Executive Pay

The concept of executive pay is certainly one where the political ramifications can kick in. Last night, at the Oscars, the winner for Best Documentary was about the Wall Street crisis, and when the director went up to accept his award, and in his speech, roundly criticized executives in the banking industry. People on both sides of the aisle constantly go after executives and their 8 figure salaries, calling them greed mongers and similar slurs.
However, it appears that some of them DO have human bones in their body. Not to come out and demonize or sanctify them, but there are often times where we forget that these are people who have hopes and dreams. This article talks about a survey given to a number of executives who said that they would take a pay-cut of up to 50% in order to be given their "dream job." Now, "50% of what absurd salary are they making now?" is a perfectly valid question to ask, but it is kind of nice to see that these people may actually care about things other than the almighty dollar.
http://www.recruiter.co.uk/executives-would-take-pay-cut-to-get-dream-job/1008737.article

Benefits and Unions

The recent unrest in Wisconsin between the new uber-Conservative governor and the unions has caught the nation's attention. The Governor is refusing to bargain with the unions and has set that his plan is the only way that Wisconsin will be able to return to fiscal balance. The unions, after initially refusing to compromise, are now currently trying to reach out to the governor and reach some kind of deal. Protests have shut down sections of Madison, and in Milwaukee, schools had to shut down on Friday because so many teachers called in "sick" in protest.
These types of unions are "Public Unions", which negotiate their contracts with politicians, often the same politicians who just took a huge campaign donation from those unions while they were running for office. There is another kind of union, which is the type that you are probably a member of, unless you work for a government agency or a related field. These are called "Private Unions" and they deal with management in their company and have historically not come away with the lucrative deals that Public Unions have in the past. This recent article from the Washington Post talks about some of the other differences between the two, and the growing annoyance that Private Unions are beginning to develop towards Public ones.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-turn/2011/02/public_employee_unions_vs_the.html

Human Resource Development

One of the key components of Human Resource Development is continuing education in all fields in order to keep your workforce as productive as possible. In order to keep up with the changes in technology, it seems like employees need to be trained almost monthly to understand the latest iThing or software update. Without it, other companies who do handle technological change and Human Resource Development better will leave you in their dust.

This is also true on an international level. Countries that keep their workers educated in the coming years will gain a huge advantage as globalization continues to "shrink the globe" so to speak. As China continues to close in on the US as the world power (They passed Japan last year to become number 2, as this article from Bloomberg points out: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-14/japan-s-economy-shrank-at-1-1-annual-pace-gdp-surpassed-by-china-in-2010.html ), people talk about how our workforce needs to work better and work smarter. This is there Human Resource Development will play a key role if we are to remain "Number One". This article from the International News Network shows the stats behind a number of Asian nations that are improving on the global level through technology and strong training programs. http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=175017

Recruitment in the Digital Age

It's a bit unfortunate that this week's topic is on Recruitment, since that's what I picked to write about last week from the text on Social Media, but I'll try and make this one different. The changes in technology that have occurred in the last few years is simply staggering. If you had told someone even 5 years ago that they would be able to carry around a device the size of a picture frame that does everything their desktop did and could connect to the internet with just one push of a button, they'd more than likely be extremely skeptical, to say the least. As technology changes, so too must companies change in order to keep up in every facet of their business. A recruiting firm, such as monster.com, has to find ways to use this new technology to benefit both the companies that use their services to find employees, as well as the people who use the site to post their resumes in hopes of being discovered and recruited by employers. Speaking of monster.com, they have taken advantage of the unique features of the iPad and launched an "App" that will allow users to do a number of things they could not do on the usual mobile devices. Also, they've tailored the app to the unique perspectives that people who use the iPad come to Monster.com for. According to Vasu Nagalingam, Monster.com's senior director of product management: "People looking for a job on a mobile device, what we call seekers, all they want to do is search for jobs and apply for them," he said. "So we don't include things like articles and advice columns as part of the iPad, we just focus on helping them find job opportunities."

Using Social Media to Hire the Right People

On page 78 of the Jue, Alcalde-Marr, and Kassotakis book, Social Media at Work, the text discusses a few of the ways social media can be used in business. One of those is attracting the right (best) employees to your company. So how can you do this through Social Media? Depending on the definition of "social media", there are a number of options. If you consider websites like Monster.com or Craig's List as social media, then these are excellent places to find people to come to your company. 
If not, there are still a number of ways to use social media to hire the right people. You can use a person's already existent social media pages (facebook, Twitter) to check in on them, so to speak. You can examine these pages to see if there are any unsavory pictures, or comments about how much they hate their current place of employment. You can also see if they name names in these posts, because while "I dislike my job" isn't going to score them any points, "My boss, John Smith, is the biggest piece of garbage on Earth" is certainly going to cost them some. In this way, you can use social media to make sure you don't hire the WRONG people. 
The company can also use social media as a recruiting tool. Becoming an active presence on these sights increases your visibility, and opens your company up to a wider pool of applicants. This article from the Huffington Post was written by Kathleen E. Christensen, the Program Director of the Alfred Sloan Foundation. In it, she talks about her company and other successful companies use a number of factors, including social media to increase workplace flexibility to attract the best employees and keep them happy once they have been hired. 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-e-christensen/how-can-you-tell-if-workp_b_816662.html