What are procedures? Procedures are documents that describe business processes. Procedures are one tool we can use to train new and current employees how our processes work, and sometimes we show them how processes interact. Procedures can also help ensure a high degree of consistency in how processes operate and in the results they yield.

From "We Want Our Mummy", Columbia Pictures (1938)

Procedures are also a pain for many companies to write and maintain. Many organizations write procedures with one goal in mind — compliance. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Either there’s a compelling business reason for you to comply, like a larger organization that says they won’t do business with you unless you comply with a certain standard, such as ISO 9001. Or, there are laws with which you have to comply simply to stay in business (for instance, worker safety and food safety regulations).

Strangely, when compliance is the most important — or the only — goal, companies often forget about their procedures once they’ve implement them. Instead of monitoring and measuring, reviewing, and adjusting their performance — gradually and continually improving the process — they put the Almighty Book of Policies and Procedures in a hallowed place on the shelf and ignore it.

From "vodex.co.uk" site

Why is that? Well, here’s what some companies say about procedures:

• “Writing procedures isn’t our business”
• “It’s a cost center, not a moneymaker”
• “It takes time and money to maintain procedures”

Writing Procedures Isn’t Our Business

It’s true — your customers aren’t buying your internal procedures. What ARE they buying? Yes, they’re purchasing a product…but is it just the product or service they’re buying? Of course not.

Besides paying for goods or services, your customers are paying for the quality of your product, your ability to produce a consistently good product, and/or your ability to act on problems quickly and efficiently. They like the fact that you don’t make excuses — you just fix problems. And how do you do that without implementing effective policies and procedures, like “how to conduct an internal audit” or “how to take corrective action“? You might, if you’re lucky, but luck doesn’t guarantee your customers consistently high-quality results.

Procedure Writing Is a Cost Center

True, it costs you time and money to develop, implement, and maintain procedures. The fact that you have to research, write, review, and approve procedures can appear expensive and time consuming.

But what does it cost you NOT to have procedures? Like we said earlier, effective internal procedures are what help you gain and keep customers. Without the high quality and consistency that procedures help ensure, you risk losing your hard-earned reputation — and your hard-won customers. It’s much easier to keep a satisfied customer than it is to obtain a new one and it’s infinitely easier to keep them than it is to win them back once you’ve disappointed them.

It Takes Time and Money to Maintain Procedures

“Besides”, many companies insist, “our people know what they have to do. They don’t need procedures once they have the proper experience ‘under their belts’.” But how did your employees get that knowledge in the first place? Were they given in-depth training? Was the training consistent? Are they able to build on that knowledge?

Besides, business circumstances change (look at the recession we still seem to be going through). Customers’ needs change over time. Regulations are added all the time — some don’t affect you but others have a great impact on your business. Are you accounting for these types of change in your procedures?

In short, maintaining your procedures will cost you something but not maintaining them will cost your company a great deal more. You run the risk of falling behind your competition, falling to the back end of the technology curve, or falling out of compliance if you’re not looking at your procedures as “living documents”. If you’re not continually looking to improve the way you do things, you run the risk of stunting your company’s growth.

To sum up, you really should develop, implement, and maintain business procedures because it’s just plain good business and not just because somebody’s making you.

What do you think? Can an organization’s growth be held back because of poor or nonexistent procedures?

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If you find your company is having trouble developing effective, meaningful procedures, check out our full line of business policies and procedures. They’ll make your policies-and-procedures journey easier to start and make it easier for you to stay on the right path.

For many companies, it’s that time of year — time for year-end performance reviews. Time to see if we can find our performance reviews from last year, or head over to Human Resources to get a copy. For managers, time to dust off the performance reviews from last year and see if anything’s changed.

If you’re like most of us, you haven’t kept a daily diary of your accomplishments, so you have to construct an account of the last 12 months from long-buried memories in just a few days. You don’t bother listing your close calls, almosts, and never-weres — you need to put a positive spin on your year.

