workforce.com
September/October 2017
FOCUS ON HR TECH
PLUGGING IN
Technology continues its surge through HR departments.
TELEMEDICINE’S TRIAL Worker usage indicates the jury’s still out.
HIRING AND THE H-1B Companies are shoring up for potential visa changes.
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From Our Editors
Benchmark Senior Living launched its “I’m Engaged” campaign that puts employees front and center on direct-mail pieces, videos and ads. The campaign spotlights employees who exceed expectations and devote
We are all technology companies now.Technology has taken over operations, marketing and sales at companies large and small. We’re also all tech workers. From back-end systems that manage production to the front end that customers see, technology is impossible to extricate from work. Human resources work is also tech work, the central theme of this issue of Workforce.Those who went into HR because they enjoy working with people now find themselves managing massive enterprise software systems and digital apps that administer benefits enrollment and deliver training. But through it all, the human touch is essential. We’re not just tech companies.We remain people companies, too. The work of HR lies in making the most of the human resources that continue to make our digital future a reality. — Mike Prokopeak, Editor in Chief 4
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themselves to helping others and their senior residents. Bottom photo, director of community relations Lauren Stowell poses during the photo shoot. By putting a unique spin on an engagement “announcement” — which included a professional photo shoot with each “star” employee — the company hopes to convey the commitment employees have with the work they do.
READER FEEDBACK One reader responded to Rick Bell’s Last Word column titled, “Take it Easy on the Boss; There’s a World to Save” in the July/ August edition. Mary Ellen Wasiellewski had this to say: There is a myriad of balls that must be kept in the air by the “captains of the ship.”They are the first to get blamed and the last to be acknowledged. Much has been written about the isolation at the top tier.The same human problems face the leaders who keep us all in employed positions: death, divorce, disease, burnout and chronic stress.What does HR do to support those high performance individuals who drive these ships during times of person adversity? They, too, are often expected to just show up and work through it. Workforce.com/TheBoss
Two readers commented on the Workforce July/August print story titled, “Contracting a Cure for Prescription Drug Costs.” F.R. Fogenberg wrote: Good article based on MBGH Annual Pharmacy Program, and more information from the National Employer Initiative on Biologic & Specialty Drugs for employer plan sponsors available at www.specialtyrxtoolkit.org. Reader David Moll added: As a pharmacist of 26 years, I would love to help other companies that self-insure do the same type of thing as Caterpillar has done. I am very much familiar with how PBMs work and have resources to tap to build a network for companies large enough to support their own benefits. Workforce.com/DrugCosts
A couple of readers chimed in on the Workforce July/August story titled, “Change Jobs to Trim the Fat.” Reader Eli1mxp stated: My company has a robust wellness program. They encourage us all to take steps to improve our health. I worked 13 hours yesterday. I don’t think I could do more. HerHealthySelf responded to Eli1mxp, saying: That’s the conundrum most employees face — grinding hours, limp home, answer emails, crash in bed. Get up, rinse and repeat. Most people don’t work an eight-hour day anymore (and the shady looks you get if you don’t answer email while on vacation ... sheesh), yet to read articles like this, you’d never know that was the reality. Workforce.com/TrimTheFat
Reader Bill Fotsch offered his thoughts on the Workforce July/August story titled, “Beyond Great: Features of Today’s Legendary Companies:” I appreciate the author’s focus on successful companies. I have a different list of companies that have stood the test of time longer than the companies that he suggested. Southwest Airlines, Capital One and BHP Billiton and hundreds of private companies treat their employees like trusted business partners, enabling them to make more money for their company and themselves.They consistently see both profits and engagement soar. Workforce.com/legendary We welcome your comments on these stories and others on our website. Be sure to follow us and give us a shout on Twitter at @Workforcenews, too. Hope to hear from you! september/october
2017
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TALENT TRACKER: AN ANALYTICS SERVICE FOR TALENT
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A PUBLICATION OF September/October 2017 | Volume 96, Issue 5 VICE PRESIDENT, RESEARCH AND ADVISORY SERVICES VICE PRESIDENT, CFO, COO Sarah Kimmel skimmel@workforce.com Kevin A. Simpson ksimpson@workforce.com RESEARCH MANAGER PRESIDENT John R. Taggart jrtag@workforce.com
VICE PRESIDENT, GROUP PUBLISHER Clifford Capone ccapone@workforce.com VICE PRESIDENT, EDITOR IN CHIEF Mike Prokopeak mikep@workforce.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Rick Bell rbell@workforce.com CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Frank Kalman fkalman@workforce.com VIDEO AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCER Andrew Kennedy Lewis alewis@workforce.com ASSOCIATE EDITORS Andie Burjek aburjek@workforce.com Lauren Dixon ldixon@workforce.com Ave Rio ario@workforce.com COPY EDITOR Christopher Magnus cmagnus@workforce.com EDITORIAL INTERNS Ariel Parrella-Aureli aparrella@workforce.com
Tim Harnett tharnett@workforce.com DATA SCIENTIST Grey Litaker clitaker@workforce.com RESEARCH CONTENT SPECIALIST Kristen Britt kbritt@workforce.com RESEARCH GRAPHIC DESIGNER Theresa Stoodley tstoodley@workforce.com MEDIA & PRODUCTION MANAGER Ashley Flora aflora@workforce.com PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Nina Howard nhoward@workforce.com VICE PRESIDENT, EVENTS Trey Smith tsmith@workforce.com EVENTS MARKETING MANAGER Anthony Zepeda azepeda@workforce.com
WEBCAST MANAGER Alec O’Dell Marygrace Schumann mschumann@workforce.com aodell@workforce.com
EVENTS GRAPHIC DESIGNER Tonya Harris lharris@workforce.com BUSINESS MANAGER Vince Czarnowski vince@workforce.com REGIONAL SALES MANAGERS Derek Graham dgraham@workforce.com Daniella Weinberg dweinberg@workforce.com Nick Safir nsafir@workforce.com DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Kevin Fields kfields@workforce.com
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGER Melanie Lee mlee@workforce.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Jennifer Benz Kris Dunn Sarah Fister Gale Jon Hyman Mark Kobata Patty Kujawa Ryan Lessmann Stephanie Lewis Rita Pyrillis Michelle V. Rafter
MANAGER, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Brian Lorenz blorenz@workforce.com DIRECTOR, AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Cindy Cardinal ccardinal@workforce.com DIGITAL MANAGER Lauren Lynch llynch@workforce.com DIGITAL COORDINATOR Mannat Mahtani mmahtani@workforce.com LIST MANAGER Mike Rovello hcmlistrentals@infogroup.com
WORKFORCE EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Arie Ball, Vice President, Sourcing and Talent Acquisition, Sodexo Angela Bailey, Associate Director and Chief Human Capital Officer, U.S. Office of Personnel Management Kris Dunn, Chief Human Resources Officer, Kinetix, and Founder, Fistful of Talent and HR Capitalist Curtis Gray, Senior Vice President, Human Resources and Administration, BAE Systems Jil Greene, Vice President, Human Resources and Community Relations, Harrah’s New Orleans Ted Hoff, Human Resources Vice President, Global Sales and Sales Incentives, IBM Tracy Kofski, Vice President, Compensation and Benefits, General Mills Jon Hyman, Partner, Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis Jim McDermid, Vice President, Human Resources, Cardiac and Vascular Group, Medtronic Randall Moon, Vice President, International HR, Benefits and HRIS, Lowe’s Cos. Dan Satterthwaite, Head of Human Resources, DreamWorks Dave Ulrich, Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan Workforce (ISSN 2331-2793) is published bi-monthly by MediaTec Publishing Inc., 111 E. Wacker Dr., Suite 1200, Chicago IL 60601. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workforce, P.O. Box 8712 Lowell, MA 01853. Subscriptions are free to qualified professionals within the US and Canada. Digital free subscriptions are available worldwide. Nonqualified paid subscriptions are available at the subscription price of $199 for 12 issues. All countries outside the US and Canada must be prepaid in US funds with an additional $33 postage surcharge. Single price copy is $29.95 Workforce and Workforce.com are the trademarks of MediaTec Publishing Inc. Copyright © 2017, MediaTec Publishing Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Reproduction of material published in Workforce is forbidden without permission. Printed by: Quad/Graphics, Sussex, WI
FREE LIVE
ONLINE EVENTS
CONTENTS
38 FOCUS ON HR TECH 30-55 30 PLUG IN
40 TELEMEDICINE’S TRIAL
50 SECTOR REPORT: HRMS PROVIDERS
36 PROFILE
44 HIRING AND THE H-1B
52 SECTOR REPORT: PROVIDERS
HR technology’s role is getting new energy in the human resources’ life cycle.
Three benefits leaders share how they’ve used technology to improve their HR and benefits functions.
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There is little consensus on usage or effectiveness of telemedicine, though it’s clear employers like it.
Companies rework technology staffing strategies in advance of anticipated changes to the visa program.
AI and analytics tools are transforming HR management systems into a decision support system.
Staffing firms see robots entering their domain: cheap, easy-to-fill jobs with little human interaction.
september/october
2017
ON THE WEB SPEAK UP!
44
The Workforce online community provides you with virtual meeting places to chat about issues and trends affecting you and your workplace. LIKE US: facebook.com/workforce.magazine
FOLLOW US: twitter.com/workforcenews
JOIN THE GROUP:
TRENDING
workforce.com/LinkedIn
WATCH US: workforce.com/youtube
40 COLUMNS 4
14 WORK IN PROGRESS
There’s a New Sheriff in Town: Google Jobs
FOR YOUR BENEFIT 16 TRUE VALUE
Value-based health care gets a high-deductible boost from the federal government.
20 BENEFITS BEAT
Engaging Employees in Benefits Plans.
24 THE PRACTICAL EMPLOYER Social Media Disclosure Is So 2008.
58 THE LAST WORD
What’s the About Us Page All About?
september/october
2017
Texting could improve your recruiting process.
11 FROM THE WEB, PEOPLE MOVES AND BY THE NUMBERS
Driving diversity effort;Audubon taps D&I head; communications.
YOUR FORCE
We’re All Tech Companies Now.
10 OMG UR HIRED!
17 EMPLOYEES LIKING ROTH 401(K)
A new BofA Merrill Lynch survey reveals workers are realizing the benefits of the plan.
18 CAREGIVERS GET HELP
Cigna is among the latest companies to unveil a Caregiver Leave Program for employees.
12 Q&A
Actress-CEO Cara Santana talks about beauty and the gig economy.
12 TRIPPING OUT
It’s no holiday when it comes to employees taking their PTO.
LEGAL 22 NOT IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT
How driverless cars and more are changing your workplace.
23 LEGAL BRIEFINGS
Arbitration claims; union campaign.
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TRENDING
OMG Ur Hired! Could texting make your recruiting process more user-friendly? By Sarah Fister Gale
M
illennials and their Gen Z succes- man resources officer at American sors have little time for thoughtfully Express Global Business Travel. crafted emails or telephone pleasantries. “They are lot more responsive via These digital natives grew up texting text, and it’s an easy and often consider other formats to be way to move the cumbersome and outdated. So it should process forward.” Here’s my résumé. come as no surprise that they think text I look forward to messages are a completely appropriate A Strange Bunch way to communicate with recruiters Besides convemeeting you Monday! and their future workplace peers. nience, texting is a A recent survey from Yello, the talent great way to get a acquisition software company, shows 86 sense of a candidate’s percent of millennials “feel positively personality, said Jack about text messages being used during Barmby, CEO of Gnatta, a customthe interview period,” and a similar er service software company based HeyWire Inc. survey shows 67 percent in the U.K. His developers and of employees are using text messaging support staff use text messaging to for business-related communications. talk to each other and to potential While it may seem like an overly ca- new hires. “It is the underpinning sual environment to connect with po- of how we communicate,” he said. and it ultimately becomes an extension tential hires, texts offer a lot of benefits The company uses Slack, a cloud- of the onboarding process. He admitted — especially in a recruiting setting, said based team collaboration tool for its that some candidates are turned off by Jason Weingarten, co-founder of the text platform, creating different conver- the process because it adds a week to the Chicago-based Yello. “Text is faster, it’s sations for different projects, teams and decision, but others love the opportunitopics. Participants post project updates, ties to connect with potential peers. questions and comments that others in “Developers can be a strange bunch, and the group can see and respond to. not everyone is a good fit,” he said. “It’s more efficient than email because Spending a week chatting with the team users can quickly scroll through posts, find is a great way to decide who will fit in. those that are relevant, without getting For all its conveniences there also are bogged down in a bunch of ‘reply-all’ risks to using texts in recruiting. Comemail chains,” he said.There are no formal panies need to be thoughtful about the rules for use, beyond the basics — don’t be information they share via text and how a jerk, and don’t post comments that are those communications can be tracked, not relevant to the topic. “Otherwise it’s Weingarten said. “If you get audited, very organic, and we encourage people to you need to be able to show the source easier and it’s more personal,” he said. let their personalities flourish.” of the texts, how they were sent, and It can also solve many problems that Gnatta also uses it as a vetting tool for what messaging you used.” create a negative candidate experience, new hires. When a candidate makes the Recruiters shouldn’t put too many including delays in communication, hiring short list, they are invited to join rules around how texting is used. lack of follow-up and overly generic one of the casual Slack channels, where Where recruiters are looking for better, form letters. Gnatta employees talk about what’s go- faster and more personal ways to en“There are many points in the recruit- ing on in their lives. The recruits get a gage with talent, texting is a cheap and ing process that are very stressful for chance to see how the team communi- familiar solution that can add real valcandidates,” he said. “Getting a quick cates, and the team gets a sense of their ue to the process. response or update can ease some of personality, Barmby said. “The shine of “Text is the next iteration of how that anxiety.” the interview comes off, and they have we communicate,” Kruse said. “It can It can also be handy for recruits who a chance to be themselves.” be a hugely helpful way to quickly have another job and don’t want to Inviting candidates to engage via text connect with people, is a style that communicate via their company email helps his team determine who will be they prefer, so why wouldn’t you take or phone, said JoAnne Kruse, chief hu- the best cultural fit for the organization, advantage of that?”
