them personally, and they are more closely tied to the finances of the company. “Our people now understand what expenses go into the net revenue and how new customer orders help to drive the figure,” Beerbaum says. In addition, all salaried employees at Santa Fe now have share options. “Our people really follow the share prices of Santa Fe now; they know what drives that price,” says Beerbaum.


Santa Fe’s HR department also has looked at the employees’ other areas of concern, which included career opportunities and communications. Through what is called career listings, Santa Fe’s HR department publicizes all job openings on its electronic-mail system. “We list every single opening, to whom it reports, where the location is and what the job requirements are,” Beerbaum says. “We list every position, even if it’s a part of our union agreement or it’s something we’re recruiting for externally.” As part of career listings, the HR department also publicizes the number of promotions annually.


Although Santa Fe developed this system to enhance employees’ possibilities for advancement and improve communications about career opportunities, it serves another purpose as well. As the company has changed through the years, job requirements have been altered drastically. “Before, we would look for a switchman who would do nothing but manual labor,” Beerbaum explains. “Now, our switchmen require some background in math and electronics because everything is computerized.” The career listings offer HR an opportunity to distribute information regarding changes in job responsibilities. “We aren’t needing people who will do the jobs as they were done five or 10 years ago,” she says. “We need a higher level of education and a higher level of initiative and leadership for all of our positions.”


Most older companies agree that they must listen to employees to effectively manage change. Even the Tribune, when creating the HR service center, formed a panel of HR people from the business units to help establish the new set-up. “Before the changes took place, the company formed a steering committee of leaders from business units nationwide,” says Lewin, who was working at the Sun-Sentinel in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, at the time and was selected to serve on the committee. “We talked through the changes with some of the management here. They needed input from those in the field.” As the Tribune’s HR service center continues to evolve, feedback from those in the business units remains essential to success. “Cooperation is the only thing that makes this system work,” he says. “Before we initiate anything in the service center, we get a lot of input from people in the field. We need their expertise.”


Age-old companies move into the future.
Just like all other corporations, century-old companies must anticipate change. Today, that includes preparing for rapidly advancing technology and the Information Superhighway. But because these particular businesses have a wealth of experience and years of history behind them, their movements differ slightly from their younger counterparts. At the Tribune, the company is moving full steam ahead by connecting their two foci-broadcasting and publishing-and expanding into new media such as online services and ChicagoLand Television News, a 24-hour cable news channel that utilizes the company’s newspaper staffers. Through the HR service center, the corporation is prepared to service new business units as they’re created. During the past two years, the center has proven itself effective. But Favia says that its success is due, in part, to the experience the company had to build on. “It was established by combining the best practices from throughout the company,” she says. “It was an extension of what already had been done.”


At OshKosh, adapting to new markets is already part of the company’s history. Just as the corporation changed its focus from workwear to kids’ clothing in the late 1960s, future change will be necessary for the company to remain competitive. Experience may make this transition easier. “We must realize that the world that treated us so well in the ’80s-when we had a niche to ourselves-has changed,” says Carlson. “We have to anticipate what the world of eight or 10 years from now will look like and what the customers are going to demand of us.” This affects HR: “To remain process focused, this organization will require even greater self-reliance and competency from people at all levels,” he adds.


And at Deere & Co., the corporation continues to diversify into new businesses including health care, insurance and credit. But as the markets change, the company’s tradition and history remain constant. Hornbuckle says that the connection between past and future is clear. The company began with one product-a plow to cut through the hard turf in Kansas-and three simple ideas: a desire to produce a quality product, a belief in customer service and the idea that employees are assets to the company. “John Deere built this company around some basic principles,” says Hornbuckle. “Today, if you were to sit down with our CEO and say, ‘What’s your vision?’ he’d come right back to quality, a customer focus and making sure our employees understand that they’re value-adders.”


Personnel Journal, October 1994, Vol.73, No. 10, pp. 86-94.


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Peer Review Drives Compensation at Johnsonville

At Johnsonville Foods, employees are talking about each other. But they aren’t gossiping near the watercooler or spreading rumors in the lunchroom. This talk is encouraged by management: It’s peer review.


More than a decade ago, as part of an improvement effort, Johnsonville Foods incorporated a team structure into its work environment. Within this framework, open communication and coworker feedback became vital to the functioning of the business. As employees learned to work together as part of high-performance teams, they began to incorporate the essentials of peer review into their day-to-day jobs.


Today, Johnsonville’s employee feedback isn’t informal, as it was in the 1980s. Instead, the Sheboygan, Wisconsin-based sausage manufacturer uses a structured peer-review process in practically all areas, including not only performance, development and dispute resolution, but also compensation.


Peer review’s move into the compensation arena began four years ago at Johnsonville, with the company’s approximately 400 hourly employees, or members. Tim Lenz, an employee in Johnsonville’s manufacturing facility, was one of many who were frustrated with the company’s hourly compensation strategy.


“There really wasn’t a system anymore,” says Lenz, who’s now assistant coordinator for Johnsonville’s Riverside, Wisconsin, plant. “When I came to the company in 1979, we had several wage scales for positions throughout the facility. These slowly deteriorated, and it had gotten to the point where no one knew how to get a raise.”


Leah Glaub, member services (equivalent to human resources in many companies) coordinator at Johnsonville, agrees that the company’s hourly compensation strategy wasn’t ideal: “We had a system in which the squeaky wheel got the oil,” Glaub says. “People would pick up different responsibilities, then go to their coaches and get salary increases. There wasn’t really an established system, and this caused frustration among people.”


A team of employees leads the design process.
Instead of simply complaining about the haphazard process, Lenz decided to do something about it. In 1990, he went to the vice president of manufacturing and proposed that a group of employees work together to rethink the hourly compensation system. The vice president not only approved Lenz’s suggestion, he also agreed to work with the team as needed throughout the design process.


Having obtained this support, Lenz hung a note on the plant bulletin board, inviting other employees to help him try to improve the hourly compensation system. He says that approximately 12 people signed up to help. After several introductory meetings, eight of these volunteers made the commitment to be members of the hourly compensation design team.


During one of the initial meetings, the team members decided that they needed some assistance from member services. “We invited a member of our company’s [HR] department to join the team, because we knew that those skills would be necessary, and knowledge about compensation would help us determine the right system for our company,” says Lenz. Because the team members had little or no expertise in the compensation area, this HR person (later replaced by Glaub) was able to conduct initial research for the team and gather useful data to assist them in the compensation system’s design.


As part of the research process, team members also conducted focus groups of employees at Johnsonville to determine their needs and expectations, benchmarked other companies to evaluate different types of compensation systems and talked with consultants to generate ideas.


“The peer-review structure improves employee communication regarding job descriptions, work flow, accountability and productivity.”


Lenz says that one particularly helpful research project was a site visit and one-day seminar on skill-based pay sponsored by Aid Association for Lutherans, a fraternal benefits society in Appleton, Wisconsin. This seminar helped the team determine what type of compensation structure would work within Johnsonville’s culture, he says.


Cumulatively, this research led the team to develop four primary philosophies for Johnsonville:


  1. Employees need to know exactly what they have to do to get a raise.
  2. Employees should have responsibility for compensation. They should be able to request a pay increase when they feel they’re ready.
  3. Employees should be involved in the review process.
  4. Base pay should equal the average market rate based on traditional internal and external values.

Once these goals were articulated, the team set about to meet them. But this didn’t happen overnight. In fact, because the team met and discussed the project only once every two weeks on average, the final proposal wasn’t introduced until 1992. “If I were to do this again, I’d like to see the team move faster,” says Glaub. She adds that part of the problem was the team’s determination to introduce a flawless program: “Sometimes, you can’t just sit there and [try to] make something perfect. You just have to go try it out and then start tweaking it from there.”


The process was a long one, but the result was strong. After two years of work and cooperation, the team members presented management with a compensation system that directly responded to the four philosophies they had established for Johnsonville.


Lenz says that as a whole, the senior ranks approved of the team’s proposal. Because he had kept management updated along the way and because the vice president of manufacturing worked with the team off and on throughout the process, there weren’t any surprises during the final presentation. “A few were skeptical, but the majority were supportive,” Lenz says. Therefore, after presentations to employees and a vote by all members of the work force, the new compensation system was introduced.


Peers review performance to determine pay increases.
Overall, the compensation system is what Lenz describes as “pay-for-performance.” Although grounded in a traditional evaluation structure-a point factor-it’s also heavily reliant on a peer-review process.


The system centers around result blocks for each of approximately 80 positions. These blocks each comprise as many as 15 separate criteria, which highlight the key requirements for each job. Lenz says that most positions have two or three result blocks that are completed in progression, but some positions have as many as five. “Our belief is that you start out with the tasks that you must accomplish to do the basic parts of your job,” he says. “These make up the first result block. Once you know how to do these tasks, you progress to the skills you need to know to perform at a higher level. Finally, you go on to the results that you should be able to achieve because of the competencies that you have.”


Going along with this belief is a philosophy that people should be paid for what they do, and shouldn’t be restricted from learning and growing. Therefore, the company sets no limits on how quickly employees can move through their result blocks. “If someone is doing the job, we don’t want to hold them back,” Glaub explains. “We want to pay them what the job’s worth.” She adds, however, it takes employees months-and sometimes years-to work through most of the blocks: “If you have them set up right, people are going to be challenged and won’t test through them too quickly.”


When employees are ready to be evaluated on a result block, they must follow specific steps. On the bulletin board in each plant, there’s a form to initiate this compensation change process. When an employee feels prepared to “pass” an evaluation of all eight to 15 results, he or she fills out the form, which includes the employee’s name, title and team, as well as the result block to be evaluated. This completed, the employee passes the form on to his or her supervisor, or coach.


“The peer-review process is refreshing for supervisors: With the extra input from others, they feel more like facilitators and less like judges.”


Together, the employee and supervisor select some of the employee’s peers who already have completed the result block being evaluated and also are in a position to see the employee’s work on a regular basis. These employees-plus the employee’s team leader and supervisor-become the peer-review team. Glaub says that usually this number comes to four or five, but “it depends on the job and how many people that person really interacts with day to day.”


For each result in the block, there is a different measurement-evaluations that range from written quizzes to timed demonstrations. “They’re supposed to be as objective as possible,” says Glaub. “We really are looking for proof of new competencies.” She admits, however, that some results-especially in the highest result blocks-need to be quite subjective in nature. “For example, I have payroll coordinators on my team,” she explains. “One of the things that they have on their last result block is that they must make meaningful contributions to project teams.” Understandably, “meaningful contributions” aren’t easily measured. Therefore, the peers reviewing the result block must analyze the employee’s past meeting participation and come to a consensus on whether he or she met the criterium.


Glaub says that for most supervisors, this peer-review process is refreshing. “They get a lot of input,” she says. This makes the performance review and salary decision easier: “The decision isn’t based only on their observations-it’s based on a number of different people’s observations. They feel more like facilitators and less like judges.”


But what do employees think about it? Lenz says that they like having more control over their salary increases. “We don’t have the good-old-boy system anymore,” he says. “People, for the most part, don’t mind honestly evaluating their peers, because that means that they will be evaluated fairly, too, when it comes time for their result-block test.”


