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by Aura Lee O'Banion
Finally - the trip you have been waiting for. A four-day conference on the east coast - complete with spouse/family activities and plenty of time to enjoy yourself too. You have already placed mail & paper stops so your home should be safe to leave empty - after all, it is only for a few days. "Don't count on it." Says Aura Lee O'Banion, CPP, author of Travel Smarts - Business Travel Safety Guide.
"An empty driveway, a home totally dark at 8PM - are signals no one is home. This attracts a potential burglar to take a closer look. Something you don't want." The best deterrent is having a friend or family member stay at your home during any extended absences.
But what if you have a good alarm system, timed lighting inside & out, and a diligent neighbor keeping a watchful eye? "These are all excellent deterrents for crime," states O'Banion, "but remember - other situations can happen that could go unnoticed." Plumbing or electrical problems are examples. Another type of crime - vandalism - can occur sometimes causing severe damage. In Modesto, California, a businesswoman left her home unattended for three days, only to find her carpet soaked with water. The day before her neighbor had discovered water running down her front steps. Someone had placed a water hose under her front door and turned it on in the middle of the night. It was not caught for at least 8 hours - time enough to saturate the entire house. She had to replace the entire carpet and no one was ever caught.
If you cannot arrange for family or friends to stay at your home, use neighbors or house-sitting services. Many different industries now offer these services. "I provide home & pet sitting for my clients." Says Donald Piazza, owner of Wow Exceptional Cleaning services, San Jose, Ca." I love animals and I offer these services year round."
Before using a service, however, be sure to ask for references and call them. "Make sure you've done your homework" states O'Banion, "and you will have a safe home to return to."
(Aura Lee O'Banion, owner of Safety First - Your Business Resource, can be reached at (510) 792-3352 or email obwan830@aol.com. Her booklet, Travel Smarts-Business Travel Safety Guide, is available for $6.95 plus S & H. She is available for organizational speaking engagements.)
by Joni Daniels
Ask Human Resources executives about their greatest frustration and you will often hear that, like Rodney Dangerfield, they "get no respect!" Perceived as a "supplier of administrative services" rather than a true internal partner, the human resources professional must focus on immediate informational needs such as compensation, benefits or compliance, rather than on sales and marketing functions that are more likely to be considered the valuable profit centers that dictate the company's future.
These technical issues are not the areas that are going to attract the respect the human resource professional craves and deserves. People assume those tasks will be accomplished, and part of the human resource professional's job is to make sure of that. They speak to departmental concerns, but not to organizational objectives. Ask a company President or CEO why they don't think of HR as a strategic partner and the responses are very telling:
"HR isn't a profit center; it's a financial drain that rarely quantifies its contributions to the bottom line."
"They just want people to be happy; they don't understand an income statement."
"People who can't make it anywhere else end up in the HR Department."
Only when HR has the ear of the CEO and senior staff can it command the respect it seeks. HR can enhance its status and change its image by clearly and consistently aligning HR objectives with organizational strategic goals and objectives.
Here are some proven strategies which, if employed in balance, will result in positioning the HR professional as a valued partner in strategic planning:
Create a Collaborative Environment
Adopt a new role and image as an HR professional -- that of a coach or internal consultant. Get a clear picture about top management's needs by asking the right questions, creating strategies and solving problems.
According to Susan T. Gauff, Vice President, People and Communication of the Sarnoff Corporations, "Look for the sound byte. Make a case by gathering data from magazines, journals, respected publications and the Internet. The goal is to find the number that will ring in people's ears." She suggests that, in order to do that, human resource professionals look at the data behind that number. Ask, "What caused it?" "How do you stop it?" "Why is it low?" (If it is.) Analyze the data. A critical skill that often is lacking is the ability to recognize the trends and use that data to make a business case. Outcomes should indicate cost savings, increase in revenue, or increase in productivity.
Make the Connections
HR professionals need to show the direct connection between their services and the bottom line. They cannot assume that everyone will see how a particular benefit will aid in attracting and retaining employees. Instead, they need to do their homework and show the research, data and evidence that indicates that there is a cause and effect relationship.
