Blog, cont'd,  Susan Seitel, WFC Resources

March 31, 2008 – Pregnancy bias

For me, there's only one drawback to a restful week's vacation in the sun; that's the stack of unread newspapers waiting my return. The upside is that reading a week's news in one sitting gives you a unique perspective on what's important. One article that leaped out of the bunch was a Wall Street Journal column on pregnancy discrimination. Sue Shellenbarger has a way of getting to the heart of the matter, whatever the subject; this column is a neat combination of facts, interviews and personal stories. One surprise: the EEOC says pregnancy-bias complaints rose 14% last year, the biggest annual increase in 13 years. And in its first year, the agency's call center got 20,400 pregnancy-bias inquiries. The figures reflect both changing demographics and a new activism among mothers, says Shellenbarger. But confusion still exists about what the Pregnancy Discrimination Act covers. For one thing, it doesn't give a pregnant woman special protection from adverse treatment. To succeed in a claim, she generally must be able to prove her employer didn't hold men to the same standards and didn't ask male candidates comparable questions. And being pregnant doesn't protect you from being downsized, but they better not be singling you out. One woman who was told her firing was part of a reduction-in-force later found out she was the only one affected. She settled a bias suit for a generous sum.

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March 20, 2008 – What keeps diversity training from working?

An interesting new study by Boston-based consulting firm Novations Group has found the training often gets a little spoiled, and they've identified some of the reasons. First and foremost, faulty delivery is the culprit.

Nearly a third of 2,500 senior HR executives blamed shortcomings like no reinforcement tools or metrics. Other typical flaws were "trite content" and "little thought leadership."

Here are some other things they said were responsible for less than perfect results:

• No tools were provided to reinforce the training: 29%
• No metrics were offered to evaluate training’s effectiveness: 24 % 
• Diversity addressed, but not development and advancement issues: 22% 
• Clear objectives were not established: 15% 
• Material was too U.S. focused: 15% 
• Concerns of line managers were not dealt with: 15% 
• Content was trite, humdrum: 14% 
• Little thought leadership was shown: 9% 
• Facilitation skills were poor: 8% 
• Employer’s policies and practices were not addressed: 7%

Says Novations VP Fred Smith, “It’s the mistakes and shortcomings identified in the study that create ‘diversity fatigue.’ The best diversity training has moved far beyond the one-dimensional, feel-good event and today needs to be held to the same rigorous standards as other corporate training. Anything less cheats participants, wastes resources and undermines diversity efforts.” Smith also said he believes a fundamental problem is that many diversity programs simply presume it's just employees who have to change. “Nothing significant will be achieved if the organization itself doesn’t look at its systems, biases and ways of doing things. There’s no return in changing the attitudes or awareness of participants if management also doesn’t make some of the right changes.”

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March 17, 2008

The saga of paid leave in New Jersey goes on. The Senate has postponed their vote because of a procedural issue. But if you're lucky enough to work for a Fortune 100 company you probably already have paid family leave. A new report by the Congressional Joint Economic Committee has found those companies overwhelmingly offer from six to eight weeks of paid family leave. The Committee asked the companies about their policies and how they designed them to serve as a guide for U.S. policymakers, and ended up finding that new mothers are the beneficiaries in most cases. But while Fortune 100 companies offer more leave than is typically provided by other U.S. companies, the length of leave is still way below that offered in the European Union and nearly all other advanced economies.

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March 14, 2008

Wondering what's going on with paid leave in New Jersey? It seems like they've been battling forever, but it's finally down to the last vote. Yesterday the bill moved through its second-to-last hurdle, passing the Assembly despite strong objections from Republicans; the vote was 46 to 30. Now it goes back to the Senate, which narrowly approved an earlier version of the bill.

The Senate has to vote again, since then it's had language added to it to make it more palatable to small business owners. It now says workers can't sue employers if they get fired when they use the leave. And the bill also now includes a controversial clause that says businesses with fewer than 50 workers don't have to save jobs for those who use the leave. Business advocates say that won't stop people from suing, and the vote in the Senate next Monday is expected to be close. Governor Corzine has said he'll sign it if it's approved.

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March 10, 2008

Forgive me for tooting our own horn, but I couldn't help sharing this wonderful letter from Patricia Herlihy, veteran work-life expert, researcher and generally valuable contributor to the field. She just changed her Newsbrief subscription from an e-mail PDF copy to a mailed hard copy, and in the exchange, sent this letter to Anne, our person in charge of customer service.

