Category: Workplace Culture

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Tips for Managing Mobile Workers

remote work

How do you make the most of a mobile workforce? Here are some recommended best practices from consultants and managers of mobile employees:

• Keep the conversation going. Set up regular conference calls between managers and team members. Malcolm Gilvar, executive vice president of sales for the Trade Group, a Carrollton, Texas-based trade show marketing and display company, who oversees 22 sales reps in five locations, checks in with his team weekly, and three top salespeople lead conference calls with smaller groups in between. Even with all of that talking, it’s harder to keep tabs on mobile workers than in-house sales reps, and Gilvar estimates turnover among his remote employees is up to 25 percent higher than for other staff members. “You can’t have that daily interaction that builds a team,” he says.

• Get to know each other. The Trade Group brings new sales reps who will be working remotely to the company’s Dallas headquarters for two to four weeks of training to indoctrinate them in the company’s culture. Other companies host annual employee get-togethers.

• Collaborate online. Facebook-like tools that allow for online work group collaboration inside a company’s firewall are proliferating, including Salesforce.com Inc.’s Chatter, Rypple and Yammer. Sara Sutton Fell, founder and CEO of jobs referral website FlexJobs, uses Yammer and other collaboration tools in lieu of email or instant messages to communicate with remote employees.

• Put it in writing. When Razorfish, the $317 million online ad agency that Microsoft Corp. owned through October 2009, sent some employees to work, it licensed online-based mobile workforce management training courses that the software giant developed for its own supervisors. The agency also created a page on its intranet where employees can find mobile workforce policies and get tips on setting up an ergonomic office, FedEx account and more. Managers use a list of questions called a “virtual workplace commitment document” to make sure remote workers understand what’s expected of them, says Mardi Douglass, the company’s employee services director.

• Ask lots of questions. Because managers can’t see remote employees, they need other techniques to determine when something’s wrong. Fraser Marlow, marketing vice president and head of research for BlessingWhite Inc., a Skillman, New Jersey, human resources training company, says asking probing questions during a phone call is the equivalent of asking an employee out to lunch.

• Make workplaces safe. Companies can run into workers’ compensation issues if home-based employees develop injuries from improperly positioned chairs, desks or other ergonomically unfriendly setups. Consultants recommend creating ergonomic policies for home offices, or requiring employees to take pictures of their home-based workspaces so that HR can sign off on the setup.

• Prep the information technology help desk. While many mobile workers can maintain their own home-office Internet connections, others need more hand-holding.

• Take security and privacy precautions. With more people working outside the office and carrying sensitive company data on laptops, smartphones or flash drives, security “has become a greater concern for employers,” says Greg Harper, president of Runzheimer International, the Waterford, Wisconsin-based mobile workforce research and consulting firm. In virtual workplace contracts or documentation, employers should include precautions employees are expected to take to keep company equipment and information safe. Pinstripe Inc., a 250-person recruitment process outsourcer in Brookfield, Wisconsin, gives remote employees access to sensitive corporate materials through a secure Web-based document sharing service “instead of people keeping them on their local drives,” says Angela Hills, the company’s executive vice president.

Workforce Management Online, June 2011 — Register Now!

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Companies Look to Capitalize on Viral Voices

Some companies spend millions of dollars on marketing and advertising to communicate their corporate and brand messages. Yet many have overlooked one of the cheapest and most effective ways to tout the company and its products: their employees. But now, thanks in part to the explosion of social media, more employers are capitalizing on the credibility and power of employee word-of-mouth. Such companies as PepsiCo Inc. are using their intranets and social media platforms to transform workers into brand ambassadors.


“If your employees want to contribute and they want to share their voice, not only is it a way to add value to your brand because it humanizes the company, but it also allows employees to feel really invested in your communications strategy,” says Rob Frappier, a community manager at online reputation and Internet privacy company Reputation.com Inc.


PepsiCo has begun using its internal communications system and social media to tap the reputation-building potential of its employees. “We view the idea of communicating internally with our almost 300,000 associates worldwide as a tremendous opportunity to tell the PepsiCo story,” says Bernadette Wade, vice president of global internal communications. “In fact, our goal is to turn all of our 300,000 associates into brand ambassadors.”


Motivating workers to become brand ambassadors not only helps enhance a company’s reputation but also strengthens the bond between employer and employee. Greater loyalty is particularly important now because so many employees feel disengaged and could quit when more job opportunities develop.


In late 2010, Purchase, New York-based PepsiCo surveyed its workers and found that 65 percent said their friends and families were asking them questions about the company, and nearly 80 percent wanted to share information about their employer’s involvement with environmental, nutritional and community issues.


One of PepsiCo’s latest initiatives is a series of e-postcards to publicize new products and brand extensions. This year, the postcards will be accessible through PepsiCo’s intranet, which about 140,000 employees use. Workers can then post the information publicly on their own social media channels.


The company also plans to release a series of employee-produced one-minute videos for download from its intranet. The videos will showcase the four pillars of PepsiCo’s Performance With Purpose mantra: performance, human sustainability, environmental sustainability and talent sustainability. “These will be ready-made materials that all associates can use and pass along” through social media, Wade says.


While PepsiCo’s employee ambassador program is new, IBM Corp. has dedicated the better part of a decade to encouraging its workers to spread the word about the technology and consulting firm.


“Internally and externally we’ve had tens of thousands of bloggers—then that expanded to wikis and now LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter,” says Adam Christensen, a social business and digital influence manager at IBM. “From a marketing and branding perspective, it’s really important for us to expose what we think is our greatest asset—our people—and have them engage with people publicly.”


