Helping companies successfully answer strategic questions like this has made Alsbridge one of the fastest-growing companies in America and a global leader in data-driven benchmarking, outsourcing consulting and network advisory services for CIOs.   Founded ten years ago, Alsbridge has enjoyed meteoric growth, fueled in part by acquisitions, including most recently by its acquisition of Telwares, a leading consulting firm that provides network optimization and transformation services to clients worldwide.

Alsbridge’s rise has just gotten another big boost with an investment from private equity firm LLR Partners, which invests in middle market growth companies with proven business models in a broad range of industries, including business services, consumer and education, financial services, healthcare services and software and IT services. With more than $2 billion under management, LLR provides capital for growth, recapitalizations and buyouts.

“Alsbridge has exhibited tremendous growth over the past 10 years and is uniquely positioned to be the industry leader in IT and telecom sourcing, benchmarking and transformation services,” says Howard Ross of LLR Partners. “With a very experienced management team at the helm and a proven track record of success, the company is set for continued expansion in a largely untapped market.”

The financing will be used to support Alsbridge’s continued growth plan.  Founded in 2003, Alsbridge has more than 175 team members across three continents. It serves as a trusted advisor to companies seeking to identify and optimize vendor relationships and maximize value from the latest enterprise technologies. Leveraging a database of more than 300,000 data points and market intelligence garnered from thousands of sourcing transactions, Alsbridge provides clients with transparency on pricing and performance.  Many of the world’s largest companies turn to Alsbridge to help them generate significant cost savings and make more informed IT and telecom purchasing decisions.

“Alsbridge has created an end-to-end solution to help companies realize more strategic value and cost savings from their technology and telecom vendors,” said Ben Trowbridge, founder, Chairman and CEO of Alsbridge Inc. “Our partnership with LLR introduces new relationships, capital and strategic guidance to support that vision. It provides Alsbridge the flexibility to quickly take advantage of additional acquisition opportunities and reshape the benchmarking, outsourcing consulting and network advisory landscape as we continue to grow.”

About Alsbridge Inc.

Alsbridge is a global consulting firm that provides data-driven benchmarking, outsourcing consulting and network advisory services for CIOs. Alsbridge’s experienced consultants leverage proprietary tools and information databases to identify and engage the optimal vendors for its clients, negotiate best practice terms at fair market prices and improve ongoing vendor management. Alsbridge helps its clients procure the most cost effective and value added sources globally for IT infrastructure services, network carrier services, hardware and software, application support and development, business processes and cloud services. For more information about Alsbridge, visit www.alsbridge.com.  

The SHRM/Globoforce semi-annual survey examines the current state of HR leaders’ employee engagement and recognition practices and their impact on performance management. Today’s leaders face increasing competition to hire skilled workers and retain top talent – a business’s number one asset. The survey reveals that employee engagement is still the number one priority among HR professionals. The recent survey also uncovers a connection between recognition programs and engagement and retention levels, all crucial elements amidst an awakening job market.

“We’re witnessing intense competition for talent that requires new approaches for energizing, engaging, and evaluating a global workforce,” said Eric Mosley, CEO of Globoforce.  “Performance management has long been viewed as the underlying way this is done. Yet, as this latest survey shows, the lack of ongoing feedback continues to be its missing ingredient. By using a social performance management strategy powered by employee recognition, HR leaders can fill that critical gap of feedback. The result is higher levels of employee engagement, satisfaction, and productivity.”

“The latest SHRM/Globoforce survey shows a growing introspection among HR leaders. They know how critical HR strategies will be in 2012 and well into the future,” said Mark Schmit, SHRM’s vice president of research.“By taking the next step beyond simply talking about employee engagement and proactively addressing it with tools like employee recognition, HR leaders will have greater success in elevating all key HR metrics.”

