ASRS, PSPRS FY2014 contribution rate changes take effect in July

The Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS) and Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS) have made contribution rate changes for fiscal year 2014 (July 1, 2013 - June 30, 2014). ASRS and PSPRS members will see the new rates reflected in their paychecks issued beginning on July 12, 2013 (pay period ending July 7, 2013).

The ASRS also has issued its 2012 Annual Financial Report, a 12-page document ithat summarizes their 2012 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR).

View the ASRS rates.
View the PSPRS rates.

View Other ASRS Publications.

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Updated 4.24.13

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Pre-Relo Precautions

Pre-Relo Precautions

In light of rising expat costs and problems linked to mismatched assignments, more HR leaders are taking extra measures to ensure proper fits between expats and their assignments.

By Carol Patton

With roughly 50,000 employees worldwide, reassigning professionals each year is a common scenario at Chevron, an energy producer headquartered in San Ramon, Calif.

Fiona Hewlett-Parker, the company's upstream capability HR manager, says that out of the 31,000 employees supported by her division, approximately 1,000 individuals are reassigned every six months, either domestically or globally.

For the past decade, the company has supported a global pre-determination process that has worked so well, reassignment failures are rare.

"We have a process that we use particularly for international jobs, but it also includes a lot of our domestic senior jobs," says Houston-based Hewlett-Parker. "We get very good business continuity and [are able to] concentrate on getting the right skills in the right place at the right time."

Whether it's due to the already high and rising cost of expat assignments or because problems resulting from mismatched placements are more prevalent, global-mobility professionals are adding an important layer to their relocation procedures, typically called a pre-determination process. Working behind the scenes, some mine employee databases, searching for unique skills or experiences. Others form committees or elaborate networks of high-potentials who travel the globe, developing a deep knowledge of employees in their business unit. No two programs are alike, but they seem to share one critical element: face-to-face conversations between HR or mobility departments and company leaders about each business function's needs.

While there's no perfect solution that guarantees success, this process helps companies make near-perfect matches that meet key goals and move employees along their chosen career paths.

At Chevron, the process is fairly complex. The company has separate personnel-development committees for most in-house functions such as petroleum engineering or earth science, says Hewlett-Parker. The PDCs meet anywhere from two to five days every spring and fall, depending on the number of job assignments that need to be filled. In the past, the number of assignments at any given time has ranged from 20 to 500.

Each PDC has 20 to 40 members or personnel-development representatives who are business leaders, not HR professionals.

"It's their role to know the individuals within their business unit with a degree of detail," says Hewlett-Parker. "They know their strengths [and] weaknesses [and have] read their career-development plans ... . So they come together with a great deal of background regarding the pool of individuals they might [relocate]."

Even with this focused pre-assignment attention, every job is also posted on the company's intranet. However, employees can only apply after being pre-approved by their unit's PDR, who is familiar with each job's qualifications.

To help monitor the progress of PDCs, another 20 high-potential managers are reassigned as sponsors, who fulfill two-year positions that are highly valued and honored, Hewlett-Parker says. During their temporary assignments, sponsors report to an operations-capability manager in HR and travel extensively, meeting people worldwide in their own business unit to develop a mental inventory of their skills and experiences.

During PDC meetings, sponsors or PDRs can add other names to the list of candidates, even those who didn't apply. HR business partners within Chevron also attend the meetings, supporting the committees throughout the relocation process by ensuring that established corporate practices and in-country laws are observed.

"This is a tried and trusted process that's been proven to work," says Hewlett-Parker. "The fact that we get very few failures means that we're actually using Chevron's money wisely when we place people."

Check Points

The number of employees relocated domestically every year appears to be rising, based on results from Atlas Van Lines' 46th Annual Corporate Relocation Survey.  Approximately 415 corporate relocation professionals responded to the online survey. More than one-third (36 percent) saw relocation volumes increase while 30 percent also experienced budget growth.

