On this Memorial Day, the people of our nation will reflect on the sacrifices of our veterans and service members, from the past, in the present, and on to the future. It is a time for solemn acknowledgment of all this country represents, and what our military has done to protect the beliefs of freedom and democracy that America holds dear.

When you consider that the United States has over 21.8 million veterans and about 1.5 million active duty service members, chances are that someone in your family or a close friend has served our nation. We appreciate the courage shown and patriotism shared by these brave men and women that has inspired Americans through the calm times of peace and darkest days of war.

We ask that you join us in observing, in your own way, a moment of remembrance on Memorial Day, Monday, May 28, 2012. There is no shortage of ways in which you can do this. Look to your neighborhood or town for public ceremonies and parades, place flowers or a flag at a veteran’s memorial, or wear a red poppy flower for the day – it’s the official Memorial Day flower. As for a private reflection, you can pause for 3 p.m. local time for a national moment of silence, or take time to tell the veterans and service members in your life that you appreciate their service in defense of our country.

From all of us here at PACE Staffing Network, we appreciate your business and look forward to continuing to serve you throughout the year.

While overall hiring was sluggish, April saw an increase in the number of temporary workers. Overall, a total of 115,000 new jobs were created in April, well below the 160,000 new jobs projected. The unemployment rate dipped from 8.2% to 8.1%, mostly due to workers leaving the workforce. Of note is that the ratio of Americans actually working compared to those available to work, hit its lowest level since 1981.

The staffing industry, companies like PACE providing temporary and contract staff, added 21,000 jobs in April, 18% of the total jobs added. This increase reversed the somewhat surprising reductions in temporary and contract workers the staffing industry experienced in March, which saw 9400 temporary jobs disappear.

Overall, temporary and contract staffing has been contributing 24,000 new jobs a month since January; 50% higher than the same period in 2011, and close to 12% of the total 201,000 jobs per month created in the overall economy.

In the larger job market, the industries doing the most hiring included retail which lead the way by adding 29,300 jobs. . Professional services – legal, accounting, computer systems, engineering, etc – added 27,500 jobs. Hospitality – employees working in hotels, motels., food and drink establishments – increased by 26,700 jobs. Manufacturing added 16,000 jobs.
The biggest losers were transportation and warehousing, which lost 16,600 jobs.

Average hourly earnings for all employees held constant at $23.38/hr, approximately 1.8% higher than the average over the last 12 months.

If you think that your company’s media page only exists for the occasional journalist’s inquiry, you are missing out on opportunity to showcase what you have to offer to potential employees. With a little planning and regular updates, your media page – often described as a media kit or press kit – will serve as a key part of communications to your present and future employees.

Savvy employees will go to this section of your web site first – in some cases, even before navigating to a human resources page. Don’t miss these chances to make a company media page work for you.

Three things to do – today!

• Post your most recent openings: While it shouldn’t be the primary focus of your media page, but you should absolutely incorporate the latest job opportunities and their posting dates. It answers the question that many visitors would ask after reading through your web site: is this place hiring?
• Offer testimonials: Though many companies include videos or feature stories from happy customers and clients, balance those with stories from your employees. The people who work at a company can talk through their positive experiences of working with clients, which in turn do double-duty for your informational efforts!
• Fact sheets/Your Company At-A-Glance: These offer a quick look for employees to determine the basic facts – quickly. Use this media page to provide a sense of what the company is like by walking through what you do, where you are located, your corporate history, who your employees are, and where your company is headed.Three things to avoid – everyday!

• Rely on a simple contact form: Go one step beyond a contact form by inviting comments through social media outlets and by including social sharing buttons or links. This will allow visitors to do some of the work of promoting your company for you. Having visitors share your page’s content through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn gives you entrance into an exponential set of individual social networks.
• Advertisements: Your media page should strive for a neutral-to-positive tone, not one that is overly boastful. Provide highlights, but tie them back to the core of your business. Save the flashy advertising copy for potential customers.
• Remove or filter comments: Make a point to counter negative feedback with positive information, and keep your conversations with upbeat and relationship-based. Taking out only the bad while leaving the good lessens your credibility and the authenticity of your content.

