The fallout is still flying from Monday’s court decision striking down a recent rule by the National Labor Relations Board governing union elections.

Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia invalidated the rule — which would have made it easier and quicker for unions to hold organizing elections — on the grounds that the NLRB did not have a required quorum at the time it was made.

In this Wall Street Journal account of Boasberg’s decision (subscription required), the Obama-appointed judge is quoted as saying, “ ‘According to Woody Allen, 80 percent of life is just showing up [a variation on the well-known comedian's line]. When it comes to satisfying a quorum requirement, though, showing up is even more important than that.’ ”

In response to his decision, the NLRB announced today that it is temporarily suspending the implementation of changes to its representation process, which had taken effect April 30. Board Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce said in a statement that the NLRB is reviewing the court decision and is considering its response.

“We continue to believe that the amendments represent a significant improvement in our process and serve the public interest by eliminating unnecessary litigation,” he said. “We are determined to move forward.”

Meanwhile, NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon withdrew today the guidance to regional offices he issued prior to the effective date and advised regional directors to revert to their previous practices for election petitions starting today. (To read that guidance and for a bit more history on all this, here is my Leader Board blog post from April 27.)

Even before the guidance’s withdrawal was announced, employment lawyer Fito Agraz, a shareholder with Ogletree Deakins in its Dallas office, said the judge’s decision, “combined with a decision earlier this year by a federal district court judge in South Carolina – finding the NLRB lacked the statutory authority to require employers to post notices regarding employee rights under the NLRA (here is my blog post about that) – leaves the NLRB in a position of having to table some of its proactive initiatives.” No kidding!

Not surprisingly, the National Association of Manufacturers — which refers to the NLRB rule as the “ambush-elections” rule — had this to say last night:

“Overturning the ambush-elections rule is a key victory for job creators and the 12 million men and women working in manufacturing. The NLRB has consistently overstepped its authority and attempted to enforce unnecessary and damaging rules that threaten workplace relations by creating hostile work environments where none exist. In invalidating the ambush-elections rule, the court rightly rejected one of the board’s most misguided policies. The NAM will continue to lead the way in opposing rules and regulations that stand in the way of job creation and economic growth.”

Employment attorney Michael Lotito, who just this week left Jackson Lewis to join San Francisco-based Littler, was a little less one-sided:

“The judge’s decision is a setback for the NLRB, but it is also an incentive for the board to consider the rule in its entirety and not piecemeal as it did. If it does, the legality of the president’s recess appointees will be critical to whether the NLRB has the power to act. In sum, this debate is far from over.”

I think Lotito’s last line says it all.

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There’s just one question that comes to my mind while reading over the alleged misdeeds of former Best Buy Chairman and Founder Richard M. Schulze: Just what was this guy thinking?!?

By this point the general outline of the story is fairly well-known: Schulze has just resigned after acknowledging he knew about an “improper relationship” between Best Buy’s (married) CEO and a younger female employee, yet failed to report it to the board of directors. CEO Brian Dunn, who resigned last month, “violated company policy by engaging in an extremely close personal relationship with a female employee that negatively impacted the work environment,” according to a report by the board’s audit committee, which began looking into the matter in March after a Best Buy HR exec heard about it, according to the New York Times.

The 51-year old Dunn and the 29-year-old employee appeared to have had a rather intense relationship, even if–as they maintain–it was not sexual. According to the audit report, the CEO contacted the female employee by cellphone “at least 224 times during one four-day and one five-day trip abroad, including at least 33 phone calls, 149 text messages and 42 pictures or video messages.” Things got especially awkward in the workplace when the employee began boasting to other employees about her relationship with Dunn and the favors he provided her with, including tickets to concerts and sports events.

For me, the kicker is when an executive provided Schulze with a signed, written statement from another employee detailing the relationship between Dunn and the young woman. Chairman Schulze proceeded to confront Dunn with the written allegation and ask if it was true. Dunn denied it was true, and Schulze dropped the matter, failing to follow company policy by notifying the appropriate company officials. Let me state that again: Schulze confronted Dunn with a SIGNED, WRITTEN STATEMENT from a whistleblowing employee, and then did nothing. So, Best Buy, how’s that whistleblower program working out? How’re the corporate ethics folks feeling these days? And how’s that whistleblowing employee doing–does he or she still have a job at Best Buy?

After flagrantly violating company policy, Dunn is walking away with an estimated $6.6 million severance package. Schulze will receive the “honorary title of chairman emeritus” when his resignation is official in June.

