Summer 2020
BACK TO WORK COVID-19 recovery and the future of workforce.com
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Better workforce management. Better customer service. To get started, visit workforce.com
FROM OUR
EDITORS FROM PERSONNEL TO WORKFORCE
.COM
COVID-19 & the future of workforce.com What a year. With one of the largest shocks to the workforce in 100 years, anyone can read the statistics but only workforce professionals know the stories, saw all the names and faces. The HR director who had to take a Xanax before laying off thousands of people over a videoconference, only to be let go herself as well. The veteran, stalwart employee who was unceremoniously retired through no fault of their own. The new dad’s and mom’s who were left broken after not being able to provide for their family. Crisis communication, termination, layoffs, getting laid off, and a radical shift to remote work or no work. Blistering operational changes against the constant haunting worry of, Is my team going to be okay? I hope everyone is going to be okay. As always, human resources and workforce professionals played a pivotal role in supporting those essential employees on the front lines. Grocers, first responders, truckers, maintenance, agriculture and my god the medical community — doctors, nurses and many more. Those who get to work and get the job done against the odds and their health laid bare. We ourselves didn’t have a great news story. Like many others, COVID-19 has been a heartbreak to our organization. With declining advertising revenue and the increasing economic difficulties of magazines, we were faced with the very real prospect of having to completely wind down print operations.
4
company in the late 1990s. We’ve tracked the history of people management and was the lighthouse for the evolution of computing into the workforce and the emergence of cloud technology. It’s why we acquired it. History repeats itself and we now stand on the precipice of a new industrial revolution with changes at a far more rapid pace and disruption from all angles. This is one of them. Our new frontier at Workforce.com is building and supporting the great software we have for workforce compliance, workforce management, employee engagement and business productivity. We hope you like it. “Coming now to the real point of our meeting together, it may be said that whatever the technical means to which we resort to the realization of our purposes we are fundamentally interested to further the application of scientific research to certain of the critical problems affecting the happiness, welfare and efficiency of the great body of industrial workers, from manager to unskilled laborer.” - James Angell, 1922 The technical means have evolved since 1922. I believe it’s our duty to not only inform but help guide the world’s workforces through the changes ahead. Technology remains the largest and fastest disruptor of our time and holds the greatest potential to bring about change for good. We also happen to be very good at it. I’d say the best. Lastly, I’m incredibly proud of the actions of our editorial team and the wider workforce professional community have taken to steer us through this crisis and am excited for this next chapter of Workforce.com.
Fortunately for the merger with our workforce management technology company in May 2019, we’re able to continue now as an annual publication and I’m excited to introduce the new merged Workforce.com in this “Back to Work” issue. It’s a bit of a shift but logic goes that if we can add technology to our mix of solutions along with our research and thought leadership, we can not only maintain but significantly invest into the growth of our editorial, this community and its history.
Things will come back better than ever. They always do. It’s the American way. We’re going to get back to work.
We’ve been the foremost authority on people management for some 98 years having evolved into a magazine and media
— Tasmin Trezise President
Regards,
Summer 2020
Get the Latest Research Available From Workforce.com Workforce Management Trends for Hourly Workers Whitepaper
Download Now at http://download.workforce.com/whitepapers
WIDGET BRAIN
The AI APPROACH
TO LABOR LAW
COMPLIANCE If your employees file a lawsuit against your company it can be a nasty shock. It can also be a great catalyst for change. Lawsuits often result in hefty fines but more importantly: they damage employee happiness and company brand image. These are certainly priorities that require your attention. Compliance to labor law is important for several reasons, including: protecting employees from overworking, ensuring that they are paid fairly, anticipating working hours and ensuring their work is in accordance with their training. So, let’s assess the reasons behind non-compliance. Most of the compliance issues center around the complexity of scheduling. Think of employees working too many hours (sometimes without fair compensation), lack of adequate time for breaks or rest, not meeting contract hours, and more. The compliance challenge is even greater for companies that employ a large number of shift workers. Another level of complexity is achieved when you add your service levels and minimizing labor costs into the mix. It’s
“
It’s time to harness the power of AI technology
Use AI technology to maximize labor law compliance in your scheduling.
“
- especially when done manually.
ARE YOU COMPLIANT?
It may be clear why compliance is so important, but the question remains: how do I maximize compliance? To keep employee morale high and your brand image clean, it’s time to harness the power of AI technology. AI-driven algorithms allow you to balance the three competing priorities of providing excellent customer service, minimizing costs, and complying with labor laws. AI will make shifts that perfectly cover the demand curve and always employee schedules that treat your people fairly, ensuring high levels of employee happiness and compliance with ease. Break rules, contracts, shift lengths, skills, and preferences are all woven into the design of the schedule, meaning that every base is truly covered.
Learn more at workforce.com/software/scheduling-software
Summer 2020 | Volume 99, Issue 2
PRESIDENT Tasmin Trezise tasmin@workforce.com
EVENTS GRAPHIC DESIGNER Latonya Hampton lhampton@workforce.com
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Rick Bell rbell@workforce.com
VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING, NORTH AMERICA Greg Miller gmiller@workforce.com
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Andie Burjek aburjek@workforce.com EDITORIAL ART DIRECTOR Theresa Stoodley tstoodley@workforce.com VICE PRESIDENT, RESEARCH AND ADVISORY SERVICES Sarah Kimmel skimmel@workforce.com
TECHNICAL OPERATIONS MANAGER Skyler Gold sgold@workforce.com SALES DIRECTORS Ana Dirksen adirksen@workforce.com
FREE, LIVE,
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Daniella Weinberg dweinberg@workforce.com
RESEARCH MANAGER Tim Harnett tharnett@workforce.com
DIGITAL & AUDIENCE INSIGHTS DIRECTOR Lauren Wilbur lwilbur@workforce.com
DATA SCIENTIST Grey Litaker glitaker@workforce.com
AUDIENCE INSIGHTS COORDINATOR Micaela Martinez mmartinez@workforce.com
VIDEO AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCER Andrew Kennedy Lewis alewis@workforce.com
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGER Melanie Lee mlee@workforce.com
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UPCOMING June 18
Feedback to Action: How Zillow & Zoom Are Shaping the Future of Employee Experience in Real-Time
July 9
How to Navigate the Compensation Complexities of Different Cities, States and Countries Available live on the air date and on-demand for one year after unless otherwise specified. Check them out today and keep the education going!
WORKFORCE.COM/WF-EVENTS/ Workforce (ISSN 2331-2793) is published quarterly by Human Capital Media, 150 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 550, 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 4 issues. All countries outside the US and Canada must be prepaid in US funds with an additional $33 postage surcharge. Single price copy is $29.99
Workforce and Workforce.com are the trademarks of Human Capital Media. Copyright © 2020, Human Capital Media. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Reproduction of material published in Workforce is forbidden without permission. Printed by: Quad/Graphics, Sussex, WI
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TABLE OF
CONTENTS ON THE COVER
HR leader Meg Levis is among the reasons that Workforce.com is a timely success story. COVER PHOTO BY LENNY GILMORE
22 BY THE NUMBERS
Paid time off and the lack of time Americans spend taking a vacation.
8
14 Q&A
12 CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS
15 GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT
13 PEOPLE MOVES
16 WORKFORCE 2020
Rebuilding confidence is a challenge for employers as their workers seek a sense of normalcy and safety.
NEWS & VIEWS
10
11 WORKPLACE REOPENING
The coronavirus pandemic has proven that technology plays a key role in a crisis communication plan. Stephanie Mardell heads HR at Button; health care tech company taps Traunza Adams as VP of people.
Author Michael O’Malley discusses structuring a healthy workplace culture to maintain high engagement. A standardized onboarding process ensures that everyone starts with a strong foundation. Employers should pay attention to trends impacting their organization and workforce and plan ahead. Summer 2020
34 FEATURES
22 COVID-19 AND WFM
Initiate Workforce Management 2.0 to relaunch managing labor cost and utilization in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
26 THE NEW WORKFORCE.COM
The untold story behind the merger of workforce magazine and our new workforce management technology
30 ON-DEMAND WORKERS
As the on-demand workforce grows, flexible workplaces are beginning to see the value of benefits for all employees.
34 PRIVACY CONCERNS
As collectors of employee information, employers should be aware of health data privacy and employee concerns.
30
100: THE BEST HR 38 WORKFORCE PRACTICES
COLUMNS
LEGAL
Microsoft’s people practices puts it atop Year 7 of our list recognizing the best in human resources.
04 YOUR FORCE
18 CRISIS COLLABORATION
ANALYSIS
COVID-19’s devastating impact on the economy and the resilience of the workforce.
17
WORK IN PROGRESS
Agile HR wins out in a postCOVID-19 workplace world.
21 THE PRACTICAL EMPLOYER
COVID-19 could soon manifest itself in a golden age of labor union organizing.
When an organization confronts a crisis, CHROs and legal counsel must step up to collaborate.
19
NEWS OF THE UNUSUAL
Onions, stealing signs and a lack of humor.
20 LEGAL BRIEFINGS issues.
COVID-19 and back wages, safety
50 CASE STUDY
The executive team at LAZ Parking has learned how to make every employee feel like they are part of the family.
52 INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE
How the parking management industry handles turnover in a highgrowth market.
54 THE LAST WORD
COVID-19 or not, it’s time to give your on-demand workforce an arm’slength embrace.
Summer 2020
9
BY THE
NUMBERS 4%
PTO and Vacation Time
of workers have access to more than 14 paid sick days.
In 2018, Americans left 768 million vacation days unused
93%
30% of the lowest paid workers are able to earn sick days.
In a recent study, Namely found that employees with unlimited vacation plans take an average of only 13 days oďż˝ per year.
Whereas traditional plan employees average 15 days annually.
55%
of Americans reported having unused vacation days in 2018 — up from 52% in 2017.
Guaranteed paid holidays
Guaranteed paid vacation 30 25
20 11
20 13
9
4
1
0
France
10
10
Finland
Germany
Switzerland
Canada
0 U.S.
Close to one in four Americans have no paid vacation (23%) and no paid holidays (22%). Summer 2020
Sources: Center for Economic and Policy Research, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Namely, Ipsos and Oxford Economics
of the highest wage workers have access to paid sick days.
NEWS &
VIEWS
Employers rebuild in a post-coronavirus workplace Workers seek a sense of normalcy returning to the office and working from home. By Staff Report
R
eopening the economy after a deadly global pandemic isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. Not only must employers consider the health concerns of employees, they also must think about clients and customers. If people don’t feel comfortable entering a restaurant, hotel or store, then these businesses will struggle. The COVID-19 pandemic that initiated strict government regulations forced many employers to rethink the most basic principles of their business models. The terms “essential workers” and “social distancing” became part of the daily lexicon and prompted retailers to literally draw up new plans for their stores. And for many of those still employed, work from home became the norm rather than the exception. As the coronavirus curve flattens, companies face the challenge of reintroducing employees to the workplace. An immediate issue is convincing employees that they are returning to a safe and healthy workplace, said Kara Govro, senior legal analyst at ThinkHR and Mammoth HR.
“EMPLOYERS ALSO DISCOVERED THAT THEY HAVE EMPLOYEES WHO DO MUCH BETTER AT HOME.” — KARA GOVRO “Physical changes will include things like spacing out desks or customer seating, changing the air conditioning system, providing cleaning products and implementing regimented cleaning protocols,” Govro said. “But there will also be changes that impact employees (and employers) emotionally and financially.” Summer 2020
Gossiping around the water cooler workplace. Supervisors discovered that isn’t the same when you have to be six employees who were out of sight can feet apart, Govro pointed out, adding be as productive if not more so than if that many employees also will be asked they were in the office. to pick up job duties that belonged to Working from home doesn’t have to colleagues who have been laid off. be a free-for-all, Govro said. Employ“Things are going to feel different ers can still have high expectations of and mostly not in a good way,” Govro employees, even when they can’t hear said. “Following the immediate chal- them clacking away at their keyboard. lenge of providing a safe environment, “Working from home will definiteemployers will have to find ways to ly become more acceptable, largely improve morale. I think being compas- because employers have had it provsionate and communicating gratitude en to them — albeit against their will regularly even if employees are just do- — that it can work,” Govro said. “I ing their job is a good start.” think many employers assumed that It’s also clear that many of those someone working from home must employees who have telecommuted be goofing off for a majority of the will remain doing so long after the pan- day, and they’d have no way to keep demic subsides. A Brookings Institute track of them or verify that they were report in April suggested that about actually doing work.” half of employed adults were working Employers also discovered that they from home, and consulting company have employees who do much better at Global Workplace Analytics estimates home, she said. that when the pandemic is over, 30 “The open office floor plan that has percent of the entire workforce will be had workplaces in its death grip for deremote at least a couple of days a week. cades has been shown time and again Companies previously hesitant to to reduce productivity and cause time implement flex work but forced to rap- loss to distraction,” Govro said. “Emidly adopt a work-from-home policies ployees who need quiet to focus may because of the pandemic learned about be significantly more productive and their workers’ productivity outside the happier in their own homes.” 11
NEWS &
VIEWS
Employee communication how-to’s during a crisis Technology should play a key role in your crisis communication plan. By Andie Burjek
T
he usual employee communication strategy goes out the door when a company faces a crisis. Special circumstances like natural disasters, workplace shootings and pandemics put employers in a challenging situation. The future is uncertain, people are constantly learning new facts and messaging has to be carefully crafted. Meanwhile, emotions may be high while people deal with the aftermath of a potentially traumatic event, and employers must be able to communicate messages carefully and empathetically. Added to this challenge, distance may be an issue. Disease outbreaks, hurricanes and snowstorms may leave a workforce separated from each other, either working remotely or unable to work at all.
JUST SHARING FACTS WON’T SHOW EMPATHY FOR THE ANXIETY, TRAUMA OR OTHER NEGATIVE EMOTIONS EMPLOYEES MAY FEEL DURING A CRISIS. It’s important for organizations to develop a crisis communication plan. Within that plan include details that relate to specific crises. Technology will be a key part of these strategies, especially when there’s a possibility that employees and managers won’t be in the same office for an unknown amount of time. Here are some tips on how to utilize technology in a crisis communication strategy.
Communicate response
Whatever the crisis, employees want to know what is going on with their jobs and updates on the company. If a company closes temporarily due to a disaster, for example, people want to know when it will open again. Are 12
their jobs safe? Is the employer taking proper health and safety precautions as they reopen the workspace? Are employees’ concerns and questions being addressed or ignored? While managers may not have all the facts, they can set up weekly calls or send ongoing communication that gives employees whatever information is available. That way, people don’t feel out of the loop and know that their concerns are being considered and addressed by management. A mobile communication solution is especially valuable since employees can access the information they want whenever and wherever on their own device. In times of crisis, misinformation and myths can be spread just as easily as facts, as crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and mass shootings show. Coronavirus myths include that antibiotics kill the virus and that only older people and people with chronic conditions are at risk. Mass shootings myths include that people with a mental illness are more likely to commit acts of violence (they’re actually much more likely to be victims of violence). The important lesson for employers here is that rather than relying on the
opinions of random people online — even if they seem credible — they should rely on basic facts from the experts. As managers regularly communicate with employees as part of their crisis management strategy, they shouldn’t further spread misinformation.
