Shift Happens (Education, Globalism, Technology and the Future)

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BusinessWeek's 10 Best Corporate Practices

BusinessWeek recently provided their list of the 10 best corporate practices or the "ideas that make great sense for employees and for the organizations that employ them:

1. Employee-Referral Bonuses
2. Employee-Driven Transfer Policies
3. Van Pools and Subsidized Transportation to Work
4. Town Hall Meetings
5. Ethics Hotline
6. Distance Learning
7. Company-Sponsored Alumni Groups
8. Corporate Social Responsibility Programs
9. Matching Contributions (i.e. 401K or donations)
10. Intranets
    

Read more details on these 10 items at the following link.

10 Best Corporate Practices. [BusinessWeek]

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Is the Impending Talent Shortage in the U.S. a Myth?

It has long been said that the mass retirement of the U.S. Baby Boomers would cause a workforce shortage. See Preparing for Baby Boomer Retirement and Retiring Baby boomer Expected to Hurt U.S. Companies for more information.

However, at least in California it seems that more Baby Boomers (aged 55-64) are working than ever before, not retiring! Should this trend increase the impending workforce shortage may be averted if not at least delayed. According to statistics published in a study by the California Budget Department, the number of Californians ages 55 to 64 who are working has grown from 54.2 percent in 1995 to 61.6 percent in 2006.

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

What is the business of managing contingent or contract labor called?

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Top 5 Benefits and Risks of Outsourcing

WORKFORCE VISION: The cost advantages of outsourcing functional areas, of nearly any organization, seemly continue to outweigh the drawbacks. Rising wages and declining service quality should stabilize as global penetration of outsourcing matures. Until that time it is recommended that companies research their potential outsourcing vendors deeply (including references) in order to minimize their change of failure.

PricewaterhouseCoopers in their outstanding report "Key Trends in Human Capital - A Global Perspective - 2006" report outline their top 5 Benefits and Risk of Outsourcing:

Key Trends in Human Capital - A Global Perspective - 2006. [PricewaterhouseCoopers]

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

"Major Implications for Workplace Free Speech" - 2007 CLAY Award Recipient Adam Levin

CONGRATULATIONS to Workforce Vision friend Adam Levin on his 2007 California Lawyer Attorney of the Year Award (CLAY). The CLAY award is known as the most prestigious award for California attorneys and Levin is one of the top employment lawyers in the State. Levin's "sexual harassment defense of Warner Bros. before the California Supreme Court in 'Friends' case had major implications for workplace free speech...At stake was freedom of speech within the work environment to address potentially offensive topics such as sex, race and religion in the logical course of doing one's job whether writing for a TV sitcom, discussing stories in a newsroom or academic discussion in a university classroom."

We recommend you read Levin's article - "So This Guy Walks Into a Bar . . . .": Dirty Jokes and Vulgar Language in the Workplace After the California Supreme Court’s “Friends” Decision (PDF) to learn more about whether or not your employees maybe crossing the legal line. Read the press on Levin's CLAY Award below.

MS&K Partner Adam Levin Receives 2007 CLAY Award

Levin’s sexual harassment defense of Warner Bros. before the California Supreme Court in “Friends” case had major implications for workplace free speech

Los Angeles, CA--Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP, a leading California law firm that has provided integrated legal and business solutions for nearly 100 years, announced that Adam Levin, a partner in the firm’s Litigation practice, has been selected as a California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (CLAY) award winner by California Lawyer magazine.

“Adam’s selection as a California Lawyer of the Year is well deserved,” said Thomas Lambert, managing partner of Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp. “He is among the most creative and skillful trial lawyers I have seen in action and a major strength to our firm.”

California Lawyer received nearly 200 submissions for the prestigious award. The winners were selected by the publication’s editors for making a significant impact on the law, the profession, an industry, public policy, for a client or for the benefit of the public in 2006 that is expected to have a significant impact on the law.

