I spent my morning with a potential partner going over key aspects of their business model for which we will be adding support in our application.  It was a very typical software requirements meeting: it started out with a group of people looking across the table at each other wondering how to start.

I suggested we start with four or five goals and work our way into the details of each in succession.  Pretty soon we were drawing like cavemen on whiteboards, talking compensation matrices and other minutiae of the HR world.

Some of the items we indentified would be tough to implement and at one point the statement was made that “maybe this isn’t a solvable problem”.  Huh uh.  No way.  Not going to happen.  All problems can be solved.  Sometimes the cost or the time or the effort required exceed our means, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.  It just has to be rethought.  We left the meeting with scads of notes, a number of great ideas and the general feeling that we’d had a productive morning.

When I got back to the office I found a news article about Time Magazine’s Top 100 Influential People in the world.  It was an interesting read.  One story in particular reverberated with me after the morning’s meeting:  if Mary Lou Jespen can bring a computer to children around the world who don’t even have physical classrooms I can create an enhanced performance management and  compensation management tool that can morph and evolve to meet almost any client’s needs.

Challenges arise, problems happen and all too often I see people give up.  I hate that attitude.  With creative thinking, some strategic compromises and hard work a lot can be done with a little.

My hope is that after each such meeting, whether with a client, a potential partner, or our own staff people leave with the feeling that by working together, by pursuing the goal we can get to wherever it is we want to go.

Everywhere I’ve worked I’ve recommended background checks on employees along with drug screens and a robust set of policies and procedures. 

It’s not the most fun thing to do.  I generally dislike a lot of policy and procedure.  It’s annoying and it sets a tone I don’t really like.  However, take a look at the security breach at LendingTree and you’ll see why these things are necessary.

In short, employees from the company gave their passwords to unscrupulous individuals who then accessed account data of clients using the service.

This is a tough hacker approach to defend against.  Offer someone enough money and they are likely to be willing do most anything.  How much for info on Britney Spears’ medical records?  How much for a photo of a celebrity’s kids?  How much for a password?

You can’t control human behavior, but you can be aware of it.  If you run a shop with sensitive data and you hire people who have a criminal record, with huge debt, who maybe take drugs you increase the likelihood that those employees can be compromised via bribes or other approaches to illicit data access.

Performing background checks and drug screens help weed out potential risks.  Having robust security measures, frequently changing passwords and a termination workflow that makes sure account access is terminated in a timely fashion when an employee leaves the company all help ensure your data doesn’t become someone else’s data.

Routine review of access logs would also have helped catch the LendingTree problem more quickly.  If a user is suddenly accessing the system all hours of the day all days of the week it’s a fairly sure sign that that user’s account has been compromised.

A little bit of due diligence, however tedious or even slightly uncomfortable can go a long way to ensuring that your data remains secure.

I was intrigued to read a February 2008 white paper by Hudson, a talent management service provider, The Ambition Divide: Differences Define Women’s Career Aspirations.  Both as an HR leader and as a female, I wanted to learn the results.  When asked if they aspire to the executive level or higher, 77 percent of the female respondents said “yes.”

Approximately one in five female mid-level managers are not interested in reaching the executive level according to a recent study by Hudson.  Those who said “no” are referred to as “decliners” in the survey.  Interestingly the study found no correlation between respondents’ aspirations and their family commitments. The report indicates that 69 percent of “aspirers” are married, compared with 61 percent of “decliners”. 63 percent of aspirers have children, compared with 59 percent of decliners.

Decliners should not be viewed as unengaged. Rather than advancement, 37 percent of decliners said they seek intellectual stimulation, compared with just 17 percent of aspirers.  The opportunity to do interesting and challenging work is what 39 percent of decliner respondents like most about their job, compared with 22 percent of aspirers.  By contrast, the opportunity for growth and development was the single most important goal for 48 percent of aspirers, compared with just 28 percent of decliners.

The vast majority of aspirers (78 percent) said they want their next career step to be a promotion or lateral move at their current company.  So what is the call to action for the corporate world to keep these women? 

Female respondents said they favor opportunities to work with senior management, access to leadership development, mentoring and training programs, and the chance to work on companywide strategic initiatives.  Respondents reported that they believe their employers are most effective at offering training programs and formal schooling and least effective when it comes to providing mentoring programs, offering flexible hours and instilling an understanding of the business. 

If employers understand the goals and aspirations of female managers, they should be able to develop strategies to retain them.

