SmartBrief on Workforce

Aetna announces wage increase | Are you ignoring this key element of employee engagement? | Mental health care workers to protest staffing shortages in Calif.

January 14, 2015

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Are you ignoring this key element of employee engagement?
Employers need to broaden their employee engagement strategies to encompass matters that might arise outside the office, writes workforce consultant Susan LaMotte. Instead focusing on employees' work habits, probe their personal values, family needs and personal interests through surveys and other methods, she suggests. Harvard Business Review online (tiered subscription model) (1/13)

Mental health care workers to protest staffing shortages in Calif.
Nearly 3,000 therapists, social workers and psychologists plan to go on strike this week as part of a protest against Kaiser Permanente. The workers claim that Kaiser intentionally understaffs its offices and hospitals. CNNMoney (1/12)

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Training & Development

Does your company offer career counseling?
Large companies such as American Express, Aflac, RetailMeNot and Workday have begun offering career counseling designed to help workers map out their next steps. Less than half of workers feel their companies provide adequate career-planning tools, according to a Towers Watson survey. The Wall Street Journal (tiered subscription model) (1/13)

Regulatory & Legal Update

Ruling affirms limited franchiser liability in minimum wage case
A California judge has ruled that Massage Envy is not liable for alleged wage violations by individual franchise locations. The ruling is inconsistent with a recent move by the National Labor Relations Board to broaden the definition of joint employer in order to hold franchisees accountable for actions by individual locations. Entrepreneur online (1/12)

The HR Leader

Sometimes the best leadership goes unnoticed
The visible signs of leadership, such as job titles, count for less than "inconspicuous leadership," writes Duane Dike. By that, he means when leaders use emotional intelligence to build trust and to establish relationships with employees. "Followers will do anything for those gems of inconspicuous leaders out of respect, support, and possibly even a touch of love," Dike writes. Management-Issues (U.K.) (1/12)

Workplace Chatter

Adverse organizational changes energize some workers, survey indicates
Some workers react constructively to "psychological contract breaches" such as layoffs and other organizational changes, according to a survey published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. Workers with social connections within their company are more likely to experience a boost in productivity when their resources are threatened. Human Resource Executive (1/12)