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Family business owners strategize for longevity in new certificate program

Workers review documents while standing in front of items on a store shelf

For Joseph Astrachan, a co-author of Cornell’s Family Business Leadership online certificate program, a family-run business is a generational tradition. Since Astrachan was young, his family has operated businesses in fields ranging from pharmaceuticals to shipping. He is no stranger to the difficulties that come with owning a company tied to the fabric of a family, including managing close relationships in the face of business challenges.

With Daniel Van Der Vliet, executive director of the Smith Family Business Initiative within the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, John Engels, president and CEO of Leadership Coaching Inc. and Holly Isdale ‘86, founder of WealthHaven, Astrachan has blended academic theory and industry practice in a certificate program that helps others navigate the obstacles and opportunities of running a family business successfully.

“There is no way around it: Navigating a family business is distinctly different from the traditional corporate model,” said Astrachan, a Professor Emeritus and former executive director of the Cox Family Enterprise Center at Kennesaw State University’s Coles College of Business.

The certificate program uses a hands-on approach to address how the personal and professional overlap in family businesses. Courses include:

  • Family Business Leadership Fundamentals
  • Managing Family Relationships
  • Stewarding Family Wealth and Values
  • Implementing Family Governance Systems

Just like with any other business, management in a family-run venture evolves over time. For family businesses, there is often an added layer of grief associated with leadership changes. Sometimes assumed agreements and familial relationships complicate these transitions.

“Continuing a family-run business requires perpetuation through transition, passing it from one generation to the next,” Van Der Vliet said in a recent conversation with eCornell. “Even though all business begins with family . . . some of this expertise around family business does not exist in academia. Family business is very specialized.”

To help learners understand the nuances, the Family Business Leadership program combines advisory parties – like lawyers and accountants – and family members into one cohesive group of learners. The courses organize behaviors in family businesses into familiar workplace relationships and help make sense of common patterned dynamics. Learners gain practical insights they can immediately apply to their own operations.

“Family members are not asked to share anything deeply personal,” Van Der Vliet said. “Their projects could become more personal if they choose, which can be beneficial for their takeaways from the course… and for those that are not family members in the family business, on the advisory or service side, they can have an opportunity to realize [how family dynamics] broadly affect the company.”

Discover how to manage relationships, steward wealth and implement governance structures in Cornell’s Family Business Leadership certificate program. Learn more and enroll now.

Quotes have been edited for clarity.

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Cornell Keynotes podcast: Mismanaging hybrid teams

Worker distracted by dog during virtual meeting

The shift toward hybrid work exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic and has since become a staple in all types of organizations.

Although hybrid teams can offer a number of benefits, leaders often find that the practices they have come to depend on for managing in-person teams do not translate well to the hybrid context. And with hybrid team management being the responsibility of both leaders and team members alike, where can you look for opportunities for improvement?

In a new episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, professor Brad Bell, director of the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies at Cornell’s ILR School, shares ways that hybrid teams are mismanaged and presents strategies for effectively managing hybrid teams.

Read more on the Chronicle.

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3 strategies to optimize executive pay in your organization

Executives make a deal with a handshake over a desk

Well-structured executive compensation packages can attract talented leaders to C-suite and top-tier management positions. Companies must consider the impact those offers might have on their employees and businesses.

Providing a clear rationale for high-level salaries and benefits supports employee productivity and morale throughout an organization. Getting it wrong can have a detrimental impact on company culture and can also lead to fines, sanctions, tax penalties, lawsuits or reputational damage.

LizAnn Eisen, faculty director for the Cornell Tech Board of Directors Forum and acting professor of the practice at Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech, recently hosted a Cornell Keynote discussion of executive pay featuring Jessica McNamara ‘96, senior counsel at IBM, and Jennifer Conway, a partner at Davis Polk. The trio covered strategies for ensuring an organization’s pay structures align with regulatory requirements and best practices for perks, clawback and noncompetes.

1. Prioritize transparency and cross-team alignment on perks.

The crescendoing call for transparency in executive pay calculations includes non-cash benefits, or perks, such as travel on company aircraft, personal security and country club memberships. Corporate leadership teams can sometimes find it difficult to distinguish business expenses from disclosable perks.

“The SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) considers a personal benefit to be a perk unless it’s integrally and directly related to the performance of duties,” Conway said. “If it’s a perk, then it has to be valued based on the aggregate incremental cost to the company — the cost of providing the perk — which sounds simple, but it can actually be very complicated.”

