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If you are having difficulty seeing this mail or images in it, you can view it in your Web browser. Volume 6, Issue 4      In This Issue:   Why your employees are loosing motivation   How to adjust your decision-making style   Do I dare say something?   Three myths of management   Can you manage different generations?   Offer-and-Acceptance etiquette   Scuttling some job-hunt myths   Taking a stand on ethics   Internet complicates HR decisions   HR issues concern CFOs   Helping obese workers   Absent and accounted for   The great global talent race: One world One workforce   Whistleblowers: Tales from the back office   Succeeding in the corner office   Handling the office jerk   Quickie Workouts   How I work: Bill Gates   New ways to get ahead      Drill down to details when preparing for disaster      The doctor is in-house      How to say no after saying yes Get ahead with a BlackBerry Solution Sure, you probably see our devices in people's hands all the time. But have you ever seen BlackBerry as a solution for your company before? Or maybe you thought it was only for larger businesses. Truth is, more and more businesses of all sizes are turning to a BlackBerry Solution to quickly gain a competitive advantage. >> Register to learn more Register for a chance to win 1 of 8 BlackBerry devices and find exclusive, limited-time BlackBerry offers! Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation Business literature is packed with advice about worker motivation—but sometimes managers are the problem, not the inspiration. Here are seven practices to fire up the troops. From Harvard Management Update. To maintain an enthusiastic workforce, management must meet all three goals. A command-and-control style is a sure-fire path to demotivation. Most companies have it all wrong. They don't have to motivate their employees. They have to stop demotivating them.The great majority of employees are quite enthusiastic when they start a new job. But in about 85 percent of companies, our research finds, employees' morale sharply declines after their first six months—and continues to deteriorate for years afterward. That finding is based on surveys of about 1.2 million employees at 52 primarily Fortune 1000 companies from 2001 through 2004, conducted by Sirota Survey Intelligence (Purchase, New York).The fault lies squarely at the feet of management—both the policies and procedures companies employ in managing their workforces and in the relationships that individual managers establish with their direct reports. Our research shows how individual managers' behaviors and styles are contributing to the problem (see sidebar "How Management Demotivates")—and what they can do to turn this around... Read the article.  Back to top How to Adjust Your Decision-Making Style To move up the ladder, it's important that your method of making decisions develops as you do. This excerpt from Harvard Business Review reports on research drawn from a comprehensive Korn/Ferry International database. Somewhere between the manager and director levels, executives find that approaches that used to work are no longer so effective. When we began our research, we expected to find that managers' predominant decision-making styles would change as they progressed through their careers. But the patterns that jumped right out of the data were even more sharply defined than we could have imagined. We found that decision-making profiles do a complete flip over the course of a career: That is, the decision style of a successful CEO is the opposite of a successful first-line supervisor's. In the leadership (or public) mode, we see a steady progression as managers move up in the ranks toward openness, diversity of opinion, and participative decision making, matched by a step-by-step drop in the more directive, command-oriented styles. In the thinking (or private) mode, we see a progression toward the maximizing styles—where an executive prefers to gather a lot of information and think things through—and, at the highest executive levels, an uptick in the styles favoring one course of action. There's a logic as well as an interdependence to the way the two aspects of decision making evolve. As you move up the ladder... Read the article.  Back to top Do I Dare Say Something? Are you afraid to speak up at work? The amount of fear in the modern workplace is just one surprising finding from recent research done by HBS professor Amy Edmondson and her colleague, Professor James Detert from Penn State. Most surprising to us has been the degree to which fear appears to be a feature of modern work life. As every company knows, employees are its greatest resource. It's more than a shame, then, that many workers are either not encouraged or afraid to speak up and communicate ideas at work. Employers are losing valuable knowledge and experience, and their companies are weaker for that loss. In a recent working paper, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson and Penn State professor James Detert explored the challenges employees face speaking up to internal authorities. Their research focused on behavior in large, multinational corporations, but the lessons learned can apply to smaller enterprises as well... Read the article.  