Implicit employee contracts need modification when the employee is gay or lesbian. These contracts are radically changed when the employee has HIV. Their meaning needs to be doubly re-examined when the employee is both from a minority group and has HIV.

Assessing openly these factors impacts can help employers and employees get fair value out of their mutual commitments. Inattention to these factors means compromising these commitments and can result in hidden agendas, misunderstandings, false assumptions, inaccurate decisions and unfair practice.

I am one of two financial planners in the U.S. with a major practice focused on gay men & women and/or people with HIV (PwHIV). I have also been a management consultant in corporate benefits with a major focus on cost containment and cost prevention since 1976. Perhaps this dual focus gives me a fair chance to strike a balance between employer and employee in this area.

When any employee commits to working for an employer, several contracts are entered into--whether they're written or not.

-a legal contract, starting with those conditions dictated by federal, state and local regulations to which are added the contractual conditions of work designed specifically for the corporation, perhaps supplemented by written agreements unique to specific employees;

• a psychological contract which starts during the interview process and which is renewed with each key work event, filled with expectations, assumptions, attitudes, personae, etc., and which initially evolves by the 3-6th month of employment into a rather fixed set of coping mechanisms, styles and games;
  
• a work contract, focused on tasks to be done, often summed up formally in a job description that eventually bears no resemblance to the work actually done;
  
• a financial contract, focused narrowly on salary & benefit modifications, connected to a wide variety of policy and practice that may be written or communicated by example.

The Legal Contract

Legally, having no provisions for gays or people with HIV sends a strong message which may or may not be what the corporation wants to say to its employees. This messages may be seen as "we treat all employees alike, i.e., we don't care who you are as a person, you're only cannon fodder for our machines," "check your personality at the door," "you have our support only as long as you stay healthy," "you'd better feather your own nest because this is no home away from home."

As other articles in this area have pointed out, gays are a bellweather for other minorities--and all human beings belong to minority groups, even, these days, White Anglo Saxon Protestant straight married men. Moreover, all human beings fall sick during their lives; all of us die from illness one day. Corporations need to think through carefully whether they want to be seen as "just a job", whether they want mere clock-punchers, whether they can tolerate higher than average turnover, whether continuity, history and the wisdom that can only accumulate from experience is essential to operations or not.

My practice shows that corporations benefit from clarifying and enhancing their legal commitments to employees, in sickness and in health, in taking advantage of their diverse experience. Employees can commit more when employers make clear that they value diversity and spell out what they will do when people fall ill.

Spelling things out seems simple, yet an amazing percentage of people in my practice are unable to produce an up to date benefits booklet. This type of gap in communications makes them mightily unsure of their employer's commitment to them; you can well imagine how much reciprocal commitment they are able to muster in return. Yet employers spend inordinate amounts on once a year federally required benefits statements. The result inadvertently gives the wrong message, i.e., "look how good we think we are," "we only communicate when we have to," "we're ashamed of what we really would have to say," and "you shouldn't have to ask--we'll take care of you, as we see fit." Employees want clarity, not paternalism. They appreciate genuinely positive policies and practices. They're realistically uneasy in today's era of mergers, acquisitions, buyouts and business failures--all of which impact long term commitments.

The Psychological Contract

Managing the psychological contract is very complicated with both gays & people with HIV because they are invisible. Policy formulators, benefit clerks and supervisors need instruction as to how much the company values diversity and how diversity can benefit operations. They need training in how the employer accomodates employees who develop serious conditions that permit them to work but which are better managed when explicitly taken into account.

The employer must decide how to accomodate, starting with colds, flus, heart conditions, high blood pressure, cancers, HIV--anything that impacts worksite productivity and personal satisfaction. Accomodation starts with providing information and resources for prevention, whether this be materials for hand washing to prevent the spread of colds, flu shots, proper ventilation, modifiable lighting and heating, reimbursement for preventive testing, etc. Simply put, all employers accomodate; the key signal to employees is how little or how much.

The Work Contract

Accomodation is the key concept in work contracts as well. Whether companies embrace, take into account, allow or exclude personal characteristics as a factor in work assignments may make the difference in an employee's sheer willingness to work. Since many gays and people with HIV have had to mask their identities, this is a stronger factor for them than with most employees; again, gays are the bellweather. Willingness to acknowledge, accept and encourage personal style and factors may make the difference between a shutdown workforce and a workplace that can draw on many sectors of the population and which can stimulate job involvement.

Accomodation to the special needs of gays or people with HIV is key to productivity as well. Disease or being gay can happen to anyone; both are most likely a mix of genetics, environment and behavior. HIV is typical of recent types of disease and perhaps diseases to come: episodic, complicated serious conditions where for much of the time people are able to work. Likewise, most gays are a mix of behavior, culture and mindset, often gay and straight.

Just as most personnel policies are geared to cookie cutter employees, most benefit policies are geared to old diseases where conditions were more clearcut, where people were either able to work or they weren't. Most short and long-term disability policies reflect this tilt towards the old simple diseases & accidents. Few have provisions for partial disability and often penalize returns to work. Yet these policies and procedures are well within the ability of corporations to change. And changing them often results in increased productivity, higher motivation and greater continuity not only directly for the people with HIV but indirectly for the workforce as a whole.

Accomodation means adopting flextime for people with serious conditions, multiplying the opportunities for working partially at home, designing jobs that can be shared and making changes in work stations to allow people to work with less fatigue and with greater ease. Most of these changes require little or no dollar outlays. Yet their return is far greater than the immediately salvaged and often increased productivity. The rest of the employees see that the company is willing to go the full nine yards in enabling its employees to work as best they can. A parallel byproduct explains why other minority groups insist on recognition of gay employee associations; they know that if the gays are acknowledged, all minorities will be. Likewise, If the disabled and those with serious conditions such as HIV are positively accomodated, other employees get a strong message of corporate commitment.

The Financial Contract

Financial contracts are usually embodied only in paystubs. It is amazing that the simple tool of an employment contract is used so rarely by American companies. We are now well beyond the era where legalese made such instruments maddening rather than clarifying. Yet most corporations remind employees of their commitments via computer abbreviations on paystubs. Again, putting policies in writing and making sure they are understood through employee communications can pay dividends on already generous corporate policies.

I've written elsewhere in WIO about measures companies can take to fashion and tailor rewards to fit the needs of gays. Let's focus here on what specific actions can be taken for people with HIV and for all employees who eventually will suffer a serious illness.

Employers would do well to provide much more life insurance for employees. Group term rates are relatively among the lowest. Heretofore, providing for families upon death always reflected well on employers. Now life insurance can be accelerated in cases of terminal illness, enabling families to meet the higher costs of today's illnesses and provide comforts for the dying. Life insurance can be sold for cash in cases where prospects of eventual recovery are rare. Life insurance can be used as collateral for private loans with friends and relatives, providing cash to the ill now. These measures are saving lives. They are also powerful incentives for committed employees who know full well they too may have serious illness.

Companies need to offer extensive group disability insurance. All would benefit if companies actively educated employees as to the key role of disability insurance, both group and individual, in financial security.

Serious illness strikes everyone; it is increasingly chronic and long term. To not offer disability coverage these days is the height of irresponsibility. To not offer employees the option of paying the premiums themselves robs them of having their 60-70% disability payments tax-free, at no cost to the employer.

Both insurers and employers need to revise limits on disability because serious illness now increases financial need dramatically. Modern diseases get poor health insurance reimbursements at best. Much treatment occurs at home or on an outpatient basis, yet most health insurance reimbursement remains hospital oriented. New treatments are classified as experimental and receive less or no reimbursement. Longer term conditions require more frequent, nonreimbursed travel. Serious conditions benefit from psychotherapy and treatments for depression--yet reimbursement dramatically lags here too. The whole notion that people who are ill have less expenses is a bankrupt one.

Insurers and employers would do well to recognize there are now two distinct types of disability: classic chronic conditions where ability to work is compromised but lifespan is not predictably shortened and new terminal or rare recovery conditions.

The latter group would be greatly assisted by higher payment levels not only because they experience a greater concentration of expenses but because often they are attempting to life an entire life in the space of but a few years. When I take clients out on disability with sufficient resources, we can make this a time of blossoming, lifedreams shelved, discovery of meaning in service--but this happens mainly when financial security has been achieved.

The old argument of moral imperilment doesn't work with terminal diagnoses. If people face rare chances of recovery, they deserve extra income not less. In the words of the Chairman of a major US corporation, "they deserve as much income as we can get them." Instead of coordinating benefits out of existence and keeping disability income to 60% of income, employers should ensure that truly sick employees receive 120% of their previous incomes.

Employers have a third golden oppportunity to do well by doing good by maximizing tax-deferred savings vehicles, both in matching funds and high allowable levels of savings. Employers should allow employees with reduced lifespans to save even more. The disabled can then draw on these funds as needed without penalty, keeping their taxes manageable, especially if their employers enabled them to pay their disability premiums, making their disability incomes tax free.

There remain two equally effective, inexpensive measures companies can take, starting with gays, starting with people with disabilities and HIV.

The first is clarity. Next to security, clarity is valued by the socially compromised and the seriously ill. This starts by making commitments and operating philosophies concrete and explicit. Most people forgive the legal need for weasel words in employee communications; what they don't forgive is corporations who choose to be deaf, dumb and mute. Communication can often act doubly as both recognition as well as a valuable management tool.

The second is financial education. When I helped found the first nonprofit foundation for financial education for the seriously ill last year, I was astounded that no one had done this before. Yet nowhere are people systematically educated to keep themselves afloat financially when they face serious illness. This is why I not only educate people with serious illness one-on-one but through writing and in groups.

Yet it is rare indeed to find employers who offer financial education to their employees. Offering just a paycheck shortchanges both the employee and the employer. Both benefit when the employee is taught how to best use what the company offers.

Employers have unique leverage, incentives, location and time to educate employees to work more effectively; that's why much of today's education occurs at the worksite not in schoolrooms. These same factors can be deployed to maximize personal productivity through respect and appreciation of employee diversity. Now they can prevent illness and improve personal finances, doing well by doing good. These four educational areas could well be the most inexpensive and most valuable benefits employers have to offer. We have the educational technology; let's position and leverage it at the right delivery point--the workplace; and let's show that education can benefit everyone.