from http://www.calpeculiarities.com/2013/03/21/protecting-company-information-when-employees-bail-california-alternatives-to-employee-non-compete-agreements/

Interesting story from the Sunday New York Times:

Noncompete clauses are now appearing in far-ranging fields beyond the worlds of technology, sales and corporations with tightly held secrets, where the curbs have traditionally been used. From event planners to chefs to investment fund managers to yoga instructors, employees are increasingly required to sign agreements that prohibit them from working for a company’s rivals.

There are plenty of other examples of these restrictions popping up in new job categories: One Massachusetts man whose job largely involved spraying pesticides on lawns had to sign a two-year noncompete agreement. A textbook editor was required to sign a six-month pact.

A Boston University graduate was asked to sign a one-year noncompete pledge for an entry-level social media job at a marketing firm, while a college junior who took a summer internship at an electronics firm agreed to a yearlong ban.

Two quick points

1.  In some fields, they are truly necessary to protect a firm's technical secrets.  However, is it really needed for camp counselors, pesticide spraying, and textbook editing?  Is the investment in the worker enough to justify such a restriction?

2.  HR - you're doing it wrong.  If you feel you need to put in a noncompete agreement in an organization to protect against even "nonessential" employees from departing, there are some deep-seeded issues within your organization involving culture and compensation that need to be addressed first. If employees are leaving, perhaps a noncompete agreement is not the answer.

"Right to Work" truly takes on a different meaning.

Each year, the College Employment Research Institute, under the leadership of Dr. Phil Gardner, puts together a look at the current state of recruiting with regard to college students (check it out here).

Based on a sample of 4,300 employer representatives, their reports indicate that "the new college labor market inches ahead with a 3 percent gain over last year across all degrees.  Strong demand for marketing finance, human resources(!), and advertising majors as well as the inclusive "all majors" group will push up hiring for Bachelor's degrees by 5 percent."  The large surprise in the report was the strong demand for Associate's degrees, which were up 30% from the previous year, and were outpacing four-year degrees for the past several months.

Its a long report (57 pages), but one of the interesting highlights was asking employers which talent management strategies they were likely to incorporate over the next three years to circumvent potential skill shortages in their organization.  The authors narrowed it down to six options (from an array of possibilities):

• Moving operations.  Few organizations (4%) identified this as a strategy they were pursuing.
• Mergers and acquisitions.   As with moving operations, only a small number of employers (6%) chose this approach
• Partnering with other organizations.  Nearly 16% of employers were considering this, with educational services, non-profits, and healthcare services most likely to pursue this option.
• Investing in technology. Here, less than 25% of employers indicated they were likely to pursue this choice, with larger organizations the most likely to make the effort.  
• Participating in early talent development programs on college campuses.  As with technology, organizational size made a difference with 50% of large employers (< 4000 employees) adopting this strategy compared to only 15% of very small organizations (< 10 employees)
• Increasing amount spent on training.  Nearly 45% of employers plan to expand their efforts in this area, with small organizations (100-500 employees) leading the way.

  Is your organization planning to increase spending on training?  Does this jibe with your 2013 recruiting plans? 

Welcome to the latest edition of the Carnival of HR.  There is a veritable cavalcade of HR knowledge provided from a bevy of HR Subject Matter Experts ready for your perusal.  Cue the Deer.

Some Questions

Mervyn Dinnen at T Recs wonders "Is Success Overrated?"  Check out the link to find out his perspective.

Chris Young at the Rainmaker Group asks "Employee Engagement: Just How Screwed Up Is Your Team?" 

Ian Welsh at Toolbox.com wonders "Could We Improve Recruiting Quality By Recording Interviews?"

Our own HR Minion, Shauna Moerke, examines career transitions and queries "Who Do You Want To be Tomorrow?"

At Lean HR, Dwane Lay asks "The Santa Claus Question."

Some Answers

At Envisia Learning, Wally Bock gives us "Two Simple Ways to Help Managers"
  
At the HR Schoolhouse, Robin Schooling gives us the skinny on "What the 'HR Community' is REALLY Talking About."

At the HR reMix, Melissa Fairman provides some life lessons in "Everyone Should Get Laid Off Once."

At Insight, Nancy Saperstone looks at "Office Politics that Work - Improve Employee Productivity."

With the 2012 American football season in full swing, Tim Gardner, in his The HR Introvert blog, looks at "One Employee's Passion is Another's Loss of Inclusion."

At Upstart HR, Ben Eubanks examines the "Benefits of Team Building."

At Julie WG, Julie Winkle Giuloni gives us the lowdown on "Creative Crossings: Where Employee Development and Career Development Converge."

At Canadian HR Reporter, Stuart Rudner warns us to "Beware the Dangers of Templates."

At Everyday People, the Godfather Steve Browne tells us to ditch the labels and "Go Tagless!!"

At Great Leadership, Dan McCarthy gives us some history in "Managing Remote Employees: Lessons from Ancient Rome and Today."

At the Curious Cat blog, John Hunter wants us to "Manage Better By Managing Less."

At Mentoring Mullarkey, Patrick Mullarkey gleans some good HR info from the Police Academy movies in "Carey Mahoney: The L&D Professional That We All Want To Be."