Up to now, the selection process for relocations has generally involved a "tap on the shoulder," says Ed Hannibal, global mobility practice leader for North America at Mercer in Chicago.

He believes it's critical to implement a pre-determination process that's linked to succession planning. He says many organizations start the process with annual surveys that ask employees about their interest in domestic or overseas assignments. 

"The reason you need an annual vehicle is that everyone's personal life may dictate when family units may be mobile," Hannibal says, adding that HR can also maximize the onboarding process by asking new hires the same series of mobility questions. "Companies need some sort of vehicle ... throughout employees' careers ... to ask those kinds of questions to start developing that pool of candidates."

He suggests HR also explore online self-assessment tools to help identify employees who may be ready for an assignment. How would someone fare when dealing with uncertainty? What about learning a new language or adapting to a new location or local customs? He believes such tools can give HR a strong indication as to whether employees have the right personality for a new assignment, if the timing is right for them or their family, or if there are other factors influencing their ability to relocate.

Hannibal says information from online assessments, surveys, talent reviews and other vehicles needs to be entered into a mineable database so HR and company leaders can make better matches and add high performers to the company's pipeline -- both of which are important components of a succession plan.

Continuous Conversations

If HR is to succeed at feeding the talent pipeline with the right relocation candidates, it can't afford to overlook the crucial role that business leaders often play in the pre-determination process. Consider WD in Irvine, Calif., a subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., which designs and manufactures storage devices, networking equipment and home-entertainment products. It supports 60,000 global employees, relocating between 75 and 100 employees domestically or globally each year.

When new assignments develop, the company's business leaders sometimes approach Roseann Schaefer, global mobility program manager, with the names of employees they want reassigned. She says managers are expected to recognize their team members' strengths and weaknesses, which is an inherent part of the company's culture.

"Although we're a large [company], we're kind of entrepreneurial," she says, adding that after identifying potential candidates, managers obtain verbal consent from all leaders involved in that assignment and then complete a formal business-justification form that is typically approved by WD's president, Timothy Layden, and the CEO of Western Digital, Steve Milligan. "Our execs know their teams so well and are very good at selecting people who can be successful in a foreign environment," Schaefer says.

Two years ago, the company created a new position -- global mobility specialist -- responsible for international assignments. Tracie Pham, named to the role, partially invests her time meeting with managers who are requesting assignments. She gathers information from them about the need being addressed by sending an individual on assignment, length of time needed to accomplish the goal, name of employee being proposed and why, and the employee's skill set that fulfills the assignment's purpose.

"Tracie will question if this is the right candidate" or was chosen simply out of interest, says Schaefer. "Then she guides [managers] through [a] business justification form and coaches them on the type of information [that] will be most meaningful to senior management in determining if the assignment is truly needed." Schaefer says.

"If I could clone her about three times, I would," says Schaefer, adding that she deals with all levels of management. "She's well-branded and networked. People in our Asian offices who want to send people to the United States or (to other Asian countries) now come to her. Her reputation is definitely growing."

Apparently, one of the most important steps of the pre-determination process is good old-fashioned conversation between HR and business leaders.

That's something Cisco never takes for granted. The company annually relocates close to 3,000 of its 68,000 global employees, says Katherine Marrufo, director of talent-delivery services at the San Jose, Calif.-based maker of networking products and services.

Although Cisco's mobility department reviews information about potential assignees from HR's talent database, she says, the key is not data mining or performance. It's having "high-touch," i.e., routine, face-to-face conversations, about the objective of the assignment and the anticipated assignee's experience with leaders tied to workforce planning who ask a series of questions: Where are you growing? Where do you need talent? What kind of talent?

Typically, her staff develops a short list of roughly five employees or business leaders who are vetted by her staff. Based on ongoing talent conversations, she says, her staff already knows who is ready for rotation and needs this type of assignment for their career development.

"The look at talent has to be truly global and regional," Marrufo says, adding that more people are now being relocated from Asia, Europe and emerging markets to the United States than in the past. "We know who our top talent is, we know who our high-performing talent is, so that piece is usually pretty easy to decide and move through."

