1. Trade Secret Protection [MIT Sloan Management Review] Tuesday 05/30/06 4:08 PM
More than $50 billion is lost per year due to trade secret and other intellectual property losses.
Trade secrets are a type of intellectual property that meets the following criteria:
- The trade secret must contain information, such as a formula, pattern, method, technique or process
- The information must be valuable to the organization that owns it and that value must be derived, in whole or in part, from the exclusive possession of the information
- The organization must make reasonable efforts to protect that information.
Trade secrets can be protected in perpetuity as opposed to patents which are protected for 20 years.
The biggest threat to a company's trade secrets comes from current and former employees not from spying competitors. According to the author, there are 8 common mistakes that companies make when trying to deter employee abuse of trade secrets. They are outlined below:
1) Giving Short Shrift to Trade Secret Issues During New Hire Orientations
Legal documents to protect trade secrets are often presented to new employees at the start of their employment. These documents are presented along with a myriad of other documents that the employee must attend to as a new hire. Little attention is given to making sure employees understand the contents and requirements of these documents. Research has shown that most employees only have vague recollections of the details of what they have signed and are unclear on corporate policies regarding handling trade secrets.
2) Not Communicating Regularly Regarding Trade Secret Policies
Educating employees on trade secret policies must be an ongoing endeavor. Consider holding meetings twice per year to review this information. Another approach to keep this information in the back of an employee's mind is to send out periodic emails and/or memos and provide manuals with policy details.
3) Signaling to Employees That They Aren't Trusted
Research shows that when employees feel they are not trusted, they are more likely to break company policies on protecting secrets. Clear "handling procedures" on the other hand, increases an employee's feeling of obligation to protect the company's sensitive information.
Therefore it is wise to limit restrictions and focus more on communicating clear procedures regarding handling secret information.
4) Punishing Instead of Helping
Trade secret protections should be designed to help employees do their job, not punish them for potential wrongdoing. Having quick and easy access to help determine proper information handling is helpful.
5) Not Practicing What is Preached
Be careful that management is as vigilant with protecting trade secrets as they expect staff to be. If a senior executive reveals confidential information publically, employees quickly become cynical. It may be helpful to assign a member of the leadership team to be a point person in charge of making sure information is protected from all ranks of employees.
6) Forgetting to Clarify Ownership Issues
Some step to clarify ownership issues include:
- Require all employees to sign assignment provisions stipulating that the company is the legal owner of ideas generated by employees that they come up with at work
- Make sure employees are aware of handling procedures for new ideas
- Let employees know that generating new ideas is a part of their job and something they are paid to do
- Consider offering financial or other incentives to reward employees for ideas that the company implements
- Relinquish ownership of ideas that the company does not plan to pursue
7) Defining Too Narrow a Scope
Employees are likely to cede ownership of ideas related to the company's main business but hold onto ideas they feel are not related to the companys core business. It's important to make sure employees are aware of the scope of business interests both currently as well as into the future.
8) Failing to Address Departing Employees
Be sure to remind all departing employees of their duty to protect the company's assets. Be careful not to accuse employees but make it part of the company's standard termination procedure. Consider integrating into the exit interview process a review or inventory of the employee's company secret information.
For involuntary terminations, proactive measures may be necessary. One approach for high risk individuals is to send a letter to the employee's new company stating the consequences if the employee divulges company secrets.
Taking precautions with regard to trade secret protection not only prevents the loss of important competitive intelligence, it also aids in a legal defense should that become necessary.
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2. Boomerang Employees Valuable Asset For Companies [Network World] Thursday 02/09/06 5:06 PM
According to a recent survey, more than half of 100 US companies said they would re-hire former employees, also known as boomerang employees and rebound employees. Companies can reduce the risk of a bad hire with rebounders because they already know the employee and can tap into the employee's previous experience with the company.
How can a company take advantage of the boomerang opportunity? Stay in contact with former employees and make sure they are happy with their new position. If they are not, make sure they know they are welcome to come back. Understand their motivations for leaving in the first place and if some of those conditions have changed or can be addressed by hiring in at a different position, let the employee know.
Nobscot Corporation recently released a Rebounding Module to their Exit Interview system to help companies rehire their boomerang employees. According to Carvin, CEO of Nobscot, "The exit interview is the last official contact with an employee and is the natural place to set the stage for high performers to be welcomed back in the future".
What are some of the benefits to the company of rehiring former employees? Rebound employees are more appreciative of the company the second time around and are easier to integrate back into the company. Former employees already know the expectations, procedures and many of the employees.
Another valuable target for rehiring is recent retirees. These employees have vast company knowledge and experience. Companies can benefit by rehiring these employees in a training or mentoring position so that the next generation can be trained by a trusted expert.
