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Westchester mortgage- scam suspect arrested after California standoff The Journal News | LoHud.com Patten is accused of taking money from homeowners to modify their home loans, then failing to perform the work . The county police department's Major Case Squad began its investigation into Patten in September, after being contacted by two Westchester … and more

(From The Huffington Post) — Even when the economy is tough — and maybe especially then — it’s never a bad idea to show your employees appreciation. You may have a few knuckleheads you wouldn’t be sorry to see go, were they to walk out, but the last thing you need is your best employees to leave you high and dry. And they will, if you take them for granted. After all, especially in a world in which retiring with a gold watch is increasingly a fantasy, why should talented employees stick around if they aren’t being treated like a best employee should be? It can obviously cost thousands of dollars to train a new employee, depending on the position, especially taking into account all the money a company can lose when its talent isn’t around to land new accounts, maintain quality control and provide superior customer service. (There are a lot of employee turnover calculators online to prove this point, like this one. So if you want to keep your employees happy, in both good and bad times, here are five things you need to know. Read more .

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Retaining Employees: 5 Things You Need to Know

(From PRWEB) — BI WORLDWIDE, a global business improvement company, recently released an article called Employees as Marketers discussing employee engagement’s impact on building a solid brand. The article was written by Lorraine Frias, interactive promotions strategist at BI WORLDWIDE. “Large companies spend millions of dollars annually building and maintaining their brand,” Frias said. But sometimes they forget to acknowledge the connection between the employee experience and the customer experience. According to Frias, “organizations need to view employees as marketers of their product, service or brand, regardless of their position in the company.” Employee engagement programs can greatly improve the way employees interact with customers on the front-lines. Frias said “companies need to use both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators to drive behavior change and motivate employees.” Extrinsic motivation comes from influences outside of oneself such as an incentive program that motivates employees to sell certain products or rewards an individual for high performance behavior. This type of motivation also comes from the fear of a poor performance review or the threat of being laid off. Read more .

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Employees as Marketers: Using Engagement to Build Brands

(From Business Wire) — “In 2012, companies looking to successfully add top talent to their company need to be aware of the shifting dynamics in the recruiting arena and become even more strategic in their approach,” said Cindy Lu, CEO of The Novo Group, a national managed recruitment outsourcing firm. Novo has developed some key recruiting tips and strategies for successful recruiting in 2012: Recruiting Passive Candidates: Understanding the differences between active and passive candidate recruiting will be a big competitive advantage in 2012. The typical process for searching out top-notch passive candidates takes more time and requires dedicated recruiters with industry-relevant experience and connections. According to a recent Linked In survey, 78% of employed professionals stated that they are interested in a new position, yet ONLY 18% of them had their resume posted anywhere. So, a full 60% needs to be found! A successful recruiter has the knowhow and contacts at targeted companies to recruit those top-notch “passive” candidates. Read more .

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Tips for Identifying and Recruiting Top Talent In 2012

(From Forbes.com) — Talent management gets a great deal of attention in social business particularly in the human resources department. Fundamentally, it is a question of if talent acquisition and personnel development are changing dramatically in the light of huge jumps in connectivity through social networks as ways to find jobs and learn from others. If there are changes to how businesses work with talent, what might they be? At Enterprise2.0 conference Santa Clara, I caught up with Tim Young, the former CEO of Socialcast, and now VP of Social Enterprise at VMware to ask this question (following my prior post on Mr. Young’s thoughts). *Note: This is a continuation of my series, How Social Business Leaders Lead, focusing on how leaders of existing social businesses are evolving their own skills, along with their views of future models of work, the evolving nature of management, and the evolving structure of the organization. Rawn Shah: What do organizations do

