CareerBuilder Vacation Survey

CareerBuilder.com’s annual vacation survey, conducted by Harris Interactive of more than 6,800 workers found that increasingly hectic schedules are forcing workers to cut their vacation time or spend time in the office during their vacations. The highlights of the survey results are listed below:
20% of workers say that they plan to stay in touch with the office during their vacation this year, although this is an improvement from the 27% reported in 2006.
20% of workers say they would not even prefer a vacation this year while 1 in 4 workers will take off 5 days or less.
Nearly 1 in 10 workers will limit themselves to weekend getaways.
The majority of workers feel that if they had their way, 69% of them would prefer 3 weeks or more of vacation each year.
When comparing industries, IT workers are the most likely to work while on vacation with more than 36% checking in with the office during this period. This is followed by sales workers at 32% and banking/finance workers at 29%.
While only 9% say that their employers expect them to check voicemail and/or email during vacation, many feel the pressure to do so anyway.
14% of workers actually feel guilty that they are not at work while on vacation.

ADP receives SAP Pinnacle Award

The SAP Pinnacle Award for BPO recognizes providers that use SAP technology as the underlying delivery platform for their BPO services. The SAO Pinnacle Award for the year 2006 was awarded to ADP as announced by ADP in a press release through MarketWire. ADP was nominated for the award by SAP partners and employees worldwide and selected by SAP among a field of finalists which included ARINSO and IBM.
ADP Employer Services International HR and payroll service experts leverage the SAP Human Capital Management system to deliver GlobalView, ADP’s single source, multilingual, multicurrency payroll and HR Outsourcing service, to more than 50 clients in over 30 countries worldwide.

HROA Chapter in Asia-Pacific

HROA, The Human Resources Outsourcing Association, a non-profit association dedicated to promote professionalism and best practices in HR outsourcing, has launched a new chapter in Asia-Pacific. The association decision is in response to the growing interest in the region, India in specific. HROA Asia-Pacific aims to bring together the largest network of providers, purchasers and participants to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information to support the development and success of developing the HRO market.
Asia-Pacific HRO service providers are growing with the presence of existing players such as Caliber Point, TPI, Convergys and Kelly services Inc.
The HROA is a well respected body in United States and Europe. Sharon McEneff continued, “The HROA philosophy is to create a win-win situation for our members and for the development of the HR industry across Asia Pacific. We encourage our members to exchange ideas and information about HR outsourcing best practices as well as framing and managing successful outsourcing programs. At the same time, members from service provision companies can explore opportunities for collaboration and alliances to help them deliver integrated end to end HRO solutions.”
For becoming a member of HROA Asia-Pacific you can contact Sharon McEneff at sharon.mceneff@hroa-asiapacific.com

Lawson Software Partnership

Lawson Software today announced a new partnership with Ceridian, a leader in managed Human Resource Outsourcing solutions, to provide a tax filing interface for Lawson customers using Lawson Payroll. Under the agreement, Lawson will manage the interface between Lawson Payroll and Ceridian’s tax service, which will help simplify the management of complex tax issues associated with an organization’s payroll operations.
This interface was designed to more efficiently manage the complexities associated with managing tax issues in payroll, with support for federal, state and local requirements. It also supports periodic, quarterly and annual tax filing as well as self-serve employee W-2 printing and wage attachment disbursement. The interface also helps simplify processes for depositing tax funds on time using the proper deposit methods, responding to tax agency inquiries and transferring funds to automatically pay tax bills.
Lawson has approximately 60 customers already taking advantage of the interface with Ceridian Tax Services.
The Lawson-Ceridian interface is also designed for security, with strong data encryption, File Transmission Protocol (FTP) standards and disaster recovery capabilities.
This service is an extension of Lawson’s application management services. Through Lawson Professional Services, the company offers a full balance of consulting and application management services, including Lawson Total Care Gold.

New Whitepaper Released

CPEHR, a leading California based PEO and a HRO provider, released a new whitepaper on the business climate in California and how a successful HR outsourcing could help the businesses in California. The white paper highlights the legal climate in California resulting in the state having one of the most expensive and high levels of lawsuits discouraging the competitive advantage played by the Californian businesses in the past. CPEHR demonstrates the need for the California based businesses to opt for HR Outsourcing due to the issues discussed above. The white paper cites the recent surveys conducted by SHRM, IDC to strengthen its argument on HR outsourcing.

