Can Employers Fire Over Facebook Postings?

Firings for Alleged Social-Media Infractions Sometimes Backfire on Companies

Facebook gaffes that can cause trouble in the workplace aren't unique to drunken college students anymore. As more companies and their workers tap into the world of blogs, Twitter and Facebook, employers are tripping over legal potholes in social media.

Next week a National Labor Relations Board judge will consider whether a medical-transportation company illegally fired a worker after she criticized her boss on Facebook, in the federal agency's first complaint linked to social media.

In another case, workers sued a restaurant company when they were dismissed after managers accessed a private Myspace page the employees set up to chat about work.

Job seekers and employees have long been warned that risqué revelations on Facebook can jeopardize career prospects. But now companies are facing their own challenges for alleged blunders in dealing with social media.

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America's Worst Companies to Work For

For the second year in a row, 24/7 Wall St. has identified America’s worst companies to work for. While company management can improve employee satisfaction, most of the companies on our list continue to make workers miserable.
 
In order to identify America’s worst companies to work for, 24/7 Wall St. examined employee reviews at jobs and career community site Glassdoor. Based on the reviews, Glassdoor scores companies on a scale of one to five with an average score of 3.2 for the over 250,000 companies measured. 24/7 Wall St. identified the nine publicly traded companies that received scores of 2.5 or lower.

Certain industries appear more likely to have lower employee satisfaction than others. Four of the companies on this list — Dillard’s Inc. (NYSE: DDS), Sears Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHLD), Dollar General Corp. (NYSE: DG) and RadioShack Corp. (NYSE: RSH) — are in retail. The majority of the others provide services that require installation and repair. These include companies like home security system provider The ADT Corporation (NYSE: ADT), transaction technology company NCR Corp. (NYSE: NCR), and satellite television provider DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ: DISH).

 

See the full list on Yahoo

10 Signs You Respect me as an employee

Does “management” still mean anything in this century?

Companies today realize they need to change their mechanistic, make-the-numbers management, but many struggle to find practical ways to humanize their management styles without losing hard-nosed productivity. Yet, in a fast changing society all agree that employee engagement and creativity are the keys to satisfied customers--and therefore, profits.

Throughout the latter part of the past century, one company has explored a different path. Toyota a small, struggling, automaker in the 1950s discovered a different route to growth based on what Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz describes as seeking dynamic gains rather than static efficiencies.

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Why Employee Engagement Is Critical to Corporate Success

Why engagement matters

As the stats add up, the picture of how disengagement threatens companies continues to sharpen.

·         Only 30% of employees in a recent Gallup poll said they felt engaged by the work they do.

·         Less than half (49%) of the employees surveyed by ADP said they felt their company's executives created an environment that drove high performance.

·         When disengagement leads to employees leaving a company, the cost of training new replacements can represent 48% – 61% of the position's salary, according to the ADP study.

Given those statistics — and the stakes that come with them — it's clear that workplace engagement is key for any corporation looking to stop loss and foster progress.

For some, getting to that goal means revisiting the way workers are empowered and encouraged. With that in mind, let's look at four key strategies for putting engaged employees back at the center of the corporate mission.

Read More on Mashable.com

 

How to Effectively Recruit Top Talent from Within Your Organization

In light of the current job market, most recruiters find themselves inundated by applications for the openings they hope to fill. The problem with this mess of applicants is that a vast majority of them are unqualified, grasping at straws for any job without paying much attention to what those jobs actually entail.

The result is a pile of applications you’re stuck sifting through, wasting your time in search of the needle in the haystack that may or may not exist.

Meanwhile, your organization probably has a largely untapped resource of qualified candidates to choose from. Using your current workforce to fill new openings can have far-reaching benefits. You’ll not only be able to fill positions with talent you know and can vouch for, but can also help create a sense of loyalty among employees.

Read the full story: http://blog.brazencareerist.com/2013/09/10/how-to-effectively-recruit-top-talent-from-within-your-organization/

3 ways to retain and engage your valuable employees

Valuable in-demand leaders are what turn a company from good to great. An organization’s most important asset is its talented, high-performing employees. Companies that prioritize retaining valued employees understand retention’s direct impact on their success.