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3. How Honest Is Your Employee Feedback? [Nobscot Corporation] Monday 01/16/06 5:16 PM
Nobscot Corporation is conducting research to determine the level of employee candor in employee opinion surveys and exit interviews.
This research will look at honesty levels in surveys and exits separately and will also compare honesty levels between current employees and those who are leaving the company.
"It is important to get a gauge on how honest employees are when analyzing employee feedback data," stated B. N. Carvin, CEO of Nobscot Corporation. "If you are going to be making business decisions on your employee feedback you want to make sure you are using the best available data."
To participate in this research, please contact Nobscot Corporation at 808-263-3800 or take a quick two-question survey at http://www.nobscot.com/library/honest-feedback.cfm
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4. Building Strategic HR in your Organization [Financial Gazette] Thursday 06/02/05 5:20 PM
HR professionals have always needed to understand their business from an operational perspective. More and more, HR professionals are being called upon to understand the business at a strategic level as well. As HR practitioners develop their strategic capabilities, their organization will rely upon them more to set and influence strategic direction. The following are some processes that can be implemented to add value to your organization.
Develop Motivation
Survey employees regularly to determine what is working and what is not working. Use this information to keep what works and reduce the things that don't work.
Develop Learning Networks
Share the load of learning among a network of peers. Problems, new ideas and industry trends can be researched and discussed in groups and the results disseminated across all members. Sharing the learning task helps shield employees from information overload while keeping them in the learning loop.
Workforce Planning
Develop targeted succession plans. Identify key positions and hold managers accountable for both identifying and developing replacement employees for all key positions within their departments.
Recruitment and Retention
Use surveys and exit interviews to determine what employees like about the company and reinforce these positives to keep key employees from leaving.
Address Common HR Errors
- Measure and reward managers that are doing a great job with their people. Too much focus is on problem managers.
- Track management satisfaction with HR. Use this information to improve your processes.
- Build your HR in line with your organization's strategic goals. Often HR departments are the last to get funding and resources.
- Recognize that different employees and business units may have different HR requirements and needs. Make sure your processes are not so rigid that they cannot adapt to changing requirements from these different units.
- Listen to feedback. When HR problems do arise, pay attention and use it to learn from and adjust your HR processes.
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5. Recruiting and Retention Solutions for the Trucking Industry [ETrucker] Friday 05/27/05 3:20 PM
A recent symposium in Alabama highlighted solutions for common HR problems in the trucking industry. Symposium participants reported turnover rates from 30 to 60% which poses a significant recruiting and retention problem. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the transportation sector had an annual turnover rate of 14.6% in 2004.
Some of the findings from the panelists
Raising pay is not effective for attracting or retaining drivers. Neither are sign-on bonuses, which were universally panned as bad business policy. Sign-on bonuses encourage job hopping and do not help drivers financially because they end up losing more than the sign-on bonus during the transition period between jobs. These bonuses just give the industry a bad image of paying to steal each other's employees.
What works
Mentoring new drivers, especially in the workings of fuel surcharges, goes a long way to retaining drivers. Also popular among the symposium panelists was exit interviews. Finding out why drivers are leaving helps trucking companies restructure their business to better cater to their drivers needs. Several panelists use exit interviews for rebounding - determining whether the employee is a potential rehire, and if so, following up with a phone call to see if the driver is happy at his new position or if they would consider coming back. Even though rehiring is an important resource for drivers, one panelist emphasized that they will only rehire once, because "a revolving door is bad business policy".
Panelists agreed that referral bonuses work where sign-on bonuses failed. Job fairs are also a cost effective recruiting technique.
Minorities and especially women, are a potential untapped resource that are underutilized in the trucking industry. Human factors is one of the reasons for under representation of women. Specifically, make sure the trucking equipment can accommodate smaller drivers - if the average driver needs to be 5 feet 10 to reach the pedals, you are unnecessarily limiting your potential workforce.
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6. Talent Management Helps Drive Business Growth [Conference Board] Tuesday 04/19/05 2:55 AM
Hiring and developing top talent is a priority for many companies according to a new report from the Conference Board.
The report is based on 22 talent management providers and the feedback from 19 conference board member companies.
According to the report, the following are some of the keys to effectively manage your organization's top talent:
- Identify critical jobs within your organization and put processes in place to target potential gaps.
- Identify potential successors.
- Track ratio of employees in key positions who are promoted from within versus those hired from outside.
- Develop and communicate specific behaviors expected of leaders in the organization to all levels of employees.
- Evaluate employees annually on both performance and potential.
