Obama and McCain Health Care - Getting to What's Real...

I'm the first one to admit that I'm not sure what the best solution is for the cost of health care in America.  As someone who sees what health care costs, on a monthly basis, within a company, it's a scary business proposition, and one I would gladly hand over to the right entity.

But government socializing the program?  I have a hard time getting my head around that.  The biggest issue is the economics of the situation, and of course, big government's track record in managing big programs with similar scope and the resulting tax burden when things don't work out.

I've got the prospect of universal health care on my mind based on recent articles in Workforce and a blog posting over at The Human Capitalist.  The Workforce article deals with employers banding together to make sure they aren't taxed to death to fund a chronically underfunded Massachusetts universal health care law, and the Human Capitalist talks about finding a 2.5% tax in a San Francisco restaurant to help pay for the city's universal health care law.

Here's a simple thought when you hear proposals from the candidates regarding health care.  You deserve to know what the cost per participant is for the plans they are touting. 

Here’s why that's important - health care reform at the presidential candidate level sounds great, but until someone gives me some fiscal facts for what the planned Cost Per Participant under each plan is, it’s all pretty much theory to me. As someone who signs self-insured invoices and sees the costs rolling in, I’m aware that it’s easy to underestimate what health care is going to cost.

I know the candidates offer a mixture of private and public solutions. Doesn’t matter to me - I want to see the cost model… Starting with cost per covered individual.  Once you have that, you can have a meaningful conversation about how it's going to be paid for.  Then, it would be nice for all to make some projections if that's going to mean tax increases at the individual level, corporate level, or stealth taxes like the SF restaurant tax.

I learned about how variable cost per covered individual can be by managing a self-insured plan and reading Joe Paduda. From a post I continue to go back to on Joe’s Managed Care Matters from 2007 regarding CT’s single payer plan:

Politicians were shocked by the estimated total cost, which ranged from $12 billion to $18 billion.

I’m shocked that they were shocked.

My home state has just over 3 million citizens. At $4000 per person, that’s $12 billion; at $6000 per person, it’s $18 billion. I don’t know what’s more troubling - for politicians to not know that health care costs between $4000 and $6000 per person, or that we have about 3 million folks living here.

And it wasn’t just the pols; “”Even we were quite shocked [by] the enormity of the cost. … A lot of people are just scratching their heads and saying, `Wow!,’” said Eric George, associate counsel of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, the state’s largest business lobby.(Hartford Courant, 4/10/07).

If you going to insure everyone in America, the cost is going to be at least the $6,000 per covered individual, or more.  That's because you are picking up lots of folks who can't work, are elderly, etc. into the cost/risk mix of your plan.

More recently, San Francisco’s efforts to create a program for the city’s uninsured estimated the cost per covered individual at $2,800. Not enough… Even with the restaurant tax, they are chronically underfunded and there will likely be more taxes to follow.

So, I like the debate, but would love to see what the camps assume their proposals would spend per covered individual. That would allow for a better analysis of each plan at a very basic and real level, including who pays for it - Corporations, small businesses or you...

Regardless of your political drift, you deserve that level of transparency.

You Just Fired Jimmy. What Should You Say?

Jimmy was a nice guy, but Jimmy didn't get it done.  You talked to Jimmy, you coached him, made him aware of the issues, but Jimmy didn't improve.  Jimmy also didn't leave under his own accord, so you ended up doing formal warnings to Jimmy to try and shake him into making meaningful change. 

Ugh...

It ended today.  You had to fire Jimmy for performance reasons.

Jimmy knew it was coming, and was really nice about the whole thing.  He asked you for a positive reference.  Not sure what you could actually provide, you told him you would do everything you could in that regard based on the circumstances. 

Now, Jimmy's gone, and you start to think what you are going to tell the world about Jimmy once you open the door.  Some may ask you, some may not. 

What do you say about Jimmy?

Note that I'm not talking about your legal obligations, I'm talking about your HUMAN obligations.  The rest of your team, that used to include Jimmy, wants to know you're the leader.  Those on the next ring out of the organization are wondering where Jimmy is, and/or who's going to do Jimmy's work.  What about those further removed?  Do you owe them anything?

Thoughts?  Here are some of mine, because to say that everyone only gets mimimal information isn't leadership:

1.  The Team - Your team, that once included Jimmy, needs more than the "Jimmy has separated from the company" mantra.  Most of them already know the deal, and may have been wondering why it took so long.  Giving them the minimal response of "Jimmy's no longer with the company" erodes trust and makes them feel like you're insincere.  Give them more, be honest without putting yourself in peril.  Talk to your HR pro, or if you are the HR pro, talk to your General Counsel/employment law person about how to be real without exposing yourself to unnecessary legal risk.  It's possible to get both done....

