Talent

Interview stereotyping undermines women

Women applying for senior positions can face an interview Catch-22. Come across as competent but modest and risk being over-looked. Come across as ambitious and competitive and get labeled as difficult.

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Ask "For What?" Before "Who?"

09 JAN 2009 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

In hiring its new CEO, Borders seems to have followed Drucker's advice to define the mission before selecting the candidate.

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Test for Dwindling Retail Jobs Spawns a Culture of Cheating

07 JAN 2009 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Many retailers have largely automated the hiring process with online personality tests... The system cuts the time store managers must spend in interviewing applicants. But the test also is creating a culture of cheating and raising questions for applicants about its fairness -- even as it becomes a critical determinant of who gets a job and who doesn't in a stressful era of rising unemployment. (Subscription required)

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Recruiting Talent to Ailing Firms

05 JAN 2009 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

How W.R. Grace Altered Hiring, Retention Practices While in Chapter 11. (Subscription required)

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One Gender's Crash

04 JAN 2009 from the Washington Post | Read the full story»

The experience of the past year suggests that we desperately need to bring more women into leadership positions. (Subscription required)

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Will Work for Praise: The Web's Free-Labor Economy

28 JAN 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

This online business model has Americans happily toiling for attention on for-profit sites that don't pay them money.

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Executive Pay

21 DEC 2008 from the Wasington Post | Read the full story»

After years of watching the top echelons of corporate management take home billions, shareholders want to know: Will inflated pay packages get slashed?

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Passing the Buck

21 DEC 2008 from the Wasington Post | Read the full story»

Who in their right mind thinks a chief executive earning a $1 a year is actually making a sacrifice? Nobody.

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Comfort with meaningless the key to good programmers

It is famously difficult to teach people to program, and CS lore says that there are simply people who get it and people who don't. Saeed Dehnadi and Richard Bornat, two computer instructors at Middlesex University in the UK, put that idea to the test, and ended up not with two kinds of people, but three.

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The Secret of Success in a Failing Economy

You don’t survive a downturn by encouraging your most experienced people to leave. Perhaps more business leaders can resist this wrong-headed practice—and hold on to those employees who have had the most practice in their careers.

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Hiring for Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence--EQ, for short--"accounts for anywhere from 24 percent to 69 percent of performance success," says Lynn. Some positions require more emotional intelligence than others, but there are very few jobs in which a solid level of EQ does not confer advantage. For managers it is crucial, as it is for anyone who needs to be adept at the give-and-take of working as part of a creative, dynamic team.

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The Needs of the Global Economy Workforce

A new Accenture study on working women underlines the importance of talent management for companies in both established and emerging markets.

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Downturn could make the glass ceiling even thicker

Global recession could make it even harder for women to break into the boardroom, even though we might be in less of a mess now if more women had been in charge in the first place.

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20 is the magic number

What gets rewarded usually gets done. So, when CEOs earn more than 364 times the pay of the average worker, it's only natural they will focus almost exclusively on short term, bottom-line results. There has to be a better way. So what is the appropriate way to pay a CEO?

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What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science? (Randall Stross/New York Times)

What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?  —  ELLEN SPERTUS, a graduate student at M.I.T., wondered why the computer camp she had attended as a girl had a boy-girl ratio of six to one.  And why were only 20 percent of computer science undergraduates at M.I.T. female? (Subscription required)

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An unfair sacrifice

Some companies are responding to the recession by asking staff to take unpaid holidays. Of course, it's the lowest-paid who will suffer most from this, not their well-fed bosses.

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Building Employee Loyalty With Kenexa

How Kenexa is blending psychology and technology to create passionate workers.

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Women CEOs Get Paid Less

According to the latest findings from "The Corporate Library’s CEO Pay Survey: CEO Pay 2008," female CEO pay packages are only about 85% of male total actual pay (which includes stock option profits and other realized equity) at the median: $1,746,000 compared to $2,049,000. The survey adjusted for size, industry, tenure and performance and included 3,242 U.S. and Canadian-based companies.

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The Positive Business Manifesto by Jon Gordon

[I]f building a positive business is so important and beneficial, then we are left to wonder, 'Why aren't more companies, more positive?' Why are there not more people skipping through the halls, smiling at their co-workers and loving their job? Why do more people die Monday morning at 9am than any other time? Why does negativity cost companies 300 billion dollars 1 and sabotage teamwork, careers, morale and performance?

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Rein in Chief’s Pay? It's Doable

How to curb executive pay has become a hot-button issue now that American taxpayers are shareholders in the nation’s largest banks. (Subscription required)

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Companies poach their rivals' best

More than 2 million people have lost jobs this year, Businesses are hurting. But companies with a little extra cash are finding this an excellent time to poach new talent from competitors.

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Gender Diversity and the Financial Sector

In these troubled times it's immensely heartening to see companies giving priority to nurturing talent. It also makes a great deal of economic sense. As compensation dwindles and bonuses are slashed, companies need to focus on imaginative forms of flexibility, leadership development opportunities and other non-monetary rewards. These are poised to become important motivators for both women and men as companies deal with lean economic times.

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Gen Y gets a recession reality check

Work-life balance is becoming one of the first casualties of the economic downturn, with college graduates reporting being pushed by managers to work harder, come in earlier and stay later.

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If Women Were More Like Men

Rather than trying to compare groups of men and women, Schilt and Wiswall looked at people like me. They measured our earnings and employment experiences before and after our gender transitions, and found significant changes. Of course, you could argue that the study merely proves that employers have a problem with transgendered workers. But the results also show that those of us who had transitioned from male to female suffered a loss in earnings of nearly one-third, whereas those who moved from female to male increased slightly (1.5%). Have transgender women lost our competitive drive, ability to handle conflict, and willingness to put in the hours as a result of changing genders? Or do employers have more of a problem with women than men?

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Initiative Moves Women Up Corporate Ladder

20 OCT 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

LeasePlan Hires Consultant, Offers Counseling and Revisits Pay Plan to Transform Its Culture and Promote Female Employees. (Subscription required)

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The Smartest Investment You’ll Make in This Economy

Your brand needs to be stronger than ever during times like we have now. The only way to make your brand stronger is to make your employees stronger, more vibrant, more inspired, more committed, more engaged. And for that, you have to invest more in them and their success and help them reach their goals. They’ll help you reach your goals, because they share them with you.

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Get Rid of the Performance Review!

20 OCT 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

It destroys morale, kills teamwork and hurts the bottom line. And that's just for starters. (Subscription required)

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Layoffs and Creativity: Are You Expelling the Innovators?

A downturn can be an opportunity to get rid of incompetent people and, of course, destructive assholes. But beware of the evils of using layoffs as a reason to expel everyone in your organization who does not act, think, and look like everyone else -- beware that most of us are prone to hold an overly narrow image of a "good employee."

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Unleashing the Genius in Your Workforce

Scrap that employee bell curve. Stephanie Chick advises managers to set expectations higher and tap the creativity—not just the talent—in their workers.

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Why The Fall of Wall Street is Good!?

Great news! The lure of Wall Street and disproportionately paid finance executives is finally behind us. The current debacle presents an amazing opportunity to liberate America’s top talent from the great opportunity cost of being brave and starting something new. For the first time in decades, the most talented people might actually follow their true interests rather than the masses. Our economy will benefit in the long-term if we have the brightest minds taking the risks to make new and bold ideas happen.

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How Top Talent Is Dealing with Tough Times on Wall Street

3 OCT 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

By Sylvia Ann Hewlett

A recent study by the Center for Work Life Policy says that trust and loyalty are at an all-time low

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The challenge of hiring and retaining women: An interview with the head of HR at eBay

SEP 2008 from the McKinsey Quarterly | Read the full story»

In an era of ever-intensifying competition for talent, companies that can appeal to and retain different kinds of employees are more likely to succeed. For more than 20 years, Beth Axelrod, the head of HR at eBay, has focused on understanding the talent needs of companies and how they can meet those needs. In this interview, she discusses the difficulties that companies have in hiring and retaining women, strategies she has seen succeed, and her view of how HR can become a strategic partner with businesses. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Heather Schultz

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The traditional workplace is broken

President Jason Fried says today’s employers present the biggest roadblock. "Simply put, employees are treated like children. They are not allowed to think for themselves, and there are too many layers of approval, just too much insulation that prevents anyone from doing anything. The traditional workplace is broken, and until someone realizes that, there’s always going to be conflict."

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The Global Talent Crisis

In today's complex environment, a strategy for attracting skilled people is as critical as a marketing or finance strategy.

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Not What, Not How, but Who? Western Companies Face a Worldwide Talent Crunch

Faced with an aging workforce and a growing demand for skilled workers in emerging markets like China and India, companies in the West are grappling with a talent crunch of unprecedented scope. According to experts at Wharton and The Boston Consulting Group, management responses include over-hiring to meet future needs, upgrading training in concert with universities and in-house corporate schools, and extracting greater productivity through innovation.

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Employee Free Choice Act: Labor vs. Business

As unionizing law, would EFCA help workers or hurt U.S. competitiveness? Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and lawmaker George Miller offer different views.

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Why Your Company Should Treat Employees Like Family

17 SEP 2008 from Harvard Business Review | Read the full story»

The numbers of unemployed are rising. The economy is rocky. And given the recent massive blows to Wall Street, odds are that things could get a lot rockier. Your firm may be thinking about belt-tightening, and the standard way of doing this is to lower headcount and cut back on benefits. But these moves can eviscerate morale, making it more difficult to keep good people on board or hire new talent when needed. What should top decision-makers do?

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Need Global Talent? Grow Your Own

With so much competition for skilled people and so much worker mobility, the best recipe for success is to build from within.

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A business case for women

Companies that hire and retain more women gain a competitive edge by drawing from a broader pool of talent in an era of talent shortages. Research shows a correlation between high numbers of female senior executives and stronger financial performance. (Subscription required)

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Not Just a Glass Ceiling

09 SEP 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Women and minorities are not the novelty they once were in Congress, statehouses and legislatures, or even, starting with this election, on the presidential campaign trail. But elective office is still overwhelmingly a white male occupation. A new study suggests that may have less to do with the glass ceiling than with the pipeline: too few women and minorities are being appointed to top state jobs where they can get the experience and the public attention to establish a political career. (Subscription required)

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Labor's Looking Good -- And Jack Welch Is Worried

I was privileged to be having lunch with Jack Welch a while back, and took the opportunity to ask him what he thought the most pressing issue facing American management today was. His answer really surprised me.

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Women: an untapped talent

Models of effective leadership are still based on men and the types of talents that they bring to such positions. So to tap into the talents that women bring to the workplace, our ideas about leadership need to be reexamined.

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Tough times ahead for US graduates

After years of expecting to waltz into their ideal career, nearly three quarters of American graduates are now seriously worried about their chances of landing a job at all when they leave college.

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What's Hobbling the IRS

BW columnists Jack and Suzy Welch discuss a problem that renders government agencies powerless to get rid of certain bad employees. If the Employee Free Choice Act passes, say the Welches, other organizations could find themselves in the same predicament. (Audio)

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Best Places to Launch a Career

To lure and keep young talent when cash is tight, companies of all stripes are appealing to Gen Yers' ambitions for speedy advancement—and their desire to do good while doing well.

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Hiring from Outside the Company: How New People Can Bring Unexpected Problems

Rather than hire experienced people from outside, many companies might be better off training fresh recruits with little experience in the industry. That approach can give the firm more control over how the new workers adapt to their employer's corporate strategy and culture, according to a research paper by Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard titled, "Unpacking Prior Experience: How Career History Affects Job Performance."

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Girl Power at School, but Not at the Office

31 AUG 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

The pay disparity speaks to a larger issue that women, coming directly out of the colleges that nurtured and rewarded them and gave them every advantage, may have trouble grasping. For me, it was crystallized in a comment made to me by Myra Hart, a retired senior faculty member at Harvard Business School who studies women as entrepreneurs: "By and large women believe that the workplace is a meritocracy, and it isn’t." (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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Skilled Trades Seek Workers

19 AUG 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Unions, construction contractors and other businesses are trying to figure out how to attract more young people to skilled trades. To highlight the benefits of a career in the skilled trades, employers are turning to schools, the military and the Web. (Subscription required)

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Talent Management: How to Invest in Your Workforce

An exclusive study from IBM and Human Capital Institute finds nonprofits and midsize companies coming up short in employee management.

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How to address China's growing talent shortage

31 JUL 2008 from the McKinsey Quarterly | Read the full story»

The growing need for talented managers in China represents the biggest management challenge facing multinationals and locally owned businesses alike, surveys show. Demand for skilled managers will grow more quickly than the supply of qualified candidates. (Subscription required)

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How Female Stars Succeed in New Jobs

04 AUG 2008 from HBS Working Knowledge | Read the full story»

Since launching his research into the war for talent, however, Groysberg has started to notice something quite different about the career paths of successful analysts who were female. Star women, he found, maintained their shine even after switching companies. Unlike their male peers, they thrived in new work environments. Why the difference?

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Employers boost 401(k)s to meet workers' demand

Corporate America may have turned its back on traditional pensions but it appears to be embracing 401(k)s more than ever....

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Why women still are second class in the workplace

Almost everywhere you look these days, senior management claim that glass ceilings have been shattered and there is no impediment to progression whatever your gender, colour, religion or sexual orientation. Talent will out is the mantra.

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Are Women Leaders Often Set Up to Fail?

With the recent dismissal/demotion of Erin Callan (Lehman Brothers), Zoe Cruz (Morgan Stanley), and Sallie Krawcheck (Citi), a 2005 article in the British Journal of Management entitled "The Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Over-Represented in Precarious Leadership Positions" is being scrutinized anew.

In this article Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam confront the question: what sorts of jobs are women given when they finally make it into senior leadership positions? They make the case that more so than men, women are likely to find themselves on a glass cliff--- dealing with situations that are seriously risky. In short, they are set up for failure.

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Are Red Sox Fans Good for Civilization?

Possibly - but on game day, they're not great for Boston's businesses and schools: A recent survey by Bank of America found that 29 percent of Sox fans surveyed admitted to skipping work for an opening day game, and over half (61 percent) said they would allow their child to skip school for a game, [...]

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'Don't Touch My Perks': Companies that Eliminate Them Risk Employee Backlash

Earlier this summer, when employees first learned of a Google plan to upgrade and dramatically raise the price of its day care program, they wept. According to Wharton faculty and compensation experts, that reaction shouldn't come as a big surprise. Trying to eliminate any perk, they say, can cause feelings of betrayal, and even retaliation against the company, on the part of employees. With the current economic slump, more 'de-perking' could be on the way.

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Wanted: risk-takers for the next decade

Employers may claim to hire for attitude, yet more often than not truly enterprising, creative people get overlooked or branded as "risky". Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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If they like the brand, they'll join you

In an age of instant imagery and messaging, protecting an organisation's brand and public image are becoming an increasingly important part of attracting, hiring and keeping top executives. Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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Six Signs You Don't Care About Workers

How to gauge whether your company's happy talk about employees being its best asset has any basis in reality.

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Older employees are happier than the young with their working lives

Older workers are the happiest employees while those in their thirties are most negative, research suggests.

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The Mismatch Problem by Malcolm Gladwell

Do you hire people based on the measuring the wrong variables? (Video )

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The Case Against Vacation Policy

IT consulting firm Bluewolf lets employees take as much vacation as they want, whenever they want-as long as they meet their goals.

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Hiring Is Hard Work

BusinessWeek Columnists Jack & Suzy Welch talk about lessons recently (re)learned from two job applicants they almost employed. (Audio)

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Measure Output, Not Input

What working conditions are ideal for maximum creativity and productivity?

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Matching the Right People to the Right Jobs

Your workforce's skills change over time, and so does your business. Getting the right people into the right jobs is key to your company's growth.

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For a Good Retirement, Find Work. Good Luck.

Today, the conventional wisdom holds that market forces will soon stimulate demand for older workers. Business executives and consultants talk of a coming shortage of skilled employees as boomers begin to retire in droves... But the demand, some say, may not surface as expected. It is true that the boomer generation is huge, but the domestic work force will continue to grow without them. (Subscription required)

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Technology worker shortage has businesses, educators worried

Fewer college students are pursuing computer-related degrees at a time when demand is increasing and thousands of baby boomers ...

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The war for talent

According to JP Rangaswami, managing director of BT Design, there is a war for talent, and the most open companies will be the winners.

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CEO pay chugs up in '07 despite economy

As the American economy slowed to a crawl and stockholders watched their money evaporate, CEO pay still chugged to yet more dizzying heights last year, an Associated Press analysis shows....

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Headhunting Goes Cross-Cultural

For global companies, finding executives who have knowledge of markets outside their own is increasingly important.

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The Career Employee Bill of Rights by Milo Sindell and Thuy Sindell, Ph.D.

In the past, an employee's relationship with their job was about work life boundaries. Today and in the future, work is and will be an integral expression of who you are. More than ever before, people need resources that will give them a framework to organize their ideas, sources of motivation, skills, and tools and sources of motivation to take control of their job and discover what's in it for them. Enter the Career Employee Bill of Rights. These are not the rights afforded to you by the law. These are your eight inalienable rights, and unfortunately, no one has made it clear that you have these rights. Now it's your time and turn to discover what each of these mean to you and take action to make these rights yours.

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Standing Up for Workers' Rights in Japan

Japan’s salarymen have borne the brunt of its economic decline, enduring lower wages, job insecurity and long hours of unpaid overtime. Now, a few are fighting back.(Subscription required)

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What Do You Make? Job Site Promises Peek at Salaries

11 JUN 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Popular real-estate Web site Zillow.com offers a glimpse of what your friends' and neighbors' homes may be worth. Now, Zillow founder Rich Barton plans to pull back the curtain on another cache of data that many people like to keep quiet: employee salaries. He is launching a job-and-career site, Glassdoor.com, that includes compensation figures for jobs at specific companies, as well as reviews provided anonymously by employees. So far, the site has gathered about 2,000 salary reports and 1,300 employee-written reviews for more than 250 companies, many of them in the high-tech and financial industries. (Subscription required)

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High Performers Won't Wait

BusinessWeek's Jack & Suzy Welch say that these days, holding back promising employees until they "pay their dues" is folly. (Audio)

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Treat Employees Right in Tough Times

If employees really are your company's most important asset, mass layoffs and salary freezes are a poor way to show it.

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Female Workers Break Stereotypes in Karachi

Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep continues his reporting from one of the largest cities in the world as part of our series, "The Urban Frontier." In this segment, we meet two influential women in Karachi, Pakistan. Sabra Khadun supervises men digging a new sewer, and Purveen Rehman works as an architect and leader of a research center. Both women are breaking stereotypes in a male-dominated society. (Audio)

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Women vs. men: Who's better at business?

05 JUN 2008 from the Los Angeles Times | Read the full story»

In Leadership and the Sexes: Using Gender Science to Create Success in Business, Michael Gurian and Barbara Annis offer decades of experience so we can decide who is better at what in the business world. But it turns out that it's not a question of better, just different.

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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Caught in the Middle: Why Developing and Retaining Middle Managers Can Be So Challenging

Middle managers are often referred to as the "glue" that holds companies together, bridging the gap between the top management team and lower level workers. They implement strategy and organizational changes, keeping workers engaged during both good times and bad. Yet according to a recent survey of middle managers around the world, 20% report dissatisfaction with their current organization and that same percentage report that they are looking for another job. How do middle managers fare in an uncertain economy, and what should companies be doing to keep them happy?

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To Fix Succession Snags, Retain Women

The many-faceted impact of grooming mid-career women for the C-suite.

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For CEOs, a reversal of fortunes

23 MAY 2008 from the Los Angeles Times | Read the full story»

For the first time in years, executive paychecks got smaller in 2007. Not small, mind you, but 10% less on average in California. The trend was mirrored nationwide, thanks to increasing investor activism.

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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When the 'Silver Tsunami' Fails to Hit

The Coyne Partnership disputes claims of an impending deluge of retiring baby boomers, and explains how the truth could affect your business.

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Companies find benefits in flex-time

More than three-quarters of companies now offer flex-time as a way to keep workers happy while maintaining the corporate bottom line. That's an increase of 10% from a decade ago, a study says. Nancy Marshall Genzer has more.

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Don't trust HR to manage your talent

When it comes to talent management, three quarters of firms obediently listen to HR and put all their time and effort into grooming their top performers. But if they are going to have any hope of coping with the twin challenges of an ageing workforce and a new generation of workers with different priorities, they are going to have to change tack - and fast.

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America's growing managerial pay gap

More evidence has emerged to suggest that throwing money at workers may not be the best way to get the most out of them. Which is just as well – as the pay gap between managers and employees in the U.S widened sharply last year.

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Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too

After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls "The Offer." The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: "If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus." Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

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Why Gen Xers Are Unhappy at Work

Corporations really need folks in their 30s to early 40s, but there is a tentative relationship at best between that cohort and Corporate America.

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Older Staffers Get Uneasy Embrace

15 MAY 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Americans are working longer, reversing a long trend toward earlier retirement. But the image of companies loyally retaining scarce, seasoned workers is at odds with reality. (Subscription required)

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The Slump: It's a Guy Thing

Men, concentrated in the weakest sectors, are losing jobs in this downturn, while women make gains.

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How Stay-at-Home Moms Are Filling an Executive Niche

05 MAY 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Lots of employers would like to be able to hire cheap, temporary teams of seasoned pros with experience managing $2 billion investment portfolios, running ad campaigns or earning Ph.D.s in neuroscience. But few know the secret to finding temps of that caliber: Look on playgrounds and at PTA meetings. (Subscription required)

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Your Employees Are Dying to Be Heard

Poor workplace communication could be costing you business in more ways than you might imagine. Here's what you can do to improve it.

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Talent Trumps Resume, Persistence Trumps Talent

I’ve encountered two seemingly contradictory pieces of wisdom about talent that add up to a powerful lesson about sustainable success.

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Still suspicious of flexible working

It isn't altruism that persuades organizations to adopt more flexible working patterns. A shrinking talent pool and an increasingly independent workforce mean that flexible working is becoming a key weapon in the battle to attract, retain and engage staff.

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Pay Gap Fuels Worker Woes

28 APR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

The gap between top executive and employee compensation has never been greater. That's triggering lower morale and productivity on some corporate staffs, and making it more difficult to attract and keep talent, even in a slowing economy. (Subscription required)

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France says 'take on older staff'

France pushes employers to take on more workers in their 50s, in recognition of its ageing population.

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Workers' new worry: 'Reclassification'

IBM employees on Tuesday plan to protest the company's practice of "reclassification," or changing salaried workers to hourly ones. It's a word that's getting a lot of play in corporate America these days. Lisa Napoli reports.

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Finding Your Company's Great Thinkers

If you get a little creative, you'll uncover the inventive minds that are already in your midst. Just give them a chance to show themselves.

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You Have to Make Them Love Their Jobs

It takes special skills to manage today's highly skilled professionals. They need encouragement and inspiration more than simple direction.

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Saudis slow to accept working women

To reduce its dependence on foreign workers, Saudi Arabia's government is hiring more women and encouraging the private sector to do the same. But change isn't coming easily. Kelly McEvers reports from Riyadh.

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Does your employer deserve you?

23 APR 2008 from Fortune | Read the full story»

Almost all companies claim that 'people are our greatest asset,' but how many really treat employees that way? A talent-management expert tells how to find one that does.

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Working Life (High and Low)

20 APR 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Stricken with cancer, Jean Capobianco asked for a leave of absence. FedEx terminated her... Patagonia’s headquarters in Ventura, Calif., has storage space for surfboards so employees can take a break and hit the waves. (Subscription required)

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Recruiting Today: What Are You Promising?

More and more, young talent is looking for companies whose values line up with their own.

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Cracks in a Particularly Thick Glass Ceiling

Women in South Korea are slowly changing a corporate culture that lags behind the rest of the country.

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Why Aren't There More Women on Boards?

Moving past tokenism and box checking opens doors to more diversity.

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Life’s Work: Dilbert the Inquisitor

There is a continuing effort to turn hiring and promoting into a science. (Subscription required)

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Another Wave of H-1Bs on the Way

With visas set to max out quickly again, tech companies want more. Amid rising joblessness, does America need more skilled foreign workers?

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Talent shortage tops HR's list of worries

Skilled workers are in such short supply in America that finding talent is now a greater headache for HR managers than even the spiralling cost of funding healthcare.

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Tempt Talent with Creative Recruiting

Companies are going the extra mile to make their pitch resonate with the most desirable prospects: the happily employed.

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Deciding Who Leads

How executive recruiters change the course of global business, and how my immersion in the world of top headhunters changed my perspective.

