Think Fresh: quality over quantity at the SHRM 2009 Conference & Expo

According to Sunday night's tally, there are less than 7,000 attendees at the 2009 SHRM Conference & Expo in New Orleans.

Less than 7K. That's less than half the number of folks who attended the past two shows.

But I gotta tell you, it's been more of a blessing than a N'awlins voodoo curse.

Ninety-eight percent of the HR suppliers we've spoken to (many of which are clients or prospects) are very happy with the quality of the attendees; they are more senior and have come with an agenda, even shopping lists, and they are engaging in fresh thinking conversations (I loved the Flavia booth with the "Think Fresh" theme at the top). This is unprecedented; usually in the past there have been way too many junior HR folk clammering for the goodie bags and giveaways. (No offense junior HR folk - someday some of you will be senior.)

Because most travel budgets have been slashed, companies sent their more senior HR managers, directors and VP's and did not send as many junior HR reps. Also, it's true that many companies have laid off HR staff so in some cases all that is left are the senior HR executives who attended.

For those who didn't already know, we exhibited at SHRM this year under the name of our new company that HRmarketer.com bought called HRVendors.com. Come by our booth #2823 today before the expo ends!

And what's great about HRVendors.com is that we get to have direct conversations with HR folks ourselves.

What's on the mind of HR foks these days? In all our conversations the past two days, it depended on the type of company, but common themes have been employee motivation and retention, health and financial wellness and education, training and development of managers, leadership development and succession planning. With many companies laying off staff, they need to find a way to reward, motivate and retain those employee's left behind who often have increased workloads.

However, there were a few that indicated they were looking to replace and/or purchase for the first time talent acquisition or talent management systems, so again that's good news for the HR marketplace! Maybe the NOLA swelter helped to thaw the freeze.

We'll see you all in San Diego next year for SHRM 2010!

Post by Kevin Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn)

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Employee Financial Education. A Hot HR Benefits Sector.

A recent article in Fortune titled Has the 401(k) failed discusses how a small but vocal group of advocates think the 401(k) is a relic of a bygone age, what's wrong with the current system and how it can be salvaged. Excellent article.

The article points out several flaws to the current 401K model -- too many people choose not to enroll at all, fees are often obscured, and most of all, among those who do invest, choices can be shockingly bad. A 2008 study by Financial Engines, for instance, showed that 38% of respondents had "worrisome" levels of company stock in their portfolios.

But what I found most interesting was the seemingly unanimous agreement that at a minimum one way to make 401k's better is to increase employee education.

In fact, SHRM's recently released 2009 Employee Benefits Survey Report found:

- Organizations recognize the critical importance of financial and compensation benefits. A financial literacy program benefit debuted on the 2009 survey with 12 percent of surveyed companies offering it. Also, more companies offered a defined contribution retirement plan benefit in 2009 (90 percent) than 2008 (84 percent). Notably, HR professionals reported fewer organizations offering the executive retention bonus benefit in 2009 (11 percent) than 2008 (17 percent).

- Overall, health care and welfare benefits declined slightly in 2009 though more companies are offering mental health coverage benefits in 2009 than 2008. Seventy-five percent of HR professionals said their organizations offered the benefit last year compared to 80 percent this year. Mental health coverage was the only benefit in this category to be offered by more organizations in 2009 than 2008.

A nice summary of the research is here.

It's a great time to be in the financial education business.

A recent poll by HRmarketer.com client LifeCare.com found a majority of workers do not or cannot keep cash reserves for emergencies. LifeCare.com's CEO Peter Burki says:

"The poll's findings are in keeping with general personal finance trends that LifeCare has tracked during the past two years. LifeCare reported that its Call Center is now answering a record number of calls about financial issues -- so many, in fact, that the company's financial call volume has eclipsed its child care call volume. In a three-month period at the beginning of 2009, LifeCare answered about 1,500 financial calls -- or nearly one call every hour-and-a-half, 24 hours a day, seven days a week".

Another HRmarketer client ThriveOn offers corporate financial education in various eLearning and Software-as-a-Service applications and their services are in strong demand these days. Here is a sampling of their financial education videos.

I've been attending SHRM this week and most of the vendors I spoke with who offer financial education benefits say business is booming. One of the better attended sessions was Dave Ramsey's presentation Hope in the Workplace: Kicking Financial Stress Out of Your Office where Mr. Ramsey shared five principles that will change the lives of your team members.
Mr. Ramsey has a new company that aims to educate employees about finances.