TEXTING IS A CHEAP AND FAMILIAR SOLUTION THAT CAN ADD REAL VALUE TO THE PROCESS.
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2017
TRENDING
PEOPLE
FROM THE WEB HAT IS RELIGION’S W PLACE AT WORK? In a recent episode of the video series “5 Minutes of Management,” Workforce editors Rick Bell and Frank Kalman discuss HR bemoaning challenges when it comes to finding qualified candidates as well as how often HR should communicate with employees.They also tackle the role of religion in the workplace. Workforce.com/ 5MinutesReligion DRIVING D&I EFFORTS In old school orgs, diversity and inclusion aren’t seen as strategic priorities like finance, writes New School D&I blogger Susana Rinderle. Terms like “passion” and “caring” are well intentioned but misguided.“I can’t recall ever seeing a single job description in any industry for a finance director that included ‘passion’ as one of its desired qualifications,” she writes. Workforce.com/ NewSchoolD&I GREAT PLACE A TO WORK In a recent “Talent10x” podcast, Rick Bell joins Talent Economy’s Frank Kalman to chat with Great Place to Work’s Ed Frauenheim. Rick, Frank and Ed recap the organization’s annual conference in Chicago, an event that featured talks from Cisco’s John Chambers and others. They also talk culture, competitiveness and leadership. Workforce.com/ Talent10xGreat september/october
moves
AMBER KENNELLY Global insurance brokerage Hub International Ltd. named Amber Kennelly as chief human resources officer. Kennelly will be responsible for all HUB’s HR strategic initiatives including talent acquisition and management, learning and development, employee relations, compensation, employee benefits and payroll. DEEOHN FERRIS The National Audubon Society named Deeohn Ferris as vice president for equity, diversity and inclusion. Ferris will lead initiatives across Audubon’s 700-person staff, board of directors, 1.1 million members, 463 local chapters and more than 60 local and regional advisory boards. Ferris is a pioneer in the environmental justice field, with extensive experience in law and policy. SUSAN PODLOGAR MetLife Inc. named Susan Podlogar as executive vice president and chief human resources officer. Podlogar will be a member of the company’s executive group and report to Chairman, President and CEO Steven A. Kandarian. Podlogar comes to MetLife from Johnson & Johnson, where she was global VP of HR for the company’s $21 billion medical devices business.
To be considered for People Moves, email a brief announcement and a high-resolution color photo to edi2 0 1 7 tors@workforce.com. Include People Moves in the subject line.
By the Numbers compiled by Rick Bell
You Don’t Say Despite many tools available, workplace communications remains mired in the 20th century.
Old School Rules! Top 5 employee communication tools
25.2%
11.6%
7.7%
5.3% social media
38.5%
instant messaging
4
texting
phone
Not Very Chatty
%
Chat tool usage at work is still low
Tools like Slack
Source: “Workplace of the Future: Progress, But Slowly,” Technalysis, 2017
Long Live Email! Email overload is a problem for employees
‘Must Read’ information
80%
Yes
20%
No 73%
Employee newsletter 58% Leadership communication Employee surveys 35% Employee events
25%
50%
Always use email for these tasks
Source: “Exploring the Use of Email for Internal Communications,” Poppulo 2017
Text Me Texting has its workplace aficionados
39% 15%
Can’t go over 10 minutes without responding to a text
Over half of texts sent or received are for business
80
%
People text for business
72
%
Sometimes/always use emojis in texts for business communication
Source: RingCentral, 2015
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TRENDING
It’s No Holiday When It Comes to PTO Use
BEAUTY AND THE GIG ECONOMY By Ariel Parrella-Aureli
By Ariel Parrella-Aureli Cara Santana, entrepreneur
When actress Cara Santana first heard about Uber’s gig economy model, she thought it absurd. But now it’s a noun, verb and an adjective. In 2014 she took the same business model and started The Glam App, which brings local makeup, hair and nail artists to women looking to beautify their lives from home. Santana, also known for TV roles in “Salem,” “Santa Clarita Diet” and movies “Reunion,” “Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3: Viva La Fiesta!” points out Uber has changed the way people see the free market economy and bolstered independent contractors. Santana only has eight full-time employees with offices in London and Los Angeles yet Glam has over 30,000 active users in 22 markets in the US and UK and over 2,000 stylists. Workforce intern Ariel Parrella-Aureli recently chatted with Santana about being an entrepreneur, hiring employees and creating a strong culture. Workforce: Why did you pick the gig economy structure? Cara Santana: The social culture of the modern-day working woman, the millennial, is instant gratification, convenience, accessibility. They really believe the shape of the culture was going to a place where, either because of time constraints or because of this need and ability to get most things instantaneously, that the beauty industry would fit in. We have to be able to fill a real need, which is beauty — it’s not going anywhere. It felt like a natural progression to apply this model to the business of beauty.
WF: How do you build your workforce in this industry? Santana: The challenge to any business is the hiring. When I talk to other CEOs it is always the staff. You really want to create a company that has good culture. It is such an interesting time; millennials are now the workforce. I am looking for innovative, ambitious and creative talent who have the best qualities millennials have to offer but with a really strong work ethic because a startup is just categorically different than any other type of environment.
WF: How do you create a common work culture and value system with internal and remote employees? Santana: It is a work in progress. You want to instill a sense of incentive and desire to work toward a common goal. We do a lot of incentivized tasks, whether it is winning trips to other offices or incentivizing our stylists to bring in clientele by providing them with a program that gives them rewards back. We certainly try to create a fun and positive working environment and create a company culture of like-minded individuals who want to work hard, who are bringing creativity to a sterile business model. It is about finding those millennials who are interested in making a change and social impact while maintaining the Generation X sentiment of work hard and play hard. As long as you are playing to that base instinct and feeling of those needs, you get a successful employee.
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V
acation time is always sweeter in the summer, but why do Americans not use all their time off? According to a study this year by Project Time Off, 662 million vacation days went unused — 4 million more days than in 2015. The study, which surveyed more than 7,000 full-time employees, found that the average number of paid vacation days used was 16.8 days per year, an increase from 2015 but still relatively low. By comparison, from 1978 to 2000 Americans took about 20 days per year. The business coalition wants to shift the culture and attitude around taking time off to seeing it as beneficial for personal well-being, professional success, business performance and economic expansion, said Katie Denis, vice president and lead researcher at Project Time Off. “I firmly believe an employee’s workplace itself should be just as invested in an employee’s vacation time as the employee,” Denis said. She said that PTO brings more productivity, creativity and work-life balance to an individual and a company as a whole; the latter usually improved through a better talent market, a stronger economy and a healthier work culture. Denis said the biggest takeaway from the study was that “sacrificing vacation time does not help you get ahead,” as is a common stereotype among so-called “work martyr” millennials. Although the generation seems committed to their job, the question becomes whether they are genuinely hard-working or simply constantly on, she said. It’s in part credited to the way they grew up: entering the workforce during a negative economy, with technology flourishing and steep student debts has created constant buzz to get ahead. The study found that more than half of non-managers never heard encouragement from leaders to take PTO. september/october
2017
Fast-track your HR career with a world-class certification from the only independent organization in the field.
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september/october
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TRENDING
THE NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN: GOOGLE JOBS By Kris Dunn |
I
Wo r k i n P r o g r e s s
f you follow the recruiting space, you likely would agree that three trends have dominated the recruitment marketing landscape in the past five to 10 years. LinkedIn has become the candidate database of choice for recruiters, Glassdoor has forced HR and recruiting leaders to acknowledge the importance of company reputation via aggregation of anonymous ratings, and Indeed has parlayed the power of jobs SEO/search into a dominant business model. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Those market positions/origins converge as each of those recruitment-marketing vendors has sought to monetize their business model. Translation: LinkedIn, Glassdoor and Indeed all sell job postings as a primary driver of revenue. Some have found that embedding job postings in bundled offerings is the only way to fully monetize the features that made them famous (LinkedIn, Glassdoor), and one has fully redefined what a job posting is by owning candidate search and making you pay for preferred placement to access candidate attention (Indeed). But each of the business models is reliant on and subject to one important behavioral trend: Candidates aren’t using job boards as a starting point for job search, they’re just typing the name of a company in a web browser (or conducting a search like “jobs in 30328”), and away they go. That reality built Indeed into the powerhouse it is today. But there’s a new sheriff in town — Google for Jobs. Google for Jobs can be described as a new search results feature when you use Google for search. The feature is simple: For searches with “clear intent” (e.g.,“head of HR jobs in Chicago” or “entry-level jobs in Boise”), Google shows a formatted preview of job listings scraped from various sources under a generic tag,“jobs.” Google for Jobs currently includes job postings from sources like LinkedIn, CareerBuilder and Glassdoor, but also job postings hosted on a company’s own website — if the bots like the formatting of your careers site. Google for Jobs doesn’t include listings for Indeed.And that should make you blink as an HR/talent/recruiting leader. The Google for Jobs search results serve to push organic listings at your company on Indeed, Glassdoor and other providers to what is known as “below the fold” status on their screen.That means candidates must scroll to find some of the results from the providers you currently pay to drive traffic to your jobs.That’s potentially a big problem. What’s an HR/recruiting leader to do? Here’s my advice
to avoid waking up one day and finding the recruitment marketing world has passed you by in the Google for Jobs era: 1. Understand your current recruitment marketing spend. You’ve likely spread your budget across multiple partners, and that’s good. Understanding the allocation will allow you to sense where you have the most risk if performance changes at any source of traffic. 2. Pledge to experiment with 10 percent of that spend. Whether your budget is $10,000 or $1 million, you should always reserve a tenth of your spend to experiment with new sources of traffic or hires. Unfortunately, there’s not a way to pay for listings in Google for Jobs — it’s aggregation of other sources now, although that could change over time. 3. Maximize your career site jobs postings for Google for Jobs. There’s technical documentation that shows you how to format your career site job postings to maximize your company’s inclusion in the Google for Jobs ecosystem. Find someone to partner with at your company on the technical side and do what’s required. 4. Routinely try to determine how your openings are performing on Google for Jobs. Your listings with partners included in Google for Jobs (CareerBuilder and LinkedIn among others) will automatically be included. Searching for your jobs on a routine basis tells you how those vendors — as well as your own career site — are performing. Be systematic and take a detailed look each month. 5. Monitor source of applicant flow and hires and take action if one of the partners you allocate budget to sees a 10 percent or more dip in performance. Know your numbers and keep an eye on performance. Once a source that’s traditionally delivered consistent results for you has dropped 10 percent, that’s your “canary in the coal mine” event. Don’t wait until the source is down 30 percent to take action and move your spend. The naysayers will tell you Google’s had a lot of failed experiments — Google Wave and Google Plus among them — and they’re right. Candidate behavior toward job search suggests that those expecting Google for Jobs to have zero impact are misguided at best. Keep your eye on the performance of postings you currently pay for and adjust accordingly for best results.
BEHAVIOR TOWARD JOB SEARCH SUGGESTS THOSE EXPECTING GOOGLE FOR JOBS TO HAVE ZERO IMPACT ARE MISGUIDED AT BEST.
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Kris Dunn, the chief human resources officer at Kinetix, is a Workforce contributing editor. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.
september/october
2017
VIEW LEADERSHIP THROUGH THE RIGHT LENS When it comes to career advancement, most organizations think in terms of people leadership roles. But what does that mean for high performers whose leadership potential lies elsewhere? Hogan’s Leader Focus Report has the answers. Through strategic self-awareness of reputation and unique personal brand, the Leader Focus Report empowers your organization’s leaders to better plan career paths and lead teams more effectively.
