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| Volume 9, Issue 4 |
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In This Issue:
 The Rising Stock of HR
The 13 most annoying people to work with
Low-cost ways to motivate employees
 Choosing employees for promotion: A 6-step legal process
Coping with seriously ill employees: 4 management steps to take
Ledbetter's lesson: Revamp your salary guidelines
To do this week: Confirm new tax withholding, begin using new I-9s
 [FAQ] Avoiding COBRA's bite
Tackling workers' comp
 Benefits not on the chopping block
 Quantifying the return on your people investment
Eliminating recruiting waste
Rewards can backfire
 Taming Twitter: Did they really just say that?
Special report: Background checking-caution amid the credit crunch
 Stress so bad it hurts -- really
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The Rising Stock of HR
Your stock market portfolio probably isn't as valuable as it was a year ago, but fortunately, there is another place you can currently increase your value: on the job. There are at least seven ways the HR department can add more value to your organization.
Former CEO of General Electric Jack Welch has been quoted many times stating that the Human Resource Director should be just as important if not more important than the Chief Financial Officer of a company. He often uses the analogy of a baseball coach putting more value on the team accountant than the team talent recruiter.
Doing so doesn't make sense. So why does the typical CEO spend a lot more time with the CFO than with the human resource director? If you really think about it,...
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The 13 most annoying people to work with
Most of us have had colleagues over the years who turned annoying into an art form.
Well, now it's a classifiable art form. Career experts Christine Lambden and Casey Connor, authors of the new book, "Everyday Practices of Extraordinary Consultants," have compiled a list of "The 13 Most Annoying People to Work With." How many of these does your company still have on its payroll?...
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Low-cost ways to motivate employees
Aside from cutting expenses, delaying payment of bills, ramping up collections and altering their business models, employers can try low-cost ways to motivate their employees to increase revenue and profitability, according to Suzanne Bates,
author of Motivate Like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act!
"Money is only one of many factors that motivate employees. When people enjoy their jobs, like their co-workers, and believe their pay is basically fair, they don't focus so much on their compensation," says Bates, president and CEO of Bates
Communications. Among the low-cost and no-cost ways to keep people motivated in challenging times, according to "Motivate Like a CEO," are:...
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Choosing employees for promotion: A 6-step legal process
White Paper published by The HR Specialist, copyright 2009.
If you’re like most organizations, you’re relying more heavily on internal promotions than in the past. And as greater numbers of existing employees compete for coveted "inside" jobs,...
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Coping with seriously ill employees: 4 management steps to take
It’s sad enough when an employee becomes seriously ill. What makes it tougher is that work doesn’t stop.
Deadlines remain, customers need service and paperwork piles up. That means you must deal with two major management challenges at once: understanding and appreciating the emotions...
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Ledbetter's lesson: Revamp your salary guidelines
Now that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is the law of the land, it may be time to revisit how you set starting and incumbent salaries.
If you currently allow managers and supervisors flexibility on pay issues, consider reducing that discretion. It may be better to have clear rules for setting salaries that rely on objective factors like education, specific experience and training. That’s better than using vague terms like "salaries may be adjusted in exceptional
circumstances." Here’s why: Those "exceptional circumstances" may seem like illegal discrimination to employees who don’t get extra pay or benefits...
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To do this week: Confirm new tax withholding, begin using new I-9s
HR pros have two important items to add to their to-do lists this week:
- Ensure that this week’s payroll reflects more generous federal income tax withholding levels mandated by the economic stimulus law enacted in February.
- Start using the new Form I-9 on Friday, April 3.
The Making Work Pay tax credit is the tax-reduction centerpiece of the stimulus package, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).
The law provides tax breaks that vary depending on workers’ income and tax filing status. Generally, single taxpayers will get an additional...
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[FAQ] Avoiding COBRA's bite
Because the federal stimulus bill offers a subsidy of COBRA benefits, employers should expect increased selection of the coverage. The changes will increase employer costs and require new processes to be developed to comply with the enhanced benefit. The deadline is fast approaching.
HR leaders need to understand the modifications to the Consolidated Omnibus Budget and Reconciliation Act (COBRA) contained in the Feb. 17, 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The changes apply to all companies that sponsor a group health plan and have terminated or laid off at least one employee since Sept. 1, 2008.
Along with action items HR executives need to pursue, we will review answers to the most commonly asked questions by HR: What does it all mean? What do we have to do? And what will it cost?...
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Tackling workers' comp
This month, our Legal Clinic is about the length of time an employer must keep a job open for an employee who suffered a work-related injury, exploring the anti-retaliation principles that apply across many states. Also answered this month is a question on the relationship between the FMLA and workers' comp leave.
Workers' compensation is a benefits scheme wherein employers provide replacement income and medical benefits to employees who suffer work-related injuries or illnesses. Each state has its own law providing for workers' compensation benefits
and all employers are affected by workers' compensation in one way or another. Therefore, we're tackling workers' comp this month...
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Benefits not on the chopping block
"The recession that we are experiencing in this country is really a wake-up call for both employers and employees," Bill Mullaney, president of MetLife's Institutional Business said Monday at MetLife’s 5th Annual National Benefits Symposium.