Levin received his CLAY award for successfully litigating Lyle v. Warner Bros. Television Production before the California Supreme Court, where he obtained a unanimous decision in favor of several writers and the producers of the hit television series "Friends" in a wrongful termination and harassment suit brought by former writers' assistant Amaani Lyle. Lyle, who admitted she had been warned before taking the job that writers could get raucous during the creative process, claimed their discussions went far beyond the scope of the show, including frequent discussions of their personal sexual experiences.

At stake was freedom of speech within the work environment to address potentially offensive topics such as sex, race and religion in the logical course of doing one's job whether writing for a TV sitcom, discussing stories in a newsroom or academic discussion in a university classroom. Named one of Daily Journal Extra's “Top 20 Lawyers Under Age 40 in California” in 2005, Levin has established himself as one of the leading labor and employment lawyers in California.

Levin represents employers in all areas of labor and employment law, including serving as lead counsel in numerous employment discrimination, wrongful termination, trade secret/unfair competition and right of publicity cases, labor arbitrations, National Labor Relations Board hearings and other administrative proceedings with a focus on the motion picture and television; video game; advertising; and broadcast industries.

About Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp Established in 1908, Mitchell Silberberg's 125 attorneys provide integrated legal
and business solutions addressing its clients' concerns in the following areas: Labor and Employment; Intellectual Property and Technology; Entertainment and New Media; Immigration and Benefits; Tax and Family Wealth Planning; and Environmental Law. Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP has offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. For more information, visit http://www.msk.com

"So This Guy Walks Into a Bar . . . .": Dirty Jokes and Vulgar Language in the Workplace After the California Supreme Court’s “Friends” Decision. [Adam Levin, Taylor Ball - Mitchell Silberber & Knupp]

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

CEOs Hired From 'Outside' Cost Much More Than Internal Promotions

Jeff Nash of Financial Week writes, "According to a new study, companies pay their chief executives nearly three times more when they hire them from outside the company than if they promote from within."

Nash continues, "In the first year of employment, CEOs snagged from the outside earned median pay of $13 million in 2005, compared with $5 million for those appointed from the inside." "Just 15% of the directors said their boards were "highly effective" in managing and developing their executive talent."

A New Boss From Outside Costs More ... a Lot More. [Financial Week - Jeff Nash]

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

For US Teens Unemployment Levels Rival Those of the Great Depression

The March 7th article "Why Teens Aren't Finding Jobs, and Why Employers Are Paying the Price" explains how and why teens are undergoing their own "Great Depression". The ramifications of US teens missing important early career lessons is expected to cause long-term labor challenges. Here are some highlights from that article:

• Teen unemployment at historic highs 2004-2007 - At one point, 70% of newspaper carriers in the U.S. were teens. But that number dropped to 18% in 2004. According to data gathered for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 37% of teens nationwide worked in the summer of 2006 -- nearly 11% fewer than were working in 1989, the peak of a nation-wide economic boom.

• Lack of work ethic or lack of opportunity? - "We often ask, 'What's wrong with this generation? They don't have any work ethic?' but a deeper analysis shows they haven't had the same employment opportunities their parents and older siblings once had," says Neil Sullivan, executive director of the Boston Private Industry Council, a business-led intermediary organization that seeks to strengthen Boston's workforce. As a result, employers are finding that entry-level employees are lacking in what Sullivan calls "the habits of paid work."

• Unemployment rivaling the Depression - "When you ask teens if they want to work, a large number of kids say they simply can't find a job," says a professor of labor economics. For the summer of 2006, according to the labor bureau statistics, teens had an unemployment rate of 16.5% -- four times higher than that of adults during the same period. "If adult employment fell by the same rate teen employment has in the last 10 years, that would be greatest job loss in American history since the Depression."

