Nonprofit HR Solutions Blog

Author Julie Berebitsky has published a new book, "Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire" (Yale University Press). In it are some great gems about how HR has helped shape the internal office environment when it comes to work place gender politics. Brian Moore has an interview with the author posted here. Below are a few excerpts. 

Human Resources departments effect on office relations
"In the 1940s and '50s, you start to see the human relations approach to management. And you also see the beginnings of a greater concern with men's behavior in the office -- that maybe they're coming on to women and that might destroy morale. If a top executive has an affair or does something sexually that gets attention, that might hurt the bottom line.

That combines with some sensational cases, like Edward R. Murrow's expose on businesses using prostitutes to close deals. Human relations and this concern about bad press start to change the way corporations think about sex in the office."

Prohibition against any romantic liaisons between office mates to avoid harassment problems

"It's obviously unrealistic. Even in the 19th century, there were lots of marriages that came out of those office situations. So today, when the majority of Americans spend most of their waking hours at work, it's obviously going to be a place where sexual and romantic relationships develop.

I think it's wrong to try to scrub the office clean of any human emotion. Sexual harassment law is about unwelcome sexual attention or a sexual culture that makes it impossible for a man or a woman to do their jobs effectively. We need as a culture to think about what is respectful behavior in the workplace."

The Future of office romance? 

"Historically, there's this assumption that a successful man, as one of his perks, should get access to the women in the office. And some people also have this belief that women might make up a charge of sexual harassment to get back at somebody who spurned them -- we have this distrust of women.

Rethinking those assumptions about men and women would be a way to move us forward to a workplace that has less harassing and hostile behaviors and more respectful interactions that could be romantic or sexual."

A report on CNN Money caught my eye this morning. Have some organizations put their hiring on the fast track to snag talent before it's gone?

"After Intel began to shift its hiring approach a year ago, a few candidates cried. Other soon-to-graduate students were so happy or excited that they forgot to ask about their salaries.

The big change? The tech company started to hire for some jobs in a week's time, instead of the multiple weeks it used to take. The process is now being whittled down to a couple of days, says Cindi Harper, Intel's Americas talent delivery manager.

'The talent's not waiting,' she says. Neither is Intel, apparently. In its new approach, managers and recruiters first determine the key attributes and skills for a job -- the profile they are seeking. Then a designated manager joins Intel recruiters at industry conferences and college career fairs, where they hand candidates an offer letter on the spot. A couple of days later, they work out details such as salary and where the job is located, Harper says.

Welcome to the new world of hiring in a hurry, an emergent recruitment method as more employers look to snag talent from college campuses and beyond before their competitors get to them."

The question I want to rasie my hand and ask is, "If you could have sped up the hiring process, why are you only doing it now?"

The latest edition of the National Study of Employers, designed and conducted by the Families and Work Institute (FWI) and released jointly by FWI and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) as part of their partnership, finds that employers are increasing employees' options for managing when and where they work, while reducing some options that affect how much they work.

Significantly more employers are allowing at least some employees to:

• use flex time and periodically change starting and quitting times within some range of hours (66 percent in 2005 to 77 percent in 2012);
• take time off during the workday to attend to important family or personal needs without loss of pay (77 percent in 2005 to 87 percent in 2012);
• work some of their regular paid hours at home on an occasional basis (34 percent in 2005 to 63 percent in 2012); and
• have control over their paid and unpaid overtime hours (28 percent in 2005 to 44 percent in 2012).

However, opportunities to work a reduced schedule or take extended leaves away from work have declined. Significant decreases were found in employers allowing at least some of their employees to:

• return to work gradually after childbirth or adoption (86 percent in 2005 to 73 percent in 2012),
• take a career break for personal or family responsibilities (73 percent in 2005 to 52 percent in 2012), and
• move from full-time to part-time work and back again while remaining in the same position or level (54 percent in 2005 to 41 percent in 2012).

So it seems that employers believe they can keep employees working more regularly provided that some felxibility is provided to their work schedule. 

To download a copy of the report, visit WhenWorkWorks.org or FamiliesAndWork.org.

Edward Lawler is  worried that HR professionals may be setting themselves up to lose their top talent because of their inflexibility towards new ideas and approaches. 

"The problem with the traditional approach to talent management is that it creates an inflexible, difficult to change organization. It makes it hard to change the competencies and capabilities of the organization when it needs to change its products and services. All too often, talent management policies and practices become BCPP, that is 'Business Change Prevention Policies,' and HR functions become the CPU, the 'Change Prevention Unit.'

What kind of practices do organizations need to adopt in order to increase their agility and position them well to profit from the recovery? In order to be more agile, they need to adopt talent management practices that allow them to change the skill set of their employees and motivate them to change their behavior. They should not be adopting practices that are focused on retention. The key practices that will accomplish great agility include abandoning the traditional job description approach to talent management and adopting a skill based pay system that includes pay for skills and skill acquisition. A market pricing approach is needed that will reflect the individual's value in the market, not his or her job's value in the market. Skill based pay does a much better job than paying according to 'what their job is worth' of retaining those individuals who are critical to the organizations skill needs. Jobs don't have a worth; individuals do, and at a time of economic expansion it is particularly important that individuals be paid what they are worth in the market."

Brett Stupakevich has three ways HR analytics can boost your bottom line. Yes, not just HR but HR analytics! 

1. Raise visibility. Creating a single view of all relevant workforce data is key to correctly aligning talent with the fluctuating needs of the business. For example, data might need to be viewed by business unit, product group and geography to find root causes, profit per employee or to compare compensation with performance.
2. Align HR data with business data. According to the Aberdeen study, 59% of top performing companies aggregate employee data with business data compared to 28% of the lowest performing companies. Furthermore, 54% of top performing companies combine talent management data with business data compared to 30% of companies in the lowest performing category.
3. Predict the future. Once a company bridges data silos to integrate HR data and business data to help achieve company goals, HR analytics can be used to predict future workforce outcomes.