Author: Site Staff

Traffic at CareerBuilder increased 78 percent from December 2004 to January 2005, according to comScore Networks.

ComScore measures consumers’ use of the Internet and judges online properties by the number of unique visitors drawn to each site. It now ranks CareerBuilder as the 25th-most-popular online property–moving up 37 spots on the list, according to comScore. Monster is No. 14, and Yahoo No. 1. ComScore attributes CareerBuilder’s growth to two things: online marketing efforts and relationships with AOL and MSN.

Other sites growing in popularity include Fastweb, a scholarship search site owned by Monster, and EducationDirect, a distance learning site owned by Thomson. Both sites saw double-digit increases in unique visitors.

Other goings-on
In other recruiting- and staffing-related news:

• The law firm of Stull, Stull & Brody, with offices in New York and Los Angeles, has announced a class-action lawsuit against 51job. A statement by the firm alleges that “51job failed to disclose the fact that it improperly recognized recruitment advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2004.”
  
  
• The complaint also alleges that “51job failed to disclose the fact that the drop in late-December advertising suggested that many Chinese firms have adopted a more Western schedule for hiring and, as a result of this market shift, 51job was forced to sharply lower its profit outlook.”

• Kelly Services has made an $18 million investment in Tempstaff, the second-largest staffing company in Japan.

Marriott is rapidly staffing its new $110 million, 617-room hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. “If a person comes in today and we feel that they’re the ideal candidate … we’re offering them the position right on the spot,” Tina Beverly, director of human resources for Louisville Marriott Downtown, tells the Courier-Journal.

“Only the educated are free.”
—Epictetus
Roman philosopher, slave and author of Discourses

    Most organizations would like to be able to measure the costs invested in training initiatives against anticipated results. The challenge is that it is far easier to measure the costs of conducting training than it is to quantify results. A useful tool in determining costs and savings is to compare costs per participant versus savings per participant.

    Comparing costs and benefits can be done in the following four simple steps:

    1. Calculate the cost of training. This will include training costs such as:

• Facilitator fees

  
  

• Training design

  
  

• Course materials

  
  

• Videos and workbooks

  
  

• Facilities rental

  
  

• Equipment rentals (such as overhead projectors)

  
  

• Production downtime (including employee time off the job)

  
  

• Videoconferencing facilities

  
  

• Specialized computer equipment

  
  

• Administration (such as registration procedures or confirmation notices)

  
  

• All the relevant costs, divided by the anticipated number of participants, gives the cost per participant.

  
  

    2. Determine the potential savings generated. These savings might include:

• Fewer errors

  
  

• Reduced customer turnover

  
  

• Less equipment downtime

  
  

• Increased revenue collection

  
  

• Faster equipment startup time

  
  

• Reduced employee turnover, when turnover is attributable to poor supervision

  
  

• Proper implementation of new customer strategies

  
  

• Higher workplace morale through more effective management practices

  
  

• Less time lost to grievance hearings and work stoppages because of ineffective supervision

  
  

• Reduced recruitment costs (because training can create more job-ready candidates for promotions)

  
  

• Maximized productivity of new employees through efficient orientation training

  
  

    3. Calculate the potential savings. To calculate potential savings, set goals for post-training achievements by identifying and quantifying the changes a training initiative will produce if all other factors are constant. The factors in the formula include the following:

• Current level of performance (for example, 200 error rates per month; six lost customer accounts per month; five days lost to work stoppages per year)

  
  

• Translate the current level of performance into a dollar figure (for example: 200 error rates x five minutes’ correction time x $15 salary per hour = $250 per month).

  
  

• Identify the change that training can produce (for example, reduce errors to 50 per month).

  
  

• Calculate the savings that the target criteria will generate (for example: 200 errors – 50 errors = decrease of 150 errors per month savings = 150 x five minutes/60 x $15 = $187.50).

  
  

• Identify a meaningful time line for realizing savings, based on your best business predictions about factors contributing to errors remaining unchanged.

  
  

• Identify the number of employees in the target training group.

