Author: Site Staff

During the past six months, 18,000 Cingular Wireless employees have joined the Communication Workers of America union. In the most recent quarter, Cingular achieved the best financial results in its history.

Lew Walker, Cingular vice president of human resources for operations and labor, believes there’s a connection between the two. The company remained neutral while a majority of workers authorized union representation by signing cards. The result, according to the company, is engaged employees who are focused on customer service and building the Cingular network rather than nursing grudges against management.

“We view the CWA as a strategic partner,” Walker said at an event at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C., think tank, on May 18. “What’s good for Cingular is good for CWA.”

That attitude undergirds negotiations on wages, benefits and work rules, according to Walker.

“They allow a contract to go out that allows us to be competitive,” he says of the union.

He emphasized several times the fierce battles that are waged every day between competing wireless carriers. Cingular, with 39,000 employees in unions, is the only one that is organized.

In fact, before it was taken over by Cingular, AT&T Wireless waged a “viciously anti-union campaign that had a negative impact on its workforce,” says Jeff Rechenbach, executive vice president of the Communications Workers of America. Rechenbach sat two chairs down from Walker on the Washington panel.

The goodwill the union receives from Cingular may produce business results. The CWA has launched a campaign to market Cingular’s service.

“We’re trying to convince people to make the switch,” Rechenbach says. A Web site has been established that offers discounts for people who sign up with Cingular.

The Washington event took place in part to promote the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would enable workers to sign up for unions through a card-check process. Union elections are often conducted via secret ballot and overseen by the National Labor Relations Board.

Some businesses assert that card-check campaigns subject workers to coercion from unions, whose representatives force them to sign up in face-to-face meetings. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has launched a campaign to build support for a bill called the Secret Ballot Protection Act.

Unions too often ignore worker sentiment and focus on “what (they) can do to get the company to cave in,” says Michael Eastman, director of labor policy at the chamber. “We’d prefer to see the will of workers determine whether there’s a union, not a pressure campaign.”

Critics contend that secret balloting is undermined by employer intimidation and that workers who seek remedies through the NLRB have their cases bogged down in sclerotic legal proceedings.

“It is a deeply flawed system,” says Mary Beth Maxwell, executive director of American Rights at Work.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Companies that want to increase retention for their valuable overseas employees by shortening their assignments are quickly discovering a major stumbling block: Adequate short-term housing is difficult to come by.

Employers have been bedeviled by failed foreign assignments for years. Attrition among expatriates is more than twice the 10 percent rate in the general workforce, according to a survey by GMAC Global Relocation Services, based in Woodridge, Illinois. The “Global Relocation Trend Survey” polled 125 small and large companies.

Some 21 percent of expatriates leave their companies during an assignment, according to the study. The problem often lies with family matters, such as the strain of being separated from loved ones or having an accompanying spouse who becomes dissatisfied with the job prospects in their new country of residence.

And that’s why companies are trying to reduce the duration of those postings, according to Helen Sharman, vice president of client services at Saunders 1865, a U.K. relocation specialist. The new assignments may be more along the lines of six months rather than the conventional three- to five-year postings that require family relocations. The shorter assignments make it less psychologically taxing to take on the challenge of being an expatriate, Sharman says.

Companies may be willing to change their foreign assignments, but the market has yet to catch up with their needs, Sharman says. The shortage is particularly acute in burgeoning Asian business centers, such as Shanghai, China, Beijing and Mumbai, India.

Frustration with temporary housing overseas seems to be widespread. Some 71 percent of respondents in a recent Saunders survey said they were dissatisfied with accommodation arrangements for expatriates. The company polled 216 employers.

In many cases, the dissatisfaction is attributed to unmet promises, Sharman says. Difficulties can arise if an expat is offered accommodations in a central location but is instead placed on the outskirts of a city, or if an expat is told to expect certain amenities, like a cleaning service or high-speed Internet, but nothing of the sort is available.

