Content about Labor

June 3, 2013
How Baptist Health Care Improves Performance

The Performance Improvement Fundamentals (PIF) course is a comprehensive curriculum based on LEAN and Six Sigma principles, developed specifically for individuals who have expressed interest in, and have demonstrated the potential for, improving things within their department.

Edited by Margery Weinstein

May 10, 2013
Give Employees Learning They’ll Love

It’s difficult to entice workers to embrace training if the content is mediocre, uninteresting, irrelevant, or offered at times when they don’t have freedom to focus. To get the most value from educational initiatives, organizations need to focus on the individual learner. Prioritizing a few key concepts can successfully shape a professional development program.

By Michael Ninness, Senior Vice President, Product and Content, lynda.com

Too often training goes unused. It’s not relevant to the learner or fails to address a specific concern in a moment of need.

Even when training is consumed, learning does not always occur. And because technology and information are rapidly evolving, content used in training quickly becomes outdated.

April 25, 2013
Training Empowers Employees to Make Smart Benefits Decisions

Water treatment company Severn Trent Services broadened its benefits communication efforts to offer more intensive tools and resources, one of which provided a dynamic, training-based approach. As a result of this change, the company observed much higher rates of benefits engagement at new hire orientation and annual enrollment.

By Justyn Harkin

It happens every benefits enrollment season at every company around the country. Employees who want to get the whole benefits enrollment process over and done with simply sleepwalk through some of the most important decisions they could be making for themselves and their families for the rest of the year.

Something has to be done to wake these employees up!

April 18, 2013
Training Increases Employee Retention

The fear for many companies is that they spend time and money developing people, only to see them take those newly acquired skills to another company. However, training actually can increase employee retention, when the training reinforces the value of the employee. In addition, a well-designed training program plays a critical part in nurturing associates’ psyches.

By Joe Lipham, Training Account Manager, Signature Worldwide

I thought I had hired the perfect person for the front desk. She was bright, articulate, and eager to learn the hotel business from the ground up. She was going to be my front desk star. I arranged an interview with the front office manager and she agreed: star material! Imagine my surprise and disappointment when two weeks later my new star was in my Human Resource director’s office offering her resignation.

March 29, 2013
Filling the Energy Workforce Skills Gap

As a younger, technologically savvy generation takes its place in the workforce, simulation-based training in the energy industry will play an increasingly crucial role. Simulation technology is an easy way to bring fundamentals and theories for plant operations into real-world applications.

By Phil Polefrone, Senior Vice President, Workforce Solutions, GSE Systems, Inc.

March 7, 2013
Building Engagement with a Remote Workforce

Remote workforces can be highly effective for all organizations across the spectrum of industries. But for this to be a successful solution, organizations must invest time and resources in building relationships, and ultimately engagement, with their remote teams before they can reap the rewards.

By Kate Donovan, Global RPO President, ManpowerGroup

February 28, 2013
Establishing Alignment in Employee Performance Management

Key to alignment is ensuring that employees understand the relevance of their contributions and taking the appropriate measures to ensure they remain engaged. Here are six steps organizations can take to gain enterprise-wide alignment.

By Marcel Messier, President and COO, Technomedia

February 19, 2013
2013 Training Top 125: CHG Healthcare’s Rx for Success

Expanded new hire orientation and onboarding programs highlight a year of training advances at CHG Healthcare Services, No. 5 on the 2013 Training Top 125.

By Margery Weinstein

February 14, 2013
Baylor Health Care Gauges Engagement

Baylor Health Care System has implemented an employee engagement survey every two years since 2004. After each survey, Baylor holds focus groups to determine clarity about the needs and best practices, and then implements a variety of training offerings.

By Margery Weinstein

February 11, 2013
Engaging Employees With a Healthy Nudge

Employers recognize the evidence that making health and wellness programs available to their employees makes sense—dollars and cents. But what they also are seeing is that offering such programs isn’t enough. Getting employees to use them is turning out to be the real challenge.

By Peter Saravis, CEO and Co-Founder, Evive Health

One of the fundamental goals of any Human Resources professional is finding the most effective way to motivate employees and to engage them in ways that allow them to be their very best. But central to this simple truth is the reality that employees cannot perform as hoped if they are not healthy. And that puts corporate America at a disadvantage.

