Layoff Tracker. It reports on all anounced layoffs.
The scary thing is to look at the number of posts so far this year: 181.
Fascinating.
On the other hand, my husband got a call from a headhunter this morning. So, there are jobs out there.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
An FMLA Question
You have an exempt employee who is officially at 20 hours a week. Because she is exempt she is paid the same amount every week, regardless of how many hours she puts in. She frequently works more than 20 hours, but no time cards exist.
She has a baby and requests FMLA. On her official schedule of 20 hours a week, she has not worked the requisite number of hours to qualify under the statute. She claims with the additional hours she has put in, she more than qualifies. Her manager agrees. (FYI, I believe you need 1250 hours in a year for FMLA to qualify. Assume her company meets the other qualifications for FMLA and she has been there more than a year.)
She has a baby and requests FMLA. On her official schedule of 20 hours a week, she has not worked the requisite number of hours to qualify under the statute. She claims with the additional hours she has put in, she more than qualifies. Her manager agrees. (FYI, I believe you need 1250 hours in a year for FMLA to qualify. Assume her company meets the other qualifications for FMLA and she has been there more than a year.)
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
You Go, Lilly
Dear friends,I was still a corporate HR person when the Lilly Ledbetter case made the news in 1998. Lilly sued her employer for sex-based pay discrimination that had gone on for 20 years. Too bad for Lilly, she lost at the Supreme Court level because the law said that a claimant had to file a claim within 180 days of the discriminatory event. Meaning the date that the first unequal paycheck was cut. Too bad that companies don't tell you when they're illegally discriminating against you by paying men more than women (or women more than men, etc.).
Not that I was a babe-in-the-woods naif in 1998, but I was shocked by that, well, idiotic decision. I guess the Supremes had no choice; the law essentially said that if an employer can hide its discriminatory pay practices for six months, the illegal pay structure can survive forever.
Congress passed a bill today, 11 years later, making it possible for employees to sue for pay discrimination even when they didn't know the discrimination was occurring at the time that it occurred. Duh. Hurrah for Congress and for Lilly. Here's the story.
If you're interested in stuff like this, check out the Ask Liz Ryan HR Ning group
Should I be offended?
My mother sent me this joke:
Some cannibals get a job in a big corporation on the condition that they don't eat any of the other staff. Things go very well until their boss calls them into his office one day and gives them some bad news--a janitor is missing in mysterious circumstances and the cannibals are under suspicion.
The cannibals get together after work. Their leader says, "Which of you idiots had the janitor?" One of the cannibals raises his hand.
"You idiot! For weeks we've been feasting on team leaders, project managers and human resources staff, then you go and eat someone they'll actually miss!"
General Release Woes
I was recently laid off with 60% of my department. I got 3 months of severance pay by signing a General Release that basically said I won’t sue the company for any reason, and I can’t work there for 6 months. I’ve tried to find out why this “6-month rule” is part of the General Release. Two hiring managers want to hire me back, but are hitting the 6-month rule roadblock.
Before I signed my General Release, I was chosen as the top candidate for a position in another department, but there was a sudden hiring freeze in that department just before the hiring manager could offer me a position. The position may open back up (at about 3 months into my 6 months), and I probably can’t be hired now, because of this dumb 6-month rule. Not only does this hurt me, the manager can’t get the employee he wants, and has to go farther down his list of applicants and/or re-open the time-consuming interview process.
A second position opened up (due to someone leaving that job for another job) that was absolutely perfect for me, in my old re-organized department. I was an excellent match for skills, and I had great connections within the group. I actually found out that the hiring manager had already inquired about hiring me, but he was told by HR that I can’t be hired because of the 6-month rule. Instead of filling his position ASAP, he now has to spend time interviewing lots of people.