The Obama administration is sufficiently concerned about the 401(k) that in its May budget proposal it considered including a clause that would make workers have to opt out rather than opt in to a plan, but it ultimately chose not to do so.

Either way, if you are an HR vendor in the business of financial education, now is the ideal time to increase your marketing to employers.

Things are definitely hot at the SHRM 2009 Conference & Expo

The "Big Easy" SHRM 2009 Conference & Expo in New Orleans started with a definite Mardi Gras atmosphere. Despite the oppressively hot weather (and thunderstorms after the show), everything was rockin' cool in the expo hall.

In fact, most of the suppliers we spoke with saw an unprecented amount of booth traffic for the opening expo night. And not just traffic, but quality "I'm shopping for products and services" traffic.

That is good news for the HR marketplace and the economy!

Quick shout-outs to EmployeeScreenIQ announcing their 2010 background screening trends, nowHIRE celebrating a happy and successful 10 years in talent acquisition, and TaxBreak is a first-time exhibitor at SHRM this year.

More to come from the expo floor and more shout-outs as well (I have to get crackin' and get to the expo hall).

Don't forget to stop by the HR Vendor Phonebook booth #2823 and pick up your vendor directory. (One trend of note is that most of the HR folks we talked with last night are concerned with employee recognition and retention.)

Party on Wayne. Sweet.

Post by Kevin Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn)

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The Latest HR Market Share Podcast: Interview with Robert Hohman, CEO & Co-Founder Glassdoor.com

The latest HR Market Share podcast is *finally* ready for your listening pleasure below (more interviews in the queue as well!). Subscribe to the series in iTunes and look for regular posts to our blog and on the HRmarketer.com site. You can also subscribe to all our past interviews and episodes via Hipcast.

Our latest episode includes some HR marketplace news and a great interview with Robert Hohman, CEO & Co-Founder Glassdoor.com (they ain't no F*dCompany.com, that's for sure). Glassdoor.com is a career and workplace community where anyone can find and anonymously share salary details about specific jobs for specific employers or company and interview reviews describing life on the inside of an employer — all for free.

If you'd like to be interviewed on our podcast about your company, product or service; what's working in marketing and PR; anything about the HR marketplace; or if you have feedback and suggestions for the podcast, please email me at hrmarketshare(at)hrmarketer(dot)com or kgrossman(at)hrmarkter(dot)com.

Thank you and enjoy!

• Glassdoor.com
  
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• News for HR Newsletter
• HR Vendor Newsletter
  
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Post by Kevin Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn)

Social media conversations are contextual and not always one-size-fits-all

Last week we attended and sponsored the Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit. Mark blogged about it wondering why more HR technology, work-life, EAP, training and wellness vendors (and HR professionals) are not focusing more on this space and the implications of an aging workforce.

The business of aging is booming, haven't you heard?

Mark spoke to a group of suppliers in the space at the event about marketing and PR best practices including a segment on social media marketing, being part of the online conversation.

Someone in the audience asked if there were any online services that allowed you to push your "conversations" out to multiple distribution points - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

I turned around and said with a smile, "Oh, our firm can help you with that."

Crickets chirped. Pins dropped with deafening clarity. A hot breeze blew by me.

Okay, so that didn't play well, but there are two services out there that do this automatically (with a little set up work) - Ping.fm (which I'm using) and Pixelpipe (which I haven't used yet).

But someone else in the audience last week brought up a great point that I'll emphasize here:

Your social media marketing "conversations" can and should be contextual and aren't always for every social networking audience.

For example, this blog post was submitted through Ping.fm because I wanted my entire "professional" social media collective to see it.

Same thing when we release new content, like a white paper or an artcle - or when I come across another interesting HR marketplace news post, blog post, white paper or another article.

But if I was letting my social media marketing hair down, which I often do for those who know me, I probably wouldn't include every network I belong to. Maybe it'll be a fun work-related message to my personal and professional friends in Facebook, or it'll just be an obscure Tweet for the Twitterverse.

Or maybe it's something very specific to a group, like a Ning network you belong to (like RecruitingBlogs.com).

Point being you want to be conversational, transparent and real, as non-promotional as possible, sharing your organization's content (content marketing is where it's at), sharing other's content, commenting on other's content, and so on.

It takes time to effectively use social media - I may spend up to an hour a day managing it all, sometimes more.

