What/How Much to Share w/ Management

How much of what an employee shares with their trusted HR Manager/Director should HR reveal to management? (Assuming nothing that was shared was illegal …)  An earlier post posed the question of  “What is the role of HR, employee advocate or management advisor?”  This post is similar.  Employees should probably be able to feel like they can unload or vent to someone at the company regarding things that they don’t perceive as going how they think they should, and if HR runs and tattles everything they hear to management, the employees will soon learn to distrust HR, and say no more.  On the other hand, if HR hears something that they think management really should be aware of – and keep it to themselves, then management can’t address the concern.

So what do y’all think? Post your feelings here in a comment.

Are Humans a Resource? (HR’s Role?)

I guess I’m in Human Resources because I really do believe humans are more than a “resource” for organizations to use like so much equipment or building space. We recently held our company Christmas party, I was responsible (aren’t most HR shops?) Luckily, I had a ton o’ help and supportive management; I think a lovely time was had by all.  One thing this party re-emphasized to me is that a company is great because of its people. While some may posit that a company is great because of their products, their technologies, their strategies, etc. I would remind: Who makes and markets those products? People. Who creates and refines those technologies? People. Who determines and executes those strategies? People.

HR professionals will invariably find themselves at one point in their career or another walking a tightrope, making some fine judgment calls, when in cases of dispute to support the employee or management.  One role HR has been cast in is “employee advocate”.  This role is an especially tenuous one, since the HR Manager/Director doesn’t work for the employee; they work for management. While many HR functions exist to support of the employee, such as benefits and parties, the bottom line is that HR exists in an organization to primarily serve management, to provide management advisory services in those classic functions of attracting, motivating and retaining employees. Companies don’t provide those fringe benefits out of the goodness of their hearts; they do it to be competitive; to attract and retain.

So how do YOU see HR’s role?  Who do YOU think HR works for – employees or management?

 

Gender Discrimination Alive and Well

In May of 2010, a jury in a gender discrimination case pending in a New York City federal court awarded a class of 5,600 female plaintiffs over $250 million in punitive damages and almost $4 million in compensatory damages.  A back pay award is also expected.  The plaintiffs are current and former sales employees of a drug maker who alleged they suffered bias in pay, promotional opportunities and pregnancy-related matters.  Here is a news article with some more details about the lawsuit and the plaintiffs’  verdict:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/business/20drug.html Some news accounts have said this is the largest gender discrimination lawsuit ever to go to a jury verdict in the United States.

Acknowledgement and thanks to Mike O’Brien (writer) and Kriss Hess (sender) at the law firm Jones Waldo in Salt Lake City, UT

Note: Posts on this blog are for information purposes only, and are not legal advice.

Employment Law Trends Reflected In News

Some recent news stories are good indicators of legal trends to which employers should pay some attention.  First, the Illinois Legislature just approved a new law restricting employers from using credit information in employment decisions.  Several other states (Hawaii, Oregon, Washington) have adopted similar laws, all intended to minimize the impact of the Great Recession on an applicant’s ability to get a job.  Second, nationally, claims brought before state wage agencies are up.  These types of claims include claims regarding termination pay, vacation pay and deductions from wages.  One Eastern employment lawyer has commented that he is seeing a “wage and hour firestorm spread from California across the country.  Make sure you know about and comply with applicable state wage laws that apply based on where your employees live/work.  Finally, a couple of recent new lawsuits suggest more men are filing sex discrimination claims with women—and other men– portrayed as the villains.

Acknowledgement and thanks to Mike O’Brien (writer) and Kriss Hess (sender) at the law firm Jones Waldo in Salt Lake City, UT

Note: Posts on this blog are for information purposes only, and are not legal advice.

Privacy and Texting

The U.S. Supreme court heard oral arguments in a case regarding employees’ use of employer-provided electronic communication devices.

The city of Ontario, California, distributed two-way pagers to employees, including its SWAT team. A lieutenant told SWAT personnel that although city-owned equipment was limited to business-related use, his employees could pay overage charges if they exceeded a preset limit of characters each month and he would not audit the messages to see if they were work-related.

Investigators found that one of the SWAT team member’s messages were personal and sexually explicit. That SWAT team member sued, alleging privacy and unreasonable search violations.
 
In today’s workplace, with all the mechanisms that you have for communication, you will sometimes have a blurring of the business and the personal.

HRIS for a small (100 EEs) company?

What do you suggest for an HRIS for a small (100 EEs) company? NO SALESMEN!

HR: Good Practitioners, Bad Marketers

 For a few years now, we’ve been hearing about Human Resources (HR) professionals having a “seat at the table”, meaning being seated at the same table as the owners, senior managers and participating in the strategic management of the organization.

 For many years, my thought was that HR’s biggest challenge was not getting that seat at the table, but letting others in the organization – especially owners and senior managers – know what it is  that HR does; how they either save the organization money, or reduce expenses. I’ve been validated now by Lawrence O’Neil, the CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the national organization of Human Resources. In the March 2010 issue of HR Magazine, O’Neil says:

 “Great HR professionals communicate the strategic importance of their profession to decision-makers who may have never given HR a second thought. Or even a first thought.

