Back when I was in grad school at Pepperdine University, I was amazed at all the workers from Boeing who had decided to go back to college to get their MBA.
It wasn’t because Boeing employees were any more motivated or industrious than people working at other companies. No, the huge number of Boeing employees enrolled in grad school was due to one thing and one thing only—the company’s longstanding policy to pay 100 percent of tuition for any employee enrolled at an accredited educational institution.
“Until now, when a Boeing employee enrolled for any class at any accredited college, the company picked up the tuition—with no restrictions,” says a story in the Seattle Times. “But many of those enjoying free classes will lose that benefit at year-end, when Boeing starts limiting its subsidy to cover only courses that further an employee’s career at the company.”
This was not only a generous benefit, but a lot of Boeing employees took advantage of it—21,000 nationwide, according to the Seattle Times.
And that may have been part of the problem, at least when Boeing started looking at the cost-benefit analysis for this pricey perk in today’s turbulent economic environment.
“Boeing spokeswoman Karen Forte said the company’s support for employees’ continuing education previously was almost unlimited,” the Times story notes. “It was pretty much an open-checkbook program,” she said. In addition, “there was no requirement to stay with the company after finishing the coursework, no limit on what kind of classes were covered. … We’ve had everything from mortuary science to sports and hobby programs,” Forte told the newspaper.
In addition to getting rid of the “anything goes” approach to paying for employee education, Boeing is also limiting the program in other ways:
• Starting in October, Boeing will pay for new enrollments only in courses that are considered “strategic” to its business. “So no more free wine-appreciation classes, culinary-arts degrees or soccer workshops,” the Times says.
• In addition, the days of unlimited educational reimbursement by Boeing, even for a “strategic” educational program, are gone as well. The company’s contribution will be capped at $15,000 a year, period.
• Boeing will also require employees to stay at the company for at least two years after finishing a course for which they are getting reimbursed. If they don’t, the employee must reimburse the company.
This benefit change may cause problems for some Boeing workers who are in the middle of an advanced degree program that they were expecting the company to pay for, because if it’s not deemed “strategic”’ they now have to foot the bill. That may not be something workers who got into these educational programs can afford right now.
Unless you work for Boeing, I doubt you’ll be shedding a tear for anyone losing this generous (and some might say unsustainable) benefit, but it is another sign of the economic times we’re in. Benefits are going to cost employees more and they will be getting less in 2010, and that’s a trend that isn’t going to change.
I’ve been busy with the SHRM conference in New Orleans this past week, so here are a few leftover July Fourth fireworks for you to ponder over the long holiday weekend:
“Jerks are annoying, but they aren’t stupid,” he writes. “They know that first-class nitwits make mouth-watering targets for human resource officers with layoff quotas. The office jerk has not disappeared. He is merely hiding in the hills. One day, he will come down from the mountains and wreak havoc again.”
And, Queenan feels that the jerks-in-hiding dynamic is actually one of the really good things coming out of the economic downturn.
“The grim specter of the return of the office jerk is perhaps the only reason some of us wish this recession goes on for a while,” he writes. “At least that way, some of the more odious office jerks will have a chance to get run over by a truck or start writing a blog. The solitary blogger is unquestionably a jerk, but a self-employed jerk is a threat to no one.”
Hmmm … I think I may have encountered a couple of these solitary blogger/jerks at SHRM in New Orleans. You know who you are. And yes, I’m with Queenan that the self-employed jerk is a good thing for workplace harmony everywhere.
So, here’s an early prediction for SHRM 2010 in San Diego next June: Don’t bet on attendance to be any better than 2009 in New Orleans. In fact, it may actually be a little bit worse.
Why do I think this? Overriding Reason No. 1 is because we will soon be going into the budget season for businesses and organizations planning for 2010, and given the lackluster unemployment numbers that came out today, it is clear that we aren’t going to be out of the woods with this recession for a while.
This means that companies will continue to hold tight on discretionary travel for events like the SHRM conference for another year, at least.
Overriding Reason No. 2 is that SHRM 2010 is in San Diego.
This bugs the hell out of us West Coasters, but people living east of Denver get all worked up about long trips to the Pacific Time Zone. This is more perception than reality, of course, but my educated guess is that there will be a lot of would-be SHRM attendees who will opt out simply because they think San Diego is just too far to travel to.
Now, I used to be a mega-frequent flier on United, but their service and customer experience has absolutely gone in the toilet the last few years. I don’t fly them much anymore, so I can’t say this with 100 percent certainty, but my guess is that today—leading into a long holiday weekend with a major computer glitch at its biggest hub—is a day that neither United workers nor customers will soon forget. Great fireworks for a happy Independence Day, indeed.
Say what you will about Jack Welch, but he ALWAYS has a lot to say about HR.
To that end, Welch gave some of his great management and business insights to SHRM attendees in a question-and-answer session with Claire Shipman of ABC News. He was provocative, funny, a bit earthy and generally entertaining. And as someone who has heard him talk on numerous occasions, I can tell you that Welch didn’t just lean on what he has said so many times before.
One of his key points: Trust is an essential quality for all human resources professionals, and that means both trust going down to employees (they need to trust that you’re helping them) and coming down from your boss (who needs to also trust in what you are doing to manage the workforce). Welch believes that the best HR people exhibit pastor-parent behavior: They keep confidences (like a pastor) but can also tell it straight (like Mom or Dad always could).
