Safety news your employees can use – In the light of the massive Toyota recall, here’s some useful safety advice you may want to get to your employees: Sudden acceleration: what to do if it happens to you – this includes a video for how to handle such a situation, as well as advice from Consumer Reports.
Union demographics – the union density rate was essentially unchanged in 2009 – 12.3% vs 12.4% in 2008. Among private sector employees, the rate dropped to 7.2% from the 2008 rate of 7.6%. See more union info at Workplace Prof Blog.
Impact of the recession on benefits – How did the recession affect large and midsize companies and what are their recovery expectations for the coming year? Read the new Towers Watson report of a recent employer survey: From Recession to Recovery: How Far, How Fast, How Well Prepared. Here’s a peek at a few things that struck us: more than half of the responding employers – 51% – have seen an increase in employee hardship withdrawals from retirement savings. Last year, 23% of the reporting U.S. companies reduced their contributions to employee retirement plans, versus a global average of 10%.
Work-Life – Organizational consultant CV Harquail posts a thoughtful discussion on why Work-Life initiatives are the foundation of authentic organizations. She tackles three myths which often keep work-life as a side issue rather than a central issue in organizations: (1) Work-Life is a women’s issue, (2) Work-life initiatives are only for employees who can’t keep up, and (3) Work-life initiatives are ‘nice to have’ but not critical.
Too much fun – at the Harvard Business Review blogs, self-proclaimed humorless grinch Grant McCracken looks at the problem of forced fun as evidenced by corporate cultures like Zappos, and asks if it makes a corporation less well-informed and less responsive. His commentary has sparked a pretty lively conversation in the comments.
Cool tools
- Social Media Policies Database – Doug Cornelius, Chief Compliance Officer at Beacon Capital Partners presents a collection of 144 Social Media Policies from organizations ranging from media and nonprofits to government agencies and private businesses at Compliance Building. Thanks to Jottings by an Employer’s Lawyer for the pointer.
- SlideFinder – Struggling with ideas for that upcoming presentation? SlideFinder is a specialized search engine that allows you to search and view publicly available PowerPoint presentations at the slide level. Search on numerous topics and get ideas for content, presentation style, and more.
- Affirmative and negative phrases when speaking about people with disabilities – the Office of Disability and Employment Policy offers a chart with helpful examples of language for communicating with and about people with disabilities. They also offer a list of etiquette suggestions for interacting with people with disabilities.