Getting out of a temporary housing mishaps may prove to be a costly undertaking, particularly if a lease or contract has been signed. Depending on their size and needs, companies can protect their expatriate employees by dedicating a person to be responsible for vetting accommodations overseas, or by outsourcing the task.

“What is important,” Sharman says, “is making an expatriate’s international experience as positive as possible.”

—Gina Ruiz

Chinese manufacturers face many of the same obstacles—increased costs, quality breakdowns—that bedevil their American counterparts when they must quickly begin high-volume production of new products to meet fickle market demand.

Applying Japanese production efficiency techniques could help them cope. A group of Chinese plant managers recently turned to an American who used to work for Honda to teach them.

“The development of manufacturing is happening here faster than anywhere it has happened on planet Earth in history,” says Kevin Hop, a member of the Manufacturing Management and Technology Institute who traveled to Shanghai in March to conduct a seminar sponsored by consultancy JF Pearson.

As an engineer at U.S. Honda plants, Hop oversaw seven major model changes and became an expert in Japanese lean manufacturing methods. In Shanghai, he introduced his 34 Chinese students to the Japanese way of eliminating waste, analyzing and solving problems, sharing information, communicating succinctly and developing a learning culture.

Chinese manufacturing operations have to improve in an area in which the United States and Japan excel—mass manufacturing of new products. The skill is particularly important for the China operations of the companies represented at the Shanghai seminar—Logitech, Ericsson, Emerson, General Motors, Honda and the soon–to-be-merged Lucent and Alcatel, among others.

If Motorola promises a new cell phone to the global market, it can’t be held up by production problems in China. “We’ve all become addicted to new products,” Hop says. “It’s pushing everyone in the world to become quicker.”

That atmosphere is creating workforce pressure for Chinese manufacturers. “Our research team in Suzhou is pretty young. We are just accumulating the experience,” says Jonas Chen, large-program manager at Emerson Climate Technologies in Suzhou. The city is located 50 miles southwest of Shanghai.

The area between Shanghai and Suzhou is a seamless strip of industrialization. Only cities and slivers of farmland break the string of factories.

Finding the talent to staff those plants can be difficult. Chen faulted the Chinese education system for focusing too much on rote learning and too little on innovative thinking. His company looks for candidates who may not have scored high on tests but are creative.

“We don’t want the library,” he says. “We try to find high-potential people and we teach them how to be good engineers.”

Those new hires can help companies with challenges like maintaining high quality while dealing with myriad suppliers and rapidly changing production processes.

“We need talented, experienced people in this area,” says Wu Hy, new program engineering director at Astec Electronics Co. “In order to be competitive, we have to introduce (new products) quicker and quicker.”

The talent shortage is compounded by societal factors. For instance, workers from rural areas may toil in a factory for a while and then return to the farm. Women may go back to their families after a few years.

The fast pace of growth in China also creates opportunities, such as the chance for people to manage a plant while still in their twenties.

“It’s almost like the Wild West in the gold rush,” Hop says of the chance to stake a business claim. “Everyone has a shot at it.”

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

Louis Uchitelle
Author, The Disposable American:Layoffs and Their Consequences

Louis Uchitelle has been writing about busi­ness, labor and economics for The New York Times since 1987. In his new book, he discusses how employers, government and society as a whole have become too indifferent to the growing trend of layoffs in this country. Uchitelle spoke to Workforce Management staff writer Jessica Marquez.

Workforce Management: Why did you write this book?

Louis Uchitelle: People who are laid off are moving back into the workforce, but almost always at lesser jobs than they had before. I’m not arguing that we can stop the layoffs, but I am arguing that we are blaming the victims so much that they blame themselves. Rather than take responsibility for the layoffs, it’s easier for employers and the government to send the message to workers that it’s their fault and that if they keep trying, they will find the right job. Employers should be asking whether all the layoffs they are making are necessary.

WM: Why should employers be concerned about this?