Among the 770 HR leaders who responded to the survey, key insights include:

Employee engagement is the top HR challenge but underutilized

According to the survey, 94 percent of HR leaders say employee engagement is an important or very important workforce challenge they currently face. However, only 42 percent of respondents currently track employee engagement levels, missing an opportunity to address low engagement levels within the organization with targeted, proactive strategies. In fact, among companies that measure engagement (versus those that do not), HR leaders say:

Mo- More employees feel rewarded according to job performance (69 percent vs. 49 percent)

Mo- More managers acknowledge and appreciate employees (56 percent vs. 46 percent)

Mo- More employees are satisfied with their levels of recognition (37 percent vs. 23 percent)

Employee recognition fills the feedback gap for effective employee performance management

The survey finds that 45 percent of HR leaders do not think annual performance reviews are an accurate appraisal for employee’s work while 42 percent do not think employees are rewarded according to their job performance. Examining this by companies with recognition programs versus those without:

·    -  55 percent of companies with recognition programs say their managers effectively acknowledge employees.

·     -  Conversely, only 36 percent of companies without recognition programs feel employees are effectively acknowledged and appreciated by managers. 

Employee recognition delivers ROI against key HR metrics

Among organizations that measure the ROI of their employee recognition programs, HR leaders observed increases in key metrics. More than half of survey respondents saw increases in productivity, customer/employee retention, employee engagement, return on profit margin, and return on equity as a result of their employee recognition program.

Percent of HR leaders who say they observed an increase in these metrics as a result of their recognition program:

Em- Employee productivity - 63 percent

Em- Employee engagement - 61 percent

Ret- Return on profit margin - 58 percent

Cu- Customer retention - 52 percent

Em- Employee retention - 51 percent

Ret- Return on equity - 50 percent

To download the 2012 SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Report, visit: 

http://go.globoforce.com/SHRM-winter-2012-report_announcement.html

To view the February 2012 webinar on the SHRM/Globoforce survey findings, visit:  http://globoforce.com/Feb8_2012_webinar

To download the full results of the survey: http://www.shrm.org/Research/SurveyFindings/Articles/Pages/EmployeeRecognitionPrograms,Winter2012.aspx

Survey Methodology

* The SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey is an employee recognition survey that examines employee engagement, performance management, as well as other key metrics associated with employee recognition. The survey is commissioned by Globoforce and conducted in collaboration with SHRM. There were 770 responses from organizations with 500+ employees, resulting in a margin of error of +/- 3 percent at a 95 percent confidence level. The online survey was conducted by SHRM from December 22, 2011 – January 12, 2012.

About Globoforce

Founded in 1999, Globoforce is the world’s leading provider of employee recognition solutions. Through its social, mobile, and global technology, Globoforce helps HR and business leaders elevate employee engagement, increase employee retention, manage company culture and discover the power of real-time performance management. Today, employees across the world are living their company values and achieving peak performance through the SaaS-based Globoforce platform. A private corporation, Globoforce is co-headquartered in Southborough, Massachusetts, and Dublin, Ireland.

To learn more:

Visit: http://www.globoforce.com

Read: http://globoforce.com/globoblog

Follow:

o   Twitter @Globoforce

o   LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/globoforce

o   Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/globoforce

About the Society for Human Resource Management

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the world’s largest association devoted to human resource management. Representing more than 250,000 members in more than 140 countries, the Society serves the needs of HR professionals and advances the interests of the HR profession. Founded in 1948, SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China and India. Visit SHRM Online at www.shrm.org and follow us on Twitter @SHRMPress.

I'll catch up on the posting in the next day or two.

Sorry.  Couldn't resist.

Google+ solves those problems and many more you didn't know you had.  The way Google+ works is that you organize your contacts in Circles.  You might, for example, have an "Inner Circle" for your closest friends, a "Business Circle" for people you work with, a "Following" circle for people that you don't really want to talk to but want to follow their conversations, a "Cousins" circle for those folks that you don't really want to talk to but don't want to offend . You can create circles for people who share your interests--films, pets, music, whatever.  I have created a Circle called "Social Learning" and another called "Workplace."   (BTW, if you want to be in my circles, go to Google+, search for Jerry Bowles, and add me to your circle.  I will then add you to mine.)

