Top advertisers, listed alphabetically below, are determined by measuring advertising placements across the major monthly HR trade publications, not including buyer guide or product directory listings.

May 2005

ADP, Aetna, Aon, Delta Dental, Great West Healthcare, MetLife, Monster.com, United HealthCare, VSP, WellPoint

Please note that this information was compiled using HRmarketer's HRintelligence database that tracks advertising and editorial placements for over 2,000 HR suppliers, employers and consultants.

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.

May 2005

Hewitt Associates, Mercer Human Resources Consulting, SHRM, Towers Perrin, Wal-Mart, Watson Wyatt

Commentary and Analysis: A recent HRmarketer.com blog posting entitled The Rule of Four: Increasing Your Media Visibility highlights the importance of distributing regular news releases to ensure regular media placements. In fact, if you Google the companies making our HR Intelligence Top Editorial Placements list each month, you will notice they have active and consistent press release campaigns. The "Rule of Four" refers to the four types of email distribution lists that human resource vendors should maintain to ensure maximum media visibility. We coined the rule after observing the PR behavior of HRmarketer.com subscribers receiving the most editorial placements and concluded that vendors secure greater media coverage/placements when they manage multiple media distribution lists - specifically the four listed in our blog posting. And in addition to sending releases to the four types of distribution lists, vendors should always send their releases over a wire service to gain visibility on major Internet news portals and search engines.

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.

Lawsuits Against Employers Remain Remarkably Steady

The complexity of employment law - as well as the complexity of the regulations and guidelines issued by various federal and state agencies and departments interpreting those laws - has kept human resource professionals and their legal counsel wary and ready for legal disasters on all fronts. Interestingly enough, the staggering number of lawsuits filed against employers every year has been remarkably steady over the years. The five major areas of concern to employers are class-action lawsuits, harassment claims, retaliation claims, leave issues and wage-and- hour class-action cases.

Unions Attempt to Reorganize and Realign

Unions are finding it difficult to stay alive in today's business world and are struggling to position themselves for the future. The current role of the AFL-CIO - a federation of 58 different unions representing 13 million workers - is being debated. Powerful unions within the federation, like SEIU, the Teamsters and UNITE HERE, are working on major reforms to help organized labor become more effective and efficient.

Employers Need More Than the Lowest Insurance Prices

The benefits world is becoming more and more expensive and demanding, and employers need more from their brokers than the lowest price available on insurance. Although employer's situations vary, they need the right "knowledge" from their brokers, advisers and consultants. Unfortunately, most insurance companies have done away with the education programs they once provided to their new agents.

Explosive Growth Continues for HRO

According to a recent study by the Everest Research Institute of the HRO market, there has been a 92 percent growth in deal volume over the past year and a half. Fifteen major HRO providers - including Accenture, Hewitt, IBM, and ACS - are providing three or more areas of HR services and leading the way for the hundreds of other players. The explosive growth is attributed to smaller deals, decreasing price points, and the scope of services is becoming much more diverse.

UPS Embraces Human Resources

Workforce management is what UPS is all about, from its liberal employee benefits program to its highly structured system of internal mobility. Although the competition from the likes of FedEx, the USPS, and DHL is hot on the heels of UPS, the HR leadership led by Lea Soupata is keeping their people processes in place while remaining the leader in the worldwide shipping industry.

Great!

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.

Commentary and Analysis: We maintained our "Great" rating for the month of May due to positive earnings announcements from human capital firms, M&A activity, increased advertisement placements in the HR trades, strong vendor participation and feedback at the SHRM Conference & Expo, and the announcement from Workforce Management that it will double its frequency to twice per month in Fall 2005, which tells us they have the advertising commitments to justify the increased frequency. On average, publicly traded human capital firms continued to report strong earnings, which was led by Paychex (Nasdaq:PAYX) who recently announced earnings that beat Wall Street's expectations, causing their shares to rise $3.20 (10.6 percent) to $33.22 This news helped boost stock prices and draw positive attention to the entire staffing and payroll industry including payroll processing firms ADP and Ceridian as well as staffing services firms like Labor Ready and Kforce. There was also some acquisition news as Authoria announced they were acquiring Hire.com. We also noticed an overall increase in the amount of advertising placements across most HR trades.

While at the 57th annual SHRM conference in San Diego last week, HRmarketer was able to gather some valuable insights during conversations with key members of the HR media. One such conversation took place with David Shadovitz, editor of Human Resource Executive magazine:

Using Your Website as a Media Kit

David Shadovitz points out that most journalists now use the Internet as their primary research tool, and they frequently use it to learn the basic "who-what-where" information about companies they write about. Unfortunately, the majority of HR companies' websites make it difficult to find such information, he notes, whether it's the history of the company, recent news or contact information for a spokesperson. Is your website guilty of hiding news? A section labeled "media" or "press" should be visible on the main page, he recommends, with a link to current and past press releases - as well as a brief overview of the company and the best person to contact for arranging press interviews. Whether it's Human Resource Executive or a local business journal, learning about your company online should be the easiest step of a writer's research.

By most accounts, this year's SHRM Conference & Exposition in San Diego was spectacular - back-in-the-day-dot-com spectacular. When the exhibit hall opened last Sunday night and the four of us attending from HRmarketer.com walked through the doors, each one of us did a cartoon double-take, jaws dropping to the floor.

We certainly weren't in Kansas anymore. We shook our heads and wiped our eyes feverishly; we thought maybe we were in Vegas at the 1999 COMDEX show...

Workforce Management magazine, one of HR's leading publications with a circulation of about 50,000, announced in late June it will double its frequency to twice per month in Fall 2005. Watch for more details coming soon to HRmarketer.com.