One of the reasons that outplacement is a valuable benefit for employers as well as employees is that it can soften hard feelings when a workforce reduction happens.

Left without assistance, employees who feel abandoned by their companies are more likely to file lawsuits -- most of them meritless.

UPDATE: Ahem ... we hate to toot our own horn but -- toot!  Huskies 53, Bulldogs 41.

To celebrate Super Bowl Sunday, RiseSmart conducted a study earlier this year that showed an interesting correlation between Super Bowl winning cities and jobless rates.  In 17 of the past 20 matchups, the winner hailed from the metropolitan area with the lower unemployment rate.

There’s no need to catalog once again the incredible strain and stress in today's workplace. It’s been decades since there's been so much pressure on employees  in industries across the board.

How are HR departments adjusting to this new reality?  Often, not as well as they'd like.  Because HR workers themselves are overloaded and everyone seems more frazzled to some degree, normally eagle-eyed HR staffers may fail to see real problems developing with employees.

More than 11 million people play Farmville everyday. 54 percent of women play social games daily. 14 percent of mobile game users play games while they’re at work. Games are entering the workplace.

In a recent article on “The 7 Trends to the Future of Talent Management” for People Matters magazine, popular HR blogger Gautam Ghosh didn’t mince words about the prevailing view of current HR metrics, labeling them “fuzzy ideas.”

Ghosh's point was not to judge whether that is a fair assessment, but to argue that the emerging trend of predictive analysis could represent a major shift in how HR is perceived and managed — namely, less art, more science:

Today, about two-thirds of families with school-age children rely on dual incomes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That means when one spouse is offered a job requiring relocation, it’s often a mixed blessing. While the husband or wife may have an opportunity for a new position with higher pay, the so-called “trailing spouse” can be left jobless in an unfamiliar city, with no connections or prospects.

RiseSmart is proud to announce that we have been named a finalist for the TiE50, Silicon Valley’s premier annual awards program for technology startups.  Our company was selected from among 1,619 startups reviewed by TiE Silicon Valley’s expert screening committee. 

Sanjay Sathe, RiseSmart founder and CEO, was recently interviewed by the blog Ceo2Ceos, a non-commercial venue for CEOs and top executives to share their experience and best practices with their peers. The objective is to develop creative and effective solutions to common business challenges and opportunities.

The interview was broken into two parts. You can read them at the following links:

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