Glaub says that if employees are uncomfortable participating in the peer review, she does what she can to make it easier for them. “If someone is having a tough time, we make them responsible for an area that’s easier to measure so that they don’t feel they’re getting into personal issues,” she says. But-in the end-peer review is required of everyone. “Since the 1980s, we’ve been a very team-oriented company,” Glaub says. “People are used to giving a lot of feedback and being involved. If it’s uncomfortable for some people, they have to get used to it if they want to work here. That’s just the way we operate.”


Monthly contract fulfillment determines individual bonus.
As the hourly team was completing its task, another team of approximately 35 employees began looking at Johnsonville’s bonus system. Working closely with Glaub and the member services department, the team developed a monthly companywide bonus system that also requires that employees talk openly with-and about-their peers.


According to this plan, Johnsonville employees follow designated steps to receive their bonuses. The process begins with all teams, salaried members and coaches writing six-month contracts, stating their six-month goals and the ways they plan to meet them. The goals must fall into the framework of four overriding company endstates: a noticeably better product, outstanding financial results, outstanding customer service and outstanding people.


In addition, the six-month contract contains professional-development goals. These ensure that each employee continually is challenging himself or herself to learn more and provide increasing value to his or her customers, says Gene Rech, southwest regional sales coach for Johnsonville. “If you aren’t at fair market value, you want to work on the skills that will get you there,” he says. “If you are already at fair market value, you should include actions that will move you further ahead.” Glaub says that these professional-development actions vary greatly from job to job and month to month, but examples might include reading a specific book or learning a new computer skill. “It’s any action that will help you to move your position forward,” she explains.


At the beginning of every month, each employee writes a contract that includes his or her actions that will help accomplish that month’s goals-and eventually, the six-month goals as well. “The whole purpose is to help people focus, prioritize and manage their time,” Glaub says. “The contracts really keep [employees] moving on long-term actions.”


To obtain feedback on this performance, individual employees select three internal customers-or people who will be affected by the employee’s work-as feedback providers each month. Through the company’s electronic bulletin board system, employees send their contracts to the three customers. At the end of the month, these customers respond through surveys that provide detailed information on employees’ performance.


Employees also post their contracts to a companywide bulletin board so anyone can read others’ monthly goals and actions and comment on them. “We realize that people have more than three customers each month,” Glaub says. “This allows for more feedback from others who may be interested. People do get comments on their contracts through this system.”


Glaub says that the company teams meet at the beginning of the month to review contracts and ensure that the employees’ goals are attainable. “It’s the team members’ role to say up front, ‘Hey, I don’t think you’re doing enough for your bonus this month,’ or ‘Hey, I think it would work out better if you focused on some different activities,’ ” she says.


At this same meeting, the team discusses the customer feedback from the previous month’s contracts. “If you do something for someone and the team thinks you could have done it better or differently, you’ll receive feedback that will help you improve your performance next time,” Glaub explains. Lenz adds: “If there was an honest effort and constant communication, then we use the attempt as a learning experience.” This isn’t always the case, however. “If you don’t complete a project, your team may not give you your whole bonus,” Glaub says.


This is an important aspect of the system. As it’s set up, bonuses-which are based on the company’s performance-are distributed monthly to teams as a whole. Each individual has a bonus target for the year, which Glaub says usually makes up 10% to 25% of an employee’s base pay. However, the monthly responsibility for dividing the bonus is left to the team members, who must decide collaboratively if the individual members have fulfilled their contracted obligations. “Sometimes, employees come in below target at the year’s end; sometimes they get 110% of their targeted bonus,” Glaub says. “The target is established so individuals can measure their performance against a pre-established dollar amount.”


Glaub says that in the event that contracts aren’t complete, the team usually knows before the month’s end. “Team members are supposed to come tell us halfway through the month if they’re having some difficulties or if something came up of higher priority,” Glaub says. “In those instances, the customers must say that it’s OK that the member didn’t finish the work [and fulfill the contract].” Usually, in these circumstances, Glaub says the employee will continue to work with the same customer the following month.


Lenz says that there have been cases in which team members didn’t receive the bonuses expected: “We’ve had team members who lost some of their dollars because they didn’t fulfill some of their contract obligations.” This is rare, however. Why? Not only is there a financial incentive to complete tasks, but the contract also encourages hard work. “You’re making a commitment when you write your contract, so you have to plan well and organize your time to get your work done,” Glaub says. “People don’t like to go to others and say, ‘I didn’t get finished.’ “


The peer-review process builds bonds between workers.
As Johnsonville enters its third year of peer review for compensation, everyone agrees that the benefits are evident. For management, the process alleviates some of the pressure caused by performance reviews and salary decisions. And for employees, it creates structure and needed challenge. “It can be stressful because the bar always is raised, and you can’t get into those comfort levels where you can just coast,” Lenz explains. “But, there’s always a lot expected of you, and your contributions are valued. Plus, everyone knows what needs to be done to get a salary increase.”


In addition, Rech says that there’s a better bond between employees as a result of the review process. “People know what’s being done throughout their areas. Everyone knows what others are working on, and each member is accountable to his or her peers.” Overall, says Rech, the peer-review structure improves employee communication regarding job descriptions, work flow, accountability and productivity. Or, in other words, peer review helps this sausage company create more than one type of link.


Personnel Journal, October 1994, Vol. 73, No. 10, pp. 126-132.


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Parenting Education Helps Employees Focus on Work

As you settle back to read this article, kindly do not allow any family distractions to interfere with your concentration. If your teenager is pushing the limits with you during every waking moment, of course you won’t be thinking about that as you read. If your 4-year-old is asking alarming questions about sex, just put that out of your mind. If you’re wondering whether your second-grader may have a learning disability, forget that for a few minutes, too. Reading this article is a work-related activity.


You wouldn’t dream of worrying about these issues while you’re at work, would you? After all, would you worry about your upcoming presentation to the board of directors while you’re at home?


If you’re like most people, you probably have a difficult time keeping those worlds separate. The worries of one leak into the other. The danger of carrying work stress home has been an issue for a long time. Less widely recognized is the parenting stress that’s carried to work and eventually robs employees of their concentration and productivity. Hence, the additional stress has encouraged many companies to include parenting education in their work/family, wellness and employee-assistance programs. By offering parenting seminars to employees, increasing numbers of employers are responding to the fact that work stress and family stress both travel two-way streets.


Does parenting education belong at work? Many U.S. corporations have answered that question: They already provide the training. In fact, among Fortune 500 companies, at least 60% offer parenting-education programs, according to Gene Cooper, president of New York City-based Corporate Counseling Associates, Inc., a national employee-assistance and managed-care company. Cooper says that for such companies, the question isn’t whether to offer parenting education, but which services should be offered. “Parents who work are looking for education about child development. Their normal sources of parenting-education exchanges—extended families living nearby, chats with other parents at the playground or park—are gone. Working parents don’t have opportunities for parent exchanges among families or peers.”


Rebecca Powell, director of Lincolnton, North Carolina-based Workforce Park: A Children’s Place in Lincolnton, agrees. She directs a child day-care center for two local employers, United States Hosiery Corp. and Cochrane Furniture Company, Inc. “Nowhere along the way do you ever take a ‘Parenting 101’ class,” she says. “Now that it often takes two working parents to support a family, parenting education absolutely belongs in the workplace.”


Northridge, California-based Great Western Bank’s corporate headquarters has offered parenting education since 1990, two years before its onsite day-care center opened. The company’s work force is young. The average age is 34, and 70% of the employees are women, according to Phyllis Austin, manager of benefits and compensation. Many of them have several young children and a full range of unanswered questions. If they couldn’t get information about parenting at work, Austin says, “some would be inquisitive and seek it out. Others wouldn’t be aware of the issues or the resources. They don’t have time to search out information otherwise because they’re too busy managing work and home.”


Austin believes that parenting education at the workplace is a preventive approach to work/family problems. “There is definitely a long-range return. You can’t measure effectiveness right away,” she explains. Parenting-education programs are offered under the work/family component of the bank’s comprehensive wellness program. “The fact that so many of our employees attend these programs [shows] that they feel comfortable in the nonthreatening, nonjudgmental atmosphere we’ve worked to develop,” she says.


In terms of a workplace market, the Washington, D.C.-based National Center of Health Statistics reports that in 1992, 80% of the women in the work force were of childbearing age. Also, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that between 1980 and 1992, there was a 21% increase in the total number of working women in the United States and a 34% increase among women who have children 35 months old or younger. In 1992, 1.9 million American women returned to work after having a baby; and among U.S. households that have working parents and children, those headed by single fathers increased the fastest, growing to more than 1 million. Clearly, both mothers and fathers are working more hours, perhaps even more jobs, to provide for the family, and they’re getting less help from traditional sources.


San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Co. recognized in the 1980s that the demographics of its employee population also were changing. Once largely male, PG&E’s employee group began to reflect the changes in the culture, including families’ need for double incomes and the increase in women among the company’s professionals. (Approximately 45% of PG&E’s managers are classified as female or minority.) Employees had new needs. Fortunately, the company had enough foresight to offer competitive benefits packages that addressed work/family issues, says spokeswoman Shawn Cooper. The company has worked with a local agency in Sacramento, California, to bring in speakers who are doctoral-level child-development specialists. Some of the topics have included why children can’t be treated the same way in all situations and how to respond when one child makes the honor roll and the other child demonstrates lackluster classroom performance. Of PG&E’s 2,500 employees, more than 500 have attended the seminars.


Courtney Murrell, manager of fitness programs for Apple Computer Inc., agrees that workplace demographics and shifting social needs drove Apple to begin marketing parent-education classes to its entire Cupertino, California, work force last January. “Our average age is 34, and our employees are feeling more stress due to greater workloads and reorganization in the Silicon Valley.” Apple offers such classes as Getting Your Child Ready for Kindergarten, Sleeping Issues for Newborns to 3-Year-Olds and Discipline for Parents of Toddlers and Pre-Teens. “The programs give the employees peace of mind and the tools to handle their personal lives better, making them more productive on the job because they can better balance life as a whole,” Murrell says.


HR at Rochester, New York-based Bausch & Lomb Inc. agrees. Renee Noll, senior human resources representative, believes that “by helping our work force deal more effectively with family issues, our employees will be more productive and more focused.” Employer benefits drive Holland, Michigan-based Donnelly Corp., says Jude Deanes, employee-program specialist. She describes the working parent who can find answers at work as one who can give more to the company, exhibits higher morale and is more likely to stay longer with the company.


Do employees benefit? Murrell believes that “the employees feel more in control. They feel like they have a grip on life and that their stress is reduced.” Wendy Starr, manager of LifeCycle Programs and Policies at Xerox, says that their employees not only enjoy the convenience of worksite training, but receive free education and the comfort that its quality is probably high, since the employer has screened the provider.


Great Western Bank provides three- and four-week programs for parents of preschoolers, school-age children, pre-adolescents and adolescents. The seminars provide an overview of the family stresses that employees bring to work and don’t know how to solve: sibling rivalry, drugs, peer pressure, disrespect toward parents, emotional distance, insensitivity to younger siblings and grandparents, self-esteem, sexuality, blended families, single-parent families, attention deficit disorder and general work/family issues. The most frequently requested topic has been on motivating children to study and overcoming homework battles. Employees at Bausch & Lomb frequently request a seminar called Safe at Home, a latchkey children’s program that provides separate segments for parents and children, then brings them together for a final session.