But it's worth it for you and your organization to invest the time and to do it right and generate more visibility, traffic, leads and improved SEO. It really is.

Now I'm checking out audioBoo. Could be some impromptu interviews at SHRM 2009! See you in New Orleans!

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The Population is Aging. Where Are The HR Vendors (and HR professionals)?

I posted an event review on our SeniorCareMarketer.com blog today on an event I attended this week. The event was the Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit.

In the blog post I questioned why more HR technology, work-life, EAP, training and wellness vendors (and HR professionals) are not focusing more on this space and the implications of an aging workforce.

If you market any of these services I think you'll find the blog post interesting.

Baby Boomers (born from 1946 to 1964) are planning to work longer and many until they are physically no longer able to do so according to recent AARP research. No matter how you look at it, the workforce is going to age considerably the next 10-20 years and this will have profound implications for organizations - on recruitment, onboarding, talent management, employee wellness, leadership development, training, etc.

Within the last ten years we've already seen employers shift benefit spending - they now spend more on elder care benefits than child care benefits but this is only the beginning and frankly, simply offering employees LTC insurance as a voluntary benefit or access to an R&R for elder care support won't cut it. This is also more than just workforce planning.

A lot more.

There are going to be huge opportunities for talent management software companies, employee benefit vendors, training and leadership development firms and any other human resource supplier who can "get out in front and dig a hole" (as Ken Dychtwald from AgeWave says) by meeting the needs of an aging workforce (employer and employee needs). This may mean new products and services or adapting current products. There are huge opportunities.

Mini-me-management: Take the time and lead well

The first thing I see when I receive The Glowan Consulting Group leadership development newsletter is their tagline:

Take Time to Lead™

And lead well. Love it. Some of you may have read my last post on the leadership development workshop I attended with Glowan.

But do CEO’s really matter? That’s the question posed in the recent lengthy but excellent Atlantic article someone Tweeted about this week (I think it was @hoovers).

The article begins by discussing the Steve Jobs saga and the ebbs and flows of shareholder value based on fact, rumor and innuendo of his failing and/or recovering health.

Yes, charismatic CEO’s can and do affect shareholder value (even plain old vanilla solid leadership does this as well), particularly in the cutthroat technology industry, but besides the superhero CEO mythos, there’s some great leadership research presented in this paper, including this telling paragraph:

James March, a management professor at Stanford, goes so far as to say that in any well-run company that’s conscientious about grooming its managers, candidates for the top job are so similar in their education, skills, and psychology as to be virtually interchangeable. All that matters is that someone be in charge.

All that matters is that someone be in charge. Hmmm…I feel there’s more to it than that. It’s got to be someone who knows how to be present, to lead one’s own self, one’s internal teams and the entire organization.

True leadership strength is measured by the team strength and influence throughout the organization.

J. Richard Hackman, a psychologist at Harvard, has done extensive work on leadership within small teams, and he has found that leaders do exert measurable influence on their team’s success or failure...

The team leader’s job is to establish the conditions that enable team members to collaborate competently; the leader needs to spell out exactly where teams should end up, but not dictate the step-by-step process of getting there...

Ideal team size, Hackman says, is about six people; performance problems increase exponentially as team size increases beyond that, and the impact of leadership becomes quickly diffused.

The ideal team size is six people? What the heck do we do with global organizations with thousands and thousands employees? If it’s true that people don’t feel allegiance to their large corporations, no matter who’s at the helm, then what’s executive management to do?

The highly localized nature of loyalty, some scholars argue, means that the real power to influence corporate performance resides not with the CEO but with middle management.

Or as I like to call mini-me-management – managing self and collaborative teams with the organization, the living cells that make up the complete business organism.

However, according to recent Towers Perrin data:

Favorable views about leadership — the top driver of employee engagement — are down in some key areas. Most notably, the percentage of employees agreeing top management provides a clear sense of direction dropped significantly, to 63% from 71% in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Makes sense considering the financial services and automotive meltdowns this country has seen in the past two years. Mark’s recent post on employee engagement (and the comments it received) was pretty clear about the fact that good management leads to employee retention, smart business decisions ethical business practices.

"Good leaders can make a small positive difference; bad leaders can make a huge negative difference - because they drive people out.” That was a quote from Stanford Business School professor and organizational expert Jeffrey Pfeffer (2006).

