Recent Articles Flexible Work Arrangements: A Productivity Triple Play When flexible work arrangements are understood and used as a management strategy for creating more effective workplaces, they enhance organization performance in three ways: (1) Produce measurable improvements in individual and team performance; (2) Reduce stress on employees and more fully engage them in accomplishing organization goals; and (3) Strengthen a results-focused management culture. When flexible work arrangements are introduced as an employee perk or an accommodation to individual employees, companies often fail to realize these benefits. In contrast, a team-based, results-focused approach to the introduction of flexible work arrangements capitalizes on the shared need of both companies and their employees for increased flexibility. The experience of ten American companies in a variety of industries proves that, when flexible work arrangements are introduced with the two-fold purpose of enhancing performance and creating more flexibility for employees, everyone wins. Read the full article Worker's Identity Issues Influence Success of Integration Efforts During M & A Mergers and acquisitions can create a number of unintended consequences leading to value destruction. Because much of the integration effort rests on the shoulders of the individual, the individual's response to the uncertainty during a merger determines the outcome of the integration efforts. Read the full article Understanding Psychiatric Disabilities. When it comes to employees with psychiatric disabilities, some human resource professionals want to know only what is absolutely necessary. That attitude is understandable, at least from the perspective of employment law. An employer is less likely to be accused of taking adverse action based on a psychiatric disability if decision makers in the organization have been told as little as possible about that disability Read the full article

Recent Reports From Consulting Firms Sourcing Strategy: Knowing When to Outsource Companies often treat outsourcing as a solution, without evaluating or understanding the true strategic rationales for pursuing it. Yet many forge ahead, making significant structural changes to the enterprise without a cohesive master plan. Building a corporate "Sourcing Strategy" is a straightforward exercise with a very high ROI, aligning the outsourcing agenda with corporate strategy and creating a context for success - hopefully, before it's too late. This paper defines an approach for constructing the needed Sourcing framework, so executives can know when it's time to outsource, and when it's not. Click here to read the full paper Coaching Conundrum 2 - The Heart of Coaching In the fall of 2005 BlessingWhite conducted its second annual survey on how managers and employees view coaching. BlessingWhite periodically conducts surveys such as this one to investigate workplace and alert business leaders to potential implications of the results. The following pages describe what we found: higher expectations and awareness of the importance of coaching, coupled with the persistence of many of the same issues that affect its ultimate impact. This paper also offers a specific recommendation for organizations to address the conundrum so that they can close the gap between coaching's promise and its results. Click here to read the full paper