DataDome Blog

This morning, our WordPress installation and the database did not play nicely together when I attempted to manually update the WordPress installation. Everything had to be reinstalled. We did manage to import a slightly outdated backup database, and were also able to retrieve the last several posts from the Yahoo cache for the pages. However, the comments are lost. Sorry about that.

This blog is hosted as a beta version of WordPress through Yahoo hosting. They are several updates behind now. I put in a feature request some time ago. It would be nice if the automatic updater would update the installation, as it did at our old host. This is my only real quibble with the Yahoo hosting so far.

Success! See the update, and how to upgrade WordPress at Yahoo Small Business Hosting.

The American Medical Group Association (AMGA) and Cejka Search 2006 Retention Survey results are out.

The total average rate of physician turnover increased slightly to 6.7% in 2006, up from 6.4% in 2005.

Demographic Changes

• Turnover among male physicians increased to 6.8% in 2006 (from 5.9% in 2005).
• Turnover among female physicians decreased to 6.6% in 2006 (from 7.5% in 2005).
• Female physicians accounted for 35% of physicians employed in the responding groups (compared to 28% in 2005).
• The proportion of physicians, both male and female, who were reported as working part-time increased to 20% in 2006 (from 13% in 2005).

Why Do Physicians Voluntarily Leave a Practice?

• “Poor cultural fit” – 51%
• “Leaving to seek higher compensation” was mentioned 32% of the time, with “incompatible work schedule” and “excessive call schedule” each being mentioned 17% of the time.
• “Relocated to find a better community fit” was mentioned 20% of the time. Why? “To be closer to own or spouse’s family” (42%) and “spouse’s job required relocation” (22%).

“As the demographics of the physician workforce change, so will recruitment and retention efforts,” said Joseph Scopelliti, M.D., president of The Guthrie Clinic in Sayre, PA. “Turnover is a fact of life, but practices can minimize their rate of turnover with proactive efforts and a commitment to recruiting a physician whose needs match the needs of the practice.”

Data Dome Tip:
Using assessments, ask current physicians what it really takes to be successful in doing the current job. Establish an objective basis for starting a discussion about how to reorganize. Then, ask them what specific changes would make it easier for them to be successful in their positions. Do anonymous surveying with third-party administration.

Outside of background and training and gender and generation, different styles will simply prefer to do certain kinds of things in specific kinds of ways. It is very difficult (if not impossible) to change yourself or others. The work environment is much easier to change – if you have the right information.

Where there is a good job fit, there is less turnover and more engagement. By extension, physicians who do not have to deal with as many unnecessary environmental stressors are freer to focus on the actual job.

Not only will they be less inclined to leave, but they will tend to provide better patient care.

Have each person pick their top three preferred communication tips from their DISC behavioral style report.

Right now, what are the most important communication “do’s and “don’ts” that others need to know to communicate with you?

• Use them to kick off a meeting
• Post them on the door or at the edge of a cubicle.
• Print the three tips on a teeshirt. Put the basic style graph on the back!
• Add them as a scrolling marquee screensaver.
• Create flashcards. When someone doesn’t honor that tip, have them signal! Neon orange is a good color for this.

Examples:

Do

• Use an unemotional approach
• Give time to analyze data before asking for a decision
• Read body language for approval/disapproval
• Refer to goals and results
• Schedule in time for relating/socializing
• Stick to business
• Offer incentives for his willingness to take risks

Don’t

• Stand too close
• Overuse gestures
• Try to convince by “personal” means
• Be curt or cold
• Be patronizing
• Waste his time or ramble on
• Take credit for her ideas

Our First Podcast!

Art Schoeck, Data Dome Inc, interviewed by Jeff Davis on “Atlanta’s Business.” Aired 2/3/07 (5pm) and 2/4/07 (5:30pm) on Business Radio 1160, WCFO, JW Broadcasting.

Download mp3 – Behavioral Style Assessments in the Workplace

WorkForce Trends Issue 30 is now available!

PDF | HTML

• The $5 Trillion Turnover Drain
• Job Dissatisfaction in the Workplace
• The Changing Landscape of the American Job Economy
• Fields on the Upswing
• Slow Gains for Women
• Fun with DISC Communication Tips
• Age, Pregnancy Discrimination: Illegal Layoffs Rising
• Common DISC Blunders
• Spotlight on Select: Associate-Level Sales and Service Screening

Our WorkForce Trends newsletter gives you the latest on workforce trends, forecasts, and solutions.

To have the html version of WorkForce Trends delivered to your email address, subscribe here.

We do not share or sell your information – ever.

