1. Human Capital Is a New Business Science
2. Goal Setting and Cheating: Why They Often Go Together
3. Education Purists Try To Stifle The Skills Development Process
4. A Revolution In Human Resources: Move HR Into Line
5. Tech Trends In HR For 2004 And Beyond
6. Across The Board: Official Communication From The SA Board For Personnel Practice (SABPP): The HR Crossroad Conference 2004
7. Case Law & Legislation Review: Substantive Fairness in Dismissal, Fraud
8. Book Reviews
9. Unsubscribe & Moving Soon

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1. Human Capital Is A New Business Science*

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In a military organization, line officers design and execute battle strategies, while staff officers plan and procure. Line officers are trained to think strategically and act decisively, intuitively assessing risk as they go. Staff officers are trained to build a process, keep costs down, limit risk and make sure things are done by the book.

Which are you? Most HR professionals are staff officers. That means you've learned to hire (or fire) as many people as necessary, quickly and inexpensively, in a standard manner that minimizes the risk of lawsuits. Chances are you can evaluate pension and 401k plans, reduce health benefits, counsel underperforming employees, develop training and a execute a host of important administrative operations. In short, you can keep the train on the rails and running, while your line officers build products and win the war.

But today's business battlefield is changing rapidly. The traditional advantages of scale, location, facilities, IT infrastructure, and access to capital are eroding as the international playing field is leveled by new technologies and networks. New strategic advantages are emerging, and the human attributes of intellectual curiosity, flexibility, creativity and action are becoming the new competitive levers of the knowledge age.

The markets understand this shift. In fact, $8 out of every $10 of corporate market value is allocated to intangible property today. CEOs understand, too. Every major business book written by a celebrity CEO in the past decade, from Lou Gerstner (IBM and RJR Nabisco), to Larry Bossidy (Unisys and Allied Signal), to Jack Welch (General Electric), emphasize that talent is the single most important indicator of business success.

That means there is no more critical, strategically vital role in business today, than acquiring, aligning, developing and measuring talent. In most organizations, HR is being offered the chance to step up and address these challenging new demands. But can staff officers win the war?

The answer is no. If talent is the key to corporate success, the companies who focus their most creative, decisive, risk-taking line executives on it will win. Everyone knows that recruiting is a marketing and sales activity. Yet in 90% of organizations it reports into an administrative HR cost center. The first organizations to attack recruiting with the same focus their sales force applies to their product market will simply sweep away the best candidates.

Companies who leave recruiting and developing their workforce to administrative HR specialists will be at a disadvantage to those who create a specialty talent acquisition and development organization. This focus on finding the best people, honing their talents, tying their performance to the bottom line, and proving their contribution to market value, should be a strategic line activity.

Increasingly, HR is being outsourced and taken offshore, because one company's 401k plan is no more strategically important than another's. As a result, HR professionals with purely administrative and soft skills are increasingly at risk.

This crisis for many practitioners is a welcome opportunity for others. HR professionals have an opportunity to move front and center to the strategic table and contribute on the front lines. But to do so requires an entirely new skillset. Great organizations can no longer afford to delegate talent acquisition and development to administratively-skilled HR departments. Acquiring the best and brightest people, and unleashing their creativity are not "by the book" processes. They are risk-based decisions that require mature business judgement, sound financial skills and decisive action.

In short, human capital management is not an extension of the traditional HR function. It is a new, business-driven mission to build a stronger, more competitive workforce, using innovative strategies for the knowledge economy. Though traditional HR organizations are contributing to the field, HCI has adopted a leadership role in helping HR professionals gain new strategic line and talent management skills.

* Reprinted by permission of the Human Capital Institute (HCI)

Ithemba Integrated Learning (IIL)

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>> LAST CALL For The HR Master Class: Moving HR Into Line For The New Economy

JHB: 25-26 October 2004

>> The Impact Of The Rules & Procedures Of The CCMA On Your Organisation:

JHB: 28-29 Sep 2004 & 25-26 Oct 2004: CAPE TOWN:12-13 Oct 2004

>> Fundamentals Of Project Management: JHB: 28-30 September 2004 & 22-24 November 2004

>> Train-The-Trainer: JHB: 11-13 October 2004 & 22-24 November 2004

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2. Goal Setting and Cheating: Why They Often Go Together*

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From childhood on, individuals are told that setting goals will make them more diligent, more focused and generally more successful in whatever they set out to do - whether it's win tennis games, ace their exams or become CEO of their company.