You might go into the review feeling you did a “more-than-adequate” job, even if you can’t quantify it exactly. Then again, you might approach the review with a sense of foreboding. You’re not well prepared. Maybe you feel like you’re going to get slammed. Maybe you wish the shoe were on the other foot. Maybe you wish everybody would just forget about it.

The performance review, as most of us know it, is a broken process. Lately, there appears to be a groundswell of support for the idea of doing away with performance reviews. According to an article in a recent Wall Street Journal, many HR professionals are “frustrated that managers don’t have the courage” to give constructive feedback.

In an interview from July, 2010, UCLA business professor Samuel Culbert said that performance reviews should be dispensed with altogether because annual reviews don’t promote candid discussions about problems in the workplace or their potential solutions.

Going back to 2006, the Harvard Business School’s “Working Knowledge” page ran an article by James Heskett, one of the HBS faculty, in which he called into question the main objective of performance reviews. Professor Heskett asked, “Is (the objective) to weed out poor performers? To recognize the so-called A players? To provide the basis for compensation decisions?” He concluded that we don’t do a good job of establishing or communicating objectives.

W. Edwards Deming, one of the gods of quality, called the performance review one of the “deadly diseases of management“. You’re not going to find a much stronger indictment than that.

It’s been a few years since I’ve had a formalized performance review. The manager in question got much more out of the typical performance review because he always had the performance of the group in mind. He linked my performance to that of my teammates, which helped create and maintain a team ethos.

Unfortunately, his type of performance review wasn’t the norm. Too often, the performance review is an exercise with no apparent purpose, except to satisfy a regulatory requirement or follow a decades-old policy. We go through the motions but don’t accomplish anything. By conducting performance reviews the way we do, we miss so many opportunities for improvement.

We all deserve better from this “process”.

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I’m currently conducting a performance review poll on LinkedIn. Please drop in (it’ll only take 10 seconds, if that) and register your opinion. Or, post a comment below.

What do you think? Do performance reviews work for your company or your group? Or, do you think the performance review should’ve been retired with the mechanical adding machine and green eyeshades?

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REFERENCES

• Light, Joe, “Human Resource Executives Say Reviews Are Off the Mark”, Wall Street Journal (Nov 7 2010) – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704405704575596723632340284.html
• NPR Staff, “Annual Job Review Is ‘Total Baloney,’ Expert Says”, NPR-dot-org (Jul 8 2010) – http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128362511
• Heskett, Jim, “What’s to Be Done About Performance Reviews?”, HBS Working Knowledge (Nov 27 2006) – http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5563.html
• “Management’s Five Deadly Diseases – a Conversation with Dr. W. Edwards Deming”, Encyclopedia Brittanica Educational Corporation , 1984 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehMAwIHGN0Y. (Video is approx. 15 minutes long.)

FURTHER READING

• Peralta, Eyder, “Top 10 Performance Review Euphemisms”, NPR-dot-org (Nov 9 2010) – http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/11/09/131189907/top-ten-performance-review-euphemisms

Obviously, we’re not out of the woods yet, economy-wise. Sure, the National Bureau of Economic Research says we are officially no longer in a recession, but most businesses are finding that hard to swallow. The money supply is still pretty tight, investors are still pretty anxious, and we have yet to see meaningful job growth.

However far away an actual recovery may be, businesses of all sizes and types are well advised to be ready to move when the time comes. Sooner or later, the business cycle will come around to expansion and companies like yours will begin hiring once again.

And when you do, will your new hires know what to do? Do you have clear, accurate, and up-to-date policies and procedures that will make their entry (or reentry) easier? If you have an effective quality management system in place and you’re continually improving it, little by little, regardless of the circumstances around you, you’re able to accept and embrace change.

All kinds of training solutions are available to get your employees “up to speed” in their jobs. The most effective solutions are those that mix a number of tools and techniques. They use a “holistic approach”, balancing various learning techniques to arrive at the best possible outcome — performance excellence, the right product at the right time in the right place, and customers who are more than satisfied.

