I’m in her LinkedIn and Twitter networks, see, and found her tweet about the post on LinkedIn.

Why am I telling you all this?  Because McCagg’s post is all about relationships in this high-tech, social-media age and the priority that top-performing, successful companies are giving them when it comes to recruiting.

“Technology [and social media] is playing an increasingly large role on this front,” he writes, “with organizations relying on candidate-relationship-management platforms to keep in touch with prospective candidates, share new opportunities and offer other relevant information to build the company’s employment brand.”

What’s so good about his post is how straightforward and simple it is, heavy on the human touch, light on technology.

Like the importance of broadening your recruiting focus beyond the “once-and-done approach,” he writes, to make use of all the new tagging and tracking capabilities that can help you develop a talent pipeline and ”keep your organization top-of-mind when a candidate is ready to make a job change.” (That’s under the subhead “Relationships are not disposable.”)

His other three sections, equally basic, sensible and indisputable, include:

• “Relationships are participatory,” about the need for both candidates and recruiters to keep up with any and all status changes, unlike what is possible on standard applicant-tracking systems;
• “Relationships require relevance,” about keeping the ones who don’t make the cut under your social-media wing for possible new functions that don’t even exist yet; and
• “Relationships go beyond any single job opening” — basically, his argument for a single system to track applicants and manage relationships. As he puts it, “Tracking hires can support effective internal redeployment and referral programs. Staying in contact with all candidates ensures organizations have access to a widespread talent pool.”

Can you tell I liked the post? In my estimation, he’s addressing what really needs to be addressed around social recruiting. It’s all about the relationships.

As Gerry Crispin – recruiting guru, co-founder of CareerXroads, and yet another friend and relation of HRE – said when introducing his session, ”Social Media Recruiting Technologies,” at our 2011 HR Technology^® Conference: “It’s being said we are in the midst of a major Internet shift from content to relationship. What say you?”

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The guidebook, ROC National Diners Guide 2012: A Consumer Guide on the Working Conditions of American Restaurants, is intended to serve as a sort of Zagat guide for diners who are as concerned about the pay and benefits received by the establishment’s employees as they are about whether or not the chicken on the menu is free-range, Saru Jayaraman, ROCU’s co-director, told Bloomberg Businessweek. The group assigned grades to 186 of the nation’s largest restaurants and fast-food chains based on whether or not they offer their employees the aforementioned wages, paid sick days and career advancement. Restaurants that score in at least two of those categories receive a “star” rating.

Bloomberg Businessweek notes that the majority of the restaurants surveyed failed to receive a star or declined to answer all of the survey’s questions (some of the ones that did get a star include Five Guys Burgers and Fries, Chipotle Mexican Grill and In-N-Out Burger). ROCU is using the guidebook to help lobby for laws that would guarantee seven days of paid sick leave per year for employees in all industries.

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While Lin’s current hot streak is amazing in and of itself — he scored more points in his first five starts than Michael Jordan or Shaquille O’Neal – what is just as fascinating is that Ed Weiland, the man who predicted it could happen, is no professional basketball scout, but a FedEx Ground truck driver who writes scouting reports on players on the side:

In May 2010, an unsung numbers hobbyist named Ed Weiland wrote a long-term forecast of Jeremy Lin for the basketball website Hoops Analyst. At the time, Lin was a lightly regarded, semi-known point guard who had completed his final season at Harvard. But Weiland saw NBA material. He emphasized how well Lin played in three nonconference games against big schools: Connecticut, Boston College and Georgetown. He noted how Lin’s performance in two unsexy statistical categories—two-point field-goal percentage (a barometer of inside scoring ability) and RSB40 (rebounds, steals and blocks per 40 minutes) compared favorably with college numbers put up by marquee NBA guards like Allen Iverson and Gary Payton. Weiland concluded that Lin had to improve on his passing and leadership at the point, but argued that if he did, “Jeremy Lin is a good enough player to start in the NBA and possibly star.”

In the wake of Lin’s historic New York explosion, Weiland’s eerily prescient post has quickly recirculated around the Internet, as a rare example of someone who saw potential in a player who wasn’t drafted and was abandoned by two teams before getting a chance with the Knicks. Traffic rushing to Weiland’s 2010 Lin piece briefly crashed the Hoops Analyst website after Lin torched the Lakers for 38 points Friday, and his wisdom has been compared with the groundbreaking number-crunching in the baseball best seller “Moneyball,” which became a recent Hollywood movie. A tribute to Weiland’s foresight on Yahoo’s The Post Game ended with, “Brad Pitt’s on line 1.”

