Benefit management

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brought the crowd to its feet in a standing ovation at the opening keynote session of this year’s Society for Human Resource Management conference being held in Atlanta this week.

Companies that measure corporate culture have more engaged and committed employees, according to the results of a study from Critical Metrics, LLC. The findings also revealed that although most employees and senior leaders think that measuring corporate culture is important, few companies measure it, and even fewer do it well.

While the vast majority of companies involved in mergers and acquisitions use retention agreements to retain key talent, a new survey by global professional services company Towers Watson shows companies that are more successful at retention begin the process early — identifying people and tactics — and don’t rely solely on money.

The lines of demarcation between work and life beyond office walls may have largely disappeared in many organizations, but that’s not to say employees are always accessible when they’re out of the office. With summer officially kicking off on Wednesday, there could be mounting anxiety about reaching vacationing coworkers.

Zone had grown weedy. As the corporate intranet for Quintiles - a biopharmaceutical services company headquartered in North Carolina - QZone had remained virtually unchanged for eight years. It was a fairly traditional intranet containing corporate news, links to various applications and calendars, along with benefits information. But it had stopped growing and evolving with the rest of the company's digital strategy. It was time for a change.

When you know better, you do better, so the saying goes. For Brocade, a Silicon Valley-based high-tech company, the knowing came in the form of a trust survey the organization conducted in 2009 as part of its participation in the Great Place to Work Institute surveys. That trust index survey revealed that women ranked Brocade lower than their male counterparts in 95% of categories. And even though Brocade ranked high overall - achieving a spot on the nation's Great Place to Work list in 2009 - CEO Mike Klayko wanted to dig deeper into what was going on.

Despite national economic and employment uncertainty, many American workers who identify themselves as top performers are thinking about changing jobs. In line with research showing the recent uptick of voluntary turnover in the workplace, the 2012 Aflac WorkForces Report revealed nearly half of U.S. workers (49%) are at least somewhat likely to look for a job this year. More troubling for employers, a majority of those who say they are extremely or very likely to leave their jobs describe themselves as the kind of workers companies need to retain to remain competitive in a tight economy.

The growing trend among employers to enforce company-wide social media policies has sparked the birth of the Password Protection Act of 2012. The new legislation prevents companies from requiring employees to provide access to their personal social networking accounts. While many companies may create a social media policy to protect their corporate reputation, a new Workplace Options and Public Policy Polling survey of American workers shows that companies who scrutinize their employees' personal accounts and social media activity may be doing more harm than good.

After years of declining employee engagement levels around the world, a new analysis released this week by Aon Hewitt showed a positive global shift in employee engagement-or emotional and intellectual involvement in the workplace.

Since its inception in 1994, Citizens Financial Group's sabbatical program has generated more than 48,000 volunteer hours and saved nonprofit organizations more than $1 million. But the benefits of the program go beyond just doing good in the community. The program also acts as a powerful retention and engagement tool.

Teach for America - a nonprofit organization that facilitates teaching opportunities in low-income communities for recent college grads - has grown from a small organization since its launch in 1990 with just a few staff members to one that now employs 1,700 people in 43 regions across the United States.

With the movement from traditional paid leave plans to paid time off banks, many employers may wonder if the switch is effective in managing employee absences. Nearly one in five employees in the United States receive leave in the form of a PTO bank, but the contours of such policies are often little understood — especially outside of the human resources community, according to a new study out by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and CLASP, a nonprofit that works to improve the economic security of low-income families.

At the height of the financial market meltdown in 2008, Leviton — a global manufacturer of electrical wiring equipment — became concerned about employees going into panic mode and either stopping contributions to the company’s 401(k) plan or, even worse, withdrawing money that was already in the plan. It was during that time the company, which has 10,000 employees worldwide, started thinking about auto-enrollment.

During the Great Recession, many companies not only halted hiring, but relocating employees.

Employers are giving employees more flexibility to work from home and work various hours as long as employees get work done, but they’re not willing to pay more for various work-life benefits. This is according to a new study released Monday from the Society for Human Resource Management and the Families and Work Institute.

There were 48.4 million Hispanic people in the U.S. as of 2009, making it the largest ethnicity in the nation. On top of it, Hispanics make up 14.8% of the civilian labor force. Projections suggest that "language minority students" (those who speak a language other than English at home and who have varying levels of proficiency in English) will comprise over 40% of elementary and secondary students by 2030.

As Americans live more of their lives online, perhaps it only makes sense that online recognition has taken off in the corporate context.

Civilian employment costs rose more modestly by 0.4% during the first quarter, primarily because growth in benefits slowed after a sharp rise in last year's fourth quarter, Labor Department data showed last week.

The perception that a connected, mobile workforce can never get away from work is eroding and employers and employees are becoming more comfortable with the advantages mobile technology offers, according to Doug Ring, chief technology officer with Peoplefluent, an HR software and technology company.

Although most Americans still get their health coverage through their jobs, new research from the Employee Benefit Research Institute shows that fewer workers have access to this benefit.