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A field guide to underappreciated workplace geniuses

As I continued to deal with people, though, I realized that not only are there employees out there with unappreciated intelligences, some of these people are downright geniuses in a strange kind of way. Their ability to function at high levels in their areas of expertise and complete inability to work and play well with others is worthy of examination by someone much smarter than me.

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Mentors Make a Business Better

Your managers may be your biggest asset. Tap their talents to teach new employees, and they'll learn from their protégés along the way.

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In Silicon Valley, a Flight to Safety

07 MAR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Mr. Kher is part of a new flight to safety among tech-industry workers as the economy struggles. In growing numbers, these workers are gravitating to larger companies that they hope can better weather a downturn. (Subscription required)

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The future of work. At home, looking after grandma

As the population ages over the next decade, workers will increasingly find themselves having to juggle holding down a job and career with caring for elderly dependents, a demographic challenge that could profoundly change the way we work.

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(New Math) x (SEC Rules) + Proxy=Confusion

21 MAR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Companies are loading proxies with mind-numbing figures and formulas that are supposed to explain executive compensation. The explosion of mathematics was sparked by an SEC request for firms to be more specific about pay packages. (Subscription required)

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Executives Teach Inmates How to Be Employees

18 MAR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

As former business executives, Mr. Goldsmith and other GOSO volunteers offer something else that's different: They understand who gets hired and promoted in a variety of industries and can teach inmates how to turn the entry-level jobs they typically get after prison into a career. (Subscription required)

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Building fast on cheap labor

Dubai's workforce is almost entirely made up of laborers from other countries. They're nothing less than crucial to the city. Stephen Beard reports on the supply of cheap labor that makes Dubai go.

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Employee Motivation the Ritz-Carlton Way

The upscale hotelier's staff meetings rely on techniques designed to engage staffers. Here's how you can incorporate them in your own shop.

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Outsiders don't make good CEOs

Commentator and management expert Joseph Bower says when it comes to hiring a new CEO, candidates within the corporation are usually better at the job than outsiders.

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Global working women on the rise

The number of women in work is on the rise globally, the ILO says, but they find it tougher to get work than men.

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Study Shows Perks, Not Pay is Key to Attracting Talented Workers

Deloitte LLP conducted a survey amongst technology and telecommunications workers to help figure out what keys points recruiters and HR should focus on in attracting and retaining talented workers. Outside observers might jump to conclusions and quickly say more money is required. However, the study shows that flexible working schedules and flexible working environments are more persuasive that financial compensation.

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Getting to Know Gen Why

An expert talks about how to understand and embrace the "what's in it for me generation" in ways that will make them productive members of your team.

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On Work, Talent Wars, and the Power of "Humbition"

In short, today’s young professionals are the beneficiaries of a “war for talent” every bit as fierce as what we saw during the Internet boom of the 1990s. Of course, that original war for talent ended with an economic bloodbath—for over-extended companies as well as the impatient young people they hired. So, in the spirit of learning from history, here’s some advice for both sides in the hopes that this talent boom won’t end with a similar bust.

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Third of American workers expect to quit this year

A third of American workers say they will only "probably" still be with their employer by the end of the year, highlighting the deep unhappiness felt by many at what they perceive to be the lack of opportunities offered to them by their managers.

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On Diversity, America Isn't Putting Its Money Where Its Mouth Is

FEB 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

At a time when Americans are congratulating themselves for having a diverse field of political candidates, their business leadership still doesn't equally value diverse employees and managers. In fact, progress for women and minorities in terms of both pay and power has stalled or regressed at many of the nation's biggest companies. This inequality shapes perceptions about who can or should be a leader.

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'Talent on Demand': Applying Supply Chain Management to People

Failing to manage your company's talent needs, says Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli, "is the equivalent of failing to manage your supply chain." And yet the majority of employers have abysmal track records when it comes to the age-old problem of finding and retaining talent. In a book coming out in April titled, Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty, Cappelli offers a fundamentally different paradigm for thinking about talent management, one that takes many of its lessons from just-in-time manufacturing.

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Yahoo outlines golden parachutes for employees

Yahoo laid out its golden parachute plans for employees, should the Internet search pioneer get taken over in a buyout bid.

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Silicon Valley Losing Middle-Wage Jobs

Silicon Valley is in danger of creating its own digital divide; the California high-tech region is losing its middle-class work force at a significant rate. (Subscription required)

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Youth Movement

With a startling number of young people leaving New England since 1990, colleges, companies, and state officials are trying to provide incentives for them to stay.

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Embracing Flex Time Takes Work, Firms Find

Balancing work and home-life is tough, making "flex time" a front-burner issue for many professionals. But companies are finding that changing corporate culture to offer more flexible schedules can be a complicated task. (Audio)

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Are H-1B Workers Getting Bilked?

31 JAN 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Overseas companies are accused of underpaying foreigners on work visas—and hurting U.S. wages.

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Bush plans to revamp guest-worker rules

The Bush administration has announced plans to overhaul the nation's agricultural guest worker program, making it easier for growers to bring foreign workers to the United States. Dan Grech reports.

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Unemployment benefits need overhaul

The Senate is considering whether to lengthen the six-month period in which people can collect unemployment. Commentator Robert Reich says not only should unemployment benefits be extended, they should also be reformed.

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Years of irrelevance

Requiring X years of experience on platform Y in your job posting is, well, ignorant. As long as applicants have 6 months to a year of experience, consider it a moot point for comparison. Focus on other things instead that’ll make much more of a difference.

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Steal Women Superstars But NOT Men

31 JAN 2008 from Bob Sutton | Read the full story»

Boris has a brand new Harvard Business Review article that amends this finding: His research shows that although male superstars aren't portable, female superstars are portable.

Hat tip: Guy Kawasaki

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The Boss Lends a Hand

04 FEB 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Encouraged by a new law, more employers are offering programs to help employees avoid investment blunders. (Subscription required)

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Give Till It Doesn't Hurt

BusinessWeek columnists Jack and Suzy Welch say that if rewarding your stars with bigger-than-ever-before checks does not come naturally for you...practice, practice, practice. (Audio)

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Indian Companies Struggle as Wages Rise

25 JAN 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Despite its massive population, India faces worker shortages in many sectors. Rapid growth means businesses must offer higher wages to keep employees.

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NYC Versus Kentucky—One Resists Flexibility, the Other Embraces It. Who Wins?

First, let’s establish that the horses have been let out of the "flexibility barn." Whether we like it or not, flexibility is fundamentally reshaping how and where we live and work. Yet, while some communities are choosing to embrace and leverage this new flexible reality to fuel growth, others are surprisingly resistant.

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How Investing in Intangibles -- Like Employee Satisfaction -- Translates into Financial Returns

Contrary to management theories developed in the Industrial Age, employee satisfaction is an important ingredient for financial success, according to a new research paper by Wharton finance professor Alex Edmans. His findings also challenge the importance of short-term financial results and may have implications for investors interested in targeting socially responsible companies. The paper is titled, "Does the Stock Market Fully Value Intangibles? Employee Satisfaction and Equity Prices."

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All the work, none of the benefits

Many companies are now hiring freelance workers to toil indefinitely with no promise of future benefits or salaries. Lisa Napoli has the story on what is becoming known as "permalancing."

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Stealth Job Site NotchUp Makes Companies Pay To Interview You

The problem with most job sites is that the people companies really want to hire don’t put their resumes on them because they are happy in their current positions. If you are a star manager, chances are your employer knows it and is treating you well so that you don’t even think about leaving... The folks at NotchUp, a stealth startup based in Los Altos, California launching later this month, have a better idea.

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In Professor's Model, Diversity = Productivity

08 JAN 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Rather than ponder moral questions like, "Why can’t we all get along?" Dr. Page asks practical ones like, "How can we all be more productive together?" The answer, he suggests, is in messy, creative organizations and environments with individuals from vastly different backgrounds and life experiences. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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Workaholics

A workaholic lives on fear. It's fear that drives him to show up all the time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record. A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

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What It Means to Work Here

10 JAN 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Don't try to be all things to all employees. Instead, concentrate on communicating what it's really like to work at your company and what makes it unique.

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Germans Debate Executive Pay

The salaries of German business leaders are usually much lower than those paid in the United States. But recent news of huge paychecks and severance packages for German CEOs trigger a national debate about executive pay. (Audio)

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Web companies' dark side: Few jobs

Some of the biggest Internet companies are growing like weeds, serving millions of customers a day and operating globally. But, as commentator Nicholas Carr points out, they tend to employee very few people.

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Mandatory sick days gaining strength

More than 40% of private-sector workers, most of whom work in service jobs, don't get paid sick leave. Now some federal, state and municipal lawmakers are considering making paid sick days mandatory. Shia Levitt reports.

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From Incentives to Penalties: How Far Should Employers Go to Reduce Workplace Obesity?

This month, more than half of Americans probably made health-related New Year's resolutions, but few are likely to stick to them. Employees at CFI Westgate Resorts in Orlando, Fla., might consider themselves lucky: They have an incentive to get healthy. If they join in the company-wide weight-loss contest and reach their goals, they could win cash prizes or a luxury vacation. Westgate isn't the only employer trying to push employees, especially obese ones, into healthy lifestyles. But using incentives, and in some cases penalties, to change employee behavior raises a host of legal, moral and practical questions, according to Wharton experts and others.

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State Your Business

Along with vague mission statements, most companies also lack values with grit. Forget "excellence." Try "Never lose a superstar," say BusinessWeek Columnists Jack & Suzy Welch (Audio)

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Conducting Employee Reviews

Employee reviews should benefit both of you. Here's how to make the most of them.

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Volunteering as a Benefit

Learn how some companies are offering employee volunteer programs that are motivating and retaining current employees, and attracting new ones.

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Why 'noncompete' means 'don't thrive '

To many employers, that's great news: The data clearly show that being able to enforce a noncompete makes your most creative employees less likely to jump ship. But keeping inventors and entrepreneurs frozen in place is detrimental to a region's innovation economy.

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A Look at the Hiring Picture For Big Companies in 2008

Retiring baby boomers and the weak U.S. dollar are creating new job opportunities in some surprising sectors.

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Title Inflation Swells Corporate America

Employers added a host of new jobs with 'chief' in their titles in 2007. Some, such as chief security officer, reflect changes in the marketplace. But others, like chief beer officer, simply indicate creativity.

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Hotelier Finds Happiness Keeps Staff Checked In

17 DEC 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Satisfied workers stay in their jobs longer, and they treat customers better, experts say. By contrast, unhappy workers tend to leave, particularly those in low-skill, low-wage jobs. (Subscription required)

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Common Networking Blunders That Can Sabotage a Job Hunt

Everyone knows you must network to find work following a job loss. Too often, however, unemployed people make missteps ...

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Taking Time Off From Work Without Fearing a Pink Slip

The law known as FMLA has enabled millions of people to temporarily leave their jobs for personal and family health reasons since it was enacted in 1993.

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Where Innovation Comes From

This new study from the Philadelphia Fed finds that human capital is the most important factor in innovation. It's talent that's the real driving force behind innovative clusters of business.

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What It's Like for Women At the Top of the Ladder

Six women executives talk about their careers the importance of mentoring and work-life-balance in a recent panel discussion.

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Defying Conventional Wisdom: Trading Employees

14 NOV 2007 from Blue Ocean Strategy | Read the full story»

Why is sports the only profession where businesses actively trade employees with their direct competitors? There are frequent transactions between professional teams swapping athletes around. But we never hear, for example, of a high profile, veteran real estate agent being dealt from one agency to another in exchange for a couple of young prospects.

Hat tip: 800-CEO-READ

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Many Executive Women Identify With the Scrutiny Clinton's Facing

Hillary Clinton's campaign is stirring strong feelings about what it means to be a woman seeking a position of power, says Carol Hymowitz.

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Gender pay gap from graduation to boardroom

Graduates and board directors may be at opposite ends of the career spectrum but one thing unites them: the gender pay gap.

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Big Executive of the Tiny Screen

Cyriac Roeding, executive vice president of CBS Mobile, is an unapologetic entrepreneur who isn’t afraid to take a trial-and-error approach to fielding fresh talent. (Subscription required)

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One Pay Gap Shrinks, Another Grows

01 NOV 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Women in the workforce are gaining on men in terms of earnings, but the remarkable burst of productivity of the past decade has not been widely shared with middle-class women or men. (Subscription required)

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The Feminine Critique

01 NOV 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

[W]e still don’t have a simple straightforward answer as to why there just aren’t enough women in positions of leadership. (Subscription required)

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End your tasks, end your job?