Do Your Own Public Relations
Just as sales professionals are applauded when goals are attained, HR professionals need to learn how to "blow their own horn!" Successful programs should be touted in operational meetings by citing results and their associated impact on the bottom line. If a training program resulted in a reduction of complaints or an increase in productivity, illustrate the success through pre- and post-program data. If a new health care option reduces costs, indicate the savings through comparative graphs.
Make Your Work Tangible
Much of the HR professional's work is never seen by the rest of the organization because it is the time spent in preventing problems. Make this time well spent by promoting the tangible evidence of your problem-solving capabilities. For instance, quantify career development discussions and coaching sessions and gather data to directly correlate them to a lower rate of turnover, a higher level of internal promotions or a lower rate of absenteeism.
Develop Partnerships
To ensure successful HR strategies, human resources professionals must create alliances within the organization and develop strong partnerships with their support group. Gain support for your initiatives by introducing their value, and obtain feedback about them from key stakeholders. If, For example, the initiative will potentially help the company avoid or reduce legal ramifications, review the benefits with the corporate attorney and create a united front.
Display Courageous Leadership
Once "at the table," be aware of how you perform! Take great care to advance an insightful, balanced position even in the face of pressure to comply with your management colleagues. To be effective in this role, Joe Toto, Director of Organizational Effectiveness and Development at Hoffman-LaRoche, Inc., recommends that the HR executive must have an informed point of view of both the business imperatives as well as employee advocacy requirements in the organization. "This may not be for the faint of heart or those preoccupied with their career posture," says Toto, "but ironically, I find more and more senior managers value and expect their HR executives to use critical reasoning skills and share an informed point of view with them."
The key to gaining visibility, respect and success is for Human Resource professionals to position themselves as solution-oriented consultants to management. Once the bottom-line impact of HR initiatives is recognized, the HR professional will be considered a management partner.
These strategies will help HR work successfully with top management to create and implement people-related strategies that ensure both company and personal success.
(Joni Daniels, Principal of Daniels & Associates, is a dynamic speaker with over 15 years experience presenting topics related to personal and professional development. She is also an instructor in management topics at the Wharton School's SBDC. She has successfully addressed a wide variety of audiences, has written a variety of articles and serves as a resource for a variety of business publications, and is frequently quoted on management topics. She can be reached at JDanAssoc@aol.com, 215-635-5359, or http://members.aol.com/JDanAssoc/index.html )
by Dan Madison
Are departments in your organization cooperating with each other? Is interdepartmental cooperation (IDC) important to achieve organizational goals? How can you create interdepartmental cooperation if you need it and it doesn't now exist?
There are five levels of IDC. Each level has its own strategy to enhance and ensure IDC.
Level 1
This involves information sharing, listening effectively, and negotiating interests. To create this level of IDC, an organization needs to:
- Have forums to share information, such as regular meetings, joint strategy sessions, informal "chats in the hall," email, and memos.
- Reward information sharing through both formal and informal means.
- Probe for and create disincentives for "information hoarding."
- Practice active listening.
- Be knowledgeable of "win-win" negotiating techniques and practice them.
Level 2
Here is joint problem solving, involving group skills, generating viable options, designing criteria for success, and crafting solutions. To create Level 2 cooperation, an organization needs a template for group problem solving. The popular "Plan, Do, Check, Act" approach is used by many groups successfully. We train teams in a 6-step model that generates decisions and action plans very effectively with a follow-up and debriefing stage so that learning is assured.
Level 3
At this point the organization engages in joint project management. This involves committing shared resources to a common outcome and requires the discipline of project management. Turf issues can come to the surface at this juncture. Initially turf problems can manifest themselves when department managers do not allow their "high" performers to join cross-functional teams. Next, if some star performers make it on the cross-functional teams, managers may choose to pull them from team meetings for departmental projects instead. Lastly, the recommendations from cross-functional teams may negatively impact certain manager's turf, with some managers attempting to derail the team's efforts.
