In its latest biannual survey, released in October 2009, temp firm Spherion Staffing Solutions asked about 300 employers and about 2,500 workers to name the top "drivers of retention."  As they did in 2007 and 2005, the bosses listed soft stuff: "management climate" and "supervisor relationship," for instance. 

Employees' top two in all three surveys?  Benefits and compensation.  And this year, only 27% are "very satisfied" with their pay.  Just 37% are equally happy with their benefits.

Of course, the high unemployment rate has scared working Americans into hanging on to their jobs at all costs.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says the "quit rate" --the portion of U.S. employees who voluntarily leave their jobs--was just 1.3% in August 2009, about half the rate that prevailed when the BLS began collecting such figures at the end of 2000.

A survey by benefits consultant Watson Wyatt found that the "engagement," or loyalty, of top-performing employees has dropped by 25% over the past year, largely because people who kept their jobs have been soured by layoffs, bonus and benefit cuts and a halt in promotions.

Why do new survey findings reveal that nearly half of U.S. companies' high performers are actively looking for other jobs?

The simple answer is that most employers are not spending enough time and money to retain their management talent.   

Source: BUSINESSWEEK, November 16, 2009

Many people, from teens to their 40s, work and play virtually while being accessible to each other every minute of the day via cellphone, instant messaging and social networking websites.

How Texting Savvy Are You?  (answers below)

Subject: JM2C

Message: BON NALOPKT John sees this as a CLM.  

DAMHIKT  

SOTMG

Sally

The question is: How much work can "hyper-socializing" employees really accomplish if they are holding multiple conversations with others via text-messaging or obsessively checking social networking sites?

The answer is: They can accomplish a great deal in today's 24/7 virtual environment.  The Gen Xs and Ys have a gift for multitasking (because they have integrated technology into their lives) and now have the ability to remain connected to each other and thus serve themselves and their employers well.

While older colleagues waste time holding meetings or engaging in long phone conversations, technically savvy Gen X and Y people have an ability to sum things up in one-sentence text messages.  "They know how to optimize and prioritize.  They will call or set up a meeting if it's needed.  If not, they text," says Ben Bajarin, 32, a technology analyst at Creative Strategies, a consulting firm in Campbell, CA.

Younger workers spend more time than older workers socializing via their devices or entertaining themselves online.  In a 2008 survey for Salary.com, 53% of those under age 24 said this was their primary "time wasting" activity while at work, compared to just 34% for those between ages 41 and 65.  However, older worker managers are being advised by consultants to accept the changed dynamics, so long as young employees are doing good work and meeting deadlines.

As the Gen Y generation now enters the work force, managers must adjust to the new ways they socialize and communicate.  For instance, past generations accepted that corporations were hierarchical.   There were supervisors, managers and senior managers, and you communicated your questions to your immediate superior.  Unfortunately, this takes time and delays decision making.  Group meetings to engineer consensus consume time and interrupt the normal flow of person-to-person work relationship communication that is necessary to get things done. 

"Young people today want accessibility," says 41-year-old Holly Gallagher, a human resources manager.  "If they have a problem or suggestion, they'll email or text senior managers, or even the CEO.  They don't have the old-school notion that there are appropriate communication models.  They've grown up in a freedom-of-information era."

Actually, the constant text messaging among today's teens can serve as good preparation for workplace interactions.  "In a lot of corporations, if something goes wrong, it's because so-and-so didn't talk to so-and-so." Ms. Gallagher says.  "But with young people, simultaneous conversations are always happening.  This reduces the chances of not reaching success because the right people didn't connect."

Perhaps, it is time to revise the old corporate hierarchical structure and provide texting language classes to older employees in order to grease the skids of communication between individuals and teams of people at work... 

Source: Moving On, The Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2009

Answers to your texting savvy message above: 

JM2C - Just my 2 cents, BON - Believe it or not, NALOPKT - Not a lot of people know that, CLM - Career limiting move, DAMHIKT - Don;t ask me how I know that, SOTMG - Short on time, must go

Leadership is an interactive conversation that pulls people toward becoming comfortable with the language of personal responsibility and commitment.  Effective leadership coaching can happen on the dance floor of conversation.

