On the heels of a disappointing April jobs report, the U.S. Department of Labor released a much-anticipated May jobs report on June 4 that showed an uptick in hiring, but overall numbers signify that the labor market is still lagging a heated-up economy.
CNBC said, “Job creation accelerated in May but is still below lofty expectations”, while the Wall Street Journal termed the news as, “Hiring picked up in May but lagged behind broader recovery”.
New economic analysis shows that the professional employer organization (PEO) industry has outpaced the U.S. economy since 2013 with employment growth 16 times above average.
"The numbers in this study reinforce the dynamism and growth in the PEO industry. More and more businesses are realizing the true value proposition of using a PEO, particularly during the pandemic, when PEOs proved to be invaluable in helping their clients navigate through the challenges of the PPP loan process, COVID legislation, remote work, and return-to-office protocols," said National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO) President & CEO Pat Cleary.
Decades from now when we look back at the evolution of the workplace, we will likely talk about events in terms of B.C. (Before COVID-19) and A.P. (After Pandemic).
The coronavirus crisis has been a defining moment in how we accomplish work, with most now agreeing that what comes after the pandemic for the workforce and workplace will not be the same as before COVID-19 swept the world by surprise.
There are a multitude of competent employees in managerial roles in today’s business world but only a select few seemingly have the leadership traits that can propel them to the next level in their careers.
Employees would rather follow a leader than a manager with a recent Cornell University-led study finding that “leaders” tend to be valued – and loved – more than “managers”.
The American economy proved in 2020 that certain sectors could operate on a “Work from Home (WFH)” basis for an extended period, but neither management nor employees were keen to continue the experiment permanently.
With COVID-19 vaccines now open to Americans of all ages, many companies are contemplating or transitioning their workforce to the office, but a return to a pre-pandemic status quo workday is not likely.
The American workforce has evolved over the past 200+ years, reshaping itself in response to economic, technological, and world events. All these factors came into play in the past year as the COVID-19 pandemic forced a sudden shift to remote work for large segments of the workforce.
Many businesses were able to weather the coronavirus crisis with a Work from Home (WFH) strategy that would not have been possible without the Digital Revolution, often called The Third Industrial Revolution, which transformed the workforce the past 30 years.
Every business generation has its own unique challenges, some epoch-defining such as the Great Depression, World War II and the turbulent ‘60s, but today’s owners are faced with a multitude of threats from the COVID-19 pandemic to extreme weather to civil unrest to workplace violence.
When a crisis does strike, your business must be prepared to launch a “people first” disaster recovery strategy that puts your employees ahead of all other considerations.
Diversity and inclusion efforts in the workplace are becoming increasingly less about a box that HR can check off, and more about how it can help drive business success.
“A diverse and inclusive workforce is necessary to drive innovation, foster creativity, and guide business strategies,” concluded a Forbes Insights survey of 332 senior executives. “Multiple voices lead to new ideas, new services, and new products, and encourage out-of-the-box thinking.
Compensation studies are important tools that help businesses of all sizes, from Main Street to Wall Street, in the fierce competition for talent in an employee-centric market.
“Salary surveys are important enough that a full 80 percent of human resource professionals said they were consulting them in their business,” according to an article from Study.com.
The federal minimum wage rate has not been raised in 12 years, the longest stretch of status quo since the legislation was created in 1938, but Washington is currently debating more than doubling the $7.25 per hour rate by 2025.
The Raise the Wage Act of 2021 was introduced as identical legislation in January as H.R. 603 in the House and S. 53 in the Senate, and has been referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
