Mass Layoffs in May 2008. In May, employers took 1,626 mass layoff actions, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single employer; the number of workers involved totaled 171,387, on a seasonally adjusted basis. Layoff events and associated initial claimants were the highest for the month of May since 2003. The number of mass layoff events in May 2008 increased sharply by 318 from the prior month, while the number of associated initial claims rose by 37,473. In May, 528 mass layoff events were reported in the manufacturing sector, seasonally adjusted, resulting in 72,058 initial claims. Over the month, mass layoff events in manufacturing increased by 45 and initial claims increased by 11,506.

iCIMS a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider of talent management platforms, announced that it has been inclused in Gartner's 2008 Magic Quadrant Report for E-Recruitment Software. iCIMS, along with 21 other vendors specializing in talent management solutions, was included in the Industry Analyst Firm's yearly report.

The complimentary report Trends in HR Marketing: HR Buyers' Behavior 2008, now available from the HRMarketer, covers the latest trends and best practices for marketing to HR and employee benefits executives and professionals.

VCG, LLC, the developer of software solutions and services that power successful recruiting and staffing companies, releases version 1.2 of its Pointwing software, an advanced system for third-party recruiting and customer relationship management. Pointwing version 1.2 improves recruiter success in today's talent-driven economy by enabling personalization or customization of the working user-interface environment at either the company or the end-user level.

Pannell Kerr Forster of Texas, P.C. has won two IMPACT awards from HR Houston. The only two-category winner, PKF Texas received the awards for their flexible workplace initiatives as well as the "Meet" campaign, which launched the career section of their website.

Deloitte has entered into a partnership with Cisco, looking to improve visibility, control, and responsiveness across the enterprise by integrating the intelligence in Cisco's network platform with its broad array of business process and technology consulting capabilities. To improve the business processes, both companies have entered into a go-to-market agreement focused on developing service offerings that take advantage of the intelligence of the network.

Survey Says
Globoforce, a worldwide provider of strategic, on-demand employee recognition solutions, announced the results of its research study that focused on the importance of bridging the gap between the finance and human resource functions to drive success in today's global organizations. The study, which revealed five key findings related to closing this costly gap, illustrated the clear need for more consistent collaboration between finance and HR, specifically with the emerging role of Chief Talent Officer (CTO) as the next vanguard of corporate governance.

The onset of baby-boomer retirement, decades of economic expansion and a tight labor market are creating a critical shortage of seasoned managers. To lessen the impact of these changes, many companies have increased investment in succession planning, employee retention and employee engagement. To manage the investment in these efforts, the CFO and the CTO are forging new working relationships to create business cases for processes, programs and technologies that track the financial outcomes. This study assessed the attitudes of business leaders in Global 2000 companies on the relationship between the CTO and CFO and their mutual role in adapting to these new global workforce trends.

Key findings of the study include:

1. Human Resources Must Take a More Strategic Role in the Business. The role of HR has evolved, and in today's business climate, HR is not only expected to take a more strategic position, but also to quantify work with appropriate metrics and substantiate ROI. The study revealed that although 87% of respondents believe that HR should play a more strategic role than in the past, only 63% believe HR has the right amount of input in the company's strategic direction. A full 91% said it is more important than ever for HR to be accountable for spending, with 88% noting that HR must embrace a more metric-based standard for measurement.

2. Employee Recognition Drives Engagement and Therefore Impacts Recognition, Retention, Productivity and the Bottom Line. Engaged employees are more likely to be high performing employees who are less likely to leave their organization. As such, when asked which HR metrics were most important, the top three responses were employee engagement (71%), employee productivity (63%) and human capital ROI (57%). Respondents were near unanimous (99%) when agreeing that they believed that employee recognition improves engagement and productivity.

3. Creating a Universal Recognition Platform for Global Companies Is Difficult. The majority of respondents (80%) believe that addressing the needs of global employees is difficult, and 58% said that creating a universal recognition platform for a global company is difficult. Only 66% indicated they have a universal platform for recognition.

4. CFOs Are Not Aware of How Much They Are Spending on Recognition Programs. Although nearly everyone agreed that HR and finance need to be on the same page, only 58% of respondents say this is the case in their organization. When asked if their CFO was aware of how much their organization spends on recognition programs, only 58% said yes. Only 52% said there was a metric/plan in place to measure the effect of employee engagement on company performance. Moreover, even though best practice suggests that finance is the business unit that should require ROI, few survey respondents (36%) indicated that finance was taking a leading role in HR processes, programs and technologies.

5. The CTO and the CFO Must Work Together to Chart the Course for the Future. Survey respondents overwhelmingly said (95%) the CTO and CFO should work together to chart a new course for the future. However, a disconnect clearly exists when only 58% said this was currently the case in their organization.

"Business leaders understand that HR has the power to transform an organization by taking a strategic view and using technology to implement a measurable employee engagement solution that generates real results," said Derek Irvine, Vice President of Global Strategy, Globoforce. "As this study shows, leaders also understand employee recognition can improve employee engagement and - by extension - their bottom line, shareholder value and customer retention. To get there, it is essential that today's global companies bridge the current gap between finance and HR, empowering these functions to collaborate on this new strategic imperative and ultimately implement a universal recognition platform that motivates, retains and attracts great talent."

More than 250 HR and finance professionals from global 2000 organizations participated in the Globoforce survey. All of the respondents are from organizations with more than 10,000 employees engaged in global operations. More than 80% of respondents had responsibilities within the broad category of human resources while 20% had responsibilities outside of HR.