Category: Workplace Culture

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What’s the Business Case for Diversity?

Dear Melting Pot:

    Organizations implement diversity and inclusion initiatives to create an environment in which individuals from different backgrounds are treated fairly and given equal access to opportunities and resources. Embracing diversity and inclusion can bring a broader range of mindsets and backgrounds into the organization, leading to more effective decision-making or drawing in a wider customer base.

    Companies are investing in this area: 77 percent of executives strongly support diversity initiatives, and organizations expect to focus and invest even more on diversity and inclusion in the coming years. However, success at improving the perceptions of diversity and inclusiveness in the organization are not as strong as most organizations would like or need; only 40 percent of employees actually believe their organization is actually diverse and inclusive.

    The gap between investment and results is problematic as organizations are missing out on some very real benefits of building a more diverse and inclusive workforce. When employees feel that they have a more diverse and inclusive workforce, turnover is almost 20 percent lower and employee effort is nearly 12 percent higher.

    This gap is generated by the fact that most executives underestimate the importance of investing in building diversity and inclusiveness. They equate it with simply hiring more people from more diverse backgrounds, and fail to truly appreciate the investment that is required to build a more diverse and inclusive working environment.

    After analyzing the behaviors of hundreds of thousands of employees and conducting interviews with hundreds of heads of human resources and heads of diversity, we have identified four lessons to implementing a diversity and inclusion initiative:

Build diversity and inclusion strategies that link diversity with outcomes that matter to business leaders.

    While building a diverse and inclusive organization as a goal unto itself is certainly worthy, success at improving diversity and inclusion is rarely achieved when organizations simply set ambitious goals. Rather by tying diversity and inclusion objectives into the broader business strategy buy-in for and delivery of diversity and inclusion strategies is much more likely to be successful.
 

Define relevant diversity and inclusion objectives.

    Allow business leaders to create locally relevant diversity and inclusion objectives, and assess incremental progress against those objectives, not just final results. Frustration is generated without creating a way to show incremental progress on the goals. This disconnect prevents progress.

Build a diverse and inclusive workforce.

    Diverse candidates are often bombarded with information. Rather than trying to exclusively influence diverse candidates through direct organizational recruiting outreach, leading organizations are influencing the career influencers of diverse candidates to shape perceptions and to expand the diverse talent pool rather than fighting fierce battles over a limited talent supply.

Create a path to leadership positions for diverse talent.

    Most organizations highlight the career experiences of some of their diverse senior leader talent. However, these strategies have limited success since many diverse employees fail to see the connection between their current situation and the final destination of other employees. Instead, leading organizations are helping diverse employees see the link between their skills and leadership position requirements, and build processes that minimize the impact of biases in talent management decisions to show how diverse talent can move into leadership positions.

SOURCE: Brian Kropp, The Corporate Executive Board Co., Washington, D.C., Oct. 22, 2013

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Ram Charan Is the Guru of Globalization

The guru of management has a message for American business: Your days at the top are numbered.  

What’s more? Leaders who are too impatient, indifferent or arrogant to see the change coming will soon find themselves out of business.

That’s the bottom line of what author and management consultant Ram Charan calls “Global Tilt,” the subject of his latest business book published this year.

Increasingly, money flows not between New York and London but from Singapore to Sao Paolo, inexorably drawn in by the combined 1 billion people in India, China, Brazil and Indonesia who will enter the middle class in the next 10 years.

Economic shifts of this order occur very rarely in human history, Charan said, and it puts North American companies, used to sitting atop the global heap, in a tricky position.

Opportunity Knocks
On one hand, they have large, vital and prosperous business interests in their home market to protect. On the other, act too conservatively and they risk missing out on a once-in-a-generation opportunity to supercharge growth.

Business is being played on a field tilted away from developed markets to emerging ones in the south, and it’s not just big companies that need to learn the new rules of the game. The game is pulling in small and midsize regional companies in places like the Midwest, too.

‘The differentiating trait of a leader of the future is dealing with and anticipating uncertainty.’

—Ram Charan

“They need to be looking at the opportunities not just in Ohio, not just in [the] USA, but on a global basis,” Charan said. “The risk of not moving is the extinction of some of the businesses here.”

New competitors, often supported by their governments, wrestle market share away from established players. In some cases, they swallow them whole. Case in point: Anheuser-Busch, venerable American beer-maker, meet your new parent, Brazilian-born, Belgium-based InBev.

