We’ve all done a lot of talking over the past six months about sexual harassment.
We should not forget, however, that our laws make harassment unlawful if it’s based on membership in any protected class.
A federal jury in Detroit just provided employers a very real reminder of this fact.
It tagged Ford Motor Co. with a $16.8 million verdict. The plaintiff, a former Ford engineer, proved that the automaker created a hostile work environment based his Arab background.
“There was a high-level executive at Ford Motor Co. that my client reported to … that would berate him and criticize him week after week about his English,” said Carol Laughbaum of Sterling Attorneys. Khalaf, who was born in Lebanon, had been with Ford since 1999.
“It wasn’t a matter of ‘Please, can you repeat this?’ but ‘What is wrong with you? Why don’t you understand this?’ ” Laughbaum said, noting that her client’s supervisor, who has since retired, would “literally pound his fist on the table and yell” at Khalaf over his English. …
The trial shed light on other problematic workplace practices, according to Laughbaum. She said Fowler, during a high-level executive meeting, handed her client a note that simply read “S 2+2.” Khalaf, who holds a Ph.D. in industrial engineering, later found out that the note meant: “Small coffee, two sugars, 2 creams.”
We’ve spent so much mental energy and workplace capital focusing on sexual harassment that it’s easy to lose focus on the myriad other classes of unlawful harassment — race, national origin, religion, age, disability, etc.
This large verdict serves as an excellent reminder.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
It’s a normal learning process for humans to apply our latest discovery to everything we encounter for a while.
When my former neighbor’s young daughter learned about the physical differences between boys and girls, for days she did nothing but talk about anatomy and ask adults in the supermarket about theirs. When my dad learned about the cultural differences between generations, he processed everything he observed from that perspective for several weeks. An incessant social scientist, I chuckle every time I notice the way I filter the latest current event through the lens of my “latest religion” with the zeal of a recent convert.
Typically, we integrate our latest discovery into a richer, more balanced worldview. But when it comes to diversity and inclusion, too many organizations stay stuck in their own “latest religion” with potentially dire consequences. They embark on the well-intended mission to create a more inclusive culture, and soon find themselves off the path hitting landmines or sinking in quicksand because they’re indiscriminately inclusive.
Creating a more inclusive culture is not about including everything and everyone. To obtain meaningful results that matter without causing more problems than it solves, inclusion must be strategic, rooted in your existing organizational identity, values and business goals. High-performing organizations and teams are effective because they have a clear sense of purpose, expressed in clear goals. Having a clear identity is necessary to fulfill those goals, and identity is influenced by values. Whether conscious or not, every organization has values that are expressed in rules that dictate which behaviors are rewarded and which are rejected.
Organizations should not abandon their values, identity or goals for the sake of inclusion; in fact, being serious about inclusion will hone them. This may result in new rules. Just as it’s OK to exclude employees who come to work inebriated or who punch customers in the face, it’s not just OK to exclude employees who speak and act in alignment with white supremacist, misogynistic or homophobic belief systems (if those are counter to your values). It’s necessary. Expecting employees to share a certain set of values and behave in a particular way is effective leadership and is not oppressive or exclusive. While it’s always critical to review policies with legal counsel, in general you’re not depriving anyone of their freedom or right to work by taking a clear stand on what’s acceptable in your organization, just depriving them of their freedom or right to work for you. You’re also depriving them of their ability to disrupt your culture and interfere with your goals. To allow such disruption and interference is poor leadership that lets down your high performers and loyal customers!
While taking a clear stand on what and who you will include, there are three important considerations.
Be clear and honest about your purpose, identity, values and goals. Such clarity allows you to be strategic in deciding which behaviors are acceptable and which aren’t, instead of making fear-based, knee-jerk decisions based on the latest media frenzy or trendy fad. It will also help you communicate the business-critical rationale for why certain behaviors aren’t acceptable. Be honest about your culture in the process. Many organizations espouse one set of values and goals, yet live another, leading to conflict, low morale, poor talent retention and reduced productivity. Have the courage and curiosity to see what your culture really is, and choose to either operate accordingly or commit to changing it.
