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Archives for April 2010

The Rush To Financial Literacy

In my last post I had a reference to Financial Literacy Education. In Europe this is known as Financial Capability. Many financial services companies are rushing to provide some type of financial education to existing and potential clients. What is behind the rush?

A number of developments converged to produce the 1000 year financial storm–

financial-issues

The global economic crisis, more complex investment choices and the shift of pension investment choices from the employer to the employee, when combined with widespread financial illiteracy, is causing increased stress among a significant number of the public.

Research suggests that 15–20 percent of employees have financial problems severe enough to negatively affect productivity. A financially stressed employee spends an average of 20 hours per month of work time on his/her personal financial problems.

The Case For Financial Education at the Workplace
The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Too many people fail simple tests on the basics of compound interest and basic financial math. The result: poor financial decisions such as not investing in company-offered voluntary investment plans. This worsens individuals’ financial condition and puts their retirement at risk.

Many financial services companies, banks, credit unions and financial advisory firms are offering a variety of financial literacy education resources.

Some examples in the US

Bank Of America  FINANCIAL TOOLS

Wells Fargo HANDS ON BANKING

CitiBank  FINANCIAL CAPABILITY

Examples from Europe

Barclay’s BUILDING FINANCIAL CAPABILITY

Halifax MANAGING YOUR MONEY

Caixa Galicia SECURE YOUR FUTURE

Some are critical of these programs. They indicate the motivation is to restore the tarnished reputations of the financial services sector. Perhaps, but the educational services offered do assist in helping individuals to improve their knowledge of financial matters.

This subject is important enough to warrant additional posts in the future.

Facing Up to Facebook

I admit it.  I’m completely on board with Twitter, but can’t close the deal with Facebook.

That may be because I dismissed Facebook at an earlier stage in its evolution, and didn’t reconnect in time to “grow up” with this social media steamroller.  Now it’s now, however, and I’m trying to get with the program.

So I went in search of some really basic help in (a) understanding the world of Facebook and (b) using Facebook effectively as a business tool.  It seems like there is less lore available for Facebook than for Twitter—but that may just be my imagination.  Anyway, here are the best resources I found in my first round of looking:

  • A nice presentation from Sinuate Media, available on SlideShare.  Only the first half is about Facebook (the second half is about blogging), but a couple of slides in the presentation were really helpful to me.  One shows a Facebook home page, the other a Facebook profile page—and both have neat labels showing what’s on each part of the page.  (Seriously, I need this level of explanation.)  There’s also a useful summary of the difference between groups and fan pages, along with tips on making pages dynamic, using privacy settings, and advertising on Facebook
  • While at SlideShare, I discovered help from an unexpected source:  the United States Navy.    Facebook Basics for Navy Commands begins with some smart questions about why and whether to utilize Facebook, follows with step-by-step instructions, and includes a useful glossary.  (It’s really a document, not a presentation, therefore hard to read on the SlideShare page.  Click the Download tab to get a printable PDF version.)
  • It really helps me to see ideas in action, so I was glad to find 10 Examples of Facebook Fan Pages, a presentation from Social Media B2B.  See what Dell, Sodexo, Forrester, Gartner, and other companies are doing with the Facebook platform.
  • Although this presentation goes way beyond the basics, Fancy Facebook Fan Pages – A Step By Step Guide is worth a look, if only to get an idea of how much can be done with Facebook.  From Vanity URLs to Video Apps, this detailed guide by Ineternet strategist Olaf Nitz shows how to take Facebook to the max.  (There are 153 slides, mostly graphics with little text, and the presentation is not available for download.  So  kick it up to full screen and watch a few slides at a time.)

    • As you may have guessed, I never got past SlideShare–but these resources have actually put me on a better footing with Facebook.  I’ll let you know when I’ve tried some hands-on experimentation.

Color Makes a Difference to Cadillac Customers

According to Cadillac, 50% of new car buyers are willing to upgrade and pay more for Cadillac vehicles that have special color options. There is no doubt that color plays an important part of emotional branding and marketing as well as brand differentiation, but this statistic demonstrates that luxury brands might want to take a closer look at their color strategies because it could be a differentiator and a moneymaker.