Good leaders keep teams of employees motivated and engaged. Those teams make up the organization. It’s been well documented that employees leave because of bad leadership, and bad leadership affects the company’s bottom line. Incentives don’t help either, because they mislead and backfire and then your still left with bad leaders.

We can’t forget personal responsibility as well – self-management and a sense of purpose – and this is what good leaders and managers can instill in their employees.

Mercy, even the growing number of private equity plays in our space and beyond understands the need for strong leadership. The short-term play just ain’t paying like it used to.

Lead self and teams well and build that into your corporate culture. Mini-me-management really works.

Post by Kevin Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn)

Employee Wellness. Employee Healthcare. Should Employers Pay For This Stuff?

While it is unlikely that employers in mass will stop funding employee medical benefits, with a new administration in the White House determined to "fix" healthcare everything is on the table.

I believe the number and percentage of people covered by employment-based health insurance is around sixty-percent. While many believe employers should subsidize employee health care as a moral obligation most employers view it as a competitive necessity to recruit and retain staff - if your competitor does it then you also must do it.

Others argue that companies shouldn't even be in the healthcare business. Employers aren't responsible for employee mortgages or sending employee's children to college. Why should they be involved in an employee's health - or subsidize unhealthy habits that end up costing the company a ton of money and have no correlation to employee health? That's right, there is no correlation between offering employee healthcare and healthy employees, reduced absenteeism, productivity, etc. In fact, employer healthcare costs arguably helped drive GM into bankruptcy.

But under no circumstance do employers ever really pay for employee healthcare - the costs are always passed on to society (higher priced goods and services) or employees who forgo higher wages. BTW, some advocate paying higher salaries and letting employees deal with purchasing/managing their medical insurance which may motivate people to live healthier lifestyles.

Whatever your beliefs, the fact is employers want and need healthy employees. Healthy employees come to work more often, are happier and are more productive.

So what's a company to do?

While many employers are decreasing their commitment to medical benefits in this recession, they are increasing their investment in employee well-being which gives us a glimpse into where things may be heading.

These employers are adopting strategies that do correlate with healthier employees. For example, a recent story in Time magazine points out that more companies are encouraging employees to get healthier by investing in employee wellness.

• Nearly 6 in 10 (58%) now offer wellness programs, up from fewer than half (43%) in 2007.
• The percentage of companies paying people to ditch bad habits (especially eating junk food and not exercising enough) has gone from 53% in 2008 to 61% this year.

This is great news for preventive helthcare and wellness companies who provide health screenings, smoking cessation, weight management and health coaching, health club subsidies, etc. Programs that have a measurable impact on absenteeism, productivity and healthcare premiums. At HRmarketer.com we work with dozens of these wellness companies and all are growing - even in this economy!

This article from the economist (Healthy employees, wealthy employers?) gives a good picture of what the future may look like in employer healthcare.

Regardless of your position on employee healthcare there is no doubt that things are about to drastically change. And this will present huge opportunities for HR vendors competing in the employee benefit and wellness space.

If you are one of these companies, now is not the time to decrease your marketing and PR budgets. This is the time to get aggressive because employers are finally listening and ready to buy. Your time has finally come.

Being present and the 10-minute-brainstorm-peer-coaching-leading experiment

You’ve heard it, you’ve seen it, you experience it – life is a runaway train. Our personal and professional lives barrel forward at sometimes unbearable speeds, and like me, we have a hard enough time tying our shoes before we walk out the door.

The runaway train is a 24-7-365 world. I know, I despise that double clichéd label as much as anyone, but it’s unfortunately painfully true. For company leaders, managing self, teams and the organization efficiently and effectively – being 100% present in every task and activity is a bitch.

Just keeping it real.

Back in January I blogged about being a mindful leader and leadership development firm The Glowan Consulting Group. During the past two months I’ve been fortunate enough to experience the L3 leadership model first hand; I took the DISC assessment, I received 360-degree feedback from my firm, and then attended their two-day workshop last week (the coaching comes next).

Glowan’s model is right up my leadership alley:

The L3 model of Leadership explores three critical attributes of effective leaders while leading with authenticity, integrity and balance. These three attributes are:

L1 Leading Self: Total Life Leadership. Achieving personal mastery and work/life integration.

L2 Leading With Others: Creating and sustaining Collaborative Advantage.

L3 Leading Others: Cultivating the Best Place to work: culture of high engagement, retention, performance and productivity.

