Moms Increasingly Going Back to Work in Recession

Thursday , October 29, 2009
By Julie Banderas/Fox News

With men accounting for 72 percent of the nation's job losses since the beginning of the recession, many American families are looking to mom to bring home the bacon. Recent studies found that 40 percent of American women are now the primary earners for their families, and that means more and more moms are going back to work — or at least trying to.

"If you had told me five years ago I would be doing what I'm doing now, I might have said no way," said Liz Morgan, a full-time mom who hopes to return to the workforce.
Morgan, 44, worked for 13 years as a legal publisher before taking on the role of a stay-at-home mom. She left her job four years ago to spend more time with her kids, as her husband's small business provided for their family of five.

But being a stay-at-home mom is a luxury the Morgans can no longer afford.
"I thought, well, it shouldn't be too hard to find a part-time job, and that proved to be more difficult too. I'm not only competing with people my own age — there are a lot of younger people who have more flexible hours," she said. "I basically want to work between 8 and 3."
"They face a motherhood penalty which will make it harder for them," said Pam Stone, a professor of sociology at Hunter College in New York. "It would be hard enough because they have interrupted their careers and their skills are getting rusty."

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that an increasing number of married women with a college education between the ages of 25 and 44 are working. Some see the predominantly "male'" recession as an opportunity for women to make a new start.

"The sectors that men have traditionally found good jobs in — finance and technology — aren't going to be doing well going forward," said Sylvia Hewlett, founder of the Center for Work Life Policy.

"So I think a lot of couples are understanding that over the long haul it's the wife and the mother that has the better prospects in the job market."

Times have definitely changed, but not completely: despite women making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, women continue to be paid 23 cents less than men for every dollar earned, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Is Your Career Site Making A Good Impression?

A career site can be an effective part of an overall Talent Management System. Or, it could be one of the main reasons why that Talent Management System isn’t doing what you need it to do on a consistent basis. We sat down with interactive design expert Maarten-Jan Waasdorp, COO at Six Foot LLC, and asked him questions that non-interactive experts might want to ask about their own career sites:

1. What are some most common mistakes you see employers making with their career sites?

Companies tend to stick to their current look and branding and make recruitment a part of the corporate site. This often leads to the Career Area on the site being overlooked. If it doesn’t stand out and engage potential candidates, then the candidates will not be motivated to apply for a position with the employer.

2. What are some general suggestions you might have for employers to help them make their career sites more effective?

Some of the suggestions I would make are:
· Start to think like your potential applicants think. Ask “How can I “entertain” the candidate while they are on my site? Are they tech savvy? Are they into Social Media?
· With the current available technology it is very important to be leading-edge so you will get the best people for your jobs.
· Make your recruitment site interactive, attract with visuals like video’s or animations. Engage the potential hire in a game or quiz.
· Make optimal use of all available media; on-line, print, TV and radio and be combined into one powerful recruitment tool.
· Also think of separating recruitment from your main site and set up a separate (mini) site. You can be more efficient and use more SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization/Marketing) tools aimed at recruitment.

3. What is the best way to measure traffic coming to your site?

First you have to make sure that anyone looking for a job in your industry/geographic area will find your career site/mini-site. I can’t stress enough the importance of making the search process fast and easy. It all starts with the way your site is initially set up. Once set up, it’s a good idea to ask the company that built your site to also track the traffic coming to the site. There are free options available, but for a small fee it’s worth the peace of mind you get by having experts handle the process on a monthly basis. And it’s quite possible they will notice “Red Flag” indicators you might miss and be able to trouble-shoot on the spot so that your site continues to enjoy a robust flow of traffic.

4. What are a few of these “Red Flags?”

One of the biggest issues is always the question of are you using the right key words to reach your target audience? You may think you know what is driving people to your site, but sometimes perception is not the reality. That’s why traffic metrics are so important. Most employers realize that SEO is not a miracle tool. You have to do intelligent research to ensure your SEO strategy is targeted and will reach the audience that possesses your desired levels of skill-sets and experience. Wrong input will result in wrong output.