Turf issues are one of the biggest obstacles at Level 3 and a number of approaches can be used to handle the problem.
- Promote commitment by giving managers specific, participative roles in the project.
- Praise managers for giving up scarce resources (key people), reinforcing the message that it is positive behavior.
- Coach managers on being less controlling.
- Paint the big picture of how the project relates to the organization's goals and mission.
Level 4
Here the organization is participating in joint process management. This requires coordinated handoffs, shared responsibility for on-going process performance, and the disciplines of continuous improvement for cross-departmental processes.
To create IDC at this level, a process advocate (some people call this a process owner) needs to be monitoring process performance and feeding this information back to all of those who work in the process. Secondly, the on-going use of continuous process improvement teams comprised of cross-departmental members is vital. Lastly, each department must see itself as both a customer and a supplier. As a customer, the department needs to provide feedback to its suppliers on performance. As a supplier, it needs to constantly look for ways of increasing performance to its customers, both internal and external.
Level 5
At this final stage of IDC is where optimization occurs. We define optimization as company-wide alignment and executive-level decisions about how each department can best contribute to the overall good of the organization.
(Dan Madison is a principal with Value Creation Partners, 41 Silktree Court, Danville, CA 94526. He can be reached at 925-362-8849, or by email dan@valuecreationpartners.com or on the web at: valuecreationpartners.com This article was originally published in "Do More With Less," the quarterly newsletter of Value Creation Partners, and is reprinted here with permission.)
In February, 1995, Kevin Mitnick, the only hacker to ever make the FBI's "10 Most Wanted" list was captured and jailed for allegedly stealing 20,000 credit card numbers. In September this year, some of his friends and supporters broke in to The New York Times' web site and scattered soft porn and nasty commentary throughout. It turned out, according to "Workforce" magazine, that the hackers chose The New York Times because one of its reporters had co-authored a book detailing Mitnick's capture. The same group is reported to have hacked its way in to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Motorola Inc. with similar messages in support of Mitnick.
One study, done by Computer Security Institute in San Francisco and the FBI indicates that nearly two thirds of companies reported unauthorized use of their computer systems during the last year. Malicious hacking appears to be increasing. A different study by Software AG Systems, Inc. in Reston, Virginia indicated that 7 percent of companies experienced a "very serious" computer security problem and another 16 percent reported "worrisome" accesses which were unauthorized.
Many states have laws which govern access to personal employee information which is frequently found in human resource management systems (HRMS). These computer data bases can become vulnerable to hackers if there is a means of accessing the machine they are stored on. Often that means is over the web or by modem connection. Passwords are not always enough protection for the sensitive data contained in these systems.
If you have an automated HRMS, it would be prudent to make sure you have security safeguards in place to prevent unauthorized access to that system from either inside or outside your organization. Often your experts in the information technology group can be of help in such an audit of system security.
If an unauthorized access does occur, it is possible under some state laws that the employer could be held liable for release of private information. Prevention is always preferable to damage control. Check out your systems today, and make any necessary plans to adjust your security provisions in the near future.
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to review a case from Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. involving its policy for male hair length. The case charged sex discrimination because males were required to have shorter hair length than female employees.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit determined that a 1975 case in the Fifth Circuit was still valid. Willingham v. Macon Telegraph Pub. Co., (507 F.2d 1084, 5th Cir. 1975) upheld work rules requiring different permissible lengths of hair for male and female employees. Every appeals court examining the issue since then has reached the same conclusion said the Eleventh Circuit.
The Court even cited action taken by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which has advised its field offices to administratively close all sex discrimination charges dealing with male hair length.
(Harper v. Blockbuster Entertainment Corp., U.S., No. 98-200, review denied 11/16/98)
This year's Supreme Court rulings on sexual harassment have increased complaint activity around the country. They have made investigation of sexual harassment complaints even more important than they were in the past.
Yet, many HR Professionals have never investigated a sexual harassment complaint and haven't the slightest idea what to be looking for or what tests to apply in determining if a complaint actually constitutes illegal discrimination. For those of you who might be wondering how to determine if you are faced with illegal discrimination rather than something else, we offer the following guidelines.
