Corporations with quality programs that stress the importance of teamwork are putting their money where their collective mouths are.
Today, salary increases tied to team results are as prevalent among these firms as pay increases tied to individual performance.
According to a 1993 survey by the American Compensation Association, 60 percent of pay increases at 196 companies with quality programs were based on what the employee’s team achieved. At the same time, 60 percent also used individual performance-which most employees still prefer-as a basis.
The survey also found that 49 percent of the firms gave raises based on quality results; 33 percent, new skills and knowledge acquired; and 11 percent gave across-the-board increases.
The compensation study originally appeared in the ACA Journal and also was reported in People Trends, a human resource newsletter published in Dublin, Ohio.
– Benefiting employees. Companies increasingly are aware of the importance of employee benefits, according to a survey of human resource directors at 1,021 firms by Hay/Huggins, the benefits consulting division of the Hay Group, a management consulting firm.
Sixty-nine percent of the human resource honchos said employee benefits play an important role in attracting and retaining employees. Forty-five percent offer benefits to part-timers, which isn’t bad in a tight job market, but it’s down from 48 percent last year. And 68 percent have employee assistance programs, up from 57 percent in 1989.
The report says one benefit that only 5 percent of employees use is the dependent-care spending account, which allows employees to set aside, tax-free, up to $5,000 of their pay annually toward child care or elder care.
“Dependent-care spending is the most underutilized benefit in America,” said Robert Cirkiel, vice president at Hay/Huggins.
I’m not surprised: You have to be relatively affluent to put aside, in advance, $5,000 of your pay for any reason whatsoever, even to save money in taxes.
– Privacy invader. I get indignant complaints from job seekers who are required to take pre-employment psychological exams. They say the tests have slanted questions, that they never are told the results and often the test is given before a job offer is made.
And other job seekers report they feel they were judged by whether or not they would even take the test-that the results of it were not what mattered. If they refused to take it, they were out of the running for consideration for the job.
Job seekers who feel they’ve been abused in this manner will feel psychologically restored to learn that a California judge recently approved a $2 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by some very unhappy job applicants against Dayton Hudson Corp., the owner of Target stores.
According to the newsletter, Labor and Employment Law Developments, published by the law firm of Neal Gerber & Eisenberg, applicants for security jobs had to take a true/false pre-employment psychological test. Intimate personal questions were asked, among them, “I am very strongly attracted to members of my own sex” and “I feel sure there is only one true religion.”
The suit charged that the testing violated privacy rights and discriminated against homosexuals. In what seems to me a non sequitur, at least as a defense for asking the two questions cited above, Target said the test was necessary to screen out applicants who are emotionally unstable or with addictive or violent tendencies.
The law firm’s advice: “Employers are advised to limit any pre-employment testing strictly to job-related functions and requirements.”
That sounds PC (psychologically correct) to me.
– High-tech technology. One of the fastest growing technologies is the field of optics. And what you get is what you see: The optics industry is a multibillion-dollar industry, according to the University of Dayton.
The school has just started a doctorate program in electro-optics, a profession it describes as “an evolving high-tech field that has made possible fiber optic communications, laser eye surgery and military target recognition systems.”
The job outlook looks good for holders of doctorates in the field, where demand outpaces supply by more than 2 to 1, says Mohammad Karim, director of the university’s center for electro-optics.
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Carol Kleiman’s columns appear in the Tribune on Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday.