5. What steps can an employer take if they need to build or improve their site but don’t have an in-house web department?

The obvious answer is to look for a partner like Six Foot! Aside from that, even if you have an in-house web department, it’s worthwhile to look outside the company and find a vendor who can help you realize the goals you’re trying to accomplish. Take Six Foot for example. We have a large team that does nothing but design and develop solutions exactly like this, using the latest technologies. An experienced design team will come up with ideas you haven’t even thought about yet simply because you were unaware of all the possibilities available at your fingertips.

In Six Foot’s case, we combine these skills with more than 20 years of experience in the Talent Acquisition & Retention business to help you come up with the customized strategies for your specific situation. We also use our vast network of industry partners to combine (web) technology solutions with a wide variety of related consulting services.

6. How do you prevent getting "ripped off" by an outside vendor?

There are a lot of suppliers out there who will provide a lot of different solutions with a lot of different price tags. The outcomes, of course, will be different, too. In most instances you will find that you can’t expect the same result from a smaller “start-up shop” versus a well seasoned, very experienced, award winning company.

In today’s economy it’s tempting to underestimate the importance of quality and focus rather on the cheapest price. Well, a quality product doesn’t always have the highest price. Hopefully you are developing your website so that it becomes an important, strategic and cost-efficient part of your Talent Management process.

For example by attracting higher quality candidates, an effective career site can often help reduce the amount of fees you find yourself having to pay staffing agencies. A good site will also increase your brand identity and value. Paying more does not automatically guarantee good service so I do advise you shop around before making any decisions. Ask friends and colleagues if they are happy with their website provider. Be sure to sit down with the potential design team and engage them in a comprehensive “discovery phase” before you kick-off the project. The discovery will give you an exact scope and plan of the project and will confirm whether or not you are dealing with the right supplier.


SIX FOOT: Six Foot is an interactive agency and consultancy that specializes in ORGINEERING (process mapping, usability and information architecture), INTERACTIVE (websites, portals, animations and applications), ONLINE MARKETING (brand marketing, SEO/SEM, social media and metrics), and EXPERIENTIAL DESIGN (touch screen, digital / interactive retail experiences, kiosks and trade show support). Six Foot has emerged as a leader, specializing in the development and execution of combined online and in-store brand experiences, e-marketing programs, creative design, 2D and 3D animation, and database and back-end infrastructure development.

Maarten-Jan Waasdorp: COO at Six Foot LLC; Maarten-Jan (M-J for short and definitely easy) has over 20 years of global experience in finance, operations, company strategies and general management for Fortune 100 companies. M-J combines all his skills and experience to develop and execute plans for any kind of challenge. M-J was born in the Netherlands and moved to the US in 2007. He is a member of the national COO Forum and the World Affairs Council of Houston.

US in need of Tech reboot

From John Mitton:

Much has been made about the shortage of workers, in the USA, who have the skill-sets needed for jobs of the future, including jobs which haven't been invented yet. I have recently given a series of keynote speeches to a variety of professional groups in different industries which all share the same dilemma: How do we starting producing tomorrow's workforce today? During the keynote sessions we explore answers to questions like: What changes need to be made in what and how we teach our children?; How do we strengthen our childrens "soft skills?"; With only 28% of 9th graders headed to a four-year university, how do we prepare the other 72% to survive in today's workplace?; What happens if we don't act now?

The article by Kendra Marr, "US In Need of Tech Reboot," illustrates that many in corporate America have begun to put realistic training programs and mandates for innovation back on the front-burner. It will be a process involving parents, teachers, Board of Educations, state legislatures, institutions of higher learning at the 2-year and 4-year levels, and finally the workplace itself.

Enjoy the article:

(Source: Politico.com; By: Kendra Marr October 28, 2009 05:01 AM EST)

For years, the U.S. was a pioneer, the renowned home of Yankee ingenuity. The United States put the first man on the moon and invented the light bulb. The country gave the world the daring Wright brothers, billionaire computer genius Bill Gates, Google and the iPod.