Uchitelle: For one thing, lots of public health studies show stress from job insecurity might be the cause of physical illness. Companies should measure the costs of layoffs beyond the immediate dollars and cents. Employers may not be able to stop layoffs altogether, but at least we can take into consideration that damage is being done. Also, companies that don’t have major layoffs seem to be successful. Southwest Airlines is the most notable example of that. Harley-Davidson has agreements with the union to do staged limited layoffs, and they are doing well too.

WM: Why do you believe that the retraining programs offered to laid-off employees don’t work?

Uchitelle: Too often, laid-off employees are just trained for whatever happens to be available, and often that is below their education and skill level. There are training programs that instruct participants that if they commit themselves, they can do a certain job at a certain wage. That’s more helpful.

WM: What does the trend of layoffs say about the state of the labor movement?

Uchitelle: The labor movement seems to have lost its ability to withstand the problem, and I don’t think it will regain it so easily. If there is hope, it is with employee associations, where members of the community—including labor and religious groups—come together to represent the community. So if, for example, Levi Strauss has a plant in a certain community and is facing layoffs, the community organization can put pressure on the company to stem layoffs in that region.

WM: What implications do you think the situation at General Motors may have on this trend?

Uchitelle: We have forgotten that when (Chrysler) went through this 25 years ago, it was viewed as a social problem. As a result, the government helped it get back on its feet. But today the discussion is all about high labor costs and we are blaming the workers. The role of the government isn’t even on the table. That shows how society’s perspective on layoffs has changed.

Workforce Management, May 8, 2006, p. 14 — Subscribe Now!

When Amaani Lyle interviewed for a job as writers’ assistant on the television show Friends, she was warned that she would be hearing and transcribing notes of the writers’ discussions and jokes about sexual matters. She accepted the job, but four months later was terminated because of problems doing the work.

    Lyle sued Warner Bros., NBC Studios and the show’s producers and writers for race and sex discrimination and harassment, retaliation and related claims. She claimed that the writers regularly discussed their personal sexual preferences and experiences, made sexual gestures and doodles and commented on the cast’s sexual activities.

    After the trial court dismissed all of Lyle’s claims, a California court of appeal held that Lyle should be permitted to proceed to trial because sexually coarse and vulgar language was not necessary for the creative process.

    On review, the California Supreme Court unanimously concluded that Lyle failed to demonstrate that the writers’ actions were severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile work environment. Rather, “most of the … language at issue did not involve and was not aimed at [Lyle] or other women in the workplace.” Additionally, the “workplace focused on generating scripts for an adult-oriented comedy show featuring sexual themes.” Lyle v. Warner Bros. Television Prods., Cal., No. S125171 (4/20/06).

    Impact: Employers should adopt and follow anti-harassment policies, conduct appropriate training of employees and carefully investigate every harassment and discrimination complaint.

The Labor Department sent a notice to state officials earlier this year saying the benefits of America’s Job Bank “no longer outweigh the costs of operating and maintaining this system. Therefore, AJB will be phased out during the next 18 months and cease to be operational on June 30, 2007.”

The notice argued that maintaining and improving the site no longer makes sense “given that AJB duplicates what is already available in the private sector.”

That logic rings true to Peter Weddle, recruiting analyst and executive director of the International Association of Employment Web Sites industry group. Weddle says the Labor Department is wise to shutter America’s Job Bank because it replicates services offered by a range of private-sector sites. These include sites targeted at lower-wage and blue-collar workers, says Weddle, whose association includes the major job boards CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com and Yahoo HotJobs.

“Why should the government duplicate what the private sector is providing already?” Weddle says.

But shutting down America’s Job Bank will be a major blow to employers and job seekers, says Gerry Crispin, co-founder of job-site consulting firm CareerXroads. Crispin says the site has been a way to aggregate all the job postings of some 2,000 state employment offices around the country, giving smaller, local employers the ability to broadcast their jobs nationwide for free. And the AJB site is often used by lower-skilled people who turn to state employment offices, he says. Those people may have to rely on a fragmented network of state job sites or private-sector job boards that will not have all the job listings that employers currently give to America’s Job Bank, Crispin says.

