Welcome to the June 6, 2007 issue of The Total View

Published by Success Performance Solutions, Written by Ira S. Wolfe

Visit our Human Resources Blog and Perfect Labor Storm Blog where we can post daily (and more often) human resource updates, news, and Perfect Labor Storm facts. 

What's Inside:

1. Pre-Employment Test to Improve the Quality Of Candidates

You’ve likely heard and read a lot of propaganda about the virtues of pre-employment tests. But you probably haven’t read about the following benefit:

What I offer this week is an observation I have had with clients using our services for three or more years. When we first introduced pre-employment tests into their hiring process, a considerable number
of “top” candidates were being rejected. On the one hand, this was good news – the assessments were doing their job, exposing traits or skills of candidates that didn’t fit the job, team or company culture. On the other hand, our clients wondered if we were going to reject all their candidates and just run up a bill for more assessments.

Fortunately, they trusted us enough to move forward and eventually we confirmed a candidate who met their job fit criteria.

Now let’s turn the clock forward to the present time. Our client presents two candidates. I take a quick peek at the results and find the behavioral styles, business motivators, personality traits and
cognitive abilities nearly identical. At this point the interviews and reference checks can focus on the subtle personality and attitude differences, resulting in a very predictive screen.

This client’s experience is not alone. Based on what our clients learn from the assessments of previous job candidates, they use that knowledge to improve screening and interviewing of future candidates. The result is that poor fits are eliminated earlier and the quality of the final candidates improves dramatically.

One client summed it up this way: “We used to hope to identify one candidate who met our criteria. Too often we had to compromise our standards to fill a vacancy. Today, even in this tight job market, we
find our screening process so good thanks to the assessments that we end up with two or three candidates we’d hire. Any one of these candidates we would have readily hired in the past.”

If you would like to screen candidates more accurately with less effort and improve the quality of candidates presented for interviews, call us at 800.803.4303.

2. Perfect Labor Storm Statistics and Trends - High Cost of Obesity

Four studies linking obesity to increased employer costs for health care and workers compensation were released recently.

One, conducted by the Medstat Group Inc. showed that moderate and severe obesity were linked to annual health care cost increases of 21% and 75%, respectively. Moderate obesity was associated with a $670 increase in costs, and severe obesity resulted in a $2,441 increase in costs.

Another study examining records of nearly 12,000 workers by Duke University Medical Center linked obesity to higher medical costs and 13 times the number of lost work days than non-obese workers. Also, the study found that obese workers averaged 11.65 workers compensation claims per 100 workers, while non-obese employees filed an average of 5.8 claims per 100 workers. As a result, obese employees had medical costs seven times higher, for an average of $51,019 per 100 employees. The most common causes of injury among obese workers were slips, falls and attempts to lift something.

In a third study, CCH reports that researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Injury Research and Policy recently published a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology showing that obesity increases the risk of traumatic workplace injury.

Of the 7,690 workers included in the study, 29 percent were injured at least once between January 2, 2002, and December 31, 2004. Approximately 85 percent of the injured workers were classified as
overweight or obese.

Finally, using data provided by nine large companies, Thomson Healthcare, found a severly obese employee typically runs up a tab of $5,695 a year in medical care and pharmacy costs, 75 percent more than a worker of normal weight.

Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 is now available. The year 2007 will see an increase in skilled worker shortages and more competition. The result will be higher salaries, more training and career advancement opportunities, and more flexible work cultures. How prepared is your company to find skilled and dependable workers?

Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 is the newly updated and revised 2007 edition of best-selling book first published in 2005. You can now download an advance copy of PLS 2.0. a $10 value with every purchase of the original Perfect Labor Storm, still a great value at $9.95. Order your copy today!

3.  New! Upcoming Webinars, Workshops and Training Dates

Get Clues: Solving the mystery of hiring employees
Date: June 19, 2007
Time: 10:00 AM EDT
Place: On the web
Cost: FREE - limited to first 10 participants.

Looking for an easy to use, low cost tool to uncover employee clues that predict successful job performance? Then you don't want to miss this free webinar conducted by Marilyn Walker, Director of the SPS Assessment Center.

