Category: Workplace Culture

Posted on

Social Work

After the housing bubble burst, agents from Long Realty in Tucson, Arizona, felt desperate to find a safe haven to discuss the complexities of the current real estate market.


Some joined other real estate agents in chats on the wide-open Facebook social network, but anyone could see their comments, including clients and bankers. The agents didn’t always exercise discretion when the discussion turned to more sensitive business matters. “Having that conversation on Facebook is not really the right venue,” says Kevin Kaplan, Long’s vice president of marketing and technology.


The firm didn’t want to stifle the free exchange of ideas and opinions, so it established Long Connects, an internal social networking site designed solely for employees to keep the conversation flowing but confine it to a secure environment. On Long Connects, for example, an agent can ask colleagues about their experiences dealing with a particular bank without worrying about prying eyes. “Our company has always had a culture of being collaborative” inside the office, Kaplan says. But with agents dispersed around the state, “we needed to break through the boundaries of the physical plant” with a safe forum for exchanging ideas and opinions.


Long Connects is clearly a hit, with nearly 2,500 posts in about a year. David Winter, a member of the firm’s short sales resource group, regularly trades advice with fellow agents about the ins and outs of short sales—properties sold for less than the amount owed on the mortgage to avoid foreclosure. When the firm first discussed introducing an internal social network last fall, “I sort of equated it to a virtual water cooler,” Winter recalls. Instead, he has found a safe place where the firm’s 1,500 employees “can pipe in with the answer to a question, instead of just the three people who are right there by the water cooler.”


Given the immense popularity of Facebook, Twitter and other social media, a growing number of companies are developing or purchasing their own social networks. The internal networks might feature employee blogs, wikis to help streamline project collaboration, employee profiles highlighting areas of expertise, training courses, or discussion groups for both business and personal issues.


Consulting firm Towers Watson & Co. surveyed more than 400 firms this year and found that 30 percent used internal social networking for HR purposes. About 44 percent of the users found that the networks met or exceeded expectations, with most of the others saying that it was too soon to tell or they didn’t know. Sites for various teams, such as marketing, project management and sales, were particularly effective for employee communication, talent management and career development, respondents said.


Respondents who have not adopted internal social networking for HR purposes said they were too busy to explore the option, it isn’t a current priority, or they don’t believe there’s a strong business case for creating such tools.


Connecting workers
 First and foremost, companies with social networks want to satisfy their employees’ need to feel connected. Employers realize that social networks are critical selling points in attracting members of the Millennial Generation who have grown up texting and tweeting and prefer Facebook to face time. The Millennial Generation is “horrified at how unconnected people in many organizations are,” says Andrew Wootton, a senior consultant with Towers Watson.


Companies that ban Facebook and other social media from their computer systems especially need an internal social network to attract young people. Of course, such bans won’t stop Facebook addicts from visiting the site on their smart phones while at work. In fact, in a recent survey conducted for Cisco Systems Inc., half of the 2,000 employees from corporations around the globe admitted that at least once a week they ignore corporate policies prohibiting social media in the workplace.


Companies that champion social networking believe it enhances communication throughout the organization. Employees are less likely to tune out corporate messages if they’re delivered interactively as a live chat or a blog posting. And by paying attention to the buzz on their networks, companies can “catch the rumblings of disgruntled employees” or detect potential problems with products and services, says Sherrie Madia, co-author of The Social Media Survival Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Grow Your Business Exponentially With Social Media. Some companies are even setting up alumni social networks that let them stay in touch with former employees and perhaps hire them again down the road. Corporate social networking “is bottom line driven,” Madia says. “It’s not just about fluff.”


But not every internal social networking system has proved to be of great value. Dow Chemical Co. introduced My Dow Network in late 2007, hailing it as a way for current and former employees to stay connected and improve collaboration. But Dow disbanded the system because of “the global economic crisis,” spokesman David Winder told Workforce Management. The company declined to comment further about its social networking experiment.


Many companies worry that social networks will be a security risk that could expose proprietary information or details of employees’ personal lives. When Intel Corp. adopted “social computing” technology, it didn’t do so lightly. The chip maker wanted to encourage employee interaction and make information and expertise readily accessible globally. But first it increased employee training to reinforce the fact that social computing fits the code of conduct governing communication via the Internet, phone services and e-mail.


Its information security team also conducted an extensive risk assessment, which concluded that internal social networking didn’t introduce new risks but could increase existing risks because of the “one to many” nature of the medium. The risk of inappropriately sharing classified information, for instance, is greater with a social networking tool than with an e-mail sent to a single individual. As an added precaution, the company developed a usage policy that makes it clear that employees must treat Intel confidential data with care.