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Photo by Michael J. O'Brien

Special thanks to Jean Achille at Devon PR for sending over these sweet treats to help mark the 25th anniversary edition of Human Resource Executive magazine, which includes: a Q&A with Dave Ulrich, who says the competencies that served HR well in the past will not propel it into the future, as well as Maura Ciccarelli’s piece, Lessons from the Top, in which past winners of HRE‘s HR Executive of the Year award share their wisdom on the evolution and importance of the HR profession — from whence it came and going forward.

And click here to access even more from the issue, from word clouds to haikus and beyond!

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Two interesting tidbits pertaining to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act came across my desk today. Their only real connection is that they are both apparent byproducts of the PPACA.

One is this survey from ADP (release with links included, registration required) showing companies of all sizes are choosing to outsource benefits administration because of the ever-increasing compliance complexity of, not just healthcare reform, but other benefits-related acts as well — including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, to name three.

In fact, the numbers are pretty impressive. An overwhelming 45 percent of HR/benefits decision makers in mid-sized companies and 54 percent in large companies reported to ADP that regulatory changes have made them more likely to outsource some or all of their benefits administration.

Key reasons given for outsourcing are the need to access subject-matter knowledge and expertise, and reduce the administrative burden on internal staff.

The second tidbit — smaller in size, but even more intriguing — is this report from the Kaiser Family Foundation showing that employers could be receiving millions in health-insurance rebates, thanks to the PPACA.

By August, U.S. business sponsoring fully insured group health plans could be getting sizable refunds from heath-insurance companies that spent more on administrative and marketing expenses and profits than is allowed under the new law.

The report estimates rebates for large companies could reach more than $541 million.

Guess that’ll loosen the purse strings for increased benefits-outsourcing spending. Ah, so there may be a connection after all.

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The afternoon continued with a presentation by Theresa Welbourne, PhD, president and CEO of eePulse Inc., who, among other things, also serves as a research professor at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California.

“Data coaching,” which Welbourne said is not a  term most people are using today, is only “three-years new” and basically describes how to tell compelling stories by using HR data. It’s a blend of analytics, narrative and story telling, mixed with how directors make movies, she said.

“We need to learn how to think about data differently,” she said. “We need to use data to push people to action, and it should be eliciting an emotional response from leaders.”

The process, in short form, is as  follows: data, dialogue, action, results.

When you put too much data out for your audiences, Welbourne quoted the author David Rock, who wrote that data overload can be “like hundred of new actors jumping on the stage briefly and then running off” and the audience doesn’t remember the information.

Citing examples from both the medical and educational fields, where storytelling is becoming a more accepted mode of data communication, Welbourne said recent neurological studies of humans’ brains have shown they typically do not “light up” when shown data, but do when stories are included with the data.

One area that HR leaders need to get better at, she said, is zoning in on a particular story to tell leaders in order to get them to act on a certain issue.

“If you want people to take action,” she said, “then you have to make a commitment to your point of view.”

And that’s hard to do, she said, because HR often just hands over data and says ‘Here it is, you make the decision.’

But it’s not just the data that’s important, she added. “The dialogue is what commits people and gets them interested.”

For those interested in learning more about data coaching, she added that a workshop will be held Sept. 19-21 in Los Angeles.

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Jon Younger, a partner at RBL Group, gave an engaging presentation on new HR competencies based on the group’s 2012 HR Competency Study.

The group has partnered with the University of Michigan and HRPS, among others, to collect responses from 20,013 participants on their views on the competencies of HR professionals, including 13,000 HR professionals and 7,000 line managers using a 360-degree approach. They also partnered with regional partners in Australia, Norway and South Africa.

“If you assume a million people in HR globally,” Younger said, “then this is insight on 1.5 percent of what’s happening in HR broadly.”

Younger said that it is vital for HR leaders to really understand the various external factors facing an organization, including social, technical, economic, political, environmental and demographic.

“If we are not starting from the outside in,” he said, “then we cannot be a partner unless we have a point of view in addition to a wish to serve,” he said. “We have to push through the mirror and ask what’s happening on the outside.”

And the only way to use that seat at the table is to have an independent point of view, he said.

“If we do that, we truly begin to operate as partners, and it’s an extraordinary difference from just being another set of hands.”

The new HR competencies are broken down into six domains and sub-factors, including:

Strategic Positioner: “We have an obligation to help the organization to position itself, from an HR perspective, from an external position.”