JDSU has worked with Cadillac for years, developing special luxury colors for the luxury brand.  For example, have you ever seen a Cadillac that seems to change colors when you look at it from different angles?  That’s a JDSU effect that Cadillac markets as “subtle and sophisticated.”

To showcase its collaboration with Cadillac, JDSU has created “JDSU Revs Up Car Colors with Cadillac,” a look into how choosing the right colors can help differentiate a brand.  The site includes interesting videos with color experts and offers insight into the color trend analysis services JDSU provides to help Cadillac determine what colors will be popular on its vehicles several years out.

jdsu_cadillac

Interestingly, this level of color analysis isn’t used by Cadillac or the automotive industry alone.  JDSU color services are actually used by a wide variety of companies to help differentiate their products and brands.  For example, color analysis is an important part of brand strategy for companies in the consumer electronics, sporting goods and cosmetic industries, too.

Color marketing isn’t a new area of marketing and branding strategy, but it’s certainly one that’s gaining attention as companies look for any conceivable edge in consumers’ minds and wallets.  Dell’s Inspiron Mini 10 netbooks are offered at a base price in black, but if you choose your netbook in another color such as (Product) Red, Promise Pink, Ice Blue, Jade Green, or Passion Purple, you’ll have to pay more.  Other brands haven’t jumped onto the premium price for color bandwagon, such as Apple whose iPod nano, for example, is available in ten color choices — all with the same price tag.

The interesting point to analyze is which products consumers would actually be willing to pay more for enhanced color options.  50% will for Cadillacs.  I wonder what the statistic is for Dell.

What do you think?  What other industries or products would you be willing to pay extra for cool color choices?

Image: JDSU.tv

Spring Cleaning

Duster

It’s that time of the year again.  The time when sunlight streams through open windows—and illuminates the dust bunnies that gathered over a long winter.

So in honor of Spring, check those job postings and see if any of them are covered with cobwebs.

If there are closed jobs still lingering on the corporate site or on job boards, it’s time to make a policy decision.  Keep ‘em or toss ‘em?

That may seem like a surprising question.  So nip over to Recruitment Directory and read Cut the Fat. Expired Job Ads Should Not Be Displayed.  In this short post, author Thomas Shaw opens a conversation about the practice of leaving old ads up in order to improve SEO for the site.  Worth noting:  Even if a corporate site is kept scrupulously up to date . . . there may still be old jobs from the company posted elsewhere.

As Shaw points out, expired ads and ads for filled positions are an aggravation to job-seekers.  They waste time, raise false expectations, and leave a poor impression of the company’s HR practices.  But commenter Peter offers an alternative interpretation, pointing out that older ads can be used by job-seekers for research into the company’s rates of job growth and staff turnover, as well as to compare jobs among various employers.

The key is transparency.  If older ads are plainly marked as filled or expired, and they can be easily eliminated by a search filter, then there may be some value to making them available.  Or it might be interesting to create a research library for job seekers on the corporate website, showing past ads and position descriptions along with statistics on number of applications, number of interviews, time to hire, etc.  I haven’t seen this anywhere, but that doesn’t mean no one is doing it—and it could be an attractive candidate service.

In the spirit of Spring cleaning here at my own desk, I’ve dived into the Inbox and come up with an interesting white paper on Onboarding from Aberdeen Research.  In case you’ve been searching for a good definition of onboarding (also called “induction”) Aberdeen offers this one:  “the strategic process designed to attract and engage new employees, reaffirm their employment decision, acclimate them into the organization’s culture, and prepare them to contribute to a desired level as quickly as possible.”

The report provides some useful insights on obtaining employee engagement–well worth a download.  One highlight:  “Companies with a formal onboarding process are 2.5 times more likely than those with an informal process or no process to experience employee performance improvements within three months.”

Here’s another great thing about having a defined onboarding process.  If there is a process, it can be described on the Careers site.  And that will be attractive to a lot of candidates.


(Thanks to entheta for the flashy “feather” duster!)

Quantifying the Online Video Opportunity for Brands

The word among marketers for quite awhile has been that online video represents a significant opportunity for brands to deliver content in a format that consumers actively seek.  In other words, online video presents the opportunity to connect with consumers and engage them in branded experiences that they might not have access to elsewhere.

