Increase in the % Workers participating in Employee Retirement Plans

clipped from workforce.com The percentage of all workers participating in employment-based retirement plans was 41.5 percent in 2007, up from 39.7 percent a year earlier, according to a study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Among full-time workers 21 to 64 years old, 55.3 percent were in an employment-based plan in 2007, up from 52.7 percent the previous year, according to a news release on the study issued by EBRI in Washington. Other findings in the study were: • 63.9 percent of workers 55 to 64 were in a retirement plan in 2007, compared with 28 percent of workers ages 21 to 24. • 57 percent of full-time female workers participated in a plan in 2007, compared with 54 percent of male workers. • Florida had the lowest representation of workers participating in plans in 2007, at 42 percent. Wisconsin had the highest participation rate, at 68 percent.

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Retirement Age 67 is the target for 48 percent of US Workers.

clipped from workforce.com Only 48 percent of American workers plan to retire at age 67, with others planning to work longer, according to a survey released by Sun Life Financial. The data also showed that only 46 percent of those surveyed are “very confident” they will have enough money to take care of basic living expenses at 67, and 28 percent are “very confident” they will be able to take care of medical expenses. Younger generations have little confidence that government benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare will be available when they retire, as 63 percent of workers 30 to 39 years old don’t believe Social Security will be available. The same age group also noted the need for employer-sponsored health care benefits as a reason to work past 67.

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MIT Study - Bias Creeps into Bonus Process

clipped from workforce.com Employers generally believe they are being as fair as possible by rating employees’ performance annually and basing their bonuses on those ratings. But a recent study by a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management shows that might not always be the case. In the study “Gender, Race and Meritocracy in Organizational Careers,” professor Emilio Castilla found that despite being in the same job with the same supervisor and receiving the same performance ratings, white men often received higher bonuses than minorities. The study, which examined 9,000 exempt and nonexempt nonmanagement employees at a U.S. company with a workforce of 20,000, compared white male and minority employees who were in the same job and work unit. They also had the same supervisor and experience and education levels.

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Use Multiple Websites for your Job Posting

Source: eGrabber Newsletters

Surveys show that nearly 17% of recruits found their last job from an ad posted on an online job board. Internet resources are clearly effective as a key component of any effective recruitment strategy. Though most recruiters are unanimous in accepting the above fact, they are a bit pessimistic when it comes to increasing their Internet recruiting capability. They restrict their job postings to a handful of familiar sites.

There are more than 45,000 job boards and career portals in the U.S. alone. Successful recruiters are more open to exploring this pool to find sites that might be appropriate for their openings. Expand your sources to include at least 5 different sites for posting job ads. By including alternative sites in your online recruiting, you can widen your net and attract more number of prospects.

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Labor Day - Less Optimism for Workers

clipped from workforce.com American workers will have little to celebrate this Labor Day, according to a new report. The study, from the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, examines the recession-recovery cycle that started in 2001 and finds that for the first time on record, middle-class families are at or near the end of a recovery without ever having regained the ground they lost during the recession that preceded it. The study also said job growth has been slower and unemployment stints longer. “[Gross domestic product] and historically high productivity growth should have raised paychecks up and down the income ladder, but instead, the benefits of that growth have bypassed most of the people who made it possible,” the institute said in a statement.

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HR software market keeps Growing this year

clipped from workforce.com Two new studies that speak to the state of the HR software market agree that spending on HR technology is likely to keep growing this year. The reports, from advisory firms Towers Perrin and AMR Research, indicate that a tumultuous, sluggish economy isn’t crimping sales of applications for such tasks as tracking basic employee data, recruiting new workers and managing compensation. Thomas Keebler, leader of Towers Perrin’s global HR function effectiveness practice, was surprised to see that just 15 percent of organizations surveyed by his firm expect to reduce spending this year on HR technology—a category that includes HR software expenses plus internal and external staffing costs. Last year, that figure was 18 percent.

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Exec Searches Increase Despite Q1 Decline

clipped from workforce.com Demand for senior executive talent increased during the first quarter of 2008 despite a slight dip in the tumultuous financial sector, according to a newly released state-of-the-industry survey from the Association of Executive Search Consultants. The number of searches for financial services executives was flat compared with the preceding quarter, but down 7.2 percent from the first quarter of 2007. The technology sector was also down year over year, falling 5.1 percent. Financial services is typically the largest executive search sector, but it dropped to second during the quarter with a 22 percent market share, trailing the industrial sector’s 24 percent. Searches for manufacturing executives saw the biggest year-over-year gain, at 10.1 percent.