"Leadership is about allowing others the chance to flourish, and you do that by asking questions," says Gary Cohen in his new book:  Just Ask Leadership: Why Great Managers Always Ask the Right Questions

 Gary B. Cohen: Just Ask Leadership: Why Great Managers Always Ask the Right Questions

By Guest Authors Steve Hochberg and Pete Kendall

When Wall Street’s total value of assets rose to a “mind-boggling 36.6 percent of GDP” in late 2006, The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast published a chart of U.S. financial assets literally rising off the page.  The picture of the mania was clear.

Now, new research shows that dollar trading volume has -- gulp -- surpassed the euphoric extremes of 2007.  Examine these two eye-popping charts and read the analysis behind them now -- they're yours for free during FreeWeek. Read More

The following text is courtesy of Elliott Wave International. Until Nov. 11, EWI is allowing non-subscribers to download their latest market analysis and forecasts for free, including Robert Prechter's latest Elliott Wave Theorist and Steve Hochberg's and Pete Kendall's latest Elliott Wave Financial Forecast. Learn more about FreeWeek, and download your free reports here.

By Guest Author Robert Folsom, Senior Writer for Elliott Wave International

As you read and look at this page, please know that the chart is the star of the show. My description will add only a few details.

The chart published less than two weeks ago in Bob Prechter's Elliott Wave Theorist. The rectangular box is plain to see: It envelopes the huge S&P 500 rally that began last March -- a gain of 61.5% and 430 points, as of Oct. 18.

But there's a two-part truth to the rally -- and that is what the box really shows.

Part one shows the "wall of worry" -- basically March through August. That's when the media and experts were overwhelmingly negative about stocks. They were surprised by the rally. Remember?

Part two shows the more recent time of "euphoria" -- basically September and October. The media and experts turned positive. The market was all about "green shoots" and "recovery."

You see when most of the rally unfolded. Six months of serious worry produces a 373-point climb, whereas "two months of euphoria produces only 57 S&P points."

Now, the two-part truth about this rally is an easy story to tell. It's literally a few lines and notations on a price chart. Yet have you seen or read ANYTHING like this in the past two weeks? Has anyone else pointed out that over the past two months, the stock market "rally" has in fact slowed to a crawl?

As you looked at the chart, perhaps you noticed that the decline, which began in 2007, and in turn the recent rally, are both on a similarly large scale. The full version of this chart shows how important that "similarity of scale" really is (Elliott labels were excluded in consideration of Theorist subscribers).

Price action in the stock market this week has only strengthened the analysis in Bob Prechter's October Theorist issue.

What's more, you can read the very latest forecasts in the just-published November issue of the Elliott Wave Financial Forecast -- both publications (plus the tri-weekly Short Term Update) are yours for free -- only during FreeWeek (now through Nov. 11).

Robert Folsom is a financial writer and editor for Elliott Wave International. He has covered politics, popular culture, economics and the financial markets for two decades, via print, radio and the Internet. Robert earned his degree in political science from Columbia University in 1985.

  Robert R. Prechter Jr.: Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression

No doubt you have heard "The Cookie Thief" poem by Valerie Cox from "A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul" Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen that goes like this:

A woman was waiting at an airport one night,
With several long hours before her flight.
She hunted for a book in the airport shop,
Bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book, but happened to see,
That the man beside her, as bold as could be,
Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag between,
Which she tried to ignore, to avoid a scene.

She read, munched cookies, and watched the clock,
As the gutsy 'cookie thief' diminished her stock.
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by,
Thinking, 'If I wasn't so nice, I'd blacken his eye!'

With each cookie she took, he took one too.
When only one was left, she wondered what he'd do.
With a smile on his face and a nervous laugh,
He took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, as he ate the other.
She snatched it from him and thought, 'Oh brother,
This guy has some nerve, and he's also rude,
Why, he didn't even show any gratitude!'

She had never known when she has been so galled,
And sighed with relief when her flight was called.
She gathered her belongings and headed for the gate,
Refusing to look back at the 'thieving ingrate.'

She boarded the plane and sank in her seat,
Then sought her book, which was almost complete.
As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise:
There was her bag of cookies in front of her eyes!

