Out-of-Pocket Health Care Expenses Rising
As health care costs continue to rise, employers are boosting deductibles and other out-of-pocket payments made by employees, according to a recent survey.
The PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 694 employers found that 20 percent of respondents this year imposed an in-network deductible of $400 to $999, up from 17 percent last year, while 11 percent imposed a deductible of at least $1,000, up from 8 percent. At the same time, 14 percent of employers this year required employees to pay at least 34 percent of the premium for dependent coverage, up from 10 percent of employers last year.
Those increases came as respondents reported that group health care plan costs rose an average of 6.1 percent this year, a slightly lower increase than the 6.4 percent rise last year. Boosting employee cost-sharing is a delicate balancing act, noted Michael Thompson, a PwC principal in New York.
On one hand, employees can become more careful consumers of health care services as more costs are shifted to them. On the other hand, health plan enrollees might delay getting needed medical services if their share is boosted too much, he noted.
The survey also found that while less than 40 percent of employees enroll in employer-provided wellness programs, participation rises when employers offer incentives such as cash or gift cards. For example, when employers gave employees some type of financial incentive for employees to complete a health risk questionnaire, about 45 percent did so. By contrast, only about 30 percent of employees underwent the assessment among employers that did not provide such incentives. (Workforce Management, 5/28/09)
SHRM, Democrats Tangle over Paid-Sick-Days Bill
After the first hearing in its legislative history, it's unclear whether a bill that would require companies to offer paid sick days will take a path toward reconciliation or strife between business and advocacy groups. But at a recent meeting of a House Education and Labor subcommittee, the Healthy Families Act created tension between the panel's Democratic chairwoman and an official of the Society for Human Resource Management.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-California, said the bill, which would allow employees to accrue up to seven paid sick days each year, would provide economic security for workers who cannot take time off for themselves or loved ones during an illness because they are afraid of losing their jobs.
Woolsey asserted that only 8 percent of workers have paid family and medical leave. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut and author of the bill, said that almost half of private-sector workers lack paid sick days.
SHRM chief operating officer China Miner Gorman warned that the bill would foist new requirements on employers that could turn out to be as difficult and costly to administrate as the Family and Medical Leave Act–whose 200 pages of regulations she held up at the hearing.During the questioning of witnesses, Woolsey turned to Gorman first. Woolsey noted that she was once an HR professional at a technology company in the 1970s that provided paid leave while growing from 12 to 800 workers.
"We would have bent over backwards if one of our employees had a family matter," Woolsey said. She implied that too many companies today don't offer the same support.
"What do you think HR people are all about?" Woolsey asked Gorman, after twice calling SHRM "shoorum," and declaring "that doesn't say anything to me" after Gorman gave her the proper pronunciation. Gorman responded, "HR people are all about having an active and productive workforce. Our members are very clear that providing paid time off... is an important part of an employee's total compensation."
More than 81 percent of SHRM members who responded to a recent survey said that their company provides paid sick time, while 42 percent offered paid time off that could be used for sickness, vacations and personal matters, according to Gorman.
During her testimony, Gorman introduced SHRM's principles for developing workplace flexibility law, which include encouraging employers to offer paid time off in exchange for protection from federal, state and local leave requirements. "Congress should build on the progress that is already being made by offering incentives for employers to do more-not risk the unintended consequences of another government mandate," Gorman said. (Workforce Week, 6/11/09)
Time Change Increases Accidents
When the nation moves its clocks ahead by one hour for daylight-saving time in March, the impact on workers is much greater than just being groggy from losing sleep -- it can cause a significant increase in workplace accidents, according to two researchers at Michigan State University.
Using 24 years of data from the U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration, psychology doctoral students Christopher Barnes and David Wagner found that workplace accidents spike on the Monday after daylight-saving time changes in the spring.
When compared to every other day of the year, the first workday after daylight-saving time resulted in 40 minutes less sleep for American workers, leading to a 5.7 percent increase in workplace injuries and nearly 68 percent more work days lost to injuries, the study says. The data found no ill effects of daylight-saving time in November, when Americans move their clocks back an hour, and typically gain about an hour of sleep.
"Employees who are sleep deprived in the workplace think they can just tough it out and it won't affect them," says Barnes. "It's like a drunk driver who doesn't really realize they've had one too many." The research is slated to appear in the September issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, says Barnes.
Employers should also keep in mind that sleep deprivation can affect company drivers, causing road accidents, according to two studies. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cited sleep deprivation as the most likely cause of a 17-percent increase in accidents on the Monday following daylight-saving time, while the Canadian Ministry of Transport reported an 8-percent increase in the risk of accidents.
HR leaders should consider communicating to all employees about the increased risks in an attempt to avoid accidents, Barnes says. He also recommends that managers move especially dangerous tasks to another day.
Another idea from Barnes -- probably not a company's first option, however -- is for managers to stagger the start time for workers, he says. For example, a business could have employees come to work 45 minutes later than normal on the Monday after moving the clocks forward, then a half hour later the following day, 15 minutes later the next day and be back to normal by Thursday. (hreonline.com, 6/11/09)
Gender Discrimination Begins MuchEarlier Than Exec Levels
Despite discussion regarding women hitting the glass ceiling once they reach the executive level, discrimination starts much earlier in their career, according to a recent paper by Development Dimensions International.
"Holding Women Back," which is based on responses from 12,800 leaders in 76 countries, found that women face gender discrimination from the very beginning of their careers. "Our data suggests that when you look at the things that would help people develop in their careers, women wouldn't get the same opportunities as men did," said Ann Howard, DDI's chief scientist.
One of the main areas where employers fail to include women is in their high-potential programs, where they identify those employees who managers believe could make strong leaders someday. According to the study, there were 28 percent more men than women in high-potential programs at the first level of management and 50 percent more men than women in such programs at the executive level. The problem with many companies' high-potential programs is that there is often no standard procedure to identify candidates, Howard said. Usually it's up to the managers to choose candidates, she added.
"I'm not saying that there is some evil plot here," Howard said. "It's just that managers might think about future executives as men because that is the traditional norm at the company."
Many companies don't track how many women participate in high-potential programs, which also adds to this problem, said Jan Combopiano, vice president and chief knowledge officer at Catalyst, a New York-based organization dedicated to helping businesses build inclusive workplaces for women. "It's really important that there is accountability tied to these programs," Combopiano said. "It's critical for overcoming gender stereotyping."
Another way to make sure that women have the same opportunities as men to advance their careers is by having a formal succession planning program in place, Howard said. "It sets the same objective standards for everyone," she said.
Companies need to pay attention to all leadership development programs and make sure gender stereotypes donít get in the way of advancing women, Howard said.
"Employers need to have objective performance management standards in place," she said. Too often a company will say that there aren't women in management roles because they took time off to have babies, but that often doesn't explain the issue, Howard said. "The bottom line is that women are just as capable as men and if you have objective standards in place, women can show their stuff," she said. (Workforce Week Management, 5/19/2009)
8 Cool Ways to Engage Your Hiring Managers and Hire More "A-Level" Talent
1. Throw away the job description. We all know that lists of skills, duties, responsibilities, academics, required experience, and industry background are useless for attracting, screening, or selecting top performers. Hiring managers know this, too. So the next time you take a search assignment, ask the hiring manager what the person needs to do to ace the performance review. Then ask what the best people do differently than the average people in the department. Then ask why a top person would want this job. Then ask the manager if she'd see someone who could do all of this work successfully, even if the person didn't have all of the skills and experiences listed on the job description.
2. Don't take the assignment until you know the job. Since you've thrown away the job description, you can't leave the room until you have a complete understanding of what the person taking the job must do to be successful. To do this, take every item on the traditional job description and ask the manager what the person must do with it to prove superior competency. For example, if the manager says the person must have three to five years of industry experience, ask what will the person do with this on the job. This is how you convert job descriptions into performance profiles.
3. Train your managers to focus on performance early in the interview. In addition to the resume, ask candidates to separately summarize two different accomplishments related to the job – one team-based and one as an individual contributor. Then ask the manager to review these during the first 30 minutes of the interview. By having the hiring manager focus on the candidate's most comparable job-related accomplishments early-on, the interview is more focused, and emotional biases are minimized.
4. Go out of your way to minimize the impact of first impressions. More mistakes are made in the first 30 minutes of the interview than any other time due to the impact of first impressions. The tactic described in the point above, about focusing on performance early on, offsets this to a great degree. For one thing, the candidate is more confident since she has prepared the write-up. In addition, you should desensitize the manager ahead of time if you perceive a potential first-impression problem. Having the manager conduct a phone screen before the personal meeting can also be extremely helpful. You might to suggest that the manager measure the "first impression" at the end of the interview when he or she is more objective.
5. Prep your candidate. The idea behind this is to minimize candidate nervousness, allow them to ask job- and performance-related questions, and to recognize that there is a formulaic way to answer questions that will overcome the typical weak assessment skills of hiring managers. A formal prep is one of the best ways to minimize the impact of hiring managers who aren't well trained.
6. Out-fact your manager. The one-question fact-finding interviewing process was developed to give recruiters enough information to disprove false conclusions. The idea behind this question is to ask the candidate to describe a few significant job-related accomplishments in great detail. The fact-finding process involves getting details, dates, metrics, org charts, and examples of going the extra mile. If you do this for two to three different accomplishments, you'll have enough information to challenge any false assertion. From a recruiter's perspective, accurate information is the only defense for conclusions based on intuition, biased first impressions, or narrow assessments.
7. Don't let managers conduct the first interview alone. Unless it's structured, pre-planned and focused, the initial one-on-one interview can quickly become an irrelevant or personality-based discussion. Making matters worse, if the candidate makes a positive first impression, the interviewer asks easier questions, and if the candidate falls short on the first impression hurdle, the interviewer asks tougher questions. For every new client, ask to lead the first round of interviews to avoid these problems. A well-run panel interview also avoids these pitfalls, since small talk is minimized and structure is ensured. A good lead interviewer can also watch out for - and reduce - temporary candidate nervousness by quickly intervening.
8. Use a multi-factor assessment. Practically speaking, untrained interviewers are unlikely to glean much insight into the candidate's ability to do the real work required for job success. While technical competency is part of this, it doesn't represent a complete assessment. For proof, consider the fact that when new employees underperform, it's typically not due to technical weakness; rather, it's because of weak team skills, lack of motivation to do the work, or a problem with the hiring manager's style. To address this, broaden the selection criteria and ask each interviewer to focus on a subset of these factors. A formal debriefing is part of this type of evidence-based assessment process.
Consider this: if you send in one less candidate per search using some of the techniques above, you'll increase your productivity by 20-30%! If you use them all, you'll double your placement rate and be the most sought-after recruiter on your planet. (ERE.net, 5/29/09)
Enterprise's Recruiting Model Transforms Interns Into Managers
Enterprise Rent-A-Car will employ 1,800 interns this summer, most of them rising juniors and seniors. By the time the interns head back to school in September, most of the rising seniors will have received a formal job offer from the company, and by the end of the fall semester, most will have accepted it.
With 2008 revenue of $10.1 billion and 66,000 employees, Enterprise is the largest car rental company in North America and one of the top employers for interns and new college graduates. The company hires 8,000 graduates a year to fill its management talent pipeline.
Like most employers, Enterprise prefers candidates who have work-related experience. Its recruiters forgo rigid hiring criteria in favor of a broad approach that selects students with well-rounded work experience, leadership abilities and good customer-relations skills.
Employers consistently rank internships as one of their most effective recruiting tools. A 2009 survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that 76.3 percent of employers prefer graduates with relevant work experience. For college students, that experience is often gained through an internship or cooperative assignment.
An additional 18.9 percent of employers report that they prefer to hire graduates with any type of work experience, relevant or not.
As labor markets continue to soften, students who have worked in internship or cooperative programs will have a decisive edge in finding jobs. Employers can expect to see a surge in their internship applications over the 2009-2010 academic year, but that fertile field for recruiting will pay off only if the right programs are in place for training interns and converting them into full-time employees. (Workforce Recruiting, 5/28/09)
Employers Furlough Without Weighing Legal Risks
Employers are implementing furloughs without due consideration of all the legal risks, Robert Duston, an attorney with Saul Ewing in Washington, D.C., told SHRM Online. These legal risks run the gamut from wage and hour issues, possible unlawful discrimination, Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requirements and possible labor relations challenges to benefits issues.
Mandatory furloughs rose sharply in the first quarter of 2009, according to a Watson Wyatt survey, which found that 17 percent of surveyed companies had instituted mandatory furloughs. Furloughs can help companies avoid layoffs, and "there is a recognition that employers will need to be poised for a turnaround," stated Laura Sejen, global director of strategic rewards consulting at Watson Wyatt. "Some cost-cutting measures such as reductions in force can put them at a disadvantage once the economy improves."
But the cost savings of furloughs could be undone by legal costs if compliance risks aren't considered up front. Duston said that furloughs are "a ripe area for class-action" lawsuits under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) because many employers are not thinking about wage and hour issues before instituting furloughs. "In such suits, it does not matter that the recovery for any one employee is small—the money is in the class certification, double damages and attorneys' fees," he noted.
The greatest danger of a wage and hour class or collective action arising from a furlough "is probably the claim that the employer has negated the exempt status of its salaried workers by making improper deductions based on either partial-week furloughs or else suffering or permitting exempt workers to engage in productive activity such as sending and receiving work-related e-mails during a full-week furlough and not paying the salary," according to Paul DeCamp, an attorney in the Washington, D.C., area office of Jackson Lewis and a former administrator of the U.S. Department of Laborís (DOL) Wage and Hour Division, the chief office responsible for interpreting and enforcing the FLSA. (SHRM's HR Week, 5/15/09)
- Out-of Pocket Health Care Expenses Rising
- SHRM, Democrats Tangle over Paid-Sick-Days Bill
- Time Change Increases Accidents
- Gender Discrimination Begins Much Earlier Than Exec Levels
- 8 Ways to Engage Your Hiring Managers and Hire More "A-Level"
- Enterprise's Recruiting Model Transforms Interns into Managers
- Employers Furlough Without Weighing Legal Risks