When companies struggle with human resource issues arising from a shrinking pool of highly skilled and talented workers, they will often resort to acquisition strategies that may run counter to employee retention plans and may prove to be less cost effective.

These strategies also often ignore employee surveys that identify learning and development as the most important factors in achieving career advancement and increasing employee satisfaction.

It is a well-known fact that the more employees are engaged in interesting, challenging work and have opportunities for growth, the more likely they are to be highly productive and stay with their company. Therefore, talent development and deployment strategies have to incorporate some way of building employees’ skills to maximum capacity.

Employee development becomes a critical tool both for the employee’s career progress and for the organization’s market competitiveness and growth. When a third and important stakeholder in the economic equation gets involved—state government—employees, organizations, and the public sector can create a successful partnership where everyone wins.

In today’s global economy, state governments are doing more to help their workforce remain competitive. Because competitive employees must possess the best and most advanced skills, government agencies have established multiple training grant programs to stimulate worker skills development. Governments understand that as workers increase their skills capacity, they fuel innovation and product development, which ultimately spurs economic growth and multiplies the return on states’ investments in their workforce.

From the private sector’s perspective, employee development can be expensive, and incentives—particularly those addressing the cost of training and upskilling of workers—can have a positive impact on business and investment decisions. Therefore, by directly financing training, government can help companies address challenges related to talent shortages and competitiveness. A training grant with a reasonable application and decision-making process will enable an organization to enact training quickly and efficiently, boosting employee productivity and its balance sheets. Companies can forge ahead confidently with the knowledge that proactive actions will be supported with training funds.

The Arkansas Incumbent Worker Training Program (IWTP) is one example of how a state training incentive is designed to respond to real-world business situations:

* The IWTP supports training projects that will benefit business and industry by assisting in the skill development of incumbent workers, thereby increasing employee opportunities, and company growth and productivity.
* Training in portable skills results in a more highly skilled and versatile workforce that contributes to Arkansas’ ability to attract new business, and creates an environment conducive to expansion.
* The training is expected to lead to the creation of new jobs, retention of jobs, increased wages for better-trained workers, a higher-skilled workforce, and more profitable businesses.
* Training costs may be matched at 100 percent of training costs.
* IWTP funds are given directly to the companies in cash payments.
* More information about Arkansas’ IWTP may be found at www.state.ar.us/esd/Employers/IWTP.htm.

Although currently state grants for workforce development make up a small portion of economic development incentives, they are vital to states’ economic health and growth and significant for the learning and development community. And increased productivity from a highly skilled labor force allows states to boost their own economic growth. This process also increases the demand for trained workers and leads to higher levels of employment, resulting in a win-win-win situation for employees, companies, and state government.

Visit ASTD for more information.

Internet Explorer is most popular with businesses right now simply because it has been the #1 browser for so long. As the market changes, they’re going to have to evaluate which browser the use for their own online presence or products.

Visit the Computerworld blog to read up on considerations when choosing a browser.

We frequently hear from people about not only their confusion over how to best use social media, but about their uncertainty around its success. The findings of this survey show that people are pretty much evenly split over whether they think social media is an effective tool for internal communication.

Key findings were:

• The level of social media expertise and experience among the profession is poor with more training needed.
• More than half of global internal communicators say their organizations do not have a social media policy in place. Those that do cite guideline inconsistency as the biggest problem.
• Social media has changed the roles and responsibilities of global internal communicators. Practitioners are rapidly changing focus from controlling communication to influencing colleagues.
• Leaders are embracing “two-way employee communication” but still rely on email and e-newsletters.
• The adoption of social media tools and platforms has significantly narrowed the communication gap between leaders and employees but increased the fear of loss of control and power at the top of organizations.
• Global internal communication teams stick to the basics when measuring the success of social media initiatives using website data and analysis or intranet traffic figures.
• Gaining budget, overcoming IT restrictions and management fearing a loss of control and reputational damage are the biggest barriers preventing communicators from implementing social media tools within their organizations.

Additional detail on their findings can be found on their recent press release. It makes for interesting reading. Join the discussion about the research on this blog; we’d be interested to know what you think.

39% of you stay connected throughout vacation

38% of you check messages, but only respond if urgent

5% bring it all with you and then ignore it

16% of you are able to completely disconnect from work when you’re on vacation

The comments received included:

“Business moves too fast. I would regret going away if I came back to a crisis or situation that could have been resolved by my intervention–even when enjoying some R&R”

Mike Waterton
Managing Director
Temp Network Recruitment

“There’s too much possibility of missing something–especially if you are a small business.”

Paula Suita
Principal
Smith & Suita

Our question now is: Is this the wave of the future, or do you think people will eventually rebel and take back their vacations? Do people need to completely disconnect from their work, or is staying available 24/7 okay? Visit our blog and join the discussion.

Some of this is related to the economy. People are doing whatever they can to ensure that they hold on to their jobs. In the long term, however, it’s setting a precedent, one that will be hard to move away from once the economy, and nerves, fully recovers.

While constant connection might be an aggravation for some people while on vacation, for entrepreneurs it’s actually given them much greater flexibility and a degree of freedom. It’s much easier to take a few days away while remaining in touch with any employees you have back home. Even better, many entrepreneurs are simply able to conduct business from anywhere.