But lately, experts say, the U.S.’s creative streak has sputtered. Today, it has gone from being the No. 1 innovative country in the world to No. 6 and has made less progress in international competiveness and innovation than 40 other nations and regions measured in the past decade.

Concerned about the failure to innovate — and convinced that it is the key to a vibrant economy — officials at Intel, the world’s largest maker of semiconductor chips, are convening a high-level conference in Washington next month. There, Obama administration officials, high-tech gurus, NGOs, corporate titans and academics will share ideas on how to spur economic recovery through innovation.

“You need to create circumstances that encourage risk-taking and entrepreneurship,” said Peter Cleveland, Intel’s vice president of government relations. He said the conference will explore what skills U.S. workers need to compete in industries of the future, including green technologies, and will tackle how to foster creativity, make scientific investments a priority and encourage cooperation between the public and private sectors.

Industry’s focus on innovation as a key to the future dovetails with White House thinking, and several senior administration officials will participate in the conference, including top economic adviser Larry Summers, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Austan Goolsbee, staff director and chief economist on the president’s economic recovery board. Other scheduled participants include America Online founder Steve Case; Jeff Immelt, the chairman and CEO of General Electric; D.C. Public Schools chief Michelle Rhee; and Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education.

In February, when consultants at Mc­Kinsey & Co. asked executives how the government should spend federal stimulus funds, 59 percent answered, “fostering innovation and potential new industries.” Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg echoed that sentiment last week when he proclaimed “investment and innovation has never been more important than it is right now.” “In the face of a global recession, economies all over the world are looking for ways to become smarter, more productive and more competitive,” he said at a broadband industry conference in Chicago. “The key to a smart economy is smart technology that can change business models and change society.”

President Barack Obama embraced the same message last month when he outlined the “groundwork and the ground rules to best tap our innovative potential.” Building on more than $100 billion in stimulus funding, he promised to invest more in research, promote policies that foster entrepreneurship and provide federal backing for clean energy, advanced vehicles and health care technology. “By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world,” Obama said. “We used to be No. 1. We should be No. 1 again.”

That, however, is a formidable challenge. Tight credit markets have driven companies to stash away cash, cut wages and lay off workers. Companies in Standard & Poor’s 500 index chopped 5 percent of their research and development costs and 25 percent of capital expenditures between the end of the third quarter last year and the second quarter of this year, according to the index.

To match Finland’s investment in technology programs on a per capita basis, the U.S. would need to invest $33 billion each year, said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Today, the U.S. spends about $2 billion. “In reality, innovation is not manna from heaven,” he said. “It’s human made and influenced by policy.”

Many experts believe that policy imperative begins with investing more in education. Over the past decade, numerous studies show, the United States has failed to raise math and science test scores, and students in several Asian countries consistently score higher in both subjects.

Economic turmoil often breeds technological breakthroughs. During the Depression, DuPont invented nylon, which paved the way for parachutes and toothbrushes. The dot-com bubble burst in 2001, but that same year, Apple introduced the iPod. The hope is that history will repeat itself. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett has been repeating the company’s mantra: “You can’t save your way out of a recession.”

In February, Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced plans to spend $7 billion to build advanced manufacturing plants in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico. The company funded mini-documentaries produced by PBS’s “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” that examined the role of innovation in the economy.

Intel and the Aspen Institute also hosted dinner discussions featuring Summers, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra. The Aspen Institute, the journal “Democracy” and PBS are co-hosting the Nov. 30-Dec. 1 Intel Conference. Lehrer and PBS correspondents Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff will be among the moderators.

“It was definitely not hard to get people to participate in the conversation, because it’s on everyone’s mind,” said Jamie Miller, Aspen’s vice president for public programs. “You look at the auto industry and places like Detroit, and there’s a fear that if America’s not at the cusp of innovation, we will not be able to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off,” she said. Said Atkinson: “We were ahead so long — really since the ’50s — that we were kind of blind to the threat going on.”