That starts with knowing what to do and how to do it. Your policies and procedures are an integral part of the learning experience. They’re key to achieving consistently high performance and results!

We’re all looking forward to expansion but you — more than most — will be prepared for it.

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Time for you to “sound off”. Tell us what you think.

Should your company decide to undertake a large project without assembling cross-functional teams — for example, a development and implementation project that requires a sizeable number of your staff at all levels and could take six months or more – it will greatly reduce the project’s chance of success. In other words, cross-functional teams produce results!

“Break down barriers between departments.”
from Deming’s 14 Points

We are not advocating that you “put a committee at the top of every task”, or “there has to be unanimous agreement on every detail of the project plan“.  We are saying that capable project leaders assemble capable and diverse groups of assistants and empower them.

Why? By assembling a cross-functional team, you ensure “out-of-the-box thinking.” Conventional thinking doesn’t breed the kind of change you need. In fact, conventional thinking can be dangerous to your company. Think about it:

• Does conventional wisdom ”always” work?
• Can you think of companies that no longer exist because they stayed with the status quo?

When you gather people from diverse backgrounds, departments, and levels, everyone’s thinking outside other’s boxes. Let’s say I’m in the “development box”. The people in the “accounting box” and the “marketing box” are outside my box, and vice versa. We’re bringing a fresh perspective to each other, thereby strengthening the project and assuring better results. It’s similar to what Mendel discovered over a hundred years ago about cross-pollination — the result is a hybrid more robust than its parents.

Everyone’s opinions have some merit. Anyone who’s been with your company for a couple of years or more probably knows your business well enough that their observations and opinions have validity.

Those who stay in their boxes — companies that get the same teams together every time to think over important stuff and don’t reach into the employee pool for new, fresh ideas and thinking — are handicapping their efforts. They can barely see to the top of their boxes, let alone see what’s outside.

Leaders have the necessary forward vision to see the immense benefits their organization gains by using cross-functional teams. How often do you use cross-functional teams?

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Recommended Reading:

• McCafferty, Dennis, “What Your CFO Is Not Telling You”, CIO Insight (Sept. 20, 2010),  http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Business-Intelligence/What-Your-CFO-Is-Not-Telling-You-802981/

One question asked endlessly in business, academic, political, and other circles is, ”What’s the difference between a manager and a leader?”

The most often quoted answer seems to be, “The manager does things right – the leader does the right things.” What exactly does that mean – “doing the right thing”?  Does that mean history tells us whether the leader did the right thing? Can someone be a leader even if they end up on the losing side?

A leader is one who knows that though the risk of failure may be great, they don’t give up on themselves or others. Leaders are people of exceptional character who are capable of bringing others through a crisis. All leaders share certain qualities or characteristics, including:

1. Self-respect and respect for others. If you don’t have a healthy self-respect, you won’t respect others. If you don’t respect others, they will not respect you. You can’t lead people who don’t respect you.

2. The ability to communicate effectively. Leaders say what they mean and mean exactly what they say. Effective communicators are far more persuasive than those who don’t communicate well.

3. Integrity and character. Leaders are not swayed by unsubstantiated opinions or unfounded rumors. Fame, power, or material gain don’t motivate them. Leaders have integrity, that strength of character that resists assault.

4. Having a vision, a mission (or a purpose), a sense of direction, and a clear set of goals. Moreover, they know that their job isn’t done when one set of goals is reached. Leaders know that life is a journey.

5. Being grounded. Leaders have a vision of what the world around them ought to be, but they are also pragmatic. Things will not always go smoothly, but leaders understand that and have the presence of mind to deal with that.

6. Courage. Fear is a powerful motivator; it causes many of us to turn away from our goals when our belief in ourselves and our cause isn’t strong. Leaders aren’t fearless — leaders make a conscious choice to act in spite of their fear.

7. Persistence, commitment, and dedication. It’s like they always say: “Winners don’t quit, and quitters don’t win.”  Nothing worth having comes easily. When setbacks crop up, leaders don’t flag because they always have their eyes on the prize.

