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RAND Corporation's View of the 21st Century Workplace
2007-04-12 15:26:00
Several years ago, the Rand Corporation prepared a report funded by the Department of Labor that nicely captured the current and future state of the American workplace. While some of the report’s findings have received extensive press coverage, the report is still an interesting read, especially for folks who have not devoted much time to the whole subject, or for those who simply wish to review facts and projections that they have previously seen from various sources. Here are some of the interesting tidbits: Work force Facts Among developed countries, the U.S. workforce remains relatively young. Canada , Europe , Russia and Japan have older workforces; Labor force participation among Hispanics is higher than among non-Hispanics; The United States has the highest educational attainment among the G-8 countries, but falls to somewhere middle in the pack for educational achievement; The labor force participation rate among men aged 65-74 is expected to increase from 14.8 percent ...
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NY Times Takes a Close Look at Executive Pay
2007-04-09 15:07:00
Sunday?s edition of the NY Time s (online edition) included a special section on executive pay, jam packed with interesting graphics and incisive commentary on key developments in the field of executive compensation. Here are some of the key themes from the special report, along with the Cenek Report?s take on each: To comply with new SEC regulations relating to reporting, proxies have become more difficult to decipher and understand. Cenek Report response:  While new forms of pay disclosure in 2007 proxies are clearly more lengthy and involved, that was the exact intent of the new SEC regulations. Some shareholders not versed in the intricacies of executive company may be more, not less confused, but at least compensation experts, institutional investors, and other parties with the knowledge and expertise to sift through the mounds of information will provide better outside scrutiny and oversight of pay practices; Top executives at many firms are still realizing gargantuan...
More About: Take , Executive , Close , Times

CogMap: The Organization Chart Wiki
2007-04-09 02:01:00
CogMap is an interesting web innovation that allows individuals to see, create and edit organization charts online. This service should enjoy some good “legs,” or staying power, unless it receives heavy heat or legal challenges from corporations relating to private information.The site should be a real boon for recruiters and headhunters.  Firms that are less concerned about their chart being in the public domain might also find it helpful as well. 
More About: Organization , Hart , Wiki , Chart , The O

Workforce at Circuit City Gets Short Circuited Again
2007-04-06 18:08:00
A major piece missing from the recent coverage of the layoffs at Circuit City is that this is not the first time that they have completed a ?wage management initiative? ? an interesting choice of doublespeak directly taken from their March 28, 2007 press release. In fact, the electronics retailer unveiled and implemented a similar cost cutting move at least once before, as reported in the February 6, 2003 edition of The Wall Street Journal. The firm announced then that 3,900 commissioned sales staff were being retro-recruited and replaced with less expensive newbies. Lackluster financial performance ? and a need for a revamped sales strategy ? were provided as official explanations. A great pop psychology-free web-letter, Knowledge at Wharton, recently covered the complexities and potentially unintended consequences of the firm?s latest decision in a well-balanced article entitled Short Circuited: Cutting Jobs as Corporate Strategy. In the article, Peter Cappelli, management profess...
More About: Work , Force , Again , Gets

More Fiction About Generational Differences
2007-04-03 05:28:00
A newly released report by Watson Wyatt brings additional support to the commentary in an earlier Cenek Report posting, Generational Differences : Fact or Fiction .Watson researchers, using a sample of Canadian employees, learned that employees across all age groups are largely motivated by the same things to excel in their jobs.Strategic direction and rewards were considered to be the top two engagement drivers for the 3,000 employees polled.According to Debra Horsfield, Practice Leader, Organization Effectiveness with Watson Wyatt, “widely held beliefs about generational differences in the workplace may lead organizations to develop programs that can actually diminish employee engagement.”These findings are further evidence that the cottage industry devoted to selling services and products based on generational differences is based on faulty premises.
More About: About , More , Rational