(From Forbes.com) — This week, I am honored to attend and speak the World Economic Forum at Davos as part of the first Global Shaper delegation, a group of 70 millennial leaders from around the world to help leaders ‘think younger’ about today’s global challenges and the future of work. As I prepare for my panel on Leadership Across Generations, I wonder, how aligned is the vision of work for today’s world leaders with the vision for me and my Generation Y peers? The recession has also influenced the way young people view work. Millennials who couldn’t get a college education or suffered after the recession have been forced to start in new ways, building online businesses or becoming freelancers. They know that pension and 401K plans won’t operate the same way anymore. They know that getting a job is about being innovative and working across fields. What I’m noticing is that most corporate structures are out of sync with the lifestyle desires of Generation Y. Companies need to rethink the way their employees work, making major changes that will accommodate the unique work desires of Gen Y. What’s in it for companies? They will increase employee performance by reducing turnover and have happier, more productive Gen Y employees. A BPW Foundation’s Gen Y study published in April 2011 also noted that by 2025, Generation Y will make up roughly 75% of the world’s workforce. With this many millenials making up the majority of the workforce by 2025 — only 13 years away — employers can’t afford not to take notice. Read more .

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Gen-Y Workforce And Workplace Are Out Of Sync

(From Human Resource Executive Online) — Australian research has shed new light on the importance of employee orientation to a company’s bottom line. Employee orientation has more of an impact on a corporation’s financial performance than a focus on any other individual stakeholder — including shareholders, customers, suppliers or the community, according to Most Valuable Stakeholders: The Impact of Employee Orientation on Corporate Financial Performance, by Nigel de Bussy, a marketing and business professor at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. The key managerial point to take from his work is “engage your employees [from the start of their employment], pay attention to your employees, and you’ll make more money,” he said in a July 14 speech at the BledCom symposium, a global gathering of academicians and practitioners exploring communications and public relations management issues. In his research — which encompassed two separate studies of 491 Australia-based chief financial officers conducted in 2004 and 2010 — de Bussy measured how strongly orientation toward the different stakeholder groups influenced corporate financial performance, resulting in an employment-orientation coefficient measurement of 0.84, compared to 0.36 for customers, 0.32 for communities and 0.08 for shareholders. Read more .

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Engaging Employees Pays Off

(From swissinfo.ch) — The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) flagship meeting in Davos will this year attempt to close widening gaps between world leaders and different sections of society. The 2012 meeting will be held against the backdrop of the European sovereign debt crisis, continued social unrest in various places in the world and the danger of emerging economies expanding so fast that they overheat. WEF founder and chairman Klaus Schwab told the media on Wednesday that established systems of governance and business are in urgent need of a radical overhaul.

(From Bloomberg BNA) — The U.S. economy, which is showing subtle signs of improvement, in 2012 once again will have a major impact on HR’s ability to address hiring, employee engagement, compensation, and other key workplace issues, business and legal experts told Bloomberg BNA. “The big challenge is still this question of uncertainty in trying to figure out where the economy is going,” said Peter Cappelli, a management professor and director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia. “The big difference now is that there’s some evidence—weak evidence—that businesses are coming back,” he said. “It certainly seems to be the case that some hiring will come back.” At first glance, it might seem that the HR profession is facing challenges identical to those it confronted last year, but there are key differences, employment analysts said. “In 2011, we were a lot more focused on restructuring, downsizing, rebalancing the workforce, consolidation of HR into smaller, more centralized groups, budget-cutting, and trying to prepare for the economic recovery,” said Josh Bersin, chief executive officer and president of Bersin & Associates, a research and advisory consulting firm in Oakland, Calif. “This year, HR organizations we talked to are increasing their budgets. This is more a year of building, and less of retrenchment.” In addition to the economy, Cappelli predicted that employee engagement could be a major focus for HR in 2012 because, during the past three years, many employers asked workers “to do more, double-up on jobs, and work more hours.” Read more .

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HR Will Have More Opportunities to Demonstrate Value in 2012

(From Marketwatch) — The talent race will be greatest in Japan’s booming IT sector this quarter, with job opportunities increasing by multiples of ten for mobile development skills, says recruiting experts Hays. In their latest Hays Quarterly Report, for the January to March quarter, the recruiter found that as new venture companies take advantage of options available following the emergence of Smartphones, they have taken their expansion plans to a new level, particularly in the area of mobile games development. “We are seeing employers increase their headcount by multiples of tens in most cases and reaching out across all avenues to fill their open positions,” says Christine Wright, Managing Director of Hays in Japan. “In other areas, we are seeing a number of telecommunications and network companies increasing their headcount, particularly in the space of mobile broadband as an increasing number of consumers move to browsing the internet and communicating over their mobile devices. There is no doubt that there will be plenty of job opportunities in this space for good talent. Read more .