8. Humility. Leaders aren’t self-promoting or self-aggrandizing. They don’t take all the credit. They give credit to others and refuse it for themselves.

9. A sense of responsibility. Leaders are willing to bear the ultimate responsibility for their undertakings. They don’t point the finger of blame when things go awry.

10. Decisiveness. When action is called for, real leaders don’t waffle. Knowing that a window of opportunity exists (“the time to act is now”), they act quickly and effectively, based on the best available information.

Most importantly, leaders have these characteristics in balance. Some may tell you there is one characteristic more important than the rest. They’ll say something like, “Oh, you have to have that ‘vision thing’ above all else.” Not true – people won’t follow someone who has vision without courage or humility, for example.

What about you? What do you think are the most important qualities in a leader? Who do you consider a leader and why?

Thanks so much for your time.

Remember when Ford’s tagline was “Quality Is Job 1″? No? Well, maybe this will jog your memory.

Back in the 1980′s, Ford, GM, Chrysler, and AMC¹ were quickly losing ground to Japanese automakers². Rumors that U.S. auto workers were deliberately sabotaging cars on assembly lines gained traction; these rumors were alleged to have been started to divert attention from the obvious and growing inequities between American and Japanese vehicles.

Fact is, American car buyers were turning away from domestic cars simply because their Asiatic counterparts were cheaper to buy and much cheaper to operate. The bad reputation American cars were saddled with then — a consumer perception of poor quality — persists to this day, even though Toyota — which leapfrogged all American automakers in 2007 to become the world’s #1 vehicle producer precisely because of its reputation for quality — has turned out to be the modern-day emperor with no clothes.  It looks as though quality took a back seat to profits.

Then there’s BP, whose failed wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico “will live in infamy”³, mainly because it appears the company would not spend a little on safety because that might eat into profits. This story has been thoroughly covered in the news, on blogs (including ours), and in company emails.

Now add the computer maker Dell to the list. Dell is now in court for allegedly selling millions of defective computers from 2003-2005 — computers that it supposedly knew were defective — hurting companies that relied on its reputation for quality manufacturing and customer service.

What’s the common thread running through all of these cases? Corporate hubris? Maybe.  A message running throughout these companies that “quality be damned — just get it out fast and make a big profit”? Quite possibly. Is their profit more important to you — the consumer – than a quality product and your satisfaction?

When do we, as consumers, demand that quality be placed before price? It catches up with the producer — eventually — but why wait for the inevitable? Why chase the elusive promise of “newer and better”? (Look at what Apple’s going through with the iPhone 4.)^{4, 5} Also, when do we, as corporate citizens, begin to see that our responsibility to give our customers quality isn’t incompatible with healthy profits?

It’s often said that we get what we deserve. If you think you deserve better, demand — and hold out for — quality.

Notes:

¹ Yes, they were still around, though not for long. AMC was put down for good in 1988.

² Except for body rust; that problem plagued Japanese auto makers for decades. My first two new vehicles were Japanese-made and I logged 18 years and several hundred thousand miles between them. If not for the severe case of “car cancer” they both caught, I believe they would’ve given me 20 or more years, combined.

³ My apologies to the late Franklin D. Roosevelt only.

⁴ http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-iphone-hit-class-action-suit/story?id=11066239.

⁵ http://news.cnet.com/8301-30677_3-20008919-244.html.

Further Reading/Viewing:

1. Enderle, Rob, “Dell and the Cost of Cover-Ups“, IT Business Edge post, 30 Jun 2010.
2. Evans, Joel, “Is Apple Covering Up the Real Problem with Its iPhone?“, ZDNet blog post, 4 July 2010.
3. “Product Recalls“, Back in Black, The Daily Show, 6 July 2010.

Does your organization talk about quality? Does it put quality concepts into practice in every aspect of the business, from design and development to product delivery? Is your firm practicing quality from top to bottom, from the chief executive to your newest hires?