However, HR professionals sometimes make mistakes throughout the process, Marrufo says. Some enable managers to hold on to existing talent without considering such individuals for assignments that could meet company needs or advance the employee's career. "Nobody owns talent," says Marrufo. Others relocate talent based upon availability or convenience versus skill or experience.

Although leaders may have identified the ideal candidate, they still can't go off on their own and make the assignment. They must contact Marrufo's department to avoid placing the company at risk for a number of issues such as violating tax or immigration laws. Early on in the process, she says, her staff also converses with the employee's current boss and potential new manager, evaluating whether there is a strong business justification for the assignment that's tied to the employee's developmental needs.

So far, Cisco's pre-determination process has mainly focused on assigning executives, primarily directors and above. Marrufo says the next hurdle is to develop a process for early career assignments. That will be a difficult task, she says, because it involves collecting data from the masses, literally thousands of employees, about their unique skills and career-development plans.

Meanwhile, she says, any pre-determination process can be simplified by observing solid talent management practices and discipline. She believes that's the reason why more than 95 percent of Cisco employees would go back on an assignment.

"A global workforce is going to be key to any company's success," Marrufo says. "So doing this well is really important ... . Knowing how to serve the whole enterprise will be critical."

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Free workshops offer professional development opportunities

Did you know that free professional development workshops are available to the ASU community? The Leadership and Workforce Development Group within the ASU Office of Human Resources offers these free courses at the University Services Building on the Tempe campus.

Read the complete story on ASU News

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U.S. Labor Dept. amends FMLA for military family members

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has published a final rule to amend the Family and Medical Leave Act effective March 8, 2013. Military family members can now take leave to care for a covered veteran who is seriously ill or injured and take additional time (up to 15 days of leave) to be with a service member who is on leave from active duty. 

The FMLA protects the jobs of family members who must take leave to attend funeral services for fallen service men and women.

AVAILABLE RESOURCES

HR Advisor's Compliance page 
OHR Benefits and Leaves Partners 
U.S. Department of Labor  
Employee’s Guide to Military Family Leave

Posted 2.26.13

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Crow praises faculty, staff at Tempe campus recognition celebration

ASU President Michael M. Crow shared several inspiring anecdotes with attendees at the May 1 Employee Recognition Celebration in the Memorial Union on the Tempe campus.

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Watch the video of President Crow's remarks.

Posted 5.6.13

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Senate approves massive immigration bill

 

The U.S. Senate on June 27, 2013, advanced the most significant overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws in decades. The measure passed by a vote of 68-32. All Democrats present voted “Aye,” along with 14 Republicans, some of whom were convinced to vote for the measure after a recent compromise on border security was worked out.

The Senate visitors’ gallery broke out into cries of “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” when the vote tally was announced.

The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S. 744) would allow the nation’s estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants to begin a 13-year path to citizenship almost immediately with a provisional legal status.

In a critical amendment brokered to attract Republican support, the bill calls for the government to spend billions to double the size of the U.S. Border Patrol to nearly 40,000 agents and finish building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The bill would expand the federal E-Verify electronic employment verification program nationwide, requiring employers with more than 5,000 employees to use E-Verify within two years of enactment, followed by employers with more than 500 workers within three years of enactment. All employers would be required to use the system within four years after regulations are issued.

S. 744 would substantially increase the number of temporary work visas for highly skilled foreign nationals trained in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Visas for agricultural workers would also be increased, and a new class of visa would be created to bring in people to work jobs in construction, retail and hospitality.

The overhaul would clear up the decades-long green card backlogs and transform the nation’s long-standing preference for family-based immigration to more preference being given to workers.

The Business Roundtable, representing CEOs of leading U.S. companies, praised the passage of the bill and urged the House to pass similar legislation. 