“Parenting education can reduce stress and absenteeism. In addition, the communication skills learned in the classes work well with colleagues.”


Such topic lists are familiar to Rona Greenstadt and Carole Mingus, Los Angeles-based parent educators who provide Great Western Bank’s parenting-education sessions for parents of toddlers and adolescents. Both are master teachers for Los Angeles Unified School District and have extensive backgrounds in child development. Greenstadt, who has been teaching parenting education since 1981, believes that parent participants will be more productive and confident when their relationships with their children are going well. “When things aren’t going well with a child, the parent is anxious. Parenting education can reduce stress and absenteeism and increase productivity.” In addition, the communication skills learned in parenting classes work remarkably well with colleagues, too, helping employees who are parents to deal with on-the-job frustration and stress.


Mingus adds that parenting education in the workplace provides a place for employees to get their questions answered, encourages small-group support systems and increases employees’ self-esteem in other areas of their lives.


The most vital educational components are the practical tools parents take home. In fact, “how to” classes are the main thrust of education programs at Apple, Bausch & Lomb and Great Western Bank. Bausch & Lomb’s Noll says that the company’s most popular classes are Helping Your Child with Homework, How To Best Communicate with Your Child and Financing Your Child’s Education.


At Apple, the parenting programs that offer tools and practical applications are the most well-received, says Murrell. Great Western Bank’s Austin adds, “These parents are seeking out information that they can take home and use with their preschooler or adolescent that evening.”


What does a company do to be prepared to offer such programs? One method is to contract with a reputable provider, such as Corporate Counseling Associates, Inc. (provider for CondŽ Nast, Ralph Lauren and Digital Equipment Corp.) or Boston-based Work/Family Directions, (provider for Xerox, Bausch & Lomb and IBM). Employers also can find low-cost or no-cost alternatives in community resources such as the adult-education department of a local school district.


Getting management buy-in is crucial, however. Program administrators at Apple screen the presenters to ensure quality control. They review the presenters’ backgrounds and materials, then arrange for personal interviews.


The more creatively the program is promoted, the more successful it will be. For example, employees can receive paycheck stuffers, fliers and the assurance that the training will be nonjudgmental. Also, registration should be easy. In the words of Xerox’s Starr, parenting education “works best if it’s part of a broader-based work/family strategy.”


But word of mouth is still the best way to enlist support. Michelle Takeshita, an accountant at Great Western Bank, says, “My 4-year-old son, Landon, had a stuttering problem. The parent educator researched some articles, shared her own experiences (as a parent) and gave me a referral to a speech therapist. Now, Landon’s doing fine.” Takeshita saves the class handouts and refers to them whenever issues arise at home. What’s the impact of the parenting-education program on reducing her family stress at work? “Fantastic,” she says.


OK. It’s fine now to return to thinking about that child of yours. And about that parenting program your company has been considering.


Personnel Journal, October 1994, Vol. 73, No. 3, 58-62.


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Deflecting Workplace Violence

Nestled in the mountains approximately 60 miles east of Raleigh, North Carolina, Deborah Hollis’ office would seem to be a safe haven from violent crime. But, just as an increasing number of American workers have discovered, violence is something that can’t be escaped.


As the vice president of human resources for Rocky Mount, North Carolina-based Hardee’s Food Systems Inc.-which operates 1,100 company-owned Hardee’s and Roy Rogers restaurants east of the Rockies and employs 35,000 people-dealing with violence is part of Hollis’ job. All too often, she has been put in the position of reacting to bloodshed within the company’s restaurants as robbery attempts have led to murder, or the aggression from the streets has been brought inside.These days, however, more of Hollis’ time is spent in proactive measures against workplace violence. In taking a stand against this growing epidemic, the company created a comprehensive violence-prevention program in 1990. The program is run by a full-service loss-prevention department that reports directly to Hollis. It includes extensive training, a 24-hour reporting hotline and an intervention policy, and aims at reducing violent crimes within the restaurants. It also addresses threats, harassment and domestic violence targeted toward any member of the company’s work force. And although it’s impossible to tell how many threats, harassments or other such incidents the program has deflected, evidence shows that the program led to a 48% decrease in robberies in 1993.


The program isn’t cheap. Francis D’Addario, director of loss prevention, estimates that the company spends nearly $3 million a year on prevention and security. But, he believes it’s a small price to pay. Just look at the figures. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), an average of 15 people are murdered on the job each week, which averages to nearly 800 murders a year. And, restaurants are high on the workplace-homicide risk list.


Even more workers are physically attacked, threatened or harassed. In fact, these incidents, although less brutal than murder, are much more prevalent and nearly as detrimental to a business and its workers. Between July 1992 and July 1993, for example, 2.2 million full-time workers were physically attacked on the job, 6.3 million were threatened with violence, and 16.1 million were harassed, according to a study by Northwestern National Life Insurance Co.(NWNL). And these incidents cost companies more than $4 billion in lost work and legal expenses in 1992, according to the Monroe, North Carolina-based National Safe Workplace Institute. The research company calculates that the average cost to employers of a single episode of workplace violence can amount to $250,000 in lost work time and legal expenses.


Despite the numbers, a poll taken by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) of HR professionals, released in December 1993, revealed that only 28% of companies have a formal plan aimed at preventing violence or dealing with its aftermath, and only 22% have plans to introduce such a strategy. Why the lack of action? S. Anthony Baron, chairman and CEO of San Diego-based Scripps Center for Quality Management Inc., and author of Violence in the Workplace: A Preventative and Management Guide for Businesses, cites three reasons: a lack of knowledge of what to do, cost, and a belief system that “it won’t happen here.”


The truth is, it can happen anywhere. And although the retail and service industries remain the bloodiest worksites (because many transactions involve cash and these businesses are easily accessible by the public), other industries are vulnerable. The contributors to workplace violence cited by workers interviewed for the NWNL study present themselves everywhere. They are: alcohol and drug abuse, layoffs and firings, job stress and job-related conflicts, violence on TV and in the movies, accessibility of guns, and poverty.


In addition, workplaces everywhere have become battlegrounds for domestic violence. Ac cording to the U.S. Justice Department, boyfriends and husbands, current and former, commit more than 13,000 acts of violence against women in the workplace every year.


Clearly, it’s impossible to completely prevent violence from happening in our workplaces without eliminating it from society, but there are steps companies can take-and indeed must take-to defuse potentially violent situations and keep their workers as safe as possible. Increased security is one measure. But security personnel shouldn’t hold the burden alone. Violence is a human issue that HR can and should play a leading role in preventing. Hollis says that Hardee’s created its program under HR’s jurisdiction because company officials believe it’s important that it have a strong focus on the human element. “Whatever strategies the company comes up with have to meet our internal standards of how we want employees treated,” she says.


Part of HR’s role in preventing workplace violence is creating an environment less conducive to volatility, an environment in which workers are empowered, have support systems such as EAPs in place and are treated fairly. But more than that, HR departments can be proactive by putting together violence-prevention strategies that at the minimum include extensive pre-screening to keep potentially violent people out of the workplace, training managers on how to recognize and handle violent behaviors, and developing action plans that include processes for reporting threats.


HR in organizations such as Hardee’s, the U.S. Postal Service and Kraft General Foods are going one step further by leading or serving on prevention task forces with people from their companies’ EAP, security, legal and other staffs. Together, they take such measures as investigating threats and intervening in potentially explosive situations.


Employee-committed violence can be minimized with proper pre-screening.
According to the NWNL study, 30% of workplace attacks are committed by co-workers, bosses or former employees. What’s more, 43% of threats of violence against workers come from this group, along with 88% of harassment. It’s acts of workplace violence committed by this group of people that human resources can have the most significant effect in preventing.


The first step in this strategy should be pre-screening both internal and external applicants. Conducting interviews that focus on uncovering character, competency and chemistry, says Scripps Center’s Baron, is the first step. Jack Jones, vice president of research and development at London House in Rosemont, Illinois, agrees. He recommends developing job-related questions that probe to get people to reveal how they have reacted in the past, or may react in the future, to certain situations.


J.L. “Larry” VanderHaar, vice president of of HR at the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times Co. in Louisville, Kentucky, says screening temperamental people out during the interview process is key to his company’s strategy. He asks questions such as, “What frustrates you?” and “Who was your worst supervisor and why?” Says VanderHaar: “If they come in and badmouth their last employer because they changed their benefits plan or something like that, there’s no sense bringing them in here because we’re going to make changes like any other employer as time goes on.”


The newspaper company began paying closer attention to interview responses after September 15, 1989-the day an armed employee on long-term disability from a company leasing space in its building shot to death seven people and wounded 12 others before killing himself on the premises. “None of our employees were injured, but it impacted us because it was in our building,” VanderHaar says. He can still picture the human carnage, which he says keeps him aware of the consequences of a slack prevention strategy.


Warren Lawson, director of training & development operations at Northfield, Illinois-based Kraft General Foods Co., has the same awareness. Earlier this year, a male employee shot and killed a female co-worker at one of the company’s plants. The victim recently had broken off a relationship with her killer.


Ironically, the company already was aware of the potential violence that can happen in the workplace and was preparing to roll out a companywide violence-prevention program when the murder occurred. As part of this program, which it has since implemented, the company tries to avoid hiring workers who have violent tendencies through a three-pronged pre-screening process, which comprises behavior-based interviewing, thorough reference checks and attitude tests.


For the first step, Kraft asks candidates questions that probe into their behavior patterns. The questions focus on discovering how a candidate will likely react to situations that may occur at work, and are job-specific. For example, if someone’s interviewing for a position that requires working on a team, the questions address team activity. If they’re managerial candidates, they’ll be probed as to how they would handle specific relations with employees. “We’re getting them to talk about what they’d actually do on the job rather than asking them what college they went to or what their favorite course was,” Lawson says. “That doesn’t tell us very much.”


Along with behavior-based interviewing, Kraft conducts thorough reference checks. Lawson has found that the company can obtain a greater amount of background information by contracting with an outside firm.


Other organizations have learned this as well. The U.S. Postal Service, for example, which has developed a six-part strategy for prevention that’s being enlisted nationally (see “The Postal Service Delivers a Violence-prevention Program”), uses an outside firm with access to national data bases to check such applicant records as criminal, driving and credit histories. “Because we have a unique population in that we’re across the entire country and we have mobile people, it’s been difficult for personnel to do thorough checks on the local level,” says Ann Wright, national manager for safety and health, who has been coordinating the prevention program. Use of the outside firm has freed up the Postal Service’s personnel workers to do more qualitative screening, such as contacting former employers and personal references.


Wright says that the postal service has explored behavioral tests to incorporate into its screening process, but hasn’t been able to identify one that does an effective job of screening and also has been validated as a predictor of violent acts.


In fact, many companies stay away from behavioral or psychological tests for fear that their validity will be tested legally. Their use is indeed tricky, says Mary Russell, a partner in the Labor and Employment Law Practice Group at San Diego-based Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps. Probing questions about behavior can be an invasion of privacy, and seeking out mental problems can be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). For this reason, she recommends companies avoid them.