But goal setting also has a dark side to it, according to a recent research paper by a Wharton faculty member and two colleagues. In addition to motivating constructive behavior, goal setting - especially when it involves rewards - can motivate unethical behavior when people fall short of the goals they set or that are set for them. The relationship between goal setting and unethical behavior is particularly strong when people fall just short of reaching the goal.

Consider business scandals. Executives have been caught cooking the books to meet the quarterly goals that Wall Street analysts expect. Salesmen report phony sales or exaggerate them, manufacturers ship unfinished products and service centers perform unnecessary repairs - often in order to meet internal or external sales targets. In the education area, college administrators have been known to exclude students with low scores on standardized tests in order to hit target pass rates.

In "Goal Setting as a Motivator of Unethical Behavior," Maurice Schweitzer, professor of operations and information management at Wharton and colleagues Lisa Ordonez from the University of Arizona and Bambi Douma from the University of Montana, argue that while goal setting - a common managerial tool - can be used beneficially in organizations, it can also encourage people to misrepresent the success they have had in meeting certain targets. The paper appeared in June in the Academy of Management Journal.

The authors cite earlier scholarly research showing that "goal attainment is associated with psychological rewards, including positive self-evaluations and higher self-satisfaction." The authors suggest, however, that people also "incur psychological costs from admitting goal failure" and that "psychological factors can motivate unethical actions after people fall short of goals. In particular," the authors note, "we expect people with unmet goals to be more likely to misrepresent their performances than people without specific goals."

What this suggests, the authors says, is that individuals who have goals - and fail to meet them - are more likely to act unethically than people who are simply "trying to do their best," without the motivation of a specific goal.

When Schweitzer first began to read some of the more than 400 scholarly studies on goal setting, he was surprised to see that almost all talked about goal setting's benefits - a reflection of the fact that "goal setting is one of the most important things managers can do to motivate employees," he notes. "And companies that use goal setting do see results in terms of performance." The problem comes he suggests, when people miss their goals, especially when they miss them by a small margin.

"People cheat," Schweitzer says. Why? "Because they are motivated to hit the goal and when they come very close to meeting it but don't, it is very tempting to fudge the numbers." In addition, individuals can easily justify their decision to cheat by telling themselves that they deserve to meet the goal and deserve the reward that comes with doing so.

How often does Schweitzer think this happens? "Within the business community, I think it's epidemic," he says, noting that it happens particularly frequently in consulting and law firms where employees are supposed to bill a certain number of hours per year in order to continue working and/or to get a bonus.

"If you fall just short in those hours, the temptation is to say, 'Well, I was in some training sessions and perhaps I should count those hours.' Or, 'I should count a little more of time I spent traveling to visit clients since it could have taken me a little longer to get there.' People will come up with all kinds of justifications for giving themselves the extra hours." It's a problem especially in organizations where "reporting your hours is an individual decision, where the exact numbers are difficult to measure and where no one is checking up on you," Schweitzer adds.

In testing their hypothesis, the authors set up an elaborate experiment that would clarify the link between goals and unethical behavior. They began by giving 70 individuals one minute to create words using seven jumbled letters listed at the top of a page (e.g. EASCKIY). The results from this test were used to identify a difficult performance goal.

The authors then recruited 154 undergraduate participants - average age 20 - to do the same word creation task as the pilot participants. These 154 were divided into three groups. Some were told to "do your best to create as many words as possible;" a second group had a 'mere goal' to create nine or more words for each round but was not offered any reward for doing so. A third group was assigned a 'reward goal' condition, in which participants were given the goal of creating nine words for each round and told that they would earn $2 for each round in which the goal was met. Participants were paid in advance and told to return unearned money (to ensure anonymity).

Participants were asked to create words and check their own work and they were assured of anonymity. i.e. they could cheat and no one could link their behavior back to them. The researchers did, however, have a mechanism which allowed them to measure unethical behavior by coding the congruence between participants' actual productivity and the claims they made about their productivity (although they could not link cheating to individual participants).

"We were interested in the relationship between goal failure and unethical behavior," Schweitzer says. As a result he and his colleagues focused their attention on cases in which participants claimed to reach the goal of nine words, when they had actually created fewer than that number.

Among their findings:

>> People with unmet goals were more likely to overstate the performance than people in the do-your-best condition.

