In this era of people analytics, many HR leaders feel they ought to be producing dashboards. The problem is that they don’t know why — and that is one heck of a big warning sign. I’ll keep this brief, but here are a few headlines on how not to mess up dashboards.
“We have a fundamental belief that our single most important asset is our people,” Jones said in a recent interview. “If you think about the industry, and assets and liabilities, it’s all about maintaining risk. For us that means developing a culture where we’re so focused on making sure they have all the right tools to do their jobs.”
If I gave a quiz and asked you the industry spokesperson who said this you would probably say a head of HR or maybe a CEO. What if I told you the truth teller was a banker, albeit a CEO? What if I also told you he positioned employee satisfaction as a “risk management” issue?
He also said, “I go back to the basic tenet that you need to make sure people are always viewed as your most important asset,” says Bob Jones, chairman and CEO of Old National Bancorp. “Don’t take them for granted.”
What advice would you give to organizations about benefits?
Steal as many good ideas as you can. I go back to the basic tenet that you need to make sure people are always viewed as your most important asset. Don’t take them for granted. We use the analogy that when you’re dating someone you do those nice things in the beginning but sometimes when you’re married for a long time you forget to do them. But as you’re thinking about your associates, you have to remember the little things make a big difference, like picking up a phone and telling someone, “Thank you.”
Investors are shifting the goalposts for business accountability beyond the traditional quarterly reports on revenue, profit and growth. As well as traditional reporting, forward-thinking investors now want to see how a business maximizes its human capital without creating any associated harm or risk within the organization or in the wider community.
This new focus is called human governance, and over the next few years it’s set to become as important a measure of corporate performance as traditional reporting has been over decades past.
Human governance manifests itself through ensuring the entire extended workforce can maximize its own personal value, and through this, a business is able to maximize its own value. This maximization of value comes about through the broader expectations the community has for business. While profit remains important, the community – and now investors – are also putting value on how sustainable an organization’s operations are, how well it treats its employees, and the broader contributions the business makes to society as a whole.
This new focus on maximizing human value also has significant ramifications for the HR operation within an organization. Gone are the days of HR being policy and governance police, the home of hiring, firing and vetting staff performance.
A “potalyzer” that can detect whether a driver is under the influence by marijuana is being perfected by Stanford University researchers.
Magnetic biosensors on the mobile device developed by materials science and engineering professor Shan Wang and her team can detect the presence of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in saliva, according to a Stanford news release.
Like a breathalyzer is used in alcohol impairment cases, police would be able to use a cotton swab to collect a spit sample and results would be available on a smart phone or laptop in three minutes.
News of the Stanford team’s development comes as California voters prepare to decide in the November election whether to legalize recreational marijuana.
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Marin-hospital-could-be-first-in-state-to-allow-9216208.php
If Dr. Larry Bedard has his way, Marin General Hospital would become the first acute-care medical center in California to allow patients to openly consume medical marijuana in the hospital.
Patients wouldn’t be allowed to smoke it, since smoking is prohibited. But Bedard, a retired emergency physician at Marin General who now serves on the Marin Healthcare District board, says he knows of no other legally prescribed drug that cannot openly be used by patients in a hospital.
“I know that it happens that it’s being used in the hospital, but it’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’” Bedard said. “It’s kind of wink-and-nod medicine.”
The doctor is taking steps toward bringing it out into the open by introducing a resolution at Tuesday’s board meeting for Marin Healthcare District, which governs Marin General. The resolution, if approved, would direct the hospital’s administrative and medical staff to review and research the clinical and legal implications of using medical marijuana in the hospital and report back to the board.
Bedard initially planned to introduce a resolution to allow patient use in the hospital but stepped back from that last month after the Drug Enforcement Agency declined to remove marijuana from its list of dangerous drugs, keeping it in the same category as such drugs as heroin and LSD.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article101382077.html
Doctors have long argued that low reimbursement rates are undermining the Medi-Cal system. While more Californians are seeking treatment, the state hasn’t done enough to increase funding to provide care, Corcoran said. Reimbursement rates are not up to par with the cost of practice, making it difficult for physicians to accept Medi-Cal patients, he said.
“It is a broken system,” Corcoran said. “Physicians want to be able to take care of patients. There’s not a lack of desire or a lack of willingness. It’s whether you can actually sustain a practice for all of your patients and provide that level of care that areas need and deserve.”
Medi-Cal is expected to balloon to 14.1 million patients in the current budget year, nearly double the number of Californians using the government-funded health care program four years ago, according to the state. Officials attribute the increase to the federal health care overhaul that expanded subsidized insurance. With a shortage of Medi-Cal doctors, advocates say patients in rural areas and other pockets of the state lack adequate access to care.
During budget talks, the Brown administration has pushed back against the need for rate increases. The administration pointed out that struggling providers can request reimbursement in full and questioned whether higher rates will result in better care.
HENRY KOTULA 