For those of you who couldn’t join us this year, following are some conference highlights from Las Vegas:

• Blue Man Group at the opening session - high energy start to the conference
• Ken Dychtwald on workforce management across the generations
• Nice blog post from Mark Smith of boutique analyst firm Ventana Research summarizing his perspective on conference highlights.
• Lots of tweeting at this year’s conference.  For those of you who tweet, check out comments from analysts, customers and Kronites by searching on hashtag #kronosworks.

The November release of the Kronos Retail Labor Index includes results for both September and October 2009.  After an uptick in August to 3.00%, the September Index dropped to 2.58% (for every 100 applications received, 2.58 hirings occurred).  The September result coincided with a decrease in retail sales estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The October Index level rebounded somewhat, to 2.90%.  Actual application and hiring data for October gives us an early view into the holiday shopping and hiring season.  Kronos’ retail clients traditionally transact 25% or more of their total year’s hiring volume in October and November.  Because labor capacity can be quickly augmented, a retailer expecting a slow holiday sales season might delay hiring until sales begin to increase.

Our results indicate that retailers appear to be preparing for another weak holiday shopping season. Changes in labor capacity levels for Kronos clients reflect not only an overall downward trend since 2006, but also sequentially smaller increases in capacity during the holiday season in 2008, and now 2009.  In addition, September and October 2009 application totals were the highest since 2006, while hiring levels were the lowest since 2006.  Our December report will show whether November hirings increased to compensate for this early lack of volume, or whether diminished hiring activity continued throughout the season.

Click here for the full report.

I’m in the midst of a complex software implementation project that reminds me how important it is to guide customers to the right decisions during implementation if you want them to get the best possible outcomes for their business from your software.  When you’re on the vendor side of this equation, it can be easy to forget that the customer doesn’t implement your software for a living.  When you’re on the customer side, you pray that the vendor is exercising their experience and not allowing you to make mistakes you’ll regret later in the interest of mollifying you in the present.

What vendors have you worked with who’ve done an exceptional job guiding you through the software implementation process?

This month’s results show that the pace of hiring in retail increased slightly in August, to 3.00 percent, up from 2.99 percent in July.  (An Index level of 3.00 percent means that for every 100 applications received, three hires occurred.)  The Index has been on a slight upward trend since January, potentially indicating that a slow recovery in the job market has begun.  We will all be watching the 2009 holiday hiring season to see if retailers feel confident enough to increase their hiring rates over 2008 and, if so, whether they take a proactive or a reactive approach to hiring.

One feature of this month’s publication is insight into how the Index might act as a leading indicator of retail sales levels.  When comparing the Commerce Department’s retail sales figures over time to Index levels over time, it appears that the large decline in retail sales in 2008 was preceded by a reduction in hiring by retailers, which accelerated throughout 2007.  It appears that the Index’s ability to capture “on the ground” hiring decisions by retail managers may also serve as a way to reflect their expectations of future sales.

For more information on this month’s results, visit the Retail Labor Index website.

• Kronos had the biggest and busiest booth at the show - particularly at the end of the day when we began serving our signature cocktails - Guided Decisions (Screwdrivers), Instant Engagement (Cosmos) and Complete Control (Margaritas).  Suggestion for next year - how about a non-alcoholic option called Improved Labor Productivity?
• Social media looms larger each year at this show.  There is lots of interest among the attendees about how to more effectively leverage social networks within and outside of their companies.  It seems like the fear of employees or customers going wild is steadily supplanted by success stories about the upside of new channels to engage employees and customers.
• I had the morale building experience of overhearing multiple conversations involving Kronos customers who are happy with us, our products and our services.  Since part of my job involves diving into understanding customer feedback - good and bad - it’s always great to see happy customers sharing their enthusiasm with others.
• New vocabulary word of the day is “socialnomics”.  I don’t know if Erik Qualman coined this term (title of his book), but it’s a good one.
• I met one of my blog heroes - Kris Dunn, The HR Capitalist.  Kris gave a presentation on internal social networks (like ning).  We’re using Yammer at Kronos, but don’t have a lot of participants (yet).  I think we need to take Kris’s advice that pictures and video are magnets for traffic.

If you’re at HR Tech, what are you learning this week?

