Evolution of our Halloween Mailer

Anyone who has ever worked with family knows it can be difficult at times. My mom (Vice President of Sales Susan Ryan) and I butt heads on our marketing graphics at times.

Usually it's a matter of two different visions. So usually the graphics I design get two or three revisions after she finally dictates what she wants.

Here's the original graphic that didn't make the mailer sent out today:



Meet Dora, my new puppy. She's 10 weeks old and a sheltie mix. I adopted her last weekend from the local animal shelter. My girlfriend bought her that costume (against my will), so she had to make it into a graphic wearing the pumpkin outfit.

But Susan wanted something closer to what we did last year:


So the comprise turned out to be the following graphic of Dora trick-or-treating at a spooky house.



If you didn't get the mailer, click here to see it in its entirety. To sign up for our newsletter, click here.
 
I hope you enjoyed it! I'm still looking for more dog photos for our Dog-Gone Temps graphics, that you can find here on the blog. Send them to newseditor@ryanstaffing.com and be sure to check out the blog to see who's pooch gets featured.

Have a happy and safe Halloween!

BJD: Mahoning Valley Jobless Rate Drops, Still Highest Among Ohio Metros

Editor's Note: The following article ran in the Oct. 29 of the Business Journal Daily. Click here to read the article.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The Mahoning Valley’s jobless rate remained the highest among Ohio’s 13 metropolitan areas in September, despite falling by nearly a whole percentage point from August.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman Metropolitan Statistical Area’s unemployment rate at 12.4%, just above the 12.2% rate recorded for the Weirton-Steubenville MSA, which had the second-highest jobless rate in the state. Ohio’s unemployment rate during September was 9.7%. Among the state’s metros, the Columbus MSA posted the lowest jobless rate, 8.2%.

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Copyright 2009 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.

How to Handle H1N1 in the Office Poll Results

Last week I took the reigns on the monthly newsletter for the Portage County Human Resource Association. In that newsletter, I included a poll to find out how offices are handling the current flu season.

It didn't get the results I hoped for, but here are the results of our small sample.

The question was: How are you preventing employees from coming into work sick?

People answered:

• Providing hygiene materials and only ask that they stay home. We have not lifted other restrictions and will only do so on a case by case basis at this time.
• Encouraging them to go home if they exhibit symptoms.
• We can only ask that they stay home if they have a fever or are sick. If they come to work and we are worried about the spread of infection, then we will send them home.
• Asking them to stay home if they are sick.
• Difficult to prevent. If they come to work sick their managers/supervisors are expected to send them home.
• We offer access to short term disability. if sick over five work days we pay from first day.
• We have asked them to stay home when sick.

Please, help us with our survey. It'll only take a few minutes. The more answers we get, the better information we can put out to everyone.

Click here to get the survey.

Thanks!

SHRM: Labor Market Continues to Send Mixed Signals

Editor's Note: The following ran in a recent newsletter of the Society of Human Resource Management. Members can click here to read the entire article.

HR professionals are gaining confidence in the U.S. job market. They hope to start hiring again. They just don’t know when.

One-third of HR professionals surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) have some level of concern about the U.S. job market for the fourth quarter of 2009, with 35 percent saying that they are somewhat optimistic and 4 percent declaring themselves very optimistic about job growth in the nation for the last three months of the year. That’s a big change from the first quarter of 2009, when 73 percent of survey respondents expressed some level of pessimism.

But when it comes to forecasting staffing increases for their organizations, only 20 percent expect such an expansion in the fourth quarter of 2009. Many HR professionals are hesitant to predict when they might increase hiring. The statistics are revealed in the SHRM Labor Market Outlook survey report for October-December 2009, released Oct. 22.

Among highlights of the report:

• Fifty-nine percent of companies will maintain their staffing levels in the fourth quarter of 2009, with 14 percent planning to cut jobs.
• Thirty percent of companies conducted layoffs in the third quarter, even though only 13 percent of organizations had predicted layoffs when surveyed by SHRM before the third quarter.
• The government sector eliminated jobs at the highest rate—41 percent—of any sector in the third quarter, despite federal stimulus funds beginning to flow to state governments for job creation. Many state governments have been forced to make deep staffing cuts to balance their budgets in the face of rapidly plunging revenues.
• Nonprofit organizations added employees at the highest rate in the third quarter of 2009, with 24 percent conducting hiring.

Safety: The Call You Hope Never to Get

Short and sweet...The safety of every Ryan Staffing employee placed on assignment is our most important daily concern.

Over the past 25 years we have declined to place personnel in situations of concern.
We believe strongly that the safety issue is a joint responsibility between Ryan Staffing and its clients.

Because our clients have total control of the work environment and provide all the job training for our temps, we rely heavily on our clients to provide an accident free workplace. We do however realize that despite all this accidents will and still happen.

Last month we experienced the most severe industrial injury in the history of our company. It was a severe crushing injury that resulted in severe abdominal internal injuries as well as crushed bones.

The injury happened on an early Friday evening shift. Our client never contacted us about the injury. We learned second hand about the accident the following Monday afternoon.

As you can imagine by the time our client permitted us to see the accident scene it had been cleansed. The clients' attorneys would not let us talk to witnesses that could
shed light on what happened. Nearly four weeks later we still don't know what happened.

Because of our clients casual attitude towards this near fatal accident we decided to remove the rest of our temps from our client's location with two days notice. We no
longer had any confidence in our client's ability to provide a safe work environment. In short, we feared for the safety of our employees. This wasn't the first accident there.

The response we got from the client's corporate attorney was that if we removed our temps they would never give us their business again. To this day they have never inquired about the condition of the injured employee to my knowledge.

You're probably wondering by now where all this is heading. It's pretty simple. As a matter of corporate culture or morality or plain old just doing the right thing, Ryan Staffing will walk away from business if we believe our employees are at risk.

It's not an easy thing to do especially during times when any business is hard to come by. But I think, rather I know, that most all of our clients feel as I do about the safety of all our employees while on the job. And for that, we are most appreciative.

As a side note, the injured worker in this case is making good progress towards recovery. He has a long road to full recovery ahead of him but at least he has a road.

Thanks for listening.

Tim's Talking about Casinos, Browns v. Steelers part II and Health-care Reform

Last month's survey concerning Ballot Issue Three on allowing four casinos to be built in Ohio received a large response.

Nearly 73 percent support passage of the issue. The poll showed 22 percent against and 5
percent had no opinion.

Browns vs. Steelers
With the November elections just around the corner its time to look back at the past year and gauge your feelings about the direction the good old USA is heading.

And for all those with an opinion, you will be entered in this month's drawing to win a pair of tickets to the Browns vs. Steelers game in Cleveland on December 10th at 8:00 pm.

So check out this month's survey question!

Health-care Reform...Who'll Pay?

According to the professional services firm Towers Perrin, US employers will not absorb any additional costs resulting from healthcare reform. Instead, they plan to decrease benefits, raise prices and cut jobs.

(Editor's Note: Towers Perrin is a human resource and financial consulting company. In July, the company combined with Watson Wyatt to become the country's largest human-resource consulting firm with an annual sales of about $3.2 billion. So those guys probably know what they're talking about.)



In a separate poll conducted by Watson Wyatt, 73 percent of US employers think reform will increase overall healthcare costs and 86 percent view reform as weakening the role employer sponsored plans play in providing coverage.

Proud Papa
Have you ever wondered who at Ryan Staffing puts our electronic media communiqués out? It is none other than Corey Ryan., Electronic Media Coordinator for Ryan Staffing (You gotta like that title).

Seriously, Corey is a recent graduate of the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio
University. He was fortunate enough to land a full time position as a reporter for The Valley Morning Star in Harlingen, Texas.

In his spare time (which is not a lot) he manages the publication of this e-letter, runs our blog and prepares other electronic marketing and recruiting programs for the company.

You can email your comments about things to him at newseditor@ryanstaffing.com. I'm sure
he'd love your feedback.

Tip of the Month: Now Would Be the Time

Demand for temporary staffing is on the rise. If you are a regular reader of our e-letter you know we keep tabs on the ASA Staffing Index which measures this demand. It has seen gradual increases now over the past nine weeks. It still remains about 21 percent lower than the same period in 2008.

If you read as much as I do about the future of our economy you know that the prognosticators are all over the board. (Editor's Note: This Wall Street Journal blog is very good at reporting and analyzing all of those conflicting economic indicators.) You don't know who to believe which means you can best rely on the signals your own business is sending.

If your business is showing positive signs but you're not sure it is sustainable you need to consider utilizing the services of a temporary help company. This is a text book time of why the industry was created.

You probably have worked hard to keep your core group of best employees gainfully employed during the current downturn. We have. You may have even taken advantage of the times to weed out some dead weight.

Using a staffing service allows you to re-build your workforce at a comfortable pace without the costs full time hires bring.

Utilizing the "temp to perm" approach can be like a "do over" as you re-tool your workforce.

If it's been a while since you have used temp help or if you are considering it for the first time I might suggest you take a trip back in our staffing tips archive. There you will find a treasure chest of brilliant information (I wrote it of course!) about how to best utilize the services of a staffing company.

Oh, and as a small tip of the month, keep in mind that the staffing index does have some correlation with the stock market as well. Happy Hunting.

NYT: $1.4 Trillion Federal Defecit

Editor's Note: The following article ran on Oct. 16 New York Times.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that the federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before and the largest shortfall relative to the size of the economy since 1945.

The number, while lower than forecast a few months ago, underscored the challenges ahead in shrinking the deficit even as the White House and Congress are considering more steps to stimulate an economy that is making a slow recovery. The political hurdles to finding a solution were evident on Friday as each political party immediately blamed the other for the growth of the deficit.

The shortfall for the fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30, translates to 10 percent of the economy, according to a joint statement from the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter R. Orszag. For the 2008 fiscal year, the deficit of $459 billion was 3.2 percent of the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product.

Economists generally agree that annual deficits should not exceed 3 percent of the G.D.P., and that is the level President Obama had vowed to reach by the end of his first term in 2013.

But subsequent spending and tax cuts to stimulate the economy, and lower-than-expected revenues as the recession deepened before bottoming out, combined to push the administration’s deficit forecast to 4.6 percent of G.D.P. for the fiscal year 2013.

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Attn: Portage County HR

Here's how to join the Portage County chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management.

1. Click the image below.
2. Print that page out, and fill the form out.
3. Send out as directed on form.

WSJ.com: 'Clunkers' Sent Retail Sales Clunking

Editor's Note: The following article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 15. For supplemental information on how Cash for Clunkers affected retail sales, check out this link.

Retail sales fell 1.5% in September with the end of the "cash for clunkers" program, but consumer spending rose in many categories, lifting hopes that the economic recovery is gaining momentum at the start of the holiday shopping season.

Excluding sales of autos and parts, total retail and food sales increased 0.5%. It was a welcome sign of consumer activity after the deepest downturn in a generation. August sales were revised downward 0.5 percentage point to a 2.2% increase. The government's monthly retail-sales tally isn't adjusted for inflation.

The retail-sales data prompted a few economic prognosticators to raise their forecasts for third-quarter gross domestic product. St. Louis forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers raised its forecast of third-quarter GDP to an inflation-adjusted 3.4% annual rate from 3.1% before the sales data came out.

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo said economic growth appeared "to have moved back into positive territory in the third quarter."

Whether that growth can be sustained is another matter. With unemployment still rising and myriad government programs propping up the U.S. economy, consumers don't appear able or willing to rush back to their old spending habits.

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