Show empathy
Just sharing facts won’t show empathy for the anxiety, trauma or other negative emotions employees may feel during a crisis. Compassion and a sense of understanding can go a long way to easing employees’ fears. This is also an area managers can practice. They don’t have to go in blindly when they want to show a human, vulnerable, empathetic side to employees. Practice could be role-playing with someone else and analyzing what responses worked. In the case where managers and employees are separated, managers can show their team members on a personal level as well via their company’s mobile chat tool. It could be as simple as asking someone how they’re doing or communicating to them that management cares about their well-being. Just be sure it is genuine. Summer 2020
PEOPLE
MOVES Traunza Adams
Stephanie Mardell
Health care technology company OODA Health named Traunza Adams as vice president of people. Adams previously served as chief people officer for Ginger, a provider of on-demand behavioral health coaching, therapy and psychiatry. Prior to Ginger, Adams led people operations at AppDynamics, an application performance management company.
Button named Stephanie Mardell as chief people officer. Mardell will continue evolving Button into a place of admirable talent. She was previously vice president of people at Button. As the company’s 14th employee, she built its people team from scratch through her meticulous, data-driven approach to people operations.
Carla Dawson Equity derivatives clearing organization OCC named Carla Dawson as senior vice president and chief human resources officer. Dawson previously was first vice president, talent management, and was responsible for partnering with leaders across OCC to develop and implement comprehensive talent management and development strategies.
Tracy Flynn HR technology company Eightfold.ai named Tracy Flynn as head of human resources. Flynn joins Eightfold.ai as an experienced global human resources veteran. Flynn will now oversee all aspects of global people operations at Eightfold.ai. Flynn is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.
Summer 2020
Editors Spotlight
Carla Yudhishthu
HR risk-management company ThinkHR and Mammoth HR named Carla Yudhishthu as vice president of people operations. Yudhishthu brings more than 20 years of experience in human resources and talent acquisition to the role, where she will drive organizational and leadership development around the companies’ people strategy. Yudhishthu previously was head of people and talent for BCG Platinion. She has also held leadership positions at Mars, W.L. Gore and Associates, Guidant Corp., and Arthur Andersen.
Gunnar Kiene
Ken Stelzer
Recruitment marketing company Symphony Talent named Gunnar Kiene as chief creative officer for its U.S. operations. Kiene will be responsible for helping to set the creative vision for the organization and will oversee innovation, engagement and the creative direction for its clients. He will also lead Symphony Talent’s overall product experience.
Mobile commerce optimization platform Button named Ken Stelzer as chief financial officer. Stelzer will build a strategic finance function at Button to accelerate revenue and profit growth. He brings nearly 20 years of experience in finance and operations at both public and private companies. Most recently, he was the chief financial officer of Zocdoc. 13
NEWS &
VIEWS
Q&A: Healthy workplace culture, high engagement Workforce: What are some best practices when it comes to creating a healthy workplace culture and maintaining engagement? Michael O’Malley: It starts with the premise that there are institutional rules, like the foundation of the workplace is mutual respect and that that’s enforced so that there are certain ways of behaving that are acceptable and ways that are unacceptable and that those are widely known. It’s not only a general attitude that you have toward one another, but it carries over to incidences of respect. So, you show up for meetings on time, you respond to people’s questions and you’re helpful — all of those kinds of interpersonal rules that enhance the pleasure of the workplace. It starts with basic rules of respect and values. Michael O’Malley, author
Michael O’Malley, co-author of “Organizations for People,” spoke with Workforce to discuss the best (and worst) practices when it comes to structuring a healthy workplace culture to maintain high employee engagement. Workforce Editorial Assistant Yasmeen Qahwash spoke with O’Malley.
The companies that I visited tend to put the employees at the center of their organization and that means that there’s a lot of employee involvement. I can’t say there’s complete transparency, but there is significant transparency on how the company is doing and there’s general openness about news, events and finances and so forth about what’s going on in the company. When decisions are made, employees are fundamentally a part of that decision process.
WF: Why is this a challenge for many organizations?
O’Malley: A lot of what these companies do seem un-businesslike and risky from an organizational point of view. I think they are slightly afraid of trying out things that are a little bit different and may seem odd in business settings that people have grown accustomed to. So, these places are oddities, they do things that other places don’t do and I think the challenge is for people to break away from this strict notion of “this is the way it’s done” and to try something that’s a little bit different.
Maybe it’s a fear of looking a little bit foolish by trying something that may not work. I have to say that not everything that these companies do does work, but there is a very high tolerance internally for trying things and if it doesn’t work, then learning from those experiences and modifying their approach. Over time people become acclimated to these different ways and are very patient with one another in trying out things that are new. I think the fear really has to do with outmoded conceptions about what the workplace should look like.
WF: Do you think organizations should come up with an alternative name for their staff, rather than use the term employee?
O’Malley: Yes. I don’t think any of the places I visited refer to employees as “employees.” They actually view that as a subservient relationship and they want a culture that’s more even where there’s open, two-way communication. They want people to act independently and “employees” sort of has this dependency that they want to discourage. The Motley Fool, an investment advisory house, they call each other “fools.” People at Patagonia are “Patagoniacs.” I think this does two things; it fosters a bond that I think “employee” doesn’t have, but it also denotes a relationship with each other and the company that is more egalitarian, which is what these companies want.
14
Summer 2020
NEWS &
VIEWS
Ongoing contact is key to engaging a global workforce A standardized onboarding process ensures that everyone starts with a strong foundation. By Yasmeen Qahwash
W
hile managing and maintaining engagement among a global workforce may seem like a daunting challenge, it’s not impossible. Operating globally can present additional challenges and concerns when it comes to engaging employees. These hurdles can go well beyond time zone differences — the divide in cultures, communication styles, values and gaining a better understanding of the global marketplace are to be considered as well. The goal is to make sure that employees feel connected to each other, the culture and the company’s values regardless of their location. “If you are working with a team spread around the world, especially in different time zones, it is important to remember the human being in all of it.” said Joe Flanagan, fitness app developer at GetSongBPM, an open source database of beats per minute. “If your employees feel valued and connected, they will remain motivated and loyal.”
Standardizing the onboarding process worldwide can ensure that everyone starts out with a strong foundation, which can result in developing and retaining happier, more productive employees. “The onboarding process is one of the most important leadership functions. It is fundamental to success when it comes to developing strong, diverse teams,” Perkins said via email. “The additional complexity of managing remote, international teams makes it even more important that we get onboarding right.” Michael Tindall, founder and CEO of virtual staffing company Opus Global Operations, said that transparency and feedback are also key factors for managing successful global teams. “Only knowing your piece of the puzzle can limit what is achievable — MICHAEL TINDALL if the team has a transparent vision Onboarding is a great place to start. of where things are going. The same Tammy Perkins, chief people officer thing is on the flip side, when times of PMI Worldwide, a global manufac- are rough, everyone digs and supports turer of food and beverage container the organization from top to bottom,” solutions, said that managing a glob- Tindall said via email. “A major chalal team requires understanding and lenge for the company is everyone’s adopting professional practices of challenge. When your team feels that other cultures. they are responsible for the whole pic-
“EMPLOYMENT LAWS ... CREATE CULTURES WITHIN THEMSELVES IN THE WAY YOU DO BUSINESS.”
Summer 2020
ture and not just ‘their’ part, people will get creative to make things work.” Tindall also pointed out how essential it is in becoming accustomed to the varying employment laws worldwide. “Employment laws vary widely from country to country and these create cultures within themselves in the way you have to do business,” Tindall said. “You have to learn about and be aware of these or you will be in for a shock when someone quits or you have a major issue on your hands from something that you weren’t aware of that applies to that locality.” In addition, cultural awareness and diversity training should be regulated throughout the entire organization to educate employees about what to expect regarding cultural differences and how to work successfully with colleagues from around the world. Katy Roby, marketing manager at e-learning company Valamis, said that investing in an employee’s personal learning and development is a huge contributing factor to employee loyalty. Roby also pointed out that one of the biggest challenges in a global workforce is creating a truly global work culture despite multiple cultures. 15
NEWS &
VIEWS
The most pressing workforce management issues of 2020 Pay attention to trends impacting your organization and workforce and plan ahead. By Andie Burjek
W
hile the buzzword “the future of work” is often thrown around as if it’s the new, exciting, sexy thing, it just refers to a reality that’s always been true. The economy changes, technology changes, and social trends impact the way people want work. Workforce management — as a field that relates to employees’ wages, schedules, promotability and more — can be impacted by large economic and social trends as well as technology. Smart workforce management professionals pay attention to what trends impact their organization and workforce and plan ahead. Some trends relate to the COVID-19 pandemic and others relate to forces that existed much before that. Based on information from various reports and expert interviews, these workforce management issues are some of the most immediate for 2020 and what practitioners should be thinking about.
WITH A PANDEMIC THAT LIMITS PHYSICAL CONTACT, PEOPLE BEGAN EMBRACING TELEMEDICINE. Employee safety
In environments like factories, workplace safety has always been a point of focus, while the same could not be said for the average retailer or office setting. “All of a sudden, that’s changed,” said Matt Stevenson, partner and leader of Mercer’s Workforce Strategy and Analytics practice. Due to COVID-19, employers are concerned with how the work environment must change to ensure employee safety. Currently, this is one of the most significant workforce management 16
issues, he said. It’s impossible to predict how long this hyper-focus on employee safety will last. He surmised this depends on whether a COVID-19 vaccine is developed and when. Stevenson gave the example of polio. Before the vaccine it was a serious threat, and there were polio epidemics globally. After the vaccine was created, safety issues related to polio stopped being a concern. On the other hand, he added, viruses like HIV still don’t have a vaccine decades after being identified in 1981.
Shifts in the way work is done
One outcome of COVID-19 is that certain jobs are done differently, Stevenson said, especially with remote work. Some organizations did not change their operating models because they didn’t have to, and the pandemic made it so they did not have a choice. For example, the use of telemedicine has grown since the pandemic started, Stevenson said. Telemedicine has existed for years, but there was
some resistance to it, and it was often underutilized. With a pandemic that limits physical contact, people began embracing telemedicine. It’s possible this trend could continue after the pandemic ends. Deloitte’s “2020 Global Human Capital Trends” report highlighted organizations that took employee-friendly approaches — giving employees more jurisdiction over their work schedules and offering them new flexible time off programs. These approaches are designed to allow employees to “live and work at their best” ultimately had positive impacts for companies. Company culture was improved, and teams saw better communication and collaboration. Mercer’s “Global Talent Trends 2020” report highlighted the need for HR and workforce management professionals to get better at workforce science — a practice that can help professionals address many workforce management issues. Summer 2020
KRIS DUNN
WORK IN PROGRESS
Agile HR wins in a post-COVID-19 world
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volve or die. That phrase has always struck me as a strong statement in the business world. Are the stakes really that high? Is anyone truly in peril? My instincts and skepticism have always brought me back to the middle where a balanced approach is both appropriate and the true value can be found. Enter 2020 and COVID-19. Regardless of your political leanings, a global pandemic that brings both broad health concerns, death, incredible economic destruction and questions related to the future of work mandates largescale change. You’ve never had anything like COVID-19 as an HR pro. The events of 2020 will mandate growth, perspective and leadership from the HR profession as a whole. The best HR pros will evolve their skills and focus as a result of everything we’ve experienced at the start of this decade. And yes, there will be some winners and losers in the world of HR based on the times we’re in. Like anything that’s evolving, the changes will at times look minor, but add them up and they matter for your career in HR. HR pros who emerge from 2020 will recognize the following post-COVID-19 trends and adjust their development and focus accordingly. 1. Place and location will matter less, with resulting impact on how we view organizational culture. That focus on the cool open floor plan and killer break room seems so 2015 in today’s world. Expect to see a shift to a higher mix of communications/brand work in HR over physical place/events. As location continues to matter less, the best HR teams will modify their investments related to culture. Hello digital tools, goodbye picnic planning. 2. Organizational development in sectors with white-collar workforces will seek to meet individual desires for remote work, with a focus on high-potential employees. This just in: Everyone is going to want different things post-COVID-19. Some will want to come back to the office, others will not. Many will want a mixed solution. Evolved HR leaders will ensure their organization is agile enough to meet the diverse set of needs, accommodating and prioritizing high performers. The HR instinct to treat everyone equally will continue to decrease in importance, and will be seen as an HR blind spot in many leadership circles.
3. Recruiting will become even more competitive with an increased desire to onboard the best candidate regardless of location. The great COVID-19 lockdown proved we can tolerate much more remote work. The strongest HR leaders will help organizations understand there’s an opportunity to recruit nationally as a result. Simply put, the best talent in your organization with the ability to work remote is going to be recruited by a host of companies you’ve never heard of before. If you refuse to broaden your recruiting targets, you’ll be defending your fortress with canons while others are using drones. 4. Spend related to supporting remote workforces will increase. The good news is that there’s a great business case that suggests your organization will need less office space in the future. The bad news is that you’ll need to fund new initiatives with some of those savings. Smart HR pros will recommend reductions in office space, looking at leases that are expiring and outlining the savings. As part of that financial win, they’ll recommend reinvesting at least a third of the savings in digital tools designed to make the post-COVID-19 workforce effective. 5. Organizational needs related to the ability to manage teams will continue to grow. Managers of people who were great coaches/leaders before the pandemic may see their effectiveness drop in the “new normal.” Great HR will monitor those gaps and provide the tools necessary to help managers maximize the post-COVID-19 performance of their teams. Evolved HR pros will understand the critical conversations remain the same, but ability to build trust across remote teams will rise in importance. There’s a great scene in the Broadway musical “Hamilton” where British soldiers march after final defeat singing “The World Turned Upside Down.” At the beginning, the song is haunting, but quickly builds to an energetic conclusion where all primary characters look forward to promise and opportunity. There’s little doubt that COVID-19 and other events of 2020 have caused a lot of pain and flipped the world upside down. I look forward to an even better world, and can’t imagine solutions that don’t require great HR pros to be at their best. Good luck HR. The world needs you.
SMART HR PROS WILL RECOMMEND REDUCTIONS IN OFFICE SPACE, LOOKING AT LEASES THAT ARE EXPIRING AND OUTLINING THE SAVINGS.
Summer 2020
Kris Dunn, the chief human resources officer at Kinetix, is a Workforce contributing editor.
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NEWS & LEGAL
BRIEFINGS
An Important Collaboration: CHROs and Legal Confront a Crisis Crises require leadership teams to manage events carefully and deliberately. By Preston Pugh
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here has been exponential growth in the field of crisis management over the last several years. Crises are understood to have the long-term potential to change the way an organization operates, sometimes threatening its survival or fundamentally changing its stakeholder relationships. Crisis management, accordingly, helps organizations survive these events. Gone are the days when crises were limited to emergencies and disasters that left a physical impact on an organization. Now included are so-called “soft crises” that may not result in physical damage but nonetheless have a lasting impact on a company’s brand, reputation and employee morale. Here are ways that the chief human resources officer and legal counsel work together to see crises to successful ends.
Experienced CHROs know crises will happen, but the who, what, where, why and when are usually unknown. Crises are typically unplanned, are hard to manage and unpredictable. Experienced leaders, including CHROs, know they will happen, but the who, what, where, why and when are normally unknown. Consider how your organization would deal with these events (all based on real crises): 18
• Your chief executive officer, who has overseen a period of marked profitability, is caught in a consensual relationship with an employee that reports to her. Your company has a policy that prohibits such relationships. • In the wake of a New York Times story about your company paying millions of dollars in exit packages to male executives accused of sexual harassment, thousands of your employees around the world walk off the job in protest. • Two of your employees who are responsible for preparing fast food upload a video on social media showing one of them doing vile things to the food in one of your kitchens. Events like these pressure-test an employer’s crisis management readiness.
