Welcome to the June 8, 2005 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. 

Time is running out to register for "Learn How to Interview and Hire High Motivation Employees".   Only a few seats left.

     Learn how to:

• Identify the competencies that drive top performers .
• Create a reliable and predictable top performer profile.
• Build a screening and interview process, including structured interview guides that qualify competence and job fit in candidates and employees.
• And More.

Special Fee for The Total View readers - save an $500 off our registration fee of $1695. Your fee of only $1195 from each company plus 3 days of training, workbooks, free assessments valued at $1300. Learn to identify competencies, complete a job analysis and interpret behavioral, values and personality assessments and build a structured behavioral interview.

The next Train-the-Trainer will be held from August 3-5, 2005 in Lancaster PA. Register before June 15, 2005 and save $500. Register a 2nd person** from your company at no additional cost.

Register for CriteriaOne online or call 717.291.4640.

What's Inside:

1. Fifty Percent of New Teachers Leave in 5 Years

Better education is often cited as a critical component to solving the impending shortage of skilled workers. But the lack of enough skilled teachers might be another kink in the workforce armor.

The U.S. Department of Education reports that over the next decade, more than two million new teachers will walk into a classroom for their first day. Unfortunately, as the National Center for Education Statistics found, 666,000 of those new teachers will leave sometime during the first three years of teaching and one million of them will not make it past five years.

School staffing problems are primarily due to a "revolving door" - where too many qualified teachers are departing their jobs long before retirement. Attrition rates of this magnitude suggest that pouring money into recruitment efforts without fixing the retention problem is like pouring more water into a leaky bucket. First you have to fix the holes.

The cost of high teacher turnover and attrition rates is enormous. Every year, American schools spend $2.6 billion on teacher attrition.

Studies show that retirement and increased enrollment account for only a fraction of teacher shortages. Overall, the nation dramatically increased its supply of teachers during the 1990s and generally produces enough teachers to meet each year's new needs.

- Between the end of the 1999-2000 and the beginning of the 2000-2001 school years, about 67,000 teachers retired, accounting for only 24 percent of the 278,000 turnover and only 12 percent of the total turnover of 546,000 during that period. Rather, the data show that the demand for new teachers, and subsequent staffing difficulties, are primarily due to pre-retirement teacher turnover.

- According to a National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) survey of 8,400 public and private school teachers, the main reasons for high teacher turnover and attrition rates are with inadequate administrative support (38 percent) and workplace conditions (32 percent).

Teacher recruitment and other supply-side solutions may not only fail to solve the problem, but could also make it worse if recruitment strategies involve lowering teacher standards, or if the effect of increasing teacher supply is to deflate salaries or erode working conditions.

2. Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #409 to #413

Don't miss day-to-day updates on Perfect Labor Storm. Save the Perfect Labor Storm blog to your favorites.

Fact #409: Since the late 1970s, the number of obese adults in the United States has grown by over 50 percent. (Source: An Economic Analysis Of Adult Obesity)

Fact #410: Nearly 59 million Americans are classified as obese. (Source: An Economic Analysis Of Adult Obesity)

Fact #411: Obesity and its attendant sedentary lifestyle result in 300,000 premature deaths annually, a toll second only to the early mortality figure attributed to smoking. (Source: An Economic Analysis Of Adult Obesity)

Fact #412: The annual costs of medical treatment for obesity have been estimated at nearly $100 billion, or $732 higher on average for obese people than for people of normal weight.(Source: An Economic Analysis Of Adult Obesity)

Fact #413: Approximately half of the estimated $78.5 billion in medical care spending in 1998 attributable to excess body weight was financed through private insurance (38%) and patient out-of-pocket payments (14%). (Source: An Economic Analysis Of Adult Obesity)

Don't be caught in storm without all the facts. "The Perfect Labor Storm Fact Book: Why Worker Shortages Won't Go Away" is a must-read leading edge forecast that predicts workforce trends for decades to come. Order your copy today - Only $7.95.

3.  On The Tube and In Person

Marilyn Walker will be the keynote speaker at the 37th Annual PA Therapeutic Recreation Institute. Her topic is "Defining Your Dream". Marilyn is the Director of the SPS Employee Assessment Center and Right-Turn-on-Red Career Test Center.

Ira S. Wolfe, founder of Success Performance Solutions, will be a
speaker at the 17th Annual NAHB Custom Builder Symposium to be held in New Orleans. His topic will be "HR Trends That Will Affect The Way Employers Do Business"

4.  NEW! Order DISCstyles™ Today and receive a PeopleSmart book FREE.

(We are very pleased to announce the addition of our newest DISC report, DISCstyles to our library of online personality tests, including our CriteriaOne DISC and Business Motivators reports.)

An indisputable fact is that people prefer to interact with people they like. The ability to create rapport with people is a fundamental skill in sales, management, personal relationships, and everyday life. The goal of DISCstyles is to create personal chemistry and productive relationships. You do not have to change your personality. You simply have to understand what drives people and recognize your options for effectively dealing with them. DISCstyles teaches you powerful life-skills that will serve you well in all your relationships: business, social and family.

Completing the DISCstyles™ online assessment, you receive:

1. Your personalized in-depth 29-page DISCstyles Report;

2. You can Invite an unlimited number of observers to complete the Observer Assessment FREE...for 30-days;

3. View and print your Graphs I, II and III;

4. View and print your Observer Composite Report;

5. View and print the FREE PeopleSmart eBook:

6. Access your home page for 60 days;

7. And Access an interactive online component on how to effectively deal with others.

To fully experience the magic of DISCstyles, order your DISCstyles Online Assessment today and receive your FREE PeopleSmart eBook (294 pages) by Tony Alessandra and Michael O'Connor.

5. Customer Service Skills Profile

This easy-to-use assessment solves one of your biggest headaches in customer service - ensuring consistency in your staff's performance.

How? By giving employee a clear picture of their unique strengths and areas they need to work on - and the motivation to acquire all the skills of an all-around good customer service giver.

Employees can rate themselves in seven competency areas widely considered to be critical to the ability to provide exemplary service:

Temperament / disposition
Communicating clearly
Engaging in joint problem solving
Building warmth and empathy
Attentive listening
Resolving conflict
Carefully negotiating

More about Customer Service Skills Excellence.

6. Learn How to Qualify Dozens of Candidates in Under 7 Minutes.

The Resu-mess is back! If piles of resumes and crowded e-mail in-boxes have got you frustrated, you NEED Total APS' Rapid Screening Data (RSD).

What is Total APS? It is an applicant tracking and assessment system that puts your recruiting and selection efforts on auto pilot. Total APS even provides you accesss to unlimited usage of the TotalView assessment for 30 days or more.

Total APS frees up your time to communicate with only QUALIFIED candidates and helps you ensure a good job fit between a person and the job. Experience Total APS and RSD in action. View our online -seven-minute, no-obligation video demonstration of the Total APS system at:

At 211 degrees, water is hot.
At 212 degrees, water boils.
With boiling water, comes steam.
With steam, you can power a train.

As with sports, close is not good enough in customer service.
Professional golf tournaments are comprised of four rounds of 18 holes played over a four-day period. There are four major tournaments each year - The U.S. Open, The British Open, The PGA Championship, and the Masters.

Do you have a story about a manager, customer, employee, vendor, or supplier going the extra degree?   Email us your 212 story by replying to this email. Readers who submit a story that is accepted for publication will receive a free 212 book.

Source: (212: The Extra Degree, S. L. Parker)

Order your 212: The Extra Degree book for only $14.95.

Syndication available - call us.