Archive for December, 2010
Xe Services Acquired By PE-led Consortium
Xe Services, the security firm formerly known as Blackwater, has been acquired by an investor consortium led by private equity firms Forte Capital Advisors and Manhattan Partners. Xe, which has been criticized for its activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, provides training and domestic and international security services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
PRESS RELEASE
USTC Holdings, LLC, an investor consortium led by private equity firms Forte Capital Advisors (”Forte”) and Manhattan Partners (”Manhattan”), announced today that it has acquired Xe Services, LLC (”Xe” or the “Company”) and its core operating subsidiaries. Xe is a leading provider Continue Reading…
FPS Considering Increasing and Federalizing Security Officer Training
On Thursday December 16, on behalf of NASCO and the contract guard industry, I had a meeting at FPS with officials working on a “pre-decisional” proposal to increase and “federalize” (through utilization of FLETC) the initial training for FPS contract “Protective Security Officers” (PSO’s). Improving training to provide better protection for persons at FPS guarded federal facilities is the “ highest priority” for new FPS Director Eric Patterson and there is a strong belief at FPS that to accomplish this goal training must be standardized as well as increased. The officials noted that if all PSO’s receive the same exact training, this will provide for “uniform protection” and instill confidence in the public and federal workers that there is “no doubt” that all PSO’s are well trained. The improved/increased training, as well as better compensation envisioned for officers, will create a more “professionalized” security officer force with PSO’s “committed to their profession.”
The proposal, called the “National Training Initiative”, is being developed by officials in the FPS National Capital Region. As currently being considered, it would increase PSO training significantly from Continue Reading…
Customization Versus Configuration: Which Is Better?
Is it better to customize or configure? Any good workforce performance management system needs to have elements that can be adjusted to best serve a company’s needs. Deciding between customization and configuration is crucial in selecting a workforce performance management system that works best for your organization. However, in order to do that, you need to know exactly what the difference is between the two.
Customizing an application entails changing its core programming to better suit a company’s needs. Companies that customize a program Continue Reading…
Safety Management: Newsletter for Parking Professionals September, 2010
MVR Reviews for Valet, Bus and Shuttle Drivers
Giving an employee the keys to a vehicle entails risk — the risk that he or she won’t operate the vehicle in a safe manner, take proper care of it, or follow policy and procedure. Managing these risks begins before the driver is hired, and is an ongoing process that can provide substantial savings and cost avoidance.
Assessing driver safety risks begins with MVR reports.
In a recent article from National Alliance of Insurance Education & Research, Steve C. Holland states: Continue Reading…
Safety Management: Newsletter for Parking Professionals- October, 2010
Are You Ready to Shake Out?
Major earthquakes can cause unprecedented catastrophes. With earthquakes as an inevitable part of our future, parking garage owners and managers will need to be prepared and take actions to ensure that disasters do not become catastrophes. With the safety and lives and employees and patrons at stake,
What we do now, will determine what our lives will be like afterwards.
With this in mind, the Earthquake Country Alliance (www.earthquakecountry.org) created the ShakeOut, an earthquake drill and preparedness activity in which everyone can participate. In particular, businesses of all sizes and types can use the drill to get their employees, business partners, and even their customers, involved and prepared for a big earthquake. Furthermore, the level of your staffs’ own personal and family preparedness will be key to their availability to support your company’s response and recovery efforts after a disaster.
Although they were created for the Great California ShakeOut (www.shakeout.org), the instructions to follow are Continue Reading…
Using Biometrics to Stop Buddy Punching
Scanning an eye to gain access to a computer or building may seem like a futuristic technology from the latest action movie, but it is very real, and it’s being used all over the world. The process of electronically identifying people using physical measurements of individual human characteristics is called biometrics, or biometry.
A biometric reader uses unique human characteristics that are permanent and able to be scanned. As long as the feature does not change throughout time and can be collected accurately by a sensor, it is can be used as a source of biometric identification. All sorts of individual parts of the body can be used in biometrics, including facial features like irises, fingers, hands, and even veins. The shape and speed of a person’s signature can be used as biometric identification, as well as his or her voice.