This shift in power is the biggest challenge most managers will face in their lifetimes, and many are not remotely prepared for it, Charan said.

It would be easy to discount the message if not for the messenger.

Charan is a 35-year business veteran and the author of 16 business best-sellers, including “Execution: The Business of Getting Things Done,” one of two books penned with Larry Bossidy, former chairman and CEO of Honeywell International Inc., as well as “The Game-Changer,” co-written with Procter & Gamble Co. boss A.G. Lafley.

He is the executive coach to Fortune 100 CEOs and strategic adviser to the board of multinational companies like General Electric Co. His past and present client roster includes global companies such as Bank of America Corp., Caterpillar Inc., DuPont and Novartis International.

Charan is also quite possibly the hardest-working man in business. His well-documented work ethic has him on the clock 365 days a year, occasionally making 6 a.m. wake-up calls to a CEO client with a piece of advice. An office and apartment in Dallas are the closest thing Charan has to a home, but he’s rarely there, instead living out of a suitcase as he crisscrosses the globe to work with clients in developing and developed countries alike.

Come to think of it, Charan is a walking embodiment of the economic shift he describes. Born in northern India to a large family of modest means, he worked in his family’s shoe shop before earning a degree in engineering and eventually an MBA and Ph.D. from Harvard Business School. He taught at Harvard and Northwestern University but found the ivory tower of academia too impractical.

“He’s an Indian guru who found his calling with consulting,” said Noel Tichy, professor of management and organizations at the University of Michigan and Charan’s co-author on “Every Business Is a Growth Business.”

“Ram is not some academic writing case studies,” he said. “Ram is a clinician first and foremost.”

Don’t Be Left Behind
The clinician’s diagnosis for U.S. businesses is a case of globalization. His prescription: Change the way you manage or you’ll find the world has left you behind.
“The differentiating trait of a leader of the future is dealing with and anticipating uncertainty,” Charan said. “Everything else has been written about leadership a billion times. It’s been packaged and repackaged — vision, inspiration, motivation, people, communication.”

With some exceptions, North American leaders are not quite ready for the volatility and uncertainty of the global market. “They are not prepared; they are not involved,” Charan said. “Their boards are not familiar with it. Many boards don’t want to invest the money because they hear things or read the newspapers.”

That fundamental lack of familiarity and knowledge with the new centers of global growth is made worse by a case of short-term-itis. The quarterly earnings drill, government oversight and uncertainty created by implementation of the Affordable Care Act limit executives’ ability to look long term, said Bill Conaty, former senior vice president of corporate human resources at General Electric and another of Charan’s co-authors, this time on 2010’s “The Talent Masters.”

“It’s taken a lot away from CEOs and leaders in North America to be bold and more strategic, be long-range thinkers,” he said.

It hasn’t escaped notice. People in emerging markets are hungrier, willing to work harder and in many cases better educated than their counterparts in developed countries.
“We now have larger growth in GDP among the countries in the south,” Charan said. “All of that is very crucial because the Internet enables anyone in the world to get information almost instantly and is democratizing the participation of people who were definitely not in it 10 years ago.”

It’s not a question of ability but of desire.

The Questions Are the Answer
To create the flexibility and adaptability needed for the shift in global business, Ram Charan recommended changing what he calls the company’s social system — the collective behaviors and actions of people — rather than a costly and disruptive organizational restructure. Focus on shifts in three areas:

  • Power: what decisions are made by whom with what input and where.
  • Resources: the allocation of leaders, experts and funding.
  • Behavior: the attitudes, habits and rules of thumb.

He recommended creating a cross-functional team that includes people from the finance department, legal and human resources to address a few questions:

  1. Is the talent pool in developing markets strong and deep enough?
  2. Do budgets reflect growth priorities?
  3. Do key performance indicators and compensation reflect changes the organization is trying to make?
  4. What is blocking the exchange of information, technology and expertise?
  5. Are people, budgets and the business-review process helping make the shift?
  6. Are important business decisions being made in the right way?

There are no universal right answers, he said, but whatever actions are determined must be clear, specific and easily communicated with accountability and rigorous follow-through. The results can be a powerful cultural interchange that helps both developed and developing markets, said Kevin Wilde, General Mills Inc.’s vice president and chief learning officer.

“That magic is not only orienting your talent machine — your talent formation processes — for what we call the developing markets, but it’s also the cross-play, the interchange — the exciting entrepreneurial stuff we see coming out of Brazil and China and getting that mindset into Canada, getting to the U.S.,” he said.