>> Although the authors hypothesized that people with unmet 'reward goals' would be more likely to overstate performance than people with unmet 'mere goals,' this did not turn out to be the case. There was no significant difference between the two. Schweitzer suggests, however, that while mere goals "alone will motivate unethical behavior, reward goals will give it an extra kick."

>> People who failed to reach their goals by a small margin were more likely to falsely claim to have reached their goals than people who failed to reach their goals by a large margin.

Like other scholars, the authors write, "[we] assumed that people balance the costs and benefits of engaging in unethical behavior. We conceptualized these costs and benefits to include both psychological costs (such as negative self-perceptions) and psychological benefits (such as the psychological reward of claiming goal achievement.) It is consistent with this conceptualization that we found that participants with mere goals, who obtained no monetary or social rewards for reaching goals, were more likely to overstate their productivity than were participants attempting to do their best. This pattern of findings suggests that goal setting alone, without economic incentives, increases the value people derive from overstating productivity.

"Our results also suggest that deception itself can facilitate self-justification," the authors note. "In our study, people were far more likely to represent their performance (in a way that justified taking unearned money) and take unearned money than they were to simply take unearned money." This result suggests that deception itself can facilitate self-justification.

The authors point out that in situations where an individual's productivity is more "transparent" than in a consulting or law firm, and where "people are held accountable for specific outcomes ... goal setting may not significantly increase unethical behavior."

In addition, "domains with low transparency and asymmetric information, such as negotiation and sales, represent a particular challenge." They cite the case of Sears, Roebuck & Co., which in the early 1990s established ambitious goals for its automotive service departments. California state regulators found that these departments "had performed unnecessary repairs 90% of the time," a finding that led then-chairman Edward Brennan to state that the company's "goal setting process for service advisers created an environment where mistakes did occur."

Schweitzer does not advocate the discontinuation of goal setting, especially when it has a clearly established role in directing and motivating employees. But he does warn against "steep reward systems that have a big discontinuity. If you tell your salesmen that if they sell 30 cars over a set period they will get a trip to Hawaii, you should also have something that is good for the person who sells 29. You don't want a massive reward that makes a discrete jump at the goal line.

Also, he says, managers should be "vigilant in establishing an ethical climate, because that matters a great deal. If you are running a consulting company, you are likely to create problems when you set goals for billing a large number of hours, convey the impression that billable hours are the key to earning rewards (e.g. promotions, bonuses) and rarely check on your employees' self-reported hours. In this type of environment, you are creating a breeding ground for unethical behavior."

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3. Education Purists Try To Stifle The Skills Development Process*

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Just a few days before the Association’s AGM, we received a "heads-up" from Christoph Vorwerk, whom we last encountered in Pretoria some months ago when attending a Department of Labour presentation on the Interdependent National Qualifications Framework consultative document. He said the Department of Education together with the Council for Higher Education envisaged developing a

Higher Education Qualifications Framework and had distributed an explanatory document for discussion.

Some of the points raised by Christoph: "What the document suggests is that:

>> Above Level 4 on the National Qualifications Framework, only the DoE/CHE can determine what it is a qualification.

>> No workplace-based 'qualification' is a qualification (ie qualifications may only be presented by those that teach).

>> There are no professional, occupational or vocational qualifications above Level 8, only academic qualifications such as Masters and PhD

>> There is no mention of unit standards.

>> SAQA becomes an administrative body without any real power.

>> If one takes these proposals together with other Acts and DoE regulations regarding registration and the kind of practices that are currently occurring, it spells the end for private providers operating in the higher education sphere.

>> For those who have been working for the recognition of skills and knowledge acquired outside the walls of institutions such as universities, this means we have gone back to pre-1993 when the National Skills Development Strategy initiative came into effect.

>> Possession of workplace-based qualifications (such as the kind we have developed) will not enable learners to enter higher education institutions.

"I think a suitable response would be a howl of outrage." The draft framework prompted considerable discussion at the ASDFSA’s annual general meeting. Professor Merlyn Mehl, who with the Association is developing an NQF Level 7 qualification for skills development facilitators said: "For 300 or so years, only 10 percent of the people in this country determined how the other 90 percent would live.

"The academics in universities say they are the only people who will decide what the people will learn. Do you know how many people in this country have degrees? Ten percent: that’s a striking similarity." Professor Mehl described skills development facilitators as architects of "real learning in actual situations".