Lessons Within The High Reliability Organization
2007-04-02 03:16:00
High reliability organizations (HROs) strive to avoid disasters and accidents that can harm the general health and welfare of society. Key examples of high reliability organizations include air traffic control operations, emergency rooms, nuclear warships, and nuclear power plants.To meet their operational objectives, high reliability organizations accent orderliness and discipline in their activities. Work processes are well described – and designed to operate in a fail-safe method. Hierarchy exists, but expertise is accessed wherever it’s located in order to make quick, accurate decisions. Many organizations operate in industries and settings not requiring high reliability in the classical sense, yet they’ve unknowingly adopted management practices that mimic those found in HROs. Six Sigma, Lean, and the tenants of the Toyota Production System (TPS) are all concerned with minimizing errors and reducing waste through greater simplification and standardization of w...
More About: Organization , With , High , Bili , Less

A Challenge for the Fortune 100 Best Employers
2006-12-17 02:54:00
Fortune’s annual 100 Best Employers issue always presents me with the same perennial set of questions: Can we assume that employees in these firms are more happy – and more importantly, more engaged with their work than the average employee in the U.S economy; andIf so, are these employees’ happiness being fueled by the “deep pockets” of the typical firm in the listing?Monolithic bureaucracies in oligopolistic or regulated industries seem to be prime examples of firms with the financial wherewithal and competitive means to fund a spiffy array of workplace pleasantries, such as on-site pet day care centers or free espresso, without having to fret much about the bottom line.Wouldn’t it be great to see firms of all sizes in the annual parade, or better yet, to base inclusion on third-party survey data, say from JD Powers, that validates the level of employee engagement (and not just satisfaction)in their workplaces?
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Happy Employees ?? Operating Performance?
2006-12-17 02:39:00
Which Comes First: Employee Attitudes or Organizational Financial and Market Performance ”  is a great read on the causality between employee satisfaction and firm performance. The article reports on research findings that overall job satisfaction and satisfaction with security are predicted by ROA (return on assets) and EPS (earnings per share) more strongly than the reverse.The authors acknowledge that rock solid conclusions are still elusive, but it would appear that this particular piece of work has chipped away at some the assumptions and inaccuracies in earlier pieces of work.Might a more interesting challenge for future researchers be to explore the connection between engagement and performance, versus satisfaction and performance? After all, without disparaging a particular type of worker, industry or practice, one can easily conclude, through personal experiences, that a happy employee is not always a productive employee.
More About: Employees , Opera , Happy

An Irrefutable Case for Leadership Development
2006-12-08 03:49:00
"The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led."   Warren Bennis___________________________________ _________________________________________ _____________________For years, researchers and thought leaders like Warren Bennis have explored the debate over whether leaders are born or made. While the debate will surely continue, some conclusions are generally accepted, with one of the most important being that effective leadership can not be predicted by level of intelligence or education, family wealth or stability, birth order, ethnicity, race or gender. There is a much stronger body of evidence, originating from the Center for Creative Leadership , that leaders are developed thro...
More About: Development , Men , Tabl , Case

Googling Job Candidates and Consultants
2006-11-23 18:51:00
Googling prospective job candidates has become standard practice among at least the more technologically savvy recruiters.  According to CareerBuilder, twenty-six percent of hiring managers said they have used Internet search engines to research potential employees, and 12 percent said they have used social networking sites.  According to a 2005 survey of 102 executive recruiters by ExecuNet, an executive job-search and networking organization, 75% of recruiters use search engines to uncover information about candidates, and 26% of recruiters have eliminated candidates because of information found online. I too have Googled prospective job candidates and potential human resources consultants for several years now, and have found it to be helpful.  LinkedIn and Zoominfo are also useful sites for finding more about individuals pre- and post-job interview.  Some job candidates may have a presence at one of the social networking sites such as MySpace, Faceback, or F...
More About: Consultant , Dates , Candidates , Dida , Sultan

