ASHHRA eNews Pulse

Hello ASHHRA Members

Well, it's done!  The 2010 ASHHRA Conference & Exposition is now officially 'history.' Over 800 health care HR leaders and professionals have now returned home, equipped with information, ideas and connections.  The ASHHRA staff has returned to Chicago, unpacked their bags, and has begun operationalizing the 2011 ASHHRA strategic plan.  The over 175 vendors are sorting through their contact lists, providing requested information, and preparing follow up meetings.  All in all, an excellent event unfolded as planned, with nary a problem or hiccup.
 
And yet within this entire ‘normalcy' is the reality that health care reform is moving along - and it's likely the hospital or health care organization you know and work with today will operate dramatically differently by 2015. 
 
The ASHHRA conference helped us remember that...and provided invaluable opportunities to learn, discuss, and debate this issue.   It'll be interesting to see what will have changed within our worlds 'by the time we get to Phoenix' (as Bob Walters so ably sang) at the conference in September, 2011! 
 
Until then, stay with ASHHRA throughout the year as we bring you on-going educational webinars, information and news about health care reform, and more.  Thank you for your membership and support!
 

Jeff Payne, SPHR
Vice President, Human Resources
Lakeland Regional Medical Center
1324 Lakeland Hills Boulevard
Lakeland, FL 33805-4500
P: 863-687-1045
F: 863-284-1971

 

The September issue of the monthly Health Care Labor Report is now available.

Visit http://www.hospitalconnect.com/oam/login.jsp?domain=ASHHRA to view the full article online.

 

The 35th Labor Activity in Health Care Report is now available. Thus far 2010 has brought interesting changes within organized labor as well as legislatively and at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This issue of the ASHHRA Labor Activity in Health Care Report is replete with information, trends and statistics about labor relations in the health care industry.

Visit http://www.ashhra.org/resources/labor_activity.shtml to view the full article online.

 

Letter regarding H.R. 3149: "Equal Employment for All Act" sent to Chairmen Frank and Gutierrez and Ranking Members Bachus and Hensarling.

Visit http://www.ashhra.org/advocacy/index.shtml to view the full article online.

 

Can obesity qualify as a disability? The folks at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission say yes. The EEOC has filed suit against Resources for Human Development (RHD), a national non-profit human services organization, claiming it fired a child-care worker because she was obese.

Visit http://www.hrmorning.com/obesity-the-next-deluge-of-disability-bias-suits/#more-14630 to view the full article online.

 

If your company offers unpaid internships to students, take heed: The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has begun to crack down on employers that do not pay interns or do not pay them properly.

Visit http://www.tlnt.com/2010/09/28/internship-crackdown-what-you-must-do-to-comply-with-the-law/#more-6850 to view the full article online.

 

Federal legislators are debating yet another version of the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 3772) in an effort to address pay disparities between men and women. Among other things, the bill includes enhanced enforcement of equal pay requirements; a grant program to conduct negotiations skills training for women and girls; and research, education, and outreach efforts.

Visit http://hr.blr.com/HR-news/Discrimination/Equal-Pay-Comparable-Worth/Developments-in-Pay-Equity-Paycheck-Fairness-Act/ to view the full article online.

 

Leaders show their mettle in many ways—setting strategy and motivating people, just to mention two—but above all else leaders are made or broken by the quality of their decisions. That’s a given, right? If you answered yes, then you would probably be surprised by how many executives approach decision making in a way that neither puts enough options on the table nor permits sufficient evaluation to ensure that they can make the best choice. Indeed, our research over the past several years strongly suggests that, simply put, most leaders get decision making all wrong.

Visit http://hbr.org/2001/09/what-you-dont-know-about-making-decisions/ar/1 to view the full article online.

 

Whether you follow the Barbara Walters line of questioning ("If you were a tree, what kind would you be?") or you go more philosophical ("What’s the meaning of life?"), some people just seem to love to do these gimmick-driven interview questions. While the validity of standard interviewing techniques have been studied and discussed for decades, these kinds of test questions have not faced that sort of scrutiny. This makes me wonder — should I be using these sorts of questions in interviews?

Visit http://www.tlnt.com/2010/09/29/ask-the-hr-pro-should-i-use-gimmicky-questions-when-interviewing-candidates/#more-6635 to view the full article online.

 

When average people think of the HR department in the company where they work, they tend to think of the "resources" aspect of the function rather than the "human" part of it. People think of employee orientation, benefits, paychecks, training, evaluations, and all the multitude of rules and regulations that the department is responsible for.

Visit http://www.tlnt.com/2010/09/23/hrs-big-task-keeping-its-finger-on-the-pulse-of-the-workforce/#more-6478 to view the full article online.

 

By Kristy Erdodi

Ninety percent of executive and board of trustee-level positions in health care are held by white/Caucasian employees. This is only one of the findings from a recent benchmarking study, which was conducted by the American Hospital Association’s Institute for Diversity in Health Management (Institute) to track the management of diversity and disparities in health care. When paired with an understanding of diversity’s significance in health care, the Institute’s findings beg the question: What are health care organizations doing to promote diversity in leadership?

