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Top 10 Best
Practices in
HR Management
For 2009
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SPECIAL REPORT
A supplement to BLR publications
Top 10 Best
Practices in
HR Management
For 2009
30610800
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The role of Human Resources is changing as fast as technology and the global
marketplace. Historically, the HR Department was viewed as administrative over-
head. HR processed payroll, handled benefits administration, kept personnel files
and other records, managed the hiring process, and provided other administrative
support to the business. Those times have changed.
The positive result of these changes is that HR professionals have the opportunity to
play a more strategic role in the business. The challenge for HR managers is to keep
up to date with the latest HR innovations—technological, legal, and otherwise.
This special report will discuss the top 10 best practices in HR management for
2009—in other words, how HR managers can anticipate and address some of the
most challenging HR issues this year. This report will give you the information you
need to know about these current HR challenges and how to most effectively
manage them in your workplace.
#1 Compliance Focus:
ADAAA and FMLA
The recent issuance of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 and new regulations cov-
ering the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) can affect your company in 2009.
Outplacement Services
As a matter of goodwill, some companies provide outplacement services to laid-
off employees. Outplacement counseling is designed to help terminated employ-
ees prepare themselves for a new job or a new career, to lend assistance in
providing outside resources, to receive training, and to help employees cope with
the stress of leaving the company.
Outplacement services include assistance in rewriting résumés, job placements,
career counseling, conducting employee skill surveys, and providing pre-layoff
employment service registration. Larger organizations may hire outplacement
services to assist employees, whereas smaller organizations may hire a single
counselor or use existing resources to assist employees. Employers should con-
sider providing outplacement services if employees have been working at the
same company for a long period of time and may not have the tools necessary to
successfully find another job.
Alternatives to Layoffs
There are alternatives to layoffs that employers can consider:
Work sharing. Work sharing allows employees to share the work that remains
after some jobs are lost due to adverse economic conditions. Under a work-shar-
ing arrangement, employees may work a reduced week or work every other week.
Their hourly pay remains the same, but reflects the reduced hours. In some states,
the unemployment compensation laws allow employees to collect partial unem-
ployment benefits during a work-sharing period.
Reduced pay. A reduction in pay works best if it is shared by all employees,
including management. It may be acceptable to employees if their unemployment
benefits during a period of layoff would be less than the reduced pay.
Early retirement. Some employers reduce their workforce by offering attractive
incentives to employees who are about to reach retirement age. The advantage of
retirement incentives is that they allow employers to cut costs without requiring
employees to leave their jobs involuntarily. However, the employer may lose some
employees it would prefer to keep.
Training
The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA) reformed the federal job training sys-
tem by consolidating about 70 federal programs into an integrated whole. The
reformed system is intended to be customer-focused in order to help workers
access the tools they need to manage their careers and to help employers find
skilled workers. While WIA is a federal program, it will differ in how it is imple-
mented by each state.
The cornerstone of the WIA is the“One-Stop”service delivery system, which is
designed to make information about and access to a wide array of job training,
education, and employment services available for workers and employers at a sin-
gle neighborhood location. “Core services”are provided at each One-Stop location
and include:
◆ Intake and orientation to the One-Stop approach
◆ An eligibility determination
◆ Initial assessment of skills and abilities
◆ Access to job vacancy listings and job search and placement assistance
◆ Information on providers of vocational rehabilitation activities and access to
eligible training providers
◆ Information on filing for unemployment insurance and availability of
supportive services
Through the One-Stop approach, employers have a single point of contact to pro-
vide information about current and future skills their workers need to possess and
to list job openings.
The American economy is in trouble, and many people can’t afford health care.
Employers are worried about their ability to compete on the global market when
health care is costing them so much. Even before the fall, when some major banks
failed or were bought and the stock market experienced dramatic downswings, a
majority of American workers expressed concern about their financial situations
and economic futures, according to the Rockefeller Foundation/TIME survey,
Campaign for American Workers Survey.
Are you prepared for the retirement of lots of your older workers? Never mind
whether you can find warm bodies to replace them (and even that may be tough),
but how will you fill the knowledge gaps left by their departures? There’s been
much talk about phased or delayed retirement programs, but two topic experts
provide a fresh perspective on surviving the brain drain.
Misconceptions on both sides. Alan Bernstein and John Trauth, co-authors of
Your Retirement Your Way (McGraw-Hill, 2006), since publishing their book, have
shifted their focus to include both older employees and their employers. On the
lecture circuit, they explain their recommendations, based on a good deal of
research, for hanging onto the much-needed knowledge and talent of older work-
ers. Employers, they say, have these wrong impressions about older workers:
◆ Older workers can’t handle the physical demands of their jobs. In
today’s service and knowledge economy, most employees can do most of the
jobs they’ve always done.
#5 Recession Help
Across the nation, employers find it nearly impossible to ignore dropping revenues
and profits. A recent study by consulting firm Hay Group found that more than 30
percent of respondents are freezing or planning to freeze base salaries, with half
that number doing so for all employees. And some 20 percent will either freeze
workforce size or conduct layoffs in the near future. Respondents also reported
they will change training and development programs (28 percent), change health-
care benefit plans (27 percent), or change retirement savings plans (20 percent).