  
  

• Divide the total anticipated savings by the number of participants to identify the savings per participant.

  
  

    4. Compare the costs to savings.

• Multiply the cost per participant by the total number of participants.

  
  

• Multiply the savings per participant by the total number of participants.

  
  

• Compare your figures to establish your business case for training.

  
  

    This exercise not only identifies actual costs and realistic savings but also ensures that your training expectations are reasonable and targeted to measurable business outcomes.

SOURCE: Excerpted from The Trainer’s Tool Kit by Cy Charney & Kathy Conway. Copyright 2005 by Cy Charney & Kathy Conway. Published by AMACOM Books, a division of American Management Association, New York, NY. Used with permission. All rights reservedwww.amacombooks.org

Companies that allow employees to cut back on their hours will generally find that “career growth and advancement can be sustained by employees working on a reduced-load basis,” according to a new study by McGill University and Michigan State University.

Eighty-one people in North America working reduced schedules participated in interviews between 1996 and 1998. Ninety-one percent of them participated in follow-up interviews in 2002 and 2003. At the time of the follow-ups, nearly half of the employees were still working part time–but not because they couldn’t get full-time jobs. “They’re all doing it because they want to,” says McGill’s Mary Dean Lee. “They all have the option to go full time.”

When salaries were adjusted according to workload, those working part time were earning salaries equivalent to those working full time.

Lee says that the highest-paid individual in the study is a part-time partner at a big accounting firm. Another reduced-load participant is now a CEO of a major division of a major insurance company, working about 80 percent of a full schedule.

Still on track
Another 38 percent of the study’s participants had gone back to full-time jobs. And, says Lee, many of them who moved back to full time did so for a promotion. Lee says she couldn’t think of a case where a worker in the study was “pushed off to the side.”

“That was a fear many people had six or seven years ago,” Lee said. “Would it brand you as someone who somehow wasn’t committed enough or serious enough about their career so their advancement opportunity would be hurt forever? Our surprise was that they’re not nearly that restricted.”

Employees were able to craft schedules that worked for them when they had reputations in their companies as people who achieved results, and when they had managers who were flexible. In fact, some of the employees studied have become supervisors themselves and have introduced more flexibility into the work lives of their employees.

In cases where their careers had deteriorated upon cutting back on their hours, it was often because their employers had since been acquired by firms with less progressive attitudes.

A good succession-planning program aims to identify high growth individuals, train them and feed the pipelines with new talent. Here’s an outline of one program.

Purpose
    To ensure replacements for key job incumbents in executive, management, technical, and professional positions in the organization. This policy covers middle management positions and above in [name of organization].

Desired Results
    The desired results of the succession planning program are to:

• Identify high-potential employees capable of rapid advancement to positions of higher responsibility than those they presently occupy.

  
  

• Ensure the systematic and long-term development of individuals to replace key job incumbents as the need arises due to deaths, disabilities, retirements, and other unexpected losses.

  
  

• Provide a continuous flow of talented people to meet the organization’s management needs.

  
  

• Meet the organization’s need to exercise social responsibility by providing for the advancement of protected labor groups inside the organization.

  
  

Procedures
    The succession planning program will be carried out as follows:

    1. In January of each year, the management development director will arrange a meeting with the CEO to review results from the previous year’s succession planning efforts and to plan for the present year’s process.

    2. In February top managers will attend a meeting coordinated by the management development director in which:

1. The CEO will emphasize the importance of succession planning and review the previous year’s results.
2. The management development director will distribute forms and establish due dates for their completion and return.
3. The management development director will review the results of a computerized analysis to pinpoint areas of the organization in which predictable turnover, resulting from retirements or other changes, will lead to special needs for management talent.
4. The results of a computerized analysis will be reviewed to demonstrate how successful the organization has been in attracting protected labor groups into high-level positions and to plot strategies for improving affirmative action practices.

    3. In April the forms will be completed and returned to the MD director. If necessary, a follow-up meeting will be held.

    4. Throughout the year, the management development director will periodically visit top managers to review progress in developing identified successors throughout their areas of responsibility.