They pose serious risks, such as loss of consumer, retailer and investor confidence; government fines and sanctions; recalls, litigation and claims; loss of employee morale and focus; and in some cases, high turnover. The value of crisis management is to minimize these and other negative outcomes. The end goal is business sustainability. Managed effectively, crises require leadership teams to do several things carefully and with deliberate speed: • Detect that the incident has reached crisis status, determine its severity, and communicate quickly and transparently with stakeholders, both external and internal. • Investigate the matter thoroughly to understand the cause, disclosure obligations, and other responsibilities the organization may have. Summer 2020
NEWS OF THE • Take steps to contain the damage from the crisis and prevent its immediate recurrence; • Start the process of business recovery. • Learn how to prevent the next crisis of this type — stakeholders may forgive the company’s first crisis but they rarely forgive the second of a similar nature. So, what roles should CHROs play in this process? During the detection and initial response phase, if a crisis is by nature an HR issue, CHROs should work closely with the company’s counsel. Together, they will understand how a problem impacts internal stakeholders, know the policies that are intended to address the problem and be the most familiar with how those policies have been enforced enterprise-wide. For crises that are triggered by events like a government subpoena or pre-dawn raid, preparation is key. Working with company counsel, CHROs will know what can and cannot be ethically communicated to employees in the initial response phase. During the investigation phase, if the crisis is primarily an HR issue, the CHRO should work with the company’s crisis management team leader (often the CEO or COO) and its counsel to quickly understand the problem — how it happened, who is responsible, and whether any company protocols or controls were bypassed. If the problem is the result of the actions of one employee or a small group of employees, the CHRO and legal team must assess supervisor and managerial responsibility. In the containment and damage control phase, CHROs will play a pivotal role in deciding employee corrective actions and working on extended internal communications with employees. When the crisis is especially severe, CHROs are also central in retaining talent and helping employees who are facing hardships because their jobs are impacted. This phase may require CHROs to work with the company’s legal team to manage employee litigation and respond to regulator scrutiny. During business recovery, many employees may experience a range of emotions, including fear, shock, panic, anger, hopelessness and trauma. In this phase, CHROs will also serve as stewards over needed cultural improvements. Lastly, in the learning phase, CHROs should play a leading role in determining how to prevent similar HR crises in the future. Here, a deeper root cause analysis is important. How did the problem happen, did the controls work as the company intended, and if not, why not? Even if the crisis was not an HR problem, CHROs should still lead the assessment of how to mitigate the effects of future crises on the company’s employees. Preston Pugh is a Member in the Litigation Department at Miller
& Chevalier in Washington, D.C. Recognized for his work in risk avoidance and mitigation investigations, and trained as a labor and employment lawyer, he works with boards of directors and C-suite leaders in multiple stages of crisis management.
Summer 2020
UNUSUAL
WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES
We start off with the case of an onion picker in New Mexico. According to Courthouse News, the woman, who is seeking punitive damages, claims Gillis Farms refused to let her leave the job during a thunderstorm, and she was then struck by lightning, causing her to be hospitalized for two weeks.
WHEN MANAGERS AND STAFF CHEAT
I like to think of the sign-stealing scandal that rocked Major League Baseball earlier this year as a sort of theft of intellectual property. Say that I’m a pitcher with a fastball clocking in at 97 mph and I’m thinking of putting one right under your chin to scare the bejeezus out of you. Or, maybe not. Maybe I’ll toss my 75 mph curveball that drops from 12 to 6 just before it crosses home plate and you’ll swing like a rusty gate. It’s my competitive advantage, so to speak. But your bosses devise a plan to steal my IP (incredible pitches) before I throw it so you can pop that tater into the left field upper deck and send me to the showers. Your boss asks you to comply with his sneaky scheme. Despite your already superior skills dissecting a pitcher’s habits, you agree to stealing my catcher’s signs. But neener neener, cheaters never prosper. Eventually your boss — i.e., the manager — gets caught, is banned from baseball and then canned. Your employer is fined $5 million. And what about you? Social media ridicule is the least of your worries. At best, your rep as a legit athlete is dragged lower than a steroid-pumped first baseman from the late 1990s. At worst, well, say it ain’t so, Jose.
BACK TO SCHOOL
Courthouse News recently noted that seven of the 11 members of the Kentucky Board of Education claimed in federal court that Gov. Andy Beshear unconstitutionally fired them without cause minutes after taking office. No word on whether he rapped their knuckles with a wooden yardstick, too.
LIGHTNING STRIKES
Walter Olson points out in his Overlawyered blog that the NLRB says any “aggrieved” person, and not just an employee, can file an unfair labor practices complaint against an employer, which may actually include internet trolls. A Twitter user filed an NLRB complaint against Ben Domenech, editor of the online opinion journal The Federalist, regarding his joke tweet saying that if any employees unionize he would “send you to the salt mine.” Think you have a workplace case law worthy of Workplace News of the Unusual? Or that I lack a sense of comic timing? (You are not alone.) Email me at rbell@workforce.com. 19
NEWS & LEGAL
BRIEFINGS
A legal briefing by definition typically states the legal reasons for a lawsuit based on statutes, regulations, case precedents, legal texts and reasoning applied to facts in the particular situation. Here, Workforce presents two cases related to the COVID-19 pandemic with a resulting impact of the case. COVID-19 NO EXCUSE TO AVOID PAYING BACK WAGES
The Gym at Greenwich, LLC, The Gym at Porter Chester, Inc., and The Gym at Union Square, Inc. (collectively the “Gyms”) are commonly owned fitness facilities. On December 27, 2018, the Gyms were sued by 40 employees in New York federal court. The employees alleged that the defendants violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the New York labor law by failing to pay wages on time. The parties reached a settlement Sept. 9, 2019. The Gyms agreed to pay $300,000 25 months; however, if they defaulted, they would have to pay $1 million. On April 29, 2020, the plaintiffs filed a motion with the court asserting that although the Gyms had paid $76,086, they defaulted under the settlement agreement by not paying the rest of the owed amounts. The Gyms responded with sworn declarations from the owners complaining about their bleak financial conditions and asking the court to excuse their non-performance. The Gyms tried to use the contract law defense of “impossibility of performance,” arguing that since New York’s COVID-19 order closed their businesses, they lacked the funds to perform under the settlement agreement. The court observed that the defense of impossibility only applies when performance under a contract (here, the settlement agreement) is objectively impossible. The court ruled that despite the unforeseen pandemic and executive order, the Gyms had at best shown financial hardship, which did not fit the “impossibility of performance” defense. The Gyms were liable for an additional $923,913. Lantino v. Clay LLC, No. 1:18-CV-12247 (SDA), 2020 WL 2239957, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. May 8, 2020). IMPACT: The COVID-19 pandemic has been challenging for employers, and unfortunately the challenges will likely continue. However, employers should not rely on these unforeseen circumstances as an excuse for failing to meet contractual obligations.
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COURT DEFERS TO OSHA ON COVID-19 SAFETY ISSUES
Smithfield Foods is a meat-processing company, which was affected by several federal and state orders related to COVID-19. On April 4, the state of Missouri identified livestock-slaughter facilities as “critical infrastructure.” On April 22, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration sent a “rapid response investigation” letter to Smithfield regarding its COVID-19 work practices and infection at Smithfield’s Milan, Missouri, plant, and giving Smithfield seven days to respond. OSHA requested that Smithfield identify what policies and actions had been implemented in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Rural Community Workers Alliance, which represents the workers at Smithfield’s Missouri plant, brought a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri accusing Smithfield of failing to adequately protect employees at the Missouri plant from contracting COVID-19. The RCWA raised state-law claims for public nuisance and breach of duty to provide a safe workplace. The court dismissed the lawsuit. The court dismissed the case under the primary jurisdiction doctrine, which allows a district court to refer a matter to the appropriate administrative agency for ruling. Citing in part the Trump administration’s April 28 Executive Order requiring meat processing plants to continue operating during the pandemic, the court concluded that “OSHA (in coordination with the USDA per the Executive Order) is better positioned to” determine whether Smithfield’s plant was complying with federal guidance. Rural Community Workers Alliance, et al. v. Smithfield Foods, Inc. et al., No. 5:20-CV-06063-DGK 2020 WL 2145350 (W.D. Mo. May 5, 2020) IMPACT: While labor unions and advocacy groups will continue to raise concerns regarding worker safety in light of COVID-19, federal courts may be inclined to defer to OSHA on these matters. Ultimately, by reducing the risk of workers’ exposure to the virus, employers can also reduce their own exposure to liability. Sukrat Baber and Allison Czerniak contributed to Legal Briefings and are attorneys at Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP
Summer 2020
JON HYMAN
THE PRACTICAL EMPLOYER
Unionization amid COVID-19
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ne of the unexpected byproducts of the COVID-19 pandemic is a corresponding rise in union organizing. This crisis has magnified attention on key labor union agenda items and talking points such as worker safety and higher pay. Unions have not been shy about pressing these issues not only for current members but also more importantly for potential members. • The Teamsters is backing Amazon warehouse workers. • The UFCW is helping organize Instacart shoppers. • The SEIU is funding fastfood activists and Uber/Lyft drivers. Indeed, according to Gary Perinar, executive secretary-treasurer of the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters, “Among the many lessons we will learn from the COVID-19 pandemic is its demonstration of the importance of union membership for essential workers.” Further, according to Richard Berman, the founder of the Center for Union Facts, this union activity is part of a much larger trend: • This is the first time since the early 1980s where he sensed significant interest by employees in “collective action” and “third party representation.” • Gallup polling in 2019 shows the 18- to 34-year-old demographic has a 69 percent approval of unions. In 2017, 76 percent of those joining unions were younger than 35. • Employees who feel they will be exposed to co-workers or customers who have the virus are communicating on Facebook and other platforms about their jointly held concerns. Union organizers have access to these conversations and are making themselves available to help. • Most current HR professionals have no history in dealing with a partial workforce rebellion. This will most likely happen in individual companies or it could be a wider industry movement in a city or region. That last point might be the one most important to your business. “Most current HR professionals have no history in dealing with a partial workforce rebellion.” Thus, what should your business be doing right now to best prepare itself in the event a union starts talking to your employees? The best defense is a good offense. I recommend that employers adopt the T.E.A.M. approach to union avoidance: Train supervisors. Educate employees. Affirm the open door. Modernize policies.
1. Train supervisors. If a union is organizing, supervisors are likely to be among the first people to know. They will also be the people that rank-and-file employees will come to with questions or concerns. Thus, supervisors need to know how to report, monitor, and legally respond to union activity. 2. Educate employees. Employees should not be told that the company is anti-union, but why it is anti-union — competitive wages and benefits; a strong commitment to worker safety and health; positive communication between management and employees; a history of peaceful employee/management relations; management’s openness to listen to employees and handle their concerns without an intermediary; and an unwillingness to permit a third-party to tell the company and employees how to do their jobs. 3. Affirm the open door. Management should routinely communicate with its employees to learn what is happening within the rank-and-file and what they are thinking about. Management should walk the floor daily. It should also hold regular meetings with employees, whether in small sessions with HR or large town hall-style meetings. 4. Modernize policies. In an ideal world, employee handbooks and other corporate policies should be reviewed and updated annually. I’ve yet to come across a company that does so this frequently. Issues to consider and review? Do you have a written statement on unionization? An open-door policy? An issue resolution procedure? Peer review? An employee bulletin board? An electronic communications policy? Most importantly, do you have a no-solicitation policy? It is the single most important policy to help fight labor unions. No union avoidance program is foolproof or perfect. No matter what steps are taken and no matter the quality of employee relations, every company is at some risk for a union organizing campaign. Some, however, are more at risk than others. And the COVID-19 pandemic highlights for employees all the gaps in how you interact with, pay, and protect your employees for a union to fill. All businesses should strive to be an employer of choice for employees and not an employer of opportunity for labor unions. The steps you take before that representation petition ever arrives will help define whether you remain a nonunion employer.
All businesses should strive to be an employer of choice for employees and not an employer of opportunity for labor unions.
Summer 2020
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland.
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Summer 2020
COVID-19 and reassessing workforce management
Initiate WFM 2.0 to relaunch managing labor cost and utilization in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. BY LISA DISSELKAMP
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ver the past several months workplaces across the globe were forced to embrace the future of work in ways they never considered. COVID-19 may fundamentally change the workplace and in this context, here are three key considerations as employers work through this recovery phase in reaction to the pandemic. • Rethinking workplaces: Ensuring the health and safety of workers will be crucial to reopening plants, offices and stores and determining new team models. • Rethinking workforces: An estimated 2.7 billion people, or more than four out of five global workers, have been affected by stay-athome measures. In addition to looking at new ways to deploy existing workers across an organization, many organizations are looking to identify opportunities to connect furloughed workers to job openings in areas with growing recovery demands. • Rethinking work: As organizations look toward the realities of a post-pandemic world, it’s likely that new business priorities will need to redesign teams and workforce policies, addressing the benefits and risks of a dispersed workforce while building flexibility. It has become even more critical to look at the COVID-19 pandemic and how it exposed two key problems in managing the workforce. When cost
Summer 2020
management is not designed into daily workforce management activities and decisions and when there is no dedicated business unit focused on owning timekeeping and scheduling outcomes, it can be difficult to manage your bottom line or your workforce effectively. The pandemic created an extreme disruption for workforce management. Many employers are concerned about costs and how to reconstitute their workforce to be optimally productive under different conditions. If they are operating today, things like store hours and cleaning have changed. If they are planning to reopen, the restart may change when and how much labor is needed and can be afforded. Labor cost and revenue models are under pressure to adapt to such changes. Unfortunately, workforce management has been mainly focused on efficient, automated, transactional processes such as reporting time and automating staffing interactions such as requesting time off. These activities and decisions aren’t likely designed to act as levers to drive critical outcomes or adapt to disruption in the workplace. Such processes typically work well for what these standards are designed to do, but not for what functions employers should be doing. Transactional, routine scheduling and timekeeping processes aren’t capable of solving for pandemic-level issues impacting the workforce.
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The pandemic created an extreme scenario that laid this fact bare. Employers should be operating differently and doing more. It exposes two everyday problems that have long been overlooked. 1. Cost and productivity should be treated as dynamic outcomes that are actively influenced by the employer in real-time workforce management activities. 2. Cost or productivity should be managed and influenced well with a workforce center of excellence and people who specialize in workforce management. Labor cost and productivity can determine if an organization is competitive, profitable and serving its customers well. However, in many organizations, it almost feels like workforce management is on auto-pilot … until something goes wrong.
IT FEELS LIKE WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT IS ON AUTO-PILOT … UNTIL SOMETHING GOES WRONG. If the employer is already operating with workforce management 2.0 — which we will call WFM 2.0 for brevity’s sake — it likely has the following characteristics allowing them to (a) design and control their labor spending for different workplace conditions and (b) know how to assign the work to the modified workforce for the ideal productivity and outcomes.
Characteristics of WFM 2.0 — managing cost and productivity outcomes.
