Articles Archived for February 2006

Staffing Jobs Increase 6.8% in 2005 - America's staffing companies ended 2005 on a positive note...
Premium-free Health Insurance Has Changed Little Since 1998 - The percent of American workers...
Companies Try to Retain Employees Looking Elsewhere - Seventy-six percent of employees are looking...

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Staffing Jobs Increase 6.8% in 2005

America's staffing companies ended 2005 on a positive note. According to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), temporary help firms added 9,000 jobs to their payrolls in December - an increase of 6.3% over the same month last year.

The report from BLS also included a significant revision to November's employment figure for temporary help, increasing the initial estimate by 22,500 jobs and making November one of the industry's strongest months of growth for 2005.

The staffing industry added more than 156,000 jobs in 2005. Although staffing employment growth moderated in the second half of the year, December marked 30 consecutive months of year-over-year growth for the industry.

Preliminary figures from BLS show annual average daily employment for the staffing industry in 2005 at 2.55 million, up 6.8% from 2004.

Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 108,000 in December, BLS commissioner Kathleen P. Utgoff said, with a total of two million jobs added in 2005. Increased hiring in December was noted in manufacturing, food services, professional and business services (which includes temporary help), and health care.

BLS also reported a significant revision to November's nonfarm payroll employment number, adding 90,000 jobs to the initial estimate for a total increase of 305,000 jobs in the month.

The unemployment rate declined slightly from the previous month to 4.9%. The rate has been relatively consistent throughout 2005, at about 5%, and is down from an annual average of 5.5% in 2004.

Source: American Staffing Association

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Percent of Workers in Small Firms with Premium-Free Health Insurance has Changed Little Since 1998

The percent of American workers offered no-premium contribution health plans has fallen since 1998 in large firms but has not changed much in small ones, according to the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Specifically, AHRQ's Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) found that:

• The proportion of workers eligible for employer-sponsored health insurance coverage who were offered at least one single-coverage plan that did not require them to contribute to the cost of their policy premium declined from 34.8 percent in 1998 to 28.4 percent in 2003 for firms as a whole.
• But the overall average decrease in offered plans with no employee premium contribution for both single and family coverage masked different trends for small (fewer than 50 workers) and large (more than 50 workers) firms.
• The proportion of eligible employees working in large firms offering a single-coverage health plan that did not require them to pay part of the premium cost dropped by about one-fifth -- from 28.1 percent in 1998 to 22.2 percent during the period.
• In contrast, the rate for single-coverage plans offered by small firms stayed roughly the same - from 55.9 percent to 53.1 percent.
• The same trend was found for large and small firms offering no-employee contribution family coverage plans. In large firms the proportion of eligible workers dropped from 14 percent to 10.4 percent. But in small firms it barely moved-from 29.9 percent to 29.2 percent.
• Actual enrollment declined for both family coverage plans and single-person coverage plans - from 35 percent in 1998 to 27.3 percent in 2003 for single coverage, and from 18.7 percent to 14.2 percent for family coverage.

MEPS collects information each year from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households about their health care use, expenses, access to services, health status, and the quality of the health care they obtained. MEPS is a unique government survey because of the degree of detail of the data, as well as the ability to link its data on health services spending and health insurance to demographic, employment, health status, and other characteristics of individuals and their families.

MEPS collects information each year from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households about their health care use, expenses, access to services, health status, and the quality of the health care they obtained. MEPS is a unique government survey because of the degree of detail of the data, as well as the ability to link its data on health services spending and health insurance to demographic, employment, health status, and other characteristics of individuals and their families.

Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

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Companies Try to Retain Employees Looking Elsewhere

Seventy-six percent of employees are looking for new employment opportunities, according to the 2005 U.S. Job Recovery and Retention Survey released by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and CareerJournal.com. Sixty-five percent of HR professionals indicated they were concerned about the voluntary resignations at their organizations. To prevent a mass exodus, almost half of the organizations surveyed are implementing special retention processes to keep their employees.

The percentage of organizations implementing special retention processes had increased to 49% in 2005 compared with 35% in 2004. HR professionals have found that competitive salary, career development opportunities, promoting qualified employees and flexible work schedules are among the best employee retention strategies. Although salary increases are often perceived as the most valuable incentive for employees to stay with their current jobs, they are also among the most difficult to provide because although the economy is improving, organizations are still somewhat cautious to increase spending.

"The loss of talent has many implications for a company, especially when the organization's core, middle-management level employees leave in large numbers," says Tony Lee, publisher, CareerJournal.com. "HR professionals are challenged with creatively engaging the people in their organizations, which will be a difficult task since more than three-quarters of employees are either actively or passively engaged in a job search."

"Offering competitive salaries for the market is important to employees, however, compensation alone is not sufficient for a complete retention strategy," said Susan R. Meisinger, SPHR, president and CEO of SHRM.  "Career development opportunities and work/life balance are important for today's employee, and employers must consider these types of issues in their retention practices if they want to develop successful organizations."

There are many strategies other than financial incentives that organizations can employ to keep their employees.  Creating programs that help employees see their potential for growth within an organization, working with managers to develop career paths for non-management-level employees, creating a more favorable work environment, and implementing better work/life practices such as flextime and telecommuting can have an impact on reducing employee turnover rates.

In the survey, employees and HR professionals agreed on the top reasons employees left their organizations--better compensation elsewhere (41% of employees, 50% of HR professionals), career opportunity elsewhere (34% of employees, 51% of HR professionals) and dissatisfaction with potential for career development at organization (25% of employees, 31% of HR professionals). About one-quarter (23%) of employees stated that being ready for a new experience was an important reason to begin or increase the intensity of their job search.

SHRM and CareerJournal.com conducted the survey to determine opinions about job recovery and the effectiveness of retention strategies from the perspective of both HR professionals and employees.  The survey questions were e-mailed to randomly selected SHRM members, yielding 435 responses from HR professionals, and a convenience sample of CareerJournal.com visitors who comprise the employee sample, bearing 465 responses.

Source: Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and CareerJournal.com

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