“For big global companies, the big play isn’t just grow the talent for emerging markets but leverage the talent mindset around the world.”
—Mike Prokopeak

“The largest concern I have isn’t whether North American leaders are capable of winning the battle,” said Marc Effron, former head of talent management at Avon Products Inc. and president of management consultancy The Talent Strategy Group. “It’s whether they’ll show up for it. I’m not sure many Americans understand the hunger for success that their Indian or Chinese counterparts bring to the table.”

Unlike their emerging market colleagues, many North American executives are unwilling to relocate internationally. “North American leaders can compete with leaders anywhere in the world, but that requires that they actually go to the same places that others are willing to go,” he said. “It would be sad if our very Western concern for work-life balance is what ultimately destroys our ability to compete.”

Like Charan, Effron sees the positive in North American leaders, including a strong desire to win, resilience in the face of setbacks and good management education. But what they’re lacking is exposure to global markets early in their career, ideally before they are 30.

Living and working in emerging markets is the gold standard for global management development, said Kevin Wilde, vice president of organization effectiveness and chief learning officer at food-maker General Mills Inc. But that shouldn’t come at the expense of the development of local teams.

“It’s going to be this wonderful blend of building the true globalist that can go around the world but also building regional talent and in-country talent,” he said. “What’s really good in one market may not work in the next. The best leaders are aware of that, and they know how to get that local feel.”

For most of its century-plus history, General Mills operated primarily within the United States. But the past 10 years have brought a global transformation of the company. After a series of acquisitions, General Mills is now one of the largest food companies in South America. Along with a French partner, General Mills runs Yoplait, the No. 2 yogurt company in the world. Chinese customers are developing a hankering for the company’s Haagen-Dazs brand. The Minneapolis-based company now has approximately 41,000 employees, half of whom work outside the U.S.

“There are a lot of very talented and promising leaders in each of these markets, and if we’re going to be a truly global enterprise, it’s not just leveraging talent around the world by moving them but growing within,” Wilde said.

Coming to terms with the global talent pool is critical for HR leaders, Charan said. It’s no longer confined to one community, one region or one country. Global business, enabled by technology and spurred on by demographic shifts, respects no boundaries.

“The business — whether they are domestic or not — is global,” he said. “Competition is global. They need to build a leadership pipeline from a global pool from the lower levels to the higher levels.”

That requires segmenting employee populations and localizing benefits and compensation where appropriate rather than centralizing. It also requires a more flexible talent management approach. Wilde points to General Mills’ individual development plan process as a case in point.  

“For 10 years we’ve built an annual season where people have very robust and useful conversations with their boss about how they’re going to grow and develop,” he said. “The first time we tried to export that it didn’t work well as we tried to apply all the practices we honed over 10 years. In stepping back, we readjusted the program to better fit the need and readiness stage of each location.”

To Charan, flexibility is important — but so is speed. The global tilt requires a shift in how companies practice HR, putting people before strategy and evaluating needs more rapidly. “Create experiences of a critical few people who will learn how to do this, and do it every quarter, not wait for the yearly talent plan,” he said. “The people in the south move faster.”

His own constant 24-hour pace is a direct reflection of that trend, although Charan quickly bats aside most personal questions. Asked why executives choose to work with him — a softball most consultants would use to swing for the fences — he said he’s simply focused on helping his clients do something better.

“Every day is a new day, and if you can’t add value, get out of the way,” he said.

Why are you the right person to deliver this message about global business? “This is a useful thing for practitioners, so let’s give it a shot,” he responded.
Charan makes it clear that he’s not interested in grand theories of business. Tichy, whose work with Charan goes back to the early 1980s when they set up the global action learning program for GE boss Jack Welch, said his real talent is his ability to help executives work through their options.

“Unlike a lot of academics who like to show off how smart they are, he works Socratically and leads them along and helps them discover things for themselves,” Tichy said.
Conaty, whose work with Charan started even before he became head of HR for all of GE in 1983, said when Charan called — and those calls could come any time day or night — he always grabbed a pen and paper.

“He would have no more than two to three points that he wanted to get across,” he said. “He’s the only consultant I know that doesn’t waste your time and always adds value. That’s a big thing. There are tons of consultants out there and everyone is trying to sell their niche.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find a business thinker to argue that globalization isn’t transforming business. But what sets Charan apart, Tichy said, is his ability to distill the point and uncover the leadership flaws of U.S. business while something can still be done.

