*He makes what?: You might think that peeking over your cubicle wall to see your co-worker's pay stub is the only way to find out what he/she makes,
but the U.S. Supreme Court seems quite optimistic about people's ability to figure out what co-workers earn. On May 29, in a 5-4 opinion in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber
Co. (GT ), the court held that wage discrimination lawsuits must be brought within 180 days of the alleged discriminatory act. That is, 180 days after the original payment was set
- not when the worker finds out. Now that workers are facing such a tight time frame to file lawsuits, the controversial court decision raises an important question about the
workplace: Do workers actually know what the person in the next office makes?
Source: BusinessWeek *Onward and Upward: According to a recent business benchmark survey conducted by the Council of Public Relations Firms, the PR
industry is showing strong revenue gains so far in 2007. Among the results:
- Surveyed firms averaged an 8.8% increase in first quarter revenues over Q1 in 2006;
- 90% of those firms expect revenues to increase in 2007;
- 73% of firms reported an increase in the number of RFPs in 2006 vs. 2005;
- Average profitability of double-digit profit margins were reported for the fourth consecutive year;
- The sectors generating the most revenue for firms in 2006 were, in order, consumer products and services, technology and healthcare; and
- More than half of firm revenues were generated in marketing communications (51%), followed by corporate communications (26%) and public affairs (11%).
Source: Council of PR Firms
*Hire Away: A past survey by Development Dimensions International and Electronic Recruiting Exchange revealed the following four hiring practices of
highly successful organizations:
- Interviews in which candidates are asked to describe specific examples of their skills
- Automated resume screening and search
- Assessments that predict whether candidates are motivated by the factors associated with a particular job or a company's values and ways of doing things
- Simulations that gauge specific job-related abilities and skills
Source: Inc.com
*Who Moved My Cheese?: In the effort to help organizations recognize the differences in employees' preference when facing change, Discovery Learning Inc. has
taken the aggregate results from 150,000 change-style assessments performed using the Change Style Indicator and grouped people into three categories according to the way they
deal with change: Conservers, Pragmatists and Originators.
Conservers: Prefer to work within the existing structure. Appear deliberate, disciplined and organized
Pragmatists: Deal in outcomes and seek practical, functional solutions to problems. Appear practical, agreeable and flexible.
Originators: Favor things that are different just because they're different. May appear unorganized, undisciplined, unconventional and spontaneous.
Source: Inc.com
*Not the Sharpest Tool in the Shed: Business 2.0 honors this year's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business, with these coming in as the top 10:
1. Wal-Mart, for "a series of public relations gaffes so stunning that it lands six spots in this year's edition."
2. Northwest Airlines, for laying off thousands of ground workers, "but not before issuing some of them a handy guide, '101 Ways to Save Money.'"
3. McDonald's, for giving away 10,000 branded MP3 players in Japan that were preloaded with viruses that capture data from PCs and forward them to hackers.
4. General Motors, for ads that included taglines like "Yesterday's technology today" and "Global warming isn't a pretty SUV ad - it's a reality."
5. Kazakhstan, for misspelling the Kazakh word for "bank" on its 2,000- and 5,000-tenge notes.
6. Steve Wynn, for striking a deal to sell a Picasso painting for $139 million and then accidentally ripping it when gesturing to show it off to visitors.
7. New York Times, for accidentally including the debit and credit card numbers of 240,000 subscribers in a shipment of the Telegram and Gazette.
8. Spirit Airlines, for the marketing copy for the airline's "Hunt for Hoffa" game, in which visitors to the corporate Web site were asked to "dig for the remains of the
missing union leader."
9. Porter County, Ind., for miscalculating a real estate valuation and causing a $900,000 shortfall for the city and a $200,000 gap for its schools.
10. Comcast, for a cable repairman who fell asleep on the couch of a customer, who took a video of the man's slumber and put it on the Web.