The newest social network making the rounds at one of the world’s biggest ad-buying conglomerates is not really a social network at all, but an online training program that looks an awful lot like one.
In early October, Group M introduced Mspace, a play on the name and style of News Corp.’s MySpace, in an attempt to get its 3,600 employees on the same page when it comes to interactive advertising know-how. It’s the company’s first big foray into online training, and it’s an ambitious one.
“We tried classroom training, group training, digital days,” says John Montgomery, COO of Group M Interaction. “But we didn’t feel like that was benefiting us from a scale standpoint.”
Building digital savvy
The impetus for the training is obvious: Every agency needs to gain more digitally proficient employees, but the market lacks the experienced talent—and agencies don’t have the resources—to invest from outside. Additionally, Group M was looking to aggregate the disparate knowledge among its various companies. While one of them, Mindshare, might have been great with one particular aspect of digital, another one, Beyond Interactive, was an expert in another area. In the end, says Montgomery, Group M is looking for employees to have “a consistent level of training.”
The training is delivered via personas, positioning 10 fake people as experts. Behind each fake expert is a Group M staffer who is particularly proficient in one of the areas of expertise, which include digital media processes, strategy, planning and buying, ad serving, search and analytics. Lessons are delivered via video, audio and games, such as dynamically generated crossword puzzles; some of it can be downloaded as a podcast.
Online training is a growing trend among corporations. According to research from the American Society for Training & Development and private firm Bersin & Associates, one of every three hours of training is delivered via technology.
Meeting employees where they’re at
Mspace launched on October 8. Group M has promoted it with ads on its intranet as well as via its 24/7 Real Media ad network that targets Group M IP addresses, so when an employee is on Amazon, for example, they might see an ad promoting Mspace. (“Creepy but fun,” Montgomery says.)
The agency is trying to encourage employees to complete the program, but doesn’t want to be heavy-handed about it. When employees complete the training, having correctly answered 80 percent of test questions, they receive a certification that shows up in their e-mail signatures.
In the first six days, 500 Group M employees had used Mspace for at least 15 minutes. While that may seem paltry for people used to thinking in term of tens of millions, Montgomery is encouraged by the results, noting they’re especially impressive “given how long it would have taken us to do an hour’s worth of training with a group that size. You’d be lucky to get 20 people in a room at the same time, and then you’d be boring them with PowerPoint slides.”
The early success has encouraged Group M’s Latin American offices to begin translating the program, and Group M Canada has been tailoring it for that market as well. “This is the way we’ll be training in the future in most disciplines,” Montgomery says.
41.5 Percent of Workers in Employee Retirement Plans
The percentage of all workers participating in employment-based retirement plans was 41.5 percent in 2007, up from 39.7 percent a year earlier, according to a study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
Among full-time workers 21 to 64 years old, 55.3 percent were in an employment-based plan in 2007, up from 52.7 percent the previous year, according to a news release on the study issued by EBRI in Washington.
Other findings in the study were:
• 63.9 percent of workers 55 to 64 were in a retirement plan in 2007, compared with 28 percent of workers ages 21 to 24.
• 57 percent of full-time female workers participated in a plan in 2007, compared with 54 percent of male workers.
• Florida had the lowest representation of workers participating in plans in 2007, at 42 percent. Wisconsin had the highest participation rate, at 68 percent.
The study is available on EBRI’s Web site, www.ebri.org.
Filed by Doug Halonen of Pensions & Investments, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.
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Economy to Put Hit on New York’s Construction Industry
The credit crunch, a slowing economy and growing budget deficits will strip almost 30,000 construction jobs from New York’s workforce by 2010, bringing industry employment to its lowest level in more than 10 years, according to a report released Tuesday, October 14, by the New York Building Congress.
Employment will fall 23 percent, to 100,250, in the next two years, and could drop even further if efforts to shore up the credit markets don’t bear fruit, the report says. The most substantial losses won’t show up until 2010 as projects financed in flusher times mean construction spending will reach a record $33.8 billion this year, a 16 percent increase from 2007.