HCM Trends Survey Highlights

Genesys, an HR services and application software provider, announced the HCM trends survey for 2007. Below are the highlights of the survey:
* 30% of all respondents identified Payroll outsourcing as among the most predominant in the Human Capital arena while 28% identified Employee Assistance programs; 27% identified background screening and 21% identified payroll tax filing
* 18% of respondents felt free-up internal staff is the prime advantage of HRO; 17% felt streamline operations is the advantage; 17% felt HRO enables access to world-class capabilities and industry expertise while 14% felt accurate and predictable monthly costs are the prime advantages of HR outsourcing
* The majority of the respondents gave the reason for choosing their outsourcing vendor as Price. Other reasons in vendor selection included in line with previous years were breadth and depth of product line, financial stability and references / reputation
* 37% of the respondents identified talent and leadership development combined with talent retention and acquisition as the top priority for 2007; 21% identified aligning people and business goals as top priority for 2007 while 18% identified performance management
* 17% of the respondents indicated that streamlining processes would be an important priority for 2007
* 43% of all respondents indicated a status quo when asked about budget expectations over the next 12 months for HR technology and outsourced solutions while 31% expected an increase in budget
* When asked about employee/manager self service, 36% of the respondents claimed to have implemented employee / manager self-service while 39% said it was still not a priority
* Respondents saw the greatest benefits of self service as employee ownership of general data, online open enrollment, and the reduction of calls placed to HR

Aon Consulting Survey Results

Aon Consulting Survey Results
May 14th, 2007
Aon Consulting, the human consulting organization of Aon Corporation, released the results of its Benefits and Talent Survey for 2007. The results of the survey are listed below in brief:
* 4 out of 5 organizations consider recruiting and selecting talent a top or critical issue for 2007
* 63% believe their organizations’ need to recruit and select the best talent will substantially increase in the coming 3 ~ 5 years
* Leadership positions will also be at risk with the impending workers shortage with more than 40% of the companies currently experiencing or will experience a leadership shortage in the next 1 ~ 4 years
* More than 98% of the selected respondents expect that recruiting high-performing employees for most critical jobs will continue to be difficult
* 77% of organizations provide a general overview of benefits with no dollar figure while communicating the total compensation package
* 42% of organizations said that the candidate went elsewhere for compensation that was perceived to be higher

Aon Consulting Benefits Survey

Aon consulting, the Human Resource consulting organization of Aon corporation announced the results of its Benefits and Talent Survey for 2007. The results of the Benefits survey in brief are:
* 3 out of 5 organizations believe that the majority of their employees are not financially prepared to leave the workforce
* 62% of organizations expect that less than 1/2 of their workforce will have enough income to retire between ages of 62 and 65
* 80% of employers offer persionalized online retirement planning tools to educate their employees about retirement needs, however the majority believes that their employees do not fully understand how to invest their defined contribution plan assets
* 98% of employers say it is important for employees to know how much they will need at retirement so they can save accordingly but 34% of organizations expect their employees to find this information on their own
* 26% of employers with 401(k) plans contribute less than 2% of payroll to the defined contributions plan and 82% make contributions to the plan
* More than 40% of organizations that offer a defined contribution plan report that 75 ~ 100 % of their employees contirbute to the defined contribution plans with nearly 30% of organizations reporting 50% or fewer of employees contributing to the plan
* 44% of employers currently offer or plan to offer automatic enrollment in the next 12 months while the remaining 56% have no plans to offer this anytime in the near future

