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Report from SHRM - Day 3

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Dear HR Executive:

Here's our SHRM Day 3 report from Dave Clemens, Editor-in-Chief of B21's newsletter Human Resources 21.

Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher

Report from SHRM Report -- Day 3

LAS VEGAS, June 26, 2007 -- I had planned another multi-themed post today, but when I sat down to write, one presentation by Gerry Crispin of CareerXRoads stood out.

His talk -- "Improve Your Online Candidate Experience and Win Quality Hires" -- dealt with companies' own websites, specifically their staffing or recruiting pages. So if you're interested only in recruiting through job boards or other third-party providers, you needn't read on.

The candidate as consumer
The power of Crispin's thought is two-fold: First, it's based on exhaustive examination and data collection on best and worst practices among companies, both cutting edge and not so. Second, it considers the job seeker as a multifaceted human being, not simply somebody looking for work. Specifically, he points out, that person who's starting to poke around your website thinking she might be interested in working for you, is probably also a consumer who has some experience buying or receiving customer service online. And as a consumer, she's probably gotten used to some pretty exceptional service.

Crispin gave the example of his business partner, who, having sent in a $3 rebate coupon for a bag of lawn fertilizer, was astounded to get a series of e-mails from a CSR at the lawn care company walking him through all the stages of his $3 check's passage through the corporate "digestive system." The partner first got an e-mail introducing the CSR -- Jerry -- then another e-mail when the coupon was processed, another when the check was cut, another when it was mailed, and a final one asking whether it had arrived.

So what's Crispin's point? If this same person then went to your website to apply for a job, and never got any acknowledgment of his application, or got only a form acknowledgement, HE MIGHT BE DISAPPOINTED!

And if he were disappointed, recent data suggests, he'd probably tell at least three other people -- maybe also potential recruits for you -- about his bad experience. You have enough trouble recruiting qualified people to not want to create more.

4 aspects of a top-class site
Crispin says building a top-class recruiting/staffing site or page means doing four things well. They are:

1. Target. The potential applicant needs to see evidence that you are looking specifically for him or her. What's this evidence? A couple of examples (these are from big companies but there's no reason a smaller company couldn't follow):
   
   Schneider National, the big trucking line, features pictures of couples on its driver recruitment page. And they take pains to make sure one of the couples is an older man and woman. No surprise: Many of Schneider's drivers, by the company's choice, are retired couples driving together. McGraw Hill has an "en español" button on its main staffing page. And Micron Technology flies an American flag atop the phrase "transitioning from the military." So-so websites, by contrast, don't make clear whether you're likely to be the kind of person they want, or not.
   
2. Engage. Key to this point is telling your potential applicants why people join your company and why they stay. Crispin noted that of the Fortune 500 companies, 55% have no such statement on their websites, while another 16% have only a clichéd statement like, "because we're the best at what we do." Only 24% of these websites contain a specific statement or statements on why people sign up and then stay. A great technique for conveying this message is a series of profiles of employees explaining why they joined and still enjoy being there. These can use either still photography or video, if you want to make it fancy.
   
3. Inform. Here you need to provide data and other hard facts to support the claims you've put forward at the engagement stage, Crispin says. If you don't, you risk having big retention problems farther down the line. You may want to provide information on awards and recognition won by your company, career progression of people like the person you're wooing, the company's social responsibility commitment, employee testimonials, mission statement, diversity statistics, benefits and FAQs. (Crispin cautions that these should be real FAQs asked by previous applicants, not questions you make up.)
   
   Some companies have gone much farther, providing such experiences as job-shadowing streaming videos where potential applicants actually watch somebody doing the job they're interested in, and virtual simulations of situations someone in the job might encounter -- like an unfriendly person getting ready to slam the door on a salesperson. With any or all of these elements, you're answering the candidate's question, "How do I know I want to work here?" Crispin says people want a job description they can understand, to glean realistic expectations about day-to-day activities, and to know what rewards they can expect if they succeed.
   
4. Respect. This entails six actions by the company, Crispin says:

• Acknowledging all actions the potential candidate or applicant takes.
• Telling them what comes next.
• Promising to protect the privacy of their data.
• Offering them updates on their status.
• Telling them if the company plans to screen them.
• Telling them what it takes to complete the application process, immediately or later.

A final point
It doesn't hurt if potential candidates can click through very quickly to the page they want, from the page where they originally landed -- usually your main corporate page.

Crispin says that of the Fortune 500 companies, only 2 percent have websites that allow people to arrive at a specific job description within 1-2 clicks. Another 16% needed three clicks, while 39% required four clicks and 24% five clicks. The rest either had no staffing page, published only generic job descriptions with no specific openings, or required applicants to use six or more clicks.