The forum served, in part, as a venue for the company to roll out findings from its 7th Annual Employee Benefits Trends Study. The study is composed of more than 1,500 interviews with benefits decision-makers, which were conducted last August and November. The study allows us to...
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Quantifying the return on your people investment
What if you had the opportunity to streamline your company's talent acquisition process and substantially improve quality of hire?
"Sounds promising," you might say. What if you also could demonstrate cost savings, productivity gains or a measureable return on your investment? You'd be a hero, right? Many companies are doing exactly this by implementing assessment tools in recruiting and hiring processes and then quantifying the impact on measurable
outcomes such as retention, sales revenue, productivity and quality. Assessments can take on a variety of forms, including ability tests, personality and biographical inventories, simulations and knowledge or skills tests. Regardless of type, it is
possible to quantify an assessment's value by linking candidates' scores to the outcomes the organization values and is trying to effect. Consider...
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Eliminating recruiting wastes
A company will strategically plan and invest in product development, marketing, sales and technology to be strongly positioned in the market and beat out competition.
Yet, most companies don't apply the same dedication and foresight when hiring the workforce that will drive these elements to success. However, talent managers can achieve significant savings by taking a close look at the strategy and analytics for an existing recruiting program...
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Rewards can backfire
Layoffs, bankruptcies, the credit crunch, mergers, closings — the headlines are impossible to ignore. Companies across industries and around the world are dealing with similar complex challenges due to the declining state of the global economy. Now is not the time for employees to give in to fear and work less hard because they believe they will not be recognized for their efforts.
Talent leaders can address these employee concerns while remaining fiscally responsible, encouraging greater productivity and sustaining growth by reconsidering employee recognition and reward programs. Such initiatives can be a lever to enable an organization to ride out the recession and position itself strongly for the
eventual upturn. Strategic employee recognition programs reaffirm the value of employees' contributions, acknowledge the additional work and effort they likely are being asked to perform and can allay rumors through frequently updated executive messages. But accomplishing these goals requires careful planning. Without proper
consideration, implementation and direction, employee rewards easily can backfire. Improperly applied recognition and reward programs can have the wrong impact, deliver the wrong reward and ultimately cost the company in reduced employee engagement and wasted investments on unwanted rewards...
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Taming Twitter: Did they really just say that?
As recent incidents have shown, on Twitter anything goes. But forward-thinking companies are mitigating risks of using the booming social network by designating Twitter reps and updating electronic communication guidelines.
Perhaps by now you’ve heard of the PR guy whose snarky comments about Memphis, Tennessee, to his Twitter followers landed him in hot water with the Memphis-based client he was about to visit, a little company named FedEx. Or the congressman whose Twitter posts during a secret trip to Iraq had military officials worried he
had compromised the mission’s security. And then there’s the very public and very profane exchange between a Canadian journalist and a product-marketing executive. As those instances show, organizations are using Twitter for almost anything and everything, often with unintended or even disastrous consequences...
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Special report: Background checking-caution amid the credit crunch
As the recession deepens, employers that routinely include credit and criminal record checks in their screening process should tread carefully to avoid legal trouble.
With the economic crisis bearing down, the sheer magnitude of consumer credit defaults and the already evident rise in crime in some U.S. cities may give pause to many employers that commonly reject job candidates with negative credit and criminal records. If employers had screened out applicants based on credit
history hits in 2007, they would have eliminated more than 40 percent of all applicants; if they had rejected those with criminal hits, they would have eliminated nearly 10 percent, according to the latest background screening hit report by Kroll. The current economic crisis is highly likely to drive up hit rates
for years to come. Although credit and criminal checks will remain relevant for some positions, widespread screening for broad job categories may not produce valid predictors of employee behavior or protection from negligent-hiring lawsuits. In addition, screening carries its own risks. Higher numbers of rejected candidates
and soaring unemployment rates quickly translate into a rise in discrimination lawsuits...
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Stress so bad it hurts -- really
"I think your real problem is stress," the doctor said when I complained that the muscle injections he was giving me hadn't relieved my neck and shoulder pain.
"You can't blame me for everything that's hard in your life," he said. My bursting into tears only seemed to confirm his diagnosis. It's not like I hadn't heard this before. During earlier bouts of low-back pain, irritable-bowel syndrome and temporomandibular joint disorder, plenty of doctors have used the stress word with
me. And each time, I've become indignant. It sounded like "it's all in your head" or "you're malingering." That's an outdated view, says Christopher L. Edwards, director of the Behavioral Chronic Pain Management program at Duke University Medical Center. Decades ago, when doctors said a condition was psychosomatic, it was the equivalent
of saying it wasn't real, since there was little evidence that the body and the brain were connected. "Now, we recognize that what happens in the brain affects the body and what happens in the body affects the brain," he says. That knowledge gives us the tools to try to manage the situation, he adds. Dr. Edwards says his
pain-management program in Durham, N.C., is seeing a rise in patients amid the current economic crisis:...
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