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6/26/05

EMPLOYMENT
Some companies adding by rehiring

As demand for talent increases, some US employers are rehiring the people they laid off.

The practice was common among manufacturing firms, but now companies in other sectors say they sometimes recruit a worker they laid off during hard times.

The reason: They know who they're getting.

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So says Right Management Consultants, an international outplacement and career consulting firm. When the company surveyed 100 firms around the country, 54 percent said they occasionally recruit former employees who were let go to fill positions because it's easier, less costly, and the employees are often more reliable.

Certainly, not every firm uses this strategy. Among the US companies polled, 46 percent rarely rehire former workers. Of those, 10 percent say there is never a good reason to bring back individuals you've let go in the past.

"Companies' attitudes about rehiring former employees who were displaced by downsizings have gradually shifted over the years," said Chuck Mollor, regional vice president of Right Management in Boston. "Organizations have become more aware of the true cost of bad hiring decisions, including having to readvertise for and recruit candidates," he said.

PERSONALITIES
Magazine lists top 10 'Bosses from Hell'

Fast Company magazine last week featured a list of beastly bosses. Among those glib, charming, deceitful, mean, and manipulative people are Martin Davis, who after ascending to the top at Gulf & Western, fired his enemies at the firm, leaving the top floor of the company's Manhattan skyscraper empty, and Walt Disney, who had "control" issues, Fast Company says.

"The man behind the Mouse was a suspicious control freak - a dictatorial boss who underpaid workers, clashed with labor organizers, made anti-Semitic smears about the other Hollywood studio heads, and wouldn't give due recognition to Mickey's real creator, animator Ub Iwerks, supposedly Disney's oldest friend."

By contrast, Ivan Boesky was a "Scrooge-like employer who routinely screamed at his staffers and made them all work the Friday after Thanksgiving, when he called many times to make sure they were still at the office."

Boesky didn't stop there, says Fast Company. In a 1986 commencement speech at the University of California at Berkeley, he told graduates to embrace greed because, he said, it's healthy. "He also served time for securities fraud but re-emerged as a tanned La Jolla beach dude - and never said he was sorry."

If you think John D. Rockefeller was a kindly philanthropist, think again. Back in 1871, he put together a scheme with the railroads that doubled the price of transporting oil for all other companies except his own cartel.

Then, there's Andrew Fastow, former chief financial officer of Enron. "Fastow could be so hot-headed that he once got into a punch-out with a taxi driver over 70 cents," writes the magazine. "Pocket change, indeed, compared to the $24 million in illicit gains [Fastow] agreed to give back when he pleaded guilty to securities fraud - or the billions of dollars lost by shareholders when his secret schemes triggered the company's collapse."

Other members of this illustrious group include the hotel magnate, Leona Helmsley, also known as the "Queen of Mean"; Armand Hammer, who bribed his way through business and laundered money for Soviet spies; Henry Ford, who routinely spied on workers, cheated on his wife, and made his young mistress marry his chauffeur to cover up the affair; and Al Dunlap, nicknamed "Chain-saw" Al because he laid off hundreds - and he didn't attend either parent's funeral.

Finally, there's Harold Geneen, number five on Fast Company's list and, well, last on mine. He's described as "history's most dictatorial accountant."

"Geneen ran the huge ITT in the 1960s and 1970s," said the magazine. "His method: publicly humiliating his top 120 executives every month at grueling, four-day, 14-hour-long meetings that made some of them physically ill."

BEHAVIOR
Anger management referrals on the rise

Bullying workers may say they don't push other people around, but ComPsych Corp., an employment assistance program, says it has had an uptick in anger management referrals due to bullying or intimidating behavior.

The Chicago firm polled 1,000 employees from US firms around the country between March and April. Of those, only 3 percent described themselves as intimidators. But the company said that when it reviews its caseload, it found that 90 percent of the anger management cases it receives yearly stemmed from clients' concerns about bullying behavior.

The company, which examined how employees resolve conflicts in the workplace, said 10 percent of the respondents fell into the following groups: negotiators who use bargaining tactics to ease tensions and find common ground; communicators who rely on their persuasive abilities; avoiders who shy away from conflict; or procrastinators who tend to wait before diving in and resolving a problem with a co-worker.

According to the company, people who bully colleagues or subordinates are more likely to demonstrate poor restraint, including angry outbursts or abusive language at work. In fact, these are the co-workers who get their way by forcing their peers to submit.

BENEFITS
Smart cards may help commuters

Here's a relatively new benefit you might be seeing more of: prepaid smart cards for commuting workers.

Such cards allow workers to decide exactly how much, in pretax dollars, they'd like deducted from their paychecks for transportation and parking expenses. One such product, the eTRAC MasterCard, is a reloadable card created by Benefit Resource Inc. in conjunction with MasterCard. Benefit Resource says the card reduces administrative costs associated with processing travel vouchers and paper receipts.

When workers swipe the card, they access transit accounts for qualified transportation expenses only. Once a worker decides how much money is needed for transportation to and from the job or to and from work-related appointments, the money is loaded onto the card. Workers who rely on transit passes can also buy daily, weekly, or monthly passes by swiping the card. Unused balances are rolled over into the next month.

Smart card technology is also being used by the nation's transit systems, reports the Smart Card Alliance. The association found that several cities, including Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Minneapolis-St. Paul, have either developed or plan to develop smart card transit systems. For example, the Massacusetts Bay Transit Authority in Boston has issued smart transit cards to senior citizens and disabled riders, and over 67,000 smart transit cards were being used on Chicago's public transportation system as of March 2004. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, meanwhile, an initial rollout of a card began last year, according to the alliance.

Diane E. Lewis can be reached at .

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