2.  The Customers - Whether the customers are internal or external, they don't need to know why Jimmy's gone.  They just need to know that Jimmy's no longer with Dunder Mifflin and how they'll be served moving forward.  If you're slick enough with the phones and email, you can communicate those messages on an "as needed" basis without having to do a blast email that makes your team look like it's falling apart.

3.  The Company/The Rest of the World - Thinking about sending that unit/division/company-wide email saying Jimmy's no longer with the company?  Don't, because no one really cares and it makes your team look like the wheels are falling off, even though you're being proactive by removing Jimmy.

The bottom line - find a way to take care of the direct team with as much truth as your company will let you get away with, and treat Jimmy with respect while you do that.  Take care of internal and external customers, but don't send out the blast email saying "Jimmy has separated from Dunder Mifflin".

Half of the people reading that won't know what "separated" means (did Jimmy get divorced?  Who got the kids?).  The other half will think that means you fired Jimmy, and they'll email the first half to clue them in.  So, the cutesy email approach actually hurts more than it helps.... 

Work Less - And Save Our Country...Really?

OK, I'm a little late with this one from the April Issue of Fast Company.  Good thing for me that like a fine wine, the story keeps getting better as long as gas prices continue to climb...

The big idea?  David Roberts opines in his "All In A Day's Work" column that Americans should work less as a means to save energy, and at the end of the day, be almost as productive, once you factor in waste.

"The United States leads the world in two categories: work and waste. American employees put in more hours and take fewer vacations than just about anyone else in the industrialized world, and our individual ecological "footprints" are much larger.

Coincidence? I think not. The way we work drives our habits of consumption and waste. The more we work, the more we drive, the more energy we burn, the more styrofoam to-go containers we use. At the end of the day, we're so tired, we devour more takeout and TV, often falling asleep in front of the latter. If we want to accelerate the recent trend of reducing waste, it may be time to consider the radical step of, well, relaxing more, consuming less, and living fuller lives. May the Wall Street Journal editorial board strike me down.

Working less is a radical notion today, but it hasn't always been. Between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, work hours declined steadily in the industrialized world. In 1956, then-vice president Richard Nixon said that a four-day workweek was "not too far distant." But men today report working 100 more hours a year than in 1976. For women, it's 200-plus hours. All these extra hours have helped more than double the productivity of the American worker in the past half-century -- but they have also increased our energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions."

I don't want to go off on a rant here, but isn't doubling productivity while figuring out an acceptable work/life balance the American way?  Politics aside, I don't want to be France (which is mentioned as a beacon in the article).  I want the backbone of America to be the guy/gal who immigrates here and outworks/outsmarts everyone else, and gives his/her family more than they could have every imagined - based on their effort and performance.

We've got lots of room to improve, in terms of figuring out the consumption of energy in our country, and sure, we've become addicted to oil.  But a call for the country to work less?  As you might expect from a site with "capitalist" in the title, I'm not having it.  Let's let people compete and see what happens.  Let's become more green, but let's reward it via the marketplace.

If folks like David trade in their broadband, cable, Ipods and Apple notebooks, I'll start paying attention to the calls to work less.  I want to have work/life balance, and I want you to have one too - including the choice to work part-time or not at all.  But all the toys and tools of the American lifestyle - they run on energy.   Until you put all the toys down, the argument to work and consume less is hollow...

And rather than push for everyone to work less, I'd rather put dramatic rewards in place culturally for those who help us figure out where the new energy sources will come from, and bring them to market. 

And make them rich for doing it.   Big risk, big return.  It's been a staple of America for two centuries, along with choice and free will.  Not the call to do less...    

The Hidden Career Killer for HR Pros - The EFCA...

My new column up at Workforce is different.  Read it here...

Instead of wondering if the PHR/SPHR is worth your time or why your employees post their résumés in broad daylight, this time I’m wondering if you’ll have a job in 2010.

Did that get your attention? Because in the new column at Workforce, I’m focusing on a stealth piece of legislation that would cripple the competitiveness of American business, limit the rights of employees and eliminate the need for independent-thinking HR pros, all in one easy-to-sign law.

I’m talking about the Employee Free Choice Act .

The worst thing about the Employee Free Choice Act isn’t its effect on us as HR professionals. It's how stunningly anti-employee the act is. Ability for employees to keep their feelings about unionization private? Gone. Ability for employees to listen and carefully contemplate both sides of an argument regarding representation? Gone.

