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NY Conference Addresses HR Issues
The importance of right-brain capabilities when recruiting, the state of HR in healthcare, the benefits of offshore outsourcing and other sessions were part of the first day of a conference encompassing HR issues in healthcare, outsourcing and the federal workplace.
The 6th Annual NY HR Week conference kicked off with a keynote by Daniel Pink, author of the best-selling "A Whole New Mind: Why 'Right Brain' Capabilities Are More Important Than Ever," who told attendees that, while logical, linear so-called "left-brain thinking" is still important, it is subservient to the creative "right brain" in today's global economy. "It used to be that the most important characteristics of any professional were those associated with the left brain," he told a packed ballroom at the New York Hilton, with some of the 1,800 attendees to the three-day event, which includes the HRO World Conference ® , the HR in Healthcare Conference and the HR & EEO in the Federal Workplace Conference TM . "But today," said Pink, "artistry and empathy are the most important characteristics." He gave three reasons for the change: Abundance, Asia and Automation. "The standard of living of today's American middle class is breathtaking in comparison with history and with most other countries," he said. "There's an entire $22.6 billion industry -- self-storage -- devoted to helping us store all of our extra stuff. And it's not because houses have been shrinking in size during the past 20 years!" And yet, while the U.S. gross domestic product tripled from 1950 to 2006, said Pink, Americans' satisfaction levels have essentially remained flat. This has resulted in people searching for "self realization," he said. "Fifty million Americans practice yoga today." The search for happiness has resulted in people being more willing to change jobs and careers in search of work that's more intrinsically rewarding, said Pink. "My grandfather worked for the telephone company for 41 years," he said. "He would never have understood someone like myself, giving up a secure government job with good benefits just because I wasn't satisfied." Meanwhile, more and more white-collar work is being outsourced to Asia, he said. Much of that work relies primarily on left-brain thinking, he added. "If a job can be boiled down to a script or a set of specs, than it's going to leave this country," said Pink. "I believe offshoring has been 'over-hyped' in the short term, but under-hyped in the long term. "India has 1 billion people. Even if only 15 percent of those people obtain the skills necessary to do this white-collar work, that's still a number greater than the entire population of Japan -- the world's second-largest economy, by the way." Finally, he said, automation has resulted in professions thought to be highly secure -- law, for example -- to be under threat from Web sites such as CompleteCase.com. A couple that wants to file for an uncontested divorce can save thousands of dollars they'd otherwise spend on a divorce attorney. Software, such as TurboTax, has shrunk or eliminated the business of countless accountants, he said. The impact that abundance, Asia and automation are having on the economy mean that today and in the future, six abilities will matter most for continued prosperity, said Pink -- abilities that HR leaders should foster within themselves and in their organization's workforce: design, empathy, story, symphony, play and meaning. "Design isn't just about prettifying things, it's about problem-solving. One woman produced a totally redesigned prescription-drug label to make them easier to understand for elderly patients," he said. "Empathy -- the ability to stand in someone else's shoes -- is something that's very hard to automate or outsource. Empathy is extremely valuable in the healthcare industry," said Pink, adding that research has shown that physicians who score highly on "empathy ratings" tend to have better patient outcomes than those who don't. "Symphony" refers to the ability to filter out patterns from a welter of information, he said, while "meaning" is the ability to understand what's important in life and that there are things that matter more than accumulating things. "Ask a job candidate, 'Are you lucky,' " he urged the audience. "The ones who say 'no' typically believe that their position and status in life is the result of their own hard work. The ones who are able to step back and say 'yes,' -- because they realize they were lucky to be born in this country, that they're healthy, that they have a nice family -- those tend to be the more empathetic, innovative team players." Workforce Challenges Two HR executives, one CEO and one financial executive from various healthcare facilities, offered their viewpoints on the greatest workforce challenges facing HR leaders today and in the future at a session entitled "The State of HR in Healthcare," on Wednesday morning. The greatest challenge George Mikitarian, president and CEO of Parrish Medical Center in Titusville, Fla., sees in transforming his organization's culture and leadership is that "people just aren't honest anymore, he said. The dishonesty ranges from candidates falsifying resumes and interviewees misrepresenting their beliefs to managers failing to honestly evaluate their employees. "Evaluations consistently aren't truthful," he said. When managers seek to avoid conflict by not offering honest feedback, they are hurting the organization's performance -- leading to