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FOR YOUR BENEFIT
Value-Based Health Care Gets a Boost From the Feds Expanded coverage under high-deductible health plans could entice employers to take part. By Rita Pyrillis
A
White House draft executive order expanding coverage for chronic conditions under high-deductible health plans could eliminate a major hurdle for employers seeking to adopt a value-based approach to health care. Chronic conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, account for three-fourths of U.S. health care costs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, making disease management a priority for employers. Value-based health care, which aims to eliminate unnecessary services and reward providers for improved outcomes, has proven effective in managing chronic diseases, according to Mark Fendrick, director of the Center for Value-based Insurance Design at the University of Michigan. But under current Internal Revenue Service regulations many services that treat these conditions are not covered by high-deductible plans linked to health savings accounts until members meet their annual deductible. Only preventive services, such as cancer and high blood pressure screenings, are covered pre-deductible. As a result, employers have been slow to adopt a value-based approach. The draft order, which was circulated in June, would open the door for more employers to incorporate value-based insurance principles in their benefits design, according to Fendrick. “The amendment of the IRS regulations, which will offer pre-deductible coverage used to treat chronic conditions will be a very important step forward for value-based insurance de-
THE NUMBER OF EMPLOYERS OFFERING HIGH-DEDUCTIBLE HEALTH PLANS PAIRED WITH A HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNT HAS SKYROCKETED IN RECENT YEARS. sign in that it may now be used in high-deductible health plans with health savings accounts,” he said. “It’s nice to see a common-sense idea move forward with bipartisan support.” The number of employers offering high-deductible health plans paired with a health savings account has skyrocketed in recent years with some companies offering these plans as their only benefit option. About 29 percent of workers with employer-sponsored health coverage were enrolled in a HDHP in 2016, up from 25 percent in 2015, according to HR consultancy Mercer. While these plans are controversial among employees who must dig deeper into their pockets to pay for claims costs, employers view them as an effective way to manage health care spending. However, these plans are incompatible with value-based insurance design, according to Fendrick. While a growing number of states including Oregon and Vermont as well as federal Medicare and Medicaid programs 16
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have adopted value-based approaches, many employers were concerned that efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act would overshadow its progress. “After the election, employers took a new look at the health care landscape and we wanted to make sure that this push toward value-based continues to be a high priority,” said Bill Kramer, executive director for health policy at the Pacific Business Group on Health. “But we saw other issues crowding out the value-based agenda, like repealing and replacing the ACA. While those are very important issues we want to make sure that the value-based agenda doesn’t get overlooked in the current political discussions.” In May, the Pacific Business Group on Health and the ERISA Industry Committee launched a campaign to educate policymakers on the merits of value-based health care.The program, called DRIVE Health — Delivering Results, Innovation and Value for Everyone — is designed to show how employers are using value-based principles to reduce health care costs and improve quality. The initiative calls for greater transparency around health care pricing and quality, financial rewards for providers with improved outcomes and regulatory changes that allow for greater innovation, among other recommendations. “DRIVE is about taking innovations from the private sector and injecting them into public policy,” Kramer said. He pointed to Boeing Co., which bypassed insurers to work directly with hospitals and physicians to provide care through an accountable care organization. Launched in 2014 as a pilot project for employees in the Puget Sound area of Washington state, the ACO now covers about 30 percent of the Chicago-based company’s 54,000 eligible employees. Employees trade a smaller selection of providers for lower costs and perks such as same or next-day appointments or free generic prescription drugs. september/october
2017
FOR YOUR BENEFIT
Employees Say They Like the Roth 401(k) A new BofA Merrill Lynch survey reveals workers are realizing the benefits of the plan, which pulls taxes up front, not at retirement. By Patty Kujawa
B
renda Mackey has been saving in a Roth Individual Retirement Account since she was 22 years old. She had no idea she could save this way in her 401(k) plan at work until she saw the option on her plan menu when signing up for benefits in her new job. “I didn’t know Roth 401(k) existed,” Mackey said. “I knew the benefits of Roth, but I didn’t do it at first” in the 401(k) plan. A few months into her job as a content marketing specialist at Indianapolis-based business consultancy Walker Information, Mackey switched to the Roth 401(k). She said she would rather pay taxes up front and pay nothing in retirement. The difference between the two accounts is about $30 a paycheck. “I feel like I’m taking away the gamble” of how much will be owed in taxes at retirement, said Mackey, 39. “I know what I’m paying now, and I won’t have to pay taxes in the future. I like that.” Roth 401(k)s have been available for decades, but it is just recently that workers are realizing the benefits of the retirement savings account, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s 2017 “Plan Wellness Scorecard.” Nearly a third of employees who have access to Roth 401(k)s increased their contributions last year. In addition, more than half of those contributing to a Roth are millennials like Mackey. A Roth 401(k) can be a savvy way to diversify the tax impact at retirement. In a traditional plan, money goes in tax free, it grows tax free, and then it is taxed at a specific income rate at retirement. With a Roth, the formula is flipped: Participants pay taxes up front, money grows tax free and is withdrawn tax free. In using a Roth, participants are betting they are at a lower tax rate now than when they need the money. Sylvie Feist, BofA Merrill Lynch’s director of financial wellness strategy, said employers are adopting a broader perspective helping their workers gain confidence in making money decisions. They are simplifying plans by using express enrollment, automatic features and by offering more ways to save. According to the survey, 57 percent of employers who offer a traditional 401(k)
also offer the Roth option. In addition, the Roth option recently became a one-click and done selection in BofA Merrill Lynch’s Advice Access online advisory service tool. “Employers have made efforts from a plan design perspective to help employees save more,” Feist said. “We find a lot of people are struggling today in making financial decisions. Employers are helping [employees] explore options — are [employees] maximizing their benefits and asking how they all play together.” In addition, employers have expanded by offering tax-friendly health savings accounts. With HSAs, employees can add money tax free, the funds grow tax free and can be taken out for medical purposes tax free. HSAs can also be used this way in retirement. The Plan Wellness Scorecard showed that the number of workers using HSAs increased 21 percent; those workers increased their balances by 31 percent. On average, workers spend about 70 percent of their HSA balance on medical expenses but save 30 percent for future costs. “People are just starting to understand the power of an HSA,” Feist said.
Reap the
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2017
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FOR YOUR BENEFIT
Organizations Caring More About Caregiving Benefits Cigna is among the latest to unveil its Caregiver Leave Program for employees. By Ariel Parrella-Aureli
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ail Hunt remembers what it was like to care for her aging mother who recently died. She knows the emotional, physical and mental stresses of being a caregiver and also has a keen perspective on caregiving benefits. As the president and CEO of the National Alliance of Caregiving, Hunt oversees the nonprofit’s dedication to conducting research and developing national programs for family caregivers and the professionals who serve them. Before heading the alliance, Hunt was president of her own aging services consulting firm for 14 years and has hands-on research experience in corporate elder care and caregiver training with AARP and the American Occupational Therapy Association. Although caregiver benefits have existed for decades, Hunt notes that there was increased interest from corporations to offer such coverage before the 2008 recession hit and elder care and child care benefits were cut. Now they are slowly
ACCORDING TO NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF CAREGIVING AND AARP, 43.5 MILLION U.S. ADULTS PROVIDED UNPAID ELDER CARE IN 2015. returning, Hunt said, although caregiving usually still receives the short end of the stick financially. The big thing for family caregivers is some form of financial relief, Hunt said. “They would like a real financial benefit and we don’t do that with the exception of Medicaid beneficiaries,” she said. With 18 to 21 percent of the workforce doubling as a caregiver and not getting paid for it, the financial strain is heavy, often causing people to take leave of absences from work or cut back their hours. More organizations are seeing these caregiving needs; they have become just as important as maternity and paternity leave. 18
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One such company is Cigna Corp., the global health service company turning 225 years old this year. To recognize its longevity, the Bloomfield, Connecticut-based company introduced a new employee benefit called the Caregiver Leave Program. The program gives its U.S. employees up to four weeks of paid leave for employees caring for others including child bonding, care for a seriously ill family member or qualifying military support. “Employees are always interested in having the ability within really challenging job demands to also have the ability to spend time with their loved ones for various personal reasons,” said John Murabito, executive vice president of HR and services for Cigna. He sees the program being beneficial to baby boomers and millennials alike. Boomers may use it to care for an aging or sick parent while the younger generation will take advantage of the time to bond with children and take longer maternity leave. Murabito said the Caregiver Leave Program will benefit Cigna’s workforce “up and down the workforce chain.” When it was announced, he said over
100 employees told the company’s leaders they appreciated the new program letting them devote necessary time to their personal lives. According to the 2015 “Caregiving in the U.S.” study by National Alliance of Caregiving and AARP, 43.5 million adults provided unpaid elder care, some 60 percent of whom are female. The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College recently found that those who provide care devote an average of 77 hours per month, which can take a toll on both the finances and health of the caregiver. It also found that the caregiving burden will likely increase as baby boomers enter their 80s. Author Howard Gleckman has been involved in the caregiving movement for much of his career. In a January 2017 blog post, he noted the cost to care for an aging parent greatly surpasses raising a child and said this shows the financial burdens of caregivers that need to be recognized on a large scale. Elder care benefits are extremely valuable to employees and will become even more so as each company’s population gets older, he said. september/october
2017
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FOR YOUR BENEFIT
ENGAGEMENT, APATHY AND BENEFITS PLANS By Jennifer Benz |
Benefits Beat
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e all walk around with unbelievably powerful com- them two to three times. This engagement gap — and puters in our pockets. An incredible 77 percent of the business cost associated with it — is precisely the Americans across income levels have a smartphone, and that reason so many technology companies have developed number will continue to grow.The data our phones collect smart technology to get employees the right resources helps to personalize the world around us in so many ways, at the right time. from the information we see in personalized ads, to the Using data to make employee benefits and HR pronews we consume, to the brands we interact with. This grams relevant and sticky is a great idea, of course, and it highly personalized and targeted consumer experience is meets a real need. But it isn’t without challenging privacy so ingrained in our daily lives that most of the time we and comfort-level issues. don’t even realize it. Whether employees welcome these new efforts or are That same level of tailoring and data-driven personaliza- suspicious of them comes down to trust, culture and comtion is quickly making its way into the employee benefits munication. There’s no question that employers want to and HR space. We see inimprove outcomes and recredibly smart tools and reduce costs. And, they also sources that provide perhave their employees’ best sonalized views of benefits, interests at heart. Better work and life. For instance, health and financial outthere are wellness apps that comes create a positive impush out notifications about pact for the business and for upcoming health screenings, individual employees.Those fitness challenges and other two goals are not inconsiswellness events for employtent with one another. ees. Financial apps automate But this positive, employbill paying and saving monee-focused framing isn’t ofey. And benefits enrollment platforms customize enroll- ten the way large organizations approach these efforts — ment options to make choices easier for employees. and the media generally doesn’t help make this case with As we look ahead, advanced analytics will play a big its focus on exceptions, instead of best practices. role in benefits and HR. That means companies will be As technology gets more sophisticated, employers can’t using techniques and tools such as data mining, statistics, do enough to educate employees about their privacy and predictive modeling and machine learning to analyze protections. Employees need to understand the considercurrent data and make predictions about future events. able effort their companies take to offer programs and reAnd, we’ll start to see personalized health and financial sources that help them improve their health and their lives experiences that mirror those used in the consumer — why you make that effort, how the programs work, and marketing world and (hopefully) motivate meaningful how employees are protected. We must remind employees behavior change. that there are stringent laws in place to safeguard individuAll this technology is impressive, and its potential is al employee data from employers. Benefits and HR leaders tremendous. We know engagement in health, financial get aggregate data about employee health, but no one gets and work-life programs is a real challenge for employ- access to individual heath data. ers. Most large employers invest millions in benefits to Engagement with health programs will continue to lag help employees and their families make good health — even with the best policies in place — until employers care decisions, get the best care, change their habits for put resources, creativity and consistency into marketing the better, save for their futures and enjoy today. And, their programs. The onus is on the employer to position most of these programs go unused, despite their value programs so they are relevant, valuable and actionable for to the employee. employees and their families, just like the consumer prodHealth care tech company Accolade partnered with ucts we all know and love. Until we do that, suspicions Harris in a poll last year and found that 43 percent of will remain and valuable programs will go unused. Americans say they have not used employer-sponsored programs such as wellness apps, condition management Jennifer Benz is CEO and founder of Benz Communications, a programs, provider cost transparency tools and second San Francisco-based employee benefits communications agency. opinion services program within the past year. Only 13 She was honored as a Workforce Game Changer in 2013. To percent have used them once, and 18 percent have used comment, email editors@workforce.com.
AS TECHNOLOGY GETS MORE SOPHISTICATED, EMPLOYERS CAN’T DO ENOUGH TO EDUCATE EMPLOYEES ABOUT THEIR PRIVACY AND PROTECTIONS.
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Legal How Driverless Cars, Drones and More are Changing Your Workplace Accessibility, liability and flexibility will all be guided by the coming revolution. By Ryan Lessmann and Stephanie Lewis
N
obody knows when the driverless car revolution will hit, but most are certain it will. While some estimate driverless cars won’t become mainstream for several decades, many companies (including Audi, Ford, Volkswagen and General Motors) are scheduled to launch driverless vehicles by 2021. Competition to invest in driverless cars is heating up, with major companies looking to capture the market early. In October 2016, Otto, the self-driving truck subsidiary of Uber, announced that they had shipped 45,000 cans of Budweiser beer in a self-driving truck. The truck drove without a driver over 120 miles from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Colorado Springs. In January 2016, General Motors announced plans to deploy thousands of self-driving electric cars in partnership with ride-hailing affiliate Lyft Inc. Early this year Ford announced they were betting $1 billion on the world’s self-driving car future through a majority investment in a startup called Argo AI. The race is on and lawsuits abound to prove it. Waymo LLC (a subsidiary of Alphabet) sued Uber Technologies Inc. alleging trade secret misappropriation, patent infringement and unfair competition related to Waymo’s self-driving car technology.Tesla recently settled a lawsuit against Sterling Anderson, the former director of its Autopilot program, for leaving to join a startup called Aurora.
Driverless Cars and the Workplace The impact of driverless cars on the economy will be far-reaching. Likely there will be displacement of many cab, Uber, Lyft, truck and local delivery drivers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, truck drivers alone account for 1.7 million drivers and about $70 billion annually in salary. With the increased utilization of driverless car-taxis constantly on the move, there will be less need for parking, freeing space for housing and offices. Some predict there will be no more driver liability insurance with the advent of driverless cars.Volvo, for example, already declared it would assume full liability if one of its driverless cars gets into an accident. Other changes to the economy are less obvious, but also impactful. For example, McKinsey & Co. predicts that 22
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self-driving cars could reduce crash rates up to 90 percent. This means less money spent by individuals on car repairs, maintenance and health bills related to auto accidents. And what about traffic? A study by INRIX found that the average
The average American and European driver wastes about 111 hours in gridlock every year. With driverless cars, employees could work while on their way to work. American and European driver wastes about 111 hours in gridlock every year. With driverless cars, employees could work while on their way to work, and due to decreased traffic, have more time to work in the first place. The launch of driverless vehicles will also impact core areas of workplace law. For example, in many positions driving has long been considered an essential function of the job. Employees who cannot drive for medical reasons could request a self-driving car as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Similarly, some individuals have been denied driving positions due to religious concerns regarding photographs and finseptember/october
2017
gerprint checks. Those individuals might claim that the employer could provide a religious accommodation by allowing them to ride in a driverless vehicle. Whether providing such an accommodation would be an undue burden would likely be an issue in litigation, particularly where the company provides vehicles to other employees. Another area where human resources departments might see a change is in the background check and motor vehicle report arena. Many companies require pre-employment motor vehicle report checks, which are used to screen out potential employees. Once driving is no longer an essential function of most jobs, a candidate’s driving record might no longer be relevant to the hiring decision.
