Law Q Newsletter (March 2009)

As we approach the end of the first quarter of 2009, it is old news that the economy is contracting and that law firms of all sizes are feeling the pinch. You may still be optimistic and know whole heartily that your firm is in a good position to survive the downturn, but your employees may still be nervous- and it could adversely affect their performance. Now is the time to adopt policies that will not only reassure your employees of their position with the firm, but also improve morale and save operating costs in one fell swoop.

This month's newsletter focuses on ways to help your firm win the battle with employee anxiety and decreasing morale. We have included three great articles on ways for your organization to keep its employees happy and stay competitive in today's marketplace. We hope you will find these pieces both relevant and useful. As always, please check out our featured attorney and legal staff candidates in the upper left hand corner of this newsletter. The resumes of both our featured candidates and our other top notch candidates can also be viewed on the 'Recruiting' page of our website.

As always, we hope your month is a great one and feel free to contact us with any of your recruiting or employment questions.

Truly yours,

R. Christopher Newton
LAW Q, LLC

Flex Schedules: By the Numbers
by Jack Chapman, The Ladders

Most execs need to work on site 50+ hours a week. But some executive work is eligible to participate in a trend that started with lower-level employees: working from home. It is easiest to apply to sales, but finance, marketing, purchasing, IT and other functions can sometimes get in on the action. Interested?

Lee Iacocca estimated his executives averaged 48 minutes a day of truly productive work; the rest of the time was consumed by "administrivia" (his word). Executives can boost that 48-minute time considerably by spending an uninterrupted day working from home.

This work-from-home option can be a benefit you extend to some of your staff, or it can be something you take advantage of yourself. It can be a way to work around an undesirable relocation or just a way to enjoy the peace and quiet of a home office.

Avoid overpromising

No matter what your reason, the biggest negotiation blunder employees make is overpromising. Don't take an eight-hour day and turn it into a 10-hour work marathon just for the privilege of working off-site. That extra time belongs to you, not the company. In effect it's like giving you time off: you recoup time that would otherwise be spent in work-related activity (commuting). Average door-to-door travel time might be around 45 minutes one way. That's 1.5 hours per day. Times 200 workdays a year means 300 hours of personal time you wouldn't have if you had to transport yourself to the office.

When offering this to an employee, you'd likely put in some reporting structures to allay your fears that they'll spend time walking the dog, doing errands or picking up kids from school. Daily logs and weekly goals will keep them in line.

You'd keep those goals comparable to what they'd accomplish if they were on site for 8 hours. Likewise, when you ask for (or simply decide) that you're taking 1+ days a week at home, set up the same type of communication so your higher-ups see the value.

Three steps to demonstrate your needs

If working at home is something you want to negotiate with a current or prospective employer, you have three things to consider.

1.         Is it a must-have or a nice-to-have?
2.         Is this new for the company, or has it been done before at the exec level?
3.         Can you demonstrate that you'll really be more productive at home?

Must-have often occurs when you don't want to relocate your family to take a new job. As a must-have, it constitutes a deal-breaker that must be negotiated before you treat salary and benefits. Line up your reasons - both those that benefit the employer and those that make it important to you. Clarify how you'll manage your function without coming in to the office every day. I've helped execs negotiate many different work-remote permutations.

If the company has established the precedent for this flexible practice, you merely need to demonstrate how the company will benefit. However, if this is a new concept to them, you'll be well advised to bring in some information about how this has worked well in other companies. Articles and studies are readily available and easy to search out. Pick those that focus on employer benefit and feature people at your level.

Third, be aware that employers worry about you running a department remotely. Work from home is primarily a lower-level perk. And since lower-level employees are more likely to slack off, this arrangement is still equated you with them: guilt by association. They're worried even the best will give in to temptation to sleep late, leave early, get in a round of golf, engage in lengthy personal phone calls, do errands, pick up your kids from school, etc. You'll want to make a case that you'll be more productive, not less. Thus, productivity ideas center on liberating more energy, time, attention, and responsiveness.

It's certainly possible, and demonstrating this plausibility in a list with quantitative benefits will be an asset. Feature these benefits to leverage your proposal:

�           Handling a brief before-hours or after-hours task can be quickly dispatched from home in off hours instead of being deferred until regular working office hours.
�           Working around other time zones is easier to accommodate at home.
�           Skype and other video-telecommunication innovations make virtual space almost like real space.
�           Internet computer and desktop sharing programs make interactive files available to boss and coworkers without being physically present.
�           Daily work logs or reports can improve at-home accountability more than if you're parked at your desk downtown.

Effective negotiation tactics

If you can't get this work-from-home option outright included in the plan from the get-go, try suggesting starting with a trial period and evaluating it after a few weeks or months. Or propose planning for a trial period to start later on, once you're sure of the work flow and relationships.

Negotiate, too, for the employer to pay all or a portion of your home-office expenses: high-speed internet connection; business-related software; hardware upgrades; special security backups; perhaps even a desk, decoration, lighting or an ergonomic chair.

Ensure your at-home work is set up for success. This means affected people feel good about the arrangement. Build a few "How's it going?" check-ins into your conversations with those affected by your decision.

300 hours is seven-and-a-half 40-hour weeks of time! If you don't want to work at home, perhaps you might consider letting some of your underlings try it. That's a tax free benefit of $7,500 worth of time at their level.

If your executive salary of $150,000 translates into $75/hour, your 1.5 hour commute is worth $112. If every Friday was work at home day, you've given yourself time worth $5,850. That's something to write home about, eh?

*reprinted with permission 2009

The One Thing Holding You Back with Social Media
By Mary Lorenz, Careerbuilder.com

Two words: Corporate culture.

According to IBM employee and blogger Adam Christensen in his recent post, The Impact of Corporate Culture on Social Media, "[Corporate] culture is...the most overlooked, underestimated factor determining whether social media succeeds or fails in a company."

He ought to know. IBM has successfully implemented social networking into its day-to-day employee and customer relations - something Jennifer McClure of the Society for New Communications Research talks about in this recent interview podcast from Marketing Voices. She argues that corporate culture is one of the greatest predictors of a company's ability to successfully adapt to social media.

Her research has found the common denominator among companies - like IBM - who've successfully embraced social media to be a corporate culture where employees feel comfortable expressing their opinions and sharing their viewpoints about their experiences - both internally and with clients.

If you have the time, you should definitely check out the interview, but here are the major takeaways for companies that want make social media a part of their organizations:

�           Be honest. Before you can even think about implementing social media into your organization, you need to assess your company's readiness to make the transition to what will be an even more open, egalitarian culture.   Consider the following questions, "How does information flow at my company? Is it a command and control structure, or is it a more open environment? Do we have 360 Reviews? Do we listen to employees? Do we ask them what they think?" (Better yet, check out Zappos' 10 Commandments for shaping corporate culture.)
�           Start simple. The most basic way to start is with a company Wiki (as either a substitute for or supplement to a company intranet) Employees can post thoughts or comment on company decisions - or give feedback on proposed company initiatives.
�           Be patient. One of the major obstacles to adapting social media is a lack of understanding about how to get started. You need to collaborate among various departments, and put forth equal effort to learn . (Read Chris Brogan's 12 Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss for a quick how-to on getting the right people to okay your social media program.)

Embracing social media not only enables your employees to voice their opinions, concerns and ideas, but it enables you to listen to and - even better - address those opinions, concerns and idea. "That can only benefit a company," McClure says.

*reprinted with permission 2009

Employee Recognition Programs
by The Business Research Lab

In the employee satisfaction studies we have done, we've never found a firm with low employee recognition scores and high employee satisfaction scores. There is some debate in the HR community as to whether it is better to reward employees with more money, or in non-monetary ways. These two methods need not be mutually exclusive.

Compensation is important. If the average compensation in your company is well below average for other competing firms (firms in competition for your workers, not necessarily direct competitors in your industry), then certainly it is an issue you should address. However, the most prevalent complaint we have observed about compensation is the lack of relationship between pay and performance. If there is a lack of a strong pay/performance relationship in your organization, a non-monetary recognition program will be of limited value. If your organization pays its employees market rates, and grants larger pay increases to top-performers, an employee recognition program should be able to boost morale.

A recognition program does not have to be expensive. The structure of a recognition program is limited only by your imagination. An effective program has the following components:

Fairness

High visibility and consistency.

To be fair, a program must not favor one employee over another, merely because of his or her position within the organization, or his relationship with his supervisor. There must be an effective means of identifying employees who should be recognized. In many programs, there is an easy means by which employees can nominate others for recognition. As a supplement to a nomination program, supervisors can keep lists of notable employee achievements.

Making certain that a program is highly visible helps to ensure consistent implementation. If a recognition program becomes viewed as management's "program of the month," nominations will drop and those who are nominated may well be those who are perceived in the eyes of many to be management's "favorites." Small, but meaningful achievements may be ignored unless there is a plan to actively solicit nominees.

The actual rewards can be anything you want. One approach is to have small rewards initially, and make each employee who receives eligible to receive a larger reward at the end of the year. Some of the awards to consider include the following:

Dinner certificates,

A trophy or plaque,

Cash bonus,

Pizza party thrown in the recipient's honor, or for an entire group that has done a great job,

Bonus miles for airlines,

A "top achiever" ribbon,

A reserved parking space,

An extra paid day off,

Movie passes.

The reward itself should be just part of the process. Recognition can be achieved by having the reward given at a gathering of employees, and by recognizing the award in corporate communications, such as the corporate newsletter or Intranet site.

*reprinted with permission 2009