On Monday, February 11, 2008, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) published in the Federal Register a long awaited proposal on the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).  The DOL proposed revisions to certain existing FMLA regulations and requested public comments on a wide variety of issues related to the new military family leave entitlements that were contained in the National Defense Authorization Act.  The DOL will use these comments to issue final regulations for these new military family leave entitlements.

Proposed Changes to Existing Regulations
           
Serious Health Condition
           
Although many HR practioners would like further clarification of the definition of a “serious health condition”, the DOL did not see this same need and essentially retained the current definition.  However, under the proposal the DOL would modify the definition for "continuing treatment" of a serious health condition that includes a period of incapacity of more than three consecutive days and two or more treatments.  The DOL proposes that the two treatment visits must occur within a 30 calendar day period.  Currently, the time period is undefined.  Similarly, where the serious health condition involves a period of incapacity due to a chronic condition, the DOL would clarify that the employee must see a physician at least two times per year for that chronic condition.  The existing regulations are pretty vague, simply calling for "periodic visits."

Intermittent Leave

The proposal makes no change in the minimum size of an increment of intermittent leave that can be taken.  The existing regulations allow an employer to limit intermittent leave increments to the smallest increment of time permitted under an employer's payroll timekeeping system, as long as it is one hour or less. 

The proposal does include a helpful change requiring employees to comply with the employer's call-in procedures before taking unscheduled, intermittent leave.  It contains a new provision that will require employees to follow the workplace call-in procedures if they want to take unscheduled, intermittent leave, except in defined "emergency" cases. Currently, employees can take the leave and then designate it as FMLA-qualifying leave within two days of the absence.  The proposal only allows such an approach in the case of an emergency.

Medical Certification

The proposal makes a major change in the "medical certification" provisions so that employers will be able to contact medical providers directly to obtain clarification or authentication of documentation.  Under the existing regulations, that communication must be between a health care provider representing the employer and the employee's health care provider.  The DOL would clarify this process to eliminate the requirement for an employee's consent and would permit an employer to contact an employee's health care provider directly provided there is compliance with the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). 

The DOL is also proposing revisions to the medical certification process and its optional forms.  In this proposal a healthcare provider may disclose diagnosis information on a medical certification.  Another is that an employer must inform an employee why a medical certification is incomplete or insufficient and afford the employee seven days to correct it.  The DOL also proposes to strengthen the recertification and fitness-for-duty certification processes.  Recertification could be requested at least every six months and the fitness for duty certification would be more rigorous.

Other Changes
           
Other proposed changes would impact employer policies in the workplace.  These include a proposal to require employees to comply with the terms and conditions of an employer's paid leave policy when substituting a paid accrued leave, such as paid vacation or paid time-off, for unpaid FMLA leave.  Similarly, under the DOL's proposal, an employer could disqualify an employee from a bonus or award based upon achieving a goal if the employee fails to meet that goal due to a FMLA absence as long as other employees on non-FMLA were treated the same.

Probably one of the more significant revisions deals with employer and employee notification requirements.  The DOL would require employers to provide notice of FMLA rights and responsibilities to all its employees at least annually.  It would afford employers five days instead of the current two days to provide an employee notice of eligibility for FMLA leave as well as FMLA leave designation notice.  Likewise, an employee would be required to comply with the employer's usual procedures for calling-in and requesting leave when the employee's need for leave is unforeseeable. 

Military Family Leave

The other purpose of this notice is to seek public comments on the new "caregiver" and "active duty" leaves.  The DOL asks for assistance in the definition of the term "qualifying exigency" and determining whether it means an urgent or one-time situation or a routine, daily occurrence.  The legislative history suggests that arranging for childcare, handling financial or legal matters, or participating in official ceremonies would be "qualifying" reasons.

Also, the DOL has raised numerous questions about the 26-week entitlement of caregiver leave.  The 60-day public comment period will help the DOL define certain aspects of this entitlement such as: when the 12-month period commences (date of service member's injury or point in which the employee is needed to care for the service member); the basis on which the 12-month period runs (calendar year or when leave first taken); and whether "single" means it is a one-time entitlement or whether there is another entitlement in a subsequent 12-month period.   These are just a few of the areas for which the DOL seeks comments.

What's Next?

The DOL expects to issue the final regulations before the end of the Bush administration.  The rules will be open for public comment for 60 days from the date of publication, which was February 11.  The final rules on the new military family leave law will contain regulatory language based on comments received during the review process.