Back to top Three Myths of Management In a new book, Stanford professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton assail popular yet shaky—maybe even harmful—management practices. Our excerpt starts with a hot trend: benchmarking. Instead of copying what others do, we ought to copy how they think. The logic behind the use of options as managerial incentive is flawed once you consider what behaviors are actually rewarded. The catalogue of poor decision practices is immense, but we focus here on three of the most common and, in our experience, most harmful to companies. Casual benchmarking. There is nothing wrong with learning from others' experience—vicarious learning, as contrasted with direct experience, is an important way for both people and organizations to learn how to navigate a path through the world. After all, it is a lot cheaper and easier to learn from the mistakes, setbacks, and successes of others than to treat every management challenge as something no organization has ever faced before. So benchmarking—using other companies' performance and experience to set standards for your own company—makes a lot of sense. In the end, good or bad performance is defined and measured largely in relation to what others are doing. The problem lies with... Read the article.  Back to top Can You Manage Different Generations? Managing multigenerational workforces is an art in itself. Young workers want to make a quick impact, the middle generation needs to believe in the mission, and older employees don't like ambivalence. Your move. As the oldest baby boomers draw closer to traditional retirement age, forward-thinking firms are investing more heavily in leadership development and succession programs. They are focusing on building up bench strength: embedding in their top young talent the skills and wherewithal to take over leadership positions when the time comes. On the surface, it seems like a sensible approach. But what if the people you're counting on to lead your company into the future won't be there when you need them? Or what if they don't even want the roles for which they are being groomed? According to recent studies, both such possibilities are increasingly likely—especially for companies that are not keeping pace with the changing makeup and diverging priorities of the U.S. workforce. Companies that expect to compete in even the very near future must recognize new attitudes among their workers. They must acknowledge that new relationships will exist between employees and organizations. And they must open themselves up to revisiting assumptions about which workers are appropriate for which roles and to rethinking the ways in which they hire, motivate, and retain employees. Where to start this heady effort? Begin by considering the advice of Tamara Erickson and Bob Morison of The Concours Group, a Kingwood, Texas-based consulting company, who have done extensive research on the changing workforce and the age-based cohorts that compose it... Read the article.  Back to top Offer-and-Acceptance Etiquette Recruiters and job seekers can reach an agreement more quickly and comfortably by employing a technique called a "supposal". Job seekers often call me and say: "How much time can I ask for to evaluate a job offer?" Well, how much time do you want? I'd say two or three days is standard, unless the weekend is coming, in which case you can ask for the weekend, too. "Oh, my goodness," said one young man. "The recruiter balked when I asked for 24 hours. "That sounded so crazy that I had to probe. Once I got the whole story, I realized that the young man wasn't asking how much time he could take to review his offer letter. He didn't have one. The recruiter, in fact, was phoning to collect his acceptance first. This is really silly. When you're evaluating an offer, you have to look over all of the parts together. You can't be expected to say yes on the phone when the recruiter tells you, "We'd like to hire you as a program analyst at X salary, Y bonus, Z amount of travel, and with our standard benefits package." Whaaat? You need the offer letter to see the entire picture... Read the article.  Back to top Scuttling Some Job-Hunt Myths What some applicants accept as gospel when they're interviewing never ceases to amaze. Here are 10 misconceptions that can really hurt. When I had my first baby, my husband's grandmother told me to put a penny on the baby's belly button and tie something around the baby's tummy to keep the penny in place -- that way the baby wouldn't have a prominent belly button. She also told me to keep the cat away from the baby because cats, she said, "steal the baby's breath." I looked at the cat and I looked at the baby, and I couldn't see how the cat, even if she were so inclined, could manage to get a lip-lock on the baby. But grandma was certain the cat had it in for the baby. Some old myths die hard. Job seekers have created their own mythology around the recruitment-and-selection process, and from time to time these myths bubble up to people like me, who get to poke holes in them. Here are some myths that you may have heard, and the corresponding truths of the matter... Read the article.  