• Teens missing important lessons - "Working as a team, completing tasks and taking responsibility. Kids learn these skills through employment," says Ivan Charner, director of the Academy of Educational Development/National Institute for Work and Learning, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit concerned with workplace development. "Can you learn those skills by playing a sport or volunteering at church? Yes, but if you are a volunteer, you don't necessarily have to show up. A lot of kids don't or can't play sports. Employment provides an important opportunity for kids to learn from adults other than their teachers or parents."
• Catch 22 for teens - You can't land a job when you don't have experience, and you can't get experience unless you have had a job. Experts agree. "Employment is what we call 'path dependent, the more you work now, the more you will work later."

• If not teens then who? - "Employers are hiring immigrants instead of kids, especially in the last six years," he notes. Hiring one immigrant often leads to hiring more, because hiring usually happens through social networks. Another group replacing teens are workers 55 and older seeking to supplement their incomes. "If you walk into a mall or a grocery store, you'll see large numbers of older people working at jobs teens used to have," says Sum.

• Long-term effects on US labor and competition - "How can the United States continue to compete in a global economy if the entering workforce is made up of high school graduates who lack the skills they need, and of college graduates who are mostly 'adequate' rather than 'excellent'?" write the presidents of the study's four collaboratingorganizations.

Why Teens Aren't Finding Jobs, and Why Employers Are Paying the Price. [Knowledge @ Wharton]

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

NASA's Human Capital Strategy

With the highly complex, expensive, and risky missions of NASA surely their Human Capital Management strategy must be of critical importance to their success. This strategy is available to view here and outlines the following subjects:

• Overview
• Introduction
• Drivers
• Architecture & Improvement Initiatives
• Pillar 1 - Strategic Alignment
• Pillar 2 - Strategic Competencies
• Pillar 3 - Learning
• Pillar 4 - Performance Culture
• Pillar 5 - Leadership
• Implementation
• Measurement
• Accountability for Results
• App-A: Roles and Responsibilities
• App-B: NASA's Human Capital Challenge
• HCM Plan (Printable Version
• Implementation Plan (Printable Version)
• Implementation Plan
• Human Capital Accomplishment Report (PDF)
• Integrated Human Capital Management Tools
• Human Capital Legislation (HCL)

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Nobel Prize Winner Explains Human Capital

An explanation of HUMAN CAPITAL by Gary S. Becker, 1992 Nobel Prize winner for Economics:

HUMAN CAPITAL To most people capital means a bank account, a hundred shares of IBM stock, assembly lines, or steel plants in the Chicago area. These are all forms of capital in the sense that they are assets that yield income and other useful outputs over long periods of time. But these tangible forms of capital are not the only ones. Schooling, a computer training course, expenditures of medical care, and lectures on the virtues of punctuality and honesty also are capital. That is because they raise earnings, improve health, or add to a person's good habits over much of his lifetime. Therefore, economists regard expenditures on education, training, medical care, and so on as investments in human capital. They are called human capital because people cannot be separated from their knowledge, skills, health, or values in the way they can be separated from their financial and physical assets. Education and training are the most important investments in human capital. Many studies have shown that high school and college education in the United States greatly raise a person's income, even after netting out direct and indirect costs of schooling, and even after adjusting for the fact that people with more education tend to have higher IQs and better-educated and richer parents. Similar evidence is now available for many years from over a hundred countries with different cultures and economic systems. The earnings of more educated people are almost always well above average, although the gains are generally larger in less developed countries. Consider the differences in average earnings between college and high school graduates in the United States during the past fifty years. Until the early sixties college graduates earned about 45 percent more than high school graduates. In the sixties this premium from college education shot up to almost 60 percent, but it fell back in the seventies to under 50 percent. The fall during the seventies led some economists and the media to worry about "overeducated Americans." Indeed, in 1976 Harvard economist Richard Freeman wrote a book titled The Overeducated American. This sharp fall in the return to investments in human capital put the concept of human capital itself into some disrepute. Among other things it caused doubt about whether education and training really do raise productivity or simply provide signals ("credentials") about talents and abilities. But the monetary gains from a college education rose sharply again during the eighties, to the highest level in the past fifty years. Economists Kevin M. Murphy and Finis Welch have shown that the premium on getting a college education in the eighties was over 65 percent. Lawyers, accountants, engineers, and many other professionals experienced especially rapid advances in earnings. The earnings advantage of high school graduates over high school dropouts has also greatly increased. Talk about overeducated Americans has vanished, and it has been replaced by concern once more about whether the United States provides adequate quality and quantity of education and other training. This concern is justified. Real wage rates of young high school dropouts have fallen by more than 25 percent since the early seventies, a truly remarkable decline. Whether because of school problems, family instability, or other factors, young people without a college or a full high school education are not being adequately prepared for work in modern economies. Thinking about higher education as an investment in human capital helps us understand why the fraction of high school graduates who go to college increases and decreases from time to time. When the benefits of a college degree fell in the seventies, for example, the fraction of white high school graduates who started college fell, from 51 percent in 1970 to 46 percent in 1975. Many educators expected enrollments to continue declining in the eighties, partly because the number of eighteen-year-olds was declining, but also because college tuition was rising rapidly. They were wrong about whites. The fraction of white high school graduates who enter college rose steadily in the eighties, reaching 60 percent in 1988, and caused an absolute increase in the number of whites enrolling despite the smaller number of college-age people. This makes sense. The benefits of a college education, as noted, increased in the eighties. And tuition and fees, although they rose about 39 percent from 1980 to 1986 in real, inflation-adjusted terms, are not the only cost of going to college. Indeed, for most college students they are not even the major cost. On average, three-fourths of the private cost—the cost borne by the student and by the student's family—of a college education is the income that college students give up by not working. A good measure of this "opportunity cost" is the income that a newly minted high school graduate could earn by working full-time. And during the eighties this forgone income, unlike tuition, did not rise in real terms. Therefore, even a 39 percent increase in real tuition costs translated into an increase of just 10 percent in the total cost to students of a college education. The economics of human capital also account for the fall in the fraction of black high school graduates who went on to college in the early eighties. As Harvard economist Thomas J. Kane has pointed out, costs rose more for black college students than for whites. That is because a higher percentage of blacks are from low-income families and, therefore, had been heavily subsidized by the federal government. Cuts in federal grants to them in the early eighties substantially raised their cost of a college education. According to the 1982 "Report of the Commission on Graduate Education" at the University of Chicago, demographic-based college enrollment forecasts had been wide of the mark during the twenty years prior to that time. This is not surprising to a "human capitalist." Such