Running late today - you're not alone!

Career Builder released a study today with Harris Interactive that points to tardiness in the workplace. Shockingly, the study says that one in five employees are running late to work at least once a week!

In contrast, the next day Career Builder released this study as reported by HRReporter.com that points to the recession for improving the punctuality of US employees.

As an employer, do these numbers add up to you? Perhaps you're one of the three in ten employers that the Canadian study says have fired an employee for tardiness?

If you're interested in further recruitment and employment related articles, please follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Nearly One-in-Five Workers Late to the Office at Least Once a Week, Finds New CareerBuilder Canada Survey

    -- Hiring Managers Share Most Outrageous Tardiness Excuses --

TORONTO, Feb. 23, 2011 /CNW/ -- Workers may be having a tough time with their time management as more are arriving late to their desks. A new CareerBuilder.ca survey reveals that 19 per cent of workers said they arrive late to work at least once a week, up from 17 per cent last year. Eleven per cent said they are late two or more times a week. This survey was conducted among 227 Canadian employers and 550 Canadian employees between November 15 and December 2, 2010.

Workers shared a variety of reasons for being tardy, such as lack of sleep (24 per cent) and traffic (24 per cent). Fifteen per cent blamed public transportation for their tardiness, while twelve per cent indicated bad weather delayed them. Other common reasons included getting kids to school or daycare, Internet use or their spouse.

"While workers will sometimes be late due to circumstances out of their control, they need to be aware of their companies' tardiness policies," said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources for CareerBuilder. "Regardless of the reason, workers who are running late should always be honest with their managers."

While some employers are more lenient with worker tardiness, others have stricter policies. Three-in-ten (30 per cent) employers said they have terminated an employee for being late.

Hiring managers provided the following examples of the most outrageous excuses employees offered for arriving late to work:

    --  Employee claimed a bear stopped his car and broke his window and tried
      to grab them.
  --  Employee claimed a prostitute stole his car keys.
  --  Employee claimed he couldn't find his clothes.
  --  Employee claimed his dog ate his Blackberry.
  --  Employee claimed he ran over himself with the company truck.
  --  Employee claimed he was playing a video game and didn't want to break
      up the group he was playing with.
  --  Employee claimed her grandmother went missing.
  --  Employee claimed he forgot it was a workday.


  Survey Methodology

This survey was conducted online within Canada by Harris Interactive© on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 227 Canadian employers and 550 Canadian workers (employed full-time; not self-employed; non-government) ages 18 and over between November 15 and December 2, 2010 (percentages for some questions are based on a subset, based on their responses to certain questions). With pure probability samples of 227 and 550 one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 6.5 and +/- 4.18 percentage points, respectively. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies.

    About CareerBuilder.ca:

CareerBuilder.ca is a leading job site in Canada. Owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), the Tribune Company, The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), CareerBuilder.ca powers the career centers for more than 250 Canadian partners that reach national, local, industry and niche audiences. These include leading portals such as MSN.ca and Macleans.ca. Job seekers visit CareerBuilder.ca every month to search for opportunities by industry, location, company and job type, sign up for automatic e-mail job alerts, and get advice on job hunting and career management. For more information about CareerBuilder.ca products and services, visit http://www.careerbuilder.ca.

New Challenges in Obtaining Work in Canada

Over the past several months, we at CMS have been encountering increasing problems in the justice system in terms of obtaining criminal record checks. The majority of our clients hire background checking firms to assess any candidates they are interested in hiring. The background check includes a criminal record check.

CMS encourages the use of background checks and historically this has been a straight forward procedure. In recent months however, the systems have been failing and have been returning inaccurate results. So people who have no criminal record are mistakenly being identified as “unclear” (indicating the individual has or may have a criminal record).

Later it is being identified that the system made a mistake and confused a person with someone with the same name who is actually of different gender or birth date. The trouble is that the only way it was eventually determined that the report was wrong was after the candidate, in attempting to prove their innocence (having been accused of being guilty) had to have their finger prints taken and resubmitted into the system to prove who they are and that they don’t have a criminal record.

The further problem is that this process takes up to six months and in that time the opportunity for the job has been lost. One has to wonder what the criminal justice system does with those finger prints once they have them. Will the upshot of this be that one day our finger prints will accompany all of us to a job interview? It makes me think of my time in China training HR managers who had very little work to do in assessing someone’s work history because their personal file contained every bit of information about them and followed them from one job to the next.

