Administration August 15, 2011

CalPERS Earmarks up to $200 Million for New Emerging Managers Program

August 15, 2011 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) has approved a new $200 million program for emerging real estate managers.

 

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According to a press release, the program has been approved for real estate managers who have less than $1 billion of assets under management.  The term of the new Emerging Manager Program for Real Estate will be five years, though CalPERS will review the progress and outcome of the program after two years.

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“Our top goal is to achieve appropriate risk-adjusted earnings,” said Rob Feckner, CalPERS Board President. “We also hope to find investment opportunities in underserved sectors for sound long-term returns and to increase diversity among our pool of real estate investment managers.”

According to the announcement, CalPERS will seek managers who have no more than three prior commingled funds or separate account investment vehicles. “The pension fund will select from its current team of seasoned successful investment managers to oversee the selection of talented new managers, provide mentoring, and back office support,” according to a press release. The program will focus on managers and assets in urban California markets.

Approximately 20 to 50 firms are in the universe of emerging managers who might qualify for the new program, according to Crosswater Realty Advisors, which assisted CalPERS in research, design and development of the Emerging Manager Program.

CalPERS is the nation’s largest public pension fund with approximately $224 billion in market assets. 

Investment proposals can be submitted at http://www.calpers.ca.gov/index.jsp?bc=/investments/investment-proposals.xml 

Benefits August 15, 2011

Study Finds Telecommuters More Ethical

August 15, 2011 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – In a survey of more than 200 firms, the Ethisphere Institute and Jones Lang LaSalle found employees who work from home commit less misconduct on the job than peers who head into the office each day
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According to Dow Jones News, 68% of respondents indicated they allow their employees to work from home on a regular basis. Eleven percent said work-from-home employees had committed ethics violations in the past two years, but 36% reported visible ethics violations in employees who don’t work from home regularly, and 43% reported non-visible violations for this group, such as expense account fraud, bribery, or social media misuse.   

“You can see why someone working from home wouldn’t get embroiled in some of the things that lead to trouble,” said Mark Ohringer, executive vice president and global general counsel for Jones Lang LaSalle, a real-estate services firm, according to the news report. For example, the opportunity to tell offensive jokes or harass people diminishes when someone isn’t in the office, he said.   

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Alex Brigham, executive director at the Ethisphere Institute, a research organization dedicated to matters of business ethics, corporate social responsibility, anticorruption and sustainability, said it may be the employee’s eagerness to maintain his or her work-from-home privilege that makes that person extra careful to comply with a company’s ethics policy.   

“In terms of the privilege of working from home, they didn’t want to put it at risk because they didn’t want to get called back into the office,” Brigham said.  

There’s also the thinking that if an employer trusts an employee to work out of sight of the manager, that employee is apt to be more conscientious about following the rules.   

“Empowering people and treating them like professionals and adults leads to better behavior. If they feel like they’re being treated well and trusted, that’s the treatment they give back to the company,” Ohringer added.

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