While SEC rules apply only to public companies, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) monitors all businesses for non-cash, in-kind fringe benefits provided to any worker in exchange for services, focusing on whether employers are properly reporting employee income. A taxable fringe benefit requires imputing income based on fair market value.

Both SEC enforcement action for inadequate perk disclosure, which the commission sees as a possible breakdown of internal controls, and audit activity from the IRS regarding personal trips reported as business travel have increased recently.

When dealing with the two different sets of federal standards for perks, McNamara advises that companies make sure their practice is robust using three key steps:

  • Have clear written policies and approval processes applicable to benefits like the use of corporate aircraft.
  • Maintain a detailed record-keeping system and automate inputs when possible.
  • Do monthly and year-end reviews with all key stakeholders, including administrative assistants and human resources, legal and tax departments.

2. Understand the latest rules on compensation recovery.

Last fall, the SEC adopted the final clawback rule mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act. The act subjects erroneously paid compensation to recovery and applies to top officers of a company. The no-fault component of the rule is new: Even if an executive had no role in their organization’s misstatement of finances, their excess compensation tied to meeting performance or revenue goals now could be subject to recovery.

In restatement processes, some areas for repayment like performance-based bonuses should be apparent, but retirement plan contributions and payments based on stock-price changes could slip through the cracks. The risk for litigation, according to Conway, makes it important for businesses to be thorough.

“Given the complexity, it’s important to work with outside counsel,” she said. “It’s also helpful to make sure that you’re correctly calculating what’s subject to recovery.”

To ensure that its executives are aware of the new clawback rules, IBM’s legal team added language regarding recovery and repayment provisions to its equity award agreements, McNamara said.

3. Prepare for a future that may not include noncompetes.

The Federal Trade Commission’s recent ruling to end noncompetes is set to take effect in September, but there have been legal challenges to the agency’s authority. From the major questions doctrine to the rule’s retroactivity, every matter of the potential ban is up for debate.

“There’s a good chance that the rule never goes into effect, but it’s definitely important to take very close note of it. On the state level, there is much more momentum to act,” Conway said.

If the ban were to be enforced, it would prohibit any term or condition of employment that intends to prevent a worker from seeking other work once they have left a company. While the rule would be retroactive, an exception applies to a limited group of senior executives who serve in policymaking positions and whose compensation exceeds $150,000 annually.

According to Conway, one of the most significant portions of the new rule impacts noncompetes tied to the sale of a business.

“The final rule does not apply to noncompetes entered into by a person pursuant to a bona fide sale of a business entity, sale of the person’s ownership interest in a business entity or all or substantially all of the business’s operating assets,” Conway said. “That raises a question of how small an ownership might be sufficient. Is it so broad that you could cover somebody with just a small interest in equity of a public company? As the rule is currently drafted, it doesn’t actually impose any sort of threshold.”

For IBM, which has acquired several companies — including many in California where a sale-of-business exception to prohibitions on noncompetes has existed for some time — not having a threshold is important for protecting the good will of businesses that they purchase McNamara said.

Given the litigation challenges, companies do not have to alter their existing practices right now, Conway said, but they can engage in certain activities to prepare for the future:

  • Review restrictive covenants, assess how broadly they apply and consider which ones are necessary.
  • Evaluate “blue pencil” provisions.
  • Include acknowledgements of senior executive status in new noncompetes.
  • Strengthen non-solicit, confidentiality and intellectual property (IP) covenants.
  • Review overall compensation plan structures to ensure they are designed to give employees incentives to stay.

“Once the IP walks out the door and someone starts work the next day for somebody, the only real method [for relief] is an injunction. If the injunction isn’t granted, there’s no equitable relief that can get the IP back. The damage is done,” McNamara said. “The noncompete is a nice way for people to sit out for a period so their information becomes stale. A reasonable rule, even if it applies to a level of technical talent you need to protect . . . would be much more palatable to the business community.”

Visit the eCornell website to watch the full Keynote “Executive Pay in the Spotlight: Perks, Noncompetes and More,” one webcast in a multipart series leading up to the Cornell Tech Board of Directors Forum. The immersive forum will prepare you for today’s most urgent opportunities and challenges in board governance, including AI and other developing technologies. Learn more and register.

