For years, the conventional wisdom has been that job seekers should wait to ask about compensation until later in the recruiting process, but that attitude is changing, according to a recent survey released by Robert Half, a staffing services consulting group.
Bill.Leonard
Bill Leonard is a senior writer for SHRM.
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Articles by Bill Leonard
Be careful out there, all you web surfers; cyberspace can be a dangerous place.
Even though the Internet has evolved into one of the most effective tools for companies to connect with customers, communicate with employees, identify talent and recruit new workers, an active online presence has become risky business. Malicious software and viruses have proliferated across the Web and are now lurking in innocuous-looking e-mails, file attachments and websites.
Implementing strategies and applying them to business operations may not be as easy as some corporate leaders believe. Research released by BTS, a consulting group based in Stockholm, Sweden, found that CEOs are much more likely than lower-level executives and managers to overestimate their organization’s ability to translate strategies into successful business plans.
Facebook has always been a tough nut to crack for corporate recruiters. Although the world’s largest social media platform has approximately 1 billion accounts, most Facebook users aren’t actively searching for a new job on the site, and extracting accurate, reliable and even usable candidate-sourcing data has been difficult at best.
However, a new software application from Work4 Labs in San Francisco could be the Facebook nutcracker and candidate-sourcing tool that recruiters have been waiting for, according to the company's CEO, Stephane Le Viet.
Christine Lahey wasn’t sure at first what the cryptic text she received on her cell phone around 3 p.m. on April 15, 2013, meant. The message read: “I’m safe. Turn on the news.”
The text came from a co-worker who was watching the end of the Boston Marathon near the offices of Liberty Mutual Insurance, where Lahey is vice president of employee relations and human resource services.
“I was at home and received this text within 10 minutes of the blast,” Lahey recalled. “I didn’t know up until that point that there had been an attack.”
People’s reactions when entering BMW’s brand-new 25,000-square-foot health care center are typically the same. After walking through the automatic glass doors, most pause to gaze about and take in the large atrium lobby, where sunlight pours in through a glass ceiling.
“When people first walk in the door they usually just stop and look all around and then tell us that it is the nicest doctor’s office they have ever seen,” said Bill Raulerson, director of site operations for the BMW health care center.
Well-crafted employment policies are a good thing: They inform employees of expected and appropriate behavior and help employers deal with workplace situations consistently and fairly.
However, sometimes employers can find themselves in murky waters or create problems by adhering to a policy too strictly, especially in situations where employees run afoul of a workplace rule by following their conscience or trying to act ethically.
At the start of 2013 the global economy has two speeds: sluggish growth in the developed economies of Western Europe and North America and rapid economic expansion in developing nations. These two economic speeds are creating myriad challenges for business leaders and human resource practitioners as they seek to find the right mix of talent to remain competitive and adapt to the highly volatile global marketplace.
Very few people are more engaged than rabid sports fans. And big sporting events, like the Super Bowl, can bring out the sports fan in all of us. Some employers are turning the passion and energy of sports fans to their advantage and are using the Super Bowl to build a stronger sense of community and pride among their staffs.
The 2012-2013 flu season has hit early and hard. The severity of the flu outbreak has left many employers pondering if their organizations’ health and attendance policies are helping or hampering their efforts to keep the flu from spreading.
While a majority of human resource professionals say that wellness programs can help to reduce an employer’s health care costs, only 55 percent of respondents to a recent poll conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reported that their companies offered an onsite workplace wellness program to their employees.
Budget cuts, salary freezes and criticism of government jobs have had a negative impact on the attitudes and engagement of federal employees, according to a survey conducted by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The results of the 2012 Federal Viewpoint Survey released Nov. 22, 2012, revealed that the overall job satisfaction level for the federal workforce declined sharply from 2011, falling to its lowest level since OPM launched the annual study in 2002.
High-ranking executives and officials have an added burden of being the face of an organization. Most chief diversity and inclusion (D&I) officers understand this challenge and must deal with it in both their professional and personal lives. This responsibility can become a source of controversy when a D&I officer’s actions or personal opinions don’t exactly align with an employer’s policies.
Even though mobile devices, social media and the Internet have gained wider acceptance as important communication tools with job applicants and employees, these tools aren’t used consistently by most hiring managers and HR professionals who responded to a recent survey conducted by Dimensional Research.
The importance of higher education and technical training for the job skills that employers need has increased considerably in the past 10 years and will only continue to increase, according to a report released Oct. 3, 2012, by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Achieve, a nonprofit education advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
Family care bias is turning into a red-hot issue for employers, according to a report published by the AARP Public Policy Institute and the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. Women are affected more than men, the report notes, and flexibility is needed.
It's no coincidence that employers with vibrant diversity and inclusion initiatives usually have highly engaged workforces. Inclusion is a key factor in boosting employee satisfaction and performance, according to Shirley Davis Sheppard, Ph.D., vice president of diversity and inclusion and workplace flexibility at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
Legislation approved by the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 4078) on July 26, 2012, would prohibit the federal government from issuing any new “significant” workplace-related regulations until the national unemployment rate drops to 6 percent or less.