This regulatory update was sent out as an Achievant HR Alert.  If you are interested in being added to the distribution list for these, please let me know.   

Ok, I admit it.  When I saw this headline by the Associated Press the other day, I had to read it.  It turns out that those employees who are in high demand are being paid to interview and they set the price.  Yep, you heard me correctly…who knew there would be a market for such a thing? 

That's the proposition behind the self-funded startup NotchUp.com. Its founders, Jim Ambras and Rob Ellis, say the site will fill a void between recruiters who charge 30 percent of a new hire's salary and resume job sites such as Monster.com.

Their audience are passive job seeks who are happily employed professionals who are just keeping their options open.  Their web site indicates NotchUp is for you if:

• You’re happy at your job
• You’re good at what you do
• You’re not looking for a new job

Here’s how it works.  You plug in your industry, job, pay and experience into a calculator on the site to help you set your pay for an interview. NotchUp typically recommends a range between $200 and $500, but you decide the final amount.  Obviously a higher price may result in fewer offers to interview and a lower price results in less money for you. Then you submit your profile to the site.  Ok, I’ll admit that I put in my information and it suggested I “charge” $850 to interview me! 

Joining NotchUp is free, but you must apply or be invited.  If a hiring company is interested in you, it deposits the money with NotchUp and talks to you. If you seem like a real, engaged candidate, NotchUp will transfer the money to your PayPal account once the interview is over. The site makes money by charging a transaction fee, which it estimates will be somewhere around 15 and 20 percent.

A number of large companies including Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Facebook are recruiting on the site, which interestingly bears a striking resemblance to Facebook. So far, the response from would-be job seekers has been warm. The site officially launched Jan. 28, but it went from 445 members to 10,500 in the five business days.

Since most recruiters have discovered that typically the best people you want to hire are the people who aren't in the job market, this will be an interesting site to watch. 

A recent Gallup Management Journal survey reports that nearly 25 percent of employees would fire their boss if given the opportunity to do so.  The survey reports that discontent runs high among employees who are actively disengaged, while most of those who connect with their bosses have no plans to roam.

Employee engagement is a hot topic among HR managers.  Keeping employees interested and involved is viewed as crucial to improving retention rates. Conversely, nothing breeds discontent in workers more than feeling alienated from their supervisors. Employees can feel “disengaged” from their managers for a variety of reasons.  These reasons need to be identified in order to correct the problems. 

According to Gallup, only 6 percent of engaged workers say they would fire their bosses if given the chance. The Gallup research found that nearly 25 million workers who are 18 or older, or roughly 18 percent of the workforce, are “actively disengaged,” resulting in diminished productivity that costs the U.S. economy about $382 billion.

Do you know how engaged your employees are?  I encourage you to conduct an employee engagement survey of the employees in your organization on a regular basis. 

If you are interested in information about Achievant’s ability to help you with this, please contact me. 

We’ve all heard of the companies on the leading edge that offer work perks most of us can only dream of.  Things like a concierge, dry cleaning pickup and delivery, prepared meals you can take home for dinner, etc. I admit I have worked places with one or two unusual benefits such as adoption assistance, an interest free loan to purchase a computer, or a discount on a mortgage.

More and more companies are taking a chance on innovative benefits such as sabbaticals in an attempt to attract and retain their best employees.  Though a generous one-size-fits-all package of health insurance, vacations and a 401(k) plan used to do the trick, prospective employees today are looking for perks that help them address work-life balance.

Some of these benefits such as paid sabbaticals, on-site child-care centers and long-term care, can come with a high price tag for employers. Others, such as concierge services and takeout meals, cost far less and have the added bonus for employers of keeping workers at their desks longer.

What seems to be clear is that benefits -- other than health-care coverage -- are getting richer. Here are a few which are gaining in popularity. 

Sabbaticals

To keep employees committed or keep them from burning out, more companies are offering several-month unpaid sabbaticals or shorter paid charitable stints.

Set your own hours

Companies seem to be moving away from the 9-to-5 mentality.  For example, about 70% of employees at the corporate headquarters for Best Buy set their own schedules, working just enough hours at whatever location they like to meet certain agreed-upon performance objectives.  The program was developed after benefit managers kept hearing employees ask, "Can't you just trust me to do what I need to do to get the job done?” Though its people may not get much face time, productivity among these teams has jumped 33%, according to one report.