Indian Job Portal Competition

It has been more than a month since TimesJobs.com, taking the cue from its own group owned newspaper, Economic Times, claimed No.1 among all Indian job sites. TimesJobs.com took an interesting tag line to send a message to the market - Everyone is Quitting Naukri - while proclaiming itself as No.1 in terms of the highest number of active resumes and other grounds.
The tag line created a controversy and there was even some buzz that Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, CEO of Naukri, planned to file a suit against TimesJobs.com for its wrong claims and the use of the tag line. Some analysis felt that the strategy adopted by TimesJobs.com was a sales strategy. The idea behind the strategy might just be to create an impression in the minds of Indian job seekers and employers and that this claim would be well taken by market players since the news came from one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country. Critics however, claimed that TimesJobs.com was in fact using a “duplication of resumes” tactic to claim the highest number of active resumes. Reports stated that TimesJobs.com asked job seekers through email notification to upload their resumes more than once, despite the fact that they were already registered members.
Naukri.com refuted this analogy of TimesJobs.com using the traffic statistics as the basis for proving its claim. It claims No.1 in terms of highest traffic shares 63% sourced from Alexa. It also claims No.1 from 6 other independent sources besides Alexa. Just recently, Naukri.com was using its email distribution program to promote this fact to all its members.

Hewitt Associates announce Q2 Results

Hewitt Associates, a global human resources services company, reported results for its fiscal 2007 second quarter which ended on March 31.
* Reported net revenues (revenues before reimbursements) increased 6% in the second quarter, to $716.2 million, from $676.2 million in the prior-year quarter.
* Benefits Outsourcing revenues increased 2%, Human Resources Business Process Outsourcing (HR BPO) revenues increased 5%, and consulting revenues increased 13%.
* Operating income for the second quarter decreased to $18.8 million, compared with $51.2 million in the prior-year quarter, reflecting higher compensation expenses and a number of unusual items.
* Operating margin was 2.6%, compared to 7.6% in the prior-year quarter.
* Net income for the second quarter decreased to $13.0 million, or $0.12 per diluted share, compared with $31.8 million, or $0.29 per diluted share in the prior-year quarter.
* HR BPO segment revenues increased 5% in the second quarter while The HR BPO segment loss was $61.2 million
* Client Employees increased to 765,000 from 720,000 as of march 31, 2006 for HR BPO services.
The company said that discussions to renegotiate our most troubled HR BPO contracts advanced in the quarter, and is in the final stages of refining its strategy for how it will position the HR BPO business for long-term success.

New Convergys Outsourcing Contract

Convergys, a leading HR Outsourcing provider, announced a renewed HRO contract with Fifth Third Bancorp. Under the terms of the contract, Convergys will continue to provide the latter with payroll administration, benefits administration, HR administration, recruiting and resources and employee and manager self-service. The duration of the contract is 5 years.
Per Convergys, although the original contract is not due to come to an end until 2008, Fifth Third Bancorp agreed to renew the contract 2 years early considering the successful execution of the contract by Convergys.
“Convergys has helped us alleviate our back-end administration concerns and enabled us to move our HR focus to more strategic activities, such as talent management, compensation, and benefits,” said Thomas Neltner, vice president, HR Operations, Fifth Third Bank.
“The fact that Fifth Third Bank rewarded us with an early contract renewal demonstrates their confidence in our ability to deliver business impacting services and solutions, based on the results of our HR BPO service delivery model and successful ongoing management of their HR functions,” said Karen Bowman, president, Employee Care, Convergys. “During our discussions, Fifth Third acknowledged its excellent working relationship with Convergys and the benefits it has realized as among the reasons for early renewal.”
The value of the deal has not been revealed.

Hewitt to Provide HR BPO Services

Hewitt Associates, a global human resources services company, announced today that it will provide HR business process outsourcing (HR BPO) services to Rogers Communications, Inc., a communications and media company based in Canada, reports Businesswire .This is an expansion of the companies’ relationship, as Hewitt has provided compensation and benefits consulting services to Rogers for the past few years.
Under the new multiyear contract, Hewitt will provide HR BPO services, including workforce administration, payroll, compensation and health and welfare administration services to approximately 26,000 Rogers employees in Canada. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The Rogers contract marks Hewitt’s first HR BPO win this fiscal year.
“HR BPO continues to be an integral part of our business and we’re pleased to demonstrate that commitment as we expand our partnership with Rogers to deliver on their HR needs”, said Russ Fradin, Hewitt chairman and CEO. “We’re excited to grow our business and will continue to pursue opportunities like Rogers that will enable us and our clients to be successful.”