forecasts ignored the changing incentives—on the cost side and on the benefit side—to enroll in college. The economics of human capital have brought about a particularly dramatic change in the incentives for women to invest in college education in recent decades. Prior to the sixties American women were more likely than men to graduate from high school but less likely to continue on to college. Women who did go to college shunned or were excluded from math, sciences, economics, and law, and gravitated toward teaching, home economics, foreign languages, and literature. Because relatively few married women continued to work for pay, they rationally chose an education that helped in "household production"—and no doubt also in the marriage market—by improving their social skills and cultural interests. All this has changed radically. The enormous increase in the labor participation of married women is the most important labor force change during the past twenty-five years. Many women now take little time off from their jobs even to have children. As a result the value to women of market skills has increased enormously, and they are bypassing traditional "women's" fields to enter accounting, law, medicine, engineering, and other subjects that pay well. Indeed, women nowcomprise one-third or so of enrollments in law, business, and medical schools, and many home economics departmentshave either shut down or are emphasizing the "new home economics." Improvements in the economic position of black women have been especially rapid, and they now earn just about as much as white women. Of course, formal education is not the only way to invest in human capital. Workers also learn and are trained outside of schools, especially on jobs. Even college graduates are not fully prepared for the labor market when they leave school, and are fitted into their jobs through formal and informal training programs. The amount of on-the-job training ranges from an hour or so at simple jobs like dishwashing to several years at complicated tasks like engineering in an auto plant. The limited data available indicates that on-the-job training is an important source of the very large increase in earnings that workers get as they gain greater experience at work. Recent bold estimates by Columbia University economist Jacob Mincer suggest that the total investment in on-the-job training may be well over $100 billion a year, or almost 2 percent of GNP. No discussion of human capital can omit the influence of families on the knowledge, skills, values, and habits of their children. Parents affect educational attainment, marital stability, propensities to smoke and to get to work on time, as well as many other dimensions of their children's lives. The enormous influence of the family would seem to imply a very close relation between the earnings, education, and occupations of parents and children. Therefore, it is rather surprising that the positive relation between the earnings of parents and children is not strong, although the relation between the years of schooling of parents and children is stronger. For example, if fathers earn 20 percent above the mean of their generation, sons at similar ages tend to earn about 8 percent above the mean of theirs. Similar relations hold in Western European countries, Japan, Taiwan, and many other places. The old adage of "from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" is no myth; the earnings of grandsons and grandparents are hardly related. Apparently, the opportunities provided by a modern economy, along with extensive public support of education, enable the majority of those who come from lower-income backgrounds to do reasonably well in the labor market. The same opportunities that foster upward mobility for the poor create an equal amount of downward mobility for those higher up on the income ladder. The continuing growth in per capita incomes of many countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is partly due to the expansion of scientific and technical knowledge that raises the productivity of labor and other inputs in production. And the increasing reliance of industry on sophisticated knowledge greatly enhances the value of education, technical schooling, on-the-job training, and other human capital. New technological advances clearly are of little value to countries that have very few skilled workers who know how to use them. Economic growth closely depends on the synergies between new knowledge and human capital, which is why large increases in education and training have accompanied major advances in technological knowledge in all countries that have achieved significant economic growth. The outstanding economic records of Japan, Taiwan, and other Asian economies in recent decades dramatically illustrate the importance of human capital to growth. Lacking natural resources—they import almost all their energy, for example—and facing discrimination against their exports by the West, these so-called Asian tigers grew rapidly by relying on a well-trained, educated, hardworking, and conscientious labor force that makes excellent use of modern technologies. About the Author Gary S. Becker is University Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago and the Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. He was a pioneer in the study of human capital. He won the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Further Reading Becker, Gary S. Human Capital. 1975. Freeman, Richard. The Overeducated American. 1976. Kane, Thomas J. "College Entry by Blacks since 1970: The Role of Tuition, Financial Aid, Local Economic Conditions, and Family Background." Unpublished manuscript, 1990. Murphy, Kevin M., and Finis Welch. "Wage Premiums for College Graduates: Recent Growth and Possible Explanations." Educational Researcher 18 (1989): 17-27. "Report of the Commission on Graduate Education." University of Chicago Record 16, no. 2 (May 3, 1982): 67-180.

