IAOP Top 100

The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) announced the 2007 best outsourcing service providers recently. It told that relative rankings, selection process details and company profiles will appear in a special advertising feature which will be produced by IAOP, in the April 30th Fortune 500 issue of Fortune Magazine.
IAOP’s panel of independent judges evaluated all applicants based on four criteria:
*Size and growth in revenue, employees, centers and countries served
*Customer experience as demonstrated through the value being created with the company’s top customers
*Depth and breadth of competencies as demonstrated through industry recognition, relevant certifications and investment in the development of people, processes and technologies
*Management capabilities as reflected in the experience and accomplishments of the business’s top leaders and its investment in management systems that ensures outsourcing success

Offshore Outsourcing Wage Cost Advantage

The wage cost advantage of offshore locations for office services is set to last for another 20 years, says the latest annual survey by global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney. Even though wages in offshore locations for services, such as IT, business processes and call centers, have started to rise, they will remain cheaper for the foreseeable future under the most aggressive projections of wage inflation and currency appreciation in developing countries.
India and China continue to lead the pack of preferred offshore destinations by a wide margin, with
declines in cost advantages offset by further improvements in talent supply and business environment.

Accenture Hiring Plans

Accenture, the world’s second largest consulting firm increased its plans to hire 60,000 people worldwide, 35,000 of which will be hired in India. The hiring plans are in line with its more than expected Q2 profits fueled by HR, F&A and payables outsourcing coupled with its consulting business contracts. Net income climbed to $296.7 million, or 47 cents a share, in the quarter ending Feb. 28, from $69.7 million, or 11 cents, a year earlier. The company currently employs 152,000.

HR Business Excellence Award

During the London Chamber of Commerce 24th Annual Business Achievement awards, Ernst & Young was awarded with Business excellence in HR. The award is given considering the consulting firm’s progressive hiring, retaining and recognition practices in Canada. The awards will be finalized based on recruiting, recognition and retention practices at companies facing talent shortages in London, Ontario.

TWC Group RPO Services

TWC Group, a leading provider of recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) services, announced today that HR Impact, the full-service human resources outsourcing (HRO) unit of the company, has become a fully integrated TWC Group division.This move reflects TWC Group’s holistic approach to human capital solutions, from end-to-end HRO and RPO to specialized executive search and consulting services. Robert Rosend, former president and CEO of HR Impact, will lead the new division as the president of the Human Resources Outsourcing (HRO) Division.

Gevity HR Q1 Earnings

Gevity HR is expecting a decline in its Q1 revenues driven by higher operating costs and lower professional service fees. The decline is primarily attributed to a drop in its client employee count. Total client employees managed by Gevity HR might drop to 124,000 at the end of Q1 as against 128,400 client employees at the beginning of the year. The professional service fees are expected to decline from $40million (Q4 fees) to $37million.

MetLife Survey

MetLife recently conducted a survey on US employers and employees for its Study of Employees Benefits Trends. This year’s findings make a compelling case that benefits strategy holds the key to one of many employers’ most pressing challenges - the need to recruit and retain the best talent in an increasingly competitive labor market.
Highlights of the Survey are listed below:
* 1,514 benefits decision-makers from organizations with a minimum of 2 employees were interviewed for the survey
* 61 percent of employers surveyed had fewer than 500 employees
* 20 percent employers had 5,000 or more employees
* More than 55 percent of the benefits decision-makers agreed that retaining employees is the main goal in creating a benefits plan
* Controlling costs is secondary
* Among employees who considered themselves “highly satisfied” with their job, 80 percent reported being “highly satisfied” with their benefits
* Seventy-two percent of the 1,202 workers cited workplace benefits as the reason they joined their current employer, and 83 percent cited it as one of the reasons they remain.