 Communication is the real work of leadership. And if HR is going to lead, it needs to communicate … to tell its story to the world beyond human resources.”

 I’ve worked in some great HR departments – some departments that did a lot of great things for their companies – and no one knew about it except those of us in the department. My hunch is that there are more than just a few folks working in HR functions that are probably there because they aren’t salesmen or marketers, or at least they don’t see themselves as such, but that doesn’t mean HR practitioners should keep what they do a secret, especially from company owners and managers.

 HR is like the electricity in the wall; its always expected to be there, doing its job, with those on the outside of the wall not even thinking about it or knowing its even there. But just wait until the lights don’t snap on when they flip the switch, or the food in their fridge doesn’t stay cold and starts to spoil. Then they think about the electricity.

 I don’t want something to go wrong in an organization before owners and managers think about HR; I don’t want the company to lose a lawsuit or experience excessively expensive turnover before they think about HR. As HR practitioners its up to us to be giving valuable information on what’s happening now with the company’s people, and what’s happening next, such as issues created by the current economy, job losses, COBRA, and health care reform, to name only a few.

 It’s a two-way street between HR and owners/senior managers. We must both reach out to the other. Companies need HR “at the table” to assist in the strategic decision planning process, and HR needs to prove itself worthy to be there by adding value – and making it known.

Employees Have Ideas. Is Anyone Listening?

People age 55 and older, women and HR professionals are among employees who make workplace suggestions more often than others, according to findings released Feb. 23, 2010.

Right Management, a subsidiary of Manpower employment services, conducted the online survey Jan. 20-Feb. 15, 2010, through LinkedIn.

“We find that employees really want to be heard,” Right Management’s senior vice president of global solutions, Deborah Schroeder-Saulnier, said in a news release. “Making suggestions signals they are thinking about the performance of the organization and want to contribute over and beyond the requirements of the job. And this can be seen as a great opportunity by employers—if they know how to take advantage of it.”

Among the findings:
•57 percent of persons surveyed make workplace suggestions regularly; 27 percent claim to make more than 20 suggestions annually.
•30 percent of employees made more than 10 suggestions but fewer than 20.
•Women were more likely than men to make more than 10 workplace suggestions annually (61 percent and 46 percent, respectively).
•Workers age 55 and older were more likely than those age 25 to 34 to make 10 or more suggestions (76 percent and 51 percent, respectively).
•Salespeople and HR professionals tend to make the most suggestions (50 percent and 28 percent, respectively).
•Management and C-level executives were most likely to offer more than 20 suggestions per year.
•6 percent offer no workplace suggestions.
•The number of suggestions made does not vary by company size.

There is little evidence, though, that employers truly listen to employee suggestions or try to benefit from their enthusiasm and perspective, according to Schroeder-Saulnier.

Excerpted from the SHRM web site

Is “Human Resources” a disrespectful phrase?

Is it demeaning or disrespectful to refer to the people in an organization as a “resource”? Does calling people a resource de-humanize them, and put living, breathing souls on the same plane as say, a building or a bulldozer?

I’m not saying that it does, but wonder what y’all think.

A company I used to work for renamed their “HR Department” their “People Department”, I’m sure in an effort to make it look like they valued their people more than their pens & pencils – but I’m not so sure that just changing the name of their HR department to “People” had any effect; what *really* matters, is how an organization treats its people. (I don’t think that phrase has really caught on yet either, I haven’t seen too many other companies jump on the “People” bandwagon.)

When I started my career in whatever we call this, I worked in the “Personnel” Department, but I feel like that organization valued its people more than any organization I’ve been in since. The name of the department wasn’t what mattered; it was how their management treated us in that department AND the rest of the employees there.

Bottom line, I don’t think it matters *what* we call that function; what matters is how the ownership and management actually treat their most valuable resource, their people.

I welcome your comments and opinions.

Graying Workforce

Workforces will become increasingly gray as older employees, reeling from the blows to retirement savings accounts, put off exiting the workforce while they try to recoup some losses, according to a survey report from the Watson Wyatt consulting firm. The report concludes that older workers will be on the job longer than expected.

The survey found that:
* One-third of all U.S. workers have increased their planned retirement ages since February 2008.
* The changes in plans are more pronounced for older workers; 44 percent of those 50 or older plan to delay their retirement, compared with 25 percent of those under 40.
* Although the average planned retirement age for all employees is 65, half of those 50 or older now plan to retire at 66 or later.

Seventy-six percent of older workers ages 50 to 64 cited the decline in the value of their 401(k) accounts as the most important reason for planning to postpone retirement, followed by the high cost of health care and higher prices for basic necessities. Within this group, 54 percent indicated that they will work for at least three years longer than previously expected.

Excerpted from HR Magazine, December 2009.