March 29, 2007

You're the best and the brightest - and you're fired!
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 12:57 PM

In a new twist in corporate downsizing, national electronics retail giant Circuit City has announced that it's firing its top 3,400 sales people. Why? Because they are making too much money:

Circuit City said yesterday that it had fired 3,400 of its highest-paid sales staff and will replace them with lower-paid workers, a risky strategy to cut costs that goes beyond the layoffs, buyouts and hiring freezes commonly used by struggling companies.

We've heard a lot of different approaches to workforce reduction, but this one really grabs your attention.

Does it make sense for the company? In a short-term cost cutting sense, yes. But how will it affect sales? Not to mention morale of those left behind? And where might the fired workers go?

Well, Circuit City said they'd be glad to hire them back:

The fired workers will receive severance packages and a chance to apply for lower-paying positions after a 10-week delay, said the 655-store electronics chain based in Richmond, Va.

They weren't given the option of taking a pay cut, Circuit City spokesman Bill Cimino told Bloomberg News.

Read more from USA TODAY'S "On Deadline" blog.

...

 

March 28, 2007

Online database fatigue?
Posted by at 6:03 PM

Over on The Recruiting Animal blog, there is a a great post about mining databases for candidates and if these databases are going to be the death of recruiting. The entry is a compilation of responses to a question originally posted in January.

As both a recruiter AND frequent recipient of calls from headhunters, this topic continues to interest me. In my mind the science of recruiting is in using the tools and technologies to find candidates; the art, however, is in the landing. Too often I find that headhunters trying to recruit me rely too much on the databases and not enough on the art. Recruiting is a matter of establishing rapport, mutual interest and mutual benefit.

I was recently the subject of a very junior recruiter's attempt to 'network' with me. He actually became angry that I would not supply him with the names of other people to call and bother. I was shocked. Spending most of my life on the phone trying to find people, it would never occur to me that just because I found someone on-line and called, s/he would be obligated to assist me in my search.

That's part of the art of recruiting----learning to take no for an answer. Will on-line searching be the death of recruiting? Yes, if it becomes more primary to our work than relationship-building.

Maureen Crawford Hentz

...

The best ideas in workforce management
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:18 AM

Here they are, all wrapped up in one tidy bundle for you. It's Workforce Management's 2007 Optimas Awards, presented yesterday in New York, recognizing those companies' "workforce management initiatives that directly improve business results":

In the early ’90s, human resources shed its administrative straitjacket. In the dot-com era, innovation reigned, and companies showered employees with unprecedented perks. In the crash that followed, the winning organizations showed a resolve and a determination to do more with less.

Now, as the global economy changes dramatically, a different theme is emerging. In nearly every category this year, the winning organizations’ entries centered on talent. How to find it—sometimes in dizzying numbers. How to bring people into an organization quickly. How to maximize their abilities. How to steep them in a company’s culture. How to retain the best people in the face of ever-increasing competition.

Check out all ten award winners. (Note: one-time free registration is required for first-time Workforce Management site visitors.)

Then ask yourself: does your organization have what it takes to move forward in today's challenging business environment, and in a sustainable fashion? If not, what steps will you take to do something about it?

...

 

March 27, 2007

Happily ever after revisited
Posted by Diane Danielson at 1:43 PM

The latest study on family and home life comes from Wharton, where two professors documented that marriage and divorce are both at low points. 

Specifically, the number of people getting married, which has been falling for the past 25 years, is at its lowest point in recorded history, while the divorce rate in 2005 reached its lowest level since 1970.

Well, this shouldn't be surprising.  Demographics and economics have made marriage into almost a "luxury."   And when we actually have a population of people wanting to get married (to their same gender), most places won't even let them.  Sheesh.

But, according to the authors of the study, the workplace might be in for a shock in the next few years.

While the authors have no definitive answer for how this trend will play out, they suggest in their study that "a related shock to future marital patterns" and their impact on the workplace is the "sharply changing gender ratios on college campus. ... While women were a distinct minority of undergraduates in 1960, they are now a clear majority."

Women with a college degree "have traditionally married men with college degrees," Stevenson says. "As more women than men graduate from college, are they going to not marry, or marry men without college degrees? That's the $64,000 question when it comes to marriage. It's very hard to predict what impact this will have on the workplace, although it is clear that among the pool of skilled workers, a growing share will be female."

My guess?  No MRS's for female MBAs.  This trend of less-educated men has played out in Black and Hispanic cultures for years, and in fact, those women have chosen NOT to marry.

...