We wanted to find out what you’re doing to stay in touch, or not, this summer. Visit our LinkedIn page and take our latest poll.

As a consumer there are steps you can take to protect your confidential information and reduce the risk of identity theft and potential financial harm. Here are a few helpful hints:

• Keep your anti-virus software enabled and updated. Anti-virus software scans and deletes viruses from your computer and incoming e-mail.
• Keep your computer files updated. Operating systems such as Windows or Mac OS, financial software programs, and entertainment applications may have vulnerabilities or back doors where a keen attacker could gain unauthorized access to your computer.
• Be cautious with your e-mail:

• Do not open e-mails from unknown or suspicious sources. Delete them immediately.
• Do not open attachments or click on links contained within e-mails from unknown or suspicious sources.
• Do not reply to e-mails from unknown or suspicious sources.
• Basic rule in reading any e-mail, if it sounds too good to be true, do not click on it.
• If someone hacks your e-mail and uses it to send suspicious messages to people in your address book, change your password immediately to prevent subsequent messages.

• If you use high-speed Internet access, be sure to use a firewall.
• Be suspicious of Internet downloads. Make sure you download information only from trustworthy sites and that you always virus-scan downloads before opening them.
• Use spyware detection with your other safeguards to ensure that you do not become a victim of pop ups that could obtain your user ID and password to your private accounts.
• Act immediately in case of an infection. If your computer is infected, log off the Internet and scan it with updated anti-virus software.

What are some of your options for making this easier? Here are a few of the most common ones we thought of:

Write them down – Who hasn’t gone to use a friend or co-worker’s computer and found a Post It note “hidden” under the keyboard containing all their user names and passwords? Pretty much a breech of security protocol for most companies, but unfortunately it’s often necessary. This is also not a good idea for personal information, such as bank accounts. You never know who’s going to use your computer area; storing critical information in this way exposes you to a lot of risk.

Have your browser remember your passwords – While this is certainly useful, you still can’t guarantee who uses your computer. By simply having each site remember your user name and password, you’re giving anyone who uses your computer access to EVERYTHING. You’re also in trouble if you clear your cache—you won’t be recognized next time you go back to that secure site—or if you use another computer and can’t remember any of your passwords.

Use password management software – There are several packages on the market, available at a wide variety of prices. We found a good comparison of products at the site Top 10 Reviews. Investing in something like this could be worthwhile to better secure all of your business and personal information.

We’d like to see what other people do to manage the overwhelming number of user names and passwords they need to get by every day. Post a comment and share your ideas with our readers.

One part of their customer base is the municipal, state, and federal governments. In mid-2009 Microsearch had the opportunity to bid on a contract with the State of Massachusetts, and the bid itself had to be Section 508 compliant. Section 508 is a federal law that addresses the needs of people with disabilities. It sets forth provisions that establish a minimum level of accessibility to eliminate barriers in information technology.

Susan Kelly, President of Microsearch, approached SOFTEACH about MS Word document training. She and her colleagues had to know how to create macros and how to create and manipulate a large number of complex tables for the bid. They were looking for training on MS Word that focused on their particular needs.

SOFTEACH trainer Darlene Collins worked with Susan to define their needs and then conducted an Advanced MS Word document class focused on Section 508 compliance for several Microsearch employees. The class was held online, with Susan and her colleagues logging in from a remote location. “We really learned a lot from Darlene in terms of creating macros,” said Susan Kelly, “She was quite helpful in teaching us how to create the accessible document we needed to win this new business.” In the end, Microsearch won that state bid because they were able to meet the 508 compliance requirements, and they will have an edge in future bids because of their new expertise.

To learn more about Microsearch Corporation and their services, visit their website.

Firewalls are programs and hardware that act as security guards to provide varying levels of protection. For instance, they can prevent unauthorized log-ins from outside sources, filter information coming through Internet connections, and / or permit only e-mail traffic to pass through. Firewalls also can provide a logging and auditing function which gives summaries about what kinds and amount of traffic passed through it, how many break-in attempts occurred, and so on.

Firewalls, however, are not good protection against viruses because there are too many viruses, with the numbers and types increasing daily. A quality anti-virus software that the user updates frequently is still the best defense against viruses.

Upgrade to Office 2007 First

This June 9, 2010 article in PCWorld describes a loophole in Microsoft’s licensing rules that allows organizations with copies of Office 2003 to save money by first upgrading to Office 2007 and then moving to 2010. You have to be careful how you manage this process, it can be a bit confusing, but the savings could outweigh the hassle.

Savings for Open Value Subscription Customers through June

For those companies with an “open value subscription,” this May, 2010 Visual Studio Magazine article outlines how you can save through a Microsoft discount program–but only if you upgrade by the end of June, 2010. If you fall into this category, you’ll want to be sure to move on this quickly.

Whichever avenue you choose to pursue an upgrade, we’re available at SOFTEACH to help you train your staff on the many new features of Office 2010 and Windows 7. Contact us today for a free quote on online or on-site customized training.

And finally…Satisfy our Curiosity

Visit our LinkedIn page to take our newest poll: Does your business plan to upgrade to Office 2010 or Windows 7 this year?