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Mobile Development Leads Talent Trend This Quarter

(From HRMagazine.co.uk) — Why wait until a person’s first day to make them aware of the organisation’s values, vision and goals — or to explain in more detail their new role, who they will be working with and where? Regular communication with someone during their notice period will sustain their enthusiasm and expand their knowledge of their new role before their first day. It can also reduce the risk of their being swayed by a counter-offer from their current bosses. So, as soon as someone says “yes” to a job, their new employer should think of them as one of their own. And having made the decision to move, the successful candidate wants to feel part of his or her new team straightaway, whatever their notice period. Read more .

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Onboarding: The Fast Track to Staff Productivity?

(From hrzone.co.uk) — Following the economic events and strategies of 2011, the theme of 2012 will be doing more with less. When it comes to learning management, cost cutting and time cutting have always been initiatives that seemed difficult to incorporate while still delivering learning effectively. But technology has progressed, and learning management solutions can be integrated and centralized, delivered on-the-go with formal or informal learning, created for consumption by a variety of audiences, and updated and innovated with behind-the-scenes smoothness. It is these technologies and motivations that are influencing the five trends in today’s learning management space: the continued convergence around integrated solutions, the emergence of using social media for effective informal learning, the adoption of mobile learning, the importance of progressive SaaS model, and the evolution of a global understanding in learning content. Though not all novel, the more familiar trends tend to focus on increasing the reach and potential of existing solutions so companies can leverage their existing systems instead of replacing them. Recognizing the relevance of these trends is the first step in maximizing them for your organization in the next year and the years to come. Read more .

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UK: Top Learning Trends for 2012

(From Wall Street and Technology) — It is a good time to be an IT professional in the capital markets space. Financial firms indicate that finding and hiring technology talent is the number one priority in 2012, according to a study from eFinancialCareers.com, a network of job sites for professionals in the financial space. “You can’t escape technology because it is the backbone of the firm, it is client service, it is how to complete a transaction,” says Constance Melrose, managing director, eFinancialCareers.com, Americas. “Financial services companies understand that in order to increase business intelligence, or to make smarter trades, or to understand risk, technology sits behind all of those decisions and processes.” The second highest priority after technologists, in terms of activity on eFinancialCareers in December 2011, was quantitative analysts, according to Melrose. “For some, especially in the capital markets space, quantitative analysis is just technology by another name,” she adds. Read more .

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Capital Markets IT Professionals in Strong Demand

(From HRMagazine.co.uk) — Talent development and talent management are not entirely synonyms: the former is an intervention applied to some or all of the people in an organisation, while the latter is a matter of strategy that should ideally be seen as ‘husbandry’ activity – maximising the human resources of the organisation by the judicious and informed application of its non-human resources. (Or ‘time, money and energy’, in plainer speech.) Talent management is a far more complex discipline than simply skimming the cream from the milk – good use has to be made of the skimmed milk and care taken to prevent the cream from curdling. Simple pampering of the ‘winners’ is not the answer, although an element of it will be required – those with the ambition to rise tend also to expect more than a modicum of special treatment to keep them onside. A 2010 Harvard Business Review article showed that 25% of Hi-Pos expect to be working elsewhere within a year (no doubt a higher percentage were less candid with their current employer). One of the conundrums for the talent manager is to strike the right balance between talent identification and fairness. Grounds for the identification of potential are not as straightforward as they might seem: current performance is no guarantee of future potential, especially when what will be performed may be substantially different from the individual’s current repertoire. Selection needs to factor in more nuanced criteria: individual learning agility and the motivation to learn and improve are just two, and they are in turn influenced by reward and recognition practices. That does not mean that informed selection is impossible, but it does take more effort and insight than is often allowed. Read more .

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All Cream and No Bottle—The Talent Management Challenge

(From cbsnews.com) — If you want to be a leader 20 years from now, you will need to speak more than one language, be willing to work outside your native country, learn to spot talent, and be attuned to climate change. And that’s just for starters! You will also need to master multiple roles — executive, mentor and fence-mender. Read more .

