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Archives for 2009

Money and Happiness: It’s Complicated…

Greener Pastures 3

According to this story from CIOZone, a recent study by staffing firm Robert Half asked 150 senior executives (from among the 1,000 largest U. S. companies) how they would be most likely to spend money on employee-related priorities.  New hiring was the top choice for 31%, followed by salary increases (21%), bonuses (15%), and training (9%).  Just 5% chose enhancing benefits.

But is it really all about money?  In a related blog post, commentator Ellen Pearlman says:

It’s time for managers and HR executives to identify the various needs their employees have and to craft reward systems that are more personal . . . One worker may need a flexible schedule to take care of an aging parent, another may need to leave early on Wednesdays to get to a class, and still another may want to work four days a week and have a day off to pursue other interests. Some may welcome a special assignment overseas or the opportunity to work with a skunkworks group researching a new product.

As Pearlman points out, this personal approach is much harder than just adding a little to everybody’s paycheck.  It may carry a lot of added value, though, especially among employees who have lost their passion for the company.  And that group is apparently growing.

CIOZone notes that the annual U.S. Strategic Rewards survey from consulting firm Watson Wyatt  and HR non-profit WorldatWork finds employee engagement levels falling 9% from last year’s survey—and “top performers” were even more likely to be disengaged (a 25% topple).   There was also a 14% increase in the number of employees who have already started a new job search.

With so many people unemployed . . . it seems like having a job is a reward in itself.  But in many cases, pay cuts or freezes, shrinking opportunities, and/or increasing workloads are sapping employee satisfaction.  When hiring picks up, these folks may bolt for greener pastures–so now may be the time to find ways of rewarding them without spending more money.

Relevance for the corporate Careers site?  Employees disengaged from their companies are perfect passive candidates.  If they aren’t actively looking, they may start any minute, and if they stumble across an interesting opportunity (or receive just the right email) they may be persuadable.  So it’s a good time for the Careers site to highlight content that promotes engagement—rewards, opportunities, culture, and support for the pursuit of happiness.  It’s also a good time to enhance communications and work on building connections.  When the hiring money flows again, having a good candidate pool will be a significant competitive advantage.


(Thanks to eye of Einstein for our greener pastures.)

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 2: Provide a Roadmap

Having started with the premise that an effective investor web site should give a clear and concise description of what your company does, the next logical thing to do is to provide an easy-to-use roadmap of where the relevant information lies. Most companies choose a format that places a column of links or tabs in either the upper left or right hand side of the main investor relations page. Set forth below is an example of this type of layout as used by Standard Life.

Standard Life investor relations

In looking at a number of websites, I could discern no standard list of what linked sections appear or in what order they are listed. Given that the objective is to enable investors to get the information they need quickly with a minimum of hunting, I would suggest that effective websites think in terms of priorities.

First, certain things are essential to investor relations and an understanding of the company and therefore access to your share price, financial statements annual and interim reports and press releases should be considered a first priority and go to the top of the list.

Of next importance are more discretionary disclosures such as investor presentations, Webcasts, upcoming investor events and the company’s financial calendar. Links that help answer questions for specific groups of investors, such as debt holders or information for individual shareholders administrative items are the next priority that should be included.

Finally, depending on the inclination of the company, the composition of its investor base, and a myriad of other factors, there are links to more specialized information that may prove helpful, such as Corporate Social Responsibility (often seen as a section on its own), corporate governance (also often seen as a separate section), links to the Annual General Meeting materials, and, in the United States, links to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Because the subject headings are not uniform and information is often buried two or three links deep, I am a proponent of the use of popup menus as you scroll over the list of links. This enables a visitor to quickly see where information has been placed. It also helps avoid the back and forth hunting for information and waiting for web pages to load that often happens when you click on a promising heading only to find that it doesn’t lead to the information you want. It turns out, that on the web, as in life, you can’t tell a link by its cover.

In this series:
Previous post: What does the company do?
Next post: Share price information

Another Front in the Global War for Talent


Suitcase_icon2

USA Today headline:  More of world’s talented workers opt to leave USA.

The loud public conversation in America about the complicated topic of “illegal immigration” has drowned out another significant concern that impacts business.  But “reverse immigration” may soon attract more interest.  According to Duke University’s Vivek Wadhwa, “What was a trickle has become a flood.”   He projects that “in the next five years, 100,000 immigrants will go back to India and 100,000 to China, countries that have had rapid economic growth,” adding that “for the first time in American history, we are experiencing the brain drain that other countries experienced.”

The article cites several reasons for the exodus:

  • These experienced and well-educated workers have excellent career opportunities in their own countries.
  • Family ties and cultural roots draw many people homeward.
  • Money goes further in their countries of origin, offering potential improvements in quality of life.
  • Immigration delays frustrate some, who are tired of having an uncertain status and may face waits of up to ten years for permanent residency.

How does all this impact recruiting and employer branding in the U.S.?  Perhaps not much in the immediate term.  Most of those leaving are actually leaving good jobs they already have—so at best they were passive candidates who will just not be available in the local pool.  But over time there will be a greater impact if certain talent areas are depleted faster than they are replenished.  This effect is most noteworthy in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (often referred to as STEM).

For companies that are really thinking strategically about staffing, the key may be in helping to create the future labor force, rather than just waiting to see what’s available when workers are needed.  A thought-provoking discussion recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education surfaces many of the problems affecting STEM education and touches on the effects of industry-education partnerships.

