Major Issues Facing Companies Today

• Timely, customer-driven, strategic planning and partnering
• Motivation through recognition and just reward
• Resolving conflict and building trust
• Respecting and valuing our differences
• Maintaining focus on long-term goals
• Responding positively to chaotic change
• Affecting cultural change by driving out fear and building trust
• Creating conditions and developing skills to improve communication
• Retaining and developing good people
• Identifying and deploying a corporate mission/vision
• Building effective, empowered teams
• Empowering people to own and improve their processes

Source: Research conducted by GOAL QPC based upon surveys of leaders in 71 major American corporations

Employer Attitudes:
Companies Aim to Better Staff Lives

A new survey of U.S. companies shows an almost total about-face in the last five years in the attitudes of managers about their company's responsibility in bettering the lives of employees inside and outside the workplace.

The survey, conducted by the optional benefits company RewardsPlus of America Corp., shows that in direct contradiction of the attitudes of the early 1900's, 91 percent of the managers polled at 86 private and publicly held companies agreed their company feels responsible for bettering the lives of their workers. As little as five years ago in the era of downsizing, these same companies were promoting the idea that employees were responsible for themselves and their own careers and well-being.

"Companies have always been motivated by economic self-interest," said Ken Barksdale, president of Baltimore-based RewardsPlus of America. "Today, it so happens that recruitment and retention are enormous corporate priorities. Companies have realized some of the short-sightedness of the age of downsizing and are trying to strike a better balance."

Source: Detroit News October 25, 1998