They're looking for doctors, in International Falls.
Up on the northern border, where the loon calls.
They don't need a psychiatrist, they're basically all right.
They need fishhooks removed, and treatment for frostbite.
A life that some people only know from a book.
In the dead of winter it can feel like outer space.
But for the right person, it could be the perfect place.
It's not a luxury resort with miles of sand beaches.
It's more known for blizzards, wood ticks and leeches.
It gets cold in winter so you cannot feel your face.
But for the right kind of person, it could be the perfect place.
The little town of International Falls,
Minnesota hardly seems like the front lines of the labor shortage. For
people who love the cold (hmmm, maybe that explains it all), the town is
a frozen Mecca of sorts. For two years, they could not attract new
doctors. The town of 6,300 had one clinic that was in danger of being
closed.
Reveille and Hyperbole: comScore Releases Top Sites For July
The category was led by CareerBuilder.com Job Search with 7.9 million visitors, a 3 percent increase, followed by Monster.com with 5.5 million visitors up 6 percent and Yahoo HotJobs with 4.9 million visitors up 11 percent.
Alphalogix™, a long-time leader in electronic forms and workflow technology, announces Tasica Forms Director 3.0's full integration with XML open standard electronic form formats. Electronic form authoring design tools such as IBM Workplace Forms, also based on open standards, are fully maximized in value with Tasica Forms Director's point and click, easy-to-use business process automation and electronic form routing capabilities.
With the nation's average tuition, room and board at four-year private colleges and universities topping over $36,000 – nearly double from 1990 – parents and students are concerned about how to afford higher education(a). Whether a first year college freshman, or a senior moving on to graduate school, there are many ways to ease the financial burden without burning a hole in your pocketbook, according to FastWeb, the Internet's leading scholarship search engine and site within the Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NASDAQ: MNST) network.
Deck Chairs: Chase Zander IT, an IT Recruitment Consultancy specializing in placing technologists with leading Financial Services clients, launched this summer.
Chase Zander IT will be headed up by James Gittins, a well-known figure in IT recruitment with an outstanding reputation as one the top recruiters in the industry.
Adam Tallamy, Managing Director, of Chase Zander said that, "the appointment of James represents a landmark in the development of our business. His calibre combined with our brand and the quality of our business processes will guarantee the success of this business"
…
Upcoming Event: HR Recruiters Invited to Staffing Company Bradley-Morris, Inc.'s September / October Hiring Conferences for Ex-Military Job Seekers
Host cities for employers with civilian jobs include Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Charlotte, NC; Chicago, IL; Norfolk, VA; and San Diego, CA.
Bradley-Morris, Inc. (BMI), the largest military placement firm in the U.S., announced their September and October 2007 Hiring Conference schedule. The events, designed to be a highly-efficient hiring solution for HR recruiters, focus on Management / Engineering, Technician / Supervision, and Sales / Sales Management careers. The Hiring Conferences will take place on the following dates:
· September 10th and October 15th in Charlotte, NC
· September 17th in Chicago, IL
· September 17th and October 22nd in San Diego, CA
· September 24th and October 29th in Atlanta, GA
· October 8th in Norfolk, VA
· October 22nd in Austin, TX
You Should Know: BANGALORE, India: Indian firms record 47% revenues growth from outsourcingPublished: Tuesday, 21 August, 2007, 06:14 AM Doha Time
Indian outsourcing firms led by Genpact logged 47% growth in overseas earnings in the year ended March, a survey released yesterday showed.
Export revenue of business process outsourcing (BPO) firms rose to Rs209bn ($4.6bn) in the year, said the survey by Dataquest, an information-technology industry publication.
New York-listed Genpact remained India's biggest outsourcing firm, earning Rs22.22bn from overseas clients who seek to take advantage of India's lower labour costs.
Dataquest took into account only Indian BPO firms that provide services to foreign customers and excluded the captive India-based units of companies such as HSBC Holdings, Dell and America Online.
The top 20 outsourcing companies contributed Rs160.94bn ($3.57bn), or three-fourths of the total export pie, Dataquest said in a statement here on the findings of the survey.
Transworks, IBM Daksh, Tata Consultancy Services BPO, and Cambridge Solutions were the next four in Dataquest's order of ranking with revenues of Rs15.1bn, Rs12.6bn, Rs11.07bn and Rs10bn, respectively.