Drones and More We can also expect sweeping changes in the delivery of goods. Currently, the Federal Aviation Administration does not allow autonomous drone delivery out of the human line of sight. Amazon, however, has made drone deliveries in Britain, and Domino’s has delivered pizzas by drone in New Zealand. Other companies have made human supervised drone deliveries in the United States. The drone delivery firm Flirtey successfully completed the first fully autonomous, FAA-approved urban drone delivery. The company delivered bottled water, emergency food and a first aid kit. The delivery of packages by automated drones will affect a wholesale change in the nature and types of retail and distribution positions needed throughout the economy. In addition, the ever-present use of drones raises unique privacy questions at the workplace. If a drone is flying outside the workplace and capturing photographs of employees, who is responsible? If an employee surreptitiously uses drones in private areas of the workplace for surveillance of other colleagues, is the employer at fault? Sound far-fetched? Some employers are already using wearable devices instead of video surveillance to monitor employees and improve safety. Some of these wearable devices have safety warning vibrations and can intervene if the employee approaches a hazardous area. There is no doubt that these and other rapidly changing technologies will directly impact the workplace as we know it. Companies should begin thinking and planning about how these new technologies might impact their operations and their workforce. Ryan Lessmann and Stephanie Lewis are principals at Jackson Lewis, a labor and employment law firm. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.
september/october
2017
Legal Legal Briefings EMPLOYER CAN’T COMPEL EMPLOYEE TO ARBITRATE CLAIM Ritarose Capili was a sales associate at a Finish Line store in California. When she was hired in August 2013, she was required to sign an agreement that required her to arbitrate employment-related disputes with Finish Line. In mid-2014, after she was diagnosed with diabetes and anxiety that was exacerbated by sleeping issues that occurred during her pregnancy, Capili requested a leave. She was terminated July 8, 2014. Capili sued Finish Line claiming that she was fired because of her pregnancy and because she tried to exercise her legal right to take leave under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, and that she wasn’t given a reasonable accommodation for medical conditions related to her pregnancy. When Finish Line moved to compel the case to arbitration, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the arbitration agreement was both procedurally and substantively unconscionable. The Ninth Circuit appellate court agreed. The Court held that the agreement was procedurally unconscionable because it was “adhesive” in that it was offered “on essentially a ‘take it or leave it’ basis.” They further held it was substantively unconscionable because its cost sharing provision “imposes substantial nonrecoverable costs on low-level employees just to get in the door, effectively foreclosing vindication of employees’ rights” and because it contained judicial carve-outs that allowed Finish Line, but not Capili, to seek judicial resolution of certain specified claims. Capili v. The Finish Line Inc., Case No. 15-16657 (9th Cir. July 3, 2017). IMPACT: The courts place significant restrictions on the enforceability of arbitration agreements so they do not effectively prohibit the employee from enforcing their rights.
‘SHARP’ ATTACKS ON JIMMY JOHN’S LEADS TO AX Six employees of MikLin Enterprises Inc., a franchisor of 10 Jimmy John’s sub sandwich locations in Minneapolis-St. Paul, were terminated for their involvement in the creation and dissemination of posters in or near store locations during a unionizing campaign. The posters contained side-byside images of Jimmy John’s sandwiches stating “Your Sandwich Made By A Healthy Jimmy John’s Worker” and “Your Sandwich Made By A Sick Jimmy John’s Worker.” Additionally, The posters stated, “Can’t Tell The Difference? That’s Too Bad Because Jimmy John’s Workers Don’t Get Paid Sick Days. Shoot, We Can’t Even Call In Sick. We Hope Your Immune System Is Ready Because You’re About To Take The Sandwich Test.” The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that even though the employees’ goal of obtaining paid sick leave was a protected activity, “communications connected to a labor dispute are unprotected when they constitute a ‘sharp, public, disparaging attack upon the quality of the company’s product and its business policies.’ ” See MikLin Enterprises Inc. v. NLRB, Case Nos. 14-3099 and 14-3211 (8th Cir. July 3, 2017). IMPACT: While “protected speech and activities” appear to have received significant expansion and protection in this era of social media, this case indicates it is not without limits. Mark T. Kobata and Marty Denis are partners at the law firm Barlow, Kobata and Denis, which has offices in Beverly Hills, California, and Chicago. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.
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Legal
Social Media Disclosure Is So ’08 Jon Hyman |
“T
The Practical Employer
hose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana It’s been eight long years since Bozeman, Montana, set the internet on fire by requiring that job applicants for municipal positions turn over passwords to their personal social media accounts as part of the application process. In the wake of that story, states rushed to introduce legislation prohibiting this practice; many succeeded. And, the story more or less died. Thank you, NBC, for reigniting it. A recently fired NBC employee claims a recruiter required that she disclose the contents of her Facebook and Instagram profiles before the TV network would even agree to interview her.Why? Because, according to the claim, NBC specifically asked the recruiter only to source good-looking applicants for the position, and the recruiter needed to see pictures before selecting the candidate for an interview. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, alleges that NBC was not shy in demanding the social media photos before hiring female employees.The plaintiff, Stephanie Belanger, and NBC have been silent on the lawsuit. The New York Post, however, quotes Belanger’s attorney, who asked, “Why would that be anything you would ask of someone you want to work there? Why is that on your radar at all?” Let’s place to the side the issue of hiring based on “looks.” Let’s all just agree that it is a terrible (and almost certainly illegal) idea. Instead, I am focusing on the social media issue. Despite all the negative response this story is receiving, I would be surprised if 1 percent of 1 percent of all employers have even considered asking a job applicant for access to a private social media account, let alone carried through on the thought by making it a hiring requirement. And do you know why most (nearly all?) employers do not do this? It’s bad HR policy, and it also carries with it significant legal risk. EEO risks: Mining Facebook and other social sites for information on job applicants can reveal a wealth of protected EEO information (age, religion, protected medical information, genetic information).The risk is great enough when the information is publicly available; it is exponentially heightened when you gain unfettered access to information shielded by a password. The best practice? Prohibit anyone in the chain of hiring from viewing candidates’ social media profiles. Train an employee, insulated from the
hiring process, to do your social media searches, scrub all protected information, and provide a sanitized report to those responsible for making the hiring decision. That way, no one can argue that protected information posted on a social network illegally influenced a hiring decision. Stored Communications Act risks: At least one court has concluded that an employer that requires employees to disclose passwords to social media sites violates the federal Stored Communications Act, which extends liability to parties that exceed authorization to access electronic communications. While this area of the law might be unsettled, testing it could prove a costly mistake. Legal issues aside, this story raises another, more fundamental, question — what type of employer do you want to be? Do you want to be viewed as Big Brother? Do you want a paranoid workforce? Do you want your employees to feel invaded and victimized as soon as they walk in the door, with no sense of personal space or privacy? Or, do you value transparency? Do you want HR practices that engender honesty and openness, and that recognize that employees are entitled to a life outside of work? Social media provides many benefits to employers. It opens channels of communication between employees in and out of the workplace. And, when used smartly, it enables employers to learn more about potential employees than ever before. You can learn if an employee has good communication skills, is a good cultural fit or trashed a former employer. But, this tool has to be used wisely to avoid legal risks. Requiring passwords is not smart. While it seems like we cannot recall a time without social media in our lives, it remains a new and developing form of media.The rules and regulations that govern it are still evolving. Moreover, governments are looking for opportunities to regulate it. If a small minority of businesses pursues this poor HR practice, state legislatures and Congress will continue pursuing legislative solutions. Do not provide the government with this opportunity. Can we all just agree that requiring social media passwords is a bad idea and finally move on from this story?
What type of employer do you want to be? Do you want to be viewed as Big Brother? Or, do you want practices that engender honesty and openness?
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Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. To comment, email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
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2017
industryinsights The Consequences of Culture How Values Impact Organizational Effectiveness By Robert Hogan, Ph. D., Chairman & President, Hogan Assessments
Culture can best be defined in terms of the values that guide the behavior and decision making of a social unit—a team, a family, a business, etc. Culture is not vague and touchy-feely; cultures can be easily and reliably assessed using any number of commercially available survey instruments. Cultures have real, concrete behavioral consequences, and they directly influence the performance of business organizations. As Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management practices, observed: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” That is, no matter what strategy a company might adopt, the culture will enable or prevent that strategy from being implemented. A concrete example might help. Several years ago, we were contacted by a newly opened, high end hotel in London because it was struggling financially. We assessed the top management team using our measure of values and found the following. On the one hand, the top management team had very high scores on the Customer Service, Aesthetics, and Hedonism scales, which meant that they cared deeply about quality, style, and providing a superb and enjoyable customer experience; these values are perfect for hospitality. On the other hand, the top management
team scored low on the Power and Commerce scales—which meant that no one cared about making money or beating the competition—and this explained their poor financial performance. There are four points about values that are worth noting. First, when people join organizations, they bring their own values with them, and the degree to which their values align with the values of the culture powerfully affects their subsequent performance. As Clarke Murphy, the CEO of Russell Reynolds Associates, observes, “We hire for talent but we fire for fit.” No matter how talented people might be, if their values are inconsistent with the culture of their organization, they will not succeed. Second, the culture of an organization reflects the values of the executive team. On the one hand, the executives will largely share values—and those who don’t share the values of this team will leave. The values of the executives indicate the kinds of behaviors that are paid attention to and rewarded or punished accordingly. Over time, this process creates cultural homogeneity (Professor Ben Schneider calls this Attraction, Selection, Attrition--
ASA). But no matter the terminology, culture is driven from the values of the people at the top. Third, values are largely unconscious. People rarely reflect on their values because they are part of “the world taken for granted;” values are to people much like water is to fish—values are just part of the environment in which we operate. External feedback is usually needed to become aware of our values and our workplace culture. 1
Fourth, not all values are equally valuable. For example, some values like greed and selfishness create dysfunction in the groups and businesses where they exist; dysfunctional cultures seldom realize lasting success. Finally, all successful teams share essentially the same values; these include tolerance, fitting in with the team, loyalty, hard work, a commitment to excellence, and an intense desire to beat the competition.
Engage Customers, Channel Partners, And Associations In Extended Enterprise Learning. Forrester. (2015).
The international authority in personality assessment, Hogan Assessments has three decades of experience reducing turnover and increasing productivity by helping businesses hire the right people, develop key talent, and evaluate leadership potential. Backed by the largest and most complete pool of research in the industry, the Hogan assessments predict job performance by assessing normal personality, derailment characteristics, and core values. Hogan’s portfolio of employee selection, development and leadership tools allow companies to better manage their most valuable assets – their people.
industryinsights The right way to verify How outsourcing verification processes benefits both HR teams and employees By Tim Harnett
HR is in the middle of a digital transformation. New digital initiatives can help revolutionize both the HR space and the employee experience. New research says almost three-quarters of all organizations list bringing digital to HR as a top priority¹. As organizations bring a digital-first strategy to HR, they’ll need new ways of addressing some of their more manual responsibilities. One area organizations can look to automate is employment and income verification. Many organizations are asked for specific verification requests, for example, when their employees apply for a loan or leave for a new job. Outsourcing those requests to a trusted partner, one who knows both the industry and the most up-to-date government regulations, can automate the verification process on your behalf, freeing your internal team for more strategic responsibilities. Verification outsourcing has three key benefits: it minimizes risk, creates cost efficiency and increases employee satisfaction.
Minimizing risk “Employment verification is focused on reporting facts and transactions that have occurred,” says Joe Tartell, managing partner for InVerify. “Yet HR teams might not know what they can and can’t legally report. It’s risky to report on speculative information, such as an employees’ probability to continue employment, or if they’re eligible for rehire. These questions get asked, but they aren’t required. Answering those questions creates a level of risk for employers. You want a partner with knowledge of the market and what banks and other requesting agencies need. Speculative answers can lead to lawsuits, especially if the organization doesn’t have accompanying documentation.” “Conducting verification transactions online minimizes the possibility of fraud,” adds Kris Straffon, vice president of business development for InVerify. “A best practice is to work with a partner with protocols in place to release information only to those agencies
who are legally entitled to this information and have the employee’s consent.” Tartell continues. “At the same time, banks and mortgage companies are constantly updating their requirements on what can or cannot be legally verified, and other requesting agencies are asking for more complex reports. Suddenly, instead of being asked for a single set of income data, HR teams are being asked to provide multiple data points, broken down by pay period. This can be time consuming and may lead to lost opportunities on the employee side if the request isn’t handled in a timely manner.”
“Making the income verification process as smooth as possible allows employees to attend to personal matters quickly and painlessly.” Creating cost efficiencies Verification outsourcing doesn’t have to be a big expense for HR. “Commercial requesting agencies pay a processing fee for the information they need, which subsidizes the cost for employers,” Tartell says. “This allows partners to provide services at minimal to no cost.”
Increasing employee satisfaction Many organizations don’t necessarily think of verification as an employee benefit, but outsourcing can give a competitive advantage. Employees want to know their company has their back, and by making the verification
process as smooth as possible, employees can take care of personal matters quickly and painlessly. Taking steps to ensure employees’ personal data is handled carefully also gives employees peace of mind. Make sure employees know about the verification benefit you offer. Include information in the employee handbook, mention it during onboarding and include a link to your third-party provider on your intranet. This last step can prove invaluable, especially if your partner has enabled single sign-on, letting employees log on to a self-service website through your portal. One thing employees don’t need is to memorize another login ID or password. “Self-service is an industry differentiator,” Tartell says. “These days, people are conditioned to seek out information for themselves. Verification self-service parallels credit report access. By giving your employees access to a self-service system, they can see at a glance who is accessing information about their employment or income, enabling them to make better decisions in their personal lives.”
they’re waiting for approval, they’ll appreciate that their employer has a process set up to handle such decisions. “Employee satisfaction is all about doing things the right way and having the appropriate selfservice features available,” says Straffon. “Self-service also gives employees access to custom letters so they can handle verification requests on their own. Speed is crucial. Many requesting agencies have a 24- to 48hour reporting window. Automation and employee self-service addresses the need to handle verification requests quickly.” “At the end of the day, HR customers are the employees they serve within the business,” Tartell says. “When working with a vendor, organizations are still in control of what information is released to requesting agencies. What the vendor provides is knowledge of the most current regulations and access for employees to review their own data. Verification might not be a benefit employees know they need, but they’ll appreciate it when the time comes.” Learn how InVerify’s employment and income verification services can benefit your workforce at InVerify.net.
