Posts Tagged ‘employee relations’

Today I am launching my new web site under the new company name of Greve Consulting, formerly known as Metreks.  The focus of my practice is to help companies develop their returns management, aka reverse logistics capabilities.  Viewers will find a lot of useful information on returns including the Reverse Logistics Podcast, which will feature industry leaders from the world of reverse logistics, and my blog which is packed with articles and information to help service providers, manufacturers, retailers, and liquidators make more money.

Register to get the blogs sent to your desktop automatically or save www.GreveConsulting.com as a favorite on your browser.  Your comments, questions, suggestions and feedback are encouraged.  I will use your feedback to improve the value delivered from the site.

Check in from time to time to see what is new.  For example, you might want to check out The Cost of Doing Nothing.  This is a form you can fill out to find out how much opportunity you and your company have in developing your reverse logistics capabilities.

Whether you call it returns management or reverse logistics, it’s all about improving returns and maximizing profits.  I hope you enjoy the new site and get a lot of value out of GreveConsulting.com.

Many business owners never hear of the National Labor Relations Board , until they get a letter notifying them that their employees have petitioned for a union election. So what is the NLRB? Simply put, the NLRB is an arm of the government that protects the rights of employees to either organize and join a union, remain union free, or decertify and effectively kick the union out. According to the NLRB Web Site:

The National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1935 to administer the National Labor Relations Act, the primary law governing relations between unions and employers in the private sector. The statute guarantees the right of employees to organize and to bargain collectively with their employers, and to engage in other protected concerted activity with or without a union, or to refrain from all such activity.

However, if you sit in any NLRB office for a few minutes you will quickly realize that the NLRB is NOT unbiased.  In fact, they are very much PRO-UNION. As one official once told me, “We are in the business of making it easy to organize.” This bias comes as a surprise to many business people when they go to an NLRB hearing where a member of the NLRB sits as judge and jury on the issue of the day.

Employees too, can be surprised by the response of the NLRB. If employees want to organize, they will be rushed into an office and a friendly NLRB attorney will carefully walk them through the process. However, decerification is often met with cold response. They will answer your questions if you ask directly, but you have to ask. Employees must ask directly:

• What do I need to do to deceritify a union where I work?
• What forms must be completed to file for decertification?
• Will you give me a blank form and walk me through how to fill it out?
• Can I have extra copies of the form?
• What wording do I need to have on the “Decertification Petition”?

The answers the NLRB gives employees will be all they need to know to legally decertify the union.  You can follow the this link to find the NLRB office nearest you. You can call or visit the office nearest you to get more information. The NLRB is there to protect employees. Everyone has a right to seek and receive their help. Quoting the NLRB web site says:

Employees have the right to form, join, support or assist unions, also known as labor organizations, who may bargain collectively with the employer on the employees’ behalf seeking to modify wages or working conditions. Employees also have the right to engage in other protected concerted activities without a union seeking to improve their wages and other working conditions.

Employees also have the right to refrain from engaging in these activities or to seek removal of a union from the workplace.

Focusing only on the bottom line is not the best way to improve profitability. That’s the conclusion of recent research conducted by Mary Sully de Luque and Nathan T. Washburn of Thunderbird School of Global Management; David A. Waldman, of Arizona State University West; and Robert J. House, of the University of Pennsylvania, that underscores the risk of single-minded pursuit of profits.

This finding is based on survey data gathered from 520 business organizations in 17 countries designed to test if a CEO’s primary focus on profit maximization resulted in employees developing negative feelings toward the organization. The result? Employees in these companies tend to perceive the CEO as autocratic and focused on the short term, and they report being somewhat less willing to sacrifice for the company. Corporate performance is poorer as a result.

But when the CEO makes it a priority to balance the concerns of customers, employees, and the community while also taking environmental impact into account, employees perceive him or her as visionary and participatory. And they report being more willing to exert extra effort, and corporate results improve.

So does this mean that CEO’s don’t have to worry about profits. No. What it does mean is that if you want a motivated workforce who will support all your goals, including bottom line goals, show them that you have a balanced approach. It also means that taking a balanced, “sustainable” approach is more profitable.