Call Allison at 800.803.4303 or 717.291.4640 or email her to reserve your seat.

ASSESS Expert System Certification
Date: June 12 and 13, 2007
Time: 8:30 - 5:00; 2nd day ends at 12:30PM
Place: Lancaster, PA
Tuition: $1500 per person; $1000 for 2nd person, same company

ASSESS Expert System User Certification has been rescheduled due to the inclement weather experienced in the Northeast from April 15-17. New dates will be June 12 and 13.

For the first time ever, Bigby Havis and Success Performance Solutions have partnered to sponsor a 2-day ASSESS User Certification in Central PA. (Bigby Havis is one of the top U.S. organizational psychology consulting firms with domestic and international clients.)

Participation is limited and over half the seats are already filled.
Don't wait. Call 800-803-4303 for information.

Hiring Tool Kit 101
During this webinar you will when it is appropriate to use pre-employment tests, how to compare different hiring tools for reliability, and how to differentiate between screening and selection tools. 
Date: June 14, 2007
Time: 2:00 PM EDT (11:00 AM PDT)
Place: On the Web
Cost:  FREE - limited to first 10 participants.
Register for Hiring Tool Kit 101

4. Recruiting Young Workers: Six Strategies for Success

Young adults these days are not just worried about getting a degree-related job post graduation; they are increasingly concerned with field-related summer and semester internships. Interestingly
enough, many of these young adults are students currently enrolled at universities and colleges around the nation and are eager to apply their newly-acquired skill set to the “real world”.

Click here to read more about Recruiting Young Workers.

Or call us at 717.291.4640 or 800.803.4303 to schedule time to discuss improving your organization's recruiting strategies.

5. New Test for "Digital Literacy"

We’ve added 3 more tests to our skills test offerings.

These new tests include:

Digital Literacy – Computing
Digital Literacy – Internet
Digital Literacy – Software Skills

The Computing version includes basic level questions on both hardware and software. The Internet version includes basic level questions regarding the internet. The Software Skills includes basic level
questions regarding operating systems and MS Windows and a few questions on Excel, Word.

For more information, call 800.803.4303 or send an email request for information.

6. And Speaking of Aging

A new "elderly" rock group called The Zimmers entered the British Top 40 chart last week at No. 26 with their guitar-smashing take on The Who's "My Generation."

The video of "My Generation" shows the 40-member group - the average age is 78 -performing the song. Lead singer Alf Carreta is 90. The oldest member, 100-year-old Buster Martin, is seen making an obscene gesture at the end of the song.

Samuels said the band was intended to combat the victim status of the elderly.

Is this a precursor of things to come?  Watch The Zimmers rock

7. New report pages added to CriteriaOne DISC

Two new pages have been added to all versions of CriteriaOne (with the exception of Interview Assistant). First we've added a page called "Intensity of Each DISC Behavior," which a graphic for each style, comparing how and additional will respond to problems, influencing people, pace, and procedures in both his/her natural as well as adapted state.

The second new page is a Personal Action Plan page. Each page includes open comment sections for an employee or manager to outline development goals, expected outcomes, who to involve and more.

These new pages have been added to all reports at no additional charge. If you prefer to receive your reports without these or customize the pages you or your employees receive, just contact us at 800.803.4303.

To view a sample of CriteriaOne DISC, click on:

Individual Report                                    Sales Report

8. Quotes from Hire Authorities

"It's crazy to tell people they should be focused on becoming more efficient while at the same time you want them to explore untapped growth potential. This is making me nuts."
Senior executive of Standard & Poor's 500 company (Business Week, IN June 2007)

Permission is granted to consultants, managers, business owners and HR professionals to reproduce content from this newsletter for your internal publications, or to distribute copies to your workforce, on the condition that you reproduce the credits and contact information as follows: "Reprinted with permission from Ira S Wolfe and Success Performance Solutions. Copyright 2007 Ira S Wolfe." We also hope you will forward the newsletter in its entirety and recommend to others that they subscribe.

Ira S. Wolfe Copyright 2007 - All Rights Reserved. Reprints and other distribution by permission