Most employees won’t think about income verification until they apply for a car or bank loan. But when 1
Deloitte (2016). Global Human Capital Trends 2016.
InVerify is the foremost leader in employment and income verification services. InVerify understands that verification inquiries – while essential – are time consuming for both HR and Payroll teams, and distracts from focusing on the most important business asset – people. InVerify manages and executes these services on behalf of our customers to optimize efficiency, minimize risk and enable a higher level of HR service across the organization. To learn more about how we can empower HR teams with a complete employment and income verification solution visit inverify.net.
Plugging In HR technology, meet HR’s vast life cycle. And it takes a special kind of manager these days to connect the two. BY MICHELLE V. RAFTER
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uman resources technology managers are hot commodities. The most desirable are well versed on the latest cloud-based platforms and apps, but that’s not all. They also have deep experience with project management. And perhaps more importantly, they also keenly understand the full life cycle of HR processes, from recruiting to succession planning — the better to direct staff in implementing new HR systems. They’re on top of the critical roles that mobile and social play in recruiting new hires and engaging current employees.They can coordinate country-specific services with global HR systems.They know how to respond to the latest cybersecurity challenges threatening HR personnel.And, at a time when workforce analytics are becoming critical to organizations’ overall operations, they collaborate well with other departments that rely on people-based data to direct business decisions. The need for this new breed of HR technology manager isn’t just at the top. Companies’ quest for HR technology staff who can tackle the latest and greatest extends from HR information services department heads to midlevel systems analysts and entry-level workers who can maintain workforce apps. Demand for HR talent with the right mix of skills, experience, project management and process expertise is strong enough in some parts of the country that it’s driving up compensation. Alfonse Visco, HR director at Computer Generated Solutions Inc., in New York, increased the salary for an HRIS coor-
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dinator position he’s trying to fill by 20 percent more from what he would have offered a few years ago, or “even from one and a half years ago,” he said. Other HR executives are using the carrots of better work, perks and work-life balance to make their HRIS job openings stand out. In addition to better work-balance, Anand Sampath, senior manager for HRIS at Boston Children’s Hospital, emphasizes the opportunities HR technology staff have at the 415-bed facility that they might not get elsewhere. “It could be projects and initiatives that help someone’s career,” Sampath said. “Those are the kinds of things I try to offer, within reason.”
HR’s Digital Makeover Is Contributing to Demand Interest in HR technology personnel with up-todate skills has risen as more enterprises move from on-premise HR software to cloud-based services and smaller organizations graduate from Excel or paper systems to similar online workforce platforms. It’s hard
INTEREST IN HR TECHNOLOGY PERSONNEL HAS RISEN AS ENTERPRISES MOVE FROM ON-PREMISE HR SOFTWARE TO CLOUD-BASED SERVICES, FROM EXCEL TO ONLINE PLATFORMS. to name an HR function that in the past few years hasn’t gotten a digital makeover, whether it’s recruiting and onboarding, team collaboration, training, performance reviews, benefits and wellness, engagement or managing contingent workers. “Of all the companies ripping and replacing technology, the No. 1 reason they’re doing it is because they want it to be easier to use for employees,” HR analyst Josh Bersin said during a workforce technology conference talk last year. “We’ve moved from HR technology designed to automate processes” to systems that encourage engagement to make employees’ work life better, said Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP. The need for HRIS staff could be one reason that unemployment for HR jobs overall stood at 2.2 percent in December 2016 compared to 4.7 percent for all jobs in the country. LinkedIn, Indeed and Monster list tens of thousands of open HR technology positions at all levels. The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts overall positions for HR managers, including HRIS specialists, will increase close to 9 percent through 2024, compared to 7 percent for all occupations. 32
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Overseeing Local and Global HR Technology As companies pile on HR technology applications, they’re looking for HRIS specialists with experience getting multiple platforms to work together. That’s no simple feat at a time when large enterprises use dozens of HR apps or more. Companies with global operations also need HR technology managers who can oversee centralized HR platforms for some functions, and country-specific ones for others. These same technology executives must stay abreast of HR regulations everywhere the business operates, and of the latest security safeguards worldwide. At Computer Generated Solutions, the HRIS coordinator job Visco is filling is based in New York and primarily manages HR services for the company’s U.S. workforce. However, the privately held enterprise software and outsourcing services provider is rolling out a global recruiting platform that country-specific applicant tracking systems will feed data into. The HRIS coordinator will need to ensure data from country-based ATS platforms is clean. “Sometimes it’s hard to find someone with all those skills upfront,”Visco said. “You need someone who has a spark, who can learn and has a will to learn.” CGS, which maintains a 100-person HR staff for a global workforce of 7,500, digitized HR functions in 2008 and moved to web-based HRIS functions in 2011. In the past year, the company made a broader push into social media, security and cloud-based applications. Getting better workforce data and giving employees more access to people-related functions drove the changes, Visco said. Five years ago, understanding how Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms fit into recruiting or employee engagement would have been an afterthought on an HR technology manager’s résumé. Now it’s a critical piece of the puzzle, Visco said. Today, social media use is so second nature for many younger workers “the social aspect isn’t difficult to find,” he said. In the New York area, salaries for senior-level HRIS positions run from $80,000 to $120,000, said Tali Rabin, CGS’ senior vice president of HR. Along with technology skills, managers at that level also need to have “the DNA” to work well with people and to work at the fast pace that the company has adopted to keep up with digital-era changes. “As I look back on my 20 to 25 years of experience, it’s totally different, even from the past five years.” Despite competition for HRIS staff with the right skills, CGS has not had problems attracting prospects for entry-level positions, most likely because the job is based in New York, which has an abundance of potential candidates,Visco said.
HR Processes vs. Vendor Apps Boston Children’s Hospital is typical of organizations overhauling operations to be more responsive to customers — in their case patients — and employees, and to prepare september/october
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AN INVESTMENT IN KNOWLEDGE PAYS THE BEST INTEREST. — BENJAMIN FR ANKLIN
INVEST IN THE FUTURE OF YOUR BUSINESS KNOWLEDGE AND BECOME A LEADER IN THE HR FIELD. Your team can work alongside the Human Capital Media Research and Advisory Group to develop custom research content, tailored to your brand or co-branded with either Talent Tracker or one of our partner magazines. Be a part of thought leadership backed by qualitative and quantitative data analysis.
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for future growth. Upgrading HRIS is part of that, creating a need for HR technology staff that can help manage the process. The hospital, which has 11,400 employees and a six-person HRIS team in its 90-person HR department, is just starting a major update of its human capital management setup. Existing systems, which are more than 10 years old, include on-premise software from Oracle PeopleSoft for core HR technology and IBM Kenexa BrassRing’s cloud-based recruiting platform. They also include a cloudbased NetLearning learning management system from HealthcareSource. The hospital’s core HCM system will likely remain on premise but Sampath, the senior HRIS manager, said at some point he might look at switching to the cloud. Regardless, the hospital already uses enough other cloud-based HR technology that it’s critical for HRIS staff to be able to collaborate with vendor representatives as services are being adopted and on an ongoing basis. “Say you have tickets the vendor has to resolve or you need them to be part of an initiative,” Sampath said. “The actual work will be done by the vendor but (staff) has to explain what needs to be done and the timelines.” When Sampath hires staff, he prioritizes candidates that have experience with HR processes over candidates with experience on a specific vendor’s platform. Applications are easier to learn and run than they used to be, and platforms change all the time, he said. It’s more important for a candidate to understand the workforce life cycle from recruiting to open enrollment to retirement so they can connect the dots and be more effective in their role. “I can train people on applications,” Sampath said. “It’s hard to teach process and business functions if you haven’t lived through them.” Demand for HRIS analysts is so high, even prestigious workplaces like Boston Children’s Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School and ranked nationally in 10 pediatric specialties by U.S. News and World Report, faces stiff competition. An abundance of opportunities in the Boston area is one factor, as is the need for smart HRIS personnel across industries. “We’re competing with financial services and startups” for the same talent, Sampath said. Historically, outside consultants for technology integration specialists or consulting firms were a steady source of job candidates. But videoconferencing, mobile apps and other technology have cut down the time HR technology consultants spend on the road, making them less interested in in-house jobs than they used to be, Sampath said. That’s where being able to offer someone interesting projects, a positive workplace culture and better worklife balance comes into play, he said. 34
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Replacing Clerical Staff with Business Analysts HR technology that gives employees direct access to payroll, benefits and other people-related services has rendered many HR clerical jobs obsolete. According to BLS forecasts, jobs for HR assistants, minus payroll and timekeeping, are expected to shrink 4.1 percent by 2024. Some HR departments have responded by replacing HR administrator positions with jobs for systems analysts who implement and maintain HR technology apps, and collaborate on reports or projects with other departments. The HR department within the Middlesex County, New Jersey, county government went through just such a transformation. Before 2013, the county’s HR department used mainly manual processes. “It was paper driven, with file cabinets all over the place,” said John Pulomena, administrator for the north-central New Jersey county, which has 25 cities and 825,000 residents and is the second largest in the state. “Any time an employee had a question they had to call the HR office.” That year, the county rolled out a cloud-based HR platform, beginning with payroll, as part of a larger initiative to automate county services.The platform, from Unicorn HRO LLC, has a self-service portal so employees can look up things like how many sick days they have accrued on their own. It allowed the HR staff to function as business analysts and focus on more big-picture issues, such as types of benefits the agency should offer, Pulomena said. After the switch, the county trimmed five positions from its 25-person HR department and moved from a 50-50 mix of clerical and skilled positions to mostly skilled work. For HR staff in clerical roles who couldn’t perform in an analyst capacity, Pulomena found jobs in other county departments that were a better match for their skills. Other people retired and or left the agency. “When we backfilled, we backfilled with people with skills we needed,” he said. Today, the county’s HR staff is split between a core HR office of 10 and HR personnel who are embedded in various county departments but meet regularly for training and other work issues. The upgrade has been a boon for HR department staff, which is enthusiastic about the role they’ve played in making people-management processes more efficient and effective for the county’s approximately 2,000 employees. “They don’t have to focus on data entry and sitting in front of a computer analyzing numbers,” Pulomena said. “They can look at what we should be doing to enhance the experience of our employees.” Michelle V. Rafter is a contributing editor in Portland, Oregon. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.
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When Technology Meets Benefits: A Q&A With Three HR Leaders These benefits pros share how they’ve used technology to improve their organizations’ benefits operations. BY ANDIE BURJEK
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hether employees love or detest the technology around them, there’s no getting around its continued influence on workplace policies. Considering that employee benefits at many organizations remains a paper-based, pencil-pushing operation, enormous opportunities for technological advancement — not to mention saving a few rain forests — are emerging for CEOs and benefits managers alike. For last year’s virtual roundtable, Workforce interviewed CEOs at the tech companies creating HR technology, but this year we’re doing something different. This year we contacted three HR leaders at different companies and asked how technological advancements have been impacting the benefits function and what to look forward to in upcoming years. Parental leave came up more than once as an attractive perk that offers unique tech challenges. And whether these people work at companies that are large and complex or small and nimble, they’ve adapted practices to modernize their benefits strategy. Rachel Frazier is the senior global benefits manager at Mountain View, California-based open-source software company Mozilla. The company has 1,200 employees in 15 countries, primarily the United States, Canada and Taiwan. Frazier has 15 years of experience in HR, benefits and organizational planning at organizations including the University of San Francisco and computer game company Zynga.
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Kristy Loomis is the vice president of human resources at Southfield, Michigan-based Great Expressions Dental Centers, which employs about 2,800 people. Great Expressions, where Loomis has worked for five years, provides dental care for more than 200 practices in nine states. Previously, Loomis worked at medical supply company Aspen Surgical. Tina Kao Mylon is senior vice president of talent and diversity at France-based Schneider Electric, which employs 144,000 people in over 100 countries, including 33,000 in North America. The energy company executive, based at Schneider Electric’s Massachusetts campus, which is the company’s North American headquarters, has previously worked at Aon Hewitt and BASF Corp. Workforce: How is technology changing the role of HR, particularly with its benefits-related duties?