Use a scalpel instead of a carpet bomb to differentiate what and who you will include. Conservatives are sometimes right to criticize liberals for our hypersensitivity to language. Even progressive darlings like Chimamanda Adichie experience what she terms the “cannibalism of the left” in how we excommunicate allies over petty, rigid notions of correct vocabulary. While words should be taken seriously for their power to shape reality through thoughts and behaviors, censoring all “non-PC” speech or controversial ideas not only reduces diversity, it creates a mistake-intolerant culture that interferes with the learning and relationship-building necessary for true inclusiveness. Too many incidences of one-time inappropriate behavior are mishandled by firing the person responsible instead of using the situation to reflect, examine the big picture, learn, and create more accountability and trust. Of course there are behaviors that require serious and immediate consequences for the actor. Even then, leaders should pause to consider the roles and identities of all actors, identify root causes, seek patterns and ponder consequences.
Focus on behavior. Cognitive diversity is what causes diverse teams to outperform non-diverse teams, and millennials are particularly keen on “diversity of thought.” People can, and should, have differing beliefs and ideas (religious, political, etc.) at work. Inclusiveness is not about thought policing. It’s also not about turning everyone into a liberal, since science shows diversity plus inclusion gets better results regardless of people’s political beliefs. The key is finding a balance between difference and similarity, with enthusiasm for the organization’s purpose and values held as an essential similarity. Ultimately, a person’s thoughts and beliefs only become problems once they translate into unacceptable behaviors. Having clarity around which behaviors are unacceptable and why (from a business standpoint) will allow you to think, speak and act more effectively. Then you can move beyond mere zeal and find success on your mission to create a more inclusive culture without losing yourself in the wilderness.
Susana Rinderle is president of Susana Rinderle Consulting and a trainer, coach, speaker, author and diversity & inclusion expert. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Bloomberg reports that demand for anti-harassment training videos has surged in the #MeToo era.
Here’s the problem, however. The Bloomberg article talks about training videos, the absolute worst kind of training.
Anti-harassment training is all about creating an anti-harassment culture in your workplace—about employees understanding what harassment is, how to complain about it, and that your company does not ever accept it.
If you plop your employees in front of a video, it sends the message that you do not prioritize anti-harassment training, which sends the absolute wrong message to your employees. How can you expect them to take this issue seriously when your training creates the impression that you don’t take it seriously?So, how should you use your anti-harassment training to help create a #MeToo appropriate anti-harassment culture?
Training should be supported at the highest levels. “Employees must believe that the leadership is serious about preventing harassment in the workplace.… The strongest expression of support is for a senior leader to open the training session and attend the entire training session.… Similarly, if all employees at every level of the organization are trained, that both increases the effectiveness of the training and communicates the employer’s commitment of time and resources to the training effort.”
Training should be conducted and reinforced on a regular basis for all employees. “Employees understand that an organization’s devotion of time and resources to any effort reflects the organization’s commitment to that effort. Training is no different. If anti-harassment trainings are held once a year (or once every other year), employees will not believe that preventing harassment is a high priority for the employer. Conversely, if anti-harassment trainings are regularly scheduled events in which key information is reinforced, that will send the message that the goal of the training is important.”
Training should be conducted by qualified, live, and interactive trainers. “Live trainers who are dynamic, engaging, and have full command of the subject matter are the most likely to deliver effective training.”
Training should be routinely evaluated. “Employers should obviously not keep doing something that does not work. Trainers should not only do the training, but should evaluate the results of the training, as well.… The evaluation should occur on a regular basis so that the training can be modified, if need be. Similarly, training evaluation should incorporate feedback from all levels of an organization, most notably, the rank-and-file employees who are being trained.”
Employers should consider including workplace civility training and bystander intervention training as part of a holistic harassment prevention program. “Employers have offered workplace civility training as a means of reducing bullying or conflict in the workplace. Thus, such training does not focus on eliminating unwelcome behavior based on characteristics protected under employment non-discrimination laws, but rather on promoting respect and civility in the workplace generally.… Bystander intervention training … could help employees identify unwelcome and offensive behavior that is based on a co-workers’ protected characteristic…; could create a sense of responsibility on the part of employees to ‘do something’ and not simply stand by; could give employees the skills and confidence to intervene in some manner to stop harassment; and finally, could demonstrate the employer’s commitment to empowering employees to act in this manner.”
Employers, let’s not just “check the box” with harassment training. Let’s make it real and meaningful for your employees. If you don’t appear to take it seriously, how can they?
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
As immigration issues swirl around businesses seeking to hire foreign talent, a new guide published by the Tent Foundation is still touting the benefits of hiring refugees.