Enrollment occurs when biometric readers digitally process representations of individual human measurements in a template. Templates are stored in two ways – either on a smartcard that an employee can possess or a device database. Identification occurs when an employee scans a bodily feature, such as an eye, finger, or hand, and is identified when the biometric reader matches the scan to a stored template. The process of verification occurs when an employee uses a smartcard, token, or login to let the biometric reader compare a previously stored template to a new scan.
Biometrics has a triple role in the workplace. Not only does it eliminate the need for any additional identifying information that is easily lost like a badge, card, code, or password, but it also prevents time fraud, or buddy punching. Buddy punching is the practice of having an employee’s friend swipe him or her in, allowing the employee to arrive late with no consequence. Since a biometric reader uses a pre-stored geometric template of an employee’s finger or hand to validate his or her identity, it renders buddy punching impossible. A biometric reader can also act as a security device, preventing people who are not authorized from entering restricted areas of the workplace.
Monitoring Productivity With a Mobile Enterprise Management Platform
Chances are everyone in your workplace owns a cell phone. In fact, you might even provide your employees with work cell phones if they move around on the job. Cell phones are just one of many mobile devices, including systems and networks, which can play a huge role in company work performance. If your company relies on mobile devices during the course of the workday, it could probably benefit from a mobile enterprise management platform, or MEMP.
A MEMP helps you keep track of your mobile workforce by managing all of its mobile devices, systems, and networks. Whether you have a small number of employees using mobile technology or a vast network, it’s important to be able to regulate the mobile aspect of your business.
A quality MEMP should easily collect data from all mobile devices your company uses and store it in a place where you can access it in real time. This can get tricky when the mobile enterprise isn’t uniform – different manufacturers produce mobile devices with different capabilities, applications, and plans. And that isn’t all – various mobile network operators can have their own compatibility issues.
A MEMP lets you monitor a rich variety of details about your company’s mobile enterprise. MEMP clients can be integrated with a mobile application to monitor tasks in real time. Phone calls, texts, and any other mobile device function can be timed, analyzed, and adjusted. Information pertaining to device performance, data connections, network speed, synchronization speed, downtime, and even battery life can be crucial to the success of an organization relying heavily on mobile performance. These details need to be monitored and analyzed so that equipment adjustments can be made if necessary.
When would equipment need to be adjusted or replaced, and how would you know? If battery life is an issue, a MEMP will provide information as to what mobile device’s battery lasts the longest. A good MEMP tells you when memory leaks are occurring, and in which mobile device. MEMPs can even track information related to the quality of a mobile device’s technical support.
Technology Tips For Encouraging High Performance And Strategic Talent Management
Recruiting talented employees and managing them strategically to meet organization goals and objectives is crucial to the success of your business. Technological solutions are emerging that provide easy ways to store information about employee skills and productivity, as well as motivation for higher performance.
First of all, define what skills are needed to ensure the growth of the business, whether they are experiential, educational, technical, or analytical. Discover who possesses what talents within the business, and which employees are the top performers. Use the results to develop and maintain a company-wide skills inventory, accessible by appropriate managers and supervisors. Such a record allows managers and other supervisors to assess the natural abilities, skills, and experience of employees, as well as keep track of any training received or necessary. These factors can be used during an employee’s entire lifespan with the company, beginning with recruitment and ending with retirement. A skills inventory also allows supervisors and business owners to compare the talent capital of the organization with the skills required to run it effectively – are there any gaps or overloads?
Ensure that employees’ individual goals are aligned with the strategy of your business. A pay-for-performance program is a perfect way to motivate employees to work hard and report their progress. Managers can then use the information gathered, including performance notes, reviews, and goal alignment metrics, to keep an in-depth skills inventory and make crucial talent management decisions. Pay-for-performance tracking technology enables 360-degree feedback to stream in from all areas of the organization as often as you desire. Using this technology also allows you give a weightier rank to particular aspects of an assessment, such as ‘customer service.’ A pay-for-performance initiative can provide the information to identify talent gaps and weak points within the business.
