When You Get Rid Of All Manager Roles, Are You Left With A Popularity Contest?

Zappos—a nationwide retailer— adopted a new organizational structure that eliminates traditional managers, does away with the typical corporate hierarchy and gets rid of job titles. (See Washington Post @ Zappos Article) Could this end up being just like a high school popularity poll?

Please think about that for a minute. What will happen to the traditional manager’s job of terminating poor performers? At Zappos that responsibility is turned over to a group of employees. Their committee is charged with “monitoring the company's culture” to decide when performers are not a “good fit” — and then terminating those the committee deems as culturally unfit.

Who is going to stand up for the over 40 crowd who may not possess the youthful attributes of cultural fit?  And who is going to stop sexual harassment? Historically as well as today groups of employees don’t self-monitor all that well in preventing hostile environments. (Think Miami Dolphins bullying episodes.)

There’s a reason why Congress and state legislatures impose personal liability on managers who do not protect employees from discrimination and harassment.   The fact is that nothing short of that worked to stop illegal treatment at work.

Perhaps, as Zappos believes, work is better conducted among equals, but the system needs to have a place where the buck stops in terms of fair treatment — and it can’t be put to a popular vote!

A Google a Day Might Keep Embezzlers Away!

Another person in my same line of work recently told a group of hiring managers never to Google candidates during the resume review process.  The consultant apparently thought companies would be vulnerable to discrimination charges because Google provides access to ethnicity, race, or other protected class identifying facts that don’t appear on the face of resumes.

I would caution managers to weigh that possibility against the results of failing to check Google at all. One of my client’s employees recently exhibited very odd, threatening behavior towards his colleagues. This employee was entrusted with critical financial data. Co-workers were afraid, and a termination ensued. While I was terminating the employee the employer ran a Google check on the soon to be ex-employee — and a felony embezzlement charge against the employee showed up.  

My thoughts on using Google at the resume screening stage are this: Use it and consider the results! It's the ultimate in public information.

You can save everyone’s time and energy. Besides if you make a rule that hiring managers can’t use Google, aren’t you patronizing them to some extent? It’s as if you’re saying, "Only HR has the smarts to handle sensitive information." Also such a rule is ungovernable. There will almost certainly be rogue managers who will inevitably check on Google—just to find out what information you think they can’t handle.

Hence my advice: you probably won’t go to jail—or be successfully charged with discrimination—by checking out candidates on Google.

A Hot HR/Legal Topic: Text Message Retention

Dare I say record retention is now sexy? Oddly enough, “to save or not to save” in the HR/Legal world is a provocative topic when it comes to text messages. Or at least it is something you should be giving some thought to.

I worry about it in terms of employers having necessary evidence of performance counseling and correction. Everywhere I go these days I find that a lot of evidence of performance correction is done by text message. This is particularly true of tardiness and failure to meet deadlines.

You find that managers send text messages like

·      “where r u?”

·      "where’s the proposal?

·      “u r late”

·      “customer said yesterday.”

And receive reply texts like

·      “caught in traffic”

·      “due 12 tonight”

·      “Sam came in after me”

·      “thought meant today”

Frequently employers need this kind of documentation to defend against discrimination cases and other employment claims. What happens to these important text messages when the manager no longer works for the employer or has deleted a lot of old messages?

Lawyers of course are suggesting different methods to solve this problem. One attorney suggested that everyone in a company have two smart phones—one for personal messages and one for business messages. His answer was to take everything off the business phones and back them up on a company server.

I don't know if that's a solution being implemented in big corporations but I'm pretty sure I haven't seen the average engineering or sales manager carrying two phones—one of which is continuously backed up to a corporate server.

So here is one idea. Just use one phone. In terms of backup when performance issues arise HR could ask the manager to use an SMS+ backup application and send their text messages to and from the employee to an email account. The manager could send all of these texts to HR. The texts could be printed out and saved by the company for record retention purposes.

Obviously this is not a complete solution. Often not all messages will be captured. Some will be deleted in the course of cleaning up the cell phone or lost to a stolen phone. But it could be a simple method of tracking performance to be used at performance evaluation time and in litigation if it comes to that.

Confused About How to Comply with the Affordable Health Care Act?

You’re not alone. Many employers aren’t sure what they’re supposed to do. Even worse, a number of small employers mistakenly believe that the requirement to distribute Obama Care forms only applies to companies with 50 or more employees.  This is not the case!

After fielding questions from a number of puzzled clients I developed a simple three-step process to guide clients.

Step 1.   Find out if you’re required to distribute forms.

Access the official tool for determining whether or not you’re required to distribute forms before October 1. www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/scope/screen24.asp

If you don’t need to distribute forms, you’re done. If not proceed to Step 2.

Step 2.   Decide which form you distribute.

You’ll need to distribute one of the two forms available below for your convenience.

·  Use this form if you are an employer with no medical benefits whatsoever. http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/pdf/FLSAwithoutplans.pdf

·  Use this form if you are an employer who has medical benefits for some or all of your employees. http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/pdf/FLSAwithplans.pdf

Step 3.   Email me at hrresults.pearce@gmail.com if you still have questions!  

I am offering a one-time, free consultation to answer questions you may have about filling out these forms.