The “U.S. Employers’ Guide to Hiring Refugees” highlights the positive aspects businesses reap when hiring refugees. Diversity tops the list of what refugees bring to the workplace, according to Gideon Maltz, executive director of Tent Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works with businesses to help them integrate refugee workers into their workplace. Whether it’s experience or language, refugees can provide new insights from their respective countries.
“A more diverse workforce fosters new ideas and innovations, which is necessary in our more competitive, global market,” Maltz said.
Finding those refugee workers poses a challenge, based on recent statistics.
A recent report in the San Diego Union-Tribune indicated the number of refugees entering San Diego has declined significantly following the Trump administration’s restriction on the refugee resettlement program. According to the Refugee Processing Center, as of February 2018, San Diego has settled 40 refugees, compared to more than 1,100 the same time last year. That reflects national numbers, too. This year 6,708 refugees have been settled, compared to 32,448 last year, statistics show. According to its website, the Refugee Processing Center is operated by the U.S Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration in Arlington, Virginia.
Gideon Maltz
Based on the Tent Foundation guide, a refugee is “an individual who is unable to return to his or her home country due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or social group.”
Employers have options beyond refugees if they want to diversify their workforce with foreign workers. Immigrants on an H-1B visa, which allows U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations, also bring with them their foreign experiences and knowledge.
Many foreign workers possess degrees in STEM subjects, according to Richard Burke, CEO of Envoy Global, an enterprise platform that works with companies to make the hiring and managing process of a global workforce easier. Burke said foreign workers, such as immigrants, have a better educational background than their U.S. counterparts.
“The problem is U.S. universities are not issuing enough STEM degrees to U.S. citizens,” said Burke. “There’s a big gap between the supply of U.S.-born folks with the right educational criteria and a demand for these positions.”
Burke reasoned that businesses could be putting more of an effort into introducing more immigrants because they see the benefit diversity brings to a company’s culture.
Richard Burke
“To address the supply and demand imbalance employers are saying, ‘We have opportunities, we want to grow, we want to contribute to the economy,’ ” said Burke. “But to do that we need the talent and the workers to do it. And the only way to do it is through foreign national talent.”
Still, why now? Businesses may hesitate when hiring foreigners at a time when immigration issues and admitting refugees into the United States remains a controversial topic.
“We as a country would be shortsighted if we didn’t want to take advantage of this foreign talent and have them create jobs in the United States,” Burke said.
Envoy Global’s “2018 Immigration Trends Report” looks at opinions of employers on immigration and their hiring process. Based on the report, businesses that would like to implement this strategy are finding it difficult to do so in the face of the tougher immigration standards.
“Eighty-five percent of respondents say the U.S immigration program policies have impacted their ability to hire,” said Burke.
For potential employers that want to hire refugees, Maltz advises them to reach out to their local resettlement agency since those organizations can help with logistical details. Managers should also prepare to spend extra money on English as second language courses and other programs to help new workers acclimate to their new home.
“[It] may require some upfront investments but these are small in relation to the benefits refugees will bring to your company,” Maltz said.
Those who have implemented the strategy of hiring refugees have seen positive results.
“Employers consistently find that by investing in refugee employees they earn their loyalty and see higher retention rates,” Maltz said.
Based on the guide, 17 percent of refugees are coming from Myanmar, 16 percent from the Democratic Republic of Congo, 14 percent from Iraq, 12 percent from Somalia, and 10 percent from Syria. The guide focuses on entry-level positions in industries such as manufacturing and service, according to Maltz.
“[Refugees] are incredibly motivated, resilient and hardworking people who are looking to rebuild their lives and regain a sense of normalcy after many years of chaos,” says Maltz.
Aysha Ashley Househ is a Workforce intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
I may be the only diversity trainer who is often anti-diversity training.
It’s not because I don’t enjoy what I do. It’s not because I’m no good at it.
It’s because half the leaders who contact me for diversity training don’t need it. Thousands of dollars and dozens of hours are wasted every year on diversity training that has little impact — or makes things worse — because leaders make one of the following four mistakes.
You’re having a knee-jerk reaction to one or two people’s concerns. A nonprofit CEO contacted me for staff-wide training at the behest of her board because a person of color in a leadership position “made comments.” There was no evidence of other diversity-related problems and she was unwilling to elaborate on the comments (a problem in itself). As sexual harassment and overt white supremacy gain broader visibility, knee-jerk reactions fueled by heightened anxiety are understandable. But while feedback, especially from members of underrepresented groups, should always be taken seriously, taking them seriously doesn’t always mean all-staff training is the next step.
