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April 27, 2006
When you hear "ding," you are now free to move about the blogosphere
Southwest Airlines has started a new blog called Nuts About Southwest that is worth checking out. What's interesting is that this is another example of what I call "communal corporate" blogging, just like the new blog from GM that I mentioned in an earlier post.
The Southwest blog features a variety of employee perspectives -- although my colleague and fellow blogger Jeffrey Treem and I shared a concern that the posts were going to be all corporate marketing types, it seems that some more legitimate voices of regular employees have been added.
Posted by Christopher at 6:43 PM
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| TrackBackApril 25, 2006
GM dips its toe in the communal blogging waters
Say what you want about the sad state of General Motor's finances and uninspiring products, but one thing they seem determined to get right is their presence in the blogosphere.
GM led the way with senior leader blogging with vice chairman Bob Lutz's FastLane blog awhile ago. Based on that success, GM started another blog last week called FYI blog that will be authored by a wide variety of employees on these topics:
Cool Stuff - Stories about innovations; product, technology, facilities and manufacturing
Our People - Profiles of GM employees and their unique jobs, careers, etc.
News - Good News stories, including items that you may otherwise never hear about
Opinions - GM op/ed pieces intended to shed light on issues in the news
Guest Voices - Blog entries written by third parties who are not GM employees
This is a blog that I'll follow with great interest as there aren't too many examples of communal corporate blogs that have been successful.
Posted by Christopher at 11:49 AM
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| TrackBackApril 19, 2006
Companies increasingly asking employees to share hotel rooms
File this under the category of "Worst ideas I've ever heard:" companies are increasingly asking employees to share hotel rooms when traveling to save money. This was reported recently in a great article in the New York Times called "My Colleague, My Roommate."
An analyst at PricewaterhouseCoopers confirmed that he's been observing this trend more and more among companies in the last year. I agree whole-heartedly with the other workplace experts who chimed in on this article with the viewpoint that, while this may save money in the short-term, it most likely has negative longer-term effects. Business travel is grueling enough without having to share a bathroom (much less bed in some cases) with a colleague. I can easily foresee how this practice could quickly lead to decreased productivity -- not to mention the creepiness factor in general.
Also would be interesting to know if the same companies that are asking their employees to bunk up together are the ones paying their CEOs millions.
Posted by Christopher at 1:03 PM
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| TrackBackApril 10, 2006
M&A activity now creating value, rather than destroying it
As merger and acquisition activity has picked up lately, it was interesting to see a recent report from London's Cass Business School and Towers Perrin that analyzed the performance of recently merged companies. They found that shares in companies that did deals in 2004 outperformed the market by 7 percent on average.
In previous years of intense M&A activity (1988 and 1998), companies that underwent M&As underperformed the market by 6.4 percent and 2.5 percent respectively in the one-year period surrounding the completion of the deal.
The two organzations that conducted the study cited improvements in corporate governance, the selection of deals and the integration of newly acquired companies.
Posted by Christopher at 10:11 AM
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| TrackBackApril 8, 2006
The power of an effective exit interview
We've all been there: leaving a job whether on good terms or bad terms and you're asked to have an exit interview with an HR person more interesting in completing the paperwork than viewing the opportunity as a golden one to uncover real insight into what might be going on in an organization.
Inc. magazine recently has some great questions that every exit interview should contain:
1. If one person leaving the organization would cause you to think twice about leaving, who would that person be?
2. Who do you think is next to leave and why?
3. What could have been changed six months ago that would have kept you from leaving?
4. Why didn't you leave before now?
5. If you were put in charge of the company today, what is the first thing you would change?
All provocative questions. While the information generated in exit interviews always must be taken with a grain of salt, they are still tremendous opportunities to identify problem situations or managers before more employees leave.
Posted by Christopher at 4:00 PM
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| TrackBackApril 5, 2006
Marks and Spencer shares the wealth with all employees
I was in the United Kingdom recently and was interested to see a bit of news about the retailer Marks and Spencer in all the papers. For those of you who follow the retail world, M&S has been recovering lately from a string of bad years. They've fought off a takeover and have made major changes to how they run their business. Its shares have risen 61 percent in the last 12 months and retail profits are up by 36 percent over last year.
To ackowledge employees' roles in this success, M&S is giving every one of its 63,000 staff a bonus from a pool of $105 million. In an era where it seems like all we read about are executives taking millions in bonuses, it's great to see an example of a company where the CEO specifially calls out employees working the retail floor (about 55,000 of the 63,000 total) for their role in the company's turnaround.
Posted by Christopher at 11:58 AM
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i work for m&s and the bonus is all rubbish it has been denied by Stewart Rose, we have been told that there is no bonus and that it was just media speculation
Posted by: ................... at April 9, 2006 4:26 PM
This is interesting -- thanks for your post. It would seem like M&S now has a bigger problem on their hands if media have reported about this and gotten hopes up.
Posted by: Christopher Hannegan at April 10, 2006 10:10 AM
I think it is unfair the way bonuses have been worked out, all staff on shop floor should get the same amount of bonus regardless the hours they work. Why should the executive get more than the shop workers.
Posted by: pam singh at April 18, 2006 3:30 AM
i Work for M&S and myself and hundreds of others are not entitled to any bonus due to being absent. It is not fair that i work hard to put money in the pot and am getting nothing back only punished for being ill!
Posted by: kati at May 11, 2006 3:49 AM