Encouraging employees to participate is one thing; encouraging them to speak favorably about their employers is another. “Our goal is to create positive experiences for IBMers to participate in so they will share positive things,” Christensen says. “We don’t explicitly tell them to speak favorably. We create programs that they automatically want to talk about in a positive way so it’s genuine.”


Jenny Sussin, an associate marketing manager at IBM and an active social media user, says she has never been asked to publicize the company. But, she says, “There is just a ton of opportunities to share interesting content when you notice it” on IBM Web pages. The company’s latest large-scale social media effort involves its centennial. Through the company’s IBM100 website, employees can access content such as videos and “icons of progress” (100 milestones in IBM’s history), which can be linked through as many as six different social media platforms.


So far, the company is encouraged by its employees’ response. “We’ve seen them be very active on Facebook and Twitter sharing things in IBM’s history they’re proud of,” Christensen says.


To motivate employees to become cheerleaders for their companies, employers should emphasize the potential benefits to the worker’s own personal brand. If you say to employees: “ ‘You’re contributing to our company’s communications efforts and that’s good because it’s contributing to your own personal brand,’ it’s a way to make the idea of brand evangelism a little bit more palatable to your employees,” says Frappier of Reputation.com.


IBM, itself, has more than 80 employee-produced blogs covering everything from the company’s Lotus collaboration software to social media strategy. Christensen believes the online forums help workers promote their own accomplishments, while providing invaluable exposure for the company.


Yet there is still the potential for negative online publicity. “When it comes to getting your employees to talk about your company favorably online, it’s important to have a social media policy in place that clearly defines how your employees can use social media tools within the communications construct you’ve created,” Frappier says.


But according to the 2010 Forrester Research report The CIO’s Guide to Establishing a Social Media Policy, 43 percent of respondents’ organizations did not have policies in place, while 11 percent were unsure if a policy existed.


Implementing regulations without seeming restrictive is an emerging and important concern for online community managers. IBM took a democratic approach by allowing employees to develop their own social media checks. Among other provisions, the social media policy encourages employees to fully disclose their role in the company; to add value to the brand by publishing useful information; to withhold confidential or proprietary information; and to avoid engaging in conduct that would be unacceptable in IBM’s workplace.


“It’s really a policy owned by the employees,” Christensen says. “The social media guidelines give a level of clarity around what you shouldn’t do in a social context. IBMers have been really great with following those guidelines and using good judgment.”


Workforce Management, May 2011, pgs. 8, 10 — Subscribe Now!

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Corporate America Embracing Their Version of the Peace Corps

When Ronda Grosse submitted her application to be a part of a team of Dow Corning Corp. volunteers in Bangalore, India, she expected it to be a new experience. What she couldn’t predict was that just getting to work would be an adventure in itself.


Each morning during her 10-minute walk as a member of Dow Corning’s Citizen Service Corps, Grosse found herself dodging cars and buses and weaving through a sea of people, cows and goats, navigating what she called “an interestingly chaotic” commute before she reached her destination.


Grosse, science and technology group manager for Midland, Michigan-based silicon products maker Dow Corning, is among a growing number of corporate employees who are discovering that a stint overseas can be an enriching personal experience for many reasons. Not only do they come to appreciate the creature comforts of home, but also the trip helps them become a better leader with a deeper understanding of the business and the knowledge to manage a more diverse, global workforce.


The overseas corporate volunteer projects are proving to benefit both the employer and employee. Acting as a sort of corporate Peace Corps, volunteers aid nongovernmental organizations with complex projects, while their companies simultaneously gain insights into emerging markets and the employees build leadership skills that might otherwise take years to develop.


With the help of CDC Development Solutions, companies are sending groups of highly skilled employees overseas on a variety of volunteer projects. In the two decades since its founding, CDC Development Solutions, which originally was known as Citizens Democracy Corps and then Citizens Development Corps, has morphed into an economic development organization using corporate volunteers and focusing on emerging markets, says director of business development Kate Ahern.


Interest in overseas corporate volunteerism is growing, says spokeswoman Katie Levey. Last month, the Washington, D.C.-based not-for-profit organization released a survey of 20 companies—a combination of CDC Development Solutions clients and other companies known for their work in the area of corporate volunteerism. This year, companies plan to send nearly 2,000 employees into 58 countries, a big jump since 2006, when 280 employees traveled to four countries.


For four weeks, Grosse worked with nongovernmental organization Ashoka, which is focused on an initiative in India called Housing for All. Ashoka’s objective is to provide housing for families with insufficient income, many of whom live in slum areas, as well as to encourage the government to create sustainable and affordable homes on a large scale.


The Dow Corning team’s goal was to write a standard to help local officials define affordable housing, specify limits on the size and type of dwelling that can be built, and regulate all the players involved in its construction.


Grosse says the experience was helpful to her work at Dow Corning, where she develops new and affordable products and technologies.


“This service project gave me ample insight into that part of my job,” she says. Personally, she adds, it changed the way she sees the world.


Grosse blogged during her time as a corporate volunteer in India. Here is the link.


Typically, multinational corporations have offered overseas volunteer assignments to only a small number of executives. In 2007, IBM Corp. set out to offer a similar opportunity to a larger pool of its high-performing employees.


IBM was the first corporation to retain CDC Development Solutions to create an international volunteer program. Since then, other companies, including Dow Corning, Deloitte, FedEx Corp., Novartis and Pfizer Inc. have established programs with the help of CDC Development Solutions, branding the program as their own. IBM has named its program Corporate Service Corps; Dow Corning, Citizen Service Corps; and Pfizer, the Global Health Teams.