January 23, 2013
The Importance of Measurement in Employee Engagement

Measurement of employee engagement is the first and most critical step in improving it. With this information in hand, managers are better equipped to empower employees by providing clear expectations and feedback that will allow them to succeed while improving customer service and overall company profitability.

By Alan E. Hall, Founder and Chairman, MarketStar (now a division of Omnicom)

Imagine half of your workforce going through the motions while looking for other employment. According to a recent Gallup study on employee engagement, approximately 54 percent of employees in the United States are not engaged in their organization (http://www.gallup.com/poll/150383/Majority-American-Workers-Not-Engaged-Jobs.aspx).

January 11, 2013
Employee First Impressions: A “Mulligan,” Please?

First impressions are remarkably persistent. This is particularly true for new hires. Next-generation HR technologies are evolving into socially infused applications that recognize the value of the employee experience. This provides a valuable opportunity for organizations to leverage these systems to positively influence a host of HR programs/activities—specifically, employee “preboarding.”

By Cary Schuler, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, cfactor

I always love self-righteously claiming my right of a “Mulligan” as it’s often referred to in golf. You didn’t like that drive? No worries, just tee up another ball and try again…

Unfortunately, Mulligans don’t work so well in our professional lives.

December 20, 2012
Home Loan Program Can Help Attract and Retain Employees

The Hometown Home Loan Program helps both employers and employees. It enables employers to offer a low-cost, high-reward benefit to their overall benefits package, and employees get both financial help and real estate education to make smarter home buying decisions.

By Dianne Wasson, Vice President & Affinity Lending Manager, HomeStreet Bank

Back in the early 1990s, the city of Seattle faced a challenge. Due to the high costs of living in the city, police and fire department employees were forced to live in surrounding suburbs and neighboring cities, resulting in lengthier commutes. For these critical employees, response time—and hence proximity—was an issue.

November 26, 2012
Training + Recognition=Productive Workforce

A consistent pattern of education, practical application,and recognition strengthensthe learning process andhelps employees see themselves as an integral part of the company’s mission. Formal employee rewards and recognition programs linked to training can be used to build on and reinforce training initiatives, support performance management,and motivate workforces, leading to increased bottom-line results.

By Mike Ryan, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Client Strategy, Madison Performance Group

November 19, 2012
Keys to Train Seasonal Employees as Brand Ambassadors

To ensure a jolly holiday season, businesses must prepare the seasonal workforce to own the customer experience by demonstrating commitment to training and focusing on the building blocks of customer experience success.

By K.C. Blonski, Senior Director, Travel, Leisure, and Retail Markets, AchieveGlobal

Despite a still-sputtering economy, consumer confidence continues to grow as retailers up the ante when it comes to delivering customer service. With the holiday season in full swing, and retail success dependent on exceptional service, retailers cannot rely solely on holiday decorations and seasonal promotions to drive traffic and ultimately brand loyalty. They must focus on owning the customer experience.

November 1, 2012
Case Study: Accelerating New Employee Productivity at Savvis, A CenturyLink Company

Savvis’ Global Learning and Development team was able to design an onboarding program that would quickly integrate and educate new employees while also building champions for the process within the business. So it wasn’t doing something to the organization; it was creating a program with the organization.

When Jim Sokolowski arrived at Savvis Communications in 2010 to begin as director of Global Learning and Leadership Development, the company was experiencing double-digit growth, along with a change in senior leadership that brought a renewed commitment to human capital as a strategic enabler and competitive advantage. The challenge was to effectively build the organization’s learning function from the ground up. Taking on such an effort brought up the question of where to start as there were plenty of obvious places that demanded attention.

October 29, 2012
Investing in a New Workforce Training and Education Program

Commander Navy Installations Command’s new Training & Education Program incorporates the training lifecycle, curriculum development, training delivery methodology, and organizational training management processes. Execution under the guidelines of the T&E program policy will yield significant savings in the organization’s future budget plans.

By Ray Davis, Corporate Enterprise Training Activity Resource Systems (CeTARS) Program Manager, Commander, Navy Installations Command

October 25, 2012
Understanding the Value of Development to Your Workforce

For employees, the top two factors to improving job satisfaction are career development opportunities and training, and “more opportunities to do what I do best.” Indeed, employees believe that greater resources, development and training opportunities, specific feedback, and clarity around organizational needs and goals would increase job satisfaction, according to Blessing White’s 2011 Employee Engagement Report.

Meeting the staffing challenges of the future is paramount for any organization. In the current business environment, we’ve heard a lot about unemployment and jobs not being available, but as the economy continues to recover, the next challenge for companies is going to be the widening talent gap and changing workforce demographics before a possible war for talent begins.

September 28, 2012
Keeping Employee Information Safe in the Clouds

Carefully assessing your level of risk, thoroughly vetting the service provider, and having clear specifications in the servicing agreement can help mitigate the risks of storing HR information and records in a cloud computing environment.

By Caryn Tijsseling, Litigation Partner, Lewis and Roca

The increasing popularity of cloud computing will have far-reaching effects on the data management systems of many companies. One area where cloud computing can have a major impact is on the storage of Human Resources (HR) information and records. In fact, recent studies indicate that up to 84 percent of surveyed companies either are transitioning or planning to transition their Human Resources functions to more accessible and affordable data management systems such as cloud systems.

August 2, 2012
7 E-Learning Best Practices for Maximum Global Workforce Training ROI

Although computer-based e-learning has been established as an efficient and cost-effective way to train a large group of employees spread across the globe, bad training can end up costing more than good training when you calculate the time, resources, and opportunity cost wasted on training that does not provide the desired ROI. Here are seven best practices, to help your organization provide high-quality technology training.

By Bill English, CEO, Mindsharp

July 26, 2012
Connecting Vision, Talent, and Development Efforts to Engage Employees

Engaging and inspiring a workforce starts at the heart of the matter: your company’s goals. If an organization has a mission that engages and inspires the right employees, it can transform the company culture, and those effects will reverberate through how the company does business and deals with clients.

Every company wants their workers to be engaged, inspired, and working toward a common goal. But not every company has a plan for making that happen. An engaged and inspired workforce inspires people to work for your company, do business with your employees, and buy your products. How does an organization set itself apart as a place where people want to work and that people want to work with?

July 18, 2012
Soapbox: Employee Engagement—Why Care?

Organizations face daunting challenges and need to use every resource at their disposal to stay competitive. An engaged workforce that performs with energy, focus, and commitment is critical to organizational survival. Addressing the issues that drive engagement levels is a significant strategy to move from surviving to thriving.

By Ross Tartell, Ph.D.

Over the last decade, employee engagement has developed as a vital component of Human Resource strategy. But economic realities during the last few years have narrowed the focus of some companies to concerns about cash flow and sales, leaving employee engagement forgotten amid the imperative for economic survival. Stagnant growth and high unemployment characterized an environment that caused many employers to act as if employees were lucky to have a job and could easily be replaced if they didn’t produce.

June 25, 2012
Using 3-D Animated Video for Workforce Training

Digital 3-D modeling and animation technology has been used for decades in the scientific, architectural, and engineering industries, but its high cost has limited its use in more common, everyday applications. But a drop in price and steady increase in computing power has opened the technology up to more mainstream markets.

By Joelle Scheldorf

Media designer Ruben Jauregui studies one of two widescreen computer displays on his desk. It shows an image of an industrial machine, dense with rollers, servomotors, and other mechanical components.

“It’s called an Embosser,” Jauregui explains. “It’s used for combining two paper plies together. This model took me three weeks to make. It can take less, but this one was pretty complicated.”

May 14, 2012
Developing Your High-Potential Millennial Employees

Nine best practices and ideas for HR professionals looking to engage, retain, and develop high-potential Millennial employees.

By Brad Karsh, President, JB Training Solutions

Are your Millennials prepared to be your company’s future leaders?

Every day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers reach the age of 65. This is going to keep happening every single day for the next 18 years. This startling statistic has chills running down the spines of HR professionals as they think about the organizational challenge of managing this drastic demographical shift in the workforce. Engaging and retaining the newest crop of workplace talent is a daunting challenge, but it has never been more important.

March 30, 2012
6 Management Practices for Affecting Workplace Climate

Many employees put teamwork and recognition at the top of the list of keys to improving workplace climate, but each business climate depends on the goals of the business. Focus on analyzing the kind of climate you need, whether it’s about innovation, customers, or collaboration.

By Maggie Walsh, Ph.D., Vice President and Practice Lead, Leadership for Forum