This is very frustrating. I’ve talked to several HR people who are uniformly adamant that the 6-month rule cannot be waived (yet I know exceptions ARE made), and nobody in HR can explain the purpose of the 6 month rule. The 6-month rule can’t be about “double dipping” because there’s already a clause in the General Release that anyone re-hired before the severance pay runs out has to give money back (e.g. if you had 9 months of severance pay and were rehired at 6 months, you give back 3 months pay).
If I could figure this out, it might aid me in circumventing what appears to be a dumb, arbitrary and harmful rule.
I would love, love, love to help you figure this rule out, but alas, I cannot. It's not because it's a secret HR rule, it's because I think it's about as stupid as they come.
Now, I can give you some insight into a few other things. When you layoff someone you want to make a couple of things clear. First, that they aren't entitled to the next vacant position that matches their skills. Two, that they can't come back as a contractor in a similar role. Three, no double dipping.
My guess is that the six month prohibition against returning is related to the first point. Companies don't want to get involved in a "failure to hire" lawsuit. These lawsuits are where the candidate argues that the only reason he/she wasn't hired was an illegal one--race, gender, age, pregnancy status, etc. These are hard to prove (normally numerous candidates), but still expensive for the company.
My lawyer friends can chime in, but I actually think prohibiting someone from coming back for 6 months actually increases your chance of a failure to hire lawsuit. Why? Because you imply that they are eligible for rehire after that 6 month time period expires. I prefer to see a clause that states that your relationship with the company is severed and that the company has no obligation to rehire you at all.
Now, this statement doesn't mean that the company can't rehire you, it just means that when you sign the release you acknowledge that they are under no obligation to rehire you. And furthermore, that you will not be treated differently than other candidates.
When you put time frame prohibitions in your releases you are asking for problems, in my opinion. The goal of a reduction in force should be related to making the business more effective. Not just cutting heads. (Lots of companies have bloat and sometimes a mass layoff can help with that--proceed with caution though. Lots of potential problems, but that's a topic for another post.) If you are just obsessed with getting your headcount down, you are doing it wrong.
Managers should be able to hire the best candidate. This is what is best for the company. Remember the company? The company that was supposed to be more effective after a reduction? Yeah, that. So, stop prohibitions against hiring any particular person and just train your managers on how to hire.
If someone else could explain to me why 6 month or a 1 year prohibitions exist in releases, I'd be happy to know. And yes, I know that some releases prohibit employees from ever applying again. I know why this is: We don't want you back. (Companies that do this to everyone are just plain dumb, by the way. These clauses should be added to your low performers or problem causers, not everyone.)
The second prohibition I listed above was to prevent you from coming back in a contractor role. While this may seem as silly as the 6 month delay, there are actually legal reasons behind it. If you come back as a contractor 3 months after I lay you off, you can argue that you really are an employee and your job never was eliminated because, look! you're still doing this. Employees have rights under federal and state laws that contractors do not. For instance, if you successfully argue in court that you are an employee not a contractor then I have to give you the same benefits all my employees get.
The third, which your contract has, is a prohibition against double dipping. This also makes sense. We should not be paying you severance while we are paying you a salary. Repayment clauses are fine, in my book.
I realize this didn't solve your problem at all, but it was fun for me to muse on and I really do want someone to explain the logic. (Of course, I left out the most likely answer--someone high up wants it in there, so there it is and HR thinks it's stupid, but we're stuck with it.)
Before I signed my General Release, I was chosen as the top candidate for a position in another department, but there was a sudden hiring freeze in that department just before the hiring manager could offer me a position. The position may open back up (at about 3 months into my 6 months), and I probably can’t be hired now, because of this dumb 6-month rule. Not only does this hurt me, the manager can’t get the employee he wants, and has to go farther down his list of applicants and/or re-open the time-consuming interview process.
A second position opened up (due to someone leaving that job for another job) that was absolutely perfect for me, in my old re-organized department. I was an excellent match for skills, and I had great connections within the group. I actually found out that the hiring manager had already inquired about hiring me, but he was told by HR that I can’t be hired because of the 6-month rule. Instead of filling his position ASAP, he now has to spend time interviewing lots of people.