1. Ownership — A designated business unit known as the WFM Center of Excellence should be responsible for labor outcomes (cost, compliance, productivity, quality, scheduling experience, etc.) and the enabling tools required to manage (timekeeping, scheduling, absence management, mobile and web-enabled devices, dashboards, etc.). This team knows the current model and is able to design the future state and the strategy to get there. 3. Capability — Specialized workforce management professionals who plan, design and support the timekeeping, absence management and scheduling practices and platforms. Post-COVID-19 operations will rely on these experts to know what policies, system configuration and scheduling models need to change to optimize cost and utilization. 3. Access to leadership and support — the WFM Center of Excellence — the CoE — reports directly to executive-level stakeholders who sponsor the function, hold it accountable, prioritize its needs and fund its operations. Post-COVID-19 transformation will require support from finance, HR, IT and operations to execute on planning, retooling systems and testing and monitoring workforce performance.
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Signs that WFM 2.0 is operating effectively.
The WFM CoE understands the workload and work priorities: • Secures accurate forecasts. This will be challenging and essential in the post-COVID-19 world to recast the labor supply-demand model. • Defines what good work and workforce look like at a detailed, task and practice level blending in the new protocols such as cleaning and distancing. • Creates solid data from time and schedule data to determine what labor should cost. • Decides what types of workers to engage or what work to automate for the lowest cost and optimal outcome. It may be time to pivot some work to machines, work from home or third parties. The WFM CoE understands the optimal workforce: • What good work looks like — updating labor standards relative to COVID-19 protocols. • What workforce is available — WFM differs from workforce planning and headcount management. WFM is about knowing the workforce that is available “today, right now” from the active, skilled and healthy workforce. • Who are essential workers. • How much the workforce requires to earn (what compensation is necessary to make work attractive — in other words, hazard pay, shift premium for evening, overtime for excessive hours, on-call pay, paid sick time, etc.). • How to connect to the workforce using up to date, reliable contact mechanisms. The WFM CoE understands how to put the proper combination of shifts, people and pay practices together to meet the business needs to drive cost and productivity: 1. Use the right mix of part-time, full-time, contingent or machine workers. 2. Design optimal shift patterns and rotations for new health protocols and regulations. 3. Deliver schedule equilibrium (predictable, stable and adequate schedules). 4. Score schedule quality. 5. Prevents payroll leakage (avoiding time inflation, overstaffing, gaming the system to inflate pay and benefits). 6. Turn on self-scheduling, shift swapping and other self-service scheduling processes as needed. 7. Use float and standby staffing appropriately. 8. Is up to date on scheduling laws such as the fair workweek, wage and hour rules, and collective bargaining requirements. The WMO (workforce management office) or WFM CoE understands what tools the business needs and how to use them, such as: 1. Timekeeping systems and devices will drive cost and payroll. 2. WFM devices that improve safety so workers can return to work. Summer 2020
Ethics and the Future of Work As the future of work rapidly evolves and organizations integrate people, technology, alternative workforces and new ways of working, leaders are wrestling with an increasing range of ethical challenges. These challenges are especially pronounced at the intersection between humans and technology, where new questions top the ethics agenda about the impact of emerging technologies on workers and society. How organizations combine people and machines, govern new human-machine work combinations and operationalize the working relationship between humans, teams and machines will be at the center of how ethical concerns can be managed for the broadest range of benefits. Organizations that tackle these issues head-on – changing their perspective to consider not only “could we” but also “how should we” – will be well positioned to make the bold choices that help to build trust among all stakeholders. Ethical concerns are front and center for today’s organization as the nature of work, the workforce and the workplace rapidly evolve. In Deloitte’s 2020 Global Human Capital Trends report, 85 percent of survey respondents believe that the future of work raises ethical challenges but only 27 percent have clear policies and leaders in place to manage them. According to our report, four factors rose to the top of the ethics concerns: legal and regulatory requirements, rapid adoption of AI in the workplace, changes in workforce composition and pressure from external stakeholders.
The pressure on ethics created by the rapid adoption of AI in the workplace, however, is much more understandable. AI and other technologies make ethics in the future of work, specifically more relevant because the proliferation of technology is driving a redefinition of work. Perhaps the issue that has attracted the most attention is the question of how technology affects the role of humans in work. While our survey found that only a small percentage of respondents are using robots and AI to replace workers, headlines of the forthcoming “robot apocalypse” continue to capture global attention and raise concern. Organizations that are implementing technologies that drive efficiencies can expect to make decisions whether and how to redeploy people to add strategic value elsewhere. Our research found that the third driver of ethics’ importance in the future of work is changing workforce composition, which raises issues about the evolving social contract between the individual and the organization and the organizations and society — the growth of the alternative workforce is one major phenomenon contributing to these concerns. The number of self-employed workers in the United States is projected to hit 42 million in 2020. “Invisible labor forces” are being exposed in the recent research by Mary Gray and Siddarth Suri’s “Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass,” which talks about the unsavory working conditions of many workers performing the high-tech piecework (labeling data, captioning images and flagging inappropriate content) that powers automation and AI.
The leading driver that respondents identified was legal and regulatory requirements. Given that there is often a lag in laws and regulations relating to both technology and workforce issues, this perception is surprising. However, outside of a few moves including fair workweek rules for hourly workers, policy changes have been slow in coming.
The fast growth of this workforce segment is calling to attention related ethical concerns, including alternative workers’ access to fair pay, health care and other potential benefits.
3. Scheduling systems and communication tools to engage with the workforce in real time as situations change. 4. Ideal absence management systems to easily facilitate planned and unplanned time off. 5. Dashboards to monitor cost and utilization, react in real time to problems happening on the front line to ensure consistency in how managers operate. 6. Data-supported insights to inform internal and external stakeholders to show how cost and productivity are being delivered to support and satisfy workers, managers, investors, regulators and the community.
WFM 2.0 was bound to happen. The pandemic is a catalyst for immediate business transformation. Labor cost and productivity are critical to the financial and competitive viability of employers. Leaving things on auto-pilot isn’t a cure for COVID-19’s impact on any organization’s health. Businesses that will recover and thrive can start by establishing a permanent workforce management center of excellence acting as the command center for managing labor cost and utilization.
Summer 2020
— Lisa Disselkamp
Lisa Disselkamp is the managing director at Deloitte Consulting LLP.
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Workforce.com
transforms into a timely success story The new Workforce.com builds a global allegiance for its workforce management technology and research. BY STAFF REPORT
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reating innovative HR technology that empowers employees while also saving organizations time and money is an accomplishment to be applauded. Such innovation has been at the root of Workforce.com since its founding in 1922 when James R. Angell led a joint initiative between the Engineering Foundation and the National Research Council to take workforce science to new levels through unifying modern engineering, labor, management and educational bodies. Nearly a century later Workforce.com is mining its rich history as a trusted source of workplace insights to author a new chapter as a media organization that logically and naturally merges with its own full-featured workforce management platform. Workforce.com’s next phase will be a success story steeped in its past and the commitment to a future of improving business performance and empowering staff through workforce management technology. Such keen devotion to its clients doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Workforce. com’s talented and diverse team customizes its offerings to their client’s evolving business needs, be it large or small, and provides on-demand insights and market-ready expertise to boost employee engagement while helping organizations trim labor costs and meet complex compliance requirements. Among those dedicated to superior customer service is Chicago-based Workforce.com software engineer Leon Pearce, who has maintained a commitment to promoting the product’s ease of use. “People are the most significant competitive advantage any business can get, so they need to be truly engaged for long-term success,” Pearce said. “We want to help tackle these complex problems and streamline those processes so they can focus on the essentials of managing their workforce: worker happiness, welfare and efficiency.”
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tive processes, build trust with front-line staff and improve business productivity.” Levis credits Workforce.com’s software among the factors setting the company apart from others. “We have the best and most user friendly workforce management software on the market,” she said. “The second factor that sets us apart from other companies are the people on our team. We have the best people researching and supporting the software. These people behind the software are what truly makes Workforce.com who we are as a company.”
The Intersection of Research and Software
Sarah Kimmel, Workforce.com’s Vice President, Research and Advisory Services, said her team has been tracking current and emerging practices in several areas of HR, which grew into the annual HR State of the Industry Survey. She then established the Workforce Business Intelligence Board. “This research feeds directly into our editorial content and keeps us informed on how HR is evolving in practice,” Kimmel said. “We also began integrating public datasets on the talent market in order to answer questions that practitioners couldn’t easily answer. Integrating research into the Workforce.com technology the next logical step. It can “INTEGRATING RESEARCH INTO THE ishelp direct technology toward solving real-world problems WORKFORCE.COM TECHNOLOGY that practitioners are facing. IS THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP. IT We can integrate our talent data into the technology in a CAN HELP DIRECT TECHNOLOGY way that makes it more wideTOWARD SOLVING REAL-WORLD ly accessible and useful for who need to do PROBLEMS THAT PRACTITIONERS organizations workforce planning or diversity audits.” ARE FACING.” That said, research, soft— SARAH KIMMEL, WORKFORCE.COM’S VICE ware and technology isn’t very PRESIDENT, RESEARCH AND ADVISORY SERVICES effective if not used properly. As an example, Pearce evoked I have always been passionate about human resources and the tool wielded by the Marvel Comics’ God of Thunder. how large of an impact HR professionals can have on their or“You could own Thor’s hammer but that’s not very useful ganization. This is why it is so great to work for a company with if nobody can lift it,” he said. a rich history in the HR industry, that also focuses on building Software fundamentally changes business operations, solutions for HR professionals to maximize their impact. which means it’s also important to make sure the partner you choose aligns with the vision you have for your teams. How Workforce.com Technology Benefits HR “With the emergence of Software as a Service as the fuConsidering that human resources practitioners must ture of technology adoption, you are not necessarily buying be all things to all people, the sheer volume of work they into what it is today, but its ability to improve and help your perform to keep a business functioning smoothly can be company reach its potential in the future,” Pearce said. overlooked and underappreciated by organizational leaders Ask multiple questions of the software provider, Pearce and employees. Workforce.com technology supports their added, such as: efforts and provides them with the opportunity to become • How many features did they release in the last 12 months? strategic business partners, Pearce said. • Who is their chief technology officer? “In essence, we build the software with the purpose of • Do they understand the future of work and what’s your improving workforce compliance, automation, engagement product road map for the future? and productivity,” he said. “This helps HR stay compliant • What improvements to the user experience have been with ever-changing labor regulations, automate administramade recently? 28
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PHOTOS BY LENNY GILMORE
While Pearce and his team work externally to keep clients satisfied, another Workforce team member dedicates herself to the well being of internal staff. Since being hired in the fall of 2019, Meg Levis has proven herself to be a go-to, all-purpose HR generalist. Initially brought into the fold as an executive recruiter, Levis has proven more than capable of handling talent acquisition as well as benefits. “On the recruitment side, I handle the full recruitment process which includes sourcing, interviewing, creating compensation structure and extending offers to candidates,” said Levis, who cut her teeth in HR as part of Target Corp.’s Executive Team Leader internship program and worked full time with them after her internship as an ETL-HR. “I also handle the onboarding and training experience for my new hires. For the HR side of business, I am responsible for benefits, 401(K), company culture, compliance and employee relations.” Juggling so many responsibilities for a growing company takes dedication and organization, said Levis, who also spent time working for staffing management company Medix in Chicago.
Leon Pearce is a senior software engineer for Workforce.com.
• What percentage of revenue do they commit to new research and development compared to supporting old infrastructure? • Are they going to grow and improve your product as we grow and improve our business? • When it comes to implementation, a common complaint about HR software is when it purely serves management and not the rank-and-file employee. • Ask to see it live in a demo and test the software by placing it in the hands of the end user and get their honest feedback, Pearce said. And there are numerous techniques to understand if users like a product. Yet, he pointed out, many of these techniques are flawed. “You can compare companies based on revenue, but then are you evaluating how good the product is or how slick the salespeople are?” he said. App store ratings give a voice to the people who actually use the software. Since users didn’t choose it, they will be honest with their opinion. “The biggest mistake we see is when software is chosen because it ticks the boxes of a proposal and not how it works and is used by the front-line employees,” Pearce said. “Is it intuitive and easy to learn? I’d always make sure to evaluate whether it enhances or detracts from the employee experience.” Summer 2020
Research, Technology and People Management
Managing people, especially through change, is difficult and complex, Kimmel said. “Interventions can have unintended consequences, which can affect the organization’s reputation in damaging ways,” Kimmel said. “How do we mitigate this risk? How can we know what’s best for our organization? Without research, you might as well just roll the dice and follow your gut, which may sound like a good idea until you realize that it’s just shorthand for giving in to your unconscious biases about how you wished the world works. The good news is that many smart people are out there asking useful questions, testing theory against practice, sharing the outcomes and utilizing advanced people management tools. “The better news is that they’ve been doing it for quite some time,” Kimmel said. “Workforce was founded nearly 100 years ago in the space between business, research and practice, and we’re still there today.” Pearce added that Workforce.com’s technology fits seamlessly into the big picture of people management, helping guide where the world of work is heading and providing a path for HR to be there alongside it. WORKFORCE.COM continued on page 42 29
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Consumerization of benefits appeals to
the on-demand workforce Flexible workplaces are providing options for full-time employees, but as the on-demand workforce grows, employers are beginning to see the value of benefits for all. BY CAROL BRZOZOWSKI
T
here is a growing inequality in today’s labor market that is creating a two-tier workforce between a company’s employees and its contingent workforce when it comes to employee benefits. Some would add contingent workers are being treated akin to second-class workers without access to benefits in contrast to the extensive, high-quality benefits afforded to full-time employees, although they perform the same tasks, according to John H. Chuang, CEO of Boston-based staffing company Aquent. “That doesn’t mean an HR director wants to eliminate variable pay or a contingent worker,” he said. “There are obviously jobs where you’re going to hire someone for only a year. It’s OK to have a contractor and an employee work together. A flexible workforce is necessary to help American companies maintain their competitive edge.” For Chuang’s company, that means offering benefits to contingent workers. It’s part of the changing consumerization of the workforce, which is leading employers to consider transitioning from a one size fits all approach to wages and benefits toward a model that aligns with employees’ diverse needs.
