Monday, August 31, 2009

Employment branding

Employment branding is a strategic and marketing effort designed to make an organization appealing as a place to work. The targeted marketing effort attempts to shape the perceptions of potential employees, current employees and the public. Successful employment branding should reduce hiring costs and ease the hiring process.
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Sunday, August 30, 2009

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is a technique that uses quantitative or qualitative data to make comparisons between different organizations or different sections of organizations. Benchmarking is usually treated as a continuous process in which organizations periodically measure, challenge, and improve their practices.
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Saturday, August 29, 2009

ZoomInfo.com

ZoomInfo.com is a summarization search engine that delivers comprehensive information on over thirty million business professionals and two million companies across many industries. ZoomInfo finds and extracts information from Web sites, press releases, electronic news services and SEC filings, and summarizes the information into a comprehensive, searchable format.
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Friday, August 28, 2009

Fantasy football

During the NFL season, nearly 37 million people will spend about fifty minutes a week at work managing their fantasy football teams, according to a survey by outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. The survey estimates that companies will lose as much as $1.1 billion a week in lost productivity.
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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Higher education costs

Over the past forty years, higher education costs have increased about 7.2 percent per year, versus the overall inflation rate of 4.4 percent. College costs are expected to increase on average about 7 to 8 percent per year over the next decade. Tuition increases at public colleges and universities will outpace tuition increases at private colleges and universities.
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Employee Benefit News

Employee Benefit News has been a top selling publication serving the benefits industry since 1987. Employee Benefit News is dedicated to helping benefit providers, broker/consultants, plan sponsors and employees. The magazine provides useful and comprehensive coverage of the ever-changing business of employee benefits.
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Severance pay

Severance pay amounts may have peaked in 1999 when employers were giving laid off workers an average of twenty-four weeks of pay, according to a study by finance publisher Kiplinger. The study observed that the decline was a result of employees changing jobs more frequently than in previous years, since severance pay is based on the length of employment.
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Monday, August 24, 2009

How to deliver bad news

Medical Doctor Robert Buckman consults businesspeople, including executives at IBM, Andersen Consulting, and Upjohn, on how to deliver bad news. As stated in an article by FastCompany, Buckman suggests communicating bad news by engaging and listening, maintaining emotions, and ending with summary: review the message, identify a plan, and agree on a "contract" for the next contact.
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Sunday, August 23, 2009

Lunch breaks

There is no federal law or mandate that requires an employer to give workers lunch breaks or rest periods, although most companies allow and encourage them. Studies have found up to 58 percent of American workers skip their lunch break. Health and workplace experts suggest that this practice ultimately leads to worker burnout and diminished productivity.
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Saturday, August 22, 2009

The most popular college major

According to data collected and compiled by the Princeton Review, the most popular college major in the U.S. is business administration and management. The rest of the ten most popular majors in the U.S. are psychology, elementary education, biology, nursing, education, English, communications, computer science, and political science.
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Friday, August 21, 2009

Performance reviews

A recent survey of more than 2,000 full-time employees by Adecco Staffing of North America found that less than half of workers say managers take performance reviews seriously, and even fewer say they receive constructive feedback.
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Thursday, August 20, 2009

401(k) auto enrollment

Some organizations enroll all employees into their company sponsored 401(k) plans. According to a recent Hewitt Associates survey of retirement and savings habits, 401(k) plan participation is fourteen percentage points higher in companies where auto enrollment features are in place. The largest increases in participation were found among the plans younger workers.
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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

J.F. Smucker

J.F. Smucker, maker of jams and food products for over one-hundred years, routinely makes Fortune magazine's annual list of best companies to work for by adhering to its basic beliefs of quality, people, ethics, growth, and independence. An exceptional perk offered by Smucker includes 100% education tuition reimbursement with no limit.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Commuting

According to the U.S. Census, Americans spend more than one-hundred hours commuting to work each year, with an average daily commute taking about 24.3 minutes. New York, Chicago, and Newark, New Jersey recorded the nation's highest average commute times. The lowest average commute times occurred in Corpus Christi, Texas, Wichita, Kansas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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Monday, August 17, 2009

The HR Manager

The HR Manager is a mid-level position responsible for overseeing human resources activities and policies according to executive level direction. They supervise human resources staff as well as control compensation and benefits, employee relations, staffing, training, safety, labor relations, and employment records.
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Sunday, August 16, 2009

HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was enacted by U.S. Congress in 1996. HIPAA specifies national standards to protect individuals' medical records and other personal health information. HIPAA also regulates the security of health information, national standards for electronic healthcare transactions, and national identifiers for providers, health plans and employers.
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Saturday, August 15, 2009

How to Measure Human Resource Management

Barbara Davison's book "How to Measure Human Resource Management" provides a proven method for accurately measuring the productivity of HR functions. This classic HR book offers a practical how-to guide for measuring intellectual capital, the effectiveness of the HR Web site, employee handbook, retirement and benefits information, and the impacts of HR call centers and service centers.
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Friday, August 14, 2009

Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a rigorous and disciplined methodology that utilizes data and statistical analysis to measure and improve a company's operational performance, practices and systems. Six Sigma was pioneered by Motorola in the mid-1980s and has spread to many other organizations. The term literally translates into 3.4 defects per million or 99.9997%.
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Thursday, August 13, 2009

IPMA-HR

The International Public Management Association for Human Resources (IPMA-HR) represents the interests of over 7,500 HR professionals at the Federal, state and local levels of government. Founded in 1906, IPMA-HR provides information and assistance to help HR professionals increase their job performance and overall agency function by providing cost effective products, services and educational opportunities.
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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Executive email

Executives are relying less on the telephone and face-to-face meetings and more on e-mail for communicating at work. According to an OfficeTeam survey of 150 senior executives at the nation's 1,000 largest companies, 71 percent listed e-mail as their most common form of dialogue at work, compared with 27 percent five years ago.
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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Illegal job interview questions

The following are examples of the most commonly asked illegal job interview questions. Are you married? Do you have children? How old are you? Did you graduate from high school or college? Have you ever been arrested? How much do you weigh? What country are you from? Are you a U.S. citizen? What is your native language? Are you handicapped?
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Monday, August 10, 2009

Credit unions

Credit union affiliation is available to most organizations and can provide an easy, no-cost benefit for employees. Credit unions provide traditional banking products -- checking and savings accounts, credit cards, mortgages, and consumer loans -- usually with better rates and less service fees. Employers with at least 3,000 employees may form their own credit union.
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Sunday, August 9, 2009

National Football League draft picks

All National Football League draft picks take the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT) as part of the annual pre-draft combine. The Dallas Cowboys were the first NFL team to use the WPT in the early 1970s. Originally developed in 1937, the WPT test is popular because it provides quick, easy and accurate information about a job candidate's intelligence.
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Saturday, August 8, 2009

John F. Kennedy

“Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.” - John F. Kennedy.
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Friday, August 7, 2009

Resume fibs

Experts estimate that 10 to 30 percent of job seekers have lied or embellished their resumes to improve their hiring chances. According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the most common resume fibs used by job seekers include enhancements in education, degree and job title, over-stated compensation, false reasons for leaving a previous job, and inflated accomplishments.
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Thursday, August 6, 2009

Union membership

According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 12% of U.S. workers were union members in 2005, down from a high of nearly 20% in 1983. The states with the highest rates of union membership were New York, Hawaii, Alaska, Michigan and New Jersey. The lowest rates of union membership were recorded in South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Virginia and Utah.
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Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Design a training program

The four basic steps to effectively design a training program include the following. Define the training needs and requirements. Define the target audience to receive training. Develop the content to be used for training. Establish the goals to be achieved from training.
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Tuesday, August 4, 2009

KSAO

KSAO stands for Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other characteristics. This acronym is commonly used by human resources and recruiting professionals to describe the characteristics of a person as it relates to job performance and requirements.
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Monday, August 3, 2009

HR Quote of the Day

A commonly used job evaluation method is the paired comparison evaluation system. The paired comparison system compares each job within a company with every other job within the company. A job's resulting score is determined from the comparisons. The jobs are then ranked by score.
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Sunday, August 2, 2009

Three basic benefits

Every legal worker in the U.S. is entitled by federal law to three basic benefits. Workers' compensation provides insurance for work-related injuries or death. Social security provides retirement income and disability coverage for workers and their dependents. Unemployment insurance provides payments for a period of time presumably long enough to allow workers to find new jobs.
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Saturday, August 1, 2009

Employee turnover

Employee turnover is caused by external and internal factors. External influences include local economic conditions and labor market conditions. Internal causes include such things as non-competitive compensation, high stress, poor working conditions, monotony, sub-par supervision, dysfunctional job fit, inadequate training, poor communications, and loose organization practices.
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