Copyright © 2005, Ethan A. Winning, All Rights Reserved
Whatever Happened to Labor Day?
For more than 30 years, the Tuesday Wall Street Journal had a front page column, "Labor." At least for me and my generation of personnel managers, Tuesday was a generic "Labor Day." We got more news about work, unions, changes in labor codes, proposed and real changes in benefits, employment and unemployment than any other single source including SHRM (neé ASPA). Then, four years ago, the Journal dropped "Labor" as a column or even a minor feature for that matter. The Journal's editors may have realized more than most HR managers that employment and labor had changed and was shifting again, and these shifts had whittled away HR's importance in the corporate structure if not culture.
I have never before said that HR was going to disappear, though I have bemoaned the lack of adaptation to changes in both corporate structure and culture. In a way, we have been like GM and Ford, thinking that the American love of the SUV would go on forever and forgetting that Americans are a fickle bunch who tire of both form and substance. We hate going through change, but we do love what comes from change. And so, HR seems to have felt that shifts in economy - local, statewide, national, and global - would not appear as a shift in the functions of HR and how it is perceived by senior management as well as the rank and file.
Well, as we should have learned with the dot com bubble, nothing is forever. Instead, though perhaps not as oblivious as we sometimes seem, three things impinge on the HR psyche: (1) we see the changes, but hope that they will not affect us; (2) we see the changes but have no power to embrace it or use it to our advantage; and/or (3) we are so alone and overloaded with the trivial, mundane, and sometimes important, that we don't have time to steer the function in other ways. In a fairly recent survey that I conducted, 82% of those responding had no more than two employees in HR and of those, 70% were completely alone - and there was no correlation to the size of the company. The ratio of 1:100 that stood so firm for three decades seems to have gone to 1:250 or more (less?).
Changes:
There have been significant changes in management, unions, jobs, benefits, politics, ethics, employment and unemployment, technology, and the work-career-retirement continuum. There has been a flattening of management, phenomenal technological changes with which few if any can remain up to date, a reduction in the significance of HR as seen by boards and senior management, and deregulation with diminished oversight which has been damn near disastrous. The Congress is a schizophrenic body which on the one hand abandons its true responsibilities and on the other interferes where it has no legitimate reason. It reacts instead of analyzing and planning, a similar pattern to many of the dot coms no longer with us.
When I was asked last week by a subscriber what I thought of a career in HR, I told her that I simply didn't know. I was going to be a veterinarian. What do I know about choosing careers? Looking back over the last 30 odd (sic) years, personnel has been and continues to be interesting. I did write my thesis on the nature of work, and I can think of few areas which have evolved in such an interesting way. Sometimes it has been frightening: there is a lack of stability in careers and too much mobility for my liking. Just this week, a survey of those in the remaining dot com companies showed that a majority want to leave and will not be returning. It wasn't that long ago that one chose a profession, stuck with it for 30 years, and retired. One may have changed jobs and companies four or five times, but they stayed in the profession. There is no question but that fewer people are happy with their careers. (There are 300,000 attorneys in New York competing with each other. There are 145,000 real estate agents in California whose average home sales in 2005 was one. These are not happy people.)
Outsourcing and Stagnation:
Should anyone get into HR? A realistic and perhaps fatalistic view would lead one to believe that HR could easily disappear from larger companies in the next 10 years. Though SHRM called this "selective outsourcing," the selection is too broad to think that HR will ever regain the place it had in the 90s when many had learned that two of its primary purposes were risk management and strategic planning.
As "amusred" posted on our bulletin board, "Our HR group handles: COBRA, short-term disability claims, safety, and recruiting. Human Resources cannot outsource mentoring, counseling, performance issues, rewards and recognition."* But others pointed out, the following have already been outsourced: payroll, employee handbooks, compliance, training, recruiting and background checks, and most benefits administration especially retirement plans. (What did happen to ERISA? Why has there been no funding in so many plans? Who's minding the store?)
The one problem that "amusred" didn't point out is that our supervisors don't do a particularly good job of mentoring, counseling, and addressing performance issues. They need training, and that kind of management development as a corporate personnel function disappeared more than 20 years ago.
HR in a corporate environment has become relatively dull. As an outside consultant, I deal with most HR factors that I did when I was an HR manager, e.g., regulations, codes, compliance, counseling managers, fostering and ensuring progressive discipline, terminations, and any employment situation where the manager wants or needs a sounding board and help in deciding a direction to take. For me, HR is still interesting because clients and subscribers provide variety. But in much of HR, the variety has been whittled away, slowed, or disappeared. (Subscribers: See Revised 2005 Sole Practitioner HR Manager Job Description below.)