Some Numbers

At her self-titled blog, Jesse Stoner gives us "The Five Steps of CRISP Decision-Making."

At Thin Difference, Jon Mertz examines "How to Navigate Life in Work - Six Considerations."


At the Inflexion Advisors blog, Mark Stelzner provides us with "7 Steps to Surviving HR Vendor Consolidation."

At Tribe HR, Paul Baribeau demonstrates no triskaidekaphobia with "13 Ways to Get Your Employees To Tune Out."

At People Equation, Jennifer Miller goes from A to Z in "26 Ways To Be A Better Boss."

******

Don't forget - there is a special Carnival of HR next Wednesday, September 19.  It is being hosted by Ann Bares at the Compensation Cafe.  So tune in next week....same time, different channel.

HR SEO Gold

Yes, a movie about male strippers is the workplace movie of the year.

Its a perfect parable for these times.  "Magic" Mike (Channing Tatum) is a budding entrepreneur working a roofing job, and stripping on the side with the hopes of raising enough capital to overcome his poor credit score and poor housing market to run his own custom furniture business.    He meets Adam (Alex Pettyfer), a former college football player, who is down on his luck after getting into a fight with his coach and deciding college is not for him.

All the characteristics of a good workplace movie are there.  Its got...

Recruiting - Magic Mike recruits Adam to work for the strip club.

Orientation - Adam is shown around backstage, meets his fellow employees.

After 16 months of strife, and seemingly endless recall elections, the final vote was cast in Wisconsin.  Governor Scott Walker retained his position and can serve out the remainder of his term.  Meanwhile, a total of three Republican State Senators were recalled, changing power in the Senate from a 19-14 edge for the GOP to a 17-16 advantage for the Democratic party.

But, some questions linger....
1.  Who will be teaching Wisconsin children 5-10 years from now?

• The hubbub started with Gov. Walker asking public employees (primarily teachers; firefighters and police were exempted) to increase their contributions to health care and pensions without an increase in pay.  The unions negotiated a tradeoff of a wage freeze for better pensions and health care.
• Not only is pay stagnant, there is some concern that given how pay is defined in the Act that eliminated collective bargaining rights, teachers may face as much as a 30% pay cut to accompany those increased benefit contributions.
• Many of the most experienced teachers retired before Walker's rules went into effect for the 2011-2012 academic year. Class sizes have increased in many districts.  Many adjunct/substitute teachers had to be hired.  Quality is impacted.
• Morale has already been negatively impacted; do you think many teachers were emboldened by Tuesday's election results?  Will the stress be significant enough for many to simply throw in the towel and look elsewhere?
• If I'm 18 years or younger, I've just spent 16 months watching my teachers being vilified; referred to as "thugs" and "parasites."  Am I going to be rushing into college and declaring my major as elementary or secondary education?  
• If I am completing my education degree, will a Wisconsin school be my first or even second job choice?

2.  If I am a parent and on the job market, is Wisconsin now going to be a destination where I might considered working, given the turmoil that has gone on?  As 800 million was cut from the education budget, am I going to get the same quality education for my children that existed 2 years ago? 

3. If I am a business looking to relocate, or currently operating in Wisconsin, will there be long-term concerns about the educational preparedness of the workforce 10 years down the road?  Will whatever tax incentives provided to locate here be enough to counteract the likely increased training costs that will be borne by the organization?

Benjamin McCall has put together an invaluable guide to training and development with the release of his e-book, "What We Teach/How We Learn."

The e-book contains:

• 32 pages of articles around engagement, presentation tips, encouraging and empowering individuals to learn and in the workplace approaches to learning.
• Approaches and tips on increasing the way we deliver and facilitate to our employees.
• Reaction sheets after each article for the reader to "react" to what you wrote and jot down some ideas on how they can use it and act.
  

To provide this information, he went out, scoured the country, and found a number of great contributors (myself excluded):

• Erin Schreyer, President of Sagestone Partners, Founder of Authentic Leadership Cincinnati, Twitter: @eschreyer
• Jennifer V. Miller, People-Equation.com, Managing Partner at SkillSource, Twitter: @jennifervmiller
• Steve Boese, HR Technology Blog, HR Technology Instructor, Rochester Institute of Technology, Twitter: @steveboese
• Sharlyn Lauby, SPHR, CPLP, She is the HRBartender.com, President of Internal Talent Management (ITM) Group, Twitter: @sharlyn_lauby
• Matthew J. Stollak, Ph.D., True Faith HR, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, St Norbert Collage, Twitter: @akaBruno
• Ben Eubanks , UpStartHR.com, Runs his SHRM chapter’s RocketHR blog, HR pro at Volunteers of America, Twitter: @beneubanks
• Chris Ferdinandi, RenegadeHR.net, Author of CultureConvo, Employee Development & Social Media Specialist at EMC, Twitter: @chrisferdinandi
• Lance Haun, ReHaul.com, Community Director for ERE Media, Twitter: @thelance
• Steve Browne, Executive Director of HR for Larosa’s Pizza, Facilitator, HR Net, Twitter: @sbrownehr
• Benjamin McCall, Leadership Performance Consultant, Editor, ReThinkHR.org, Twitter: @BenjaminMcCall

Check it out now.