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| Volume 8, Issue 4 |
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In This Issue:
 HR crucial to executive compensation process
On the hunt for talent
 Electronic surveillance of employees [?]
Develop [your] performance management system
 Responding to employee rants: 4 do's and don'ts
25 good interview questions ... and 8 to avoid
Attract and keep young workers with 'Portable' benefits
 Tips for outsourcing benefits communication and enrollment
The body you've always wanted for just $14
 Bullying more damaging than sexual harassment
 Provoking productive [employee] thinking
 Background checking--Digging deeper
 The fine art of sucking up to your boss
Eight healthy reasons to drink beer
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HR crucial to executive compensation process
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The world of executive compensation has changed during the past few years. Never before has there been more attention paid to the finer details of compensation
programs, and the roles of key players in the executive compensation process have changed dramatically.
In most companies, it is now the job of the board compensation committee to govern executive compensation — and for good reason. Board members have a fiduciary responsibility to manage not only the costs of the executive pay program, but also to
ensure its link to long-term value creation for all of the company's constituencies. However, as the board has taken over the process, some companies have overreacted to the shift in the governance landscape by leaving many HR practitioners — who used to
be the strategists and administrators behind the plan — out in the cold. The irony of this outcome is, given the current demands on executive pay programs, it's more
important than ever for HR to play a central and critical role in the process. The best way for HR to do that is to...
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On the hunt for talent
"Get 'em while they're young!" might be the rally cry for today's talent managers who are starved for candidates and struggling to retain those who've joined organizational ranks.
College campuses are a great place to find the best and brightest, but recruiters have to dip their hands in many different pools to get their attention. The word recruitment often conjures images of job fairs where hordes of college students wait
anxiously for their one chance to impress a potential employer. Yet recruitment strategies today involve much more than the traditional, generic job fair scenario. It has become an ever-changing, ever-evolving strategy to attract the best young talent.
Each class that graduates from college is different from the last, but that doesn't mean the fail-safe methods from 10 years ago should instantly be discarded. On-campus recruiting still is ranked as one of the most effective recruiting tools tied with
company internship programs, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers' (NACE) Job Outlook 2008 survey. Other top recruitment methods referenced include job fairs, faculty contacts, employee referrals, Internet job postings and
student organizations and clubs. Ranking last in the survey were virtual career fairs and video interviewing, evidence that face-to-face time still is important in the recruiting realm."Technology is necessary, but it's not sufficient," said Emanuel
Contomanolis, associate vice president and director of Rochester Institute of Technology's Co-op and Career Services. "I cannot think of any student who basically sight unseen would jump and accept an offer of full-time employment. They may be
connecting with people electronically, but ultimately they want to see a face, they want to see a place — they want to understand the culture because the culture is more
important to them than ever before."In today's über-competitive job market, the best recruitment method is...
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Electronic surveillance of employees [?]
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In researching and interviewing experts for an article about the electronic surveillance of employees at work, I obtained so much information that the task turned into two articles.
The first, published about ten days ago, was Surfing the Web at Work. Today's new article, Electronic Surveillance of Employees in the Workplace, focuses on the fact that electronic surveillance of employees is increasing every year, according to the
annual Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance Survey, done by the American Management Association (AMA) and The ePolicy Institute annually since 2001. This review of the pros and cons of electronic surveillance of employees at work will help employers
decide what is best in their organization. Not every workforce, workplace, or work culture and environment is a candidate for electronic surveillance of employees at work. In fact, in some work environments, depending upon the culture and environment
desired, electronic surveillance of employees would injure trust, injure relationships, and send powerfully wrong messages to the workforce...
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Develop [your] performance management system
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This week, I did my third recent interview about performance management.
I found myself raising all of the issues that influenced my philosophical direction with the topic of performance appraisals. Universally disliked by many managers who don't like sitting in numeric judgment annually over a staff person's work,
performance appraisals are avoided. This causes the job of the Human Resources staff to become policing. I can think of a lot of better uses for my time. How about you? So can managers who fear giving a staff person a less than stellar appraisal because of
the hit the employee's morale may take. Plus, managers depend on employee contribution of discretionary energy; a poor performance appraisal interferes with forward motion. And, in most companies, the appraisal is tied directly to raises. A less positive
performance appraisal will impact an employee's bank account all year long. This is known as employee motivation - not. What do I recommend instead? I've had the
opportunity to work with six clients to install a performance management system. You'll want to understand the differences...
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Responding to employee rants: 4 do's and don'ts
Discipline and termination meetings are emotionally charged events that carry the potential for nasty words, hurt feelings and even legal troubles.