Some companies also fear that social networks will be a drain on employees’ productivity. Zachary Misko, global director of Kelly OCG, says his company initially blocked access to social networks, dismissing them as “just a fun thing, just a waste of time.” But as members of his team urged their customers to use social media for recruiting, they began to push for it at Kelly OCG, the outsourcing and consulting group at staffing firm Kelly Services Inc. “If you’re going to talk the talk [to clients],” Misko says, “you need to be able to walk the walk.”


Rather than launch an internal social network, however, the company opted to form a private networking group on LinkedIn. Misko believes the LinkedIn group is convenient for people who are traveling to access from their smart phones or hotel rooms. By using LinkedIn, “people are more engaged,” he says, and they can keep track of what co-workers are up to and share best practices.


Beyond Facebook
It’s the word “social” that makes some companies anxious. “Your mind immediately goes to Facebook and Twitter,” and companies fear it will prove to be a distraction for employees, says Tony Brice, an executive at Sabre Holdings Corp., a travel services company that owns the online site Travelocity. Sabre was a pioneer in internal social networking, establishing its own site called Sabre Town in 2007 for its employees and contractors around the world.


Sabre recently turned its expertise into a new business called cubeless, a social networking platform that it customizes for other organizations. “You can’t force people to use this,” Brice, vice president for customer success for cubeless, tells his clients. “But if you deliver value, you hope they will.”


The three main features of Sabre Town are a Q&A section, which allows users to search for employees with certain expertise, such as Java programming; profiles of employees that show their skills, experience and customer contacts; and job function groups such as project managers.


Sabre Town also includes Mom2Mom and other groups that were formed for more personal reasons. “We realize the line is disappearing between personal and business,” Brice says, as employees work from home or take care of personal matters from the office. “Solving their problems pays off in the long run in terms of employee satisfaction and productivity.”


While the Mom2Mom group had been created under the auspices of the human resources department, it gained more traction with the advent of Sabre Town. Women throughout the company use the group to seek advice about pediatricians and day care centers, commiserate about problems at home and work, and help juggle work and motherhood.


With Mom2Mom, “you don’t feel quite so alone,” says senior project manager Amy Dillon, a mother of four, one of whom has special needs. She says she sometimes walks into a meeting where another member of Mom2Mom is present and feels “this instant bond” even though they’ve never met in person before.


Momentum Worldwide, a New York-based marketing agency, also allows both professional and personal use of its corporate social network, which features videos of employees’ work as well as blogs and wikis. One employee, for example, makes jewelry at home and blogs about it during her free time on a section of the network that is open to the public.


While some organizations might frown on using internal social networking for personal purposes, Stephanie Rudnick, vice president of global communications, says employees receive training in appropriate behavior on the site. They are not allowed to “bash anyone” or post pornography or other inappropriate materials, she says. The bottom line is that “at the end of the day, we all get our work done.”


Twenty-something employees are the “power users” of Momentum’s social network, but Rudnick says baby boomers also find it helpful in keeping up to date on information affecting clients and the marketing business. Boomers “don’t necessarily build wikis,” she says, “but they use them.”


Rudnick also sees geographic differences in usage. Employees in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East quickly joined in the social network, but in Asia, people are more hesitant because they aren’t as accustomed to candid workplace discussions. “It’s way too transparent for them,” Rudnick says.


Global strategy
     For IBM Corp., connecting its 400,000 employees around the world is one of the primary goals of its vast collection of social networking tools. Cyberspace transcends national borders and enables workers to create ties across long distances and collaborate more effectively. While John Rooney, program manager for collaboration and innovation, can’t measure the precise return on investment from IBM’s site, called w3, he says it clearly “contributes to the integration of our company on a global basis. It’s seen as part of our ability to succeed.”


IBM sees its corporate social network as a complement to its use of Facebook and Twitter to promote products and services, offer insights about technology trends, drive traffic to its corporate website and attract people to trade shows. The company boasts that it has “the largest corporate-wide communities on all the social media sites.”


The internal w3 is like a candy store for social media fans. Employees can create personal profiles similar to those on LinkedIn, bookmark websites and news stories of interest, comment on company blogs, contribute to wikis, share files, and gain knowledge from white papers, videos and podcasts. Rooney especially likes the file-sharing feature, which gathers documents into a repository open to anyone searching for specific information.


Wikis also are a “tremendous productivity enabler,” he says, because teams can brainstorm together to write and edit a document. There’s no longer the need to e-mail a document to 10 people, who each make their own changes and then make even more changes to their colleagues’ changes.