Understanding Available Retention Strategies: Are You Prepared for Turnover Rates to Double?

(Part 1 of a 2-Part Series) by Dr. John Sullivan on ERE.net, September 28th, 2009:

As the economic turnaround picks up steam, turnover rates in many organizations are likely to skyrocket and recruiting replacement workers of the same caliber will be extremely challenging.

Study after study has confirmed the notion that many employees would have left their employers months/years ago had the option to do so been viable. The economic downturn, combined with the mortgage crisis, has forced many frustrated, disappointed, and unmotivated employees to stay put. The trend is not a new one and is consistent with past downturns.

While turnover rates are at an all-time low, they most certainly cannot be taken as an indication of a firm’s status as a desirable place to work.

Just as in years past, when job opportunities become more prevalent, employees will exercise their right to demonstrate just how much they appreciated the treatment they received throughout reductions in force, furloughs, clumsy mergers, travel freezes, and budget cuts. The level of animosity among many will render most traditional retention [1] approaches ineffective.
Some studies indicate that as many as two-thirds of employees are ready to go. Unfortunately, few corporations are preparing today to handle the dramatic increase in voluntary terminations that will come tomorrow.

While few organizations completely decimated their staffing functions, the majority have cut back to the point where capability has been negatively impacted. Strategic programs that deliver retention have been cut, and in most cases, no one is held accountable for retention solutions. It might seem outrageous, but unless you consider the phrase “let’s keep them all” to be a retention strategy, it’s a fact that most HR and recruiting executives can not even list common retention strategies, let along devise their own.

Retention Is One of the Most Poorly Managed Goals in HR

It’s hard to argue that retaining key employees isn’t a high-value activity, and I can’t say that I have ever visited an organization that would argue otherwise. In fact, most HR leaders and recruiters talk a lot about the importance of retaining the very best employees that the organization has invested so much time, money, and development resources in. Unfortunately, talk is where most HR organizations end when it comes to formalizing retention efforts.

Among organizations that force-rank satisfaction with HR deliverables, retention often ranks high in importance but extremely low in execution. In fact, it’s often lower than compensation and benefits, if you can imagine that!

Its perennial position at the bottom of the list qualifies it as the most poorly managed staffing activity. However, its position at the bottom should come as no surprise, since few organizations can identify who’s in charge of it, what is the strategy, and how retention efforts are measured and evaluated.

These three factors are the reason behind most organizations’ poor retention performance:

Reason #1 — Who is in charge of retention?

In many organizations the answer to this very basic question is no one! Rarely does the organization’s design for the HR function include a role(s) charged with designing, developing, and executing retention programs. When such a role does exist, rarely is it positioned at level with enough resources and power to make a difference (i.e., Senior Director or VP).

When it comes to organizational design, nothing says “low importance” more than lack of budget or executive-level leadership at the helm. Some might argue that all are responsible for retention, but merely listing it as one among many responsibilities essentially guarantees a mediocre enterprise-scale effort.

While great managers may assume ownership of retention activities in their group, because there is no clear support organization, their approaches will largely be ad hoc in nature and inconsistently leveraged, opening the door for anyone disgruntled to scream discrimination!

Reason #2 — The real costs of key employee turnover are not reported.

Retention metrics in most organizations begin and end with overall turnover by period. Absent are metrics that measure the business impact of turnover and specific goals to mitigate predicted impact. If your retention function doesn’t measure and report these five key metrics, chances are your efforts are under-managed:

The cost of turnover. Reporting a percentage turnover rate seldom excites executives, but converting that turnover rate to a dollar impact on business performance can establish the visibility on talent issues needed to transform a good recruiting function into a great one.

Top performer/key employee turnover. Often called regrettable turnover, this measure prioritizes the jobs and individuals based on the degree to which their leaving hurts the firm.