The enclosed article by Derek Sankey, as printed in the 02.05.11 edition of the Calgary Herald, paints an interesting picture of the 'bottle-neck' in today's background checks. I would call it a 'must read' for job seekers and employers alike.

Cindy Saunders
Principal - CMS Management Consulting

Background checks hit bottleneck

New RCMP rules delay hiring process for months

By Derek Sankey, For The Calgary Herald

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/Background+checks+bottleneck/4229038/story.html#ixzz1DbgcWp1N

Recruiters are struggling to deal with a surge in criminal record checks under new RCMP rules for "vulnerable sectors" and private screening firms say the backlog is creating some difficult human resource challenges.

Vulnerable sectors include construction, medical, law enforcement, volunteers, lawyers, retail jobs involving cash, the financial sector and many more.

"It is a massive issue," says Ainsley Muller, director of business development for Express Pardons. "It certainly has escalated since mass layoffs have occurred. There is an onslaught of (job) applications."

Hiring managers often use criminal record checks as a screening tool to immediately rule out anybody who comes back with a positive result for a record. The problem is that oftentimes, the 24-hour check flags people with absolutely no record -- just the same name and date or place of birth as a criminal.

That type of check has two possible results: "clear" or "may or may not have a record."

"They tend to throw out a lot of really good candidates based on the check coming back with a positive hit," says Muller.

Under new rules introduced last July by the RCMP, a person is also matched by birthdate and gender -- but not by name -- against a list of 14,000 pardoned sex offenders.

Thousands of people are being incorrectly flagged, while the number of longer and more in-depth fingerprint checks has skyrocketed.

It's an imperfect system, and one that police are working with pre-employment screeners to resolve, but the concept behind it both helps and hinders various organizations in their search for the best and brightest talent.

"Your gut feeling is only 50 per cent of the equation," says Julie McLean, with preemployment screening firm Canpro HR Services Inc. "Criminal records and education are the two things that we see most often that don't match up to what the individual says."

It does, however, create some pressing HR challenges for recruiters. Long wait times -- it can take three to five months for some fingerprint criminal record checks, says Muller -- makes many volunteers simply move on, while good employees are also being overlooked.

"Until they know what their (criminal) record is, they can't make an offer of employment," says McLean. "Who's going to risk hiring someone for maybe eight months to a year and not know what the 'unclear' result is for?"

She says she's working with RCMP and industry to find a solution that works for all parties and does not put the RCMP at risk of liability for providing potentially inaccurate results.

Human rights legislation varies by province in Canada, with some areas protecting individuals from discrimination for not being hired due to a criminal record with or without a pardon, depending on province.

In Alberta, for example, neither pardoned nor unpardoned records are protected. In B.C., both types of records are protected.

Muller says recruiters need to arm themselves with the tools to handle the delicate subject of criminal records appropriately and in a way that puts matters into perspective. His job is to help people clear their names by working with employers to get pardons for past minor offences -- a process that can take six months to a year or more by itself.

Muller refers to Mike Quinn of IBM Canada when approaching the subject of criminal records, who put it this way: "The operative phrase is to apply common sense and judgment to these situations. A person who did something silly 25 years ago when he was still in high school would be looked at differently than somebody charged with bank robbery three years ago."

Background checks include more than just criminal record checks. They include credit checks, personal reference checks, credential and academic verification and any other requirements unique to any given field.

The current problem is the delay in finding out what the criminal record is for, given the lengthy wait times to access a definitive result from the RCMP and the Canadian Police Information Centre.

There is also the possibility that a positive result with one police force will not yield the same result on municipal databases and people also change names, confusing things further.

In Calgary, the average time for police checks is about six weeks, exceeding its target of 10 days to two weeks, but measures are being taken to reduce the wait.

derek.sankey@telus.net

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

More New Sales Jobs With CMS Management Consulting

Take a look at our new Sales Jobs. As a sign of things to come, employers across Canada are picking up their sales teams and are looking to our expertise in filling these types of positions.

More notably, we are working on new Edmonton Sales Jobs and Grande Prairie.

If you're interested in hearing up to the minute news about any new positions please follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

More New Jobs With CMS Management Consulting!

As we posted last week, we're getting more new job orders from our clients by the day. As the economy improves our clients are growing and they are looking to you for that growth.

Take a look at the new Sales & Marketing jobs we are filling or the Trades & Technical additions. We've also been assigned new Executive & Management jobs.