I have known Susan for a long time and I still am amazed at what she has put together.  I don't know in any other field a so well thought out and written crib sheet (or cliff notes) of what is important in the field. I send everyone there because it is truly the best way to keep up with all kinds of information, but in "bite" sections. As a researcher I read a lot...but I don't always have time to read whole papers. Your product helps me skim and then pursue the ones that are relevant to my research and work.

So you will probably get to know me. I call Susan whenever I am having writer's block or need some quick references, and bless her heart, she has never let me down in over about 10-12 years of our relationship.

I'm looking forward to getting the paper version again.... I can then put it on my bedside table and it is great reading before going to bed so I can think( or dream) about new opportunities or networking that I need to do for whatever project I am working on....

Best,

Pat

March 7, 2008

This week the Families and Work Institute/Conference Board held their work-life conference in Atlanta. It's a gathering that never fails to stimulate a different level of thinking about work-life, and this year was no exception.

We'll write a Trend Report about it in the April Newsbrief, but here are just a few thoughts about it. We heard new study results about what keeps CEOs up at night, and recession or no recession, talent issues are moving up on the list. And more studies found that for the talent they want to recruit and retain, having a supportive work environment is number one on their list of desires.

We talked this week about what's stopping culture transformation, how to get around it, and about casting a whole new set of messages for senior management. We redefined both diversity and flexibility. And we spent a lot of time talking about who's really in control of our lives. To get the whole report on April 1st, drop me a note at Susan@WFCResources.com

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March 4, 2008

It may come as no surprise, but Americans have the worst vacation privileges in the world. Expedia.com says we're getting a tiny bit better – an average 14 vacation days in 2007 vs. 12 in 2005 – but more than a third won't even use them all. They left an average of three of those days on the table last year.

We are more productive and feel better about our jobs when we return from a vacation. But we just have too much work to do; 19% of U.S. adults said they've cancelled or postponed vacation plans because of work. And nearly a fourth of us now check voicemail and/or e-mail while we're "away" from work. That's up from 16% in 2005. UK workers get 24 days; in Germany they get 26 days; Spanish workers get 30 days and the French get 36 days. Men were more likely than women to feel guilty abut taking time off from work.

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March 3, 2008

We were lucky enough to catch 60 Minutes last Sunday, and an amazing segment about a real American hero. His name is Stan Brock. He was once an adventurer who tackled wild animals and was profiled on Wild Kingdom. Now he's tackling an equally tough issue.

Brock is the founder of an organization called Remote Area Medical, or RAM. It's a volunteer medical organization. They're not kidding about volunteer. No one involved, including founder Brock, earns any money. They work on weekends and bring free care to rural areas of the U.S. where many residents have no insurance or, at best, are underinsured, with large, unaffordable deductibles.

This segment showed him setting up his medical tent in Knoxville, Tennessee, and as the New York Times writes, "offering anyone who shows up everything from free mammograms to tooth extraction. Over one weekend Mr. Brock and his volunteers see more than 900 patients, uninsured or underinsured, and are forced to turn away at least 400 others, some of whom traveled hundreds of miles and slept in their cars to win a chance at free medical care that other industrialized countries consider a basic right."

CBS News reports that during the Knoxville "expedition," RAM volunteers extracted 1,066 teeth, did 567 fillings, performed 94 mammograms and made 500 pairs of glasses, in addition to almost 300 general medical exams.

In about 20 minutes, this program did more to explain the critical need for universal health care than all the political speeches we've heard so far. I'm sure Brock could use a few contributions. For more about his program, click here. 

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March 1, 2008

It seems that no matter how beneficial a law would be for all concerned, there's always a naysayer. This time it's Texas Congressional Republican Kenny Marchant, who worries that the new Telework Improvements Act could be too much for small agencies like the 62-employee Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The new set of requirements, a bill known as HR 4106, would increase the number of government employees who telecommute. It would mean all agencies would have to allow eligible employees to work at home or at a telework center for at least 20% of their two-week pay period.

Obviously Rep. Marchant knows little about the practice of teleworking, and hasn't read about studies like the latest by Penn State academics. They examined 20 years of studies and concluded that telecommuting has a "clear upside" for all stakeholders. It has a positive impact on performance, turnover and stress, and benefits employees, employers, the community, and the environment.

Perhaps he might check in with some of the government's own small agencies, listed in this 2007 report. The Committee for Purchase from the Blind and Severely Disabled, for instance, has 29 employees; 24 of them are eligible to telecommute, and ten of them do so. The Inter-American Foundation, with 47 employees, has decided 45 are eligible for telework and 17 (nearly 38%) now do so.

Allowing eligible employees to work from home for two days out of a two week period a hardship? Hardly. On the contrary, what a great way to begin to teach managers to manage by results.

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