Building a Better Workforce – What technology can (and can’t) do to help companies optimize their most valuable asset.

Fifty years ago, a man wrote to Look magazine columnist Norman Vincent Peale, asking, "What should a person do who is unhappy and bored in his job after twenty years, but who earns a nice salary and hasn’t the nerve to leave? He’ll never go any higher in salary and position, but will always have a job."

In the half-century since, many aspects of the employer-employee relationship have changed — noticeably the assumption of guaranteed employment. But boredom and unhappiness have not gone out of style, nor have companies managed to achieve perfect alignment between corporate strategy and the day-to-day activities of their workers.

There remains only a tenuous connection between pay and performance, companies routinely lay off valuable workers and then spend large sums to recruit less-capable employees, and the incessant labeling of the workforce as a company’s most-valuable asset seems wholly at odds with the scant efforts most companies make to optimize it.

Scott Leibs, CFO IT

Full Story: http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/4390947?f=AlsoOn092305