As soon as management starts conflating people with tasks, they've guaranteed that the organization is going to get stuck.

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In managing workers, it's no longer one size fits all

25 OCT 2007 from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel | Read the full story»

In today's workplace, younger generations especially are acting, dressing and performing differently than their older colleagues. As a result, managers and co-workers are struggling to deal with each other's idiosyncrasies at work. "We have a new formula in HR," Putzier says. "The more you are worth the more you can be weird."

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Otetsudai Networks: Mobile Jobs by GPS

Looking for the freedom and flexibility of part-time work over salaried security, Japanese youth can now turn to Otetsudai Networks for instant daily employment wherever they are.

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Blue Card: Don't leave home without it?

In an effort to attract highly skilled immigrant workers, the European Union is proposing its version of the U.S. "green card" visa. It would offer faster approval and employment guarantees. And it has U.S. businesses worried. Dan Grech reports.

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Must employers really pay to play?

Authoria CEO Tod Loofbourrow writes that with the U.S. in the middle of a talent crisis, too many companies are being tempted to overpay.

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The baby-boomer leadership vacuum

Most HR professionals believe Western businesses are failing to bring on the next generation of leaders, creating a vacuum at the top just when emerging economies are snapping at their heels.

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The 'Eldercare Generation' Cares About Continuing to Work: Are Companies Interested in Keeping Them?

When the AARP recently announced its seventh annual "Best Employers for Workers over 50" awards, the winners didn't get there by offering the traditional fringe benefit trio of health, life and disability insurance. Instead, the AARP recognized companies for providing workers over 50 with "forward-looking" benefits packages that include, for example, alternative work schedules and lifelong learning and career training opportunities. But are companies interested in offering jobs, or job security, to older workers? And why aren't these workers following the retirement path their parents did?

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The Great Tech Worker Divide

10 OCT 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Is there really a labor shortage, or are tech companies lobbying Congress for more visas and green cards simply to avoid paying Americans better wages?

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Nothing Can Kill Drive and Inspiration Like a Long Wait

08 OCT 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Waiting is often endemic at work -- we wait for raises, approvals and responses. And without anything to show for long waits, people tend to stop caring, waiting instead for their options to vest. (Subscription required)

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Survey Shows Workers Seek Creative Outlet

A good number of workers say they are creative types but fewer say their jobs allow them to express that creativity, according to a recent survey.

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The New Me Generation

30 SEP 2007 from the Boston Globe | Read the full story»

The crop of talented recent graduates coming into today's workforce is widely seen as narcissistic and entitled. And those are their best qualities.

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Generation Y's Bad Rap

BusinessWeek Columnists Jack & Suzy Welch say that Gen Y's reputation for being greedy and swaggering is unfair. Instead, they believe the members of Gen Y are driven, thoughtful, and candid.

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Financial Incentives Can Create Bad Employee Behavior

SEP 2007 from the Stanford Graduate School of Business | Read the full story»

Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer of the Stanford Graduate School of Business warns that using monetary incentives can backfire, especially if they are offered mainly to influence behavior.

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Best Way to Save: Analyze Why Talent Is Going Out the Door

24 SEP 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Few things trouble executives more than watching outstanding talent walk out the door. But rather than deny a talent bleed, executives should carefully analyze why it is happening. (Subscription required)

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Netflix: Flex To The Max

24 SEP 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Surrounded by fierce rivals, Reed Hastings keeps the troops motivated with hefty compensation and luxe perks, including lots of time off.

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Wage Wars

01 OCT 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Workers—from truck drivers to stockbrokers—are winning huge overtime lawsuits.

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Wielding The Velvet Hammer

24 SEP 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Creative types need special care, but they are the lifeblood of your company.

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Seeking Loyal, Devoted Workers? Let Them Stay Home

11 SEP 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

A recent survey finds that workers who telecommute from home or elsewhere, while still a very small portion of the work force, report the highest levels of satisfaction with their jobs and loyalty to their employers. (Subscription required)

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How to Fill the Talent Gap

15 SEP 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Global companies face a perfect storm when it comes to finding the employees they need. (Subscription required)

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The New Battle for M.B.A. Grads

17 SEP 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

With demand growing for M.B.A. graduates, it's a seller's market out there, making it tough for many companies to meet hiring quotas. To improve their odds, recruiters are visiting business schools earlier and more often and raising starting salaries. What's more, some are trying something new: virtual recruiting. (Subscription required)

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Scientists predict management success

A new method of predicting who is likely to succeed in a managerial role and who is likely to fail could herald a revolution in the way that organizations recruit and groom the managers of the future.

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Retaining Younger Workers in the Workplace

You've hired them. Now how can you keep them around?

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Ex-CEOs Are Looking For Some Challenges In Their Second Acts

10 SEP 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

[E]xecutives who have left the corner office but aren't ready to totally retire... want new jobs where they can satisfy their own needs rather than those of investors and directors -- and get some relief from the grueling schedules and pressures they faced as CEOs in big companies. Mostly, they want to keep learning by taking on new challenges. (Subscription required)

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U.S. Business Grads Take Jobs in India

Hundreds of business school graduates from U.S. colleges are taking jobs in Indian companies. India's second biggest tech company, Infosys, just hired 300 Americans to work in its Bangalore office. They say it's more exciting than an entry level job in the slower-growing U.S. economy. (Audio)

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The Generation That Can't Wait to Move Up at Work

The newest generation of workers seem to be at the top of managers' worry list these days. These 20-somethings, known as the Millennial Generation, are eager to bounce up the corporate ladder without putting in the time on the lower rungs. (Audio)

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Survey: Young Workers Tech Savvy

Millennial workers' strong technology skills create a different problem. A survey of human resources executives shows entry- level workers lack writing skills. Perhaps they're spending too much time composing text messages. (Audio)

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The Turnover Dilemma: A Question to Keep Employees

In this manifesto, Matthew Kelly warns of the high price of turnover. Sure, we all know that losing employees costs money, but lost opportunity is often an incalculable cost. Many pundits and business owners blame employees, thinking they are uncommitted. But, Kelly argues, people leave their jobs because there is a disconnect between the work that they are doing and the dreams for their future. And it is up to managers to help reconnect their employees to their dreams.

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'Extreme' Jobs Force Employees to Make Choices

Two million professionals are working in "extreme" jobs. A study that looks at these jobs finds that most who have them love them. Still, many workers, particularly women, find the hours impossible. (Audio)

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The workplace wish-list

American workers have a very simple wish-list. They want to be paid more, they want better healthcare coverage and, above all, they want greater respect from their managers.

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Career Mentors Today Seem Short on Advice But Give a Mean Tour

28 AUG 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

The mentor-mentee relationship used to be a partnership between a manager and a new hire. Now, with managers stuck volleying emails and dodging high-velocity blame, time for teaching has evaporated. The HR answer to this void: the assigned-mentor program. (Subscription required)

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Virtual Recruiting for Real-World Jobs

There's an unusual job fair taking place this week, but you can't get there by plane or car, or drop off your resume in person. You have to travel in cyberspace -- to the popular virtual world called Second Life. (Audio)

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Mistakes, Gimmicks Inevitable in Online Interviews

Hewlett Packard tells The Wall Street Journal that there have been some blunders in its online recruiting. A male interviewee attended an online job fair as a brunette female avatar named Dragon Ritt. Then he handed the recruiter a beer instead of his resume. (Audio)

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Multigenerational Office

11 AUG 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

How do companies engage younger workers? We found one firm that pairs them up with colleagues old enough to be their grandparents. We will show you this unique office arrangement and what is behind its success. (Video )

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The Eighth Self-Destructive Habit: When Companies Plateau Their People

In writing his book, Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies…and How to Break Them, Sheth found seven reasons behind why successful companies have such a short life span. After publishing, he felt that companies often committed yet another 8th offense: not enabling their people to rise to the top level of their talent. Instead, either companies employ too many people and don’t have challenging work for all of them, or these companies bring in outsiders who fail to connect with the existing culture such as Fiorina and Fisher and Nardelli.

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Breaking the Attendance Culture in the Workplace

In an attempt to attract new talent and retain their current work force, accountancy firm Ernst & Young have decided to loosen up their attendance policy in several pilots schemes across England. The company is trying to "break the attendance culture in the workplace" by allowing employees the ability to choose the amount of holiday they want to take each year as well as allowing staff to work from home more and introducing a nine-day working fortnight.

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Moms Leave Work Behind

Women are opting out of the workforce after having children because something in their deal with their employer changes: promotions and opportunities slow down and it's less rewarding to be at work. Liz Ryan, a workplace consultant and a columnist for BusinessWeek, says those women are left with little negotiating power when they try to re-enter the workforce. (Audio)

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Why Early Retirement Is Losing Its Appeal

Older workers are growing faster than any other group in the labor force -- a sharp departure from the recent past. And they are in high demand.

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For Young Earners in Big City, a Gap in Women’s Favor

Young women in New York and several other U.S. cities who work full time now earn more than men. (Subscription required)

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Business runs on people skills, not gadgets

Wireless and mobile technology may have revolutionised the workplace, but what continues to drive business isn't gadgets, but good old-fashioned face-to-face communication.

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Career Women in Japan Find a Blocked Path

Despite a law promising equal opportunity, women in Japan have had trouble reaching positions of authority. (Subscription required)

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Walgreen Erases 'Un' From 'Unemployable'

The retail drugstore chain is offering jobs to people with mental and physical disabilities, while saving itself money through automation.

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Wal-Mart pays Mexican teens $0 an hour

The young (14+) teenagers that Wal-Mart employs as after-school baggers at its Mexican stores earn nothing at all -- paid only in tips. Technically, this complies with local labor laws, while violating the hell out of their spirit.

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Legislation making women less employable

Legislation introduced earlier this year in the UK to boost maternity rights for women has only resulted in women becoming less employable particularly as far as small and medium-sized employers are concerned.

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Memo to managers to watch your mouth!

Here are five things you should never say or do around any young workers who you want to keep around...

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Putting the Spotlight On the Grimiest Gigs

We talk to 'Dirty Jobs' host Mike Rowe about the some of the most undesirable -- and unthinkable -- occupations.

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Save the Endangered Workplace Species!

THE PUFFY-CHESTED ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT OF INTER-DEPARTMENTAL COMMUNICATION AND INTERNATIONAL MARKETING AND DEVELOPMENT. Come on. Nobody has ever known what this person does. It’s a miracle they haven’t become extinct already.

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Family-Leave Values

Do workers have a fundamental right to care for their families? The latest front in the job-discrimination battle. (Subscription required)

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How Blogs Are Changing The Recruiting Landscape

Many employers and search professionals now use Web journals to find potential job candidates and check for digital dirt.

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Is the Pay Gap Between Execs And Average Workers Too Wide?

Many professionals believe companies' senior leaders are overpaid and that their compensation should be based on performance, a survey shows.

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A thought on teams and leadership and stuff

Teams that win do so because they are winning teams first. The emphasis should be on creating the winning team, not on the winning.

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Why women are doomed to failure

It's hard enough for women to scale the heights in business, but even when they do they are faced with a range of "double-bind" contradictions that make it almost impossible for them to be truly successful.

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Women Take Off the Gloves and Come Out Multitasking

Women speak out on multitasking and so-called emotionalism in business. (Subscription required)

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Finding Ways to Boost Female M.B.A. Enrollment

Ron Alsop on how one organization aims to help business schools overcome obstacles in attracting female students.

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What Gen Y Wants from Work

By the time my generation is given the reins, work will barely resemble today’s office environment. It’s not because we are special or better than any other generation. It’s because we are entering the work force at the time that the web is revolutionizing work.

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Boosting employee retention

It ought to be common knowledge, but it probably bears repeating: People leave their managers more often than they leave companies and jobs. Which means that throwing money at them won't persuade them to stay.

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Making the most of the very best talent

07 MAY 2007 from The Telegraph | Read the full story»

"We need to have people who are confident enough to be wrong and to be called wrong and to change their opinion when they see they are wrong..."

Hat tip: David Pilbeam

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Some in Silicon Valley Begin to Sour on India

03 JUL 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

A few bring jobs back as pay of top engineers in Bangalore skyrockets. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: The Creativity Exchange

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Job Listings - A Sign of the Times

The exodus of job listings from print to online highlights an inexorable trend that bodes well for job seekers and employers but is moving newspapers to the endangered species list. Searching for jobs, rather than browsing them, is the way of things in 2007.