“We are basically losing a public resource that provides job seekers a more convenient and easy way to identify the employers who were local and had smaller budgets,” he says.

America’s Job Bank dates to 1995, and the free site currently lists more than 2.1 million jobs and more than 682,000 résumés. But it has been criticized as difficult to use. The Labor Department said in a notice that the cost of operating AJB has been as high as $27 million a year, but that “AJB has not been able to keep up with private-sector job boards or industry standards regarding up-to-date technology.”

The slated closure of America’s Job Bank could force both companies and states to change the way they do business. Idaho, for example, enticed employers to list jobs on its state job bank with the promise that the listings would get on the better-known America’s Job Bank site.

“We’ve used the national distribution of job postings through AJB as a promotion,” says Bob Fick, communications manager at the Idaho Commerce and Labor Department.

America’s Job Bank also has been used by companies as a way to abide by the guidelines of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Weddle wrote in an online newsletter last month.

“Because this site was operated in conjunction with state employment agencies and open to all U.S. citizens, posting an opening there was a de facto commitment by the organization to consider any qualified person, regardless of their race, ethnicity, age, gender, religion or sexual orientation,” Weddle wrote. “The openings may have also been posted on other job boards or on the employer’s own Web site, but as long as candidates from America’s Job Bank were considered, the government was (usually) content that the company had made a conscientious effort at compliance.”

An alternative for demonstrating a good-faith effort at EEOC compliance, Weddle wrote, is posting jobs on a variety of sites, including general-purpose employment sites and “diversity” sites such as those that specialize in candidates of a particular race.

The notice sent to state officials said that during the past two years, the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration had reviewed and evaluated the ongoing viability of maintaining a national job site. “Since the launch of AJB, the number of private-sector Internet-based job boards (Career Builder, Monster, Yahoo! Hot Jobs, etc.) has proliferated, calling into question the need for a Federal government-sponsored job board,” the notice said.

The notice, titled “The Phase Out of America’s Job Bank,” also said: “The cost of operating AJB has been as high as $27 million per year, with a current operating budget for maintenance-only of $12 million per year… . The cost to maintain AJB and constantly upgrade the foundational technology and make improvements to the site is no longer justifiable given that AJB duplicates what is already available in the private sector.”

The notice said the Labor Department has developed an initial transition plan “to ensure that states and other entities, which currently utilize the AJB platform as part of their suite of services, are able to plan and make changes accordingly.”

It also indicated that the federal government could contract with a private-sector employment Web site to create some kind of national job board in the future.

“The (Labor) Department recognizes there will be a periodic need for a national job board due to unique circumstances, such as the recent dislocations related to the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast,” the notice said. “It is the Department’s assessment that it will be more cost effective to contract for this type of service with the private sector on an ‘as needed basis.’ “

In addition to the notice, the Labor Department also sent state officials a set of questions and answers about the phase-out.

Workforce Management received copies of the two documents from Ted Daywalt, president of private-sector job board VetJobs. Daywalt said he received them from a contact who works in the U.S. Labor Department, and that the documents were sent to state officials. Daywalt declined to identify his contact.

The U.S. Labor Department confirmed the documents were authentic and sent to state workforce administrators in March. In a statement, the department also said a conference call on the subject was held with state workforce administrators on March 17. The department did not respond to a request for further comment.

Although the demise of AJB amounts to a headache for Idaho state officials, it is a relatively minor one, Fick says. Of greater concern, he says, are cutbacks in federal grants for programs such as unemployment insurance and workforce training. “It’s another problem, but in a long list of problems,” he says.

In Crispin’s opinion, the loss of America’s Job Bank adds to the economic insecurities faced by many Americans, and is likely the result of political lobbying.

“It’s simple greed on the part of job boards and newspapers who have always feared that a free site will hurt them,” he says.

Weddle, though, says he had no knowledge that the decision to close America’s Job Bank was based on any lobbying. He also noted that there still are other free job-posting sites, such as Craigslist.

Weddle gives the government credit for launching the site more than a decade ago and helping to spark the online job board field. “It was so successful that it spawned a $2 billion industry,” he says.