“If we do not solve the credit crunch, I think we could be in for even a greater loss of jobs than is projected,” said Louis Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers’ Association and a vice chairman of the Congress. “I’m really concerned about the future of the industry on both the public and private sides.”
Construction spending will fall more than 22 percent, to $26.2 billion, by 2010, driven by across-the-board drops. Residential, nonresidential and public sector work are all forecast to fall off by 2010. The steepest drops will occur on the residential side, where developers had rushed to get projects into the ground to beat changes to the 421(a) tax incentive program that went into effect July 1.
The number of residential units constructed is expected to be nearly halved by 2010 to 18,500, with a falloff in spending of $2.2 billion. Nonresidential construction, including office space, institutional development and sports venues, will fall nearly 30 percent, to $7.1 billion. And government projects—which remain the primary driver of construction activity in the city—will fall more than 15 percent, to $14.4 billion, by 2010.
The report paints a resilient picture of the industry, predicting it will stave off major losses until 2010. Even then, it says the $26.2 billion forecast for that year would be well above levels from the early 1990s and early 2000s, when adjusted for inflation.
But much remains unknown. A prolonged downturn could lead to further slashing of funds for public projects such as mass transit, schools and bridges. It’s already becoming nearly impossible for developers to fund new private projects. Coletti said banks that typically require 15 to 20 percent down for construction loans are now starting to ask for as much as 40 percent. For now, developers are biding their time.
“If you were in the market trying to finance something now, you’d have a real problem no matter how good the project was,” said David Picket, president of Gotham Organization Inc.
Fear is starting to spread from future projects to ones already under construction. The tightening of credit prompted industry leaders to gather last week for an emergency meeting on the future of construction in the city.
“It’s not only whether future projects can be canceled or delayed, but it’s cash flow for contractors currently building projects,” Coletti said. “If they can’t use credit lines, how will they pay for products or supplies they’ve already ordered? How do they pay the cost of benefits for their workforce?”
Filed by Daniel Massey of Crain’s New York Business, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.
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Is This Our Legacy
In a recent private meeting with a group of Fortune 100 chief human resource officers, we discussed the current state of development of the HR profession. It did not take long for one to volunteer, “I have a group of terrific midcareer HR business partners, few of whom bring much HR depth to the table.”
Is this to be our legacy? Have we created a new model of HR in which the actual HR component is minimal? Are we so focused on supporting the business that we have forgotten our duty as HR stewards? What exactly, then, is an “HR business partner,” and do we really need them at all?
My window on the field of HR spans from the end of the “personnel” era in the 1970s to the present. While for the most part I have no interest in going back to the largely administrative role of those early days, I’m not sure I want to go forward on the path we are on either.
More and more often I meet midlevel HR executives who have spent nearly their entire career in client-supporting HR generalist roles. Few have had any depth of experience in what we affectionately call the HR “silos”—compensation, recruitment and staffing, employee relations/advocacy, organization development, communications or, heaven forbid, labor relations. They are well versed at analyzing business issues and identifying human capital implications or concerns, but many are unable to fashion effective solutions from the HR tool kit.
Once upon a time there were “specialists” (in the earliest days at each plant or location) from whom a “generalist” could acquire needed knowledge. Today, if those positions exist at all they are in distant centers of excellence or outsourced to business process outsourcers. Under this scenario, where does a generalist go for help? To the textbooks we write and use in academia? I hope not.
Big companies today routinely hire chief human resource officers with little or no HR experience into the top job. This notion that you can do HR without any real HR skills arises in several forms. Bill Conaty, the recently retired chief human resource officer at GE, was asked in an interview, “Can anybody do HR?” Fortunately, he answered no. In fact, he went on to suggest that talented HR professionals working in companies with that philosophy (that specific HR domain knowledge is irrelevant) probably needed to move to another company.