This research also confirms what many progressive companies such as Walmart, P&G, and Dell already know. That is that focusing on sustainability, aka – the triple bottom line, is not only good PR, but is the best strategy to maximize long term bottom line results.

According to an article appearing Workforce.com, employers are getting hit with lawsuits related to criminal background checks and credit checks. As always, consistency and common sense will keep you out of trouble but the trend is clear. See exerpts from the article by Fay Hansen below:

Explosive growth in the background screening industry during the past decade has generated near-universal adoption of criminal checks and a steady rise in credit checks for all U.S. job candidates.

…this growing reliance on screening is on a collision course with new legislative restrictions, legal challenges and mounting evidence that such results are poor predictors of behavior and performance.

…The EEOC says these exclusionary practices are not job-related or justified by business necessity.

…A spate of EEOC and private lawsuits are pending against other companies for unlawfully denying employment to people with criminal records or bad credit histories.

…EEOC hearings on screening practices in November 2008 included expert testimony that the results are not good predictors of employee behavior or performance. In addition to greater EEOC scrutiny of criminal record screening practices, a growing number of states now prohibit or limit pre-employment arrest inquiries.

One in five U.S. adults now have a criminal record that would show up on a routine pre-employment background check, according to estimates based on Bureau of Justice data.

…HireRight’s 2009 survey results confirm this, with 93 percent of employers reporting that they run criminality checks, up from 85 percent in 2008.

…HireRight surveyed 1,411 employers of all sizes from more than 15 industries. The survey found that 84 percent of employers conduct comprehensive screening before the first day of work; 8 percent screen immediately after the start.

…The HireRight survey found that 42 percent of employers check credit histories, up from 36 percent in 2008, but legislators are increasingly challenging the use of credit checks in pre-employment screening.

Congress is considering a bill that would prevent employers from using credit reports in their hiring or promotion decisions. In June, Hawaii joined Washington state in limiting the use of credit checks in pre-employment screening; bans or restrictions also are under consideration in Michigan, Ohio, Connecticut, Missouri, New York and Texas.

…What is clear is a growing legislative and regulatory backlash against screening practices that are not tied to demonstrable risk and business necessity.

Follow this link to the complete article.

Big labor is finally pushing organizers to use the web to develop issues, recruit sympathetic employees and conduct organizing campaigns. Recently, the Teamsters conducted a workshop to….

“….introduce you (the organizer) to ways you can use your own web site and other free web applications to organize workers or mobilize supporters for both online and offline action”

In addition to teaching organizers about how to leverage social media and email, unions like the Teamsters have taken it one step further and set up a www.teamsteractive.com that they defined as:

“the ultimate tool for Teamster organizations to maintain a professional web presence with up-to-the minute information and powerful membership communication tools.”

Along with the web building tools, the Teamsters provide instructions and down loadable presentations that instruct organizers on how to use the web to identify targets, issues, and sympathetic employees. This is Big Labor’s version of Web 2.0 for union organizers. It challenges organizers to consider:

• What are your goals?
• Who are you trying to reach?
• What actions do you want them to take?
• Who are the “influentials?”
• How will you spread word about the resources on your site?

Who are “influentials?” The Teamsters define them as:

• Water cooler experts
• Read and write Blogs
• Politically active – online or off
• Regularly participate in email actions
• Active online social networkers MySpace, FaceBook, Listservs

Big labor is clearly looking to introduce unions to the younger, more internet savvy generation. Businesses should take note and ensure they are ready to take their campaign tactics to the next level to meet the new threats.

Human Resources is one of the most important departments within any organization. HR responsibilities can range from policy administration, to hiring, to labor relations, benefits, and beyond. HR departments are like….. uh… noses.  Everyone has one but they can vary greatly.

My experience has been that there are three kinds of Human Resource Departments:

1. Bureaucratic – They are more interested in filling out the right form than they are helping people
2. Road Block – Their job is to stop management until they ask nicely and always remind everyone of the risk of a legal suit that the company will lose, through no fault of theirs.
3. Advocate – These HR professionals recognize that their job is to champion the cause of their employees and help management apply policies in a fair, firm, and consistent manner.

