.jpg "VODAFONE IN NEW ZEALAND OFFERS REDUNDANCY TO ABOUT 2000 EMPLOYEES BEFORE ITS IPO")
Vodafone PLC’s New Zealand unit is planning to offer voluntary redundancy for its 2000 employees citing business review ahead of its stock market listing next year. The move impacted most of its 3000 employees strong unit barring the frontline call center and retail team members. Vodafone New Zealand’s CEO Jason Paris, who was recently appointed said that the company is trying to get in shape before its first IPO slated to be in 2020. The firm opened shop in 1998 in the country and currently has 2.4 million customers and 72 retail chops with 3000 employees, some of whom have already accepted the redundancy proposal as per the company spokesperson.
Nordea Bank’s Copenhagen headquarters replaced its gray-suits for mustard robe wearing tattooed model in an attempt to lure the twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings millennials in the workforce. The largest name in finance among the Nordic countries put the said step forward to woo young talent as banks get more online and face the talent battle against IT giants like Amazon and Google. The banking industry has evolved and as per Christian Ronn Osteraas, Danske Bank’s head of real estate, “Banks are more and more IT companies.” So, as these financial companies are competing for the same pool of talent should provide similar physical facilities and office ambiance. Nordea is pushing for a “start-up feeling” getting its inspiration from Silicon Valley and Disney to lure AI and IT talent in their system.
Women take their time and are more selective while applying to new jobs says a LinkedIn study. The study that is based on 610 million users across 200 countries also said that men are 68% more likely to ask for referral than men. Women are 14% less likely to apply for a job after viewing it and are 16% more likely to be hired than men for the job applied. This can be attributed to women applying for a job only when the qualifications are an exact match showcasing a risk-avoiding selection. For women, the job description and company is more favorable if it has the expected salary undisclosed as it guarantees a fair pay workplace for them.
.jpg "UNILEVER USA AND IBM AMONG THE TOP NAMES WHO PROMOTE WOMEN EXECUTIVES")
Unilever USA, Marriott International, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, IBM, JLL, Eli Lily & Company, and Loreal USA are among the top 10 in National Association of Female Executives 2019 Top 70 Companies for Executive Women. This year’s list had top names in pharmaceutical and hospitality topping the charts to become employers who, “prepare, promote and push women to executive levels.” Female CEOs at these companies increased by 5% bringing the number to 19% that outpaces the S&P 500. The number of board of directors increased to 32% this year from 30% in 2018. The results are promising and welcome news for a March 8, but there is a lot to achieve going forth.
The job engine in America might be showing signs of a cool-down, but wages are supposed to carry on their upward journey, courtesy a tight job market. The unemployment rate fell a tenth of a point to 3.9% since last month and the nonfarm payrolls continued to grow by almost 180,000 despite the fact that it slumped from last month’s 304,000. The rate of unemployment is the lowest since 1969 and the hourly wages jumped 0.3% from the last month to get a 3.3% annual gain. A robust hiring trend will likely ease off the tension that a decade old expansion was bringing in to the corporate psyche.
The verdict is out on overtime pay extension and the U.S. Department of Labor announced on Thursday its intention to extend overtime benefits to a million more worker. The number is way below than the proposed threshold of $4700 in 2016 that would have impacted 4 million workers. The current overtime threshold is below $23,660, an amount that was set in 2004. The new threshold of $35,308 comes with a promise of review every three years by the current government and after a federal judge in Texas struck out 2016, Obama government’s proposed figure saying that it would bring many management workers in the overtime pay regulation and they, as a rule, are exempted from it.
.jpg "HIRING FLEXIBILITY AND SOFT SKILLS TO RULE THE 2019 RECRUITMENT SCENE")
Flexibility in hiring is a must-have component in the recruitment recipe for 2019 says a new CareerBuilder study based on The Harris Poll surveys. Forty percent of the employers in the study wanted to fill vacancies with a full-time employee and forty-seven percent of them are looking to hire part-time employees. Though the numbers have come down from last year’s respective percentages of 44 and 51, the hiring game will see a strong run in 2019 with talent crunch still sitting as the main theme as 50% of HR managers with open positions say that they cannot find candidates who suit the job role to perfection. The study also found that soft skills will be the focus of employers while 32% of current workers are looking to change in 2019 citing poor pay and bad company culture as major reasons.
