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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m | J a n u a r y 2 0 2 0 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 9 BEYOND THE HEADLINES A game-changing gi for Yale SOM No secrets: 'Google is the enemy,' Frehse told employers. T o an institution with a $30 bil- lion endowment, $100 million may seem like chump change. But it's not. In fact, the $100 million donation from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation to the Yale School of Management is a potential game-changer. e purpose of the Broads' gi, announced in early December, is to develop teaching and research programs to strengthen the leader- ship of the nation's public-educa- tion system. e gi will enable the establish- ment of the Broad Center at Yale SOM. A nonprofit that recruits and trains educators for the mission of re- shaping urban public school systems — the Broad Center has operated out of Los Angeles, where the Broads live, for the past two decades. e donation will also fund a tuition-free master's degree program for budding education leaders and facilitate the creation of both a leadership training program and a research initiative. SOM Dean Kerwin Charles announced the donation in a Dec. 5 letter to the SOM community. "I am confident that the center's ambitions will also resonate with most of [the student body], given the school's distinctive aspiration since its founding to educate leaders for all sectors — public, private, nonprofit — and the animating belief shared by us all that leaders who attack problems with analytical rigor, energy and caring have profound impact on society," Charles wrote. Charles' words may have been chosen with a nod to history. When Yale decided to join the business-school sweepstakes in the early 1970s, the university deliberately set out to create a model outside the Wharton/ Harvard mold. Instead of training Brooks Brothers-clad, wingtip- shod princelings for Wall Street, SOM (originally an acronym for the Yale School of Organization & Management) offered not a standard MBA sheepskin, but an MPPA (master's in public & private management) for a new breed of business leader for the nonprofit and government sectors. at changed in the 1990s, as the school in many ways regressed to the biz-school mean (surrendering to the MBA standard in 1999). Now, in christening a new academic center with a mission to advance the cause of public schools — which are both in and of the government sector and non-profit — SOM has in a sense steered the ship full-circle back toward its original raison d'etre. n H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N M A N A G E M E N T When your workers become your boss T he combination of a booming economy and not enough workers to fuel the engine means that employees today have more economic power — and thus more leverage — than ever before. So concludes labor and opera- tions strategist John Frehse, senior managing director for Ankura, a New York-based management con- sulting firm with offices worldwide. Frehse presented a talk entitled "e Future of Work: Hiring & Retaining Great Employees in a Boom-or-Bust Economy" at the 2019 Manufacturing Summit recently at the Trumbull Marriott. e event, which drew some 250 manufacturers from across the state, was presented by the Con- necticut Business & Industry Asso- ciation and the Connecticut State Technology Extension Program (ConnSTEP). And, as a consequence of re- cord-low unemployment, skilled and experienced employees today wield economic power unmatched in generations. "You guys are in a lot of trouble," Frehse told his audience, most of them employers. Because high-value workers are at a premium, "Hotels used to care about occupancy rates," he observed. "Now they care about finding maids to clean the rooms." e power workers wield today stems not just from their relative scarcity, but also due to their un- precedented access to information, Frehse said — especially informa- tion about prospective employers. "Google is the enemy," said Fre- hse, since workers now can access virtually unlimited information about prospective employers — placing unprecedented pressure on employers to use candor about describing their companies and what it's like to work there. "It's not enough to say you have a great culture," Frehse said, "it's another to actually have a great culture." Because of that, he urged employers above all to "Tell the truth." If companies withhold information, distort facts or outright lie, "Your employees will find information elsewhere." Sometimes sharing information about sensitive subjects such as compensation can actually benefit employers. Frehse cited a survey from Payscale.com revealing that more than a third (35 percent) of workers who were paid above the market for equivalent responsibil- ities believed they were actually being paid less. Frehse said that the qualities most valued by employees in count- less worker surveys — feeling val- ued, having access to information and input into important decisions — cost employers nothing. n SOM's new $100 million Broad Center will train leaders for public education.

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