While GE is often cited as a company that takes HR very seriously and generally does HR work well, few realize the extent to which GE invests in the recruitment, selection and development of “the best and brightest” HR candidates from a handful of top-notch universities. Those who thrive in the GE culture receive continuous training and development in HR throughout their careers. And they earn their keep by delivering HR products that help the business, not by writing white papers that identify the problem. Mastery of some set of foundational knowledge in the human resources domain, and the ability to fashion solutions, is critical if the business partner model is to fully deliver on its promise.
But today’s undergraduate and graduate students in HR are repeatedly sent signals that the real need in the field is for more “strategic” players. As best I can decipher, to them being “strategic” translates to not being required to do any real HR work. They view filling open jobs or helping a line manager document a tricky performance case as beneath them—from their first day on the payroll! How did we get ourselves into this predicament?
One of my close academic colleagues blames the success that the leading HR guru, Dave Ulrich, has achieved in gaining global acceptance of the HR business partner concept. This mythic creature of great beauty (the business partner role, not Dave Ulrich) allowed the last generation of HR practitioners to hope for a better day, which was a valuable contribution to a field with a self-image problem. But the unintended consequence was to diminish the value of the real work through which HR earns credibility and, with it, line management’s ear. It also promotes a myth that everyone in HR can be strategic, every day. If nobody in the field wants to do the real work, what exactly do we bring to the table? Have we so diluted the field and the role that we are simply advisors or consultants? Is that all that is left when we finish our “transformation”?
I hope not. I hope that more companies will return somewhat to the basics and tell this next generation of HR professionals that when a company is growing, there are few things more “strategic” than filling open jobs. I hope they’ll say that when a company’s success is constrained by poor performers who drag down the entire organization, it is “strategic” to either help improve those people’s performance or manage them out of the organization. I hope the next HR generation will understand that when a compensation plan fails to provide the motivation and incentive to support the company’s goals, it is “strategic” to design a better comp plan. When tough times hit, carefully managing reductions in force is the definition of strategic. And finally, when conflict pits labor and management against each other in Detroit—or Pune—it is “strategic” to find ways to reduce conflict and build trust. All these things are strategic. They’re just not easy.
So call me old-fashioned. But I am just as excited today about the role of HR as I was 30 years ago—maybe more excited. With broad recognition that how people are managed is directly tied to competitive advantage, HR has never had a bigger platform. For a truly qualified HR professional, the opportunities are almost unlimited. But those qualifications include the ability to actually craft HR solutions. So go learn your trade, and don’t be afraid to break a sweat and get your hands dirty doing it.
Videoconferencing Eases Recruiters Efforts Across India
L Venketesan, the business head for staffing company Fortek Software Solutions, didn’t have the time or the budget to “air dash” across Tamil Nadu to hire employees to transcribe doctors’ notes for the U.S. market.
So on a recent weekday he avoided costly traffic jams and sat comfortably in his Coimbatore office, concluding an interview with a promising candidate from a rural college in Pollachi, 42 kilometers south, using a video recruiting Web site.
The interview with Geetha lasted about 20 minutes. She was articulate and well-informed. Venketesan, confident that she could make a good addition to the medical transcription company, invited her to his company’s Coimbatore headquarters for a final round of interviews.
“A simple DSL connection, mike, speakers and a Web camera are all that is required,” he says.
The videoconferencing service is the brainchild of online recruiting portal Whereismyboss.com, launched in July by Tirupur, Tamil Nadu-based PGC Industries. While traditional Web-based job portals such as Naukri.com, Monster India and Timesjobs.com follow the print-based model of aggregating pools of jobs with potential candidates, online recruiters like Whereismyboss could make the process simpler, faster and far more cost-effective through electronic search and screening tools as well as services that allow recruiters to conduct in-depth interviews without having to bring candidates to the office.
Along with videoconferencing, which costs employers Rs 100 ($2) for a five-minute Web chat, Whereismyboss also provides services like “intelligent profile matching,” a search engine function that Aadith D Vikram, vice chairman and managing director of Whereismyboss, says better matches companies with candidates.
