Gruntled Employees

Gruntled on MSNBC Live

On May 22, MSNBC Live did a story on whether parents in the workplace were getting preferential treatment over nonparents. The fine folks at MSNBC had been perusing Gruntled Employees, and invited me to appear and give the employers' perspective. We actually ended up doing two live segments. The first piece had me facing off with Kim Gandy, the president of the National Organization of Women. Here is the clip (it's 3:50 long), which is copyrighted by MSNBC:

Later that day, I went back on MSNBC Live to discuss the issue with Kimarie Rahill McDonald, a New Jersey family lawyer. In this piece (3:58 long), I noted the similarity between today's issues and a similar topic from a 35-year-old Mary Tyler Moore Show episode:

(Also copyrighted by MSNBC, and used here under the fair-use doctrine.) I thought MSNBC did a nice job with the topic, and both anchors directed the discussion well.

Note to aspiring TV personalities: it's a heck of a lot easier doing it the second time!

Making it in Massachusetts? Merit increases up slightly

Yesterday's Boston Globe reported that Massachusetts employees can look forward to merit pay raises averaging 3 to 4.5 percent this year, a slight increase over last year's raises. These figures came from a survey  of 223 employers that Associated Industries of Massachusetts conducted. (On the other hand, 13% of employers surveyed froze pay last year, and 2% put in a salary-reduction program.) According to AIM's accompanying press release, "Merit increase budgets are beginning to slowly ramp up in 2007."

Survey respondents also said that their top three compensation priorities were:

1. "Managing top performers,"
2. "Addressing market competitiveness," and
3. "Communicating the total compensation program to staff."

Quite an inspiring goal, Number 3. I'm getting chills. But ignoring the almost-Churchillian total-compensation-program-staff-communication aspiration ("I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat, and a plan to communicate the total compensation program to all the staff"), the other two goals make sense: paying our best people enough so that they don't go make more with our competitors.

I'm reminded of our April post "Bonuses: more bang for your buck," which discussed a recent Cornell School of Hotel Administration study showing that bonuses were almost ten times more effective than merit increases. Communicate that.

[And yes, I know that the Churchill quote is "blood, toil, tears, and sweat." It's kind of like "Play it again, Sam." Only not so much.]

Wage-discrimination claims don't last forever

Late last month, the Supreme Court ruled that wage-discrimination claims are like other discrimination claims under Title VII: they expire in 180 days (or sometimes 300 days — distinction not important here). Now Congress is trying to undo that ruling.

In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (PDF), Lilly Ledbetter sued for sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. She argued that the pay she received over the course of her years at Goodyear was discriminatorily low, and a federal jury agreed. Goodyear then appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, arguing that pay decisions that occurred more than 180 days before she filed at the EEOC were time barred. The Court of Appeals agreed (PDF), and reversed the jury verdict. Ledbetter then took her case to the Supreme Court, which affirmed the Circuit's decision. Justice Alito wrote the opinion, joined by Justices Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and Chief Justice Roberts.

According to the decision, Ledbetter argued that earlier discriminatory decisions (outside the 180-day filing limit) carried forward their effects into paychecks delivered during the filing period. In other words, each paycheck was a discrete discriminatory act, rather than the mere result of an earlier discriminatory act (the pay-rate decision). The Court nixed this argument. The Court also noted that Ledbetter made no claim that intentionally discriminatory conduct occurred during the filing period, nor did she claim that she hadn't learned of the pay decisions until the filing deadline had passed. Bottom line, as the Court put it:

[C]urrent effects cannot breathe life into prior, uncharged conduct ... such effects in themselves have "no present legal consequences."

In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg (joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer) concluded her argument in Ledbetter's favor with the following:

Once again, the ball is in Congress’ court.  As in 1991, the
Legislature may act to correct this Court’s parsimonious
reading of Title VII.

Now Rep. George Miller (D-CA) has picked up the ball and introduced the "Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007" (PDF), designed to reverse the Court's decision (press release from the House Committee of Education and Labor here). We'll have to see whether Congress decides to punish employers for years-old employment decisions. Employers: call your legislators to put a stop to the Ledbetter Act, or plan on defending stale discrimination claims.

Shout out to Chris McKinney's excellent HR Lawyer's Blog for his post "Congress Responds to Ledbetter Decision," which called it to my attention. Good work, Chris!

Put your employees first and your customers second

Got an email a few weeks back from Siobhan Ford at the Harvard Business Review calling my attention to an article in their June issue. (Actually, her email ended up in my spam filter, because I forgot to turn off the "ignore all things Harvard" rule.) (Kidding.) She had found us through Frank Roche's excellent KnowHR blog (shout out, Frank), which has been a staple on our Blogroll (right) for quite some time.

