By Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

The percentage of job seekers relocating for new positions in the last half of 2014 rose to its highest level in five years, which should be good news to the growing number of employers that may find their local talent pool getting shallower as unemployment rates continue to fall around the country.

An average of 15 percent of job-seeking managers and executives moved for new positions over the last two quarters of 2014. That was up from an average of 11.4 percent in the first two quarters of the year. In 2013, the relocation rate among job seekers averaged 13 percent.

The latest relocation rate, which is based on Challenger’s quarterly survey of approximately 1,000 job seekers, is the highest it has been since the first half of 2009, when an average of 16.3 percent of job seekers moved in the immediate wake of the recession.

“Ongoing improvements in the employment and housing markets are undoubtedly making relocation a more palatable option for managers and executives in transition,” said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer.

Relocation activity plunged after the first half of 2009 as home values continued to decline, which made it very difficult to sell an existing home without taking a significant loss.

“Relocation is rarely the most desirable option for job seekers. There is a lot of cost and risk involved. The collapse in the housing market, which was a primary factor behind the recession, made relocation even more unattractive, as many job seekers were stuck in homes with market values well below what was owed on the mortgage. 

At the same time, employers were unwilling to help pay for any relocation costs, much less cover the likely loss in home value, due to their own recession-related cost-cutting initiatives. Starting in 2013, we saw a rebound in home buying and home prices. That trend continued in 2014, leading to the upturn in relocation among job seekers,” said Challenger.

Read full report here.

Recently, NY Chapter member Marc Hodak, Managing Partner at Hodak Value Advisors and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern School of Business, delivered a wonderful talk about corporate social responsibility (CSR), set against utopian communities in the industrializing U.S. These communities each had shared aspirations, and distinctive--sometimes unorthodox--visions. They all failed to to varying degrees, and their failures yield important lessons for modern businesses hoping to do well by doing good. Hodak also highlighted some successes by somewhat more modest reformers, such as the profit sharing program launched inside P&G in the 1880s, which lasts to this day, and has been widely copied.

As always, the content of the talk was as stimulating as the networking opportunities before and afterwards. Baruch students and faculty joined CEO Trustees and their guests. The new faces smiled throughout the program, so I look forward to seeing them again as members.

- CEO Trustee, Aaron Mandelbaum - Founder of Icebreaker Consulting

CEO Trust's CT Chapter recently heard from a panel of experts about technology risks facing our companies today.  Event Chair, Joe Tait, CIO of Lydall, Inc. had this to say:

We had a great event last week in CT called “Technology Breaches – Is Your Business at Risk?”.  The meeting was well attended and based on the comments (and the news of course) this is the sort of thing that we should probably schedule on an annual basis.  We had nice mixture of trustees/guests and a panel consisting of IT Security vendors and two attorneys with different areas of focus.  Among the comments were:

·         I really enjoyed the evening.  The speakers were great, the conversation intriguing and there was plenty of interaction.  It helps that the subject is, or should be, at the forefront of everyone's mind.

·         Great event - keep them coming!

·         The discussion and different viewpoints were enlightening and very interesting. 

·         The subject matter and interaction was very good.  A good subject that we can all relate to.

Americans seemed, at least for now, to have reached their saturation point on direct wealth redistribution. So for those who still feel we have more redistribution to do, they are trying via the tax code. A Democratic congressman has proposed to penalize executive pay if the company “fails [the] test of pay fairness.” Specifically, if a public company fails to raise the average pay of its workers making less than $115,000 by a percentage equal to the overall US growth in productivity plus inflation, the government will eliminate the deductibility of top executive compensation above $1 million. What could go wrong? Read More

CEO Trust speaker Shawn Achor spoke recently about how "Happiness Breeds Happiness" as the opening keynote for the Ultimate Software User Conference. Shawn's research is focused on happiness, its generation, and its use as a competitive advantage.  Key elements of Shawn's talk included:

• Reality is caused by the way you view it. Not by the way it is.
• Emotional tone is contagious.
• Habits of thought persist.
• It’s important to change the way you think on a regular basis (and hard to do).
• Happiness is a choice and not a choice.
• By choosing to be happy, you can increase the happiness of others.
• The best way to change someone else is by changing yourself.

After spending twelve years at Harvard University, Shawn has become one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and success. His research on happiness made the cover of Harvard Business Review, and his TED talk, "The Happy Secret to Better Work," is one of the most popular of all time. Shawn has worked with over a third of the Fortune 100 companies, and lectured in more than 50 countries. Shawn is the author of New York Times best-selling books The Happiness Advantage.

 On Tuesday, November 11, CEO Trust's NYC Chapter was fortunate to share in the insights, experience, creativity, and wisdom of Gary Cohen, most recently global CEO of Timex and a consumer products veteran, and Heather Marasse, Managing Partner of Generative Leadership Group (GLG), a leading innovation consulting firm.  Gary and Heather have partnered at Gillette, Playtex, and Timex to help launch dozens of successful innovation programs. Here are some of the highlights:

• Consider the intersection of human systems with the business systems we routinely manage. The challenges with innovation are culturally based, and rest often in being too dependent on what we know.
• Get past the need to be knowledgeable. Judging and evaluation too early in the process, and intolerance of mistakes, are pitfalls to taking an innovative and creative approach to business problem solving.
• Think about how to establish a vision for the future to remove barriers. The vision can be at the team level inside the business. Possibility versus certainty is the key to developing a vision that will result in immediate action. Only an hour or so is needed to develop a compelling and actionable vision for the future.
• Create a climate for generous listening and true communication. Since large companies have a gravitational pull to the past, this can be challenging.
• Embrace conversations that produce results through possibility, relationship, opportunity, action, and completion. Remember, conversation has a design.
• Celebrate early and often. It is the acknowledgement and communication of small but important wins that will ensure a cycle of innovation and success.
• Ask - what can we try first? Some things cannot be known until you try them.
• Declare your future! This is the key to innovation.

Our CT Chapter welcomed Rob Henrikson, former chairman of the board, president and CEO of MetLife, Inc., for our Leadership Series event on October 22nd in Darien. After catching up with colleagues over a lively wine & cheese reception, CEO Trustees & invited guests settled in for an informal and engaging talk from Rob, who shared with the group his experiences, anecdotes, and lessons learned from his nearly 40 years with Metlife, the largest life insurer in the U.S. and provider to more than 90 million customers in over 50 countries.

Rob disclosed that his journey with MetLife began in 1972 when, fresh out of law school at Emory, he joined as a life insurance agent in Atlanta. Through the 70s & 80s, he served in roles with increasing responsibility in the company’s pension business in Atlanta, Chicago and New York. Attendees learned about some of Rob’s biggest business challenges and accomplishments over the years and throughout his various senior executive positions with MetLife, including president and COO. Interestingly, Rob is the first MetLife agent in the company’s 142-year history who went on to become CEO, a role he assumed in 2006 and kept until 2011.

Trustees & invited guests came away with an insider's perspective of MetLife from during it's most interesting phase of history.

Just published in Directors & Boards.  The summary:  

Nucor's classic incentive plan contained three elements:

1) a fixed share of profit growth ...

2) ... without limit

3) annual grant of standard stock options

The company was enormously successful because of this plan.  It looks like everything that shareholders care about is imbedded in this plan.  Empirical evidence strongly supports these plan elements as being good for shareholders.  Yet none of them would pass muster with ISS today.  Read More