Greg Brown, Chairman & CEO of Motorola Solutions, Inc. and the Chair of Business Roundtable’s Select Committee on Immigration, said, “It’s time for the members of the House of Representatives to show similar leadership as they craft their own version of immigration reform. An immigration system that works will secure our border, eliminate the magnet of illegal employment, find a workable solution for those who are living here without a legal status and welcome legal immigrant workers to contribute to our economy, especially by attracting the best and brightest from around the world.”

Prospects in the House

Republican House members have already said the Senate bill is dead on arrival.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, dashed optimism on any hope that the House would vote on the Senate plan, and insisted that the House will take up legislation supported by a majority of the Republican conference.

“I issued a statement that I thought was pretty clear, but apparently some haven’t gotten the message: The House is not going to take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes,” he said before the Senate voted. “We’re going to do our own bill.”

Boehner has delegated Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., Judiciary Committee chairman, as the pace-setter for the House’s efforts on immigration. Goodlatte has said he prefers a piecemeal approach to immigration reform. The committee has already approved bills strengthening enforcement of immigration laws, mandating a national electronic employment verification program and setting up a new farm guest worker program.

SHRM, ACIP to Continue Advocacy

While the American Council on International Personnel (ACIP) and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) welcomed bipartisan passage of a comprehensive immigration reform bill, the organizations have pledged to continue advocating for a fully electronic and integrated employment verification system that can accurately guard against identity theft and a Trusted Employer program for greater processing efficiency. 

“While it is encouraging to see bipartisan progress being made to reform the U.S. immigration system, there are areas of the employment verification system that need to be improved,” said Michael Aitken, SHRM vice president of Government Affairs. “We will continue to press for an employment verification system that can provide certainty to an employer that they are hiring a legal worker,” he said.

ACIP Executive Director Lynn Shotwell remarked that the green card provisions in S. 744 were necessary to stay globally competitive, and that she will continue to work with lawmakers “to ensure that before a bill goes to the President’s desk, all high-skilled provisions provide for U.S. growth and that a Trusted Employer program is created.”

Roy Maurer is an online editor/manager for SHRM.

Follow him at @SHRMRoy

Related Articles:

Immigration Reform Passes Senate Committee, SHRM Online Global HR, May 2013

Senate Panel Rejects Expedited E-Verify Rollout, SHRM Online Global HR, May 2013

Senate Bill Revamps Employment-Based Green Card System, SHRM Online Global HR, May 2013

House Proposes Piecemeal Immigration Approach, SHRM Online Global HR, May 2013

Senate Bill Mandates E-Verify for All Employers, SHRM Online Global HR, April 2013

ACIP, SHRM Release Solutions for Employment-based Immigration, SHRM Online Global HR, March 2013

Mandatory E-Verify Central to Immigration Reform, SHRM Online Global HR, March 2013

Senate Republicans Stress Enforcement Before Comprehensive Immigration Reform, SHRM Online Global HR, February 2013

Senate Bill Calls for Market-Based H-1B Cap, SHRM Online Global HR, February 2013

Quick Links:

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FICA tax reverts back to 6.2%

Most ASU employees will see a slight decrease in their net pay beginning with their Jan. 11, 2013, paychecks. The decrease is the result of an increase in the employee portion of the Social Security (FICA) tax back to 6.2%. A temporary rate of 4.2% had been in effect for calendar years 2011 and 2012.

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Posted 1.9.13

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Minimum wage to increase; Update needed to workplace posters

Because the Industrial Commission of Arizona has increased the state’s minimum wage - effective Jan. 1, 2013 - to $7.80 from $7.65, all departments must update their workplace posters as soon as possible.

The Workplace Poster Options page has new versions of Black & White Poster 1 and Color Poster 1, plus an All-in-One Poster Addition for those who do not want to order a new All-in-One Poster. 

The Workplace Poster Options page also has links to all the individual state posters, including the new minimum wage information.