ACS Contract with US DOL

ACS, a premier provider of business process outsourcing and information technology solutions, announced today that it has won a $74.8 Million contract for medical bill processing with the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP) under the U.S. Department of labor (DOL). The three-year contract continues services previously provided by ACS under a sub-contract agreement.
ACS will provide all medical bill processing and support services for the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act, the Division of Coal Mine Workers’ Compensation, and the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act programs, all administered by the OWCP.
ACS will provide claims resolutions, prior authorization, provider enrollment and call-center support, as well as imaging and web portal management for the Division of Federal Employee’s Compensation.
Posted in Benefits Administration, Business, Cobra Administration, Compensation Plans, Employee

No Overtime For Indian BPOs

While it may be the show piece of India’s entrepreneurial talent and technological prowess, when it comes to compensating employees for overtime work, India’s fabled BPO sector does a bad job even when compared to the infamous sweatshops of urban India. This comes in a report from Economic Times.
A Noida-based BPO pays its employees Rs 12.50, which equals approximately 33 cents, and Rs 50 which is equal to approximately 1 US Dollar, for 4 hours of OT, which is often mandatory. It says these low overtime rates are despite the fact that the hourly billing rates are fairly good. However, this trend is particularly visible in small BPOs. Large BPOs fare much better paying Rs 100 which is equal to $2 US, per 1 hour of overtime. For each national holiday worked, these players pay a 2 days salary with a compensatory day off. Sometimes they pay an Rs 250 or US $5 per extra Saturday worked over and above the day’s salary.
From our own HR research in many other BPOs, the OT figures continue to be dismal. A low OT will have an impending effect on the quality of work done by the employees, which will ultimately seriously affect the service deliverables. We often advise our clients to be more flexible in terms of paying reasonable OT and other perks to help encourage them to be engaged toward the company. There are many BPOs who are still shying away from even paying a small amount of OT. They are simply adjusting themselves by giving a $1 worth Sodexho pass voucher, which is a meal voucher in India, for the entire day of extra work. Let’s just hope this article will wake those BPOs up.

Kronos Expected Acquisition

Kronos, a leading HR software developer and Staffing services company publicly traded on Nasdaq, has announced its agreement to be acquired by Hellman & Friedman Capital Partners under a deal worth $1.8 billion. Under the terms of the buyout agreement, Kronos shareholders will receive $55 per share. The deal is in line with ACS which announced recently that it received a buy out proposal from its chairman, Darwin Deason, in association with Cerberus Capital Management.

HR Metrics Series I: Employee Engagement

Employment Engagement is an important concept in HR Management. Engaged employees are more productive, more profitable, more customer focused, safer and much less likely to leave their employer. The reason why it is considered important is that it can be linked inversely proportional to Employee Attrition, which is an irk to almost every HR organization. In what way does Employee engagement correlate to Employee Attrition? This just may be one question that emanates in the minds of many.
The more Employee Engagement is seen, the less Attrition is seen, and it goes both ways. This is what our research tells us. The more an organization works towards its employees’ engagement, the less attrition we see and hence employee engagement exercise is one way to cure the attrition irk.
Employee Engagement is defined as a positive attitude or thinking exhibited by the employee towards the organization and its core, as well as business, values. It is the responsibility of the organization, especially HR, to develop healthy and matured engagement thinking in the minds of their employees. Why is it the responsibility of HR specifically? The concept is a two-way relationship. The more the employer works with the employees to develop an emotional bonding towards the organization through every possible means, the more the employee engagement percentage will be. Many surveys done on this concept have revealed that many organizations continue to have a lesser percentage of engaged employees versus a higher non-engaged employee percentage. A lesser engagement will always prove to be a danger to the organization where it leads to a higher attrition.
Employee Engagement Drivers are divided into two categories.
1. Intrinsic Variables
2. Extrinsic Variables.
Among these two drivers, Intrinsic Variables are considered to be the key drivers. Examples of Intrinsic Variables are working through a common purpose, personal growth, etc.
Extrinsic Variables are things such as pay, rewards and so on.
The entire process of creating awareness to the concept as well as maintaining a stable engagement in employees and efforts to continuously drive engagement to further high levels are the primary responsibilities of HR. Failure to accord an important role to this particular concept will lead to higher attrition for employers.
How could we take this engagement as metric? Does it qualify to be an HR metric? Yes, absolutely! From our viewpoint, Disengagement will lead to increased attrition, productivity losses, lesser ROI and so on. Focused on developing a better understanding of how variables such as quality of work relationships and values of the organization interact and their link to important work outcomes are HR’s responsibilities to address.
As far as Measurement of this metric is concerned, there is no specific set of formulas to arrive at the engagement score. The engagement score can be determined or measured through various surveys in their respective organizations which are followed u with actionable items. These surveys could include 10 questions or 100 questions. What is more important is the relevance of the questions to the engagement. The best way to gauge HR performance as far as Employee Engagement is concerned is to compare the engagement score with the earlier scores, as well as benchmarking the engagement score. It is simply the duty of HR to make their employees clearly understand the overall business goals and objectives. The same surveys can be used to measure the engagement score as well as arrive at the performance levels of HR in conductive and facilitating a productive work environment. Any increase in Engagement scores of overall employee size or scores arrived at through conducting surveys on engagement should be attributed to the HR performance.
Our earlier publications on HR Metrics:
1. Employee Attrition
2. Time to Fill
3. Cost Per hire
4. Quality of New hire
5. ROI for HR function
[Read more]