This "click factor" is one reason why SHRM is pushing the new .jobs domain category that it helped create. SHRM says more than 1,000 companies nationwide have adopted the .jobs category in an effort to make it easier for applicants to find staffing pages without clicking here, there and everywhere on an employer's other pages.

RISK-FREE TRIAL -- ONLINE TRAINING LIBRARY FOR HR AND MANAGERS: Want to learn about an amazingly effective and affordable way to train yourself, your HR staff and your managers and supervisors? Sign up for a risk-free trial to the HR Cafe Training Center Online. It's a powerful resource that allows HR executives to deploy high-impact training modules effortlessly throughout their organizations. Want to see what it's about before you sign up for a trial? Check out just one program from the huge library of content in the HR Cafe. It's a six-minute "Quick Take" training module called "Why 95% of Training Doesn't Stick."

Report from SHRM - Day 2

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Dear HR Executive:

Here's our SHRM Day 2 report from Dave Clemens, Editor-in-Chief of B21's newsletter Human Resources 21. He plucked some great insights into how to handle people in various stages of their employment cycle at your company.

Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher

Report from SHRM -- Day 2

LAS VEGAS, June 26, 2007 -- As anyone who's attended a large conference like SHRM knows, attendees intent on learning from expert presenters must cope with an embarrassment of choices.

Almost 200 enticingly labeled presentations -- who could resist titles like "Employee Where Art Thou" or "More Stupid COBRA Tricks"? -- are available during two-and-a-half days of concurrent sessions in every nook and cranny of the Las Vegas Convention Center and the adjacent Hilton. This year, SHRM offered six core tracks: innovation, employment, HR and the law, skill development, strategic management and total rewards, not to mention a Masters Series led by big names like Linda Gratton and Rita Gunther McGrath, as well as Senior Practitioner Spotlight sessions featuring HR oldies but goodies.

Since even the most zealous HR self-improver can't exceed four sessions a day, tough decisions have to be made. I made mine on Monday according to what I hoped was a unified theme (although it's possible my theme might have been simply an after-the-fact rationalization for picking random sessions that most appealed to me.)

Anyway, I found myself touching on three stages of an employee's "life cycle" -- from hire to performance development/issues to termination, or morning, noon and night, if you will. I sat in on presentations telling HR how to approach aspects of each in the optimal way.

Morning
My morning started with "So Happy to Be Here -- Now What?" Angela Hills, a senior VP with BlessingWhite in Chicago, gave participants a method for better "onboarding" of new employees. Onboarding is what some people call orientation, with the added element of new employee coaching/training so as to get new hires up to speed as fast and efficiently as possible. Fail in your onboarding efforts, Hills warned, and you risk incurring either high turnover costs or productivity losses, or both.

Here's the thing about onboarding that companies regularly miss, according to Hills -- what people want most from the job they just took is interesting, meaningful work, but the employer often doesn't structure their initial experiences with that in mind. They didn't take the job because they wanted to be instructed on where the bathroom is, or where they should park their cars. And yet this kind of material, indispensable as it may be for new employees, is too often all they get during their introduction to the place where they're hoping to spend some years of their lives.

Hills suggested that companies will want to move beyond these basics of onboarding by focusing on three stages:

1. Affirmation -- feeding and confirming the new employee's hope that he made the right choice, through planned positive interaction with new colleagues,
2. Fit -- this is longer-term affirmation, where the company, led by the employee's manager, models the culture to which the company aspires, and
3. The Job -- through development of a work plan done collaboratively by the employee and his or her manager.

In onboarding, Hills sums up, the employee is the driver, the manager is the navigator, and HR is On-Star -- on call should problems occur that neither employee nor manager can handle.

Oh, and don't do what one company Hills knows did. One employee reporting for her first day of work was sent home by security guards because her new manager was offsite that day and had forgotten to tell anybody else she was coming in...

Noon
We're talking High Noon here, or the showdown that can occur when it's time to discipline an employee. Randy Pennington of Pennington Performance Group in Dallas says discipline doesn't have to be an adversarial proceeding.

The problem with most systems of discipline, progressive or otherwise, is that they're based on the idea that fear of losing a job will cause an employee to change, according to Pennington. And especially today, that's just not always so. "It's too easy to walk across the street and get a new job, in this labor market," he says.

The most effective discipline occurs, Pennington claims, when the company sees discipline as part of the development of its employees. Discipline, he says, is just one part of building superior performance -- the part that takes place when the performer has failed to meet expectations.

In traditional disciplinary systems, the responsibility for changing performance lies with managers. In the best systems, Pennington avers, the responsibility lies collaboratively with managers and the employees themselves. "Once you focus on building manager-employee relationships, the managers will earn the right to have these difficult conversations and to expect the employees to listen," he says.