This is very frustrating. I’ve talked to several HR people who are uniformly adamant that the 6-month rule cannot be waived (yet I know exceptions ARE made), and nobody in HR can explain the purpose of the 6 month rule. The 6-month rule can’t be about “double dipping” because there’s already a clause in the General Release that anyone re-hired before the severance pay runs out has to give money back (e.g. if you had 9 months of severance pay and were rehired at 6 months, you give back 3 months pay).
If I could figure this out, it might aid me in circumventing what appears to be a dumb, arbitrary and harmful rule.
I would love, love, love to help you figure this rule out, but alas, I cannot. It's not because it's a secret HR rule, it's because I think it's about as stupid as they come.
Now, I can give you some insight into a few other things. When you layoff someone you want to make a couple of things clear. First, that they aren't entitled to the next vacant position that matches their skills. Two, that they can't come back as a contractor in a similar role. Three, no double dipping.
My guess is that the six month prohibition against returning is related to the first point. Companies don't want to get involved in a "failure to hire" lawsuit. These lawsuits are where the candidate argues that the only reason he/she wasn't hired was an illegal one--race, gender, age, pregnancy status, etc. These are hard to prove (normally numerous candidates), but still expensive for the company.
My lawyer friends can chime in, but I actually think prohibiting someone from coming back for 6 months actually increases your chance of a failure to hire lawsuit. Why? Because you imply that they are eligible for rehire after that 6 month time period expires. I prefer to see a clause that states that your relationship with the company is severed and that the company has no obligation to rehire you at all.
Now, this statement doesn't mean that the company can't rehire you, it just means that when you sign the release you acknowledge that they are under no obligation to rehire you. And furthermore, that you will not be treated differently than other candidates.
When you put time frame prohibitions in your releases you are asking for problems, in my opinion. The goal of a reduction in force should be related to making the business more effective. Not just cutting heads. (Lots of companies have bloat and sometimes a mass layoff can help with that--proceed with caution though. Lots of potential problems, but that's a topic for another post.) If you are just obsessed with getting your headcount down, you are doing it wrong.
Managers should be able to hire the best candidate. This is what is best for the company. Remember the company? The company that was supposed to be more effective after a reduction? Yeah, that. So, stop prohibitions against hiring any particular person and just train your managers on how to hire.
If someone else could explain to me why 6 month or a 1 year prohibitions exist in releases, I'd be happy to know. And yes, I know that some releases prohibit employees from ever applying again. I know why this is: We don't want you back. (Companies that do this to everyone are just plain dumb, by the way. These clauses should be added to your low performers or problem causers, not everyone.)
The second prohibition I listed above was to prevent you from coming back in a contractor role. While this may seem as silly as the 6 month delay, there are actually legal reasons behind it. If you come back as a contractor 3 months after I lay you off, you can argue that you really are an employee and your job never was eliminated because, look! you're still doing this. Employees have rights under federal and state laws that contractors do not. For instance, if you successfully argue in court that you are an employee not a contractor then I have to give you the same benefits all my employees get.
The third, which your contract has, is a prohibition against double dipping. This also makes sense. We should not be paying you severance while we are paying you a salary. Repayment clauses are fine, in my book.
I realize this didn't solve your problem at all, but it was fun for me to muse on and I really do want someone to explain the logic. (Of course, I left out the most likely answer--someone high up wants it in there, so there it is and HR thinks it's stupid, but we're stuck with it.)
Monday, January 26, 2009
Confidential Email
I have a question I am hoping you can answer as I have been searching the Internet for about three hours now and have found nothing. I did what was probably a really stupid thing to do. I was very ill and so not using my best judgment I wrote an email to our (evil??) HR lady. In this email I expressed my gross intolerance for a coworker. I posed, in a not so nice way, the question of why someone as inefficient as them could be allowed to keep their job for so long. I then went on to make a few snide remarks about the company for letting this go on so long. I know, I know, I know..... never in writing, but like I said I was sick and my judgment (not to mention my patience) was a bit off.
