Safety and Health Program

At first glance, a dot-com company is one of the last places you’d expect to find
potential safety and health hazards or so the owners of LearnInMotion.com
thought. There’s no danger of moving machinery, no high-pressure lines, no
cutting or heavy lifting, and certainly no forklift trucks. However, there are safety
and health problems.

In terms of accident-causing conditions, for instance, dot-com companies

have cables and wires. There are cables connecting the computers to screens and
servers; in many cases, separate cables run from some computers to separate
printers. There are 10 telephones in this particular office on 15-foot phone lines
that always seem to be snaking around chairs and tables. There is, in fact, an
astonishing amount of cable considering this is an office with fewer so-called
wireless connections and with fewer than 10 employees. When the installation
specialists wired the office (for electricity, high-speed cable, phone lines, burglar
alarms, and computers), they estimated they used well over 5 miles of cables of
one sort or another. Most of these are hidden in the walls or ceilings, but many of
them snake their way from desk to desk, and under and over doorways. Several
employees have tried to reduce the nuisance of having to trip over wires whenever
they get up by putting their plastic chair pads over the wires closest to them.
However, that still leaves many wires unprotected. In other cases, they brought in
their packing tape and tried to tape down the wires in those spaces where they’re
particularly troublesome, such as across doorways.

The cables and wires are only one of the more obvious potential accident-
causing conditions. The firm’s programmer, before he left the firm, had tried to
repair the main server while the unit was still electrically alive. To this day, they’re
not sure exactly where he stuck the screwdriver, but the result was that he was
blown across the room, as one manager put it. He was all right, but it was still a
scare. And while they have t received any claims yet, every employee spends hours
at his or her computer, so carpal tunnel syndrome is a risk, as are a variety of other
problems such as eyestrain and strained backs.

One recent accident particularly scared the owners. The firm uses
independent contractors to deliver the firm’s book and DVD-based courses in New
York and two other cities. A delivery person was riding his bike east at the
intersection of Second Avenue and East 64th Street in New York when he was
struck by a car going south on Second Avenue. Luckily, he was not hurt, but the
bike s front wheel was wrecked, and the narrow escape got the firm s two owners,
Mel and Jennifer, thinking about their lack of a safety program.

It’s not just the physical conditions that concern the two owners. They also
have some concerns about potential health problems such as job stress and burnout.
Although the business may be (relatively) safe concerning physical conditions, it is
also relatively stressful in terms of the demands it makes in hours and deadlines. It
is not at all unusual for employees to get to work by 7:30 or 8 a.m. and to work
through until 11 or 12 o clock at night, at least 5 and sometimes 6 or 7 days per
week.

The bottom line is that both Jennifer and Mel feel quite strongly that they
need to do something about implementing a health and safety plan. Now, they want
you, their management consultants, to help them do it. Here’s what they want you
to do for them.

Questions

1. Based on your knowledge of health and safety matters and your actual
observations of operations that are similar to theirs, make a list of the potentially
hazardous conditions employees and others face at LearnInMotion.com. What
should they do to reduce the potential severity of the top five hazards?

2. Would it be advisable for them to set up a procedure for screening out stress-
prone or accident-prone individuals? Why or why not? If so, how should they
screen them?

3. Based on what you know and on what other dot-coms are doing, write a short
position paper on the subject, what can we do to reduce the potential problems of
stress and burnout in our company?

Performance Appraisal
Recently St. Luke’s Hospital, a thoroughly modern hospital in Jacksonville,
Florida, had a new problem. Its performance appraisal system was rapidly
becoming an insurmountable pile of papers; and with 1,325 employees, the HR
staff recognized that changes were needed. St. Luke’s performance appraisal
system had evolved over the years into a format, with about 20 pages per
employee. Although some of the lengths were due to concerns about meeting
numerous federal, state, and healthcare industry requirements, other facets of the
system had been developed for administrative reasons. The existing performance
appraisal system was based on a combination of job descriptions and a
performance appraisal. In addition, healthcare accreditation requirements
necessitated using a competency management program focusing on employee
development and education. As a result, St. Luke’s combined the competency
profiles with the job descriptions and performance appraisal forms.
To complete an appraisal of employees, supervisors and managers scored
employee performance on formal weighted criteria and then summarized the
information by compensation and benefits class. Those summaries were reviewed
by upper management for consistency. The overall performance appraisal process
was paper-intensive, slow, and frustrating because it required a total of 36 different
steps A steering committee was formed to oversee the process of changing to a
better performance appraisal system. The committee established that it was crucial
for the new system to better fit the needs of those using it. Also, the committee
wanted the system to use more technology and less paper. Based on these general
objectives, brainstorming was conducted to find bottlenecks and identify what the
ideal automated process would look like. At this point, the committee understood
the current systems and what key users wanted.
After reviewing the literature on performance appraisal systems, surveying
other hospitals, and looking at software packages, the committee decided it would
have to design its system. The option chosen consisted of moving the numerical
criteria scores from the individual pages of the job description to a summary sheet
that provided for scoring up to six employees on one form. The total scores were
calculated by the computer. Also, written comments were moved to a summary
sheet dealing only with exceptions to standards. The most difficult part proved to
be the design of the database. It had to be designed from scratch and had to
interface with existing HR systems. A software program was written to do the
calculations using data already in place, and another program was written to do the
calculations. The new process reduced the paperwork from 20 to 7 pages per
employee. Supervisors and managers were given the option of using computerized
comment sheets. Another time-saver was the ability to use the system to record and
document noteworthy employee performance incidents, both positive and negative
in nature, as they occurred throughout the year. This documentation feature
eliminated the need for a separate note-keeping system that many managers had
been using.
 To implement the new performance appraisal system, training for
supervisors and managers was crucial. When the training program was developed
for the new system, all 97 supervisors and managers were required to attend.
During the training, attendees were given a sample package with appraisal forms, a
checkoff timeline, a resource text, and directions for using the online performance
appraisal forms. To determine if the original goals had been met, the committee
developed an evaluation form. After the new appraisal system had been in use, an
evaluation revealed that 90% of the supervisors and managers felt that the process
had indeed been streamlined. The new process was viewed as easier to understand,
a significant reduction in the paper had occurred, arithmetic errors were prevented,
and the appraisal information was clearer and more concise.
The next year the committee reconvened to examine the first year of
operation and identify areas for improvement. Since then minor revisions have
been made to the performance appraisal system, updates on computer hardware
and software were undertaken, and data screens have been simplified for
management users. Also, efforts have begun to fully automate the performance
appraisal system.
Questions:
1. What is the core issue in this case of St. Luke’s Hospital?
2. Explain in detail why the new performance appraisal system at St. Luke’s
Hospital is most likely to result in more accurate performance appraisals.
3. Describe some of the advantages and disadvantages of combining job
descriptions, performance appraisals, and competency profiles for development as
St. Luke’s did.

The New Training Program

The Carter Cleaning Centers currently have no formal orientation or training
policies or procedures, and Jennifer believes this is one reason why the standards
to which she and her father would like employees to adhere are generally not
followed.

The Carters would prefer that certain practices and procedures be used in
dealing with the customers at the front counters. For example, all customers should
be greeted with what Jack refers to as a big hello. Garments they drop off should
immediately be inspected for any damage or unusual stains so these can be brought
to the customer’s attention, lest the customer later returns to pick up the garment
and erroneously blame the store. The garments are then supposed to be
immediately placed together in a nylon sack to separate them from other
customers’ garments. The ticket also has to be carefully written up, with the
customer’s name and telephone number and the date precisely, and noted on all
copies. The counter person is also supposed to take the opportunity to try to sell the
customer additional services such as waterproofing, or simply notify the customer
that Now that people are doing their spring cleaning, we’re having a special on
drapery cleaning all this month. Finally, as the customer leaves, the counter person
is supposed to make a courteous comment like Have a nice day or Drive safely.
Each of the other jobs in the stores pressing, cleaning and spotting, and so forth
similarly contain certain steps, procedures, and most importantly, standards the
Carters would prefer to see upheld.

The company has had problems, Jennifer feels, because of a lack of adequate
employee training and orientation. For example, two new employees became very
upset last month when they discovered that they were not paid at the end of the
week, on Friday, but instead were paid (as are all Carter employees) on the
following Tuesday. The Carters use the extra two days in part to give them time to
obtain everyone s hours and compute their pay. The other reason they do it,
according to Jack, is that frankly when we stay a few days behind in paying
employees it helps to ensure that they at least give us a few days’ notices before
quitting on us. While we are certainly obligated to pay them anything they earn, we
find that psychologically they seem to be less likely to just walk out on us Friday
evening and not show up Monday morning if they still have t gotten their pay from
the previous week. This way they at least give us a few days’ notices so we can
find a replacement.

Other matters could be covered during orientation and training, says

Jennifer. These include company policy regarding paid holidays, lateness and
absences, health benefits (there are none, other than workers’ compensation),
substance abuse, and eating or smoking on the job (both forbidden), and general
matters like the maintenance of a clean and safe work area, personal appearance
and cleanliness, timesheets, personal telephone calls, and personal e-mail.

Jennifer believes that implementing orientation and training programs would

help to ensure that employees know how to do their jobs the right way. And she
and her father further believe that it is only when employees understand the right
way to do their jobs that there is any hope their jobs will be accomplished the way
the Carters want them to be accomplished.

Questions

1. Specifically, what should the Carters cover in their new employee orientation
program and how should they convey this information?

2. In the HR management course Jennifer took, the book suggested using a job
instruction sheet to identify tasks performed by an employee. Should the Carter
Cleaning Centers use a form like this for the counter person’s job? If so, what
should the form look like, say, for a counterperson?

3. Which specific training techniques should Jennifer use to train her pressers, her
cleaner/spotters, her managers, and her counter people? Why should these training
techniques be used?