June 6th, 2007
Salary Search is a new resource to determine the full range of salaries a job position is commanding – all the way from the top 10th to the bottom 10th percentile. Offered by the Compensation wing of Business and Legal Reports (BLR), it currently offers information on 2400 job titles.
“We have been collecting compensation information from thousands of companies each year for decades,” says BLR’s founder and CEO Robert L. Brady, “But previously we issued this data only in a lengthy report exclusively for employers. SalarySearch.com is a logical new use of this massive database.”
An employer or employee can receive one free salary report.
“This information helps employers know they’re paying competitively so they can acquire and retain the best talent, but without overpaying,” notes Baker. “Meanwhile, jobseekers and current employees know what to ask in job applications, performance reviews, and salary increase discussions. So when the boss says, ‘what are you looking for?,’ workers can back up their answer with comparative data.”
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June 4th, 2007
A preliminary report issued by the Conference Board has found that non-profits – whose growth is currently outpacing the rest of the economy – will likely be hit hard by the talent shortage just when it needs talent the most.
The demographic of the retiring baby-boomers affects almost all sectors, but executive-level and leadership skill shortages are already disproportionately affecting service sectors such as healthcare and social services. As non-profits grow, there are fewer skilled people to step up to the plate.
The Conference Board report suggests that non-profits need to invest more than they have in human resource management, and in developing younger leaders.
We would add that in addition to internal professional development, non-profits also need tools to identify talent from the start – and to employ effective strategies to retain the talent that they have developed.
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May 29th, 2007
An amusing spoof article on workforce trends at The Spoof:
A six-year study by industrial psychologists, the first of its kind, reveals that inspirational posters in company cafeterias and employee lounges cause depression among workers and may trigger homicidal rages.
…
Inspirational posters in the workplace became popular in the 80’s as globalization first began to exert downward pressure on U.S. wages and benefits. “You don’t need them if you’re having a layoff because then people are motivated by fear,” says Flynn. “It’s when you’re grinding people down with nothing but a cost-of-living increase that you need to buck their spirits up.”
The posters lost some of their effectiveness as they became a common fixture in plants and offices across the country, forcing designers to refine their message. “‘Hang in there, baby!’ was a classic in its time,” says Carole Connolly of Workplace Solutions, a Cleveland benefits consulting firm, referring to a widely-used posting depicting a kitten clinging desperately to a tree limb. “We refocus that image for particular situations, such as loss of health insurance, so people are thankful they still have a job at all.”
The U.S. Postal Service, which has experienced some of the worst workplace violence in American history, has gone so far as to ban inspirational posters altogether. …
Copyright 2007, Con Chapman
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May 29th, 2007
Depression has the single largest negative effect on productivity and healthcare costs, according to a study conducted by pharmaceutical company Eli Lily. This effect is magnified when depression is accompanied by fatigue, sleep problems, anxiety, and other co-factors.
Among the most prevalent physical and mental conditions, depression had the largest negative effect on overall work performance, followed by fatigue, anxiety, chronic sleeping problems, obesity. Painful conditions also had large effects. However, when the effect of each condition was examined while controlling for comorbid depression, the independent effect of the condition was diminished. This suggests that the other conditions examined in this study have their biggest impact on work performance when they occur with depression.
At one of the companies, depression in the absence of anxiety or fatigue/sleep disturbance was associated with a 3.5 percent reduction in the presenteeism score, equivalent to seven to eight full-time workdays per year. Depression with anxiety or fatigue/sleep disturbance was associated with larger negative effects (6-8 percent reduction in average presenteeism score), and having depression with both anxiety and fatigue/sleep problems was associated with a 13.2 percent reduction.
Employees experiencing depression had average annual costs in excess of both employer sample averages ($4,132 and $3,504 compared to $3,286 and 2,653, respectively). Employees who reported experiencing fatigue or sleep problems with depression had significantly higher average annual costs than those with depression alone ($6,665 and $5,306). (All results noted above statistically significant, p<0.05). Although having anxiety with depression was associated with lower rating of work performance, direct healthcare costs were not significantly different from costs of employees with depression alone.
We have a vague idea of the solutions that Eli Lily might recommend.
I wonder how they would have ruled other factors (workplace conflicts, caregiving commitments, other medical conditions, etc.) to make the claim that depression affects productivity and healthcare costs more than anything else?
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May 28th, 2007
One reason China is likely to overtake the U.S. as the world’s most important country in this century is that China puts more effort into building human capital than we do.
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May 24th, 2007
ISR polled 2,157 male senior leaders and 731 female senior leaders in 11 multinational firms in various industries and found that the factors that engage senior organizational leaders differ by gender.
The top engagement driver for both genders is knowing that the leadership was effective – 24% of female leaders and 26% of male leaders responded accordingly.
However, they found that female senior leaders are more concerned about “how business success is accomplished,” while their male counterparts show more concern with “personal advancement” (Hold your laughter).
Priorities differed among the other top engagement factors surveyed as well.
For female senior leaders, other top engagement drivers are the quality of relationships in the workplace, organizational support for empowerment, career growth opportunities, the quality of supervision and customer focus.
Male senior leaders were most engaged by opportunities to grow their careers, supervisory quality, rewards and the strategic direction of the organization.
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May 18th, 2007
We’ve installed the new Sphere Related Content WordPress Plugin. It was very simple to install and customize.
Sphere connects news and blogs.
We already had a Sphere-it button in our Sociable links (those little icons where you can Sphere-it, Digg-it, Technorati-it, or whatever you like).
The new plug finds related content to your post in the Sphere network of other blog posts, as well as media articles.
If you click on the icon at the bottom of each post, you will see a pop-up window that shows related content.
It’s very fun, and very useful. We give it high ratings, top kudos, an enthusiastic woo-hoo, and a somewhat furtive hurray!
The Sphere blog mentioned Data Dome as a favorite new partner site – thank you!
Get the Sphere Related Content Plugin here.
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May 18th, 2007
Art Schoeck was a featured speaker at the 2007 Atlanta HR Star conference, held at the Georgia World Congress Center on May 2.
Predicting Turnover: How to Keep Your Best From Leaving
Arthur G. Schoeck
President, Data Dome, Inc.
Employees are showing less loyalty and less patience for their employers. In addition to the more aggressive recruiting efforts of other companies, employees now have easy access to information about what positions are available in their industries. Coupled with a fast-approaching drain of skilled workers that is looming on the horizon, what can you do to proactively attract and retain talent? Some companies play a “hit or miss game” to try to retain their most talented workers, but now is the time to gain a real competitive edge with employee loyalty and engagement. In this session, you will learn exactly how to determine who your best people really are, why they would leave, and what you can do about it. Topics include:
- Why your best employees may leave.
- Why current practices like exit interviews and certain reward systems are not working.
- How current workforce trends impact turnover.
- How to uncover the bad news you can’t afford not to know.
Data Dome Inc. was also a featured exhibitor at the conference. Qualified participants at the conference received a valuable behavioral style assessment from Data Dome, so that they could see its accuracy and applicability for themselves. We donated a complimentary Career Planning assessment (with a debriefing session) for the end-of-conference giveaway.
Art, Heidi, Ralph and Amanda enjoyed meeting with HR professionals and other HR resource vendors at the conference. This is the second year of our participation, and we look forward to future HR Star conferences!
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May 17th, 2007
Last Friday, we installed Zone Alarm Security Suite 3 on one of our workstation computers. During the install I had added our network as “trusted” but could no longer connect. On restart, the computer would no longer boot up. It would get as far as trying to find a network connection, then the blue screen of death flashed by – too quickly to read the error message – and the computer restarted itself.
It did not take long to realize that whatever had gone wrong was beyond my capability to find, much less fix. I checked the forums and support FAQs and so on, and experimented with a number of possible solutions, but nothing worked.
