Report: Hiring to Improve
Modest hiring this month is expected to bring more jobs than layoffs in manufacturing and services, according to the Society for Human Resource Management's latest employment report. But year-over-year numbers still show that hiring is down compared to this time last year - by 2.5 percent in the manufacturing sector and 6.4 percent in the service sector. Results are based on a survey of HR professionals at more than 500 manufacturing and 500 private service-sector companies. The two sectors comprise more than 90 percent of America's private sector employment.
A net total 17.9 percent of manufacturing sector companies will add jobs this month, with 33.3 percent of HR professionals saying their company will increase staffing while 15.4 percent will cut jobs. That's the highest net gain for manufacturing hiring since October 2008. A net total of 13.4 percent of service sector companies will add jobs this month, with 32.5 percent planning to hire while 19.1 percent will reduce staffing levels.
"Though the labor market remains weak, the pace of layoffs does appear to have slowed and job seekers may find increased opportunities in both the manufacturing and service sectors during October," said Jennifer Schramm, manager of workplace trends and forecasting at Alexandria-based SHRM, in a statement. "Recruiting difficulty and new-hire compensation rates however remain down, indicating that this is still a very tough market for job seekers." (Washington Business Journal, 10/2/09)
Stress May Be Making More Workers Sick
While the cold and flu season serves as a primary culprit in workplace absences, the economy may be a factor as well this year, according to a survey released recently on absenteeism.
The annual CareerBuilder survey shows nearly one-third (32%) of workers have played hooky from the office this year, calling in sick when they were well at least once, and 28 percent of employers think more employees are absent with fake excuses due to increased stress and burnout caused by the recession. The nationwide survey included more than 4,700 workers and 3,100 employers.
While the majority of employers said they typically don't question the reason for an absence, 29% reported they have checked up on an employee who called in sick and 15% said they have fired a worker for missing work without a legitimate excuse.
Of the 29% of employers who checked up on an employee, 70% said they required the employee to show them a doctor's note. Fifty-two percent called the employee at home, 18% had another worker call the employee and 17% drove by the employee's house or apartment.
More than one-in-10 workers (12%) who played hooky admitted to calling in sick because of something work-related, such as to miss a meeting, give themselves some more time to work on a project or avoid the wrath of a boss, colleague or client. Others missed work because they needed to go to a doctor's appointment , needed to relax , catch up on sleep, run personal errands, catch up on housework or spend time with family and friends. An additional 32% just didn't feel like going to work that day.
This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Interactive on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 3,163 hiring managers and human resource professionals and among 4,721 U.S. workers. (Philadelphia Business Journal, 10/8/09)
HR Leaders Rethink Strategies during Recession
Research from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) shows how senior HR professionals are dealing with the recession and preparing their companies for success after the economy improves. Nearly 50 executive-level HR leaders responded to SHRM's poll, which was fielded in February 2009 and asked what key problems the recession posed and how employers are addressing the problems. Their responses comprise Riding out the Storm and Preparing for the Post-Recession Workplace, released in early October at the 2009 SHRM Strategy Conference. Respondents were asked to write in responses, and their quotes are included in the research report.
The most critical HR issues that organizations are facing because of the recession are as follows:
- Financial stability—"The most critical HR issue we are facing is the need to reduce expenses, including salary expenses, and yet maintain critical staff or patient care delivery," wrote Theresa Gianfortune, vice president of HR at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Miller Children's Hospital.
- Talent management and staffing—"The most critical HR issue is assuring the right manpower for the business level. Forecasting sales has become very difficult. The margin of error will be critical," wrote J. Kim Scholes, MBA, vice president of human resources at Network Communications Inc.
- Business stability/efficiency.
- Employee engagement: 83 percent of HR executives reported that employee engagement and retention are a significantly or moderately higher priority in the recession than prior to the economic downturn.
- Employee morale: "Keeping employee morale positive during a time of staff reductions and short working hours is among our most critical HR issues," wrote James Packer, vice president of human resources for Hickory Springs Manufacturing Co.
To prepare their companies for success after the economy recovers, HR executives have expanded three strategies and programs: communication (80 percent), health care (76 percent) and workforce planning (74 percent). Said Brad Holliday, PHR, CBM, MBA, vice president of human resources at Schaller Anderson Inc., "We've increased frequency of town hall meetings and other forms of communication from senior leadership to all employees (and vice versa) in order to increase transparency and deepen trust/engagement."
To reduce overall health care costs, Hickory Springs Manufacturing has opened a free off-site medical clinic for employees' spouses and children ages 2 and up in order to curtail rising medical costs. We already have free employee clinics located at our operations, and now we have taken this strategy to the next level, Packer wrote.
