Top advertisers are determined by measuring advertising placements across the major monthly HR trade publications, not including advertisements placed in buyer guides or product directory listings.

March 2005

ADP, Aetna, American Background, Great West Healthcare, Hewitt Associates, Kenexa, Mellon Financial Corp, MetLife, SHRM, Spectrum, T. Rowe Price, Ultimate Software

Commentary and Analysis: Based on our HRintelligence data to date, there is no correlation between advertising placements and media coverage. To illustrate this point, let's take a look at Aetna. Aetna was the number one advertiser in the HR space in the month of March but received virtually no media coverage in the major HR publications. While it is difficult to draw any specific conclusions from one month of data, it highlights the importance of executing a variety of brand-building and lead- generating marketing and PR activities including regular press releases, media relations/pitches, direct marketing, exhibiting, speaking, byline article placements, white paper distribution, SEO and more - no single activity is enough.

To determine the organizations receiving the most media coverage, we look at the number of non-paid editorial placements across the major monthly HR trade publications.

March 2005

Aon, Ceridian, Convergys, Exult, Fidelity, Hewitt Associates, IBM, Mellon Financial Corp, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Segal, Towers Perrin, Watson Wyatt, Wharton School of Business

Commentary and Analysis: Watson Wyatt and Hewitt Associates had more than twice the media coverage than any other company listed. While not all media coverage can be good (think AIG and Eliot Spitzer) these companies consistently generate quality coverage by providing a steady drumbeat of newsworthy information about the human capital space. We'd also like to point out that over 50% of the top companies receiving editorial coverage in the human capital space are customers of HRmarketer. Coincidence? We don't think so.

Based on the top stories in the major HR trade publications. Visit HRmarketer News for a comprehensive listing of HR news over the last 90 days.

HR Vital to Business Success

Chief Executive Officers who fully understand the impact human resources can have on the success of their organizations set performance standards for their HR leaders and focus on sound metrics of attracting, motivating and retaining qualified and skilled associates. HR-savvy CEOs know that their HR executives must think strategically and innovatively, have strong planning and execution skills, understand the business operationally, and have a very strong connectedness to the business.

HR Outsourcing Giants

With the latest merger of EDS-Towers Perrin earlier this year, there are now 27 tier 1 firms that provide end-to-end or enterprise level HR services. Analysts and customers alike recognize seven of these players as "giants" - Accenture HR Services, ACS, Aon HRO, EDS-Towers Perrin HR Services, Fidelity, Hewitt, and IBM (listed alphabetically). Many experts predict the remaining 20 companies, while strong in their areas of specialization, will most likely become subcontractors in the hunt for U.S. Fortune 200 or Global 500 HRO deals due to the extensive requirements of geographic scale and capabilities. While there is a lot of room to grow below the Global 500, the great news for the Global 500 customers is that the competition among the seven giants will ensure competitive pricing and strong service offerings indefinitely.

Employers Help the Uninsured

A coalition of 60 large companies - which includes Ford, General Electric, McDonald's, IBM, and Sears - plans to offer a new program in September called National Health Access. This program will offer voluntary health benefits to workers ineligible for employer-based coverage and is designed to help part-time workers, temporary and seasonal employees, contract and franchise works, pre- Medicare retirees and dependents. The coalition of companies is organized by the HR Policy Association, which represents the senior HR executives at more than 240 large U.S. employers. With healthcare becoming a hot political topic, compaines may be proactively dealing with these issues before they are told to do so via legislation.

Broker Investigations Unlikely to Impact Employee Benefits Costs

Although top brokers like Marsh, Aon, and Willis Group Holdings have stopped taking contingency commissions after a number of state governments have probed their compensation practices, it may have little impact on the prices employers pay for employee benefits. The concerns prompted by insurance industry probes might bring more business to firms that operate on a fee-for-service model, instead of ones that take commissions for carriers, but insurers aren't likely to cut overall compensation to brokers that accept commissions.

The Labor Shortage Truth

Predictions that the total labor supply won't keep up with the total demand are off base, according to sources at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Such predictions generally are based on subtracting estimates of the total number of future workers from the total number of expected jobs. The resulting calculation shows that by 2012, there will be 3.3 million fewer workers than jobs. But there are numerous flaws with that math. Most significantly, the two data sets involved, both of which are supplied by BLS, are derived from different sources and cannot be compared accurately. To subtract one from the other is to make an apples-and-oranges comparison that is invalid and misleading.

Few Employees Saving for Retirement

Too many employees are not making decisions when it comes to either enrolling in a 401(k) or increasing their contributions. Baby Boomers are the worst offenders with 34 percent of workers ages 55 and older saying their total savings, excluding the value of their homes, is less than $50,000 (according to national savings rates reported by the Employee Benefit Research Institute). Employers need to do a much better job at encouraging their employees to save for retirement, because the burden of retirement could fall on them through greatly increased Social Security taxes or more limited Social Security Benefits.

Universities Offering More Tailored Executive Education Programs

After more than three lean years, university executive education programs are welcoming back corporate customers, with most schools reporting 3 percent to 10 percent revenue growth in the 2004- 05 year. Much of this growth indicates a trend of custom programs tailored to the needs of individual corporations.

Good

Our unscientific measure of the human capital industry's health looks at the aggregate number of advertising placements across the major HR trade publications and our subjective analysis of other "activity" within the sector including new investment money flowing into the space, IPOs, M&As, closures, etc. We then benchmark against the previous month to come up with a 5 point rating system of Excellent / Great / Good / Average / Poor. Again, we caution readers that our rating is a subjective analysis and may not be a true reflection of the industry's health.

Think about journalists' needs when pitching story ideas and news about your company. Involve your HR executive customers, because they are who's reading the magazines - journalists want their perspective.

"Our editorial staff's response was pretty much unanimous: If there is one pet peeve that rises above the others, it is when PR folks don't understand that we need a reason, other than the mere existence of their client and/or the services they offer, in order to write a story that includes the companies they are pitching. There needs to be some tie-in to a specific story idea or trend. At every company there's one executive who actually talks to the customers (i.e., HR executives, our readers). Find him or her. Find out what issues his or her customers are coming to him or her with (and which, very likely, competing vendors' customers are also going to THEM about). Is something new or noteworthy going on? Have customers lined up willing to talk to me about it. THAT is something I can pitch at a features meeting."

- Christopher Cornell, Senior Writer, Human Resource Executive magazine