In my last blog I talked about performance appraisals.  So today, I will personalize it a little more and talk about my own performance appraisal.  In all fairness to my boss, probably the worst person in the world to have to do a performance appraisal on is the HR person.  It’s “our” process, “our” form, etc.  So, HR people are more vested in the entire process than most employees.  And although I’ll read hundreds of reviews on “other people”, this one is about me. 

I know that in a performance appraisal the criticism I will receive is inevitable (of course totally unwarranted from my perspective!).  Frankly, if it does not include criticism it’s not very useful to me as a development tool, although we each like to believe that the criticism of ourselves is unfair. 

The critical piece in criticism is “How I give it, receive it and deal with it will tell a lot about me”. 

I have several choices on my approach to dealing with this feedback.  Here are a few of the ones I've seen most often: 

1.      Tupperware Approach – I simply internalize the feedback within myself like I’m a tupperware bowl and I put a lid on it, never to be looked at again. 

2.      Uhaul Approach – I don’t deal with the feedback, I simply pick up and move on to another job or another company, until I am criticized there. 

3.      Bulldozer Approach – I will smash right on through, reacting, blasting people with the hope no one else will have the guts to criticize me again. 

4.      Phone Approach – I will call everyone I know, gossip about my review experience, try to make myself look good and diminish the perspective of my boss. 

5.      Growth and Development Approach – I am willing to make adjustments in my behavior in order to grow and develop as both a person and as an employee.  I accept that there is probably some truth in the criticism. 

How did you respond to your review? 

Over and over I have seen the performance appraisal process fail because -

• Manager lacks information concerning an employee’s actual performance.  This is one of the primary reasons 360 reviews are so beneficial.  They provide the opportunity to see an employee’s performance from the perspective of subordinates, peers, and management. 
• Standards are unclear. 
• Manager is not prepared or fails to take the evaluation seriously.  They schedule the review and then throw it together at the last minute. 
• Manager is not honest during the review.  The manager doesn’t know how to effectively provide constructive criticism. 
• Employee does not receive continuous feedback.  The only time they hear how they are doing is at “review time”.  Feedback must occur on a regular basis. 

There are also advantages for an employee to receive a performance appraisal -

• It provides a clear and complete view of how they are performing compared to expectations.
• It provides a time to discuss their strengths and weaknesses.
• It provides a time to set future goals and recommend a specific program designed to help them improve performance.
• It’s an opportunity to express opinions in two-way communication.

Although I mentioned earlier that I believe the process is more important than the form, I do want to mention a couple things to keep in mind while writing the performance evaluation -

• Review the performance throughout the entire evaluation period, not what has just happened recently.
• Include comments consistent with ratings.  If you rated them high, tell them why.  What specifically do they do that made you rate them that way.  Likewise, be sure to provide comments for “needs development” ratings. 
• Be sure to include specific examples:  customer comment cards, employee of the month, perfect balancing, etc.
• Finish the evaluation by adding comments to areas of strength and areas that need improvement.  Require the use of a self-evaluation. 
• Don’t hesitate to have HR read the evaluation before giving it.  Sometimes an unbiased observer can shed valuable insight into an employee. 

Now that you’re ready to give the performance evaluation –

• Schedule a time and place for the evaluation.
• Be specific, not general.
• Discuss the employee’s developmental needs and goals.
• Discuss the salary increase or lack thereof.
• Give the employee time to comment on the evaluation and to sign it.

One of the most important components here is training on how to do a performance evaluation.  Tomorrow, I’ll explain what that should look like.

There seem to be no end of cautionary tales in the media these days.  Hackers steal over four million credit card numbers,  more hackers steal students’ personal information,  electronics come straight from the factory already infected ,  your swipe card for door access at work and other places can be easily hacked , and even your pacemaker (if you have one) isn’t safe.

It’s like a hail storm of bad technology news.  I might move to a deserted island somewhere and give up all my modern conveniences in order to escape to digital mongrel hordes that are after my data.

So what do you do?  You take all the precautions you can.  You make sure your anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware and anti-spam software are all up-to-date.  You make sure your OS is up-to-date.  You are careful about what links you click, what emails you open, what programs you install.  You make sure your spouse, kids, mom, dad, cousin and aunt are all aware of the same precautions and are taking them.

Sounds tedious.  Sounds time consuming.  Sounds like a pain in the rumpus.  It is. But you’re not done yet.  You need to make sure that all the people who have your data do the same: the grocery store, the bank, your online retailers, your doctor, your accountant, your HRIS vendor and pretty much everyone else you do business with.