The top 20 added 57,784 employees during the year and employed a total of 216,967 people at the end of the financial year in March.
Indian BPO firms are trying to rise up the value chain by diversifying from low-end services such as answering calls from credit-card and banking customers to knowledge-based services that include financial analysis, risk management and equity research.
"We expect the Indian BPO industry to redefine rules of the game by setting up non-India delivery centres, addressing the knowledge-process outsourcing opportunity, and offering services better integrated with IT," Dataquest chief editor P K Roy said.
Most large outsourcing firms opened delivery centres outside India, with Manila emerging as a favourite destination, to be closer to customers and pare wage costs that are rising at home as competition intensifies. – AFP
Gulf Times
CAIRO, Egypt: Middle East Beckons as Outsourcing Hot Spot
As rising wages and attrition rates in India spur some international companies to seek new locales for outsourcing operations, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America have all been competing to become new offshore hubs.
Now, the Middle East and North Africa are elbowing into the race to host remote sales staff, service centers, tech support and the like, thanks to a favorable time zone, a multilingual work force and an oil-fueled investment and expansion spree. Companies also are attracted by some efforts by some governments there to diversify and liberalize their economies, as well as the prospect of tapping into the growing local market.
The offshore industry faces challenges in the Mideast, which is better known for political instability and ingrained bureaucracy than customer support. But underscoring the region's promise, some of the biggest outsourcing companies operating in India -- the industry's undisputed powerhouse -- are establishing outposts there.
Satyam Computer Services Ltd. is hiring 300 people for a new center in Cairo that will handle clients in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world. Earlier this year, Wipro Ltd. set up an outsourcing joint venture in Saudi Arabia and recently announced plans to enter Egypt. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. says it will soon start offering services from Morocco to French-speaking European clients.
Indian companies pulled in nearly $1 billion of outsourcing revenue from the region in the fiscal year ending March 2007, up from $600 million the year before, according to India's National Association of Software and Service Companies, a trade group.
Read More by Mariam Fam
Deep Release: Reserve Service Brings Benefits To Workforce Development Recent research by SaBRE has shown that the majority of employers agree that being a Reservist benefits the general development of employees: 80% of employers agree that Reservists are an asset to the UK workforce and 76% believe that activities such as service in the Reserve Forces provide employee development.
Reserve service develops employees skills in key areas
Reserve training enables Reservists to develop key skills and qualities that can be transferred directly to the workplace. These fall into three main categories: core skills, practical skills and personal skills.
Core skills such as team working, self-confidence and leadership development are highly prized by employers, and hardest for a business or organisation to train its workforce in.
Reservists also offer a wide range of practical skills, such as essential training in first aid and health and safety. Furthermore, weapons drill and parade drill encourage the development of precision, co-ordination and accuracy useful skills for any employee using expensive machinery or technology in their civilian career.
Training for Reservists also helps in the development of key personal attributes such as organisational loyalty, reliability, resourcefulness and integrity, all of which are desirable qualities in any workforce.
In addition to these transferable skills, much of the training provided for Reservists leads to nationally recognised qualifications, such as NVQs, SCOTVEC, and City and Guilds. By integrating these qualifications into their own workforce development programmes, companies and organisations are able to save both time and money.
Flexible working is fundamental to employee development
The world of work is changing, with flexible working practices and corporate responsibility becoming increasingly important in attracting, recruiting and retaining the best staff. One way in which companies can demonstrate a more holistic approach towards the development of their workforce is by employing Reservists and supporting them during their training. Flexibility in allowing time off will not only be appreciated by the employee, but rewarded through the enhanced transferable skills gained.
By becoming an officially recognised Supportive Employer, with policies and procedures in place for managing Reservist employees, companies will send a clear, positive message to both existing and prospective employees.
According to recent press, the West Australian Government is 78 teachers short of staffing targets leaving schoolchildren with no teachers to attend them. A reactive campaign to bring some of the 8,000 registered teachers back into the classroom has now started. As Australian Baby Boomers retire over the next few years, acute shortages of the most highly skilled and valuable workers will become more prevalent. PeopleStreme Human Capital has developed Workforce Planning Software to fill the gap left by organisations who have focussed mainly on benchmarking and high level measures to assess future workforce needs.
