World trade is expected to pick up this year after a sharp drop in 2009. But serious challenges remain, from price swings for some basic products to uncertainty over the pace of global recovery, participants said at the 2010 kick-off for WorldCity’s quarterly Trade Connections event series. Last year, South Florida’s trade with the world fell 12 percent to dip below $80 billion, its first reversal since 2001. Both imports and exports shrank. U.S. consumers bought less, stung by the recession. Plus, South Florida’s top partners bought less, hurt by… Read More
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Diane Vento lead the discussion at HR Connections
Engagement: 'Do you have a best friend at work?'
“Do you have a best friend at work?”
When Diane Vento, the director of Human Resources for Olympus Latin America, read this question on an engagement survey that was going to be administered to 2,500 of the Japanese company’s employees, including 60 in Miami and Puerto Rico under her watch, she was puzzled by it.
So she called Gallup, the organization that was doing the polling, for an explanation, she told the other human resources directors attending WorldCity’s HR Connections event today.
“That was the question that linked to engagement the most,” was the answer, she told the group.
Engagement was the theme of the bi-monthly event series, which is sponsored by the University of Miami’s School of Business Administration. Engagement, she told the group, is different from satisfaction. Vento was the presenter at the group.
An example, she said, is the $2 off coupon for laundry detergent. If you are engaged with the detergent brand and company, you will disregard the savings; if you are simply satisfied, you will use the coupon.
Another telling question: “Do you know how you contribute to this business?”
In the end, “people want to make a contribution,” Vento said. “You are more engaged when you want to stay there, at work.”
“Leadership has a lot to do with it,” said Lourdes Arencibia, director of Human Resources for North America and the Caribbean for Dufry, the Swiss company that operates duty-free locations around the world. “A leader who is engaged makes a difference.”
Jacqueline Coca of Black & Decker said pay is often not a top issue.
Jacqueline Coca, director of Human Resources for Black & Decker, Latin America, indicated there were three primary findings when it conducted its surveys: leadership, friendship and the autonomy to make decisions. “Interestingly enough, remuneration, compensation was fourth or fifth,” she said.
Leadership does not necessarily mean the company CEO, either, or the head of the Latin America operations. According to Terry Scandura, Ph.D., the dean of the University of Miami’s Graduate School, “When people are engaged,” she said, “it’s not because of leadership at the top but the immediate supervisor.”
Olympus’ Vento concurred when asked about the disengaged employee. “It goes hand-in-hand with the manager,” she said.
Becker & Poliakoff’s Jason Lennon said responding to results is critical.
One key, according to Becker & Poliakoff’s Jason Lennon, is what happens after the survey is completed. He worked on similar surveys while at FedEx Express Latin America. “Were your issues from last year’s survey addressed? Yes or no?”
If not, problems can arise, he said. “They’re not meeting what I brought up last year so why should I work (hard) for this company.”
For that reason, said Mirelys McCloud, a human resources consultant for Discovery Networks Latin America and U.S. Hispanic, the media company found that conducting the surveys annually wasn’t completely practical. “We adjusted to every 18 months,” she said. “We didn’t have enough time.”
Marcelo Carvalho, a SAP Human Resources business partner for Latin America, said his company had found the engaged employee matters particularly in difficult times, keeping attrition and turnover low, difficult when merit raises are largely nonexistent.
American Airlines’ Carlos Hernandez talks about AA’s “joint leadership teams.”
For American Airlines, it has a framework not faced by the other companies: a largely unionized workforce. What AA has implemented in the wake of 2003 management-labor negotiations was the creation of “joint leadership teams,” according to Carlos Hernandez, managing director, international Human Resources, for the airline.
These teams, comprised of representatives of both management and American’s unions, do not try to negotiate or renegotiate its various contracts. Instead, the more than four dozen teams across the country focus on improving what they could — building revenues and cutting costs outside of the contract framework, or trying to tackle specific problems that arise.
WorldCity’s HR Connections is open to directors of Human Resources at multinationals with offices in South Florida. For more information, contact WorldCity’s director of Community, Tak Takasu at ttakasu@worldcityweb.com.
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