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What It Will Take to Lead 20 Years From Now

(From PRNewswire) — Many executives foresee leadership shortages in the year ahead and are looking at programs to accelerate leadership development within their companies, according to new research from Deloitte. The Deloitte report, “Talent Edge 2020: Redrafting Talent Strategies for the Uneven Recovery,” identifies a number of significant trends driving corporate talent strategies and tracks how companies are responding to shifting economic realities. “The standout findings from our research are two-fold: the near universal agreement about the existing and potentially growing shortage of executive leadership and the significant regional differences in talent needs around the globe,” said Alice Kwan, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and talent services leader. “Talent leaders in today’s business environment are taking responsibility for their futures by focusing investments and capabilities on rebuilding and developing new talent programs for leaders and critical employees within their organizations.” Read more .

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Executives Greet New Year With Concerns About Leadership Shortages Amid Shifting Economic Realities

This image appeared in the September 1991 issue of Training & Development. The article, which appeared in the Training 101 column, examined creative thinking or “looking where the light isn’t.” Innovation and creativity is a major competency in today’s business environment. How do you create an innovative culture? How do you help your colleagues think creatively? For more information, visit www.astd.org/td .

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ASTD Archive Image of the Day: Kaleidoscopic Thinking, Circa September 1991

(From The Telegraph) — The Association of Consulting Actuaries (ACA) said that in the last year alone a fifth of all private sector final-salary pension schemes have closed to existing members because companies can no longer afford to run them. It also found that one in three large companies is looking to cut its overall spending on pensions in the future. More than 3 million people are active members of occupational pension schemes, which both they and their employers contribute to. The schemes include final salary schemes as well as less generous defined contribution schemes. This is a fall from 8 million members in the late 1960s. Read more .

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Britain sees ‘seismic collapse’ in workplace pensions

(From Human Resource Executive Online) — Despite its familiarity in the workplace, the phrase “pay for performance” likely means different things to different people. This lack of clarity and understanding can keep employers from meeting short- and long-term goals and employees from deriving satisfaction in their roles and careers. For top management, performance has most often been defined by metrics commonly reported to public company shareholders or otherwise easily calculated, such as earnings per share or total shareholder return. This has afforded top management and shareholders a clear view of the linkage between pay and the final measure of performance. But unfortunately, the means to achieving that end measure of performance were not typically included as performance measures. As for other employees, the metrics used for linking pay to performance were not always considered from a business-performance perspective. Read more .

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Effective Pay-for-Performance Strategies

Videotaping can be the perfect form of feedback. This photo, which appeared in the October 1967 issue of Training and Development Journal, was part of an article titled, “Self Confrontation Via TV.” TV feedback proved to be a valuable aid for authentic feedback. What tools do you use to give authentic feedback? Is video a part of your training regimen? For more information about T+D, visit www.astd.org/td .

This image appeared in the January 1985 issue of Training and Development Journal . This article, “How to Be an Idea Generator,” is another timely topic for today’s workplace. Innovation

(From itbusinessnet.com) — In today’s management environment, new forms of and tools for corporate leadership development programs have emerged. One of the most popular development tools is executive coaching. The number of executive coaches has more than doubled in the past decade and corporate leadership development programs are utilizing their services more frequently. However, the fundamentals of executive coaching have actually been around for many years in the form of debriefing. In the U.S. Air Force, debriefing after every flight was an essential process in my training and development as an F-15 fighter pilot. My instructor pilot debriefed with me after every training flight. Later, when I became an instructor pilot and squadron training officer, I did the same with my young pilots. After leaving the Air Force, I used the basic tenets of the debriefing process I had learned, adapted the process to a sales force I led in a civilian company, and further refined that process over the next 16 years. I was recently reminded just how broadly applicable the debriefing framework is as an executive coaching tool when a professor approached me at the end of a lecture to a healthcare team, thanking me for explaining the process of debriefing to the team. She told me, “You’ve given me the means to have a difficult conversation with a student, allowing her see what, in herself, needs to change in order for her to be successful.” Read more .