However, London House’s Jones, who has conducted research on these types of tests, says that as long as tests are designed to assess workplace violence specifically and are grounded in psychology, they can be not only valid and legal, but effective in identifying tendencies for everything from vandalism to physical abuse. “What you’re primarily interested in is identifying what percent of applicants could have some violent workplace disposition,” says Jones.


To specifically address workplace violence, he says, these types of tests need to seek answers to job-related behaviors and attitudes. For example, questions may ask candidates to agree or disagree with the way a problem is solved, or ask to what degree of anger a proposed problem would cause them.


Jones’ research on these types of psychological tests has included having workers who take them also complete biographical questionnaires in which they admit to past violent activities. He has found a high degree of correlation between the test scores and the admissions. “It’s a myth that tests can’t predict violent behavior,” he says.


He believes that these types of tests, coupled with structured interviews and reference checking, benefit companies in several ways. “Not only do they help deter negligent hiring claims by showing that you’re responsible in keeping out the more severe offenders, but they also seem to be related to customer-service behavior,” he says.


That’s something that Kraft has discovered. As the third prong of its pre-screening process, the company conducts behavioral tests that uncover how candidates react to certain situations. The process, while weeding out potentially violent people, also has netted a better- quality work force. At the company’s four new facilities, which used the process from the outset, the turnover rate has been less than 2%. “We’ve got a better caliber of employees in these facilities, and that’s because the selection process was good to begin with,” says Lawson. “Had we had this process before, we probably would have screened out some employees that we hired in the past.”


Augment pre-screening with training about violence, its predictors and preventions.
Along with extensive pre-screening, Kraft is training its work force on violence issues as part of its prevention program. The video-training program from Des Moines, Iowa-based Excellence in Training Corp. explains what workplace violence is, identifies its causes and signs, and offers tips on how to prevent it and what to do when it occurs.


Kraft plans to train all of its approximately 75,000 North American workers in 168 facilities. It’s starting with the management group, who will in turn train their employees. Lawson says the program is being well received. “Our plant managers are asking us where they can get more information,” he says.


At San Joaquin Health Care Inc. in French Camp, California, training on how to recognize and handle potential, violent incidents also has been successful. The company held a three-hour seminar for approximately 60 managers in July presented by Littler, Mendelson, Fastiff, Tichy & Mathiason, a San Francisco-based law firm that has approximately 20 lawyers on staff who work full time on workplace violence cases. Only a few days after the seminar, a manager was presented with a potentially violent incident. An employee approached her because another employee’s husband had threatened to harm his wife and anyone around her. The manager had learned in the training how to advise the threatened employee about getting a restraining order, and bringing human resources into the process. “She was thrilled that she had had the training so that she could try to prevent anything from happening,” says Judy Courtney, director of HR for the hospital. She adds that the training sent a clear message that this issue should be taken seriously.


That’s a message that the Postal Service wants to get out. Training is one way it’s doing so. Approximately 5,000 managers in California, for example, recently received training on how to report threats as well as how to recognize early signs of violence and how to intervene. In addition, postal managers and supervisors nationally are going through a series of training programs that addresses such climate-improvement measures as employee empowerment, labor relations and conflict resolution.


How to handle conflict is part of the training Hardee’s managers get as well. The fast-food company does extensive video training for managers on everything from store security systems to dealing with stalking situations. Workers receive training on cash handling and such preventative measures as keeping the back door of restaurants locked. And, the company communicates safety information constantly to its work force through a monthly newsletter produced by human resources, a training newsletter and a semi-annual internal publication called The Stop Watch. Occasionally, it even sends out special bulletins to stores in particular areas if a crime analysis indicates a particular risk.


Hardee’s program goes beyond just job safety training. All of Hardee’s workers receive personal safety training. They’re taught travel tips (such as not going directly to their hotel room if there’s someone following them); road safety (such as driving in spite of flat tires if a suspicious person approaches); and general safety tips (such as not going to ATM machines alone at night). “Most of the violence that’s occurring in the United States occurs off the job, and if a company is going to address the potential for keeping its employees and their loved ones safe, it would be remiss to only prepare workers for what might happen in the workplace,” says D’Addario.


Adds Hollis: “If there are unsafe practices at work or at home, it costs the company in lost time, in workers’ compensation and in health-care benefits.”


Wilmington, Delaware-based EI DuPont De Nemours & Co. shares this philosophy. It began a personal-protection program in 1986 that has won the company several awards. The program also has been copyrighted and purchased by other businesses. “DuPont is focused on safety,” says Jane McManus, human resources manager for DuPont’s nylon business. “So when we had a changing dynamic in the workplace-an increasing number of women going into nontraditional jobs, interfacing in different types of business and traveling more-coupled with a growing awareness of violence against women and violence in general, the company put in place a personal safety program.”


Its most intensive training module is an eight-hour rape prevention workshop for women. The seminar was created by human resources development and is facilitated by female workers who volunteer. The training focuses on understanding rape and its aftermath, providing prevention measures and outlining support systems for rape survivors.


Other modules include a managers’ workshop that’s designed to help managers understand how to support workers who have been through a crime such as rape. The workshop also gives managers some strategies for preventing rape; a Right to Dignity program that talks about physical and psychological battering; and a Matter of Respect seminar focusing on sexual harassment. All of the programs are facilitated by DuPont volunteers, who are trained to conduct them in a five-day workshop. “People volunteer generally because they understand the topic and have the energy to try to bring about change,” says McManus.


Task forces focused on violence prevention put energy into action.
DuPont’s training program raises its workers’ awareness and knowledge of violence and how to react to it. To facilitate reaction, DuPont also recently created a Corporate Threat Management Team that is developing an action plan for handling threats, harassment and physical attacks. The team consists of someone from security, external affairs, human resources and the company’s employee assistance program.


Scripps’ Baron says that forming a crisis team such as DuPont’s Corporate Threat Management Team is key to a prevention strategy. These teams should comprise senior, onsite managers; HR personnel; legal counsel; security representatives; people to handle communications both internally and externally; a psychologist, EAP representative or violence specialist; and a union representative if the company has a unionized work force. The duties of these teams may vary, but at a minimum should include performing crisis-vulnerability assessments, establishing written policies and procedures, such as guidelines for reporting abuse, and developing action plans if crises do occur.


San Joaquin Hospital created a safety task force after a female employee was attacked from behind in the parking lot. “We decided we needed to really look at the incident, as well as some increasing activity that was occurring, such as vandalism and emergency room violence going on around the country,” says Lynn Cook, director of nursing, who chairs the task force. Also, medical facilities in California must abide by new Cal/OSHA guidelines that require them to develop plans for reducing violent behavior on their pre-mises.


Cook enlisted the personnel director, hospital director, a risk manager, a security person, an education coordinator and managers from various departments to serve on the task force. One of the first tasks the team undertook was conducting an employee survey of safety concerns. The survey revealed that workers’ fears stemmed most from the distance of the parking lot from their work sites, hospital accessibility (there are 35 entrances into the hospital) and emergency room chaos.


The team then began meeting monthly to address these concerns. It did a security survey, looking at lighting systems, security measures and building access. The members all stayed after dark one night to walk the parking lot, noting bushes growing too high, light locations and employee parking spots.


Since the task force has been in place, several new safety measures have been implemented. Security guard schedules have been adjusted to meet identified needs. An ID badge system with electronic readers has been installed. And the company is in the process of creating a “lock-down” system to limit access into the buildings. In addition, the team has added a reporting procedure to the employee handbook that defines what constitutes violence and outlines workers’ responsibility for contacting the proper people.


Creating a reporting system was also a key achievement of Kraft’s task force, assembled to design the company’s prevention program. Kraft enlisted an outside consultant to lead its team, which also consisted of corporate security personnel, safety and risk management people, human resources staff, an EAP representative and workers from operations.


The team developed guidelines for workers to report either actual violent incidents or suspected trouble. The guidelines stipulate that supervisors should be employees’ first contact. If the incident requires further action or investigation, the chain of involvement is human resources, the legal department and then security. “The key is that it’s better to take some action than no action,” says Lawson. “We’d rather err on the side of prevention than be sorry for it later.”


Some companies are finding hotlines to be the answer for threat reporting. Hardee’s, for example, has a 24-hour crisis-reporting center run by the loss prevention staff. And the Postal Service has two toll-free numbers that ring at the headquarters any time day or night. One, run by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service), takes all reports of any overt threats or any kind of illegal activity. The other one takes reports of almost anything. Sometimes, says Wright, the reports regard climate issues or conflicts with supervisors or co-workers. Sometimes, people just call with personal problems. “If a caller contacts us and needs some sort of counseling, then counseling is available on that phone line,” says Wright. “And that’s in addition to our EAP services.”


The agency’s inspection service pursues all threats reported to either line, as well as threats reported at local levels. And it does take action if threats prove authentic. In Southglenn, Colorado, for example, a postal worker made a threat against his supervisor during a session with his personal counselor. Obligated by a duty to warn, the counselor informed both the police and the postmaster about the situation. The postal service removed the threat maker from his job until he was cleared by a psychiatric fitness-for-duty test.


The action, although proper for the situation, had its implications. At the time the employee was released, his union filed a grievance. Nine months later, when the postal service cleared him to return to work, co-workers again filed a grievance, some of them walking off the job. The problem, says Wright, is that the Postal Service probably didn’t do a good job of communicating to the work force that the agency no longer deemed the worker a danger. Currently, the employee isn’t working but is being paid, and the Postal Service is continuing with its training, climate improvement and labor relations initiatives.


In addition, some regions of the Postal Service have created crisis intervention teams to address threats and other potentially violent behaviors on a local level. The pilot project began in California, where each district created its own team comprising human resources managers, EAP coordinators, medical practitioners, line managers, safety and health personnel, injury compensation people, labor relations representatives and outside resources. “The teams provide an organized way of addressing potentially dangerous situations so that we can have control and respond appropriately,” says Jim Merrill, an HR executive with the Pacific region of the Postal Service.


Action the teams take can include gathering information about the threatening workers, offering counseling if appropriate or even terminating if necessary. For example, there was an incident in Antioch, California, in which an ex-employee wrote his supervisor a threatening letter and sent Prodigy messages to the post office stating, “I have post-traumatic stress disorder, I haven’t been properly treated, I’m enraged and I wake up at night thinking that I want to kill the postmaster.”


The threat assessment team for that region took over the case, investigating and taking action. The team discovered that the ex-employee had an attorney to deal with some employment issues. It talked to the attorney. It sent the doctor on the team to discuss the situation with the man’s therapist, who confirmed the man was under treatment. The team got a permanent restraining order against the ex-employee, installed some security guards in the office temporarily and moved the postmaster to a different location until the situation was stabilized.


Currently, the postmaster’s back in the office, the restraining order is holding and the ex-employee’s therapist knows that if the man acts up, the agency needs to be contacted. “You don’t have control of that person because he’s outside your work force,” Merrill says. “But through these efforts we were able to put him on notice, determine that he wasn’t dangerous, that he was just blowing off steam, and defuse the situation. Had we not been organized, we don’t know where it would have gone.”


Having a team in place provides organization. It creates opportunity for input from several areas of expertise and divvies up responsibility. And Merrill believes that it’s important for human resources to lead the team. “HR managers have most of the information about employees, and have experience dealing with employee problems and medical situations,” he says. “They’re the natural choice in an organization to take the lead.”


