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WORKLIFE NEWS ALERT : March 2009
Career development and management news from Worklife International
   
 

In this issue:

Latest HR stats

A recent Hewitt Associates survey has found that just 17 per cent of companies say their workforce strategy is consistently aligned with their business strategy across the organisation.

A recent Hudson survey found that 23 per cent of employers intend to grow their permanent headcount in the first quarter of 2009 (down 10 percentage points), while 17 percent plan to decrease headcount – a jump of 10 percent on the last quarter of 2008.

Quote of the month

"The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it."

Theodore Roosevelt

  

A word from the MD, Peter Tobin

In last month's issue of Worklife News Alert, we launched our inaugural career development survey.  Thank you to all of our readers who took the time to complete this survey, we are now compiling and analysing your responses and look forward to bringing you insights from the survey in upcoming issues of Worklife News Alert.

I hope you enjoy this latest issue of Worklife News Alert, and as always, if you would like to tell us what you think why not email us with your comments and suggestions (click here to contact us now).

Dear Worklife 

Each month Worklife answers your career development questions. To ask us a career development question, simply click here now. This month's Q&A looks at the current global economy, related to staff management:

Q: The current economy has resulted in many older workers in my organisation, who were considering retirement, deciding to work longer. Is this a good thing?

A: How full is the glass: half-empty OR half-full? It all depends on your viewpoint. Many potential retirees have seen the value of their superannuation dwindle in recent months and many have decided to postpone retirement as a result. The resulting reduction in turnover can limit the potential for internal moves and/or promotion for other team members.
These more mature and in many cases more experienced team members can be used to the organisation’s and co-workers' advantage - as a knowledge bank; to gain organisational understanding; share life experience; and their in-depth expertise is a development opportunity for younger and, perhaps, less experienced colleagues.

In Worklife’s recent 2009 Career Survey, we asked those working in corporate environments if the average interviewee discussed development opportunities as being important. Over 77% of respondents said that development opportunities were ‘Almost Always’ or ‘Often’ discussed ranking higher than Hours of Work, Specific Job Tasks, and Salary.

Perhaps you could consider the following:
• Partner a more experienced worker with a less experienced worker in a mentoring relationship;
• Establish knowledge-sharing sessions to give the more mature worker a sense of recognition;
• Investigate changing the mature worker’s employment without impacting their superannuation;
• Formalise your knowledge management system to gain maximum benefit from more mature workers and their experience.

Feature article: Companies drop talent management ball

At a time when organisations need to optimise their workforces by addressing talent challenges promptly and appropriately, most companies are still struggling to institutionalise effective talent management practices and programs, a recent study has found.  To read more, click here now to download this article from HR Management Magazine.

What's new on the web?
Check out www.beysterinstitute.com.

The Beyster Institute is dedicated to advancing the use of entrepreneurship and employee ownership as a way to build high performing enterprises and improve corporate performance. Beyster's website offers a wealth of free information about employee ownership complete with a resource library with keyword search capability.  To check out Beyster go to www.beysterinstitute.com

What's happening at Worklife this month?

This month we have a number of exciting initiatives, workshops, and projects occurring:

2009 Career Survey
We finalised our 2009 Career Survey which uncovers the important issues and elements to career-minded professionals and private practitioners. From the survey we have gathered exceptional feedback from professionals interested in careers, and private practitioners working in the careers space. In coming issues of the Worklife News Alert, we will share the survey results with you and strategies to address the key points that this survey has highlighted.

Congratulations Maria Floudiotis of Sensis, Melbourne
Maria participated in Worklife’s 2009 Career Survey and was randomly selected from survey respondents to receive a gift from Worklife. Maria receives one complimentary seat at a Career Coach Certification Program (CCCP) during 2009. Well done Maria! For more information on Worklife’s CCCP workshop, click here.

Upcoming CCCP Workshop
The next CCCP workshops for 2009 will be held in Sydney (April 27 to 29) and Melbourne (May 18 to 20). This year, Worklife is also conducting the CCCP workshop in Brisbane and Auckland and we present these workshops in June. For more information and a registration form, click here.

NEW Workshops Launched
We have launched a number of new workshops recently aimed at raising awareness of individual career needs from the perspective of team members and managers:

Career Health Check – is an intense, fun check up of personal career goals;

Manager as the Career Development Coach – equips managers to discuss careers with team members;

Executive Career Transition Coaching – assists and supports senior leaders who find themselves displaced; and

Executive Coaching – helps senior leaders to refine and further develop their leadership skills.

To find out more about these workshops and services, visit the Career Development Solutions page on Worklife’s website. Click here for more information.

 

  
   

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