An Employer's Retention Advantage The Ca
se for Talent and Leadership Development - NOW
Once upon a time there was an "employment pact" between employer and employee. In this pact, the employer set out that if you come to work, do a good job, and keep your nose essentially clean, you will have a job as long as you want it. That fairy tale ended before most of us were born. If anyone was holding out that this may still exist in today's world, the past couple of years will have changed those views.
What this means is that company allegiance as well as employee allegiance just does not extend as far as it may have in the past. For most employees that sense of allegiance is now associated with their own careers rather than a particular company. So when it's every man or woman for themselves, what is a company to do to retain its key contributors?
More often than not, companies begin to reach for reward elements as a quick solution to retention. However, I'm telling you now that most reward elements provide only a patch with very little long-term holding value. Throughout my career in human resources, I've come across a multitude of executives and professionals who are more than willing to accept a new job offer as long as the start date follows the cutoff date for full payment of their current company's pending bonus. Considering how we arrived at this point in the US job market, organizations seeking a sustainable retention tool with value today, tomorrow, and long into the future need to make a serious investment in learning and development at all levels.
Talent and leadership development have gained a new level of importance as individuals found themselves jobless after 10, 15, and 20 years of employment. As they dusted off their resumes and summed up their marketability, many discovered that their skills and abilities fell a bit short of what's required today to get the results organizations were seeking. While they were working hard and doing what was asked of them, they were not necessarily growing in a manner that made them more valuable. Colleges and universities have seen their student population increase dramatically over the past 24 months, largely due to formerly working adults returning to school or enrolling in continuing education programs. Some in this new group of students are there to upgrade their ability to perform in their current occupations whereas others are there to acquire new knowledge and skills for increased career flexibility or a complete change of careers.
The implication for companies in all this is that your current employees witnessed the fallout and can just as easily see themselves in those shoes. The one thing that can provide some sense of security is a solid and marketable base of knowledge, skills, and abilities that can be applied in any number of employment settings. In this type of environment, a company that demonstrates a commitment to its employees through talent and leadership development has a much higher probability of retaining its key talent. By doing this, you are creating an environment that will incent your employees to want to be better employees for you and not your competitors.
Note: If you are interested in establishing talent and leadership development opportunities that will work for your organization, feel free to contact me, 1-877-310-6553, ext. 702. We offer development programs geared towards accelerating individual, team, and enterprise performance (view our programs). Email me directly at vivian@morahr.com or complete a contact us form.
Avoid the Misclassification of Compliance Training
Make Clear the Connection between Compliance Training and Diligent Risk Management
Knowing and communicating the purpose behind compliance training is crucial to keeping your entire training budget from coming under fire from the broad sweep of the CFO's red pen or the CEO's scramble to reign in expenses. Simply stated, the purpose of compliance training is to protect people and preserve company profits by appropriately managing risk for the entire organization. In addition to growing the value of an organization, this purpose is exactly what leadership teams are charged with accomplishing. Making the connection between these programs and diligent risk management is key.
Discrimination and harassment prevention; emergency preparedness; disability, incident and/or injury handling; illness and return-to-work management (think H1N1); and/or workplace violence prevention all have an elevated importance when workplaces are under stress. I think we can all agree that our workplaces have definitely been under stress over the past 18 to 24 months. Programs such as these can not be simply dropped under the category of HR training without including their function of protecting the human and financial assets of the organization by managing the risks that accompany these areas if they go unattended.
I can't help but think that even the hardiest of Chief Financial Officers would have a difficult time stating he or she is willing to take the risk associated with the elimination or maybe even the reduction of funding for such crucial areas. It would be negectful to do so. Therefore, we, the HR community, need to make a pledge to only discuss compliance training needs in terms of its true purpose, protecting the people and profits of the organization from unnecessary risk.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
It will also help to have some numbers and case studies to back up your statements. The first instances listed below have all been settled within the past 45 days. You only need to visit the EEOC website to see that so many more suits are pending. The EEOC has reported that filings have reached a record number. It's true that not all are million dollar settlements but we know that a $120,000 settlement is really the tip of the iceberg in terms of the true cost of one of these charges.