IBM used wikis to craft its social media usage guidelines, allowing anyone to comment and change the wording until a final version was completed. Among other things, the final guidelines urge employees to identify themselves and note that they are expressing their views, not IBM’s; respect other people’s privacy, as well as copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws; avoid potentially inflammatory topics such as politics and religion; and not pick fights with competitors or the media.


Tiered approach
Some companies slice their social networks into tiers.


Alcatel-Lucent launched its Engage network in April and included groups with different levels of accessibility. Anyone can take part in the public group discussions, but employees must be approved by the system administrator for private groups focused on a specific subject, like sales. There are even confidential groups, such as one created to review nominations for a corporate award.


The Paris-based maker of telecommunication network equipment has gradually rolled out Engage to more than 23,000 of its 80,000 employees in 130 countries. English is the common language, but a group that pops up in Madrid is likely to communicate in Spanish.


Office employees are typically the most active users of corporate social networks, at least partly because of the logistical problems for workers in manufacturing and warehousing facilities. At Quad/Graphics Inc., a printing company based in Sussex, Wisconsin, more than three-quarters of the 28,000 employees work in manufacturing, and they tend to participate less in the TeamSites internal network than office employees sitting in front of a computer all day. Groups of production workers either share a computer or must find a computer kiosk.


Still, “a good chunk” of blue-collar workers are actively engaged, says Matt Kammerait, marketing and social media specialist at Quad/Graphics. He notes that many employees use the social network to propose new projects, which the company’s Innovation Council reviews. It then posts the most promising ideas on the network so fellow workers can comment before it decides which ones to pursue.


For some companies, it’s challenging to coax employees to chime in on the social network, whether or not they have ready access to a computer. Advantage Sales & Marketing in Irvine, California, began using Cornerstone Connect about 18 months ago in a mentoring program linking young sales associates with baby boomers and other trainers. In the first two weeks after the program started, there were only 21 posts to the social network, but 807 people had viewed it and 45 had commented. “People are always a little hesitant to start,” says Wendie Whelan, human resources management system manager. “They don’t want to make the first post and don’t want to put themselves out there.”


But acceptance is growing. The company has observed that boomers seldom post, but the young sales associates will share what they’ve learned from their mentors. “Even though they’re dispersed around the country,” Whelan says, the social network gives the trainees “a sense of belonging to this community.”


Workforce Management, September 2010, p. 18-22 — Subscribe Now!

Posted on

Healthy Returns on Flex Work

Any employee attempting to juggle work/life responsibilities while reporting to an obdurate boss understands the angst-filled consequences. But a federally funded research consortium is digging deeper to determine whether some flexibility can improve blood pressure and other health indicators, paying off for employers and employees alike.


The Work, Family & Health Network, launched several years before the Obama administration recently spotlighted workplace flexibility, has already wrapped up several Phase I pilot studies looking at supervisor training and innovative scheduling, among other factors. The network’s $31 million Phase II, which runs until 2012, will more closely study how such accommodations can influence blood pressure, blood sugar control, body mass index and other physical warning signs.


“A huge part of our Phase II is looking at return on investment,” says Leslie Hammer, a professor of psychology at Portland State University in Oregon and a principal investigator of the research consortium. “We do expect that if we improve the health of workers that it will lead to improvement in the organizational bottom line.”


Researchers from eight institutions are involved in the multiphase project, which is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. The first phase, which ran from 2005 to 2008, covered a mix of employees, including lower-income workers filling shifts in grocery stores and nursing homes.


In March, the White House held a forum on workplace flexibility and released a report detailing trends and related economic benefits, including reduced turnover and absenteeism. Still, published data on physical health have been limited. Researchers have shown that workplace accommodations can reduce stress and boost an employee’s sense of well-being, Hammer says. “When we try to connect it to actual health outcomes, that’s much more complicated,” she says, citing the time, expense and logistics involved, including taking health measurements.


Ellen Bravo, executive director of the Family Values @ Work Consortium, applauds the Work, Family & Health Network for looking beyond white-collar workers. Too frequently, the discussion of flexibility is viewed as “synonymous with professional women who want to work fewer hours or telecommute,” says Bravo, whose group advocates for policies such as paid sick leave.


In one Phase I study slated for publication this year, researchers assessed the perspective of nursing home managers toward flexible policies. Employees reporting to managers who rated low- to mid-level were more likely to be diagnosed with two or more heart disease risk factors, the researchers found.


Research from Hammer, working in conjunction with Michigan State University, focused on managerial training at Midwestern grocery stores in such behaviors as resolving scheduling conflicts. Employees reporting to managers who were trained not only reported better job satisfaction, but also improved physical health.