Companies are finding that employees are more productive when they're allowed to choose where and when they work.

On-site child care

Interestingly, only 4% of the companies recently surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management offer child care at work. Probably because it's expensive, takes up a lot of company space and time, and can present liability problems.  Still, for those who have it available, it gives parents more time to spend with their children during lunch hours, plus a quicker commute because they don't have to make a separate trip to drop off the kids.

Help caring for aging parents

At many companies, elder-care benefits are limited to referral services that help employees track down facilities or caregivers. But for others, like Prudential, provide its employees with 80 hours a year of subsidized backup care for their aging parents. Officials say this move is helping to prevent absenteeism and boost productivity among its workers who are often sandwiched between caring for their children and their parents.

Mortgage assistance

This benefit could be one of the most financially meaningful for an employee's future. Real estate companies, banks and many universities offer mortgage assistance to employees with reduced interest rates, discounted appraisal fees and help with other processing costs.   Eligible employees at Fannie Mae can also obtain a loan to use toward their down payment and closing costs.  As employment continues, a larger share of the loan principal is forgiven, according to company information.

Additional vacation time

The average number of vacation days is slowly edging up, rising from 10.9 annually in 2000 to 11.7 in 2006, according to Hewitt Associates. With health-care costs rising, many companies see increased vacation time as a good way to offset more-constrained medical coverage.   Other companies allow employees to purchase additional vacation or are setting up Paid Time Office banks that put vacation power in the hands of workers. Employees are free to use the time for sick time, vacation days or holidays without explanation. This minimizes the “gee it’s a beautiful day out and I think I must be coming down with something” lies.  Typically the number varies with job classification and years of service. If workers stay healthy, they wind up with more time to bask in the sun.

What's typical?

These benefits may not be realistic for most companies, but there are many benefits that prospective employees should reasonably expect to receive from a new employer. The following company benefits are offered by more than half of the 916 U.S. companies surveyed by Hewitt Associates. See how your company stacks up:

• Immediate eligibility for a health-care plan.
• A 401(k) plan in which the typical match is 50 cents for each $1 an employee contributes, up to a certain percentage of pay.
• Retirement eligibility at age 65 and health-care coverage to retirees.
• Access to a dental plan with 100% of exams covered and 80% coverage for dental work.
• Access to a vision plan separate from medical or dental coverage.
• A group life insurance plan that pays a year of salary or wages as a death benefit.
• Long-term-disability benefits with pay replacement of 60%.
• On average, 11.7 days of vacation after one year of service and 15.4 after five years of service.
• Eight to 12 paid holidays a year.
• Dependent-care spending accounts and access to a health savings account.
• Educational reimbursement up to a median of $5,000.

As I meet with CEOs and discuss topics like Time & Attendance systems, they tend to not be involved with HR systems issues.  It just has not been a radar screen issue for them.  It should be!  The more I pursue Time & Attendance or the topic of systems with HR leadership teams I observe a frequent bias towards status quo.  Often, comfort with a particular Time & Attendance system is the determining factor for how to configure HR automation within the respective HR department.  Too often, payroll wants their preferred time & attendance system, performance management is a separate system, training wants their learning management system, and HRIS records may well be on yet another.  This “best in class” approach creates immense redundancy, software application complexities, and user confusion.  Singular integrated Human Capital Management Systems (HCMS) create efficiencies, drive automation, facilitate communication, enhance access, and are more widely accepted do to more frequent user access and consistency.   HR directors should be the efficiency role models within their organizations.   As an internal provider to every employee, the image presented by HR significantly impacts each employee’s perception of their organization.  The use of a fully integrated HCMS system…which includes Time & Attendance, performance management, application management, comp management, benefits management, learning management, HRIS, and more…will improve efficiency within HR through the elimination of disparate systems and the inevitable redundancy they create.  Organization wide use of an integrated HCMS will improve access for employees, improve the effectiveness of management, and create consistency in HR processes.

I recently read an article in Chief Learning Officer magazine about employee’s need for financial education.  

Unbelievably, seventy percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. USA Today cites concern about personal finances as the No. 1 cause of stress on the job.  As an HR manager, I have seen the effect this has on productivity.  Increased absenteeism, collectors contacting employees at work, requests for paycheck advances, wage garnishments, theft, lack of participation in 401(k) plans, are just some of the effects.    