Recent EEOC claims filing settlements:
(1) Federal Court Approves Largest Monetary Amount Ever in Single EEOC ADA Suit: Employees Allegedly Terminated Based on Inflexible Workers' Compensation Leave Exhaustion Policy (http://www.eeoc.gov/press/9-29-09.html); (3) UPS Freight to Pay $120,000 to settle EEOC Sex Harassment and Retaliation Suit (http://www.eeoc.gov/press/9-23-09b.html); and (4) ALLSTATE to Pay $4.5 Million to Settle Age Bias Suit: EEOC Resolves Class Case Against Insurance Giant Over Rehiring Policy Which Adversely Impacted Older Workers During Companywide Reorganization (http://www.eeoc.gov/press/9-11-09a.html)
Failure to appropriately train supervisors and employees can result in extremely costly awards:
Greene v. Coach, Inc., 218 F.Supp.2d 404, 414 (S.D.N.Y. 2002) – Compliance training every other year is not enough to prevent liability if the workplace harassment prevention training did not occur during the year(s) that the alleged workplace harassment occurred. In this case, even though the employer had conducted seven harassment prevention training sessions, it did not conduct any anti-harassment training during the two years of the plaintiff's employment. By not training on an annual basis, the employer lost the ability to claim a good-faith defense in court, and the case proceeded to a jury trial.
Romano v. U-HAUL International, 233 F.3d 655 (1st Cir. 2000) – Court held that a written policy against workplace discrimination, without more, is insufficient to insulate an employer from punitive damages liability. The employer did not put forth evidence "of an active mechanism for renewing employees' awareness of the policies through...specific education programs."
Mathis v. Phillips Chevrolet, Inc., 269 F.3d 771 (7th Cir. 2001) – Punitive damages are awarded where no workplace harassment training is conducted. Court held that "leaving managers with hiring authority in ignorance of the basic features of the discrimination laws is an 'extraordinary mistake' for a company to make, and a jury can find that such an extraordinary mistake amounts to reckless indifference" of laws against discrimination in the workplace.
Appropriate compliance training can help to avoid costly awards:
Bryant v. Aiken Regional Medical Center, Inc., 333 F.3d 536 (4th Cir. 2003), cert. denied, 2004 U.S. LEXIS 68 (2004) – $210,000 punitive-damage award is reversed in a workplace discrimination and retaliation case where, despite a manager's unlawful actions, the employer demonstrated "good-faith efforts" to comply with workplace harassment laws and discrimination laws by issuing an EEO policy, training employees in harassment and discrimination prevention and voluntarily monitoring departments to identify workplace discrimination.
Hatley v. Hilton Hotels Corp., 308 F.3d 473 (5th Cir. 2002) rehearing denied, 2002 U.S. App. LEXIS 24504 (5th Cir. Nov. 5, 2002) – The court refused to let a jury even consider awarding punitive damages against an employer that had a "well-publicized policy forbidding sexual harassment, gave training on sexual harassment to new employees, etc...".
Hull v. APCOA, Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 247 (N.D. Ill. 2000) – Court held that employer's policy prohibiting workplace harassment and discrimination, and the fact that regular compliance training was conducted on the policy, indicated employer's good-faith efforts. Employer's motion for summary judgment on punitive damages award granted.
Posted 10/28/2009
Keep your organization safe, call to book your training sessions! 1-877-310-6553, ext. 702.
Avoiding the I-9 Snafu!
HR in Orange Coveralls?
HR in orange coveralls is truly a snafu in the original sense of the word! For this article, we will use this acronym euphemistically. Snafu is a military acronym that stands for "situation normal all fouled up". By now, you may know that Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, wants to trot you along with the rest of management off to jail if you have not been meticulous in meeting immigration regulations in your hiring practices.
Now, if just hearing this causes tightness in your chest and shallow breathing, you may have work to do.
In the News
In the past years, we've turned on the news and witnessed workers being ushered on to buses and vans following a raid at this workplace or another. Napolitano states that to truly get at the heart of this issue, we must strike at the demand side - employment - meaning employers. In the new administration’s view hauling workers out without making those responsible for hiring them accountable makes little to no sense. Can we argue with her logic? One can try; however, the workers did not just walk in and start working. They were screened (used loosely) and hired by someone. In most cases, more than one someone is involved in the hiring. HR, however, becomes "the usual suspect" when it comes to verifying authorization to work.