Capita BPO Contract

UK’s Southampton City council announced this week that it has chosen Capita as their preferred bidder for a 10-year business process outsourcing (BPO) contract covering IT, customer service, procurement, property, HR and payroll, and revenue and benefits, reports Silicon.
The outsourcing costs almost doubled to £290M from the original projection of £100 to £150M. It took nearly two and half years for the lengthy procurement process to take place during which the cost of the project was doubled. However, Council’s spokeswoman told that the increase in cost is due to the expansion of Capita’s services to revenue and benefits processing.
Councilors are expected to rubber-stamp the deal in the summer, with work due to begin in October of this year. Around 600 council employees will transfer across to the private sector with Capita under Tupe outsourcing regulations.
As part of the outsourcing plans Capita will develop a new call centre and a “one-stop shop” that will become the first point of contact for Southampton residents using council services.
Analysts are cautioning the longer time frames to conclude that such huge deals might be costly and risky.

Mid-Market HRO Growth

PlatformOne, which started offering HRO services for mid-market companies in 2002, has announced today that its HR BPO initiative completed 2006 with another record year. The company got a total of 8 additions with multi-year contracts, representing over 41,000 new employees under management.

HR-XML Certifications Awarded

HR-XML Consortium, a leading source of global interoperability standards for HRM, awarded certification to Hewitt Associates, Kenexa, Justifacts Credential Verification, Inc., MetLife, Inc. OnTargetJobs, Previsor, USIS, and Verifications Inc.
While the certifications to Hewitt, Kenexa, Metlife Inc., Previsor and Verifications are renewals of earlier certifications, the certifications for Justifacts Credential Verification Inc., OnTargetjobs, and USIS are the first awarded companies.
The certification entitles these companies to publish HR-XML logo on their websites and a conformance statement within a registry located at HRCertify. The HR-XMl certified logo indicates that the solution provider is a technology leader and is ready to integrate flexibly and opportunistically with customers and partners.
To view related Article posted on HRO MANAGER

NiSource - IBM Relationship

NiSource is reviewing their current outsourcing relationship with IBM, signed in 2004 for 10 years, priced at $1.6 billion, reports CBROnline. It is also reported that Sources has already decided to take certain finance functions back in-house. The original outsourcing contract signed includes F&A, HR, Supply Chain, billing and collections, call center and IT functions. The outsourcing contract is estimated to bring a $530billion cost-saving to the company, however, NiSource now believes a $530billion projection is not feasible considering its operating profit of nearly $900million during 2006 on $7.5billion revenue. The company filed the same with SEC earlier this month. IBMand NiSource agreed to assessment of the deal.

Employee Benefits Administration Woes

Employees Benefits administration has always been a complex task for organizations. One of the biggest constraints on having an efficient benefits administration is the frequently changing employee laws, compliance, carrier rate changes, communication gaps created between employer and carriers and so on. Moreover, benefits administration has never been a cost effective solution considering the high paper costs during open enrollments with mailing costs taking the major cost share. Identifying these constraints, many employers opted to have automated benefits systems. It is estimated that $115 per transaction is the cost savings by employers through the automation of open enrollment process itself. However, the one important constraint that is forgotten by many employers is how computer savvy their employees are. Many surveys revealed that a major number of US employees other than those working for the fortune companies do not use computers at all. When HRO MANAGER asked many PEOs in the US on their benefits administration process methodologies, most of them said they are still not automating their open enrollments processes and restricting automation to their internal processes. They say that most of their clients either do not have a computer or they aren’t comfortable with the online transaction. This constraint is not letting many PEOs opt for a dynamic change in their processes triggered by automation. These constraints which are micro in nature should first be evaluated before exercising automation process. Unless otherwise, the automation might prove to be an expensive and a failure strategy for employers, especially a PEO.