Ability for an employee to vote in an election via the democratic process we all take for granted? Priceless ... but gone if the Employee Free Choice Act is passed and signed into law.

Read the whole article at Workforce.  Educate your teams about what's at stake.  Hard to believe SHRM, who's pretty good at governmental affairs, hasn't organized marches on Capitol Hill over the EFCA. 

Social Networking Sponsored By Your Company - It'll Take Microsoft to Make It Happen....

You know, I'm starting to think this Internet thing is just a fad.  After all, if all my friends can't check in via Facebook from work, what's the point?   It's a Social Networking caste system, baby!  Of course, if you want to check Facebook from work, you could always leave BIG Inc. for a startup.  But then there's the deal about competitive pay and health care.  Details, details....

Fortunately, for you Facebook lovers, Microsoft looks to be moving aggressively to create a Facebook for the corporation.  And if there is anyone that could tear down the social networking wall in a company, it is the big softie from Redmond...

ComputerWorld checked in recently on Microsoft developing a Facebook-like application for your company:

"At the request of its SharePoint and Office product development teams, Microsoft Corp.'s Office Labs operation has created and is testing a prototype of an internal social network that can provide employees with feeds and updates about their colleagues.

Chris Pratley, general manager of Office Labs, is slated to disclose details of the prototype -- called TownSquare -- Thursday at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. He spoke to Computerworld today about the project, which was launched in January and has already been used by about 8,000 Microsoft employees.

With a layout that is strikingly similar to Facebook's (in which Microsoft invested $240 million in October 2007), TownSquare is fueled by enterprise news feeds that use Web services to query SharePoint for public information, such as promotions and company anniversaries, about an employee.

TownSquare also notifies users when a document or file is modified. Users can customize their feeds and monitor who is receiving information about them."

Couple of big points to me in this.  First up, Microsoft runs the IT show in most companies.  Why do you think they invested in Facebook?  Access to that technology/culture/thought train will do wonders for their efforts to embed better RSS/social networking tools in Sharepoint, other networking elements, Outlook, etc.

And once those elements are there, you are just a tweak or two away from interfacing with the outside world through those elements.

Be enthused or be alarmed as a HR Pro.  Depends on your perspective....

5 Ways Managers Can Make HR Love Them....

If you're a manager and have to deal with HR, is it important to you that HR respects/loves you?  Probably not.  After all, you are a manager in charge of operations, and HR is there to support you.  Not the other way around..

If that's how you feel, I agree with you.  We're here to support you.  Still, we have opinions about the characteristics that make a strong, employee-centric, HR-friendly manager.   You know, the reasons, if we weren't restricted by law and discomfort, that would make us hug it out...

I guess every HR Manager/Director/VP has a different list about what makes them love their most effective managers.  Here are my top 5 characteristics that make me DIG you as a manager:

5.  You clearly communicate expectations - Your employees understand their objectives, and they also understand performance you consider to be not meeting, meeting and exceeding your expectations in each micro area.  Not a lot of suprises in your group when it comes to perfomrance management.  Nice...

4.  Talent is important to you, but you are a realist - You want the best talent, but you seem to have a knack regarding what type of talent you can get for your open slot.  With that in mind, you'll hold out for a better candidate, but you know when to cut to the chase and close the deal. 

3.  You have a sense of urgency in Employee Relations issues - You know if you let employee relations issues fester in your group, it's only going to get worse.  With that in mind, you're proactive, and always looking to talk about where you need to go with a certain situation to ensure it doesn't blow up.

2.  You have a situation-specific sense of humor - Face it, we talk about a lot of sticky stuff, including your own plight, and you mix humor with seriousness like a champ.  Thanks for understanding we're going to work through it and laughing with me/at me.

1.  You have the ability to anticipate outcomes and reactions to your actions - You see the game.  If you are thinking about taking a specific action, you proactively talk about what that will mean to others, how others will perceive it, the poliitical landscape, etc.

In other words you get it.  I'm glad you're on my team.  You want to hug it out?  Let's hug it out...

Notice, I didn't put something administrative in the list, like "you get the forms to me', or "your reviews are always done on time".   I'd like to have that as well, but candidly, we can fix those things when you miss. 

If you couldn't do the items above, all the administrative excellence in the world wouldn't matter...Of course, that's just my opinion... I could be wrong...

Hit me in the comments with your additions to the list....

Googling Candidates - The Game Just Got Serious with Pipl.com....