Though Whereismyboss—whose clients include Infosys, Vodafone and HSBC—is the only portal that provides video-enabled search and screening services, Vikram believes employers who begin to use these new technologies will more effectively recruit qualified candidates. He points to the popularity of social networking sites and people’s increasing comfort level with online video as reasons why e-recruiting is positioned to be “the next big thing.”
“Services like ours are especially useful at a time when recession in the West has begun to put a squeeze on the Indian job market and managers have to work with smaller budgets,” Vikram says.
Venketesan, who has already used Whereismyboss’ services with some 2,000 candidates in the past month, plans to take a three-month subscription account with them. He says his most recent recruiting contract, a search for a CEO for a retail company in India, showed the service can be used for executive hires as well as entry-level workers.
“The client was interested in hiring an expatriate,” Venketesan says. “We interviewed 20-odd people and finally closed the position at Rs 65 lakhs ($140,000) per annum.”
While that salary is on par with the industry average, Venketesan says the hiring company saved 40 to 50 percent of its normal recruitment costs. The efficiency of video recruiting also allowed access to a wider talent pool throughout India. Venketesan says the service has helped him tap into lower-cost entry-level employees in rural areas, something he believes could help him better weather the current economic slowdown.
“Interviewing a pool of 2,000 to 3,000 candidates would require me to send out a team of at least eight to 10 consultants to those remote towns and villages,” he says. “Through video, we wind up everything in a couple of days.”
On average, Venketesan and his team devote five to eight minutes to each candidate, while some are dismissed in less than two minutes. For senior hires, the interaction lasts considerably longer and is used only for a pre-screening followed by a face-to-face meeting.
“But even that saves a lot of time,” Venketesan says.
The experience can be easier on hires too, says Saurab Kwatra, a networking engineer from East Delhi. “I was disappointed when I didn’t get selected but at least I didn’t burn a hole in my pocket taking a two-hour flight from Delhi to Mumbai,” he says.
Tapesh Kotwani, an assistant manager with the Indian subsidiary of HSBC Bank in Mumbai, says he has used the portal’s intelligent-search and video-résumé services but only for filling up positions at back-end operations.
Surabhi Mathur, general manager, permanent staffing, with Bangalore-based TeamLease Services believes one of the biggest advantages with video technology is a cost saving of 20 to 40 percent.
“We don’t have to fly in candidates, schedule interviews, book venues,” he says.
E-recruiting, however, may face technological hurdles in places where high bandwidth is not readily available, says V Suresh, national head of sales with Naukri.com. As of June 2008, India, a country of more than 1.13 billion people, had 4.38 million individual broadband subscribers, according to the Internet & Mobile Association of India, an industry body.
Suresh also doubts whether such services can be useful for anything other than entry-level positions where the goal is to assess a candidate’s communication skills and where the largely younger talent pool may more widely accept being interviewed via video.
As with any new technology, demand will be driven by recruiters. As of now, however, face-to-face meetings still pull a lot of weight with Indian employers.
“In the Indian scenario, nothing beats a physical meeting, at least not yet,” Mathur says. “We do at times schedule five to six rounds of interviews, a few of which may also involve video or telephonic interactions, but the end request is always for a physical meeting.”
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. Keeping an Eye on GM
General Motors Corp. is being monitored by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., “as financial reports come in,” said Jeffrey Speicher, PBGC public affairs specialist.
“We will be looking with great concern as financial reports come in,” he said. “We aren’t sending out any flares or raising any panic.”
GM’s pension plan was overfunded, based on its latest filings, he said. “From our point of view, it is difficult to say what the impact [of the market turmoil] is” on the plan, he said.
“I don’t know of any public contacts” the PBGC has had with GM executives, he said. “But there are no public steps we can talk about,” he added.
GM’s defined-benefit plan was $9 billion overfunded, based on assets of $117 billion and accumulated benefit obligations of $108 billion as of December 31, according to a Milliman report.
GM’s 10-K showed a funded status of $19 billion, based on assets of $104 billion and liabilities of $85 billion as of December 31.