But, there is good news.  Studies have shown that effective financial education can help.  According to the National Endowment for Financial Education, just 10 hours of personal finance training can improve spending and saving habits for the average person.  Although we’ve added many classes to high school curriculum, financial education is usually not a part of the core classes.  Many people have never been taught how to handle their finances.  Our strategy often reflects how we saw our parents do it, regardless of whether they did itwell or not.

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) are beginning to offer assistance on financial matters.  Some provide information on reducing debt, how to improve credit scores, budgeting, insurance, and retirement planning.

A study released earlier this month by Countrywide Bank showed that 67 percent of adults ranked financial fitness higher than physical fitness as a New Year’s resolution for 2008. 

If you aren't sure if your EAP offers financial literacy education, ask about it. 

Let’s talk metrics.  Not the Yard vs. Meter kind of metrics, but the kind that hopefully your supervisor shares with you and you share with your direct reports more than once a year. 

In my last post (Metrics 101) I talked about coming up with metrics for my team here at Achievant as we flesh out some of our own goal setting for our internal performance management.  It was a team effort and here is what we decided made good metrics for an IT group.  Our goal was to create a score card that told us how we are doing, how well we’re serving the client and how well we are supporting the other key corporate goals.

1.       Newly reported issues - this will represent all new cases opened in our ticketing system. This report will break down into sub-reports by client, by request type and by application function.  This report should let us know if one client is driving all of our work, if all of our work is being done on one specific type of request (defect, enhancement, gap, etc) and if one functional area is seeing most of the churn.  Knowing these things will help us gauge the strength and weaknesses of the application and determine how to best utilize resources to meet client needs.

2.       Released tickets - this report will show us every ticket released to production.  Knowing this will help us judge our own productivity and when we group the report by client, request type and functional area will let us know if we are serving our clients appropriately, spending the right amount of time on each request type and if one functional area is getting far more (or less) attention than all the others.  If all we’re doing is fixing defects and never releasing enhancements we know to shift focus early upstream to diminish the number of defects in order to free up resources for enhancements.

3.       Current Bucket Volume - this report will tell us the count of tickets (that are active) in each request type.  This will let us know if we are being deluged by a single request type or if the distribution is as expected.  If we see a high defect count we know we’re not doing our job unit testing and QAing.  If we see a high enhancement count we know we are lacking features.  We’ll complex this report by client to see if a single client is getting pelted by defects or is requesting an inordinate number of enhancements and we’ll also complex the report by functional area to see the same in a more generic context.  Historic trends of this report should tell us if we’re improving our QA, adding features fast enough and serving the needs of the client.

4.       Ticket Fail Rate – this report will tell us what tickets were rejected from QA back to product development.  We’ll complex it not only by developer, but by client and functional area.  Watching this should alert us to any inherent quality issues and help us be proactive to address any such issues before they become defects in production. It will also help us identify any developers who may need additional training or a change in workload.

5.       Difficulty – this is a report that reports at the weighting we assign to tickets.  No two tickets are the same and if we’re going to use these metrics as a performance management tool we need to be able to level the playing field.  A ticket to correct a spelling error on a single screen is not equal to a ticket to rewrite the encryption algorithm we might use to store sensitive data.  We need a way to differentiate such things so that developers are judged on a level playing field. 

We’ve decided to review these metrics weekly and include in them the historic trends for the previous year.  This way we can see data to the moment, but also stay aware of trends up or down and make sure each metric we measure is headed in the right direction.  It will also allow us to see the impact, or lack of impact, of any corrective action we take.

 As a group the development team decided that early and often is the best way to catch negative trends and to strengthen positive ones.  We will meet as a group and review the week’s reports.  Everyone will get to participate.  We’ll role these metrics into our HR automation platform (which we use internally) and keep track of them through the performance management module.  Each week we’ll be able to note changes good or bad, improvement, lack of improvement, etc.  When it comes time for our annual reviews we will have well thought out, detailed data culled from throughout the year with which to performance the reviews.  The reviews, really, should be just a formality.  Everyone should already know where they stand.

Hello World. 

Every entry level programming class begins with its students building a program that displayed the words “hello world”.  Since this is my first blog, I found it fitting. 

Now that I’ve gotten the worry of sounding cliché out of the way, allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Byron Pitney and I am Ed’s guest blogger (thanks for the blogstipation intro).  I am also the Software Architect on Ed’s team here at Achievant.  I’ve spent the last seven years writing code, but this is my first year writing HRIS software.  I have always enjoyed building things that are useful to people.  Working on a system that benefits employees and their employers definitely fits that bill.