As a manager, you never know how employees will respond to discipline or firings. But you need to be prepared for anything—including employees who “let it all out” in long, loud rants. Rants are unpredictable. Some employees simply vent, cry or complain
without pouring their scorn on management. Other employees scream, insult, curse, threaten—or even get physical. In either case, it’s wise to follow these four do’s and don’ts to defuse rants and avoid lawsuits:...
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25 good interview questions ... and 8 to avoid
When preparing to interview job candidates, it’s important for supervisors to plan out their lines of questioning.
Decide which skills are most important for that position, then focus your questions on assessing those skills. Here are some sample questions to work from:
Employment history
1. If you had to evaluate your performance in your present job on a scale of ...
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Attract and keep young workers with 'Portable' benefits
Your organization’s youngest workers learned an important lesson about the workplace from their parents: You can’t count on keeping the same job for your whole career.
That realization dawned decades ago, when companies started laying off employees and replacing them with contractors and consultants who didn’t require benefits—or a long-term commitment. Now that commitment gap has widened to the point that today’s
young employees don’t want to make a long-term commitment to their employers. They have no faith that companies will return the favor of loyalty. So young employees come, and they go. If you want your talented Gen Y employees to stick around, you’re
going to have to change the way you look at employee benefits. Here are three things they want that might surprise you:...
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Tips for outsourcing benefits communication and enrollment
Gregory J. Morano is the CEO of Univers Workplace Benefits, a Hammonton, N.J.-based provider of benefits communications and enrollment services.
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Benefits are a primary factor in deciding whether employees stay with a company.
Of course, offering the best benefit plan money can buy doesn't guarantee that your employees will be satisfied. A company's benefit program is only as valuable as employees perceive it to be. Knowing that employees need to understand the value of
their benefit plans, companies of all sizes have turned to vendors that specialize in communicating employee benefits. The goal is to make open enrollment and new employee orientation less stressful, substantially elevate your workforce's knowledge and
appreciation of your benefits and drive a great ROI for your company. However, identifying the right vendor can be difficult. The following are some key points to consider...
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The body you've always wanted for just $14
With the U.S. struggling with a growing obesity epidemic, employers across the nation are wondering which fitness, exercise and weight-loss regimens might best fit with their workforce.
There are dozens of concepts and programs available for employers which can make it difficult to select the most appropriate one. The best choice though, might be cold, hard cash. A study published in late 2007 shows that even a small amount of money can
encourage people to make healthier choices and lose weight. Led by Eric Finkelstein, director of the public health economics program at RTI International, a research institute based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., the study tested how effective two
levels of modest financial incentives would be for some 200 overweight employees from nearby North Carolina colleges...
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Bullying more damaging than sexual harassment
Divide and rule, generating conflict to create a more competitive environment, pushing people hard to help them fulfil their potential – there has always been a fine line between challenging, motivational management and bullying.
But according to new research, managers who step over that line do more harm than if they were sexually harassing their team. A study by Canadian academics has concluded that a bullying culture of belittling comments, persistent criticism and withholding
of resources can inflict more damage on employees than even sexual harassment. The research looked at 110 studies conducted over 21 years and compared the consequences of employees' experience of sexual harassment and workplace aggression. Specifically
it focused on the effect on job, co-worker and supervisor satisfaction, on workers' stress, anger and anxiety levels and their mental and physical health. Job turnover and emotional ties to the job were also compared. [While both bullying and sexual
harassment clearly created negative work environments and had unhealthy consequences for employees, the researchers found workplace aggression had the more severe consequences...]
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Provoking productive [employee] thinking
As foresighted and innovative as management might be, the thinking that's likely to have the greatest impact on improving processes, products and services emanates from
the people closest to the work. HR leaders and others in organizations who understand this fact include frontline staff in an organized productive thinking process.
