Macy’s North division seems to be taking a page from the Circuit City playbook (see "More Gibberish from Circuit City," "Age Bias Suit at Circuit City" and "Running With the ‘Knuckleheads’ "). Not only is the famous retailer struggling to carve out a new identity for its famous State Street store in Chicago—the former Marshall Field’s—but now the company has decided to cut wages and commissions for some sales associates starting in August.

According to the Chicago Tribune, "Macy’s notified employees at its North division, made up of former Field’s stores, that it will cut the range of wages and commissions for some sales associates starting in August and offer voluntary severance packages for those who choose to leave. Macy’s officials declined to be more specific but said the pay model at the former Field’s stores is outdated and out of line with the other Macy’s divisions."

Consumer behavior expert Britt Beemer told the Tribune that it’s a mistake to lower pay, even for a portion of the sales force, going into the big holiday selling season. The risk of hurting employee morale could overshadow the efforts to attract shoppers into the stores, he said. "Those [marketing efforts] are all nice things, but when I walk in the front door of the store and the employees aren’t happy, am I going to come back?" said Beemer, founder of America’s Research Group. "When you’re a retailer, you’ve got to sell the employees first."

Cutting pay and commissions seems to be a curious way to motivate your workforce, especially a sales-oriented workforce, as Circuit City has discovered. Is Macy’s seriously thinking that this move will help fix what seems to be a growing problem in the Windy City? Only the holiday shopping season will tell, but I’m betting that this move will backfire in a big-shouldered town like Chicago.

Got a comment about Google or any of my other posts? Until we get the comment posting function on this blog operational, send me comments at jhollon@workforce.com. I will publish as many of them as I can.  

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the books they read. If that’s true, what does this list of the top-selling books purchased at last month’s Society for Human Resource Management annual conference in Las Vegas tell you about the HR professional in the 21st century? Let me know if you can figure it out:

1. The Carrot Principle—How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent and Accelerate Performance, by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

2. 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave—How to Recognize the Subtle Signs and Act Before It’s Too Late, by F. Leigh Branham

3. Perfect Phrases for Performance Reviews, by Robert Bacal and Douglas Max

4. Perfect Phrases for Managers & Supervisors, by Meryl Runion

5. Hot Spots—Why Some Teams, Workplaces and Organizations Buzz with Energy—and Others Don’t, by Lynda Gratton

6. It's OK to Be the Boss—The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming the Manager Your Employees Need, by Bruce Tulgan

7. Effective Phrases for Performance Appraisals—A Guide to Successful Evaluations, by James E. Neal. Jr.

8. The Voice of Authority, by Dianna Booher

9. Ask the Right Questions, Hire the Best People, by Ron Fry

10. 101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems—A Guide to Progressive Discipline & Termination, by Paul Falcone

Got a thought about this book list, or any of my other posts? Until we get the comment posting function on this blog operational, send me comments at jhollon@workforce.com. I will publish as many of them as I can.

I’ve been in the workforce long enough that I remember a time when companies sometimes hired a person even though they didn’t have a specific job for them. It didn’t happen often, and it sometimes turned into a problem, but when it worked, it was kismet.

I’ve been meaning to write about last week’s news concerning Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey, who has put his company’s $565 million acquisition of rival Wild Oats at risk by anonymously attacking and belittling Wild Oats and its CEO on Internet financial forums. Writing under the handle "Rahodeb," Mackey also anonymously questioned why anyone would buy Wild Oats stock and that the company was probably headed for bankruptcy—just before Whole Foods made its buyout bid.

You know this if you have spent much time in the workforce, but really good and really bad management is impossible to forget. One reader reminded me of this recently when she wrote about my blog item on Northwest Airlines’ management troubles and contrasted them with Delta Air Lines under CEO Gerald Grinstein. Her comments are interesting and further evidence (as if we needed any more) of how far airline service has fallen under today’s shortsighted management:

"I read with great interest your article "Another Airline, Another Meltdown" earlier this month in the 7/2/07 Workforce Management newsletter. I have been a flight attendant since 1970 and was based in Minneapolis-St. Paul for a period of time and witnessed the poor labor relations that Northwest historically had with their employees from the 1960s until now.

"I was also an employee with Western Airlines when Gerald Grinstein helped pull it out of the financial crisis that they experienced in the 1980s. His actions helped my company survive and eventually be purchased by Delta Air Lines. He was a man of integrity then and continues to be so today. Delta was poorly managed by both Ron Allen and the ‘Enron school of management’ style [of] CEO Leo Mullin. Because of my previous experience with Mr. Grinstein, I rejoiced when he lead the coup that ultimately resulted in him being chosen to be the CEO of Delta, a position that he did not for the big bucks that other airline CEOs were paid, but for his love of the airline and desire to see our company survive. He did an admirable job in attempting to keep Delta out of bankruptcy but was ultimately forced to take that route by pilots who refused to renegotiate their contracts and had an outrageous pension plan. I took a major pay cut and experienced dramatic change in work rules, but I trusted the decisions that Mr. Grinstein made. This trust was rewarded when we came out of bankruptcy and Delta’s employees were given bonuses, raises and stock in the new Delta Air Lines.

"It is too bad that other CEOs do not have the integrity that Mr. Grinstein has shown for the 20 years that I have known him. He also did not overlook the fact that when internal customers are happy, customer service improves and customer satisfaction rises, which directly impacts company profits: a balanced scorecard at work.