See what all this looks like from the other side—and get some interesting ideas—in How the Disciple became the Guru, a white paper from Global Engineering and Entrepreneurship @ Duke.  As the report explains, in India “several industries, including IT, have learned to overcome another major deficiency: India’s education system. They have adapted and perfected western practices in workforce training and development, and now take workers with poor education and weak technical skills and turn them into highly productive technical specialists and managers able to compete on the world stage.”

Final thought:  Smart companies doing business multi-nationally may find ways to take advantage of this trend.  Sometimes it’s a good idea to “think locally, and act globally.”

Digital Advertising and Behavioral Targeting Get the Thumbs Down from Consumers

spywareTracking online activities isn’t new, but only in recent years has it become the “must-try” marketing strategy.  With Google leading the way, more and more consumers are catching onto exactly what behavioral tracking and ad targeting online means, and they don’t like it.

In a new study of 1,000 U.S. adult Web users conducted by the University of California and the University of Pennsylvania, 66% said they do not want to be shown ads based on their interests as determined by their online activities.  However, that was before they fully understood how advertisers collected the data used to deliver targeted ads.  Once the survey respondents understood how the process of tracking online behavior is conducted and then used to determine which ads to display, respondents felt a bit differently about the practice.  The number of people who said they do not want to be shown ads based on their interests jumped to between 73% and 80% once they understood the process used to deliver those ads.

Privacy groups in the U.S. are fighting for more stringent laws related to online behavioral tracking, but the Internet advertising industry is fighting just as hard from the other side of the debate trying to keep the doors open to online behavioral tracking and ad serving. [Read more…] about Digital Advertising and Behavioral Targeting Get the Thumbs Down from Consumers

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? (Part 1)

At the suggestion of our Executive Editor, today’s entry marks the first in a series of interrelated pieces examining what makes for good corporate investor relations web sites. The intention is to try and lay out a template for companies to think about as they communicate with their investors via the Internet by highlighting good examples from across the web.

compass group investor relations page

It’s always best to start with the basics, and for investors that means giving them a clear understanding of what it is your company does. It is surprising how many companies omit this first step, perhaps working on the assumption that because a person has made it to the investor page, they know what the company does. However, this overlooks several factors. When an investor does a search on a company name, many search engines show a link directly to the investor relations page of the company, bypassing the company’s home page and all of the explanatory information that resides there. Second, people coming to the investor page may be familiar with the brand name of a company, but not fully understand the entire range of products or markets the company serves. Finally, truly savvy investors will peruse a statement to get an understanding of how the company thinks about itself.

What I look for is fairly straightforward: simple declarative sentences, devoid of consultant-speak, which accurately portray the company and its markets. It doesn’t have to be too lengthy or detailed as there is certain to be much information elsewhere on the site, but it should give a clear and concise picture of the company. This is often harder to do than it appears, as many companies have evolved into complex entities in disparate markets, but with careful thought diligence and editing, it can be done.

For example, I found the Compass Group did an effective job on their Investor Centre Homepage:

“Compass Group is the world’s leading foodservice company. Our 388,000 employees specialise in providing food, vending and related services on our clients’ premises and we generate annual revenues of over £11 billion.  The company operates across the following core sectors of Business and Industry (B&I), Defence, Offshore & Remote Site, Healthcare, Education, Sports & Leisure and Vending with an established brand portfolio.”

In three short sentences, Compass Group has told us the industry they are in, how large they are in terms of sales and employees, their market position and the industry sectors they serve. Further, you get the impression that they are efficient and direct in the way they think about things. That’s a pretty good introduction to their investors.

Next post in this series: Provide a Roadmap

How Not to Use Social Media to Market Your Brand or Anything Else – Ever

Microsoft brings us a great example of how NOT to use social media to market your business, your brand, your products, or anything else you might ever consider promoting online in any way shape or form with its Global Windows 7 Launch Party campaign.

I don’t think I could make this story much funnier than The Register did, so check out their take for a good laugh.  In the meantime, here’s my view on this marketing ‘miss’.

First, the Global Windows 7 Launch Party is a worldwide online event hosted on the HouseParty.com Web site, where anyone can sign up to host a party to celebrate the launch of Microsoft Vista 2 Windows 7 with their friends and loved ones.  So if you want to lose your friends and annoy your family members, go here and sign up to host your own Windows 7 launch party right now.

Why so negative, you ask?  It’s not so much the idea of the Global Windows 7 Launch Party, which seems lame enough in and of itself, as it is the promotional videos Microsoft has unleashed on the unsuspecting online world to teach people how to host a Global Windows 7 Launch Party.

I cannot do these videos justice in text summary.  You must either watch them or read the article on The Register for full humorous impact.  However, I will include them below for your analysis:

First, the “How to Host a Global Windows 7 Launch Party” video complete with preparation instructions, agenda suggestions, and more uncomfortable banter than an interview between Glen Beck and Richard Gere might be.

Next, the terrible party idea suggestion.  Copy music and send your friends home with it.  Notice the missing disclaimer that copying music you don’t own or have permission to copy is illegal.  Oops.

And now the final piece of torture.  Notice how at 30-seconds into the video, the over-zealous partier proclaims, “Cool!”  I believe the real-world exclamation at this point would be something more along the lines of, “Dude!  We can’t be friends anymore.”

So yes, this post was a bit more sarcastic than you might usually see here on Corporate Eye, but if you read any of my other blogs, then you know I’m very sarcastic in real life.  And I couldn’t resist this one.  This story was just too lame to ignore.  I’m waiting for the Windows 7 Launch Party skit on Saturday Night Live.  If only that show was as good as it used to be, but I digress.  What’s the SNL equivalent outside of the U.S.?  There’s parody gold here!