The Summertime Crunch
May 31, 2008
Our latest workforce survey reveals that 69% of US workers polled plan to take off time between Memorial Day and Labor Day. This obviously presents challenges for employers who seek to keep their operations running smoothly throughout these peak vacation months.
According to our board member Steve Hunt, what employers should NOT do is discourage employees from using their vacation. This is especially true when managing employees in high stress jobs who might readily forego vacation if they thought it could adversely affect their careers. There is quite a bit of empirical research showing that vacation plays an important role in keeping people physically healthy in terms of managing stress. People who do not take vacation are likely to suffer decreased work performance and satisfaction over time. Vacations really do allow us to “recharge” and avoid burn-out - as such they can be thought of playing a similar role for ensuring a long-term, effective workforce as ensuring employees’ work schedules allow them to get a reasonable amount of sleep.
The New Industrial Revolution
May 19, 2008
Photo Credit: ClawzCTR
There was a recent article in IndustryWeek, “How Ceradyne Increased Productivity through Effective Labor Management” that raised some questions for me. This article was co-authored by one of my colleagues, Gregg Gordon, and explains how Ceradyne has used Kronos solutions to optimize their workforce productivity. Ceradyne is using a broad suite of Kronos capabilities to improve overall labor effectiveness (OLE) - a key performance indicator that can be used by manufacturers to measure the optimal balance of workforce availability, productivity and quality.
What I wondered about is how the implementation of Kronos technology affects worker morale - and what companies can do to take advantage of workforce productivity tools without leaving their workers feeling that they been taken advantage of.
Gregg focuses on the manufacturing sector for Kronos, and had a number of war stories to share - as well as some great suggestions he’s picked up from customers who’ve successfully implemented workforce tracking and scheduling software. He’s worked with companies around the world who walk the delicate line between the need to control expenses and the need to hold onto skilled workers in competitive economies. Here are some of his suggestions:
- Get employees who’ll be affected by these changes involved in helping management implement them. An example Gregg provided was of a pharma company implementing time and attendance tracking for scientists. This population had not had to “punch in” in the past. The reason for the change was to map R&D human resource investments to projects in order to substantiate proposed pricing - an objective these workers understood and applauded. The ultimate solution was to have the scientists update a timecard biweekly by noting any exceptions to their exempt 8 hour days - but not by having them punch in and out every day.
- Explain to affected employees how they’ll benefit. These types of Kronos solutions can benefit employees by providing more accurate overtime tracking, accommodating employee preferences in shift scheduling, fair and consistent application of policies, etc. Workers who understand these benefits - and experience them personally - are more likely to support the change.
- Implement changes in small increments. Enterprise software solutions can impose a lot of change on an organization. The key to successful implementation is to enable the new capabilities in digestable increments that employees can accept, master and absorb. For companies new to time and attendance, just getting employees to punch in and out is a big step forward.
- Measure progress. Pick a few key metrics, track them and report back on them to key stakeholders. The metrics will vary based on your business, but you can’t improve what you can’t measure. Kronos customer Crossland Construction believes that their ability to provide these types of metrics to their customers is providing them with a competitive advantage.
How do you think organizations can take advantage of human capital management technologies without taking advantage of the humans involved?
Hourly Workforce Planning: One Size Does Not Fit All
May 12, 2008
Take a look at our newest white paper, “Increasing Hourly Workforce Productivity: Different types of work, different types of workers“. Our board member, Steve Hunt, wrote this paper in response to a spirited discussion we had during our last board meeting.
During that meeting, we talked about the inherent flaws in trying to define best practices in hourly workforce management without addressing the fundamental differences between hourly jobs. Layer on the demographic differences among the employees who perform these jobs, and the concept of best practices becomes even more nuanced.
In Steven’s white paper, he provides a framework to help organizations think about how differences in the competencies required for different types of hourly jobs translate into differences in talent management best practices. Throughout the talent management lifecycle, those differences should drive decisions regarding how employers choose to attract, train, engage and retain their workforce in the pursuit of optimal productivity.
For more insight on this topic, listen to the podcast below for an interview with Steven Hunt.
National Teacher Day
May 5, 2008
photo credit: oddsock
Tomorrow is National Teacher Day . The tagline for the day is “Great teachers make great public schools”. The first event of this kind was in 1953, when Eleanor Roosevelt persuaded the 81st Congress to proclaim a National Teacher Day. There has been an annual celebration since 1985.So, how far have we come with public education since 1953? We’ve already commented here on the declining literacy levels among US high school students. Consider as well this excerpt from The Teaching Penalty, a publication of the Economic Policy Institute:
Recent trends represent only a small part of a long-run decline in the relative pay of teachers. Using U.S. Census data we show that the pay gap between female public school teachers and comparably educated women—for whom the labor market dramatically changed over the 1960-2000 period—grew by nearly 28 percentage points, from a relative wage advantage of 14.7% in 1960, to a pay disadvantage of 13.2% in 2000. Among all public school teachers the relative wage disadvantage grew almost 20 percentage points over the 1960-2000 period.
In this era of No Child Left Behind, you’d think that teachers and schools would get additional resources to carry out their mission. Instead, school systems are often pressed to meet federal and state mandates with funding that is highly dependent on the local tax base. As a member of the Finance Committee for a small town in Massachusetts, I’ve had a front row seat at the difficult financial tradeoffs that need to be made to balance flat budgets against the needs of the K-12 students in our town - especially those with special needs that require expensive outside services. Teachers battle through tough collective bargaining to earn modest wage increases.
Most adults have fond memories of the teachers who made an impact in their lives - by exposing them to new ideas, by challenging them to perform at a higher level than they thought possible, or just by being there for counsel. Those of you who are parents of school age children know who are the teachers who’ve made an impact on them.If you want to say thank you tomorrow, by all means send a card or some flowers. If you want to make a real impact, however, vote locally and nationally for measures that provide these teachers with the resources needed to get the job done. We’ll get the workforce we invest in, not the one we wish for.
Happy Teacher Day, Mr. Ramsden, Mr. Perry, Mr. Brady, Mrs. Hennessey, Mrs. Silva, Mr. Reed, Mr. Schwartz and the rest of you unsung public school heroes who’ve made an impact in my life and those of my children.
Five Ways to Leave Your Job (Well)
May 1, 2008
I’m on my way out to a goodbye party for a very good employee. She’s been with our company for many years, and after an ex-pat assignment in the US, is returning home to Australia to a new job with a different employer. We’ll miss her terribly. She’s not only a great employee, she’s a dear friend to many Kronites.
In keeping with her excellence as an employee, she’s been a role model for how to leave a job with style. Here are five lessons to carry with you the next time you need to jump:
- Provide your manager with as much advance notice as possible. Giving him/her more time to adjust key stakeholder expectations and shift resources is invaluable.
- Keep excellent records of your key projects and commitments - and share them with those who need to know in order to preserve as much continuity as possible.
- Help identify candidates - internal or external - who can replace you (or at least assume your responsibilities if you’re irreplaceable).
- Keep your communications about your current employer positive. The decision to leave an employer often includes the opportunity to leave behind some negatives. Resist the temptation to enumerate these negatives for your soon-to-be former coworkers.
- Provide honest and direct feedback to your management about how to improve the position for the next incumbent.
Thanks for everything, Natira - and good on ya!
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