Chief Executive Officers who gathered at a White House Forum remarked that they were not necessarily and always looking at four-year graduation while hiring Americans in the wake of scarce applicants for an open position. The forum had leaders of major firms like Apple Inc, Lockheed Martin Corp, IBM Corp, Home Depot Inc and Siemens USA joining the 25-member board co-chaired by President Trump’s adviser and daughter Ivanka Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Tim Cook, CEO Apple noted that last year the company hired nearly 50% of non-college degree holders. Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson was also of a similar opinion as she said that out of 14,000 people the company hired half of them did not possess a college degree and 6,500 of them were in manufacturing.
Apple Inc. plans to bring 1,200 employees to Sand Diego over three years in an expansion move. Notably, this move will plant Apple in the backyard of Qualcomm, the chipmaker for Apple and currently its legal rival. The announcement comes pertinent step towards the company’s motive to reduce its reliance on third-party for chips and modems. The current multinational legal battle between Apple and Qualcomm is chiefly due to the latter’s allegation of Apple violating its patent, while Apple alleged that Qualcomm inaccurately charged royalties. Last month reports were ripe that Apple was moving its modem chip engineering team to in-house hardware technology group from its supply chain unit indicating its intention to produce a component that it earlier procured from Qualcomm.
.jpg "GOLDMAN SACHS DROPS THE TIE AND SUIT TO WEAR A MORE CASUAL OUTFIT")
Goldman Sachs Inc. will shed its business suits and formal shoes to wear more casual attire. The Wall Street firm on Tuesday declared a “firm-wide flexible dress code” in its internal memo stating the changing nature of the workplace and its tilt towards a more casual attire behind the move. The memo intended for the bank’s 36,000 employees was penned by Chief Executive Officer David Solomon, a former investment banker. As the tradition dictated till now, the Goldman Sachs was a strictly white-shoe investment bank that required business suit as a requirement. The move succeeds the 2017 decision to implement a more casual dress code for its technology and other digital business avenues.
In the absence of a comprehensive employment data privacy law, the threat looms large on corporate data. Human error and more precisely human negligence can be attributed to most of the data breaches. Supporting the statement is the Shred-it report that says more than half of the leaders believe that employee negligence leads to most of the breaches. Assimilation of official and company data in personal devices like smartphones leave data vulnerable to hackers. PII training and adhering to the three O’s - onboarding, ongoing and off-boarding in the learning and development initiatives can thwart the threats in the womb.
.jpg "APPOINTED A CDO? IT MAY NOT BE ENOUGH FOR A TRULY DIVERSE WORKPLACE")
Appointing a Chief Diversity Officer may not be enough to catapult a company’s diversity initiatives and a recent survey by Russell Reynolds Associate, a management consulting firm supports the statement. The study found out that nearly half, i.e. 47% of the surveyed companies has a Chief Diversity Officer, but a good number of them, i.e. 63% were appointed or promoted to their roles within three years. A short time to expect significant changes especially when resources pooled in for diversity is scant. About 97 CDOs interviewed in the report said that the resources and support from their organizations did not meet expectations and also the CDO initiatives were ill-aligned with organizational goals.
Bob Iger, Chief Executive Officer, Walt Disney Co. will see his future potential earnings decrease ahead of Disney’s annual meeting and amidst criticism over excessive pay packages for its executive ranks. Walt Disney disclosed that Iger’s pay will be reduced by 28% bringing it to $35 million after the company completes a deal to acquire assets from 21st Century Fox. The change will leave $100 million equity awarded to Iger as a part of his 2017 contract extension with Walt Disney that makes him the CEO till 2021 as the company prepares with its succession planning. The major concern for Disney is to keep a balance between creating a sustainable pay package for Iger to keep him on-board and succession planning.