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The 10 Hardest Jobs To Fill

clipped from workforce.com Because of an aging workforce and a new generation of workers entering other professions, engineers, machinists and skilled trade workers are the three most difficult positions to recruit for, according to Manpower’s annual list of “The 10 Hardest Jobs to Fill.” Baby boomers are starting to retire, which means many workers with traditional blue-collar skills are leaving the workforce, says Melanie Holmes, vice president of corporate affairs for the Milwaukee-based staffing giant. The survey, released Tuesday, April 22, covered 42,500 employers from 32 countries. The retiring boomers are compounded by fewer young people entering these fields. Less than 10 percent of college students in America are getting engineering degrees, Holmes says. The 10 Hardest Jobs to Fill 1. Engineers 2. Machinists/machine operators 3. Skilled trades 4. Technicians 5. Sales representatives 6. Accounting and finance staff 7. Mechanics 8. Laborers 9. IT staff 10. Production operators

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Employees Aren’t Engaged by Wellness Programs - Hewitt Associates

clipped from workforce.com Employers still have a lot of work to do to make their wellness programs more effective, according to a study released Thursday, April 3, by Hewitt Associates. While companies are devoting more time and money into helping employees live healthier lifestyles, employees aren’t sure they want their employers taking on this role, according to Hewitt. Eighty-eight percent of employers surveyed plan to invest in ways to improve the health and productivity of their workforces, up from 66 percent last year. But only 12 percent of employees believe that it’s appropriate for their employer to play this role. This presents a huge challenge for companies, says Jim Winkler, leader of Hewitt’s health management consulting practice.

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Working From Home Reduces Stress levels - Survey Results

clipped from www.personneltoday.com Working from home reduces stress in office workers, but leads to fears about career progression, according to research. A survey of 749 staff in managerial or professional positions conducted by Durham Business School showed that homeworkers worried about missing-out on 'water-cooler networking' - where potential opportunities for moving up the ladder are discussed informally in the office. Despite these concerns, the study also found that working from home generally had a positive effect on an employee's work-life balance, giving them more time with the family and leading to less stress and less chance of burnout.

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Survey Hints Drop in Hiring

clipped from workforce.com Survey Hints at Drop in Hiring Manpower’s latest quarterly employment outlook survey showed its weakest hiring projections in four years. The report, released Tuesday, March 11, revealed 9 percent of the 14,000 U.S. companies responding to the survey expect reductions in staff levels between April and June, according to Melanie Holmes, vice president of corporate affairs for the Milwaukee-based staffing giant. A majority of respondents—60 percent—expect no change in their workforce levels, and 26 percent plan to increase hiring. By comparison, during the first quarter of 2004, 13 percent of employers anticipated cuts in staffing, while 61 percent thought headcount would remain the same and 20 percent projected increases. Manpower’s outlook at the same time last year was somewhat stronger, with 7 percent of respondents anticipating staffing cuts.

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Compensation Gap Continues - WorkForce.com

clipped from workforce.com In the survey, conducted among the association’s 259 members, 96 percent said women are paid less than men for comparable work. Nearly two-thirds consider their gender a factor that holds them back in their careers, and many cited a lack of access to decision-makers, mentors or types of assignments critical for career advancement. Entrepreneurs also felt they had limited access to funding sources need to start a business. “The FWA study indicates that women in finance-related careers continue to find themselves hindered in their treatment as equal partners in the workplace,” says Lily Klebanoff Blake, the group’s president. When asked whether certain business conditions were better today than three years ago, only 10 percent of women said issues of pay parity had improved, compared with 20 percent of women in the association’s 2002 survey.

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2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey

clipped from workforce.com I get a lot of surveys sent my way in the course of a week. Most of them aren’t all that surprising or newsworthy. This one was different. Here’s the headline that grabbed my attention: More than half of all employers have fired workers either for e-mail or Internet abuse, according to the 2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey from the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute. It went on to list these other highlights from the study: • 66 percent of employers are monitoring Internet connections. • 45 percent of employers are tracking content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard. • Another 43 percent store and review computer files. • Of the 43 percent of companies that monitor e-mail, 73 percent use technology tools to automatically monitor e-mail and 40 percent assign an individual to manually read and review e-mail.

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Good human resources will boost your company profits

Source: Personnel Today

This article appeared in Personnel Today. The article is about a research which shows that business with good HR practices enjoys high profits.

Find below the text clips from the article

People and the Bottom Line, an in-depth two-year study by the Work Foundation and the Institute for Employment Studies, tested a range of people management practices with almost 3,000 employers to assess their impact on organisational performance.

It found that businesses with good HR practices - from resourcing to employee engagement and skills development, enjoyed higher profit margins and productivity than those without. The study concluded that if an organisation increased its investment in HR by just 10% it would boost gross profits by £1,500 per employee per year.

Penny Tamkin, associate director of the Work Foundation and lead researcher on the project, told Personnel Today: "The report found that it was the intensity of the HR practice that makes a difference - for example, not just whether companies do employee engagement, but how much and how often."

Tamkin stressed there was no one-size-fits-all approach to investment in people management. However, she said the key to success was HR departments working closely with managers to achieve results.

To read the complete article, Visit Personnel Today

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