GM’s pension asset allocation was 48.9 percent fixed income, 30.1 percent equity and 21 percent other, according to the Milliman report. GM’s 10-K lists the allocation as 26 percent equity, 52 percent debt, 9 percent real estate and 13 percent other.
Because the GM plan is overfunded, it would not be affected by curtailments of pension benefits, including shutdown benefits in the event of layoffs, under the Pension Protection Act of 2006, according to an ERISA attorney who asked not to be named because of potential conflicts with corporate clients.
In 2006, GM froze its salaried defined-benefit plan for all active participants, moving them into a new defined-contribution plan. That reduced pension expense by $383 million in 2006 and reduced the pension benefit obligations by $2.8 billion, according to its 2007 10-K.
Standard & Poor’s on Thursday, October 9, put the bond ratings of GM and its finance unit, GMAC, on negative credit watch, triggering an S&P review of the financial situation over the next three months.
The negative watch “reflects the rapidly weakening state of most global automotive markets, along with capital market conditions that will remain a serious challenge for the foreseeable future,” the S&P report said. It did not address pension issues.
Filed by Barry B. Burr of Pensions & Investments, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.
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TOOL Health Resources From the National Library of Medicine
HR executives know that employers have a vested interested in the health and well-being of their employees—and their families. Employers may help their workforce by adding links to their intranets to, for instance, “Health Hotlines,” which is from the National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health. People can search for toll-free phone numbers and Web sites by keyword or by subject.
Employers Find Legal Support for Surveillance to Fight FMLA Abuse
In a recent ruling, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld the termination of an Indiana auto parts factory worker for abusing her medical leave. An off-duty police officer hired by Raybestos Products had observed Diana Vail working for her husband’s lawn-mowing business while she was on leave and, the court said, the information obtained from the surveillance was sufficient to give Raybestos an “honest suspicion” that Vail was not using her leave “for the intended purpose.”
Vail had been taking intermittent Family and Medical Leave Act leave for migraine headaches. “As a result of this ‘honest suspicion,’ Raybestos did not violate Vail’s rights under the FMLA,” the 7th Circuit concluded.
Employment law experts say the July 21 published decision in Vail v. Raybestos Products is additional confirmation that the practice of spying on employees, routinely used to ferret out embezzlement, theft of trade secrets and workers’ compensation fraud, is also a valuable—and legal—tool for fighting FMLA fraud.
Employers have generally been successful in defending similar cases around the country, while plaintiffs have failed to gain traction with the argument that using private investigators is an excessive response to the fraud problem and only serves to intimidate employees into not taking leave. U.S. Department of Labor regulations specifically recognize that an employee “who fraudulently obtains FMLA leave from an employer is not protected by FMLA’s job restoration or maintenance of health benefits provisions.”
In June, however, an Ohio judge deviated somewhat from the norm in the case of an assembly-line worker who was fired after an investigator videotaped him building a front porch on his home while he was on FMLA leave. James Weimer sued Honda of America for interfering with his FMLA rights. In allowing the case to proceed to trial, U.S. District Judge Gregory L. Frost cited “a factual dispute as to whether Defendant honestly believed that Plaintiff exceeded the scope of his leave.”
In Illinois, meanwhile, five Illinois Bell employees are moving toward trial in their case, alleging the phone company has systematically interfered with their rights by, among other things, videotaping employees on FMLA leave “in an effort to oust them from their employment and/or discourage them from taking FMLA leave to which they were entitled.”
“They were telling people, ‘If you take FMLA leave, you’re going to be watched,’ ” says the plaintiffs’ attorney, Charles Siedlecki of Chicago. Employers, he admits, have a right to weed out malingerers, but a broad policy of surveillance is a “form of intimidation.” Illinois Bell has filed a motion for summary judgment.
FMLA experts agree that the cases involving Honda and Illinois Bell should remind employers to be cautious both in requesting surveillance of an employee in the first place and then in later taking action against an employee based on the results of the surveillance.
“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it every time,” says attorney Linda Walton of Perkins Coie in Seattle.