The health findings were largely based on employee self-reports, Hammer cautions. But such results represent a good start, researchers say, toward further investigation into whether easing work/life stress also can lighten employee medical bills.


Workforce Management, July 2010, p. 3 — Subscribe Now!

Posted on

Shedding Pounds, Premium Dollars

William Ashmore, CEO of the State Employees’ Insurance Board in Alabama, felt frustrated. Government employees kept putting on more pounds and pushing up the state’s health care bills, even though the state had long encouraged them to receive wellness screenings, including weight and blood pressure checks. “It became very clear to us that obesity was one of the major drivers of health care costs,” Ashmore says.


By 2009, nearly 48 percent of state employees met the federal definition for obesity, with a body mass index of at least 30, compared with only about one-third of adults nationally. And their costs were rising proportionally. The state insurance board found that an employee with a body mass index of 30 to 34 averaged $490 more annually in medical costs compared with a healthy-weight colleague. For those who were even heavier, with a body mass index of 35 or higher, additional health care costs ranged from $907 to $1,719 annually.


So last year the insurance board decided to try the carrot approach to encourage employees to undergo wellness screenings and obtain medical help. Now all employees who are screened receive a $25 monthly discount on their 2010 health insurance premiums. That includes those employees who are classified as high risk because of their weight, blood pressure or other factors. But to receive that discount, they must also show that they’ve consulted with a physician about their health or taken another proactive step, such as enrolling in a weight-loss program.


Employees are classified as high risk, for example, if their body mass index is 35 or higher—at least 230 pounds for a 5-foot-8-inch individual. They also are asked to seek medical help if their blood pressure is at least 160/100, compared with the recommended target of 120/80 or lower.


Before implementing the premium discount, only about 30 percent of people got screened—typically the healthier employees, Ashmore says. In 2009, 95 percent of the state’s nearly 38,000 employees were screened. The point is to get at-risk employees into the medical system, he says. “We don’t want to get in the middle of dictating to individuals, ‘You have to do this and you have to do that.’ The treatment plan and the compliance with the treatment plan is between them and the physician.”


The $25 premium difference helped convince Shakina Wheeler-Cox to get a better handle on her weight. “I’m real tight with my money,” says the 32-year-old HIV coordinator.


She joined a weight-loss program and started exercise classes. From early 2009 to mid-2010, she reduced her body mass index from 52 to 44. Her goal: to drop below a 35 body mass index. She already feels “a thousand times better,” she says, with more energy and a better attitude.


Workforce Management, August 2010, p. 24 — Subscribe Now!

Posted on

Wear a White Shirt and a Dark Suit: Clear Rules for Corporate Boards and Executive Leaders

Every organization should have a few clear and unambiguous rules and principles that are followed and enforced at every level. These principles build culture and set standards that can readily and credibly spread throughout any organization.
A string of executive controversies during the summer months has brought this issue into stark contrast. Two bewildering examples drawn from the headlines include recent firings:
ï The University of Georgiaís athletic director following a DUI arrest (when part of his responsibilities involved encouraging fans not to drink at the collegeís sporting events).
ï Hewlett-Packardís CEO for breaches of trust and conduct after pledging to ethically lead his business.
In setting standards, I suggest leaders and boards figure out whatís really important. If you donít live up to these rules, youíre gone, no matter what position you hold or who you are.
If you are the Georgia athletic director, you need to follow the behavioral rules that you are telling students to follow. And if you are the CEO of HP, you must provide accurate expense reports and other information.
I learned my lesson about following the rules at my first real job as a part-time salesperson for Baker Shoes in September 1967. Back in those days, there was no orientation, no employee handbook and no training.
Before my first day of work, my boss, Joseph Silverman, told me how much I would be paid, what I would do and what hours I would work. Finally, he said, ìBe here at 8:30 a.m. Saturday. Wear a white shirt and a dark suit.î
I got up on Saturday, ready to go to work for eight hours on what was already a muggy day in East Liberty, an urban neighborhood in Pittsburgh. But there was one problem: I had only one heavy gray wool suit, which had been given to me by my friend, David Kalson, for a role in the prior yearís class play. If I wore that suit, I knew I would burn up, sweat and itch on a sweltering day in the un-air-conditioned shoe store.
So I came up with a better plan: I would wear my solid lightweight dark-blue blazer with matching blue slacks. The blazer buttons were gold, but it looked just like a suit, and I would be more comfortable.
I arrived at work on time, greeted by Mr. Silverman, who wore dark suit and white shirt. His first reaction before I entered the building: ìWhereís the suit?î
I replied, ìBut itís hot and this is just like a suit.î
Mr. Silverman said, ìI said a suit, not just like a suit. Go home and come back in a suit if you have one. Otherwise, forget it.î
I went home and told my dad. Without hesitation, he ordered, ìPut on your suit and get down there now.î
So I did. I sweated that first day and first month until I could save enough to buy a lighter-weight suit.
Bakerís did not spend a lot to get its message out. But the companyís dress code was embedded in its culture. Mr. Silverman always wore a suit, he communicated the rule to every employee before they started, and he enforced it.
It was clear and important, and he brooked no exceptions. And that was the rule in the other stores across the nation.
Some organizationsí boards and leaders fall back on complex and wordy rules and codes of conduct. Itís easier than figuring out whatís really important, universal and essential to the business.†
But itís a vital exercise if you want to draw clear lines that canít be crossed. You still have plenty of room for discretion to deal with ìgray-areaî exceptions.
But where basic principles, values, cultural, legal and reputational risks intersect, the rules need to be as clear and unambiguous as Mr. Silvermanís ìWear a dark suit and a white shirtî was back in 1967.
Stephen Paskoff is president and CEO of Atlanta-based ELI Inc., a provider of ethics and compliance learning solutions. He can be contacted at info@eliinc.com.