“Who would you like to hold up as a role model? HP with four failed CEOs? How about Microsoft, where they totally screwed up and they’re half the market cap of Google, and they should have invented Google? There are very few examples,” Tichy said. “Just like the Olympics, there are only three medals that matter. There are some serious players emerging around the world, and we’re going to have to play even better than we have to stay in the medal part of the game.”
The challenge for leaders is to keep their eyes on the prize through the ups and downs of a tilted business world.

“Uncertainty is here, it’s going to continue to be here, and it’s going to increase,” Charan said. “So how do leaders make uncertainty a competitive advantage and create value?”

In typical guru fashion, the solution begins with a question. 

Mike Prokopeak is Workforce's editorial director. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Prokopeak on Twitter at @MikeProkopeak.

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The Risk Companies Run When Bullying Goes Incognito

By now, you’ve likely read about Miami Dolphins offensive lineman Richie Incognito and the abusive voicemails and text messages he sent to teammate Jonathan Martin.

Among the voicemails is this gem (per ESPN):

Hey, wassup, you half n—– piece of s—. I saw you on Twitter, you been training 10 weeks. [I want to] s— in your f—ing mouth. [I’m going to] slap your f—ing mouth. [I’m going to] slap your real mother across the face [laughter]. F— you, you’re still a rookie. I’ll kill you.

ESPN also report that Incognito did not limit his use of racial epithets to that lone voicemail, and that he also sent Martin a series of texts that included derogatory terms referring to the female anatomy and sexual orientation.

Meanwhile, Fox Sports reports that Dolphins coaches encouraged veterans to toughen up Martin, and knew that some were using hazing as a means to that end.

I’ve never played organized football at any level, and I’m not going to pretend to know of the culture that exists inside its locker rooms. What I do know something about, however, is corporate culture in general. Your company cannot turn a blind eye to hazing and other bullying-related misconduct.

Unless a bully is harassing someone because of a protected class (race, sex, age, disability, religion, national origin…) bullying is probably legal. As the U.S. Supreme Court has famously said, our workplace discrimination laws are not meant to be “a general civility code for the American workplace.” In layman’s terms, our laws allow people to be jerks to each other at work.

Just because it’s legal, however, doesn’t make it right. The question is not whether the law protects the bullied, but instead how you should respond when it happens in your business. If you want to lose well-performing, productive workers, then allow them to be pushed out the door by intolerable co-workers. If you want state legislatures to pass workplace bullying legislation, then ignore the issue in your business. If you want to be sued by every employee who is looked at funny or at whose direction a harsh word is uttered, then continue to tolerate abusive employees.

The reality is that if companies do not take this issue seriously, state legislators will. The high-profile case of Jonathan Martin will only help the cause of those who believe we need workplace anti-bullying laws.

What can you do now to protect your employees?

  1. Review current policies. Most handbooks already have policies and procedures in place that deal with workplace bullying. Do you have an open-door policy? A complaint policy? A standards-of-conduct policy? If so, your employees already know that they can go to management with any concerns — bullying included — and seek intervention.

  2. Take complaints seriously. These policies are only as good as their enforcement. Whether or not illegal, reports of bullying should be treated like any other harassment complaint. You should promptly conduct an investigation and implement appropriate corrective action to remedy the bullying.

Written by Jon Hyman, a partner in the Labor & Employment group of Kohrman Jackson & Krantz. For more information, contact Hyman at (216) 736-7226 or jth@kjk.com. You can also follow Hyman on Twitter at @jonhyman.

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Sweat Equity: Working Out Workout Programs at Work

Veronica Salerno, second from left, was hired by HGGC to help get the company's employees in shape. Photo courtesy of Exercise ETC Inc.

When private equity firm HGGC prepared for its annual fitness challenge in early 2012, its office in the West Palm Beach, Florida, hired bikini fitness competitor and personal trainer Veronica Salerno to help coach the participants.

The competition ended that spring, and Salerno was contracted to lead workouts for small groups of employees twice a week in the on-site fitness center. But she soon discovered that HGGC employees often are on the road and couldn’t attend the workouts.

“Our employees travel a lot, and their health isn’t always on their minds, but our company understands that health is important,” said Ashley Truett, administrative assistant and office manager for HGGC. “If you keep your employees healthy and happy, they’ll stay motivated, want to be at work and continue to do well for you. The problem is traditional training doesn’t work on today’s schedules.”