Key questions to ask yourself in building an effective discipline program are, according to Pennington:

1. How will performance be categorized? According to attendance, safety, personal effectiveness, productivity, other factors?
2. How will the company reinforce improvement?
3. How long will corrective action levels remain active?
4. How will documentation and approvals be handled?

Night
Termination, to wax poetic, is the nightfall of the employee life cycle. And Marc McElhaney of Critical Response Associates in Atlanta points out that employees sometimes refuse to go gentle into that good night. As a result, he says, employers need to be more aware than ever of the possibility of violence or disruption bursting out during or after -- up to years after -- a troubled worker's termination.

Employers, he says, need to consider (before they act) how a termination is going to affect the employee involved. Depending on the employee's personality and situation, the employer, with HR taking a key role, should engage this four-part procedure to make sure the termination can be carried out safely:

1. Pause. McElhaney notes that employers are too often hasty in getting rid of someone they have suddenly perceived as potentially dangerous or disruptive. But if the employee has been around for a while, his danger probably isn't going to increase significantly while you slow down and make sure you've got all your bases covered. After all, McElhaney says, termination is your last chance to manage the situation -- once he's out the door, you have few handles on him.
2. Confer. If you've had doubts or bad gut feelings about someone, others may have too. Bounce your impressions off managers and/or your peers. Information may surface about his prior conduct that nobody thought to mention until now.
3. Assess. It helps to have a team assess the level of threat the person may or may not pose. Managers, HR, security and legal people are logical members. At-risk terminations are too complicated and potentially perilous to handle alone. Make sure that before you act, you understand the risks of various courses of action, and also those of not acting.
4. Plan. Depending on the situation, this may involve what McElhaney calls Control, Contain and Stabilize. To achieve these ends, you may want to have the threatening employee remain home, with pay, while you ascertain what to do. You may want to take his direct supervisor out of the equation, and instead call in someone from HR, a higher corporate level, or even an outside mediator.

Your plan should cover such issues as who does the termination, where you do it, when you do it (McElhaney warns against Fridays, which leave the person a weekend to brood and, perhaps, get fired up on drink or drugs), and what the physical setting should be so as to minimize risk (i.e., don't be cornered in the room, don't leave objects about that could be thrown).

It should also cover what exit route/process the person will be asked to follow afterward, future security issues (do you need to hire extra security, should someone seek a restraining order), your duty to warn other employees who may be targeted in anger by the fired employee, and whether the terminated person is likely to respect the boundaries you've set up against inappropriate future contact with former co-workers.

And by the way, we're not just talking about male employees here. McElhaney says that while men used to account for more than 90% of potentially threatening terminations, the figure is now more like 70%. Women, it seems, are catching up as risks as they catch up in other, more positive aspects of workplace life.

Report from SHRM - Day 1

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Dear HR Executive:

Here's a report from B21's correspondent at the SHRM conference, Dave Clemens, Editor-in-Chief of our newsletter Human Resources 21.

Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher

Report from SHRM -- Day 1

LAS VEGAS: JUNE 25, 2007 -- It's official -- SHRM's 2007 annual conference is the biggest gathering ever of HR professionals, the organization announced Sunday at the start of the four-day event in Las Vegas.

As SHRM also pointed out, big -- no, let's come right out and say excessive -- is what Vegas is all about. So having 20,000 or so HR people under one roof at the Vegas Convention Center somehow fits right in to the local ethos.

A couple of statistics shared by a SHRM spokesman at the opening orientation session on Sunday:

1. The largest jackpot ever won in Vegas was $39 million-plus -- unfortunately, not by an HR person! It was a 25-year-old software engineer.
2. Some 60,000 pounds of shrimp are consumed every day by hungry tourists and others in the City in the Desert.

SHRM didn't give any statistics on the amount of bottled water it expects conference attendees to guzzle, but I'll bet it will be a huge number. An unofficial conference theme is... hydration. With summer temperatures soaring to 105 degrees and a hot desert wind blowing, HR people will have bottles to their lips constantly for the next four days.

Keynote speech
Which conjures up a vision of 7-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong reaching down to his bike frame to grab another bottle of water. Armstrong was today's opening keynote speaker.

Unlike Armstrong, most HR people have never had to haul themselves and a bike up three or four 10,000-foot passes over a 150-mile mountain stage. But sometimes dealing with an employee who's late every other day, or trying to explain to an especially obtuse manager why he shouldn't call female subordinates "Toots," can feel just about as exhausting. So maybe Armstrong's message of persistence and endurance will carry weight with the HR crowd.

Armstrong's current challenge, he told attendees, is eliminating cancer in his lifetime through the efforts of his foundation and other concerned Americans. Having survived advanced cancer and then climbed to the top level in his sport afterward, he said he'd want "cancer survivor" engraved proudly on his tombstone one day, while "won some bike races" could be left off.