A look at your web site’s analytics can confirm this final thought: your media page may be among the most popular pages within your entire web site. Make sure that you and your team are using that valuable space to speak to potential employees.

The top performers for any business can be viewed as rock stars, who have loyal fans in the form of customers, strong entourages in the form of support staff, and lucky managers in the form of their employers. Once you have identified these superlative employees, taking the steps to make their working environment as comfortable as you can goes a long way towards keeping them working for you.

Set up goals and rewards
Establish a structure for goal-based rewards for your top-performing employees, but don’t confine yourself to just financial rewards. Taking the extra effort to recognize them for their outstanding efforts can come by way of a preferred parking spot, upgraded travel options, flex-time or other, less tangible, perks.

Pay them more than what they’re worth
The cost for paying your top employees more than what they could earn on the open market is marginal compared to the value you get for their efforts. And if you don’t believe that, imagine them taking their experience, knowledge and contacts to your competitor.

Free up their time to do what they do best
Your top performer might have a phenomenal gift to persuade others, but he has trouble keeping up with expense reports. Or, perhaps she consistently finds and lands lucrative new clients, but couldn’t write up a proposal if her life depended on it. Within the skill sets of your top people, there are weaknesses that might not be holding them back, but they certainly could be slowing them down. Work with your employee and make it clear that by reducing or eliminating the time they have to spend on their “weak” tasks, they are freed up to maximize the time doing what they do best.

Offer opportunities that challenge
Think of the top performers that you have on your payroll. Whether they got there by natural talent or sheer force of will, most appreciate the value of hard work. Devise ways for them to expand their skills and to be challenged in ways that showcase their unique talents.

Find ways to duplicate their success
Look to these top-performers as a model on which you can mold other, promising employees. The purpose is two-fold. First, the top-performer is kept to stay at the top of her game, not resting on laurels and skating by on previous success. As a final bonus for the employer, when you do eventually lose that employee to retirement or a move to a competitor, you have others eagerly waiting in the wings.

PACE Staffing Network has a 35-year history of connecting employers with top performers. Contact us today to see who we can find for you!

As trends in business wax and wane, the call for lean manufacturing continues to rise above the rest as one that is here to stay. And the innocuous, sleek-looking Apple iPad has burst upon the manufacturing scene as a game-changer.

Manufacturers who have long relied on proprietary barcode scanners to track inventory, or Windows-based platforms to manage shipping and transport, would be well-served to look at the possibilities that the iPad has opened up for operational efficiency.

The Hardware
iPads do break, but the data collected and analyzed by the iPad user doesn’t have to be lost. Despite not being “ruggedized” in ways that protect the device from damage or data loss, iPads have the advantage of working in “the cloud,” provided that a facility has the bandwidth and wireless capabilities to support it.

The Software
No longer does a business have to rely on a patchwork quilt of applications to run its operations. The visual interface on which the iOS (operating system) runs shares the core Apple philosophies of being functional, friendly and fun for the user. Contrast that to the complicated, decidedly unfriendly systems used by some to manage their networks and inventory, and it’s no surprise that Apple’s market share among non-consumer markets keeps expanding.

iPads get information to decision-makers at the executive level without any filter at all. Those in the C-suite would then have a 30,000-foot view of the situation, aided in part by iPad apps that gather and interpret all available data, not just what might be available from a particular plant.

Savvy businesses might also consider creating, or funding the development, of industry-specific apps that solve specific business problems. Think back to a little application called Instagram, and how it was bought by Facebook for a cool one million dollars in 2012. With the iPad, anyone can become a software developer.

The Results
Those who are thinking that the Apple iPad is simply one in a string of trendy technological toys are already steps behind manufacturers who have accepted that the iPad has caused a shift in the way they need to operate. Real-time data and its twin, real-time analysis, are the new rules, not the exceptions, and the iPad makes that possible from start to finish in the business life cycle.