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

The Future of Staffing is Crowdsourcing

In my humble opinion the future of staffing lies in Crowdsourcing. Individual recruiters in local markets, with local connections and local talent pools will be able to recruit for open positions much faster and less expensive than the branch staffing and internal HR department models of today.

To better understand crowdsourcing and how it may impact talent acquisition I recommend watching this video of Don Tapscott, best selling author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, as he speaks at a recent tech conference. Also view the website of Cambrian House, the Canadian Crowdsourcing company that hosts the video. If you don't have time to watch the whole video I recommend moving ahead to the 36th minute where the evolution of Crowdsourcing is explained:

00:36:17

Economic Revolution. Crowdsourcing as natural extension of decreasing transaction costs which have been steadily dropping ever since industrial age. Industrial Age. Extended Enterprise. Business Webs. Mass Collaboration.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Interesting Contingent Workforce blog posts for the week of March 1 - 7th

Bill Gates: Skilled foreign minds needed in US or competitive ...

6 hours ago by Bill Inman ... so the nation can double the number of graduates in those areas by 2015. See the whole story at the financial times here. Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing. Workforce Vision - http://workforcevision.blogspot.com/index.html [ More results from Workforce Vision ]

Japan’s newly contingent workforce

5 Mar 2007 by z One of the key reasons for the rise of depression, dissatisfaction and malaise in modern Japan is the changing nature of work, and the decline of community within Japan. I’ve just read a piece by Masahiko Ishizuka, originally published ... AsiaFile - http://www.shuttingoutthesun.com/wordpress

Levi Strauss & Co. To Participate in Contingent Workforce ...