As it turned out, Salerno’s fitness training met the company’s mobile workforce, using a hybrid of traditional personal exercise and social media. She meets less frequently with clients in person, but can work them out virtually almost daily.

With workplace wellness programs becoming more widespread — pushed in part by federal health care reform — Salerno said an out-of-office component can help employees fully engage no matter where they are.

According to Automatic Data Processing Inc.’s 2012 HR/Benefits Pulse Survey on Wellness, 41 percent of midsize companies (those with 50-999 employees) and 53 percent of large companies (those with 1,000-plus workers) offer exercise programs as part of their overall employee wellness program.

“As health care costs continue to rise, many companies adopt employee wellness programs to motivate their employees to lead healthier lives,” said Jessica Saperstein, division vice president of strategy and business development for ADP. “Improving employee health and well-being is the ultimate goal, and healthier employees are often more satisfied and productive in their professional lives.”

This year, under federal rules, the maximum reward an employee could save through workplace health incentives is 20 percent of the worker’s health insurance premium.Most employers offer discounts of 3 percent to 11 percent, according to Stand Up for Health Care, part of the consumer group Families USA. Next year, under the Affordable Care Act, there will be a maximum reward of 30 percent.

Robert Matthews, national director of sales for well-being and productivity at HumanaVitality, said there are benefits for employers, too. If employees are engaged in the health plan, including exercise offerings, and enough of a percentage of workers sign up, the employer can see a premium discount coming from insurers.

Salerno, who moved to the United States from Ecuador, has created a Facebook page for her company, Home Fitness Trainers Inc., and has encouraged every HGGC client to add it. She posts recipes, exercise routines and motivational tips on the page daily to keep clients engaged. She also adds all clients on Skype and pushes them to use MyFitnessPal, a free online calorie counter and diet plan. Clients “add” her on the website or app, and she monitors their progress. She checks in regularly through these portals to make sure her clients stay on track.

“Corporate training is often a group activity, but it’s all about individual goals,” Salerno said. “I give everyone their own speed, agility and strength training exercises and couple those with diets that meet their needs. Social media lets me maintain a one-on-one relationship and pushes clients to be more accountable.”

Guy Andrews, executive director of Exercise ETC Inc., a provider of continuing education programs for the fitness community, said that fitness coaching makes personal training services more accessible to more people.

“Some people either cannot devote a set number of hours per week to training, or do not have the luxury of a structured schedule to plan for training sessions in advance,” Andrews said. “For others, the price of regular, personal training sessions is not sustainable. Fitness coaching is making training affordable and accessible.”

Ladan Nikravan is a Workforce associate editor. To comment, email editors@workforce.com. Follow Nikravan on Twitter at @ladannikravan.

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Team Coaching for Highly Motivated Employees

Dear Pleased:

A proactive approach, sometimes referred to as continuous improvement, is often an expectation we place on the individual employee. You’ll find that companies ranked as “best places to work” are more likely to take that same proactive approach to team development. Unfortunately, more often it is after a team begins failing that management pulls in the team building. There is so much to be gained by taking a proactive approach to ensuring your team’s continued success.

Executing projects and drumming up innovation happens in a collaborative environment. A collaborative environment requires trust and communications skills. There are other components too such as personal accountability and self-management that contribute to the success of a team. Having clear goals and priorities are important as well. And team resiliency is a critical component that is often overlooked yet easy to maintain through team coaching.

Team coaching is used to clarify and align goals and priorities as well as develop and maintain trust, collaboration, communication skills, personal accountability and self-management. We see highly effective teams using this kind of coaching to bring new energy, solve problems and accomplish greater goals. Team coaching also serves to reduce the risk of unwanted turnover. And designed and delivered appropriately, team coaching can be incredibly enjoyable for the team.

An assessment can be used to diagnose where the team wants to improve. I use one that focuses survey questions in four main areas of a team: 1) Processes 2) Work Management 3) Leadership 4) Relationships. The results of the assessment will help you determine what to focus on and how to design a team-coaching program. As for individual coaching, the team leader will benefit from one-on-one coaching, which will have a broader positive impact on the entire team.