So What Else is New?
For almost a year, my issues of SHRM, CCH, and two other newsletters have been stacking up on my desk. I took a cursory look at each, and have been online almost daily looking for some juicy HR or legislative work related tidbits. And the "What the..." moment was when I realized there was nothing of significance for HR people in the past year. So I went back two years, and the result was the same. Oh sure, you can bring up Sarbanes-Oxley which we made our own even though it was not an HR issue, and the changes in the FLSA which has neither teeth nor influence in most states, but take a look at this list of just the article headers which were published as "meaningful:"
Unscheduled absenteeism rises to five year high - Salary increases remain at record lows - CEO compensation soars at companies that outsource - CEO compensation 400 times that of lowest employees even in companies that fail - Fourth quarter hiring optimistic - First quarter hiring optimistic - HR Outsourcing Selective and Sporadic - Second quarter hiring lower than originally thought - Eldercare Grows As Issue - Companies Give Post Partum Time Off - Winking At Age Discrimination - Outsourcing Some HR Functions Gain Momentum - Mid-Sized Employers Outspending Large Employers on Health Care - U.S. Workers Not Concerned About Offshoring - Health Insurance Surpasses Paid Leave As Most Costly Benefit - Flu Vaccination Shortage Affects "Presenteeism" - Health Savings Accounts Get Mixed Reviews - HR pros want to link compensation with performance - Looking For Benefits That Attract, Motivate, and Retain - Employees unhappy with incentive programs - Help Wanted Advertising Index Dips - Conference Board - Job Market Growth Lowest in 11 Months - Poor management equals poor productivity - Employees Apathetic or Dissatisfied with Management - Employee Trust of Management All Time Low - Union Membership Down Again in 2004 - Retaining employee enthusiasm is a challenge - Funding Retirement Programs a Worry - E-Mail Policies a Company Priority - Camera Phones a Threat to Privacy - Camera phones are a threat to trade secrets - Hiring figures depend on level of jobs - Stress takes toll on workers
That's more than enough, though I could literally quintuple the list. You know you have a problem when someone was compelled to come up with the term, "presenteeism" which, by the way, refers to employees who are sick but come to work anyway. Why not just call them "sickies?" (Where else but in HR and politics has there been an emphasis on finding new names for personnel, employees, teams, and now attendance?)
Anyway, for at least half the topics, the "Duh Factor" lives. If you don't believe me, take the last one: "Stress takes toll on workers." Ya think? Even those with limited exposure to HR or management have got to view these as old news or common sense. Fewer than five of those articles were deserving of reading mainly because you couldn't tell from the title what it was about, and only two posed solutions to perceived problems. And that is another part of the problem: for many issues, no one has solutions. For some issues, we are simply not prescient enough to determine what we should do in the interim. I know that the Chinese economy and labor force are going to have an effect on the rest of the world's economy and on jobs, but I'm not bright enough to think of a direction or plan to work with it since it has become obvious that some forces cannot be countered.
Groundhog Day - The Equal Pay Acts:
Even Congress has run out of legislative ideas. Well, maybe they ran out sixty years ago, but in case you're wondering what set me off (again) about what is happening in and to HR, it began with the annual statement by one politico or another that women make 72 cents on the dollar compared to men in the same positions. I personally think that's a crock, and it drives me nuts especially since it's been the same story since the 1960s when the second Equal Pay Act was passed.
On May 27 a headline read "Working women today earn an average of 72 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts." A GAO report had it pegged at 80 cents in 2001. The DOL said 76 cents in 2003. Earlier this month, the BLS said that one of every three wives make more than their husbands. These figures do not seem to take occupation, industry, race, or even geography into consideration. For all I know, they're include stay-at-home moms who don't make any money and, when you average that in, yep, all women make less.
The first Equal Pay Act was in 1864 and addressed the inequities between white and black soldiers in the Union Army. Then there was one in 1964 to level the playing field between men and women doing the same jobs. And another in 1973 to do the same thing. And I guess it didn't. Either that or it's such a great political issue to rally 'round that a democrat (usually) who has received an email asking "Where have you been?" says, "Uh...I've been working on the disparity between women's pay." It got to the point where the Congress set aside April 3 as "Equal Pay Day." Yeah, they did. I think that all people working at least 30 weeks a year and 40 hours a week, should have equal pay with all senators. Don't ever say I don't come up with solutions. The problems engendered by my solutions are somebody else's problems.