I’m all about getting my house in order first – being personally responsibility for my actions and reactions, my choices and my life – being 100% present in each and every task and activity – and then applying it to managing teams and leading the firm.

But what I really want to talk about is the 10-minute-brainstorm-peer-coaching-leading experiment.

The wha?

This exercise encapsulated everything I learned about leading during the workshop. We broke up into teams of three – myself, an operations manager for a Bay Area power plant company and an IT data center manager from Oracle.

The task was this: each of us had to present an organizational problem to the group (3 minutes), brainstorm solutions (5 minutes), and then select the best solutions to share with the workshop (2 minutes).

None of us knew much if anything of the other’s industry, and yet in 10 minutes each of us had a list of viable solutions for our organizational problems.

I can’t overstate how powerful this exercise was. I mean, we’ve all done brainstorming and problem solving exercises with internal and external teams, but how fruitful were there? How organized? How much time did we spend? How present was everyone?

How present were you?

Take a 10-minute timeout to be present and lead yourself, your team and your company. It’s transforming.

Post by Kevin Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn)

Customer Intimacy Is the Key to Growth for Talent Acquisition Firms (scenes from theHRshow 2009)

For those of you familiar with HRchitect’s Beauty Pageants, you know it’s a refreshing, however brief, objective look at the HR technology companies in our ever-evolving space. HR folk and executive management have the opportunities to hear a brief “virtual” pitch from talent acquisition, talent management, learning management, time & attendance, and many other firms.

Virtual events like this aren’t new, but I tell you that these hip cats at HRchitect (Rick, Matt and Tiffany) have got it going on when it comes to HR systems strategic consulting.

And they’re at it again with this year’s theHRshow 2009. It was supposed to be a face-to-face event, but due to the dismal trade show turnouts this year (SHRM only has about 7K registered so far – that’s down 50% from its peak a few years ago).

Today was the first day of theHRshow and there were many different vertical vendor panels today, similar to the pageants, where vendors where asked a series of questions about their products, the marketplace, etc., and then they had tiny windows to reply.

I attended the Recruiting Vendor Panel today – the best darn talent acquisition software firms in the world that included HRsmart, iCIMS, Kenexa, nowHIRE, Peopleclick and Taleo.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of these firms first hand, and in the spirit of full disclosure, we currently work directly with nowHIRE as their marketing and PR firm. (HRsmart, iCIMS and Peopleclick are all current HRmarketer members as well.)

All the vendors did swimmingly (homage to the swimsuit portion of HRchitect pageants, although CJ Donnelly from nowHIRE was glad he didn’t have to wear it!). There were “David and Goliath” moments between nowHIRE and the rest of the firms, but CJ knows how to use that sling!

The first question for the TA crew was: What should companies do when evaluating a talent acquisition vendor? Here are some of the collective answers:

• Review the long-term viability of the TA firms
• Review the firms’ investments and track record of growth
• Review the firms’ R&D investments
• Does the software help with compliance and diversity issues
• Does the software provide a solution that will grow with you
• If you’re global, go with a firm that’s global
• Ensure the software will automate and streamline workflow processes
• Ensure the software addresses hourly, salary and/or contingent populations
• Visit the firm to see what their culture and values are like
• Ensure the software provides short-term resume management needs and long-term talent management needs
• Ensure there’s seamless integration with internal systems and/or third-party screening and assessment services

When the firms were asked how they demonstrate ROI in the current economy, the consensus was providing a quality system that helped companies identify the qualified applicants more efficiently (doing more with less), which of course varies from customer to customer. They also agreed (of course) that the best time to invest in an ATS is now so as to develop efficiencies when they’re not in hiring crunch time.

When asked what the firms were doing to protect their client investments in such a volatile consolidation market – R&D, innovation, innovation, innovation, move to a suite market via sound science and technology. (Loved Peopleclick’s comment “Why consolidate when you can integrate?”) Unfortunately, the consolidation cookie monster will still be chomping away this year and next.

There was lots more Q&A but I’m wrapping things up here. Check out the remaining fantastic agenda for the next two days. Topics include:

• Web 2.0 Recruitment Marketing
• Secrets to Building a Successful Social Media Policy
• Building a Performance Based Culture Despite Economic Cycles Using Talent Management Best Practices
• How Do I Motivate My Employees During an Economic Downturn?
• Six Degrees of Separation - How Technology Changes the Landscape of Recruiting
• Workforce Analytics: Key to the New HR Decision Science
• Linking Competencies to Compensation
• From Structure Planning to Succession Planning

By the way, Kenexa said something at the end that really struck me – growing your business is all about having a sustained level of “customer intimacy”.