Instead: Engage in meaningful conversation with those raising concerns to identify wider patterns and get at the root of the problem. The root may be one manager’s leadership skills, or a flaw in systems or procedures. In such cases better accountability, clearer communication, leadership coaching or process change are the appropriate solution, not training.
You lack meaningful goals for training (or D&I in general). A corporate HR leader requested unconscious bias training to help the firm recruit and retain more people of color. Some stakeholders felt training was long overdue, while others saw no need and resisted efforts. After three years their diversity council had produced no strategic plan or D&I goals. Simply aiming to recruit and retain “diverse people” is an “old school” approach to D&I that doesn’t work, especially when buy-in is low among key stakeholders. Trainers are limited in their ability to create staff buy-in; this must come from leadership.
Instead: Identify your strategic, mission-critical goals for D&I. Diversity is not a strategic goal, it’s a strategic means to an important end the organization already cares deeply about. Having strategic D&I goals enables leaders to identify the barriers to achieving them. Identifying the barriers equips leaders to break them down effectively and efficiently — and may not require staff training. Also, defining why recruiting and retaining more people of color (or whatever the goal) is necessary to organizational success creates buy-in for training — when the time is right.
Your leaders aren’t holding people accountable for poor behavior. A leader contacted me for diversity training because a manager was making disparaging comments about Limited English Proficient staff. There were no other concerns raised by staff or complaints about other managers. Training would be a waste of time for everyone not doing inappropriate behaviors, and would not have gotten at the heart of the one manager’s issues.
Instead: Determine whether the person engaging in poor behavior knows what is expected of them and has the knowledge and skills necessary to deliver. If they do, only consistent accountability from their leadership will solve the problem. If they don’t, individual mentoring or coaching may close the gap, along with an exploration of the organizational breakdown that allowed the gap to occur in the first place (or go unaddressed).
Your effective processes or previous trainings aren’t hardwired. A top leader in an educational institution contacted me for training to help create a more inclusive environment. Six months before, they’d engaged another trainer whose content was robust, aligned with their goals and applicable to their culture. The school had also invested a great deal of time in creating protocols to increase equity in faculty hiring. However, there had been no post-training implementation plan or follow up from leadership. The hiring protocols weren’t being used consistently and there was no clear procedure or accountability for doing so.
Instead: Rigorously implement and follow up on identified action items following any training or new procedure rollout. This requires effort up front, but pays off over time in meaningful, sustainable behavioral and organizational change. Investing in more training is a waste of resources and communicates to employees that training and process changes don’t have to be taken seriously.
Training only solves a problem when the problem is lack of essential knowledge or skills. Providing training with no solid foundation for success or when training isn’t needed is poor stewardship of your organization’s resources. It also sets up your D&I efforts to be disregarded as the strategic priority research demonstrates they are.
However, diversity training can be highly effective when:
You know where your organization is. What are your strengths and weaknesses (in general, not just D&I)? What do your employees and customers say about you? Who is saying what?
You know where you want to go. What’s the pressing problem you need to solve as an organization, or how do you want to go from good to great?
An increase in staff or leadership awareness, knowledge and skills is key to getting you where you want to go.
Engaging a skilled diversity trainer that’s also a competent consultant – whether external or internal to your organization – is vital to the mindful planning that will get you D&I results that matter. Don’t fall into the traps of quick action out of fear or treating D&I as anything less than the strategic priority it is.
Susana Rinderle is president of Susana Rinderle Consulting and a trainer, coach, speaker, author and diversity & inclusion expert. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
The fourth nominee for the worst employer of 2018 is the Humane Society of the United States, which last month voted to retain its CEO despite an internal investigation that identified and corroborated three complains of sexual harassment against him.
The internal investigation, which was conducted by Washington law firm Morgan Lewis last month, detailed the stories of three women who said Pacelle harassed them, with complaints dating to 2005.
The nonprofit group also offered settlements to three other workers who said they were dismissed or demoted after speaking up about Pacelle’s alleged sexual misconduct, according to a memo describing the law firm’s findings. …
The Humane Society investigation interviewed 33 witnesses, including Pacelle, outlining complaints from a former intern who said Pacelle kissed her against her will in 2005; a former employee who said he asked to masturbate in front of her and offered her oral sex in a hotel room in 2006; and a former employee who said he stopped by her office late one night in 2012 and asked her to salsa dance with him.