Back to top Taking a Stand on Ethics While not normally part of my columnist repertoire, the big ethical questions sometimes need to be tackled. I often hear from working people who run into tough situations on the job. How do I respond to this thing my boss said? How should I navigate this political situation? We help each other. I send words of advice, and very often the letter inspires a column in this space. But these letters don't touch on the biggest problems facing white-collar professionals these days: how to get promoted, how to foil the backstabber in the next cube, and how to neutralize the idea-stealing clown one department away. These are tactical issues. The big one, the issue that vexes corporate people in every industry and function, is this: How do I succeed at my job without turning into that spineless character -- a pod person? Driving home from the office, or sitting in the airport waiting for the red-eye, we wonder: Is this me? Are these meetings I'm holding, these memos I'm writing, are they the things I'm supposed to be doing? Corporate roles can introduce mind-numbing ethical issues. That layoff last month -- did we handle that right? How do I feel about the big bonus I got, in light of the fact that we just outsourced customer support and eliminated 32 jobs in New York? And so on. It's not easy... Read the article.  Back to top Internet Complicates HR Decisions So-called "viral videos" (videos posted to various Web sites that gain suddenly popularity via word-of-mouth) are all the rage on the Internet these days, but one video snippet making the rounds recently is reverberating in the world of HR. The video (web link) was created by former Apple customer service rep Eirik Ott, a poet who uses the stage name Big Poppa E. Ott was fired two days after a company talent show in which he discussed keeping a disgruntled customer on hold. Ott created the video, made it available on his Web site late last year, and got on with his life. This month, the video was discovered, and began to ricochet around the Internet. It eventually became one of the most popular selections on Google Video -- resulting in discussion of Ott's firing on HR-related blogs and some bad publicity for Apple. Ott, who lives in Austin, Texas, has appeared twice on HBO's Def Poetry showcase as well as on National Public Radio and CBS's 60 Minutes. For 11 months beginning in 2004, his day job was as a temporary worker at an Apple Computer call center in Austin... Read the article.  Back to top HR Issues Concern CFOs Employee health-care expenses top the list of worries for financial executives today, a new survey shows. Nearly half (49 percent) of chief financial officers polled recently cited the rising cost of insurance and healthcare as one of their three most pressing concerns. When asked how they are addressing it, more than half (53 percent) of respondents said they are cutting spending in other areas of the company. The survey was developed by Robert Half Management Resources, a provider of senior-level accounting and finance professionals on a project and interim basis. It was conducted by an independent research firm and includes responses from 1,400 CFOs from a stratified random sample of U.S. companies with 20 or more employees. CFOs were asked... Read the article.  Back to top Helping Obese Workers Obesity can cause or exacerbate many health problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease, high cholesterol and arthritis. This health epidemic significantly racks up workers’ compensation costs, increases time off taken by employees and interferes with productivity for federal agencies. "All the diseases linked to obesity are either preventable or can be modified with exercise and healthy nutrition," said Lucy Polk, a work/life specialist at the Office of Personnel Management, who presented the session, Creating Healthier Feds Through Healthier Workplaces at the 2006 OPM Federal Workforce Conference held Feb. 27 to March 2 at the Baltimore Convention Center in Maryland. "Workplace health programs enhance productivity, reduce absences and workers’ compensation costs, and increase focused time at work," she said. There are many ways federal agencies and human resource managers can prevent and modify the negative effects of obesity. These include creating health promotion programs, encouraging employees to tap into the resources of their federal health benefits for screenings and dietary information, and taking advantage of facilities already in place for workplace health – such as an office fitness center, a walking path outside, or even stairs... Read the article.  Back to top Absent and Accounted For Holding On According to a survey of 95 organizations, the majority of companies are trying to hold on to executives by offering better compensation and benefits. (more) The past decade has seen a U.S. workforce vastly reshaped by change—demographic change, a more competitive global economy, technological advances in the workplace, and changes in the family and society. Amidst this, employers increasingly have come to realize that traditional benefit-program designs may no longer support either business objectives or employee needs. One important by-product is the ongoing evolution of absence benefits.Because their real costs are not easily understood, absence benefits—sick leave, disability, vacation, and other forms of paid-time-off—may fly under the radar when compared to expenses like health care and retirement programs. However, since absence benefits are used regularly by all employees, they are highly appreciated, and employers whose programs are noncompetitive will have difficulty attracting and retaining the best workers... Read the article.  