Launched in 2008, IBM’s Corporate Service Corps program assigns high-performing employees to community service assignments around the world. Each year, hundreds of employees apply to work for IBM’s partners—often nongovernmental organizations—in countries such as Egypt, Ghana, Romania, Tanzania and Vietnam.


“The value of the work of participating employees is estimated at $25 million” since the program’s inception three years ago, says Michael Bazigos, a strategy and change executive for IBM. “Teams consist of employees from over 50 different countries who have specific technical and consulting expertise. They take on issues that include local economic development, entrepreneurship, transportation, education, government services, health care and disaster recovery.”


To date, 1,000 IBM employees have participated in 100 projects in nearly 20 countries, Bazigos says.


There are three primary goals of IBM’s program, he says. First, help address economic and civic challenges in places that would benefit most from IBM’s expertise; second, help employees feel more fulfilled within the company; and third, help employees—and thus the company—gain insights into growth markets they might not otherwise understand.


With IBM’s program as its model, Pfizer began working with CDC Development Solutions last year to create its Global Health Teams, an expansion of a longer-term volunteer program already in place. The Global Health Teams last year sent 12 employees throughout Latin America to work in teams in Peru for two weeks. This year Pfizer is expanding the program, adding additional teams and locations.


Competition to secure a spot on the teams is fierce, according to Caroline Roan, who oversees worldwide corporate responsibility at Pfizer. The pharmaceuticals company has one of the more exhaustive application processes: interested employees must write essays, provide references and submit their résumés. Their qualifications are reviewed internally and by the nongovernmental organizations Pfizer works with.


Because time is limited—most projects run between two and six weeks—it is imperative that employees with the right skill sets be chosen. The process, Roan says, is similar to applying for a job.


Once employees are chosen, the training is rigorous. Most companies spend about eight weeks preparing them, and train them on everything from the history of the country they will be serving to lessons in corporate responsibility.


In addition to training at their home offices, Pfizer participants attend a weeklong orientation at the company’s New York headquarters. That orientation includes direct training with the nongovernmental organizations, distribution of materials and equipment and the opportunity to meet with alumni of the program.


The intensive training is in preparation for an intense work experience. Ten- and 12-hour days are common. The work can be exhausting, especially when coupled with the challenges of living in a less-developed country.


“We were in Bangalore staying in a guest house, which was similar to a youth hostel,” Grosse says. “It was an immersion program, so we got used to some of the same constraints that people who live in Bangalore are used to, like having no hot water or water pressure at times or periods where the electricity wasn’t working.”


According to Edward Colbert, director of talent management at Dow Corning, Grosse is not alone in saying that she returned from her trip a changed person. The program, he says, is the company’s most effective leadership classroom.


“These employees return as different people, deeper thinking people, people that have stretched their brains and hearts, opened their eyes and figured out solutions to problems that they likely had never thought of before,” Colbert says. A “boss can’t easily provide like opportunities at the corporate headquarters.”


Workforce Management Online, May 2011 — Register Now!

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Proper Planning Can Make Summer Internships a Warm Experience

As the summer intern season approaches, employers are making plans to welcome their newest employees. Well, at least that’s what we’d hope.


Whether paid or unpaid, part-time or full-time, interns are entering new situations where little, if anything, is familiar. They will rely on their previous experience and education to quickly assess their surroundings and gather the information required to succeed.


As their host employer, there is one simple thing you can do to assist them with this transition and in turn benefit from a more engaged and productive intern: commit to conducting an effective onboarding and orientation plan. Here are some ways to create a beneficial experience for both the employer and the intern.


Leverage existing programs. While many employers place less emphasis on this than they should, even with their experienced hires, there may be existing resources you can leverage. Make the best use of what you already have, such as your orientation program, logistical set-up, company events, presentations, videos and your intranet.


Internal overview. These new hires are going to be highly motivated to succeed. For that reason, they need to know about the organization they’re working for. Ensure that they get to see organizational charts; are provided with an overview of products and services; that they understand the company’s history, culture, values and principles; and how they are connected to their summer assignments.


Introductions (internal and external). Here’s a scenario that is played out far too often in office environments every summer:

The new intern is in his first week. Someone walks by and says, “Hey, you’re new, what’s your name?”
“I’m Joe, the new intern. What’s your name?”
“Hey Joe, I’m Mike, it’s good to meet you. Gotta run.”

Joe’s glad he got to meet Mike. After all, it was just two days ago that he found out he’d be working closely with Mike; glad he got the head’s up.


Mike missed the opportunity to explain his role to Joe and how their work will intersect. Promise that you’ll make every effort to avoid this scenario.


Tour of facilities. This may seem simple and obvious, but take into consideration the size of today’s work environments. Extend the courtesy of showing the intern around and making sure they know where everything of importance is located.


Social component (team lunch or afternoon coffee break). This is far less about lunch or coffee as it is breaking the ice and putting the interns in what will hopefully be a comfortable environment. You’re looking to create an environment where they and their temporary team of co-workers can feel relaxed, let their guards down a bit and begin the process of building relationships. Choose the right people, prepare them and connect them to your interns.


Review calendar. Even before they start, the intern will be curious to know what their summer will look like. If you make the point of reviewing a calendar that outlines the entire internship experience as early as Day One or Two, you will quickly win the confidence of your intern. They’ll know that you’ve done your homework and that you’ve planned for their arrival.


Review goals, expectations and overall intern work plan. Clearly communicate expectations. We hear about it all the time as it relates to millennial expectations. Outline what will be expected of the intern and how success will be measured. Make sure that they have a project plan of sorts to guide them along the way.