Super-Sized Slices Shrink the Pie
2006-11-20 03:27:00
Today's New York Times featured an article - "If All the Slice s Are Equal, Will the Pie Shrink?" - that probably portends an escalating debate on the intended and unintended consequences of the ramp-up in executive pay since the early 90's.  Some are already forecasting the topic as a key issue in the next general election.Two of the researchers identified in the Times article, Xavier Gaibaix of MIT and Augustin Landier of the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, argue that the explosion of CEO pay to new stratospheric levels is simply due an accompanying increase in firm size over recent decades. Other academics dispute this hypothesis however, and strongly belief that the run-away pay is due to a host of factors, and not just organizational size.Several statistics are quite sobering:The top 0.1 percent of American income earners receive nearly 7 percent of the total, the highest since the 1920's;Fifty percent of the income increase in our ...
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A Confirmation of Reality
2006-10-22 07:05:00
The folks at Hudson Highland Group released survey findings indicating that younger workers crave feedback, access to managers and more social interaction.Hudson surveyed 2,000 U.S. workers and categorized the respondents as either:Traditionalists, workers born 1928- 1945;Baby Boomers born 1946-1964; Generation X born 1965-1979; and Generation Y born after 1980.According to the Hudson survey, " beyond formal reviews, one-quarter (24 percent) of both Generation X and Y workers said they would like feedback from their boss at least once a week, if not every day. Comparatively, only one-fifth of Baby Boomers want feedback that frequently, and just 11 percent of Traditionalists would like that level of communication."What struck me about the findings is that they mirror my personal experience in corporate America; and secondly, that they are not all that surprising.  The constant segmenting of the workforce into these categories also bugs me, but this is a movement that i...
More About: Reality , Real , Confirmation , Ality , Irma

The Crankiness Factor
2006-10-20 07:03:00
It's easy to forget that one's mood away from work influences one's mood at work.Wharton professor Nancy Rothbard and Steffanie Wilk, a professor at the Fisher School of Business at Ohio State University, have reported research findings that an employee's mood on arrival influences their mood throughout the work day.They further report that ""Start-of-day mood may come from myriad sources including persistent life challenges and opportunities, positive or negative family experiences before leaving for work, or even the commute into work," they write. "Non-work and work domains are permeable, and research suggests that mood often spills over from one to the other.... Specifically, start-of-day-mood might affect one's appraisal of subsequent events."Does this lend credence to the importance of humor in the workplace?
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Unintended Consequences of Age Discrimination Laws
2006-10-20 06:31:00
Hats off to Joanna Lahey, a research associate of the Center for Retirement Research and an assistant professor at Texas A&M. Her research has established that while the Age Discrimination in Employment Act appears to have helped and protected older workers on the job, it has probably hurt the older job seeker. Presumably, the law has made some employers a little more "gun shy,"and fearful of unwittingly mishandling the older worker. Employers will have no other alternative than to be less cautious in their dealings with older workers given the well-publicized aging of the workforce.
More About: Laws , Tend , Nation , Sequence

Another View on Web Usage at Work
2006-10-07 18:13:00
Surveillance and strict prohibition-like controls are the most common responses organizations use in the fight to keep cyber slacking in check. Most firms spell out the do’s and don’ts of internet usage at work through the omnipresent Acceptable Employee Internet Usage Policy. These policies are often buttressed by LAN software that monitors and tracks internet usage patterns. Excessive surfing at work can be a productivity robber when the privilege is abused. However, in knowledge-based work environments where creativity and impulsive-like insight are required, web use should probably not be of paramount concern, unless there is clear, egregious misuse - e.g., porn, heavy levels of personal shopping and so forth. In those settings occasional web usage should be viewed as a healthy diversion, akin to the well-documented guitar strumming by Seattle IT workers in the 80’s. Innovative work environments are known for their informality, spontaneity and absence of KGB-li...
More About: Other , Work , View , Another