EFCA: What Steps Can Employers Take to Prevent Potential Problems if it Becomes Law?

• Educate supervisors about the dangers of retaliating or discriminating against pro-union employees.
• Resolve any unsolved employee issues and complaints that could make a union look more appealing to your workers.
• Use new-hire orientation to explain the advantages of your company’s union-free status. Talk about the drawbacks of unionization with current employees before organization attempts are made.
• Make sure non-solicitation policies are in order, so you can prevent third parties from coming on-site to drum up support for a union.

What are companies doing?

• Discussing what is unknown: How long is an employee authorization card good?
• Educating supervisors: How to spot potential union efforts. How to handle risky employee situations. No-solicitation policies.
• Educating employees: What is a union? How will the EFCA remove your democratic right to a secret ballot? A card an employee signs in front of a union organizer may be their only vote.
• Educating employees using long-time front-line supervisors who have credibility. Also opportunity to engage lead workers whom other employees look up to.

EDGE HR Managers Share Issues of Concern

• Attendance policy: How to communicate and encourage attendance and reduce the turnover that results from enforcing attendance policy.
• How to prepare for a changing regulatory environment. Potential new laws and laws currently on the books but not vigorously enforced. Issues include: equal pay, medical leave and fair labor standards.
• How to staff for flexible skilled labor needs? Pay OT vs. adding employees vs. temporaries.
• How to communicate clarified policies within a newly published employee handbook without damaging morale. Moving from a culture without policies to one with policies and the impact it may have on employees used to fewer limits.
• The need to update safety policies and procedures.
• How to meet the needs of customers in the current economic situation with appropriate workforce structure and hours.
• How to develop performance metrics for the entire organization, linking each to profitability.
• Training for the entire organization. How to create a robust professional development program for employees with limited resources.

What Are Appropriate Metrics to Use to Evaluate HR Managers?

What are fair and appropriate metrics to use to evaluate and hold accountable an HR manager? Where do you find the right benchmarks? EDGE HR managers contributed to this discussion at the Jan. 27 EDGE HR Managers meeting, the first of four in 2009. Ideas and experiences shared include:

• Link any measurements to profitability.
• Balanced scorecard: Link drivers to the bottom line by following profitability upstream. HR may route through Operations to link to the bottom line. (Approach applies to all jobs within a company).
• SHRM and ERC may have benchmarking data.
• If no applicable benchmarking data are available, use past performance as a baseline.
• Select metrics that can enhance your ability to contribute to the organization.
• Survey the parties you serve. Try to make the questions produce actionable information and constructive input.
• What metrics make sense? Turnover, time to fill (positions), cost of benefits, 401k participation?
• Helps to put yourself, as a manager, in the owner’s shoes.

MBA UltraLite

This week, we kicked off the first of a ten-session “crash course” in business and leadership, designed for rising stars in growth companies and taught by a mix of academicians and experienced business leaders. We created this course in response to the voices of CEOs who were asking all of their employees to make management decisions, often with very limited business education and leadership training. By explaining the rationale, language and inner workings of business and each functional area (Strategy, Operations, Marketing, HR, Finance, etc.) we begin to build a holistic bridge between teammates that often don’t understand each other. We then crack open doorways of leadership development, covering personal assessment and learning, communication, negotiation and project management. In the end, each participant gains practical tools for how he or she may create value on a personal and organizational level, benefiting themselves, their companies and the region as a whole.

Happy New Year and Best Wishes for a Prosperous 2009

From the EDGE Staff & Supporters