 

March 26, 2007

Women-only events - is separate still equal?
Posted by Diane Danielson at 6:36 PM

Carol Hymowitz of The Wall Street Journal looks at High Power and High Heels  in an article about women-only networking events. 

Still, holding women-only networking events raises some complicated issues. Are these single-sex events just as exclusionary as the traditional spectator sports events and steak-and-cigar dinners have been for men? What about women who have male clients and vice versa?

Some male executives think ambitious women would be wiser to learn to play golf -- still a primary way men in business socialize and lay the groundwork for deal making. And some women are ambivalent about women-only events that may cause them to be viewed as "frivolous." But a growing chorus is saying there's nothing wrong with recognizing that women have different tastes and different interests. Besides, after years of being subtly and not-so subtly excluded from male gatherings, women say they want their own space.

Random thoughts about this:

• I like to golf more than shop, so I don't have a problem with the former.  And I know some metrosexuals who would prefer the latter.  But, what about non-golfers of either sex?  Should they feel forced to go along with what the dominant group has decided is the norm?
• Over the course of my career, I've been excluded from male events as well as female events (the latter for not being senior enough) and it just feels "oh so college fraternity/sorority-like."
• I think it is discrimination to exclude a person based on gender.  However, it's not discrimination to hold an event that is more likely to attract one particular group than another.
• People will follow the power.  If more women are in power, we might see different networking venues where everyone can participate.  We're already seeing gen y men shy away from their father's traditions.
• People will make time for what they think is fun.  We are all extremely busy, but if we think something is going to be fun, we figure out a way to make time for it.

...

 

March 22, 2007

Enough with the opting out already!
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:27 PM

E.J. Graff's post on TPM Cafe about The Opt Out Myth needs to be read in it's entirety by any journalist who insists on writing anything more about the "opt out" trend.  Some of the highlights from her article that you won't read about elsewhere:

• Only 4% of women in the US population fit the demographics of the original "opt out" article, yet because publishers and journalists belong to this class - it's spotlighted as a trend.
• "opt-out stories invariably focus on women in one particular situation: after they have ‘opted out’ but before any of them divorce."
• "Census numbers show no increase in mothers exiting the work force, and according to Heather Boushey, the maternity leaves women do take have gotten shorter.'
• "In one experiment, Correll and her colleagues asked participants to rate a management consultant. Everyone got a profile of an equally qualified consultant—except that the consultant was variously described as a woman with children, a woman without children, a man with children, and a man without children. When the consultant was a “mother,” she was rated as less competent, less committed, less suitable for hiring, promotion, or training, and was offered a lower starting salary than the other three."
• "Here’s what feminism hasn’t yet changed: the American idea of mothering is left over from the 1950s, that odd moment in history when America’s unrivaled economic power enabled a single breadwinner to support an entire family. Fifty years later we still have the idea that a mother, and not a father, should be available to her child at every moment."
• "Why can’t twenty-first century school schedules match the twenty-first century workday?"

...

 

March 19, 2007

Retirement jitters
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 1:36 PM

Earlier this month Elaine Varelas opined on the looming labor shortage in her latest Hire Authority column.

Then the Globe followed up last week with a similar story on how many employers may be caught short when the Baby Boomers start to retire in the very near future:

American businesses are largely unprepared for a seismic workforce change that will get underway in the coming decade, as tens of millions of baby boomers retire and far fewer new employees arrive to take their place.

That's the conclusion of a study being released today by Boston College's Center on Aging & Work. The report, which surveyed 578 companies and other organizations, finds that only 12 percent have planned in-depth and more than a quarter have failed to plan at all for the changing demographics projected to create a worker shortage.

Read the entire piece, as well as the companion piece on how many workers may not have put enough aside for retirement.

Food for thought. How prepared is your company to manage the coming exodus of workers? Are you one of the 12 percent with a plan in place, or are you one of the 88 percent that may not be fully prepared?

...

 

March 14, 2007

Flexibility is not a female issue
Posted by Diane Danielson at 10:17 AM

It's also not a Gen X or Gen Y issue.  This is an everyone issue.  According to Cali Yost on the Work+Life Fit blog, The National Study of Business Strategy and Workforce Demographics (.pdf) just released a study today by the Center for Aging & Work at Boston College.  The study shows that:

As the population ages and more workers face caring for aging parents and retirement, the focus must expand. How do we all find flexibility to strategically adjust our work+life fit in response to personal and professional transitions throughout all stages of our career? This includes finding a partner, and having a child, but also caring for an elder and retirement which historically haven’t gotten as much attention.

...