Armstrong encouraged SHRM members to attack their challenges with the same spirit he's come to personify. He didn't mention HR-specific challenges, but SHRM's new mission statement -- also unveiled today -- alludes to a very big one: persuading CEOs that HR can provide critical support for the achievement of key corporate goals.

A recent worldwide survey by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu indicates that top executives still have their doubts about HR's strategic value. But maybe if Lance Armstrong can do what he's done, HR people can prove the doubters of its broader mission wrong, too.

Vendor highlights
Vendors of recruitment and applicant screening tools took pride of place at the exposition accompanying the SHRM conference.

As a member of one vendor's booth team put it: "The unemployment rate is low and qualified personnel are harder than ever to find. So employers are desperate for solutions. At the same time, they don't want to hire people who misrepresent themselves or who have a sketchy past." 

Online job boards -- Monster, CareerBuilder, Yahoo Jobs and Jobing.com among them -- mounted the biggest and glitziest displays, luring attendees with contests for prizes ranging up to a Toyota Prius, and big-name presenters leading sessions to rival those in the core conference sessions.

Other vendors, like SmartSearch and Sonic Recruit, offer better ways of managing the vast pools of resumes and other applicant data that the Internet makes available to employers seeking to fill positions. And employee verification/screening firms -- ranging from Sterling Testing Services to Justifacts to employeescreenIQ -- promise to vet your applicants for everything from county criminal records to sex offender registry entries to dubious claims of educational qualifications. Some providers -- like ChoicePoint and HRsmart -- merge the management and screening functions.

For sheer memorability, though, nobody at the exposition beat screening firm Employment Background Investigations. Perhaps mirroring the Alice in Wonderland quality of some job applicants' elaborate deceptions, EBI offered free orange-colored Mad Hatter floppy top hats that dozens of conference-goers strolled the aisles wearing. Did everybody just want to put on a silly hat? Nope. EBI pasted "playing card" stickers on the hats (remember the Queen of Hearts in Alice?) and offered free i-Pods to any pair of attendees who found each other and brought their matching stickers back to the booth. Great marketing ploy.

HR visitors from abroad
Among those 20,000 SHRM-ers at the opening plenary session were the first delegations ever from India and China, SHRM CEO Susan Meisinger said. Individual delegates from these new economic powers have attended before, but not as groups. Somewhere between 20 and 40 people from each of the Asian giants came to Vegas.

SHRM's initiatives in those countries aren't just aimed at teaching American HR techniques to local people. The organization believes Americans can learn from how India and China handle the human resource challenges of the kind of hyper-growth many companies in these countries are experiencing.

Apparently, though, not all the foreign delegations that might otherwise have turned out actually did so. Meisinger -- who said Vegas was way too hot for her, temperature-wise -- said sponsors of some would-be foreign attendees considered the town too hot in other ways, and refused to send them.

New research: How men and women differ
SHRM published new research studies during the conference, on benefits, e-recruiting and job satisfaction. The single most striking point, in our view: There's an immense gender-specific difference in what male and female employees consider the top aspect of job satisfaction. Some 59% of men said it was health care and medical benefits. But fully 63% of women said feeling safe at work contributed more to their job satisfaction than any other factor. Feeling safe didn't register in the top five for men.

SHRM's research people said they weren't certain what caused this sharp difference. But they speculated that women might feel particularly vulnerable to perceived threats of terrorism or other perils bursting into the workplace from outside. (The question wasn't aimed at perceptions of workplace safety in the OSHA sense.)

SHRM also said that for employees at companies with under 500 employees, a feeling of safety was key to job satisfaction for both men and women. And across the board, over-55 employees considered this feeling the main key to satisfaction with their jobs.

Takeaway: Maybe HR people in general need to be more proactive in communicating to employees what employers have done to safeguard their people from external threats.

Stay tuned for another report tomorrow.
Dave Clemens, Editor-in-Chief, Human Resources 21

Top-10 excuses for missing work

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Dear HR Executive:

When I was skiing in Bozeman, Montana last February the locals told me that on big powder days a light flashes on top of a building in town. That's the signal, of course, for thousands of workers to call in sick and hit the slopes before the "cold smoke" turns to crud.

I'm sure those Bozemanians are brilliant at coming up with excuses. Just for a laugh, here are the lamest (and funniest) excuses I could find:

Top 10 Excuses for not coming into work today:

10: I've used up all my sick days... so I'm calling in dead.

