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Dealing with HR's Many Challenges
During the second day of the SHRM Convention, session presenters offered analyses and advice on issues including union organizing, fostering innovation, the latest employment-law decisions, workplace love, performance appraisals, HR outsourcing and more.
The federal legislative effort to make secret elections unnecessary in union organizing will fail in the Senate on Wednesday, predicted two labor attorneys during a Monday morning session at the 59th annual Society for Human Resource Management Annual Conference and Exposition, being held in Las Vegas. But the Employee Free Choice Act -- which would allow unions to solicit employees' signatures on cards in lieu of elections to signify support for union membership -- is only being defeated temporarily, said Michael J. Lotito and Lynn C. Outwater, both of the Jackson Lewis law firm. "EFCA will fail on Wednesday and that will be the end of EFCA for this year," Lotito, a partner based in San Francisco, told a large group attending the pair's session on "Labor's Radical Reformation." But the proposed law will be back in 2009, they warned. And if it passes then, Outwater, managing partner of the Pittsburgh, Pa., office, foresees union membership growing back to the "high water mark" of 35 percent -- a penetration of the workforce last achieved in 1955. In 2006, overall union membership was 12 percent. In the private sector, it was 7.4 percent, they said. But the EFCA is a problem for the future. The problem here and now for companies is to proactively address the aggressive corporate campaigns of the unions that are part of the Change to Win Coalition, which splintered off from the AFL-CIO and is led by Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union. Lotito and Outwater kept the audience laughing with their role-playing and back-and-forth conversation even as they spoke of the many challenges of fighting off the very different tactics of the union-organizing efforts that the coalition says it will spend $750 million on. Those tactics include using politicians, class-action lawsuits, government and regulatory actions, community involvement and religious leaders to pressure corporations and cause enough pain that the organization will accept union representation. "It's not so much a legal battle as much as it is a communication battle," Lotito said. Supervisors and managers need to be trained and educated on the company's policy -- and every company should articulate a policy on unions that is built on the organization's core values. Supervisors need to feel comfortable discussing the company's policy, and they need to know what they are and what they are not allowed to say, the attorneys advised.
Employment Law Update Hundreds of SHRM conference-goers packed a three-hall combined auditorium to heed the warnings of Mary E. Pivec, a partner with Washington-based law firm Keller and Heckman. "Disregard much of what you have in front of you as the guideline I provided for this talk," said Pivec in her session entitled "2007 Employment Law Update." "So much has changed in the past few months ... and what has changed is huge, and it affects every single one of you." Citing landmark, precedent-setting cases in a growing number of retaliation cases, she underscored the importance for HR professionals to review their discrimination and harassment policies to ensure they prohibit retaliatory behavior by supervisors, and to provide hotlines for reporting claims. She also advised investing in ongoing interactive/behavioral harassment and retaliation training for supervisors and managers. "What the growing number of cases prove is that it is now much more difficult for HR to predict what's going to happen in the courts and what HR's exposure will be," she said. Pivec also cited two recent cases in which companies were found to be guilty of unfair labor practices by depriving employees of their rights to converse, via e-mail and personally, about the conditions of their jobs. In one case, involving Cintas Corp., a simple word choice in its employee handbook, protecting the confidentiality of information concerning the company's "partners" ( a.k.a. employees) was found to be the culprit. "You might want to re-examine your handbooks so you're not disallowing these conversations between employees about the conditions of their jobs," she said. Pivec's most urgent caution, however, punctuated by audible grimaces and nodding heads, was to urge HR professionals to act quickly and act now to ensure "your companies are not caught in the snare of the newly re-energized potential immigration bill," the STRIVE Act of 2007. "Whereas many of you were advised in the past to ignore those Social Security Administration no-match letters because they were unenforceable," she said, under this new proposal, "failure to investigate these reports will potentially be landing CEOs in jail, and if you yourself are responsible for overseeing this process at your company, you could potentially be charged with a felony too." She cited the case of Swift Co., which "basically did all the right things" to ensure Social Security numbers were authentic, but was eventually raided by the federal government and saw large numbers of employees arrested on charges of identity theft. She stressed the importance of paying attention to all new regulations and recommendations set out by the Department of Human Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and complying with new, very involved electronic employee verification regulations, not only for new hires, but for all existing employees. "In many cases, this [proposed] law will put you between a rock and a hard place," she said, but the alternative to following these steps "is extremely significant."
Mixed Results on HRO Glenn Nevill, a principal in Towers Perrin's Dallas office, discussed the "mixed" findings of the firm's most recent outsourcing study, HR Outsourcing Effectiveness, during the conference. At this stage, Nevill said, "you would think the business would be more mature and that the results wouldn't be as mixed." That said, Nevill believes there continues to be things employers can and should be doing to address some of the issues, including doing a better job aligning service-level agreements to business objectives, whether it's at the pre-deal stage or midstream. Of the handful of companies that have renewed agreements, the majority are now much more conscious as to what to outsource and what not to outsource, he said. Another finding of the study, Nevill said, is that the role of HR leaders and practitioners hasn't subsequently changed much. Though the expectation was for HR to spend more time on strategic matters following the move to HRO, many of the 38 companies participating in the study reported a modest shift (33 percent) or no shift at all (18 percent). Fourteen percent said they were now spending less time on strategic activities. Apparently, Nevill said, "HR is not realizing either the time savings or the costs savings" of HRO.