If you outsource an HRIS needs (like time and attendance, learning management, payroll integration, etc) you need to make sure that vendor is doing all they should.  They don’t just have your data… they have the data of every employee in your company and quite possible the data of their dependents, beneficiaries and a whole host of other innocent people.

A company should spend at least 10% of its IT budget on security.  All of the things I suggested you do above are the bare minimum they should be doing.  Ask to see their security policies, their intrusion response documents, their SAS 70.  Ask to see everything.  Then ask them how they know all of these policies are being followed.

For me, I believe actions are better than words.  Any good company has their employees sign acceptable use policies, claim they use “best practices” around digital security.  I like to prove that.  How?  You can:

1.       Hire someone to perform a physical penetration.  In the past I have (about every six months) had someone walk into the office, pretend to be a computer technician, a new IT employee, whatever and then work to gain access to computers, networks and other data stores.  It’s a great way to keep people on the alert.

2.       Pay a company to perform a penetration test against your network (or, if you have staff with the right skills perform it yourself).  Do it once a quarter.  Things change and you need to make sure you haven’t accidently opened a whole in your digital fortress.

3.       Send out monthly security newsletters… it helps keep security on everyone’s mind.

4.       Subscribe to security alerts from your anti-virus, anti-spyware and other security software vendors.  They generally do a great job of getting in front of new attacks and keeping you aware of the latest schemes.

There will always be new and improved security threats.  There’s not much you can do about that.  What you can do is be aware, be ready and be on guard for what may be coming your way.

Today I am back on the HR 2.0 topic.  It seems like every blog, news article or factoid I read these days is all about social this or wiki that and the word “mashup” seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue.  Actually ‘social” and “wiki” are already kind of dated and mashup is (IMHO) a newer, slightly evolved, version of the same.

So, reading about things like Yahoo! Buzz and MyPunchBowl’s own Buzz I began to wonder what an HR mashup would be?  What would it do?  How would it make our lives better?

I see two possible HR mashups: one for the HR professional and one for the HRIS user.

First, let’s define what a mashup is: a mashup is essentially the aggregation of data from diverse sources into one place.  A hip techno geek might want to wax poetic about the separation of data and presentation, but in my mind that’s over complicating something that is basically simple.  In the modern age you can get instant access to pretty much any piece of information you want and from pretty much any source you prefer.  Bring all those pieces of information from all those various sources into one place and present it in a meaningful way and you have yourself a mashup.

If you look at either Yahoo! Buzz or MyPunchBowl’s Buzz you’ll see what is essentially a mashup (more so for Yahoo! Buzz) that adds a social twist by allowing users to rate the content within the mashup.  Visit Digg and you can see more of the same.  The proliferation of this kind of site must mean there is (at least a perceived) need for it.  I think it also means that the need has not been met.

So, back to the HR Mashup…

What if you, as an HR professional, had a mashup at your disposal that brought together all of the HRIS, HR automation, time and attendance, etc information of meaning to you and then let other HR professionals give it a virtual thumbs up or thumbs down so that the cream rose to the top and the chaff fell away?  Would it help you keep up with current HR issues, changes in HR law and see HR trends emerge?

What if you, as an HRIS user, had a mashup at your disposal that brought together all of the time and attendance, learning management, performance management, applicant tracking, etc data you might want?  You could see that suddenly everyone is taking the day after Thanksgiving off or that everyone in your job family has signed up for a new course or certification or that everyone with your experience is applying for this new job?  It seems like it might be a nice way to stay on top of changes and events within the workplace for which you might use your own company’s HRIS tool.

A mashup is kind of a mob mentality, but one that would use a collective to push important current and emerging topics to the forefront.  It’s really a two heads are better than one kind of thing: if every other HR professional is finding topic C to be particularly salient maybe you will too?  Or maybe you can keep your marketability high by seeing the trend that everyone competing for that job you want 9or have) is adding to their skill set by getting certification Y.

You’ve probably heard the term Web 2.0 tossed around like a good salad at a fine restaurant.  It’s one of those buzzwords whose drone seems ever present in the background of web based technology talks today. 

What Web 2.0 is can be hard to define or maybe isn’t widely agreed upon and is generally based on your own biases.  In my opinion and in short Web 2.0 is generally comprised of any combination of three things:

1.       Functionality and features (particular within the user interface) equivalent to those you can get with a desktop application.