Face it, you've Googled candidates, or maybe friends before.  You are a voyeur. 

If you are having trouble seeing in the window, you can put down the binoculars and try a telescope via www.pipl.com.  I'm not sure this one is a good thing, but more will follow.  That's technology, so you may as well know about the tools...

Hat tip to Marci Alboher from Shifting Careers for the find.  Here's how Marci describes it:

"By going into what’s called “the deep Web,” which basically means finding pages on the Web that are not generally picked up by a standard search engine search, you’ll find the kinds of things — white page listings (including prior addresses), birthdays, profiles on social networking sites and certain public records that an employer, potential business partner or any inquiring mind can easily access.

While all this might sound either useful or creepy, the wrinkle is that if the person being searched has a common name, the search will turn up pages and pages of results for people with that name. I spoke to Matthew Hertz, the site’s founder and chief executive, who said that Pipl is working on ways to narrow a search past the current method, which brings up results based on first name, last name and city. Until then, it certainly is amusing to see how much of your personal data the deep Web turns up, and to get a glimpse of what your doppelgangers have been up to."

So I gave pipl.com a try.  First up, Marci's point regarding googling candidates or any other individual with a common name is valid.  Trying to find relevant info on a "John Smith" is a problem via Google unless you really know how to use the advanced search tools.  So, there's a business opportunity there.

Unfortunately, I found the tool really didn't help a lot with this.  Once you get past a couple of cool features, the indexed results are driven by Google, and there's still a lot of clutter.

One cool feature is the "quick facts" on the target of your search, displayed towards the top of the page.  That's worth using the tool, but don't expect a lot of help with the John Smiths of the world.

Final Note - it's always creepy to see phone numbers and addresses atop a people search.  Brave new world...

Mo Money, Mo Problems - Pay for Performance is Tricky....

You know the drill on pay-for-performance (PFP).  You do your best to ingrain the PFP fundamentals into your culture, but here's the trick - to truly pay your best performers, you have to be tough on the folks who aren't cutting it.  Is your budgeted percentage for merit increases across your company/unit 3-4%? 

For most of us, 3-4% is the standard budgeted range.  And that's where the rub is.  To give your best performers 6-8% and make them feel like the special people they are, you have to take it away from a low performer.  Most of your managers aren't prepared to sit down with the lowest performing person in their groups and tell them they are getting a 1% raise - or no raise at all....

To them, it feels so....so.....Jack Welch!  (Note to file - I think the picture used to the right featuring B.I.G. is about to become my new logo for all compensation posts.  I think Ann Bares should adopt it as well...)

Suzanne Rumsey over at the Consultant's Corner at Knowledge Infusion wonders aloud if Pay-for-Performance isn't the wrong way to look at the opportunity:

"Lately, I've been working with several clients who are grappling with the concept of Pay for Contribution, rather than Pay for Performance. Much of this transformation in thinking is coming about as more and more organizations ask the questions, "What do we pay our employees for, really?" Pay for Performance tends to be a historical view, paying employees for what they have accomplished in the past. It is based on the premise that the employee, with his or her manager, has set SMART goals for the performance period, and has been evaluated against how well he or she achieved the goals identified.

Pay for Contribution, on the other hand, can be backwards or forwards looking, however, it is based more on the premise that the employee has contributed value to the organization is (sic) some form or other - whether by growing critical relationships, developing valuable intellectual property, implementing key infrastructure, etc. Often, Pay for Contribution is intended to reward more "intangibles" - elements that add value to the organization, but are difficult to quantify or establish objectives for up front."

Those are great thoughts.  The reality, in most of the companies that I've worked for and with, is that while the pay for performance model is institutionalized, the pay for contribution (or even potential) is more informal in nature. Like style, you know it when you see it, and the valuing process (how much do you compensate for that?) is more art than science as well.

For most progressive HR types, pay for contribution/potential falls under the term "equity increase". Special skills, innovation, etc. get valued on the top line after pay for performance is done, and you provide an additional increase for the noted contributions or innovation that make the person special to the org.

How special do those thoughts/contributions have to be?  Pretty special, because the pay for contribution/potential/innovation model that Suzanne talks about is UNBUDGETED in most companies. 

So, the contributions have to be special enough to warrant that call to action, and to make everyone feel like there's a retention risk if it doesn't get done. 

What percentage of your workforce falls into that category?  10%?  5%?

Does Happiness at Work Make You Poor?

Quiz time at the Capitalist!!  Pick the statement that best describes your philosophy regarding happiness and work:

1.  Do what makes you happy and the money will follow.
2.  Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do to earn a living.
3.  I've never been happy in my career, and I'm not happy now.  Leave me alone.