If you're interested in hearing up to the minute news about any new positions please follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

CMS Management Consulting Has More New Jobs

Things are really heating up in the employment market of 2011 and out current job opportnuities are proof of that. Our clients are all expecting growth over the coming year and have assigned us new positions.

For instance, the Oil & Gas jobs are growing with the addition of Coil Tubing jobs and Cementing Technologist jobs.

Our Trades & Technical positions are also growing with today's addition of a Flexographic Press Operator and a Journeyman Millwright Job.

Are you interested in any of these positions? Get in touch with one of our headhunters to discuss what we can do to help. It always pays off to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Mobility is key to economic growth - pack your bags!

A New report released earlier this week by the Boston Consulting Group and the World Economic Forum says that as certain skills become in higher demand, the ability to move is crucial to the global economy.

The reports says that China for instance, will need to double its talent base by 2020. Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States will need more immigration and better education to balance the loss of talent from aging workforces.

It says the highest demand will be for highly educated professionals, technicians and skilled managers, adding health care research & development will create huge demand world-wide. The report is clear in saying that if you do not have critical knowledge or technical skills you will be left behind.

So, are you ready to move? Ready to improve your level of experience? Get in touch with one of our headhunters to discuss what we can do to help. It always pays off to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Here's the press release from BCG and WEF;

• A new report on looming labor and skills shortages finds that global mobility of talent is as critical to economic growth as global mobility of goods and financial capital.
• To retain their growth momentum, most economies will need to import highly skilled professionals, technicians, and managers, and act fast to develop and diversify their domestic talent bases.
• China will need to double its talent base by 2020. Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States will need more immigration and better education to balance the loss of talent from aging workforces.

Industries and countries worldwide will require major increases of highly educated people in their workforces to sustain economic growth, argues a new report prepared by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The report, Global Talent Risk -- Seven Responses, analyzes projected talent shortages by 2020 and 2030 in 25 countries, 13 industries, and nine occupational clusters. The report concludes that:

• Demand will be biggest for highly educated professionals, technicians, and managers. Professionals will be in particularly high demand in the trade, transportation, and communications industries in developing nations.
  
  
• In the next two decades, demand for professionals in manufacturing will peak at more than 10 percent in developing countries, exceeding 4 percent across all countries sampled. (Labor-demand growth rates are compounded annually.)
  
  
• Health care research and development alone will generate enormous demand for skilled labor worldwide.
  
  
• Employees without critical knowledge and technical skills will be left behind.

If left unaddressed, talent scarcity will become a threat to sustained growth, particularly in knowledge-based economies. "Human capital has replaced financial capital as the engine of economic prosperity," said Hans-Paul Bürkner, BCG's president and chief executive officer.

The roots of the global talent risk include the widely uneven quality of educational systems, erratic employability of the workers in the Southern Hemisphere, and demographic changes in the Northern Hemisphere, where retirement of the baby boomers will result in an unprecedented talent deficit. In Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, expected immigration and birth rates will not offset the workforce losses caused by aging populations. Today, foreign-born workers with university degrees or equivalent qualifications make up just 2 percent of the European labor market, compared with 4.5 percent in the United States and nearly 10 percent in Canada. Improved education and training must go hand in hand with increased labor migration.

"The global problem is no longer a mere talent mismatch. The scale of the predicted talent gap requires concerted action, starting with -- and going well beyond -- removing barriers to the mobility of talent," said Piers A. Cumberlege, senior director, head of partnership, World Economic Forum.

The report proposes seven core responses to global talent risk:

• Introduce strategic workforce planning to address imbalances between labor supply and demand.
  
  
• Ease migration to attract the right talent globally.
  
  
• Foster "brain circulation" to mitigate brain drain.
  
  
• Increase employability by advancing technological literacy and cross-cultural learning skills.
  
  
• Develop a talent "trellis" by focusing on horizontal and vertical career and education paths.
  
  
• Encourage temporary and virtual mobility to access required skills easily.
  
  
• Extend the pool by tapping women, older professionals, the disadvantaged, and immigrants.

Members of the Global Agenda Council on Skills and Talent Mobility, as well as more than 100 high-level experts and practitioners, contributed to the recommendations in the report and to the talent mobility dialogue hosted by the World Economic Forum online and at meetings in Brussels, Doha, Davos-Klosters, Dubai, Montreal, New Delhi, and New York in 2009 and 2010.

The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2011 in Davos-Klosters will seek to catalyze a pragmatic, result-driven action focused on effective sharing of good practices.