Another broadside was fired by the Services Seta’s Ivor Blumenthal, who contended: "I hope skills development facilitators and your Association will help to put an end to a document that could potentially put us back five years. This is a document that says once again that both your present and future employees will be trained by academics who, quite frankly, have never worked a day in their lives."

Mr Blumenthal added that the proposed framework declared the higher qualifications designed by Seta-affiliated standards-generating bodies to be "meaningless and having neither credibility nor foundation". Over the past few years, some of the country’s finest minds have been attracted to standards-generating bodies in the belief that they will be establishing vocational qualifications that will allow South African business to become more competitive.

The inescapable rationale is that business growth will help to alleviate the terrible twin blights of joblessness and poverty. Sadly, it would seem that the detractors of the National Skills Development Strategy and the work done by the Setas – those who mocked the Skills Development Levy as "just another tax" – will be proven correct.

It would be a bitter pill, but one that could nonetheless be swallowed, if the architects of the Higher Education Qualifications Framework had designed it for the good of the country and its people. They have not: the framework is underpinned by base self-interest – a desire on the one hand to recapture the elitism of the possession of knowledge and, on the other, a need to reverse the waning profitability of the organisations that employ them.

Let’s be blunt: universities and technikons exist on grants from the State as well as the fees paid to them by (generally) the parents of their students. Government subsidies are correctly performance-related while fees are forthcoming in the expectation that graduation from the academic institution will increase the employability of those who exit the hallowed halls, qualification in hand. The truth is that a major percentage of graduates are no more prepared for the world of work than the Man in the Moon.

One of the reasons why learnerships are becoming increasingly popular is that they do prepare people for the workplace and parents are catching on to the fact that they are an effective, inexpensive alternative to tertiary

study. The higher level vocational qualifications therefore directly threaten the continued existence of universities and colleges that reside within the Department of

Education. And if the Department and the Council for Higher Education don’t seek the total destruction of these qualifications, at the very least they want to hijack them.

The Association of Skills Development Facilitators of South Africa views the proposed Higher Education Qualifications Framework with alarm. I told the AGM that the Association would not only seek to formulate its own response to the initiative but also form alliances to counter it and, consequently, I strongly urge members to attend one of the Services Seta roadshows alongside

*Reprinted by permission of the Association Of Skills Development Faciltitators Of South Africa (ASDFSA)

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4. A Revolution In Human Resources: Move HR Into Line

By David Creelman who can be contacted at

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The good news for human-resource departments is that top management, at least in the U.S. and the EU, recognize the importance of people. CEOs talk about human capital and invest time in communication, coaching, succession planning, training and development. The bad news is that top management is gradually coming to understand that great people management isn't driven by HR programs; it's driven by the actions of line management. Gallup's research, made famous in Marcus Buckingham's First, Break all the Rules, shows employee engagement depends more on the individual manager than on HR programs. Bob Gandossy's Leading the Way shows that great leadership-development programs look much the same as mediocre programs. The difference is the time, energy and sincerity top managers apply to developing people.

It's not that good HR programs don't matter. HR has to do a good job of recruiting employees, designing training, creating compensation structures and building an HR technology infrastructure. However, HR programs are not going to make the difference between great people management and good people management. HR needs to revolutionize their conception of how they have impact on the firm.

The people who have best articulated what must happen are USC professor John Boudreau, and Pete Ramstad, a VP at PDI. The single most important question they ask is, "Where will an investment in talent have the biggest impact on the execution of strategy?" Wrapped in this single question are three important ideas:

>> The question assumes we are making a focused investment on a particular area, not in a company-wide HR program or on improved HR services.

>> It assumes line managers will be making these decisions, not HR.

>> It directs attention to specific business objectives in executing strategy, not general HR objectives like creating a strong talent pool.

So what is the role of HR in this? Boudreau and Ramstad argue that HR has to support managers in making good decisions about talent. The way to do this is by providing managers with robust frameworks for thinking through talent issues. Pete Ramstad looks to the history of finance for insights on what we should expect from HR. For several hundred years accounting tracked assets, but it was only in the twentieth century that finance evolved. Accounting did not go away, nor will traditional HR. However, just as finance created an approach for making decisions about investments, HR has to create an approach for making decisions about talent.

As you absorb these ideas, it revolutionizes how you think about HR. In their book Deep Smarts, Dr. Dorothy Leonard and Dr. Walter Swap talk about those people who, through years and years of experience, have developed deep technical or managerial expertise. Organizations should be concerned about developing and retaining "deep smarts." HR will naturally get excited about it—but how can HR help? Dr. Leonard points out that deep smarts, almost by definition, cannot be created in a classroom. Experts develop their wisdom through challenging projects and a chance to work with other really bright people. Assigning people to projects is done by line managers. It's managers who need to make the right decisions about talent, not HR.