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A shifting workforce
“For us, that means sharing an incredible amount of inDriving this change of dynamics in the American work- ternal data and communications with candidates before place is a generational shift, an increasing interest in gig and they even join the company,” he said. remote work and new legislation establishing different emRather than imposing innovation from above, studies ployee classification metrics. show employers should use surveys and group discussions Consumerization refers to those in the workforce — to explore employees’ feelings about new technologies and more than half of whom are now millennials — who seek elicit their help and suggestions through managerial collaban employment experience that empowers them to make at oration for successful implementation, said Dinkin. least some of their own choices about tasks and goals, thus Dinkin, whose own workforce has mostly full-time bringing a customer-like mentality to the workplace. and some part-time employees ranging in age from 20s “They shop around almost like to 60s, said each generation has difthey’re buying a cell phone,” said ferent priorities regarding pay, benCowden Associates President and efits, time off, retirement, tuition CEO Elliot Dinkin, whose compareimbursement and other factors. ny provides actuarial, compensation As the employee moves through and employee benefits. the company, they can migrate to “As individuals and consumers, we’re other packages based on their needs, used to setting our own goals and manDinkin said. aging our own tasks, rapidly adopting For example, a 24-year-old college the apps and tools that enable us to graduate may not be thinking about achieve what’s important to us, with retirement and may prefer to remain ease,” said John T. Anderson, CEO of on a parent’s health insurance plan Smartway2, which provides workplace until they are 26 years old rather than scheduling solutions for enterprises. obtain insurance through work, Din“Rather than putting up barrikin said. ers that hamper autonomy and rapid Some employees may want the opadoption of new technology, organization to pass on benefits and make as tions are now firmly focused on offermuch money as they can, he said. Aning a seamless, consumerized employee other employee may prefer more paid experience so they can reap the benetime off because they want to attend fits of increased productivity, collabotheir child’s school or sports events or ration and innovation. must care for an aging parent. “The 2020s will be the decade of — COWDEN ASSOCIATES autonomy at work and the mainThe value of benefits for stream adoption of tools that enable PRESIDENT AND CEO on-demand workers us to craft our own unique workplace ELLIOT DINKIN In order for employers to set experience,” he said. “These tools will themselves up as employers of choice rival consumer applications in ease of use and ability to in a consumerization environment, Dinkin urges emsculpt human behavior.” ployers to be aware of these developments and consider enabling employees to design a package that fits compaPeople are people, not “resources” ny operations, is cost-effective and offers choices more Joseph Quan, co-founder and CEO of Twine Labs, which aligned with individual career goals, life stages and rankhelps integrate HR data to deliver analytics and visualizations ing within the company. for CEOs and HR leaders, labeled consumerization as a fanDinkin cites a recent Deloitte study of millennials in cy way of saying that every company will take a much more which 49 percent said they would leave their current job humanistic approach with every individual it interacts with. inside of two years while about 25 percent actually have “That applies to customers, partners, investors, candi- done so. dates, and employees,” Quan said. “They’re a product of their education where they’re “Forward-thinking companies are shedding the notion told the best way to get ahead is to change jobs,” said that people are just ‘resources’ or ‘capital’ — implicit in the Dinkin. “They lack information as to what are actually terms HR/human capital — and that attitudinal shift is their opportunities.” reflected downstream in the recent mania around candiIt’s best to sit down with an employee and show them date experience.” how their career ladders can intersect with a wage structure Companies can position themselves by building a unique and show them the requirements necessary to move from an brand based on its distinctive cultural values and over-in- entry level position into a higher level and what they will vest in candidate care and experience, said Quan. make, he said.
“THE 2020s WILL BE THE DECADE OF AUTONOMY AT WORK AND THE MAINSTREAM ADOPTION OF TOOLS THAT ENABLE US TO CRAFT OUR OWN UNIQUE WORKPLACE EXPERIENCE.”
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Summer 2020
California’s AB5 Adds New Layer to Contingent Worker Worries To the extent that a company considers implementing consumerized-type offerings to its workforce, how to classify employees is becoming a topic of political debate with legal implications. The term gig worker serves as an umbrella term for workers in a variety of alternative employment arrangements, such as freelancers and independent consultants, on-call workers, temporary help agencies, contract firm workers and contingent workers. While those in the gig economy vary, widely cited Gallup data shows that 36 percent of the 157 million Americans in the U.S. workforce have a gig arrangement in some form. California Assembly Bill 5, which addresses and changes the circumstances under which a company can classify its workers as independent contractors, went into effect this year. Similar legislative efforts ensued in other states as well as at the federal level through the introduction of the Federal PRO Act bill. Proponents say such laws are keeping independent workers from exploitation. But the efforts are being met with resistance by some independent contractors who say one of the unintended consequences is that by changing the metrics that reclassify workers from 1099 independent contractors to W2 employees, it is hurting their careers. Soon after California’s Assembly Bill 5 went into effect, it was met by lawsuits from the California Trucking Association and American Society of Journalists and the National Press Photographers Association whose members found that companies are either capping their work to prevent reclassifying them as employees, hiring from out of state or ceasing to hire independent contractors. “No matter what ultimately results from the new law in California, we are going to see a new level of attention — and in some cases scrutiny — given to employer-employee relationships in 2020 and beyond,” said Cowden Associates President/CEO Elliot Dinkin. — Carol Brzozowski Summer 2020
Consumerization extends beyond a full-time employee to contingent and gig employees
In hiring gig workers, an employer may be trying to save payroll taxes and some benefit costs, said Dinkin. “Why wouldn’t I create benefit plans for those individuals?” he said. “Don’t I want to make them stick to my company?” For example, they could be offered a health reimbursement account. “Let this class of employees go out and get medical coverage and reimburse them for a certain amount,” said Dinkin. Aquent is a talent services company providing marketing and creative talent, managed services, extended workforce benefits, project management and professional development. In 1993 Aquent became the first staffing company to offer full comprehensive benefits to its temporary employees. Its newly launched service, Square Deal, enables companies to offer equal benefits to their contingent workforce efficiently and at scale. Aquent’s Square Deal offering includes benefits, policies and eligibility designed for variable work: full- and parttime and long- and short-term assignments that are on par with internal employee coverage. Its benefits package combines health and dental insurance with accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity insurance; a wellness program; 401(k) or Roth IRA plans; flexible spending accounts for health care, dependent care, parking and transit; an identity protection plan; an employee discount program, and career development and online skills training. The best and most productive talent has many options and seeks a reason to work for a company through consumerization, said Chuang. Benefits provide that reason, he said. “If you have a yearlong project where someone leaves at the six-month point, you don’t have time to hire,” he said. “It’s devastating. If there is no commitment to the employee, there’s no commitment for the employee back to the company. “By giving benefits — especially since it’s so unique and different among contractors — they really value it. We found that offering a strong benefits package typically increases retention by more than 20 percent.” Nick Patel is founder and CEO of Wellable, which offers customizable wellness solutions enabling employers to run an engagement program through wellness apps and wearable devices that includes gamification, rewards and incentives. Additionally, it provides education and consulting services on how to set up an office environment to promote wellness. Such programs may be subject to failure, however, if employees are not keen on their employer being closely affiliated with their health, said Patel. “It’s creating a culture about educating and letting employees know why the company is doing it,” he said. ON-DEMAND continued on page 42 33
Maneuvering the complicated intersection of
data privacy, health and technology As collectors of employee data, employers should be aware of the health data privacy landscape and the concerns employees may have. BY ANDIE BURJEK
P
eople share their experiences with depression on Twitter to show support for the mental health community. They join private Facebook groups to discuss similar health issues, without realizing that a “private” online group does not actually offer privacy protections. Companies encourage employees to be open about their health in an effort to create a “culture of health.” And employees join “HIPAA-compliant” wellness programs without realizing that the health data they log in various apps may not be protected by any law if the program is voluntary.
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When the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was enacted in 1996, today’s vast digital space didn’t exist. Even if organizations comply with HIPAA, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act and other laws that protect health-related data, that doesn’t necessarily mean the data is protected in many contexts. There are gaps that have yet to be legally addressed. Meanwhile, employees increasingly share health information on digital health apps or online. A vast amount of employee data is not legally protected. As collectors of employee data, employers should be aware of the health data privacy landscape and the concerns employees may have. “As much as it pains me to say, [data privacy] is probably nobody’s top priority,” said data privacy attorney Joseph Jerome. “It only becomes their priority when something goes wrong or they get concerned or they hear something in the news.”
“THESE ARE THINGS THAT PEOPLE PERCEIVE AS HEALTH DATA, BUT THEY’RE NOT COVERED BY HIPAA, AND THEY WERE NEVER DESIGNED TO BE COVERED BY HIPAA.” — JOSEPH JEROME, DATA PRIVACY ATTORNEY Employers in the U.S. and internationally have increasingly more data privacy regulations to pay attention to — as laws like the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union and the California Consumer Privacy Act and Illinois Biometric Privacy Act in the U.S. move the data privacy legal environment forward. In this constantly changing world, there’s information that can help organizations navigate this complicated intersection more intelligently.
Privacy Law Limitations
There is a lack of understanding of what HIPAA protections apply where, when and to what data, Jerome said. At its core, HIPAA was enacted to facilitate the portability and interoperability of health care records, not for any greater data privacy reason. “We act like this is a health data privacy law, but no. It’s designed to govern data in hospital systems,” he said. Employers want to learn increasingly more data about their employees, he said. They have the opportunity to do so through commercial apps that capture wellness and fitness data. “These are things that people perceive as health data, but they’re not covered by HIPAA, and they were never designed to be covered by HIPAA,” he said. HIPAA — and therefore what data is considered health information — is limited to covered entities like hospital 36
systems and doctors’ offices. For example, within a health system, a patient’s email address is considered health information under HIPAA, but outside the health system, an email address is not considered health information and does not get HIPAA protection. HIPAA also doesn’t apply to anonymized data — the data remaining after being stripped of personally identifiable information from data sets, so that the people whom the data describe remain anonymous. Further, anonymous data is fair game, legally. “There is no regulation of ‘anonymized’ data. It can be sold to anyone and used for any purpose.The theory is that once the data has been scrubbed, it cannot be used to identify an individual and is therefore safe for sale, analysis and use,” noted “Re-Identification of ‘Anonymized’ Data,” a 2017 Georgetown Law Technology Review article. A concern here is that anonymous data can be easily re-identified, and it’s tough to hold bad actors accountable for doing so, Jerome said. Further, it’s hard to do anything about it once the data is already identified and public information. Unfortunately, there are realistically not enough reinforcement resources, he added. “That’s a real problem right now, not just in health care or employment context, but you’ve got this giant ecosystem where a lot of companies are sharing information and they’re all saying they’re good actors, they’re all saying they’re not re-identifying information, they’re all saying they’re not even using personal information,” he said. “But there’s data leakage all over the place. People are recombining profiles, and it’s very hard to attribute where the information originally came from.” According to the Georgetown Law Technology Review article, the re-identification of anonymous data can lead to sensitive or embarrassing health information being linked to one’s employer, spouse or community. “Without regulation of re-identified anonymized data, employers, neighbors, and blackmailers have an unprecedented window into an individual’s most private information,” the article said. One of the privacy concerns some people have about their health data is that it could eventually be used against them and that they could suffer real-world implications like the loss of job opportunities, the denial of insurance or higher premiums for insurance.
Wellness Program Gaps
The idea behind employee wellness programs is supposed to be a win-win, said Anya Prince, associate professor of law and member of the University of Iowa Genetics Cluster. Employees get healthier, and employers get lower health care costs and a more productive workforce. But wellness programs are often not effective at changing employee health, she said. “If the premise is we’re doing this to benefit employees [but] there’s not actually evidence that it’s benefiting employees, the question then becomes why are [wellness programs] continuing to happen?” she said. “The evidence Summer 2020
shows that what they’re doing is shifting health care costs back on to employees in various ways. That’s where the concern comes in.” Digital health apps on employees’ phones play a part in many workplace wellness programs. But even though thirdparty health apps are common on people’s phones, the privacy landscape behind these apps is murky at best. Prince cited Lori Andrews, professor of law at the University of Chicago and director of Illinois Tech’s Institute for Science, Law and Technology. Andrews has conducted work on the types of data that medical apps collect from users, including employees in workplace wellness programs. “Some of the medical apps are just completely bogus and don’t give you anything helpful back,” Prince said about the general health data privacy environment. “But they are collecting data on you, not just health information but geolocation and other data that’s worth money.” Another trend in wellness programs is employers offering employees consumer-directed genetic tests to help them understand what medical issues they may be predisposed to and what preventative measures they can take to combat them. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 18 percent of employers provided a health-related genetic testing benefit in 2018, up from 12 percent in 2016. Many studies have shown that people are not aware of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act or what privacy protections they have through the law, Prince said. “GINA is quite protective in employment in the sense that employers are not allowed to use genetic information to discriminate, so they can’t make hiring, firing, promotion, wage, any decisions based on genetic information,” she said, adding that genetic information includes family medical history, genetic test results and more. Still, she said, there are some exceptions with GINA, including private employers with fewer than 15 employees and any employee in a voluntary wellness program. There is currently a legal debate on whether wellness programs are voluntary or if employees feel coerced to join them, Prince said. Some wellness programs are participatory — meaning that employees don’t need to hit a certain health outcome target to earn the incentive — but others are health contingent. Employees need to lose some amount of weight or accomplish another target measurement to get the financial benefits of the wellness program. These programs are more participatory currently, she said. But if programs that collect genetic information become health contingent, that could bring up ethical issues and become more invasive. “If you think of breast cancer gene] testing, which is a predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer, one of the preventive measures right now is to prophylactically remove your breast and ovaries. My dystopian future is the employer saying, ‘Have you finished having kids yet? Get on that, so that you can remove your ovaries,’” she said. This discussion begs the question of who is ultimately the best actor to push people toward better behaviors and Summer 2020
health outcomes, she said. Society has to ask if employment is the best place to do this. “In a way the answer is yes because we’ve created a system where health insurance and employment are so intertwined, but maybe employment isn’t the right space to be encouraging people to make the right health choices,” she said. “Maybe that should be a public health system or your primary care physician or researchers.”
“MY DYSTOPIAN FUTURE IS THE EMPLOYER SAYING, ‘HAVE YOU FINISHED HAVING KIDS YET? GET ON THAT, SO THAT YOU CAN REMOVE YOUR OVARIES.’ ” — ANYA PRINCE, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR The Pentagon has advised service members not to engage in 23andMe genetic tests, said Glenn Cohen, professor of law at Harvard Law School, and faculty director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics. There’s a major national security reason for this, he said, but part of the reasoning also has to do with protecting service members’ privacy. The military is exempted from GINA, which is the law prohibiting genetic discrimination by employers.
Consent, Transparency and Communication
Employers could communicate with employees better, Jerome said. Privacy is more than just legal compliance, which may include a disclaimer in the company handbook or on the employees’ computers that inform them “All this can be tracked and monitored.” This can help set up the expectation for employees that they should have no expectation of privacy in anything they do at work. While most employers have done their legal duty, they’ve yet to have a conversation with employees about what they’re actually doing with this data, Jerome said. “I get that those conversations can be difficult and uncomfortable and frankly might get employees riled up, but I think that’s probably a good thing in the end,” he said. Employers — who sit on large troves of employee health data — may have the legal right to share data, but that doesn’t mean employees and other parties won’t criticize them, said Cohen. “They have to be worried a little bit about how it’s going to play as a PR matter and, in an industry where they’re competing for talent, how employees feel about [it],” he said. DATA PRIVACY continued on page 43 37
2020 Workforce 100: Ranking the Top Companies for HR
1
MICROSOFT CORP.
2
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
3
JOHNSON & JOHNSON
4
FACEBOOK INC.
5
SALESFORCE.COM INC.
6
AT&T INC.
7
CISCO SYSTEMS INC.
COMPILED BY WORKFORCE EDITORS
E
mployers have watched the unprecedented challenges unfold in many areas of workforce management in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the ability to manage a team remotely and encourage work/life balance during a stressful global occurrence. Meanwhile, the murder of George Floyd has brought racial tensions front and center. At the heart of both issues is something vital: cultivating a trusting relationship with your employees and communicating vital information or HR policies to them. Now in its seventh year, the Workforce 100 recognizes companies that excelled in human resources over the course of the previous year. To determine which companies make the list, Workforce editors work with researchers from the workforce.com Research and Advisory Group, the publication’s research division. The research team created a model to sift through publicly available data on HR performance to separate the best from the rest. To give employees more of a say in the rankings, we asked recruiting and job-review website Glassdoor to provide data on what workers are saying about the companies that made our list. From there, we combined that information with the public data available to create our 2020 Workforce 100 list. Congratulations to all the companies that made the 2020 Workforce 100 list, and may your excellence in HR continue through the rest of the decade!