Working moms at Amazon going by the name of Momazonians reached out to Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos with a campaign to include a backup daycare service. Momazonians is an 1800 women group who are slated to meet the senior managers of Amazon in the coming weeks to discussion day care facilities that the company has shied away for so long in spite of many IT companies providing the same for years. The argument in favor of a backup daycare is not humanitarian, but organizational as it curbs down the instances of unplanned leaves, turnover, and attrition in caregivers and especially mothers.
Gig economy might be shrinking as the latest report by the Center for Economy and Policy Research backs the earlier findings by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics that came a year back. The new data collaborates the fact that contingent workers are opting for standard jobs more in 2017 than in 2005. As per EPI, the number of workers in the gig economy has decreased from 10.9% in 2005 to 10.1% in 2017 in a steady trend. The recent data, as many fear might derail the efforts towards refreshing labor laws in the wake of the gig economy and for contingent workers.
.jpg "LEADERS PREDICT DISRUPTION IS COMING AND MOST OF THEM AREN'T READY FOR IT")
Organizational disruptions will almost be the norm in the coming three years as per 65% of U.S. executives in Mercer’s 2019 Global Talent Trends Study. The number saw a rise from 2018’s 35% indicating that executives around the U.S. expect “significant disruptions” a part of the corporate curriculum. However, just 37% of the 7,300 HR leaders believe that their company is future ready for these disruptions indicating human capital risks will be set in priority. The study noted that companies are deploying technology to overcome disruptions and building a brand that resonates with candidates and employees alike. The anticipation has replaced preparation for the future of work, but chances of change burnout remain in the backdrop.
.jpg "DOL PROPOSES THE NEW FLSA OVERTIME THRESHOLD TO BE $35K")
The U.S. Department of Labor will propose a salary threshold of $35,000, a raise from the previous $23,660 for overtime pay requirements. The rule pertains to the Fair Labor Standards Act that sets a threshold below which, workers are entitled to time and a half overtime pay for hours worked beyond 40 hours a week. The rise in the threshold will be lower than the proposed $47,476 threshold by the Obama administration. The change pending since 2016, will see the day of light by March 2019, wherein a formal Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is expected to appear. The new threshold will leave half of the workers who were supposed to be benefited from the threshold set by the Obama administration.
WeWork bid about 300 of its employees in what it claims to be a performance-based culling before the upcoming hiring spree. The New York-based company that was founded in 2010 has at present 10,000 staff and is planning to add 6000 more and the current slash comprises 3% of its staff. The company’s fortune dipped in 2016 when it fired 7% of its staff and curbed some of the financial forecasts for the year. The co-working giant found an ally and dedicated investor in SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate in 2017 and has since then raised $10 billion in investment.
U.S. companies are getting more robot friendly than they were last year thanks for cheaper machines and parts. The use of robots comes in a tight job market with stricter immigration laws that see the use of robots as one of the ways for industries to stay competitive and have a grip on labor cost. Shipments with robots and related parts hit 28,478 that is 16 percent more than its 2017 count and this time the user goes beyond the traditional automobile industry. Shipments have increased overall for food and consumer goods, semiconductor and electronic plants except for the automobile sector as the manufacturers are gearing up for a cutback.
The Chinese peer-to-peer lender, Dianrong is the latest in the league of companies who are cutting cost to comply with authorities’ efforts to shrink the industry by cutting down 2000 jobs. The company backed by Tiger Global Management and Standard Chartered Plc. Is closing 60 of its 90 brick and mortar stores that were set up for borrower’s identity verification in addition to letting people go. The shrinking of operations indicates that even the biggest names in China’s online industry could not escape the government crackdown on financial risk. The peer-to-peer sector that was once the biggest in the shadow banking industry has shrunk to $114 billion and will downsize more as a ripple effect of financial woes that affected thousands of individuals as many platforms failed.
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