Survey from Salary.com

Survey from Salary.com
March 19th, 2007
Employees prefer to work for a small or medium company for various reasons outlined below:
* Small companies are less regimented than the large ones
* Small companies impose fewer policies that govern employee conduct
* Small companies can be located much closer to residential areas rather than companies
* Employees of small companies experience high levels of accountability and a noticeable impact on business results
* Small employees provide employees with more responsibility and power to execute
* Small companies offer opportunity for meaningful relationships with co-workers and customers
Employees prefer working for a large company only for the reason that they may provide the employees with high fringe benefits and there is a scope for advancement within the organization.
The above are revealed in salary.com’s 2006 survey on Working for a small or medium size business. For a complete survey report, please visit salary.com

Confusion in UK Offshoring Contracts

The Transfer of Undertakings (protection of employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) revisions in UK is said to be applied for offshoring too. The revisons extend the definition of employee transfer as a result of which the offshoring might be included. The UK is currently the only country adopting the concept of service provision change. However the confusion continues whether this revision applies in the case of offshoring to more than one country.

Female Boss Survey

A survey conducted in January 2007 by MSNBC.com and Elle Magazine shows that the negative perceptions of Female Bosses is slowly dying, reports SHRM.
The survey was restricted primarily to MSNBC.com readers mostly around the age of 42. Among them, 94% are full-time employees while 44% supervise other workers.
The results of the survey are reproduced below:
* More than 1/2 of the 60,000 people surveyed said it doesn’t make any difference whether their boss is a male or female
* 1/3 (30% men and 37% women) said they prefer working for a male boss
* 15% of female bosses and 7% of male bosses were seen having a family/work conflict
* 71% of all women surveyed revealed that female bosses think they have to work harder to earn the same respect for men while 64% of men disagreed with that sentiment