Back to top The Great Global Talent Race: One World One Workforce "It can’t purely be a bidding war with business conducted on a mercenary basis. It is difficult to stand still and not be reactive to the marketplace, but the degree to which you need to do that is dependent on the other aspects you put in place to retain talent." --Andy Goodman, CA Inc. Global companies based in the developing world look much like their developed-world counterparts. They manage their employees with similar policies and pay practices. In this world of sameness, differentiating the employment brand requires a new focus on career development. orkforce management is an extreme sport in Hyderabad, India, a first-tier offshore hotspot where foreign multinationals compete with Indian companies for software engineers and managers. In the mad scramble to recruit and retain employees, annual sal¬ary adjustments have turned into quarterly raises. The average wage increase for 2006 will top 12 percent. Labor cost savings for U.S.-based companies operating in India could shrink from 80 percent to 40 percent within a decade, according to Andy Goodman, executive vice president of human resources at Islandia, New York-based CA Inc., formerly Computer Associates International, which employs 1,100 workers in its Hyderabad software development center. "But even so, India will still represent a significant economic value," he says. "It is really a question of exploiting the global talent pool wherever it exists." Increasingly, that global talent pool lies outside the United States and Europe. Half of CA’s 15,800 employees work in foreign countries. Since 2000, U.S.-based multinationals have consistently reduced the number of workers employed in the United States and increased the number employed abroad... Read the article.  Back to top Whistleblowers: Tales from the back office It is becoming easier for employees to reveal their bosses' wrongdoings. Sherron Watkins, a star witness in the current trial of Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, respectively Enron's former chairman and chief executive, is billed as a whistleblower. "Probably the closest thing to a hero to emerge from the Enron saga," said the Wall Street Journal. Ms Watkins fits the public's image of what a whistleblower should be—female, feisty and ultimately vindicated, a stereotype laid down by Oscar-nominated actresses such as Julia Roberts (in "Erin Brockovich") and Meryl Streep (in "Silkwood"), and reinforced when Ms Watkins was one of three female whistleblowers named as Time magazine's "Persons of the Year" in 2002. In reality, the lives of most whistleblowers are far from glamorous. In "Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organisational Power", Fred Alford, a professor at the University of Maryland, writes, "the average whistleblower of my experience is... Read the article.  Back to top Succeeding In The Corner Office At the time, higher pay, increased responsibility, a corner office and an easier commute added up to a dream job and a great career move. Six months and many sleepless nights later, it appears that your values don't mesh with your new company's way of doing business, and that you've made the worst decision of your career. Now what?"Don't be dazzled by higher pay and a chance to move up the corporate ladder when sizing up a job offer," says Barbara Callan-Bogia, founder and principal of Callan Consulting in Framingham, Mass. "I've tracked many executives in new jobs, and the key to success is 'fit'—not competence. You wouldn't have gotten an interview, let alone the job, if the company didn't think you could do the job."... Read the article.  Back to top Handling The Office Jerk The pallbearers carried their co-worker's casket down the church steps to the hearse.Mourners whispered their fond memories and expressed an overwhelming sense of loss to friends. A cell phone tucked in one of the pallbearer's pockets played a cheerful tune. He's an important guy, so he took the call. "That's appalling," says Dr. Ken Lloyd, author of Jerks at Work: How to Deal With People Problems and Problem People. "His action told everyone that on many levels he's a jerk." Unfortunately, there's no shortage of jerks. These maddening creatures, including some with real talent, are everywhere. There are jerks in the corner office, jerks in middle management, jerks in computer support and jerks in the next cubicle. Jerks can be male or female, young or old. An education doesn't inoculate one against jerkdom. The essence of a jerk is immutable, or so it seems, raising a basic question: How do you deal with the office ninny, jackass or schmuck?... Read the article.  Back to top Quickie Workouts Is it possible to get a good workout in less than 30 minutes? The Gravity Fitness Center in Le Parker Meridien hotel in New York boasts that with "The Quickie," a person can get into the gym and work out their entire body in just 28 minutes. Does it work? While many people are under the impression that they have to spend hours at the gym (which leads to the excuse of not having time), that's not necessarily the case. A typical strength exercise program usually consists of three sets of eight to 12 repetitions per body part. But the American College of Sports Medicine in Indianapolis, has done research that shows that 80% of the gains made from the three-set system are accomplished in... Read the article.  Back to top How I Work: Bill Gates Not much of a paper chase for Microsoft's chairman, who uses a range of digital tools to do business. It's pretty incredible to look back 30 years to when Microsoft (Research) was starting and realize how work has been transformed. We're finally getting close to what I call the digital workstyle. If you look at this office, there isn't much paper in it. On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity... Read the article.  