By DENNIS NISHI
If you’ve been marking time at work and hoping to get a new job, you’ve got company. Employment experts caution, though, that moving too quickly could land you in a new job that you dislike even more. Here are some ways to improve the odds of finding the right one.

• Re-evaluate the situation. Think about why you’re dissatisfied at your current job. If you aren’t challenged enough, there might be a way to make a change without leaving. “There may be ways that your job can be changed for the better or your role in the company expanded to offer more challenges,” says Tony Mulkern, a management consultant in Los Angeles. Scout job openings in other departments or at higher levels that you may qualify for with some additional extended education or skills and ask your manager to support your effort to get the training you need.

• Reach out. If the opportunities just aren’t there or you’re simply dissatisfied and aching to move, tap your personal and professional network for information on who is hiring. Many job postings go up with a candidate in mind already, if you know someone at the companies you are targeting—or someone in your network does—work to get personal referrals.

But be discreet with your inquiries. Keep requests off social-networking websites like Facebook and Linkedin—they can be indexed by search engines and discovered by anyone, including your current boss.

• Do your homework. When you land an interview, use the opportunity to learn about the company. You should get as much from them as they will try to get from you, says Sharon Armstrong, a human-resources consultant in Washington. Salary and benefits are important, but so is fit. It’s difficult to tell what the workplace culture is like from casual visits. Don’t be shy about calling for more information and contact current and former employees, if possible, to get a feel for the company and opportunities.

If you get an offer, before you accept, consider doing more in-depth financial research on the company. Try The Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR Public Dissemination Service (edgarcompany.sec.gov). For private firms and startups, Gail Rosen, an accountant in Martinsville N.J., says to look for a profit-and-loss statement, a balance sheet, references, a business plan and a list of where the company is getting funding.

“You may not get that all but it doesn’t hurt to ask, and they might at least give you something else you can use,” she says. Some information also can be found on fee services like Hoovers or on business blogs.

• Leap carefully. Whatever you do, don’t quit your job until you’re certain you’re hired, says Ms. Armstrong. “Even if a job offer seems imminent, there are a lot of things that can happen at the last minute.”

If your current company wants to keep you and replies with a counteroffer, keep in mind why you’re leaving. “People seldom move just for money, so don’t be swayed by a bigger paycheck if everything else stays the same,” says Ms. Armstrong. “Job satisfaction comes from a lot of different places. If the boss offers to help change the other things that are making you unhappy, that might be worth at least discussing.”

By CRAIG CHAPPELOW AND JEAN BRITTAIN LESLIE

Mid-career derailment can happen any time, but in today’s economy there is no room for complacency. With job opportunities harder than ever to find, it’s a particularly rough time to be fired or demoted or to hit a career plateau. You can reduce your risk for derailment by paying attention to your value and effectiveness and by focusing on interpersonal skills, adaptability, team leadership and bottom-line results.

Based on the Center for Creative Leadership’s ongoing study of executive derailment with clients around the world, here are 10 ways to avoid these pitfalls:

Ask for instant feedback. When walking out of a meeting, ask a colleague, “I think that could have gone better – what could I have done differently?” Listen to the response. Don’t defend or justify your actions and don’t interrupt. Sean Fowler, assistant vice president with insurance company IAT Group in Cold Springs, Fla., uses feedback from his co-workers as a reality check. “You have to develop a bit of a thick skin,” Mr. Fowler said. “Once you get past the initial shock, you really come to appreciate it. It’s a long-term effort made up of small steps, not a leap.”

Increase self-awareness. Become a student of your own behavior. Take stock of how you feel about your work and how you react when you are pushed outside your comfort zone. Explore the values that matter most to you and use them as an anchor during times of change, transition and stress. Amy Gillard, owner and operator of Gillard Enterprises, an event-management business notes that selecting work which is not the right fit will only create challenges with clients down the line. “Self-awareness is key in my business. You have to know who you are and what you have to offer,” she said.

Pay attention to organizational culture. To stay aligned with your organization as it morphs and changes over time, you need a clear understanding of the prevailing culture. Analyze how decisions get made and think about the underlying assumptions that guide the organization as it responds to challenges and opportunities.

Use empathy. Your direct reports, your peers and even your bothersome boss are all human beings worthy of your respect. Listen without judging. Take the feelings and perspectives of others into account. Don’t use humor inappropriately and always keep private conversations private. You’ll end up with stronger relationships.

Learn to listen. Hearing isn’t the same as listening. Turn away from your email and concentrate on the person talking to you. Don’t be passive. Ask questions to make sure you understand. Stay in the moment and take notes to help you remember key points. Show people you’re really hearing them. Air Force Col. Trent Edwards, Commander of the 28th Mission Support Group at Ellsworth Air Force Base, learned to listen differently in response to feedback from his team and his family. He realized he was using a “war zone” mentality in non-war zone settings. With tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, Edwards describes his previous approach as “very action-oriented. Everything was always go, go, go. Now I try to listen with more patience, with an open ear to try to hear what is being said and also what is not being said.”

Collaborate. Try to not be the Lone Ranger. Be open and willing to disclose your decision-making process to others, along with important facts and feelings. Your influence and effectiveness will increase.