Posted on

Stressed JetBlue Attendant Apparently Not Flying Solo

The JetBlue flight attendant who cursed out a belligerent passenger before sliding down the plane’s emergency chute Monday, August 9, has become something of a folk hero to stressed-out workers as well as worn-out and ticked-off frequent fliers across the country.


Stephen Slater, the 38-year-old JetBlue steward, has been charged with several felonies, including reckless endangerment and criminal mischief for his impromptu escape from the aircraft shortly after his flight landed at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport from Pittsburgh. Slater was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court on Tuesday morning and released on bail that evening.


According to his court appointed lawyer, Howard Turman of the Legal Aid Society, Slater said a passenger had been verbally and physically abusive and openly defied flight-attendant instructions. Slater also alleged that the passenger intentionally hit him in the head with the lid of an overhead baggage compartment, and that he fled the aircraft to avoid further conflict.


Following his expletive-filled rant over the plane’s loudspeaker, Slater grabbed his bags—and a couple of beers—and slid down the inflatable slide.


“It’s the kind of thing you dream about doing,” said Brett Snyder, founder of the travel blog CrankyFlier.com. “It wasn’t professional behavior at all, but flight attendants are people too. He was obviously having a really, really bad day.”


Slater’s antics were extreme, but the incident is by no means isolated, according to industry experts.


“There are more people reacting to anger triggers now than ever before, in every part of the airline industry,” said Alan Sirowitz, director of clinical services at JFK Advanced Medical, a health center at the airport. “There are people who intentionally annoy flight attendants, and have an attitude of taking advantage of them because of their own stress factors.”


Sirowitz said that he did not witness the incident so he could not speak to particulars of this case. But he said that there are plenty of incidents that occur and are not reported because flight protocol is followed correctly and the situation is diffused.


JFK Advanced Medical recently launched an employee-assistance support services program to provide aviation workers community with counselors and programs for issues such as anger management, anxiety, depression and substance-abuse counseling.


“Airports are very stressful places,” he said. “Frustration on both sides—passengers and employees—is part of the equation.”


Crowded planes, extra charges and delays add to passenger frustrations, and flight-crew concessions, pay cuts and concern about their jobs on an everyday basis compound the situation.


“You can be prepared to hear about more of these incidents occurring,” Sirowitz said.


JetBlue Airways, the No. 1 passenger carrier at JFK, issued a statement confirming the incident, adding, “There were no injuries and all customers deplaned the aircraft safely through the jetway. At this time, we are working with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to investigate the incident. At no time was the security or safety of our Customers or Crewmembers at risk.”  


Filed by Hilary Potkewitz of Crain’s New York Business, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.


 


Stay informed and connected. Get human resources news and HR features via Workforce Management’s Twitter feed or RSS feeds for mobile devices and news readers.

Posted on

The Only Question You Need to Figure Out Who Owns Your Culture

In management, we often make things harder than they need to be. Things like culture, engagement and the Gallup 12 are good examples.


We’ve heard so much about employee engagement that the mere term has become a bit of a buzzword to many in the talent game. The mention of engagement alone can cause a cynical, jaded reaction among HR leaders (when no one is watching and the cameras are off, mind you).


After all, how do you measure engagement? How do you find time to chase engagement initiatives in addition to everything else you have on your plate? What’s the ROI of engagement work?


It’s easy to talk about engagement, but it’s harder to measure. It’s even harder to do well and feel like you have your arms around the concept as an HR leader.


There’s a simpler way.


No doubt you want to build the best culture possible at your company, which requires employee engagement (or whatever you choose to call it). Regardless of how you define your culture, you can find out what your employees really think and what they value culturally by asking the following simple question: If you could pick any manager (other than the one you currently report to) in the company to work for (regardless of functional area), who would it be and why?


It’s a no-BS question you should add to your next employee survey that cuts straight to the heart of what people want out of your company. Culture isn’t defined by a cool workspace, by free lunches and soda, or by the stuff you put in the onboarding packet. Those things help to attract talent and are nice to have, but they quickly become entitlements.


You are not the car you drive or the perks you pump up your recruiting collateral with. Your company is, however, only as good as your managers allow you to be.


You lose control of your culture once your managers take delivery of talent in the new-hire process. At that point, an employee’s experience with your culture is heavily influenced by their day-to-day interactions with their manager.


My bet is if you ask the “Who else would you like to work for?” question and review the results in a group of manageable size, you’ll find some common names popping up all over the place.


Employees talk. They know who’s good with people, who’s fair and who has a nice balance between business results and development of team members.


The equation is pretty simple: Fairness plus people skills plus balance between business results and employee development equals the culture your employees truly value.


When I talk to my peers about the impact of frontline manager effectiveness and the potential of this question from an engagement and cultural perspective, objections consistently differ between large and small companies. The big companies claim that the “Who else would you like to work for?” question isn’t scalable to their enterprise level needs. The small companies claim that they already know the answer.


Both responses are wrong.

For big companies, there’s no question that employee reactions to the question can’t be effectively reviewed in raw form. However, it’s easy to imagine a progressive HR team taking a page from the marketing playbook and developing a form of “buyer personas” from the trends identified.


Buyer personas help marketers understand buyer needs and thus market more effectively to them. Why wouldn’t a big company ask the “Who else would you like to work for?” question, then develop a form of “manager personas” detailing the trended traits and skills of the managers the polled employees identified?


Imagine a world where you developed those personas, evaluated your existing managers to see which profile each had the best chance of emulating, and then developed a customized development plan to help those managers match up with that persona? It could be scary good.


Small companies are simpler in their objections to using the “Who else would you like to work for?” question, claiming they already know the answer. Of course, that’s not true.


Those in charge at small companies know who they would like to work for, not who their employees would like to work for. Don’t believe me? If you’re in a company with more than 20 managers, ask the question and I’ll guarantee you that you’ll be surprised by at least one trend in the results.


Ask the question, and then look at the names of the managers that come up repeatedly. Look at their style and philosophy, then figure out how to push, prod and train your other managers to embody some of the traits identified.


The question doesn’t lie, and it’s brutally honest because how it’s written (anyone other than who you report to) releases the employee responding from saying, “I’d take my manager,” because we all know that’s the politically correct answer.


Ask the question. Learn who is really driving your culture.


I bet you’ll be surprised.


Workforce Management Online, July 2010 — Register Now!

Posted on

Dear Workforce How Do We Persuade Management to Create Flex Schedules?

Dear Not Nimble:

Here are some facts from your statement, slightly rearranged:

1) Your company does not have a formal flex policy.
2) Some departments use flex schedules anyway.
3) You work in human resources.
4) You view flextime as a benefit and want your department to get the benefit, too.
5) You seek assistance in designing a pitch to your line executive.

To start: Instead of trying to see how flextime can benefit you, see how it can benefit your customers. Start with an important business need in which a flextime schedule would improve some aspect of customer service.

The human resources department is visible to all in the company. Limit your self-interest and you will build more respect for the HR function. Don’t make flextime simply about the HR department.

During my 20 years as head of HR for an S&P 500 company—incidentally an early adopter of flextime—we followed a guideline that our HR people would not have the most favorable cases for any company benefit. We (and most others) found that flextime could not be structured the same for research scientists, manufacturing assemblers, building maintenance mechanics, administrative services like HR and others..

Real-world examples: Our assemblers liked to start early (together), take short breaks and leave at 3:30 p.m. That fit their work pattern. Service functions needed long hours of coverage. Those departments tended to have some early starters, some later, with all present during “core hours” from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

To get your proposal together:

1) Forget about the most exotic flextime alternatives, like 4/40 schedules, three-day weeks and so on. Start with a business problem that has a natural, rational link to a flextime solution. Think of some ugly problem that your customers complain about or some service improvement that might be achieved by a conservative use of flextime.

2) Come up with the most concrete business rationale you can.

3) Do your research to be absolutely sure that nothing in your proposal violates or fudges any Fair Labor Standards Act rules or applicable state laws, especially for nonexempts (overtime-eligible employees).

4) Rather than box in your vice president of HR with a formal memo, meet briefly face to face after you have developed a business rationale for flextime. .

SOURCE: Harold Fethe, organizational consultant, Half Moon Bay, California, June 1, 2010.

LEARN MORE: Be aware of changes to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act that address flexible scheduling issues.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

Workforce Management Online, July 2010 — Register Now!

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

Ask a Question
 Dear Workforce Newsletter
Posted on

Social Media Sites Still Emerging as Benefits Tools

Benefits consultants continue to encourage employers to integrate Internet-based social media tools into their benefits communications campaigns despite a survey finding that many workers are not yet ready to embrace the communications channel for that purpose.


The survey, released this month by the Washington-based National Business Group on Health, found that even though 47 percent of U.S. workers regularly use social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter daily for personal reasons, three-quarters said they were not interested in receiving benefits information from their employers via those websites.


“Because we hear so much about social media … we’re made to feel that we’re out of it if we’re doing the old-fashioned things like home mailings,” says Helen Darling, president of the Washington-based NBGH, a consortium of nearly 300 large U.S. employers. “But even the youngest employees prefer receiving communications the old-fashioned way.”


In fact, less than 20 percent of employees younger than 34 said they would like to receive information such as how to choose a health plan or diet and exercise tips via Facebook, according to the survey, which was conducted in March and included responses from some 1,500 employees 22 to 64.


Based on the survey, Darling recommended that employers test the use of social media before adopting it for their entire employee populations. She also warned against abandoning traditional methods of benefits communications, including print and e-mail correspondence.


Benefits communications specialists, however, said the survey’s findings may not accurately reflect employees’ attitudes toward the use of social media to deliver benefits information simply because they are not used to getting such information that way. Only recently have employers begun using social networking tools, and most of the communications thus far have been focused on external marketing and recruiting.


“I think a lot of people have less experience with these new channels in the context of getting benefits information. It would be like asking people if they wanted to get their news via television when television just came out. They’d probably say no; they prefer reading the newspaper,” says Jim Hoff, a principal and solutions and innovations leader at Hewitt Associates Inc. in Lincolnshire, Illinois. But “as new generations come into the workforce who are more comfortable with those tools, we are likely to see greater acceptance.”


Jennifer Benz, CEO and founder of San Francisco-based Benz Communications, says the findings demonstrate that social media should not be used to supplant other forms of benefits communications.


“It reinforces that social media is not a strategy in itself. You cannot replace other forms of communication with social media. It’s a new tool to communicate more frequently in a way that is cost-effective. So it supplements other communications activities,” Benz says.


For example, some of her clients have been using Twitter to link to their corporate intranet that houses their benefits information.


“So much of this has to be multichannel,” Hoff says. “If you ask employees, ‘Do you want to get something by Twitter or Facebook?’ they may say no, as opposed to if you ask if they would like it to be one of the channels in a broader communications campaign.”


Hoff suggested that employers continue to publish complicated information, such as summary plan descriptions or annual enrollment packages, in print or on a corporate intranet, but that they consider conveying brief, less-complicated messages, such as reminders that the enrollment deadline is approaching, via Twitter with a link to the corporate site.


Some employers, such as Armonk, New York-based IBM Corp. and Minneapolis-based Best Buy Co. Inc., have been using enterprise software products similar to Facebook and Twitter to communicate benefits and other business-related information on their corporate intranets. For example, Yammer functions very much like Twitter, while Jive acts like a corporate Facebook, allowing employees to create user profiles.


By using internal tools that mirror external tools, employers can take advantage of employees’ familiarity with them while still keeping the information private, Hoff says.


“It’s closed and within their firewalls,” he says.


It also enables employees to communicate with their co-workers without having to go to the Internet, access to which some companies have blocked to prevent distractions, Hoff adds.


Further interpreting the survey’s findings, Lisa O’Driscoll, senior communications consultant at Towers Watson & Co. in San Francisco, suggested that some employees may have an aversion to the use of social media for benefits communications because they want to keep their work and personal lives separate.


“There is a difference between what an individual does on their own time and what they do while at work,” O’Driscoll says. “If you’re stressed and you don’t feel you have work/life balance, do you really want to wake up in the morning and get a reminder from your employer to eat oatmeal for breakfast?”


Workforce Management Online, July 2010 — Register Now!

Posted on

How Many Round Pegs Do You Need

It’s a buyer’s market for talent. Front pages of major newspapers carry stories of hordes of applicants available for each job opening. Beyond that, research finds dissatisfaction among people who have been continuously employed. So if you don’t like who has shown up from the unemployed labor pool, the best talent at a competitor is likely to be receptive to a phone call as well.