Furthermore, another survey done by Career Protection predicts a 37 percent
increase in layoffs this year compared to last, making this year’s forecast the worst
Immigration was a hot topic in the recent presidential primaries and national elec-
tion, and complying with immigration laws continues to be a challenge in Human
Resources management.
No-Match Letters
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) makes it illegal for an
employer to knowingly hire or to continue to employ an individual who is or may
become an unauthorized alien. On August 15, 2007, the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) issued regulations that defined the term“knowing”to mean having
actual or constructive knowledge. In a no-match letter, the Social Security Admin-
istration (SSA) or DHS informs an employer that the name and Social Security
Number (SSN) reported for an employee or the immigrant status or employment
authorization documents do not match their records. A“no match”does not mean
that an individual is undocumented, but it could, in certain circumstances, consti-
tute constructive knowledge that an individual is undocumented.
DHS regulations set out steps that an employer may take after receiving a no-match
letter from DHS or SSA. If these steps are followed, an employer may avoid being
considered as having constructive knowledge that a particular individual is an
unauthorized alien based on a no-match letter from one of these agencies.
Regulations on hold. A federal district court judge has barred SSA from sending
no-match letters on the grounds that DHS exceeded its authority in issuing the reg-
ulations. The bar will last at least until there is a full trial on the question or the
order is reversed by a higher court. On November 23, 2007, DHS filed a motion
asking the judge to suspend this case so that it could rewrite the regulation to
address the court’s concerns, including conducting a survey of the impact of the
regulation on small business.
Regulations reproposed. In response to the lawsuit and the court order, DHS
has issued a supplemental proposed rule that leaves the August 15, 2007, regula-
tions intact. The preamble to the supplemental proposed rule includes an analysis
of DHS’s authority to issue the regulation and an analysis of the impact of the regu-
lation on small business intended to address the court’s concerns. The preamble
does clarify that the obligation of an employer to provide prompt notice to an
affected employee after the employer has completed its internal record checks
and has been unable to resolve the mismatch will ordinarily be satisfied if the
employer contacts the employee within 5 business days after completing its inter-
nal records review. In addition, DHS has made it clear that the regulation does not
have application to no-match letters that reference employees hired before
November 6, 1986, because the statutory bar against continuing to employ unau-
thorized workers does not apply to such employees.
The increased role and use of computers in the workplace has presented employ-
ers with an entire set of new problems to worry about in the form of privacy issues,
identity theft, and security breaches.
Privacy
Several states have enacted statutory or constitutional provisions guaranteeing
their citizens the right to privacy from certain intrusions. In the absence of a state
constitutional provision or existing law, however, private employees enjoy relatively
little freedom from workplace intrusion. Therefore, private employees must look to
common or judge-made law to find privacy protections. There are essentially four
common-law privacy claims available to private employees. These are:
1. Intrusion into an individual’s private solitude or seclusion. An
employee may allege this form of privacy invasion when an employer unrea-
sonably searches (e.g., a locker or desk drawer) or conducts surveillance (e.g.,
dressing rooms) in areas in which an employee has a legitimate expectation of
privacy. An employer’s improper questioning of an employee (e.g., sexual
habits or orientation) may also give rise to this type of claim. Under this claim,
the employer’s intrusion into the employee’s private affairs must involve a gen-
uinely private matter and must also be of such a nature that a reasonable per-
son would deem the intrusion to be“offensive.”
2. Public disclosure of private facts. An employee may claim this form of pri-
vacy invasion when an employer publicly discloses private and arguably
embarrassing facts about an employee to a wide audience without his or her
permission. In order to sustain such a claim, however, an employee must be
able to show that the information was genuinely private, the employer’s publi-
cation of the information was offensive by reasonable standards, and the
employee suffered a resulting injury.
3. Portraying an individual in a false light. Under this theory, if an employer
attributes a false or offensive conduct or characteristic to an employee that is
not true (e.g., criminal activity), the employee may claim invasion of privacy.
4. Use of an individual’s name or likeness. When an employer uses an
employee’s photograph, likeness, or attributes specific statements to an
employee without his or her permission, an individual may have a valid
misappropriation claim (e.g., the employer publishes an employee’s
Identity Theft
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimates that as many as 9 million Ameri-
cans have their identities stolen each year. Identity theft has been the fastest grow-
ing crime in the United States for the past 3 years, according to the FTC, which
predicts that in 5 years, the majority of Americans will have been victimized by
identity theft.
Much of the identity theft that occurs in the workplace happens when employees
steal personal information of the company’s co-workers, customers, or clients via
their employer’s computer system. Identity theft also threatens enterprise security,
enabling corporate espionage and fraud, and theft of hard assets and intellectual
property. Large scale or frequent identity thefts also result in significant negative
publicity, impacting sales, partnerships, and employee recruiting and retention.