9. I foiled a terrorist attack on the way to work today. I know Jack Bauer would be there, but I need to rest.

8. I thought that I'd be more productive if I didn't come in today.

7. I left my car keys at work last night.

6. I can't come in to work today. I went skydiving over the weekend and my chute didn't open.

5. I can't come to work today (Wednesday) because my father is going to die tomorrow.

4. I can't come to work today (Friday) because my father did not die on Thursday. He's waiting until Monday.

3. I will not be to work today as I have a headache and do not want to give it to anyone else.

2. I dropped my car keys in the snow and I'm waiting for the temperature to warm up so I can find them.

And now, the #1 excuse for not going to work:

1. My wife's going to get pregnant and I want to be there.

Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher

Exclusive B21 survey: Independent contractors

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Dear HR Executive:

B21 editors are reporting in our newsletters that the General Accounting Office thinks the Department of Labor has been soft on enforcement of independent contractor regulations.

That means the DOL is going to start cracking down. B21 conducted an exclusive survey to see whether HR execs feel they're compliant with DOL regs. Here are the results:

How confident are you that if the DOL arrived at your door tomorrow you'd be found compliant with regs on the use of Independent Contractors?

• No problem. We're definitely compliant -- 54%
• I think we're compliant, but I'm not absolutely sure -- 41%
• It wouldn't surprise me if we got fined -- 5%

My read of this poll is that nearly half of HR execs surveyed aren't very confident they're in compliance, and they're vulnerable to penalties and lawsuits. Might be a good time to examine all your contractor relationships to make sure you're clean. Here's a helpful article from B21's newsletter Human Resources 21. And at the bottom of this post you'll find the DOL's trusty "20-Point Test" to determine independent contractor status. Read on.

Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher

Watch out: Feds get tougher on independent contractors

Crackdown coming on companies that misclassify workers

From now on, you need to make doubly sure the independent contractors you give 1099s are truly independent and not employees subject to withholding and W-2s.

If you misclassify employees as contractors in the future, it's likely the company will get socked with greater tax liabilities and penalties than ever.

It's up to the DOL to make sure employees covered by minimum wage and overtime regs are not fraudulently or mistakenly classified. And DOL is under pressure to do a better job of it, as a result of an ongoing GAO probe into lax DOL procedures.

To be safe, payroll experts recommend using two tests the federal courts apply:

1. Economic realities. If the worker depends heavily on your company for a livelihood, doesn't have other customers or have a significant investment, chances are they'll be considered an employee.
2. Control test. This test looks at how much the employer controls the way the worker does the job, the working hours on site, and whether or not the company supplies tools or equipment. The greater the control, the more likely the person is an employee.

Note: To help preserve contractor status, have contractors submit invoices and pay them just like other vendors.
Info: www.irs.gov; www.taxprophet.comInfo: www.dol.gov

An additional resource: At the bottom of this post we provide the DOL's "20 Point Test" for determining independent contractor status. See below.

The 20-Point Test for Independent Contractors
Every HR person should be aware of the government's "20-Point Test" to determine if an employee is independent or not. Here are the 20 points:

1. Continuing Relationship - Independent contractors do not have a continuous working relationship with a single employer.

2. Working for More then One Contractor - Independent contractors perform services for more than one entity at the same time.

3. Availability to the General Public - Independent contractors offer their services to the general public on a regular basis.

4. Instruction - Independent contractors do not receive instructions on how to perform and accomplish a job.

5. Training - Independent contractors do not receive training on how to complete a job.

6. Personally Rendered Services - Independent contractors have the right to hire employees or contract with other entities to perform actual jobs.

7. Payment - Independent contractors are paid by the job.

8. Business Expenses - Independent contractors are responsible for their own expenses.

9. Tools and Materials - Independent contractors provide their own tools, materials and equipment to perform the job.

10. Work Location - Independent contractors are free to choose where the work will be performed.

11. Controls Over Assistance - Independent contractors are free to decide to hire assistance to accomplish a job and to control their work activities. 

12. Work Hours and Schedule - Independent contractors control their own hours and schedule for accomplishing results.

13. Full Time Work Requirement - Independent contractors are free to work when and for whom they choose.

14. Required Work Order or Sequence - Independent contractors determine the order in which they will perform the work.

15. Required Reports - A degree of control is suggested if a worker is required to submit regular oral or written reports.

16. Investments in Facilities - Independent contractors have a significant investment in facilities in the course of performing their job.

17. Profit or Loss - Independent contractors realize a profit or sustain a loss, based on the success in performing their work or service.

18. Business Succession or Continuation - operations or ability to be successful should not depend on the service of independent contractors.

19. Discharge Rights - Contracts with independent contractors cannot be terminated as long as they perform services in accordance with their contract.

20. No Compensation Liability - Independent contractors may be liable for a breach of contract if they leave without completing their work.

Preventing new-hire disasters

Dear HR Executive:

I recently attended a forum where an executive discussed a problem she had with a new hire. The fellow, a button-down MBA from a big company, was having a rough time integrating into her small, entrepreneurial company.