If you’re curious, Politico outlines all of the sordid allegations. Under the force of public pressure and the threats of many high-dollar donors, Pacelle has since resigned.
If you value your CEO more than the rights of your employees to be free from harassment, you might be the worst employer of 2018.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
On any given day an employee will be bombarded by hundreds of communications. There are emails, voicemails and old-school snail mail.
Slack messages pop in from customers, clients and co-workers. There are companywide communications about everything from new employees to doughnuts in the break room. At the same time there are texts from the parents about whether the dog will like its new plaid pajamas and friends asking about dinner plans via Snapchat and Facebook.
Not only are employees still expected to do their jobs through this glut of information, they’re also expected to make decisions on employer-sponsored benefits. These potentially life-altering choices on health care and retirement, employee assistance and wellness programs and even pet insurance can be complex and leave many employees confused, anxious and lacking in information.
Increasingly, HR is discovering how much communication is too much, which can leave practitioners in a dilemma when they are restrained to just a few messages to convey important information. Although difficult, it is possible to tame this delicate balance of giving employees the necessary information without overwhelming them. At a certain point, even the most vital information can become white noise, just another of 300 or so messages per day, and go undetected and ignored.
Reaching employees and engaging them in today’s always-on world is one of the key challenges that organizations have, according to Keith Kitani, CEO of GuideSpark, a software company specializing in employee communication. Part of the problem is that employees are accustomed to consuming information in a certain way in their personal lives, through short, digestible and sometimes video-based messages. Corporate communication hasn’t risen to this new bar. “Companies are competing with employees’ personal lives now,” said Kitani.
Also, many employers will send communications such as emails or newsletters with too much information, and not all of it may be relevant to an employee at a given point in time, he added. “In a noisy world, you have to think about relevance,” he said. “As more organizations think about communicating, the more they can figure out how to deliver shorter, targeted messages with relevant information.”
This may not be the company’s initial instinct, he said. Many times, companies will have an important message to send employees and they’ll tack on other less important messages. An employee may file away a piece of irrelevant information for later and never get back to it.
“The world is so noisy now,” said Kitani. “The reason you file away is you’re getting hit with so many pieces of information, and you pick the one that’s the most relevant and consume that one, and forget the one you weren’t ready to consume.” Being able to focus on one clear, concise focused message would serve companies better, he added.
Understanding the Value Behind Your Benefits
One area in the workplace in which communication is especially important is benefits, whether that communication is about open enrollment in the fall or a different topic during the rest of the year.
Two out of three employees said that making sense of benefits is complicated, and 75 percent said that there is some part of their benefits coverage they don’t understand, according to a recent Aflac survey of 5,000 employees.
Kevin McNamara
In the health care space, “a lot of employees miss key information that comes out in advance of open enrollment, and they suffer for it in the next plan year,” said Kevin McNamara, senior enrollment strategist at The Standard, a Portland, Oregon-based insurance company. Only 8 percent of employees update their workplace benefits during open enrollment, according to the Aflac survey. The same survey found that 80 percent of people spent less than an hour researching and reviewing their benefits options.
Considering the complexity of benefits, one strategy of employee communication employers can use is being clear on the philosophy behind the benefits program from the very beginning, said Michele McDermott, senior vice president of human resources at Assurance, an insurance company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. “We share with employees the ‘why’ behind our programs, which then makes understanding the ‘what’ so much easier,” McDermott said.
For example, the company only offers a high-deductible plan with a health savings account. “We only offer the HSA because we believe in consumerism. That’s our philosophy,” she said. When the company shares that ‘why,’ it helps the employees to buy into that ‘why’ and to understand important questions like ‘What is an HSA?’ ‘What do I need to know?’ and ‘How do I use it?’ ” she added.
Explaining the “why” helps when communicating company information in the broader sense as well, according to Kitani. With any business message, if you don’t tell them that “why,” employees often won’t consume the information. He suggests following the “inspire, inform, reinforce” strategy. Start by telling the employees why it’s important to them, then tell the information.
Unfortunately, companies forget to reinforce, he added, and that can ruin a great communications strategy.
Considering the demographics of the workforce also helps guide a strategy in the right direction, according to Mark Johnson, founder and CEO of benefits management company Creative Benefit Solutions. Demographics are one prong of his four-prong strategy.
