HR Policy Association is a member-led organization that has a tradition of using
the collective resources of the membership to drive change in the public policy
arena and the HR marketplace as well as to create innovative training and education
opportunities. A sampling of those are described below.
The Association has a major project underway to lay out a vision for human resource
policy in the 21st century. Employer organizations do an excellent job
of detailing policy proposals they find objectionable. In view of the immense challenges
facing employers and employees, far more is needed to provide policy makers and
the public with a holistic view regarding how the human resource, education, and
related policies of the United States could be changed to better promote job growth,
employment security, and career advancement. Despite our current economic condition,
there is no question that inventive and resilient societies will eventually succeed
by figuring out new markets, new technologies, and new ways of doing business. Our
objective is to provide guidance as to how human resource policy can support and
facilitate this process of change and renewal
The Association created the Center On Executive Compensation to develop and promote
principled pay and governance practices and advocating compensation policies that
serve the best interests of shareholders and other corporate stakeholders. Additional
information regarding the Center can be found on its website –
www.ExecComp.org.
Association members have become increasingly concerned about the competitiveness
of U.S. based business operations and federal, state and local education and training
programs and policies. Employment opportunities occur at the intersection of innovation,
financial resources, markets, and the availability of a skilled workforce. With
the world becoming more challenging each day, chief human resource officers believe
far more could be done by the United State to coordinate government support of these
key job producing elements. With unemployment expected to remain high for several
months or years to come in many industrialized nations, the Association is in the
process of developing a set of recommendations for public policy and private sector
actions to address this critically important issue.
The global operations of most major corporations pose significant challenges to
HR as the company seeks to ensure that those operations share a common corporate
culture and values throughout the globe and that the legal requirements of various
countries are complied with while maintaining the company's corporate identity,
culture and reputation. In affiliation with our EU counterpart, the Brussels European
Employee Relations Group (BEERG), our global HR initiatives are designed to help
our member companies understand global employee relations issues as well as labor
law and practice issues arising in their own operations and in their global supply
chains.
With the number of uninsured Americans constantly increasing, the HR Policy Association
has sought to develop a program that will provide populations associated with its
member companies not currently covered by traditional employer sponsored health
care programs access to affordable health care coverage.
The Pharmaceutical Coalition's mission to achieve a more cost effective and transparent
model for purchasing pharmaceuticals benefits for employees, retirees, and their
dependents. Its signature project is the Transparency in Pharmaceutical Purchasing
Solutions (TIPPS)sm initiative developed by the Coalition which uses
a comprehensive certification process to identify pharmacy benefit managers willing
to meet the Coalition's rigorous transparency standards. More than 50 percent of
the PBM marketplace now subscribes to our TIPPS standards.
With an aging workforce and looming talent shortages, U.S. employers are facing
a "brain drain" of older workers. At the same time, many workers are interested
in gradually transitioning into full retirement by reducing their hours or responsibilities,
a process often referred to as "phased retirement." The Phased Retirement Initiative
is dedicated to developing and promoting best practices for phased retirement programs
that help employers retain targeted retirement-eligible employees and facilitate
the transfer of institutional knowledge to the next generation of workers.
Access to medical insurance for retirees regardless of their health status or level
of employer subsidy is a major concern of nearly all members of HR Policy Association.
The marketplace, however, has been highly resistant to developing the products desired
by large employers. For that reason, the Association’s members joined forces three
years ago to form a retiree health care purchasing coalition and develop their own
retiree medical solution – Retiree Health Access. By using the collective leverage
of its members, the Association has been able to develop a breakthrough retiree
health care solution that allows members to offer their retirees guaranteed access
to comprehensive, fully insured coverage without any employers subsidy or minimum
enrollment requirements.
With the dwindling supply of labor relations professionals in the United States,
the Association's members joined together to develop a unique series labor relations
and collective bargaining courses that distill the knowledge, skills, and experience
of veteran collective bargaining practitioners. Significantly, all courses are taught
from a management perspective, and only persons from corporate management are permitted
to attend the courses.