Those who don’t take the necessary precautions can be found liable for violating the FMLA, which protects “any eligible employee who takes leave … for the intended purpose of the leave.”
Under the FMLA, employees are entitled to 12 weeks of leave in a 12-month period. But since the law was passed in 1993, employers have become increasingly concerned about employee abuse, particularly of intermittent leave.
Workers who have doctor appointments or suffer unexpected flare-ups of a chronic health condition such as migraine headaches can take leave in small increments of as little as an hour. But for the less scrupulous, intermittent leave has turned into an opportunity to take a three- or four-day weekend, for example.
According to arecent survey by WorldatWork, an association of HR professionals, suspected employee abuse is the leading complaint about intermittent leave among its members. Forty-two percent report “extreme difficulty” in dealing with the potential for or suspicion of abuse.
“Intermittent leave is far and away more of a problem for employers than leave taken in a block,” notes attorney John Myers of Eckert Seamans in Pittsburgh. “It’s unpredictable and it’s unscheduled.”
In 2004, the Department of Labor offered employers some guidance on how to confront the problem. A Friday/Monday absence pattern can, in and of itself, constitute “information that casts doubt upon the employee’s stated reason for the absence,” it said in anopinion letter, thus allowing an employer to request medical recertification from the employee’s health care provider more frequently than every 30 days. The employer can also request a second and third medical opinion with the recertification.
But for employers who feel they need to go further, and have a “good faith, honest belief” that an employee is abusing leave, it may be appropriate to hire a private investigator.
“Given the right circumstances, it’s the right thing to do,” insists Christy Phanthavong, counsel in the Chicago office of Bryan Cave. “An employer might have a tough time selling surveillance as an across-the-board policy. But when they have some sort of reason to suspect fraud is going on … engaging a private investigator is going to be more acceptable to the courts.”
Volvo Parts North America, for one, wasted little time requesting surveillance of Ebony Stanley, an employee at its Columbus, Ohio, warehouse. After Stanley submitted her FMLA paperwork on February 3, 2006, so she could take intermittent leave for chronic anemia, she missed her 2:30-11 p.m. shift on February 14.
That night, starting at precisely 11:01 p.m., a private investigator followed her from her home to a nightclub, the Boulevard, where she was observed wearing a “one piece red thong bathing suit” and dancing “exotically” on the stage. After a second night of surveillance at the club, Volvo fired her for engaging in outside employment while on FMLA leave, which constituted a violation of its collective bargaining agreement with the United Auto Workers.
Stanley sued Volvo for interference and retaliating against her for taking leave, arguing, among other things, that she should not have been under surveillance outside her normal working hours. She also denied she was actually working at the club. But Volvo was able to defeat her claims by showing her termination was based on an “honest suspicion” that she was not using her leave for its intended purpose, and the investigator’s report was powerful evidence against her, as U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson noted in granting Volvo’s motion for summary judgment.
The plaintiff has appealed the ruling. “The judge didn’t even address the issue that the surveillance happened after her shift,” says her attorney, Fazeel Khan of Blaugrund Herbert & Martin in Worthington, Ohio.
The Weimer case, however, suggests that the usefulness of evidence gathered during surveillance has its limits. Weimer, who worked at Honda’s Marysville, Ohio, plant, took FMLA leave after suffering an on-the-job industrial injury. A co-worker tipped Honda off that he was building his porch and the company put him under surveillance. After he returned to work, he was fired for taking leave under false pretenses.
In his decision, Judge Frost wrote that he could not “say as a matter of law that Plaintiff did not use his FMLA leave for its intended purpose,” in part because it was unclear whether Weimer’s ability to build a porch “informs his ability to perform the duties of his job.” Moreover, if Honda “knew that Plaintiff’s purported on-leave activities did not rise to the level of his job functions … the investigation’s conclusions cannot provide the honest belief on which Defendant relies.”