—Ed Frauenheim

Workforce Management editorial researcher Yasi Jahed contributed to this report.

The critical role that the privacy, integrity and protection of employee data plays in organizations was the focus of several sessions at the International Association for Human Resource Information Management conference in Washington, D.C., last month.

At a time when HR software vendors tout “strategic applications” such as performance management and workforce analytics, many companies are wrestling with a much more basic challenge: making sure their information is consistent and their figures add up.

The Progressive Group of Insurance Companies is a case in point. Progressive, a major auto insurance provider, struggled mightily before it made its employee data uniform, said Laurie Munoz, HR systems manager at the company. Munoz told a conference session that Progressive made a big investment in PeopleSoft software in the late 1990s, but the resulting system failed to generate accurate reports. “We got these numbers that were ludicrous, like 475 percent turnover in some areas when we reorganized,” Munoz said.

Among the obstacles to arriving at clean data, Munoz said, was a lack of common definitions for such seemingly straightforward terms as turnover percentage and headcount.

Similar issues can plague attempts to create worldwide HR systems, according to participants at another conference session. For example, choosing whether to use the term “family name,” “given name” or “last name” in setting up data fields can be tricky. And resolving such matters involves talks with a variety of constituents within an organization, said session facilitator Rob Eidson of Deloitte Consulting. “This is not for the faint of heart,” Eidson said. “It’s hard, challenging stuff.”

Even such basic data as the number of employees can’t be taken for granted.

“What’s (our) headcount? That’s what we’re struggling with,” said Kathleen Murray of Fidelity Investments.

As they work to get a grip on such basic measures, organizations also face laws restricting the way they handle employee data in their HR information technology systems. In a session titled “Can Data Privacy and HRIT Coexist?” officials from Eli Lilly and Co. outlined challenges of dealing with privacy laws and regulations that differ from state to state and nation to nation. “HR privacy is the sleeping giant of privacy issues,” said Carolyn Anker, who works in Eli Lilly’s global privacy office.

Consultant Donald Harris went further in another session. Harris, president of HR Privacy Solutions, said many businesses fail to abide by a law restricting transfers of employee data outside of the European Union. “I’m sure that many companies are (violating the law),” Harris said.

Harris led a session focused on “binding corporate rules,” which are corporate codes of conduct for data protection that can serve as a way to observe EU law.

If organizations can keep their noses clean regarding privacy laws and keep their data tidy, technology today promises to help companies set better strategies. Munoz said that an HR scorecard at Progressive allowed the company to realize it should focus on employee referrals as a good source of new employees and to slow down its growth in a specific market because of high turnover among claims adjusters.

A key, she said, was having the HR department lead the way in coming to common understandings. “We needed to take control,” she said.

—Ed Frauenheim

WorldatWork Total Rewards Conference & Exhibition 2006
May 7-10, 2006, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California

What: Founded in 1955, WorldatWork touts itself as is the world’s leading not-for-profit professional association dedicated to knowledge leadership in total rewards, compensation, benefits and work/life balance. WorldatWork focuses on human resources disciplines associated with attracting, motivating and retaining employees. The 2006 conference in Anaheim attracted more than 2,000 attendees from some 35 different countries, and 160 companies showcasing products and services in the exhibit hall.

Conference Info: For more information about WorldatWork, go to www.worldatwork.org.

Date: Tuesday, May 9, 2006

Is CEO compensation a zero-sum game? The solutions that companies concoct to cope with challenges of the moment often have unintended consequences, according to David Swinford, senior managing director at Pearl Meyer & Partners in New York. For instance, take stock options, which were created to give CEOs ownership incentives for meeting performance objectives. Or look at the golden parachutes of the 1980s that were devised to fend off hostile takeovers. The most recent example of this phenomenon is the practice of backdating stock options, which was acceptable in the 1990s but has now engulfed UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire in a storm of controversy.

