Global consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide and Mariategui JLT Corredores de Seguros, provider of insured benefit solutions, have formed a marketing alliance to provide total compensation and employee benefit consulting services to employers in Peru.

The Spherion Employee Confidence Index dropped 0.8 points to 46.1 in June, showing a record-low level in 2008. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive(R) on behalf of Spherion Corporation, reveals no movement in macroeconomic confidence with only 12% of workers saying they believe there are more jobs available and 7% reporting the economy is getting stronger.

Los Angeles-based Atomkeep has launched a new service, which allows users to synchronize their profiles between major social networking and career web sites, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Monster, Flickr, Twitter, Jobster, Blogger, Yelp, Slide, JOBcentral, and Mixergy. The free, Web 2.0-style service, which is in beta, allows users to modify profile information, such as name, address, and other fields, and have those updates show up in all of its supported social networking and other web sites.

MEP Jobs, job board for the HVAC, electrical, and plumbing industries, has released a new white paper, Relocation and Recruiting: a how-to guide for MEP organizations. The study paper shows companies how to use relocation as an effective part of their overall recruitment strategy. Topics include determining why a candidate will relocate, building an effective relocation offer, and protecting company interests .

According to the recently released American Time Use Survey, The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor found that in 2007: --Employed persons worked an average of 7.6 hours on the days that they worked. They worked longer on weekdays than on weekend days-7.9 versus 5.6 hours.
--On the days that they worked, employed men worked about three-quarters of an hour more than employed women. This difference partly reflects women's greater likelihood of working part time. However, even among full-time workers (those usually working 35 hours or more per week), men worked slightly longer than women--8.2 versus 7.8 hours.
--Many more people worked on weekdays than on weekend days: 83% of employed persons worked on an average weekday compared with 36% on an average weekend day.
--On the days that they worked, 20% of employed persons did some or all of their work at home, and 87% did some or all of their work at their workplace. Hours worked at home averaged 2.8 hours per day, while hours worked at a workplace averaged 7.9 hours per day. Men and women were equally likely to do some or all of their work at home.
--Multiple jobholders were almost twice as likely to work on an average weekend day as were single jobholders-62% versus 33%. Multiple jobholders also were much more likely to work at home than were single jobholders-31% versus 18%.

In Depth
That noncompete pact may end up hurting recruiting. Is a noncompete agreement keeping you stuck in place? Since late last year, Boston venture capitalist Bijan Sabet has been crusading against the noncompete agreements many employees in Massachusetts are required to sign; they're intended to keep people who depart from immediately jumping to a rival company. Sabet believes such contracts discourage employees from leaving big companies to pursue entrepreneurial dreams, diminishing innovation. This month, Sabet helped organize a panel discussion at Harvard Law School on the impact of noncompetes, and entrepreneur Christopher Herot blogged about it. The consensus of the panel was that these restrictions are bad for the economy, and whatever small benefit they may have for a company seeking to retain its employees is more than offset by the difficulty that same company will have in recruiting. Prof. Lee Fleming of the Harvard Business School presented some research which showed that non-competes reduce employee mobility by 20 to 30 percent, and Paul Maeder of Highland Capital Partners put forth a model that showed how this could reduce the formation of new companies and the growth and innovation they could have provided. Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital added that his firm discourages companies in its portfolio from demanding non-competes. Rich Miner added that Google, which is headquartered in California, does not require non-competes from its Massachusetts employees. With all this agreement on the negative effects of non-competes, the mystery is why they persist. The panelists were not optimistic that the Massachusetts Legislature would change the law, since there was not a powerful constituency lobbying for change but there were large employers in the state who like things as they are. More likely, the change would come as newly educated employees weigh job offers in Massachusetts and California and refuse to work at companies that want them to sign. Also, enlightened VCs such as Maeder and Sabet stated they would continue to lobby their colleagues at other firms.