Here is a short list of objectives that your team coaching might address to keep your teams performing at a high level:

  • Increasing self-awareness – those who really know who they are and how they operate (strengths and weaknesses) are found to be much more effective and successful in a team environment
  • Communication skills – recognizing, understanding, appreciating and adapting to the communication needs of others on the team
  • Communication strategy for problem solving – learn and apply a simple 5-step model for coaching each other
  • Team goals – articulating and aligning purpose, goals and outcomes for clarity
  • Building trust and collaboration skills
  • Defining and clarifying each role’s key accountabilities
  • Identifying and eliminating waste in teamwork
  • For leadership teams or teams responsible for organizational change initiatives, build coaching on change management for teams

Team coaching reduces the risk of failure and increases goal achievement. Everyone is expected to contribute to being faster, better and cheaper toward goal achievement. Team leaders and executives who have utilized development strategies such as team coaching are likely to tell you their teams are much more likely to surpass all expectations and achieve more.  

SOURCE: Carl Nielson, The Nielson Group, Dallas, Texas, August 6, 2013

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Hey, Jealousy: Envy Blossoms Among In-House Workers

It may not be surprising that in the digital age 70 percent of employees say they would rather telecommute than work in their office.

It may, however, be surprising to learn 57 percent of employees say they are jealous of colleagues who are allowed to telecommute, according to a survey published by Deltek Inc., a global enterprise software company based in Herndon, Virginia. And when it comes to workers between the ages of 35 and 44, 81 percent said they’d prefer to telecommute. That number drops to 66 percent for workers between the ages of 18 and 24.

When some employees are offered the convenience of working from home and others aren’t, that’s when jealousy may start to arise — especially among older workers, working parents and those earning a high salary. According to the survey, 65 percent of workers over the age of 65 are jealous of their telecommuting co-workers. Additionally, 60 percent of working parents and 75 percent of workers earning more than $100,000 per year are jealous of colleagues who get to work from home, according to the survey.

But while most employees say they would rather work at home than in the office, and despite the possibility those employees who aren’t allowed to do so may get jealous of those who do, telecommuting isn’t a realistic option for all employees.

There are some jobs that require an on-site presence, said David Kirby, Deltek’s chief human resources officer. “There are times when, either due to technology difficulties or based on the nature of the job, someone’s role requires them to be in the office,” Kirby said.

Telecommuting is a benefit of certain kinds of jobs rather than a performance reward, added Jeff Eckerle, co-founder of Deltek’s Kona Project, which develops social collaboration software.

“Some people just have positions that require them to be in an office. They need to be there to do their job,” Eckerle said. “Telecommuting isn’t about, ‘Well, you deserve it, and you don’t.’ It’s really a function of what you do.”

An interesting finding of Deltek’s survey shows 64 percent of respondents believe email is an effective way to communicate within a group. This seems to suggest many workers are already collaborating remotely anyway, even when working in the office. And with the rapid pace of technological advances increasing the capabilities of remote communication every year, the expansion of telecommuting to more employees appears inevitable.

“Over the last 20 or 30 years, technology has really enabled telecommuting as a possibility,” Eckerle said. “There’s a whole new level of what next-generation collaboration tools are going to provide for employees working on common goals and purposes that are better than email communication, and it will make it even less necessary for people to be in the same room."

Max Mihelich is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Mihelich on Twitter at @workforcemax.

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Factors That Impact Productivity

Dear Solid Foundation:

You pose an excellent question. In all, there are 20 total factors that impact output. They are:

  1. A great manager
  2. Effective plans and strategies
  3. Clear and prioritized goals to focus the work
  4. Rapid learning and “best practice” being shared
  5. The correct motivators, rewards & engagement
  6. The “right” employee skills
  7. Two-way communications
  8. Performance metrics
  9. Quality team members from great hiring & retention
  10. Collaboration for innovation
  11. Employee is placed in the “right job”
  12. The work environment is designed  for productivity
  13. Enough time is devoted to the task
  14. Identifying, and removing, barriers to productivity/innovation
  15. Integrated talent processes
  16. Information for decisions
  17. The right tools/technology
  18. Quality inputs/materials
  19. Enough budget/ resources
  20. Outside-of-work factors

Every organization is different, but the No. 1 factor that affects talent management is universal: managers.

Think of it: poorly skilled managers are the primary cause of low productivity, low innovation, low engagement – and high turnover. The next most powerful impact factors are rapid learning and being permitted to "do the best work of your life." Firms like Apple Corp. are highly successful, despite a relatively harsh and secretive management approach, simply because the work itself is so important and exciting.

Many surveys also list unclear career paths as key factor in engagement, although firms like Apple and Google Inc. are productive and innovative despite having notoriously imprecise career paths.