Still not sure if online video should be part of your brand’s marketing strategy?  Consider the numbers for a moment by reviewing the chart from Nielsen below.

nielsen_online_video_statistics

According to this chart, Google’s YouTube is by far the dominant player in the online video channel.  In the United States alone, over 100 million unique viewers watched nearly 6 billion online video streams in February 2010.  Clearly, people are watching online videos!  However, YouTube is a crowded and cluttered site.  How do you get noticed on YouTube against the viral sneezing kitten and Justin Bieber fan videos uploaded by teenage girls?

The key to getting noticed is not relying entirely on your online video destination to grow your video audience.  Online video should be an integrated part of your broader social media marketing strategy.  Yes, online video is an effective form of social media marketing when you create share-worthy videos and actually allow people to link to, embed, email and share your videos with their own audiences via blogs, Twitter, social networking, and so on.  Even your offline marketing should be integrated with your social media marketing and online video efforts.

As an example, Samsung created a unique marketing initiative that tied into the 2009 Super Bowl — one of the biggest annual sporting events in the United States — where consumers were invited to create their own videos explaining how they enjoy watching the Big Game.  The campaign leveraged traditional advertising as well as social media marketing with online videos, fan voting for the winning video, and more.

In other words, if you create an online video and publish it to YouTube, that doesn’t mean consumers will find it, watch it, or share it.  Your job as a marketer is to drive the audience to your online videos by creating integrated marketing efforts and creating amazing content that people actually want to see.

Here Comes the Future: Changes Loom on Employment Horizon

Shortened_Horizon_-_geograph.org.uk_-_176661

Labor shortage ahead! Well, maybe . . .

A recent report from the MetLife Foundation and San Francisco-based Civic Ventures (a boomer-issues think tank) projects that as employment ramps up again, spot labor shortages will begin to appear.  And in ten years or so, there won’t be enough new workers to replace the large number of retiring boomers.

Of course there may be off-setting factors.  More and more boomers are delaying retirement, either because they can’t afford to quit working or because they’d rather work than loll around.  In addition, productivity increases and automation continue to reduce the number of workers actually needed to make the wheels go round–at least in some parts of the world, and some areas of the economy.

On the other hand again, an aging population will require an enlarging pool of health care workers and other service providers.  The MetLife report expects “social sector” jobs (which includes education, non-profits, the arts, and other activities in addition to health care) to provide nearly half of all non-farm job growth in future.

Takeaway? Organizations need to start thinking today about talent management strategies that will work for tomorrow.  For example—some companies will benefit in the long term by encouraging their older employees to stay around, while others need to bring in larger numbers of young workers.

“A Seismic Shift Toward Contingent Labor”

Another warning shot comes from Jeb Evans (AVP of Resource Management at the TriZetto Group) in a presentation at the 2010 Human Capital Summit.   Evans sees contingent workers comprising 20-30% of the labor market over the next few years—and that may well be an underestimation.   This “new norm” has both advantages (contingent labor can be a cost variable when times are lean) and challenges (such as protecting intellectual property).

Takeaway? Many companies consider contingent labor as a necessary evil, and fail to integrate this area into their talent management strategy.  Get a detailed view and some excellent ideas of this topic from Dr. John Sullivan at ere.net.

The Virtues of Virtual Work

In recent remarks at a forum on Workplace Flexibility, the U.S. president praised trends and technology that support  telecommuting—certainly an important factor in the morphing of the labor picture.  Telecommuting, which lets workers in conventional companies do some or all of their work without physically coming to an office, has been limited in the past to only a few types of workers, but the practice is rapidly expanding to a wider variety of jobs.  And there is a continuing increase in the number of purely virtual  companies that have no centralized office at all.

Takeaway? Recruiting virtual workers presents some new challenges, as well as new opportunities.  Conventional job applications and evaluations are designed for onsite workers and may miss some of the important considerations in hiring people that will make good offsite workers.  So far, the only specialized tool I’ve found for hiring remote workers is LIMBRA’s Virtual Worker System, but I’ll keep looking.

 

(Thanks to Michael Patterson for the photograph, taken near Heath, Derbyshire, Great Britain.)