To maintain the company’s greatness, it must commit and invest resources in the vast pool of quality talent across the company. The most effective way to maintain a competitive advantage in today’s marketplace is to fully utilize your top performers. This will directly differentiate your company from its competition.

But how do you do this? Begin to implement these three strategies today:

Read the full story:

http://smartblogs.com/leadership/2013/08/19/3-ways-to-retain-and-engage-your-valuable-employees/

Managers failing their unhappy staff

There’s usually one in every office – the person who’s just doing the bare minimum in order to get by. They’re not doing anything wrong; they’re just not getting it right either. In some cases you throw training, resources and opportunities at them until you’re blue in the face, for others you give them the basic tasks, leaving the ones that need innovation for your motivated workers.

Regardless of your personal approach, research from Zenger/Folkman finds that in general, managers give up too soon on disgruntled employees.

“Our evidence shows that managers are giving up far too soon on their disgruntled employees, making them less productive than they could be, exposing their companies to unnecessary risks from thefts and leaks in the process, and inflating turnover costs,” company president Joseph Folkman said.

Read the full story:

http://www.hrmonline.ca/hr-news/turn-around-your-most-miserable-worker-174716.aspx

Gauge of U.S. layoffs falls to pre-recession level

The four-week average of new claims for state jobless benefits dropped to 335,500, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The reading has not been that low since November 2007, just before the United States fell into a calamitous recession.

Now it appears that a long cycle of aggressive layoffs, which had fueled a surge in unemployment and helped shape two presidential elections, is over.

Read the full story: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/08/us-usa-economy-idUSBRE9770K220130808

Companies shift strategies to retain employees

When Deane Code arrived a year ago to start her job as a senior consultant at Environics Communications Inc. in Toronto, she found her new business cards waiting at her desk. She also knew what her new co-workers looked like and how to get to their offices, thanks to a “family tree” that arrived in the mail a few days earlier, with staff photos and a map of the office.

Stacey Marson had a similar welcome to her new job at LoyaltyOne, a customer insight and strategy firm. Before she started as a co-ordinator of business-to-business public relations and corporate marketing, she got a phone call from her new boss, and a package of information – including a book written by the company’s chief executive officer.

Read the full story: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/career-advice/life-at-work/companies-shift-strategies-to-retain-employees/article13368016/

Poor people management biggest blight of leaders

A survey has found that poor management management is perceived to be the biggest shortcoming of leaders in Singapore.

According to the latest Hudson Report: Employment Trends, nearly half of respondents (45.7%) perceive that poor management is the great shortcoming of leadership. This is followed by poor change management (20.8%).

Read the full story: http://www.hrmonline.ca/hr-news/poor-people-management-biggest-blight-of-leaders-174392.aspx

Report: Money really isn’t everything to the world’s changing professional workforce

Here’s what we’ve been reading/watching today:

1) There are changes afoot in the professional workforce. That’s according to a report from Thomson Reuters released Thursday, which finds that a majority of the more than 1,000 workers polled would, if given a choice, take a job they enjoy over one that pays them more. And if you think there’s a generational divide there, think again. According to the report, Millennials (or those roughly 18 to 35 years old) are just as likely as older workers to make that choice, the survey finds.

Read the full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2013/06/27/report-money-really-isnt-everything-to-the-worlds-changing-professional-workforce/

Free lunch vs. other perks: Why not let employees vote?

How much of a voice do your employees have in making decisions like which benefits they'd prefer, or how their workspaces are set up?

Plenty of research shows that millennials in particular want a say in these things, so enterprises big and small are trying harder to oblige. One place where it's working is daily-bargain website 1SaleADay.

Last November, management faced a dilemma: The company, which has grown from 45 employees to more than 360 in just three years, was facing steep hikes in health insurance premiums.

"We operate on razor-thin margins, so we had a lot of discussions about whether, and where, we could reallocate funds," recalls Eli Federman, a senior vice president who has helped grow the business since his brother Ben founded it in 2006.

One option: Stop giving employees lunch for free, a perk that cost 1SaleADay about $250,000 a year.

Read the full story:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/31/smallbusiness/employees-vote/index.html