Exclusive Interview With John Nail

He knows how to optimize technology to derive desired HR solutions. However, he is not a technology guy. He founded Employease, a company that was highly regarded as the first Software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor and that was subsequently acquired by ADP. He founded DigitalBenefits, an information management company intended to serve employee benefits and HR for mid-market insurance brokers and their customers and innovated the company;s flagship product BenefitsATM, which was acquired by Authoria. He is now the Principal of the Industry Radar, the much-talked RSS driven HR portal serving more than 100,000 HR professionals across the globe. He is John J. Nail, A 54 Year old HR innovator, a serial Entrepreneur, a HR TECH man. HRO MANAGER is proud to present to its readers, an exclusive interview with Mr. John J. Nail. We spoke to him at length about his initial head-start in the HR industry up to his current ventures and future plans.
Q. What stimulated you to choose HR industry as your growth path?
The first 17 years of my career I spent working for what is today The Unum Group, the world’s largest disability insurer in sales and management. I like to say that I spent half my career with a carrier torturing people with paperwork and the second half trying to automate it. I got interested from a management perspective originally in business process improvement essentially selfishly to meet our needs on the carrier side and in our office. The more I looked at the problems we had in getting clean data on employees to do our job the more I realized that employers did not have the tools to do things like benefits enrollment etc. better. The original idea for what became Employease I proposed in 1990 at UNUM and was actually was for a “disk” based tool - a sort of mini spreadsheet - for employers to provide us with their employee census and enrollment information. That core data about an employee - name, address, job title, dependent info etc is the raw material at the core of the entire HR industry and was not being managed electronically but on paper and then poorly so. That would allow us to upload data rather than hand type it, eliminate errors, speed up our work and better service our customers. You have to remember that PC’s were still just getting started then in business and the idea went nowhere at the company but stayed in the back of mind.
Q. You are best known as a “Serial Entrepreneur” in the HR industry. Could you explain on spell of your years long Journey in HR as an entrepreneur?
I’ve always been a “gadget guy” I got it from my Dad who worked for the old Zenith Radio Corp . The quality goes in before the name goes on. Having been playing w/ PC’s since 1984 I had been using Prodigy and AOL and even paying bills online long before the Internet exploded on the scene in 1995.I had been playing w/ the net for 18 months or so trying to understand its real power and potential as it was clear to me that the idea of “all connected to all” to paraphrase Nicholas Negroponte from “Being Digital” was going to change the way we all operated, I just had not figure out how yet. One day a friend called me asked me if I was using the web and I said yes and simply asked me the idea from 5 years before could actually be done over the web. A light bulb went off in my head; the web would be able to connect people to data not just web pages. I literally sat down for 13 hours non-stop and wrote the first business plan for Employease ” initially labeled, Census, Inc. I was 42 years old and as I floated the idea with friends in the industry and got positive response to it I got that passion that I “had to” pursue this idea. So literally I jumped into the “entrepreneurial abyss” as I have heard it called, with a passion for an idea that had been in my mind for a while. Once my mind started down that creative path that has been my passion, to really synthesize ideas and technology into solutions.
Q. You founded DigitalBenefits which was acquired by Authoria. Same was the case where you found Employease which was again acquired by ADP. These two acquisitions show how your products are well taken into HR world, either it be the SaaS model or an Extranet for Benefits. However, as a Seller, What is your preposition behind your strategy? Identify a business problem, find a solution, develop the solution, sell the solution?.
I have never thought of an exit strategy when I started any business. I always approach the problem with a solution and expect to make it successful. When I sold DigitalBenefits it was when the web bubble burst and venture capital dried up. We never really had a chance to take it to the level we wanted to. I guess my basic supposition in all my ideas is looking at an infrastructure problem to solve and going from there. Many people create solutions to symptoms; I always try to solve root problems as the real long term value comes from that. That is why Employease was successful in its own right and why ADP bought the company.
Q. Way back in 1998, Red Herring described you as a “Tech geek trapped in a middle-aged Insurance guy’s body”. Do you agree?
You know, this is a great line and one I use for laughs when I do speeches. It is partially true. As I said before I am a gadget guy and love to try new things. I am curious by nature I guess. I can’t program in the traditional “geek” sense but I do understand how things work well enough to be able to put ideas together with solutions. I do have friends though who would say this is a truer statement than I might like to admit.
Q.Coming back to your current successful and growing venture, The Industry Radar, Could You explain the thought process that went into setting it up?