But they shouldn’t have full responsibility. “They tell me that having a threat assessment team reduces their stress because in the past they ended up doing it all themselves.”


At Hardee’s, the human resources personnel work closely with the loss prevention team in following up threat and harassment reports. “Our loss prevention staff in the field have a dotted line relationship to our field HR staff,” Hollis says. “Their skills are different, so they match up and blend very well.”


The HR and loss prevention staffs work as a threat assessment team collecting written and verbal statements from victims and witnesses and doing background checks on both perpetrator and victim. “We want to make sure that the incident occurred as described and that the integrity of the person making the allegation is reasonable,” says D’Addario.


If the incident indeed is real, which D’Addario says is the case 90% of the time, the team takes action. First they check the public record for other acts of violence committed by the perpetrators. If some is found, action is escalated.


Action may vary. In most cases, immediate steps include informing law enforcement of the situation and moving the potential victim temporarily to another location out of harm. The company also will advise the victim on such things as getting restraining orders, working with police and cataloging evidence, such as gifts, phone calls and letters from stalkers. If phone harassment or threats have been made, the company will serve as liaison with the phone company. And if employees need the company to go to court for them, it will. “One of our missions is to enforce a zero-tolerance policy for threats or harassment at Hardee’s,” says D’Addario.


The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times Co. has zero tolerance as well. Shortly after the murderous rampage occurred at the company site, for example, an employee came to work with a water gun shaped like an assault weapon. He was immediately fired. “His intent was to be funny,” says VanderHaar. “We didn’t take it that way.”


In another instance, an employee frustrated about a particular work assignment threatened the company that it “hadn’t seen anything yet,” in reference to the previous deadly incident. Her termination withstood an arbitration with her union. “We’re just not going to tolerate that,” says VanderHaar. “This isn’t a kindergarten. People need to have a minimum amount of respect for one another.”


Joseph Kinney, executive director of the National Safe Workplace Institute, agrees that zero tolerance is necessary, but warns that immediate termination isn’t always the answer. He suggests finding out a perpetrator’s side of the story, weighing it and making a decision to suspend without pay or terminate. “There may be mitigating factors,” says Kinney. “And if somebody’s creating a hostile environment, you need to know because other people are likely to be affected and it’s going to be a situation that’s going to come back to haunt you legally.”


He stresses, however, that some sort of discipline be applied. One of the reasons for increased crime in our workplaces, he says, is a failure to equate crime with punishment. “The boundaries of allowable behavior have changed,” Kinney says. “We’ve allowed people to get away with too much. Companies need to go back and redefine those boundaries. If somebody’s abusive toward somebody else, they need to be disciplined.”


D’Addario believes this extends to people outside the workplace as well. Hardee’s offers rewards for the capture of people who harm any of its workers, be it on the job or elsewhere. “We will do anything that’s legal to bring that person to justice,” he says. “We want everyone to know that Hardee’s and Roy Rogers will not abide by somebody injuring a customer or employee, and we will move to take whatever measures are necessary. We want people to realize that ours won’t be a place where they can act out aggressively and get away with it.”


Even this can’t stop the violence, however. On August 9th, as this article was being written, a female employee was shot and killed at a Hardee’s restaurant in Georgia during a robbery. Investigators believe that the killers were let in through the back door by an employee-an employee who has been trained to avoid potential violent situations.


“Tragedies happen even if you have the best of training,” says Hollis. “We do everything within our power [to prevent them], but there’s a human element involved, which isn’t predictable.”


The recent Hardee’s murder is a painful reminder of this and a warning signal that even more must be done.


Personnel Journal, October 1994, Vol.73, No. 10, pp. 66-77.


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Traditional Labor Laws Apply to the Non-traditional Office

At-home work can confer many benefits to all involved and is an excellent solution for many work situations. However, it also can give rise to potential problems in complying with wage-and-hour laws and health-and-safety regulations.


The Department of Labor takes the position that an employer that “suffers or permits” an employee to work more than 40 hours in a week must pay overtime. That can be true even if employers don’t authorize the overtime and make it clear to at-home workers that their job is listed for straight time only. Usually enforcement agencies hold that if there’s no proof to the contrary, whatever the employee claims is sufficient proof to warrant a judgment for back pay and penalties. And, workers have as long as two—and in some cases three—years to claim these wages.


To reduce the likelihood of wage-and-hour claims by at-home workers, employers should:


  1. Establish and enforce methods for monitoring work done at home.
    Keep accurate records proving what hours are worked. This can be done by having a verifiable system for employees to self-report or certify in writing the hours they work each week, and by maintaining a paper trail to make sure employees can’t come back later and claim they’ve worked additional hours.

  2. Educate operating managers and supervisors about the necessity for keeping workers within the 40-hour workweek.
    Employers need to ensure that supervisors don’t tell their workers to “get the work done regardless of the time it takes,” or “process 75 claims each day” without considering that assignments may take longer for certain workers.

  3. Use such technology as time clocks, or other equipment that records hours.
    Time expended on behalf of the employer for preliminary and follow-up work should be counted as well.

  4. Give employees explicit written directions not to work more than 40 hours without prior written supervisory approval.
    Check with them to ascertain that they’re not doing so.

Health-and-safety law compliance presents another set of problems. There’s often the same potential in an at-home office for injuries resulting from repetitive motion, use of hazardous chemicals or lifting as in the traditional workplace. And, because these injuries occur without the witnesses that may be present in a traditional office, workers’ compensation claims are more difficult to police. The situation is ripe for fraudulent claims.


Minimal steps should be taken to combat this problem, including imposing strict reporting requirements. Require that all injuries be reported immediately, and request specific information about how the injury occured and what the symptoms are to make verification easier.


Lastly, employees and their employers need to watch out for exposure to third-party injury claims. At-home workers’ negligence and intentional acts while employed can make employers liable for damages. Most, if not all, problems can be minimized with proper forethought. Identification of risks and planning to maximize compliance are a must. These usually are areas of responsibility for HR managers. Therefore, companies planning telecommuting programs should ensure that HR considerations don’t lag behind the technological focus of such change.


Personnel Journal, September 1994, Vol.73, No. 9, p. 75.


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FMLA Checklist

Here’s a quick recap of the provisions of the FMLA:


  • The Act requires employers to grant as much as 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a 12-month period
  • Eligible workers must have been employed for at least one year and worked 1,250 hours
  • Circumstances triggering FMLA eligibility:

    • —The arrival of a son or daughter for adoption or foster care
    —To care for a son, daughter, spouse or parent who has a serious health condition
    —For an employee’s own serious health condition


  • Circumstances exempting FMLA eligibility:

    • —Companies with fewer than 50 workers are exempt
    —Employees in the highest-paid 10% may be denied leave if it would cause “substantial and grievous injury” to the business operations.


Personnel Journal, September 1994, Vol.73, No. 9, p. 38.


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Diversity Ignites Effective Work Teams

Several years ago, Rohm & Haas Texas Inc., a Houston-based chemical company, jumped on the total quality bandwagon to boost its competitive position. Work processes were redesigned. Mission statements were drafted. And to encourage employee input and participation, workers were reorganized into mandatory teams designed around natural work processes.


For example, the company formed a team of employees to monitor sulfuric-acid manufacturing. In the past, an employee may have been responsible for only three kettles out of a process that involved 17 different manufacturing kettles. As is typical in many factory environments, this employee rarely was concerned with what happened before the chemical substance reached his or her kettles, nor did the worker care much about what happened to it afterward. He or she fell prey to the classic “It’s-not-my-job” syndrome.


By cross-training employees to understand the entire sulfuric-acid manufacturing process, management believed employees would care more about the end result; that they would search for ways to eliminate mistakes and come up with ideas for process improvements. Like other companies involved in teaming efforts, Rohm & Haas believed a newer, better company could be grown from a cross-pollination of employee ideas, values and perspectives.


Unfortunately, as managers discovered, the diversity that makes teams so successful also can stand in the way of their success. Why? Because it just isn’t that easy for people to overcome their differences, whatever they may be, and work together effectively.


Rohm & Haas is typical of many Houston companies in that the work force is diverse-about 40% of employees are considered legal minorities. These individuals often feel overlooked by the white male power structure, explains Rolando De La Pena, the company’s internal consultant for Total Quality Leadership training until September 1993. (De La Pena is now a senior HR representative at Amoco Production Co. in Tulsa, Oklahoma.) “Texas is somewhat of a racially delineated society,” he says. “The good-ole-boy system is in place.” Because of this, differences in others aren’t readily acknowledged or accepted; in fact, differences make many employees uncomfortable.


For this reason, instead of blithely accepting their new team assignments, Rohm & Haas’ employees started migrating to teams composed of members with whom they felt they had more in common. An African-American employee, for instance, would apply for an open position on a team with more African-American members. An employee with many years of service would search for a team with other long-service employees.


The migration was slow and subtle because employees had to wait until team positions became available through the open-bidding process. But within three years, the carefully designed mix of heterogeneous teams had been replaced by teams of like-minded members. The diversity of experience and perspective the company was hoping to achieve was lost as the teams became increasingly all black or all white.


Managers realized the clever and deliberate reorganization of teams was a sign of deeper diversity problems; problems that, if left unchecked, would affect the entire quality effort. To remedy the situation, Rohm & Haas introduced diversity-awareness training to sensitize employees to differences in others. “The focus of training was to move employees from fearing differences in others to valuing them,” De La Pena explains. “We wanted employees to feel OK not only having different viewpoints, but challenging them in others.”


Working with an external diversity trainer, the company launched five-hour awareness seminars funded by the HR department. Though it was predominantly racial and ethnic tension that revealed the need for such training, the initiative actually focused on tension that any kind of difference creates, including age, gender, religion-even differences in communication styles. Training also emphasized that while homogeneous team members will come up with quick, easy solutions because members think alike, innovative solutions that are acceptable to the entire work force can only come from teams in which members view things differently. Hence, for the good of the company and individual employees, it would behoove workers to learn how to interact with one another more effectively. “We made clear there was not only a social and moral reason to accept diversity, but a business reason as well,” De La Pena says.


Rohm & Haas couldn’t require unionized factory employees to attend the courses, but by gaining the union’s support and encouragement, 95% of employees participated. Was the training successful? Did employees begin to see the reasons for understanding differences instead of avoiding them? “We polled every employee right after the workshop,” he says, “and then we polled them three to six weeks later. The data were consistent that employees viewed the initiative as positive. They began to realize two people can view the same situation and come to different conclusions, and that neither conclusion is wrong.”


Today, because there’s less resistance to new ideas, and employees are more willing to work across their differences, the company’s quality initiative is back on track. The awareness seminars helped people realize that some of their stereotypes were wrong, De La Pena adds, and that process improvements can only be realized if employees are comfortable challenging each other.


With all the talk about Workforce 2000 and our melting-pot society, you’d think companies would realize diversity awareness is a crucial preliminary step to team building, but-unlike Rohm & Haas-not all of them do. This is because for years in corporate America, an employee’s primary workplace goal was to assimilate and conform. Differences existed, of course, but they were either superficially ignored-in the case of gender and race, for example-or they were segregated neatly into separate functions. There were the marketing people, for example, those in accounting and the suits upstairs. To a large extent, these groups thought, talked and acted differently from one another, which was OK, because they rarely were given the opportunity to interact.