When you post something to Google+ you designate which of your circles it goes to;  only the people within those circles will be able to see it.  You completely control your content--from sharing with one person to making it public, with all the stops in between. 

One feature of Google+ that seems tailor-made for HR and other business professionals is  a video-conferencing feature called "Hangout."  You create a "Hangout," invite the people you want to chat with to it, turn on your cam, and, voila, you're face-to-face with the members of your team (or your old high school classmates)--from anywhere in the world.  Companies and brands could create permanent "Hangouts." You could do a regular TVCast at a certain hour and invite everyone on the internet.  The possibilities are virtually limitless.

That seeming limitless is the most compelling thing about Google+  for me.  It is a true platform rather than a restrictive service that makes you behave in a certain way or limits what you can do with it.  I'm sure the Google folks will figure out how to extract their pound of flesh but right now Google+ is as close to a democratic social network as we're likely to get.

The lesson for Mark Zuckerberg is a lesson for all tech darlings that hit it big.  Nobody can hold the edge forever--especially not in the world of high-stakes technology.  He should have taken $10 billion and walked when he had the chance.     

p.s. the March numbers will be even more impressive--according to Google Analytics, HCL had more than 44,000 unique visitors in March.

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The phrase 'damage control' has its roots in the Merchant Marines. It is the stuff you need to do in an extreme emergency to avoid a ship sinking.
In our strange world, seemingly small acts can start an avalanche of unexpected consequences.

One person's self- immolation in Tunisia, can bring down a dictator in Egypt, etc. Or, a couple of problems, can destroy the perception of 100 year old businesses like Toyota or J&J .

Thus, a strategy of controlling everything seems a sound one in many industries where in reality there is no such thing as a small problem, and any problem can potentially sink the ship.

Jason

We like to delude ourselves that people care about what we think about us, far more than they actually do [by a factor of a zillion to one].

It makes us feel all puffed up and special at cocktail parties

It’s a painful lesson at first, certainly, one that once you’ve learned to deal with, is actually quite liberating. --Hugh McLeod

A new human resources standard for measuring cost-per-hire – the first of its kind in the United States − is open for review and comments until March 18, 2011.

The Standard for Measures and Metrics Taskforce, led by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), designed the cost-per-hire metric standard as a tool for organizations to determine accurate and comparable costs of recruitment through a standard algorithm that calculates recruiting costs.

“Previously, organizations had numerous and conflicting approaches for determining cost-per-hire,” said Lee Webster, director of HR standards at SHRM. “The proposed draft standard may soon be used by companies that would prefer to use a metric that consistently and comparably measures the performance of their staffing efforts.”

The draft standard, known as SHRM Draft Standard 6001: Cost Per Hire, is structured at a topical level with components addressing issues for individual organizations based on specific hiring environments and requirements.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) designated SHRM as the exclusive U.S. developer of human resources standards in February 2009. SHRM led a taskforce to develop a consensus standard for performance management later that year. SHRM also leads a taskforce devoted to developing a standard for diversity and inclusion.

All SHRM standards are developed with the involvement of those who are affected by the standard. HR practitioners, academics, consultants and line managers from public and private firms across the U.S.participated in the development of the cost-per-hire standard.

SHRM's consensus standards development process is accredited by the ANSI, a private, non-profit organization that administers and coordinates the U.S. voluntary standardization and conformity assessment systems.

Individuals and organizations can view or submit comments on the proposed draft standard by visiting the SHRM balloting website.Thecomments will be reviewed by the taskforce that developed the standard and will be incorporated where appropriate. Questions about the proposed draft standard or about how to submit comments shouldbe directed to Lee Webster at 1-703-535-6047 or e-mailhrstds@shrm.org.