And now we come to Senator Harkin.
So along comes Senator Tom Harkin, the same Tom Harkin who promised a fight against the changes in FLSA and then just plain gave up last November. (And there are still 17 states which use the old criteria for exemptions.) On April 9, 2003, he introduced Senate Bill 841, the Fair Pay Act of 2003 "to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to prohibit discrimination of wages on account of sex, race, or national origin, and for other purposes." Along side him were Ms. Mikulski, Mr. Kennedy, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Akaka, Mr. Leahy, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Feinfold, and Mr. Durbin. Pictures were taken and headlines made.
On April 19, 2005, Mr. Harkin (and Ms. Mikulski, Mr. Kennedy, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Akaka, Mr. Leahy, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Feinfold, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Corzine, Mr. Kerry, and Mrs. Lincoln who probably came back from 1864 to find out what happened to the pay for black soldiers) introduced Senate Bill 840, the Fair Pay Act of 2005 "to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to prohibit discrimination of wages on account of sex, race, or national origin, and for other purposes."
I must be caught in an annual time warp. Why renew my newspaper subscription when the same things occur? No matter how I look at it, HR is either going backward or standing still.
HR, a Diminished Function? A Revised HR Manager Description
Candidly, I think that HR may be regressing. It kind of reminds me of a college essay assignment where a student says, "All the good topics are taken." Not knowing what else to do, we get involved in such things as Sarbanes-Oxley or, if part of a medical practice or non-profit, it is foisted upon us since no one else wants to deal with it. Remember that S-O has to do with corporate fiscal malfeasance or misfeasance, and was only peripherally related to privacy. We may ultimately end up being the hiring, orientation, benefits information center, and the ones called upon to terminate someone else's problems...just as it was in the 60s.
It wasn't until the 80s and 90s that we hit our stride and focused on compliance and risk management issues. Then came two revolutions. One obviously was the computer. The second was the "women's movement." Women became empowered (I hate that term because it's both loaded and misleading). With empowerment comes responsibility, but the responsibility took women in a new direction. They entered male-dominated professions. They entered the boardroom. And they started making more money than many men and as much as most in the same profession (that that, BLS!). And they bought. And before you knew it, it took two incomes to own a house and the SUV and the 1.5 kids which they had at age 37ish, and now the balancing act of being in the sandwich generation: kids and parents to care for.
What has that got to do with HR? Everything. Take the new work, workplace, workforce, outsourcing, unemployment, etc. etc. etc., and HR is very different than it was even 10 years ago. These changes have even begun to show up in honest responses to motivation surveys. More women want time to be at home with the kids. More people want time off. There are muddled career plans, i.e., putting off retirement because of debt or the inability to live on a retirement income. There is greater stress. And if we aren't worried about ourselves, we're worried about our kids, and some of you are our kids. (Depressed yet?)
Some of the changes that I see so far for the HR Manager of 2005 or maybe 2010 are shown in a revised Sole Practitioner HR Manager job description in the Subscriber's Section at http://www.ewin.com/subart/nuggie.htm. It's up to the manager to make more of it, change it, educate the management as to its necessity and potential. But it also means educating yourself.
If you need some direction as to what HR might be doing, here's a survey from vault.com: "Without proper emphasis on and commitments to HR and compliance issues, most start-ups are failing to educate and train their employees about the laws they must comply with, leaving companies open to workplace harassment claims. Despite recent high-profile sexual harassment lawsuits--involving both large Fortune 500 companies and major Internet start-ups alike--which might have served as a sharp wake-up call to businesses nationwide, the study found an overwhelming 79% of executives surveyed said they are still 'not at all concerned' with sexual harassment in the workplace. The study also uncovered that 54% of companies surveyed have no written sexual harassment policy in place. Of those companies, 64% do not plan to have one within the next 12 months. While the majority--58%--said they thought an employee handbook is important, 52% do not have one."
I'll do the handbook. You do the sexual harassment training.
*Although I agree that you can't outsource mentoring, if you're an HR manager with no or perhaps one subordinate, you do not have the time to "mentor" anyone. And if you're under 30, you probably don't have the expertise to pass on as part of a mentoring process.