 

March 12, 2007

Hidden disabilities and you
Posted by at 3:34 PM

Discussions about hidden disabilities are becoming more and more common in HR circles lately and rightfully so. Long left on the sidelines of consideration, people with hidden disabilities may suffer an additional 'helping' of discrimination because their disability can't be readily seen.

Hidden disabilities, including cancer, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and Asperger's disorder, have significant impact upon a person's daily life activities (hence their categorization as disabilities). Although many HR colleagues now know how to address visible disabilities and accommodations, responses to hidden disabilities still seem to lack finesse.

An article on monster.com called Hidden Disabilities at Work is a cogent, although basic, primer on hidden disabilities in the workplace. It is an excellent opportunity for self-assessment on the topic. If the article leaves you with more questions than answers, you know that you have more to learn in this area.

Maureen Crawford Hentz

...

 

March 9, 2007

Mass firms aren't female friendly
Posted by Diane Danielson at 9:53 PM

The Boston Globe reports on the National Association of Female Executives latest list of 35 most female friendly firms.  And there's not a Massachusetts company on the list. Maybe that's why we're the number one state for entrepreneurs

...

 

March 8, 2007

Outsourcing an internship search? Give me a break!
Posted by at 4:11 PM

CNN.com had an article this past week that details several companies' efforts to further prey upon millennial parents and students, anxious for all the right opportunities. These companies, which I won't deign to mention here, charge students to find and secure their clients (sometimes unpaid) internships.

As a former college Career Services Director and currently a recruiter, this particularly horrifies me. The process of finding, landing and securing a job is invaluable to a student's future ability to replicate the process. Hiring a service to do this for them strips students of the valuable lessons learned during a job search.

I don't want an employee who outsources her own job search, having a company write resumes and cover letters for her or doing the research for him. In the job-searching process, as in the job itself, I'm looking for someone who can problem-solve, cope with bumps in the road and keep moving forward.

As a recruiter, I certainly have no intention of partnering with any company that sells my internships like a commodity. Current applicants in my internship pools are qualified, diverse and most importantly....have gotten there on their own steam.

Maureen Crawford Hentz

...

Mass. is a hub of business democracy
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:28 AM

Massachusetts is not just the the cradle of liberty. It's also a hub of business democracy, according to a new study from WorldBlu Inc., a Washington, D.C., firm specializing in organizational democracy:

Five Massachusetts companies made a worldwide list of 34 firms with the most democratic workplaces, according to a new report.
- - - - -
On the list were Collective Copies, a firm with a copying office in Florence; Continuum, a Newton design and innovation consultancy; and Dancing Deer Baking Co. in Boston, WorldBlu said.

Other Massachusetts winners included Equal Exchange Inc., a fair trade company in West Bridgewater that sells such products as coffee, tea, and chocolate, and South Mountain Co., a design and building firm in West Tisbury.

Companies had to apply for the award, and they were evaluated on such considerations as decentralization, accountability, and integrity, WorldBlu said.

Read the whole piece from today's Daily Business Update from the Globe Business Team.

...

 

March 6, 2007

Working for the "Man"
Posted by Diane Danielson at 4:37 PM

Turns out that most people literally want to work for a man.  MSNBC.com reports on the latest study that finds male leaders more acceptable, if not preferable, for both genders.

While more than half our 60,000 respondents said a person's sex makes no difference to leadership abilities, most who expressed a preference said men are more likely to be effective leaders.

Of male respondents, 41 percent said men are more likely to be good leaders, and 33 percent of women agreed. And three out of four women who expressed a preference said they would rather work for a man than a woman.

The survey, conducted early this year, found a bonanza of stereotypes among those polled, with many using the optional comment section to label women "moody," "bitchy," "gossipy" and "emotional." The most popular term for woman, used 347 times, was "catty."

There are still few women in the corner office today, and the numbers appear to be declining. Our survey sheds light on one obstacle blocking women from the boardroom: negative attitudes about women leaders — attitudes women themselves still harbor.

.

...

 

March 5, 2007

As tech firms rebound, job market shifts
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 1:44 PM

Tech firms, does this conform with your view of the world these days?

The job market hasn't returned to the feverish state of the 1990s, and fields such as telecommunications have been slower to recover. But multiple job offers are no longer rare for managers and consultants, software developers, researchers, website designers, marketing and sales professionals -- even newly minted college graduates -- knocking on the doors of resurgent high-tech companies. Especially hot are Internet businesses riding the new wave of digital commerce.

And, on the flip side, employers are struggling for the first time in years to hire technology talent. Many are paying signing bonuses ranging from $15,000 to $40,000, often structured as tuition forgiveness, to lure masters in business administration graduates from top schools.

Read this front page feature story from yesterday's Boston Sunday Globe.

...