2.       A social twist on a formerly strictly technological domain (like search).

3.       Transformation of what was essentially tactically oriented automation of previously manual task into strategic analysis and action based on data from those tasks.

Being a web developer who works in the HR space I’ve started wondering what HR 2.0 should be.  Should I be developing a virtual HR world along the lines of Second Life where your avatar walks into a cyber-faux HR department that looks like a Caribbean resort in order to request time off or to complete an expense report?  Should I be working on a social alternative to the usual HR functions that uses a wiki-like mob Inteligencia to perform daily HR tasks?  Probably not.

What I should be working on is a way to take the tasks of time and attendance, learning management, session management, performance management, etc that we’ve automated and elevating them to be tactical and strategic.  An HR 2.0 application should be a proactive piece of software that doesn’t just help streamline day-to-day task; instead, an HR 2.0 application should point your organization in the right direction by helping determine strategic success factors.

Let’s take succession management (the subject of my last post) as an example.  The application might tell you what gaps you have now, might help you use our learning management module to plan to fill those gaps, might give you a roster of who is where and how long have they been there, but as an HR 2.0 application it should also tell you (maybe without your asking) that Bob Smith is the best choice for that new VP of Whatever slot that just opened up.  It should tell you that if you train Mary Jane Doe on topic X she’ll make the best replacement for John Somebody who has 29 years of service in and is ready to retire.

In short, a HR 2.0 app should be an active virtual employee within your company bringing solutions to you without the need of your asking it for the data to make that decision yourself.  Two dot oh means that it is time for software to move beyond automation of mundane tasks into the space of strategic planning.  Two dot oh software doesn’t just work hard; it work’s smart, too.

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.   

Does your organization have a performance management solution? Or are you just “doing reviews”?

For many companies, this time of the year is often touted as “the review season”.  The previous year’s financials have been determined and goals for the next year are set.  Managers are juggling their priorities – trying to balance their “real work” with HR pushing them to do performance reviews.  The happiest time of the year – or not, depending upon whether or not like Santa Claus, you have kept a careful list of who has been naughty and who has been nice all year long.

As a human resources manager, you and I both understand the importance of having a strong performance management process in place. Such a process helps align individual goals with overall corporate objectives, reinforces desired behaviors and creates a more engaged workforce. 

But if your company is like many that I speak with, your current performance management system consists of a word processing document that is manually collected by HR.  This no longer needs to be the case.  More and more small and mid-sized businesses are turning to HR technologies to improve their performance management processes. The availability of affordable, web-based solutions automating the performance management process is no longer just for very large employers. 
 
At the senior staff meeting here at Achievant, one of the tasks we are working on is creating our own Performance Appraisal form to use in the Achievant platform for our organization.  And if you think it’s difficult to obtain consensus of an appraisal form in your organization, try getting 5 “HR types” to agree on one to use.  But, we all agree on how important it is. 

Studies show that employees value clear, consistent feedback and acknowledgement as much as they do the money.  For those companies who have invested in a performance management solution, the review season isn’t so bad and provides a number of benefits, including:

1. Recognizes your best performers

• Actual progress against performance goals is tracked so you can identify who is delivering…and who’s not
• Reinforces continued positive behavior and set expectations for non-performers. 

2. Provides clarity for employees

• Set goals, establish timelines, track progress, and identify obstacles to communicate what's expected of them
• Give employees a clear understanding of their individual goals and how they fit into the bigger corporate picture
• Provide the link between overall business objectives and employees' day-to-day actions

3. Protect yourself legally

• Provides documentation  to support employment actions such as termination, demotion, or lack of compensation adjustment

4. Stabilizes your workforce

• Reduces employee turnover and attrition

What’s the best way to monitor time and attendance?  Is it the honor system?  A swipe card system? Or, should we just trust that everyone’s working a full day?  What factor does trust play in your decision?  The answer clearly lies in the organization, role and position.  These are all good questions.  Regardless, each and every organization needs to make a conscious decision on how they are going to monitor time & attendance.

Not coincidentally, there are just as many vendors out there that can help you monitor your organizations time & attendance policy.  How do you make a choice?  Who’s the best?  What’s right for your organization?  Achievant is in the time and attendance business and I can offer a few things for you to consider.

1)  The overarching goal should be to accurately capture your employee’s time on the job – both hourly and salary.  In a perfect world time data gets sent to multiple systems including those that perform payroll and time off accruals.  Don’t over think the solution hoping to catch someone cheating you out of 15 minutes a day.  It’s much more important to have a seamless and integrated flow of data among the HR applications you’ve deployed.