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Posted 12.19.12

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Mike Gioja's Second Act in HCM -- at Paychex

Mike Gioja's Second Act in HCM -- at Paychex

Mike Gioja has made a major impact in HCM. First at SAP and PeopleSoft and now, after a comparative lull at smaller companies, at our third big payroll provider, Paychex. Remarkable similarities at what he's done at each of the three, and now he's transforming Paychex (like ADP and Ceridian) into a technology company.

By Bill Kutik

There are many executives in HR technology, some even below the level of CEO, who have made extraordinary contributions to our world. Mike Gioja is one of them.

Mike Gioja was already an experienced IT executive when we first meet at SAP's user conference SAPPHIRE in 1998. He had already spent 12 years at IBM as a senior R&D manager,directly responsible for delivering IBM's first release of UNIX on the mainframe.

After that, he worked at Fidelity for three years on its very early (and still on-going) HCM outsourcing efforts.

But his SAPPHIRE appearance was his very public debut in HCM after spending four years closeted in Germany turning SAP's R/3 HCM product into something respectable that could -- and successfully did -- finally compete with PeopleSoft.

Trust me, the American version SAP first showed in 1993 could never have reached the huge installed based it enjoys today without Mike's insights and hard work.

We knew we were brothers under the skin (both from New York City) when during a briefing in his hotel suite, we both reached for the gift basket on the table and simultaneously grabbed for the pistachio nuts!

Beyond shared tastes, Mike had an extraordinary  ability to explain tech to business people and explain business to the technical people he usually managed. Everyone who worked for him or alongside him always had the most admiring things to say about Mike -- at least to me.

From SAP, he went to a greater triumph: managing 2,200 developers at PeopleSoft and creating the first web-based applications for Version 8.0. He arrived and found a lot of cleaning up to do: merging three separate application development organizations -- the PeopleSoft Business Network, the "Disruptors" and the main organization.

Moreover, in their rush to market, the PBN people were using off-the-the-shelf tools that would guarantee their first web-based self-service apps would not integrate easily into the main PeopleSoft HRMS. There, Mike made the hard decision that those apps had to be rewritten using PeopleTools, which didn't yet have that ability and had to be extended! Long delays ensued, but the version was better for it.

Mike left PeopleSoft before absolute final delivery of 8.0 could be reached, following  an executive dispute with CEO Craig Conway, the former Oracle exec who replaced founder Dave Duffield for a short time. Thus began his eight years of wandering among smaller, less ambitious companies than SAP or PeopleSoft.

Serially, Mike was CTO & VP of operations of the Internet Capital Group, a high-flying dot.com incubator during the bubble years that quickly fell back to earth; president of BrassRing, the pioneering ATS vendor now owned by Kenexa; EVP of products & services for Workscape, now owned by ADP; and CIO, EVP of products & services for Workstream, the HR application software aggregator now renamed HR Soft.

But now he is back on top as SVP IT, Product Management & Development at Paychex, where after four years of cleaning up a different kind of mess, the CEO wisely decided Mike should be the voice and face of the company.

So naturally he went to Florida to visit Naomi Lee Bloom and to lovely Newburyport, Mass. to visit IDC's Lisa Rowan. And then came to see me. We both looked for pistachios ahead of time but failed to find any!

Truth be told, I've never followed Paychex, despite it being the third big payroll service bureau after ADP and Ceridian, believing it served a market of companies so small that it couldn't be doing anything interesting. Mike explained otherwise.

The background is Paychex started about 40 years ago with a distributed brick-and-mortar model of 100 franchised offices. Each franchise built its own processing system, offering service bureau payroll to companies with two to 10 employees. Much as all the bureaus did at the time, clients phoned in (or later faxed) their weekly payroll information.

Later it added services for tax filing, 401(k), recurring payments, ASO (administrative service organization) and PEO (professional service organization), time and labor, and, of course, HR.

Before going public under the ticker PAYX, Paychex consolidated all the franchises and their applications "on a big box with 100 partitions," Mike says. It now has 12,000 employees and 2,400 sales reps, no small operation.