Workforce planning was defined in the study as strategic planning to determine the organization's future workforce needs based on different economic scenarios. At the Miles Kimball Co., Margie Harvey, MBA, vice president of human resources, wrote, "As we started to see slight sales declines several months ago, we were very careful to only selectively fill positions that became open. We also expanded automation projects and continuous improvement initiatives to proactively control costs." (SHRM's HR Week, 10/13/09)
Lessons from the Letterman Saga
David Letterman, America's new late-night ratings king, barely had time to try on the crown for size before scandal rocked his comedy kingdom, in the form of an alleged extortion attempt from CBS news producer Robert Halderman over Letterman's past romantic involvements in the workplace.
Letterman attempted to short-circuit the attempt on his Oct. 1 show, on which he confessed to previously having affairs with office staff. A subsequent apology on the following Monday night's show was made both to his wife, (herself a former staffer) as well as to staff members who had not been intimately involved with Letterman yet still had to endure countless probing questions from the media.
Employment-law experts agree that Letterman may have learned the value of getting out in front of such a salacious story after watching a succession of high-profile public figures (John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer and Mark Sanford to name but three) burn at the public stake for their amorous actions. "While David Letterman dealt promptly and forthrightly with respect to the alleged illegal extortion ploy, he also took the bull by the horns and admitted to having consensual sex in the workplace," says Sara Begley, an employment attorney at Pittsburgh-based Reed Smith LLP. "His audience laughed and clapped at his public confession. From a public relations perspective, [the confession] was a homerun." But she adds that, from an employment-law perspective, many questions remain unanswered.
"Workplace consensual relations are not illegal and often are not a violation of company policy. But allegations of sexual harassment often arise from a consensual relationship gone south," she says. "If a senior executive makes it his practice to have sex with subordinate employees, exposure to the employer for claims of sexual harassment is not only possible, but likely. Employees may claim that when the top dog wanted sex, there was no answer that would have kept them in good stead except 'Yes.' "
It has been reported that Letterman, technically an employee of his production company Worldwide Pants and not the CBS network that airs his nightly talk show, violated no company policies through his actions, and no one has yet to file a sexual harassment claim against him. And he also has said that the affairs took place before he was married earlier this year. Part of the problem with such inter-office romances relates to the people not involved in the relationship in question who may feel slighted or out of the loop when it comes time for promotions and choice work assignments, and may feel a sense of resentment towards the co-worker(s) involved in the after-hours camaraderie.
Roberta Chinsky Matuson, president of Northampton, Mass.-based Human Resource Solutions, advises that anyone engaged in a romantic relationship with their work superior should immediately disclose it to their HR department. "They need to come forward, and one of those two people needs to be moved so they're not in a direct line of authority, so that there isn't even the appearance that someone is getting preferential treatment."
At the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, where the show is taped, Matuson thinks "there may very well be a hostile work environment, where people are given preferential treatment that others don't get. After all, how many other assistants got to be on television?" (Matuson is referring to the fact that one of Letterman's assistants who had been romantically linked to him, Stephanie Birkitt, had appeared in a number of skits on the show.) When it comes to investigating whether a hostile work environment does exist, HR leaders have to be willing to stick their necks out, Matuson says. As a former HR director herself, Matuson has investigated her share of sexual harassment claims.
"It's a serious matter, and as uncomfortable as we are as HR professionals, it's something we have to do. I remember the first one I had to investigate. I just kept thinking: 'What am I doing here? I don't want to know these details,' " she says. "It could be your boss [you end up investigating], and you have to remember why you're in that HR position in the first place: Is it to keep your job, or to protect the employees and create a workplace where people can thrive?" To limit sexual-harassment exposure at their own organizations, Begley says, many HR departments "have policies that prevent employees from having even consensual relationships with employees who report to them." Others have anti-fraternization policies in place which restrict all workplace sexual relationships, she says.
Andria Lure Ryan, a partner in the national labor and employment law firm of Fisher & Phillips, says it is incumbent upon HR executives to ensure that managers and supervisors are not abusing their power to coerce employees into unwanted sexual relationships. "Train all employees that, if they feel unwanted pressure, they can go to their human resource department or other managers for help," she says. "And be on the lookout for any signs of behavior that may violate company policies prohibiting harassment."