With the early identification of talent so critical in both the business and sports worlds these days, one wonders who is actually more deserving of a big contract from an NBA team: Lin the talent or Weiland the talent identifier?

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The Prudential study finds 40 percent of plan sponsors say the employee-benefit decision-making process in their company has changed over the past five years, demonstrating increased attention to the bottom-line impact of benefits.

The study, which surveyed plan sponsors, plan participants and broker/consultants, finds the influence of senior management has increased the most (45 percent say they’re more involved). More than 20 percent of plan sponsors also say boards, finance/treasury and employees themselves are all playing more important roles in deciding what benefits are offered and how much money should be allocated to them.

The most dramatic perception of change came from benefits brokers and consultants, with more than two-thirds of those surveyed (69 percent) seeing changes in the areas and seniority of people involved in the benefits decision-making process.

This certainly underscores Dave Shadovitz’s Leader Board post yesterday from this week’s IBI/NBCH Health and Productivity Conference at the Fairmont San Francisco. Findings from a study presented there — looking at chief financial officers’ perspectives on the role health plays on financial performance — shows most CFOs now consider health an organizational imperative.

Inerestingly, both studies also indicate this interest by top leaders in their organizational health goes beyond finances alone. In the study of CFOs, their newfound interest isn’t confined to healthcare costs, but extends into the cultural and overall performance impact — including sick days, absences, turnover and opportunities lost.

Likewise, the Prudential study looks at the growing importance this new focus has on employees’ overall satisfaction with their benefits; which, of course, enhances overall performance.

“Our research suggests that greater involvement throughout the employer organization may enhance the decision-making process and lead to more relevant benefits offerings,” says John DeLorenzo, senior vice president of sales and account management for Prudential Group Insurance. “Companies that are more focused on benefits tend to pay more attention to communications, which in turn leads to higher levels of employee satisfaction.”

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More seriously, the HRPA asserts, the rule would result in “illegal hiring quotas” and would essentially require federal contractors to violate the Americans with Disabilities Act by requiring them to ask job applicants and existing employees to “self identify” as having a disability. The framers of the ADA specifically prohibited employers from making such inquiries, said the HRPA: “Today, employers focus their recruitment and application process on the abilities of employees and applicants insofar as they match the employer’s needs … In stark contrast, however, the proposed rules would have employers focus on the disabilities of employees and applicants. This fundamental change in the nation’s employment policies leads to what our members view as not only highly inappropriate, but also unlawful lines of inquiries.”

The HRPA’s statement also criticized the DOL for scheduling the 60-day commenting period for the new rule over the holidays, making it more difficult to solicit member input, and for inadequately publicizing a 14-day extension to the comment period. The deadline for comment is now Feb. 21; originally, it was Feb. 7.

You can read more about the story here.

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For the first time in at least two decades of reporting the worldwide cost of living survey Zurich sits atop the ranking as the world’s most expensive city. An index swing of 34 percentage points pushed the Swiss city up 4 places compared to last year to overtake Tokyo which remains in 2nd place. Geneva, the other Swiss city surveyed, saw a 30 percentage point rise in the cost of living to move up six places into joint third alongside Osaka.

You can download a full copy of the survey – which is conducted twice a year and compares hundreds of prices across 160 products and services, including food, household supplies, transport, utilities, and schooling — through the link above, but CNN’s Business 360 web site broke out the top and bottom ten cities, seen below:

Top 10

Rank                City                 Country                       WCOL index (New York= 100)

1                     Zurich              Switzerland                 170

2                     Tokyo              Japan                           166

3                     Geneva           Switzerland                 157

3                     Osaka             Japan                            157

5                     Oslo                Norway                         156

6                     Paris               France                           150

7                     Sydney           Australia                       147

8                     Melbourne    Australia                       145

9                     Singapore       Singapore                  142

10                   Frankfurt        Germany                     137

Bottom 10

Rank                City                 Country                       WCOL index (New York= 100)

120                 Muscat            Oman                            63

123                  Dhaka             Bangladesh               61

124                 Algiers            Algeria                          59

125                Kathmandu    Nepal                            58

125                 Panama City   Panama                     58

127                 Jeddah            Saudi Arabia              57

128                 New Delhi       India                            56

129                 Tehran            Iran                              54

130                  Mumbai          India                            52

131                 Karachi           Pakistan                     46

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At this week’s IBI/NBCH Health and Productivity Conference at the Fairmont San Francisco, Integrated Benefits Institute President Thomas Parry unveiled the findings of his group’s “Making Health the CFO’s Business” study, which looked at CFOs’ perspectives on the role of health on financial performance.

As might be expected, researchers found that most CFOs, especially those one out of every three executives the researchers identified as “health and productivity leaders,” consider health an organizational imperative, with roughly two-thirds of the 313 respondents viewing health as a “cultural or financial” priority in their respective organizations. But the study also revealed several intriguing data points surrounding the kinds of metrics CFOs’ value most.

According to the findings of the study, which was produced with the help of CFO magazine, most CFOs believe health can have an impact on financial performance in both conventional ways (healthcare expenses and sick-day absences) and less conventional ways (opportunity costs and staffing requirements). “It’s not just about healthcare cost, but all of the other dimensions as well,” Parry said.

In light of this finding, he adds, benefit professionals might want to rethink the kinds of information they’re generating and sharing with their CFOs.

“If you need to make a case to your CFO as to why you need to make an investment, and the only thing you have to build your case on is healthcare costs, you’re going to have a much harder path than your counterpart in another organization who can talk about sick days, absences, turnover and opportunities lost,” says Parry.

Interestingly, the study found CFOs put a fair amount of weight on self-reported metrics, such as employee-satisfaction surveys and workforce health risks. “The idea that self-reporting information is useless flies in the face of what we found,” Parry said.

CFOs also said they find information from their own organizations (such as claims costs, employee surveys and program results) to be more credible than external sources of information, modeled estimates and recommendations from suppliers and consultants.

At the end of its report, IBI offers benefit professionals a handful of lessons learned. But one of the more memorable ones is the need to better understand the mind-set and goals of the CFO before you begin to have a conversation. It just might get you to rethink the kinds of metrics you decide to bring along with you.

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Southam, executive vice president of health plan operations for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and Kaiser Foundations Hospitals in Oakland, suggested to those attending the meeting (produced by the Integrated Benefits Institute and National Business Coalition on Health) that a significant portion of the problem can be tied to just four behaviors: diet, physical activity, smoking and alcohol. “If we can address these four issues, then we’re on our way to tackling 70, 80 or 90 percent of the possible causes …” he said.

Not surprisingly, Southam spent a disproportionate amount of time focusing on the issue of obesity. Despite all of the attention it’s received in recent years, Southam reported that obesity rates continue to soar and, in turn, “undermine everything else we’re working on.”

While awareness and education are important, Southam believes they represent only a small part of the solution. Much more important, he said, are the skills and tools for supporting behavioral change. Southam pointed out that mobile devices and social media, in particular, represent the next frontiers in changing behaviors, especially when they give employees the ability to interact with others who have similar conditions.

Through extensive research, Southam said, he’s also identified a “miracle prescription” that can go a long way to providing relief.

“We’ve come up with a technology that is both preventative and therapeutic,” he said. “It significantly improves obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, depression, respiratory disease and a host of other conditions. It significantly reduces time-off, has no side-effects, comes at a very low cost and requires a minimal up-front investment.

“Everyone can do it and it has an addictive potential … ”

What’s it called? “Walking!”

Were every American to walk 30 minutes a day, five days a week, Southam said, the rate of Type 2 diabetes would be cut in half. That’s right, half!

I imagine it wasn’t a coincidence that pretty much everyone skipped the escalator and took the stairs as they left for the evening reception in the Fairmont’s Crown Room.

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You know the routine: “Absolutely no candy. And no means no.” “OK, just one but that’s it.” “OK, two, but no more. That’s final.” “Oh all right, three but you can’t eat the third one now. You have to wait till after dinner.” “OK, you can have it after lunch, but that’s the absolute last of this conversation.”

Nothing absolute about it, right? And haven’t we all been there at least once – either watching this scenario or, God forbid, participating in it – and either witnessed or experienced the crecsendo of bad behavior and ever-louder protests from the darling angels as more options are added to these nebulous commands?

Well, two behavioral scientists and professors at Duke University have just come out with new research that they say not only explains this crescendo of protests when the removal of rights or privileges leaves room for second-guessing, but can be translated to the workplace as well. (Oh, it also correlates to the current political unrest in the Middle East, but I’ll stick to the workplace.)

“Reactance Versus Rationalization: Divergent Responses to Policies That Constrain Freedom,” to be published in the February edition of Psychological Science, looks at how people react differently to restrictions on rights when those restrictions are communicated either as absolutes or as issues with even a sliver of “wiggle room.”

(One scenario in the study invloves a lowering of speed limits in which some study participants were told the limits were definitely coming and the other group was told they would take effect only if government officials voted to enact them.) In essence, those getting absolutes rationalized and accepted them more, whereas those in the non-absolute group reacted vehemently against them.

The methodology and metrics are in the study itself, which is available here, but does require a subscription to Psychological Science. Here is the full release from Duke that explains a good bit more than I can in a blog post.

I spoke to Gavan Fitzsimons, co-author of the study and a professor of marketing and psychology at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke, and asked him to put this in workplace terms. “Say a manager wants to impose a restriction on personal-computer use in the office,” he says. “You could say you’ve consulted with folks and you’ve come to a decision and there will be a monitoring device that will ensure absolute follow-through. Or you could say, ‘We’re going to put this policy in place and we’ll revisit it in a month to get your perspective or response.’

“If you go with the former,” he says, “people will actually generate rationalizations and explanations for why this is necessary and important, but when there’s a peak of a window of a chance it could be reversed, people will react in a totally different way: ‘That’s the stupidest thing in the world!’ ”

What’s it all mean for employers? At a time when there’s much discussion about engaging employees and making sure they know they have an integral role in the business and sometimes even a voice in the decision-making process, “be real careful how you communicate it,” Fitzsimons says.

“If your goal is to have a happy workforce,” he says, “what we would argue based on these findings is that, in many ways, it’s more productive to use these absolute restrictions. Employees will actually generate reasons why the limit or restriction is good. They’ll actually generate justifications and be happier.

“If you manage this poorly and don’t provide the absolute,” he adds, “they’ll be unhappy, with high anxiety, high arousal and aggression [might I add high decibels], and you won’t have a productive workforce. It’s like disciplining children. They need that wall, that absolute ‘No’ in order to thrive.”

Go figure.

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For those of you who may not remember the case of Crystal Dixon, here’s a brief recap, courtesy of Inside Higher Ed web site:

Dixon — who had been associate vice president of human resources at Toledo –  set off the controversy when she wrote a column in The Toledo Free Press  in which she asserted that gay people can change their sexual orientation and  questioned how gay people could ever be considered “civil rights victims.”

Wrote  Dixon: “As a black woman who happens to be an alumnus of the University of  Toledo’s Graduate School, an employee and business owner, I take great umbrage  at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are ‘civil rights  victims.’ Here’s why. I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a black woman. I am  genetically and biologically a black woman and very pleased to be so as my  Creator intended. Daily, thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave  the gay lifestyle.”

She went on to talk about “irrefutable” data showing  higher-than-average salaries for gay people, and to discuss the fate of those  who “violate God’s divine order.”

But Judge Katz ruled that she was not entitled to First Amendment protections  from dismissal from the university, given the nature of her job and the nature of her comments.

The judge also decided that her position as an administrator gave her authority over hiring and firing decisions, and over various  personnel issues, which made her comments problematic:

“Plaintiff stated that she did not think homosexuals were civil rights  victims,” he wrote. “Not only does this statement directly contradict the  university’s policies granting homosexuals civil rights protections (such as the  equal opportunity policy), but as [a job] appointing authority, plaintiff was  charged with ensuring that the university maintained those protections in  employment actions.”

Therefore, he added, her statements could be viewed as  insubordination. Further, Katz noted that the university was reasonable in  assuming that Dixon’s statements could cause damage to the institution, by  undermining the recruitment of gay employees, or by making current gay employees  feel that their rights were not respected.

As for an appeal from Dixon, the story notes no word from her camp yet, but one can reasonable expect one is in the offing. Stay tuned!

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