Please contact us at 404-814-0739 for your complimentary consultation to determine specific solutions for your workforce management needs.

So, who do you know?

More workers landed their current job through networking than by any other means.

According to a new Hudson survey a full 73% of managers say their company considers internal candidates to fill a job opening before looking at anyone else. Specifically, 40% of managers say that internal promotions are the best way to fill an opening, followed by employee referrals and personal recommendations (24% and 20%, respectively).

The more you make, the more this appears to be the case.

Managers and others earning earn more than $75,000 per year are significantly more likely than the average worker to have found their current job through a personal or professional contact – specifically, 33% more likely for managers, 39% for workers who earn $75,000-$100,000 per year, and 36% for workers who earn more than $100,000 per year (compared to 28% for all workers).

Professional and personal contacts still give the job seeker an “in.”

• More than half (54%) of the work force is job seeking – whether actively so, or more passively (i.e., they’d leave if a good opportunity presented itself).
• 28% of workers anticipate switching companies in the short-term.
• Only 14 percent of workers’ resumes are available online. Among those employees, 42% believe their company has no idea that their resume is posted (41% say their employer knows).
• One-quarter (25%) of workers have worked with a recruiter or headhunter at some point.

“Hiring and retaining top talent in today’s job market is a challenge, which is only going to intensify as the pool of highly skilled professionals continues shrinking. This is why it is imperative for employers to not just react as jobs open up, but develop a formal recruitment strategy that provides a healthy pipeline of talent.”

While the survey doesn’t ask why job board applications, resume submissions, and the like are considered last, other studies have confirmed that the “resu-mess” of paperwork makes it easy for talented candidates to get lost in the shuffle.

Successful recruiting strategies to select-in more of the right candidates are derailed by the sheer volume of applicants. Sifting through the resumes takes time. Few managers, human resource professionals and assistants have the time to screen the applications, call the candidates, fight the voice mail tag, complete phone interviews, and schedule face-to-face interviews.

While attempting to disqualify the unqualified or disinterested applicants, high-demand qualified candidates are often overlooked and turned off by slow response times, cumbersome hiring hurdles, or inexperienced, and sometimes inept, interviewers.

While networking is the most common method, there is an implicit question here just begging to be asked.

Are referrals and network connections inherently superior to other methods of recruitment?

Maybe. Maybe not.

• How well does your referrer know the person that they have referred, and in what context?
• Does a contact necessarily know that this person will thrive and be successful in this particular position, or only that they are generally competent in another position?
• Is the referrer the best judge of the strengths and weaknesses of the person they refer?
• Do you have any way of knowing whether the referral is genuine (or is it just a matter of “calling in a favor”?

Whatever your talent sourcing preferences, a more formalized set of strategies is clearly needed.

• Have you created an objective job description, including the behaviors, strengths, and competencies required for success in a particular position?
• Do you have methods in place to job-match the position to appropriate talent?
• Have your streamlined your procedures so that qualified candidates have a chance to be considered?
• Do you use valid, targeted assessments to identify the most promising talent, position by position?

It pays to hire right.

DO UNTO OTHERS… how?

As a corporate behavioral specialist, Art Schoeck has some advice for managers and employees who want to improve relations: Forget the Golden Rule.

“The Golden Rule is totally wrong,” says Schoeck, founder and CEO of Data Dome, a clearinghouse for assessment tools. “You don’t treat people the way you want to be treated. You have to treat them the way they want to be treated.

Such straightforward advice has helped to make Schoeck an award-winning trainer and sought-after speaker for companies such as BellSouth, Hewlett-Packard, and Marriott International.

“We help companies analyze their positions, assess their people, and then apply their people the best way,” says Schoeck, a member of the One Ninety One Club in Atlanta.

In the past 15 years, Schoeck has spoken to nearly 18,000 executives and managers through his workshops, which touch on everything from preferred communications styles to helping companies increase productivity.

“The employee and company both have to have a win,” he says.

The top corporate mistake Schoeck says he sees is that managers “hire people like themselves.”

The former restaurateur also embodies the good advice he tends to offer others. As he puts it: “It’s not just what you’re good at. It’s what you like to do.”

Reproduced from Janet Mefferd, Do Unto Others, Private Clubs, March/April 2007 issue, page 88. Photography by Marc Climie.

Note: We have gotten some feedback on this. To clarify, there is nothing wrong with an ethics of action based on treating others as you would yourself prefer to be treated.

However, in terms of behavioral styles and communications, the way that you prefer to be treated may not bear much resemblance to the way someone with a different style would prefer to be treated.