The other three prongs include creating a yearlong strategy that educates employees on the benefits offered, making the most of technology, and using social media efficiently. Together, these can help employees get the information they need to understand and find value in the plan.
Using social media is especially valuable at the start of the strategy before employees have questions, said Johnson. This can be done through usual channels like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but businesses should also consider having an internal benefits blog in which employees could have the chance to comment and ask questions, he said. The company’s consultants and benefits team could be involved so that people get the correct information.
Johnson suggests taking a quarterly approach to benefits communication and breaking that information into bite-sized chunks. A company might take one of these pieces to focus on a highly utilized benefit, such as health care or retirement, and focus on educating employees how to use that benefit as a consumer.
It might use another time to focus on an underutilized benefit. For example, it might have a workforce with many millennials who do not participate in a flexible spending account. “Target those specific nonparticipating members to try to see the value in that benefit,” Johnson said.
Alternatively, a company may have employees who sign up for extra benefits they don’t need, he added. They may end up choosing a benefit plan with a higher premium solely based off the perception that it’s the best plan for them and end up spending a lot of money on something they’re not using.
Striking that balance between cost and quality of benefits can be tricky, said Johnson. Even if employees understand the content, knowing the value is another vital piece that is sometimes not considered.
An Increasingly Complex Future
Communication is getting more complex as the types of communication increase. Looking toward the future, Kitani suggests that employers begin to think of communication as part of the employee experience, as it’s the way that employees interact with the company and the programs it offers.
“Everything has been fairly decentralized and inconsistent. A company may use different vendors like Fidelity and Aetna, and it may use different departments,” Kitani said. “One of the things [employers] should think about is how does this [communication] deliver a culturally consistent employee experience?”
Assurance already does this. The company coordinates any communication going to employees through one central internal communication person or function, said McDermott. By coordinating in this way, one party has control over the types of messages and the number of messages that go out, and employees have a center point they can rely on.
Even with this control, employees at the company still sometimes find they’re receiving too much information to take in, she added. For example, many employees are confused about events like technology changes and benefits communication. The company will consider the amount of communication going out, and if it gets to the point where it’s too much, then they’ll focus on communicating for a more current project rather than adding something else unnecessarily, said McDermott.
Don’t be afraid to delay a project, she added. Sometimes it’s necessary so not to overwhelm employees with information overload.
Having more demographics in the workforce than in times past also poses a challenge in terms of the modes of communication a company chooses, and this mix of demographics in most places isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Some people prefer information communicated to them via mail, others through text messages, and others through one of the many alternative options including email and social media, according to Heidi Guetzkow, national program manager, health risk solutions at Lockton Benefit Group.
“More than ever before, companies have to spend more time thinking about those complexities and planning for it and coming up with a solid strategy in order to best reach their employee population,” said Guetzkow. Recent changes in the health care landscape have also muddied the waters for how employers strategize their communication plan moving forward. With the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, the increasing trend of high-deductible plans and growing use of supplemental insurance, some employees don’t understand their new options, according to The Standard’s McNamara. These employees are starting at zero, he added.
“The challenge is employees who have worked 10 or 20 years at a job may really understand dental, life and disability insurance, but some of these plans they’ve never heard of before,” said McNamara, because the need wasn’t as present in the past. Employers could consider decision support tools that help employees navigate their new realm of options, including supplemental plans like critical illness and accident insurance, he added.
He cited new innovations in the decision-support tool area. The Standard, for example, did a study with employees to understand their decision-making process and how they like to learn, then developed a tool; one option of many.
“Through our analysis we build personas based on these segments of employees and their behaviors of buying benefits,” said McNamara. By asking six simple questions, the decision-support tool labels the employee with a persona and presents the same content but presented in different ways to reach different types of people. The goal is to engage employees in the first few lines and make them feel like the message is speaking to them personally.
“Maybe now instead of fading out after the first paragraph or page, they’re actually engaged, making it to the end and getting the key information they need to know,” said McNamara.
Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Each month Workforce looks at important stats in the human resources sector. Here’s the topic we’re keeping an eye on for January 2018: the winter blues and Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). How common are these mood disorders in the workplace, and what impact do they have on employees and the companies they work for? Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.
Faced with a red-hot job market, employers are offering perks like free ski passes, complimentary e-readers and on-site acupuncture to attract and retain quality employees.