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Cornell Keynotes podcast: Neurodiversity inclusion policies and practices at work

Employees connect colorful puzzle pieces

Finding the right talent is a top priority for businesses. Building a deep and diverse candidate pool is key in matching open positions with the best employees to fill them.

In a new episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, Susanne Bruyère, a professor of Disability Studies and academic director of the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability at the Cornell ILR School, joins host Chris Wofford to discuss the growing number of corporate affirmative hiring programs to recruit individuals who are neurodivergent.

Read more on the Chronicle.

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5 essential tips for interviewers

Two men sitting across a desk from one another during a job interview. One is wearing a white button-up shirt and blue tie, and the other is in a black jacket. An open laptop displaying a resume is on the desk, facing the man in the black jacket.A company’s success is closely tied to the quality of its employees, but a flawed interview process can disrupt this balance and undermine overall performance. JR Keller, associate professor of human resource studies at the Cornell ILR School, identified five key strategies to conduct better interviews that lead to more effective hiring.

1. Reduce the candidate’s anxiety.

According to a 2020 survey conducted by JDP, 93% of Americans reported experiencing interview-related anxiety, with 29% ranking interviews more nerve-wracking than a first date or doctor appointment. To ease this tension, Keller recommends clearly communicating with a job applicant well before their interview.

Disclosing who will participate in the interview is beneficial as it allows interviewees to look up their interviewer on LinkedIn. Likewise, telling prospective employees the interview timeframe and whether it will be in person, over the phone or on a platform such as Zoom helps them prepare better and manage their expectations.

Another tip recruiters should consider is providing candidates with a set of interview questions in advance so that they can prepare their answers to showcase their skills and abilities applicable to the job. “In the 2020 JDP study, the number one thing people were nervous about going into interviews was answering a difficult question. They’re really worried about ‘gotcha’ questions, and there shouldn’t be ‘gotcha’ questions in an interview,” Keller said.

“If you reduce candidate anxiety, they will come into their interview prepared to speak confidently about their skills, knowledge and abilities, and they’re going to perform better in the interview,” Keller said, noting that the better the candidate’s recruitment experience, the more likely they are to accept a job offer.

2. Value the candidate’s time.

With the average corporate job attracting 250 resumes, recruiters can be overwhelmed by the sheer number of candidates they must interview. That said, interviewers should respect each and every interviewee’s time, as the way they treat applicants during an interview is indicative of how applicants will be treated as employees.

Prospective employees have limited information to help them choose which company they want to work for. Consequently, if a hiring manager is late to an interview, the candidate may view the tardiness as a forewarning of why they shouldn’t work at the company. Keller offers two tips to give candidates the time they deserve: Don’t be late and don’t be distracted.

“If you have a 30-minute interview that starts at 1 p.m., block your calendar starting at 12:45 p.m., so you have time to read through your questions and review the candidate’s resume,” Keller said. “An interview should not be the first time you look at a resume. That’s not the impression you want to give candidates.”

3. Create quality interview questions.

An interview question intended for a software engineer position is likely different from a question designed for an editorial job. However, Keller argues that the common characteristic of a good interview question is its ability to predict performance in a particular job.

Borrowing from Mark Horstman’s book, “The Effective Hiring Manager,” Keller suggests recruiters follow a three-step process to craft an effective behavioral interview question: the helpful lead-in, asking for an expansive answer and ensuring the question relates to a behavior the job requires.

The helpful lead-in is a statement preceding the actual question. Its goal is to give interviewees a realistic job preview by subtly implying what the job requires. Then, combine steps two and three to create an open-ended situational question — typically beginning with “Tell me about a time when” or “Give me an example of” — that allows the candidate to demonstrate the skill or ability applicable to the job.

In addition to knowing how to formulate a good question, interviewers should also know which questions to avoid. Keller strongly advises hiring managers to steer clear of illegal questions (marital status, religion, etc.), brainteasers and questions like “What’s your greatest weakness?” and “Where do you want to be in five years?” A valuable alternative to the latter question is, “What skills do you want to develop over time?”

4. Ensure consistency in your approach.

With 24% of hires made internally and 42% of workers obtaining their jobs via personal connections, it’s essential that hiring managers approach each interview — regardless of who the candidate is — with a standardized process. Not only does this ensure fairness and equity, but it also allows prospective employees to be evaluated on a level playing field.