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One Key to a Problem-Free Firing Is Dignity

Many employers believe the best way to avoid the danger of litigation is to treat soon-to-be former employees with respect even as they are being shown the door. (Subscription required)

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Escalating war for talent drives changes in recruitment

Recruitment, rather than business strategy or management, is now the number one problem for half of UK companies.

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Employees Feeling Underappreciated

Of more than 500 full- and part-time employees surveyed nationwide, 35 percent said the company they worked for was ineffective at rewarding strong performance...

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Many Family Firms Rely on a Largely Invisible CEO -- Chief Emotional Officer

When your family business involves an extended network of 52 family shareholders, as it does for Bukit Kiara Properties, a Malaysian real estate development firm, simply pulling everyone together for family dinner can be hard work. But N.K. Tong, who co-founded Bukit Kiara with his father, says there's just one person to call: "My auntie." Tong's aunt plays a role some scholars describe as "chief emotional officer," an informal position usually filled by a family member or close advisor. But the topic is not as warm and fuzzy as it sounds: Not only can the job be stressful, it can fall by the wayside as businesses are passed on to succeeding generations.

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When is a Company Too Innovative for Its Own Good?

Maybe when it invites you to send a cartoon character in your place for a job interview. According to Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, that’s basically what employers like consulting firm Bain & Company, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Verizon are experimenting with....

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New Goal for Human Resources: Establishing a Work Force of One

A single set of rules for recruiting and managing employees may have made sense in an earlier era. But these days, it no longer flies.

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New Grads Quickly Grow Impatient For Climbing the Corporate Ladder

Accustomed to short-term goals at school, many entry-level workers are eager to get promoted early in their careers.

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You can't just buy talent

If you want to get talent through your door you throw money at them, right? Wrong ? money is a factor, but what really matters is holidays, where they are going to be based and whether or not they will be able to work flexibly.

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Helicopter Parents & Spouses Should Buzz Off

There are few guarantees when it comes to identifying and hiring top talent. But if there’s one, heavy involvement by parents or spouses spells trouble.

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Building Cachet With Job Applicants

How small employers can use their size to their advantage and other advice for hiring successful employees.

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Can a Workplace Be Too Enticing?

Some organizations are making the work environment such an enticing place to be, people are lining up at the door, clamoring to be hired. Let’s face it…from an organizational perspective, if you’re competing for the best talent, why not tempt future employees with perks? It gives you the edge right?

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Marketing to Employees: Hearing a 'McCalling'

A recent McDonald’s ad caught the eye of Business Week writers recently. "It’s Not a McJob, It’s a McCalling" caught my eye since internal branding and team building are ever hot topics these days.

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Survey: Undergrads gaga for Google

While Apple is also a highly desireable place of employment among undergrads, Google dominates the field.

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All On Board

As graduations wind down and a whole flock of new recruits hit the pavement, one of the most important things you should be thinking about is how you're bringing those new recruits into your organization.

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The Most Dangerous Job in Business

It's the chief marketing officer. Chances are, yours is just leaving.

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How much money do you make?

[H]ow would your workplace change if suddenly, over the weekend, a list of every employee and their weekly pay were posted on the bulletin board, for all to find when they arrived at work on Monday?

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Most Employees Believe They Can Outperform Their Bosses

Two-thirds of executives also say they would like to replace their bosses one day.

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Make Your Company a Talent Factory

JUN 2007 from the Harvard Business Review | Read the full story»

Stop losing out on lucrative business opportunities because you don’t have the talent to develop them. (Subscription required)

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Chief Receptionist Officer? Title Inflation Hits the C-Suite

We're all familiar with titles like chief executive officer, chief financial officer and chief operating officer. We have even grown used to chief technology officer, chief marketing officer and chief diversity officer. But what about chief talent officer, chief cultural officer, chief innovation officer, chief privacy officer, chief apology officer and chief geek, to name just some of the more contemporary titles in today's companies? On the surface, this looks like title inflation -- an overabundance of C-level jobs that cheapen the prestige that used to go along with promotions. Yet according to several Wharton faculty members, there is more to this story than inflated egos.

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Teenager today, tech exec tomorrow

Silicon Valley conference shows how Web entrepreneurs are getting younger and younger--some are not of driving age.

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Web Worker Payoff: Webinar Emcee

If you have expertise in a specialized business area, can keep your cool when hundreds of people are hanging on your every word, and know how to show good humor when technical snafus arise, you may have a bright future as a webinar host.

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matt of paleo-future

Paleo-Future is a blog that explores the future(s) that never happened. It showcases the visions of the dreamers, artists, corporations and writers who’ve tried to imagine what our future would become.

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Hacker. Dropout. CEO.

"I'm here to build something for the long term. Anything else is a distraction."

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Meet Avi Arad, the Man Who Launched the Superhero Craze

The producer almost single-handedly transformed Marvel Comics from a slumbering entertainment giant into a silver screen juggernaut.

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Scouting for the Best Athletes (or Analysts): Character vs. Performance

The world of pro sports may look a lot more exciting than life in the office, but in reality -- when you strip away the glamour and media attention -- the bottom line for success is not too different on the playing field than it is in the business world.

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It Sure Beats the NEA

Creative Capital brings venture philanthropy--and business savvy--to the arts.

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When a Paycheck Isn't Optional, Ambition Is Less Complicated

After losing her job, a banking executive repositioned her career. With legal bills to pay and a 6-year-old at home, necessity propelled her forward.

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Dirty Car Art - Artist Goes Well Beyond Writing 'Clean Me' (VIDEO)

Scott Wade is an artist who "just can't resist a dirty rear window." He creates amazing works of art using dirty cars as his canvas.

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Interior Designers Enjoy Sharing Their Visions

While it can be a chance to brush with wealth and glamour, there are also long hours and the need to manage many small particulars.

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Report: Retiring Baby Boomers Expected to Hurt U.S. Companies

Many are not prepared for the loss of experienced workers that will occur over the next decade.

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The Shifting Calculus Of Workplace Benefits

More companies are asking employees to buy their own disability and medical coverage, and the trend may continue to grow.

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Work-life policies are window dressing

The big accountancy firms in the U.S. are keen to trumpet their adoption of work-life balance and flexible working arrangements. But look more closely and this new-found concern for their employees is revealed as little more than window dressing.

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When (Organizational) Change Hurts: Startups Need to "Think Employees" from the Get-Go

JAN 2007 from the Stanford Graduate School of Business | Read the full story»

Start-up firms should pay as much attention to creating a pattern for managing their employees as they do to developing the vision for their product. A decade-long study of Silicon Valley (California) technology startups finds that companies were three times more likely to fail if at some point they altered the founder’s blueprint for employee relations than if they maintained their original employee model.

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Hiring and Cultivating Employees Who Succeed

A small-business owner shares the titles that helped him learn to be a better boss.

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Women and economic growth

25 JAN 2007 from the Economist | Read the full story»

"Women are the most wasted resource in the world." By some reckoning, women’s increased employment in developed economies has added more to global growth in recent decades than China has. But women’s growing share of the workforce has a limit, and in some countries it has stalled. There is still a lot of scope for them to become more productive as they make better use of their qualifications. Women are the world’s most under-utilised resource. Too many are still excluded from paid work, and many others do not make the best use of their skills. (Audio)

Hat tip: NEXT by Ramla

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How to Work More Hours and Still Go Home Early

As older baby boomers leave the work force and younger workers move into senior management, the workday is becoming much less rigidly defined. (Subscription required)

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Women's Intuition at Work

Lots has been written lately about the difference between men and women in business -- from their leadership styles to the amount of VC financing they attract (less than 10% of all venture capital funding.)

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More employers recruit the military work ethic

Employers looking to hire workers with strong work ethic, leadership skills and diverse backgrounds are increasingly turning to a select group of recruits: members of the military.

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Paid sick days for all

Democrats want to guarantee all Americans seven days of paid sick leave a year, but passing the legislation won't be a slam dunk: Some Republicans and the business lobby are resistant.

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Web Work Continues Explosive Growth

The number of employees who are allowed to work from home at least one day a month stands at 12.4 million, up 63% in two years.

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Stemming the Boomer retirement tide

One California professor says we need to invest in educating the children of immigrant workers, because they may be our best hope for replacing the wave of Baby Boomers about to leave the workforce.

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Treat Employees Like Family

Steven Bigari, a successful McDonald’s franchisee from Colorado Springs, understands the importance of treating front-line employees with compassion and respect. In what began as a plan to reduce employee turnover has blossomed into a business ethos where the Golden Rule of treating others like you would like to be treated became standard operating procedure at his Golden Arches McDonald’s locations.

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People drive economic growth

Click here to listen to an absolutely fascinating interview with Nobel-prize winning economist, Robert Lucas on how economic growth comes from "suitably-trained people,"... (Audio)

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Manager Shortage Spurs Firms to Grow Their Own

A dearth of seasoned up-and-comers has encouraged many small companies to pay more attention to grooming their next generation of leaders.

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How to be successful without being a success

Managers have a completely different mindset from their employers when it comes to understanding what being successful in the workplace really means.

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Don't ask employees to be passionate about the company!

People ask me, "How can I get our employees to be passionate about the company?" Wrong question. Passion for our employer, manager, current job? Irrelevant. Passion for our profession and the kind of work we do? Crucial.

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Women changing the rules of business

Author Margaret Heffernan has researched women-owned businesses and come to the conclusion that they're doing a lot of things right — and, in some ways, better than their male counterparts.

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Eight Critical Customer Service Skills

According to the recently published book, EXCEEDING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS, when it comes to hiring employees, Enterprise "...doesn’t want people who merely seek to be behind the rental counter. It wants every candidate to aspire to greatness."

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"We Are Determined to Take Them Some Place They Don't Want to Go."

That's how Brad Seligman described his class-action gender discrimination suit against Wal-Mart to me a few years ago. It's the largest such suit in American history, representing 1.6 million current and former female employees. Now Seligman is taking on Costco,...

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Senate considers paid time off

One small problem with the Family and Medical Leave Act: Many workers can't afford to actually take the unpaid leave. A new proposal would give workers six weeks off with paid leave in medical emergencies. Jeff Tyler reports.

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When in Doubt, Offer a Nice Perk

Small-business owners are becoming increasingly creative in how they reward their staff members. (Subscription required)

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Talent crisis brewing in Asia-Pacific

Many employers in Asia-Pacific are at risk of losing their most talented people as disillusionment with career prospects and management styles leads them to look for opportunities elsewhere.

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U.S. Family-Oriented Job Policies Weak

The United States lags far behind virtually all wealthy countries with regard to family-oriented workplace policies such as maternity leave, paid sick days and support for breast-feeding, a new study by Harvard and McGill University researchers says...

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Bush Blasts High Salaries for Corporate Chiefs

President Bush made a surprise visit to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, scolding corporate America for lavish salaries paid to its chief executives. "America's corporate boardrooms must step up to their responsibility," Bush said. But he said the government should not force executives to give up their perks and high pay. (Audio)

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Web Site Targets Older Job Hunters

Finding a job can be a challenge for older workers. The Web site Jobs 4.0 specializes in placing seasoned workers in permanent positions. (Audio)

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Parental Consent

In India, companies discover that when it comes to winning talent, mom and dad can help.

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From Tech Workers to Nurses, an Employee’s Market

Demand is expected to result in higher salaries, more career advancement and flexible work environments. (Subscription required)

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Middle Manager, RIP?

More than five years ago, Marcus Buckingham proclaimed that middle managers were the most important people in your company. Why? "The single most important determinant of individual performance is a person's relationship with his or her immediate manager."

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Home Depot says new CEO could earn up to $8.9 million in 2007 vs. $24M for Nardelli

Home Depot's new chief executive could earn as much as $8.9 million in total compensation this year...

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Online Job Networks For the 55-Plus Crowd

Companies are eager to lure back to the work force retirees with decades of experience.

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Office politics the biggest cause of stress

Changes in the way that organisations are structured mean that office politics have grown from being a peripheral worry ten years ago to the single biggest cause of stress in the workplace today.

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Dealing with employee burnout

Job stress costs employers $300 billion a year — but how do you keep workers from hitting the burnout point? Apryl Lundsten looks at how emergency call centers help their operators cope.

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More Women Negotiate Flexible Work Schedules, Study Finds

More professionals are finding a way to achieve work-life balance without giving up pay.