The most interesting part of my job as chief economist at Kronos is working with the huge data sets made available through our hiring system. Based on application and hiring records from 69 of our retail clients, we have created a metric called the Kronos Retail Labor Index. Over the last three years, this Index has been a leading indicator of not only the retail economy but the U.S. economy overall. The Index is a measure of the relationship between the demand for, and supply of labor front-line labor in the retail sector. The jobs being filled are the front-end of the consumer-retail supply chain. Retailers can make changes at this end of the chain more easily and more quickly than anywhere else. As such these employees are figuratively the “canary in the coalmine” for the rest of the retail industry. Economists are always on the lookout for new leading indicators and this one has great potential. The Index is being made publically available for the first time today and can be accessed at: www.kronos.com/retail-labor-index. Going forward the Index will be updated on a monthly basis. I have had the chance to preview the Index with analysts and press, and the reception has been excellent.

Click here to listen to a podcast of my interview with Dr. Yerex and Steve Earl, director of product marketing at Kronos.

I don’t believe that anyone likes his or her job 100% of the time.  As a mid-career Boomer, I’m not doing what I thought I’d be doing when I entered college 35 years ago with plans to save the world.   Despite the copious advice available regarding the importance of following your passions, leveraging your strengths, and crafting your personal brand, employment nirvana is elusive.

If you accept that you won’t love your job all the time, there are things you can do to help you like your job most of the time.  Here are a few that work for me:

• Work relationships matter a lot - The results of every employee satisfaction survey I’ve seen in the last 20 years cite “my coworkers” as a primary driver of satisfaction at work.  Be a good coworker to those around you.  If you don’t trust and respect your coworkers, you probably need to find a new team to play on.
• Apply the “No one’s going to die” rule - Unless you are literally in the business of saving lives (which most of us aren’t), there is little to be gained from allowing yourself to stress out as though lives are on the line as a result of your next move.  There are few decisions at work that won’t be better as a result of taking a moment to slow down and breathe before speaking or hitting the “Send” button.
• You will work from home - Work-life balance doesn’t mean that those parts of your life can be neatly partitioned.  Deadlines and inspiration can and will strike during your “off” time.  Illness and plumbing will intrude on “work” time.  Work for employers that give you the flexibility and tools to accommodate these scenarios and you’ll be happier.
• Contributing makes you feel good - Happiness isn’t the absence of work, it’s the opportunity to do work that makes a difference to those around you.

What helps you to like your job?

Thirty-eight percent of our respondents said that there had been layoffs in the past year at their primary place of employment.  Forty percent of them further indicated that productivity had been negatively impacted by layoffs:

o 66 percent said that morale has suffered and people are less motivated;

o 64 percent said that there is too much work and not enough people to do it;

o 37 percent said the wrong people or departments were laid off, leaving inefficient systems and workflows; and

o 36 percent said they are concerned that as the economy picks up, they won’t have the right resources to meet demand.

Employees also have some advice for employers on how to improve the work environment:

o 50 percent said employers should look for ways to improve morale.  The most frequently cited mechanism to do so is increasing hours or salary;

o 46 percent said their employers have processes that should be automated to be more efficient;

o 36 percent said their organizations should invest in new technology to help manage productivity – interestingly enough, more men (42 percent) than women (30 percent) believe this would help; and

o 36 percent of employees believe that organizations need to take a fresh look at how to redistribute the workload among those employees who are left.

In an upcoming CFO.com webinar with Jim Holincheck of Gartner, he’ll be offering insights into what organizations are doing to balance recession economics and productivity.  If you’d like to learn more, you can register here.

If you’ve felt the sting of cutbacks in your workplace, what’s your employer doing to help you work smarter, not just harder?  If you’re one of the optimists who believes the economy is starting to recover, how prepared is your organization to sprint out of the recession?

Businesses are in the same boat.  According to an April survey by Watson Wyatt, 70% of businesses have implemented some level of layoffs or downsizing.  For many, though, the difficult measures they’ve already taken haven’t been enough.   So what more can organizations do if they need to manage expenses even more closely?

They can get back to basics.  For families and businesses, this means measuring what you spend so you can plan and manage to a budget.  It means inspecting your largest variable expenses for opportunities to reduce those expenses.  For most organizations, that’s the workforce, somewhere between 30% and 80% of their operating budget on average.

According to Nucleus Reseach, many companies still rely on paper based or semi-automated timekeeping and payroll solutions, yet payroll errors can cost them over 1% of their payroll per year. In my conversation with David Caruso earlier this year, he indicated that more manufacturers are focusing on the use of automation to manage labor cost and productivity as they’ve reached the point of diminishing returns with other strategies for cost containment.  It can be hard to justify the capital outlay to invest in the hardware and software needed to automate time and attendance data collection, however the measurable returns are there to be had.

What has your company done to make the case to spend more in order to save more?