5 Mar 2007 Original post by Levi Strauss & Co. and software by Elliott Back. RetailInsider.net - http://www.retailinsider.net

HOME BASED BUSINESS - THE CONTINGENT WORK FORCE!

3 Mar 2007 by Howard Hanson Many of these individuals became a part of what has come to be called the contingent workforce. The contingent workforce consists of temporary, part-time, contract and leased employees along with people who simply decided the time was ... HOME BASED BUSINESS COMMUNITY - http://homebasedbusinesscommunity.blogspot.com/index.html

Albany Acquires eWork Services to Expand US Contingent Workforce ...3 Mar 2007 by HR Marketer
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—March 1, 2007—Albany, a leader in global contingent workforce management services, announced the acquisition of eWork Services, Inc., a specialist in contractor payrolling services and 1099 compliance. ...
Breaking Human Resource News - http://www.hrmarketer.com/~blog/index.html

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Bill Gates: Skilled foreign minds needed in U.S. or competitive advantage might be lost

Before a U.S. Sentate panel on March 7th Bill Gates competitive advantage is being threatened by U.S. immigration laws. Gates wants to lift the U.S. restriction of temporary H-1B visas, which allows foreign workers with at least a bachelor's degree to work in the U.S. from 65,000 a year.

'We are failing to live up to our obligation to make the investments needed to make sure that the U.S. remains competitive in the future,' Gates told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. 'Our economic future is in peril.'

Gates said the United States should strengthen math, technology and science education so the nation can double the number of graduates in those areas by 2015.

See the whole story at the financial times here.

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

How Companies Find Candidates to Hire - CareerXroads 2006 Study

A recent CareerXroads study, conducted by Jerry Crispin and Mark Mehler, was conducted to reveal how companies found new candidates in 2006. Here are the results:

Click on Image to Zoom In

Data was gathered by:
* CareerXroads asked 200 major companies to participate; 54 firms responded within 30 days, and of that number, 40 submitted fully qualifying information.
* The 40 companies participating in the survey employ 1,281,429 people.
* 1,880 recruiters filled 207,702 full-time U.S. openings in 2006.
* Approximately 60% of all the hires reported were for exempt-level employees (58% of internal fills and 64% of external fills.)
* Contract, part-time, and contingent workers are a growing percentage of the workforce; only 10% of the respondents have no contract workers.

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Human Capital - 5 Questions with Capital H CEO Weinfurter

Daniel Weinfurter, CEO of rapidly growing HRO/RPO Capital H, recently discussed the value of human capital to today's succesful companies with The Houston Chronicle. Here are the five questions asked of him by L.M. Sixel of The Houston Chronicle along these lines.

Q: What is the most significant trend in human resources today?

A: I'd say it's the realization, finally, that the people, regardless of the business you are in, end up being the only sustainable competitive advantage. So you better get the people part of your business right. People have always talked about product, strategy and technology, and those are important. But all of those and others are dependent on the people to get them right.

Q: Executives are fond of saying, "Our people are our most important asset." Do CEOs really believe that, or is it just lip service to the politically correct thing to say?

A: I think most CEOs on an intellectual level would agree that people are their most important asset. The actual behavior, though, varies widely. To really gauge a CEO's belief that people matter, you have to look at what they do in more difficult times.

It's easy to have a positive approach when everything is going well, but what happens when business conditions become more difficult or the business situation changes, and does the CEO really place the right level of importance to staying connected with the people to execute the strategy?

Companies can spend hours and hours analyzing the numbers, but nowhere near as much time is spent analyzing the capabilities of the management team, the culture and the softer aspects that ultimately drive the success of a business.

Q: What's on the mind these days of the human resources manager?