Technological initiatives to strategically manage talent within the organization benefit employees and employers alike. Employees who are accurately assessed and paid for their efforts have higher job satisfaction and tend to stay with the company longer. Employers reap the benefits of a successful business that uses talent to grow strategically in areas of concern.
Is Outsourcing Always the Best Option?
The Staffing Industry Analysts published an article reporting that in 2008, 40% of companies had their own internal workforce. By 2011, the number of companies using MSPs is projected to rise to 64%. Outsourcing to Managed Service Providers (MSP) has been a steadily rising workforce management trend for years, but is it always the best option?
Pros of Internal Management
Establishing a management office within the company is probably going to be less expensive than the initial cost of starting an outsourced office. There is less likelihood of cultural and educational difficulty, and more communication between clients and suppliers.
Cons of Internal Management
Self-managing a company’s workforce can cause poor branch communication and a variety of non-standardized processes. This can lead to unnecessary spending and company finances that fall between the cracks. Companies attempting to manage their workforce internally must have the proper expertise, budget, and time to deal with workplace issues and stay on top of new technology trends.
Pros of Outsourcing
Using an MSP can cut down on the number of employees working fulltime. It can also make contacting people in charge of program management a much more streamlined process. MSP providers have greater staffing industry experience, since they have a greater variety of clients. They are often involved with the latest workforce manage best practices and technology trends, keeping programs valuable and fresh. Additionally, outsourcing doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing proposition – it can be applied to select facets of an organization. The amount of support an MSP provides can be increased or decreased as the organization employing it deems fit.
Cons of Outsourcing
If it doesn’t make sense to outsource considering company strategy, then using an MSP will probably cause cultural alignment difficulties. Small companies or those with a limited focus might waste more money outsourcing than staying local.
Conclusion
For small businesses with limited resources, outsourcing might not be the best option. Businesses with larger aims, however, might do well to investigate whether the cost of setting up an MSP will save them time and money in the end.
How To Eliminate Pirated Time
Pirated time is the bane of countless workplaces. Employees who clock in early may think they’re doing the business a favor by working extra time, but in reality, they are throwing off payroll amounts and potentially putting the organization in a financial quandary. Employees who get co-workers to punch in for them but actually arrive later than the scheduled time are bilking the organization of service and money. Luckily, it’s possible to prevent pirated time.
The first step in eliminating pirated time is to restrict time clock punches with a workforce management system that compares the punched time to the appropriate schedule. Workforce management systems automatically integrate the time clock and employee schedules, saving your business valuable manual evaluation time. This way, employees cannot receive extra pay by clocking in to work when they are not scheduled.
It may seem counterintuitive, but you should allow managers to permit time clock overrides, or provide associates with a way to override the time clock. There are a host of reasons why an employee may have a real need to clock in later or earlier than usual, including covering for a sick co-worker or coming in early to complete a project. This way, payroll errors are reduced, odd times are easier to report, and the entire process is streamlined. When employers are given the capability to override time clock restrictions, the business saves even more time. In this scenario, the employee doesn’t have to waste time finding the manager, and the manager doesn’t have to put off doing more important work at hand to deal with the issue.
Along with permitting time clock overrides, you should devise exception reports to track the reasons behind them. Managers and employees alike should be given a list of acceptable reasons for time clock overrides that they can use to swiftly, accurately report all instances. This allows you to see how many overrides there are in which sections of the company, and the reasons behind them. The exception reports will alert you to any problems associated with time clock override frequency or rationale.
Authors
- Adam Stark
- Albert P. Corvigno
- Alex Passantino
- Bob Hayes
- Bob Perry
- Cameron Hamilton
- Carolyn D. Richmond
- Dana Wright
- Gary Levy
- Jay Ethridge and Joe Jezior
- Jim Pirraglia
- John Bauer
- John McHugh
- Jon Levin
- Karen Bucks
- Kathy Phillips
- Katie Meeker
- Lisa Brauner
- Matthew Gilley
- Michael Busch
- Mike Lehner
- Natalie Runyon
- Nick Fishman
- Rich Wilkinson
- Robert Munao
- Stephanie O'Rourk
- Steve Amitay
- Valiant
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