Ask the intern: “What are you hoping to achieve this summer?” Done exceptionally well, this conversation should actually occur before Day One. If that didn’t occur, don’t worry. You ask this question and you do a couple of things. First, acknowledge that the internship is very much about the intern. Second, you are relinquishing control while also saying to the intern that you need to assume ownership for this experience. If you can construct an internship that meets both your objectives and advances your business agenda while also meeting the expectations of the intern, be prepared to be impressed.


If you still have a few weeks before they start, make the best use of that time. Make plans now to build the foundation for a successful summer internship experience for both you and your intern.


Workforce Management Online, April 2011 — Register Now!

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Employers Seek More Satisfaction With an Engaged Workforce

Judy Whitcomb can recall a time when employers were content with satisfied workers.


But in the wake of a deep recession and surveys indicating burned-out workers are ready to jump at the next job opportunity, Whitcomb, assistant vice president of learning and organizational development for Chicago-based Vi, which runs senior-living residences in 11 states, says employers must change their perception of a contented workforce.


“Employers now are looking for the difference between satisfied and engaged—when employees are going above and beyond [their job description] and have an emotional attachment to the company,” Whitcomb says. “Satisfied is not good enough.”


Employee engagement is the elusive new golden goose to revitalizing and retaining a workforce that’s psychologically and in some cases physically drained by two-plus years of massive cutbacks and doing more with less. BlessingWhite Inc., a worldwide consulting company focused on employee satisfaction issues with North American headquarters in Skillman, New Jersey, says engagement melds an employee’s contribution to a company’s success with their own personal satisfaction in their job.


A relatively new term, employee engagement is the principles and policies by which an organization or company “engages” its workers to improve productivity, creativity and loyalty. Engagement can take the form of feedback, career development or strong leadership.


Engagement experts quoted in this story offered their top 15 ways to best engage workers. Their advice includes:


• Onboarding experience


• Offer clear lines of sight or alignment


• Feedback/communication


• Feeling of community


• Opportunities for job advancement


“The measure of engagement has been constant over the last couple of years,” says Ilene Gochman, consulting director of Chicago-based Towers Watson & Co.


Gochman cites three areas to measure engagement: the “head or rational,” what direction a company has charted; the “emotional,” the pride and connection of working at a company; and the “motivational” or, as she puts it, “whether you are jumping out of bed on a Monday morning ready to do any assignment.”


“What we see are [employees] that are getting increasingly optimistic,” Gochman adds. “Does a company offer long-term opportunities, employee development and career path? Those areas took a big hit in 2009.”


Yet firm answers to whether employees remained engaged during the recession and subsequent rebound seem elusive.


“We can make a broad-brushed statement that all things [with engagement] took a hit in 2009-10,” says David Wilkins, vice president of research for HR software company Taleo in Dublin, California. “There was a loss of personnel, a cutback in training. Most people’s vision last year was survival.


According to a study by Philadelphia-based Right Management, the outplacement services division of recently rebranded ManpowerGroup, 84 percent of the more than 1,400 North American workers polled in late 2010 “intend to actively seek a new position” this year. The number was 60 percent a year earlier, according to Right Management.


“As companies lost personnel, there were very high levels of worker productivity but now there’s a drop-off because people are just burnt. There was only so long people could sustain that,” Wilkins says.


And when employees think they’ve reached their breaking point—either psychologically or at their job—they look for a change.


“The burnout factor is starting to take hold,” says Judy Sweeney, who runs her own research firm in Milton, Massachusetts. “There is a big jump in people who want to look for another job after an intense period of doing more with less.


“People are saying, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ ”


If 84 percent of employees truly are thinking about finding a new job, it behooves companies to engage the people with the creativity and ability to contribute to an organization for years to come, Wilkins says.


“When people leave an organization, survey after survey shows that one of the top five reasons is always the lack of career growth,” Wilkins says.


In other words, poor engagement plays a big role in their departure.


“Low engagement often leads to low retention, which leads to low productivity,” says Alice Snell of Snell Research in Raleigh, North Carolina. “There have to be opportunities within the organization. People need to see how they can grow with the company.


“The employee-employer relationship, at its core, is an investment.”


Snell notes that the recession forced many employees to stay put. As the economy turns around, however, low engagement can mean a loss of top performers, making it crucial for organizations to develop what she calls “talent intelligence.”


“A company has to understand who they have and what good performers and good performances look like,” she says.


Perhaps the most extensive recent study was BlessingWhite’s Employee Engagement Report 2011. Published in December 2010, researchers contacted HR and line leaders and conducted an online survey that drew 11,000 responses from around the world.


Among the report’s findings:


• Thirty-one percent of employees are engaged and 17 percent are disengaged.


• More employees are looking for new opportunities outside their organization than three years ago.


• Employees worldwide view opportunities to apply their talents, career development and training as the top drivers of job satisfaction.


• Trust in executives can have more than twice the impact on engagement levels than trust in immediate managers.


BlessingWhite’s study notes, “Executives aren’t getting the basics of performance right. Creating an environment that supports high performance … received the least favorable response in the entire survey.”


Whitcomb of Vi, formerly known as Classic Residence by Hyatt, has seen how employee engagement leads to better customer engagement and higher productivity. “We’ve really turned our company upside down” in terms of employee engagement, she says.


Whitcomb says it became imperative for Vi’s 4,000 employees to better engage customers—in this case, Vi’s elderly residents.


She cites one study saying companies that are highly engaged with employees enjoy 26 percent higher revenue per employee and a 13 percent higher total return to shareholders.


Whitcomb puts the onus on management.


“Without competent managers, everything else falls apart. You have to have managers who are engaged.”


Workforce Management Online, April 2011 — Register Now!

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Niche Sites Gain Monster-Sized Following

Need jugglers to entertain passengers on a cruise line? Proship Entertainment and Cruiseline Job are a couple of well-traveled sites for shipboard hiring. A high school football coach? Jobs InSports.com and iCoachUSA.com rank high on recruiters’ lists.



Move over CareerBuilder and Monster. Niche job boards continue to proliferate and grow in popularity, giving the top two job boards stiff competition. “While the large job sites provide a breadth of candidates, they result in employers having to slog through hundreds of résumés to find good talent,” says Peter Weddle, president of Weddle’s, a Stamford, Connecticut-based employment consultancy, and head of the International Association of Employment Web Sites. “Niche sites allow employers to go directly to the A-level performers, who typically focus their job search efforts on specialized search engines.”


Niche job boards are growing at a rapid pace. Today, some 100,000 Internet job boards vie for listings and résumés, double the number in 2000, according to Weddle’s research. And the job specific nature of the websites is becoming even more granular. “Job sites are slicing and dicing into ever finer gradation,” Weddle says. “No longer is it enough to have a job site focused on logistics, for example. It now has to specialize in warehousing logistics or trucking logistics.”



The growth of these niche sites results in large part from a recognition that the way to establish an edge over larger, general job boards is to offer more—much more—to those seeking specialized employment. One of the larger niche boards, AllRetailJobs.com, provides help with retail résumé writing for job hunters and a “Candidate Tracker” to help employers manage their searches. The site, which says it has nearly 55,000 job listings and 1 million-plus résumés posted, boasts 750,000 unique visitors monthly.


Then there’s VetJobs, a niche board aimed at transitioning veterans back into the workforce. It includes a “Spouse Portal” that provides job assistance to veterans’ spouses. The site says it attracts 110,000 unique visitors monthly and posts some 37,000 jobs and 120,000 résumés at any given time. Another niche board is Icrunchdata.com, which specializes in 14 specific categories of data and analytics jobs and allows direct application to employers. With 5,000 jobs and 110,000 résumés posted, it says it has 165,000 unique visitors per month.


“Job boards have evolved very similarly to any other industry in that you find a few big generalist and countless niche specialists,” says Ron Emery, co-founder and managing director of icrunchdata.com.


Of course, the big boards do have advantages. CareerBuilder and Monster Worldwide Inc., the industry leaders with an estimated 23 million and 20 million visitors per month, respectively, are extraordinarily well-branded.


“There’s not a person on the planet who hasn’t heard of Monster and CareerBuilder,” Weddle says. “Their reach is far and wide.” Additionally, the big boards have the resources to provide sophisticated features that niche sites simply can’t match, such as links that allow employers to broaden their searches and tap into previously ignored talent pools, and job seekers to explore possibilities they may previously have disregarded.


Still, the big boards aren’t taking the proliferation of niche boards lightly. CareerBuilder has launched a number of its own specialized boards, such as miracleworkers.com for the health care industry and jobsonthemenu.com for restaurant workers to ensure it captures the employers and potential employees who might shy away from broad-based job sites. Monster, however, is steering clear of niche endeavors in its effort to retain market share, focusing instead on search technology that helps employers sift through the millions of résumés on its site to find the best matches.


“Why limit a search for talent to a small pond when you can search the world’s largest database with precision and extend your reach all across the Internet for talent?” says Monster spokesman Matthew Henson.


While there’s no way of knowing how many niche boards fail, many startups come and go in short order, Weddle says. “There’s no barrier to entry in this industry so there are a lot of sites that are undercapitalized, haven’t done their homework and disappear in a flash.”


Although reports of niche job boards’ demise continue to circulate, with predictions that social media will ultimately replace them, evidence points to the contrary. A recent survey conducted by the Wharton Small Business Development Center at the University of Pennsylvania and Beyond.com, a career development website, indicated that most college students are reluctant to use social networking sites for career-related purposes. According to the results, 98 percent of students visit Facebook on a regular basis for personal use, but less than 35 percent of them use it for job search-related reasons. Also, more than 35 percent of those students indicated that they are uncomfortable using social networking sites for securing post-graduation jobs.


“When it comes to finding a job,” Weddle says, “even social network aficionados know to go to the job site with the most impact.”


Still, many recruiters are hedging their bets when it comes to filling positions. Chicago-based custom publisher Imagination Publishing relies on both general job boards and publishing-specific boards to find new hires. The same holds true for the Abis Group, an Evanston, Illinois-based specialist in online software for companies.


“We use the big boards to cover the broadest range of talent in the workforce and industry-specific boards to penetrate deeper into specific areas of expertise,” says Tyler Blue, Abis’ director of human resources.


Workforce Management, March 2011, pgs. 10-11 — Subscribe Now!

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Coca-Cola Division Refreshes Its Talent With Diversity Push on Campus

Although Coca-Cola products are staples on college campuses nationwide, recruiters for a major division of the world’s largest soft-drink maker were marked as absent.


But in 2009, Coca-Cola Refreshments—the company’s sales and supply operation—launched the University Talent Program. Its creation was spurred by compelling business needs.


Although Coca-Cola is one of the world’s most-recognized brands, supply-chain jobs aren’t high-profile, hotly sought positions. The company faced a common problem: a shortage of talent.


“We wanted to infuse talent into the organization that would add value to the business through participation in targeted leadership and internship programs,” says LaTashia White, director of talent acquisition for Coca-Cola Refreshments, which employs 75,000 people in North America.


To make Coca-Cola Refreshments opportunities especially attractive, White put together a program structure that would ensure participant success. Its crucial elements are real-world responsibility, executive exposure and support and built-in professional development.


White sought to leverage the Coke brand not only to interest more candidates but to also help expand the division’s diverse workforce.


“We developed a major initiative to attract more women and people of color, so we turned to campuses to establish a diverse pipeline,” she says. College recruiting seemed to provide access to large numbers of candidates cost effectively, so the company launched University Talent Program to plumb a previously untapped resource.


The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that, in 2009, women accounted for 48.45 percent of the total workforce and constituted 54 percent of professional workers. Minorities, meanwhile, comprise 34 percent of the total workforce but only 24.5 percent of professionals.


“We should always be looking for top talent wherever we find it, and looking to increase representation wherever we identify gaps,” says Linda Stokes, president and CEO of PRISM International, a consulting group based in Sanford, Florida. “Inclusive, respectful workplaces lead to increased employee engagement, which has been shown to positively affect business results.”


Hired during the spring of their senior year, Coca-Cola Refreshments’ new hires, who are known as “leadership associates,” can specialize in human resources, business, sales, supply chain, or finance. Once hired, they enter a 24 to 36-month, full-time program, rotating to new assignments within their specialty every six to 12 months.


Participants are supported by rotational managers, sponsors and coaching peers. Brian Weston graduated from Emory University in Atlanta in May 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and entered the company as part of the finance team. He recently completed his first rotation in forecasting.


“It was an excellent place to start, at the center of finance, sales and the supply chain. It gave me a sense of who the players are,” he says. Weston is now beginning a rotation in procurement.


“Learning activities, such as capstone projects at the end of rotations, enable our participants to get leaders’ ears,” White says.


The new hires must meet performance expectations, complete a functional learning curriculum that includes on-the-job training and an annual leadership conference and are evaluated like other employees. Those who excel are eligible to take on leadership roles.


White immediately pushes for the retention of the young workers. She partnered with learning and development professionals to create an onboarding toolkit that would help develop an affinity for the organization and set participants up for success. Each entering class participates in a weeklong series of learning and social activities.


Each year, the division accepts 60 full-time associates and 80 interns. In the first year of the program, 32 percent of full-time recruits were people of color; 44 percent were women. In the second year, 45 percent were people of color while 54 percent were women. White recruits at 29 colleges and universities nationwide, selecting historically black colleges and others based on their U.S. News and World Report rankings in such relevant programs as industrial engineering.


Workforce Management Online, March 2011 — Register Now!

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Chrysler’s F-Bomb Rift Underscores Workplace Social Media Turf War

When an employee of advertising firm New Media Strategies dropped the F-bomb in a tweet from client Chrysler’s Twitter account on March 9, it might have been chalked up to one of those things that can happen to someone on a bad day. Instead, Chrysler decided not to renew its contract with the agency.

The dustup began when one of the agency’s staffers tweeted from the @ChryslerAutos account: “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f****** drive.”

The employee was fired by NMS, and on March 10, Chrysler went a step further by saying it would not renew the shop’s contract. But beyond that, the whole affair may have shined a light on a continuing turf battle between marketing and communications departments over who should own and manage social media.

According to those familiar with the episode, the employee thought he or she was logged in to a private Twitter account rather than Chrysler’s account. The employee had access, along with a team of other agency and client-side people, and wrote tweets throughout the day.

After the expletive went out, it was quickly deleted, but had already been retweeted by a few Chrysler followers and spread to blogs.

“Even if it had gone out under their private account, we would have had issues with it as it indirectly referenced a Chrysler ad and violated the company’s policy about texting while driving,” said Chrysler spokeswoman Dianna Gutierrez.

Advertising Age, an affiliate of Automotive News, was unable to determine whether the tweet went out while the employee was indeed driving.

Turf battles over social media between marketing and communications have been an issue at the automaker—and other companies—for a few years. Early in the day after the tweet went out, Chrysler’s communications team was grappling to get hold of the details of the episode after bloggers and media began calling, in part because Chrysler’s marketing department controls Facebook and Twitter social media accounts that are “consumer facing.” The communications department has separate Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr accounts that are meant to be “media facing.”

Many companies say the divide only serves turf and budget wars, not the brands.

“All that has blurred, so it’s critical for communications and marketing to be coordinating and cooperating all the time,” said Stuart Schorr, vice president of communications and public affairs at Jaguar-Land Rover North America. One of the issues creating the turf war, he noted, is which department gets the budget.

For Jaguar Land Rover, for example, all tweets and Facebook posts are cleared by a small internal communications group, Schorr said. Land Rover’s marketing agency, Wunderman Worldwide, manages Land Rover’s branded Twitter account, but all posts are cleared by communications. Only one outside agency person has access to the Twitter accounts, and that person is only a functionary to post pre-approved content.

Communications runs websites, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts branded InteractiveJaguar and InteractiveLandRover. Those websites were created and are managed by Icon Interactive, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“My belief is that communications is better trained and oriented to deal with the real-time and back-and-forth nature of social media, but we have a very collaborative and coordinated effort with marketing,” Schorr said. “But it is such a big and popular area, with a lot of money going into it, that I recognize it is a pie that marketing and communications departments at companies are going to continue to wrestle over.”

Chrysler would not make any marketing executives available to talk about the episode.

On its website, Pete Snyder, CEO of MNS, said the agency “regrets this unfortunate incident. It certainly doesn’t accurately reflect the overall high-quality work we have produced for Chrysler. We respect their decision and will work with them to ensure an effective transition of this business going forward.”

In the automaker’s communication blog to the media, Chrysler Communications staffer Ed Garsten wrote, “The tweet denigrated drivers in Detroit and used the fully spelled-out F-word. It was obviously meant to be posted on the person’s personal Twitter account, and not the Chrysler Brand account where it appeared.