Commitment to quality starts at the top and flows from there throughout the organization. Whether management is sold on the notion of “quality in everything we do” or they’re not, the rest of the company follows suit. Here are ten indicators that your company’s top management is making the quality commitment:

1. You have a quality budget for Corrective and Preventive Action, Training, and Internal Audits. If management puts money on the table, they’re obviously committed to quality.  Quality requires a budget to prevent problems from occurring and recurring.  Quality requires training.  And Quality requires gentle prodding from internal audits, to ensure the quality system is continuously improving, not stagnating.

2. You’re allowed to use the quality budget for Corrective and Preventive Action, Training, and Internal Audits. Having a monetary budget for Quality is great but if you can’t use it because there are too many orders that need to get out or there are never enough worker-hours to work on Quality, do you really have a budget for Quality? Don’t forget — time has to be budgeted, too.

3. You track the cost of quality in your budgeting process. Your cost of quality includes scrap, defects, rework, corrective actions, preventive actions, quality training, audits, management reviews, lost business due to customer complaints (i.e., returns), warranty claims, and other such “quality” costs.  If you’re actively tracking and comparing your cost of quality to your revenues, expenses, and profits, you’re displaying a keen sense of what quality means to your business.

4. Top management actively participates in your regular (weekly/monthly) management reviews. Quality management reviews are critical to management’s understanding of the future of the business.  Top management’s attendance demonstrates that the future of the business is important to it and the results of management reviews are a valuable input to management’s strategic direction and execution.

5. Quality management participates in regular (weekly/monthly) management meetings, planning sessions, and decision processes. Quality management’s attendance at the management meetings demonstrates that input from quality is important.  Can your company expand, add new products, contract, cut costs, or implement strategic actions without understanding how it may impact the operation’s quality?  Cross-functional teams at all levels provide an early warning to management that improves the execution of your plans.

6. Quality management reports directly to top management. Quality management’s input is vital to strategic execution and requires that quality management be a peer (equal) at the top management level.  Quality management needs to attend critical meetings, needs resources to act on Quality issues, needs to act across the organization chart, and needs the active support of top management for quality success.  Can you really achieve high levels of quality by delegating quality to lower levels of the organization’s management?

7. Top management champions quality, communicates it, and understands its bottom line impact. In order for top management to appoint a quality manager at the top management level, that quality manager has to have a budget and has to interact with all other departments. To ensure the future of the business is secure, top management needs to understand how quality impacts the company and it needs to communicate that impact to the entire organization.  Quality takes discipline and only top management can instill the discipline required for success.

8. Management’s strategic plan includes quality milestones. The road to quality takes time measured in years.  Top management can communicate its commitment to quality through the successive achievement of quality awards over the years (e.g., ISO 9001, Shingo, state Quality awards, Baldrige).  I have seen one organization that, after winning Baldrige, required its individual operating units to all go for Baldrige.  Top management can keep on the continuous improvement road by driving quality milestones deeper into the organization.

9. Management allows people to fail, make mistakes, experiment, and improve without serious repercussion. Improvement is really about failure. If you’re allowed to fail, you can learn from your mistakes. Conversely, if you’re not allowed to make mistakes, you’re being deprived of learning and growth opportunities.

Without learning, there is no quality.  When top management allows people to fail, they allow people to learn and grow.  Fire people for failure and people will stop reporting failures…and they will stop learning, too.

10. Quality is implemented as a strategic requirement to build competitive advantage, not as a customer requirement to qualify for new business. A committed top management is focused on quality because it represents improvement, being better than others, and the future.  If a customer has to ask you for proof of quality, do you have a problem?  Even worse, if you only implement quality because the customer asks and not because you want to, then do you really have quality?  Committed top management doesn’t wait for customers to ask for quality — they integrate quality into their strategy.