Though many recruiters find structured interviews tedious, Keller explains they are the best predictor of performance in an interview setting. According to Keller, structured interviews are formatted so that a list of questions prepared in advance, which are tied to the knowledge, skills and abilities related to the job, are asked of all candidates being interviewed for a position: “The reason this is so effective is because you are collecting job-relevant information about each of the candidates you’re interviewing so you can make apples-to-apples comparisons when it comes time to decide who you want to hire.”

However, hiring managers should not be robotic and ask each interviewee the exact same questions in the exact same tone. “If that’s the approach you want to take, you can just use HireVue or some other pre-recorded video interviewing software,” Keller said.

The key to a lively structured interview is asking each candidate similar questions in a similar manner, allowing for variety across interviewers while ensuring that every candidate has a comparable experience within their interviews.

5. Develop a comprehensive evaluation plan.

After an interview concludes, it’s important to have a detailed evaluation plan in place. This includes preparing a rubric in advance to determine which aspects of the candidate’s performance will be evaluated, how they will be scored and how notes and data will be documented to facilitate comparison when making the final hiring decision.

Keller emphasizes the importance of rating candidates individually and avoiding sharing notes with team members to maintain objectivity. “Complete the rubric right away, before you’ve had a chance to talk to anybody on your team who might have interviewed that candidate. This way, your evaluations remain independent and aren’t influenced by the water cooler gossip that’s bound to happen later in the day,” he said.

Keller admits that completely avoiding the discussion of candidates is difficult in practice. For this reason, he encourages hiring teams to convene either on the same day as interviews or within the same week to ensure that teams gather information promptly and make timely decisions without the complications of evaluating candidates at different times.

By gathering everyone’s input within a short timeframe, teams can maintain consistency and coherence in their evaluation process, leading to more informed and efficient hiring decisions.

For more information on effective interview practices, experience the full Keynote for “Five Essential Tips for Interviewers: Connecting With Candidates and Making Smart Hiring Decisions” on the eCornell website.

Learn more in Cornell’s online human resources certificate programs, including the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Building a Diverse Workforce certificate authored by JR Keller. Be sure to also check out JR Keller’s previous Keynote “Internal Talent Mobility: Posting, Slotting and Hoarding.”

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Leaders strategize for new corporate environment in Hybrid Work Strategy certificate

Woman sits in an office set up. In front of her, there is a meeting on her monitor with six people displayed.

Since 2020, organizations all over the world have shifted to hybrid work models. This change has forced leaders to reevaluate how remote collaborative processes can still drive organizational culture. Brad Bell , Donna Haeger and Theomary Karamanis , faculty authors of Cornell’s Hybrid Work Strategy Program, spoke to the eCornell team about the challenges and opportunities posed by hybrid work.

Is it possible to replicate an in-person environment in a virtual workspace?

Theomary Karamanis, Senior Lecturer, SC Johnson College of Business: “That’s the biggest mistake that organizations make: They feel that they need to simulate everything that happens organically in an in-person environment into a virtual environment, and you cannot do that. Instead, try to have less live meetings, less synchronous communication and a bit more asynchronous [work]. Live meetings should usually be limited to problem solving, creativity and conflict resolution.”

How does the hybrid work environment affect the leadership structure of an organization?

Brad Bell, Professor, ILR School: “In these semi-remote environments, leaders can’t be as hands-on, they can’t see everything that’s happening, so a lot of the leadership has to be assumed by the team members themselves in these hybrid and remote settings. This opens a gap [inside the organization’s leadership structure]. Someone that is not a leader might look at courses like [Hybrid Work Strategy] and assume they need to be in a management role to benefit from this. But without usual in-office interaction, those concepts and tools have become importantly applicable to both the leaders and the members.”

What can leaders do to ensure that their hybrid organizations are consistently productive?

Donna Haeger, Professor of Practice, SC Johnson College of Business: “Oftentimes at work, whether it’s hybrid or not, everyone’s focused on ‘task, task, task’, ‘get the work done.’ That’s become even more of a pressure because things do become disjointed when people are not colocated . . . An organization’s culture and productivity are tied together. Tasks and relationships, and the synergy between those, are what really create productivity. [Fostering that synergy] is really essential in a hybrid work environment: The research has shown that the stronger the culture, the more productive the workplace will be.”

Begin developing your confidence as a hybrid team leader with eCornell’s Hybrid Work Strategy certificate program. Learn more and enroll now.

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Justin Heitzman, an eCornell writing intern, contributed to this post.