These benefits are certainly fun and may help attract top talent. Certainly, some people may jump at the chance to work at a firm that offers in-house yoga and spin classes. But there are organizations where once the luster wears off, employees begin to see that these benefits are simply camouflage over a toxic work environment.
They speculate that such perks are provided simply to entice employees to never leave as opposed to rewarding them for jobs well done. Catered lunches and dinners might make employees think that leaving the office for meals is frowned upon, while free trips cause skeptical workers to question whether they’ll be able to make their own vacation plans or do as the company dictates.
Workplaces with low employee morale see constant churn, and right now, the number of U.S. workers quitting their jobs is the highest it’s been in more than a decade. Seven in 10 American workers are not engaged in their jobs, according to Gallup’s recent “State of the American Workplace” survey.
Given today’s robust job market, employers must work to develop positive, healthy workplaces that entice top talent. Dedicating resources to the benefits that matter most — competitive compensation and respect for a healthy work-life balance, to name just two — will help ensure that workers join the right firms and stick around.
So how can businesses build and sustain a positive culture? It starts the day they receive a prospective hire’s résumé.
Promote Timely Hiring Practices
Many businesses drag out the hiring process and make prospective hires fret for weeks after they take an interview. That rubs applicants the wrong way. In a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults by my organization, Robert Half, 40 percent reported that waiting just one to two weeks after an interview for an offer was “too long.”
This lengthy hiring process causes 40 percent of U.S. adults to lose interest in the role and pursue other job openings, according to the same survey. Nearly 1 in 3 adults reported that a lengthy process makes them question the company’s ability to make other decisions.
It’s imperative for employers to put their best foot forward the moment an applicant submits a résumé. Managers should interview all candidates on-site and make sure that everyone who needs to meet with the applicant is available that day. Employers should also offer applicants a chance to see the office and meet their potential co-workers, which allows candidates to quickly assess the company’s culture for themselves.
After the interview, employers should let prospective hires know when they can expect to hear back. If there’s a delay in the decision-making process, employers should update candidates as soon as possible.
These simple courtesies go a long way in ensuring that prospective hires feel wanted and respected, which increases acceptance rates and builds goodwill.
Focus on What Matters Most to Workers
Employers also must make sure that they’re giving employees what they want. Workers aren’t as interested in extravagant perks as employers may think.
According to a survey by software firm Qualtrics and venture capital firm Accel Partners, 80 percent of millennials rank in-office perks as the least important benefit when considering a new job. The same survey found that millennials want a workplace that fosters a sense of pride and offers competitive compensation, a positive culture, opportunities to advance and flexible hours.
Getting the Fit Right
According to “The Secrets of the Happiest Companies and Employees,” a survey of 12,000 workers by Robert Half in collaboration with engagement-analytics company Happiness Works, the biggest factor affecting worker happiness is the sense of pride an employee takes in their job. Workers who share a company’s vision derive more meaning, satisfaction, and happiness from their jobs than employees who see their work as a mere paycheck.
But employees also want competitive compensation, and they want their managers to be proactive about giving it to them. Ninety percent of workers think they deserve a raise, but only 44 percent planned to ask for one in 2017. In fact, many professionals would rather be cleaning their house, getting a root canal or being audited by the IRS before asking for a raise.
Given this hesitancy, employers need to be proactive. They should clearly communicate guidelines for raises and they should be more vigilant about ensuring that they’re paying competitive salaries. It’s no longer enough to compare salaries once a year. In today’s job market, employers should strive to cross-compare salaries at least twice a year, if not quarterly.
To that end, managers also should set up meetings with their employees to discuss compensation. These meetings can help professionals understand the factors affecting compensation levels and the steps needed to earn a raise.
Recognizing workers’ successes with consistent compliments and encouragement costs managers nothing but makes employees feel valued. In fact, nearly 1 in 2 employees ranked management’s recognition as “very important” to their job satisfaction, according to a survey of 600 U.S. employees by the Society for Human Resource Management.
Workers also want an opportunity to climb the company ladder. Prospective hires consider advancement as one of the chief considerations of taking a job, according to that same SHRM survey.
Finally, a company culture that gives employees the flexibility to attend to their private lives is of high importance to employees.
More than half of workers are willing to change jobs for a position that offers more flexible working hours, according to the Gallup survey. This is understandable, given that today’s workers spend an average of 49 minutes commuting each day, according to my company’s research.
