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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.