Employee Engagement
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Study Touts the Benefits of Internal Social Networking Sites
A recent study conducted by Baylor University found that developing an internal social networking site could help a company acclimate its new hires into the corporate culture, improve employees' morale and reduce turnover rates.
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No Joke: Stand-Up Comedy Training for Employees Can Improve Workplace Culture
Infusing comedy into workplace culture has the potential to improve employee communication skills, build a tight-knit team of employees and lower turnover rate.
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Catalysts of Creative Destruction
Despite the hype about private equity and job loss, they have little net effect on employment levels.
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Private Equity Turns and Burns … Its Past
While horror stories exist, in some cases private equity takeovers can lead to healthy updates to management methods and practices.
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Democrats and Republicans Agree—Workplace Flexibility Key to Job Satisfaction
Congressional staff members and 25 members of Congress participated in a SHRM survey, which found that 55 percent feel that ‘flexibility to balance work and life issues’ is very important, but only 26 percent are very satisfied with the flexibility in their own workplace.
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Report: People Management Propels Profits
A technology firm and a supermarket chain are among companies that validate a recent report that found that proper management techniques push companies from good to great.
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Happy Holiday: More Executives Are Taking Vacation
Completely unplugging from the office is still a challenge, although about 50 percent of CFOs in a recent survey said they didn't check in while checked out.
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Don’t Worry If Your Workers Tweet This Story Out, SilkRoad Executive Says
Of the employees surveyed by talent management software-maker SilkRoad, 43 percent worked for organizations that allowed total access to social media, 24 percent said access was monitored, and 16 percent had social media access blocked by their employer.
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Chicago Teachers Strike Could Offer a Lesson on Performance Evaluations
Performance evaluation “is a nationwide issue—and it's an issue that is not going away,” said Norm Solomon, a professor of management at Fairfield University in Connecticut. “I don't think anybody should be surprised that this issue is coming to the fore.
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Most Employees Say Benefits Enrollment Information Lacking: Survey
Fifty-two percent of workers indicated their employers have not distributed any communication regarding upcoming open enrollment periods. Thirty-nine percent said they were only somewhat prepared for open enrollments, while 26 percent said they were unprepared or very unprepared.
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Companies Can Name Their Stars but Struggle to Retain Them
Just 76 percent of organizations surveyed say they are successful at retaining star talent yet stubbornly high unemployment has lulled companies into believing they no longer need to be aggressive in recruiting and retention, according to a Sibson study.
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Creating a New Contingent Culture
Why giving free agents an 'arms-length embrace' is the way forward.
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Four Common Myths About Temporary Workers and Contractors
In July 2010, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission settled a race and sex discrimination case against a Cleveland-area temporary agency.
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Why Now for the ‘Free-Agent Nation’?
Using temporary workers at the start of a recovery is nothing new. But other factors behind the contingent expansion are less tied to the business cycle. These include cost-savings.
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Working With Contingents
You can have the best, brightest and most flexible workforce if you consider these suggestions for working with contingents. These tips will help you become a “nonemployer of choice.”
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Etching Out a Creative Culture
To connect with its employees and improve engagement, DreamWorks introduced initiatives that range from paying for the personalization of workspaces to sending daily updates from the CEO.
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Joplin, Missouri, One Year Later: Lessons Learned after a Tornado
The journey from ruin to rebirth involves lessons in taking care of employees, operating a store amid chaos and excelling at customer service despite having no nice building to work in.
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Broken Engagement? New Survey Reveals Employees Still Not Feeling the Love
Companies may measure it, but shared accountability for engagement remains an exception, not the norm, according to a July global workforce study of 32,000 workers by New York-based consultancy Towers Watson.
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Radio Flyer Relishes Rolling Out Engaged Workers
Emphasizing engagement has helped the privately owned company post double-digit revenue growth each year from 2004 through 2011.
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In Search of a Standard Measure of Talent
Under SHRM's draft human capital metrics standard, companies would report on topics including spending on training and development, ability to retain talent, leadership quality and employee engagement.
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New Push for Employee Recognition May Have Broader Implications
Two new surveys point toward executives realizing that the random gift card, or company watch and pin for years of service, do little to motivate behavior.
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How to Build a Performance Management Program
Begin by defining role-based competencies and behaviors for every employee so they know exactly what is expected of them. These competencies should include the five or six qualities that define success for every member of the organization.
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Employee Bonuses Driven By Customer Loyalty at General Motors
For 2012, salaried workers in North America will get a year-end bonus if GM hits an internal customer-retention goal. But it is inside GM's 650-person field sales division that the customer-centric pay structure probably reflects the most striking departure from GM's past.
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The Golden Egg of Incentive Pay Policies Is an Elusive Bird
Even with the best-designed programs, companies face challenges in making incentive and merit-pay programs effective in today's economy.
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Compensation Plan Helps Insurance Firm Cash In
The practices can be time-consuming and arduous to implement, but the time taken to focus on talent management has paid off in ConnectiCare's overall success, an executive says.
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Successful Wellness Programs Hinge on Emotional Well-Being
A recent study notes that companies should pursue the development of a workplace culture where employees are supported for their health and well-being.
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Cultivating a Virtual Culture
Startups operating as virtual enterprises from Day One, companies sending employees home to telecommute, and businesses hiring more mobile workers are changing the conventional wisdom about how to create corporate culture.
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Stir in Your Own Ingredients to Create the Best Virtual Culture Recipe
Consultant Mary Sobon says these ingredients are key to a healthy corporate culture with large populations of virtual employees.
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Selling Cars Online Is More than a Typical Sales Job
Moving from the showroom to the Internet desk can be a tough transition for a salesperson. Internet car sales require a different skill set from showroom car sales. But if a salesperson succeeds, the payoff is sizable.
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Employers Adding Automatic Enrollment to DC Plans: Aon Hewitt
Under automatic enrollment, employees who don't respond to participation notices are enrolled automatically in a plan unless they notify their employers that they want to opt out.
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For Young Entrepreneurs, It's All Work, All Play—and It's All Good
Developing ideas is a 24/7 hobby for them, which might explain why they enjoy one another's company so much.
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How Big Is Your Year-End Bonus?
Nothing says more about China's booming auto market than the generous bonus given by the FAW-Volkswagen Automotive Co. The joint venture carmaker awarded its employees with a bonus that equals to 27 months of salary. On top of that, employees also received double salary for eight months this year.
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Today's Workforce—Pressed and Stressed
While politicians and pundits fret about unemployment and underemployment rates, growing numbers of employees are under pressure to do more. The resulting “work-more economy” threatens not just workers' sanity but companies' long-term success.
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EAPs: First Responders in a ‘Work-More Economy’
Employee assistance providers say they continue to see a continued spike in employee calls for help in coping with added work pressures.
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Worker ‘Gas Tanks’ Close to Empty
Scholars say employees have a reservoir of physical and psychological resources for fueling their work contributions—and those tanks are running low.
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Perhaps Your Workers Are Entitled to New Titles
A promotion can do a lot to make up for the longer hours and extra duties that many workers have wrestled with in the past couple of years. But firms often fail to see where employees who are learning on the job might fit into new roles.
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Democracy at Work: 5 Questions With Traci Fenton, Founder and CEO of WorldBlu
Many people like to keep politics out of the workplace. But to Traci Fenton, what workplaces badly need is the infusion of a political idea: democracy.
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Effective Talent Assessment Starts (and Ends) With Leadership
A bad hiring decision can cost a company more than 1.5 times the mis-hire's salary, depending on the level of the role. With the right assessment, businesses can avoid this cost.
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Special Report on Talent Management: A Resilient Bunch
Some employers, such as humanitarian organization World Vision, above, provide support and resiliency training to workers whose job is dealing with crisis situations.
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Book Excerpt: Good Company
The authors of the new book say employer goodness requires an inspiring purpose to buoy an organization during tough times.
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Patagonia Fills Payroll With People Who Are Passionate
Perennially recognized as a good workplace for mothers, the California company also has earned a reputation for employee loyalty at a time when other apparel retailers commonly see turnover of more than 100 percent annually.
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Aon's Premier Partnership Kicks Up Camaraderie
Employees from acquired companies find ways to unite with one another through their affiliation with the English soccer club. The partnership added a new dimension in October with ‘Pass It On,' an employment and client engagement initiative.
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Where Is Pay Rising? Try Accounting, Finance, IT
Employees in these highly credentialed fields will see an average 3.5 percent pay hike next year, according to staffing firm Robert Half. ‘There is a drought of highly skilled people,' says a recruiter.
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Workers OK With Their Job but Seek Security, Communication
SHRM’s 2011 Employee Job Satisfaction Survey shows that 83 percent of 600 randomly selected employees are satisfied with their current job.
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Investing in Employees
Despite a tough, volatile economy, 10 small to midsize companies have been able to run successful businesses while bringing stability to employees through strong benefits programs.
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Trader Scandal May Hamstring UBS' Recruiting
The $2.3 billion loss the London-based trader allegedly managed to accumulate will make things difficult for the bank's wealth management business, recruiters said.
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No Perfect Fit
Outfitting workers with well-suited age, ethnic benefits requires tailoring.
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The Last Word Cultural Awareness
Many people yearn to belong to an organization whose principles they share and can embrace in their daily work. And if corporate stewards tend the culture well, they can count on an engaged and committed workforce for many years to come.
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Tips for Talent Management in the Social Media Realm
While cash incentives are still king in the tech scene, more and more companies are turning to social media as a tool to source and recruit talent.
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Out of Site: Remote Possibilities
More employers are benefiting from a mobile workforce through improved productivity, increased employee satisfaction and reduced costs, but they also face new management challenges.
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Companies Focus Their Attention on Flexibility
To limit contingent staffing, some companies are making permanent employees more agile.