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Executive Coaching and Debriefing for Corporate Leadership Development Programs

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(From PR Week) — Is employee engagement a useful goal for internal comms? The answer appears to be no. This is according to attendees of Cohn & Wolfe’s November “Dinner & Dialogue” reception at the W Union Square, where nearly 20 senior communicators from large corporations gathered to discuss engaging employees throughout periods of change. All of the guests were responsible for some form of internal communications, and all agreed that the metrics that gauge the function’s effectiveness, where they even exist, are entirely inconsistent. Employee engagement, while a convenient, all-encompassing buzzword, is based on so many factors – from leadership to compensation to personal career goals – that it’s rendered almost meaningless as a metric. Read more .

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Opinion: Measure employee engagement by staff actions

This image appeared in the March 1994 issue of Training & Development . The image appeared with an article on self-directed learning–a timely topic that is gaining traction in the industry. For a more current article on self-directed learning, see Pat McLagan’s article in the current issue of T+D at www.astd.org/td . How has social media tools changed the design and delivery of self-directed learning programs? What is the learning professional’s role in self-directed learning?

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ASTD Archive Image of the Day: Self-Directed Learning, circa 1994

(From suddeninsights.com) — October’s Big Question on the Learning Circuits Blog has to do with gamification and its possible role in workplace learning. Does it have a role? In this post, I’ll weigh in on that question but only as it applies to formal e-learning. The popular definition of gamification commonly refers only to the addition of game elements such as achievement badges or trophies, leaderboards, levels, game-like scoring and interactions, or social elements . Sites like Gamify and Badgeville perpetuate this kind of definition. The problem is that this definition doesn’t go far enough. The main challenge is that, by themselves, extrinsic gamification elements like levels and achievement badges can actually weaken the learner’s intrinsic motivation to learn the content. Sam Marshall has a good article that explains how this can happen in the context of intranets. There are other problems too. Thinking of gamification in this limited way is what gives the term gamification a bad name. I don’t think limited gamification like this has a role in workplace e-learning. I prefer the broader Wikipedia definition, in which gamification is defined as the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. In my view, gamification should primarily refer to the use of the much larger body of game design strategies and techniques, and how they may be used together effectively in e-learning (and including those surface-level game elements but only where appropriate) . If this is how we define gamification, then I not only think there’s a role for gamification in the workplace, I think the revolution is already well underway! Read more .

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Blog: Does Gamification Have a Role in Workplace Learning?

This image appeared in the Working Life column of the March 1994 Training & Development Journal. The photo portrayed the struggle that professional athletes endure when they have to make the decision to be there for the birth of their child or play in a football game. The player, a Houston Oiler tackle, was fined for missing the game. Work-life balance is a major part of employment today. The younger generations entering the workforce demand it. What kinds of benefits does your company offer? Is telecommuting part of your organization? For more information about T+D , visit www.astd.org/td .

Prospective buyer Halifax Media Holdings inadvertently revealed the news on its website, a slip that was picked up by media critic Jim Romanesko

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NY Times in talks to sell regional titles

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae ARE broken! Watching the news about six top executives (with several millions of dollars in salary) being indicted for the mortgage mess….SEC charges ex- Fannie , Freddie CEOs with fraudAnd …

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Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae ARE broken! SEC sues ex CEOs for …

(From Forbes) — I don’t think there’s any question that engaged employees are more productive. Research by the Gallup organization shows that they are also “…more profitable, more customer-focused, safer, and more likely to withstand temptations to leave. The best-performing companies know that employee engagement improvement strategy linked to achievement of corporate goals will help them win in the marketplace.” Over the years Gallup has supported organizational efforts to improve the level of employee engagement and created some metrics that help business leaders determine their ratio of engaged vs. not engaged employees. According to Gallup, their “…engagement ratio is a macro-level indicator of an organization’s health…” You might be interested to know that Gallup identifies that world-class organizations have a ratio of 9.57 engaged employees to every employee that is not engaged. The average organization is 1.83:1—that’s a big difference. Read more .

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Improving A Leading Indicator of Financial Performance: Employee Engagement

(From Business Insider) — You and the team worked extremely hard to turn an idea into reality. You may even think it is time to breathe a sigh of relief. The company is up and running now. However, your employees may have different ideas. Do you know what your employees are thinking, and are you worried about keeping them? Retention is paramount in any organization, and there are ways to ensure you retain your most outstanding employees. 1. Know Your Employees and Their Skills Most well-trained employees will have other skills. When a unique situation arises, instead of hiring outside help for a short-term project, turn to the in-house talent. Let your people shine and offer them a chance to show off a little. 2. Employees Work for You, Not the Company You may feel at times that your employees should have the same level of commitment as you. Why should they? They are not you, and they do not run the company. When employees quit they are quitting on their boss. They work for you, but they may not have the same level of commitment to the company as you. You cannot force anyone to have a passion for something. You and the company must earn that. Often times in large organizations you are the company as far as the employees are concerned. Read more .