Very simply I was finding it hard to stay on top of what was going on in an industry that is converging with HR, payroll, benefits, healthcare, talent mgmt, HRO, recruiting and technology all coming together. Existing industry publications still look at the space as silos even though customers do not and cannot and I found them lacking in timeliness of information or unfocused in what they deliver to their audience much of the time with their online “news”. Print publishing in all areas is behind and meets a smaller and smaller fraction of people’s needs in a world where even a few minutes of attention a day is highly fought over w/ all the options we have. We live in a real time world and we needed a real time solution and my mind told me that RSS could allow us to create a tool to bring together disparate sources of information, news and content into a cohesive real time solution that meets our industry’s needs. My biggest surprise frankly, and the lesson I have learned this past year is that the issues that we grapple with here in the US around people and work are universal and the international following we have developed with readers in over 50 countries this year is surprising and gratifying and fun to see.
Q. What is the current estimated traffic to Industry Radar and at what rate are you expecting this to grow in coming years?
We reach north of 100,000 industry professionals daily growing about 7% a week there. We just cracked a million article views for a week for the first time last week. Our plans are to double our subscriber base and do close to 100 million article views for the year.
Q. What is your future growth strategies lined up for Industry Radar?
We will be expanding in 5 key ways. As you know we added US Regional and state feeds on 2/1/2007. On 4/1 we will be adding four Retirement Radars and 4 Property & Casualty Insurance Radars. In 2 Q we will be adding International HR feeds for 8 regions around the world. The area I am most excited about is The Industry Radar calendar which is nearly ready for launch. Our mission is to be the only place and HR, benefits, healthcare or insurance professional needs to go to be fully informed. We are creating a central calendar for this group that has unlimited sub calendars so that in one place vendors can post conference, web cast info etc and users can access it in any subset- topical, geographic, job level etc. that they want. Nothing like this exists today and opens up new revenue areas for us in advertising, listings etc. Cross promotion of events in our newsletter and on our website as well as users subscribing to their own specific event RSS feeds will be very popular.
Q. Are you planning to expand the number of Radars available on Industry Radar? In other words, are you looking forward to add any sub groups to the existing radars?
Our fifth area of growth will be in creating deeper channels in our Radars. For example three that are ready to go today are focused on US insurance brokers and their acquisitions and US healthcare payers and providers and the disputes going on between them. There are nearly limitless opportunities to connect our river of news and content to specific channels each one bringing revenue possibilities
Q. You continue to be a veteran in Human Resources Industry. What are your thoughts on the outsourcing trends in HR?
Outsourcing is the key to long term success provided that the right technology tools are employed by your partners and that the customer understands that they must manage these processes going forward, measure them and continually improve service delivery while driving costs down. This management role is one I think companies often overlook when outsourcing just assuming that the vendor is now responsible. The biggest mistake I see companies make is trying to simply unload old, outmoded paper processes on an outsourcer to provide at a lower cost. If that is all you are trying to do you will fail. At its core the real value of outsourcing is applying scale and expertise and proven best of breed processes against an existing customer. That change from status quo to best of breed will involve pain but bring value in quality of service and bottom line contributions from HR, a new concept for most.
Q. Would you think Technology additions alone can bring productivity to HR, if not, what are the other factors?
Getting organized is the single biggest thing any size employer needs to do and most are not or are not as well organized as they should be. If an employer has one single database with all the relevant data for an employee around their job, HR, benefits, payroll etc and connects the output from this to their payroll, healthcare, benefits and retirement vendors they go a long way to solving theory traditional problems and save a lot of money on mistakes and rework. Couple this with a truly integrated employee portal that combines information, connectivity to partners and self service transactions and a culture to support it and a company of a 100 or 100,000 will be successful in this area.
Q. You have pioneered in providing optimized benefits administration solutions through your earlier ventures. Our research tells us many PEOs and HROs, administering benefits plans for their clients loose several $ due to reconciliation differences and lack of a proper administration map. What is your advice to them in terms of streamlining their benefits programs to minimize their risks and standardize?
You are right and this goes back to my earlier point on how I’ve tried to create solutions. The reason we were successful at employEase was we focused on the infrastructure problem that all the needs of a company for HR and benefits emanated from one single, integrated employee record for HR, payroll and benefits and built our solutions on top of that. If your systems are not fully integrated, and designed by industry experts, not simply techies, like this, then you will always be throwing band aids (i.e. people) at problem and not able to get the scale to make money. Things that can be automated must be off a common set of data and connected on the backend directly to carriers etc. The straight thru supply chain concept has to be applied to make money on this space and most importantly improve service quality to employees around billing, eligibility and services.
Q.You have interests in sports too to our belief. You are a founder member of Secession Golf Club in SC. How passionate you are towards Golf as a sport?
I truly love the game and its traditions but the last few years I have played very little which I hope to remedy this year. My 7 year old loves to hit golf balls so I plan to really get him into the sport this year.
Q. Any other John Nail trademark HR ventures in pipeline to be set up under the Radar Group?
You never know. My mind never stops working on ways to improve communication and connectivity between the players in what I call the “HR supply chain”.