'If mine are here,' she moaned with despair,
'Then the others were his and he tried to share!'
Too late to apologize, she realized with grief,
That she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief!

The Real "Cookie" Story

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me.

I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know… But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, What am I going to do?

In the end I thought Nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, That settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice…” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back.

A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies. The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

-Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
“Cookies” 

Leadership by Sharing Knowledge

Knowledge is power and sharing it can build even more capability for the person sharing and the organization.   Yet, this concept can be a hard sell to those who have been raised on the belief that giving away their knowledge is surrendering their power.

Today, social networks are allowing us all to share our virtual cookies with people all over the world by practicing the law of reciprocity (www.LawofReciprocity.com).

By Guest Author Nico Isaac

The following article includes analysis from Robert Prechter’s Elliott Wave Theorist. For more insights from Robert Prechter, download the 75-page eBook Independent Investor eBook. It’s a compilation of some of the New York Times bestselling author’s writings that challenge conventional financial market assumptions. Visit Elliott Wave International to download the eBook, free.

Once upon a time, the term "Black Monday" was to Wall Street what the name "Lord Voldemort" was to Hogwarts. It turned the air freezing cold and sent traders flinching around every corner in fear of a repeat of the October 19, 1987 or October 28, 1929 meltdown.

Case in point: The 2008 "Black Monday" anniversary. At the time, the U.S. stock market was locked in a ferocious downtrend that included regular, triple-digit daily declines of 400 points and more. Needless to say, when the final two Mondays of October arrived, the least superstitious investors surrounded their portfolios with more good-luck talismans than a Bingo player. See October 19, 2008 AP headline below:

"Black Monday: Stocks Sink As Gloom Seizes Wall Street. Prolonged Economic Turmoil" is seen.

That was then. Today, the usual dread surrounding the back-to-back string of "Black Mondays" is nowhere to be found. In its place, media reports abound of a new, global bull market "shrugging off," "ignoring," and "making a distant memory" of the event.

For one, "gloom" hasn't "seized" the U.S. stock market in quite a while; from its March 2009 low, the Dow has risen more than 50% to above the psychologically important 10,000 level. For another, the mainstream experts insist that today's financial animal is unrecognizable to that of 1987, and especially 1929. In their eyes, it's a completely different -- i.e. safer, smarter, and sounder system.

We beg to differ.  

See, while the usual experts want to put as much mental distance between today's market and those that facilitated the 1987 recession and 1929-1932 Great Depression -- the physical similarities are impossible to ignore; more so, in fact, to the latter scenario.

Here, the October 2009 Elliott Wave Financial Forecast presents the following news clip from the October 25, 1929 New York Daily Investment News.

Now, take a look at these headlines from the week of October 12-17, 2009:

"The Great Recession Is Over." (Reuters) --- "80% of Economists Say The Worst Is Behind Us." (CNN Money) --- "The Bull Is Back" (AP) --- "The Economic Recovery Is Well Underway" (Wall Street Journal)

They're interchangeable -- Eighty years later.

Along with a similar extreme in bullish sentiment, the performance of stocks between now and the 1929 situation is cut from the same cloth. After an initial plunge from August 1929 through late October 1929, the US stock market enjoyed a powerful rally well into the following year.  NOW: After a steep freefall from its October 2007 peak, the US stock market is once again enjoying the fruits of a powerful rally back to new highs for the year.

As Bob Prechter points out -- in 1930, stocks rallied to the level of the preceding year's gap. Bob then reveals that the same level has been reached now.  So, we all know how the 1930 rally ended. The question is whether the 2009 advance will experience the same fate. As Bob explains in the Theorist, the only way to know for certain is to "look at the reality of the situation."

For more information, download Robert Prechter’s free Independent Investor eBook. The 75-page resource teaches investors to think independently by challenging conventional financial market assumptions.

Robert Prechter, Chartered Market Technician, is the world’s foremost expert on and proponent of the deflationary scenario. Prechter is the founder and CEO of Elliott Wave International, author of Wall Street best-sellers Conquer the Crash and Elliott Wave Principle and editor of The Elliott Wave Theorist monthly market letter since 1979.