Frazier: Technology is fantastic and it helps me do my job as a global benefits manager, but I sometimes worry about our employees having analysis paralysis. There’s so much information available, and they can’t get through it all. I don’t want us to lose track of that human touch; that human part of human resources. I’d like to talk about our parental leave program and technology. There’s a lot that goes into creating a parental leave program. We did something quite unique in this space, particularly in Silicon Valley companies of
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our size. We have a policy in 15 countries that is essentially the same. Getting that information out was no small task. We started out big and then we went small. What I mean by that is, we sent out an email to all employees saying, hey, we have a new program, and also had an extensive FAQ on our intranet. These are all rather traditional ways of communicating with people. Then I sent targeted, individual emails to those people who had a leave of absence, who welcomed a child in 2016 and anyone we knew was going to have a child in 2017.We reached out via email to say, this is going to apply to you. Let’s set up time to go over the program. Also, twice a year Mozilla gets all of its employees together to meet. We are all physically in the same space somewhere in the world, and I had open office hours. Kind of the old-fashioned thing, right? We also used video conference technology. I met with every employee taking a leave of absence. By using multiple channels — meeting in person and talking over video and emails and having the FAQ on the internet — is how we rolled the program out. That’s how we continue to communicate with our folks. I think it’s really made a difference because no matter how much information there is, people still have questions. New parents wonder, how does this actually work? Even if we can say, here’s the website, go read that, we still need to have that human touch. Loomis: Making data-driven decisions, that’s what technology helps us do. Most functions have had that and embraced it, and HR was always behind. But I would say we’re definitely there, caught up with the rest of the functions if not starting to get ahead in different companies. Technology is changing everything we do. I do training and career development as a big benefit. It may be outside of the traditional with medical benefits, compensation and total rewards, but I think training is a huge benefit that companies provide for their team members. That’s where I see the newest things coming from: training. There’s companies that are using on-demand training and taking it a step further [with] reality Mozilla employees at a planning workshop. virtual glasses you can just put on at your work site to get training in the moment. It gives team members what they need when they need it. Mylon: For us at Schneider Electric, the role of technology is huge and every day it continues to grow in terms of our relationship with our employees, whether it’s through 38
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our benefits or other HR policies. It also allows us to get feedback so we can react in real time to certain HR policies, benefits, etc.That’s been very helpful for us. Recently we communicated on the North America family leave policy, and that was based on tons of data through real time and some through the old-fashioned surveys. One of the pain points from an engagement and retention perspective from [employee feedback] was about leave and taking time off for their family. The other interesting kernel that we learned from the data is that it wasn’t just women having a child taking ma-
Kristy Loomis and Robert Brody, chief clinical officer at Great Expressions Dental Centers.
ternity leave. It was a lot of folks who were struggling with taking time to take care of an elderly or sick family member. It started out being a parental leave policy, but we extended it to family leave. We’re a 144,000-employee company, so part of our commitment is to help each of them manage their unique life and their unique work. If the policy is inclusive enough, people can take time off and get paid for it whether that’s caring for a child or caring for an elderly family member. **** WF: How has your company effectively used technology in major HR functions such as benefits education, communication, enrollment and administration?
Frazier: What (technology) really does help us with is the administrative burden. It makes our jobs much easier, and it’s the way we can run very lean teams. Leave of absence is a lot of tracking. And enrollment — as recently as 10 years ago, some companies are still using paper enrollment forms. We’ve got to get away from that. Online enrollment is really important. Loomis: That’s our HR story over the past five years. When I joined the team, we were very antiquated and manual. The few technology platforms and payroll systems we had were not right. We were trying to bundle them. There’s a lot of platforms out there that want it all on one place. What I found when I looked at those platforms is they had a core product they released, whether that’s payroll or september/october
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benefits.They came out with one thing first and then to be that all-in-one [company], they started adding on other tabs and modules.You could tell they were afterthoughts. We came in and looked at it differently.We said, why not have the best in class in each key system, even if it is different providers and vendors? That’s the direction we went in, we broke down that massive enterprise and said, we’re going to go out and purchase the best. [We wanted to] make sure the employees had an easy user interface so that they have a good experience overall instead of something clunky. It really modernized the department. Mylon: We have a global backbone, a common enterprise system, and then a lot of the benefits administration technology at the local level. An interesting area where there are global as well as local efforts is the benefits communication and education area. Here we are increasingly moving toward mobile apps.This is similar to other companies. But it’s tricky for us because we have a very large (employee) population. There have been some great pilots around the world of apps to educate around our benefits cycles and campaigns. We have global campaigns that are consistently in the same time frame of when people enroll for benefits, and a number of the countries have taken the creative intuition to use the global timeline but also use more customized employee apps that feed information and allow employees to ask questions and engage [in the process]. **** WF: Big data has been around for a number of years, but what are companies able to do with it now that they weren’t in the past, and what might be possible in the future?
Frazier: We can get all excited about big data, but one of the things that’s really important is to be careful. Particularly at Mozilla, we are very concerned about people’s privacy. I think perhaps people who work at large companies aren’t aware of exactly how much data is available. They might be surprised.
AS WE GET SAVVIER AS COMPANIES, WE’LL HAVE OUR OWN DATA AND BE ABLE TO GO DIRECT AND DO WHAT’S RIGHT FOR OUR EMPLOYEES.
—KRISTY LOOMIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF HR, GREAT EXPRESSIONS DENTAL CENTERS
That being said, I really do think that having that information allows us to make sure we’re building our benefits plan where it will have the greatest impact for our employees. So let’s use our data, but not in a way that will make people uncomfortable. If I can look at what’s happening in september/october
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any given country to say, nobody likes this benefit, [then we can] quit paying for that and put [our money] in something else.That’s great. Loomis: You’re seeing this in benefits and health care a lot. Employees are getting their Fitbits and Apple watches and are more aware of their health. If employees are taking more care of themselves, it should be reducing costs. Instead we keep seeing it go up and up.
Schneider Electric’s North American headquarters in Andover, Massachusetts.
I think we’re going to be seeing new things where people start pushing back. Employers will find creative solutions to go beyond what’s been out there today, like by working with hospitals or dental groups like ourselves directly to come up with solutions that make sense for their employees. The data will help us have those conversations, where before we needed the big insurance companies to do that for us. As we get savvier as companies, we’ll have our own data and be able to go direct and do what’s right for our employees. For a lot of large companies, it takes a lot to make these changes. There are so many employees, it takes a lot to make a big change, and it takes quite a lot of planning. I think it’ll be a few years before you see large corporations [do this]. But the more midsized companies, like our size, have the data and the staff to be savvy. And we’re still nimble enough that it isn’t a huge shift with our employee population. Mylon: For us, where I get excited is thinking about how we use big data not only from the corporate perspective, to churn out insights and inform decisions, but how we again engage our broader employee community to participate in that experimentation. Our ambition is huge, how we use big data more to not only drive decisions but also to engage our employees to experiment along with us for a bottom-up generation of input and insight. We have a lot of experiments we’re doing with that data. It may not be so novel for a small company, but we’re a giant ship. Trying to get things going and trying to change TECH BENEFITS continued on page 56 w o r k f o r c e . c o m | Workƒorce
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Worker usage indicates their jury’s still out; expert testimony remains neutral; and employers plead their case with lower health benefits costs as evidence.
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BY ANDIE BURJEK
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ee Damiano felt ill one day in May 2015.The previous year when she signed up for her employer’s new telemedicine benefit that would allow her to contact a doctor any time, any day of the week, she thought she’d never actually use it. She was wrong. Initially thinking, “I might as well wait until Monday,” Damiano ultimately called and was speaking to a doctor within 10 minutes. “As we went through the symptoms, the
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doctor encouraged me to go to the ER. I’m so glad I listened,” she said.“I had several pulmonary embolisms that could have been fatal over the weekend.” Damiano, the senior vice president of Denver-based Westerra Credit Union, is now a big proponent of telemedicine for the organization’s 260 employees. “A number of things happen off hours and on the weekend,” she said. “It is critical to provide our employees cost-effective options.” Westerra is one of many U.S. companies offering telemedicine, which is the usage of technology to deliver medical care that would otherwise be delivered on-site or in person. Telemedicine — a term that’s commonly used interchangeably with telehealth, although technically the words have slightly different meanings — can include texting, video and phone calls. But despite employers’ newfound infatuation with it, employees don’t appear nearly as enamored. Only 3 percent of employees in the companies that offer telemedicine used those services in the first half of 2016, according to the National Business Group on Health’s “Large
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Employers’ Health Plan Design Survey.” Conversely, the same report found that 90 percent of the large employers offered the service in 2016. As more employers look toward telemedicine as a lowcost, convenient alternative to an in-person visit for routine types of medical care, they’ll need to address skeptics’ concerns. Many employees are not accepting the technology as an appropriate substitute for in-person doctors with the same enthusiasm as their employers. Meanwhile, some physicians remain neutral regarding telemedicine. Dr. Jack Resneck, professor and vice chair of dermatology at the University of California at San Francisco and an American Medical Association board member, said telemedicine is not something they are for or against. “We see it as an additional tool that actually has great potential,” Resneck said. “This is an area we’re excited about. We just want to see it done right so patients get good quality care.”
Employee Utilization and Communication Although the trend for employers is rapidly increasing adoption of telemedicine, employees aren’t necessarily buying in as quickly, said Dr. Aamir Rehman, partner and senior clinical and total health management strategy consultant at Mercer. Growth is steadily increasing, but it’s still low. A couple of factors may influence low utilization rates, Rehman said. In some cases, it’s simply informational. Employees might not know that their employer offers it. Other employees may know it’s an option for them but feel more comfortable seeing a provider face to face. Rehman added they could be uncomfortable using telemedicine and have qualms or questions such as, Is this person a real doctor? How can this doctor tell what’s wrong with me without being in the same room? “These are issues employees have brought up, and employers with a high utilization rate have succeeded in communicating and addressing these concerns,” said Rehman. Large Employers’ Use of Telemedicine
In the last five years, the offering of telemedicine has skyrocketed among large employers, and even more are considering it in the next two years.
70% 46%
28% 7% 2012
14%
Currently offer 2013
2014
2015
Source: National Business Group on Health Plan Design Survey, 2017
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How It Works In general, this is what a telemedicine visit looks like for employees. They can call a number at any time of day, any day of the week. Shortly after, they are connected with a physician, who needs to be licensed in the state the employee is located but does not need to live in that state, said Dr. Aamir Rehman, partner and senior clinical and total health management strategy consultant at Mercer. The employee describes their symptoms and the doctor may suggest that they go to the ER if it sounds like something serious. However, in many cases it’s a routine problem that can be solved differently. The doctor can make a diagnosis and prescribe an antibiotic over the phone, for example, said Rehman. The patient can schedule a follow-up appointment with their primary care physician, if their health plan allows. There is a certain level of quality control, he said. A quality assurance committee could assess the situation above and ask, “Why did you provide an antibiotic when his symptoms were more like allergies?” Everything has to be documented in telemedicine, said Rehman. “The checks and balances in telemedicine in some cases are greater than in bricks and mortar,” he added. — Andie Burjek
There are certain talking points for employers to focus on when communicating telemedicine, he added. “If you can get me to the right provider at the right time, then the outcomes will be better. If you have a problem at midnight or it’s noon and you’re at work and (telemedicine) can take that hassle out of accessing health care, then the outcomes will be better. That is the primary 97% message,” he said. 90% Clinical outcomes are often equal to that of a brickand-mortar provider while costing less, said Rehman. It’s less expensive to access care through telemedicine than an office visit. On average, a telemedicine consultation costs $40 compared to $125 Considering for an office visit. About half of Westerra 2017 2018 2019 Credit Union’s workforce use telemedicine throughout the september/october
2017
year, said Damiano. One important factor in getting that high usage was a robust communication strategy, especially during allergy season in the spring and flu season in the winter. This communication included giving instructions about using telemedicine and in which cases it should and should not be used. The Alvin Independent School District in Alvin, Texas, also successfully uses communication strategies to increase utilization. Donnie Marek, director of risk management, runs a self-funded medical plan for the district, which employs about 3,000 people across 30 campuses. “Any time you have a self-funded plan, you look for opportunities to slow down claims and provide better services for your employees,” he said. The district began offering telemedicine in September 2014 through Teladoc Inc. after Marek researched opportunities to reduce claims. It averages a 21 to 25 percent monthly utilization rate, which is good for an organization of its size, he said. Communication is key to its success rate, he added. “Our district was a very reactive district for health insurance. When I was hired I flipped that to be very proactive. [Employees] are constantly getting information from my office,” he said. Marek sends out monthly emails to all employees, provides information to new hires and looks for employee testimonials with a positive experience with telemedicine.
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2017
“If I get a good testimony from someone who has used it, I’ll ask them to write up a quote, and I’ll put it in the next blast that goes out. We’ve branded it well at our district,” said Marek. It’s also helped to have leadership buy-in from several school principals.
TELEMEDICINE IS OFTEN LESS EXPENSIVE THAN AN OFFICE VISIT, ON AVERAGE COSTING $40 COMPARED TO $125. To communicate the telemedicine benefit to employees who still do not use it, Marek has other plans for the fall 2017 semester. He, along with one other person, will visit each campus throughout the calendar year and attend faculty meetings at the current 30 campuses, along with two more opening up this fall. “We’ll talk about insurance and wellness, and telemedicine will be a huge part of the presentation. Getting in front of each employee in a smaller setting, they’ll listen,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll be blown away by how many people TELEMEDICINE continued on page 56
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Companies are reworking staffing strategies in advance of anticipated changes to the controversial foreign worker visa program. BY MICHELLE V. RAFTER
U
.S. employers, including domestic divisions of India-based outsourcers, are curtailing their use of the controversial H-1B visa, which allows organizations to bring highly skilled foreigners into the United States to work. Simultaneously, other businesses are bulking up overseas offices or sending employees who are foreign nationals to work out of offices in their home countries.
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Employers that have used the visas have been scrambling to revise policies ever since President Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election when the controversial program was targeted for overhaul. Whatever workplace policies are being implemented, a sharp dip in 2018 fiscal year applications for H-1B visas makes it clear that employers aren’t waiting on legislation or federal edicts from new officials before they take action. Applications filed by the April deadline declined for the first time since 2013, to 199,000 from 236,000 for fiscal year 2017.The 16 percent decrease is a sharp reversal from the previous five years, during which time applications for the visa rose a cumulative 90 percent. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Homeland Security department that administers H-1Bs, grants 65,000 of the temporary work visas annually to foreign workers with specialized skills, plus another 20,000 to foreigners with advanced degrees.The visas are good for three years and can be extended for another three. In mid-July, the USCIS said it had returned all applications not selected in the annual April lottery the agency holds to award the visas.The USCIS has not released names of employers whose applications were accepted or signaled when that data would be made public. To bypass potential H-1B problems, U.S. companies are increasing hiring in their overseas offices. Nicole Sahin runs a PEO, or professional employer organization, that helps major U.S. companies and fast-growth startups hire salespeople in 150 countries. Since late 2016, Sahin has seen a 30 percent jump in clients sending foreign nationals back to their home countries or hiring locally, all direct responses to coming changes to the H-1B. “There’s a lot of fear around it,” said Sahin, co-founder and chief executive at Globalization Partners in Boston.“Some employees want to leave the U.S. because they don’t feel like they’d have the security they had under the previous administration.”