Today, however, companies realize the benefits of bringing employees from diverse backgrounds, perspectives and functions together. But it takes work. It isn’t enough to put people together in a team and assume that positive synergy will be the natural result.


“I don’t want you to come in here with any Pollyanna thoughts about the benefits of diversity,” explains R. Roosevelt Thomas, president of the American Institute for Managing Diversity at Atlanta-based Morehouse College. “I want you to understand the realities of diversity-the opportunity for gain and the opportunity for loss. Sure, teams can be very effective. But teams also can be very dysfunctional.”


The diversity issues that teams confront are myriad, and they begin with the obvious physical differences related to race, ethnic background and gender. According to Elsie Cross, a diversity consultant with Elsie Y. Cross Associates, Inc. in Philadelphia, it takes a lot of skill to listen to people in the team environment who are obviously different from oneself.


“The work of the team is to seek inclusion of everybody’s ideas and everybody’s point of view,” she explains. “The wider the point of view or the wider the diversity, the more effective the team can be. But for this to happen, people have to learn to see each other as equals, and that’s not easy.” Men talk over women, she says. Whites expect that people of color communicate the same way they do. People with accents are assumed to be less qualified; older employees, less creative; workers with disabilities, less capable.


But diversity issues go way beyond obvious physical differences to include differences in communication styles, problem solving, professional experience, functional expertise, management level, training and education, and work ethics. When team members don’t recognize these differences for what they are, unfair stereotypical judgments occur.


“I may not understand how someone thinks or why it takes them so long to make a decision,” says Martha Stoodley, an organizational consultant in San Jose, California. “Therefore, I may say ‘Chinese people always act like this,’ or ‘Women act like that.'” Given this ignorance, the entire team runs the risk of degenerating into a group of typecasting, name-calling, finger-pointing, untrusting employees.


For all these reasons, “I think you can make a serious case about taking a team that’s coming together for the first time through an introduction to diversity,” Thomas says. “This way, you’re legitimizing the fact that people are going to see the world differently and that’s OK. Unless you’re prepared to accept, understand and deal with diversity, it can lead to some very serious disruptions on the team.”


At CoreStates Financial Corp., for example, a bank holding company in Philadelphia, a diversity-awareness initiative was launched a full year before the company embarked on a quality effort that eventually will reorganize employees into self-managed teams. The awareness initiative is similar to the one undertaken by Rohm & Haas, but as a three-day course, it’s much more in-depth. Participants are taught not only to be aware of diversity issues, but they’re given the skills to deal effectively with differences. “We did diversity first be-cause to pursue quality effectively, we have to learn to value each other’s differences,” explains Tim O’Malley, assistant director of diversity.


To date, more than 1,200 of the company’s 14,000 employees have attended three-day diversity-awareness sessions, and a group of 12 employees has completed an eight-month training program to prepare them to serve as internal diversity consultants. These consultants will work with the company’s primary business units to make sure diversity objectives are considered at every stage of the company’s reorganization. “We’re still not at the team stage,” O’Malley says. “But the diversity foundation is being laid so that when we begin to pursue quality, we’ll be able to work across our differences.”


As important as diversity awareness is to teaming, however, it may be important for some companies to take a step back even further and assess the organizational culture to learn what specific diversity issues exist.


A 1,000-employee operating unit within IBM’s marketing and services division did this as a preliminary step in the company’s move to cross-functional teams. “You can’t just create an environment that allows everyone to achieve without doing some work to understand what your environment is today,” explains Jan Dillon, culture-change manager.


“The wider the point of view, the more effective the team can be. But for this to happen, people have to learn to see each other as equals, and that’s not easy. —Elsie Cross, Elsie Y. Cross Associates, Inc.


IBM’s cultural assessment revealed two things. One, that the IBM culture supported individualism. “We tended to recruit, motivate and reward independent, individual performers,” explains Dillon. Two, that employees were expected to conform and adapt to the company’s unwritten code of conduct; in other words, to be an IBMer. “To make sure this happened, we looked for employees who had a certain style, experience and background,” she says. Obviously-and much to the chagrin of management-both of these cultural expectations would prevent effective teaming unless they were ad-dressed and changed through a targeted diversity initiative. Today, all of the company’s quality efforts are structured around collaborative group efforts.


At IBM, as in many quality-driven companies, the teaming process is almost indistinguishable from the company’s diversity efforts. “Our definition of managing diversity also could be the definition of our desired culture,” Dillon says. “And inherent in that is the fact that we need to come together very effectively as teams to satisfy client requirements.”


What this means is that diversity awareness is embedded in all of the company’s cultural change efforts-so much so, that you might not even hear the word diversity mentioned. This is because the company defines diversity management as a way to create an environment that allows everyone to excel so that IBM can achieve its corporate objectives. Diversity, in other words, is not a standalone effort.


For example, the company is currently sponsoring a leadership-development program in which existing cross-functional teams attend a three-day training session that helps them focus on real-life business issues. Team members, who attend the course together, learn about culture and organizational change and acquire teaming and leadership skills. By working on concrete business problems, team members are forced to focus and work together on potential solutions.


Through these workshops, IBM has found that having a clear objective goes a long way toward overcoming the potentially negative aspects of diversity and capitalizing on the benefits of diverse viewpoints. In fact, says Stoodley, this kind of focus is what makes “teams the ultimate diversity program.” When team members have a clear purpose, it’s easier for them to stay on track and not let petty differences get in the way.


Focus is the primary reason teams have been so successful at overcoming diversity barriers at Ortho Biotech, Inc. in Raritan, New Jersey. Here, cross-functional teams have been in place since the company was formed in 1990 and today, virtually all of the company’s 500 employees work in teams in one way or another. But even though teams have been part of the corporate structure since the beginning, it doesn’t mean there weren’t potential diversity issues to contend with. How did the company avoid them?


First, it drafted a mission statement designed to integrate business and diversity goals. “We knew if we didn’t build into the company vision a core value of respect for diversity, then our team endeavors wouldn’t stand a chance,” explains Andrea Zintz, vice president of HR. To gain buy-in, every employee in the new company participated in the development of the one-page mission statement, which includes a section that reads: “We recognize we can only attain (our) vision by maximizing the contributions of every member of our diverse work force and by continuing to develop an organization that values employees of all races, genders, levels, cultures and lifestyles.”


The second activity undertaken to provide focus for employees was the development of a list of norms and behaviors that were expected of employees in support of the diversity goal. For example, one of the diversity norms reads: “We value the input of employees of all races, genders and levels.” A behavior in support of this norm is: “We listen fully to a different point of view before making a judgment and strive for a win-win situation.” These norms and behaviors are posted in every conference and team meeting room to constantly reinforce their importance. So that employees have the skills to put these values into play, Ortho Biotech also sponsors a mandatory three-day managing-diversity workshop for all new employees.


Zintz firmly believes that the company’s inclusive environment and the effectiveness of teams is the result of the shared vision, norms and behaviors. “Everyone points to the same set of values to guide what they’re doing,” she says. “These guidelines fuel everything we do.”


Colgate-Palmolive Co. is another organization that’s learned the importance of having clear business objectives in handling diversity issues. Three years ago, as the company’s Kansas City, Kansas-based plant was reorganizing into teams, managers realized there were some problems related to racial and gender bias. If ignored, these biases could hurt the new teams. Working with outside diversity consultants, Colgate managers recognized the importance of mission statements.


According to Ronald Grover, who was the company’s first-line supervisor for training and development during the reorganization, each team had a mission statement that defined not only what the team was going to do, but also how members would treat each other. “Basically, each team had a statement to the effect that they would not do anything ‘at the expense of others.’ “


Each new team at Colgate also conducts an exercise in which members list their expectations for each other—i.e. respect for each other’s ideas, thoughts and diversity. “Through this process, there’s a lot of discussion about differences,” Grover says, and this helps members understand the various differences they bring to the table. “If you don’t sit down and talk about your expectations with team members, not just behaviorally, but also in terms of job performance, that’s when labels and generalizations emerge,” he adds.


Taking clues from the companies we talked to, organizations wishing to avoid the strife that differences create should:


  • Assess organizational culture for hidden diversity issues
  • Embark on diversity-awareness programs before making the move to teams
  • Clearly define the company’s goals as well as the goals for each team.

What other activities can help people look beyond their differences and work together effectively? Linda Moran, executive consultant with San Jose, California-based Zenger-MillerAchieve suggests these additional activities:


  1. Establish ground rules for the team-similar to mission statements, but more specific. For example, a ground rule might be that if someone on the team has an issue with another member, that person must confront his or her colleague directly.

  2. There should be a forced rotation of team responsibilities. For instance, the task of attendance taking might rotate at each meeting. Or, on production teams, each member might be required at some point to complete a technical task, such as welding. “This helps get people outside their own biases,” Moran says. “Instead of assuming that a person can’t do something, you have a forced rotation of the task so the person has a chance to demonstrate his or her competencies.” In some situations, teams can benefit from rotating the leadership position among members.

Of course, even with all these precautions, the opportunity exists for issues of diversity to impede a team’s progress. And sometimes, the only way to avoid or minimize that is by giving the team members time to adjust to one another. Like any solid relationship, team relationships are built on mutual trust and respect, both of which take time to develop.


As Zintz explains, “Even though employees have the skills to work across differences, it doesn’t mean they’re going to be totally trusting or comfortable with those differences. The team must have time to get used to itself.”


Personnel Journal, September 1994, Vol. 73, No. 9, pp. 54-63.


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Making the Virtual Office a Reality

It’s 2 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. Inside the dining room of Chiat Day Mojo’s Venice, California, offices, Nancy Alley, manager of HR, is downing a sandwich and soda while wading through phone and E-mail messages. In front of her a computer—equipped with a fax-modem—is plugged into a special port on the dining table. The contents of her briefcase are spread on the table. As she sifts through a stack of paperwork and types responses into the computer, she periodically picks up a cordless phone and places a call to a colleague or associate. As she talks, she sometimes wanders across the room.


To be sure, this isn’t your ordinary corporate environment. Alley doesn’t have a permanent desk or workspace, nor her own telephone. When she enters the ad agency’s building, she checks out a portable Macintosh computer and a cordless phone and heads off to whatever nook or cranny she chooses. It might be the company library, or a common area under a bright window. It could even be the dining room or Student Union, which houses punching bags, televisions and a pool table. Wherever she goes, a concierge forwards mail and phone pages to her and a computer routes calls, faxes and E-mail messages to her assigned extension. She simply logs onto the firm’s computer system and accesses her security-protected files.


“I’m not tethered to a specific work area; I’m not forced to function in any predefined way,” says Alley, who spends mornings, and even sometimes an entire day, connected from home via sophisticated voicemail and E-mail systems, as well as a pager. “My work is processand task-oriented. As long as I get everything done, that’s what counts. Ultimately, my productivity is greater and my job-satisfaction level is higher. And for somebody trying to get in touch with me, it’s seamless. Nobody can tell that I might be in my car or sitting at home reading a stack of resumes in my pajamas. The call gets forwarded to me wherever I’m working.”


You’ve just entered the vast frontier of the virtual office—a universe in which leading-edge technology and new concepts redefine work and job functions by enabling employees to work from virtually anywhere. The concept allows a growing number of companies to alter their workplaces in ways never considered just a few years ago. They’re scrapping assigned desks and conventional office space to create a bold new world where employees telecommute, function on a mobile basis or use satellite offices or communal work areas that are free of assigned spaces with personal paraphernalia.