8
Redmond, Washington Industry: Computer software
Employees: 151,163 Performance Index: 9.2
Dallas Industry: Airline
Employees: 60,922 Performance Index: 9.167
New Brunswick, New Jersey Industry: Consumer products
Menlo Park, California Industry: Social Media
San Francisco Industry: Software
Employees: 132,200 Performance Index: 9
Employees: 44,942 Performance Index: 8.567
Employees: 26,244 Performance Index: 8.467
Dallas Industry: Telecommunications
San Jose, California Industry: Technology
ADOBE
San Jose, California Industry: Software
Employees: 247,800 Performance Index: 8.4
Employees: 75,900 Performance Index: 8.267
Employees: 22,634 Performance Index: 8.167
METHODOLOGY
The Workforce 100 is the rank order and scores of the 100 companies that performed best in seven core areas: workplace culture, employee benefits, diversity and inclusion, employee development and talent management, human resources innovation, leadership development, and talent acquisition. The working assumption behind the list is that high performance in these core categories provides a reasonable proxy for overall HR excellence. Find our detailed methodology at Workforce.com/2020Workforce100.
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9 10
APPLE INC.
Cupertino, California Industry: Technology
DELOITTE
New York Industry: Professional services
Employees: 137,000 Performance Index: 8.166
Employees: 68,714 Performance Index: 8.067
Summer 2020
All seven years Here are the 13 companies that have made all seven of the Workforce 100 lists to date. Accenture American Express Co. Apple Inc. AT&T Inc. Cisco Systems Inc. Deloitte Google
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Johnson & Johnson Kaiser Permanente Lockheed Martin Corp. Procter & Gamble Co. Salesforce.com Inc.
11 EY
London Industry: Professional services
12
SAP SE
Walldorf, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany Industry: Software
13 Google
Mountain View, California Industry: Technology
14 15 16 17
McKinsey & Co.
New York Industry: Management consulting
Delta Air Lines Inc.
Atlanta Industry: Airline
LinkedIn Corp.
Sunnyvale, California Industry: Social media New York Industry: Health care
Kalamazoo, Michigan Industry: Medical technologies
Erie Insurance Group
Erie, Pennsylvania Industry: Insurance
20 Hilton
McLean, Virginia Industry: Hospitality
21 22
Employees: 101,150 Performance Index: 7.833 Employees: 118,899 Performance Index: 7.733 Employees: 30,000 Performance Index: 7.732 Employees: 91,000 Performance Index: 7.533 Employees: 16,000 Performance Index: 7.533
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
18 Stryker 19
Employees: 273,325 Performance Index: 7.967
American Express
New York Industry: Financial services
Costco Wholesale Corp.
Issaquah, Washington Industry: Retail
Summer 2020
Employees: 20,000 Performance Index: 7.532 Employees: 40,000 Performance Index: 7.531 Employees: 5,800 Performance Index: 7.5
Employees: 173,000 Performance Index: 7.433 Employees: 59,000 Performance Index: 7.333 Employees: 254,000 Performance Index: 7.333
23 Dell
Health care Industry: Technology
24 25
Nike Inc.
Beaverton, Oregon Industry: Consumer products
Texas Health Resources
Arlington, Texas Industry: Health care
26 T-Mobile
Bellevue, Washington Industry: Telecommunications
27 28 29 30 31
Goldman Sachs
New York Industry: Financial services
Kaiser Permanente
Oakland, California Industry: Health insurance
Workday Inc.
Pleasanton, California Industry: Software
HubSpot Inc.
Cambridge, Massachusetts Industry: Software
AbbVie Inc.
North Chicago, Illinois Industry: Biopharmaceutical
32 Accenture
Chicago Industry: Consulting services
33 34 35 36
Merck & Co. Inc.
Kenilworth, New Jersey Industry: Pharmaceutical
Morgan Stanley
New York Industry: Financial services
Bain & Co.
Boston Industry: Management consulting
Intuitive Surgical Inc.
Sunnyvale, California Industry: Medical appliances & equipment
37 Nvidia
Santa Clara, California Industry: Consumer electronics
38 39
Power Home Remodeling
Chester, Pennsylvania Industry: Exterior remodeling
Smile Brands Inc.
Irvine, California Industry: Health care
Employees: 165,000 Performance Index: 7.332 Employees: 76,700 Performance Index: 7.331 Employees: 22,110 Performance Index: 7.33 Employees: 53,000 Performance Index: 7.329 Employees: 20,551 Performance Index: 7.233 Employees: 219,149 Performance Index: 7.232 Employees: 8,846 Performance Index: 7.231 Employees: 2,171 Performance Index: 7.2 Employees: 30,000 Performance Index: 7.133 Employees: 492,000 Performance Index: 7.133 Employees: 71,000 Performance Index: 7.132 Employees: 60,431 Performance Index: 7.131 Employees: 4,000 Performance Index: 7.1 Employees: 7,300 Performance Index: 7.1 Employees: 13,775 Performance Index: 7.099 Employees: 2,760 Performance Index: 7.098 Employees: 5,000 Performance Index: 7.097 39
40
Toyota North America
Plano, Texas Industry: Automotive
Employees: N/A Performance Index: 7.033
41 DocuSign
San Francisco Industry: Technology
42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49
E. & J. Gallo Winery
Modesto, California Industry: Winery and distributor Boston Industry: Management consulting
53 54 55 56 40
Employees: 21,000 Performance Index: 6.8
Kronos Inc.
Lowell, Massachusetts Industry: Software
Procore Technologies
Carpinteria, California Industry: Construction project management
Trader Joe’s
Monrovia, California Industry: Retail
Employees: 4,013 Performance Index: 6.7 Employees: 2,139 Performance Index: 6.699 Employees: 10,001 Performance Index: 6.698
Procter & Gamble Co.
Cincinnati Industry: Consumer products
Employees: 97,000 Performance Index: 6.6
St. Paul, Minnesota Industry: Consumer products
58 59 60
Amazon.com Inc.
Seattle Industry: E-commerce
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
New York Industry: Financial services
Travelers Cos.
New York Industry: Insurance
61 Unilever
London Industry: Consumer products
62 Vi
Chicago Industry: Senior living
63 64
San Jose, California Industry: Communications technology Durham, North Carolina Industry: Health care
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
66 Netflix
Employees: 450,738 Performance Index: 6.599
San Francisco Industry: Software
Employees: 500 Performance Index: 6.567 Employees: 400 Performance Index: 6.566
Intel Corp.
Santa Clara, California Industry: Technology
Siemens USA
Washington D.C. Industry: Industrial automation
Wegmans Food Markets Inc.
Rochester, New York Industry: Retail
Employees: 110,800 Performance Index: 6.5 Employees: 50,000 Performance Index: 6.499 Employees: 50,000 Performance Index: 6.498
World Wide Technology
Maryland Heights, Missouri Industry: Technology service provider
HP Inc.
Palo Alto, California Industry: Technology
Employees: 5,767 Performance Index: 6.497 Employees: 56,000 Performance Index: 6.496
Sammons Financial Group inc.
Chicago Industry: Insurance
Employees: N/A Performance Index: 6.467
Lockheed Martin Corp.
Bethesda, Maryland Industry: Technology
Los Gatos, California Industry: Entertainment
67 68 69
Starbucks Corp.
Seattle Industry: Retail
The Walt Disney Co.
Burbank, California Industry: Entertainment
Greenhouse Software
New York Industry: Software
70 ADP
Roseland, New Jersey Industry: HR management software
71
Bank of America
Charlotte, North Carolina Industry: Financial services
72 Medtronic
Dublin Industry: Health care
73
Employees: 798,000 Performance Index: 6.4 Employees: 250,000+ Performance Index: 6.399 Employees: 30,800 Performance Index: 6.398 Employees: 155,000 Performance Index: 6.397 Employees: 3,000 Performance Index: 6.367 Employees: 2,532 Performance Index: 6.366
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina
65
Mumbai, India Industry: Information technology
Employees: 96,000 Performance Index: 6.4
Zoom Video Communications Inc.
TATA Consultancy Services Limited
Atlanta Industry: Engagement platform
52
Employees: 6,000 Performance Index: 6.9
Boston Consulting Group
50 SalesLoft 51
Employees: 3,909 Performance Index: 7
57 3M
MetLife Inc.
New York Industry: Insurance
Employees: 4,800 Performance Index: 6.3
Employees: 110,000 Performance Index: 6.299 Employees: 8,600 Performance Index: 6.298 Employees: 346,000 Performance Index: 6.297 Employees: 223,000 Performance Index: 6.296 Employees: 394 Performance Index: 6.267 Employees: 58,000 Performance Index: 6.2 Employees: 208,000 Performance Index: 6.199 Employees: 90,000 Performance Index: 6.198 Employees: 49,000 Performance Index: 6.197 Summer 2020
First timers on list
Here are the 22 companies that made the Workforce 100 list for the first time this year. AppDynamics Bamboo HR The Charles Schwab Corp. DocuSign Erie Insurance Group Greenhouse Software Intuitive Surgical Inc. The Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group LLC ManpowerGroup Noom Inc. Northside Hospital Paycom Software Inc.
74 75 76 77 78 79
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams SalesLoft Sammons Financial Group Inc. Smile Brands Inc. TaskUs TATA Consultancy Services Ltd. Trilogy Health Services LLC VIPKid Zoom Video Communications Inc. Zurich Insurance Co.
Northrop Grumman Corp.
Falls Church, Virginia Industry: Security
Raytheon Co.
Waltham, Massachusetts Industry: Aerospace and defense
Verizon Communications Inc.
Basking Ridge, New Jersey Industry: Telecommunications
Zurich Insurance Co.
Schaumburg, Illinois Industry: Insurance
Bamboo HR
Lindon, Utah Industry: Software
Northside Hospital
Atlanta Industry: Hospital
80 TaskUs
Santa Monica, California Industry: Outsourcing
81 CVSHealth
Woonsocket, RI Industry: Health care
82 83
Boeing Co.
Chicago Industry: Aviation
The Charles Schwab Corp.
San Francisco Industry: Financial services
Summer 2020
Employees: 90,000 Performance Index: 6.196 Employees: 67,000 Performance Index: 6.195 Employees: 135,000 Performance Index: 6.194 Employees: 55,000 Performance Index: 6.193 Employees: 470 Performance Index: 6.167 Employees: 21,000 Performance Index: 6.167 Employees: 5,200 Performance Index: 6.166 Employees: 300,000 Performance Index: 6.133 Employees: 161,100 Performance Index: 6.1 Employees: 19,700 Performance Index: 6.1
84
Wells Fargo & Co.
San Francisco Industry: Financial services
85 AppDynamics San Francisco Industry: Software
86 87 88 89 90
In-N-Out Burger
Irvine, California Industry: Restaurants Huntsville, Alabama Industry: Engineering
Noom Inc.
New York Industry: Software
Paycom Software Inc.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Industry: Software
Trilogy Health Services LLC
Louisville, Kentucky Industry: Health care
Bloomfield, Connecticut Industry: Health insurance
93 94 95
Comcast NBCUniversal
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Industry: Telecommunications
Humana, Inc.
Louisville, Kentucky Industry: Health insurance
Fast Enterprises
Centennial, Colorado Industry: Software San Francisco Industry: Hospitality
Milwaukee Industry: Professional services Houston Industry: Cancer treatment Beijing, China Industry: Education
100
Employees: 390 Performance Index: 6.065
Employees: 1,800 Performance Index: 6.064 Employees: 3,765 Performance Index: 6.063 Employees: 1,200 Performance Index: 6.063 Employees: 73,700 Performance Index: 6 Employees: 143,620 Performance Index: 5.999 Employees: 46,000 Performance Index: 5.998 Employees: 1,000 Performance Index: 5.967 Employees: 8,124 Performance Index: 5.966 Employees: 28,000 Performance Index: 5.965
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
98 VIPKid 99
Employees: 16,000 Performance Index: 6.066
The Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group LLC
96 ManpowerGroup 97
Employees: 2,000 Performance Index: 6.067
Intuitive Research and Technology Corp.
91 Cigna 92
Employees: 259,800 Performance Index: 6.099
Target Corp.
Minneapolis, Minnesota Industry: Retail
Boston Scientific
Marlborough, Massachusetts Industry: Manufacturing
Employees: 21,700 Performance Index: 5.964 Employees: N/A Performance Index: 5.963 Employees: 368,000 Performance Index: 5.9 Employees: 36,000 Performance Index: 5.870
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WORKFORCE.COM continued from page 29
ON-DEMAND continued from page 33
“Technology is changing how people approach their work and their relationship with work, so we’re engineering to build a future where teams can perform better through improved workflow and feel empowered with the right technology,” Pearce explained. For employees that means intuitive mobile apps to see future work hours, swap shifts, provide company feedback and apply for time off and schedule unavailability. For managers, it’s being able to easily build, send and optimize schedules against forecasted demand while tracking actual hours worked. “And for HR and workforce professionals it means being able to manage and oversee this in one place that they can customize perfectly to their way of doing things and integrate with their existing payroll and technology stack,” Pearce said. “On the whole it means building a platform that leverages the very best technology to help the workforce win and reach its potential.” Competitive advantage is key to any software platform. Finding what separates one product from another doesn’t necessarily take a publicity-hungry influencer. The benchmark for software in this space would be a solution that can follow best practices for each particular industry and help teams get to where they want to be, while being easy to use. “Create a solution that supports an organization while they find their way forward and enables them to operate in ways that create new competitive advantages,” Pearce said. “Our strategy is to build our software like a platform that provides adopters with a starting point of industry best practices, but is also flexible enough to evolve with them. Stagnation always ends in failure, which is why enabling our users to keep tweaking their functions and improving the way they operate is so important to us.” Building a workforce culture will avoid stagnation while encouraging a sustainable business, Levis said. “Everyone here is truly invested in helping each other grow professionally and to get the job done even if it is not something within their typical job duties,” she said. “There is not any sort of politics, gossip, or egos that you have to worry about. To top it off, we make sure that while we are all working toward the same goal, that we are having fun while getting it accomplished.” While many see software — any type of software — as a tool, a thing to use merely to accomplish a task, Pearce fancies a more cultured approach. “It’s like art. Seeing people use the software I helped build definitely gives me pride, but I think more to the point is the knowledge that I was involved in hopefully making people’s lives just a little better,” he said. “I thank our customers every day for giving me that opportunity.”