possible problems in clinical and patient safety outcomes, he said. Stability of the organization in the face of an economic downturn, and possibly a recession, makes transforming an organization even more challenging, said Craig Morley, vice president of revenue cycle for Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City. In order for an organization to be successful, HR needs to recognize and engage staff and drive change, he said. "I look to HR leadership roles as the key place in the organization to manage change." Part of that process, he said, has to require HR to "walk in the shoes" of the front-line staff. Workers will respond with energy to being led and inspired, he said. They will respond with structure and processes when they are being "managed." Jon C. Cecil, Chief HR Officer of Lee Memorial Health System in Cape Coral, Fla., said the Florida economy is particularly challenging -- although retention "is not as big of an issue." HR professionals need to be "acutely aware" of changes affecting their organizations, he said. He singled out performance by physicians as one of those changes, saying Lee Memorial had to change its compensation model to gain leverage in that area as newer physicians were not as willing to perform some tasks -- such as working on trauma cases or attending meetings -- as in the past.. The "productivity based compensation," he said, involves quality, finances and patient safety metrics. HR should remember, said Joan K. Mollohan, senior vice president of human resources for Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, that employees closest to the work know the roadblocks and barriers to optimum performance. "They have the answers," she said. "I think many of them think we are not listening; that we don't want to hear." Empowering all employees not only increases overall organizational performance, she said, but it builds loyalty. And employee opinions may someday count for even more, said Mikitarian. He foresees a day when healthcare systems will be required to report on employee issues, as they are required to report on patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes. "This is about accountability," he said. It's not an HR issue, it's about patient outcomes, he said. Offshore Outsourcing In a Wednesday afternoon session entitled "The Impact of Offshore Recruitment on Your Business Model," two presenters discussed the benefits of incorporating offshore capabilities into the recruiting process outsourcing model. "Offshoring can help you get a jump on the competition in terms of speed and reduced costs," said Steve Shangold, CEO of RPOworldwide in Pittsburgh. Typically, he explained, an RPO provider is going to have a small team at the client's location whose main responsibility is to manage the expectations of the hiring managers, discuss specific openings and help out when candidates come onsite for interviews so they have a good experience. But then they'll have a much larger group that's working offsite, usually domestically, [doing] the nuts and bolts work of searching for and screening candidates." In the case of that larger group, Shangold asked, "Why not do that work on an offshore basis?" That way, he said, companies can reap the benefits of round-the-clock coverage. "You want to be in a position that as soon as that candidate makes himself available, you have someone there ... ." he said. Shangold added that candidates are becoming much more comfortable talking to people globally. "In fact," he said, "we found that the candidates are actually impressed that they're [dealing with] a global-thinking company." Tony Steadman, co-founder of TalentBridge, a South Orange, N.J., organization that partners with RPOworldwide, noted that offshoring RPO is by no means "a slam dunk. You can't just choose a provider and expect it's going to work. It's something you have to work at." But when done right, he said, the payoff can be significant. Steadman cited the experience of one of his clients, Westinghouse, which is using RPO offshoring to augment what its senior recruiters were doing onsite to fill 300+ project engineers in Pittsburgh and other locations. Thanks to offshoring and the ability scale and work around the clock, he said, the company has been able to hire more than 25 engineers a month. Reasonable Accommodation In a two-part session entitled "Defining Who is Entitled to Reasonable Accommodation," attorneys Gary Gilbert and Ernest Hadley, both of Federal Employment Law Training Group, although in different state offices, said they could sum up the answer in two words: It depends. "That virtually is the answer to any question you can ask here," Hadley told attendees in the crowded room, before going on to pinpoint the questions HR professionals should ask when doing the required "individualized analysis" of whether an employee is disabled and then whether he or she is entitled to a reasonable accommodation. Hadley said the Americans with Disabilities Act is an "extraordinarily poorly drafted statute that the courts and government have been struggling with ever since" it was adopted. Gilbert said the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has great resources on its Web site that help employers understand the compliance issues, including information on what EEOC investigators look for when conducting probes into possible violations of the ADA. NY HR Week is produced by Human Resource Executive Conferences.
April 17, 2008 Copyright 2008© LRP Publications |
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