"Thank you for a very interesting take on the industry that I love."

Got a comment about one of my posts, like this reader did? I love to hear what you have to say. Until we get the comment posting function going on this blog, send comments to me via e-mail: jhollon@workforce.com. I will post as many of them as I can.


 

There’s a great New York Times story today  (registration may be required) about how the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, is both misunderstood and misinterpreted by nurses and other health care professionals. The result is that family and friends of patients frequently can’t get basic information they need and are stymied by a system that seems bent on emphasizing secrecy and confidentiality at all costs.

From the NYT story by Jane Gross: "HIPAA was designed to allow Americans to take their health insurance coverage with them when they changed jobs, with provisions to keep medical information confidential. But new studies have found that some health care providers apply HIPAA regulations overzealously, leaving family members, caretakers, public health and law enforcement authorities stymied in their efforts to get information.

"Experts say many providers do not understand the law, have not trained their staff members to apply it judiciously, or are fearful of the threat of fines and jail terms—although no penalty has been levied in four years. Some reports blame the language of the law itself, which says health care providers may share information with others unless the patient objects, but does not require them to do so. Thus, disclosures are voluntary and health care providers are left with broad discretion."

But here’s the part that really caught my eye in the NYT story: "Susan McAndrew, deputy director of health information privacy at the Department of Health and Human Services, said that problems were less frequent than they once had been but that health care providers continued to hide behind the law. ‘Either innocently or purposefully, entities often use this as an excuse,’ she said. ‘They say "HIPAA made me do it" when, in fact, they chose for other reasons not to make the permitted disclosures.’ "

This kind of thinking is all too common, especially among managers and HR people. Too often they choose to hide behind "rules" that they misinterpret or misuse in an attempt to keep from being completely truthful and honest with workers. Their default position is that they are legally prohibited from talking, when in fact that may not be the case.

I’ve encountered this behavior on many occasions, but one sticks out. A respected longtime employee leaves suddenly and co-workers don’t know why. Senior management and the HR department won’t talk about it, leaving the impression among the remaining workforce that the respected longtime employee may have been fired because they did something terrible. Weeks later, someone finally connects with the departed employee and finds out the real reason for the departure—a health emergency within the departed employee’s extended family. When the word spreads among concerned co-workers, everyone wonders aloud, "Why couldn’t management be a little more open rather than leaving us hanging and thinking the worst?"

It’s a good question I don’t have an answer for. In my book, management does itself no favors by being so secretive. If I were a CEO, I’d push my HR people and senior managers to work as hard as possible to be as transparent and open as possible all the time. There are always some things that need to be kept secret, but the fewer there are, the better the company will ultimately be.

Have a comment on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say. Until we get the comment posting function on this blog operational, send me comments at jhollon@workforce.com. I will publish as many of them as I can.  

Whatever happened to the notion of shared sacrifice, of workers and management both sharing in the pain and hardship it takes to get a money-losing business back on track? Well, the concept is a good one, but at Northwest Airlines, it seems to be at the core of all that is wrong with the business right now.

Northwest has been canceling flights at a pretty good clip—more than 1,000 in the past week. The ongoing bad weather in the middle of the country is partly to blame, but the main culprit is a coordinated move by Northwest’s pilots to only fly the 90 hours per month required under their labor contract with the airline. Generally, pilots fly more—the FAA allows 100 hours—but the pilots at Northwest have decided to stick to the letter of the contract and do only what they are contractually obligated to do and not any more.

The pilots, who took about a big pay cut in their last contract and saw hundreds of their fellow pilots furloughed, are upset that Northwest executives received large bonuses when the airline finally came out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy this spring. Last week, they passed a resolution expressing "no confidence" in Northwest management. Pilots at other airlines, notably United and American, are equally upset with management, and it’s possible the problems at Northwest are just the beginning for summer travelers.

Contrast the Northwest battle with what happened at Delta Air Lines when it came out of bankruptcy in March. As I noted at the time in this blog (‘The Art of Management Spin and Positioning," March 8), Delta management gave numerous pay raises and stock when it emerged from bankruptcy to reward rank-and-file workers for their efforts in helping to get the carrier back on track.

Delta CEO Gerald Grinstein understood, as all managers should, that workers are more than willing to sacrifice for the good of the company as long as they are recognized for that sacrifice and see some payback when things get better. Delta management gets this. Northwest clearly doesn’t.

In addition, Northwest’s management doesn’t seem to care about its best customers either. Get a load of this post by a Northwest frequent flier on the Detroit Free Press Web site:

"My wife flew NWA to Phoenix and was to return home two days ago. She has been stuck in a flea-bag hotel for the past two days near the PHX airport because of a pilot shortage, and may finally be able to get home sometime today. She is Platinum Elite with NWA and flies many, many miles a year for business. Now we must re-assess her relationship with Northwest. What would you do? Can anyone afford to be stuck someplace for days at a time? She will be looking for other carriers in the future. I hate to say this, but NWA is a major employer in the Detroit area … and they are shooting themselves in the foot with this foolishness. If they go bust, they deserve it, but it will cost the area lots of jobs."

Have a comment on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say. Until we get the comment posting function on this blog operational, send me comments at jhollon@workforce.com. I will publish as many of them as I can.