In the Health sector, the Australian Government's 'Districts of Workforce Shortage' is aligned with State and Territory Governments 'Area of Need' or 'Unmet Area of Need' in order to deal with a lack of suitably qualified medical staff. "Rather than scrambling to refill positions once the person has actually left the organisation, pro-active planning means that successors can be trained or recruited with more than just a few weeks notice" said Lyle Potgieter, CEO of PeopleStreme Human Capital. In managing the workforce shortage the Government still uses a high level approach described as "a doctor to population ratio based on recent Medicare billing statistics".
Visibility of Australian workforce shortages has significantly increased in recent months as the Victorian State Government posts the Small Business Victoria Newsletter to Victorian households. The Newsletter quotes a 2005 Workforce Tomorrow Report saying "by 2012 a national shortfall of 195,000 workers is predicted".
The trend is expected to become worse as Baby Boomers retire over the next few years. Workers in many Government Departments already have an average age much higher than the majority of the Australian workforce. In fact, a search of "ageing workforce" at the Australian Bureau of Statistics website reveals an impressive array of high level reports on this problem.
What is Wrong with the Traditional Workforce Planning Approach ?
Despite the known shortages in workforces across Australia, organisations are still having trouble dealing with the issue. Many organisations have conducted high level Workforce Planning and benchmarking. They know that their workforce is ageing according to their own high level reporting but struggle beyond the point of acknowledgment that this is happening. The most basic planning technique is to collate statistics on the workforce, such as age, length of service and other demographics. However, the workforce plan usually stops at a high level forecast of shortages and an acknowledgement that a problem really exists.
Fortunately new Workforce Planning technology is available to overcome this lack of planning detail. Workforce planners can now get visibility on the retirement intentions of each and every employee. Shortages of key staff often result in very lengthy replacement times. Even more time is needed for the new employee to become as proficient in the role as the retiree. Without advance notice, key roles are remaining vacant, resulting in service delivery issues affecting many organisations. In addition to retirement data, new Workforce Planning technology can assess the current - not historical - statistical probability that an individual will resign from an organisation. This means that vacancies created by retirement and other resignations of the most skilled workers can be pro-actively managed.
Detractors might suggest that privacy implications prevent effective identification of the most at-risk employees. This is a naive view given that managers must have strong visibility of their team's growth path or retirement plan, as the case may be, in order to manage their own outcomes and resources effectively.
"The problem of workforce planning for an ageing workforce is usually delegated to the HR department but really belongs with each manager and supervisor." said Potgieter. It is the managers and supervisors who are struggling with the consequences of accelerated retirements and who usually have to deal with problems such as:
1. Breaking continuity of service
2. Reputation impact for the organisation
3. Much higher cost to replace key workers resulting from a reactive approach
4. Program and project breakdowns resulting from a loss of organisational knowledge and experience
According to Potgieter, "Workforce Planning is not just a matter of collating demographics and acknowledging a problem. Rather it is a process of working actively with managers to define a strategy in each department where there is a known workforce shortage." Managers and supervisors deal with ageing workers in their teams every single day. It is a small step to determine which aged workers are considering a retirement and when they will leave.
Existing workforce planning techniques are very high level. For example, it's not unusual to hear something like "Based on last years numbers and economic conditions, we will be short of 89 teachers (or doctors or town-planners) in 2008." Being pro-active means that organisations need to go further than this and define which schools, which departments and which individuals. This helps improve visibility on staff replacement priorities and also with the development of plans for retaining talented employees whilst replacements are found. This is the part most organisations struggle with. Few organisations have visibility on individual employee intentions and, therefore, the business can only react after the resignation or retirement event.
Manager and Supervisor participation is critical in this process because they a) Feel the Pain of retirements in their own team and b) are best positioned to pro-actively plan for replacement workers by asking current team members when they intend to retire. But managers and supervisors need tools such as PreopleStreme's Workforce Planning module, to help them report and collate retirement information about individual team members. This makes the process easier for supervisors and managers and also provides the organisation with a top-down view of retirement hot-spots throughout the workforce. i.e. what has to be done first and what areas can wait.
As with water shortages, the impact of an ageing population can no longer be ignored. Once organisations start having delivery issues, there has to be urgent action. The economy has reached the point that unfilled positions are growing fast and organisations are experiencing service delivery issues. The time for action has arrived. Detailed workforce planning that is granular and specific will provide proper visibility and help manage the issue, whilst gross high level benchmarking will not.
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