Functional
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Sleep, Work-Life and Performance
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Many of us who read systematicHR are in the same situation. We’re good at what we do, we’re over-worked, we’re committed to achievement, and our employers expect us to succeed. It all boils down to one thing – most of us are not getting enough sleep. Dubs is writing about sleep? You ask. Why yes.…
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Equifax to buy top payroll-service firm
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That was the headline that greeted me when I opened up my Atlanta Journal Constitution Business section last Thursday. Right there below the fold. Plain as day. My heart began to race a bit. Who could it be? Equifax is big, certainly. With a $5 billion market capitalization they could probably make a run at…
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Myths of Employee Engagement: Part 2
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Yesterday I posted some basic reactions to WorkUSA’s research on employee engagement and manager communications. Today, I’d like to continue with some reactions to the second half of their “key findings.” Some of you may thing “Does Dubs always have to disagree?” Well, I don’t always. But I do like to put my particular spin…
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Employee Morale and Stress
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A lot has been written about the connection between low employee morale and stress. In fact, Melissa Bushman even claims it to be “The most common cause of low employee morale.” On the face of it, this sounds reasonable. If I’m stressed at work, I’m probably not happy at work. Take a deeper dive on this…
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HRIT: To Outsource or Not to Outsource… That is the Question
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For some people it’s not whether to outsource, but how much? There are degrees of technology outsourcing, services and full BPO. There are a few areas where outsourcing is pretty standard. These would obviously be payroll, benefits, retirement and technology hosting. While some of these may have more market adoption than others, these are certainly…
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Employee Morale and the Company Car
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Do a Google search on “employee morale” and you will get “about 1,020,000 hits”. Evidently, it’s a pretty hot topic! Actually, after I went through all the million plus hits, I found that there are actually 748,639 non-duplicative hits. Still quite a few, and definitely a hot topic. I found out all kinds of things…
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Universum Survey of New Graduate Preferences
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There’s a lot more to the Universum survey that I have time to go into or interpret including top employer brands cut into multiple categories and such. What I found most interesting was their cut on the new graduate goals for work. Easily, the highest ranking career goal was the desire for balance between personal…
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Employee Morale and the Boss
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The other day, I came across an interesting graph a client of mine had copied from a BusinessWeek article. I’ve been trying to find it online, to no avail. I found reference to it here, on another blog, NumericLife. Everyone has a boss to deal with When employees were polled to pick New Year’s…
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Analytics: Linking Silos, Linking Strategy
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There was a question posed on the web a while back (I’m hard pressed to find it) asking what linkages were important to the performance of an HR organization. I’m equally hard pressed to think of an instance where integrated data and analytics is not critical to an organization’s overall health and direction setting activities.…
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Prosperity Growth and the Satisfaction Gap
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Your grandfather probably worked to live. Your mother and father most likely fired to make a living. Your children will be working to define a life. – Jeff Hunter, 2006 ((Hunter, Jeff. October 31, 2006. “Economics to Identity.” Retrieved from http://www.talentism.com/ on November 12, 2006.)) There’s really no argument that the industrialized world has gotten…
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Managing the “A” Player
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Reading Harvard Business Review’s “How to Keep A Players Productive” ((Berglas, Steven. Setpember 2006. “How to Keep A Players Productive.” Harvard Business Review, September 2006.)) I was intrigued by their description of the what an “A” player is. The normal stuff we all know intuitively. “They have the natural self-confidence and brilliance to stay at…
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Fear Automation, Not Oursourcing
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People in the U.S.often complain that the loss of jobs to countries like Mexico, India and China are ruining the economy. Unemployed people from manufacturing sectors can’t find jobs, and the easy culprit to blame are those countries taking a few of the jobs. Here’s the truth – it’s not outsourcing and offshoring. It’s automation.…
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Engagement Insights From a Dumb Little Man
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Hey… Dumb Little Man is the name of his website, ok? Coming from a non HR practitioner he has some great insights about retaining engaging employees. In fact, I’d be impressed if some of these ideas came from HR practitioners too. Here are some nuggets, but then go read the whole thing for yourself: I…
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Where are the HRO Successes?
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Because much of my practice focuses on helping companies and HRO providers improve the outsourcing relationship for cost, quality and service levels, in my job I see many broken HRO relationships. It’s the nature of the business. So it comes as no surprise to see the article published online at Workforce.com yesterday: ACS, Delta Change…
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The ROI of Sales Incentives
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Online Conversion recently referenced a great study from Northwestern University that surveyed the economic impact of $1 trillion of sales incentives annually. What does not work as well as managers hoped are non-cash incentives. The study found that: “What employees most desire might not be best for optimal business results. Employees indicate a preference for…
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HRO: Profits, or Business Model?
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Jason asks if we can just get past the HRO profit (loss) thing. I think he’s right. What’s important in the equation is not if the HRO’s are making money or not (and chances are that none of them are), but how the financials are affecting the shaping of their businesses. Instead of focusing on…
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I Pretend to Work, Work Pretends to Pay Me
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I actually saw this quote on a sign in a very touristy restaurant. Somehow, I decided that I probably wouldn’t see the situation quite the same way that the employee did. I Pretend to Work therefore Work Pretends to Pay Me The fact of the matter is that this situation is probably completely true. Because…
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How Did They Get Here – ExcellerateHRO
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In March of 2006, a study by Forrester Research was released which ranked ExcellerateHRO as a “Leader” among HR BPO providers. Excuse me? I mean who were these guys? Anyone not paying close attention might have missed that ExcellerateHRO had only been in business for 1 year at that point. If you were busy with…
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A Return to Sabbaticals
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A few months ago I wrote about sabbaticals and wanted to swing back around and clarify my position – especially since I may have been proven wrong about a couple things. In my original article, I stated that sabbaticals were the domain of relatively few professional services firms (consultancies, law firms, accounting firms, etc.). However,…
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How did they get here – ADP
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Next in our “How did they get here” series, I take a look at ADP, perhaps the most acquisitive organization in the payroll / HR / benefits space. As such, I certainly cannot begin to recount all of the activity that got ADP where it is in this space. I will however try to hit…