March 31, 2005

Supreme Court expands age bias protections
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:30 AM

A ruling from the US Supreme Court yesterday expanded protection for older workers:

The Supreme Court made it easier to sue for age discrimination on the job yesterday, ruling that older workers may take their employers to federal court even in cases where the alleged adverse impact on them was not intentional.
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Advocates for the elderly said the court's ruling means employers will have to take greater care to show that policies such as pay-scale adjustments or layoffs do not unreasonably affect older members of their workforces.

The ruling is a clarification of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which defines older workers as those over the age of 40.

So employers need to be on their toes more than ever. Any behavior which could be construed as age discriminatory, intentional or not, is open to question.
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March 30, 2005

What's in your laptop?
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:40 AM

Most HR departments are charged with maintaining files on every employee in the organization. Much of that information is confidential, and these days, much of that information is in computer files.

All of which makes the trend toward data and identity theft a very real and alarming one, as officials at UCal Berkeley discovered first-hand this month:

A thief has stolen a laptop computer containing personal information about nearly 100,000 University of California at Berkeley alumni, graduate students, and past applicants, continuing a recent outbreak of security breakdowns that illustrate society's growing vulnerability to identity theft.

It gives one pause.

Where is your sensitive data stored, and how secure is it? Could someone walk out of your office with all your personnel records on a single laptop? Maybe it's time for HR to talk to IT and get this one sorted out.
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March 25, 2005

Is it just business?
Posted by Jason Butler at 8:30 AM

In case you haven't noticed, the employment market here in Boston has turned. It's not 1999 again, but it's certainly not 2002. If you're not already, you'll soon be fighting harder to become an employer of choice.

Relationships are the key to being an employer of choice. Relationships with your current employees bring in the referrals you crave; relationships with former employees keep the doors open and your reputation healthy. Relationships are tested in times of stress, tested by how you react to your employees' life issues.

John Porcaro was recently in the hospital for burns, and he contrasts how well Microsoft treated him with his 9-year old roommate's father's company.

Just after they moved in, I heard the boy's father on the phone with his company.  He was asking his boss for two things: 1) for two weeks vacation to help take care of his son; and 2) access to his retirement account (401k) funds to help with medical bills.  His company flatly denied both requests.  Because he was two weeks shy of being there a full year, he was told he had no accrued vacation.  They told him if he took any time off, he'd be fired.

Would your company handle this situation well? Or, is it just business? Are the rules the rules? Should they not let the door hit them on the way out?

(Via Robert Scoble)
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March 23, 2005

Religious beliefs vs. company dress code
Posted by Sean Kenney at 1:48 PM

When a Costco employee who belongs to the Church of Body Modification insisted that her religious beliefs trumped the company dress code, a legal battle ensued. This in-depth report examines what happens when an employee’s religious beliefs conflict with the company dress code.

An interesting debate on a potentially delicate matter. --------

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March 22, 2005

The envelope, please
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:08 AM

". . .And this year's Digital Edge Award for Best Employment Site goes to. . .BostonWorks!"

That's right. You are now reading the award-winning BostonWorks.com site. The "Edgies", as they are known, are conferred annually by the NAA (Newspaper Association of America) New Media Federation on the top digital products and services in the industry.

At this year's NAA "mega-conference" currently underway in Dallas, BostonWorks was recognized as the winner in the category "Best Employment Site, Circulation Greater Than 250,000" for "fulfill[ing] its mission as a career mentor with a focus on local jobs and deep information about Boston-area industries and employers."

Read the full citation and see the list of other award winners, including our sister site Boston.com for Best Sports Site. Meanwhile, rest assured that we are still hard at work striving to improve the services we offer, for job seeker and employer alike, in order to maintain our digital edge.
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March 19, 2005

Mass. firms add jobs for sixth consecutive month
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 9:52 AM

Today's Boston Globe reports more good news on the local economy:

Massachusetts employers boosted payrolls by 1,300 jobs in February, a modest gain, but enough to keep the state's economic recovery on track, economists said.

The state has added jobs in each of the past six months, and more than 20,000 in the past year, the Division of Unemployment Assistance reported yesterday. Recent job growth, however, has been too weak to dent the state's jobless rate, which rose slightly for the second consecutive month, to 4.9 percent, from 4.8 percent in January, and 4.7 percent in December.

While there are still signs of weakness, the overall picture is improving, and it is spreading across industry sectors:

. . .Economists said the outlook is brightening. Manufacturing added 500 jobs in February, the first monthly gain since July, while another key sector, professional, scientific and business services, added 1,400. In the last year, the sector nearly 11,000 jobs, the most of any.