For example, a low S has a quick pace. If they communicate with a high S at the pace they prefer, a high S will feel rushed – causing stress. When you understand what the positions in the four quadrants really mean, you can adapt your behavior to treat others more as they themselves prefer to be treated rather than projecting your own behavioral preferences.

We have found that it is not unusual for people to make value judgments based on behavioral style differences. For this reason, too, the distinction is valuable.

There is an implicit ethic in specifically adapting your style in order to better communicate with someone else: It can be a way of paying attention to – and honoring – their differences from you.

Ultimately, though, an understanding of behavioral styles equips you with a neutral language for understanding behavioral differences among us. Whether you use that insight for good or ill is another question (and that is when the original version of “The Golden Rule” applies once again!).

The effects of cuts in the permanent workforce are starting to show.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics report on Continent and Alternative Employment Arrangements has documented that in 2005 more than 10 million workers – about 7.4 of the employed – were independent contractors (an increase from 6.4 in 2001). An increasing number of workers are doing on-call work (2.5 million workers), working for temp agencies (more than 800,000), or working part-time (11% of men in wage and salary jobs and 25%).

In the fourth quarter of 2006, there were 1,444 mass layoff events that resulted in the separation of 255,886 workers from their jobs for at least 31 days, according to preliminary figures released by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Both the total number of layoff events and the number of separations were higher than during the October-December 2005 time period.

Some talented people who are laid off start their own businesses, and some of them find new jobs right away.

However, the modest job gains in some industries may mask that many workers who lose their jobs through downsizing or reorganization layoffs may be more likely to have to settle for temporary positions, positions that do not pay as well, or other stop-gap work.

A manager who loses a full-time position, and is forced to take an hourly part-time position to pay the bills doesn’t show up in the unemployment figures. Unemployment figures count heads, not hours. Someone who is willing to work 40 hours a week, but is only offered 20, is still counted as “employed” rather than something like “half-employed.”

Semi-permanent, part-time, outsourcing, and temporary jobs have left as much as 25% of the workforce without traditional benefits such as health care, pensions, or even unemployment insurance eligibility.

Remember too that numerous studies show that the population of skilled workers in America is shrinking.

A Pew Research Center poll last fall found that

…most Americans are well aware that the social contract associated with work in America is going through a period of profound change – with the industrial-era model of secure jobs with good wages and benefits that predominated until roughly a generation ago giving way to a more cost-conscious and globally-competitive workplace marked by stagnant real wages, cutbacks to health benefits and retirement plans, and growing threats of having jobs outsourced abroad. When asked whether each of eight different aspects of work life have gotten better, worse or remained the same for the typical American worker over the past 20 or 30 years, a majority or plurality of respondents in the Pew survey answered worse to all eight questions.

Qualified, talented leaders and workers will factor into their career decisions the history of how a company treats its most valuable resource – its people.

There are better ways to cut costs. Call us.

Prediction from Dr. Heidi: Organizations who show by their actions that they value their people will be more likely to attract and retain the talented leaders and workers that they will need in order to be competitive.

Will you attract and retain talent as the skilled workforce shortage approaches? Seventy percent of U.S. intellectual capital is planning a career move – do you know why? Who will stay with you through rough times?

The New York Times article Inside the Minds of Your Employees (Kelley Holland, Jan, 28) points out that in a tight market the communication breakdown between talented workers and employers can have consequences beyond a breakdown of morale.

Some 86 percent of the 262 employers in a study by Watson Wyatt, the consulting firm, said they believed that their organization was treating employees well, and more than half expected to do a better job of treating employees well in the future. But only 55 percent of the 1,100 employees in the study believed they were well treated, and just 24 percent thought they would be treated better in the future.

Employers also appeared to have little sense of why high-performing employees might leave the organization: not one employer said health care benefits would play a role, but 22 percent of the top performers themselves said that those benefits would be important.

Communication is the keystone of employee satisfaction. How can you discover what’s working and also find out the bad news you need to know – ask! Third party, anonymous surveys protect employees.

Anonymous surveys can mend the communication breakdown. For example, a bottom-line question would be to ask “if you would leave this position or company for any reason, what would it be?” Include not only multi-choice, but also some open-ended questions.

Here are some real-life answers our clients discovered:

• 71% of employees would take a comparable job elsewhere.
• “Upper Management is too lenient with employees.”
• “Employees feel used.”
• “My manager often makes me feel inadequate.”
• “The attitude is ‘It’s not my job.’”

With information about what really matters to your employees, you can gain a competitive edge on loyalty and engagement. Add survey trending for accountability on whether your solutions are working.