If you don’t serve and service your customers, customize and configure to their organizational needs, then you’ve just helped to grow the replacement market.

How true is that.

Post by Kevin Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn)

Artificial Intelligence and Employee Engagement

I wanted to share with our readers an interesting blog post by Winning Workplaces titled Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Intuition in Assessing Unsatisfied Employees?

Like everyone, I'm a huge fan of using technology to simplify my life and make more informed business decisions. CRM's are a great example. Since we switched to SalesForce.com managing customer and prospect relations has improved dramatically. In fact, I'd like to think that our own product HRmarketer.com has helped simplified the lives of marketing departments in the human capital marketplace and allowed them to make better marketing decisions.

But can technology, specifically artificial intelligence, help employers measure employee engagement and/or predict which of their employees are most likely to quit?

That is exactly what Google is reportably now doing with a new algorithm that will help them calculate which of their employees are most likely to quit.


As the blog referenced above points out, this may be useful for large employers who have to track the engagement of thousands of employees where HR departments are "strapped keeping track of everyone's needs and trying to satisfy them".

But in smaller firms the author of the blog Winning Workplaces suggests that this is the responsibility of management where "leadership and HR are better equipped to know not only if people are not satisfied, but if they're going to bail". He writes:

"I think that small and midsize businesses can save money and have a pulse on their workplace cultures by continuing the proven, decidedly 20th century practices of MBWA (managing by walking around), having an open door policy, and continually seeking ways to solicit and benefit from employee feedback."

But why can't large businesses do the same, without the use of artificial intelligence by using their existing talent management platforms and/or by using affordable surveys and assessments already available by a host of leadership development firms? I think they can.

And HR's role?

Ultimately, measuring employee engagement and performance is the responsibility of managers regardless of company size. Only a manager can effectively monitor the engagement of their direct reports on a day-to-day basis. Technology certainly can and does play a role. At it's core, HR is a "people" department and regardless of the size of the organization HR can and should equip their managers with the tools to help them identify engagement - not necessarily do the job entirely by themselves.

And there are plenty of these tools available already.

And as the author of the blog referenced above suggests, "maybe Google will enter this space if it wanted to go into that as a new business model :-)

Outsourcing Spending on the Rise

There may be a bright Spot on the horizon for Outsourcing Vendors. It appears as though outsourcing spending may be on the rebound. According to The 2009 Black Book "State of the Outsourcing Industry" report released today. This information may be on the bittersweet side for unemployed US citizens, but it is good news for some of our HR vendors.

In the wake of the recent offshore scandal at Satyam and subsequent admissions of the founder, the outsourcing industry in India was scrutinized. Gartner published a report titled “What the Satyam Debacle Means for the Indian IT Industry”. In that report, it was noted: “Drawing parallels between the Satyam and Enron scandals has become common in press reports.” Ultimately, transparency, in the form of frank discussions with their clients saved the industry.

According to the Black Book –“ India is still considered one of the top locations to procure outsourced workers”. The Black Book’s introduction has this to say about the reasons:

“Recent endorsements of South Africa, Nigeria, Pakistan, Kenya and Jamaica proved unreliable... Such criteria do not insure data safety or business continuity offshore….”

However, one sentence from that same introduction to the survey points out the potential flaw in their own conclusions: “ As the savings gap between India and other world locations widens to less than ten percent, the value proposition is tempered by potential threats.” With all the laid off engineers, (who are among the most commonly outsourced) available (for much less than before), why not hire within our own country?

If further support for this argument is needed, the Black Book goes on:

“The reality is terrorist attacks, typhoons, crime and corruption will disrupt your corporate operations via offshore outsourcers. Client organizations need to realize that outsourcing does not decrease risk unless there is proper oversight including the business-crippling hazards that are lurking among offshore delivery locations. Every company that outsources is fully exposed to the downstream risk unless they can establish the threats and hazards in the regional location where their operations are hosted. Weighing the risks against the savings and improvements offered by outsourcing faces corporate development and location specialists daunted by the task of determining the best choice for their organization. The necessity for an effective vulnerability management matrix has grown ever greater over the last few months.”

It seems to me that these same arguments, which are written in support of using India for outsourcing, can be used in favor of just hiring laid off US workers just as well.

