Newsletter: 2004 December Issue

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Newsletter

December 2004

Looking back, looking ahead
As the clock ticks down on 2004, I want to thank our readers – and your numbers are swelling – for offering great story ideas, suggestions for improvement, and general support over the past year. As you will notice with this issue's line-up, contributions from Queen's IRC alumni and friends are an important and welcome part of the mix. Keep them coming.

As a reminder, your monthly e-newsletter features articles geared to practitioners in the broad area of people management: human resource management, organization development, and industrial relations. Contributors are drawn from faculty on our own programs as well as from other units within Queen's, such as the School of Policy Studies and the School of Business. In the coming year, we will be generating quite a few new case studies and working papers and making them available – generally free of charge – on our web site. We will use the newsletter to let you know when documents are available for download.

My colleagues here at Queen's IRC join me in wishing you the best for 2005.

Alan Morantz
Manager, Communications and Development
Queen's Industrial Relations Centre

This Issue: Adele's secret: Why ALTANA is one Canada's top employers....more Contest news: Increase your chance to win a free pass to a Queen's IRC program of your choice....more Going deep: Katya Laviolette on how to move from transactional fire fighter to proactive business partner....more Work-life balance: We're stressed out, and Linda Duxbury explains why....more

Upcoming Programs All - Toronto- Regina - Halifax Sept. 21 - 26, Kingston Industrial Relations Register Sept. 22 - 25, Kingston Building Smart Teams Register Sept. 23 - 26, Toronto Change Management Register Sept. 30 - Oct. 03, Regina Dispute Resolution Register Oct. 07, Toronto Performance Management Essentials and Strategy Register Oct. 07 - 08, Toronto Compensation Clinics (Performance+Group Benefits Programs) Register Oct. 08, Toronto Employee Group Benefits Register Oct. 15 - 17, Toronto Business Strategy Register Oct. 19 - 24, Kingston Negotiation Skills Register Oct. 21 - 24, Regina Building Smart Teams Register

What's your secret, Adele?

Before dinner during the recent Queen's IRC Organization Development Foundations program, human resources manager Adele Zita was beaming as she shared some exciting news with other participants. Her company, ALTANA Pharma Canada of Oakville, Ont., had just been named one of the top 100 employers in Canada by Maclean's.

To us, this says ALTANA Pharma is a well-designed company that rates highly in terms of IRC's OD diagnostic tool, the Blueprint for Organization Effectiveness. We asked Adele to share some of ALTANA's secrets for success. She said the following factors contributed to its Top 100 designation:

• A brand new building designed to provide an effective work environment and promote innovation and collaborative interaction. Includes a fitness facility, free parking, wireless systems, video conferencing, a library, and lots of natural light.
• A social committee that organizes social events for the staff and their families. And ALTANA Pharma is an IMAGINE company, which means the organization contributes 1 percent of pre-tax profit to charity.
• A competitive compensation strategy with incentives for all levels. Family-focused benefits include maternity leave top-up to 100 percent of salary for 20 weeks, a tuition scholarship fund for employees' dependants, plus a tuition reimbursement program for employees.
• A minimum three weeks vacation for all employees and Christmas shut down. Flex-time is an option for all employees, as is time off to volunteer.
• An employee newsletter, a monthly communiqué from the senior leadership team, and quarterly all-employee Town Hall meeting (webcast to remote staff).
• A performance management program that allows employees to know exactly how their achievements will be measured and rewarded. Objectives are established by mutual consent with managers and measurement is based not only on achievement of goals but also on how goals are achieved.
• Comprehensive leadership training programs for all levels of employees including situational leadership, coaching and team skills.

Put 'er there: HR as business partner

For Katya Laviolette, who was hired in May 2003 as Vice-President, Human Resources at Montreal-based Transcontinental Media, two things became apparent in her first months of leadership. First, the organization had grown too large to maintain a fragmented approach to HR. In order to continue growing, acquiring, and successfully integrating, the culture needed to shift from that of a collection of small businesses to a unified publishing company. Second, the future of the business depended on superior human capital. Transcontinental Media's HR organization would need to become a partner to the business in order to attract, develop, and support talent. This would mean expanding and growing the responsibilities of the HR professionals from a focus on the technical aspects of HR (recruitment, compensation, employee relations) to include the more strategic aspects (change management, communications, organizational and leadership development).

