2011 Year in Review: HR & Education
8 to 5 no longer routine
Working from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday isn’t for everybody. More and more Central Iowans are finding ways to work from home or spread out their hours differently. Principal Financial Group Inc., for example, has encouraged employees and company leaders to be flexible in how they work through things such as the company’s Intranet system. Some employees are able to work four 10-hour days in order to take three-day weekends. A Principal workforce survey found that just under 20 percent of its employees were working some form of a compressed schedule. Iowa State University professor Anthony Townsend said that there is a surprising amount of “virtual work” happening in Des Moines.
401(k) plans start to rebound
The heart of the recession forced many companies to suspend their 401(k) plan matches. According to a survey by the Profit Sharing/401k Council of America (PSCA), between 2008 and 2010, one out of five companies surveyed had either reduced or suspended their matches. David Wray, the PSCA’s president, told the Business Record that “the trend data is that companies that have suspended their matches have slowly begun to re-employ them.” Locally, Principal Financial Group Inc. said about 20 percent of its 401(k) plans that offer matches had reduced or suspended those matches since the recession. About 30 percent of those plans have since reinstated them.
That’s leadership
What is the profile of a leader in Central Iowa? The Business Record partnered with Merit Resources Inc. to give 36 area leaders an assessment from Profiles International Inc.’s Profile XT total person assessment. The assessment was a test of both verbal and numerical abilities and a survey of personality traits. Some trends among area leaders included: Many leaders are enterprising, which indicates they like to be persuasive and present ideas to others; overall, leaders showed high levels of energy, decisiveness and sociability; Central Iowa leaders as a whole are more people-oriented and trusting than the national CEO performance model.
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