But indications are that the typical recruitment strategy has changed little. It continues to emphasize fitting “round pegs into round holes,” when companies should be rethinking both pegs and holes.


In other words, the human resources function has an unusual opportunity in this environment. Small shifts in hiring strategy can strengthen teams, anticipate growth and mitigate departmental weaknesses. Groundbreaking research by Stanford University professor Douglass Wilde points to the path to take.


Several years ago, Wilde conducted an experiment in which students in an engineering competition were guided through a team-formation exercise that selected for dissimilar problem-solving styles, based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a popular system of personality types. In the 13 previous years, Stanford students had entered the same engineering competition. Consistently, a quarter of the teams won awards. Wilde’s belief was that those teams, with no particular strategy for team formation, ended up with too-homogeneous teams and narrow problem-solving approaches.


A dramatic improvement followed over the course of a decade. Nearly three-quarters of teams formed via Wilde’s method won awards—triple the productivity of the earlier baseline. Especially convincing, Wilde says, was one year in the middle of the process, when he went on a sabbatical. The process reverted to random self-selection. The results? Back to only one-quarter of the teams receiving awards.


What does that have to do with recruiting? Many teams in the world of work have learned to live with pesky skill and performance deficits that have become part of “the way we do things around here.” An open requisition for a new hire can be an opportunity to rebalance those old equations and set the stage for better team performance.


In this market, hiring managers often have a range of very good finalists for any given job—any one of the top two or three could probably do the job pretty well. Among those finalists may be someone with some skills or a problem-solving style that are complementary to the norms of the existing team. Do you need someone in your work group who’s a good writer, a common deficit in the business world? Or someone with diplomacy and verbal communication skills, to help broker the services of your excellent—but quiet—technical staff, and communicate the customers’ expectations back in tech-speak?


Too much radical innovation from HR can create havoc, or induce resistance from a hiring manager. To keep the innovative spirit in balance, here are some guidelines for engaging the favorable talent market to balance teams’ narrow skill sets:


• Ask the hiring manager what skill or work-style shortages he or she is living with, and what interpersonal style or ancillary skills would address the deficits. Some terms from Wilde’s research to describe key attributes: organization; knowledge; imagination; analysis; evaluation. Where’s your deficit?


• Apply the supplemental-skills test to only a few top applicants. That way, if you select the applicant who brings an additional, complementary skill, and that part doesn’t pan out, you still have a good conventional performer.


• Don’t undercut the hiring manager’s final word on which applicant should get the offer. It is bad client relations, and it will undermine your ability to innovate in the future.


With a little strategic thinking, you may be able to strengthen or diversify the skill sets in key functions. You may raise awareness, and help a manager reimagine how the department could work. And you’ll be able to say that you didn’t go through this historic buyer’s market for talent on autopilot, doing little more than fitting round pegs into round holes.


Workforce Management Online, July 2010 — Register Now!

Posted on

Employees and E-Mail Privacy Rights

Marina Stengart, while employed by Loving Care Agency Inc., a home health care provider, was given a company laptop to use for work-related projects. Loving Care’s electronic communication policy provided it could review, audit and access all matters on its computers, including e-mail messages.


Stengart used the company laptop to communicate with her attorney about work-related concerns but used her personal e-mail account to do so. Unknown to her, Loving Care had browser software that copied all those e-mails.


After Stengart resigned in January 2008, she sued Loving Care for employment discrimination and wrongful termination. Loving Care hired computer experts to image the hard drive from Stengart’s laptop, read Stengart’s e-mails that she exchanged with her lawyer, and used information in those e-mails to defend against her lawsuit.


Claiming that Stengart had a reasonable expectation of privacy in her communications with her lawyer and that the e-mails were attorney-client privileged, Stengart’s attorney demanded return of the e-mails.


The New Jersey Supreme Court agreed, and held that the company’s lawyers had no right to read the messages between Stengart and her lawyer and violated state rules of professional conduct in doing so. In response to Loving Care’s claim that its electronic communication policy permitted its access, the court found that the policy did not address whether the company could review personal Web-based e-mail accounts.


“The policy does not address personal accounts at all. … [E]mployees do not have express notice that messages … are subject to monitoring if company equipment is used.”


Moreover, even a clearly written company manual could never permit an employer to review an employee’s attorney-client communications. Stengart v. Loving Care Agency, Inc. N.J. No. A-16-09 (3/30/10).


Impact: Employers are advised to review their electronic communications policies and ensure that such policies clearly communicate the employer’s rules and expectations involving company e-mail and personal password-protected e-mail.


Workforce Management, June 2010, p. 10 — Subscribe Now!


The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.