The company has three target markets: about 500,000 clients with 1-49 employees, which Paychex calls "core," and may have more than the number of ADP's identically sized Small Business Service (SBS) clients. It claims to be No. 1 in that market.

Paychex's new sweet spot is its 50,000 clients with 50-250 employees. And, of course, it has aspirations to service companies with 1,000 employees. Rounding out its application suite, the company has made five acquisitions in the last two years, including the recently announced myStaffingPro for recruiting.

Like ADP, it runs an insurance brokerage with 107,000 clients and many partners providing the actual coverage.

Mike is writing a new payroll system, enlarging the size companies that the app can service from a less ambitious effort that was already underway and integrating payroll with HR on a SaaS platform. He declares (just like ADP with Vantage and Ceridian with Dayforce) that it is the company's "next generation and will turn Paychex into a technology company, ready for the new world."

There will be one code line for U.S. payroll and tax, and a second one for global. Clients are already receiving the standard three SaaS updates per year.

As Naomi sees it, "Mike convinced management that they had to rebuild their foundations [and] led that painful/expensive/time-consuming work successfully with much of it now accomplished, and Paychex is now reaping the benefits of that big bet. I believe it's saving Paychex by enabling them to ramp up their technology capabilities in the nick of time. It's the kind of foundational work that is rarely seen or understood by customers, investors, even analysts."

So erase the term "payroll service bureau" from your forebrain. Thanks to Mike's "second act" (and David Ossip at Ceridian and Mike Capone at ADP), there just aren't any big ones anymore.

HR Technology Columnist Bill Kutik is founding co-chairman of the 16th Annual HR Technology® Conference & Exposition, returning to Las Vegas, Oct. 7-9, 2013. This year's conference program is online or download the brochure.  You can comment on this column at the Conference LinkedIn Group, which doesn't require prior or future conference attendance to join. He is also host of The Bill Kutik Radio Show®. He can be reached at bkutik@earthlink.net.

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A Hazy Issue

A Hazy Issue

An employee sitting at her desk appears to be smoking a cigarette, complete with puffs of smoke when she exhales. When a shocked manager approaches her, she explains that she's using an electronic cigarette and the smoke is vapor. What does an employer do now?

By Kecia Bal

"For the human resource executive trying to address this right now, the best advice is to proceed with caution," says Tom Glynn, Ph.D., director of both the American Cancer Society's Cancer Science and Trends and its International Cancer Control.

FDA regulations are expected by the end of this year, he says, which would provide more consistency in manufacturing of the more than 200 types of e-cigarettes on the market and better insight into health impacts to help employers make informed decisions.

"If you leave the scientific and health realm and get into the human relations realm, that's one of the biggest things the HR person is going to deal with when, say, an employee complains that someone in the office or cubicle next to them is smoking."

Electronic smoking, or vaping, is becoming more prevalent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which this February released study results that show that one in five adult smokers in the United States have tried e-cigarettes, up from one in 10 a year earlier. Introduced to the U.S. in 2007, electronic cigarettes -- battery-operated products that vaporize nicotine, flavoring and other chemicals that are inhaled by the user -- do not fall under FDA regulation of drugs or devices because a decision in 2010 from the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit ruled that e-cigarettes are not considered therapeutic.

The American Cancer Society, like many organizations, still is waiting to hear more on the safety of e-smoking, Glynn says.

"I would say the American Cancer Society finds them intriguing, and a potential -- and please underline potential -- tool for quitting smoking. But electronic cigarettes are still saddled with a lot of question marks."

While the science is still out on electronic cigarettes (one limited 2009 FDA study showed carcinogens in some of 18 varieties tested) and the legal landscape is developing around e-smoking in public, some companies are electing to snuff out this relatively new product in the workplace before those questions surface, says Steven Noeldner, partner and senior consultant in the total health management specialty practice at global consulting firm Mercer.

"It does come up in almost every one of the programs I'm involved in, especially if we're putting a workplace no-tobacco policy in place or a wellness program," Noeldner says. "It's generally true that most employers that impose non-tobacco use programs usually try to be all inclusive. They do include e-cigarettes."

Because most e-cigarettes are designed to look like their traditional tobacco-leaf counterparts, allowing their use works against a no-smoking environment, Noeldner says. "It's counter to the intent of a non-tobacco use policy."

Employers shouldn't embrace them as an effective smoking cessation tool, either, he says, though there have yet to be any long-term studies confirming or undermining that idea. All the organizations he's worked with are opposed to e-smoking at work. Whether an employer would hold e-smokers to a higher, "smoker" rate on employer-sponsored insurance plans is a decision to be made between a company and its insurance plan representatives, he says.

"They are a false crutch," he says. "They can reinforce the ongoing habit of having that cigarette in your mouth."

Crafting a policy to ban e-smoking may be as simple as adding e-cigarettes to an existing no-tobacco policy, says San Francisco-based attorney Cheryl Orr, co-chair of the national labor and employment practice at Drinker Biddle & Reath.

"In creating a policy, if companies want to ban e-cigarettes, there's no reason why they can't," she says. "They just need to be clear in their policy. If they want it to be effective, they probably need a clause in there that tells employees they need to report it, and they need a no-retaliation provision."

Because some municipalities have created bans on e-smoking in public, employers also can check with city and county governments that may already prohibit it at work, Orr says. New Jersey is the only state so far to ban e-smoking anywhere traditional smoking is outlawed, though legislators in other states have considered similar measures.

"If you're a company with an employee assistance program and that includes smoking cessation assistance, you can alert them to that," she says. "Also, if you're a unionized workforce and there's a contradiction, the collective bargaining agreement would trump the policy. Have employees acknowledge that they've read the policy. It's really not different than a regular tobacco ban."

Celia Joseph, counsel at employment law firm Fisher & Phillips' Philadelphia office, says no company has approached her specifically about e-cigarettes yet, but she has raised the issue when crafting tobacco policies.

"Employers may want to ban them. They may be concerned because they don't want the look of someone smoking in the workplace. Could they be annoying? Could they be harmful? We don't know," she says. "I think employers should consider at least what their response would be if the issue came up."

Compiling an ad hoc committee with scientific, medical and human resource perspectives could help employers consider the implications of any stance on e-smoking, she says.

"Then make a recommendation based on a thoughtful discussion," Joseph says. "The other legal issue is, if any employer decided to ban it, what are the legal rights of individuals? If there's an intention of banning e-cigarettes, in addition to the legal issues, stay apprised of developing science."

A ban on hiring e-smokers is another legal gray area, Joseph says, as some states even provide employment protection to conventional smokers.

"Generally, the courts have not protected smokers as a group under the ADA," she says. "So the issue becomes, if they decide to include e-smokers as smokers, what happens?"

Some organizations already do. Texas-based Baylor Health Care System's nicotine-free hiring policy, for example, classifies e-cigarette smokers as nicotine users and all applicants must test nicotine-free. The same goes for applicants at Virginia's Bon Secours Health System.

Health Care Service Corp., and its Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans in Illinois, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, has included a ban on electronic cigarettes in its tobacco-free workplace policy, says Judith Levy, the corporation's wellness specialist.

"Nicotine addiction is a chronic condition and employees must be supported in their efforts to quit," she says. "Employees must sign a tobacco-user affidavit stating that they and/or dependents do not use tobacco for at least three months prior to any open enrollment changes."

Helen Darling, CEO of the National Business Group on Health, says organizations should consider e-smoking to be another form of tobacco use. The organization published a fact sheet for employers about how to tackle e-cigarette use, including how to ban it from a workplace.

"We want to eliminate it as fast as we can as part of a wellbeing and health improvement initiative," she says. "Electronic cigarettes are, in their own way, just as bad as cigarettes. Most employers banish smoking both in the workplace, outside the workplace and in company cars or trucks -- and that's the use of tobacco, not just smoking."

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