Do Unions Help Organizational Productivity?

Catherine Palmiere — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:21:34 +0000

On Wednesday, we convened for the first Manhattan College session of the month and yet another engaging dialogue on current issues in HR. In this week’s meeting, we took on the topic of unions and their impact on organizational productivity.

We can all agree that unions serve a specific and crucial role in our civilization and that when workers first began full-scale organization in the early 20^th century, the institutions they created provided essential worker protections that made many aspects of modern society possible. There’s no doubt that unions, as a concept, are founded on important principles.

But in …

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Attracting and Retaining the Millennial Generation: Do Young Workers Require Special Consideration?

Catherine Palmiere — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:00:45 +0000

Recruitment and retention are vital components of any staffing strategy, even during a slow economy. Regardless of the state of the job market, employers need to aggressively recruit talented workers. And once great employees are on board, they’ll be more productive if they’re managed carefully, respected, and given the resources they need for success.

So if you’re staffing an office with a high percentage of millennial workers between the ages of 18 and 25, do you need to alter your HR approach and bend over backwards to accommodate this special demographic? For some management experts the answer is clear: absolutely.…

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High Executive Compensation: a Wise Move for Employers?

Catherine Palmiere — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:00:42 +0000

We’ve recently seen a high degree of media and cultural attention surrounding the issue of extravagant executive paychecks. The collapse of Wall Street, taxpayer bailouts, and a declining economy that threatens the security of the middle class have all led to close scrutiny of this practice. And because the issue strikes a personal chord for so many of us, the resulting criticism has been laid on with a broad brush. “High executive compensation” has come to suggest a spectacle of greed and undeserved privilege, and we can’t seem to separate the motivation behind the decision from front page images of …

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Securing Talent in the Current Job Market

Catherine Palmiere — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:53:31 +0000

As recruiters and employment firms have long recognized, jobs that require specific skill sets offer greater staffing challenges than jobs that don’t. Skilled labor is simply harder to come by, even when an economic downturn begins to favor employers in the ever-shifting balance between companies and job seekers.

But some employers have trouble accepting this reality. And when employers become picky, or simply refuse to acknowledge an essential scarcity of talent, they sometimes make unrealistic decisions that can have a negative impact on their firms. These decisions can include everything from hiring temporary help while waiting for the dream candidate …

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