What HR can do is provide managers with frameworks for making these decisions. The place to start is to help line managers answer Boudreau and Ramstad's key question, "Where will deep smarts have the greatest impact on the execution of strategy?" Secondly, HR must develop tools to help managers staff projects in a way that aids in developing deep expertise. And HR will be available, as internal consultants, for managers to provide advice on specific projects—just as finance does.

Great people management will be found in organizations where line managers make great decisions about talent. A new and quite different role for HR will be to create the tools for managers to make the right decisions. The work of Boudreau and Ramstad will be worth following—and not just for HR managers.

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MOVING HR INTO LINE e-TOOLKIT

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5. Tech Trends In HR For 2004 And Beyond*

By James Holincheck who can be contacted at

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1. Introduction

There are two major themes for HR technology in 2004: cost control and talent management. Cost control will emphasize lowering HR administrative costs, company labor costs and employee- related third party vendor costs. Talent management will leverage emerging services-oriented architectures (SOAs) to deliver composite applications that integrate business process and data across disparate systems to support deeper workforce planning, sourcing and acquisition, employee development and separation.

These themes will be heavily influenced by environmental factors, including the economic environment, globalization and increased regulation (e.g., Sarbanes-Oxley). Significant changes in the environment may impact the relative importance of the themes.

2. Cost Control

In 2004, HR organizations will continue to be asked to work with smaller budgets and to do more with less. So, they will focus on technology and services that reduce the cost of HR service delivery.

For many companies, labor is their single largest cost, yet they lack the tools necessary to truly manage labor cost on a proactive basis. In addition to direct labor costs, there are employee-related costs - such as health care - that are significant and ripe for reduction.

To reduce administrative costs, companies will continue to invest in employee and manager self-service applications in 2004. The Cedar Group 2002 Human Resources Self-Service/Portal Survey showed strong growth between 2001 and 2002, but there remains significant room for additional growth across both self-service areas. We have seen many companies adopting self-service a few transactions at a time until they build up a portfolio of capabilities that are well-understood and used by end-users.

We also see larger companies showing more interest in developing HR service centers that compliment their self-service capabilities. Companies will evaluate both internal HR call center technology and outsourced call center services to support the service center. In addition, we see many companies looking at outsourcing, in general, as an approach to lower costs and make costs more predictable. A recent Gartner/Dataquest research report indicated that 50 percent of respondents wanted to reduce the high cost of HR transactions through outsourcing.

With regard to labor costs, Gartner sees continuing interest in scheduling and time/attendance solutions during 2004. Though many organizations use time and attendance, they rarely use a centralized, company-wide solution. Companies will look to consolidate site-specific time and attendance solutions into a single, company-wide solution in 2004.

This consolidation, along with implementation of better industry-specific scheduling solutions, will allow managers and executives to have better, more frequent visibility into planned vs. scheduled vs. actual labor costs. Improved information will enable managers to make better decisions on resource mixes to lower costs and/or improve service.

HR and finance departments are directly involved in managing many employee-related third-party vendor costs. In 2004, we'll see more focus on reducing these costs. Cost reduction will come from better information that results in consolidation of vendors and achieving lower unit costs.

We also expect to see significant interest in expense-management solutions because of Sarbanes-Oxley (i.e., the need for better auditability of employee expenses). Many companies still have relatively manual expense reporting processes, which makes auditing difficult.

Finally, Gartner also sees increased interest in health-care cost management. Health-care costs continue to rise. The aging population coupled with people retiring later will put increased pressure on employers in 2004 to control costs. Most companies rely on third parties to help them find and negotiate contracts with carriers.

This system is inefficient and promotes the status quo. Companies will invest in 2004 in technology that provides better visibility into how employees are using health insurance. They will use that information to negotiate better rates with carriers and to create more customized health insurance programs that better reflect the demographics of and usage by their employee population.

3. Talent Management

Talent management has started to become the umbrella term used to describe strategic workforce management applications. As a result, we expect to see in 2004 increased interest in niche solutions in each area below as well as newer suite solutions that encompass multiple aspects of talent management, but do not include the more administrative HR applications.

>> Workforce Planning. Today, workforce planning is primarily a budgeting exercise, separate from the operational planning done in other parts of the company. In 2004, companies will start to look for new solutions that better integrate human capital planning with operational planning. The emergence of Services Oriented Architectures (SOAs) will enable composite applications that can bring together data from disparate planning applications to provide insight into the demand for human capital in the company. The composite application will use the demand plan as a foundation for creating supply plans to meet the demand.

>> Workforce Sourcing/Acquisition. When most people think about workforce sourcing and acquisition, they think about recruiting. Though hiring is down, with the downsizing of the last few years, the number of job applicants have increased. This is driving demand today both from a purely administrative perspective as well as an opportunity to upgrade the talent pool of a company. When the economy improves and job mobility increases, e-recruitment will be crucial for finding the best-fit candidates for openings.

Permanent hires are an important source of human capital, but not the only one. Contingent workers (e.g., temporary workers, contractors, consultants, etc.) are an increasingly important talent source. The current economic situation has forced many companies to lower their contingent workforce costs by reducing their usage of contingent workers.

Only early adopters have invested in new contingent-workforce management technology to manage contingent labor. Once the economy revives, we expect to see companies increasing their use of contingent workers and thus increasing the need for solutions that enable better management and control of these resources..

>> Workforce Development. Companies in 2004 are asked to do more with fewer resources. As the economy strengthens and employees have more job mobility, there will be increased attention to retention of high performers. This will drive emphasis on performance management, training and development, career development, succession planning and compensation management solutions.

Ideally, companies would buy these applications as an integrated set, but functional silos still exist in most companies that will limit adoption of a suite. Instead, companies will adopt these capabilities in a modular fashion.

>> Workforce Separation. Many companies have had reductions in force over the past three years. In many cases, these reductions have been relatively haphazard. They have been a cascading numbers game: "We need to reduce headcount overall by X which means Department A needs to reduce headcount by Y, Department B needs to reduce headcount by Z, etc. ..."

The department managers would then decide who stays or who goes based on performance (hopefully - though in many cases it is personal relationships). In almost all cases, there is little linkage between who is retained and the strategy to be executed post-downsizing. In 2004, we expect to see new solutions that help better conduct this type of business event.

4. Final Thoughts

The year 2004 will be an important one for HR technology. There is a groundswell that is starting to occur as companies look less at buying new HRMS suites and more at specific add-on applications/services that can leverage previous investments. Some companies will decide that additional investment in new technology is not the answer and will look at Business Process

Outsourcing as a viable alternative. Whatever the approach, HR organizations will be judged on their ability to manage their own business, contribute to corporate objectives and performance, and deliver relevant HR services to employees, managers and executives. Talent management will emerge as an important tool for aligning human capital to business need. 2004 will be the year that HR tools and technologies move out into the company and start to deliver on the promise of strategic Human Capital Management

*Reprinted by permission of the author

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MANAGING FOR DIVERSITY WORKSHOP

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6. Across The Board: Official Communication From The SA Board For Personnel Practice (SABPP): The HR Crossroad Conference 2004

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# The HR Crossroad Conference 2004

The SABPP, the HR Council of South Africa (HRCOSA), Business and the IPM West Rand is inviting the HR Fraternity to discuss the revisions in the in the Draft HR Profession Act and to review the ramifications thereof.

>> Johannesburg, Gallagher Estate: 4 November 2004

>> Durban, International Convention Centre: 10 November 2004

>> Cape Town, CT International Convention Centre: 16 November 2004

Sponsorship & Exhibition opportunities available:

For more information contact: Johann Vogel, 083-459-3820 or 082 4787900

# The revised draft of the proposed HR Profession Act

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DOES YOUR EMPLOYMENT EQUITY COMMITTEE DELIVER RESULTS?

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7. Case Law & Legislation Review:

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# SUBJECT: Substantive Fairness in Dismissal, Fraud

ISSUE: Substantive fairness in dismissal – employee created the impression that she had the necessary work experience – company established that they had been prejudiced by the employee’s misrepresentation - dismissal substantively fair

SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE: The employee was employed as an electrician on the strength of her Curriculum Vitae and the impression created at the interview that she had the required experience she was given the job. However, it later turned out that the Employee was unable to perform the basic functions and the company testified that despite the employee having been unemployed for 2 years, after approximately 3 months she should have picked up any lost skill.

They further testified that there were certain basic skills and basic knowledge that one did not lose irrespective of the number of years that one has not been working as an electrician. Despite experience stated on her CV, the employee was given on the job training to familiarise her with required skills, but again displayed a lack of basic skills. As a result of her misrepresentation the Company incurred financial loss in that the Employee’s incompetence resulted in damage to Company property and it also resulted in unnecessary calls of other electricians who had been on standby.

The essence of the employee’s case was that when she was interviewed she made it clear that she had been unemployed for 2 years therefore her skills and knowledge had been rusty. She had indicated that the experience she had was obtained whilst serving her apprenticeship training. Under cross examination she admitted that some of the things she had stated under ‘work experience’ she could do and some she could not. She argued that the company should have given her more time to improve.

SUMMARY OF JUDGEMENT: In determining this issue the commissioner was guided by John Grogan in Dismissal (2002) page 119, where he stated that "….fraud not only constitutes a criminal offence but also invariably justifies dismissal in the workplace ..it takes many forms including fraudulent non-disclosure, applicable in cases where employees have acquired their positions by failing to supply information which, had the employer known of it, would probably have resulted in the rejection of the application".

Applying the law to the facts the employee had fraudulently misrepresented her work experience in that in her CV she stated categorically that she had work experience in areas, which she had not. In her own testimony she admitted that she could do some of the things and with the others she only had theoretical knowledge. However, on her Curriculum Vitae, the things she now claims to have only theoretical knowledge appear under "work experience", the definition of "work experience" is clear namely, that it is work that you have practical knowledge of.

It was also clear that the company would not have employed the employee had she not created the impression that she had the necessary work experience. Furthermore, the company established that they have been prejudice by the Employee’s misrepresentation, in that they had to incur costs in replacing damaged property and unnecessary call outs. The employee never disputed this evidence.

Based on the evidence heard and submitted, the Company has discharged its onus and established that the Employee dismissal was substantively fair.

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8. Book Reviews

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# Unstuck: A Tool for Yourself, Your Team, and Your World

By Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro Penguin Books, 2004

We’ve all been there. It’s the supply problem that seemingly can’t be fixed, the personnel decision impossible to make, the budget quandary with no win-win solution. In short, you can’t make a decision. You’re stuck.

Written by Yale School of Management professor Sandra Spataro and management consultant Keith Yamashita, Unstuck is a short but sweet field guide for individuals and organizations paralyzed and unable to move forward.

Born out of a class that Spataro and Yamashita taught to MBA students at Yale, the book presents a process that leaders can use to identify, diagnose, and remedy their condition of paralysis. After facing up to the fact that you are stuck, the authors suggest seven potential causes for your condition: overwhelmed, exhausted, directionless, hopeless, battle-torn, worthless, and alone. But don’t despair. Unstuck also offers seven solutions with case examples that readers can use to emerge from the fog. An innovative and refreshing presentation of photos, diagrams, and illustrations adds to the book’s effectiveness.

If you can’t decide which business book to buy, maybe Unstuck is the right choice.

# Coping with Toxic Managers, Subordinates…and Other Difficult People

By Roy H. Lubit Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2004

No need to explain what we mean by "toxic." Everyone has worked with at least a few people who have that word glowing on their forehead. Fortunately, this book offers a lot more than commiseration. The author, an Ivy League-educated psychotherapist and specialist in organizational dynamics, says his guide is aimed at helping people work with those above and below them in the hierarchy. Learning to cope with difficult people, he says, teaches skills that are good for your current job and all jobs to come.

Lubit describes the underpinnings of such familiar types as the narcissistic manager, the grandiose manager, the control freak, the paranoid manager, the anti-social manager, the bullying manager, and the list goes on.

His advice is learned yet sensible. Let’s say you are coping with the dictatorial manager. This manager is quite benign compared to other toxic managers, Lubit tells us. But we know this manager can also be a hellion for individuals who desire courtesy and consideration in their professional relationships. According to Lubit, the dictatorial manager operates under the mistaken belief that dominating the decision-making process is actually the most time-saving tactic. For that reason, you can approach the issue of dictatorship in a tactful and even effective way by framing it as a discussion about efficiency. "Changing the behavior of dictatorial managers is generally not that difficult," writes Lubit. "If it is, the manager is more than simply dictatorial. Effecting change can usually be accomplished by having superiors encourage the change, providing some executive coaching, and keeping an eye on how the measurement-reward system and messages sent out by senior leadership inadvertently supports dictatorial styles."

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