According to attorney Linda Walton, the case makes clear that employers have to be very cautious about taking action as a result of an investigation. An investigator’s report cannot say, for example, “whether an employee’s on-leave activities rise to the level of job functions. And the employer must honestly believe that what they were doing rises to the level of job duties.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney Charles Siedlecki believes any spying on an employee suspected of FMLA abuse is improper outside the hours the employee would normally be working.
“You shouldn’t be watched anytime you go to the doctor or the drugstore,” he argues. “When you’re on FMLA leave, you’re not a prisoner of your house.” He also says employers are interpreting “reasonable suspicion” too broadly in deciding to have an employee investigated.
“They’re playing games with some of the vagaries of the statute in an effort to stretch it as far as they can,” Siedlecki says.
But the overall trend in FMLA litigation appears to be favoring employers. In the case of Diana Vail, the 7th Circuit noted that while putting an employee under surveillance “may not be preferred employer behavior, employers have certainly gone further than Raybestos.”
Attorney Christy Phanthavong says that employers can have some confidence that “when you have a good reason for taking aggressive steps, you’re going to be OK.”
Re-Employment Rights And USERRA
Brian Petty worked as a police sergeant, supervising patrol officers, for the Metropolitan Government of Nashville, Tennessee, known as Metro. When Petty was called to active duty in 2003 with the U.S. Army and stationed in Kuwait, he was accused of manufacturing and offering wine to other soldiers. The Army dismissed charges against Petty in exchange for his resignation, and he was discharged “under honorable conditions.”
When Petty requested reinstatement to his job, Metro required Petty to complete a questionnaire about whether he had been charged in any military disciplinary proceeding. Petty admitted charges had been made against him, but he did not disclose the substance of those charges. Believing Petty was concealing information, Metro refused to reinstate him to his former position, but assigned him to work in an office position for the police department with significantly fewer responsibilities than his former position.
Petty sued Metro in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, alleging that Metro unlawfully delayed his re-employment, failed to restore him to his full patrol sergeant’s job and discriminated against him based on his military service. The district court dismissed the lawsuit in favor of Metro, and Petty appealed.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reversed, holding that USERRA prohibits an employer’s adoption of a “policy, plan or practice” that creates additional prerequisites to a service member’s statutory right to re-employment. Petty’s failure to provide the separation papers he had received from the military, which were “statutorily unnecessary,” did not prevent Petty from exercising his right to re-employment. Petty v. Metro. Gov’t of Nashville & Davidson County, 6th Cir., No. 07-5649 (8/18/08).
Impact: Protections under USERRA extend to employees who have left military service under “honorable conditions,” make a timely request for reinstatement and provide the employer with a signed authorization allowing access to the employee’s military and medical records.
Workforce Management, October 6, 2008, p. 11 — Subscribe Now!
The Four-Day Workweek Now Wrecking Innovation at a Company Near You
Here’s a rule of thumb for all you capitalists working undercover as HR pros in corporate America: If your local, state or federal government is leading the charge to implement a seemingly progressive workplace policy, don’t rush to be included in the “me too” camp.
In fact, when you get the brochure for the “government best practices seminar,” run like hell.
As an example of such a policy, I give you the four-day workweek for exempt, salaried employees. I understand that nonexempt, hourly employees are going to work a certain number of hours, then go home. For hourly workers, the four-day workweek is a simple exercise in scheduling production and ensuring availability for customers.
The four-day workweek for exempt professionals is different, and it makes sense only if you don’t think about it too hard. Here’s the spin: We’ll work smarter, not harder, enhance work/life balance through organizational design and improve the morale of exempt workers. All this will be accomplished by chopping a calendar day off the workweek that we’ve carried over from the industrial age.
Listen to the logic, and you can fill up a buzzword bingo card with the catchphrases. As the gifted poet Flavor Flav once said, “Don’t believe the hype.“
Before I go off on a rant, allow me to be fair and balanced in presenting the reported positives of the four-day workweek. The City of Birmingham, Alabama (headquarters of the HR Capitalist and Fistful of Talent), recently made a voluntary switch to a four-day workweek (similar to many other municipalities are across the U.S.) for exempt and nonexempt employees, and the Birmingham News reports the benefits include improved employee absenteeism and reduced fuel costs for the city and employees alike.