Top Ten Signs of Management’s Commitment to Quality

1. You have a quality budget for Corrective and Preventive Action, Training, and Internal Audits.
2. You’re allowed to use the quality budget for Corrective and Preventive Action, Training, and Internal Audits.
3. You track the cost of quality in your budgeting process.
4. Top management actively participates in regular management reviews.
5. Quality management participates in regular management meetings, planning sessions, and decision processes.
6. Quality management reports directly to top management.
7. Top management champions quality, communicates it, and understands its impact.
8. Management’s strategic plan includes quality milestones.
9. Management allows people to fail, make mistakes, experiment, and improve.
10. Quality is implemented as a strategic requirement to build competitive advantage.

Your thoughts?

The 2010 Winter Olympic Games begin in earnest tomorrow, February 13. (The overhyped, overwrought opening ceremony doesn’t count.) Alpine skiing, freestyle skiing, the biathlon, ice hockey, luge, speed skating, short-track skating, ski jumping…and that’s just the first day!

Some Olympic records – and a few world records – will be broken over the course of the next two weeks. You watch these athletes perform and you marvel at their power, their endurance, their finesse.

How do they do it? What makes them so special? Are they that different from you and me? Are they superhuman? No, not really. They’re just like you and me…well, maybe not now. But we all start out on equal footing.

The big difference? With a few exceptions, the athletes got their start fairly early in life. And almost from the day they laced up a pair of skates or strapped on skis, they had an ambitious, long-range goal – to be a pro, maybe even the next Wayne Gretzky or Herman Maier.

Mom and Dad encouraged and helped them. Their parents, and then their coaches, made up their plan. They knew that to get the big goal, these future stars had to accomplish a lot of smaller goals, and they had to do it in stepwise fashion.

The plan included competition, proper nutrition, and physical and mental training. Their coaches checked their performance in training and competitions. They analyzed the athlete’s performance, noted where they were reaching those small goals and where they weren’t, and revised the plan accordingly. Then, they executed the revised plan to improve performance.

They repeated this stepwise plan over and over until they reached their big goal, whether that was turning pro, making the Olympic team, making it to the medal round, or standing on the podium at the medal ceremony.

Think about that. They made a plan, executed it, checked their progress, and improved incrementally. What does that remind you of?

If you thought “Deming Cycle”, you’re right. Plan, do, check, and act — just like your organization should be doing (if it isn’t already). Your organization is just like that Olympic athlete. Improvement doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in stages, over time, following a plan.

Consider this: What are your goals for the short and long term? Do you have a plan to get there? Are you satisfied with your performance? More importantly, are your customers?

How do you get better? What will it take to make your firm stand out from the rest – to get to the Games, to the medal round, and maybe even the gold, silver, or bronze?

Are you monitoring and analyzing your performance in order to improve? Are you looking for overnight success, or are you looking for incremental improvement over time? Do you adjust your plan when you don’t meet your goals?

Enjoy the Games. And remember, as you’re watching the long hill jump – seeing that ski jumper glide down the ramp, pick up speed, then hurtle the length of a football pitch before touching down gently (we hope). Remember that it started with a plan…

So, what’s your favorite event at the Winter Games? Who’s your favorite athlete? Will they have to truck in snow? (Sounds like somebody had a plan.)

Business continuity management — more commonly known as “disaster recovery”, even in the present day — used to be about worst-case scenarios.  That is:

“What is the worst thing that could befall my company, and how do I ensure minimal to no disruption of the company’s operations if that happens?”

Aftermath of 1906 San Francisco Quake

“What could happen” has traditionally centered on such events as:

• Natural disasters (fire, flood, storm, earthquake);
• Disasters of the human kind (terrorism, rioting, looting, etc.);
• Major utility outages; and
• IT system problems (malware attacks, hardware failures, etc.).

While the likelihood of such a catastrophic event is believed to be very small, its impact – if it occurred – would probably devastate the business, causing it to fail.

As computers have insinuated themselves into every facet of every type of business, and the importance of alignment of strategy and operations has been realized, the scope of “disaster recovery” has broadened.  More complex recovery systems have been devised to address companies’ needs on a more comprehensive basis.