The primary benefit to the employer in embracing consumerization is that it cuts down on the high cost of turnover with respect to recruiting, hiring and training, said Dinkin. “If you’re in a client service business, people are leaving your accounts or if you’re an experienced person on an operating line and you’re leaving, it costs the company so much. Some of it can be measured and some of it can’t,” he said. Another factor in becoming an employer of choice is that it affords a company to be more diligent in the way it supervises, manages and rates employees, said Dinkin. “All of this attention to training, development, giving people multiple chances, and looking the other way because it’s so hard to find good people … what does that do to my culture? Is that the best way to run my business? “You’ll just have a bunch of mediocre people slow down your company because the good people leave anyway. They don’t like that culture if they know you’re keeping around somebody who’s mediocre.” When it comes to how consumerization benefits companies, Patel said that while return on investment was “strictly defined by the fact that if I invest this many dollars to try a wellness program, I should expect first to make dollars in health care savings,” said Patel. “We see the industry transition to this trend called value on investment, which is what we ascribe to,” he added. Value on investment can be difficult to measure and will vary with each company, he added. “It’s taken to other considerations beyond health care expenses,” said Patel. “Employees may be more productive, for example. Studies have identified millennials as buyers of more wellness benefits. It’s bringing those kinds of broader benefits to help their well-being in terms of determining the value on investment.” That may help attract and retain talent, he said. The consumer-in-the-workplace mentality can help raise employee engagement and smooth a path to ROI, but is a double-edged sword, said Dinkin. The same dynamic found in retail — in which the customer experience is important in gaining an advantage and poor customer service leads to people not returning to the store — also is found in the workplace, said Dinkin. Dinkin said the economic constraints such as a projected 6 percent increase in employer-based health care costs in 2020 makes it difficult for most employers to offer a significantly competitive advantage in terms of salary and benefits. The differentiating factor is being a valued supplier to consumerized employees, making them feel they have a stake in the company’s success. That will pay off in loyalty, retention, corporate agility and profit, he said.
Don’t take our word for it. There’s a lot that goes into making workforce management software simple to use and hassle free. Try Workforce.com’s multifaceted software and you’ll be lifting Thor’s hammer in no time.
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Carol Brzozowski is a writer based in Florida.
Summer 2020
DATA PRIVACY continued from page 37
When Ascension Health partnered with Google for the “Project Nightingale” initiative late last year — allowing the tech company access to the detailed personal health information of millions of Americans — it received a lot of backlash. It could be dangerous for an organization like Google, which already has so much of people’s personal data, to get access to people’s health records as well, critics argued. Supporters said it was perfectly legal. “My recommendation in general is even if you legally have the right to share the data, you may want to think about creating some internal governance mechanisms that have employees involved in trying to decide what gets shared or not,” Cohen said. Practically, this could mean that the organization charters a committee that includes employers, employees and subject matter experts who can explain both the uses and the risks of adopting a certain solution, he said. This could be a valuable decision for employers because better decisions get made and it’s better for the employer’s reputation, he said. When people find out a company has sold its employees data, it could look bad if there hasn’t been employee input in the decision. For most organizations dealing with health data and other personal data, their reputation is based on how they treat that data, said Ed Oleksiak, senior vice president at insurance brokerage Holmes Murphy. A data breach or misuse of data would be bad press, so the company would be incentivized to protect that data and ensure it’s used properly When there is a health data mishap, there are a couple ways that organizations can address that breach of trust, he said. OrganizaAdvertising: For advertising information, write to sales@workforce.com. Back Issues: For all requests, including bulk issue orders, please visit our website at Workforce.com/products or email hcmalerts@e-circ.net. Editorial: To submit an article for publication, go to Workforce.com/contribute/ submission-guidelines. Letters to the editor may be sent to editors@workforce.com.
Summer 2020
ADVERTISING SALES tions can provide impacted employees some kind of identity theft protection that will help them mitigate any harm. Further, the company is required to address whatever has resulted in the breach and do whatever it can to make sure it can’t happen again in the future. “Whether it’s the employer’s health plan, a hospital system, or a technology provider, everybody’s reputation is contingent on successfully mitigating that,” Oleksiak said. “You just have to start over again, and try to fill that cup of trust back up.” Oleksiak also suggested that employers follow a key tenet of only getting and storing the minimum necessary data. Even though people involved with employee health plans most likely want to use patient data for the right reasons, people who can hack into these systems can access everything, including more unnecessary data. Ultimately, this is an issue of balance. According to the aforementioned Georgetown Law Technology Review “Re-Identification of ‘Anonymized’ Data,” “data utility and individual privacy are on opposite ends of the spectrum. The more scrubbed the data is, the less useful it is.” Still, there are positive things companies can do with this data, Oleksiak said. No matter what privacy rules and regulations are put in place, a bad actor is going to find a way to do something that’s for their own benefit. “Hopefully we write rules that go after people that abused their position or access to data, but still allow everybody else that’s doing it for the right reasons to get the job done,” he said.
Ana Dirksen Western Sales Director 312-847-5729 adirksen@workforce.com Kevin M. Fields VP, Business Development for Events 312-967-3565 kfields@workforce.com Melanie Lee Business Administration Manager mlee@workforce.com
SOFTWARE SALES Paul Smith Chief Revenue Officer 310-648-2200 paul@workforce.com Michael Valentine Vice President of Account Management 310-318-4563 michael@workforce.com Travis Kohlmeyer Vice President of Sales 310-796-6986 travis@workforce.com
Andie Burjek is Workforce’s Associate Editor..
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Learning Alignment in an Uncertain and Disrupted Business Climate By: Alexandra Levit, Chairman, DeVry University Career Advisory Board When speaking with a Chief Learning Officer at a Fortune 500 industrial equipment organization, I heard a leader who was both stressed out and inspired. She described how, after years of struggling to maintain her L&D budget, her function was now center stage. The CEO had a narrow set of strategies in mind to keep the business afloat during COVID-19, and he needed the CLO to quickly develop learning experiences to help employees execute on those strategies. The CLO’s plan includes bite-sized trainings on skills employees have never used before, from self-scheduling to virtual collaboration. And, since the business has shifted more toward e-commerce, she’s developing a program to bring all employees up to speed on the essential digital tools. Increased L&D investment isn’t purely a consequence of the pandemic. According to LinkedIn’s 2020 Workplace Learning Report – issued prior to the crisis – nearly 60 percent of surveyed L&D professionals expected to increase their online and virtual learning offerings in 2020. Just under three years ago, that number was 27 percent. But since COVID-19, the TrainingIndustry.com website, which targets corporate L&D professionals, has seen a 8,135 percent increase in topics related to remote learning, virtual instructor-led training (VILT), and leading through adversity, indicating that appetite for guidance has increased exponentially. In the current climate, business priorities are constantly shifting, and skill mastery must occur rapidly and with unprecedented agility. The corporate L&D function is more critical than ever because no team is better positioned to drive skills outcomes in line with overall business objectives.
My partners at DeVryWORKS recently introduced the concept of learning alignment. When an organization is learning-aligned, L&D enables business strategy and measures learning initiatives’ success in transforming the organization. DeVryWORKS’ Sr. Director of Strategic Accounts, Duane Glader suggests that organizations are learning-aligned if they’ve implemented a continuous process to map the learning strategy to the business strategy, which may include: • Documenting learning or training requirements for new initiatives and planning rollouts in a way that integrates effectively with the whole. • Affiliating learning professionals with business units or geographic areas. • Including L&D components in all change management initiatives. • Creating flexible programs that can be instantly adjusted as business priorities change. • Leveraging analytics tools to quantify learning program impact on business performance. As a human capital expert, I have observed that a lack of alignment may result in diminished business performance, higher levels of employee confusion and disengagement, and poorer retention. Now that COVID-19 has ushered in a new era for L&D, we have an opportunity – and some might say a duty – to uplevel the function. DeVryWORKS named the following six areas as essential to learning alignment:
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Business Relevance
KPIs
The L&D team is clear on current and pressing business objectives and the HR organization is empowered to attract and retain top talent and fill skills gaps to execute on these objectives.
Working in concert with c-level leaders, L&D has established success metrics and put tools in place to ensure consistent monitoring of performance.
Awareness
Resources
Targeted employees or employee groups understand the L&D resources and opportunities available to them and where to access them. Awareness increases participation in learning programs, which cascades into higher levels of engagement and productivity.
Organizations secure and maintain enough L&D staff and budget to develop relevant and impactful programs.
“
Skill requirements will be in flux for the foreseeable future, and what your organization needs today may well be different than what it needs tomorrow.
Management Support Aligned organizations spread learning messages far and wide. C-level leaders publicly promote L&D offerings and evaluates managers based on the learning outcomes of their direct reports. Utilization Targeted employees or employee groups actively take advantage of L&D opportunities because learning is presented in a variety of formats that people can consume on their own time.
Like many aspects of the COVID-19 business world, learning alignment requires ongoing vigilance and oversight. The process of mapping learning to business strategy, gaining c-level buy-in, communicating learning availability and benefits, and demonstrating impact must be repeated and honed as your culture evolves and your company transitions out of the current crisis. Skill requirements will be in flux for the foreseeable future, and what your organization needs today may well be different than what it needs tomorrow. In my opinion, learning leaders who use this time of disruption as an opening to think differently and try a new approach may be rewarded with a more stable organization and a workforce that is proactive and enthusiastic about upskilling as the business demands. Are you wondering how your organization compares to its peers with respect to learning alignment? How does learning alignment look in practice? What steps have your peers taken to transform their learning function from order taker to business enabler? Stay tuned for the results of DeVryWORKS’ and Human Capital Media’s Strategic Learning Alignment survey, to be released later this year.
Workforce Solutions to Attract, Acquire and Develop Talent At DeVryWORKS, we understand that one of the biggest challenges of any business is not only hiring skilled people but also providing opportunities to help them grow in their careers. DeVryWORKS seeks to truly understand your organization’s training and development needs so we can offer solutions to help you acquire and retain strong talent, plan for succession, and close the skills gap. www.devryworks.com.
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Rely on Resilience
Wisdom from meQuilibrium’s “Rely on Resilience: Navigate Uncertainty with Confidence.” By: Adina Sapp
COVID-19 is changing the way we’re working and is seriously affecting our mental health as individuals and as a society. Many of us have lost significant aspects of our freedoms and lifestyle; we are experiencing shattered beliefs around control and are having to face the reality that good and bad are meted out inexplicably. Understandably, many workers are displaying the classic symptoms of loss, including denial, anger, and depression.
In a timely webinar titled, “Rely on Resilience: Navigate Uncertainty with Confidence,” Alanna Fincke, meQuilibrium’s senior vice president of content, together with Lucy English, Ph.D. and social scientist, shared research and practical wisdom for developing resilience in yourself, your workers, and your organization during times of uncertainty.
Start with Self-Awareness
People with resilient minds can manage stress and emotions, but perhaps what you’ve found is that you’re not as resilient as you thought you were. That’s OK. “We all want to come through this crisis better and stronger than we were before, so it is a great opportunity to continue developing essential skills,” Fincke said.
The process of gaining resilience begins with self-awareness, and acknowledging where you are is an essential part of the development. There is a pile-on of pressure from COVID-19: social distancing, supply shortages, new anxieties, and unknowns. All of this may bring you to a new place of self-awareness.
“As we reflect on our own cognition and emotional responses, we become better able to identify that we’ve had a bad experience and better able to evaluate our options around how to respond,” Fincke said. With self-awareness, we can begin to form positive habits and experience a cognitive change. This means we don’t simply react to an experience. Instead, we: • Identify thought or feeling.
• Notice automatic or triggered reaction. • Evaluate options.
• Choose between automatic reaction and other options.
“Resilience in times of uncertainty requires that we go against our brain’s natural response,” Fincke said. “We’re wired to react to threats, but resilience is a skill set that can be developed, and good habits are reinforced with repetition.”
Changes in thought and emotional response cascade into other healthy habits, such as good fitness routines, better eating and sleeping habits, and behavioral and psychological improvements. Stay Humble
“What makes a great leader during this time is humility,” Fincke noted. “Teams don’t like change and uncertainty, so when times are tough it’s crucial that we lead well by managing our own stress and leading with humility.”
She pointed to organizational psychologist Adam Grant, who said, “Bad leaders believe people work for them. Good leaders believe people work with them. Great leaders believe they work for people.”
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“Especially in this crisis, we all depend on servant leaders who put others first. Research shows your team responds to what you model, so model the behavior you want to see,” Fincke urged. “Develop a resilient workforce by modeling resilience and mentoring your team.”
“
Resilience is a skill set that can be developed, and good habits are reinforced with repetition. —Alanna Fincke
Observe Your Team
It’s very important to stay in regular communication: send emails throughout the day, check in at regular times, and keep the information flowing. As you talk with your team, continually evaluate your opinions, and check your expectations to ensure your communication comes from a place of humility and resilience. When you must share difficult news, find a way to focus on the good while still acknowledging the bad. With the move to remote work, some of your team members may be working all hours and many of them are under stress as they have lost the boundaries between work and home life. In this mental frame, a negative message can trigger anger, anxiety, frustration, sadness, guilt, embarrassment, or shame.
Watch for these responses among your team and help them ease conflict by not personalizing it.
Build Workforce Resilience
Organizations thrive on the differences among people that bring innovative ideas front and center. So, focus on the positive and help them optimize those differences.
One of the most essential aspects of business success is the way in which your people think and addressing the barriers that keep them from having good mental health, learning on the job, and remaining focused and productive. A key in helping individuals not only survive, but thrive, especially in times of uncertainty and anxiety, is to measure how they’re feeling and their thinking styles. How would you know if their home environment is causing sleep or health issues? How would you know if certain populations are experiencing heightened burnout? Uncover Hidden Workforce Issues
Sometimes even the best leaders miss signs of workforce stress, burnout, and depression. The meQuilibrium platform can triage for risks and help you build a customized learning journey so you can build agile and high-performing teams with strong relationships that can not only get through change, but come out of it better because of that experience. Using AI, data, and individual input, meQuilibrium delivers custom reporting with unique and actionable insight about your workforce. It also provides accessible, straightforward learning and activities that support people where they have need.
To learn more, go to meQuilibrium.com. For meQuilibrium’s free webinar and response resources visit: mequilibrium.com/coronavirus.
meQuilibrium is the #1 resilience platform that harnesses behavioral psychology and neuroscience to unleash your organization’s full potential. Powered by clinically-validated assessments and robust insights, the platform measures resilience and creates personalized training programs that build team and employee skills. With meQuilibrium, you can equip each of your employees to master skills they need to overcome any obstacle, increase agility, gain adaptive capacity, and transform your organization.
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Personality and Leading Through a Crisis By: Ryne Sherman, Chase Borden, & Kimberly Nei Every organization will face a crisis at some point. When that crisis occurs, people will turn to their leader for answers. How are we going to survive? How should we respond? What is the plan for getting us through the crisis and back to business as usual? Ultimately, it is the leader’s answers to these questions and the leader’s actions that determine whether an organization survives or collapses in the face of a crisis. The critical question then for organizations is this: who is best suited to lead us through a crisis?
To find the answer to this question, we searched the academic literature on crisis leadership to identify the most critical competencies for leading through a crisis. This search, which included hundreds of scientific papers, journal articles, and book chapters, pointed to five things effective leaders do during a crisis. Here we describe these five behaviors and how they can be assessed with common personality instruments. The first thing effective leaders do during a crisis is remain calm. Crisis increases stress in everyone, which can lead to panic, chaos, and poor decision-making. A leader who remains calm – at least outwardly – maintains order and prevents panic. The key personality trait associated with remaining calm under pressure is Adjustment. Leaders who score high on Adjustment (or low on Neuroticism) are steady under pressure and convey a sense of calmness that prevents panic.