The MBA was hired to "professionalize" the company's systems. His boss genuinely wanted him to clean up sloppy, seat-of-the-pants processes and bring big-company discipline to her business. But six months later, despite his obvious talent, the MBA was failing. His direct reports weren't following his lead. He'd alienated key players in the organization. He wasn't "getting" the informal culture and his rigid management style rubbed people the wrong way. Even the way he dressed -- button-down shirts rather than casual polos -- grated.

What happened? This is a great example of a mismanaged transition. Integrating new people into your company is ALWAYS difficult. Even if they come from a similar company in your same industry, they'll be perceived as outsiders, and behaviors that worked fine for them elsewhere will cause clashes in your company culture. If they come from a radically different company, in a different industry, the rate of successful integration plummets, which is why we all tend to look in obvious places for people who are a perfect "fit." It's simple risk management.

The executive at the forum very intentionally took a risk and hired somebody who could bring something special to her organization. But she underestimated what it would take for him to succeed.

Imagine a "New Employee Transition Continuum", where one end reads "Sink or Swim." At this extreme, a company gives a new hire and an office and some goals and says, "figure it out." If he doesn't, he wasn't the right person for the job.

The opposite end of the continuum reads "Nurture." At this extreme, the company totally "owns" the success or failure of the new hire. His boss hovers over the new hire like a mother over her baby, protecting the person, monitoring every interaction he has for days or even weeks after he arrives, continually asking both him and his colleagues how it's going. The boss quickly spots conflicts, miscommunications and culture clashes and proactively intervenes, ensuring that the employee develops the survival skills required to succeed in the new organization.

In the end, integrating people is all about culture and values. And the stronger your company culture the harder it is to integrate outsiders. In the example above, the executive pretty much let the MBA sink or swim. If she had it to do again, she admitted, she'd have nurtured the guy much more, educating him about the company culture and what he needed to do to fit in.

Years ago I worked with a large HR consulting firm that had executive coaches who specialized in onboarding senior-level managers. They all had "Sink or Swim" horror stories that would make your hair stand up. And they could quote you the dollar losses companies incurred when new hires failed (they're staggering). But what I remember most from them was how easy it is to avoid these failures if you approach transitions intelligently.

I think it's helpful to see onboarding as similar to language immersion. During a new hire's first weeks and months, you need to immerse the person in a closely monitored learning experience that will help him understand the usage, grammar and syntax of your company culture. In some cases, you'll learn very quickly that the person can't, or won't, assimilate. But most new hires are willing and able to sing from your company hymnal, and they'll succeed if you show them how.

RISK-FREE TRIAL -- ONLINE TRAINING LIBRARY FOR HR AND MANAGERS: Want to learn about an amazingly effective and affordable way to train yourself, your HR staff and your managers and supervisors? Sign up for a risk-free trial to the HR Cafe Training Center Online. It's a powerful resource that allows HR executives to deploy high-impact training modules effortlessly throughout their organizations. Want to see what it's about before you sign up for a trial? Check out just one program from the huge library of content in the HR Cafe. It's a six-minute "Quick Take" training module called "Why 95% of Training Doesn't Stick."

Mandated wellness programs

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Dear HR Executive:

There's a new white paper floating around saying that eventually companies will force employees to participate in wellness programs. (To read it, click on the link near the bottom.)

My first reaction was, "What nonsense." But the more I thought about it, the clearer it became that it'll happen just because lawyers will make so much money.

The white paper was written by a law firm, Littler Mendelson, PC., and it lays out very nicely all the reasons why health costs are going to choke companies in the next decade. It concludes that employers will have no choice but to tell employees, "Either you get healthy, or you're going to pay your entire health premium yourself -- no more employer contribution."

An economist would applaud the elegance and efficiency of this solution -- which regulates bad behavior by making people pay for it. A pragmatist would find it an irresistible win/win -- the employer ends up paying less while the employee gets healthy and lives a longer, fuller life. What's not to like about this idea?

Where do I begin? First, let me say that I'm sidestepping the entire issue of whether it's fair to punish overweight people and smokers when the real problem may very well be our healthcare system. It's way too complex for most of us to understand, and I have no answers for fixing it. But I'm pretty sure that before companies start mandating wellness en masse, we'll have a national debate on the merits of an overhauled healthcare system. The pressure is on to deal with the costs, if only to give U.S. companies a fighting chance to compete globally. A company like General Motors, which spent $5.3 billion on health benefits last year, is at a huge competitive disadvantage, and both Democrats and Republicans now find that unacceptable.

