Greetings!
Welcome to the latest edition of the HRintelligence eNewsletter, the monthly marketing intelligence newsletter from HRmarketer.com. HRmarketer is the No. 1 marketing and media visibility service for companies targeting human resource professionals, employee benefit brokers and consultants.
Top Advertisers |
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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.
August 2005
Aetna, Aflac, Employease, LA Times, MetLife, Private Healthcare Systems, Recruitmax, SPECTRUM Human Resource Systems, Visa
Commentary and Analysis: Visa continued their aggressive new ad campaign for their card that helps employees manage flexible spending accounts (FSA's) and Healthcare Spending Accounts (HSA's). A newcomer this month was the LA Times who placed full-page ads in several major HR trade publications along with CareerBuilder that announces a new job-pullout in the newspaper’s Sunday editions. SPECTRUM Human Resource systems, a provider of HR information systems and frequent member of this list, also ranked as a top advertiser for the month of August. Overall ad placements in the major HR trades remained relatively constant from last month although some vertical-specific trades realized a bump.
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Top Editorial Placements |
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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.
August 2005
Aon, Employee Benefit Research Institute, Hewitt Associates, IBM, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, Motorola, National Business Group on Health, SHRM, Watson Wyatt
Commentary and Analysis: The National Business Group on Health and the Employee Benefit Research Institute made the list as companies receiving the most editorial coverage this month. The fact that these organizations make the list in the same month underscores the continued and growing importance of health care in the employer marketplace. HR suppliers who market services that help to offset and/or lower corporate health care costs are hot right now. One example is health coaching, an affordable health benefit that targets a larger subset of "at-risk" populations to prevent them from becoming costly health problems to companies. This is different from disease management which focuses on the small percentage of employees who already cost employers a bundle in health care costs. The marketing message for health care employee benefit firms is to show how your product/service can reduce health care costs. HR buyers are much more likely to respond to this message now than they were even a few years ago – the timing is right. Sounds simple but few HR suppliers have effectively integrated this messaging into their overall marketing and PR. One firm to watch in the health coaching field who does a great job in messaging is Leade Health. Check them out.
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Top Stories in the HR Marketplace |
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Here are the top stories in the major HR trade publications from last month. Visit HRmarketer News for a comprehensive listing of HR marketplace news releases and articles over the last 90 days.
Essential Habits of Savvy Health Care Consumers
For six consecutive years, U.S. health care costs have risen in double digits. Employers are struggling to contain these costs while continuing to offer employees reasonable medical and prescription coverage. Now employees represent the “last frontier” for cost containment, and employers see positive outcomes when they enlist their employees in the fight against skyrocketing health care costs.
Helping the "Not-Ready" Workforce
Entry-level workers often lack skills to do their jobs properly or advance up the corporate ladder. To help human resource professionals with these problems, a business-backed coalition led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is developing a work-readiness credentialing test to determine which workers are ready to enter the workforce and which need further training.
Overpaying for Prescriptions
A new study finds that employers are overpaying millions of dollars for drugs in workers’ comp cases. The reason they are doing so is due to the shocking number of errors in filling prescriptions. Few claims payers audit their PBM’s performance, although this may be the year in which a uniquely workers’ compensation-based model of pharmacy management, distinct from health-plan practices, emerges, with innovation being driven more by claims executives than by PBMs.
The Liability of Living Past 65
Companies that provide retirement plans face many challenges – people are living longer, and Social Security and the traditional pension system no longer guarantee that those who retire at 65 will live comfortably. Employers that offer 401(k) plans are navigating a minefield of liability issues around how much they can do to help employees save enough for retirement – without being held liable if workers don’t have enough when they retire.
What High-Performance Learning Organizations (HPLOs) Know
As companies realize that human capital and intellectual property are among their most valued assests, learning organizations are gaining new prominence in many businesses. No longer seen as support operations at the fringes of the enterprise, these organizations are expected to contribute to their company’s overall mission and quantify benefits to demonstrate ongoing value. So found Accenture Learning in its 2004 survey of learning executives, which identified HPLOs and their defining traits and challenges.
HR Pivotal in Curbing Health Care Fraud
Although health care fraud, defined as the intentional submission of false medical claims, has been a serious problem for more than two decades, it is gaining widespread attention now as a major driver of health cost inflation. In their responsibilities for managing employer-sponsored health benefits, HR professionals are pivotal in seeing to it that health plan administrators ore health insurance providers are proactive about detecting fraud.
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This Month's Human Capital Health Indicator Is... |
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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.