Posted by Dawn Passaro

The Latest HR Market Share Podcast: Interview with Kelly Fitzsimmons, Co-founder and CEO of HarQen, the developers of VoiceScreener

The latest HR Market Share podcast is ready for your listening pleasure below. Subscribe to the series in iTunes and look for regular posts to our blog and on the HRmarketer.com site. You can also subscribe to all our past interviews and episodes via Hipcast.

Our latest episode includes some HR marketplace news and insight and a great interview with Kelly Fitzsimmons, Co-founder and CEO of HarQen, the developers of VoiceScreener, and one of VoiceScreener’s first clients, Lori Mallett, President of Hatch Staffing, Headquartered in Downtown Milwaukee. I first blogged about VoiceScreener last fall. Very cool technology. VoiceScreener lets companies use the phone and a simple web-based dashboard to create and distribute custom, recorded phone interviews so HR and the hiring teams can quickly and efficiently find the perfect employees.

If you'd like to be interviewed on our podcast about your company, product or service; what's working in marketing and PR; anything about the HR marketplace; or if you have feedback and suggestions for the podcast, please email me at hrmarketshare(at)hrmarketer(dot)com or kgrossman(at)hrmarkter(dot)com.

Thank you and enjoy!

• VoiceScreener
• Hatch Staffing
• predicting May job losses
• Antitrust probe reportedly targets hiring by Google, Apple, Yahoo
  
• The coolest collection of HR-related news and content found online is in our HR Directory (get a profile up if you're not already there)
• News for HR Newsletter
• HR Vendor Newsletter
  
• More HR marketplace news here and here

Post by Kevin Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn)

Sunny Seattle? A recap of the 2009 WorldatWork Total Rewards Conference and Expo

The sun was shining in Seattle for the WorldatWork Total Rewards conference, May 31 – June 3, - a nice treat for all those who expected gray skies or rain. Some speculated that the nice weather may have contributed to the lighter traffic on the expo floor. Another factor, like most trade shows this year, is fewer attendees – 1250 this year, compared to 2000 in Philadelphia last year. The number of exhibitors was also down from about 180 in 2008 to 153 this year – obviously both decreases due to tighter budgets.

The opening night was on Sunday, and the exhibit floor was noticeably quiet, even with the International Wine and Beer Reception. Many vendors felt that since there were no sessions on Sunday, many attendees were still traveling, or taking advantage of the surprising warm, sunny weather – visiting the first Starbucks and Pike Place Market.

But in spite of fewer attendees walking the floor, many vendors confirmed the information provided to me by a WorldatWork staff member that more senior level professionals were attending this year compared to years past. Many exhibitors I spoke with said the attendees who stopped at their booths were interested and engaged in discussion, truly wanting to learn more about their services and how they could benefit, and were often the decision maker for their organization. So, even though exhibitors spoke with fewer people than in the past years, over all they felt the quality of the prospects were very good.

A few of the work-life benefits and wellness exhibitors did comment that the majority of the attendees seemed to be compensation professionals, so they felt they were being passed over compared to the compensation consulting and software providers. However, most vendors admit that the WorldatWork conference is the best place for them to exhibit due to the focus of the event. It is a great branding opportunity to get your company name in front of benefits and compensation professionals.

A new company on the scene this year was The Oxygen Plan, an interesting personal stress management program that equips people to lower their stress levels and become more productive employees. I really enjoyed speaking with their team – Sondra, Eric and Shannon. Some other first time exhibitors included Purchasing Power, Caring Connections – a provider of end of life care and services in the workplace, and The Vitality Group , a health and wellness provider. It was also great meeting and discussing marketing strategies with people from MTM Recognition, Synygy, Winston Financial, Xactly Corporation, and Diamond H.

The WorldatWork show is also a wonderful time to catch up with many HRmarketer friends, including the WorldatWork team, HRchitect, LifeCare, Harris Rothenberg International, Compdata Surveys, Berkshire Associates, Decusoft, Halogen Software, SilkRoad technology, Hewitt Associates, Hay Group, Buck Consultants, Free & Clear, and many more. It’s reassuring that we must be doing something right (not to mention good for our company ego) when I walk into a booth and hear, “We LOVE HRmarketer!”

The trade show didn’t end for me when I left Seattle, as I discovered I was sitting next to a WorldatWork board member and session presenter on Executive Compensation on my flight home. We had a great discussion about the show, executive compensation issues and the HR industry.