2)  Your time and attendance needs to be flexible enough to meet the needs of your desk and floor staff.   One size definitely does not fit all.  Swipe and punch systems are the only real alternative for manufacturing/distribution/warehouse floor.  The desk environment can work well with pc based clock in and out.  However, both have a need to track and monitor your time off plans with an associated approval process.

3)  How does your time and attendance decision integrate into your human capital management (HCM) needs?  Most small and mid-sized companies are well served by deploying an integrated HCM platform and not best of breed solutions for applicant tracking, time and attendance, HRIS, learning management, performance management and benefits management.

All of this may seem obvious but when looking at time and attendance applications many organizations can get tunnel focused on finding the “best of breed” system and lose sight of how this application fits into the overall architecture of the HR infrastructure.  Take a step back to get a better view into your time and attendance decision.

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.

Yesterday almost everyone in our office received one of the IRS tax refund scam emails that have been going around.   No one fell for it, but I can see how someone could.  Computer related fraud is becoming more and more common. 

During the sales cycle we are often asked how employees might defraud our application and cheat the company.  There isn’t a cornucopia full of opportunities for fraud in HRIS, but there are few and one spot in particular is time and attendance.  Stealing time from an employer is probably as old of a trick as employment itself.  Fudge 15 minutes here, a half hour there and pretty soon the company is paying you for 40 hours of work when you’ve only worked 30.

We allow for two basic types of (regular) time entry in our application: by the honor system and by time punch.  Which a client uses is usually a nod to the corporate culture of that client.  We’ve had client adamant about never using the honor system and we’ve had clients just as adamant about always using the honor system.

Here is how we work to prevent fraudulent time and attendance entries the application:

1.       Time punches: if used by a client our time punch system requires the employee to authenticate via username and password and then punch a virtual time clock.  The time for the punch is controlled by our servers.   By requiring authentication we’re making it more likely that the employee is punching their own "time card”.  By controlling the timestamp on our servers, we prevent anyone from cheating the system by fudging the time on the client PC.

2.       Rounding:  We round the punch or honor system entry by whatever rule the client has.  We all know people who work this angle.  If someone knows that until seven minutes past the hour the punch will always round back to the hour they wait until 6:59 past the hour to punch in, stealing almost seven minutes.  We track the rounding and measure whose favor the rounding is in and can report on these on an employee by employee basis.  Over time if an employee is being honest with their punches that give and take should average out to about zero: sometimes it will be in the company’s favor and sometimes it will be in the employees favor.

3.       Work Flow: For all of our time and attendance functions there is an associated work flow.  The workflow is defined by the client and can be (and should be) used as a check and balance.  If a manager is required to review and sign-off on an employee’s time and attendance then it is much more likely someone will be honest in their timekeeping and that any fraudulent behavior will be caught upon review.

Our controls for off-time work pretty much the same way. You have to go through very similar process esin order to take time off.  We track your requests for off time, put them through workflows, get them approved and report on them.

Not many employees cheat at the time and attendance game, but it’s important to be able to know if someone is stealing time.  Labor is a huge cost for any company.  If you were being shorted half your widgets on every shipment you’d want to know and would want to take preventative measures to prevent it.  The same is true for hours worked.  Every hour falsely worked is money taken from the bottom line, lost productivity and a theft from the company.

Defining what is or what is not a defect is a lot like defining happiness or love, but in reverse.  Happiness and love are fun, defects are not.  In two recent posts I discussed metrics and goal setting.  For me, and I think for IT in general, metrics are null and void if a company does not have a well defined set of criteria for what’s a defect and what’s not.

A lot of issues can masquerade as a defect and defects can come in many shapes and sizes.  Without being specific about what a request type is and means too many issues will get lumped in one bucket and the wrong people and groups will get saddled with the weight of that bucket come metric measuring time.

If you’ve read my posts Metrics 101 and Metrics 102 you know that we’re going to measure IT success (in part) at Achievant based on the flux within our ticketing system.  In order to have valid metrics we’ve identified 10 types of tickets:

1.       Data Update:  This category covers any data transformation, update, whatever.  These aren’t defects.  They are usually in responses to changes in state or federal codes or a change is business practice by a client.  For example, when the fed changed the convention for ethnicity codes that generated a Data Update ticket in our system as we complied with the change.

2.       Defect - Business Logic:  There are lots of flavors of defects.  We wanted to pin our defects down a little so we could better track