Second, effective crisis leaders show compassion and concern for their constituents. The members of the organization—employees, citizens, customers—who are most effected by the crisis want to know that their leader cares about them and their needs. Showing compassion instills trust that the leader will
make decisions in the best interest of the organization. The personality traits associated with these behaviors are Altruism and Interpersonal Sensitivity (or Agreeableness). Leaders who score high on these traits are seen as friendly, likeable, and care deeply about the people around them.
Third, effective crisis leaders get comfortable with uncertainly. Part of what makes something a crisis is its unpredictable nature. Leaders who are more comfortable with uncertainly are less likely to panic and more likely to make reasonable decisions. The personality trait most associated with attitudes toward risk is Security. Leaders who score low Security are more comfortable with risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity. As a result, they are less likely to succumb to the inherent stress of a crisis.
“
A leader who remains calm – at least outwardly – maintains order and prevents panic.”
Fourth, effective leaders during a crisis get realistic about the size and impact of the crisis. Crises are inconvenient. As humans, we naturally want to deny, ignore, or discount factors that are inconvenient for our plans. But, denying reality is a short-term solution that leads to long-term disaster. Leaders who are realistic about the size of the problem can best determine how to mitigate it. The two personality traits most associated with denying reality are Excitable and Reserved. Leaders who score high on these scales are more likely to deny problems and avoid confronting them.
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Fifth, effective crisis leaders take charge and make decisions in a timely fashion. When a crisis occurs, it is easy to be uncertain of what to do and to freeze up. While acting rashly and without considering the information is problematic, it is just as problematic to delay action when the proper course is clear. Once the scope of the problem and possible solutions have been evaluated, people look to the leader to make a decision and to plot the course of action. The personality traits most associated with taking vs. not taking action are Ambition and Cautiousness. Leaders who are ambitious take charge of situations and try to solve problems immediately. On the other hand, leaders who are Cautious are reluctant to act and hesitate far too long.
Summary
Crisis is inevitable. The best way to be prepared for a crisis is to have a leader who is effective at handling crises when they occur. Research on leadership tells us that the most effective leaders during a crisis remain calm, show compassion for others, are comfortable with uncertainty, are realistic about the scope of the problem, and act promptly. Additionally, these critical behaviors for crisis leadership can all be predicted by underlying personality traits.
As Hogan’s Chief Science Officer, Ryne is responsible for managing the primary functions within Hogan’s industry-leading research department, including client research, product development and maintenance, and Hogan’s research archive and infrastructure.
Ryne’s previous research in personality psychology focused on the role of personality in career pursuits and workplace performance. He has also researched and experimented with new approaches to personality assessment, including unobtrusive assessment via new talent signals, such as voice prosody, word use, and affective responses to stimuli.
CASE STUDY
PARKING MANAGEMENT
The secret sauce for engagement How LAZ Parking makes every employee feel like part of the family. By Sarah Fister Gale
L
AZ Parking has a corporate history straight out of a Netflix mini-series. And it’s shaped the company’s culture and values ever since. In the summer of 1981, Alan Lazowski was an aspiring college student trying to earn a little cash before his senior year at the University of Connecticut. Instead of looking for a job, he borrowed money from his grandfather and started a parking valet service for a local restaurant in Hartford, Connecticut. By summer’s end, he and two of his friends were managing five parking locations and had 30 employees. Nearly 40 years later, Lazowski and his co-founders, Jeffrey Karp and Michael Harth, have grown that summer business into the second largest parking company in the country. LAZ Parking now has more than 13,000 employees and $1.4 billion[SFG1] in annual managed revenues, and operates more than a million parking spaces.
‘TO GROW AS FAST AS WE ARE GROWING, WE HAVE TO FIND REALLY GOOD PEOPLE, WHICH ISN’T ALWAYS EASY.’ — ANDI CAMPBELL, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE The founders attribute their success story in large part to their long standing goal: “Create opportunities for employees and value for clients.” That mission isn’t just a sign on the wall. Leaders across the company genuinely care about everyone on the team, from part-time valets to senior executives. They treat hourly workers like they will be with the company forever, said Luis Henriques, general manager for LAZ in Hartford. “Creating opportunities for employees is our secret sauce.” Henriques knows from experience. He started at LAZ in 1989 as a teen-ager parking cars on weekends. His vice president recognized his dedication, and when Henriques com50
SNAPSHOT Founded in 1981 by three college-age students, LAZ Parking has blossomed into a corporate force in the competitive parking industry while still maintaining its family touch.
pleted his associate’s degree the company offered him a night management position overseeing 100 employees. Today he is responsible for 20 managers and more than 850 employees. “I grew up in this company,” he said. “It is my family.” LAZ leaders know that valet and parking attendant jobs aren’t glamorous, and that most employees see these jobs as a temporary measure to earn some quick cash. But the company is doing everything it can to encourage them to stick around, said Andi Campbell, senior vice president of people and culture. Campbell was hired in 2012 as director of talent with the primary goal to “fill the talent pipeline.” Soon after she moved into the people and culture role because LAZ leaders recognized that finding and keeping talent is all about the company culture.
Everyone Deserves a Second Chance
The emphasis on creating opportunities for employees is seen everywhere at LAZ, beginning with recruiting. “We are laser-focused on using data and KPIs to be sure we are getting people where we need them, and getting them into development,” Campbell said. “To grow as fast as we are growing, we have to find really good people, which isn’t always easy.” The company hosts national job fairs in 20 cities twice a year and actively recruits everyone from college students to recent parolees. “We are very big on second chances here,” said Henriques. He noted that while many companies won’t give previously incarcerated people an opportunity, LAZ believes these candidates can be great assets to the company. “They paid the price for what they did, and our experiences with them have all been positive.” Summer 2020
Once hired, employees are immersed in company culture from day one, so people know right away that the job can be more than just a temporary gig. The LAZ onboarding process includes a variety of events, including Get Connected, a lunch and learn where employees meet with local, regional and national managers to talk about the company and opportunities beyond the front line. “Our CEO always says that leaders are the ambassadors of the company,” Henriques said. “You have to take time every day to listen to your people. That’s what makes us different.” The company is also quick to celebrate its employees. Managers hand out Rave Cards that acknowledge employees who do excellent work, and the company throws elaborate end of the year parties for front line workers. “Recognition is a big part of motivation,” Henriques said. “It’s how we say thank you to our staff.”
It Starts With Management
Campbell also makes sure that managers have the training and guidance to promote the company’s values in every employee interaction. This is key to the company’s engagement strategy. “If you want to improve employee well-being, or safety, or engagement, it all comes down to how managers manage their people,” Campbell said. “Front-line workers don’t know the VPs, but they do know and trust their managers, so the key to change is at that mid-level.” Whenever the company wants to address a corporate issue or encourage a certain behavior, it starts with manager training. Campbell has launched a series of learning programs over the years that align with corporate strategy, including how to meet the needs of front-line workers, how to prevent safety issues, and how to identify and promote high performers. Along with core workshops or live training events, she also provides frequent communications with management tips, access to coaching clinics, and a catalog of online training that managers can access any time. “When you teach people how to lead teams on the ground, that’s how you move the needle.” One of the most successful efforts has been around teaching managers to be effective coaches, mentors and advocates for their people. Managers like Henriques are taught to always be on the lookout for passionate employees who might be LAZ management material. When they identify these high performers, they can nominate them to attend LAZ University, an 10-week business management program that prepares aspiring hourly workers for management roles. Attending the training is considered an honor, and it draws attention to the company’s commitment to growth — both for employees selected for training, and those who see them move up the ranks, Henriques said. Local and regional managers are also encouraged to suggest employees for management roles where positions open up. Henriques has promoted five people in the last nine years. “Their co-workers see that and recognize the opportunities are there.” Summer 2020
Hugs Not Handshakes
All of these values have been part of LAZ from the beginning, and are constantly reinforced by Lazowski himself. “He really cares about people,” said Tina Cyr, accounts payable director. Lazowski takes the time to learn everyone’s name, and is always available for a chat or a hug. “We are big huggers around here,” Cyr said. Cyr was initially surprised by the warmth she felt after coming to LAZ from a much more corporate environment, but she quickly embraced it. “There is something really special about a genuine family culture,” she said. “It really feels like they put people before profits.”
‘IF YOU WANT TO IMPROVE EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING, OR SAFETY, OR ENGAGEMENT, IT ALL COMES DOWN TO HOW MANAGERS MANAGE THEIR PEOPLE.’ — ANDI CAMPBELL While the company may have a touchy-feely approach to engagement, they also keep a close eye on results. Campbell tracks data on every program she initiates, and sets key performance indicators to measure success. That helps her prove the impact of her programs, and to tie culture investments to bottom-line results. Most recently, efforts to improve safety and wellness have helped the company reduce its per employee per month healthcare claim costs, despite being in a rapid hiring phase. “We see wellness as a huge opportunity for LAZ,” she said. It lowers costs, reduces absenteeism, and reinforces the company’s commitment to employee wellbeing. The company has also seen engagement numbers steadily rise, and its turnover has dropped below 17 percent for salaried employees, and 70 percent for hourly workers. “For the hospitality industry, those numbers are amazing,” Campbell said. LAZ may have a unique culture and history, but Campbell believes that it can be replicated. The key is to make culture part of everyone’s responsibility, she said. Whether a company is trying to figure out how to improve retention, promote wellness, or drive bottom line results, when leaders factor employee needs into their business decisions, they make choices that allow a positive corporate culture to blossom. “It sounds simple,” she said, “but that’s how we connect culture to everything we do.” Sarah Fister Gale is a writer in Chicago.
51
INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE
PARKING MANAGEMENT
Parking People
1.8 %
Annual growth rate
The $11 billion parking industry has a lovehate relationship with the economy. By Sarah Fister Gale
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
ike all hospitality sectors, when the economy is strong, demand for parking spaces and attendants rises. People spend more time shopping, dining and enjoying nights on the town, and they need places to park when they get there. The current economic growth has also led to new construction of commercial and residential developments, including parking garages that need valets and attendants. All of this demand is great for business – assuming these lots can find and retain a strong workforce. That is a constant challenge in a historically low unemployment environment, where hourly workers often have their pick of jobs. The average wage for parking valets and attendants is just $11 per hour, or $24,330 per year, according to IBIS World. Parking companies also have to compete for talent with other retail and food service industries, as well emerging roles in the mobility sector, including rideshare driver and delivery person. That has led to a more than 70 percent average turnover rate, forcing parking companies to constantly recruit for open spots. Companies like LAZ Parking, which is the second largest parking company in the nation, rely on good management, a strong corporate culture, and career path programs to keep this vital segment of their workforce engaged.
2015
L
74%
Average turnover (hospitality industry)
52
Summer 2020
DATA BANK
PARKING MANAGEMENT THE PARKING INDUSTRY HAS SEEN STEADY GROWTH IN RECENT YEARS FOLLOWING TRENDS IN URBAN CONSTRUCTION OF COMMERCIAL AND RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENTS.
The $11 billion parking industry Total national revenue:
$11 billion
Number of businesses:
19,745
National employment:
156,322
Average hourly salary:
$11.27
3
5
2 1
4 4
3 2
1
5
Sources: ibisworld.com, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Valet Parking Annual Salary Top States 1 2 3 4 5
Arkansas $16.69/HR Massachusetts $16.21 Washington $13.69 Illinois $13.20 Maine $13.18
Summer 2020
Top Cities $34,710/YEAR $33,710 $28,470 $27,450 $27,420
1 2 3 4 5
New York City $14.47/HR San Diego $13.48 Las Vegas $12.47 Chicago $11.90 New Orleans $11.08
$30,102/YEAR $28,048 $25,938 $24,758 $23,042 53
RICK BELL
LAST WORD
Give your on-demand workforce an arm’s-length embrace
S
everal years back my former colleague Ed Frauenheim “The ‘hustle culture’ — constant working — is a reflecwrote what I consider to be one of the landmark stories tion of the fact that on-demand workers are often at the in the history of Workforce magazine. lower end of the pay scale, so working long hours to pro“Contingent Workers: Why Companies Must Make Them vide sufficient income becomes the norm. The lack of Feel Valued and Engaged” was a deep dive into the relation- security of employment leads to on-demand workers ship between employers and an on-demand workforce. The taking all the jobs they can in case the next job or gig is on-demand workers were too often seen as a business tool not secured.” versus living, functioning, vital team members, Ed argued, Oh, believe me, I have heard that one before from a great and even though these workers often were remote, they de- number of the freelance writers, artists and photographers served the same respect accorded to full-time employees. I work with. They may be cranking 12-hour days for two “If companies are going to connect with the best of today’s weeks straight, worn to the nub. But they can’t refuse that contingents and elicit their best efforts, a new deal or next assignment because, well, they don’t know if that’s the relationship is in order.That relationship might be called last assignment they’ll get for several weeks. And theycan’t the ‘arm’s-length embrace.’ ” just turn down work. Ed was always looking to coin a phrase, and he absolutely Barnes sees little advantage to on-demand work. nailed it with offering “an arm’s length embrace” to your “It trades employee protection for so-called flexibility. It on-demand workforce. also transfers the power to the employer — take the gig on That story published the summer of 2012, and it could not my terms or I’ll give it to someone else,” Barnes said. “This is ring truer today. We are living in an age where organizations a race to the bottom. The gig economy, which we tell ourrely more and more on an on-demand workforce. Depend- selves allows us to work anywhere, any time, traps us into ing on what study you are quoting, about one-third of to- assuming flexibility is our goal when really we are not takday’s workforce is part of the gig economy. Andrew Barnes ing enough time away from work to be properly rested.” is the author of “The 4 Day Week,” and while he spends And as we know, burnout is omnipresent among today’s much of the book offering solutions to productivity through workforce — gig worker or otherwise. flexible work schedules, he also spends a good deal of time I asked Barnes to elaborate on a statement in the book: addressing today’s on-demand workforce. “We collectively Doctor Frankensteined ourselves into a bold economic model whose ramifications we barely understood.” He fired back with both barrels. And it’s a terrifying prospect. “Surveys of young people in France and Australia working within the gig economy have identified that they exhibit high levels of stress and anxiety due to the uncertainty of work and the lack of investment in their skills, careers and future. They often work more than one job and many are not working the equivalent of full time. “Once in gig, it is almost impossible to get out. Business accrues the short term benefits of cheap, disposable labor while society will ultimately pick up the costs.” Barnes is no fan of today’s gig economy. I asked him if Barnes adds that investment is virtually nil in any type of there’s a difference between on-demand and gig workers. training. Learning and development? Not for the on-de“Theoretically one is a contractor and one is an employee, mand workforce, Barnes said. but increasingly both are being used to transfer the risks “There is little or no investment in their skills or their and many of the costs of employment from the employer to future. The danger is we are forming a new underclass. We the worker,” Barnes said via email. “The issue is that this is need to be better than that.” often not about flexible working but an arbitrage of emAs Ed Frauenheim pointed out eight years ago, we can be ployment protections such as minimum wage, sick and hol- better than that. It begins with respect for all employees and iday pay. Long term and widespread use will create signifi- offering an “arm’s length embrace” to envelop your on-decant economic and societal issues.” mand workforce into the fold. On-demand workers, he added, are at the mercy of the employer. Rick Bell is Workforce’s editorial director.
CALL THEM CONTINGENT, OR GIG, OR AN ON-DEMAND WORKFORCE. WHATEVER PHRASE YOU USE, TREAT THESE WORKERS WITH THE RESPECT THEY DESERVE.
54
Summer 2020
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