Not too long ago Ed sent me an email with an attachment he affectionately refers to as The Bus Document.  In other words, if he were to get hit by a bus we would (in theory) still be able to continue on without him based on the information in “the bus” document.    

At first I was laughing at the way he was so carelessly talking about his own demise, but then the wheels started turning in my head.   What would we do without him?   What if instead of getting hit by a bus, he got a really good offer from a start up state-of-the-art search engine and left us behind? 

Do we have a plan B?  Being makers of HR automation software we should certainly have a succession plan for our key employees.

I know that leaders of any business have a lot of responsibility (what they choose do with this responsibility might be a blog for another day).   It is important for them to groom their employees to someday fulfill their roles.   I’ve seen first-hand how neglecting succession planning can cause major headaches. 

A company that I worked for struggled with this concept.  For sake of protecting the innocent, let us call the company Company X.   During my time at Company X I worked under a manager that was heavily involved in developing his team.  Next to getting the job done, team building was his top priority.  His was a sound philosophy. 

In order to be successful, he surrounded himself with successful people.  He made sure his team had proper training, and that they were reaching their clearly defined goals and objectives.   However (this is where the neglect part comes in), Company X did not have job descriptions or career paths in place.  In the eyes of the company, his standard for developing employees did not meet the same standard the company had (or in this case didn’t) set.  When the manager eventually stepped down, he recommended his replacement.  Since Company X hadn’t given time to succession planning they treated the recommended person the same as any other resume off the street.  To make a long story short, instead of losing one employee, their lack of succession planning eventually cost them four.  In retrospect, having a plan B seems like common sense.  Unfortunately, common sense does not always prevail.

There have been a number of cases of “what belongs to whom” in the news lately.  One sensational case was the Tom Cruise Scientology video that’s has been shown on every media outlet in the known universe and another more hum drum case was a recent court ruling regarding corporate email and a company’s right to restrict how that email is used.

It’s the hum drum case that should have our attention.

I have always been amazed by how unaware most people are regarding who really owns the emails they send at work and the personal content they keep on their work-owned PCs.  We all use our work email and PC so frequently that it becomes second nature to treat it as our own.  The only problem is: it’s not.  That PC and email account and everything on and in them belong to the corporation and not the individual.

In my career as the reluctant email and PC content police I have come across people who sent inter-office love letters to people not their spouses (only to have those letters then become public after an inadvertent print) and even racy photos and provocative drafts of personal ads that become office gossip after accidently being shared via a shared network drive.  There are cases where someone has even been convicted of murder based on instant messenger logs and emails which were subpoenaed and then used at trial.

What does all of this have to do with HR automation software, time and attendance, learning management and performance management?  Chances are that your HR system, like our HR application, stores a variety of data from performance management comments to disciplinary notes to emails.  Knowing what is and is not proper content in those instances can sometimes be challenging.  It requires clear guidelines, a well educated staff and some due diligence. 

For our own needs here at Achievant keeping a handle on content is pretty easy.  We have a Professional Services and Consulting staff with deep experience in such practices.  We have well defined usage policies and keep our employees up-to-date with HR alerts on any recent developments in this space.  We arm our staff with knowledge so they know how to make the right decision.

If you’re not keeping your staff up-to-date, training and educating them on what is and what not valid content for reviews, emails and other forms of communication you’re setting your employees up for potential failure.  It can be an easy task to put off because it’s not needed until it’s already too late.  Take them time and wrap some best practices around corporate communication no matter what form it takes.  You’ll be glad you did: it’ll drastically reduce the chances of an issue and will provide clear guidelines when as issue does arise.

The financial services industry has taken the losses from the sub-prime lending and other credit related woes on the chin.  Institutions have taken varying approaches to stop the bleeding.  I found Citigroup’s approach to be unique and refreshing. 

Earlier this month, Citigroup announced the creation of its first-ever chief talent officer position.  This was done in the midst of unsettling times there as employees are worried about possible layoffs as a result of the multibillion-dollar losses from mortgage-related securities. 

Citigroup announced a fourth-quarter net loss of $9.83 billion attributable to $22.2 billion in write-downs of securities tied to subprime loans as well as credit costs. Pandit, Citigroup’s new CEO, recently told shareholders and employees that Citigroup would divest from businesses that were not aligned with the company’s long-term strategic goals, but did not specify what those businesses were.  The company also announced a $12.5 billion cash infusion from outside investors.

