ORC Sightlines

July 2008

In this issue:

New Strategy to Show the Business Value of Industrial Hygiene (or HR)

For decades, industrial hygiene (IH) professionals have struggled to express the value they bring to their organizations. That explains the tremendous response to the Value of the Industrial Hygiene Profession Study, presented by ORC Worldwide at the June 3 opening session of this year’s American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition. The AIHA-sponsored research identified and quantified links between investment in industrial hygiene and value to the business.

The strategy that ORC developed as a result of the study could be adapted to demonstrate the value of the work done by human resource professionals, according to ORC Consultant Steve Newell, who, along with colleagues Dee Woodhull and Reepa Shroff, helped produce the study. The study demonstrates that IH interventions often reduce the need for medical care and other costly benefits, while adding value in areas not traditionally linked to industrial hygiene, including revenue growth and contributions to key business objectives.

The study’s findings apply to almost any type of organization, according to Ms. Shroff. For example, IH interventions create strong business value for small-sized companies as well as larger ones.

The ORC initiative is the biggest project of this nature ever undertaken by the association, according to AIHA’s executive director, Steven Davis. ORC Senior Consultant Dee Woodhull noted that industrial hygienists have not, until now, attempted to link their activities to the larger business goals of the organization. The study gives them the tools to do so. More than 400 people at the conference attended two follow-up presentations that explained how industrial hygienists can use these tools to look outside the traditional boundaries of their profession and find the impacts their work has on the entire business process.

“We trained several hundred IHs on the new value strategy and handed out more than 700 CDs containing the strategy along with information on ORC networks,” said Mr. Newell.

The study produced some surprising findings. For example, contrary to the belief that seems to be held by many corporate leaders, the most protective safety and health strategies are also the most cost-effective. Completely eliminating hazards, such as hexavalent chromium, from a work process may be more expensive initially, but this proved to provide the best business value over the longer term. Eliminating the hazard eliminates the need for costly medical surveillance and results in a lower risk that employees will draw on extended medical benefits due to serious illness.

Cutting companies’ health care costs by improving workers’ health is just one example of how the Value of IH Study helps clarify the ways industrial hygiene and human resources professionals can work together to add value to their organizations. For more information on this ground-breaking strategy, go to http://orc-dc.com/AIHA_Project/Index.htm.

Executives Who “Just Don’t Get It”: Advice from Diversity Experts

Diversity practitioners devote their lives and careers to changing the fundamental ways organizations and individuals view difference and interact with people who are different in some way from themselves. So they can perhaps be forgiven for now and then venting frustration with the high-level executive who “just doesn’t get it”—the division president who makes inappropriate comments, or the functional VP who “protects” the woman on his staff by not assigning her to projects that would take her away from home. Participants in last month’s Workforce Opportunity Network meeting admitted to some of these frustrations, but then went on to share strategies for overcoming them.

One strategy is to coach the offending executive—a role many diversity managers play on a regular basis. Many WON members have gone beyond reactive coaching, however, to working proactively with leadership teams to bring home the message in the context of their world. They may take time during a regular staff meeting or operations review to facilitate a case study or other exercise that prompts dialogue about real experiences in their organization. One member noted that for these meetings to have a lasting impact, executives should commit up front that each will leave with a set of objectives for which he or she will be accountable.

Some companies have addressed the issue from the other end, by coaching employees who are objects of stereotypical treatment on how to respond. While some feel that it is unfair to place the responsibility for correcting the situation on the victim, others see it as a realistic and practical way to help individuals overcome obstacles. Books and videos such as Ouch! That Stereotype Hurts by Leslie Aguilar can help people explain in a productive way why the behavior someone believes to be innocuous is anything but.

The bottom line is that the cure for any sort of miscommunication is more communication. Whether through one-on-one conversations, small team meetings, or larger-scale efforts to bring senior leaders into dialogue with groups of employees, WON members realize that brokering the meeting of minds and hearts is a major part of their brief.

For more information about the Workforce Opportunity Network, contact Nita Beecher, +1-212-852-0436, or Liz MacGillivray, +1-212-852-0406.

ORC Resources

Make Sure Your International Assignment Program Is in Compliance

International assignment programs may fall out of scope of routine internal audits, which can leave companies exposed if any elements of their programs fail to comply with regulations in home-country or foreign jurisdictions, or fall short on internal policy requirements or objectives. In “Blind Man’s Bluff: The Perils of Overlooking International Assignment Compliance Issues,” published in the July 2008 issue of Mobility, ORC Director Rebecca Rosenzwaig leads readers through an in-depth tour of audit considerations.

Companies should periodically review how their policies and practices stack up against:

Audits should also examine administrative issues, such as:

Metrics for Global Mobility Programs

Employers deploy employees on international assignments for a variety of purposes under a variety of circumstances, which renders impossible development of one, straightforward method for determining the return on investment from global mobility programs. Nevertheless, global mobility is an expensive proposition, and it is imperative that companies track closely whether strategic goals are being met and how effectively and efficiently the program is managed.

In his article, “Analyzing the Metrics of Global Mobility Programs,” ORC Senior Vice President Roger Herod recommends a measurement strategy that can help executives assess the impact of their expatriate management policies and practices on five areas:

  1. Employee careers
  2. Satisfaction of the program’s customers (i.e., assignees and their managers)
  3. Administration costs and staffing levels
  4. Policy exceptions
  5. Collection of tax receivables from assignees

The article was published in the Summer 2008 issue of International HR Journal.

 

 

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