A: The human resources manager wants to be viewed as wanting to help drive the strategy of the business and how they help in that role. It's no longer strictly concerned with benefits, retirement and compliance.

Q: Why don't most human resources executives have a place at the board table?

A: I'd say that many do, and the trend is increasingly moving in that direction. Their ability to really get a seat at the table is largely based on demonstrating what they do impacts the results of the business — putting an organizational structure in place with the right people to execute the strategy of the business.

Just managing health care costs doesn't cut it, even though it's an important activity.

Q: Why do people change jobs? Is it money, a lack of challenge or something else?

A: There are two to three primary reasons. More often than not, people quit their boss, not the company or the job.

Second would be the nature of the work is no longer interesting or challenging. Third, they don't believe in the vision or the integrity or the values of senior management.

Well down the list is pay, even though it's often cited as the primary cause. That's because it's objective and easy to explain. But in our view it's not a root cause.

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

Meet the 2007 Global Services 100

Global Services, an integrated media brand servicing corporate professionals engaged in the sourcing and management of business and technology services, recently provided their list of the world's most innovative providers (prepared in conjunction with neoIT ). These providers are, for the most part, business outsourcing services working within 11 different functions; including IT, Call Center, Managed Services, and Engineering.

Company	CEO	URL
24/7 Customer	P.V. Kannan	www.247customer.com
Accenture	Bill Green	www.accenture.com
Affiliated Computer Services	Lynn Blodgett	www.acs-inc.com
Augmentum	Leonard Liu	www.augmentum.com
Auriga	Alexis Sukharev	www.auriga.com
Bleum	Eric Rongley	www.bleum.com
Caliber Point	Ashok Bildikar	www.caliberpoint.com
Cambridge Solutions	Chris Sinclair	www.cambridgeworldwide.com
Capgemini	Paul Hermelin	www.capgemini.com
CGI Group	Michael E. Roach	www.cgi.com
ClientLogic	David Garner	www.clientlogic.com
Cognizant Technology Solutions	Francisco D'Souza	www.cognizant.com
Convergys	James F. Orr	www.convergys.com
Covansys	Rajendra B. Vattikuti	www.covansys.com
CPM	Antonio Carlos Rego Gil	www.cpminternational.com
Darwin Suzsoft	Dan Ross	www.darwinsuzsoft.com
DataArt	Michael Zaitsev	www.dataart.com
DBA	Danilo Meth	www.dba.com.br
Dextra Technologies	Daniel Chavez	www.dextratech.com
e4e	Somshankar Das	www.e4e.com
ea Consulting Asia Pacific	Chin King Wong	www.eacap.com
EDS	Michael H. Jordan	www.eds.com
EPAM Systems	Arkadiy Dobkin	www.epam.com
Etech	Dilip Barot	www.etechinc.com
ExlService Holdings	Vikram Talwar	www.exlservice.com
FCG Software Services	Subramaniam Ramachandran	www.fcg.com
Freeborders	John Cestar	www.freeborders.com
Genpact	Pramod Bhasin	www.genpact.com
Globant	Martin Migoya	www.globant.com
HCL Technologies	Shiv Nadar	www.hcltech.com
Headstrong	Arjun Malhotra	www.headstrong.com
Hispanic Teleservices	Alberto Fernandez	www.htc.to
HTC Global Services	Madhava Reddy	www.htcinc.com
Hinduja TMT	Partha D Sarkar	www.hindujatmt.com
I.T. United	Cyrill Eltschinger	www.ituc.com
IBA Group	Sergei Levteev	www.iba-it-group.com
IBM	Samuel J. Palmisano	www.ibm.com
ICT Group	John J. Brennan	www.ictgroup.com
i-flex solutions	Deepak Ghaisas	www.iflexsolutions.com
Infinite Computer Solutions	Upinder Zutshi	www.infics.com
Informatica Integral Empresarial	Antonio Velasco	www.sinersys.com.mx
Infosys Technologies	Nandan M Nilekani	www.infosys.com
Innominds Software	Rao Vemula	www.innominds.com
Intelenet Global Services	Susir Kumar	www.intelenetglobal.com
Intetics	Boris Kontsevoi	www.intetics.com
ITC Infotech	Sanjiv Puri	www.itcinfotech.com
Kepler - Rominfo	Petrisor Guta	www.kepler-rominfo.com
Knoah Solutions	Myneni	www.knoah.com
Lason	Ronald D. Risher	www.lason.com
Lohika Systems	Daniel Dargham	www.lohika.com
Longtop	Eric Liang	www.longtopinternational.com
Luxoft	Dmitry Loschinin	www.luxoft.com
marketRx	Jaswinder S. Chadha	www.marketrx.com
Mastek	Sudhakar Ram	www.mastek.com
MERA Networks	Dmitry M. Ponomarev	www.meranetworks.com
Microland	Pradeep Kar	www.microland.com
MindTree Consulting	Ashok Soota	www.mindtree.com
Mistral Software	Anees Ahmed	www.mistralsoftware.com
Motif	John Coker	www.motifinc.com
MphasiS	Jaithirth Rao	www.mphasis.com
NCO Group	Michael Barrist	www.ncogroup.com
Neoris	Claudio Muruzabal	www.neoris.com
Ness Technologies	Raviv Zoller	www.ness.com
Neusoft Group	Jiren Liu	www.neusoft.com
NIIT SmartServe	Paul Barrow	www.niitsmartserve.com
Objectiva Software Solutions	Douglas Winter	www.objectivasoftware.com
Ocwen Financial	William C. Erbey	www.ocwen.com
OfficeTiger	Randolph Altschuler and Joseph Sigelman	www.officetiger.com
Outsource Partners International	Clarence T. Schmitz	www.opiglobal.com
Patni Computer Systems	N.K. Patni	www.patni.com
Perot Systems	Peter Atlabef	www.perotsystems.com
Polaris	Arun Jain	www.polaris-america.com
Politec	HÉlio Oliveira	www.politec.com
Promantra Synergy Solutions	Praveen Vadlamudi	www.promantra.net
QuEST	Ajit A. Prabhu	www.quest-global.com
Sapient	Jerry Greenberg	www.sapient.com
Satyam Computer Services	B. Rama Raju	www.satyam.com
Scicom (MSC) Berhad	Leo Ariyanayakam	www.scicom-intl.com
Sierra Atlantic	Raju Reddy	www.SierraAtlantic.com
Sinapsis Technologies	Gerardo Rodriguez	www.sinapsis.com
SnT Global	David Wong	www.sntglobal.com
SoftServe	Taras Kytsmey	www.softservecom.com
Softtek	Blanca TreviÑo	www.softtek.com
Sonata Software	B. Ramaswamy	www.sonata-software.com
SPI Technologies	Ernest Cu	www.spi-bpo.com
StarSoft Development Labs	Nick Puntikov	www.starsoftlabs.com
Stream	Toni Portmann	www.stream.com
Summit HR Worldwide	Ranjan Sinha	www.summithrww.com
Sutherland Global Services	Dilip R. Vellodi	www.suth.com
Symphony Services	Gordon Brooks	www.symphonysv.com
Syntel	Bharat Desai	www.syntelinc.com
Tata Consultancy Services	S. Ramadorai	www.tcs.com
TransWorks Information Services	Atul Kunwar	www.transworks.com
Unisys	Joseph W. McGrath	www.unisys.com
vCustomer	Sanjay Kumar	www.vcustomer.com
Vee Technologies	Chocko Valliappa	www.veetechnologies.com
Vsource Asia	Jack Cantillon	www.vsourceasia.com
Wipro Technologies	Azim H. Premji	www.wipro.com
WNS	Neeraj Bhargava	www.wnsgs.com
Zensar Technologies	Ganesh Natarajan	www.zensar.com

Meet the Global Services 100. [Global Services - Rusty Weston]

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing