According to an article in the Wall Street Journal online, a growing number of employers are resorting to salary cuts as the recession drags on.
A January survey by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that of 100 human-resource professionals surveyed, 27.2% reported that their companies have imposed a salary freeze or cut. A February survey of 245 large U.S. companies conducted by human-resource consultants Watson Wyatt Worldwide found that 4% of companies plan to reduce salary over the next year, with 7% already implementing pay cuts.
. . .Other companies have imposed cuts but also added incentives to recoup lost salary.
Some companies are trying to make up for the salary loss by other means.
At Momentive Performance Materials Inc. in Albany, N.Y., a chemicals and specialty materials company with 4,600 global employees, any worker forced to take a pay cut will receive an extra week of paid vacation for each quarter that the reduction remains in place.
Similarly, nonunion New York Times Co. employees were forced to take up to a 5% pay cut, effective this month, but were given 10 vacation days in return. Vail Resorts is granting full-time, year-round employees stock-based incentive compensation on a sliding scale. “It’s partially to ease the blow, but it’s also giving people some ownership to participate in our future success,” says Mr. Katz, the CEO.
This full article can be found here.
Here’s an article from today’s Wall Street Journal that is a good selection to read if your organization is working on job planning for the future. Titled, Some Employers See Hiring Opportunity, it provides a variety of viewpoints about how some organizations are handling the over abundance of job applicants and how they are already starting to look towards future needs:
. . . some employers are seizing the recession as an opportunity to strengthen their talent pool, poach stars from rivals or rebuild after layoffs. Every opening attracts dozens of qualified, and overqualified, applicants. Unemployment is 8.1%, the highest since 1983, and 12.5 million Americans are out of work. Yet the Labor Department says there were fewer than three million job openings in January, the fewest since it began tracking the data in 2000.
Strategically hiring skilled, productive employees can help employers boost efficiency and save money, says DeLynn Senna, executive director of permanent placement services for North America for Robert Half International Inc., a professional staffing firm. Good hiring decisions now may allow companies to best competitors when the economy rebounds, she says.
Many of the employers that are hiring are in sectors such as healthcare, government or utilities, which are still adding jobs.
This article can be found here.
How did you and your office do with April Fool’s Day? Did a provide an opportunity for a little levity in this ever present climate of stress and uncertainty?
Here is an article from ReportonBusiness.com by Wallace Immen on this topic. He says:
Just 11 per cent of 6,940 respondents to an online Globe and Mail poll said they intended to play an April Fool’s Day joke this year.
Even in sunnier times, just 29 per cent of workers said they had initiated or been on the receiving end of an April Fool’s Day prank at work, according to a survey of 6,800 U.S. employees by job site CareerBuilder.com last year.
But that rubber chicken might not be such a bad idea after all, career experts say. Times of gloom like these present a perfect opportunity to try to inject a little mirth into the office, the pros say.
“You need a little insanity to preserve sanity in your office when the mood is as down as it is right now,” says humour-in-the-workplace consultant David Granirer, president of Vancouver-based Tune-In Counselling Services Inc.
Cutbacks, heavier workloads and worries about job security have become the new realities. Left unrelieved, the pressures associated with them are destined to lead to higher stress levels, lower job satisfaction and even physical illness, Mr. Granirer says.
His prescription: “Laughter can be the cure. It’s like a dose of cod liver oil for the soul,” he says.
Read the rest of this article for some good ideas.
Yes, you read the title of this post correctly! And you just knew it was going to happen someday. Somehow, some way, a study would be done to show that all that time you are spending watching YouTube selections and checking your Facebook page would pay off! Well, maybe you didn’t, but here’s the data:
MELBOURNE (Reuters Life!) – Caught Twittering or on Facebook at work? It’ll make you a better employee, according to an Australian study that shows surfing the Internet for fun during office hours increases productivity.
The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not.
Study author Brent Coker, from the department of management and marketing, said “workplace Internet leisure browsing,” or WILB, helped to sharpened workers’ concentration.
“People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration,” Coker said on the university’s website (www.unimelb.edu.au/)
“Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days’ work, and as a result, increased productivity,” he said.
According to the study of 300 workers, 70 percent of people who use the Internet at work engage in WILB.
Among the most popular WILB activities are searching for information about products, reading online news sites, playing online games and watching videos on YouTube.
Coker also said Coker said the study looked at people who browsed in moderation, or were on the Internet for less than 20 percent of their total time in the office.
“Those who behave with Internet addiction tendencies will have a lower productivity than those without,” he said.
So perhaps companies need to update their policies on blocking certain Internet sites and reevaluate their use.
This article came from reuters.