You often hear about the “culture” in a company.  The HR department has more to do with defining that culture than most think.  If they work WITH management to help them achieve their tactical and strategic goals, while filling their role as employee advocate, the culture will be norished and will thrive.

If Human Resources is contantly at odds with Operations or serves employees only by filing forms and effectively shutting the “open door”, the culture is undermined both in the board room and on the shop floor.

HR impacts every part of every organization.  If you have a “culture” issue in your company, look first at how the Human Resource Department interacts with the rest of the organization.  If there is no upward communications from the shop floor, or rampant law suits, or union organizing efforts going on, don’t ignore HR’s role in helping create the situation while on your way to fire the VP of Operations.

Human Resources must be your finger on the pulse of your people.  They have to maintain a balance between supporting management and “protecting” your employees from unfair decisions or work place abuse.  HR can be a company’s greatest tool or it’s weakest link.  Like everything else, it comes down to leadership.  If Human Resources is not walking the talk, you must take action or a ripple could turn into a tsunami.

According to a new Proofpoint study of 220 leaders at American companies with over 1,000 employees, 38% employ staff to read or otherwise analyze the content of outgoing email, compared to 29% last year. Why the big increase in surveillance? 34% said their businesses had been affected by the exposure of sensitive or embarrassing information, up from 23% in 2008.

ON a related note, the NLRB reversed a ruling that said employers could consider internal emails encouraging unionism as an abuse of the company property. With this reversal, employees are now protected if they use company email to encourage unionism. The message is that we all should be careful what is put in emails and we should not spy on employees to see if they are promoting a union by reading their emails.

Treat your team with respect and treat them like you would like to be treated. Do you let them read your emails? Then don’t read theirs. If you do that and you have a positive uplifting culture, you won’t have to worry about what your people are saying about you, NLRB violations, or union organizers.

SEIU sent out emails today urging all members to sign up for mobile alerts so the SEIU can immediately rally their members “When your Senator or Congressman needs to hear our voices on the health insurance reform, Employee Free Choice, or immigration debates.

When our members — your brothers and sisters — require support at the workplace, the state capitol, or in the streets.”

This is more evidence of big labor investing and building infrastructure to sway political opinions and organize non-union businesses. Like the old song says, “these times, they are a chang’n”. Is your business keeping up? Do you have a Strategic Labor Relations plan to deal with all the legal changes, threats, and union tactics? If not, you need to take action now. The times may be changing, but time stands still for no man.

Many times employees will blame the system when they can’t hit their productivity goals. There are some who will complain about “the slow system” for no other reason than to get attention. As a manager, you need to be careful not to assume the employees are correct and make a service call to you systems support.

If the complaints are not well founded, you will cost your company money and you will quickly loose credibility. To avoid this and to figure out what the real problem is you should work with the complaining employee for a few hours and see for yourself if their is a real issue or if the employee is the real problem.

If you have a person that can’t hit their numbers but blame the system or setup or something in the work area, work with them for a day and see how they perform while you are working with them. You will be a better leader for having actually done the work and your employees will appreciate your investment in them. You may find that those employees are more productive the day you work with them than any time in their history. You may also find they have not been trained properly, or that there actually is a systems issue that needs to be addressed.

Regardless of the outcome, the key is that you work with your “troubled employee” for an extended period to identify the true source of the problem. Once you identify the source, you can address the problem correctly. You can’t do this from behind a desk and you really won’t know what the issue is from reading a report or observing for just a few minutes.

Invest the time working with your employee and you will see a big return on your investment coming from a number of sources.

Want a free and easy way to dramatically improve the relationship between your management team and your employees?

Have your team at the door when your employees go home. As they leave the building each supervisor thanks them for doing a good job, says good night, smiles, and just chit chats with them.

This is a great time for your people to quickly speak with you and your supervisors one on one. You will hear about their families, big events in their lives, and issues in the operations that you may not of heard about otherwise.

It is free, it is easy and it is common best practice at Walmart facilities and other leading companies. I’ve done it for years and can tell you that it is a great practices that pays great dividends.