 Robert R. Prechter Jr.: Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression

Women love lists of what they have to get done.  There are too many things for her to do before she can relax. The more exhausted she feels, the more urgent it becomes for her to get everything done.

As an executive coach of working women, I know in a woman's brain there will always more to do.  It seems that Marcus Buckingham knows this also and has written a new book about what the happiest and most successful women have in common.  Here are five myths that Buckingham reports about the lives of working women:

Myth:  With better education, jobs and pay, women are happier and more fulfilled.

Surveys of more than 1.3 million men and women reveal that women are less happy compared with 40 years ago, and compared with men.

Myth:  Children want to spend more time with their working mothers.

1,000 kids were asked what they wanted from working moms.  10% said "more time."  More than a third wanted mom "less stressed and tired."

Myth:  Women are relegated to lower-level roles at work.

In fact, 37% of women hold managerial positions today, vs. 31% men.

Myth:  Flexible work options like paid leave allow women to feel happier at work.

Studies show a negative correlation between taking advantage of such options and a woman's self-reported daily happiness.

Myth:  Women would prefer to work for other women.

About 40% of women want to work for men, while 26% prefer a female boss.

 Marcus Buckingham: Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently

Forbes.com reports that Flint, Mich., and Lincoln, Neb., have something in common: They are the two cities in the U.S. with the greatest difference between how many of their employers expect to add workers in the next quarter and how many expect to let them go.  But that's very good news in Lincoln, and very bad news in Flint.

In Lincoln, 21% of employers plan to hire soon, and only 4% plan to fire---a net difference of 17 percentage points. Pretty much the opposite is true in Flint, where 26% of employers are planning cuts to payroll and 9% are expecting to hire. That's according to employment services firm Manpower's latest United States Employment Outlook Survey.

Detroit, Mich., Dayton, Ohio, and Salinas, Calif., follow Flint, Michigan's end of the spectrum, all at -14% to -15% (exceeded only by Flint's, at -17%).

Those cities helped the U.S. as a whole achieve its lowest net employment outlook since 1962. This coming quarter, 12% of employers in the U.S. plan to hire and 14% plan to fire, for a national net employment outlook down 2%.  The Northeast is the hardest-hit region, at -4%.

The ranks of the discontented are swelling. 

As the economy continues its downward spiral, many able men and women are facing an involuntary retirement, as well as having difficulty in finding a new job. That is why a number of job coaching tip options have been created to help job seekers move from where they are now to where they want to be in today's tough times.

Here in Michigan, the epicenter of joblessness in the U.S. with a 15% unemployment rate, Wayne State University's School of Business Administration is sponsoring workshops and a new book, "Yes! You Can Land a Job; (even) in a Crummy Economy" authored by Therese Marie Boldt, a successful recruiter and career coach.  Wayne Business School Dean David L. Williams says, "Our main goal is to prepare students for their professions.  That entails not only theory and practice, but also the concepts Therese so aptly discusses [in her book] such as a positive, realistic attitude; self-knowledge; preparation; and perseverance.  In today's uncertain economy, our students are finding it more and more challenging to cross the commencement stage and step into their dream jobs."

Other universities and alumni associations are steping up to assist their graduates in landing jobs in today's tough economy.  Our suggestion is that the college graduate job seeker put together an action plan with the emotional and financial support of their Baby Boomer parents:

First, buy the book, "Yes, You Can Land a Job" which is the recipe you need to follow.  However, you can't land a job just by reading the book; you much follow the recipe with the support and guidance of career counselor or coach. 

All college grads seeking jobs should consider contacting their university's career services office or alumni association for career coaching assistance...or...search the Internet for a personal career coach to put the book's recipe into practice.  

For all job seekers and those unhappy in their profession (without the slightest clue on how to seek a new opportunity), you can access a range of job coaching services from personal coaching to job coaching tips that can be purchased online.  Now is the time to custom tailor your approach to what's next for you.  Consider purchasing the low-cost 21 Career Transition Tips or sign up for a year's subscription to weekly email Job Seeking Coaching Tips to guide you through your career transition.

For joining a free social network connecting job seekers, recruiters and career coaches ready to share actionable knowledge for those making a career move, go to: www.CareerTips.us.com