For more information about the Global Talent Risk -- Seven Responses report, please contact:

• Anna Janczak, Associate Director, Head of Professional Services, World Economic Forum, by telephone at +1 917 562 0533 or by e-mail at anna.janczak@weforum.org
  
  
• Eric Gregoire, Global Media Relations Manager, The Boston Consulting Group, by telephone at +1 617 850 3783 or by e-mail at gregoire.eric@bcg.com

About The World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.

Incorporated as a not-for-profit foundation in 1971 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the Forum is tied to no political, partisan, or national interests (www.weforum.org).

About The Boston Consulting Group

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a global management consulting firm and the world's leading advisor on business strategy. We partner with clients in all sectors and regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their businesses. Our customized approach combines deep insight into the dynamics of companies and markets with close collaboration at all levels of the client organization. This ensures that our clients achieve sustainable competitive advantage, build more capable organizations, and secure lasting results. Founded in 1963, BCG is a private company with 71 offices in 41 countries. For more information, please visit www.bcg.com.

How many jobs did Canada add in December?

The results of StatsCan's Labour Force Survey are in and Canada surpassed expectations with 22,000 new jobs. The average estimate of new jobs was 20,000 so today's study is impressing most.

Interestingly, the private sector added more than 50,000 new jobs but this number was offset dramatically by a substantial drop in self employment.

Despite the job creation, Canada's unemployment rate held steady at 7.6% due to more people entering the work force.

Finally, while December 2008-09 saw an overall job loss of 1.1%, the past year has seen creation of 2.2% - meaning we're back on the growth track.

Here's the study in full as released by Stats Can.

Employment edged up for the second consecutive month in December, with an increase of 22,000. The unemployment rate held steady at 7.6%. Compared with December 2009, employment increased by 2.2% (+369,000), following a decline of 1.1% the previous year.

There were notable employment increases in December in manufacturing; transportation and warehousing; as well as in natural resources. At the same time, there were declines in construction; health care and social assistance; wholesale and retail trade; business building and other support services; as well as agriculture.

Full-time employment was up 38,000 in December, the fourth increase in the past five months. Despite these recent gains, part-time employment has grown faster (+3.4%) than full time (+1.9%) over the past 12 months. Full-time employment accounted for 81% of total employment in December.

Increases in the number of private sector employees in December were partly offset by declines in self-employment.

Among the provinces, Quebec, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador saw employment gains in December, while British Columbia posted declines. Employment was little changed in the other provinces.

Note to readers

Following the release of final population estimates from each census, a standard revision is applied to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates. The revised estimates are scheduled to be released on Friday, January 28, 2011, and will include the following:

LFS estimates are currently based on the 2001 Census population estimates. These data will be adjusted to reflect 2006 Census population estimates and will be revised back to 1996.

Industry estimates will be reclassified to the 2007 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) from the 2002 NAICS and revised back to 1987.

Geography boundaries will be updated to the 2006 Standard Geographical Classification (SGC) rather than the current 2001 SGC. With this change, six new census metropolitan areas (CMAs) will be added and the boundaries of seven existing CMAs will be modified. New CMA tables will be created based on the 2006 census boundaries and will date back to 1996.

Finally, the 2006 National Occupational Classification for Statistics (NOC-S) will replace the 2001 NOC-S. This change will not affect the LFS estimates as there were only minor changes to the description of the categories.

Please note that the above-mentioned revisions will have a minor impact on the LFS estimates. However, rates of unemployment, employment and participation are essentially unchanged.

During the revision, CANSIM data for the LFS will not be available from Friday, January 21 to Thursday, January 27, 2011. To facilitate access to the revised data, LFS data on CANSIM will be free from January 28 to February 3, 2011.

LFS estimates are based on a sample, and are therefore subject to sampling variability. Estimates for smaller geographic areas or industries will have more variability. For an explanation of sampling variability of estimates, and how to use standard errors to assess this variability, consult the "Data quality" section of the publication Labour Force Information (71-001-X, free).

Unless otherwise stated, this release presents seasonally adjusted data, which facilitates comparisons by removing the effects of seasonal variations.

Strong gains in manufacturing and transportation and warehousing

Following a decline of 29,000 the previous month, manufacturing employment increased by 66,000 in December. The bulk of the gains were in Ontario and Quebec and were spread across a number of industries. This follows little overall change in the manufacturing sector in the previous 18 months.

Transportation and warehousing also saw a notable gain in December (+45,000). With this gain, employment in this industry was up 10.8% (+85,000) compared with December 2009.

Employment in natural resources increased by 7,700 in December, bringing growth in the industry to 10.8% (+33,000) over the past 12 months.

Employment in construction fell by 27,000 in December, the first notable decline since July 2009. Despite this decline, construction employment was up 4.8% over the past 12 months.

In December, employment in health care and social assistance declined by 24,000, following gains the previous month. Employment growth in this industry totalled 3.3% (+67,000) from a year earlier.

Employment in wholesale and retail trade fell by 22,000 in December. However, employment in this industry was relatively stable in 2010 (+0.7%).

Business, building and other support services also saw employment losses in December (-18,000). Compared with December 2009, however, employment was up by 8.1% (+50,000).

Agricultural employment fell by 8,000 in December, bringing total losses to 4.2% (-13,000) over the past 12 months.

More people working in the private sector

The number of private sector employees increased by 53,000 in December, while self-employment fell by 38,000. At the same time, public sector employment was little changed.

Over the past 12 months, 332,000 (+3.1%) employees were added to the private sector and 143,000 (+4.2%) to the public sector. The number of self-employed declined by 106,000 (-3.9%) over the same period.

Employment gains in Quebec, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador

Employment in Quebec increased by 25,000 in December, pushing the unemployment rate down 0.3 percentage points to 7.6%. With December's gain, Quebec employment was up 102,000 (+2.6%) from a year earlier.

In Ontario, employment increased for the second consecutive month, up 23,000 in December. The unemployment rate edged down 0.1 percentage points to 8.1%. With December's increase, the number of workers in Ontario grew by 2.8% (+186,000) from a year earlier, above the national growth rate of 2.2%. Over the 12 months of 2009, Ontario's employment was down 1.8%, the largest decline among all provinces.

Newfoundland and Labrador saw employment increases of 2,500 in December, bringing total employment growth in the province to 4.6% (+9,900) compared with the same month a year earlier, the fastest rate of growth in the country.

Employment in British Columbia fell by 23,000 in December, pushing the unemployment rate up 0.7 percentage points to 7.6%. Compared with December 2009, employment in the province grew by 1.5% (+35,000).

More youths working in December

Following a large decline in the number of 15- to 24-year-olds participating in the labour market in November, youth employment increased by 26,000 in December. Employment was little changed for the other demographic groups.

Compared with December 2009, youth employment was up 1.8% (+42,000), below the overall employment growth of 2.2%. Over the same period, people aged 55 and over saw their employment levels increase by 6.6% (+186,000), of which half was due to aging of the population, as the number of people in this age group grew by 3.3% over the period. While this age group makes up less than a third of the working-age population, it accounted for 50% of the total employment growth over the past 12 months.

At the same time, people aged 25 to 54 saw their employment level grow by 1.2% (+141,000), primarily driven by men (+2.3%), compared with little growth among women (+0.1%).

Quarterly update on territories

The Labour Force Survey also collects labour market information about the territories. This information is produced monthly in the form of three-month moving averages. Not all estimates are seasonally adjusted; therefore, comparisons should only be made on a year-over-year basis.

All three territories saw employment gains in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared with the same quarter of 2009.

In the Northwest Territories, employment rose by 1,300 in the fourth quarter of 2010. The unemployment rate also increased by 1.7 percentage points to 7.7%, the result of an increase in the number of people seeking work. The participation rate reached 73.0%, the highest in the country.

In Yukon, employment rose by 1,000 during the three months ending in December 2010 compared with the same period in 2009. This increase pushed the unemployment rate down by 3.5 percentage points to 4.0% in the fourth quarter of 2010, the lowest nationally.

Nunavut saw employment gains of 900 in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared with the same quarter a year earlier. The unemployment rate increased by 2.5 percentage points to 15.2%, as there were more people participating in the labour market.

Available on CANSIM: tables 282-0001 to 282-0042, 282-0047 to 282-0064 and 282-0069 to 282-0108.

Definitions, data sources and methods: survey number 3701.

A more detailed summary, Labour Force Information (71-001-X, free), is now available online for the week ending December 11. From the Key resource module of our website under Publications, choose All subjects, then Labour. LAN and bulk prices are available on request. The DVD-ROM Labour Force Historical Review, 2009 (71F0004X, $209), is now available. See How to order products.

Data tables are also now available online. From the Subject module of our website, choose Labour.