Therefore, employers need to carefully control access to employee and customer
financial information (via password protection); carefully control the transfer
of such information; and carefully control the destruction and/or recycling of
company documents.
Metrics are not unique to the HR profession. They are used in almost every area of
business, in government, and in education. A metric is simply a way to measure
and track key performance indicators. In education, the key metric is often stu-
dent performance on standardized tests, which is then used to drive educational
priorities to improve performance on the next round of tests.
In Human Resources, metrics are used to measure and track the performance of a
company’s largest investment, its investment in human capital. More to the point,
HR metrics measure the performance of a company’s investment in hiring, train-
ing, and retaining employees.
What to Measure
Deciding what to measure is very important. Metrics should be tied directly to the
business issues facing the company. These might include a need to cut costs
because of price competition, improve customer satisfaction, or develop new
technology to keep pace with competitors.
To be effective, the metric should not just report results, but should show a cause
and effect relationship. In addition, to the extent possible, the HR professional
should try to use formulas, ratios, and language commonly used by the organiza-
tion’s other business leaders. For instance, ROI, or return on investment, is univer-
sally understood in the business world. A company’s investment in human capital
(its employees) is usually its largest investment. And the HR professional needs to
take the lead in identifying where these resources can best be allocated to meet
the company’s goals and how to hire, develop, and retain the human capital the
company needs to stay competitive now and in the future.
A good metric is one that provides decision makers with the data needed to make
fact-based decisions. One example of a metric is measuring turnover in an organi-
zation. It is helpful to know what percent of the total number of employees left the
company during the year. However, it is probably more useful to know how many
of those people left voluntarily as opposed to those who left involuntarily.
When choosing what to measure in your organization, consider the following:
◆ Use data that are readily available and can be gathered at regular intervals.
◆ Use the ratios, formulas, key performance measures, and language used by
business leaders.
◆ Include measures of results and don’t limit the focus to costs.
◆ Tie metrics directly to the key challenges facing the business and the results
that must be achieved.
◆ Use only metrics that add value in making decisions.
◆ Keep it simple. Metrics don’t have to be complicated.
◆ Identify and compare results to key competitors whenever possible.
Strategic Alignment
The role of HR is changing as fast as technology and the global marketplace. Histor-
ically, the HR department was viewed as administrative overhead. HR processed
payroll, handled benefits administration, kept personnel files and other records,
managed the hiring process, and provided other administrative support to the busi-
ness. These functions were viewed as administrative necessities but not as integral
parts of the core business. Today, many of these old administrative functions have
been automated and/or outsourced. The positive result of these changes is that HR
professionals have the opportunity to play a more strategic role in the business.
Business leaders focus on revenue, profit growth, market share, new products,
and increasing capacity. These can all be measured using metrics that describe
the current situation, compare current numbers with previous years’ or with a
competitor’s position, and quantify goals and measure progress. By measuring
the current situation compared with quantifiable goals, business leaders make
data-driven decisions. In order to be a business leader, the HR professional must
utilize a similar approach to decision making, one based on data and facts. Deci-
sions related to the allocation of resources, technology purchases, succession
planning, hiring and retention, training, employee performance, compensation
programs, and outsourcing HR functions can all be based on data compiled
through the use of appropriate metrics.
#10 Communications
In most instances, when employees are asked what they like least about their jobs,
they will cite a problem with communication. In fact, in BLR’s 2007 National
Employee Attitudes Survey (NEAS), participating organizations across the board
were rated lowest on questions related to communication, while at the same time,
employees who took the survey said communication was very important to them.
Because communication is a very important factor in employee satisfaction and
engagement, making sure the right information is communicated effectively is
very important to human resources professionals and managers.
It is important to understand what types of information employees feel they aren’t
getting. It might be that employees don’t have a good understanding of what is
expected of them or how they fit in the organization. In other cases, it might be
that management does not provide employees with information about how the
organization is doing or the direction in which it is heading. Employees might feel
they aren’t well compensated because they don’t have any information on the
value of benefits and their total compensation package. They might feel they are
not being acknowledged for their hard work. Another problem area related to
communication is how conflict is handled in the workplace, which requires a
unique set of communication skills.
Effective communication is the foundation of positive and cooperative working rela-
tionships. Good communication benefits the workplace in many ways, including:
◆ Improving the flow of vital information
◆ Improving employee morale by making sure employees know what is
expected and what the rewards are for a job well done
◆ Serving as the basis of effective teamwork
◆ Ensuring accountability in a department because all employees know who’s
responsible for what
◆ Providing greater consistency, because all employees have gotten the same
messages about procedures and work rules
◆ Leading to better quality because mistakes are avoided
◆ Improving productivity
Conclusion
We hope that you have enjoyed this special report, and that you found the informa-
tion contained in this report useful. BLR strives to provide Human Resources pro-
fessionals with practical and easy-to-use information on a wide variety of topics. If
you would like to see the complete library of publications available through BLR,
please visit our website at www.blr.com or call our Customer Service Department
at 800-727-5257.
WWW.BLR.COM
Keycode: MQP/1885 HR-SRST07