“So why were we so sensitive? That commercial featuring the Chrysler 200, Eminem and the city of Detroit wasn’t just an act of salesmanship. This company is committed to promoting Detroit and its hard-working people. The reaction to that commercial, the catchphrase ‘imported from Detroit,’ and the overall positive messages it sent has been volcanic.”  

Filed by David Kiley of Advertising Age, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

 

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Gay Groups Refocus on Workplace

Emboldened by the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, gay rights groups have set their sights once again on the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA. The act would prohibit public and private employers, employment agencies and labor unions from using an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity as a basis for discrimination.


The proposed law, which was reintroduced in the House on March 30 by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., would cover hiring, firing, promotion or compensation decisions, according to the gay advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign. But James Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project, believes ENDA would achieve much more than legal protection in the workplace. “The law sets expectations for society,” Esseks says. “Establishing new social norms for appropriate behavior is going to create a better environment for both straight and LGBT people in the workplace.” With gay employees spending time worrying about discrimination, he adds, companies aren’t fully benefiting from their talent.


(To view a PDF, click on the image below. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required.)


Gays are protected from employment discrimination by laws in 21 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, employment bias against transgender individuals is prohibited in 12 of those states and the district. A handful of other states also prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, but limit protection to public employees only.


Efforts to bar employment discrimination against gays on a national level date back to 1974, and the ENDA legislation itself has floundered in Congress since 1994. Opponents contend the act would create a more litigious workplace. “ENDA would invite employees to take an ordinary workplace conflict, in some cases with plenty of blame to go around, and turn it, literally, into a federal case,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, in his 2009 House testimony. Some ENDA opponents also argue that sexual orientation and gender identity are matters of choice and that gay and transgender employees aren’t entitled to the same protections as other minorities.


Despite ENDA’s history and the potential roadblock of the new Republican majority in the House, proponents remain optimistic and expect the bill to be reintroduced in Congress in March or April. “With bills like the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act being passed, we are on the verge of doing away with institutionalized discrimination,” says Daryl Herrschaft, director of the Human Rights Campaign Workplace Project. “There are dozens of major corporations that are petitioning the federal government to pass ENDA; they want and expect the federal government to set a standard of equality of what a workplace environment should be like.”


(To view a PDF, click on the image below. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required.)


The project has long lobbied Congress and mobilized corporate support. More recently, it has begun using Facebook, Twitter and its blog to spread the word about ENDA and take the issues from Washington to the homes of people nationwide. “We have a very robust social media effort,” says Brian Moulton, chief legislative counsel at the Human Rights Campaign. “The American public is supportive of the goal ENDA would accomplish, but they are still very uninformed about the fact that it’s legal in so many places in the country for LGBT people to lose their jobs because of who they are.”


According to a 2010 survey by the not-for-profit Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, nearly eight out of 10 heterosexual adults said they believe employees should be judged on job performance, not their sexual orientation. Yet only 44 percent said they believe gays are treated fairly and equally in the workplace.


One of ENDA’s biggest backers is the Business Coalition for Workplace Fairness, a group of 80 major employers, including Cisco Systems Inc. and Ernst & Young, that pledge their support for the federal legislation. “We are already very open and active in ensuring Cisco is a safe place to work,” says Rick Moran, a Cisco vice president and executive sponsor of the company’s gay and transgender employee network. “But I think ENDA will provide visibility to a group that might otherwise be invisible; advocates need to stand up and promote safe work environments where gay employees are respected for who they are and the work they do.”


According to the Human Rights Campaign, as of 2009, 87 percent of Fortune 500 companies had nondiscrimination policies that included sexual orientation. But corporate officials say turning policy into practice is what truly drives a culture of workplace inclusiveness.


At Aetna, it starts at the top. Mark Bertolini, president and CEO of the health insurer, received Out & Equal’s 2010 champion award, which is given to a heterosexual who plays a pivotal role in promoting equal treatment of gay and transgender employees. Bertolini is a visible presence at Aetna’s gay employee resource group events and is also the first elected straight board member of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. “With our CEO as a clear symbol and sign of our commitment to improving the lives of the LGBT community, we can say we are here for the long haul,” says Raymond Arroyo, Aetna’s chief diversity officer.


At professional services firm Ernst & Young, raising LGBT awareness is at the forefront of its diversity efforts. A recent event included a video showcasing individuals’ experiences. One story profiled a gay man—not from Ernst & Young—whose partner had just died. Not having told co-workers or supervisors about his boyfriend, he went to work the following day. Why? Because, as far as anyone knew, he had no reason not to show up.


“We found that stories like these really had a companywide impact as far as LGBT awareness and LGBT partner inclusion was concerned,” says Chris Crespo, a director in the Americas Inclusiveness Center of Expertise at Ernst & Young. According to the Human Rights Campaign, about half of LGBT employees hide their sexual orientation or gender identity in the workplace. “They are afraid of being fired, or being made fun of, or discriminated against, or not fitting in,” says Justin Nelson, president of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.


Andre Cooley, for example, says he was fired last year from his corrections officer job in Forrest County, Mississippi, because supervisors at the sheriff’s department discovered he is gay. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on Cooley’s behalf, citing a violation of his equal protection and due process rights under the 14th Amendment. Most people in Mississippi working for private companies have no legal protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But because the county sheriff’s department is a governmental entity, the ACLU contends, the Constitution protects Cooley from anti-gay discrimination. “Andre’s sexual orientation has no bearing on his ability to perform the job of a corrections officer,” says Joshua Block, an ACLU staff attorney.