The conventional wisdom in all the motivational books says that you should find what you love to do and the money will follow.  However, there's a contrarian view that suggests that contentment with your professional life is the setup for stagnation.

I guess some of us need the drama.  Contrarian view to the happiness mantra from the unique stylings of Trizle:

1. You're super-freakishly happy.
2. You think you're all badass.
3. You end up earning less than Schmo.

Why?

1. Happiness makes you complacent with $$$.
2. Instead of trying to improve yourself, you settle for "This is who I am! I am so proud of myself!"
3. So, you continue doing what you're doing -- never really improving on how you financially live your life.

Boos all over the world to you.

Are you crying?

Good.

You're one step closer to being financially successful.

If you haven't read Trizle, you need to bounce over and take a look.  It's a site developed to help business owners bootstrap.  Great and unique writing style, simple and clean, and thought provoking.  Check it out. 

But what about the concept that happiness make you poorer than you might otherwise be?  In the comments to the post at Trizle, there's a snippet that quotes Earl Nightingale as saying "discontentment is the greatest motivator in the world."  The commenter goes on to say that discontentment is the mark of "great" people, providing Lance Armstrong, Kobe Byrant, and Tiger Woods as professionals who are never content or satisfied with their performance level--which is why they're great.

Which helped me arrive at the following performance mantra - Be happy, but never be content....

Is that possible?

Labeling a Family Member "Ineligible for Rehire"...

Interesting article in the 6/9/08 copy of Business Week entitled "The Trouble with Background Checks".  As you might expect from the title, the focus is that background check companies operate with little compliance oversight, make errors and are generally slow to correct errors.

Stuff happens.  What's the alternative again?  No background checks?  Don't believe any of the ones that come back bad?

Here's the lead in the story:

"Theodore Pendergrass was shocked in November, 2006, when the Walgreens (WAG) pharmacy chain rejected his application for a store supervisor job. The company told him a background-screening firm called ChoicePoint (CPS) reported that a past employer had accused him of "cash register fraud and theft of merchandise" totaling $7,313. "I wanted to cry," Pendergrass says. The $4 billion business of background screening is booming.  Whatever their motives, employers are becoming more dependent on mass-produced background reports that rely heavily on anonymous, and sometimes inaccurate or unfair, sources.

Pendergrass' difficulties stemmed from a previous job at Rite Aid (RAD). By late 2005, when he was 25 years old, he had reached the first rung of management as a shift supervisor in a Rite Aid store in Philadelphia. His bosses trusted him to oversee cashiers, bank deposits, and merchandise deliveries. Then, in January, 2006, a store official accused him of stealing goods and underpaying for DVDs. He denied the accusations, but the official said police were waiting outside to arrest him if he did not confess. Pendergrass wrote a statement but wouldn't admit to theft. He was soon fired anyway.

Later, at a hearing for unemployment compensation, Pendergrass was vindicated. A state labor referee ruled that Rite Aid had not proved its allegations and awarded him nearly $1,000 in benefits. But Rite Aid had already submitted its theft report to a database used by more than 70 retailers and run by ChoicePoint, the largest screening firm for corporate employers in the U.S."

I've got to say that submitting a theft report without a criminal charge to back it up doesn't seem like a best practice. 

That being said, the article has the dramatic pictures you would expect from those who have been wronged.  While I'm sensitive to that and expect that the background companies are going to great lengths to be accurate, the case above doesn't apply to most of us.  We make calls based off of accurate reports to withhold offers when necessary, and let's face it - they are mostly accurate.  Plus, most of us are willing to listen when someone claims they've been a victim of inaccurate information.

One easy way to stay out of the weeds - do background checks post offer, after you've made the decision to hire.  Doing it at that juncture keeps costs down, plus puts the candidate in the position to listen when you inform them of the issue, vs. doing background earlier in the process and simply discounting anyone with a flagged issue.

One last clip from the article that's priceless:   

"You won't believe what people tell you," says Mary Beth Gotshall, who has done interviews since 1999 at Employment Background Investigations, a midsize firm in Owings Mills, Md. She and colleagues have collected comments from a father who said he would never rehire his son because he had missed so much work at a family business.  Her boss, Richard Kurland, chief executive of Employment Background, says the company goes to great lengths to be accurate. "We have a huge responsibility to mankind," he adds."

Richard, trust me - if you get a father to code his own son as ineligible for rehire during one of your employment verifications, you've fulfilled your mission to mankind.  Wow...