In all likelihood, Letterman would have preferred to keep his romantic past out of the public spotlight, but his show's ratings have risen considerably since the story broke. And while that's good news for him, it's not the favorable outcome that most organizations would face in the wake of such revelations. So, regardless of how it's ultimately handled, at the end of the work day, when office affairs usually bloom, the experts agree that companies can't get caught flat-footed. "It's just bad business to permit unregulated sexual relations between superiors and subordinates," concludes Begley. (Human Resource Executives, 10/12/09)
Survey Shows Disconnect Between Workers and Bosses
A recent survey says employers are fooling themselves believing workers are content simply to have a job. According to the survey conducted by Monster and Human Capital Institute, 84 percent of employers indicated they thought their employees were content because they were working. However, only 58 percent of workers said that.
For workers, the disconnect extends to their feelings about their workload, the longer hours required of them, and their willingness to give their employer the benefit of the doubt for layoffs. "Today's employers feel that employees are loyal due to the economic times, but the reality is they are not," said Katherine Jones, HCI Research Fellow. "Because of this, there is a strong likelihood that when the economy turns for the better, employers could find themselves with valued employees jumping ship. This places pressure on them to put retention measures in place now."
Monster and HCI conducted the survey in May and June to assess the impact of the recession on workers and companies. More than 700 companies and almost 5,000 passive and active job seekers participated, responding to questions about their attitudes to work, employees, their post-recession expectations, and purchasing plans.
The three-part report examines the recession's impact from the worker's and employer's perspective and how the government's stimulus program may change the workplace. While the survey showed employers understood their workforce morale has slipped and stress is up because of the recession, it also shows that employees believe their bosses are taking advantage of the situation.
Among the findings:
- 57 percent of workers believe employers are exploiting the recession to drive longer hours and lower pay from their workforces
- Only 26 percent excuse their employers for requiring layoffs and longer hours because they believe their employer's hands were forced by the recession
- 58 percent believe employers are less concerned about employee retention, and 50 percent of workers are more concerned about top performers leaving than before the recession
- 53 percent have a decreased company loyalty
- 79 percent are more likely to be seeking jobs elsewhere.
Each of the three parts offers insights and conclusions drawn from the survey results. Equally as important is the glimpse the overall report offers of the future: Boomers won't be retiring in the numbers once thought, thus offsetting, at least partially, the worker shortage; younger people are likely to be more inclined to seek recession-proof or at least recession-resistant jobs or self-employment, and; the general skepticism of Gen Y toward corporate America may be passed down to the following generation. Perhaps most immediately, there may be a mass turnover of employees, especially of top performers, once companies begin hiring again. (ERE Daily, 10/14/09)
U.S. Employers: 'We'll pass Along Health Reform's Added Costs'
U.S. employers say they will not absorb any additional costs that result from health care reform and plan to reduce benefits, raise prices for customers and cut head count to accomplish this financial goal, according to a survey of HR and benefit executives from mid-size and large U.S. organizations conducted by professional services firm Towers Perrin. The firm's Health Care Reform Pulse Survey report, released in September 2009, analyzed responses collected two months prior.
"The way employers would respond to reform proposals that raise or lower their costs is one of our most telling findings-one that could conceivably impact economic recovery," says Dave Guilmette, managing director of the Towers Perrin health and welfare practice. "With companies struggling to manage rapidly escalating health care costs and reclaim profits, only 11 percent of companies would agree to absorb increased health care costs by reducing their profits. The overwhelming majority of companies would respond to higher costs by reducing the benefits their employees receive."
Although not as outspoken in the reform process as many stakeholders in the health care industry, employers are watching Washington closely, Towers Perrin found, with 80 percent monitoring developments. Nearly one in four surveyed companies (23 percent) are rethinking benefit changes in light of possible reforms, and nearly all (89 percent) plan to re-examine their health benefit strategies for active employees in response to the passage of any health care reform legislation. (SHRM's HR Week, 9/28/09)
Proposed Amendments to FMLA Abound
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) has been a target for expansion for years, and 2009 has been no exception, with numerous proposals to make FMLA leave available to more workers and for more conditions. Since the FMLA actually was amended in 2008 to further expand its scope in a defense authorization package signed into law by President George W. Bush, some Capitol Hill observers are betting that it won't take another 15 years for the FMLA to be amended again.
In a Sept. 10, 2009, Fisher & Phillips webcast, D. Albert Brannen, an attorney with the firm's Atlanta office, said he thinks that improving leave opportunities for working Americans is the number one priority other than health care reform. U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis "really is on the bandwagon to give employees more leave," he added.
So, employers should pay particular attention to how proposed amendments to the FMLA will play out, according to Brannen, who predicted that the proposed Balancing Act of 2009 is "a good indicator of what is likely to come." (SHRM's HR Week, 9/21/09)