Easier IRAs For Mercer HR Services

Mercer HR services announced today that it will leverage technology of Wealth Management Systems Inc (WMSI) to help retirement plan participants easily open individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) with a choice of variety Industry leading providers.
The advantage of this new solution from Mercer is that the participants can continue saving for their retirement without interruption, even when they change companies or retire.
As part of the understanding, WMSI will provide Mercer with their Rollover Software that facilitates the opening of IRAs and smooth transition of assets.
If former participants choose to roll over their savings, utilizing WMSI technology, Mercer HR Services can quickly make it happen by giving them access to a variety of IRA providers and the ability to initiate a rollover transaction in as little as a single phone call. Instead of mailing a distribution check to participants, assets are directly deposited into their new IRA. As a result, they are more apt to stay the retirement saving course and less likely to jeopardize their future financial security by taking an early, taxable cash distribution or simply doing nothing at all.

HireRight to Provide Employment Screenings

ExcellerateHRO, a global HRO provider announced its partnership with HireRight, an on-demand screening leader for employment screening.
“Today’s HR outsourcing customers are looking for a full-service provider with market-leading solutions, global reach and HR industry expertise”, said Iris Goldfein, vice president, global offerings for ExcellerateHRO.
“HireRight is pleased to be ExcellerateHRO’s employment screening partner”, said Eric Boden, president and chief executive officer, HireRight, Inc.
This partnership is in line with our research article published before in earlier post (HR Outsourcing Providers on an acquisition spree: Consolidation) that HRO providers are consolidating to offer multi processes and become an end-to-end outsourcing partner for their clients.

SHRM Survey of FMLA

Summary of Survey conducted by SHRM
*Four out of ten HR professionals stated that they have had to grant
FMLA requests that they believed were not legitimate due to the
Department of Labor’s regulations or interpretations.
* More than half (57 percent) of respondents found it somewhat difficult
or very difficult to determine if a health condition is a “serious
health condition” under FMLA.
* Eighty percent of respondents indicated they had difficulties
tracking/administering intermittent FMLA leave.
*Almost half (47 percent) of HR professionals experienced challenges in
administering/granting leave under the FMLA for employees with serious
health conditions as a result of episodic conditions

Manpower Survey

Almost all shares of major staffing companies inched lower on NYSE in today’s morning trades after a seasonally adjusted survey showed that employers are likely to maintain or trim staff levels in the second quarter. The survey was done by Milwaukee-based global staffing company, Manpower Inc.
The results of the survey are given below:
1. According to this survey, excluding seasonal factors and the number of companies that expect to cut jobs, the results mark the third straight quarter in which the predicted rate of hiring has declined.
2. In the U.S., the number of companies expected to raise hiring during the second quarter declined to 18 percent from 19 percent in the 2007 first quarter and from 21 percent in the 2006 second quarter
“Overall, labor market data has been somewhat inconsistent, and the sustainability of the pace of hiring remains uncertain in Europe and the U.S.,” Morgan Stanley Analyst Gutek wrote in a client note. He further says “We expect employers to report a more cautious hiring outlook in coming quarters.”
Manpower shares declined 27 cents to $73.59, and Labor Ready Inc. lost 17 cents to $18.35. Robert Half International Inc. shed 54 cents to $36.95, while Adecco SA gave up 19 cents to $15.91. All stocks trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
Monster Worldwide Inc. lost 16 cents to $49.06, and On Assignment Inc. fell 20 cents to $12.59, both on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Top Payroll Deals for 2006

HRO Today has released the Top Payroll (outsourcing) deals for 2006. According to its research, many of the deals are termed as mid-market deals. Mid-Market, according to HRO Today, is comprised of those organizations with employee size varying anywhere between 500 to 5000. The report also says the buyers have become more knowledgable and demanding. The customer is the driving the market. The growing need for powerful HRIS, administrative support, and HR compliance services has forced payroll service providers to deliver solutions with more value to their clients, HRO Today quotes as told by Advantec Senior VP of sales, Steven Cohen.
The conclusion of the report is that the Payroll outsourcing deals on a standalone basis is slowly getting replaced with the multi process deals.

Talent Management Concerns

The one common concern experienced by many HR professionals is Talent Management. Given the ever rising demand curve of quality human resources, HR professionals are fighting hard to combat the issue of talent retention and management. In countries like India this issue is often ignored. When a quality hire leaves the company, it involves monetary loss as well as to create several operations issues like productivity loss etc. The probabilities of losses will increase the responsibility and pressure of talent retention on a HR professional. They often have to look for ways and means of containing the attrition rates as well as increasing the retention rates. HR professionals try to retain the talent through common methods like counseling exercises with the employee willing to leave the organization, take their feedback, offer to address their issues, offer them benefits for sticking with the company etc. However, these procedures are not getting implemented properly and processes like Exit interviews are just getting more routine than getting much better. “In countries like India where the demand for quality hires is rising day after day, it is a tough call for a HR professional to adopt balanced strategies of Talent Management. However, it is requisite to overall success of a HR department and hence can’t be ignored as well. This is where companies like Cognet HRO comes to play helping corporate HR unburden their responsibilities like Talent management tasks. We work with HR of our clients in designing strategies of an effective Talent Management. We don’t simply work as a recruiter for our clients who seek recruitment services alone and we always go beyond a recruiter” says Mr. Ram, Founder and CEO of Cognet HRO. He thinks HR professionals should adopt a pro-active strategy as far as Talent management is concerned say for example, HR should identify the potential employees who might be a possible candidates for exiting the company and should devise strategies on working out for their retention.

HRO Manager’s Choice For HR Resources

We advocate Industry Radar as the best RSS resource for HR professionals across the World. RSS syndication and aggregation is the new trend in E-media as more and more readers are opting out to get e-mail updates by subscribing to the feeds or reading directly from the feeds. Not many RSS aggregators exist in Human Resources feeds which could match to the quality of content published in Industry Radar as per the results of our survey. When we checked up with Laurus HR India Operating Head, Mr. Saleem Yusuff on what feed aggregator he prefers to read everyday besides HRO MANAGER, he gave not a second thought before he admitted that Industry Radar was the best resource . Mr.Yusuff says, “We should appreciate the work and technology of Industry Radar. Bringing updates on Human Resources Industry from every corner of the world as such is not a simple exercise. Industry Radar is able to accomplish this complex exercise through the means of RSS feed aggregator, Thanks to its best technology“. Industry Radar collects HR feeds from over 10,000 sources everyday. The man behind Industry Radar is John Nail, who founded Employease which was acquired by ADP in 2006.

Cognet HRO Launches Corporate Performance Management Solutions

Cognet HRO, a global HR outsourcing provider, launched corporate performance management (CPM) solutions to Indian companies and abroad. “The CPM solution offering is a big milestone for Cognet HRO. The new solution will help us expand into other verticals” said its Founder and CEO Mr. Ram. Currently, only few corporate biggies house this solution in India. Cognet HRO’s solution is expected to corner a major market share in performance management solutions, especially in India, which is still in its embryo stage in implementing a systematized CPM solution. On the latest acquisitions like the Oracle - Hyperion deal, SAP - Pilot software deal, Mr. Ram said that the performance management industry is experiencing a consolidation zone currently and he expects the trend to continue a little while further.
About Cognet HRO
Cognet HRO is an Indian based HR services company providing HR outsourcing, Recruitment Process Outsourcing, and Staffing & Recruitment services to companies in India and abroad. The company is also supported by its dedicated HR research & Analysis wing possessing rich experience and exposure to global HR industry.
Press Release through HRO MANAGER, the research & Analysis publication desk of Cognet HRO

Capita Group Reports Higher Profits In 2006

Capita Group, one of the leading providers of HR outsourcing in the UK, recorded pre-tax profits of €200.1M, up from €169.6M in 2005. Turnover increased by 21% to 1,739M, reports Personnel Today.
Capita Group secured 23 deals in 2006 alone, some of the major deals given below
1. 10-year HR outsourcing deal worth €132M with the BBC
2. 7-year deal with Dixons owner DSG International worth €120m
3. 15-year e-HR contract worth €100M with Fujitsu Services
Capita plans to increase its offshore operation in India over the next 12 months. By the end of 2007, the company anticipates employing 1,500 staff across three sites there, and it expects that number to have doubled by 2009.

Humetrics Survey On US Minimum Wage Hike

In a recent survey conducted by Humetrics Inc., a research division of Deploy Solutions, 47% of 1000 HR professionals responded against the minimum wage hike to $7.25/hour.
Questions in the survey covered participants’ current starting pay for hourly employees, what influences current wages, and how they would respond to a federally mandated increase. According to the survey results, when asked if they were for or against raising the hourly wage:
* 47 percent said they were against it
* 31 percent approved
* 16 percent said that the minimum wage in their state was already higher than the proposed rate
When they were asked how they would absorb the rate hike:
* Over 62 percent said they would raise prices
* 42 percent stated they would reduce labor hours
* Only 27 percent resolved that they would take the hit on their bottom line
* 18 percent said they would change their mix of part-time and full-time employees to compensate for the increased costs

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