It’s also true that the performance-appraisal processes is mentioned as being too subjective, but this is true at almost every firm (except in the rare cases where managers rely on metrics and data, rather than opinions in their assessment) The Gallup organization has a list of 12 productivity factors that have been developed over many years which many people find to be quite accurate.

SOURCE: Dr. John Sullivan, San Francisco State, September 4, 2013

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Five Ways to Avoid Problems With Background Checks

Employers often want access to an applicant or employee’s criminal history. However, employers should be careful how they obtain and use criminal background information.

Federal and state laws provide guidelines for requesting criminal history information and define when an employer may make an employment decision based on such information, including when information obtained in a criminal background check justifies not hiring an applicant.

Here are five tips to avoid problems that could result from using criminal conduct or criminal history to make employment decisions.

1. Obtain written authorization and provide written notice before requesting a criminal background check.

First, be consistent. Use criminal background checks for all similarly situated employees or not at all. And before requesting a background check from a third-party investigator, obtain the applicant or employee’s written authorization to request the report and tell the applicant in writing that the information you obtain may be used as a basis for an employment decision, as well as the nature and scope of the investigation. The written notice must be in a separate document from a job application, but you can include this separate notice as part of an application packet.

2. Evaluate whether the criminal conduct or conviction is related to the applicant or employee’s actual job responsibilities.

An employment application should make clear that “conviction” includes not only a guilty verdict but also a guilty plea or other dispositions classified as convictions under state law. If the background check reveals a conviction, compare the duties and responsibilities of the position being applied for with the nature and seriousness of the offense and the length of time since it occurred. Conduct is related if it indicates an employee would be unfit to perform the job. For example, a recent conviction for fraud, theft or embezzlement is related to a position where the applicant would handle credit card information, but a driving-under-the-influence conviction may not be.

Further, an employer can decline to hire an applicant who fails to disclose a conviction that has not been sealed or expunged if the applicant has certified that the information provided in the application is true.

3. Do not use or inquire into arrest history or sealed or expunged criminal history information.

An employer may not ask about an applicant or employee’s arrest record, so an employment application should state that the applicant should not disclose arrest history and sealed or expunged convictions in the application. However, an investigative report may provide arrest history. The fact of an arrest or sealed or expunged criminal history information may not be used to refuse to hire an applicant or as a basis to take any employment action. This rule recognizes that some groups are arrested more frequently than others.  

4. Other evidence besides arrest history that indicates criminal conduct may be considered.

An employer may refuse to hire or terminate an employee if it reasonably believes that the conduct underlying an arrest actually occurred. For example, an investigative report may contain an interview with a reference or neighbor who knows about the incident that led to an arrest. In some circumstances, such information may be so closely related to job responsibilities that an employer can consider it in a hiring decision.

5. Provide notice both before and after taking adverse action on the basis of a criminal background check.

Before declining to hire an applicant because of information contained in his or her criminal background check, the employer must provide the applicant with a copy of the background check and a statement of rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. After deciding not to hire an applicant, provide the applicant in writing with: 1) the contact information of the company supplying the background check, 2) a statement that the company supplying the report did not make the decision to take the unfavorable action and cannot give specific reasons for it, and 3) a notice of the right to dispute the accuracy or completeness of any information the investigative company furnished, and to get an additional free report from the company if the person asks for it within 60 days.

Consult your state’s laws for further details on using criminal history information in employment decisions.

Cary E. Donham is a shareholder and Rachel L. Schaller is an associate at Shefsky & Froelich in Chicago. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.  Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go: The Right to Workplace Bathroom Breaks

Do you know that Occupational Safety and Health Administration protects the right of employees to go to the bathroom? OSHA’s sanitation standard states:

Toilet facilities, in toilet rooms separate for each sex, shall be provided in all places of employment.

The OSHA standard tells you everything you would ever want to know about workplace bathroom facilities, including the minimum required per number of employees. Thankfully, it also forbids employees from “consum[ing] food or beverages in a toilet room.” (just in case your employees like to snack while taking care of business).

It’s not enough that employers provide toilets; they also must provide access for employees to use them. According an April 6, 1998, Director’s memorandum to the OSHA Regional Administrators, this OSHA standard mandates that “employers allow employees prompt access to bathroom facilities,” and that “restrictions on access must be reasonable, and may not cause extended delays.” Another issues to keep in mind when dealing with bathroom breaks is that the Americans with Disabilites Act might require extended or more frequent breaks as a reasonable accommodation.