WorldatWork puts on a great event, even in tough economic times. And Audrey Johnson, event organizer, again showed her pride with her flashy painted toes with the WorldatWork logo. We took a picture of them last year and could not resist showing them off again this year.

If you’re an HRmarketer member, log in to your account to post a review the conference on the Community Message Board under Conference/Expos Reviews & Comments.

We look forward to next year’s show in Dallas, May 16-19, 2010 - we hope to see you there!

Post by Jocelyn Cook

We're Experiencing an Unusually High Level of Calls. Please Hang Up.

"We're Experiencing an Unusually High Level of Calls".

Translation = We've laid off most of our call center staff in order to cut costs. We didn't think our customers would mind waiting longer (in fact, they don't have a choice) so we can make a few more bucks.

I know, this is a little unfair - sometimes there really are unusually high call volumes :-)

When it comes to technology, investments are often made that benefit the company at the expense of the customer. I think any business admittedly has struggled with these trade offs.

How many times have you called a company and been asked to enter your account number (so they can route you) only to repeat it again when the agent finally answers your call? Or how about getting stuck in a checkout line when buying one small item under $10 because the clerk has to enter fifteen pieces of information to complete your purchase? Do they really need all that information?

Anyway, my favorite airline (Southwest) just upgraded their call centers with "virtual hold technology software" that means you can hang up if you don't want to wait for a representative, keep your place in line, and get a callback when an agent is available.

Wow.

On the first day of implementation, 40 percent of Southwest Airlines callers accepted the Virtual Hold callback option instead of waiting on hold.

Very impressive. A true "win-win" for company and customer.

And great marketing.

Sometimes as marketers we focus on product features and benefits and forget that some of the best differentiators have nothing to do with the actual product but the pre and post purchasing "experience".

Thanks for the reminder Southwest.

Content Marketing and the HR Directory

We've talked about it before, how mining your own data produces great marketing content. In fact, our latest article in our marketing series titled Using Original Content to Generate Online Visibility, Web Site Traffic and Sales Leads focuses on just that and more and is available for download.

Our HR Directory - a popular destination for HR professionals - contains a White Paper+ section with thousands of white papers, articles, videos, blogs, podcasts, webcasts and research.

Taking a look at May 2009, the directory indicated its top five most requested topics from its White Papers+ section that included the flu and unemployment compensation.

Our HR Directory gives us a lens into what's on the minds of HR decision makers during any given month and the top items continue to be employee wellness, unemployment and talent management. HR decision makers are looking for sources of information they can trust to help them do their job better and more efficiently.

May's full list of popular resources includes:

• 2009 Unemployment Compensation Tax Briefing (TALX webcast)
• Summit Health Flu Center (Online flu resources from Summit Health)
• Best Practices in Talent Management: Factors in ATS Selection (nowHIRE.com white paper)
• The Trouble with Personality Tests (HR Chally Group white paper)
• 17 Rules of the Road for CRM (Sage white paper)

What's motivating HR professionals to seek out these resources? The economy and Swine Flu crisis are clearly driving demand. Companies are also using the down economy to improve internal recruitment, hiring and sales efficiencies and that means purchasing an ATS or CRM for the first time or looking for a new software provider because they're unhappy with their current one.

Pretty cool indicator. Our HR Directory gives us timely and topical insight into what's on the minds of HR decision makers during any given month and the top items continue to be employee wellness, unemployment and talent management. It also underscores the importance of objective, high-quality content marketing in building brand visibility for HR vendors.

The fact is HR decision makers are looking for sources of information they can trust to help them do their job better and more efficiently. To find these, they turn to the Internet, and our previous buyer research validates that.

Having great content increases the likelihood of your company showing up on search results - and prospects finding you first.

The first rule of the content marketing club: always talk about the content marketing club.

The HRmarketer.com HR Directory helps HR suppliers showcase their companies and share their expertise with professionals and decision makers. The site is visited by thousands of HR decision makers monthly and includes five major sections:

• HR Buyers Guide
• HR White Papers+
• HR Forms and Templates
• HR News
• HR Discussion Boards

The Directory allows human resource and employee benefit vendors to build interactive company profiles and syndicate their content. Since a vendor's content is hyperlinked to their Web site, it helps HR suppliers improve their own company's search engine optimization (SEO) and generate sales leads.

Check it out. Take a look at your own data as well. What can you turn into valuable content marketing?

Post by Kevin Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn)