January – 2011

Workplace Privacy Wars: A Different Ruling on Use of Employer E-Mail

by Brent A. Cossrow on Jan 31, 2011, 1:37 PM | 1 comment

Attorney Brent Cossrow of the Philadelphia office of the law firm Fisher & Phillips.

By Brent A. Cossrow

In a widely discussed decision issued last year, Stengart v. Loving Care Agency, the New Jersey Supreme Court held that an employee had a reasonable expectation of privacy in her e-mail communications exchanged with her personal attorney through her web-based, password-protected, Yahoo! e-mail account using her employer’s computer.

Recently, in Holmes v. Petrovich Development Co., LLC, a California appellate court ruled that e-mails sent by an employee to her attorney from a company computer were not privileged. According to the appellate court’s opinion, plaintiff Gina Holmes started working for Petrovich Development Company in June 2004. Holmes later told her supervisor, Paul Petrovich, that she was pregnant.

Holmes’ subsequent communications with Petrovich regarding her pregnancy left her feeling as though her position was in jeopardy. Petrovich shared his communications with Holmes with his colleagues, and when Holmes learned this she felt as though her rights were violated. Read more…

HR Basics, Talent Management

The Top 50 Problems With Performance Appraisals

by Dr. John Sullivan on Jan 31, 2011, 11:27 AM | 4 Comments

“(Some) 90 percent of performance appraisal processes are inadequate.” – Salary.com survey

In conversations with HR leaders and employees, the talent management process that suffers from the most disdain around the world is the performance appraisal. It’s one of the few processes that even the owners of the process dread.

If everyone hates it, but it still gets done nearly everywhere, you might assume some asinine government regulation requires it, but in this case there is no such regulation. The only legal justification pertains to showing just cause for termination and other disciplinary action.

While that is the justification used, no matter how strong their design, most performance appraisals are executed so poorly that they may actually harm a legal case. (A major labor law firm found that among a random sample of performance appraisals conducted in a retail environment, a majority would damage the employer’s case versus support it.) Read more…

Talent Management

The Link Between High Performance and Employee Engagement

by Bob Kelleher on Jan 31, 2011, 9:57 AM | 1 comment

Employee engagement and profit can seem like difficult metrics to square.

One is “soft,” having to do with people and their investment in their jobs and their company, and the other is “hard:” numbers. No executive team is going to sign off on a plan to increase employee engagement without some assurance that the Holy Grail – discretionary effort, with its corollary increase in productivity, and ultimately in profit – is a likely result.

To state the case plainly: engagement leads to profit and profit, wisely publicized and distributed, leads to engagement.

People want to work for a winner. And in correlating engagement and performance, it should hardly come as a surprise that the employees who go above and beyond – who invest that discretionary effort – are among the most engaged. Read more…

HR Management, Talent Management

A New Way to Engage: Are You Ready for an Organizational Pit Stop?

by Ron Thomas on Jan 31, 2011, 8:05 AM | 1 comment

While sitting through a presentation by the Medici Group last Friday, one of the slides caught my eye.

Franz Johanssen, an international management consultant whose workshop helps companies innovate through the “intersection of ideas, concepts and culture,” gave a stunning presentation.

As we often do, sitting though presentations, there are times that our mind just wanders. We sometimes have so many other thoughts pushing through our space that we are there and at the same time we are not there.

The slide was the photo of a pit stop. I must confess that I am not a fan of car racing by any stretch of the imagination, but this slide really got me to thinking. Read more…

HR News & Trends

Weekly Wrap: Why CEOs Don’t Get Fired, Florida Worker Shortage, Being a Good Boss

by John Hollon on Jan 28, 2011, 11:30 AM | 1 comment

Here’s a question I wish I had asked: Why aren’t more CEOs fired?

Regular readers of this blog (and of that other popular blog I used to write over at Workforce) know that I often rant and vent about what I call “our 21st Century Divine Right of Kings,” or why unemployed CEOs seem to never have trouble finding a new job.

As I’ve noted before, there’s no unemployment crisis if you happen to be an unemployed CEO because there is a revolving door when it comes to CEOs. The reason? Well, there is this overblown notion in this country that CEO skills are something handed down from God and are incredibly rare and hard to find.

That’s complete and total nonsense of course, and one only need look at the track record of all-too-may recycled CEOs (like the guy who ran Circuit City into the ground, or much of Bob Nardelli’s tenure at Home Depot and Chrysler), to know it.

The question of why more CEOs aren’t fired, however, popped up this week in Philadelphia Inquirer columnist’s Mike Armstrong’s Philly Inc. blog when he referenced a paper by Luke Taylor, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, on this topic. Read more…

HR Insights, HR Management

How Well Do You Know Your People? Here are 7 Things You SHOULD Know

by Linda A. Hill on Jan 28, 2011, 10:05 AM | 1 comment

By Linda Hill and Kent Lineback

How well do you know your people?

If you don’t know your people, you cannot make intelligent decisions about assignments for them, and you cannot capture their commitment or decide how much to trust and delegate to them.

Nor can you fairly assess and weigh their interests as you make difficult choices that involve them. Use the following questions as rough guides to assess what you know or need to find out.

What is this person’s generation and what does that say about her approach to life and work? Knowing her generation — pre boomer, boomer, Gen X, Gen Y/Millennial — can provide clues about her attitudes toward life and work. Try to understand how her generation differs from yours. The Web makes this information easy to find.

When It Comes to Workplace Incentives, Just Show Me The Money

by Lance Haun on Jan 28, 2011, 8:05 AM | 36 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to the HR Happy Hour Internet radio show and the subject drew my attention. It was about rewards, motivation and incentives and how they best operated in the workplace.

Paul Hebert and Trish McFarlane were co-hosting the show and I thought I would call in about the question I always have about incentive programs: Why don’t we just use cash as the incentive of choice?

The problem I always have with incentive programs is that the incentive is always some sort of hat with a company logo, an iPod, a gift card, a trip or some other non-cash reward. Those are all great as long as I want any of those things (and I generally don’t unless the trip is all expenses paid to Mexico with my wife). But what if I don’t want any of those things?

What Discrimination Looks Like in 2011: It’s Older and Unemployed

by John Hollon on Jan 27, 2011, 11:30 AM | 8 Comments

Anyone who has been in the hiring game, or even just an active member of America’s workforce for more than a few years, knows this in their heart: job discrimination comes in all forms.

The newest form is particularly insidious because it not only comes at a time when our country (and a good chunk of the world) is slowly working to recover from the worst economic downturn in 75 years, but because it also targets some of the most vulnerable and fragile members of our society.

Yes, I’m talking about the ongoing discrimination against the older, struggling-to-find-a-job, long-term unemployed. Read more…

HR News & Trends

Goodbye Color-Coded Threat System, Hello Better Communication?

by Lance Haun on Jan 27, 2011, 9:53 AM | 1 comment

Color me not-so-surprised that the current terror alert system is going away.

As CNN reported yesterday, the color-coded terror alert system that has been around since the days after 9/11 is going to be no more:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is expected to announce Thursday that the almost 9-year-old threat alert system will go away in April. It will be replaced by the new National Terror Advisory System that will focus on specific threats in geographical areas, a department source said Wednesday.

The source did not provide details of the new system, which Napolitano will unveil at what the department is calling “the first annual ‘State of America’s Homeland Security’ address” at George Washington University.

This is one small step forward for threat communication and a major lesson for employers everywhere.

Workplace Privacy Wars: A Different Ruling on Use of Employer E-Mail

The Top 50 Problems With Performance Appraisals

The Link Between High Performance and Employee Engagement

A New Way to Engage: Are You Ready for an Organizational Pit Stop?

Weekly Wrap: Why CEOs Don’t Get Fired, Florida Worker Shortage, Being a Good Boss

How Well Do You Know Your People? Here are 7 Things You SHOULD Know

When It Comes to Workplace Incentives, Just Show Me The Money

What Discrimination Looks Like in 2011: It’s Older and Unemployed

Goodbye Color-Coded Threat System, Hello Better Communication?

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