Outsourcers Respond by Increasing American Workforce Indian outsourcers, which accounted for 69 percent of all H-1B workers as of 2015, the latest available data, are taking some of the most drastic measures to deal with changing policies. After the Justice Department and USCIS announced stepped-up H-1B audits earlier this year, a handful of Indian outsourcers said they wouldn’t use the visas to bring as many workers into the country. Infosys Ltd., which has received thousands of H-1Bs over the years, plans to hire 10,000 U.S. workers in the next two years and open four technology centers here. In June, Infosys paid $1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the state of New York that claimed the outsourcer routinely abused the H-1B visa program, and in doing so, failed to compensate workers fairly or pay required taxes.
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Nicole Sahin, co-founder of Globalization Partners, says she’s seen immediate responses by companies anticipating H-1B visa changes.
In late June, Wipro Ltd., another India-based outsourcer, said it had hired more than 1,600 U.S. employees over the previous six months, and that U.S. citizens represent more than half of its workforce here. That’s a substantial change from recent years, when the company was among the top five H-1B visa users in order to staff its U.S. offices with Indian workers. Indian outsourcers’ new labor model will no doubt be welcomed by H-1B critics, who claim the foreign companies haven’t adhered to requirements of the visa program to attempt to fill jobs with Americans before handing them to immigrants. Critics also fault the program for allowing H-1B employers to pay local prevailing wages that generally are less than what most U.S. workers with similar jobs earn.
UNCERTAINTY ABOUT THE VISA PROGRAM COULD PUSH EMPLOYERS TOWARD THE GIG ECONOMY TO HIRE INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS. The same critics maintain loopholes and lax oversight have allowed companies such as The Walt Disney Corp. and Southern California Edison to lay off highly paid U.S. employees and replace them with lower-paid foreign workers, many of whom are outsourcer employees. In several highly publicized cases, the laid-off workers were required to train their replacements. Such practices have led to a number of lawsuits, including one filed by a group of former Disney World IT employees who maintain they were discriminated against for being American.
Big Boosts for Gig Economy, STEM Workers? Uncertainty about the visa program could push employers to embrace the gig economy and hire independent contractors, said Yvette Cameron, senior vice president for strategy and corporate development for SAP SuccessFactors. If employers were using H-1Bs to lower costs, using 46
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gig workers who aren’t eligible for benefits or pensions is another way to keep labor costs low, said Cameron, whose job puts her in touch with thousands of SAP SuccessFactors customers. Historically, U.S. companies relied on H-1B visas to hire foreign graduate students with science, technology, engineering and math degrees from American universities. However, H-1B reform and Trump administration immigrant policies have already put a damper on applications to U.S. colleges and universities from India, China and the Middle East. As a result, total applications from foreign students dropped 38 percent for fall 2017, according to the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Stepping up domestic STEM studies could help fill the gap left by fewer foreign grad student coming here. Companies have gotten accustomed to hiring employees who can hit the ground running, said Ron Hira, an H-1B expert and political science professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Having government agencies subsidize on-thejob training “might be a way to fill genuine gaps,” Hira said. Employees also need to step up their training, said Katherine Jones, a partner and director of talent research at consultancy Mercer. Starting STEM education in elementary or high school could help, Jones said, as could projects such as the charter public high school Oracle is paying for that opens this fall on its Redwood City, California, campus in the heart of Silicon Valley. Coding schools and other types of short-term bootcamps that teach STEM skills are other options, Jones said.
Reforms Pending in Congress, White House Ultimate responsibility for rewriting immigration laws lies with Congress. Since the start of the current session, supporters and opponents of the current H-1B system have introduced bills that would expand or curtail it respectively. A bill re-introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in January would raise minimum salaries for H-1B visa worker to $100,000. A competing bill sponsored by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., would kill the H-1B lottery and award the visas first to holders of advanced degrees from U.S. universities, then to high-salary workers, then to people with valuable skills.The H-1B and september/october
2017
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L-1 Visa Reform Act, also introduced in January, would bar companies from having more than half their employees on H-1B or L-1 visas, and prohibit companies from replacing U.S. workers with visa holders, among other things. Both bills have been referred to committee but no other action has been taken. Other recent attempts to pass H-1B reform laws have gone nowhere, and it’s a toss-up whether a Congress that’s been preoccupied with repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act and other issues will get to it this term, said Leon Rodriguez, who ran the USCIS under the Obama administration from 2014 until Trump took office. “There are those who think the number should stay where it is or go backward, along with tighter restrictions,” said Rodriguez, Yvette Cameron, SAP SuccessFactors who now practices immigration and health care law at Seyfarth Shaw LLP, in Washington, D.C. “Then there’s the school of thought that says let’s expand the numbers but also put in more safeguards protecting U.S. workers and design the system in a way that favors getting the highest levels of talent we can.” In a June appearance before a congressional committee, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said the administration supports increasing the current $60,000 minimum salary for H-1B workers — which hasn’t changed since 1998 — to at least $80,000 as a way to stop the flow of cheap labor into the country. Opponents to the administration’s H-1B clampdown say the policy shift is ill-conceived and ultimately could do the country more harm than good, particularly for a U.S. tech sector that’s seriously understaffed. In an address earlier this year, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman at Google parent company Alphabet called it “the stupidest policy in the entire American political system,” according to Fortune.com. But Trump fans and critics of the program in its current form laud the president’s moves to protect U.S. jobs for U.S. workers.The present H-1B program undercuts American jobs by allowing companies to shift positions to outsourcers who pay substantially less or send the work overseas, argues Sara Blackwell, a Sarasota, Florida, lawyer who’s represented laid-off workers in H-1B lawsuits. “We have executives who are outsourcing for cheap foreign labor,” Blackwell said. Workforce contributor Michelle V. Rafter covers workplace issues and labor policy. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.
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How One Company Deals with H-1B Uncertainty Cornerstone OnDemand Inc. grew so fast in the past five years, the human resources technology maker tripled its U.S. software developer staff to keep up, from 52 people to 163. The company hired several developers through the federal government’s H-1B visa program, which grants foreigners permission to work in the United States. But times are changing. Competition for H-1Bs made it difficult for tech companies like Cornerstone to secure as many H-1Bs as they would like. New restrictions championed by the Trump administration as part of broader immigration reform could make it even harder. For this year’s H-1B visa lottery, “they tell us there’s a 50 percent chance people won’t be selected,” said Peter Renault, Cornerstone’s technology talent acquisition lead. “We always have openings, so there’s some kind of gap there. And there’s not much you can do to hedge against it.” By midsummer, Cornerstone was still waiting for word from the feds about its H-1B applications, according to a company spokesperson. As Cornerstone grew, the company used the visas to hire foreign grad students for systems and network engineering jobs, among others, applying for H-1B once their student visas expire. “We make sure they have the right educational background and a skill set that’s harder to find here,” Renault said. “We work with a really good immigration attorney here that helps us mitigate that risk.” Cornerstone has also brought some of its Indian employees to the United States for work as needed and sponsored H-1B visas for them. In the past, the company has seen a few candidates not chosen in the H-1B lottery. One Cornerstone employee who didn’t get picked moved back to New Zealand until they were approved in a subsequent H-1B lottery, and then returned to the United States. “We’ve hired a lot of good engineers that have done good work for the company and our products” through H-1Bs, Renault said. “Of course we don’t want it to go down, as that would take away the pool of candidates we see.” —Michelle V. Rafter
september/october
2017
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SECTOR REPORT
HR Management Systems Providers
More Than an HR Database AI and analytics tools are transforming the HRMS into a decision support system. By Sarah Fister Gale
I
n the world of HR management systems, the transition to the cloud is finally old news.While some companies are still waiting out their old on-site solutions, when they are ready to upgrade the path is clear, said Mike DiClaudio, principal in management consulting for KPMG in Detroit. “It is rare that you talk to an organization choosing an HR management system today that isn’t in the cloud.” Thanks to the agility and rapid upgrades that are possible in the cloud, the new focus is on transforming the HRMS from a repository of information to a business management tool, he said. Vendors are rolling out artificial intelligence tools, machine learning, mobile apps and other automated features that are making it possible for customers to use their HR data to support business decision-making. Whether companies want to determine who deserves merit raises, help employees select the right benefits packages or let recruiters figure out where the best candidates come from, these tools promise to change the way employers and employees use an HRMS, DiClaudio said. “These tools are driving innovation in this space.” Different vendors are taking different approaches. In 2016, for example, SAP SuccessFactors outlined plans to use machine learning to detect bias in every decision point of the talent life cycle, from hiring through succession. “We believe technology can help root out and eliminate bias, and promote more diversity and inclusion across the entire business,” By 2020, more than half said Mike Ettling, of enterprises will support president of SAP their HR function via SuccessFactors the cloud, and in a 2016 statement from the company. Workday Inc. will migrate at least also is rolling out one HR system to the cloud a series of employee engagement tools, such as the Opportunity Graph, which shows employees the transitions that others have made from their role, to help them identify potential career paths and training opportunities. “It harnesses the power of data to help them see what might be possible,” said Cristina Goldt, vice president of HCM products for Workday. While some vendors are developing these tools in-house, industry experts, including DiClaudio and Josh Bersin of Bersin by Deloitte, believe the rise in advanced analytics and automation tools for HR will trigger another merger and acquisition spree.
more than 75%
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The industry has already seen a few deals, including Ultimate Software’s 2016 acquisition of Kanjoya, a predictive analytics solution provider; and ADP’s acquisition of the Marcus Buckingham Co., a cloud-based performance and talent management solution.
The global HR software market is forecast to reach
$9.2 billion by 2022 The buying trend is likely to continue as vendors look to expand their use of analytics, and to incorporate better survey tools, performance management features, and self-service tools. “The world of talent management is being disrupted by new technologies,” Bersin said.“There will always be the need for new innovations.” Though unlike the past, much of the innovation in analytics technology are coming from big players, like IBM Watson and Blue Prism, which aren’t likely to be for sale. That may force HRMS vendors to partner rather than acquire to achieve their analytics goals, DiClaudio said. “It’s a highly competitive space that will require a lot of collaboration.”
ALEXA FOR HR Companies are also looking to their HRMS vendors to provide a better overall user experience that mimics the way employees engage with consumer sites. “The HRMS should be like Echo,” said Bersin, referring to Amazon’s voice-controlled intelligent assistant, Alexa. He envisions a future where such interactive technology will sit on top of the HRMS — and every other technology platform in the company — providing employees with a single environment to access all of their workplace software. “It won’t matter what system they are using, all they will see is that technology layer.” For companies making HRMS buying decisions today, DiClaudio warns not to get too enamored with all the new features. He suggests companies look for alignment between their own strategic goals and the vendors’ technology road maps. “You want your vendors to be able to scale with you,” he said. “These conversations should less about process and features, and more about how they are going to integrate the next great technology to support your business.” Sarah Fister Gale is a freelance writer in Chicago. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.
september/october
2017
HOT LIST HR Management Systems Providers Listed alphabetically; compiled by Ariel Parrella-Aureli; editors@workforce.com COMPANY NAME & web address
HRMS Product Names
Total Number of HRMS Clients
ACENDRE acendre.com
Acendre Recruitment; Acendre Performance; Acendre People Analytics
200
U.S. Department of Agriculture; Australian Taxation Office; Glencore; Transurban; University of Sydney
EPICOR SOFTWARE CORP. epicor.com
Epicor Human Capital Management
400
ASU Foundation; LifeCare Assurance Co.; Native American Health Center
INFOR infor.com
Infor CloudSuite HCM; Infor Global Human Resources; Infor Talent Management
WND
Pilot Flying J; Community Bank System; Denver Public Schools; Penn State Hershey Medical Center; Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare
Key Clients
KRONOS INC. kronos.com
Kronos Workforce Central; Kronos Workforce Ready
1,589
Puma North America; Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital; Cavender’s Boot City; YMCA of Greater Boston; Salida Hospital District; Dora Hotel Co.; Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort
SAP SUCCESSFACTORS successfactors.com
SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central; SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll; SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting; SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding; SAP SuccessFactors Learning
6,200
Microsoft; Kellogg; Cintas
ULTIMATE SOFTWARE ultimatesoftware.com
UltiPro
3,700
Bloomin’ Brands; Major League Baseball; Subway; Texas Roadhouse; Yamaha Corp. of America
WORKDAY INC. workday.com
Workday Human Capital Management (including compensation, benefits, talent management); Workday Learning; Workday Payroll; Workday Planning; Workday Recruiting; Workday Time Tracking
1,528
Netflix; Bank of America; Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Note: Oracle Corp. declined to participate; CRG emPerform, Asure Software and ADP did not respond to requests for information. Source: Companies september/october
2017
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SECTOR REPORT
Staffing Providers
Robots Take a Big Step in Staffing The gig economy continues to dominate trends in staffing, triggering new partnerships, driving technology innovations and forcing recruiters to wonder what role they will play in the future. By Sarah Fister Gale
T
he gig economy continues to dominate trends in the staffing industry, triggering new partnerships, driving technology innovations, and forcing recruiters to wonder what role they will play in the future. “The rise of platforms like Shiftgig, Upwork and Taskrabbit is causing many staffing professionals to ask tough questions,” said Vinda Souza, vice president of marketing for Bullhorn, a staffing industry technology firm. “They want to know, are they friend or foe?” The case can be made that they are both. These gig work platforms give employers and candidates fast, easy access to each other, often via one-click applications and rapid onboarding. “They are taking over cheap, easy-to-fill roles that require little human interaction,” Souza said. That is seen as a threat to some staffing agencies, particularly if they focus on finding front-line retail workers. Fully 43 percent of staffing professionals see online talent platforms thwarting their businesses because of increased competition, according to Bullhorn data. However, other staffing experts see these platforms as a resource to draw from. “Like LinkedIn or job boards, they are another place to find candidates,” she said.
