ORC Sightlines

May 2009

In this issue:

ORC Testifies at House Hearing on Flu Preparedness

At a May 7 hearing held by the House Committee on Education and Labor, ORC Worldwide Senior Consultant Ann Brockhaus explained how many leading companies are ensuring that workers are protected from emerging infectious diseases, such as the H1N1 influenza virus.

Relying on two recent teleconferences attended by hundreds of participants from ORC member companies as well as preliminary results from a survey conducted by ORC, Ms. Brockhaus identified three critical lessons learned thus far about how companies can respond most appropriately to the H1N1 outbreak.

  1. Advance Planning Counts! Companies benefited from having already implemented responsible emergency preparedness planning, much of it developed in response to SARS and the Avian flu.
  2. Timely and Consistent Governmental Information and Guidance Are Critical. The timeliness of the government messaging about the outbreak—at the federal, state, and local level—has proven to be essential to company efforts to respond effectively to the outbreak.
  3. Making Pandemic Flu Planning Part of an Overall Safety and Health Management System Optimizes Protection of Workers and Helps to Ensure Business Continuity. Placing influenza preparedness in a broader context, ORC Worldwide has long maintained that the best way to protect workers and companies is to implement an occupational safety and health management system focused on the reduction of all workplace safety and health risks.

Ms. Brockhaus's written testimony and a transcript of her oral statement are available online. The archived webcast of the House hearing can be accessed at http://edlabor.house.gov/hearings/2009/05/ensuring-preparedness-against.shtml.

For more information about ORC's Survey on Business Response to the Influenza A H1N1 Outbreak or additional information on ORC's continuing response to Influenza A H1N1, contact Ms. Brockhaus or Scott Madar at +1-202-293-2980. An executive summary of the survey is available on orcworldwide.com.

Recruiting and Retaining Female Scientists and Engineers

Last year, a study led by economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett found that in many companies the atmosphere for women in the sciences has not changed much since the seventies. As a result, more than half of women scientists and engineers are dropping out by the time they reach their late thirties. Long hours, old boys’ networks, and a macho, “lab coat” culture are blamed. Members of ORC’s Human Resources in R&D Network have been taking action to ensure that their laboratories are comfortable and inclusive places for women to work and contribute.

HRRD members shared strategies for attracting and retaining female technologists, especially those who have been away from the workforce for a few years, at last month’s meeting hosted by SAS Institute. BBN Technologies has taken a comprehensive approach to reaching out to women who are at home with children, making part-time work more attractive, focusing on employee development, and highlighting the aspects of BBN culture that make it a good place for female scientists to work.

High-level BBN managers keep in touch on a regular basis with scientists who have left to raise children and let them know that the company would like to have them back when they’re ready. Benefits have been redesigned to make part-time work more doable. Women who do return are provided with coaches to help them develop their careers. The company also plans to offer skills update training to returnees who may need to catch up on advancements in their fields since they left the labs.

Other companies are also addressing the needs of professional women. One finding of the Hewlett study was that female technologists are often isolated from one another. Each may be the only woman in her department or lab. Networks and online communities can help increase the visibility of women to one another and to the organization. So can training technical managers to understand the specific issues women face in a technical environment and ensure that they are not overlooked for challenging assignments.

A number of HRRD members have also revised part-time working policies and practices to help overcome resistance from managers. Some provide for a trial period and require that the employee and manager come to written agreement about how communications will work, the frequency of performance reviews, and when the arrangement will be considered for renewal.

For more information about the Human Resources in R&D Network or about talent management practices in R&D organizations, contact Michal Fineman, +1-212-852-0354.

ORC Knowledge Center: How Not-For-Profits Are Riding Out the Recession

In the April issue of Monday Developments, Curtis Grund, vice president of ORC’s global development sector consulting practice, outlines how not-for-profit organizations are reshaping their compensation programs to ride out the recession. Dependent on donors and answerable to a variety of stakeholders, nonprofits are accustomed to assiduous stewardship of their assets, and current economic circumstances and increased government scrutiny of executive compensation have heightened the need for careful management of compensation.

The mission-focused culture of nonprofits makes this easier to some degree. Employees are attracted to the work and remain with the organization because of their commitment to its goals, not to earn large salaries. Nonetheless, nonprofits have been increasing pay over recent years to become more competitive, which may make it a bit easier for them to put on the breaks now. An ORC survey found that nonprofits are more likely to freeze salaries or delay increases than for-profit companies. On the other hand, 33 percent of profit-making companies have reduced their merit increase budgets, compared with only 19 percent of nonprofits. This may be because nonprofits typically have less room in their budgets for cutting to begin with.

The full article can be downloaded at interaction.org. For more information on compensation practices in the global development sector, contact Curtis Grund, +1-212-852-0302.

The Listening Post

ORC Networks members have the opportunity to hear and talk with some of the most respected and interesting experts in their fields. And ORC’s own professional staff are sought-after speakers in their own right. Here are a few of the notables we have hosted recently and notable events to which we have been invited to contribute.

Norman Tan

Following Indian custom, ORC Vice President Norman Tan, with other government and private sector dignitaries, lit the golden lamp to open the Greenfield Foundation 8th Annual Safety, Fire & Security Conference held May 4–6 in Goa, India. Mr. Tan, a chairperson of the conference, addressed participants regarding worker safety.

ORC Worldwide’s 2009 Annual Conference of Senior HR Networks, held earlier this month, brought together some of the United States’ most prominent thinkers on health care, pension reform, and labor relations to address the 2009 legislative agenda and its implications for HR policy and practice. Dallas Salisbury, President of the Employee Benefits Research Institute, gave the keynote address. Other speakers included the following:

Former Chairman and current Member of the U.S. National Labor Relations Board, Peter Schaumber, and Ontario Minister of Economic Development, Michael Bryant, spoke to the members of ORC’s Canada Labour & Industrial Relations Group (LIRAG) at its May 5–6 meeting in Toronto.

ORC’s Executive Compensation Forum discussed the impact of the current economic crisis on governance and executive compensation reform with Professor Charles Elson, the Edgar S. Woolard, Jr., Chair in Corporate Governance, Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware.

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