Business leaders agree that human capital is the most important asset in organizations. Ironically, particularly in medium-sized and large companies, it is often the most underutilized asset. Although fierce competition is driving an
increasing number of workers to put in long hours, the additional hours have not translated into optimal results in organizations where the traditional approach to work has not changed. This approach disproportionately focuses on motor skills,
leaving much of an organization's brainpower untapped. Dutifully repeating the same tasks and routines is only a fraction of the capability of the worker. As a young sculptor, Michelangelo applied for a job at a commercial studio. The owner of the
studio informed him that he knew exactly how long it took to carve each piece and that his deliveries were never late. In his book The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone dramatizes the rest of the conversation between the two men: "Michelangelo asks what
happens if a sculptor thinks of 'something new ... an idea not carved before.' The owner replies, 'Sculpture is not an inventing art, it is reproductive.' "Michelangelo again asks him what would happen if a sculptor wanted to 'achieve something fresh and
different.' The owner says, 'That is your youth speaking, my boy. A few months under my tutelage and you would lose such foolish notions.' " Obviously, Michelangelo never worked in this studio. At a time when customers constantly demand new and fresh ideas,
and when visionary companies identify and create markets to meet needs the customers didn't think of, many businesses still operate like that studio owner. The solicitation of habitual productive thinking in an organization is often limited to
management, which is typically 5 percent to 20 percent of the workforce. When professionals, such as accountants, lawyers, and human resource leaders, are included in the productive-thinking process, that still leaves out more than half of the
workforce. [Under Jack Welch's leadership, GE caught on to the infinite potential of a thinking organization...]
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Background checking--Digging deeper
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With civil records, you have to proceed carefully. If an applicant filed a discrimination claim against a former employer, that's not the type of thing that should influence an employment decision." —Gregg Freeman, associate general counsel, HireRight |
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Many employers are going well beyond the typical criminal record check in screening job candidates—looking into civil records like lawsuits and even divorce filings. But experts say the information needs to be handled with extreme care.
When Bruce S. Fillpot applied for a job as a financial analyst at Intel Corp., his résumé did not lack distinction. A past president of the New Mexico Society of CPAs, he had helped write legislation and authored numerous articles in professional
publications. During his career, he had worked for the “Big 4” accounting firm Ernst & Young, as vice president of investments for a national brokerage firm, and had most recently been chief investment officer at REDW Trust Co., an Albuquer¬que financial
services company. Fillpot disclosed on his application that he had sued REDW, but Intel, the semiconductor giant, offered him the job in October 2005, contingent on a background check. A month later, Intel managers called him into a meeting and it was
then that things started to go awry, according to court documents. During the November 10, 2005, meeting, Intel questioned Fillpot “at length” about issues that arose from his background check, including a bankruptcy and the REDW suit, Fillpot, 48, alleges
in a discrimination suit he filed in December 2007. On November 28, 2005, the company withdrew the job offer. Intel “retaliated against Plaintiff for filing and participating in an EEOC charge of discrimination against [REDW],” the suit says. New
Mexico court records show Fill¬pot sued REDW in October 2003 for violations of the state Human Rights Act, retaliatory discharge and breach of contract. After the company filed a counterclaim for conversion, which in tort law means an illegal taking
of another’s property, the litigation was settled in January 2007. Fillpot also alleges that Intel discriminated against him because he had filed a bankruptcy action. The federal Bankruptcy Act prohibits an employer from discriminating “with respect to
employment” against someone who “is or has been a debtor or bankrupt” under the act. He came out of bankruptcy in February 2003. In checking out Fillpot, Intel wasn’t doing anything unusual. A 2006 survey of human resource professionals by the Society
for Human Resource Management found that 85 percent of those surveyed hired outside agencies to conduct background checks of potential hires and, of those, 96 percent
reported using criminal records checks—up from 51 percent in 1996. What was out of the ordinary about Intel’s research was that...
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The fine art of sucking up to your boss
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Forget about complimenting the boss' tie or her choice in shoes. And if you're thinking of picking the head honcho up a scone and coffee on your way into work, think again.
Forget about complimenting the boss' tie or her choice in shoes. And if you're thinking of picking the head honcho up a scone and coffee on your way into work, think again. There's an art to sucking up, and if the boss--or your co-workers--can
figure out what you're up to, you're not doing it right. More importantly, it will backfire. Your goal is to develop trust between you and your manager since the projects you work on and whether you get promoted is directly tied to your
relationship with him or her. So while everyone calls it something different, it's key to your success at work. "I call this self-survival," says Faith Ralston, an
organizational leadership coach. "It's not fun to play the game, but if you do it to succeed then you're not just doing it to make the boss feel good." The key is...
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Eight healthy reasons to drink beer
Looking for a good excuse to tip back a beer? You don't have to wait for St. Patrick's Day. That's because a decade's worth of health research shows that regular, moderate beer intake--one to two 12 ounce glasses per day for men and one for women--can be good for you,
especially if you're facing some of the most common diseases related to aging. Experts say wine tends to get most of the attention when it comes to the health benefits of alcohol primarily because of the French paradox, a reference to the relatively low rate of heart
disease in France in spite of a diet high in saturated fat. The idea is that daily sips of Merlot make the difference. But a number of studies are showing that moderate consumption of
alcohol, including beer, can have similar...
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