Identify whether or not you have a "prima facie" case from the complaint. Six factors must be considered to constitute a "prima facie" case. "Prima facie" means "on the surface," roughly translated. Is there reason to investigate the complaint? Not if the complaint fails to pass the test for "surface illegality."
First, the employee must be a member of a protected group by virtue of his or her sex. Since the Supreme Court has now said that same-sex harassment is illegal, this first factor is nearly a moot point.
Second, the employee must have been subjected to unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors or other verbal, physical or visual conduct of a sexual nature. If the conduct was merely distasteful, but not sexual, you may not be faced with a case of sexual harassment.
Third, submission to sexual advances was made a term or condition of employment ... or ... the behavior at issue had the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with the employee's work performance ... or ... creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment. Somehow, you will have to measure the offensiveness of the behavior against what a reasonable person in similar circumstances would have found offensive. That, after all, is the yardstick a jury will use if your case ever goes that far. Behavior that violates your organization's policy may not rise to the level of being illegal.
Fourth, determine if the alleged harassment was generated by a coworker or non-employee. If so, you will need to find out if managers in the organization knew or should have known of the behavior. If so, did they fail to take prompt and appropriate remedial action? In some states, such as California, it is not enough to attempt to solve the problem by taking action. It is necessary to assure the problem is solved by monitoring effectiveness of the action taken.
Fifth, if managers were involved in the alleged harassment, are they able to express a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for the events? You may discover that the events didn't actually happen or that they were isolated or genuinely trivial.
Sixth, determine if the managers' explanation is pretext for harassment.
All in all, discrimination complaint investigation is not as easily done these days as it once may have been. People are more clever about how they create these situations. Sexual harassers often pick times to make their sexual advances when there are no other people to act as witnesses. You will have to search long and hard some times to find evidence which supports one side or the other.
Finally, don't forget to look for history of such behavior on the part of the alleged harasser. Such information is especially helpful in judging credibility after you have gathered all the information you can. If an accused harasser has a history of such behavior, you can use that background in weighing their input during the current complaint.
Remember that a complaint does not constitute illegal discrimination by itself. An investigation is the only way to determine if the complaint is legitimate and if it rises to the level of illegality. If behavior in your case doesn't seem to be illegal, you may still be faced with behavior that violates your policies. It is sometimes appropriate to discipline people because of policy violations even when there doesn't appear to be any illegality in the behavior.
As an HR Professional responsible for handling such complaints you should always be consulting with your legal advisors as you proceed. Fewer attorneys are actually conducting discrimination complaint investigations for their clients these days because of the legal complications which can be created by doing so. They are still valuable counselors and should be used by HR Professionals when investigating complaints, however. Be sure to review your interviews and document discoveries with your attorney to determine if additional probing is necessary. Let your attorney guide you through that process. It will make things easier on you and you will have an investigation which will stand up to future criticism.
When you need help developing your affirmative action program, give us a call. We specialize in AAP development, implementation training and compliance review support for clients all over the country. You wouldn't go to an IRS audit alone. Why think about going into a Department of Labor compliance review without professional support? The stakes are just as high either way.
We are ready to give you the support you need. And while you're at it, think about ordering a copy of our reference and training book on preparing affirmative action plans and managing compliance reviews. You will find it an invaluable resource at a price that just can't be beat.
"Secrets of Affirmative Action Compliance," new 3rd edition, contains 500 pages of regulation requirements and practical suggestions for your organization. Includes new Federal Regulations. $99.95 plus $7. shipping/handling and CA sales tax for CA destinations. Credit Card Orders ... Call Toll Free:
1-888-671-0404
We can help with your other human resource management needs as well. Think of the next time you need:
- Employee Handbooks
- Discrimination Complaint Investigations
- Management Training in Compliance Issues
- Affirmative Action Plan Development
- Affirmative Action Statistical Analysis
- Disparate Impact Testing for New Hires, Promotions, Transfers, Terminations
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