    5. As need arises, the database will be accessed as a source of possible successors in the organization.

Source: William J. Rothwell and H. C. Kazanas, Building In-House Leadership and Management Development Programs (Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books, 1999), p. 131. Used with permission.

Excerpted from Beyond Training and Development by William J. Rothwell. Copyright © 2005 Williams J. Rothwell. Published byAMACOM Books, a division of American Management Association, New York, NY. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

With a labor shortage hitting the trucking industry, companies are “raising driver pay like never before,” according to Crain’s Chicago Business. 

A spokesman for Wisconsin trucking company Schneider National says that this is the toughest driver recruitment market in the history of trucking. The top 195 trucking companies in the United States raised their per-mile pay an average of 8.9 percent last year, according to the National Transportation Institute. They’re passing along those costs to customers.

Even with the pay raises, driver turnover is high. Last year, it hit 121 percent, according to the American Trucking Association. Many drivers find themselves working very long days-as much as 14 hours-and are away from their families for long periods. 

Jason D. Shaw is a management professor at the University of Kentucky’s Gatton College of Business and Economics. He says that as the transportation industry has become less regulated and less unionized, pay over the years hasn’t kept up with inflation. It’s finally catching up with companies; Shaw believes there’s been a severe labor shortage for at least 10 years. 

“It’s hard to recruit people in the trucking industry,” Shaw says. “Living in a sleeper cab for a long period of time, three weeks at a time, is not that attractive. When you combine that with the expansion in the economy, the amount being shipped, the number of drivers needed-that’s kind of a bad combination.” 

Transportation giant J.B. Hunt has been working to reduce turnover, according to Shaw, by improving pay and benefits and generally being much more flexible with employees. Other companies are following suit. 

Shaw’s research shows that the most consistent predictor of turnover is driver pay. Flexibility is important, but not as much as pay per mile. “It’s very easy to change jobs,” he says. “You can pretty much go to the another company if you decide to quit. The drivers are just looking around for a (better) deal. If they find one, they move on.”

Among the additional resources available online: a list of fatigue management programs implemented in the transportation industry; an article about turnover in trucking; as well as a report called “Critical Success Factors in Truck Driver Retention.”

Employers are going to have to wait a while longer—perhaps a very long while—for the resolution of a longstanding legal threat to the way they administer retiree health care plans.

Earlier this month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission agreed not to publish for 60 days a final rule that would exempt retiree health care plans from the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The move was in response to a lawsuit brought by AARP.

U.S. District Judge Anita Brody will hear oral arguments next month on the legality of the rule, which the EEOC had been expected to send to the Federal Register this month. The rule would have gone into effect upon publication.

The AARP litigation means that the resolution of a pivotal legal question will remain unanswered for quite some time: Can employers with retiree health care plans be sued for age discrimination if they don’t offer the same level of coverage or spend the same amount on health care benefits for Medicare-eligible retirees as they do for other retirees? “It means continued uncertainty,” says John Piro, an attorney with Hewitt Associates in Norwalk, Connecticut.

“This issue has been around a long time, and it now looks like it will continue to be around even longer,” adds Henry Saveth, an attorney with Mercer Human Resource Consulting in New York.

The issue emerged 4-1/2 years ago, when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that retiree health care plans are subject to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. To prevent a charge of age discrimination under ADEA rules, employers either would have to spend the same amount of money on health care for Medicare-eligible retirees as they do for younger retirees or offer the same coverage to the two groups.

The practical effect of that ruling in the so-called Erie County case was huge. Virtually all plans would be in violation, because employers typically provide richer benefits to younger retirees than to older retirees who are eligible for Medicare benefits.

While the ruling was a bombshell, its impact was short-lived. Within a year of the ruling, the EEOC, which enforces age discrimination law, said it would no longer enforce the ruling.

Last year, the EEOC proposed a final rule that would exempt retiree health care plans from the ADEA, an action that would allow employers with retiree health care plans to continue to offer different levels of benefits to the two groups.