The Form I-9
The Form I-9, produced by the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), serves to help employers verify who is and who may not be legally authorized to work in the United States. Employers must complete a Form I-9 for every new employee hired after November 6, 1986.
The Concerns
On April 3, 2009, a new Form I-9 was issued along with several new or modified requirements for all employers. Following this change, I discovered a couple of my clients almost frozen in place regarding what to do in light of the new requirements and the news coming out of the DHS. The paralysis came out of fear of earning a criminal record due to: (1) the possibility of not being able to distinguish a valid employment document from a fraudulent one; (2) having to go back to review all of the documents on file for current employees; and (3) the most egregious of all, pressure from "management" to hire "regardless".
In addressing the first concern above, the DHS does provide for a "good faith" defense. If you have examined a document and it appears to be valid, you must accept it to avoid possible discrimination. To assert a good faith defense, you must be able to show that you did not knowingly hire an unauthorized alien. As for current employees, you are only required to re-verify employment authorization when an employee's authorization expires. If you think there may be a concern with previous I-9's completed, I would advise you to review all current I-9's, not just a segment of them. The final concern is most concerning. However, "management" must understand that the potential roundup for criminal charges would not exclude them. Napolitano has made it clear that the objective of DHS's enforcement unit is to build cases against the employer and prosecute to the full extent necessary to squelch illegal hiring.
This may be the first and only time you hear me say this but I am hopeful that it is not going to be an isolated incident. The USCIS has produced a very useful document, Handbook for Employers M-274, which provides instructions for completing Form I-9. The instructions are clearly written, provide excellent guidance, and include great document examples. Do not go out and buy any of the publications being sold on this topic. Download the 54-page handbook by clicking the title link above. Read it and use it to stay compliant with the regulations. You'll be breathing easier and avoiding this snafu!
Help is Available
If you are still a bit uneasy, Mora&Associates conducts Employment Eligibility Audits/I-9 Reviews. We also host a half-hour webinar, The New I-9: How-To Guidance on Employment Eligibility. We use the USCIS handbook as the source document. Click on the above link to sign up if you prefer this interactive and condensed review of the 54-page handbook.
EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT - Impact in Texas
Is this organizing made easy?
At Mora&Associates we urge all our clients and potential clients to become more educated on the EFCA right NOW. Prepare your management staff. Do not wait for passage to establish the type of environment that precludes the entry of organized labor.
The details
Introduced in the US House of Representatives on March 10, 2009, H.R. 1409 - known as the Employee Free Choice Act of 2009 - will significantly impact employers all across the nation if passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. This act will impact employers in three very important ways. The shorthand version is that it would (1) amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an easier system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations through a signature/checkcard system rather than private ballot elections; (2) provide for mandatory and stiffer injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes; and (3) require companies and newly certified unions to enter into binding arbitration if they cannot reach agreement on an initial contract after 90 days of negotiations and 30 days of mediation.
Are we ready for the potential impact in Texas?
The rollout of this Act will affect Texas significantly. Our "Right to Work" state may be affected in adverse ways. I like to say that I spent the first half of my HR career involved in labor relations and that I've spent the latter half in Texas. My time in Texas has been more or less ensuring that my organizations were "protected" from having to address labor relations through union avoidance strategies. Only, I didn't term the strategies we utilized as "union avoidance". With only a couple of exceptions, I found that putting into place exceptional employee relations strategies brought about very little need to focus on union avoidance in any direct and overt way but still accomplish the same result. This is a key point for many organizations right here in Texas. Have you established an environment that will make organizing easy or make organizing unnecessary? I hope it's the latter.
All employers must begin to prepare now for the EFCA's potential passage and the effect that the Act will have on workplaces across the United States. The EFCA will dramatically shift the balance of power to unions in whatever form it ultimately takes. If you don't believe this, go to the AFL-CIO's website right now and see the excitement this act has generated. Don't let your organization fuel the spread of organized labor in Texas. Contact Mora&Associates. Help is just a phone call away at 1-877-310-8553, ext. 702. Email me at vivian@morahrsearch.com.
Posted 05/04/2009