The company had already designed a major cost-cutting strategy that includes laying off as many as 17,000 employees and it is expected they will lay off at least 4,000 more employees.

Paul McKinnon will be the company’s first head of talent management and will be responsible for recruiting, developing, reviewing and retaining Citigroup’s senior talent as of February 1.  McKinnon has spent the last 10 years as senior vice president for human resources at Dell where he helped to implement the company’s “Wining Culture” initiative. 

The renewed focus on talent management at this time is unusual.  If it works, it will provide many lessons for the rest of the industry and I am sure they will be watching closely.  

On Friday, Steak n Shake warned investors that it will post a first-quarter loss, spurring a 2-day stock tumble.  Shares of the Indianapolis-based restaurant chain tumbled 18 percent to $7.80, the lowest point since June, 2001.  I was disappointed to see this as I am a customer of Steak n Shake.  Love the chili, hate the drive through….way too slow as they make food fresh to order. 

2007 was a difficult year for Steak n Shake and provided many management lessons for outside observers like myself.  As they compete in a crowded space for limited consumer dollars, we have watched them change management, close underperforming stores, change menus and blame employees.   

All restaurants are fighting for sales as consumers facing higher costs for everything else are becoming more selective in their purchases which unfortunately for Steak n Shake may include eating at home to save money. Steak n Shake also is fighting for its identity, returning to burgers and milkshakes after a stint promoting healthier chicken fare.

Steak n Shake has blamed the results on sluggish consumer spending, poor weather, promotions from competitors and issues with store execution. For 2008, they will need to re-establish their corporate goal, re-identify their brand, re-train their employee base and recruit new talent. 

Another type of consulting that Achievant can assist you with is Harassment and Discrimination training. 

Last week, the EEOC announced the biggest award ever obtained by them on behalf of an individual in a racial discrimination case. Lockheed Martin agreed to pay $2.5 million to end a racial discrimination suit brought by an electrician who says he was subject to harassment and threats to his life during the two years he worked for the military contractor.  

In addition to the payment to Charles Daniels, an African-American avionics electrician who worked for the company from September 1999 to August 2001, Lockheed fired or barred from rehiring the team leader and four co-workers who verbally abused him. The company also agreed to establish a special anti-discrimination training program.

The investigation and litigation took six long years and many believe they were made an example of to send a message to corporate America that racial harassment and discrimination will not be tolerated.  Lockheed contends that the EEOC has distorted the facts of the case and that the alleged conduct involved a small number of first-line employees in a small, single operating unit of the giant military contractor.

When he approached the Lockheed HR department, he felt he was rebuffed.  He stated that officials waved off the discrimination, saying “boys will be boys,” and warned Daniels not to prosecute the company. They also continued assigning Daniels to the same team and eventually laid him off.

This kind of case is becoming more prevalent at the EEOC. The number of racial harassment charges filed with the agency has risen from 3,075 in fiscal year 1991 to about 7,000 last year. In February 2007, the agency launched a national education and enforcement campaign to eliminate racial bias.

Does your organization have a policy in place?  Are employees regularly trained on this policy?  Is the policy working?  Achievant can provide employee training programs on a variety of topics – harassment and discrimination, ethics, interviewing, performance appraisals, etc.    

In my last blog I talked about the human resources vulnerability assessments that Achievant conducts.  We also consult on the start up of new HR departments

HR and its related requirements change greatly with the passage of time and the growth of an organization.  Initially HR duties are scattered and responsibilities are assigned to designated personnel throughout the company. As the company grows and these functions require more focused attention, invariably the company’s management realizes that it needs to set up a human resources department.  Frequently the department consists of one or two people, and employee expectations can be overwhelming. This consulting service provides assistance on where to begin and provides resources to assist as the functions develop. 

Objectives

• Keep the HR department’s mission and goals in sync with the organization’s needs and business strategy.

• Ensure legal compliance (which should decrease settlement expenses and legal fees).

• Identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement, as well as areas of potential future risk.

• Improve efficiency and productivity so that the department can better serve employees and customers.

• Identify “root” problem areas and fix them before they become more widespread.

• Find cost reduction opportunities.

• Improve employee communications and morale and establish better credibility.

• Implement and stay current with world-class practices by comparing results with other businesses.

• Measure and improve performance across the organization.

• Identify and correct any gaps between what is intended and what is actually being delivered.