Publication of the final rule had been expected to put an end to the controversy. But AARP, fearful that employers would cut coverage to Medicare-eligible retirees, filed suit to block the proposed EEOC rule.

In its complaint, AARP says the EEOC lacks the legal authority to grant an exemption to the ADEA.

“Congress has not delegated to the EEOC any rule-making authority in the substantive field of health care policy, nor does the EEOC possess any expertise to weigh factors relevant to the challenged exemption, or to accurately predict the consequences of the exemption itself,” the complaint says.

If the final EEOC rule is published, AARP members “will suffer irreparable harm” because employers throughout the country will reduce or eliminate health care to older retirees, the AARP complaint adds.

But others say that if AARP prevails, it is retirees who will be hurt. At a time of rising costs, employers will reduce the coverage provided to younger retirees or eliminate coverage for the two groups rather than upgrade coverage for Medicare-eligible retirees, benefit consultants say.

“If anything, you will see cutbacks for younger retirees or the elimination of coverage. Employers aren’t going to do anything” that would increase their retiree health care obligations, says Cara Jareb, director of retiree medical consulting for Watson Wyatt Worldwide in Washington, D.C.

—Jerry Geisel, Business Insurance

Dear Discerning:



The renaming of human resources departments has been going on for about five years. Some departments historically known as “compensation” or “benefits” now carry the moniker of rewards. Some human resources departments have developed full-time change-management divisions. Still other organizations have renamed the entire human resources function as organizational development, as opposed to making it a subset of human resources.

It’s important to stress that the labels or even the “boxes on the chart” are less relevant than the department’s function, service delivery or decision-making capacity. An organizational chart is just a piece of paper. The norms of how teams interact and the culture they share represent the soul of the organization.

In your case, training likely should be one implementation arm of organizational development. Most organizational-development functions include some combination of corporate communication and change management. They usually have some overlap with the teams handling performance management and succession planning, and some overlap with the compensation and benefits/rewards team.

Use organizational development to improve the overall core competency of your company by measuring the strengths and weaknesses of your workforce as they relate to what’s required in the business’s strategic plan. Reinforce this via a strong performance-management program. Capturing data on employee skills and performance enables you to ensure that the right training programs are in place to bolster areas where you’re weak and maintain excellence in stronger areas.

The goal of both functions–training and organizational development–should be to improve skill levels throughout the organization. Adopt a good performance-management program to capture this data, especially electronically. You can also use it to analyze your bench strength or successors for critical roles.

Organizational-development and training departments each play a role in assessing the return on investment of training money. Together, the two departments can determine whether money and resources are being used efficiently.

Don’t worry about labels. Just focus on collaboration so that you develop talent in a way that helps the business. If this happens, employees and employers both win.

SOURCE: Matthew Levin, vice president, global operations officer, Hudson Human Capital Solutions Hudson Highland Group, Chicago, Illinois, March 29, 2004.

LEARN MORE: Discuss in theTraining and Organizational Development forum.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

Employees’ job satisfaction declines the longer they work for their employers, according to one new study.

The finding is in a new book, The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want by David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind and Michael Irwin Meltzer of Sirota Consulting. The book is based on research by Sirota Consulting, including a survey of about 1.2 million employees, mainly in large companies, between 2001 and 2004.

According to Sirota’s research, there is some improvement in the satisfaction of employees with more than 10 years’ experience with their employers, but it’s not as high as when they started on the job.

The company finds that employee job satisfaction (on a 100-point scale) averages out as follows:

• Employees with an average of six months with employer: 80
• Employees with one to five years working for employer: 69
• Employees with six to 10 years working for employer: 68

David Sirota says that the declines in satisfaction are even greater than the numbers show. That’s because the unhappy employees often leave and are no longer included in the data.

In many cases, Sirota believes, the low morale is a result of a gap between what a company says its goals are and the message it really sends to its workforce. A firm might say “quality is job one,” according to Sirota, but managers may leave employees just enough time to get the product out the door, regardless of its quality.