In this article written with Consultant Beverley Patwell, Katya, a Queen's IRC alum, offers a first-hand look at how she moved her HR department from transactional fire fighter to proactive business partner.

To download the article, click here.

Spotlight: "Money buys presence. Money doesn't buy passion"
Linda Duxbury on work-life balance

If you are observing a growing number of colleagues working one-and-a half jobs, complaining of chronic headaches, turning down promotions, and suffering strains on the home front, Linda Duxbury has this to say: It's not your imagination.

As one of Canada's leading researchers in the area of work-life balance, Dr. Duxbury, a professor in Carleton University's School of Business, has the statistics to back up her view that organizational cultures undermining employee well-being are simply no longer sustainable. She was at Queen's November 17 to deliver the 2004 Don Wood Lecture, an annual event co-sponsored by the Industrial Relations Centre and the Masters of Industrial Relations program.

As a self-described advocate for stressed-out employees, Dr. Duxbury used research from her database of 33,000 Canadians to show that organizations have not kept pace with dramatic changes in the workforce and generally do not support a healthy balance between work and home. “Employers can no longer afford to ignore the issue,” she said. “We have to see the link between how people are treated and the outcomes your organization needs... Money buys presence but it doesn't buy passion.”

Dr. Duxbury's conclusions are based on data collected from 1991 to 2001. Some findings:

• In 2001, 58 percent of Canadians complained of “role overload” compared with 37 percent in 1991. Similarly, those reporting job stress jumped to 33 percent in 2001 from 20 percent a decade earlier.
• In 2001, 26 percent of Canadians said they worked more than 50 hours a week; in 1991 only 11 percent said they did. Managers and professionals have seen the biggest workload increase, with huge jumps in unpaid overtime.
• In 2001, only 43 percent of Canadians said they were committed to their organizations and an equal number reported job satisfaction. By contrast, in 1991 66 percent were committed to their organizations and 61 percent reported job satisfaction. “Life satisfaction” dropped to 41 percent from 54 percent over the decade studied.

Dr. Duxbury said the increase in work-life conflict is mainly due to five factors: the “myth of separate worlds”; changing workforce demographics such as the demise of the traditional family and the increase in the number of knowledge workers; the rise in dependent care issues, such as child care and eldercare; organizational cultures maladapted to knowledge workers; and rampant downsizing and restructuring. As well, technology such as email has increased expectations and made it possible to work “anytime anywhere.”

The cost of not instituting more human-friendly culture and policies is increased absenteeism and “mental health” days, higher benefit costs, lower levels of commitment and job satisfaction, and severe recruitment and retention issues.

“Our calculations indicate that employers could reduce absenteeism in their organization by 23 percent if they eliminated high levels of role overload, 6.3 percent if they eliminated high levels of work interferences with family, and 8.6 percent if they could eliminate high levels of caregiver strain,” Dr. Duxbury said.

With Canada entering the tightest labour market since the 1950s and the pool of “new” workers shrinking, the issue of recruitment and retention looms large. The shrewdest organizations, Dr. Duxbury said, will understand key generational differences, in terms of what employees want from the organization and from their bosses. They will create and support a culture that encourages autonomy, challenge and innovation, and work-life balance, and will institute “cafeteria-style” benefits that allow employees to pick and choose depending on their life situation.

Until that culture arrives, Dr. Duxbury suggests individuals be organized and set goals, recognize that balance takes work, use exercise to cope with stress, and “use faith to put things into perspective.”

As for maintaining her own work-life balance, Dr. Duxbury said she practises yoga with her husband, does no work from Friday evening until Sunday after dinner, and takes a one-month vacation out of the country each year. Before an extended absence, she sets a bounce-back email message that asks people to contact her after her vacation. And upon returning, she erases all the emails she received during her absence. A brave and balanced soul, indeed.

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