Anyway, Siobhan pointed out this short piece by two professors from Manchester (UK) Business School, Gary Davies and Rosa Chun. Davies is a professor of corporate reputation (how cool a title is that?) and Chun is a professor of business ethics and social responsibility (slightly less cool, and harder to fit on a business card). Davies and Chun conducted field interviews with 4,700 customers and employees of 63 businesses. They learned that service companies were more likely to be growing if their employee satisfaction exceeded their customer satisfaction:

Our research shows two things: Employee and customer views strongly correlate, indicating that the former influences the latter; and year-on-year sales growth positively and significantly correlates with the size of the gaps between employee and customer views. The more the staff’s view outshines the customers’, the greater the sales growth, because, we believe, employee views tend to transfer to customers through the aptly termed process of emotional contagion.

"Emotional contagion," apparently, is the way that employees' good feelings rub off onto the customers. The professors also found that employee satisfaction was most influenced "by the perceived quality of both training and management and by how much autonomy workers have."

Bottom line for managers and HR: employee satisfaction can actually be used as a metric to provide a leading indicator for company growth. Maybe that will get the boardroom's attention.

The article, which is only slightly longer than this post, is available for free until June 27 here. Thanks to Siobhan for the tip, and sorry about the whole making-fun-of-Harvard's-blog-policy post. (Well, not really.)

"The dog ate my homework" excuses

Some employees just don't want to work. They might never admit it — perhaps not even to themselves — but the attentive manager or HR pro can usually tell who they are. They're often absent or late or have to leave early. Their lives are more chaotic than other employees', and they tend to bring their chaos to work with them (when they actually come to work).

And their excuses are often lame.

Let me be clear here: I'm not talking about employees who have health issues or family issues. There's an enormous difference between workers who want to work but have been stung by tragedy or bad luck and employees who really don't want to do their jobs and whose stories never quite seem authentic. When we were kids, they were the students who always had a tale about why they couldn't finish their assignments. "The dog ate my homework" was the classic, if apocryphal, story.

Here, then, is a list of excuses given by one office worker for her absences, tardiness, and early departures. They were collected by her coworkers and sent to me via a trusted source. The numbers in parentheticals represent the times she has used that excuse. A few references have been edited to avoid compromising the identity of the accidental employee or her sometime workplace:

• I have pinkeye (3)
• my child has whooping cough (2)
• I need to register my car with the DMV
• my childcare provider has norovirus (the cruise-ship disease), and can't care for the children
• my childcare provider is adopting a baby, and can't care for the children (4 total days off)
• I have migraines (3)
• my child has an ear infection (3)
• I have a sinus infection (6)
• I had food poisoning, or a family member did (4)
• I need to be present for mold remediation in my apartment [actually, this one's pretty clever — JS]
  
• my car was stolen (resulted in 3 days off)
• my neighbor moved out, so I have to be home for the cable guy to come and reconnect my cable (3) [unclear whether the neighbor moved out multiple times — JS]
  
• the airline canceled my return flight and failed to notify passengers
• I have to be home for a plumber to fix a leaky pipe 
  
• I found an injured wild bird in my backyard and needed to bring it to a vet
• I have an last-minute doctor's appointment (4)
• my cat is in traction following an unknown injury [trying to picture this — JS]
  
• I have an ovarian cyst (incorrectly self-diagnosed; turned out to be menstrual cramps)
• my cat requires oral medication (had to leave early for 3 days)
• my kids had a total meltdown and I just could not get them into the car (resulting in 14 late arrivals)
• my other cat is suffering from liver failure [probably looking for attention after the other cat's traction deal — JS]
  
• it snowed: kids refused to get into car until they were allowed to play in the snow for a while
  
• unexpected visit from in-laws (husband forgot to tell her)
  
• I have to be home for the electrician to come and fix an electrical problem [well, that is what they do — JS]
  
• my daycare provider is just not feeling well (3)
• my daycare provider is on holiday (2)
• I am suffering from a virus (can't remember name of it, but did recall that it was a third-world malnutrition virus that was wiped out sometime back in the 1960s)
• the starter in my car is broken (which my husband diagnosed over the phone)
• I just need a day to clean my house (5)
• I need to prepare for my child's birthday party (5)
• I need to prepare for our vacation (5)
• I need to accompany my husband to his eye-tumor medical appointment (turned out to be a stye)
• I need to get my car reconditioned so that we can sell it (update: still has the same car 4 months later) [maybe a "For Sale" sign would help — JS]
  
• my coworker made me laugh so hard that my asthma is acting up (2) [turnabout is fair play; wait to see how much the coworker laughs after reading this — JS]

It probably takes more energy to come up with these stories than it would to simply quit. If you have an employee like this, help him or her come to that conclusion. And if you've come across other dog-ate-my-homework excuses like these, post a comment.