Back to top New ways to get ahead At many FORTUNE 500 employers, it's now easier to move up by moving sideways first. If you work at a FORTUNE 500 company, you've probably found it hard (if not impossible) to get much meaningful experience outside your narrow functional area. At big corporations, marketing people have tended to get stuck in marketing, finance people have rarely been offered opportunities to step outside finance, and so on. Everybody aiming to rise through the ranks has had to wait for a job opening directly overhead. That's still true in lots of places, but it's changing fast. One of the hottest buzzwords in human resources now is "unsiloing," an ungainly bit of jargon that means this: Take upwardly mobile employees out of their straight-up-and-down functional "silos" and move them around to where their talents are needed, with an eye toward helping them cultivate new skills... Read the article.  Back to top Drill down to details when preparing for disaster Kimberly A. Wheeler, SPHR, knows the value of stockpiling dry socks and breath mints and having multiple communications systems during a natural disaster. They are among the hard lessons the human resource professional has learned during 10 years living and working in the Florida panhandle. She shared those and other tips in the session “Disaster Planning and Recovery for HR Professionals: Tools to Work By,” part of the 15th annual Gulf Coast Symposium on Human Resource Issues the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) Houston Chapter sponsored recently.As newspaper chain Gannett’s lead HR resource person during the 2005 hurricane season, Wheeler provided support to colleagues in Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi, including the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, where she worked, and at The Hattiesburg (Miss.) American, for three weeks immediately following Katrina. Many of the tips she offered can be adapted to other types of disasters. Wheeler, who sits on the 2005-2006 SHRM National Disaster Relief Panel, pointed HR professionals to SHRM’s recently released Disaster Management Plan Toolkit as one of several preparedness resources. Among the recommendations Wheeler shared... Read the article.  Back to top The Doctor Is In-House The company doctor is back, helping workers remain healthy and employers reduce health care costs. Tom Hopkins was at work when he felt the pain in his chest and abdomen. It seemed minor, but the health professionals at his company’s on-site wellness center urged him to go to the hospital, where doctors found problems with his heart. Two days later, Hopkins underwent coronary artery bypass surgery. Now enjoying a healthy recovery, he credits the worksite clinic with saving his life. "If it wasn’t for the clinic, I probably would not have gone to the doctor right away, and who knows what would have happened," says Hopkins, manager of the Central Florida Market Unit of the Pepsi Bottling Group, in Orlando, Fla. Stories like Hopkins’ are becoming more common as businesses increasingly adopt a new approach to the old model of employer-sponsored health benefits. Reminiscent of the "company doctor" of years past, today’s trend of providing on-site medical care is building rapidly, experts say, spurred largely by the fact that these on-site facilities enable employers to better manage—and even scale back the growth rate of—their health care expenses. "I think it’s a modern model that is indeed proving to be cost-effective," says Sean Sullivan, president, CEO and co-founder of the Institute for Health and Productivity Management, a nonprofit corporation in Scottsdale, Ariz., that works to link employee health to corporate performance. "Not only does it pick up health issues earlier, but it doesn’t require time away from work and at the same time creates a culture of caring."... Read the article.  Back to top How To Say No After Saying Yes You can rescind job offers, but be sure to minimize your legal risks and keep communication open. Put yourself in this real-life applicant’s shoes: You receive a job offer that is too good to turn down. The job requires you to relocate to Eugene, Ore., and you and your spouse decide to move. You both resign from your respective employers. You put your dog to sleep because she is too frail to survive the trip. The moving van departs for Oregon, and you’re en route as well, when you get the news: There is no job. The company is closing its Eugene plant, and your job offer has been withdrawn. What’s more, you discover that the parent company apparently had decided to shut the Oregon plant months before you were offered a job there. Now what? "You sue the company for misrepresentation," says attorney Richard Busse, a partner with the Busse and Hunt law firm in Portland, Ore. Busse represented the applicant... Read the article.  Back to top Forward to a Friend: Do you have a friend that would like to receive HRWatchsm? Perhaps you know a peer within your organization, or associate at a partner company that would benefit from applying to receive this publication. Inviting a friend to experience the benefits of joining the BusinessWatch Network is easy! Just FW: this newsletter to the person you know who may have an interest and ask them to click here http://www.businesswatchnetwork.com Your friend will be glad you did! DISCLAIMER: HRWatchsm and the BusinessWatch Networksm are service marks of DMS. All other trademarks or service marks contained in this email are the property of their respective owners. At the time of publication, all links in this e-mail functioned properly. 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