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Cornell Keynotes podcast: Mid-year trends in generative AI tech

3D chrome brain statue, generated with AI

What are the latest breakthroughs in generative AI? What’s just noise?

In a new episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, Karan Girotra, the Charles H. Dyson Family Professor of Management and professor of operations, technology and innovation at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business and Cornell Tech, explores what’s new in the world of AI, including updates on Apple Intelligence, Anthropic and advancements in China.

Read more on the Chronicle.

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Certificate program bolsters NYS public health workforce

Gen Meredith, center, associate director of the Cornell Public Health Program, works with colleagues Zoe Wakoff, right, and Katie Lesser, left, in Schurman Hall.
Gen Meredith, center, associate director of the Cornell Public Health Program, works with colleagues Zoe Wakoff, right, and Katie Lesser, left, in Schurman Hall.

As a registered nurse and director of patient services for the Chautauqua County Health Department in western New York, Wendy Douglas conducted case investigations and monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic. The experience laid bare the disparities public health departments are designed to address but not all workers are equipped to encounter.

“Very few of our health department’s employees have any public health background when they start working here, and it sometimes shows,” Douglas said. “For example, there can be a lack of understanding of health equity.”

The issue is nationwide in scale. On-the-job experience is the only source of public health training for most professionals in governmental agencies. Only 14% of those workers have received formal higher education in the field. To close the skills gap that is, in part, responsible for the profession’s decadeslong workforce decline, a team of Cornell faculty members and researchers – led by Gen Meredith, an associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Public and Ecosystem Health – partnered with eCornell to launch the university’s Public Health Essentials online certificate program.

Read more on the Chronicle.

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Cornell Keynotes podcast: The American South braces for a huge unionization push

Auto worker using tools on metal car parts

Will auto industry unionization in Tennessee and Alabama galvanize a new labor movement in the South?

In a new episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, Andrew Wolf, a professor of global labor and work at Cornell’s ILR School, joins host Chris Wofford to discuss the opportunities and challenges ahead for both auto manufacturing companies and labor organizers.

Unionization is shaking up the auto industry, delivering meaningful gains toward fair pay and other benefits for workers in the U.S. The efforts are particularly significant in the South where a legacy of racist labor laws continues to propagate disparity within the workforce.

Listen to Episode 32: “The American South Braces for a Huge Unionization Push” and read more on the Chronicle.

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Cornell public health certificate closes 8 primary skill gaps for students

Recent global events have underscored a pressing truth: our ever-expanding interactions with the natural world can lead to unforeseen health challenges. At the juncture of urban development, climate change and health concerns, the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic raised the necessity to strengthen our public health infrastructure.

Through its new Public Health Essentials online certificate program, Cornell seeks to help leaders proactively address today’s global health challenges.

“COVID-19 came and showed us that our public health workforce was underprepared and that our public health systems were not equipped to detect and respond to an emerging pandemic,” said Gen Meredith, associate professor of public and ecosystem health and associate director of the Cornell Master of Public Health (MPH) Program.

Meredith, co-author of the university’s Public Health Essentials certificate program with Alexander Travis, professor and MPH program director, developed the coursework to address real-world applications for health professionals, community health advocates, volunteers and other emerging leaders in public health. The program begins with the basic foundations of public health, including the latest terminology, and moves into topics such as driving action with data and supporting behaviors that prevent disease. Courses include:

  • Public Health Foundations
  • Assessing and Implementing Public Health
  • Using Public Health Data for Action
  • Supporting Public Health Behaviors
  • Public Health Preparedness

Participants complete the facilitator-guided online program with a cohort of fellow professionals within four months. Research from Meredith, Travis and coauthors from the MPH program shows significant improvement among learners across eight critical skill areas: systems and strategic thinking; community engagement; cross-sectoral partnership; policy engagement; diversity, equity and inclusion; data-informed decision making, effective communication and programmatic expertise.

“The way that globalization is happening around the world and the way that humans are using the natural environment around us is creating real risk for the emergence of new diseases, and this comes at a time when humans are already vulnerable because of chronic diseases and other environmental conditions we are facing on a day-to-day basis,” said Meredith.

The Public Health Essentials program intends to drive actions that contribute to disease prevention and global community well-being. In earning the certificate, leaders can gain new knowledge and skills to navigate the complexities of worldwide health challenges, strengthen healthcare systems and enhance preparedness.

Enroll in Cornell’s Public Health Essentials certificate program to explore the global challenges alongside best practices from experts.