Credible Activist: Earning trust through results; influencing and relating to others; improving through self awareness; shaping the HR profession.

Capability Builder: Capitalizing organizational capability; aligning strategy, culture, practices and behavior; creating a meaningful work environment.

Change Champion: Initiating and sustaining change.

HR Innovator and Integrator: Optimizing human capital through workforce planning and analytics; developing talent; shaping organization and communication practices; driving performance; building leadership brand.

“We need to make sure our solutions have efficacy, but also make sure our HR systems  and practices are aligned,” he said.

Technology Proponent: Improving utility of HR operations; connecting people through technology; leveraging social media tools.

HR must not only understand and anticipate external trends and stakeholder expectations, but also build aligned internal capabilities and actions, he said.

“It’s a huge job,” Younger concluded, “and it’s never been more fun. The question now is: Are we willing to step up?”

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We’re back at it here in the Broadway Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan, where noted HR/business advisor and author Libby Sartain discussed the changing state of talent with her presentation: “Customer” or “Employee”? The New Consumer of Work.

“The people you want to work for you, do you think they’re going to be attracted by a job description?” asked Libby Sartain. “They’re thinking about what they can do for you and how they can use their talents and skills.”

HR was still called personnel administration in 1977 when she started out, she said, and, since then, the world of business has evolved from largely manufacturing to what’s being called The Human Age, where people are the commodity.

“That’s good and bad,” she said, “because workers are now in the driver’s seat but they’ve also become a commodity at the same time,” she said.

And, with crowdsourcing growing in popularity — including Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk, in which micro-tasking jobs such as creating a spreadsheet or taking a picture of a billboard in a certain location are offered for a modest payment, employers will need to re-evaluate how they look at talent.

“It’s work that you don’t care who does it, just as long as it gets done,” she said. “For 35 years in HR, I thought of person who does work as an employee,” she said. “Now I’m banishing that thought, and will call them a contributor or worker. Maybe that person needs to be with us full time, but maybe there’s work that gets done at an acceptable level and anyone can do that.”

Citing a survey in which only 25 percent of people are satisfied with their work, Sartain said it’s becoming more and more important to anticipate what workers want and be able to deliver it as well because “their profile is on LinkedIn, so they are always in the marketplace.”

And, she said, these new workers are more prone to ask:  How will the company’s brand look on my personal brand?

“We need to really think about how we market work to people, not just Gen Y, but all people,” she said. “Gen Y gives us permission to ask for what we’ve wanted all this time” such as flextime.

“We can no longer motivate people with ‘Here’s a job,’ ” she said.  “We have to create a work experience.”

The answer to that, she said, lies in how employers market themselves to the workforce.

“In this war for targeted talent, it comes down to employer brand,” she said. “And branding is a powerful thing.”

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Greetings from Day Two of the HRPS conference, where I’ll be updating the blog during the presentations, thanks to the wonders of WiFi.

9:21 AM Kicking things off today was a tag-team presentation with Ravin Jesuthasan, global practice leader of talent management for Towers Watson, and John Boudreau, a USC professor, research director and senior research scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations, on their new book, Transformative HR: How Great Companies Use Evidence-Based Change for Sustainable Advantage.

With their presentation entitled Transformative HR: Using Decision Science to Gain Sustainable Advantage, the duo took the Broadway Ballroom stage to make the case for evidence-based change by laying out its five principles: logic-driven analytics, segmentation, risk leverage, integration and synergy, and optimization, by featuring case studies on IBM, PNC and Deutsche Telekom, among others.

“The blessing and curse of HR is that every leader thinks they are an expert on their workforce,” says Jesuthasan, which he said makes evidence-based decision-making all the more important.

On the topic of logic-driven analytics, Jesuthasan said that, ten years ago, there was a distinct lack of data in most organizations.

“Now, many have more data than they can shake a stick at,” he said. “But how do we move on from data availability, to generate insights on the business by leveraging the frameworks leaders already understand?”

Boudreau added that getting the numbers right is just the beginning.

“The ‘magic’ happens when measures and analysis are combined with the logic of knowing where to look for the important connections and the savvy of knowing when a story is better than a number,” he said.

The instant-poll response data then shed some light on just how limited the use of data to make talent decisions: When the audience was asked “To what extent does the organization use data to make decisions around talent?” only 28 percent said they never make a talent decision without some data to support it.

When it comes to risk leverage, they noted, risk is merely “a deviation from an expected outcome.” It can be analyzed, planned for, managed and exploited to the economic benefit of the organization, they noted.

“Our profession evolved from compliance based,” Jesuthasan said. “HR is well versed in the risks organizations don’t want to take. … But taking the right risks is often as vital as avoiding the wrong ones.”

Integration and synergy, according to the authors, simply means understanding how different HR solutions mesh with each other — and other organizational processes — to deliver a unique and compelling proposition.

Finally, optimization, said the authors, is simply the summation of the first four principles.

“Do we have the analytics to help us make those important tradeoffs?” Boudreau asked. “And do we have business leaders with the courage to stop investing in what’s not working?”

Next up: HR advisor and author Libby Sartain describes the new “consumer of work.”

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Greetings from a rainy Times Square in New York City, which is currently hosting the 2012 HRPS Global Conference, The Future of Business: Big Ideas in the Big Apple.

Day One of the conference focused on the theme of “competing globally,” and included presentations and discussions that ranged from how German industries compete (and win) in global markets, to a look at leadership in China, India and Mexico, to some inside lessons on China from Eddie Ng, the former chair of the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management.

One of the afternoon sessions, entitled Using Workforce Analytics to Build an Evidence-Based Talent Strategy, concerned Johnson & Johnson’s efforts to create a “comprehensive talent strategy” for its 4,000-strong IT department in order to better meet the company’s various business goals in the coming years.

Saila Incollingo, J&J’s corporate human resources director of IT talent management, said the process of creating that new talent strategy included help from Angel Hoover, a senior consultant in Towers Watson’s talent-management practice, who, among other things, guided an external labor market analysis that identified 15 cities around the world where such IT talent could also be obtained.

“Defining the talent strategy is a business initiative,” Hoover said, “it’s not just an HR program.”

Later in the afternoon, John Challenger, CEO of Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, took a deep dive into the latest labor statistics in his session entitled It’s In the Numbers: What Global Labor Force Statistics Are Telling Us.

Challenger said that, while the U.S. economy just posted its 10th consecutive quarter of increased Gross Domestic Product, such positive markers can be easily overlooked.

“It’s easy to look at the latest jobs numbers and get frustrated, but we’ve made some great strides and we are heading in the right direction,” he said. “There’s so much more dynamism in the economy than most people think.”

But, he added, real economic growth can be attained if U.S. organizations can find ways to utilize certain demographics of the workforce, such as those holding only a high-school diploma or less, that have been most adversely affected by the downturn.

“We need to look for ways to develop our people for the jobs that are available now,” Challenger said.

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Yet another reminder for HR to not only be diligent in verifying a job candidate’s credentials, but to also be diligent in monitoring any outgoing communications from their company regarding their executives’ backgrounds: According to the Associated Press, Yahoo shareholder Daniel Loeb–who owns 6 percent of the company and is trying to replace its board of directors–is now questioning the integrity of the company’s leadership after he revealed that it posted inaccurate information about CEO Scott Thompson’s educational background.

According to a recent filing by Yahoo with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Thompson has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Stonehill College in Massachusetts. There’s just one small problem, as Loeb discovered: Thompson does, in fact, have a degree from Stonehill, but it’s in accounting, not computer science.

Loeb also cited Yahoo for inaccuracies involving the educational background of board member Patti Hart. Yahoo’s SEC statement listed Hart as having a degree in marketing and economics from Illinois State University; in fact, Hart has a degree in business administration from ISU, with specialties in marketing and economics.

On Thursday, Loeb wrote a letter to Yahoo’s board calling for an independent investigation, questioning Thompson’s ability to lead and citing the company for poor governance:

 If Mr. Thompson embellished his academic credentials we think that it 1) undermines his credibility as a technology expert and 2) reflects poorly on the character of the CEO who has been tasked with leading Yahoo at this critical juncture. Now more than ever Yahoo investors need a trustworthy CEO.”

Yahoo’s stock price has languished between $10 and $20 for the last three years as its performance has severely lagged competitors such as Google. Thompson, who before joining Yahoo in January served as president of eBay’s PayPal division, laid off 2,000 Yahoo employees–14 percent of the workforce–last month in a cost-cutting move. Loeb is trying to have himself and three allies elected to the board, asserting that they have the expertise to turn the struggling company around. Yahoo acknowledged the inaccurate bios but it is sticking by its CEO, releasing a statement that said:

This in no way alters the fact that Mr. Thompson is a highly qualified executive wiht a successful track record … Under Mr. Thompson’s leadership, Yahoo is moving forward to grow the company and drive shareholder value.”

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