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Happiness: Forget wages, well-being is the new company currency

A new survey which set out to understand what makes for happy employees, found the most important factor is having friendly, supportive colleagues. Languishing in 10th place in the Happiness at Work index, conducted by Chiumento, a human resources consultancy, is a competitive salary.

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Older workers more focused than the young

The idea that older workers spend their days thinking about their retirement rather than the job in hand is nonsense. In fact it is younger workers who are more likely to be disengaged from the workplace.

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Innovative Job Title of the Week: Chief Beer Officer

As Hotel Chatter points out, Sheraton's Four Points hotel chain has been looking for a Chief Beer Officer for the past two months. This person would travel the country testing out beers at beer festivals and overseeing the hotel's new beer program, Best Brews, as a part-time gig.

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Ernst & Young Reaches Out To Recruits on Facebook

08 JAN 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

The accounting firm is among a growing number of employers experimenting with newer forms of Internet recruiting to attract tech-savvy young people. Some are creating pages on social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Others have started recruiting-oriented blogs. (Subscription required)

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The link between talent management and innovation

In building the innovative enterprise, one of the most important factors is managing, recruiting and enabling the right type of human capital.

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Google Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm

Google, in typical eccentric fashion, has created an automated way to search for well-rounded candidates. (Subscription required)

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The no-collar workplace

The real legacy of the '60s is not Woodstock (or even Greenwich Village in its halcyon hippie days), it's Silicon Valley's style of free-spirited, laid-back, blurred-boundaries, around-the-clock work.

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Happy New Year

We wish you a new year filled with prosperity and growth, both personal and professional.

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Find Their Calling

DEC 2006 from Fast Company | Read the full story»

The match between your employees' values and the organization or team's values is a more powerful factor by far than money in keeping good people.

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Talent, skill and lateral thinking

Some people have a seemingly bias towards creativity. For true creativity, however, you must go far beyond this general motivation - and lateral thinking can help you do that.

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Idea Lab: The Rise of the Office-Park Populist

Today educated and highly skilled professionals face rising risk and uncertainty. Will their anxiety create a new politics? (Subscription required)

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Happy Holidays!

We're observing the Christmas holiday today and will return to posting tomorrow, Boxing day. We wish you a day filled with joy and peace.

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Women falling deeper into the wage gap

A new study shows that women have made big gains in the workplace over the past five years — until you compare their paychecks with men's. Hillary Wicai reports.

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How Suite It Isn’t: A Dearth of Female Bosses

17 DEC 2006 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

The contours of her [Carol Bartz's] long, bumpy journey to the chief executive’s suite reflect some of the gains women have made in navigating corporate hierarchies over the last 30 years, but also illustrate how rare it still is for a woman to get the keys to a company’s most powerful corner office. For decades, the pat explanation was that women simply had not been in the work force long enough; with patience, the pipeline would fill. A look at the pipeline suggests otherwise. (Subscription required)

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To Retain Valued Women Employees, Companies Pitch Flextime as Macho

11 DEC 2006 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Here's a novel approach to keeping women in the work force: Focus on men. Some employers are trying to overcome a perceived stigma on flexible work schedules -- often viewed as a concession to women -- by redefining the issue as a quality-of-life concern for everyone. The approach is gaining traction, especially in the male-dominated financial-services sector, where employers have long struggled to retain and promote women. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: The Business Innovation Insider

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The Future of Linked-In

Now, I'm not saying that recruiters are toast. Far from it. But I am saying that anyone who's involved with my industry should be watching Linked-In very carefully.

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New rules for CEO compensation in effect

Companies today must begin to use the amended SEC disclosure rules for executive compensation — and some say the change could slow the rapid rise in CEO pay. Hillary Wicai reports.

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We're all becoming managers now

The past decade has seen a huge growth in the number of people, particularly women, being appointed into relatively well-paid, managerial or semi-professional jobs.

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Holiday bonuses becoming a rarity at Christmas

A bonus in your pay packet to fund a bit of pre-Christmas shopping always goes down well but is in fact becoming increasingly rare in the modern workplace.

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Immobility threatens European prosperity

While it is commonplace for people in North America to relocate hundreds or even thousands of miles for professional reasons, European Union efforts to encourage greater labour mobility are failing.

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Hooked on Work: the Allure of Extreme Jobs

For people who love their work – and who get supersized rewards for putting in super-sized hours -- the concept that they’re being harmed by spending so much time at work misses the point. They want to be there. They get a rush from their jobs. They revel in the challenge.

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Is Google too smart for its own good?

06 DEC 2006 from Fortune | Read the full story»

Google's famous for hiring the best and the brightest, but when they get bored, they're bound to create the son-of-Google, warns Fortune's Jeffrey O'Brien.

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Small Business Success Requires Investment in People, Not Things

01 DEC 2006 from Diary of a Startup | Read the full story»

If people are the most important asset, then why do small growth companies still forgo hiring key talent? Why do many businesses put up with the deadwood, especially in critical roles?

Hat tip: MyBusiness Magazine

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Global talent, venture capital and entrepreneurship

Check out UC-Berkeley's Annalee Saxenian new report on the global mobility of engineers, international flows of venture capital, entrepreneurship in India and China and "brain circulation." Download Saxenian_WIDER_2006.pdf

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Half of U.S. firms have no women at the top

Nearly half of the 1,000 largest U.S firms have no women in the upper echelons of their senior management, and a fifth of the rest have only a symbolic presence, damning new research has revealed.

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Executive Searches, Done With Sharp Elbows

As companies continue to hire thousands of skilled workers in India at lower levels, signs point to a talent shortage that is becoming acute at the high end. (Subscription required!)

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How Important Is Quality of Labor? And How Is It Achieved?

Over the past thirty years, several of my colleagues and I have tried to figure out why a handful of organizations are able to achieve true excellence. One of several things they all do is hire for attitude and train for skills.

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Signing Up a New Chief in the Age of Prenups

28 NOV 2006 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

New chief executives have shorter strings and briefer honeymoons these days. Two things have gotten longer, though: their contracts, and the time it takes to negotiate them. (Subscription required!)

Hat tip: Dynamist Blog

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Design's Growth

15 NOV 2006 from Fast Company | Read the full story»

Despite the growing demand for designers in the business world, there remains a dearth of qualified designers.

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Cities Compete in Hipness Battle to Attract Young

24 NOV 2006 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Baby boomers are retiring and the number of young adults is declining. By 2012, the work force will be losing more than two workers for every one it gains. Cities have long competed over job growth, struggling to revive their downtowns and improve their image. But the latest population trends have forced them to fight for college-educated 25- to 34-year-olds, a demographic group increasingly viewed as the key to an economic future.

Hat tip: The Creativity Exchange

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Surfing for talent

Rising stars don't even have to leave home to get Hollywood's attention these days. Some agencies have talent scouts devoted to seeking them out online. Lisa Napoli reports.

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CIA crafts online test with humorous bent to seek out all types of job applicants

The CIA has scrapped its ho-hum test for job applicants and devised one that's cloaked in jest.

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Women help their men escape the office

Professional men are increasingly managing to escape the treadmill of office life to pursue their dreams thanks to the financial support of their high-earning partners.

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Happy Thanksgiving

We hope that you all have a day rich with community and contentment. The wire service will resume tomorrow.

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Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting

Professional recruiters have started hunting for job candidates using social networking technology -- like the kind found on sites such as Linkedin, Spoke, Jigsaw and Ryze. And those who want to be discovered can make more effective use of such sites, too. (Audio)

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Yahoo seeks geek credibility

As more applications move to the Web, companies like Yahoo are working to nourish their "ecosystem" of software developers.

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The Expert on Experts

K. Anders Ericsson has spent 25 years interviewing and analyzing high-flying professionals.

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IT staff hire Hollywood-style agents to keep up with demand

They may have a reputation for being geeks, but IT wizards are now being paid at levels not seen since the dotcom boom ? and some have even taken to hiring their own Hollywood-style agents as a result.

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More than Job Demands or Personality, Lack of Organizational Respect Fuels Employee Burnout

One of the biggest complaints employees have, according to Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade, is that "they are not sufficiently recognized by their organizations for the work they do... When employees don't feel that the organization respects and values them, they tend to experience higher levels of burnout."

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Advertisements Revisited

"Ready. Fire! Aim." is one of Tom’s favorite mantras. In that spirit, we've been experimenting with advertising here at the TP Wire Service. We've also considered and researched it for our parent site, tompeters.com. The results have underwhelmed us. We're removing the ads from the TP Wire Service RSS feeds today and will be removing the ads from the TP Wire Service home page in the near future. Tompeters.com will remain ad-free. We welcome your thoughts on the subject. Here's to "Relentless Experimentation!"

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Opportunity Knocks, and It Pays Better

Top-performing workers listed pay as a main reason to consider leaving a job, but most employers didn't, a survey found. (Subscription required!)

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One in five employees quit within the first two years

The phenomenon of "job shock" has been brought into sharp focus as a new survey reveals that twice as many employees quit within the first two years as do those with more than two years of tenure.

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Offshoring – it's a talent thing

Companies are increasingly offshoring sophisticated, mission-critical functions such as product design and research and development because they can't find the skilled staff to do the work at home.

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What's to Be Done About Performance Reviews?

It's the season for many employee performance reviews. Why do they seem to rank alongside root canal dental work on our list of things we look forward to as managers and employees? And what are we doing about it?

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Making a market in talent

26 OCT 2006 from the McKinsey Quarterly | Read the full story»

Companies that understand the value of talented people in generating brands, reputations, and other intangibles often spend considerable time recruiting such workers but drop the ball in providing them with opportunities to develop and grow. (Free subscription required!)

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Women CEOs Experience Longer Tenures, Faster Growth

A new study found that companies headed by women grow at twice the national average.

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'Chutes and Ladders' of the Low-Wage Job Market

For years, a sociology professor followed workers at a fast-food place in Harlem to see how their lives would unfold. She found that a strong economy and personal connections led some of them to much better jobs than what they started with. (Audio)

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Should I stay or should I go?

What is it that motivates a worker to leave a job, or accept or decline a new position and do age, gender or ethnicity have any bearing on these? A new report seeks to provide some answers.

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Work less, gain more

Offering key employees the opportunity to work fewer hours for less pay might seem like heresy particularly in U.S. corporations. But a new study has revealed that such flexibility can deliver some very real benefits.

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Fixing Executive Options: The Veil of Ignorance

How might option compensation be refashioned to deliver the benefits without the distortions?

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Talent shortages go global

Talent shortages among skilled professional workers are spreading across the world, leaving gaps in many organisations and forcing employers to pay higher salaries, a new global survey has revealed.

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Baby Boomers Find Second Careers Working for Social Change

SEPT 2006 from Stanford GSB News | Read the full story»

It’s time to redefine "having a senior moment," says David Campbell, founder of Hands On Worldwide. The new definition? "When our experience could help solve a problem."

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Older workers face backlash despite a wealth of experience

Older workers are often unable to keep pace with new technology and are viewed increasingly negatively in many other areas. But according to a U.S. survey, they more than make up for this in other ways.

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Verizon CEO Pay Is Tied to Goals

Verizon is changing how it rewards its CEO and other executives, tying part of their compensation to attaining certain goals. (Subscription required!)

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Baby Boomers start truckin'

The trucking industry is in the middle of its worst labor shortage ever. As companies hone their recruiting efforts, they're focusing on one group: Baby Boomers. Martha Woodroof tells us it could be a match made in economic heaven.

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Chief executives do not trust HR to manage their talent

As the West's workforce demographic changes, managing and retaining senior level talent is becoming an ever more important priority for CEOs. But they don't trust HR and personnel to get it right.

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Colleagues You Wish You Didn't Have Seem the Most Secure

10 OCT 2006 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

In the age of layoffs, survivors often fall into one of two categories: folks at the bottom who don't do a lick of work and superstars at the top who behave atrociously. (Subscription required!)

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U.S firms struggling as Baby Boomers ride off into the sunset

Dealing with the impending retirement of the Baby Boomer generation and keeping workers in their mid-careers happy and engaged are the biggest challenges facing U.S employers, a new survey has suggested.

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Knocking the exuberance out of employees

If you asked the head of a company which employee they'd prefer: the perfect team player who doesn't rock the boat or the one who is brave enough to stand up and fight for something rather than accept the watered-down group think that maintains the status quo (or makes things worse), who would they SAY they'd choose? Who would they REALLY choose?