• Increase the commitment of professionals within the HR department to seek change and focus on continuous improvement in all aspects of their work.

Initial Assessment

• Who currently handles staffing, training, benefits, compensation, leave requests, employee problems, etc.?

• What works well within the current processes?

• What could work better? (Consider factors such as time spent, legal claims, employee attitudes, turnover, productivity, direct costs, etc.)

• Are there any existing basic HR systems, such as policies, job descriptions, forms?

• What does management see as the department’s priorities? What do employees see as the department’s priorities? (These can be assessed through a formal process, such as department meetings or focus groups, or informally through conversation).

• Establish realistic priorities based on staffing, what is already in place and what is critical to the organization.

Focus is centered on:

• Staffing the HR department
• Developing an HR mission statement
• Identification of metrics and benchmarks
• Establish recruiting practices
• HR forms and templates
• Handbook and policies design
• Performance management
• Personnel files
• Labor law postings
• Record retention practices
• Benefits
• Pay practices
• Employee communication
• HRIS system utilization

If you are interested in learning more about this, please contact me. 

Did you know that at Achievant we don’t just have a technology solution, but we do a great deal of consulting as well on a wide variety of topics? 

Over my next few blogs, I will talk about what some of these topics are.  One of the things we are often engaged to consult on are human resources vulnerability assessments.  

What is an HR Vulnerability Assessment?

HR vulnerability assessments are designed to assess company policies and practices, identify areas of non-compliance or weakness, uncover issues, and determine how to strategically align HR practices with business objectives. 

According to Watson Wyatt's landmark Human Capital Index research study, "companies that adopt and combine superior HR practices can increase shareholder value by up to 47 percent".  HR and its related practices should therefore be a key strategic factor in a company's plan for success and growth.

Objectives of an HR Vulnerability Assessment

• Keep the HR department’s mission and goals in sync with the organization’s needs and business strategy.

• Ensure legal compliance (which should decrease settlement expenses and legal fees).

• Identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement, as well as areas of potential future risk.

• Improve efficiency and productivity so that the department can better serve employees and customers.

• Identify “root” problem areas and fix them before they become more widespread.

• Find cost reduction opportunities.

• Improve employee communications and morale and establish better credibility.

• Implement and stay current with world-class practices by comparing results with other businesses.

• Measure and improve performance across the organization.

• Identify and correct any gaps between what is intended and what is actually being delivered.

• Increase the commitment of professionals within the HR department to seek change and focus on continuous improvement in all aspects of their work.

Types of Assessments Offered

HR General —These audits focus on an assessment of the general areas of  the HR function  with  an eye toward court decisions that are being used to determine law or administrative systems that reduce errors and omissions, such as hiring and termination processes, training and development of employees, performance evaluation processes, sexual harassment policies, compensation practices, disciplinary process and documentation, and litigation or investigation issues.

Strategic—These types of audits focus on strengths and weaknesses of systems and processes to determine whether or not they are in line with the strategic plan of the HR department and/or the company as a whole (e.g., diversity, employee turnover, length of time to fill an open position, number of employee complaints to assess the employee relations climate, communication with employees, etc.).

Affirmative Action —These types of audits focus on the OFCCP regulations requiring specific recordkeeping of job jackets, review of affirmative action plan and statistics, notifications and exhibits.  

If you are interested in this type of assessment, please contact me. 

Hopefully a recent conversation I had with an organization was unique but I fear not.  Organization of approximately 250 employees was looking at solutions to streamline their HR processes.  Current environment had some automation; Payroll and web-based time and attendance.  The pain points were no automation and process regarding Applicant Tracking, Benefits Enrollment, Training and Performance Management.  Compounding the pain was significant dual entry and a lotus notes environment that required multiple and ongoing patches to maintain somewhat of a pulse to support the organization.  Having automated part of the processes over the past year the next logical step was to continue if not complete the HR system upgrade and avoid future quickly outdated enhancements and time eaters for both HR and IT departments.  

Surprisingly the final decision was a “penny wise pound foolish approach.”  Lacking budget approval to continue automation the organization elected to purchase off the shelf software and load to meet their demands.  While a less expensive route in the short term, this approach is more costly over the long haul.  In no time at all they will find themselves right back to their original pain.  Assuming they can dedicate the time and resources to build out the software to meet their specifications it will soon be outdated and they will be back to the drawing board of building patches and work arounds in order to maintain and keep up.  “Time is money” is cliché but accurate.  Analyzing the total need and taking budget into consideration a stair step approach to improving efficiency is a much better approach. 