Businesses can offer this work-life balance by allowing telecommuting where it makes sense and bringing in project workers when the core team is overwhelmed.
Following these guidelines would do wonders to attract and retain workers as well as boost employee happiness.
The Benefits of Happy and Engaged Workers
When employees are invested in their work and committed to doing their jobs well, company productivity also improves. According to the Gallup survey, business units that score in the top quartile of their companies on measures of worker engagement experience 41 percent less absenteeism compared to the lowest quartile of units. They are 17 percent more productive. These companies also are 21 percent more profitable, the survey noted.
Happy and engaged workers are also considerably less likely to leave their jobs, thereby reducing turnover-related costs.
By comparison, when workers are not engaged, the company’s bottom line suffers. One disengaged employee costs his company more than $2,200 per year, according to a study by ADP. That equates to hundreds of billions of dollars overall.
At a moment when talented employees are increasingly hard to come by, attracting top talent requires more than quirky company perks. Businesses need to invest in creating the kind of workplace culture that supports happy, engaged employees.
If they don’t, their most valuable workers will have no trouble finding the exit no matter how many trips to posh Caribbean resorts they are offered.
Paul McDonald is the senior executive director at global staffing firm Robert Half. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Corporate culture is viewed by many workplace experts as vitally important to employees. But in a recent study by global communications and engagement company Weber Shandwick, only 19 percent of employees see a strong match between how the company represents itself and the actions they experience while working there.
A new study notes the importance of branding to organizations.
“We thought that this was a stunning and startling finding,” said Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist at the New York-based firm.
Creating a brand that matches a workplace is not be as easy as it may seem but it is important, noted John Williams in an Entrepreneur article. The founder of LogoYes.com stated that for an employer to be able to define their brand they must be able to answer the following questions: what is the company’s mission; what are the benefits and features of the products or services; what qualities do you want customers to associate with your company; and what are their thoughts of the company already.
Kate Bullinger, head of employee engagement and change management at Weber Shandwick, said it is important to tie the employer brand to the company purpose and values. “Employees are more and more driven by joining a company that’s got clearly articulated values and a clear purpose,” Bullinger said.
She added that companies should make sure that their values are articulated well and understood throughout the company, so that the employee experience for match the organization’s values and purpose.
The new Weber Shandwick data could be interpreted as a call to action for companies to build stronger company brands.If a company can connect their culture and brand to have the same purpose and values, it is more likely that a company will produce an organization that operates with integrity and authenticity, said Denise Lee Yohn in the Harvard Business Review. She also wrote that, “without using your brand purpose and values to orient your culture efforts, you’re also likely to waste a lot of money.”
Having a well-developed brand is one of way to sustain a successful business.
“Some companies will spend time on the articulation of their brand, why it’s great to work at this place, and don’t do necessarily the hard work of aligning their programs and policies, said Bullinger. “You think you’re joining a company and once you get into it, there’s no experience that really matches what was promised to you.”
Employment brand must be authentic and not be filled with empty promises, Bullinger said.
“They talk about a great work-life balance, but then there’s nothing that allows for flexible work arrangements or child care,” Bullinger said.
Although the survey found that 19 percent of employees feel as if there is a strong connection with the brand and what they experience, it also found that less than 10 percent of employees believe there is no brand connection with what employers say about themselves and what employees experience.
It starts from within the company and continues to grow out to the public, Bullinger said.
“I think more and more companies are using their own people to be advocates for the brand and that includes on a recruiting front,” Bullinger said.
Employees especially the highly aligned ones are a great resource to get out there and be actually talking about and promoting what the company is doing, and that has a big influence on people Bullinger said.
With websites like Glassdoor, “companies need to accept the fact that their employees are using social media to talk about work,” Gaines-Ross said. “Help provide programs and platforms where employees can easily find information and content and share it.”
Companies should be consistent with their message and the actions they represent.
“You say that you want your company to be focused around the environment and sustainability; are your programs and policies really aligned with that, and if they’re not what needs to be done? What are new things that you might add, or what can you feature?” Bullinger said. “So make sure the employer brand is grounded in the experiences for people.”
Alexis Carpello is a Workforce intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Considering the demographics of the workforce also helps guide a strategy in the right direction, according to Mark Johnson, founder and CEO of benefits management company Creative Benefit Solutions. Demographics are one prong of his four-prong strategy.
