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NEWS
BeechTree Partners delivers top headlines in search, recruitment and human capital news—from new books and survey statistics, to academic insights and business developments.
Firms compete to hire top executives
Executive hiring rose to a 37-month high in June 2006, according to a quarterly report by a firm specializing recruiting senior executives. Among the findings:
- Seventy-percent of the member recruitment firms surveyed plan to hire within the next three months.
- Healthcare, financial services and high tech are experiencing the greatest hiring gains, while manufacturing and publishing still languish.
- Among the hottest hires are those with experience in sales, business development and finance.
- The West Coast is the hottest area for executive hires, while healthcare and financial executives experience great success in the Mid-Atlantic region.
- Executives and managers who change positions can expect a 10 to 15 percent increase in compensation.
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Psychologist links personality to workplace success
Psychologist Robert Hogan has written a new book, Personality and the Fate of Organizations,” which links personality characteristics to behavior and workplace success and failure. The personality tests Hogan has developed include the Hogan Personality Inventory, which predicts how individuals will perform in a job on a day-to-day basis, and the Hogan Development Survey, which assesses 11 patterns of behavior that can derail a manager’s career. More than one million adults have completed the Hogan Personality Inventory for pre-employment screening purposes. The book can be ordered through the publisher’s Web site, http://www.erlbaum.com.
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Good HR practices pay off big
A four-phase study conducted by Professor Christopher Collins at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations suggests that good human resource tactics pay off big—especially for small businesses.
Small businesses profit by hiring workers who fit into their company culture, creating a "familylike atmosphere" where employees are trusted to manage themselves. Small businesses that follow such strategies reap 22 percent more revenue growth, 23 percent more profit growth and have 67 percent less employee turnover than companies that have no similar hiring criteria. Successful hiring strategies include:
- Hire employees to fit in with company culture, rather than hiring solely on a job candidate's individual skills.
- Trust employees to manage themselves, rather than enacting strict controls.
- Create a family-like environment, rather than trying to motivate employees solely through money.
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Lack of sleep impairs job satisfaction
A new University of Florida study shows lack of sleep not only makes people tired and cranky, but also causes them to dislike and even hate their jobs the next morning. The
The effects are most pronounced in women, who reported suffering more fatigue and hostility and being less attentive and happy than their male counterparts, said the study author, whose work will be published in the October 2006 issue of the Journal of Management. Employees reported higher rates of job satisfaction if they had slept soundly the night before and lower levels if they had experienced insomnia. .
Companies can address the problem by giving employees flexibility in making their schedules, providing on-site child care and offering wellness programs designed to teach employees how to reduce insomnia. Individuals can exercise more and limit consumption of caffeine and alcohol. By not doing anything, businesses risk more frequent turnover if their employees aren’t content in the workplace.
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Individual-driven culture fosters innovation
Teams may not promote innovation as much as individualism, according to UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Professor Barry Staw. Even when teams are asked to be creative they generate fewer and less creative ideas than groups focused on processing the viewpoints of individuals. The ideas were presented in “Individualism-Collectivism and Group Creativity,” which was published in the May 1006 issue of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
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Women executives climbing the corporate ladder
Only 15.7 percent of corporate officers at Fortune 500 companies today are women, according to a survey conducted by Catalyst. A much greater percentage of women account for upper management roles at Association Management Companies (AMCs). –Research by the International Association of Association Management Companies (IAAMC) (http://www.amcinstitute.org) shows that, among active member companies, 33 percent of CEOs and presidents are women – more than double that of Fortune 500 companies.
Women may be drawn to working with non-profit organizations because it gives them the opportunity to serve as a backbone of support for community services, according to Professor Patricia H. Deyton, Interim Faculty Director of the Center for Gender in Organizations and Assistant Professor of Management at the Simmons School of Management in Boston. This is a role where women have been historically active, and one that fits a commitment to improve society by working with groups such as the American Red Cross.
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For-profit corporations can make management blind to ethics
Profit-driven companies like the defunct Enron Corp. can cause executives to suffer from ethical insensitivities, according to Scott Reynolds, an assistant professor of business ethics at the University of Washington. In two separate studies, Reynolds asked 96 senior-level managers to rate five scenarios involving varying degrees of ethical violations designed to measure their moral awareness.
Reynolds found that people who focus on the ends recognize ethical issues when harm is done, but are less sensitive to ethical issues that only involve a violation of the means (someone lied, broke a promise, violated a policy, etc.). When it appears that no harm is done, ends-based decision-makers are less inclined to see the issue as an ethical one. Means-focused people, however, recognize both harmful situations and those situations where the means used were an ethical issue.
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Companies focus on aging workforce
Human resources professionals listed rising healthcare costs and increasing numbers of retiring baby boomers among the top 10 trends that will have the biggest impact on the American workplace in the next decade, according to the 2006 Society for Human Resource Management Workplace Study. Surveys show that even though 70 to 80 percent of executives at big companies are concerned about the coming brain drain, fewer than 20 percent have begun to do anything about it, according to "How to plug your company's brain drain," published in the July 19, 2006 issue of Fortune.
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Technology addiction may emerge as employer liability
Technology keeps workers connected. But non-stop connectedness may turn into a liability for employers if they stand accused of encouraging high-tech addiction among employees. Gayle Porter, an associate professor at the Rutgers University School of Business at Camden, says that technology addiction can be as damaging to workers as chemical or substance addictions. "If an employer manipulates an individual's propensity toward workaholism or technology addiction for the employer's benefit, the legal perspective shifts," says Ms. Porter. "When professional advancement (or even survival) seems to depend on 24/7 connectivity, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between choice and manipulation."
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Varied backgrounds and personalities strengthen groups
Does diversity have a positive effect on workgroup performance? Is it a help or a hindrance? Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty member Margaret A. Neale believes that diversity across dimensions, such as functional expertise, education or personality, can increase performance by enhancing creativity or group problem-solving. However, more visible diversity, such as race, gender, or age, can have negative effects on a group--at least initially.
Porter says that managers need to rotate the composition of groups periodically to keep things fresh. However, group newcomers should be different in some critical way, such as area of expertise, level of education or thinking style. “Teams with a very stable membership deteriorate in performance over time because members become too similar in viewpoint to one another or get stuck in ruts," says Neale.
She suggests that managers deliberately assign roles such as "devil's advocate," or "cheerleader," and occasionally switch these roles. "In time, a chronic devil's advocate will simply be ignored, to the detriment of the group," she says. "But if a manager publicly assigns someone else to play the role for a while, that new person initially will be much more influential, even if he or she doesn't do it as well."
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Employees work more, vacation less
American workers take fewer vacations than workers in nearly all industrial nations, according to an August 11, 2006 article in USA Today. The prognosis for employee vacation fun is even worse, as surveys point to the absence of vacation plans among workers. One survey from the New York City-based Conference Board confirms that 40 percent of employees have no vacation plans over the next six months, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that 25 percent of American workers get no vacation time. Firms such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers are responding to “shrinking vacation syndrome” by encouraging workers to take vacation time.
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Medical affairs goes global in pharmaceutical industry
Just 26 percent of pharmaceutical companies have a global medical affairs function in place,
according to research from Cutting Edge Information. "Medical Affairs: Evolving with the Compliance Environment" reveals that close to 70 percent of companies operate medical
affairs groups in multiple countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan and parts of Europe. Medical affairs groups that operate in their own countries or regions still maintain contact with groups in other countries.
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Workers eager to catch up on sleep
American workers are sleep deprived, according to an article in the August 21, 2006 issue of USA Today. Research from groups such as the National Sleep Foundation supports the conclusion that more than a quarter of adults get a decent night's sleep only a few days a month.
Among the consequences of lack of sleep are employee drowsiness, stress, errors, accidents, waning job satisfaction and health problems. Employer responses to employee sleepiness range from providing workers with caffeinated drinks, to napping and fatigue management programs. Even entrepreneurs have entered the scene with facilities designed for 45-minute naps.
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