Come to find out the email had been forwarded to the COO (small company...about 40 employees) of the company and then to my direct supervisor from the COO. Now I feel like a total idiot. What I want to know is if the company's HR rep violated any laws by doing this. I know it was completely immoral, but was it illegal?
Well, it's not illegal (she says in her non-lawyer, non legal advice way). HR people are not required to keep a confidence as a doctor, priest or lawyer is. In fact, part of our job is to blab. Which means that I'm also going to suggest that it wasn't necessarily immoral either.
Let the angry evil HR comments begin.
HR represents the company, not the employee. This sometimes requires following up on a complaint. Now, your company is small, so you probably actually have a relationship with your HR person. If I'd received such and e-mail and I knew it was out of character for you, I might have e-mailed it back and said, "Did you mean to hit send?"
But, having a productive workforce is part of HR's long list of responsibilities. I have to assume that if you tell me a co-worker is a complete slacker that you want something done about it. Not knowing your company culture or the organizational structure I can't comment on whether it was appropriate to forward the e-mail to the COO.
Actually, I can. I would think the proper thing to do would be to find out myself if there was a problem with your co-worker, or with you, and then decide who needs to know. But in a company that small, the COO very well could be the right person.
We understand that sometimes steam needs to be blown off. We also sometimes over-react. Some people would send off an e-mail like this and wonder why in the heck no one brought it to the COO's attention! You can't win in this HR business.
What should you do? Apologize for losing your temper. Get back to work. Hope your co-worker doesn't find out about it. Address it head on with your boss. And finally, read the comments here, as my readers will have better advice.
Come to find out the email had been forwarded to the COO (small company...about 40 employees) of the company and then to my direct supervisor from the COO. Now I feel like a total idiot. What I want to know is if the company's HR rep violated any laws by doing this. I know it was completely immoral, but was it illegal?
Well, it's not illegal (she says in her non-lawyer, non legal advice way). HR people are not required to keep a confidence as a doctor, priest or lawyer is. In fact, part of our job is to blab. Which means that I'm also going to suggest that it wasn't necessarily immoral either.
Let the angry evil HR comments begin.
HR represents the company, not the employee. This sometimes requires following up on a complaint. Now, your company is small, so you probably actually have a relationship with your HR person. If I'd received such and e-mail and I knew it was out of character for you, I might have e-mailed it back and said, "Did you mean to hit send?"
But, having a productive workforce is part of HR's long list of responsibilities. I have to assume that if you tell me a co-worker is a complete slacker that you want something done about it. Not knowing your company culture or the organizational structure I can't comment on whether it was appropriate to forward the e-mail to the COO.
Actually, I can. I would think the proper thing to do would be to find out myself if there was a problem with your co-worker, or with you, and then decide who needs to know. But in a company that small, the COO very well could be the right person.
We understand that sometimes steam needs to be blown off. We also sometimes over-react. Some people would send off an e-mail like this and wonder why in the heck no one brought it to the COO's attention! You can't win in this HR business.
What should you do? Apologize for losing your temper. Get back to work. Hope your co-worker doesn't find out about it. Address it head on with your boss. And finally, read the comments here, as my readers will have better advice.
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Changing Context of Employer Branding
This post is prompted by a number of initiatives we're involved in that deal directly or indirectly with the changing context of employer branding (EB) and HR (see next paragraph). It is also prompted by direct communication from a colleague who has just posted an item on 'reverse employer branding' on http://authenticorganizations.com/. This post is definitely worth reading because it points out that the reputation of 'toxic' firms can spillover to their employees, so making them less employable in the future because of their association with the unethical/inept practices of their leaders. This must certainly be a worry to those employees/managers in some of the major UK/US financial institutions that have had to be rescued or allowed to collapse over the last few months.