Competitor win/loss ratio. This metric is simply the ratio of the number of top performers you have successfully recruited away from a competitor compared to the number of top performers who voluntarily terminated to join a competitor. If a top performer quitting goes directly to a competing firm (vs. retiring), it raises the costs because it hurts the firm while aiding a competitor.

Preventable turnover. If turnover is occurring for silly or preventable reasons, the percentage of cases where that is true needs to be reported and fixed.

Percentage of “at risk” employees. The best firms proactively identify high-priority individuals who present a high risk of leaving during the next one or two years. Reporting the percentage of target individuals at risk alerts managers helping them put into place proactive programs attacking retention issues before they get out of hand.

Reason #3 — What is the name of your retention strategy?

The economic impact of losing 10% of the workforce each year in a major corporation amounts to tens of millions of dollars. With that amount of money and disruption involved, retention is clearly a strategic issue. To develop a competitive advantage around a strategic issue requires a strategy that is measurably superior to that of your competitors.

Unfortunately, it’s rare for organizations to develop a formal retention strategy. To make matters worse, most HR executives don’t even know the common retention strategies in use that they could adopt.

Before launching into a comprehensive list of common retention strategies, note that all retention strategies fall into one of three categories and usually contain five common elements.

The Five Common Elements of a Retention Strategy

• Goals of the strategy. This element identifies the goals and specific results the strategy should produce.
• Prioritization process. This element specifies the methodology that will be employed to determine which (if any) employees should receive priority treatment.
• Identifying turnover causes. This element specifies the methodology that will be employed to identify the primary factors that “cause” employees to leave.
• Retention solutions. This element contains a catalog of proven counter measures or solutions that can be employed by managers to halt or reverse a trend of turnover categorized by common cause.
• Success measures. This last element covers the process for selecting retention metrics and reporting the results.

The Three Categories of Common Recruiting Strategies

Retention strategies usually fall into one of three categories, but world-class organizations often employ a hybrid approach that uses different strategies for different groups within the organization based on their role in achieving wildly important organizational goals. The three common categories include:

1. Laissez-faire approaches. This group contains decentralized retention strategies that rely almost exclusively on operating managers to solve the retention problem.
   
2. Comprehensive approaches. These approaches attempt to retain all employees by improving the treatment, pay, or benefits of all employees. These approaches are also called “peanut butter” strategies because they attempt to spread the improved treatment evenly across all employees.
   
3. Targeted or personalized approaches. This category concentrates retention efforts on high-priority individuals and jobs and then customizes the treatment as much as possible in order to fit the individual needs of the targeted employee.

My Boss Sent "Friend Request!"

(Source: medialifemagazine.com. Sep 18, 2009 - 1:02:58 AM)

Dear Rachel, I have a problem. My boss has sent me a friend request on Facebook. I know she's already friends with a few people in the office. The thing is, I don't know if I should friend her. We get along fine, but I don't particularly want her to see my status updates, some of which are inappropriate for work, or know the fact that I stay logged on to the site all day, even during work. At the same time, I don't want to offend her by rejecting her request. So far I've just been pretending I haven't seen it, but it's already been a few weeks, and I'm starting to feel uncomfortable. What should I do?-- Facebook Addict

Dear Addict, I think you should be truthful with her and explain that as much as you respect her as a boss and like her as a person, you believe it's important to keep your personal life separate from your office life and that friending her would cross that line. You won't feel particularly comfortable about doing it, but if you handle it well, you can maintain good relations and get the matter behind you.

You don't have much choice, really.If you don't address the issue, she might let it drop but more likely she would persist, and at some point you could find yourself in a far more uncomfortable situation.She’ll be offended on two fronts. You’ve not friended her and you’ve been rude in not even acknowledging her request. I think the other issue you raise is what you are putting up on your page.Sites like Facebook invite users to open themselves up to their friends, and they are a wonderful way to stay in touch with people without having to pick up the telephone. But we all know the downsides. What you post can find its way into the wrong places, leading to all sorts of embarrassment. The best advice--and I am hardly original in saying this--is to never post anything you wouldn't want your mother to see. So leave off all references to your steamy dates, and leave off all snide comments about people you work with, or know socially.

As for your Facebook addiction, I can offer little help there. I have the same addiction, and I rationalize it this way: There are worse things to get hooked on.In time there may be a 12-step program for us, but until then I'll just have to learn to control my addictive behavior.

Best Buy calls Twitter a job qualification

Employment ad asks for "250 plus followers" on social networking site
By Paul McNamara on Mon, 07/13/09 - 10:46am on Buzzblog.

Twitter skeptics -- and they remain legion -- will find the idea silly … but it's not, particularly not in this case.

Of course Best Buy should be seeking Twitter experience in a candidate for a senior manager's position in "emerging media." Who would dream of landing such a job without first-hand knowledge of the most-hyped emerging medium in recent memory?

But that's not to say the company is going about measuring Twitter savvy in the right manner; its not.

Nor does it answer the more difficult question of who among us needs to be on Twitter for the sake of our employers and our careers. (It's a question we're grappling with right now at Network World.)

From a Computerworld Canada story:

A recent job posting on Best Buy Co Inc.’s Web site for a Senior Manager – Emerging Media Marketing position based out of the company’s corporate headquarters in Richfield, Minn. listed two preferred job qualifications: a graduate degree and 250+ followers on Twitter.

Basic qualifications for the position include a Bachelor’s degree, “two plus years of mobile or social media marketing experience” at the director or strategist level, “four plus years people or resource leadership experience” and “one plus years of active blogging experience."

Again, I'd want any candidate for such a job to be an active blogger and have a hand in Twitter. However, an arbitrary number of Twitter followers will not separate the dabblers from the more meaningfully experienced, as was noted by employment experts quoted in the story.

Anyone can accumulate followers on Twitter. The real questions are whether you're actively participating and realizing any tangible benefits from that participation.

Although I'm not interested in working for Best Buy, I do meet the company's Twitter threshold, having attracted 1,653 followers since taking the plunge eight months ago. Over that span, I have sent 2,552 Twitter messages -- roughly 10 Tweets a day, seven days a week. While not by any stretch a Twitter heavyweight, that does put me in the top 1 percent of 2.7 million accounts tracked by TwitterGrader.com.

Yet I remain wholly unconvinced that everyone needs to be on Twitter.

Yes for would-be senior managers of emerging media. Yes for technology trade-press editors. No for CEOs. (A recent survey showed only two Fortune 100 CEOs are on Twitter, and it seems to me they have more to explain than the non-Tweeting 98.) Maybe for most everyone else.

As for you, your job and your future aspirations? The best way to find out is to give Twitter a shot. It's free, it can't hurt, you might find you like it … and you never know when you might need a job at Best Buy.

(Update: Just stumbled across this item noting that Best Buy in general is big on Twitter and that company CEO Brian Dunn has an account, albeit one that just barely would qualify him for employment in his marketing department.)

Tough job market for teens

Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 10:08am EDT

Atlanta Business Chronicle

Companies are hiring more teens this summer, compared to a year ago, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

But at the current pace, it would still be the second-worst job market for teens since the late 1950s, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Companies hired 111,000 teens in May, followed by 698,000 in June — or a total of 809,000 jobs this summer. That’s about 10,000 more than the first two months of summer 2008.
Last year, companies hired 1.17 million 16- to 19-year-olds, the lowest since 976,000 teens in 1954.

“While summer hiring among teens is by no means robust, it has been stronger than expected, particularly in light of this recession’s impact on retailers, restaurants, tourist destinations and other businesses that are typically the biggest recruiters of teenagers during the summer months,” said John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
The company estimates more than 1 million teens will find work this summer.

“For those who are still wanting a summer job, it is not too late to find one,” he said. “Some retailers may add more workers for back-to-school sales. Other employers may need to replace workers who didn’t work out.”