Does Swinford believe that the CEO compensation system is fundamentally broken? No. But he does think that companies should be cognizant that compensation structures that made sense in the past are not necessarily sensible for today’s business environment.

Swinford also stressed the need for companies to develop a compensation philosophy and to stick to their principles when hiring a new CEO. “Be prepared to walk away from a candidate if necessary,” he said.

A compensation specialist sitting in the audience swiftly challenged Swinford’s views. “I do not like what I am hearing,” a woman said. “The situation is not as negative as you are portraying it to be.” Swinford playfully responded: “If I ever give a speech that doesn’t stir controversy, please shoot me.”

Digging beneath the surface: The session on developing remuneration frameworks for China—led by Elliot Santner, compensation specialist from Grainger, and Chikage Nose of Mercer Human Resource Consulting—got off to a rocky start. There were technical difficulties with the microphones and the speaker system, which inadvertently streamed in loud noises from concurrent sessions. Within the first five minutes of the presentation, the sound specialist made no less than three separate trips up to the stage. “This wouldn’t happen in China,” an audience member said. “I wouldn’t know,” Nose replied, “I’m from Japan.”

The crowd laughed, and, it’s hoped, drew an important lesson from this incident: Asia should not be taken at face value. There are far too many nuances in the cultures, languages and business environments to take a simplistic approach. Take the variances in compensation structures within China alone. There are three different tiers that companies can use as a roadmap when creating remuneration packages.

Companies in first-tier cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen can expect to pay out the highest salaries. Meanwhile, remuneration in second-tier locations like Nanjing, Wuxi and Suzhou can be 13 percent to 22 percent less. But if companies are really looking for a bargain, they should look for workers in cities like Zhongshan, Zhenjiang and Huizhou, where compensation can be as much as 30 percent lower than in first-tier locales. However, cheap doesn’t always translate to smooth operation, Nose and Santner point out. The less developed the city, the more difficult it may be to find qualified talent.

–Gina Ruiz

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Day 2: Monday, May 8, 2006

Morning keynote: What would a conference be without a best-selling business author to give the keynote? For this conference, the speaker was Jason Jennings, author of Less Is More and It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small–It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow. There’s a reason why authors like Jennings, Malcolm Gladwell, Marcus Buckingham and others make such a good living speaking to HR and management conferences. It’s because everyone is hungry for leadership and management wisdom and hope that one of these guys has the silver bullet.
Jennings is good and has a good message, but no, he doesn’t have a silver bullet. What he has is this piece of advice: “Finding, keeping and growing the right people is the single biggest business challenge today.” He talked about his book research, which looks at 180,000 companies around the world–research that he says has identified the fastest, most productive and best-performing companies anywhere. Jennings named a few: Cabela’s, the world’s largest catalog merchant selling fishing, hunting and outdoor gear; World Savings; Nucor Steel; and Ikea. Jennings said a company’s culture “is the ultimate competitive advantage.”

I don’t want to work, I just want to bang on the drum all day: WorkatWork had an interesting way to get people awake and functioning for an extra-early 8 a.m. keynote Monday. A three-person troupe of taiko drummers banging away like the cast of Stomp. There were easily 20 minutes or more of headache-inducing drum pounding before the speakers mercifully came on. This is the ultimate way to get a crowd to appreciate the keynote and other presentations: Pound their brain cells into submission beforehand.

You can’t win over the comp committee without a scorecard: It took SunTrust Banks just under a year to overhaul its total rewards program in order to remain a competitive employer. SunTrust’s program is complex—there are 180 incentive plans covering the bank’s 35,000 employees, said Jo Anne Moeller, senior vice president of compensation and HRIS for the organization. Moeller described SunTrust’s case study during a Monday afternoon session and described one technique to engage and guide decision-makers in such a detailed and deep endeavor: Come up with the mother of all charts. So that senior management and the compensation committee could see where the bank stood in its current rewards plan, what should change and what the results of that change would mean to its competitive position in the bank-pay marketplace, Moeller and her team developed an at-a-glance chart that she described as “detailed but fairly concise.” Indeed. The chart is eight levels deep and 14 categories across. Moeller said the team that developed the plan had outside consultants, of course, but also involved representatives from SunTrust’s benefits, compensation and controller’s departments. “In my experience, when you have the accounting folks say, ‘Yes, those are my numbers,’ it makes the CEO feel better,” Moeller said.