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Why C.E.O.'s Aren't Sitting in the Dugout

Baseball teams part ways with a manager who asks for too much money, but it’s hard to think of a company that has let a chief executive walk over pay. (Subscription required!)

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Study: Telework gains acceptance

[S]kepticism in an employee's ability to get the job done away from the corporate office continues to decrease, according to a recent study by Yoh, a provider of talent and outsourcing services to customers in the United States.

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Fewer U.S workers employed by foreign companies

The number of U.S workers employed by foreign companies has dropped by nearly 10 per cent in the past six years, raising fears that America could be losing its edge in the global competition to generate jobs.

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100 best companies for working mothers, according to Working Mother magazine

As Working Mother magazine released its annual list of the top 100 places to work on Monday, the magazine noted growing concern among companies that they will lose qualified female employees if they don't upgrade their benefits.

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Risk - not people - tops the management priority list

People issues appear to be dropping down the priority list for today's senior executives as new research finds that managing risk has overtaken improving the workforce as management's top priority.

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The Jobs of Web 2.0

Along with blogging, social-networking, and other user-generated phenomena, Web 2.0 has brought a whole slew of new gigs. Start-ups are focusing on running a tighter ship with employees whose jobs are unique and multilayered.

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Choosing tech's heirs with care

More and more technology companies are navigating the gap between charismatic founders and efficient managers.

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Women less prepared to sacrifice everything to reach the top

It isn't discrimination that is stopping women getting into the boardroom, a new survey has suggested. They just aren't prepared to make the sacrifices needed to get there.

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Do Talented People Need the Organization?

DAN PINK: "That big agency or marketer needs you a lot more than you need them. I mean, what do you need now to reach potential clients? A phone, a computer with an Internet connection. Karl Marx said the revolution would come when workers can own the means of production. Well, you know, now workers own the means of production."

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Hire Smart

One of the most important aspects of being a leader is hiring people smarter than you. That’s why top leaders spend more time putting the right team in place to accomplish their objectives than they spend on planning, strategizing, or...

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Small Business Super Star Hiring Hassle

When given the option of head count and budget flexibility, I have always suggested to my managers to hire the most expensive talent possible — the Super Stars.

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Becoming an Employer of Choice

Nearly every business prides itself on being an Employer of Choice, but we all know that isn’t the case. I’m sure the muckity-mucks at Radio Shack... have spoken about being an "Employer of Choice"... but we know otherwise.

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What Impact Will Higher Minimum Wages Have on Retailers and Employees?

While retailers complain the legislation may lead them to stall plans for new downtown stores, Wharton faculty say Chicago's proposed living wage law is largely symbolic and would have little real impact on large retail chains or their employees. Some argue that it also won't have much impact on poverty.

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"Success" should not mean "Management"

We might all say that career success should be measured by how fulfilled you are on the job, but in practice, most people and companies still measure success by how high you climbed the corporate ladder. Clawed yourself near the top of the org chart? You ARE successful.

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The end of the job interview

I’ve been to thousands of job interviews (thankfully as an interviewer mostly) and I have come to the conclusion that the entire effort is a waste of time.

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Labor Day

"Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country." [U.S. Dept. of Labor]

There will be no postings today at TP Wire Service in observance of the holiday. Have a wonderful day.

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Culture and reputation count more than money in war for talent

A company's reputation and its workplace culture are more important than pay and benefits when it comes to attracting top talent, new research has suggested.

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The Top Employers For the Over-50 Crowd

Vanpools and flexible schedules are among the perks at these companies, where age is not an issue.

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The lunatic fringe at Texas Instruments

Apparently, the key to innovation success at the company has been the ability to create an environment that is supportive of "managed chaos." As Peter Lewis of FORTUNE explains, it all started with "a small group of crazies" (the lunatic fringe, if you will) who are convinced that giving free rein to "wild-eyed optimists" is the secret to innovation success... [Note: the story is not yet posted at Fortune's site]

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The Compensation Game

Confronting greater media scrutiny and an ever-increasing number of shareholder resolutions focusing on executive pay, Corporate America continues to support current pay practices as a product of "the market." Not too long ago, former Treasury Secretary John Snow defended the dramatic rise of executive pay over time as a product of efficient markets and argued that the increase merely reflects the growing marginal productivity of chief executives.

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New bombshell for UK employers

Is the UK government about to put a bombshell under the country's employers by granting all parents the right work part-time and choose their employment hours? It looks as if they might be.

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Diversity's Positive Impact in the Workplace

A recent research article from Standford Graduate School of Business's knowledgebase discusses the impact of diversity on work-group performance.

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When Working at Home Doesn't Work Anymore

A small but significant number of foot soldiers dislike corporate America's march toward telecommuting, says Sue Shellenbarger.

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The Over-50 Crowd Finds Second Careers in Big-Rig Gigs

Faced with a shortage of long-haul truck drivers freight carriers are aggressively recruiting older couples to climb behind the wheel.

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Harry Joiner: "Would I hire them again?"

The worst thing a company can do is to motivate their stars to look around.

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Ford Motor Company looking for women designers to create innovative new cars

According to Ford Motor Company, the secret to designing great cars that Americans want to buy is hiring more women designers. Based on proprietary Ford research, it appears that women influence 85% of all car-buying decisions and purchase 45% of all vehicles. Yet, at the same time, women remain a minority in the design workplace.

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Jobs for working moms

Women make up roughly half of the workforce, and a large portion of them are of child-bearing age. Although it's no secret that employers need to become more family-friendly if they want to attract top talent, many are slow to take action.

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Ready, willing - but too old

Over one million 50 - 65 year olds in the UK are ready, willing and able to contribute to the economy but can't get a job because employers won't recruit older workers or retain the ones they already employ.

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Ageing workforce changing the way managers plan their strategy

As the workforce grows older, companies are spending more time and effort analysing and forecasting the talent they have or need to acquire in order to execute their business strategy.

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MBA Streetball?

Corporate recruiters are using games to assess business school hires, according to The Wall Street Journal. "As the battle for top talent intensifies, the games help companies stand out in the crowded campus-recruiting field and spot promising candidates ahead of their competitors..."

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Businesses losing high-flyers because they do not understand them

British businesses too often lose their most valuable high-flying talent because of a distinct and worrying lack of insight into what really motivates career-minded executives.

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Career Opportunities For Older Job Hunters

04 AUG 2006 from CareerJournal.com | Read the full story»

Worried about age bias? These companies say they're eager to recruit grey-haired professionals.

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Wall Street’s Women Face a Fork in the Road

06 AUG 2006 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Although banks are doing much more than paying lip service to the notion of retaining women or enticing them back to work, executives say long-term success means fundamentally changing the way Wall Street works. (Subscription required!)

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Working for Less than the Minimum Wage

While Congress debates raising the minimum wage, many workers still do not earn the current minimum. Community organizers in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn are running a local campaign focused on grocery baggers who receive only tips from customers. Nancy Solomon reports. (Audio)

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America braces itself for surge in older workers

With the number of workers aged over-55 in the U.S set to leap by 11 million in the next eight years, many employers are reassessing how they approach recruitment in an era of major demographic change.

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Older Workers Struggle to Find Space in the Job Market

Some workers who are past retirement age and still want -- or need-- to work find it very hard to land jobs. Lisa Belkin, a reporter for The New York Times, tells Don Gonyea that changing demographics mean older people need to carve out a new spot for themselves in the workforce. (Audio)

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Corner office cuts

Looks like all that post-Enron fuss really has made a difference at the top. A new study out today suggests CEO compensation is down. Andrea Gardner reports. (Audio)

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Avoiding the stress of Generation Why

Companies are just beginning to wake up to the havoc that the newest generation of workers is causing in offices across the globe. And adapt they must, because it is they who will dominate the workforce for the next 70 years or so.

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Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the Desk: The Effect of Mood on Work Performance

While a lot of research has been done in the past two decades on work-family conflicts, few studies have looked closely at how mood affects workers' performance. Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard and co-author Steffanie Wilk wanted to find out which mood-altering events have the biggest effect, if any -- those that influence one's outlook at the start of the day, or those that nudge one's mood up or down as the workday advances. The results of Rothbard and Wilk's study are reported in their paper, "Walking in the Door: Sources and Consequences of Employee Mood on Work Performance." Among their key findings: The mood you bring with you to work has a stronger effect on the day's mood -- and on work performance -- than mood changes caused by events in the workplace.

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Games industry 'burns out talent'

The games industry has a long hours culture that is burning out young talent, union Bectu warns.

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U.S. workers want greater flexibility

Although six out of 10 Americans believes that telecommuting at least some of the time would be the ideal working arrangement, fewer than a quarter are actually given the option by their employer.

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Employers give thumbs down to academic qualifications

Only a tiny proportion of European employers have any faith in the trustworthiness of academic qualifications, CVs and job application forms in determining on-the-job performance.

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Keeping talent happy... a primer.

06 JUL 2006 from The Jason Calcanis Weblog | Read the full story»

As you can see it's all about removing obstacles and creating a comfort level for the talent. When we started Weblogs, Inc. I wasn't rich, but I moved mountains to make sure that my people didn't have to worry about paying their rent. I made sure folks didn't have to screw around with the details.

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David Armano: Rocketbust: It’s About Talent

So Amanda is leaving Rocketboom—by now that’s old news. And rather than get into the drama behind it, I’d like to call some attention to what I think is a bigger issue...Retaining your talent.

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Joe Robinson: leisure rules

But can't hard work be a source of pride?
I hear that all the time: "That's what makes this country great." It is a myth we have tricked ourselves into believing. The Dutch, the French, the Norwegians, the Belgians and the Irish are more productive per hour than we are, even with their four- and five-week vacations. We are number one in terms of productivity per person only because of all the overtime we do. And that's the number we count.

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A Sucking Sound

03 JUL 2006 from Newsweek | Read the full story»

The old job-for-life is on the way out across Europe. The new trend is temp-time. Now for the backlash.

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Extreme interviewing

According to Mark Franchetti, the Sunday Times' man in Moscow, Russian employers are increasingly using the so-called 'stressovoye' — stressful interview — to help them hire the best staff.

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Mimicking Whole Foods Market

29 JUN 2006 from Brand Autopsy | Read the full story»

If one were to take the WFM team member out from its business, Whole Foods Market would not be the successful company it is today. Try saying the same thing for Wal-Mart. You can’t. Right?

Hat tip: Ben McConnell at Church of the Customer

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Happy 4th of July!

We're taking the day off in celebration of Independence Day here in the U.S. We hope everyone has an opportunity to relish freedom today. Enjoy!

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A little on baseball and a lot on performance - John Eckberg

I’ve been fascinated, too, by the topic of performance, particularly in sports and probably because I live in Cincinnati where baseball is still accessible...

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Talent Magnet

Kai-Fu Lee is heading Google's new Beijing lab--and its push to tap into China's talent boom.

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Employee engagement gives big boost to the bottom-line

It is no surprise to hear that a highly engaged workforce improves an organisation's performance. But as new global research has highlighted, the sheer scale of the improvement in bottom-line results can be remarkable.

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Shiny Happy People

According to Kjerulf, a happy employee is not only more productive and harder working - a happy employee is also more innovative and creative.

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US bosses 'earn $11m a year'

US bosses earn an average $11m annually, which is 262 times more than their workers, a leading think-tank reports.

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Rethinking the Value of Talent

SUMMER 2006 from strategy+business | Read the full story»

If companies managed financial assets as carelessly as they do human assets, then shareholders, auditors, and regulators would come down hard on them for inefficient use of funds. Yet although it is commonly accepted that individuals are crucial to an organization’s success, many companies cannot measure or manage their employees’ contributions to corporate value.

Hat Tip: Ramla at Next by Ramla.

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CEO... See Ya!

Liberum Research has been tracking C-level leadership changes since late 2004. And even though May claims the highest number of C-level changes -- including boards of directors and CFO's -- the overall turnover trend seems to be slowing, according to...

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Top 10 ways to prevent innovation

* Hire employees looking for safety in their roles.

* Treat employees like garbage

* Reward conservative and marginal successes.

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Incentives for Workers Combine Cash and Fun

Snowfly is among a group of new programs proving popular as relatively inexpensive ways to offer extra compensation linked to performance. Managers who use the program credit it with increasing sales, reducing turnover and improving morale.

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Why offer employee benefits?

15 JUN 2006 from The McKinsey Quarterly | Read the full story»

The vast majority of US executives see employee benefits as important to their company's competitiveness, according to the latest McKinsey Quarterly survey. (Free subscription required!)

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Why companies overlook their own talent

08 JUN 2006 from Business 2.0/CNN Money | Read the full story»

Hiring outsider CEOs can be a big mistake - and is often a symptom of even bigger problems.

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U.S.-Style Pay Packages Are All the Rage in Europe

Europeans are eagerly importing an American phenomenon: soaring pay packages for chief executives. (Subscription required!)

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Women becoming new face of interim management

Traditionally considered a lucrative refuge for older, mostly male executives, interim management is in fact fast becoming the career of choice for female executives, according to a new study.

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Newly-promoted - but no idea what to do

Employers regularly hire and promote managers and executives before defining what they need to be doing in their new role to be successful, a new U.S study has suggested.

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Gulf of misunderstanding separates graduates from employers

The UK economy is being held back by a damaging disconnect between graduates and employers, with the changing values of young people leading to a lack of understanding on both sides of the other's needs.

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Trust gap holding back flexible working

An archaic office-bound, nine-to-five work mentality is putting business productivity is at risk because employers still won't trust their staff to work flexibly.

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British employers seeing grey when it comes to recruitment

With seven out of 10 British employers saying they are now actively seeking to recruit older workers, could the era of being thrown on the career scrapheap at 50 is finally passing?

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A Life Between Jobs

08 JUN 2006 from The New York Times | Read the full story»

Many young people in the workplace are finding that quitting their job is becoming the satisfying new alternative to the standard, entry-level benefit for vacation. As they found out, the two weeks allowed to most young employees is barely enough time to visit their parents for Christmas, go to a friend's wedding and take a long weekend. (Subscription required!)

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Not bad for a McJob?

As a new study is published suggesting that working at McDonald's has a positive impact on the development of young people, the fast food giant is also using the iconic location of Piccadilly Circus in London to promote itself as a good employer.

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Workers demanding better ethics from their employers

Enron and other corporate scandals have led to a sea-change in how employees view their own company's ethics, a U.S study has suggested.

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Interns? No Bloggers Need Apply

This is the time of year when thousands of college grads enter the workplace, many bringing with them an innocence about workplace rules and corporate culture. (Subscription required!)

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CEO Pay

After reading the article in the New York Times yesterday on the hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation given over the past few years to the CEO of Home Depot, I ran across this...

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Economic Scene: Hello, Young Workers: One Way to Reach the Top Is to Start There

The recent evidence shows quite clearly that in today's economy starting at the bottom is a recipe for being underpaid for a long time to come. (Subscription required!)

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Are US Workers "Vacation Deprived"?

"What are you doing for your vacation?""Err.what vacation?"

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College No Guarantee of Top-Dollar Pay

David Wessel, deputy Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, talks with Steve Inskeep about why having a college degree doesn't guarantee the pay graduates would like to see. (Audio)

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References, resumes and interviews useless at predicting success

The vast majority of tools used to recruit workers fail completely to predict whether someone will be successful in a job, according to a study by British HR professionals.

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Baby boomers look to a working retirement

More and more Americans are working in their retirement or are planning a new retirement career - a phenomenon that it seems most employers have yet to pick up on.

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Economic Scene: A Contrarian Look at Whether U.S. Chief Executives Are Overpaid

A new paper suggests that the higher salaries for chief executives can largely be explained by increases in the value of the stock market. (Subscription required!)

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Women Find New Path to Work

Professor Myra Hart's New Path program helps Harvard Business School alumnae re-enter the work world. Here is a look at what participants learned about life, work, and the quickly changing world of business.

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Mom Corps recruiting

In honor of Mother's Day this Sunday, Hillary Wicai reports on a job-placement service exclusively for corporate-minded moms looking to work part-time to keep their skills sharp. (Audio)

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Recruiters Hawking Dead-End Jobs May Want to Quit

04 MAY 2006 from Electronic Recruiting Exchange | Read the full story»

[An interview with Seth Godin]
In recruiting, there are people who are trying to hire great employees because the quality of the employee matters, and the only way you're going to get a great employee is if you have a great job for them and you tell an authentic story about why they want to work there. And then there are recruiters who just have to put people in the chairs. They're selling a mediocre thing and trying to get volume.

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Building your resume? Disney has an offer

The "Happiest Place on Earth" is looking for 4,000 summer interns to do work ranging from answering phones to regular park duties. It's a sign college students need jobs with resume-building experience. Lisa Napoli reports. (Audio)

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A New Generation Gap: Differences Emerge Among Women in the Workplace

04 MAY 2006 from The Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Workplace researchers lately have been intrigued by the fact that there now are four generations of women in the work force. Female leaders, meanwhile, are seeking ways to find their footing while managing women of different ages. (Subscription required!)

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CEO pay – its an envy thing

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposals that would force companies to disclose more information about executive compensation packages could result in bosses demanding even more pay, according to investment legend and long-time critic of executive excess, Warren Buffett.

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How New Accounting Rules Are Changing the Way CEOs Get Paid

When a well-known compensation consulting firm predicted in early April that new accounting rules wouldn't have any impact on the use of options as compensation for corporate executives, Wharton accounting professor Mary Ellen Carter was ready to disagree.

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Babies 0 Work 1

According to some new research by the Guardian newspaper people in the UK would prefer to have a career rather than babies. Here are some stats: 20% of British women reaching the end of their fertile life are childless, compared with 10% in the 1940s; it is more important for women to enjoy themselves than to have children - with 64% of men and 51% of women agreeing; Among men and women, 63% say career pressures are making it harder to have children and 54% said the cost was a deterrent; 53% of women and 46% of men said they thought it was more difficult now than ever for people to meet the right partner.

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They're never too old

As the Baby Boomer generation grows older, many are pondering retirement. But due to a shortage of skilled workers, many companies are attempting to lure older workers. And, Hillary Wicai reports, older boomers are responding. (Audio)

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War for talent hampering Chinese expansion

A lack of locally-experienced talent managers and a growing trend towards wage inflation are hampering the efforts of companies to hire suitable staff in China, according to research by a recruitment company.

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Shareholders Question Executive Pay at Pfizer

At the annual meeting of Pfizer shareholders, some attendees plan to protest the pay package for the company's chief executive. According to critics, Pfizer has changed the way it pays top executives to justify high levels of compensation. The company's stock is hovering near a seven-year low. (Audio)

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Make us save more for old age, not work longer, say workers

Workers around the world would prefer to be forced to save more for their retirement rather than work longer, a new survey has reported.

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Sabbaticals Aren't Just for Academics Anymore

22 APR 2006 from The New York Times | Read the full story»

In an age of job hopping, a perk to reward loyalty — sabbaticals for those with five years or more on the job — is taking on increased importance. (Subscription required!)

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Talent revolt

A growing number of young professionals say they won't work for companies that don't provide employees flexibility to balance their work and private lives. Hillary Wicai reports. (Audio)

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Money as a Motivator? - Kate

The question of the week directed towards Jack and Suzy Welch is: In our business, the biggest challenge we have today is motivating our people. What's the best way to do that?

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Job-Market Churn a Fact of Life for U.S. Workers

College seniors in the United States will soon jump into the workforce. Unlike the French youths who recently protested in favor of job-security laws, U.S. students don't think they'll keep a job for life. (Audio)

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Adding It All Up

For years, board pay panels have been faulted for failing to do the math when it comes to grasping the true value -- and possible future cost -- of CEO packages. But today there's a simple tool that's increasingly popular among corporate boards concerned about out-of-control executive pay: a tally sheet. And these "holy cow" sheets could have a significant impact on pay practices. (Subscription required!)

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Outside Advice on Boss's Pay May Not Be So Independent

The secretive, prosperous and often conflicted world of compensation consultants has grown into a substantial industry. (Subscription required!)

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Reich on savings

The Senate Finance Committee meets tomorrow to talk about how little Americans are saving. Commentator Robert Reich thinks he knows why — and what we ought to do about it. (Audio)

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Economic Scene: Beauty and the Fattened Wallet

ECONOMISTS have long recognized that physical beauty affects wages, even in occupations where appearance does not seem relevant to job performance. (Subscription required!)

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How's Your Workforce IQ?

Lifelong learning has advanced from a nice-to-have to a business essential, write the authors of Workforce Crisis. Their book examines the business implications of trends in the pool of current and future employees. Here's an excerpt.

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Why Do So Few Women Reach the Top of Big Law Firms?

19 MAR 2006 from The New York Times | Read the full story»

Although the nation's law schools for years have been graduating classes that are almost evenly split between men and women, and although firms are absorbing new associates in numbers that largely reflect that balance, something unusual happens to most women after they begin to climb into the upper tiers of law firms. They disappear. (Subscription required!)

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Working life no longer stops at retirement

More and more people who have officially retired are working part-time to supplement their income, a new study has found.

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Making a market in talent

23 MAR 2006 from The McKinsey Quarterly | Read the full story»

Companies that understand the value of talented people in generating brands, reputations, and other intangibles often spend considerable time recruiting such workers but drop the ball in providing them with opportunities to develop and grow. (Free subscription required!)

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Fearless Predictions (And What to Do About Them)

Four fearless predictions about the future of work--and what to do about them.

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What Happens When the Press Blasts Your CEO for Excess Compensation? Apparently Not Much

Springtime, in addition to bringing back flowers and birds, also brings forth many companies' proxy statements, including information on CEO compensation. It's a signal for the business press to get to work reporting the details of what appear to be the highest executive pay packages. Wharton accounting professors Wayne Guay and John Core, and Stanford accounting professor David Larcker, also study executive compensation. What they conclude from their most recent research is that the most relevant information doesn't necessarily make headlines. They also find that in general, the media's focus on excessive compensation does not substantively change corporate behavior with regards to pay packages.

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You Play Warcraft? You're Hired!

Why multiplayer games may be the best kind of job training. By John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas from Wired magazine.

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The Art of Recruiting, Part II

I received an email from Craig James that contained superb insights into the art of recruiting. With Craig's permission, I provide it below.

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Middlescents - Jack Covert

No not adolescents, middlescents. The people who, "make up more than half your workforce. They work longer hours than anyone else in your company. From their ranks come most of your top managers. They're your mid-career employees, the solid citizens..."

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Canadians spurn the grindstone to spend more time with family

Canadian workers are increasingly putting their personal lives ahead of their work, with work-life balance becoming an increasing priority for job-seekers.

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Blue-collar blues

Hourly workers with children often struggle to balance job requirements and family needs. Putting family first can sometimes cost them a job. A new report says this is more common than expected, and businesses would be wise to change their policies. Hillary Wicai reports. (Audio)

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Making the transition to managment

Getting promoted is a common goal, but perhaps the most difficult promotion is transitioning from line worker to front-line supervisor. Why? Because the skills that made one successful in the rank and file are not the skills one needs for success as a supervisor.

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The great motivational myth

U.S. employers spend $100 billion a year on incentives like T-shirts, golf outings and free trips to Florida in the belief that they somehow motive and inspire their employees. But what they're forgetting is that gimmicks don't buy engagement or motivation. That takes equitable pay, opportunity, and - above all - respect.

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Industry wants girls to stick to knitting

Upon her retirement, Autodesk's Carol Bartz remains that rare exception, one that's becoming more rare all the time: the female CEO.

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Dubuque aims appeal at young women

Cities around the nation are trying to plug a brain drain by wooing young professionals. And they're getting more pointed in ...

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Survey names top U.S. companies for women

Although women account for fewer than one in 10 line managers in U.S. Fortune 500 companies, some organisations are finding innovative ways of developing and advancing their talented women - and seeing positive results.

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Old Brains Don't Work That Badly After All, Especiallly Trained Ones

03 MAR 2006 from The Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Maybe I'm guilty of wishful thinking, but more and more research seems to be pointing to a rare bit of good news about aging: Old brains have gotten a bum rap. (Subscription required!)

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Supporting Actors

In the workplace, there are few bigger insults than being called a ‘part-timer’. Here in the UK we’ve just learned that there’s a hefty financial penalty to choosing part-time work. A report by the government-funded Women and Work Commission shows...

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Bias against babies?

A bias against women having babies has permeated our culture, argues Madeline Bunting in her Guardian column. It is evident in our consumer culture and our work culture.

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Economic Scene: Do You Need a License to Earn a Living? You Might Be Surprised at the Answer

The balance of occupational licensing has shifted away from protecting consumers and toward limiting the supply of workers in various professions. (Subscription required!)

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Remote workers let it all hang out