Commentary and Analysis: We are downgrading our rating of the human resource marketplace this month from "Great" to "Good" because there was not enough compelling news to keep the indicator at "Great" - as it has for the last five months. In talking to dozens of HR suppliers, the consensus is things are good but flat. We are, however, very bullish on the space - and if our own HRarketer.com sales are any indication, we will be upgrading our rating soon. In the just over three years of providing the industry's only online marketing and PR service for HR service providers, August was our fourth best ever month of new sales. This tells us suppliers are feeling optimistic and confident about the marketplace.
Overall ad placements in the major HR trades remained the same and some large HR publications actually had a reduction of ads. One HR trade magazine, HR Innovator, ceased operations all together, and even now we still don't know why. There are reasons to be upbeat, though. The human resources marketplace continues to receive a lot of great press as companies invest in HR infrastructure and realize the importance of recruiting, hiring and retaining top talent. Some of the major news this month included:
- TALX announced that its board raised the quarterly cash dividend by 25 percent. According to a recent press release, TALX is one of the few companies where free cash flow was clocking in higher than actual reported earnings. This is a healthy company.
- Monster Worldwide upgraded by JP Morgan from neutral to overweight. JP Morgan says the company’s current share price does not reflect the company's future margin expansion potential.
- Ceridian was also upgraded by JP Morgan (from Underweight to Neutral) mainly because JP Morgan believes Ceridian’s accounting issues have been resolved.
- Kronos Inc. bought the work force management business of CTR Systems Time and Attendance Inc. in order to expand its own direct sales network. The company also announced their founder and CEO Mark Ain is stepping down from his post effective October 31, 2005. Kronos was also upgraded by Piper Jaffray.
- Hewitt’s 3Q profit was up 10 percent and they were upgraded by JMP Securities.
- RBC Capital Markets initiated coverage of Ultimate Software with a "sector perform" rating and set a target price of $18 this year. Meanwhile, First Albany downgraded Ultimate but set a target price of $21 Go figure.
Recent M&A activity in the HR space:
- Towers Perrin acquired Rauser AG, a leading German pensions consultancy.
- Convergys completes acquisition of finance & accounting outsourcing business of Deloitte Consulting Outsourcing.
- Christian & Timbers acquired Feehan Barr Partners, adding capabilities to meet Fortune 500 demands for Chief HR officers.
- CMP Media acquired TechOnLine, a leading provider of online technical education.
- SSA Global Technologies, a global provider of extended enterprise solutions and services, acquired Boniva Software, a provider of human capital management applications.
- BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee acquired Gordian Health Solutions.
- World Health Alternatives, a healthcare staffing firm acquired Universal Staffing Group, a privately- held staffing company based in Orlando, Florida.
- Metavante Corporation acquired Med-i-Bank, a provider of electronic payment services and debit cards for employee benefit and consumer-directed health care accounts.
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Marketing and Media Visibility Tip of the Month |
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Distributing "Marketing" Press Releases
Marketers are now realizing that press releases distributed via wire services like HRmarketer’s Direct2Net service are effective online visibility activities that generate sales leads. In fact, whether a journalist actually finds or responds to your release on the Internet search engines and related news portals is secondary in importance.
Remember, these "marketing" press releases are different than traditional press releases. Marketing releases are SEO optimized (i.e., include embedded hyperlinks, key search terms, shorter headlines) and are written for your buyers, not for reporters.
This is an exciting new marketing trend! If you are not distributing at least 1-2 "marketing" releases per month, you are missing out on this growing lead- generation activity and placing your company at a competitive disadvantage.
For more information, read our recent blog postings on "marketing" press releases:
To read other helpful tips like these, login to your HRmarketer account... |
How HRmarketer Helps Me |
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This new monthly feature highlights how HRmarketer helps our loyal members...
"With a background of more than 15 years in journalism when I made the transition to marketing, I figured my most daunting task would be building a strong list of contacts. I was floored when our co- founder introduced me to HRmarketer. I was probably able to trim months off the ramping-up process. And that doesn’t even begin to take into account the quality and quantity of the personal attention I received. They made me feel like I was HRmarketer’s most important client, and I’m probably a bit more skeptical than most, considering my background. Finally, I can’t say enough about the press release review service. After writing a few thousand major- market newspaper stories, I submitted my first press release to HRmarketer with more than a little bit of apprehension that they could improve the product. But Human Resources is a different game, and HRmarketer plays in the big leagues. Their revisions made a world of difference."
Brian Higgins, Media Manager, JobFlash
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HRintelligence Service |
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HRintelligence is a premium HRmarketer service that tracks media and advertising placements in the major industry trade publications for all HR service providers, helping vendors monitor competitive information and track their own media and advertising placements. Much of the analysis in this monthly newsletter comes from the HRintelligence service.
For more information about HRintelligence or any of HRmarketer's services, please contact us at 831-460- 9700 or via email at info@hrmarketer.com
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