79
%
of employers now offer mobile-apply options
This is resulting in new collaborations between tech firms and staffing agencies as the later look for ways to better meet the needs of their clients. “More than half of agency professionals see partnership opportunities with digital staffing platforms,” said Barry Asin, president of Staffing Industry Analysts. He points to Randstad’s acquisition of the job board giant Monster, and Trueblue’s rollout of JobStack, an app that lets workers search for construction, warehouse and other project-based work. “This trend is inspired by companies like Uber and Lyft, where workers manage their own work.”
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HIGH QUALITY OR HIGH VOLUME? Demand for new and more agile staffing channels is being enabled by advances in artificial intelligence, chatbots and other automated communication tools that speed recruiting while reducing the need for actual human contact. “Humans — millennials especially — don’t care if they are talking to a human or a chatbot,” Souza said. If a tool can update a candi-
31
%
of staffing agencies prefer to grow through M&A thanks to private equity and cheap debt
dates on the progress of their application, or get them into a job faster they are happy. Staffing professionals are less enamored with the benefits of these tools to their own livelihoods.While 67 percent of staffing professionals surveyed by Bullhorn believe automation will help to promote top recruiting talent by freeing them to focus on building relationships, 33 percent of staffing professionals admitted that they plan to use the technology to reduce their workforce. “It is definitely changing the role of the staffing agency,” Souza said. Staffing agencies can either harness technology to focus on high volume placements, or continue to offer personalized high quality recruiting with lots of human contact.“You have to figure out who you are going to be, because there is no in-between.” Jim Stroud, global head of sourcing and recruiting strategy for Randstad in Atlanta, thinks that fears about robots taking over recruiting jobs is a lot of hype. “They are just tools, they can’t replace humanity,” he said. While automation may be useful for upfront tasks like sorting through resumes, recruiters still need to talk to candidates and hiring managers to complete the cycle. Companies that lose that human touch run the risk of damaging the candidate experience, he said. That can be the death knell for companies recruiting in a tight labor market where frustrated candidates are quick to post ratings on Glassdoor and other social media sites that could scare off future candidates. Talent Board’s 2016 candidate experience report shows 75 percent of candidates research a company before applying, and said that employee testimonials are among the most valuable content they look consider. september/october
2017
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Despite the potential risk of negative reviews, the overall candidate experience has not improved much in recent years. Bullhorn’s 2017 staffing trend report found that while candidate acquisition ranks among the top three priorities for staffing firms, most companies fail to track candidate satisfaction at all, while others do so inconsistently. Similarly, Talent Board found nearly half of candidates report not hearing back from employers more than two months after submitting an application. “The lack of commitment to improving candidate experience is problematic,” Souza said. Firms that want to con-
tinue attracting high quality candidates, need a comprehensive approach for engaging them via multiple channels that includes prompt feedback. “Candidate experience matters a lot for staffing agencies and their clients,” she said. Stroud agreed. “There are a lot of cool technologies that can help you find and connect candidates,” he said. “But in the end they need to feel good about the company for the process to work.” Sarah Fister Gale is a freelance writer in Chicago. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.
HOT LIST Staffing Providers Listed alphabetically; compiled by Ariel Parrella-Aureli; editors@workforce.com COMPANY NAME & web address
Global staffing revenue for 2016
Average number of temps on payroll
Number of client companies
ADECCO GROUP NORTH AMERICA adeccogroupna.com
$25.1 billion
700,000
7,000*
Office; industrial; information technology; finance/legal; medical/ science
ATWORK GROUP atwork.com
$294 million
50,000
1,500
Commercial staffing; clerical/light industrial
BARTECH GROUP bartechgroup.com
$140 million
1,450
55
High-volume professional contingent labor; low-volume staffing; information technology; engineering; finance
EXPRESS EMPLOYMENT PROFESSIONALS expresspros.com
$3.05 billion
510,000
75,000
Professional; commercial; administrative
KELLY SERVICES kellyservices.com
$5.3 billion
500,000
N/A
Consulting; recruitment; HR management; vendor management; outplacement services
MANPOWERGROUP manpowergroup.com
$20 billion
600,000
400,000
Professional services
RANDSTAD SOURCERIGHT** randstadusa.com
$24.4 billion
626,300
N/A
HR outsourcing; engineering; finance/ accounting; health care; information technology; legal; life sciences
ROBERT HALF roberthalf.com
$4.4 billion
215,000
WND
Administrative; creative/marketing; finance/accounting; information technology; legal
Industry/occupational specialization
Notes: *Represents U.S. clients only; **Does not reflect Randstad Holdings parent company’s data Source: Companies
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2017
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TECH BENEFITS continued from page 39 the culture to be more willing to do small experiments, prototype quickly and then build out the perfect plan for the whole global workforce — that’s something that’s a big culture shift. But we’ve been able to do that because the data and the insights are quite compelling for people. We’re complex, and out of that complexity, driving change is hard, but I think also the power of all the technologies and the power of our employees and customers to generate ideas is also quite big. **** WF: What has been the most noteworthy development in the benefits technology space in the past year? What do you expect to see more of in the near future?
Frazier: One thing I see coming more and more, and this is specific to the U.S., is helping employees gain access to their care and understanding their care. What I mean is, and this is so basic, helping them use the apps that are already available. For example, I get multiple requests every month saying, how do I print out my insurance card? I go back and say this is how you print it, but did you know that our insurance company has an app?You can just access your ID card in the app. Even folks who are super-knowledgeable about benefits didn’t even realize they had that option. Educating employees to better utilize that access to information can really help. That’s what will be noteworthy. We have the technology, we just need human beings to catch up with it. Loomis: I think it’s what’s already been out there. We already have our benefits portals for employees to choose their plans and for employers do different things.The better the portal is, and the more user friendly and flexible it can be for the employer, the more it allows them to be more creative with what they offer employees. I think we’re seeing benefits companies that offer this technology understand that they have to make it very easy and streamlined not only for employers to set up their plan but also for employees to navigate and understand what their options are. Mylon: Like every other company, we’ve made a bet toward mobile and apps within mobile. Here it’s not so much a new development, but the pace at which mobile and apps continue to accelerate. Also, how do you create from a big corporate culture like Schneider a culture that’s more nimble and much more employee-focused? At the end of the day, we’re trying to drive a lot of our strategies for employees to take charge of their own benefits, well-being and career development. And we can’t just do it by telling them they need to do it. As a company, we have the responsibility to provide the assets and the tools and inspiration to make sure they can do it in a good way. Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. To comment, email editor@workforce.com.
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TELEMEDICINE continued from page 43 don’t know about it, simply because people still don’t read emails. I’m excited about this.”
Making the Practical and Ethical Choice There are hundreds of telemedicine providers with varied focuses, said Richard Foust, chief business officer of Chicago-based laboratory diagnostics company Analyte Health. When choosing a provider, “It’s important to ask questions about their approach to telehealth, because they’re all different,” he said. “If the HR manager is really thinking about what’s important, based on the size of the company and the employees they have, the decision will be different.” Employers should question the telemedicine company’s growth, Foust said. Adding lab testing will become increasingly critical to a telemedicine company’s development since physicians would then be able to make decisions not only based off what they see and hear from the patient, but also medical facts that come back from a test. Questioning quality is also important. “If I am going to be getting access to a physician at any point in time, how does that telehealth company ensure that I will get a good doctor?” said Foust. “And is that doctor part of a practice that readily reviews how they are treating patients, the outcomes they get and the feedback they receive?” When an employer chooses a provider, it also has a responsibility to offer telemedicine ethically, said Resneck. “I’ve seen some things that have worried me and been challenging around some quality and patient-safety issues.” The AMA released a set of guidelines for ethics in telemedicine in June 2016. It took three years for the AMA to develop the guidelines, which define a high standard of care to strive for in telemedicine. “The area that’s concerned me the most is care coordination,” said Resneck. Care coordination — defined as “deliberately organizing patient care activities and sharing information among all of the participants concerned with a patient’s care to achieve safer and more effective care” by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality — is an area where employers may fumble, said Resneck. “In the employer market, we have seen a lot of employers reaching out and looking at this as a benefit for employees, which is great, but the temptation I think has been to take the thing that’s the easiest to scale up quickly,” he said. Sometimes what’s been the easiest to scale up has been telemedicine providers that provide fragmented care. Resneck sometimes sees a patient using a telemedicine model where the provider of care doesn’t know who the patient is, doesn’t have their medical history and doesn’t share medical records after the virtual visit. Also, sometimes when a patient uses a telemedicine service to set up a consultation, the health plan may not cover a follow-up with the primary care physician they regularly see. Large and midsized employers shopping for health insurance or working with health plans are in a unique position to drive the conversation.They have an opportunity september/october
2017
to say, “If we are going to work with a health plan to include telehealth as a benefit, let’s sit down and talk with the health plan and talk about ways to cover this coordinated care,” Resneck said. “If we saw employers pushing health plans to actually cover things like follow-up care with established physicians and care teams who know those patients, we could provide high-quality, coordinated care in a way that would be more efficient for patients,” he added. Employers should also push for proper identification of the physician, he added. Patients should know who their physician is and what their credentials are when they are seeking out care via telemedicine. “We definitely see telehealth providers where that is the case and others where that is not the case,” said Resneck. Employers should encourage proper identification and transparency of credentials when they’re in talks
with these health plans. That all being said, doctors and physicians embrace innovation, he added, and they see incredible potential for telemedicine to improve patients’ access to care. Westerra’s Damiano has seen this potential in her employees’ experiences. Many of them access the service off hours and avoid going to the ER for something that ends up being relatively minor, like an earache. Meanwhile, in her own experience, it’s meant something even more significant than one unnecessary ER visit. A pulmonary embolism, a sudden blockage of the major blood vessels in the lung, can be deadly. “If I hadn’t called the doctor, I wouldn’t have gone to the hospital,” said Damiano. “It was a lifesaver for me.” Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.
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LAST WORD
Rick Bell
YOUR ABOUT US PAGE IS ABOUT WHAT?
W
hile reading a contributor’s story about technology and benefits, the author referred to a company I didn’t recognize. Given the thousands of companies occupying the vast space we call HR technology, that’s not unusual. I’ll usually add a short phrase defining the company’s business. We include it for large companies too, even though it seems obvious: HR consultancy Mercer, tech giant Hewlett Packard, largely for clarity’s sake. With less-known companies my go-to is their About Us page, which helps me craft a quick ID. This particular
based on its profits and losses but clear communication creates a critical calling card. Entire industries exist to message the mission. Whole departments are built to pound home the point.Whether you are communicating wellness to your employees or explaining your business through the About Us page, words matter. If two ink-stained wretches have trouble understanding what your business does, how will a potential customer relate? Let’s run through a hypothetical situation. You’ve cleverly named your company, which attracts a curious HR tech buyer at a conference. There’s a glib, chatty talker at your booth who could sell an air conditioner to a penguin. After a product demo, plush company mascot dolls for the kiddos back home and 15 minutes of hard sell, the potential client departs, promising to close the deal in the morning. Awesome sales pitch still ringing in their ears, the customer-to-be heads to their hotel room and checks your website for one final eval before hitting the hay. About Us page, however, made me stop, blink several times, And they read, “on-demand healthcare concierge,” or shake my head and as I exhaled a heavy sigh, ask myself, something equally as vague and inane. My guess is they in“About what?” It began, (yes, I’m concealing their identity): deed will return the next day — looking for a vendor that “Company X is an on-demand healthcare concierge … .” can quickly articulate a clear definition of what they do. Umm, what? You’re a what?? As I sat there in disbelief, I have no doubt that whoever wrote the 85-word defollowed by denial, then disgust — OK, I actually was scriptor labored over every word, every phrase, every senmore amused than angry — I figured the definition was tence to make sure it perfectly captured the company’s deeper in the text.They buried the lead, as we like to call it. mission. Then it was likely vetted by a team of well-paid By the end of the 85-word About Us paragraph, I knew executives in several lengthy meetings, probably went the lead wasn’t buried. It was nonexistent. through four or five rewrites and finally nuanced to reflect Here’s what I could glean: They are in health care; well, company objectives. so is my doctor. They offer on-demand services; so does It unfortunately reads like a summer intern English lit my cable company.They are a concierge; at the Hyatt next major knocked it out in 45 minutes. door there’s a guy standing behind a desk labeled “conTo see if this is an isolated incident or a jargon-filled cierge” eager to tell tourists about the city’s trendy Pol- epidemic of corporate mumbo-jumbo, I decided to peruse ish-Thai fusion cuisine scene (love me a good chicken ca- 15 or so About Us pages. shew nut pierogi). I’m happy to report Company X is in the minority. Amid my fusion confusion I could only explain it like Most are clear, descriptive and engaging. this:“On-demand healthcare concierge” is a doctor’s office One company spells it out simply: “… is the leader in broadcasting “Despicable Me 2” 24/7 while doling out employee communication software.” Another says, “We coupons for Da Original Gangster Tour. handle administration and compliance across HR, payroll, In my befuddled yet bemused state, I messaged my col- time, and benefits … .” league Andie Burjek, who eats, sleeps and breathes health Simple. Straightforward. Not a concierge in sight. care and benefits, seeking clarification on this confounding Should you be tasked with updating or crafting your corporate communication. Her Slack reply was succinct, to company’s About Us page, channel Beetle Bailey, not Wilthe point and equally uncertain: “hmmm I’m not sure … .” liam Faulkner. Like a newspaper comic strip, get to the While two journalists do not constitute a consensus, punch line in three panels or less, because clarity wins out it’s clear that neither of us gets what Company X is of- over a fusion of confusion every time. fering. I think it’s safe to say that if we don’t get it neither will others. Rick Bell is Workforce’s editorial director. To comment, email Study after study spells it out. A company’s success is editors@workforce.com.
ENTIRE INDUSTRIES EXIST TO MESSAGE THE MISSION. WHOLE DEPARTMENTS ARE BUILT TO POUND THE POINT. WORDS MATTER.
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YOUR PEOPLE matter most to the success of your business. Make sure you put them first.
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