Still not convinced? Consider these hard stats from the Magic City, as Birmingham calls itself:
The four-day workweek saves money for the city. Birmingham offered statistics showing that the city consumed 5,581 fewer gallons of diesel fuel and 13,669 fewer gallons of unleaded fuel in July compared with June, a net savings for the month of more than $73,000. Annualize the run rate and the city is projected to save $885,000 on fuel over the course of a year.
The four-day workweek saves money for employees. Birmingham also projects the 2,467 employees who work four-day weeks could save as much as $513,136 in personal fuel costs over the course of a year. The math is based on a 20-mile average daily commute in a 20-mile-per-gallon personal vehicle, with gas at $4 a gallon.
I know what you’re thinking: How can you argue with stats like that?
Easily. The early statistics from the city of Birmingham point to raw savings, almost solely focused on fuel usage reductions for the city and employees alike. What the stats don’t tell you is whether the city reduced services to save fuel. What the stats can’t tell you is whether results, innovation and creativity are negatively affected by this practice over time.
Here’s why you should think twice before implementing a four-day workweek that includes your exempt workforce:
1. Results are replaced by time. When we think about developing a performance culture in our organizations, most of us say we value results over time spent at work. For exempt-level positions, that’s the way it should be. Unfortunately, if you look behind the rhetoric and talking points, you’ll find many of us reinforcing the old industrial model of clocking in and clocking out. Office hours and face time are still the norm. We criticize people who don’t work like us (I’m here at 7:30 p.m. and Tom’s out of here at 5:15. What’s up with that?”) or don’t follow the company norm, oftentimes refusing to look at the output of those who work “differently.”
If you choose to implement a four-day workweek, you’re sending the classic message that you value time over results for your exempt employees. Some people can get their objectives knocked out in 40 hours, some need 60. Put the four-day workweek in, and you’re sending an institutional message to your salaried workers that your organization expects 40 hours rather than continuous effort until their objectives are met.
2. Driving for high performance becomes almost impossible. When you replace a focus on results with a focus on time, performance management becomes increasingly difficult. At the macro level, you’re limited in the conversations you can have related to overall contributions and results. After all, you replaced a focus on results with one focused on time. As a result, when you push for higher overall performance and nudge your talent to exceed expectations, you’re going to hear the following: “Man, I’d love to do that, but there just aren’t enough hours in the week”.
As for the increased performance you need to make your department work: Don’t worry, you can always request additional budgeted headcount to get it done. Good luck with that one.
3. By implementing a four-day workweek and placing an emphasis on face time, you’ve discounted the creativity and maturity of your employees. Think about it. You’ve mandated one solution and one work schedule, rather than allowing employees to find what works best for them. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have office hours. I get the need for people to be seen on regular schedules. But if you truly want results in your organization, you’ve got to provide the vision to your people on what the objectives are, then allow them to get their groove on in a way that unlocks their potential.
Sally doesn’t like to work the same way as Johnny. By making them work under identical conditions, you’re guaranteeing one thing: They won’t meet their collective potential. Loosen up and let them figure it out, individually and with each other as a team.
4. Innovation isn’t scheduled. There’s a reason HP was founded in a garage, Yahoo was launched in a trailer. And there’s a couple of kids today in an RV with no tires cooking up the technology that will ultimately make Google a dinosaur. Innovation can’t be scheduled. Your best and brightest need a lab that is flexible enough to give them the tools they need, but allows them to work how and when they see fit. By providing this, you’ll maximize the ability of your employees to innovate.
Instead of focusing on the four-day workweek, loosen your iron grip on face time, enhance how you measure performance in your organization, and let go. Allow people to telecommute. Offer flexible hours as long as the customer (internal and external) gets served. Measure how people are doing every couple of months.
Manage by results and manage by objectives. Just don’t manage by counting hours. All you’ll get from that is less of lots of things, including engagement, passion, creativity and innovation.