What do “reasonable on restrictions on access” look like? Zwiebel v. Plastipak Packaging (Ohio Ct. App. 9/6/13) provides an answer. Plastipak terminated Mark Zwiebel, a production-line operator, for leaving his machine three times in one shift, which included once to use the bathroom.

Zwiebel claimed that his termination wrongfully violated the public policy embodied in OSHA’s restroom standard. The court of appeals disagreed:

While there is a clear public policy in favor of allowing employees access to workplace restrooms, it does not support the proposition that employees may leave their tasks or stations at any time without responsibly making sure that production is not jeopardized. In recognition of an employer’s legitimate interest in avoiding disruptions, there is also a clear public policy in favor of allowing reasonable restrictions on employees’ access to the restrooms.

Thus, the employee lost his wrongful discharge claim because his breaks unreasonably interfered with production. Going to the bathroom is one thing—abandoning one’s job is another.

Nevertheless, employers shouldn’t be the potty police. When an employee has to go, an employee has to go. Unless an employee seems to abusing bathroom rights, or, like in Zwiebel, the breaks interfere with performance or production, let employees be.

Written by Jon Hyman, a partner in the Labor & Employment group of Kohrman Jackson & Krantz. For more information, contact Jon at (216) 736-7226 or jth@kjk.com. You can also follow Jon on Twitter @jonhyman.

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Cultural Competence: What’s in a Name?

WF_WebSite_BlogHeaders-12Some believe that words are mere descriptors of reality, but there is evidence that words also create reality. Scholars such as Benjamin Lee Whorf, and more recently George Lakoff and Lera Boroditsky, (also here) make a compelling case for the power of language to actually shape our experience, thoughts and perception.

As the term “cultural competence” grows as a buzzword in the D&I field, so does discussion about its appropriateness. Since the term is still fairly new, now is the time to consider what reality this word creates, and whether it’s the best expression of our ultimate goal. If our goal is to create commitment, initiatives and behaviors that result in all people receiving equitable, excellent and the most appropriate services, patient care and products possible, then cultural competence is an inadequate term for two reasons.

First, while competence is attractive and familiar in sectors like health care, it implies an end point or a check box. Neither exists when it comes to effective communication across differences. Providing the best, most appropriate services to a variety of people and populations is a moving target — fluid, contextual and evolving. And who gets to decide when this box is checked? Who defines, assesses and grants the competence at the fictional end point? Second, “cultural” is vague. For many, culture is proxy for race just like diverse often means people of color. While we in D&I know culture includes multiple identity groups, the word tricks people into thinking we’re only talking about race and language.

There are other possibilities, but most are also inadequate. Cultural empathy points to an adaptive internal emotional state, but no actions, behaviors or impact. Also, empathy is difficult for certain personalities, thinking types and industries to take seriously. Cultural humility has similar drawbacks. Cultural capacities refers to a finite end state and implies that some folks have it, and some don’t. Sensitivity and awareness are incomplete – an internal state only – and for many, cultural sensitivity elicits the fearful specter of blame-shame-walking-on-eggshells sensitivity training.

My colleague AndrĂ©s Tapia suggests we embrace crosscultural dexterity.  Dexterity is a vast improvement, but still implies a way of being instead of a way of behaving that meets a goal. Also, the term cross cultural refers to the comparing and contrasting of one group’s cultural patterns to another. Intercultural is the accurate term to describe what occurs when individuals from different cultures interact with each other. We need people to show behaviors that are effective during the (intercultural) interaction among members of different identity groups; we don’t need people to develop sophisticated (cross cultural) knowledge of different cultural beliefs and practices devoid of context.

Right now my preferred term is “intercultural effectiveness.” Effectiveness focuses on action. It focuses on impact, not intent. Effectiveness is fluid, contextual and constantly evolving. It moves us toward our goal of equity, excellence and appropriateness. To be effective, we need three things — awareness, knowledge and skills. Skills are useful insofar as they are effective, and one’s awareness, knowledge or internal emotional state (empathy, humility, etc.) are irrelevant if one lacks skills. The point of empathy, humility and sensitivity is what we do next in a situation to interact effectively with others and get a better result for everyone.

A close second is cultural responsiveness, used widely in Australia. Their Cultural Responsiveness Framework and Cultural Responsiveness Plans required for health care are excellent examples ahead of what we are doing in the USA.

Words create reality. What is your goal with cultural competence? What is the reality you want to create? Perhaps using a different term will be more effective!