Fostering Innovatrion Lynda Gratton, a professor of management practice at London School of Business and director of the school's executive program, discussed how companies can harness what she calls "Hot Spots" to create "extraordinary engagement and energy" in a company, during her Monday afternoon keynote speech. Citing examples from companies such as Royal Bank of Scotland, Nokia and Goldman Sachs, Gratton said that if a company wants to create more innovation and energy, then the leaders must first ask themselves: Do we have a cooperative culture? Are we skilled at working across boundaries? Do our executives have an igniting purpose? Are our leaders skilled in supporting diverse, virtual teams? "The No. 1 thing predicting team cooperation is that the senior-management team is seen to cooperate with each other," she said. "If you're the CEO and you want your company to be cooperative, it starts with you." Gratton said cooperation within an organization starts with mentoring and coaching programs, adding that they are often a good indicator of an organization's ability to work across its own borders. "Organizations that tend to be good at mentoring also tend to be good at cooperating as well," she said. One of the other key elements to creating hot spots, according to Gratton, is finding "boundary spanners," or employees who can help bring about new ideas and transfer knowledge between work groups that do not normally work together. "If you want innovation, you need novel combinations," she said. Performance Appraisal Dangers Despite a variety of historical, mechanical and philosophical challenges, performance appraisals, done properly, serve as a critical tool for determining whether people are really an asset or an expense, said Paul Falcone, vice president of human resources for Nickelodeon in Burbank, Calif., during a Monday afternoon session entitled "Reinventing Performance Appraisals: A Renewed Focus on Performance Excellence." Falcone said there should be very few surprises in the annual performance review and there needs to be a careful review of prior years' performance to ensure continuity. What's more, he said, HR leaders need to fully understand how documentation can sometimes backfire based on how it's worded. "Composed the wrong way, it can easily be used against your company," Falcone said. Falcone advised the audience to shift the responsibility back to the employee, whenever possible. "I'm a big believer in self-evaluations," he said. "Let your employees set their own development plan. Get your managers to delegate and get your employees to take on the responsibility. It saves you time ... and motivates employees." Though managers might initially resist this approach, thinking they were losing control, that's clearly not the case, because the managers still have to do the reviews, Falcone said. Falcone also suggested employers replace traditional grading scales with scales that are less threatening, such as "distinguished, superior, fully successful, needs improvement and unsatisfactory."
Love on the Job In a fitting tribute to Las Vegas' unofficial king, attorney Joe Beachboard, based in the Torrance, Calif. office of Ogletree Deakins, began his session on dealing with romance in the workplace by playing a few verses of Elvis Presley's classic A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action. The toe-tapping number was an appropriate beginning for the session, which explored the reasons behind workplace romance and the best ways employers can cope with the often-taboo topic. Beachboard attributed the rise in workplace trysts to the fact that Americans are spending more time at work than with family, the increasing number of women in the workplace (now at 46 percent of the total workforce, according to Beachboard) and the fact that more Americans are marrying later in life, resulting in more unattached people in the office. He noted that a Vault.com 2007 Office Romance survey found that 47 percent of employees polled had been involved in an office romance, and that another 11 percent said they would be "open" to the idea of participating in one. "Approximately 70 years ago, Sigmund Freud said the two things a person needs to have in order to have a happy life are work and life," he said. "But I have a feeling that combining the two is not what Freud had in mind." The survey also found that 41 percent were unaware their company had any policies in place regarding workplace romances -- and that, Beachboard said, could lead to legal trouble down the line. "Retaliation [lawsuits are] the biggest risk companies are facing" as a result of workplace romance, he said. The two basic types of lawsuits in this area, according to Beachboard, are 'romance lawsuits,' where harassment is alleged by one of the two involved participants, and 'paramour favoritism' lawsuits, where a third party alleges preferential treatment of an employee involved in an office romance at the expense of other workers. One way to avoid litigation, he said, is to establish a harassment hotline for employees to call and complain without having to deal with a superior who may be the subject of the complaint. "This cuts off the complaint that there was no one for the employee to complain to," he said. He also advocated training on the topic, advising employees that the company monitors all e-mail correspondence, and even implementing a "love contract" to be signed by involved employees to ensure that the relationship is consensual and that their behavior will remain professional at the office if and when the relationship ends.
Express Yourself In her session entitled "Creating a Positive Workforce by Effectively Managing Emotions," Susan David, co-director of Cambridge, Mass.-based Evidence Based Psychology, urged employers to look for ways to encourage emotional expression in the workplace. "Our research has shown that suppressing emotions negatively impacts organizations, just as it does individuals," said David. "Employers need to be setting up processes where employees are asked how they feel about a new direction, a change of course, a goal." David cited studies showing how certain emotions, both negative and positive, enhanced the performance of certain jobs. A happy employee, for instance, tended to be more innovative and creative; whereas a happy or euphoric doctor tended to misdiagnose patients more than doctors in somber or balanced moods. "In every company, there's a place for critical thinking, but a place for feeling too. And in every company, there's a place for the whole range of feelings." Setting up processes that invite workers to express their feelings about work, even negative ones, also cuts down on their disgruntlement, passive aggressiveness, sense of disenfranchisement and lack of productivity, she said. All emotions are motivators. They create performance environments. "The danger," David said, "is in running a company where expressing them is prohibited." Also during the SHRM conference, companies announced new products: * Raleigh, N.C.-based global talent acquisition solutions provider PeopleClick unveiled its Contact Management solution, which is designed specifically for HR professionals to build a talent bank of contacts and convert them into potential candidates. According to the company, recruiters can "use the technology to promote relationships with contacts including graduates, acquaintances, passive candidates, retirees and alumni, and target individuals with innovative marketing campaigns." It is slated for a September 2007 release. * Minneapolis-based Verifications Inc. announced its Application Manager product that combines employment screening, applicant processing and onboarding in a single software system. "We are about managing the resumes throughout the process," said John A. Lamb, executive vice president of marketing and strategic alliances. He also noted one unique feature of the Web-based product, which will be available in July, is that it offers a single view of all of the elements of the hiring process using icons or text.
June 26, 2007 Copyright 2007© LRP Publications |
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