Inside Human Resources Blog

Retaining employees is a problem!

Welcome to the September 27, 2006 edition of The Total View
published by Success Performance Solutions, Written by Ira S. Wolfe

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Success Performance Solutions was presented with the 2006 President's Award from Maximum Potential at their annual conference held last week in Minneapolis.   The President's Award is awarded to consultants with the highest sales revenues and demonstrated leadership in the employee assessment industry.
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1.   Retaining employees is a problem!

According to a recent survey released by Staffing.org, employees may be largely satisfied with their actual position, compensation, and benefits, but attitudes toward their employers, rewards, professional development opportunities and the functioning of HR in the organization all lead to a majority actively searching for new positions.

When asked “Do you have an interest in changing employees?” over 50 percent said maybe, and another 10 percent responded “definitely.”  That puts over six out of every ten employees at risk to leave an organization.

Retaining employees is a growing problem. When an organization loses a high performing employee, the cost of that loss goes beyond the monetary hit incurred to replace him or her.   The cost is so high that a story about Aetna stated  that they add 93 percent to an employee’s first year annual salary to account for the investment in bringing a new employee up to speed.  The loss of a skilled employee carries a heavy load:  lost productivity, lost available skills and knowledge, and a lost opportunity for future organizational growth.

Why are the best employees leaving?  Over one-third identified an opportunity for professional learning and another one-third sought compensation rewards.  Another 13 percent was looking for better management.

To add injury to insult, job seekers, the replacement workers applying to fill open positions, overwhelmingly indicated that organizations are failing to treat job candidates well. More than two-thirds of the Staffing.org respondents felt that job requirements and descriptions were unclear. If a job description is unclear, the number of self-selected qualified candidates is overwhelmed by unqualified candidates who are “taking a shot” at a position outside their experience and skill set.  Recruiters and managers are simply overwhelmed by the "resu-mess" and often overlook the most qualified inadvertently for the sake of time. 

More than 80% of respondents were also unhappy with their interview experiences. Two-thirds were dissatisfied with ongoing and follow-up communications, and again, two-thirds were dissatisfied with the recruiting function of hiring organizations.

To order the full report from Staffing.org:
http://www.staffing.org/Store/estore/detail.aspx?ID=170
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2.  Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #576 to 578

Don't miss day-to-day updates on Perfect Labor Storm Blog.

Just Released! Listen to "Trends That Will Change The Way You Do Business" - FREE Download:
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Fact #576:  If a full-time Wal-Mart hourly employee elects for single coverage, the employee would have to spend on average 9% of their earnings before the health insurance provided any reimbursement.

Fact #577:  If a full-time employee elected for family coverage, an average employee would have to spend 27% of their average earnings before the health insurance covered any costs. (Wal-Mart 2004 Associate Guide and UFCW Analysis).

Fact #578:  Wal-Mart can cover the cost of a dollar an hour wage increase by raising prices a half penny per dollar. For instance, a $2.00 pair of socks would then cost $2.01. This minimal increase would annually add up to $1,800 for each employee. [Analysis of Wal-Mart Annual Report 2005]

Don't be caught in storm without all the facts. "The Perfect Labor Storm Fact Book: Why Worker Shortages Won't Go Away" is a must-read leading edge forecast that predicts workforce trends for decades to come. Order your copy today - Only $7.95.
http://www.perfectlaborstorm.com/

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3.   CriteriaOne Certification Workshop

"Light years ahead of the competition" says one CriteriaOne participant.

"A must for anyone interested in lowering turnover and improving productivity," says another.

Don't miss the final certification workshop in 2006.

Learn to  build an effective interview and selection process through a competency-based job analysis.  Align employees with the right skills to meet the competitive demands of your business.  Design career paths that motivate employees and increase your talent pool.

More about CriteriaOne Certification, the whole person approach to selecting and managing employees....
http://www.super-solutions.com/criteriaonetraining.asp
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4. New! Supervisor Slip-Ups That Lead to S*xual Harassment Lawsuits

This 35-page report from the B21 Coach Series:                      

1. Will raise your supervisors' awareness of what behaviors and attitudes provoke s*xual harassment lawsuits

2. Is written in a friendly, respectful, "coaching" voice so supervisors won't "tune out" the way they do with so much other material they're asked to read.