However, we’re still focused primarily on disaster recovery — assuming that only the worst will happen – rather than using a truly comprehensive, risk-based approach to crisis and continuity management.  Instead of dwelling on the most unlikely of possibilities, we ought to be more concerned with:

• What threats are more likely to take shape than others?
• Which of those threats, if manifested, will have the greatest impact on the company, which will have the next-greatest impact, and so on?
• How will the company act to prevent those problems or minimize their effect?

I’m not suggesting that your company has to completely give up on the doomsday scenario.  However remote the possibility of a cataclysmic event, you want to be prepared.

I am saying that your business continuity management plan ought to cover the risks inherent in conducting day-to-day business as well as the remote possibilities…things like the current brittle economic environment, or risks to our business structure and processes (e.g., cloud computing, embezzlement, misuse of company information, swine flu).

What do you think?  Could your crisis and continuity management plan take a more comprehensive, risk-based approach? Are you satisfied with your current plan?  Do you even have a plan?

Or, are you counting on the world to end in 2012?  (In which case, I suppose, the whole crisis and continuity exercise is moot.)

As 2009 limps — bloodied and beaten — toward its conclusion, here are a few issues that are possibly weighing heavily on HR managers’ minds:

1. Salary budgets are reportedly set for modest increases, at best, but given the last couple of years, for most of us any increase – however modest – is welcome.  According to one survey, increases for this last year averaged 1.9% worldwide and are expected to rise another 2.9% in 2010.  (However, at this time last year, they called for 3% and got two, so take a grain of salt. Another thing…how much is the financial sector skewing those numbers?)
2. Of course, this is the time of year for benefits reenrollment, for the declining numbers of us who still have company benefits.  In this corner, benefits aren’t being reduced, but we’re going to pay 5-10% more for them. (There went the salary increase.)
3. Speaking of health, GINA (the Genetic Information Nondisclosure Act) has just been introduced to the USA. A number of countries (e.g., Sweden, Israel) have had genetic privacy laws on the books for some time, but the US is taking a slightly different tack, not really playing catch-up.  HR departments will have to get the word out to hiring managers…for when they get around to hiring again.
4. How does a company retain its best and brightest if it can’t give salary increases?  Training?  Guess again.  Training budgets declined an average of 14% in 2009, according to “Chief Learning Officer“ magazine.  CLO also looks for an average 4% increase in training budgets in 2010, spent mostly on “efficient” delivery methods, like e-learning.  The ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) says that retail, government, and businesses operating on narrow margins are cutting back on training or cutting it out entirely.
5. Funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) have been handed out at a glacial pace (it’s the government, after all), though it has had an immediate effect on unemployment benefits.  Stimulus funds don’t appear to be having an effect on employment rolls, according to the news on mounting job losses across the board.  Look any day, on any news site you favor — a few thousand jobs lost here, another few thousand there.  Yet, the Federal government reports more jobs being created each day.  Who’s right? In any case, HR departments don’t appear to be preparing for a return to pre-recession employment levels.
6. H-1B visas.  Always a touchy subject in the USA, the numbers have risen and fallen with the state of the economy so, of course, they’re down now.  High-tech firms, health care institutions, and educational institutions appear to profit most from H-1B workers.  The current annual cap is 65,000, according to the USCIS (excluding various exemptions).  If the job market keeps on its current unsteady course, expect the “hire American / hire H-1B” tug-of-war between labor and employers to intensify.
7. The Health Care Bill before the U.S. Congress: What will its final form be and how will it affect HR managers in the years following 2010?  Will it actually put the brakes on employment growth, as some prospective employers suggest?  What will be the ripple effect, if any, on commerce?

While we seem to be dwelling mainly on the USA, most of these issues weigh heavily on the minds of HR managers around the world, as well.  (“It’s A Glo-bal E-co-no-my / Af-ter All…”.)  These and other concerns don’t have an easy or quick resolution, either, yet we continue to be optimistic about the days ahead.  As a friend said to me just today, “We must have hope.”

HR specialists and managers out there…is there anything else that concerns you as 2010 approaches?