Duel in the sun: Sometimes the best way to see all of the shades of gray of a subject is to examine it in stark black and white. That’s exactly what compensation consultants Jannice Koors of Pearl Meyer and Partners and Erin Bass-Goldberg of Frederic W. Cook & Co. did for the increasingly controversial subject of executive compensation during their workshop session “Dueling Consultants: Perspectives on Executive Compensation.” The “dueling” duo addressed both sides of the “800-pound gorillas.” Those are the thorniest executive compensation questions, such as impact of proposed SEC proxy rules on executives pay, whether CEO pay is too high and the effectiveness of various long-term incentives.
Their polarized examination helped highlight the fact that executive compensation is an emotional and complex issue, and is not governed by a fixed set of rules. Koors and Bass-Goldberg concluded that public companies are taking the issue of CEO compensation more seriously and, faced with new disclosure rules, are “self-regulating.”

–Robert Scally, John Hollon and Carroll Lachnit

 

People moving into key executive positions
	John G. Peeler has joined the Castleton Group as the firm’s business development manager.
	Steven Tighe has been named managing principal at Strategic Talent Partners in Minneapolis.
	Ben Jensen has been named director of transportation recruitment and retention for Bernard Hodes Group in Phoenix.
	Robert Middleton has been appointed chief executive of Aon Consulting in the U.K.
	Jeffrey Wahba has been named CFO of HireRight Inc. in Irvine, California.
	Russ Moen has been promoted to vice president of human resources at Express Personnel Services in Oklahoma City.
	Barbara Kurka has been promoted to senior vice president and director of human resources for Katz Media.
	Greg Pawelskihas been promoted to director of human resources for Con-Way Central Express.
Steven A. Levin has been added as a director to Chartis Group’s leadership team in New York.
Carl Hess has been appointed director of investment consulting for North America at Watson Wyatt.
Joseph P. Delaney has been named president and CEO and Patrick Dills has been named chairman of the board at Medical Services Co.
Janet Perna has been appointed to the board of directors at Cognos.
Roger Gaston has been named executive vice president for Kenexa’s employment process outsourcing practice in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
Carol Sipe has been named senior vice president and general manager of Summit Operations.
Sheren Ghali has been appointed vice president of human resources at WageWorks.
Brian Fawkes has joined Achievo Corp. as vice president of corporate communications.
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People moving into key executive positions
	Karl Grass has been appointed vice president and general manager for Sage Abra HRMS and Sage Payroll Services at Sage Software in St. Petersburg, Florida.
	Ronald Bottano has been appointed senior client partner at Korn/Ferry International in Los Angeles.
	Sherry Luper has joined Silkroad Technology as senior vice president of human resources in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Gary Fisher has been appointed HR director at Gate Gourmet based in Zurich, Switzerland, and Reston, Virginia.
Andrew Young has been named chairman of Working Families for Wal-Mart Steering Committee.
Christy Suerth has been appointed director of human resources at Proactive Worldwide.
Bill Ziegler has been appointed talent acquisition leader in the human resources department at Deloitte Services in New York.
Gregory Troyhas been named vice president and chief human resources officer at Modine Manufacturing Co. in Racine, Wisconsin.
Jane Loftus has joined GeoLogistics as senior vice president of human resources in Santa Ana, California.
Rod Fralicx has rejoined Hay Group as general manager in Chicago.
Charles Harvey has been named vice president of diversity and public affairs for Johnson Controls in Milwaukee, while Brian Cooke has been appointed vice president of manufacturing and technology.
Yvonne Wolf has been appointed vice president and chief people officer at Denny’s Inc. in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Art Brown has been named regional manager for CPS Human Resource Services’ Northeast region, based in New York.
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