About 10 percent of companies, he says, buck the trend. These “super-high-morale organizations,” he says, include the Barron’s division of Dow Jones (Barron’s is  “incredibly engaged,” he says), as well as Intuit, the Mayo Clinic, Southwest Airlines, Crescent Real Estate Equities, Continental Airlines and FedEx. “Their honeymoon lasts through employees’ careers.” These organizations, Sirota says, generally have a minimal amount of bureaucracy and fairly flat structures. Lower-level employees sense that they are treated pretty much the same way senior managers are.

This sense, he says, is passed down by the CEO. Southwest Airlines, for example, has a highly unionized workforce, but customers can’t help but notice the employees’ high morale. Employees’ feelings about the company stem from a sense that the company is a positive influence in the community and is concerned about its customers.

Dear Undefined:



Having done a lot of recruiting myself, I can think of a few “precise terms” for some of the people I’ve interviewed. But you’re really looking for terms that refer to job-related competencies–the skills, knowledge and attributes that qualify a candidate for a specific job. Let’s focus on that subject for now.

First and foremost, you must recognize that as a recruiting firm, you are bound (just like your client) to honor the many laws related to recruiting and discrimination. You should avoid vague or stereotypical adjectives in describing applicants, and stick to the competencies that distinguish solid performers from poor performers. As you begin a recruiting assignment, be sure to ask your client which competencies are essential to success in the job, and focus on them consistently as you interview candidates.

Words like “well-mannered” or “conservative” could mean different things to different people, so you should probably lose your out-of-date list of adjectives and switch to a new set of descriptors that refer to observable job-related behavior. Consider using a professionally developed list of competencies with behavioral definitions and corresponding interview questions to get up-to-date fast. You’ll find many ready-madebehavioral interviewing packages available, and lots of consulting firms can offer you assistance in this specialized area of assessment, too.

Second, forget any concerns you have about individuals’ inability to do a job because of their age. As someone who crossed the magic threshold of 40 some time ago, I’d say you’re out of touch. Betteropen your eyes and read up on age discrimination.

Third, you’re also treading on thin ice if you’re trying to apply a generic “fitness for duty” screening technique. Instead, ask your client to define the physical requirements of the open position, and then ask the same job-related questions of each candidate. For example: “Are you able to lift 30-pound cartons onto a conveyor belt at the rate of 75 per hour for seven hours each day with or without accommodation?”

If candidates say they can do this, accept their response. Don’t ask questions just because you’re curious, but don’t ignore an obvious disability, either. Give the candidate the impression that you’re looking for their ability to do the job, not for ways to eliminate them from consideration. If the candidate needs some accommodation, ask what would be helpful, and then pass that information along to your client. You’d be surprised how easy it is to make a job manageable for people who need some accommodation.

Finally, if you haven’t taken a course on interviewing and selection, now is the time. You’ll be more confident and effective–and your employer will be more likely to stay out of trouble with theEEOC.

SOURCE: Patsy Svare, managing director, The Chatfield Group, Glenview, Illinois, March 19, 2004.

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Dear Looking:

I applaud your support of higher education. However, not every position justifiably requires a college degree. For various reasons, you’ve placed people without degrees in positions requiring a degree. How have they performed? Can you still justify the degree requirement? A realistic review of job specifications will help you open the field of candidates, justify positions that need a degreed incumbent, and help you avoid lawsuits for discrimination. You may also get a more diverse workforce.

You might consider a higher compensation level for people who have degrees. Or, hire people without degrees with the provision that they will actively pursue a degree, probably on the company’s dime. Supporting higher education is a sensible move, but sometimes training, experience and ability to do a job can be substantially more valuable than a piece of paper and a theoretical education.

An educational degree does not predict performance, nor does it validate competence. I’m reminded of the old question about what you call someone who graduates at the bottom of the medical-school class: doctor.

SOURCE: Roger Herman, CMC, The Herman Group, Greensboro, North Carolina, March 25, 2004.

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Dear Workforce Newsletter