The real reason I don't like mandated wellness is that lawyers will have a field day. Here's just a sampling of what we'll see when companies start telling people to shape up or ship out:

• Alice, under pressure from her company to lose weight or forego her health benefits, buys a Brazilian diet pill called Emagrece Sim and Herbathin over the Internet. The pills work. She gets thin. But after a year the illicit narcotics in the pills make her psychotic and she attempts suicide. She sues the company, saying she was so desperate to save her health benefits that she risked her well-being by taking dirty drugs.
• Jerry, an overweight employee, is told he must lower his weight or the company will make him pay his entire health benefits premium himself. In the cubicle next to Jerry sits an equally overweight man suffering from chronic phlebitis. He walks with a cane, can't exercise, and is considered disabled. The company has never threatened to make him pay full freight for his health benefits. Jerry can't lay off the junk food and the company pulls its monthly contribution to his benefits. Jerry sues, claiming he's being discriminated against because he's NOT disabled.
• A company has a policy saying no employee can smoke, either on the job or off. It suspects Fred of smoking and hires a private detective to follow him; sure enough, Fred gets caught on tape smoking a cigar at a pool hall. The company fires him. He sues for age discrimination, insisting that once in a blue moon he fires up a Dominican but he's not a real smoker. His main defense: he was the only person the company investigated. To be fair, his lawyers argued, the company would have to hire a PI to shadow EVERY employee.
• An employee fired for smoking files suit, saying it's unfair for the company to discriminate against smokers while its employee assistance program actually HELPS alcohol and drug abusers. Why, his lawyers argue, is tobacco use treated differently from other substances that endanger health? And shouldn't a company also fire people who skydive? Or scuba dive? Or race cars? Come to think of it, isn't that 55-year-old guy who plays softball a medical calamity just waiting to happen?
• The bottom-feeding law firm of Dewey Cheatum & Howe hires overweight people to present themselves as job candidates at companies that mandate wellness. When they get rejected, DC&W represents them in a lawsuit. The plaintiffs either lose or settle for a modest amount every time, but the companies pay huge legal fees to respond to complaints and the lawyers are fat (pardon the pun) and happy.

It's pretty easy to imagine all this stuff happening, and it makes you ill, not well. How about we all start stuffing a granola bar in employee paychecks?

Here's the link to the whitepaper, entitled, Employer Mandated Wellness Initiatives.

POST A COMMENT: If you have strong feelings about this issue, please post a comment below. We'd love to hear your thoughts.

B21 Survey Results: Paid FMLA leave

Dear HR Executive:

The defining quality of the HR function is that it's stuck in the middle. You represent the company's interests. But you also advocate for employees. The best HR execs shrewdly navigate the gray zone where employer/employee interests collide.

You've no doubt heard about recent attempts to legislate paid family and medical leave. This issue has the potential to illuminate that gray zone like none other. And HR people are going to find themselves forced to take sides. It's a tough choice. On the one hand, paid FMLA leave will cut into corporate profits. On the other, it's an immensely appealing benefit for employees -- one that raises issues of corporate and social responsibility, fairness, decency, public welfare, gender discrimination, even morality.

B21 conducted a survey to see how HR executives felt about paid FMLA leave. Are they for it? Or against it? Below is an article from B21's newsletter Human Resources 21 that lays out the poll results, discusses efforts in Congress to mandate paid FML, and includes comments in which respondents explain why they answered as they did. Read on. (And feel free to share your own thoughts adding a "comment" at the bottom of this post.)

Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher

Exclusive B21 Survey: Is Paid Family and Medical Leave a good idea? Or a bad one?

Despite the potentially staggering cost, nearly 4 in 10 HR executives surveyed by B21 are either in favor of it or “torn” by the notion that companies should be obligated to pay for family and medical leave.

In B21's survey of 170 HR professionals, only 9.5% of those responding said they thought paid FMLA leave was a good idea that employers should have to pay for. A bill that would provide such leave is to come before Congress soon.

But 29% said they were “torn” over paid FMLA leave. Respondents who commented on the issue raised both the benefits such leave would offer for employees, and the cost and potential for abuse with which it would saddle employers.

The remaining 62% of respondents said paid FMLA leave was a bad idea and firms should not have to pay for it. Here's a summary of the results:

Q. Which best describes your feelings about paid FMLA leave?

• It's a good idea and companies should be obligated to pay it -- 9.5%
• It's a bad idea and companies should not pay for it -- 61.9%
• I'm torn -- 28.6%

Six weeks with pay
Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, says he’ll introduce the paid leave bill this session.

As we pointed out when we first wrote about the bill (March 12 issue), the legislation would pay employees for half of the FMLA leave to which they’re already entitled. That adds up to six weeks of paid leave for someone with the full 12-week FMLA entitlement.

Dodd is a serious player in this arena. He introduced the legislation that eventually gave birth to the FMLA. His party now controls Congress. And he has a conservative Republican co-sponsor for his bill, Ted Stevens of Alaska.