Pace, the Global Insight economist, said these gains indicate that firms believe the recovery is well-entrenched and are ready to hire. He added that consumer spending, a vital economic driver, remains solid as leisure and hospitality, which includes hotels and restaurants, added 2,500 jobs last month.

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March 18, 2005

Business networking site starts jobs service
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 4:52 PM

It's a brave new world. Social networking is itself a relatively new application on the barely 10-year old World Wide Web. But now one of the leading networking sites has launched a jobs service that leverages the power of its online network:

It's not what you know but who you know. That's particularly true with job hunting.

Social networking firm LinkedIn is hoping to capitalize on that axiom. The Mountain View, Calif., company has launched LinkedIn Jobs, a bulletin board job service where degrees of separation may be as important as degrees from universities.

The concept and the service are already gaining traction among employers, who have posted 300,000 job openings in the first couple months of LinkedIn Jobs' existence.

Interested? Learn more in this article from InternetNews.com or go directly to the LinkedIn Jobs site.
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March 11, 2005

Economy adds 262,000 jobs in February
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 4:46 PM

The latest economic news out of Washington was mostly good last week:

The nation generated a better-than-expected 262,000 jobs in February, the government said yesterday, a sign the economic recovery is finally translating into a healthier job market.
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The job gains were broad based. The nation's manufacturing firms, which have been shedding jobs steadily for four years, boosted payrolls by 20,000 in February. An additional 30,000 jobs were added in construction, 30,000 in retail, and 81,000 in professional and business services.

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A business management license?
Posted by Sean Kenney at 3:04 PM

One way of diagnosing the cause of the recent epidemic of business scandals would be to speak of a widespread failure among CEOs and other senior executives (along with board members, auditors, financial analysts, and others) to uphold their professional obligations. To speak of the professional obligations of individuals such as CEOs and other executives is to imply that business management itself is a profession — but is it?

This Harvard Business School article looks at four criteria for defining a profession, and considers whether business management should be a licensed profession on par with law and medicine. --------

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March 9, 2005

Kiss and tell risky on job
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:23 AM

WARNING: As the Boston Globe reported yesterday, in light of the recent dismissal of Boeing's CEO by the company's board, it is increasingly clear that office romances can be damaging to your career:

Boeing Co.’s ouster yesterday of its chief executive after learning of his extramarital affair with a female executive sent a warning to anyone involved in garden-variety office romance: Even consensual relationships can spell trouble if employees’ desires conflict with management’s goals.

No less an authority than SHRM says so:

While most employers do not ban romances among employees, they watch them closely, human resources executives said. That’s because employees in romantic relationships may behave in ways that their employers deem are in conflict with the requirements of their job – and risk a sexual harassment claim if a relationship sours. ‘‘The biggest issue is when someone’s personal life affects their ability to perform their job,’’ said Rebecca Hastings, the Society for Human Resource Professionals information manager.

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March 4, 2005

New plan offers health coverage for part-time employees
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 9:28 AM

A consortium of major firms has announced a new plan to offer health insurance coverage to their contract and part-time workers:

Called National Health Access, the group plan is the brainchild of 60 Fortune 500 companies that joined forces to attract insurers who would be willing to cover the firms' uninsured workers and their families -- a potential pool of about 3 million.
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Since the firms broached the idea last year, new companies have joined, bringing the total number of firms to 90. Corporate participants include EMC, Manpower Inc., IBM, Target, Home Depot, Gap Inc., and Sears Roebuck & Co.

Part of the stimulus is that, in the competitive market for workers, these employers see the benefit of being able to offer health coverage to any type of worker, full-time or part-time:

The companies are hoping the plan will be an effective way to recruit professionals and reduce turnover among lower-wage workers who often leave jobs for better benefits or higher pay.

''In terms of attracting talent, this will put us in a great competitive position," said Delia Vetter, director of benefits at EMC, a data-storage firm in Hopkinton. ''Also, for those people who are 55 to 65 and have left our companies, this will make it more appealing to come back on a contract or temporary basis."

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The total candidate experience
Posted by at 9:28 AM

Candidates have a unique perspective on your hiring process. If your process has internal hoops you need to jump through, those hoops will be reflected in your external process. And that will affect the candidate's total experience. In Experiential Talenteering, Doug writes about a passive candidate who encountered an organization that didn't have a hiring culture.

They totally didn't grasp the notion of a process modification to accommodate a highly-desirable passive candidate being in control.

As Doug says, "Talenteering is about relationships!" Maybe it's time to review how your hiring process affects the building of relationships with your candidates.
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