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Capital Associated Industries, Inc. (CAI), the largest employers' association in North Carolina, says another day of financial woes on Wall Street leads to more employee concerns about the stability of their retirement plan. How can employers help employees maintain confidence in their company and assurance with their benefits plan? Lynn Unsworth, regional manager of CAI, shares a few tips for employers on how to handle this difficult human resources situation that can have a big impact on employee morale.
Open enrollment season throughout corporate America is rapidly approaching, and that means millions of workers will be making important decisions about their employee benefit coverage for next year. This year's menu of options will feature an increased emphasis on personal health behaviors as well as enhancements that give workers access to new health services and programs, according to benefit consultants at Watson Wyatt Worldwide.
Companies are now beginning to apply a global human resources (HR) mindset to their global footprint and operations, according to findings from a recent multinational research survey released by Mercer's outsourcing business. In early 2008, Mercer partnered with Harvard Business Publishing to launch an in-depth study on the needs and expectations of multinational companies in the area of global benefits outsourcing. The survey shows that even as multinational companies and their HR executives take on more global roles, they are still largely entrenched in local and regional issues. In addition, they face significant business challenges that threaten to slow their progress in globalization, in particular the lack of centralized employee and benefits data.
As the U.S. works toward stabilizing its financial markets after unprecedented events on Wall Street, the ripple effects of a cooler business climate in 2008 continue to infiltrate nationwide employment. Employers expect current hiring trends to hold steady through the end of the year, according to CareerBuilder.com and USA TODAY's "Q4 2008 Job Forecast." "Employers are maintaining a conservative approach to recruitment as they maneuver through a weaker economy that has produced its share of casualties," said Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder.com. "Certain sectors such as IT and Healthcare are still showing solid job growth while others struggle with reorganization, cost containment and other measures to stay afloat. Consistent with last quarter's findings, there is a slight decrease in the number of employers planning to add new workers in the next three months."
If America is to solve its nurse shortage crisis, health-care leaders will have to figure out a way to keep people such as Nancy Burtis in the profession. Burtis, 52, was an emergency room and surgical nurse in the Chicago area for almost 25 years. But after growing weary from the constant stress of the job—including forced overtime and extra shifts—and seeing peers in understaffed units suffering with backaches from lifting patients without help, Burtis left the profession six years ago for a research job in the suburbs with a pharmaceutical company. "You were always running, trying to get everything done, always afraid you were missing something or forgetting something," she said. "I don't think anybody can work that hard for that long."
A perfect storm of retiring baby boomers, an aging nurse population that's leaving the profession and too few nursing instructors is setting up a health-care crisis. One report estimates that by 2020, there will be a staggering shortage of nurses—possibly more than 1 million vacancies. States are trying to head off that shortage by helping colleges turn out more nurses and by improving their working conditions. But the question remains whether it's enough to avert a crisis.
Nearly half of organizations participating in the September online poll report that they are succumbing to the pressures of the failing economy. While 51 percent of participants say that they are not contemplating layoffs, the remaining 49 percent are in some way. Nineteen percent are affirmatively contemplating layoff actions, while 10 percent say they are not, but that such considerations are not that far away. Twenty percent of poll respondents report that they have already implemented layoff actions. There were 393 respondents to the September online poll.
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