Rather than wasting more work time on the problem, I recommended that we get outside technical help. Consumer Reports had ranked Geek Squad as providing better tech support than any manufacturer but Apple, so we decided to give them a try.
We called a local branch, and left a voice mail message. No response.
After a couple of hours, we visited the Geek Squad web site to request an “agent dispatch” to “our coordinates” but their contact page form was broken. What?
On the second call to the local branch again, someone answered, but only to notify us that they were not authorized to schedule anyone to come to our location. It had to be arranged at the central 800 number. Right.
At the 800 central command post, we were told that all their systems were down. Systems down at Geek Squad? Hmmm.
I elicited a promise from the agent that he would call us back personally to schedule an appointment just as soon as the systems were back up. He dutifully took down our details.
It’s now Tuesday, and no-one from Geek Squad ever called or even emailed us.
Meanwhile, the support ticket that I submitted at Zone Alarm tech support came back (it took 3 days, but that includes the weekend). Their message wasn’t very helpful. The solutions they offered had been tried and were unsuccessful. My reply didn’t append properly to the support ticket. Unfortunately, we purchased a 3-license version of the Security Suite from Zone Alarm – intending to put it on three computers. I have submitted a refund request.
Fortunately for us, our computer “guru” friend made himself available over the weekend. He worked on it for several hours. He did not find a workable solution either, which actually made me feel a bit better about my inability to find or fix the problem. He was able to uninstall the program, and on his advice we have decided to install a different anti-virus solution for that machine.
So, what happened to Geek Squad?
Centralized systems were down and there was no return call or email that day, not even to notify us about the status of our request? Four days later, they still haven’t been in touch.
You would think that “geeks” would have a plan B.
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May 14th, 2007
Fully one-half of global companies report that less than half of the sales team achieves its sales targets, according to the 2007 TAS Index Global Sales Effectiveness Benchmark Study.
Sales management and sales reps have widely differing perspectives on what’s working and what’s broken.
- 72% of sales managers believe that their sales process is well defined, but only 56% of sales reps believe this is so.
- 48% of sales managers think they spend their time coaching (not chasing the reps for updates), while just 34% of reps agree.
- On the other hand, 58% of reps believe they close deals when originally forecasted, while only 46% of managers agree.
- 53% of reps believe they are effective at maximizing return from existing accounts, versus only 42% of managers.
Salespeople employing sales methodologies more than half the time perform much better than those who don’t. Salesforce turnover is also lower – by 39% – when methodology usage is high.
The study notes that more American salespeople lack deal-closing skills compared to their European and Asian counterparts, but are better at managing the sales cycle.
Americans seem to have better alignment with marketing, overall company strategies, and are better at describing the value a company has to offer.
Sales Assessments:
- Advanced DISC Behavioral Style Analysis for Sales – Describes the sales person’s natural sales style (what their natural preferences are for the type of product, how to handle sales presentations, and how to close and service) and their adapted style (how they change their behaviors in response to perceptions of what it takes to succeed in their current environment). It outlines their behavioral strengths and weaknesses as a salesperson, and provides adaptive strategies for selling to different styles.
- Sales Strategy Index – Measures salespersons in 7 critical skill scales for the successful execution of the sales-specific body of knowledge.
- SalesMax – Sales Max examines the 3 areas that affect successful selling – sales personality, knowledge and motivations. SalesMax has been designed and validated to consistently identify candidates with superior sales potential. Candidates who score “BEST” on SalesMax achieve, on average, over 95% of their sales targets and are rated as “top” or “superior” performers by their employers. Selection and development versions are available.
- Assess Expert System – Top-notch tool for behavioral style, thinking style, work style, motivations and intellectual abilities. Selection, development, and 360-degree feedback versions are available.
- Select Pre-Employment Screening System – Identifies customer service, call center and entry-level sales/service providers who have stable work-related personality characteristics and productive work behaviors.
Call Data Dome at 404-814-0379 for your complimentary needs consultation.
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