Workforce Management Daily Conference News

STUDY LINKS HEALTHY WORKPLACE TO HIGH MORALE

There's a connection between healthy workplaces, healthy employees and high motivation and morale, according to a survey released Monday by EAP provider ComPsych.

In unhealthy workplaces—where there are few healthy food choices, limited exercise opportunities and little access to health education but which are full of nonstop stress—employees tend to be less motivated, the survey found.

ComPsych surveyed 1,000 of its client companies, asking employees to rate the healthiness of their workplaces in terms of the availability of healthy food, opportunity for physical exercise, access to health education and the ability to manage stress levels.

In healthy workplaces, 71 percent of employees had high morale, compared with 41 percent of the workers in non-healthy workplaces. Eighty percent of workers in non-healthy workplaces described themselves as overweight, compared with 62 percent in healthy workplaces.

Eighty-two percent of employees in healthy workplaces said they had high motivation to do their best work. In non-healthy workplaces, the percentage of motivated employees was lower— 66 percent. The survey also looked at the connection between weight and morale: 22 percent of very overweight employees said they had low morale, compared with 12 percent of normal weight employees.

HR ON HOMELAND WATCH LIST

In a sign of the times, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is reaching out to human resource managers. Exhibiting for the first time at the SHRM conference in San Diego, the government agency is providing employers with disaster recovery tools, such as a sample emergency plan, information about insurance coverage and a list of supplies that every company should have.

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Careerbuilder staffers turned out in force

Exhibitors more strategic in selecting conferences

Budget considerations, fear of getting lost in the shuffle spur some vendors to skip large shows

By Jessica Marquez

To show or not to show. That is the question marketing and sales executives have been asking as they decide which conferences they should attend and which are not worth it.

In the late '90s, when budgets seemed bottomless, most companies chose to exhibit at any and every conference. Now, however, firms are being more strategic in deciding which events are musts for them, says Elrond Lawrence, a spokesman for HR Marketer, a Capitola, California- based public relations and marketing company serving the human resources industry.

In particular, smaller companies are deciding against having booths at the larger trade shows, such as SHRM's annual conference, because they are worried about being lost in the shuffle, Lawrence says.

ConnectedCare, a Baltimore-based company that helps employers transition to consumer-directed health care plans, has chosen not to exhibit at big trade shows like SHRM's in favor of a strategy more focused on public relations, says Teresa O'Keefe, director of marketing. "We believe decision-makers for employers don't attend conferences—not ones that vendors are invited to,” she says.