IBM, AT&T, Travelers Corporation, Pacific Bell, Panasonic, Apple Computer and J.C. Penney are among the firms embracing the virtual-office concept. But they’re just a few. The percentage of U.S. companies that have work-at-home programs alone has more than doubled in the past five years, from 7% in 1988 to 18% today. In fact, New York-based Link Resources, which tracks telecommuting and virtual-office trends, has found that 7.6 million Americans now telecommute—a figure that’s expected to swell to 25 million by the year 2000. And if you add mobile workers—those who use their cars, client offices, hotels and satellite work areas to get the job done—there’s an estimated 1 million more virtual workers.


Both companies and employees are discovering the benefits of virtual arrangements. Businesses that successfully incorporate them are able to slash real-estate costs and adhere to stringent air-quality regulations by curtailing traffic and commuters. They’re also finding that by being flexible, they’re more responsive to customers, while retaining key personnel who otherwise might be lost to a cross-country move or a newborn baby. And employees who successfully embrace the concept are better able to manage their work and personal lives. Left for the most part to work on their own terms, they’re often happier, as well as more creative and productive.


Of course, the basic idea of working away from the office is nothing new. But today, high-speed notebook computers, lightning-fast data modems, telephone lines that provide advanced data-transmission capabilities, portable printers and wireless communication are fueling a quiet revolution. “As a society, we’re transforming the way we work and what’s possible,” says Franklin Becker, director of the International Workplace Studies Program at Cornell University and a leading expert on the virtual office. “It’s creating tremendous opportunities, but it also is generating a great deal of stress and difficulty. There are tremendous organizational changes required to make it work.”


Adds Loree Goffigon, a consultant at Santa Monica, California-based Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (HOK), which helps companies implement alternative office strategies: “As markets have changed—as companies have downsized, streamlined and restructured—many have been forced to explore new ways to support the work effort. The virtual office, or alternative office, is one of the most effective strategies for dealing with these changes.”


Of course, the effect of alternative officing on the HR function truly is great. HR must change the way it hires, evaluates employees and terminates them. It must train an existing work force to fit into a new corporate paradigm. There are issues involving benefits, compensation and liability. And, perhaps most importantly, there’s the enormous challenge of holding the corporate culture together—even if employees no longer spend time socializing over the watercooler or in face-to-face meetings. Notes Goffigon: “When a company makes a commitment to adopt a virtual-office environment—whether it’s shared work-space or basic telecommuting—it takes time for people to acclimate and adjust. If HR can’t meet the challenge, and employees don’t buy in, then the program is destined to fail.”


Virtual offices break down traditional office walls.
Step inside Chiat Day and you quickly see how different an environment the ad agency has created. Gone are the cubicles in which employees used to work. In their place are informal work carrels and open areas where any employee—whether it’s Chairman Jay Chiat or an administrative assistant—can set up shop. Teams may assemble and disperse at any given spot, and meetings and conferences happen informally wherever it’s convenient. Only a handful of maintenance workers, phone operators and food-services personnel, whose flexibility is limited by their particular jobs, retain any semblance of a private workspace.


Equally significant is the fact that on any given hour of any day, as many as one-third of the salaried work force aren’t in the office. Some are likely working at a client’s site, others at home or in a hotel room on the road. “The feeling,” says Adelaid Horton, the firm’s managing director of operations, “is that the employees of Chiat Day are self-starters. To empower the work force, we felt we could dispense with traditional structure and discipline. The work environment was designed around the concept that one’s best thinking isn’t necessarily done at a desk or in an office. Sometimes, it’s done in a conference room with several people. Other times it’s done on a ski slope or driving to a client’s office. We wanted to eliminate the boundaries about where people are supposed to think. We wanted to create an environment that was stimulating and rich in resources.” As such, employees decide on their own where they will work each day, and are judged on work produced rather than on hours put in at the office.


“It takes time for people to acclimate to a virtual-office environment. If HR can’t meet the challenge, and employees don’t buy in, the program is destined to fail.”


Another company that has jumped headfirst into the virtual-office concept is Armonk, New York-based International Business Machine’s Midwest division. The regional business launched a virtual-office work model in the spring of 1993 and expects 2,500 of its 4,000 employees—salaried staff from sales, marketing, technical and customer service, including managers—to be mobile by the beginning of 1995. Its road warriors, equipped with IBM Think Pad computers, fax-modems, E-mail, cellular phones and a combination of proprietary and off-the-shelf software, use their cars, client offices and homes as work stations. When they do need to come into an office—usually once or twice a week—they log onto a computer that automatically routes calls and faxes to the desk at which they choose to sit.


So far, the program has allowed Big Blue’s Midwest division to reduce real-estate space by nearly 55%, while increasing the ratio of employees to workstations from 4-to-1 to almost 10-to-1. More importantly, it has allowed the company to harness technology that allows employees to better serve customers and has raised the job-satisfaction level of workers. A recent survey indicated that 83% of the region’s mobile work force wouldn’t want to return to a traditional office environment.


IBM maintains links with the mobile work force in a variety of ways, says John F. Frank, project manager for mobility. All employees access their E-mail and voicemail daily; important messages and policy updates are broadcast regularly into the mailboxes of thousands of workers. When the need for teleconferencing arises, it can put hundreds of employees on the line simultaneously. Typically, the organization’s mobile workers link from cars, home offices, hotels, even airplanes.


Virtual workers are only a phone call away.
To be certain, telephony has become a powerful driver in the virtual-office boom. Satellites and high-tech telephone systems, such as ISDN phone lines, allow companies to zap data from one location to another at light speed. Organizations link to their work force and hold virtual meetings using tools such as video-conferencing. Firms grab a strategic edge in the marketplace by providing workers with powerful tools to access information.


Consider Gemini Consulting, a Morristown, New Jersey-based firm that has 1,600 employees spread throughout the United States and beyond. A sophisticated E-mail system allows employees anywhere to access a central bulletin board and data base via a toll-free phone number. Using Macintosh Powerbook computers and modems, they tap into electronic versions of The Associated Press, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, and obtain late-breaking news and information on clients, key subjects, even executives within client companies. And that’s just the beginning. Many of the firm’s consultants have Internet addresses, and HR soon will begin training its officeless work force via CD-ROM. It will mail disks to workers, who will learn on their own schedule using machines the firm provides. The bottom line of this technology? Gemini can eliminate the high cost of flying consultants into a central location for training.


“Today, the technology exists to break the chains of traditional thought and the typical way of doing things,” says Gordon Stone, senior vice president for Gemini. “It’s possible to process information and knowledge in dramatically different ways than in the past.” That can mean that instead of one individual or a group handling a project from start to finish, teams can process bits and pieces. They can assemble and disassemble quickly and efficiently.


Some companies, such as San Francisco-based Pacific Bell, have discovered that providing telecommuters with satellite offices can further facilitate efficiency. The telecommunications giant currently has nearly 2,000 managers splitting time between home and any of the company’s offices spread throughout California. Those who travel regularly or prefer not to work at home also can drop into dozens of satellite facilities that each are equipped with a handful of workstations. At these centers, they can access proprietary data bases, check E-mail and make phone calls.


Other firms have pushed the telecommuting concept even further. One of them is Great Plains Software, a Fargo, North Dakota-based company that produces and markets PC-based accounting programs. Despite its remote—some might say undesirable—location, the company retains top talent by being flexible and innovative. Some of its high-level managers live and work in such places as Montana and New Jersey. Even its local employees may work at home a few days a week.


Lynne Stockstad’s situation at Great Plains demonstrates how a program that allows for flexible work sites can benefit both employer and worker. The competitive-research specialist had spent two years at Great Plains when her husband decided to attend chiropractic college in Davenport, Iowa. At most firms, that would have prompted Stockstad to resign—something that also would have cost the company an essential employee. Instead, Stockstad and Great Plains devised a system that would allow her to telecommute from Iowa and come to Fargo only for meetings when absolutely necessary. Using phone, E-mail, voicemail and fax, she and her work team soon found they were able to link together, and complete work just as efficiently as before. Today, with her husband a recent graduate, Stockstad has moved back to Fargo and has received a promotion.


Great Plains uses similar technology in other innovative ways to build a competitive advantage. For example, it has developed a virtual hiring process. Managers who are spread across the country conduct independent interviews with candidates, and then feed their responses into the company’s computer. Later, the hiring team holds a meeting, usually via phone or videoconferencing, to render a verdict. Only then does the firm fly the candidate to Fargo for the final interview.


“The virtual office radically changes thinking. It totally changes the corporate culture,” notes Cornell’s Becker. “Although many companies are attracted to the cost savings—real estate, maintenance, security, landscaping, energy and insurance can all be cut—many discover it has a lot of other benefits. It’s forcing organizations to fundamentally rethink how they function.”


HR must lay the infrastructure to support a mobile work force.
Just as a cafeteria offers a variety of foods to suit individual taste and preferences, the workplace of the future is evolving toward a model for which alternative work options likely will become the norm. “Nobody says you have to work the same way, even if you have the same job,” says Becker. “One person may find that telecommuting four days a week is great; another may find that he or she functions better in the office. The common denominator for the organization is: How can we create an environment in which people are able to produce to their maximum capabilities?”


Creating such a model and making it work is no easy task, however. Such a shift in resources requires a fundamental change in thinking. And it usually falls squarely on HR’s shoulders to oversee the program and hold the organization together during trying times. “When a company decides to participate in an alternative officing program, people need to acclimate and adjust to the new etiquette,” says HOK’s Goffigon. “Workers are used to doing things a certain way. Suddenly, their world is being turned upside down.”


“Just as a cafeteria offers a variety of foods to suit individual tastes, the workplace is evolving toward a model for which alternative work options will be the norm.”


From an HR perspective, one of the biggest problems is laying the infrastructure to support such a system. Often, it’s necessary to tweak benefits and compensation, create new job descriptions and methods of evaluation and find innovative ways to communicate. Sometimes, because companies are liable for their workers while they’re “on the clock,” HR must send inspectors to home offices to ensure they’re safe.


When Great Plains Software started its telecommuting program in the late 1980s, it established loose guidelines for employees who wanted to be involved in the program. “We pretty much implemented policies on an unscientific basis,” says Lynn Dreyer, director of HR for the company. Over time, the company has evolved to a far more stringent system of determining who qualifies and how the job is defined.


For example, as with most other companies that embrace the virtual-office concept, Great Plains stipulates that only salaried employees can work in virtual of-fices because of the lack of a structured time schedule and the potential for working more than eight hours a day. Those employees who want to telecommute must first articulate how the decision will benefit the company, the department and themselves. Only those who can convince a hiring manager that they meet all three criteria move on to the next stage.


Potential telecommuters then must define how they’ll be accountable and responsible in the new working model. “We ask them to specify their performance expectations—particularly in communication,” notes Dreyer. “The last thing you want is someone feeling like an outside consultant rather than part of the company.”