- Inform employees of possible career paths that will benefit them and the organization.
- Use talent management to embed workforce diversity in the company.
- Have at least 15% of employee satisfaction ratings tied to year-end goals and financial rewards.
- Identify quantifiable opportunities for improvement.
- Establish a cross-functional group to measure talent management effectiveness.
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7. HR Professionals Say Rewards Programs Motivate and Retain Top Performers [US Newswire] Wednesday 04/13/05 11:59 PM
Rewards programs are an effective method for improving employee morale and retention. This according to a recent survey of HR professionals by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
Incentives for Managers
Managerial level employees are generally rewarded for attaining long term goals. Common monetary rewards for managers and above include incentive compensation, year-end bonus and profit sharing.
Rewards for Non-Managerial Staff
Incentives for staff level employees are generally used to help reach short term goals. These award programs may include employee referral bonuses for referring outside applicants that are hired and spot bonuses for outstanding performance.
Survey respondents caution that rewards programs do little to motivate under-performing employees.
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8. Case Study of a Best Place to Work Business [This Is The Northeast] Tuesday 04/12/05 11:07 PM
A UK company, Bettys and Taylors of Harrogate, is a prime example of a Best Place to Work company. Seventy-four percent of employees "love" working there and 80% are proud to be an employee of Bettys.
How do they do it?
Some of their success can be attributed to the following:
- A portion of the company profits is shared among staffers.
- They provide the best possible work environment
- Training and the welfare of employees is a priority
Additionally,
- All new employees have an opportunity to meet with the managing director and the chairman
- Personal events such as employees' birthdays, marriages and the birth of children are celebrated
- Prizes are awarded for employees' ideas that improve the company
- Bottles of champagne are the reward for going above and beyond in assisting customers
This has resulted in 87% of employees admitting they "laugh alot" with colleagues and 82% state that they have fun while at work.
Bettys has been named Best Employer in Yorkshire and made the Top 50 for Best Companies to Work For in the entire country.
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9. Talent Raiding on the Rise [Salt Lake Tribune] Tuesday 04/05/05 6:25 PM
Talent raiding is the practice of targeting and hiring key employees or superstars from your competitor. The benefits are two fold: it brings top talent to your organization, and it can deal a significant blow to your competitor. How significant a blow depends on how critical the employee was to the raided company. The damage can be significant as the company deals with the cost of recruiting, hiring, and training a replacement, as well as the lost productivity and lowered coworker morale in the interim. Another danger is loss of trade secrets to your competitor.
In high profile cases, the raided company retaliates with law suits. The courts have generally ruled that raiding is not illegal unless it is done specifically to put a competitor out of business.
Steps to minimize falling prey to raiders:
- Employee happiness - pay attention to pay, but also fairness, recognition and work flexibility.
- Identify key employees and execute non disclosure agreements.
- Safeguard secrets - limit access to critical and secret information to those that need it.
- Exit Interviews - find out why your stars are leaving.
One silver lining in talent raiding is that studies have shown star performers seldom perform as well in their new company as they did in their original company.
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10. Quality Management Programs Encourage Employee Participation in Problem Solving [Akron Beacon Journal] Monday 04/04/05 11:45 PM
Businesses are taking advantage of a variety of management programs designed to elicit ideas and encourage problem solving from employees.
Play to Strengths
At a decal company in Ohio, the President hired an outside firm to evaluate the strengths of their managers. They used this information to make sure that the company is best utilizing their managers' talents. The company also provided teamwork training to all employees plus are surveying employees regularly for suggestions and improvements that the company can implement.
Six Sigma
Another popular management program is the Six Sigma quality control program. Six Sigma is named after the statistical term that seeks to keep errors at or below a rate of 3.4 per 1 million.
A Six Sigma program sets up teams of employees to study and identify problems in various business processes. Six Sigma participants not only uncover problems, they also find ways to prevent them.
Lean Six Sigma
A hybrid management program has evolved that combines the principles of Six Sigma with another popular program called Lean Management. Lean Management focuses not on problems but on ways to enhance the speed of processes.
A bearings manufacturer in Canton, Ohio has been using Lean Six Sigma for more than 2 years. In that time they have worked on 359 Lean Six Sigma projects and have saved the company $9 million.
Appreciative Inquiry
A less well known but equally pervasive management program is called Appreciative Inquiry or AI. With AI, the company focuses and builds upon its strengths rather than its weaknesses. A company implementing Appreciative Inquiry asks the question, "What are we doing right and how can we duplicate it?"
A large trucking company that has been using AI since 1999 has had great success with this management technique. They have seen improvements in productivity, lowered costs and an increase in employee job satisfaction.
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