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Financially ailing wireless communications provider Sprint Nextel Corp. is suspending its 401(k) plan match for 2009 as part of a drive to reduce costs by $1.2 billion.

The suspension of the 401(k) plan match comes three years after the company’s last retirement plan change. At the beginning of 2006, Sprint Nextel froze its defined-benefit pension plan. The change affected Sprint Co. employees who had been with the company before its merger with Nextel Communications Corp. Nextel did not have a defined-benefit plan.

Last year, Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint Nextel matched 100 percent of employees’ salary deferrals, up to the first 5 percent of pay.

The suspension of the match is one of several cost-cutting moves at the company, including laying off about 8,000 employees by March 31.

For the nine-month period ended September 30, Sprint Nextel lost $1.18 billion on revenue of $27.2 billion. That compares with a net loss of $128 million on $30.3 billion in revenue for the first nine months of 2007.  (For more, read “Layoffs Coming, and in Large Numbers.”)

Filed by Jerry Geisel of Business Insurance, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

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The recession is leading organizations to slash spending on training, two recent studies show.

Average training expenditures per employee fell 11 percent in the past year, from $1,202 per learner in 2007 to $1,075 per learner in 2008, according to a report issued Friday, January 23, by research firm Bersin & Associates.

Bersin said its figures include training budgets and payroll. Bersin also said the U.S. corporate training market shrank from $58.5 billion in 2007 to $56.2 billion in 2008, the greatest decline in more than 10 years.

Bersin’s report echoes a November study by training services firm Expertus and research provider Training Industry. The survey of 84 corporate and government training professionals found that more than twice as many respondents expect training budget decreases rather than increases for 2009.

Forty-eight percent expect their budgets to decrease in 2009, up from 41 percent in 2008. Only 17 percent expect their budgets to increase in 2009. In addition, since 2008 budgets were first approved, far more saw decreases (38 percent) than increases (11 percent).

Bersin president Josh Bersin said organizations funneled money and staff into traditional and “often nonstrategic” training programs in good years.

“When budgets became tight, organizations with a traditional training focus suffered most,” Bersin said in a statement. “Today’s business world demands a combination of formal and informal learning with an emphasis on collaboration, knowledge sharing, social networking, coaching, and mentoring.”

The new reports confirm the old theory that training is among the first things cut during hard times, which today include a U.S. economy estimated to have contracted by more than 5 percent in the fourth quarter, an unemployment rate that rose to 7.2 percent in December and thousands of job cuts announced daily.

Trimmed training budgets also come amid a broader reassessment of employee development. In recent years, experts have argued that workers increasingly see career development as vital in an employer. At the same time, traditional, formal training in classrooms or through computer coursework has come under fire as less effective compared to less-formal modes of training, including on-the-job learning and the use of social networking tools such as corporate wikis.

Peter Cappelli, management professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has suggested that employees share in the cost of training. In particular, he argues for tuition assistance programs, in which employees invest their time and effort on classes and class work.

The Expertus-Training Industry report found that return-on-investment and business-impact metrics are not often used to evaluate training programs.

“We recommend that organizations make measuring the value and impact of learning a priority,” Doug Harward, chief executive of Training Industry, said in a statement. “This way, training organizations can make better-informed budgetary decisions about which training should be supported and which training needs to be improved.”

In its 2009 Corporate Learning Factbook, Bersin said it found that companies have changed training program priorities; moved to coaching, informal learning, collaborative activities and other less-costly training methods; and increased reliance on outsourcing.

—Ed  Frauenheim

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A woman who testified in her employer’s internal investigation of a sexual harassment charge is protected against retaliation under a federal civil rights law, the Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision Monday, January 26.

The court reversed decisions by a district court and the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that Vicky Crawford could not sue a local government in Tennessee for dismissing her after she reported the lewd outbursts of a supervisor in a 2002 probe.

The lower courts held that only the subject of the sexual harassment is shielded from retaliation. Crawford was not the employee who brought charges against Gene Hughes, the employee relations director for the Nashville and Davidson County school system.

But Crawford, the payroll director, had run-ins with Hughes, including an incident in which he grabbed Crawford’s head and tried to pull it toward his crotch.

The school district took no action against Hughes. It fired Crawford later for alleged embezzlement. In her suit, Crawford asserted that she was dismissed for reporting Hughes’ behavior.

Supreme Court Justice David Souter, writing for his colleagues, argued that the lower courts erred in ruling that Crawford was not protected because she did not “oppose” Hughes’ harassment, as her colleague who formally filed the charge did. Rather, the courts said Crawford was just answering questions.

Souter wrote that “oppose” was undefined in the Title VII discrimination statute and therefore took on its dictionary meaning of “to resist or … to confront.”

“There is, then, no reason to doubt that a person can ‘oppose’ by responding to someone else’s question just as surely as by provoking the discussion, and nothing in the statute requires a freakish rule protecting an employee who reports discrimination on her own initiative but not one who reports the same discrimination in the same words when her boss asks a question,” Souter wrote.

Some business advocates warned that a ruling in favor of Crawford would crimp internal investigations because companies would be wary of retaliation suits.

Souter dismissed that reasoning. He said that if companies did not respond to harassment allegations with an internal investigation, they would be forfeiting an important defense.

But Louis Britt, a partner at Ford & Harrison in Memphis, said the ruling did leave open the question of whether informal workplace chats are protected.

“There could be a conversation with a supervisor that could provide that [retaliation] protection—even outside of an internal investigation,” Britt said.

A bigger risk is that employees would avoid probes if they feared losing their jobs, according to Souter.

“If it were clear law that an employee who reported discrimination in answering an employer’s questions could be penalized with no remedy, prudent employees would have a good reason to keep quiet about Title VII offenses against themselves or against others,” Souter wrote.

James Burns, a partner at Reed Smith in Chicago, said the decision should not discourage employers from conducting investigations. But they might want to be more careful whom they interview, especially if it’s a poor performer who may be on the way out the door.

The ruling “suggests greater care in planning and carrying out the investigation,” Burns said. “The employer may initially start out with a smaller group of employees who are likely to know something.”

It will be up to HR departments to track internal investigations and make sure that a company avoids talking to employees who are at risk of being fired.

“Now they’re going to have to make sure they connect those dots,” Britt said.

Justice Samuel Alito Jr., in a concurring opinion with Justice Clarence Thomas, made a clarification that employers likely would find helpful. He asserted the court’s ruling in the Crawford case applied just to people who take part in an internal review. It does not extend to people who never directly voiced opposition to the alleged harassment.

“The question whether the opposition clause shields employees who do not communicate their views to their employers through purposive conduct is not before us in this case,” Alito wrote.

In sending the case back to the lower courts, Souter emphasized that the matter is not closed. The school district may still be able to prove that Crawford’s dismissal on the embezzlement charge was justified.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

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For companies seeking to inspire employees to improve their health or stay well, Sibson Consulting offers “Reaching Employees in the Right Place at the Right Time: Four Steps to Successfully Communicating Your Organization’s Wellness Program.” The article in the company’s October 2008 newsletter, Perspectives, walks managers through four steps, which begin with communication:

• Conduct a communications assessment.

  
  

• Develop a communications strategy.

  
  

• Build employee awareness and create demand.

  
  
• Keep it up with ongoing campaigns.
  
  

  And the writers of the article, Erin Hodges and Randolph Carter, conclude with the opinion that communication is the key: “To facilitate behavior change, organizations need to review how their wellness program is communicated to employees. Without effective communications the best wellness program in the world is not going to succeed.”