RediClinic Offers Valuable Employer Solutions

RediClinic, one of Steve Case’s Revolution Health Care companies, offers a unique and innovative way of creating a value proposition to employers of all sizes. Easier and Earlier Access to Health Care.
Convenient care clinics provide convenience, cost reduction and more importantly - less time out of work for employees. The average cost of absenteeism is $660 per employee. This is a hidden cost in the healthcare arena that has gotten little if any, attention in the past. The recent announcement of Retail Giant Wal-Mart to expand its store healthcare clinics from 76 currently to more than 400 over the next few years might be attributed to the above discussion. Industry experts feel that RediClinic, already operating over 50 nurse practitioner-staffed clinics in high traffic locations that are co-located with pharmacies, including Walgreens, Wal-Mart and H.E.B. is well positioned to cater to the ultimate convenience needs of employees.
Chris W. Kersey, RediClinic’s Chief Medical Officer, says RediClinic creates a compelling value proposition to employers of all sizes by providing Easier and Earlier Access to healthcare. According to him:
“Easier access to health care, particularly for those individuals without a primary care provider. Since RediClinics are conveniently located in stores where your employees already shop, getting a prescription at the store’s pharmacy (and filling the prescription!) is easy.
Earlier access to health care, thus potentially reducing illness severity and any related absenteeism from work. RediClinic offers a broad menu of preventative screening services and vaccinations, including physicals, drug screenings, blood tests for common diseases, osteoporosis, health risk appraisals, biometric measurements, and immunizations.
Complementarily to your current health and wellness programs with a focus on preventive care and reducing long-term health care utilization. High-quality, standardized care across clinics. RediClinics are staffed by highly-trained, peer-reviewed nurse practitioners with advanced clinical training who work with nationally-accepted treatment protocols and in conjunction with physicians at a leading health care system in each market.”
The outcome of an Easier and Earlier Access to health care offerings to an employer will ultimately lead to lower health care costs while improving employee productivity to higher levels.
A recent study conducted by a leading actuarial company compared physician office visit charges to RediClinic charges in various markets indicate the following findings:
RediClinic visits are on average 36% less expensive per visit than the average primary care provider.
RediClinic can reduce the average annual claims cost by 4% for an employer, e.g. if an employer spends $10M on health care annually, the anticipated savings can be up to $400,000.
RediClinic can also reduce the indirect costs of absenteeism. Assuming 2 physician visits per employee per year, an average wage per employee and an average RediClinic 30-minute visit time (vs. average MD visit of 2.5 hours), a 100-employee company can potentially reduce the costs associated with absenteeism by tens of thousands of dollars by contracting with RediClinic.
Also, according to RediClinic’s research 98% of employees were satisfied with their clinic experience. Currently, RediClinic Employer partners are located in Atlanta, Houston, Austin and Richmond.
Its time for the employers to choose the right health care company which can bring this double sided advantage of lower health care costs and greater employee productivity.

2007 HROA Award Winners

HROA, an HR outsourcing Association, presented its Yearly Awards for those who have made extraordinary contributions to the advancement of HR Transformation during mid-April. The winners of the awards are given below
Person of the Year - Christian Baader, SAP
Thought Leader of the Year - Steve Shangold, RPO Worldwide
Large Market Provider of the Year - Accenture HR Services
Middle Market Provider of the Year - ADP
Customer Relationship of the Year, Large Market - ADP & IKEA
Customer Relationship of the Year, Middle Market - Accenture BPO Services, Solutions for the Middle Market & Catalina Restaurants
Buyer Executive of the Year - Sue Gooch, British Telecom
Provider Executive of the Year - Michelle Adelman, Accenture HR Services
Technology Provider of the Year - SAP
RPO Provider of the Year - IBM Recruitment Process Outsourcing Services
Payroll Provider of the Year - ADP
Relocation Provider of the Year - Cartus
Sourcing Advisor of the Year - Rosemary Collins, TPI
Attorney of the Year - Barbara M. Melby, Morgan Lewis
Janet Parkhurst, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP