10 Best corporate practices

Word of Mouth Recruiting

Five years ago, word-of-mouth marketing was all the rage. Now it's about WOM recruiting, as employers realize the limitations of mega career sites and the piles of often badly suited résumés those sites can generate. Word of mouth recruiting efforts work by cultivating opinion leaders who'll sing an employer's praises and make hot talent aware of job opportunities. Job sites such as Jobster.com are riding the wave of alternative recruiting methodologies, and smart employers are moving away from the cattle-call hiring processes they've deployed in favor of more targeted, long-term, pipeline-development strategies. Particularly as Gen Y's Facebook sensibility takes center stage in the job market, WOM recruiting will become the wave of the future for employers looking to hire the most talented—vs. the most obedient and patient—job candidates.

Pooled Sick-Time Banks

We first heard of pooled sick-time banks from the chief executive officer of the Spanish-language theatre operator Cinema Latino, who created a bank of pooled sick time with other Denver-area employers after a Cinema Latino employee ran out of paid sick time during a family member's long-term illness. These very smart corporate solutions allow one employer or several to create time banks into which employees can deposit one or more sick days per year, for the use of other employees in the same bank. That way, an employee who has run out of sick time can withdraw time that's been deposited by other employees. The system is overseen by leaders from the participating organizations who manage 

Flex Time and Flex Place

The human resource trade magazines predicted the '90s would be the decade of flex time, but some employers must have missed the memo. Salaried workers are on the job more hours than ever, but savvy employers are getting ahead of the curve by releasing their staffs from the strictures of the cubicle. Flex-time and flex-place programs let employees get their work done wherever they happen to be, from a coffee shop to the dentists' waiting room. Flexibility is predicted to become more of an issue than ever during the coming Talent Wars, as baby boomers depart the workforce in droves and employers fight over the available pool of workers. If your organization is still tethered to the face-time standard, 2008 is the year to experiment with unshackling employees and focusing more on results.

A Room of Her Own

A year ago, only 30% of corporations reported providing a place for nursing moms to pump milk during the workday. Still, that's better than the single-digit percentages of milk-aware employees from the mid-'90s. Workplace lactation is a hot topic as moms return to work looking to combine work duties with twice-a-day pumping. An investment of less than $500 per location nets enlightened employers a lactation room and keeps new moms on the job. With the major pediatric-health organizations weighing in on the many benefits of breast milk for babies, it's smart for employers to make lactation at work a reality and to reinforce the message by providing lactation support and reminding managers that a little milk at work is nothing to be afraid of.

Peer Mentoring

Old-fashioned mentoring—with worldly senior folks dispensing advice and wisdom to younger colleagues—had its merits, but this approach doesn't always make sense in a fast-moving industry or business. That's why peer-to-peer mentoring is on the rise. This more informal arrangement calls for 'regular employees'—not the most senior — to be trained to share their knowledge with newbies on a day-to-day basis, also acting as sounding boards for any issues that arise at work. Peer mentoring has been shown to reduce mistakes, speed a newcomer's ascent, and even increase workplace safety.

Customized Benefit Plans

I remember when I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young human resources person, breathlessly running through the list of employee benefits at each new-employee orientation. Naturally the company's range of benefits was way more exciting to me than to anyone else in the room. Since then, forward-looking companies have gotten smart about customizing their employee-benefit offerings, allowing employees to choose from a menu of benefits, perhaps opting for more disability coverage and less life insurance, or vice versa. One size most assuredly does not fit all in today's workplace, and wise employers are creating benefit programs to reflect that reality.

Community at Work

Twenty years ago it was the bulletin board in the break room that served as an information clearinghouse when people had stuff to sell, needed tickets to a hot sports event, or wanted to borrow a port-a-crib for visiting grandchildren. That board has been replaced by a corporate intranet or an e-mail discussion list that facilitates information-sharing on both work and off-work topics. If you need to know something, buy something, borrow something, or figure out who knows whom, where better to start than in your own office? Community-at-work interventions earn a spot on our Top 10 list for allowing organizations to function as lively communities as opposed to a stack of sterile silos.

A Real Vacation Policy

Survey after survey proclaims the sad truth: Workers don't use their vacation time. One study showed working Americans on average use less than 50% of accrued vacation time each year. Some employers are turning the tide, encouraging employees to take the time they've earned and, just as importantly, encouraging managers to make their employees use earned vacation time. These employers manage the vacation-promotion program by creating reports showing earned vacation time against used time each quarter, and dinging managers for allowing employees to pile up excess vacation hours.

Instant Seniority

We're working in a knowledge economy, so what difference does it make, when you're designing circuits, writing op-ed pieces, or creating marketing plans, whether you've remained with one employer for 20 years or moved six times in that period? Sticking with one employer for that long can dampen career prospects and even damage your acquisition of skills. So seniority-based benefits make less and less sense over time, which is why we're including non-seniority-based benefit programs as one of our top 10 corporate practices. When an employee is hired into XYZ Industries and granted four weeks vacation per year based on her 20-year career history—not the two weeks that are offered to newbies fresh from college—that's a non-seniority-based benefit and a wise reflection of the fact that tenure at a single firm is not the be-all and end-all anymore.

Spot Bonuses

Much has been made in the press and in workplace blogs about the "entitlement" problem, whereby workers expect certain perks and benefits just for coming to work. At various times, it's Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, or Gen Yers who are tagged as "entitle-ists," and the entitlement problem comes to the fore each year when annual bonuses are distributed. There is a way for smart managers to surmount the entitlement issue while still rewarding good work, and that is via the use of spot bonuses. These are special bonuses, never arranged by an annual plan, that are simply granted at the manager's discretion when an outstanding deliverable is completed or high-level work is observed over time. "Here's $1,000 you weren't expecting" may be the happiest message an employee can hear at work, and may even have more impact than a higher-amount annual performance bonus.