BONUS: Your report also includes appendices containing:

A sample S*xual Harassment Policy

A sample Dating/Fraternization Policy

A sample "Social Relationship" form for non-managerial employees

A sample "Social Relationship" form for managerial employees

Learn more about how to avoid Supervisor Slip-Ups:
http://www.super-solutions.com/B21_SexualHarassmentLawsuits.asp

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5. Quotes from Hire Authorities

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.
Frank Moore Colby, encyclopedia editor
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6. Get Clues 24/7

Our new Clues store is open 24/7.  You can now order Clues attitude and personality reports around the clock.  Need to create a new account?  Our Clues store allows you to create a new account in minutes.  Get ready to test candidates or employees in minutes.  Order as few as 5 reports or purchase an annual license.   To learn more about Clues and the Clues Store, go to:

http://www.super-solutions.com/JobCluesPersonalityTest.asp

Ira S. Wolfe Copyright 2006 - All Rights Reserved. Reprints and other distribution by permission only.

95 percent of managers find life at work stressful

A survey by online learning provider, SkillSoft, shows that 95 percent of managers find life at work stressful and 28 percent have taken time off work as a direct result.

More than half the managers surveyed can never imagine a stage in their life when they are completely stress-free and 58 per cent of managers think they probably spend most of their lives stressed in one way or another. Worryingly, almost 70 per cent of managers say they wake up in the night due to feelings of stress.

The major causes of management stress at work are*:

1.    Workload – 61.6 percent                   
2.    Deadlines – 50.3 percent                     
3.    Feeling undervalued - 38.9 percent            
4.    Having to work longer hours than they should – 37.3 percent
5.    Having to take on other people’s work – 34.1 percent
6.    Lack of control over their day - 31.9 percent       
7.    Targets - 30.3 percent
8.    Type of work – 30.3 percent
9.    Too many emails – 28.1 percent               
10.    Organisational changes that impact on them and their job – 27 percent   

* respondents could pick more than one cause of stress

Top ten colleague irritations*:

1.    Seeing other people not pulling their weight – 56.1 percent
   
2.    Bosses changing their minds about what they want you to do – 37.3 percent

3.    Lack of support from bosses – 29.7 percent       
4.    Pressure from bosses – 28.6 percent               
5.    Interruptions by bosses – 23.8 percent                
6.    Feeling put-upon by bosses - 22.2 percent
7.    Lack of support from colleagues – 21.6 percent    
8.    Bullying behaviour by bosses – 17.8 percent         
9.    Feeling put-upon by colleagues – 11.4 percent
10.    Bullying behaviour by colleagues 9.2 percent         

* respondents could pick more than one colleague irritation

Healthcare Organizations: Best Employers for Older Workers

Mercy Health System in Janesville, Wisconsin, is the best employer for workers who are 50 years of age or older, according to a ranking by the AARP.

Mercy Health System is just one of five healthcare organizations in the top five of the AARP's Best Employers for Workers Over 50 list.

Rounding out the top five on the list are Lee Memorial Health System in Fort Myers, Florida; Bon Secours Richmond Health System in Richmond, Virginia; Leesburg Regional Medical Center and The Villages Regional Hospital in Leesburg, Florida; and Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut .

The top 10 companies on the list follow.

1. Mercy Health System-- Janesville, Wisconsin
2. Lee Memorial Health System-- Fort Myers, Florida
3. Bon Secours Richmond Health System-- Richmond, Virginia
4. Leesburg Regional Medical Center and The Villages Regional Hospital--Leesburg, Florida
5. Yale-New Haven Hospital -- New Haven, Connecticut
6. Volkswagen of America, Inc.-- Auburn Hills, Michigan
7. Massachusetts Institute of Technology-- Cambridge, Massachusetts
8. Oakwood Healthcare System, Inc.-- Dearborn, Michigan
9. First Horizon National Corporation-- Memphis, Tennesse
10. Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. (Roche)-- Nutley, New Jersey

Source: AARP

Execs Say Single Typo on Résumé Is All It Takes

Forty-seven percent of executives say it takes just one typographical error in a résumé to remove a candidate from consideration for a job opening, according to a survey by OfficeTeam.