Finally, once performance standards and guidelines have been created, Great Plains presents two disclaimers to those going virtual. “We tell them that if their performance falls below certain predetermined standards, we’ll review the situation to determine whether it’s working. And if the position changes significantly and it no longer makes sense to telecommute, we will have to reevaluate,” says Dreyer. She explains that early on, some workers assumed the arrangement would be permanent and were taken aback when changes warranted ending it. “We learned that you can’t create the assumption that this is a lifetime program,” she says.


“We ask telecommuters to specify their performance plans – particularly in communication. The last thing you want is someone not feeling a part of the company.”


Other companies have adopted similar checks and balances. “We’re training HR advisers to make accommodations for the individual, but to not make accommodations for the person’s job responsibilities,” says Frank. “[But] we don’t want to create artificial safety nets that make it easy to go back to traditional ways of working. Otherwise, the program is doomed to failure.”


IBM provides counseling from behavioral scientists and offers ongoing assistance to those having trouble adapting to the new work model. By closely monitoring preestablished sales and productivity benchmarks, managers quickly can determine if there’s a problem. So far, Frank says only approximately 10% to 15% of its mobile work force has required counseling, and only a handful of employees have had to be reassigned.


Virtual workers need guidance from HR.
Not everyone is suited to working in a virtualoffice environment. Not only must workers who go mobile or work at home learn to use the technology effectively, but they also must adjust their workstyle and lifestyle. Says Cornell’s Becker: “The more you get connected, the harder it is to disconnect. At some point, the boundaries between work and personal life blur. Without a good deal of discipline, the situation can create a lot of stress.”


Managers often fear that employees will not get enough work done if they can’t see them. Most veterans of the virtual office, however, maintain that the exact opposite is true. All too often, employees wind up fielding phone calls in the evening or stacking an extra hour or two on top of an eighthour day. Not surprisingly, that can create an array of problems, including burnout, errors and marital discord.


IBM learned early on that it has to teach employees to remain in control of the technology and not let it overrun their lives. One of the ways it achieves the goal is to provide its mobile work force with twoline telephones. That way, employees can recognize calls from work, switch the ringer off at the end of the workday and let the voicemail system pick up calls.


Another potential problem with which virtual employees must deal is handling all the distractions that can occur at home. As a result, many firms provide workers with specific guidelines for handling work at home. “It’s essential to give the company one’s full effort,” says Great Plains’ Dreyer. “We expect that those who work at home will arrange child care or elder care.” And although she recognizes there are times when a babysitter falls through or a problem occurs, “If someone’s surrounded by noisy children, it creates an impression that the individual isn’t working or is distracted.”


Still, most say that problems aren’t common. “The majority of workers adjust and become highly productive in an alternative office environment,” says HOK’s Goffigon. “The most important thing for a company to do is lay out guidelines and suggestions that help workers adapt.”


At many firms, including IBM, HR now is providing booklets that cover a range of topics, including time management and family issues. Many companies also send out regular mailings that not only provide tips and work strategies but also keep employees informed of company events and keep them ingrained in the corporate culture.


This type of correspondence also helps alleviate workers’ fears of isolation. IBM goes one step further by providing voluntary outings, such as to the Indianapolis 500, for its mobile work force. Even without these events, however, virtual workers’ isolation fears often are unfounded. “The level of interaction in a virtual office actually can be heightened and intensified,” says Becker. “Because workers aren’t in the same place every day, they may be exposed to a wider range of people and situations. And that can open their eyes and minds to new ideas and concepts.”


However, dismantling the traditional office structure can present other HR challenges. One of the most nettlesome can be dealing with issues of identity and status. Workers who’ve toiled for years to earn a corner office suddenly can find themselves thrown into a ubiquitous work pod. Likewise, photographs and other personal items often must disappear as workspace is shared. But solutions do exist. For instance, when IBM went mobile, top executives led by example. They immediately cleared out their desks and began plugging in at common work pods.


Not surprisingly, one of the most difficult elements in creating a virtual office is dealing with this human side of the equation. Indeed, the human factor can send shock waves reverberating through even the most staid organization. “When all the accessories are stripped away, a company must redefine its success indicators,” says Goffigon. “They’re saying they don’t just value people sitting at their desk, they value results. Suddenly, there’s a huge paradigm shift in the workers’ heads. It’s a tremendous challenge for HR.”


According to Goffigon, this challenge requires HR to become a proactive business partner. That means working with other departments, such as real estate, finance and information technology. It means creating the tools to make a virtual office work. In some cases, that may require HR to completely rewrite a benefits package to include a $500-or $1,000-a-month stipend for those working at home. That way, the company saves money on real-estate and relocation costs, while the employee receives an incentive that can be used to furnish a home office.


HR also must change the way supervisors evaluate their workers. Managers easily can fall into the trap of thinking that only face-to-face interaction is meaningful and may pass over mobile workers for promotions. Great Plains has gone to great lengths to ensure that its performance-evaluation system functions in a virtual environment.The company asks its managers to conduct informal reviews quarterly with telecommuting employees, and formal reviews every six months. By increasing the interaction and dialogue, the company has eliminated much of the anxiety for employees—and their managers—while providing a better gauge of performance. In the final analysis, the system no longer measures good citizenship and attendance, but how much work people actually get done and how well they do it.


Adds Becker: “Today, the odds that a manager will find a specific employee at a desk on the spur of the moment isn’t always so great. People now have more channels of communication then at any time in the past. Face-to-face interaction is less important than ever before.”


Still, many experts point out that too much reliance on voicemail and E-mail can present problems. Although instantaneous messaging is convenient and efficient, it can overload virtual workers with too much information and not enough substance. “It isn’t what you communicate, it’s how you communicate. Without some human interaction it’s impossible to build relationships and a sense of trust within an organization,” Dreyer points out.


Sending workers offsite can boost productivity, while saving costs.
Those who have embraced the virtual office say that it’s a concept that works. At Pacific Bell, which began experimenting with telecommuting during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, employees routinely have reported 100% increases in productivity. Equally important: “They tell us that this fits into family and flexibility issues and that they enjoy working for the company more than ever before,” says Gary Fraundorfer, manager of HR quality communications strategy.


Emily Brassman, the company’s director of virtual office development, plunged into the lifestyle with unwavering commitment. She now spends three to four days a week at home, and schedules face-to-face meetings all on the same days. Using a notebook computer, portable printer and a separate business line in her home, she’s in constant touch with the office. “In most cases, nobody has any idea where I’m working. It’s completely invisible to them.”


Although the final results aren’t yet in, IBM’s mobile work force reports a 10% boost in morale and appears to be processing more work, more efficiently. What’s more, its customers have so far reported highly favorable results, says Andre’a Cheatham, manager of the National Mobility Project. “People are happier and more productive because they can have breakfast with their family before they go off to client meetings. They can go home and watch their child’s soccer game and then do work in the evening. They no longer are bound by a nine-to-five schedule. The only criterium is that they meet results.”


And at Chiat Day, the outcome speaks for itself. After the Los Angeles earthquake in January, the organization used virtual-office technology to link work teams and keep operations running at full speed. Now, long after the disaster, employees adhere to their own timetables and work preferences. “There’s a fundamental change in philosophy,” says Horton. There’s a focus on quality and not physically being someplace.”


In the end, says Becker, HR must become a major player in the transformation and keep both management and workers on track. “There’s a need to support people through all the changes,” he says. “And that requires mechanisms to encourage discussion and ways to solve problems. Migrating to a virtual office can be a positive and rewarding experience—but only if all the pieces are firmly in place.”


HOK’s Goffigon says that she believes society is on the frontier of a fundamental change in the way the workplace is viewed and how work is handled. “In the future, it will become increasingly difficult for traditional companies to compete against those embracing the virtual office,” she says. “Companies that embrace the concept are sending out a loud message. They’re making it clear that they’re interested in their employees’ welfare, that they’re seeking a competitive edge, and that they aren’t afraid to rethink—even reengineer—their work force for changing conditions. Those are the ingredients for future success.”


Personnel Journal, September 1994, Vol.73, No. 9, pp. 66-79.


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Telecommuting Centers Provide an Alternative to the Corporate Office

In today’s highly mobile environment, many companies are discovering that conventional corporate offices no longer fit the bill. They’re expensive to maintain, and they’re inconvenient for telecommuters and road warriors, who find themselves spending hours driving to and from a far-flung location. As a result, many firms now are turning to smaller telecommuting centers—places that offer a full-fledged office in a convenient location. At these sites, an employee can receive secretarial aid, make photocopies and pick up mail one or two days a week. Quite simply, they can step into a corporate environment that’s equipped for their specific needs.


It may be the next great wave in alternative work environments. Already, a growing number of companies—including Pacific Bell and Panasonic—are creating their own satellite offices, and independent firms now are beginning to create shared telecommuting centers to cater to the growing demand. In Valencia, California, located approximately 35 miles from downtown Los Angeles, the Newhall Land and Farming Company has created a prototype for corporate America. The 30,000-square-foot facility—a converted warehouse—is equipped with state-of-the-art offices, conference rooms, free parking and convenient freeway access. Companies—including CareAmerica, Cigna and Great Western Savings—have already leased space.


“The center provides a place for telecommuters and others to work in their own community,” says Jim Backer, director of marketing for commercial and industrial real estate at Newhall Land and Farming. “People find they no longer have to spend hours on the freeway getting to and from the office. It has improved their productivity and the quality of their lives.”


Newhall Land and Farming has gone to great lengths to satisfy companies seeking space. All office suites are separate and secure. Furnished and unfurnished offices are available. And the overall environment has been designed and laid out by consultants who specialize in alternative worksites and technology issues. To be sure, nothing is left to chance.


So far, the center has proven an overwhelming success. Not even a year after it opened the facility, Newhall Land and Farming is leasing at 100% occupancy. And some of the firms—such as Chatsworth, California-based CareAmerica Health Plan Inc.—have discovered an array of supplemental benefits. During last January’s earthquake, for example, the HMO provider used the site for recovery and emergency operations. Using computers, phones, modems and faxes, personnel were able to keep the company online during trying times. Afterwards, commuters, who were cut off from their usual worksites by impassable roads and freeways, were able to set up shop and continue with minimal disruption.


Consultants such as Santa Monica, California-based Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum’s Loree Goffigon, believe that independent telecommuting centers soon may appear at airports and a variety of other locations. “The problem with a lot of business centers is that they’re ugly and low-tech,” says Goffigon. “By fashioning the concept for the ’90s and providing cutting-edge capabilities, non-traditional workers have far more options available. Ultimately, that benefits them and the company.”


Personnel Journal, September 1994, Vol.73, No. 9, p. 68.


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Defense Against FMLA Abuse

The FMLA doesn’t leave employers completely defenseless against those who choose to take advantage. Here’s what companies can do:


  • Supervisors may require up to three medical opinions for employees taking leave for health reasons.
  • Employers may deny leave to “key” employees: Salaried workers in the highest paid 10% of their work force. Employers must prove that the leave would cause “substantial and grievous injury” to the business.
  • If an employee is out sick, and the illness turns out to be covered by the FMLA, employers may apply the leave retroactively if the employee is on paid leave and is still out when the FMLA qualifications are discovered.
  • Employers may make leaves such as workers’ compensation leaves run concurrently with FMLA leave if the injury is covered by both laws.
  • Employers may institute a rolling year policy to prohibit leave stacking.

Personnel Journal, September 1994, Vol.73, No. 9, p. 40.