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10 Tips on Retaining Employees

(From Talent Management) — The recession has impacted how individuals view work and the workplace. Though it may appear little has changed as employees who’ve managed to keep their jobs hunker down, try not to get noticed and wait things out, the workplace continues to evolve as new trends emerge. Leaders must proactively address these trends to ensure their organizations evolve toward growth. Here are a few workplace trends talent leaders can expect to see in the upcoming year: Movement from management principles to leadership values. Employees are savvy, and although they have been relatively quiet waiting for things to return to normal from the recession, they’ve been carefully watching. Cookie-cutter, old-school or command-and-control approaches to managing people are becoming less effective; employees can determine when an organization’s walk doesn’t fit the talk, and they are getting impatient working for managers who are less self-aware than they are. Instead, individuals today must lead with values such as collaboration and shared purpose. By engaging the workforce in a compelling shared vision and engaging their hearts as well as their minds, leaders can reap the best results. Read more .

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Five Workplace Trends for 2012

(From The Miami Herald) — Despite the fact that women now make up half the workforce, they still are no further toward achieving top ranks at the nation’s big businesses than they were last year, or even six years ago, according to the 2011 Catalyst Census report issued Wednesday. At the Fortune 500 companies, more than a quarter of businesses still had no women in their executive offices in 2010, and 56 had no women directors, the Catalyst report found. It also revealed the sobering fact that only 3 percent of corporate board seats are held by women of color. Read more .

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Women Slow to Make Gains in Top Ranks

(From onrec.com) — Research released by 2e2, the ICT services company, has shown the need for UK businesses to change traditional working practices while at the same time maintaining informal employee interaction. In a survey of nearly 2,000 office workers, 63% said they feel restrained by traditional 9 to 5 working and felt that they would be more productive if there was more flexibility around the hours they worked. Furthermore, 55% admitted to being more productive from working from home as opposed to the office, while 73% said that technology was no longer a barrier to home working. Read more .

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Research Shows Productivity of UK Workers Stifled by 9 to 5 Working

(From Auto Remarketing) — Keffer Hyundai in North Carolina is one of the top-selling certified pre-owned dealerships in the U.S. for the Korean automaker.

(From The Sunday Times) — Compliance training is tedious. Nobody wants to spend more time than they have to in a windowless room with a folder full of notes and a check list. Organizations are increasingly turning to gamification, the use of the fun, engaging nature of games to encourage people to complete dull tasks, said Aaron Dignan, author of Game Frame, a guide to using games as a strategy for success, and chief executive of Undercurrent, a digital consultancy. Read more .

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Game Over for Dull Training

(From Rapid City Journal) — For the first time in history, four generations of people are together in the workplace, and human resources professionals and other managers are concerned about how they are all getting along. Understanding the differences in the generations and learning how to motivate, coach and retain employees of all ages can increase productivity and teamwork Read more .

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Generation Gap: Workplaces Strive for Harmony Among Age Groups

This image appeared in a Telex ad in the November 1969 issue of Training and Development Journal . The product–a reel-to-cassette duplicator–was capable of duplicating more than

(From PRWEB) — Today, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the CEO and founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy (CWLP) announced a name change for both the CWLP and its flagship project, the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force. The announcement was made at the organization’s annual Summit which brings together senior executives from 70 global companies for a program centered on research and action. Starting in January 2012 the CWLP will be called the Center for Talent Innovation and its flagship project the Task Force for Talent Innovation. “These name changes are driven by enormous growth in the span, scope and stature of the organization,” says Hewlett. “Eight years ago the CWLP was a small, U.S.-based non-profit centered on women’s retention and acceleration issues, today it’s a global think tank with representatives in San Francisco, London and Mumbai and projects in Brazil, China, India and Japan. Our budget has increased ten-fold and our talent agenda has expanded significantly. The mission of the newly named Center for Talent Innovation is two-fold: to drive ground-breaking research that leverages talent across the divides of gender, generation, geography and culture; and to create a community of senior executives united by an understanding that full utilization of the global talent pool is at the heart of competitive success. Read more .