Thirty-seven percent of the 150 senior executives responding to the survey said two typos are enough to eliminate a candidate from consideration.

Seven percent of respondents said it would take three typos, and 6 percent said four or more typos.

Source: HR.BLR.com

Sierra Southwest Powers Up Future Managers with SPS

Welcome to the September 6, 2006 edition of The Total View
published by Success Performance Solutions, Written by Ira S. Wolfe

1.   Sierra Southwest Powers Up Future Managers

Sierra Southwest Cooperative Services Inc. in Benson, Ariz., faces a problem common to the energy industry: Finding the right people to lead the nonprofit cooperative into the next generation of providing electrical power and other specialized services to its members/owners.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association in Arlington, Va., reports that in less than a decade the co-op industry will lose more than half of its top leadership to retirement. More than a third of its rank-and-file will be eligible to retire by then, as well.

At Sierra Southwest, human resource experts anticipate the loss of 45 employees, nearly a quarter of its work force; many of them longtime employees who, over the years, gained their knowledge and skills through on-the-job experience. Emery Silvester, director of human resources at Sierra Southwest, said the organization needed to do more than recruit the right number of replacements; it needed to find candidates who had the skill sets necessary to carry on the Cooperative’s business with no interruption.

Another required element usually not found in for-profit environs is employees’ altruistic sense that their contribution makes a priceless difference to the community. Their employer is not in it for the money, and, likewise, Cooperative employees “believe in what they do and receive the satisfaction of knowing that their work directly improves people's lives,” says Russell Turner, senior human resources community representative for NRECA.

A unique problem calls for a unique solution.

The cooperative looked 1,500 miles northeast and enlisted the help of Success Performance Solutions, Lancaster, Pa., a consulting firm, and valued-added partner on ccoperative.com, with a mission to “help employers take the hassle and guesswork out of hiring and managing employees.” SPS was founded by Dr. Ira S. Wolfe, president. Wolfe used his trademarked Criteria One, a whole-person approach to finding and hiring the right people for the job. The method looks at the knowledge and skill sets that links people performance to organizational goals.

“Co-ops need to be efficient in many areas,” said Wolfe. A co-op cannot afford a culture clash neither in its leadership nor among its line workers. A co-op has a social directive to its mission. Sierra Southwest wanted a hiring and assessment method that it could share with its members. For a solution, Success Performance Solutions recommended assessing four core areas of personality: behavior, values traits, and cognitive abilities. These are the traits and characteristics that most impact performance in the Cooperative culture, especially hiring workers who share similar or compatible values and are motivated by the culture.

Said Silvester: “We had to look at hiring in-house versus going outside. Our employees tend to stay here; this is not a metro area.” Sierra Southwest wanted to identify two groups: people interested in entering management and current managers eager to move ahead. Rather than merely eliminate unqualified candidates, SPS’s assessment tool invited employees to participate in the solution. “The testing identified people’s strengths and weaknesses,” Silverster said. SPS put together a development plan that worked on each participant’s three top developmental needs. Everyone who participated in the process learned where he/she excelled in job performance and where improvement was needed to fulfill the desire of personal and professional growth.  “Each layer of management has more complexity,” Wolfe said.

SPS and Sierra Southwest gave new meaning to the word cooperative when it joined with local community colleges and universities to create a management-development program for its employees.

Wolfe said it goes with the Cooperative’s new goal of building career paths for its employees. Sierra Southwest has seen 33 employees complete the program, and nine of those are current managers. “I’ve been in human resources for 25 years,” Silvester said, “and I’ve been doing testing for years.

“SPS tools are a definite advantage to the cooperative culture,” he said. “It’s a more beneficial process as it makes it easier to hire in-house.”

The message transmitted to employees is that growth and improvement is an ongoing process, Wolfe said.

Today, he said, “Sierra Southwest understands its talent; it knows whom it can call on in the future.”

Learn more about CriteriaOne at the next CriteriaOne Certification Workshop scheduled for November 1 - 3, 2006. For more information, see below.

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2.  Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #570 and 571

Don't miss day-to-day updates on Perfect Labor Storm. Save the Perfect Labor Storm blog to your favorites. 

Just Released! Listen to "Trends That Will Change The Way You Do Business" - FREE Download:
http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/netcart.asp?MerchantID=37174&ProductID=2864258

Fact #570:  From 1997 to 2004, the U.S. population grew 7.7 percent. If jobs in retailing had grown at the rate of the population, the country would have added 1.1 million retailing jobs during those seven years. The country however added just over that number - 670,000 new retail jobs. Out of those 670,000 jobs, Wal-Mart created 70 percent of them. The remaining new retail jobs - 190,000 in the nation over seven years amount to just 540 new retail jobs in each state, each year. While the number of Wal-Mart jobs grew 67 percent, the number of jobs in the rest of U.S. retail grew 1.3 percent. (Source: The Wal-Mart Effect)

Fact #571:  While Wal-Mart was adding 480,000 jobs between 1997 and 2004, U.S. manufacturing jobs during those years fell by 3.1 million jobs, a loss of 37,000 factory jobs a month. For the first time in U.S. history, the number of Americans working in retail (14.9 million) was greater than the number of Americans working in factories (14.5 million)
(Source: The Wal-Mart Effect)

Don't be caught in storm without all the facts. "The Perfect Labor Storm Fact Book: Why Worker Shortages Won't Go Away" is a must-read leading edge forecast that predicts workforce trends for decades to come. Order your copy today - Only $7.95.
http://www.perfectlaborstorm.com/

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3. Get Clues 24/7

Our new Clues store is open 24/7.  You can now order Clues reports around the clock.  Need to create a new account?  Our Clues store allows you to create a new account in minutes.  Get ready to test candidates or employees in minutes.  Order as few as 5 reports or purchase an annual license.   To learn more about Clues and the Clues Store, go to:

http://www.super-solutions.com/JobCluesPersonalityTest.asp
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4. DISCovering the Styles

The best study guide to help you prepare for DISC certification.
The perfect reference guide for effectively using DISC in the workplace.

As early as 300 BC, Aristotle observed that the images speakers create of themselves are their strongest persuasive tools. Each person has various traits, abilities, and personality characteristics that influence these messages. Effective impression management means accenting some of those characteristics and de-emphasizing others. It involves putting on one's "best face" but not necessarily putting on a false face.

DISCovering The Styles, a new book by Bill Schult, describes how over 2300 years after Aristotle, the behavioral model DISC is still being used by leaders, managers, salespeople, and coaches to create powerful impressions, build high-performing teams and gain endorsement.

DISCovering the Styles is 162-pages filled with everything you need to know about:
- How the DISC Behavioral Styles Learn
- DISC Styles Approach to Decision Making
- DISC Styles Approach to Leadership
- DISC Styles Approach to Work

In addition, you will find valuable information in these areas:

- Self and Others Perception
- Quick Tips for Identifying High Side Behavior
- Communicating with the DISC Styles
- DISC Graph Interpretation

Order DISCovering the Styles
http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/javanof.asp?MerchantID=37174&ProductID=3024769

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5. Quotes from Hire Authorities

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
Carl Jung
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6. CriteriaOne Certification Workshop
"Light years ahead of the competition" says one CriteriaOne participant.

"A must for anyone interested in lowering turnover and improving productivity," says another.

Don't miss the final certification workshop in 2006.

Build a selection and performance management system to align employees with the right skills to meet the competitive demands of your business.

More about CriteriaOne Certification, the whole person approach to selecting and managing employees....
http://www.super-solutions.com/criteriaonetraining.asp
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Ira S. Wolfe Copyright 2006 - All Rights Reserved. Reprints and other distribution by permission only.