One interesting moment came when Welch asked the audience members to raise their hands if the HR leader in their organization had equal status to the company’s CFO. Only a few of hands went up, and Welch said that this is proof that HR still must do more to get the respect of their organization—and that more organizations need to push for HR-CFO equality.
Welch also said that holding on to top talent is going to be a bigger challenge because “what you hear is, ‘I want to get the hell out of corporate America.’ ” More workers, he said, are opting to become entrepreneurs in the wake of the huge number of layoffs and corporate downsizing. “HR needs to challenge the organization to be more exciting and more accessible,” Welch added, “because people just don’t trust corporate America.”
Overall, Jack Welch delivered an upbeat HR pep talk here in New Orleans, and his presentation was the most focused and HR-specific opening speech of any I have heard in the past half-dozen SHRM conferences. I didn’t agree with everything he said—for example, I don’t buy his argument that women must make a decision between having children and getting a high-level executive position—but then again, I never agree with everything anyone ever says.
One last thing: There was also probably more written about this SHRM speech than any other in the history of the organization. I had a hard time keeping up with the tsunami of HR “tweets” and blog posts flowing live from the ballroom at the Morial Convention Center, where Welch was speaking.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill: Never have so many written so much, so quickly, about so (relatively) little. As much as I like Jack Welch, the social-media flood to get out his speech was overkill, and probably a sign of the times. I don’t think we’ll be able to shake it anytime soon. Get my latest blog updates and workforce management news by following me on Twitter.
It’s T-minus four days to the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference in New Orleans, and all I can think about is how brutally hot it’s going to be down on the bayou when things kick off Sunday.
According to the newspaper, “The list of local thoroughfares erupting under the searing heat continues to grow, [and] a busy section of Interstate 10 in eastern New Orleans between Read Boulevard and Bullard Avenue buckled Tuesday afternoon. In Algiers, much-traveled Gen. DeGaulle Drive near Carlisle Court popped apart, damaging cars and detouring traffic after expansion joints could no longer contain the expanding panels of concrete.”
It’s got to be pretty hot to buckle roads, and worst of all, it doesn’t look to improve anytime soon.
“A ridge of upper level high pressure has become centered farther west over the southern plains, but the extended period of very hot weather will continue today [Wednesday], with a highs that could climb above 100, the weather service said,” according to another Times-Picayune story.
“Temperatures [in New Orleans] will be in the mid-90s Thursday and through the weekend, but high heat indices may reach dangerous levels each day.”
Regardless of what the attendees do, Workforce Management will be covering the 61st annual SHRM Conference & Exposition at http://www.workforce.com/, with daily e-mail news blasts and with a big conference wrap-up next week in Workforce Week.
As for me, I’ll be sweating away in New Orleans and writing a daily Last Word column, blogging and even tweeting on Twitter (I’m at http://twitter.com/johnhollon).
If you can’t make it to SHRM, or perhaps have just decided to stay home and stay cool instead, check our site for the latest conference developments from the Big Easy. And don’t hesitate to drop me a note, if you have questions or comments, at jhollon@workforce.com.
Hey, Management Guy! I know people really value honest, straight-shooting executives, but how honest is too honest? For example, does it ever make sense for the Big Boss to diss or put downhis or her workforce? This seems like a really counterproductive and shortsighted management strategy to me.
— Sam in San Jose, CA.
Sam:
A couple of years ago, The Management Guy would have told you that it is over-the-top stupid for ANY senior manager to openly diss or talk trash about the company’s workers. Not only does this violate Hall Of Fame football coach Vince Lombardi’s old maxim that a leader should always “praise in public, criticize in private” (a philosophy The Management Guy has tried, with modest success, to emulate), but it also makes the manager in question look like a churlish philistine.
Never mind that this behavior defies all logic or business sense. Guys like Zell do it because, well, the “devil made them do it.” Yes, the same comments would probably get any other employee fired, but sometimes, top executives get to be top executives despite the fact that they are missing a basic impulse-control gene. They succeed in spite of themselves, and that’s why they sometimes end up treating and talking about workers like they are the conquered chattel of Attila the Hun.
Just this week, Bartz appeared at an investment conference in New York where she was questioned about how quickly the changes she was making at Yahoo would begin to pay dividends. That’s a pretty standard question, of course, and Bartz had a pretty standard answer, according to the Associated Press.
“While pointing to some progress,” the AP reported, “Bartz said it probably will take another year or two before Yahoo reaps the gains from her shake-up.”
Most CEOs would have left it at that, but Bartz, for better or worse, isn’t like most CEOs. She couldn’t resist the urge to follow up her straightforward assessment of Yahoo’s progress under her leadership with a gratuitous and unnecessary swipe at her workforce that would make Sam Zell proud. “For everything you can do in three steps,” Bartz added, “it will take Yahoo 22 steps [to get it done].”
You would be right to point out that it is foolish, shortsighted, and does nothing at all, but then again, you aren’t a big-time CEO like Sam Zell or Carol Bartz.
Now, Carol Bartz is not Sam Zell, but she does have a lot of the same qualities, including a wonderfully colorful vocabulary. It remains to be seen whether trash-talking her workforce in public will help in her revival of Yahoo, but The Management Guy remains unconvinced.
He’d rather put his faith in Vince Lombardi’s Super Bowl-winning advice than in the approach of Zell or Bartz, but then again, Lombardi was also known to swear like a trooper, too. The difference is, he never publicly dissed his workforce. Like all good coaches, he knew you don’t get very far by trash-talking the very players you count on for your ultimate success.
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