The sheriff’s department didn’t respond to requests for comment. But in its answer to the lawsuit, it states: “Actions regarding termination or specific rights based upon sexual orientation have not been enacted nationally and specifically by the state of Mississippi in that this is a states’ rights issue.”


Other wor-kers are exploring different avenues to voice grievances. One gay man took to the Internet this year, creating the blog “Gay & Fired” to rail against discrimination. Writing under the pen name “Michael,” and maintaining anonymity, he hopes to connect with others who have experienced discrimination because of their sexual orientation. “I’m going to have to leave the South,” he says, and find a more gay friendly place to live.
 


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Companies Focus Their Attention on Flexibility

Staffing flexibility has a new look these days. You might call it a vintage approach to workforce planning.

In recent years, companies have sought greater labor force agility largely by paring back their payrolls and tapping temporary workers or independent contractors when needed. Now, some employers are exploring ways to make traditional full-time and part-time employees fit more flexible workforce strategies. Given people’s desire for more stable employment and the potential drawbacks of hiring contingent workers, organizations as diverse as Hilton Worldwide and Eden Medical Center in the San Francisco area are bucking the trend to ramp up the number of temporary hires.

Hilton, for example, coordinates its staffing on a regional basis, sending full-time employees from one hotel to another nearby hotel to address temporary spikes in demand. This strategy not only makes efficient use of the hotel chain’s staff but also helps develop an agile workforce, says Jim MacDonald, Hilton’s vice president of human resources for the Americas. The employee-swapping approach “allows us to invest more in full-time team members that have a wide range of specialties,” MacDonald says. “Our ultimate goal is to have as many full-time team members as possible.”

To be sure, contingent labor arrangements are growing. Between September 2009 and December 2010, the number of temporary help jobs increased by 495,000, or 29 percent, according to a preliminary government estimate.

Turning to temporary workers is typical during economic recoveries, but some workplace experts are raising questions about the move to a “just-in-time” labor model. Among the concerns are: lack of commitment to the employer, steep wage markups for some temporary jobs, uncertain qualifications of contingent workers and the risk of misclassifying workers as independent contractors, a problem the Obama administration has been targeting.

Rather than rely on contingent workers, Peter Cappelli, management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, says companies can remain agile through job-sharing, redeployment of workers to different parts of the business and temporary furloughs. “Most U.S. companies have way overdone their use of contingent labor,” Cappelli says. “They haven’t thought through the alternatives of being internally flexible.”

The HR consulting firm Mercer expects more of its clients to develop innovative staffing models. “More creative, flexible work arrangements are going to be the future,” says Andy Geller, a partner in Mercer’s Human Capital practice. For example, one of Mercer’s financial services clients is exploring a novel staffing approach to deal with blips in demand in the mortgage business. The company faces cyclical swings, such as higher processing volume in the summer, as well as unpredictable manpower needs, such as during a surge in home buying when interest rates drop.

In the past, Geller says, these challenges led to significant overtime demands for full-time employees even as the company tried to tap temporary agency workers.

Now, Mercer and its clients are considering setting up a pool of on-call employees. These workers would not be paid a fixed salary but would be guaranteed a certain amount of work each year. They also would receive training and possibly some benefits such as tuition reimbursement. To keep costs down, the company could target workers who already have health insurance, such as retirees or spouses of people with full-time jobs. Like a substitute teacher who comes back to the same school regularly, these employees would have more continuity with the business than a typical temp, Geller says. “The aim is to keep them linked to the organization.”

In the wake of the recession, many workers want a close connection with employers. A 2010 study of U.S. employees by consulting firm Towers Watson & Co. found that respondents ranked “security and stability” as their top priority, ahead of both “significantly higher pay” and “opportunity to rapidly develop skills/abilities.”

Closer ties and greater stability will likely result in a more engaged workforce that is committed to the company and willing to put in extra effort. The prospect of a more dedicated staff is a key reason that hiring more full-time workers appeals to Pete Eggleton, administrative director of human resources at Eden Medical Center, a hospital system. “If you have people who are contingent, they’re not necessarily loyal to you or to the patients that you serve,” he says. “They’re loyal to the paycheck.”

Eden Medical Center meets its nursing needs largely through a combination of nurses who are “benefited,” meaning they receive benefits such as health insurance and work a minimum number of hours a week, and “per diem” nurses who fill in as needed and don’t collect benefits.

Currently, about two-thirds of Eden Medical Center’s workforce is made up of nurses with benefits. The remainder are primarily per diem nurses, along with a small percentage of nurses from temporary help agencies. Eggleton says he would like to bump the share of nurses with benefits to 75 or even 80 percent.

On the other hand, flexibility is important at Eden Medical Center, which employs about 1,700 people, including roughly 600 registered nurses. For instance, patient demand can increase as much as 50 percent between summer and winter, when people are more likely to be sick.

So during a recent recruiting campaign to fill about 70 registered nurse jobs, roughly 35 percent of them were designated as per diem slots. Eggleton, though, says he can imagine his benefited staff taking on more hours in the future. Nurses can work just two 12-hour shifts a week and still get benefits.

Eggleton remains wary of hiring too many temporary employees because he says he believes they could have a “renter” as opposed to an “owner” mindset. A contingent nurse, Eggleton argues, could work night shifts in one facility and then show up for the day shift at Eden. And Eden officials wouldn’t necessarily know about the nurse’s extensive hours.

This concern applies equally to per diem employees and agency temps, Eggleton says. “It’s not good from either the nurses’ perspective or from a patient perspective to have somebody routinely working a double shift. We would have no clue about that.”

Workforce Management, February 2011, p. 3-4 — Subscribe Now!