Procure IQ

While reading The Talent Game (membership required) Panel Discussion transcript, I was horrified to read that one participant said that many employees are being told they are lucky to have a job — that is one form of retention. Simply put, it’s disgusting. Not only does it show an utter lack of respect for the employee, but it also shows an utter lack of competence in talent management. Even if you recently went through a layoff, presumably the employees you retained are those employees who were best at the …

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A recent article over on Discovery News that headlined that Employees With Flex Time Put In More Hours is a must-read. Consider the headline findings: working the usual nine to five may not be the ideal schedule for employees or employers workers with flexible hours are not only more satisfied with their jobs, they also work more intensely the findings also apply to remote workers and employees with reduced office hours Basically, as those of us who work flex, or who have worked in flex environments know, it’s a boon to …

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Besides the fact that you’re probably as fed up as I am at the ridiculous compensation packages that many Executives are getting these days despite the fact that they are on their way out the door having just tanked the company, there’s also the fact that their focus on short term gain is hurting the company and your ability to do your job. You want to switch to sustainable sources of supply, because you know that the long term savings (as energy, water, and carbon costs are all poised to go through the roof) will dwarf any short term …

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Don’t be fooled by the current economic environment, there’s still a global talent shortage and we’re headed towards an impending crunch because the talent war is going to heat up again along with the recovery. And chances are that you’re going to be on the losing end according to some recent research from TopGrading Solutions. (Tip-of-the-hat to Kevin Cornish.)According to the research, 67% of currently employed personnel surveyed will be looking for new opportunities once the economy picks up. That’s right, if you’re an average company, when the economy recovers, you can expect that two thirds …

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post is from Dick Locke, Sourcing Innovation’s resident expert on International Sourcing and Procurement. (His previous guest posts are still archived.) The US Census Bureau recently announced that one out of six people in the US workforce is foreign born. In four states it’s more than one in four and in one state it’s more than one in three.Here’s an excerpt from the NYTimes article Census Finds Rise in Foreign Workers:Nearly one in six American workers is foreign-born, the highest proportion since the 1920s, according to a census analysis released Monday. Because of government barriers to …

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A recent article in Industry Week presented ten tips from Watson Wyatt that were designed to help you help your employees reconnect with the business in these troubled times. They weren’t bad, and are definitely worth a review (if you add a little flair). In the doctor’s words, they are: Ditch the Dotted Lines The organizational structure should be crystal clear. Every employee should understand their role and how they contribute to organizational success. Cut the Crap Be honest about the situation. You might think …

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I enjoyed this recent article in Industry Week on the Miller Centrifugal Casting Comeback from revenues of 8M in 2003 to 22M in 2008 because it highlighted the key elements of a successful turnaround: your people. According to MCC, five key structural supports were required to achieve the turnaround, with the first two being workforce morale and employee satisfaction. In other words, it had to put the people who would ultimately be effecting the turnaround first. MCCs secrets of a turnaround? They are: Workforce Morale MCC starting treating its workforce …

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Last week, I attended the Best Practices XChange (BPX) hosted by The MPower Group in Chicago. This quarterly, one day BPX roundtable, event brings together senior procurement professionals (director and above) from BPX members and interested organizations.* The event was well put together, and I’ll be diving into the presentation by Dr. Lloyd Rinehart in a later post, but I wanted to start by summarizing the emerging themes from the roundtable discussion.As pointed out by Brian Sommer in his post last week on The New Sourcing Concerns, one of the big concerns is transition management, both in …

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Today’s post is from Charles Dominick of Next Level Purchasing (and the SPSM certification) and blogmaster of the Purchasing Certification Blog.I can’t recall a time in my procurement career when business conditions so strongly indicated that changes were a–coming. The latest United States GDP report indicated that the economic freefall has subsided, likely giving businesses the confidence necessary to resume the spending that will fuel growth. The last several US unemployment reports indicate that, while unemployment is still high at 9.8%, things aren’t getting worse by the minute the way that they were earlier in the year. …

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A recent article in the Harvard Business Review, which purported to tell us when individuals don’t matter, stated that under the right conditions, groups — whether ant colonies, markets, or corporations — can be smarter than any of their members in an effort to apply swarm theory to corporate performance. This is because, in complex adaptive systems, hard-to-predict behaviors emerge from the interaction of the individuals.The article says that executives make three common mistakes to demonstrate that they don’t grasp how complex systems work. A complex system cannot be understood or managed with a focus on a few key …

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