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The Center for Work-Life Policy to become the Center for Talent Innovation in 2012

(From Harvard Business Review) — Executives spend a lot of time worrying about their companies’ products and prices, but they don’t spend nearly enough time worrying about corporate character. Why would they? A lot of them don’t believe companies even have a character, and others don’t see what difference it could possibly make. But your company’s character can earn you — or cost you — real money. Our research on thousands of managers, frontline employees, and customers of a U.S. retailer shows that there are connections between customer spending and what’s known as the organizational identification of the people who work at the company. The greater the OI, as researchers like to call it, the greater the spending. And organizational identification is, to a great extent, about company character. Corporate character is like corporate reputation, but it’s a deeper and more nuanced concept. It has little to do with advertising or marketing. Like your own character, it’s judged by actions more than words. If your company sticks its neck out for a principle, it will be seen as having integrity, just as you’re seen as having integrity when you stand up for the employee who’s being scapegoated by some other manager. A long history of admirable moves builds an impression of a solid character. A history of missteps does the opposite. You can probably name companies with solid character as easily as we can: Zappos , Ritz-Carlton , and USAA , to name just a few. Read more .

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Blog: Employees Who Identify with the Company Boost Financial Performance

(From The Chronicle of Higher Education) — Many employers believe colleges aren’t adequately preparing students for jobs, according to findings of a study presented by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. The group surveyed more than 1,000 employers in various industries last month about whether job applicants possess the skills to thrive in the workplace. More than half of employers said finding qualified applicants is difficult, and just under half thought students should receive specific workplace training rather than a more broad-based education. Read more .

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Employers Say College Graduates Lack Job Skills

(From marketwire) — Companies that invest in their employees during these uncertain economic times will face lower future talent turnover costs, studies from Taleo Research have found. According to findings by Taleo Corporation, the global leader of SaaS-based Talent Management solutions, companies can save in the long run by investing now in compensation restructuring and training to improve employee engagement. Taleo Research estimates a company that loses 500 employees during the economic recovery may face turnover costs of $75 million, while a company that spends $2 million raising employee engagement could avoid these costs and see an ROI of 3,650 percent. “Though the overall unemployment rate remains at 9 percent, there is a strikingly healthy market for knowledge workers, many of whom are just waiting to make a move,” said David Wilkins, vice president of research at Taleo. “We see the mix of low unemployment among knowledge workers, low quit rates and historically low levels of training and development forming a perfect storm for massive turnover. The investment companies make today in retaining their best talent will directly impact the cost of dysfunctional turnover once the economy recovers.” Read more .

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Investments in Employee Engagement Today Will Yield Savings Tomorrow

(From ere.net) — By definition, being strategic requires that you look forward — identifying trends, opportunities, and threats. With the December lull looming, now is a great time to plan for the future. I’ve listed the “top 10 talent management trends” I foresee that require your attention. But you should certainly do your own thinking. I recommend that you start by examining this past year… 2011 Was The Year of Social Media 2011 was a tough year for many in talent management, but despite compressed budgets, organizations continued to hire and develop talent. One factor that seemed to invade nearly every high-level functional discussion was social media. It’s clear that Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter will play a dominate role in recruiting and development best practices in years to come. Not surprisingly, 2011 saw no fewer than 40 new vendors emerge to help organizations use social media to attract referrals. We also started to see early stage tools to use social media in talent assessment (pre/post hire) as well as applicant/candidate/employee experience management. New tools brought much enhanced visibility into talent issues, but most talent-management metrics continue not to resonate with key leaders outside of the HR function. 2012 Will Be “The Year of the Mobile Platform” By the end of next year, even the skeptics will have to admit that the mobile platform will have become the dominant communications and interaction platform by early-adopting best-practice organizations. The capabilities afforded users of smartphones and tablet devices grows immensely day by day. Long before unified inboxes existed for the desktop, smart device users could see all incoming e-mail, social messaging, text messaging, and voice and video messaging in a single place. Read more .

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10 Predictions for 2012: The Top Trends in Talent Management and Recruiting

(From Harvard Business Review) — Most businesses have a normal distribution of talent — a limited number, say top 10 percent, of high potential, rock star performers, a bottom decile of underperformers, and a thick middle of 80 percent of folks who get the day-to-day stuff done. In well-managed businesses, there are clear feedback mechanisms to ensure that the bottom of the talent pack gets managed out efficiently and objectively. While at GE, Jack Welch popularized the notion that it was good to fire the “bottom 10″ of his managers every year. On the other end of the spectrum, the better companies manage the top-end of their talent pool, providing mentors to groom this group of next-generation of leaders and compensating them differentially in recognition of their superior performance. The challenge lies in productively managing talent’s fat middle. What is the right people strategy for the average employe e — the stalwart who is performing well enough, but is not necessarily a standout? Here are a few of the challenges with the middle base of talent: • Almost by definition, they often get lost in the mix , lacking appropriate guidance and management attention. This creates an issue of not understanding who holds real potential to move up the talent curve with the right nurturing, versus those who have limited upward mobility, versus those who should not be at the company. Read more .

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Blog: The Challenge of the Average Employee

(From Learning in the Social Workplace, Jane Hart) — Back in May 2010 I posted a diagram that I had created that showed what I considered to be the 5 stages of Workplace Learning. My ITA colleague, Jay Cross, re-worked it so that I looked like this… Read more .

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5 Stages of Workplace Learning (Revisited)

(From The Wall Street Journal) — Faced with a dearth of skilled labor, more companies are taking employee education into their own hands. Unemployment figures are high, but finding workers with the right skills for the job—especially for highly specialized roles such as power plant technicians or laboratory chemists—remains a big challenge, many firms say. In a survey from Lloyd’s, the British insurance concern, U.S. executives considered lack of skilled workers one of the greatest risks their companies faced in 2012, second only to loss of customers. So rather than wait for the perfect candidates to walk through the door, companies have decided to school their in-house staff or train new hires who may lack the exact skills they were looking for. Read more .

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Fine-Tuning the Perfect Employee

(From UNC Kenan-Flagler) — A luxury hotel chain emerges from the industry’s worst time in its history stronger than ever. A financial institution thrives while its peers receive government bailouts, suffer debilitating reputational blows, or cease to exist. A beauty retailer on the brink of extinction a decade ago is now highly profitable and opening an average of two new stores a week. In many ways, these global companies could not be more dissimilar. They are in different industries and life-cycle stages, yet they share a common trait: they defy the conventional logic that during a recession, morale and profits plummet. We’ve spent the past two years studying these organizations and dozens of others to understand what makes them different. What allows them to flourish in times when most organizations flounder? How did they use a crisis as an opportunity to transform their business models, to redirect their strategies and to build momentum during a downturn? We discovered that these organizations (and all truly great organizations) share a common thread: a well-honed collective ambition, a story that depicts their purpose, vision and plans on how to achieve their goals. Companies with strong collective ambitions have a deep understanding of why they exist and what they hope to accomplish. They have developed a path forward that involves working as a team to address their challenges. They align their brand promise with their core values and use them as guideposts to execute their strategy. Read more .

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Charting a Course During Uncertain Times

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Local homebuilders' group honors four Tuscaloosa News The Tuscaloosa association won for small association and was cited for its work after the April 27 tornado, including its education and public service efforts to help people avoid scam artists who came to the area after the tornado. … and more

(From Ledger-Enquirer.com) — A jobs training bill for unemployed residents is unlikely to survive Gov. Chris Christie’s veto pen so long as New Jersey’s revenue collections continue to sag. Christie on Monday threatened to veto even a scaled-back version of Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver’s jobs bill that moved through the Assembly Labor Committee because it would cost $3 million that has not been budgeted. “The Legislature likes to spend money,” Christie said at a morning event in Camden. “We are simply not spending money in a supplemental way.” Christie said there’s not enough money for the program – and that his methods of cutting the cost of local and state government have helped create 50,000 private-sector jobs. Democrats have been critical of the Republican’s efforts to create more jobs. Read more .

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New Jersey: Assembly panel advances job-training bill again