What HR execs said
Here are some comments from survey respondents, by category:

Bad for our country
"Employers in other developed countries provide (or are required to provide) these and/or similar benefits so from that point of view we should always be aiming to improve our standard. However the global economy we now live in creates a strong downward pressure on these types of benefits. The average American worker is now paid approximately $9.30+/hr., Mexican $1.50/hr. and Chinese $0.30/hr. Do the math....we can't compete. So even if we want to provide it (and many other benefits as well) the reality is we'd likely hurt our ability to compete in the longer term if we do it. And, sadly, it's not very long."

A moral necessity
"We are the only industrialized country without paid leave for maternity/paternity leave. I think it's time to change considering more than half of U.S. workers are parents. Not to mention the sandwich generation who take care of ailing parents. WE NEED SOME FORM OF PAID LEAVE! (And not just Short Term Disability for a workers illness)."

Increased potential for abuse
“Abuse with FMLA leave is rampant now. If we pay the employees, the abuse will increase 10-fold.”

"The original intent of the FMLA is a very good thing, but unfortunately, the intermittent leave' and definition of 'serious medical condition' have been interpreted in such a way that the FML opportunity is easy to be taken advantage of which often makes it difficult for the company to carry on with it's work and mission."

Burden for small companies
“To comply with FMLA requirements employers must shuffle and delegate job duties of individuals claiming this leave. Such disruption is costly. Requiring employers to compensate employees who claim this leave would be an additional burden that employers should not have to bear.”

"All small companies and most that aren't small will have a tremendously difficult time meeting any requirement to pay for 12 weeks of leave per year. If you consider industries that are predominantly staffed by women of child-bearing years, it could force a company into bankruptcy."

"I am concerned that there are already many obligations on an employer and one like this would put smaller companies like ours under a good amount of financial stress. In addition, there are many people abusing FMLA, paying for it will only add to the number of people who are abusing the system."

"Great for the Employee, hard on companies unless there will be some type of break. Industries are dealing with budget cuts, and more with less as it is."

"As an employee it would be wonderful not to worry about how to pay the bills that accumulate while I am unable to work. But as the employer, I am not sure that, a) I could afford to pay someone on leave AND their temporary replacement; and b) some employees won't see paid FMLA as a nice long paid vacation."

Compromise?
“Many times an employee needs to be away to take care of family members or their own needs. Often they are already financially strapped and can ill afford to take the time without pay. However, paying the full freight would be cost-prohibitive and might encourage employees to take more time off than needed. A compromise – perhaps half-pay – might keep employer costs under control while allowing employees to have at least some income relief.”

"Paid FMLA leave shouldn't be mandated, but companies may want to offer paid leave (FMLA and/or non-FMLA) as an added benefit."

Smart business
"Dealing with a serious health condition is devastating whether it is you or a loved one. Having an employer who is more interested in how to get rid of you because you are using FMLA instead of looking for ways to help and support you is just one more reason there is such a turn over of good employees. Loyalty is what keeps good employees and that loyalty works both ways."

Opposed philosophically
"A company cannot be responsible for every aspect of an employee's life! Many companies including ours already offer at no cost to the employee, short and long term disability. To expect us to now cover family members' illnesses is just ridiculous."

"I'm fearful that we'd be endorsing an entitlement mentality."

"As a nation, we need to allow individuals to take ownership for their own situation rather than expecting private business to constantly fund more and more 'extras' while less and less is expected of employees."

Again, tell us what YOU think by adding a "comment" below.

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Magic Question to ensure follow-up

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Dear HR Executive:

Here's a personal effectiveness tip to help HR execs with a problem we all face -- getting people to follow through with what they said they'd do.

It's an adaptation of an idea from Chris Lytle, a sales consultant. One big problem salespeople face is buyer inertia. They meet with a prospect, it goes great, then ... nothing. The next week the buyer's not returning phone calls or answering e-mails. Chris came up with what he calls "The Magic Question" to prevent stalled sales. Before leaving that meeting where everything went great, he asks, "Are you willing to work with me on a calendar basis?" If the person says no, he's not worth pursuing. But if he says yes, you've got a firm commitment from a legitimate buyer.

HR execs and managers who do project planning immediately grasp why Chris' technique works so well. Project planning dissects all the tasks required to get something done, and it puts on paper who's going to do what when. When you commit to something, and see your name next to a deadline on a piece of paper, you tend to get it done. So, the management equivalent of Chris' Magic Question might be, "Can I get on your calendar next Tuesday to discuss your progress in hiring the new controller?" or "On this project you're leading to find a new health plan, can we work together on a calendar basis?"

When they say yes, send a confirmation e-mail to memorialize what the person agreed to. If you use MS-Outlook, send it through your "calendar" navigation pane (instead of "mail"), which will automatically put the meeting on the person's calendar when they click on "accept."

Try the "Magic Question." It works.

Stephen Meyer
Business 21 Publishing