To return to the initiatives we're lucky enough to be part of (and do a bit of advertising for the Centre), the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has just promoted two important initiatives in this field. The first is their 'Shaping the Future' programme, the Scottish edition of which we are launching with them in Glasgow on March 27th with a working lunch for an invited group of HR directors to consider the future of HR in the current economic conditions. The second is an advisory board established by Rebecca Clake of the CIPD to examine the role of EB research in the current recessionary context. In addition to these initiatives, we're also running a one day seminar we're running with the Institute of Employment Studies in Glasgow on EB in changing contexts on April, 16th.
So what does all of this activity add up to? Well, all will have to re-visit EB with a critical hat on because it was largely a product of the talent management agenda and employee shortages of a few years ago. For some people, EB and recruitment were almost synonomous. Therefore, what is the future for EB when talent management takes a downturn?
A few months ago I posted some thoughts on that issue following a series of seminars in Australia, to which I still adhere no matter how deep the recession bites. However, I'm working with two sets of colleagues in Australia and Canada on different projects that may have something more to say about this question. The Australian project, with colleagues from Macquarie (Paul Gollan) and Monash (Kerry Grigg) and supported by ADCORP and other organizations, is examining the impact of EB not only on the talent management/human capital agenda, but also on the creation of social capital (creating strong organizational identities and creating strong bridges/networks among people) and organizational capital (e.g. Web 2.0 - our CIPD report on this comes out in a few weeks). Surprisingly, some excellent research has shown that both of these forms of capital have more of an impact on innovation than human capital/talent. The Canadian/British project is a new book I'm editing with Ron Burke and Cary Cooper on Corporate Repuations for Gower. A key focus of this book is on managing reputation risk, which leads me back to the opening comments on reputation spillover and reverse employer branding. The more I think about this issue, the more important I think it is to investigate. So thanks to CV, the author of Authentic Organizations, for raising this issue. Any comments, experiences, examples would be greatly appreciated to help inform our events and research.
To return to the initiatives we're lucky enough to be part of (and do a bit of advertising for the Centre), the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has just promoted two important initiatives in this field. The first is their 'Shaping the Future' programme, the Scottish edition of which we are launching with them in Glasgow on March 27th with a working lunch for an invited group of HR directors to consider the future of HR in the current economic conditions. The second is an advisory board established by Rebecca Clake of the CIPD to examine the role of EB research in the current recessionary context. In addition to these initiatives, we're also running a one day seminar we're running with the Institute of Employment Studies in Glasgow on EB in changing contexts on April, 16th.
So what does all of this activity add up to? Well, all will have to re-visit EB with a critical hat on because it was largely a product of the talent management agenda and employee shortages of a few years ago. For some people, EB and recruitment were almost synonomous. Therefore, what is the future for EB when talent management takes a downturn?
A few months ago I posted some thoughts on that issue following a series of seminars in Australia, to which I still adhere no matter how deep the recession bites. However, I'm working with two sets of colleagues in Australia and Canada on different projects that may have something more to say about this question. The Australian project, with colleagues from Macquarie (Paul Gollan) and Monash (Kerry Grigg) and supported by ADCORP and other organizations, is examining the impact of EB not only on the talent management/human capital agenda, but also on the creation of social capital (creating strong organizational identities and creating strong bridges/networks among people) and organizational capital (e.g. Web 2.0 - our CIPD report on this comes out in a few weeks). Surprisingly, some excellent research has shown that both of these forms of capital have more of an impact on innovation than human capital/talent. The Canadian/British project is a new book I'm editing with Ron Burke and Cary Cooper on Corporate Repuations for Gower. A key focus of this book is on managing reputation risk, which leads me back to the opening comments on reputation spillover and reverse employer branding. The more I think about this issue, the more important I think it is to investigate. So thanks to CV, the author of Authentic Organizations, for raising this issue. Any comments, experiences, examples would be greatly appreciated to help inform our events and research.
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