Joe Barrett
Achievant

There are two phrases I hear a lot that I just don’t really like: The Customer Comes First and Controlling Customer Expectations.  Call me a rebel, but I think neither of those is a good thing.

The Customer Comes First

This sounds great and is a wonderful platitude.  It looks good on a marketing slick.  But it isn’t true.  In software what has to come first is the right people who with the right training and processes use technology and relationships to deliver the right product to the customer.  The customer comes second.  Not because we don’t value the customer above all else and not because we don’t want to provide the greatest customer service possible.  We do.  But before that can happen we have to have done the following:

·         Recruited the right people both for talent and personality

·         Motivated those people to achieve the level of service our clients expect

·         Trained those people so that they are as well equipped to do their jobs as possible and understand exactly what those jobs and associated goals are

·         Put in the processes that allow those people to work effectively and efficiently

·         Built the relationship among staff, vendors and clients to ensure open and honest communication

Once you have the who, what, how and why in place you can start to deliver to the client.  If you don’t do that upfront prep-work you won’t be putting the client first in any way because you won’t have the means to serve the client.  The product and the service have to exist before the client in order for the client to truly be served by the product.

It may seem obvious, but I have seen plenty of software vendors who want to build the features and functionality after they have the client base.  These same vendors generally talk liberally about controlling client expectations.

Controlling Customer Expectations

To me, it means you’ve gotten yourself into a place where the customer’s expectations and your reality don’t match.  If so, that means you’ve done something wrong.

My biggest brush with setting the wrong customer expectation came when I was working as a consultant for one of (what was at that time) the big five consulting firms.  Reporting for the first day at a new consulting gig I joined the client contact and his larger team in a meeting room.  During the meet and greet phase I was introduced by the client contact as having credentials I didn’t have.  During a break I called our technical sales rep and asked what was going on.  He’d made the consulting sale by flat out lying about my experience with a specific technology, years of experience and just about everything else.  I came clean with the client, explained what my real background was and offered to make the deal right in any way I could. 

In the many years since I have come to value a few axioms of technology sales:

Don’t’ sell what you don’t have.  If your software simply can’t do what the client needs be honest and tell them that.  Back out gracefully.  You might make the initial sale by lying, but you’ll find yourself between a real rock and a hard place when you can’t deliver.  You’ll alienate that client, all the potential clients they know and chances are you’ll alienate your staff as well.  Nothing is worse than getting handed an implementation that is destined to fail.

Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.  Maybe you and the client have agreed to a software enhancement in order to close the sale. It’s a common thing and your larger client base generally benefits from the new functionality and you generally get paid to add a feature you needed to add anyway.  Just make sure the timeline you offer up is one you can stand behind.  I can’t tell you how many times the sales guy (or gal) has pulled me aside after the sale and asked “is this doable?”.  Find out beforehand.  Client service isn’t just saying yes.  It’s saying yes knowing beforehand you can deliver and then delivering.  Don’t throw the greater organization under the proverbial cross-town bus by making a promise you (and ultimately they) can’t deliver on.

Don’t pretend to be what you’re not.  If you sell green widgets and your prospective sale needs orange widgets and you just can’t make orange widgets don’t pretend green is the new orange.  I’ve seen software companies completely distort who they are and what their product can do in order to make a sale.  Unhappy clients are not the way to fortune and fame.

Instead of “controlling customer expectations” I prefer “setting customer expectations”.  Go into the deal setting the right groundwork.

Yesterday Eli Lilly and Co. announced that CEO, Sidney Taurel, will step down as chairman next year and be replaced by John Lechleiter.  This is just one more step in a succession plan that has been in the works for year.  Does your organization have a succession plan in place?

Succession planning is a process whereby a company identifies and prepares employees to replace key players throughout the organization.  The preparation is typically a combination of:

§  recruiting top-notch employees,

§  mentoring them over a period of time, and

§  providing training/education to develop their knowledge, skills, and abilities, and preparing them for advancement or promotion into ever more challenging roles often through job rotation. 

Succession planning emphasizes the importance of specific, individualized development plans for each employee.   An additional benefit of succession planning is its effect on retention……employees appreciate the time, attention, and development that you are investing in them. 

Best-practice organizations make succession planning an integral corporate process by exhibiting a link between succession planning and their overall business strategy. This link gives su