Visit https://www.naylornetwork.com/ahh-nwl/articles/index-v2.asp?aid=128655&issueID=22497 to view the full article online.

 

The "Great Recession," as the Pew Research Center refers to it, may be affecting your employees more than you realize. A national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 55% of adults in the labor force say that since the Great Recession began over 2 years ago, they have suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or have become involuntary part-time workers.

Visit http://hr.blr.com/HR-news/Compensation/Compensation-Administration/The-Recession-Has-Impacted-Your-Employees-How-Can-/ to view the full article online.

 

The experts have spoken: The recession’s officially over. And a lot of employers are taking a hard look at their compensation structure. You’ve probably heard that the National Bureau of Economic Research has declared that the recession that started in December 2007 ended in June of last year. That announcement coincides with recent research that indicates many organizations are beginning to assess the impact that two years of salary freezes and limited pay increase budgets had on their base salary programs.

Visit http://www.hrmorning.com/if-recessions-over-is-it-time-to-review-comp-plan/ to view the full article online.

 

We suspect that most employers support some sort of employee recognition program—from the simplest approach of awards for perfect attendance and long service, to more elaborate programs in which supervisors and top managers are encouraged to write personal notes of appreciation to employees who’ve done outstanding work on an important project. But the authors of a new book, Winning with a Culture of Recognition: Recognition Strategies at the World’s Most Admired Companies, see reward programs as going way beyond those ideas.

Visit http://hr.blr.com/HR-news/HR-Administration/Communication/Lets-Take-a-Bigger-Look-at-Recognition/ to view the full article online.

 

As a valuable gatekeeper in an organization, the HR pro has to be able to separate honest folks from liars. And in what’s been called a "post truth society," developing the skills to spot a whopper is crucial to the integrity of a firm and its overall success.

Visit http://www.hrmorning.com/learning-how-pick-out-the-liars/ to view the full article online.

 

Battered by the downturn, America's suburbs are bearing the brunt of poverty among those of working age that has climbed to its highest level in almost a half century, creating strains on dwindling safety-net programs focusing mostly on the inner-city poor. A pair of analyses by the nonprofit Brookings Institution paint a bleak economic picture for the 100 largest metropolitan areas over the past decade and in the coming years, when the U.S. poverty rate is projected to edge toward 15 percent.

Visit http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39544919/ns/business-us_business/ to view the full article online.

 

How much of an increase in benefit costs are employers willing to absorb next year? Would you believe it’s now up to 5.9 percent? A new survey released this week by global consulting giant Mercer found that employers are changing their approach to health care benefit offerings for 2011, primarily because they have figured out that the cost advantages of making changes to their plans outweigh those of avoiding some health reform mandates through "grandfathering."

Visit http://www.tlnt.com/2010/09/08/mercer-survey-employers-pushing-to-keep-2011-benefits-increase-under-6/ to view the full article online.

 

This won’t be a surprise to most of you given all the bad stuff that happened during the recession and ongoing economic downturn, but it still bears noting: the traditional annual cost of living increase is just about dead and gone.

Visit http://www.tlnt.com/2010/09/20/survey-only-11-of-companies-still-giving-cost-of-living-increases/#more-6204 to view the full article online.

 

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) urges Americans to learn about provisions under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that can help them access preventive services, such as cancer screenings.

Visit http://hr.blr.com/HR-news/Benefits-Leave/Healthcare-Insurance/Breast-Cancer-Awareness-Month/ to view the full article online.

 

By: Phyllis Cohn, Project Manager, Workforce Issues, AARP

The battle cry is on for health care employers: by 2010, they must fill more than 14 million jobs – up from 10.9 million in 2000. Not only will they be further squeezed when the 78 million baby boomers begin to need more medical services, but the upcoming generations won’t have the numbers to replace retiring boomers. So what is a health care organization to do?

Visit https://www.naylornetwork.com/ahh-nwl/articles/index-v2.asp?aid=129030&issueID=22497 to view the full article online.

 

As if there weren’t enough websites offering medical advice, along comes a high-profile, well-funded new site that will surely result in more self-prognosis and additional questions during patient exams. Sharecare describes itself as an "interactive social QA platform." The site is "designed to greatly simplify the search for quality healthcare information and provide consumers with the necessary tools to make smart health choices and live healthier lives."

Visit http://www.physiciansnews.com/2010/10/07/sharing-is-caring-new-medical-social-network-sharecare-debuts/ to view the full article online.

 

Trying to convince managers to track in writing the performance of all of their direct reports is the never-ending frustration of human resource professionals and in-house lawyers. Right?

Visit http://hr.blr.com/HR-news/Performance-Termination/Performance-Employee-Appraisal/HR-Convince-Employees-to-Track-Their-Own-Performan/ to view the full article online.