Deal with problem employees sooner rather than later. If a direct report’s behavior or lack of skills threatens the success of your team, confront the problem head on. Don’t let it fester. These kinds of problems almost never heal themselves. Document specific shortcomings and either dismiss the employee or create a development plan for improved performance. The cost of carrying poor performers can have a ripple effect across the organization – destroying morale and dragging down productivity.

Delegate authority. Don’t keep your employees tied down and stuck in the same roles and responsibilities. Allow them to test their wings. Assign stretch projects you think they can handle. As they prove themselves, increase the complexity of the assignments. Give adequate guidance and follow up to see how they are doing. Debrief shortfalls and use them as a learning opportunity. Above all, acknowledge positive outcomes.

Focus on the task at hand. While it’s great to have a development plan and to work on skills you will need down the road, don’t forget that your main job is just that – your main job. Organizations value managers who get work done. Focus on what you need to accomplish each day. Bring jobs to a close. Tie up loose ends. Document outcomes. Get closure, and…

Break out of a rut. Learn from the mistakes that you and others make. Stop talking about how things were done in the past. Bring a new idea or solution to the table. Break away from your lunch cliques. Identify a rut you are in and get out of it.

Become known for your skill at adjusting to change, building strong relationships, leading effective teams and getting results. Your colleagues will appreciate it – and you’ll reap the professional rewards.

By DENNIS NISHI

As vice president of a Los Angeles film-production company in the 1980s, Ronald Kaufman had nearly everything that he’d ever wanted in a job — great pay, friendly co-workers and interesting work coordinating product placements in films. Unfortunately, he hated the job.

“The owner of the company was a master at intimidation and would scream at everybody. An hour later, he would be a great guy. It made everybody unhappy to be there,” says Mr. Kaufman, now an executive coach.

But he knew he wouldn’t earn the same salary elsewhere, so Mr. Kaufman committed himself to making his situation work. “You can’t really change people’s nature, so I changed how I responded to him. I learned to align with his demands, instead of questioning them, and that made my 8½ years at the company so much easier.”

Toxic workplace relationships, failing company fortunes and limited advancement opportunities are just a few compelling reasons to quit a job. But career experts say many workplace problems that employees may think are irreconcilable can be improved or even resolved with some action and a change of attitude.

First, find out if your problems are unique. Reach out to co-workers in other departments, peers through industry associations or even call colleagues at other companies to compare notes.

“It’s a very individual perception that leads to people believing that others are receiving better treatment,” says Christopher McCarthy, professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who researches workplace stress.

Separate the demands of work from your own expectations of yourself. If you’re unhappy about falling short of your own personal career goals, try breaking your big goals into smaller, more realistically achievable ones. This can improve your morale by reinforcing small successes.

Pitch your boss on a less formal and more goal-oriented workplace. And offer improved results in exchange for more autonomy. “Most people are generally happier at work when given more creative freedom to do their jobs,” says Mr. McCarthy.

If the operational processes of your job are leading to failure, alter your approach, if you can. Spencer Belkofer was an account representative for a telecom firm in Montgomery, Ala., and he didn’t like the way the company trained him to sell phone services. Unhappy customers frequently complained about bad contracts. So Mr. Belkofer decided to go off script and spell out every detail of the services offered, and he frequently sided with customers to resolve problems.

The extra effort didn’t improve his sales, but Mr. Belkofer felt better about the work and customers thanked him for being forthright.

By JOE LIGHT

LinkedIn Corp.’s splashy initial public offering of stock earlier this month underscored the company’s status as a major professional network. But several start-ups are banking that the future of career networking is actually on Facebook Inc.

These start-ups point to Facebook’s much broader user base: With 500 million users, Facebook is five times larger than LinkedIn.

But changing users’ mindsets might be a challenge. Some Facebook users are loathe to mix their personal and professional networks, fearing some private information might damage their work reputation.

Recruiters, meanwhile, say that LinkedIn has already established itself as the most robust source for job-candidate information.

This month, BranchOut Inc., which makes a professional-networking Facebook application, said it raised $18 million in venture capital, bringing its total to $24 million. On the day of LinkedIn’s IPO, Jibe Inc., which lets people use Facebook connections to bolster job applications, announced that it had raised $6 million.

Since January, BranchOut has gained more than 500,000 active users, Chief Executive Rick Marini said. The app helps users find Facebook friends at companies where they want to work.

Jibe CEO Joe Essenfeld said that its 200,000 active users have landed hundreds of jobs by sending applications through its service.

Mr. Essenfeld added that 26 large employers, including Amazon.com Inc. and MTV Networks, as well as 20 small businesses, accept résumés sent through the application, which lets users import connections from both Facebook and LinkedIn.

“Most people do not want to mix their professional lives with their personal lives,” said a LinkedIn spokesman, Hani Durzy, in an email.

Even though the apps are gaining in popularity among Facebook users, right now LinkedIn is still the go-to site for recruiters trying to find suitable candidates, said Debra Feldman, a job-search consultant.

“They’re using it over and above any other résumé databases, including their own,” she said. That means that if someone isn’t looking for a job but wants to field offers from headhunters, he needs a LinkedIn profile, she said.

Other job-related Facebook apps have been slow to catch on. Talentag, which lets users earn job-related “badges” and recommendations from Facebook users, had a strong debut last August, but its average number of monthly users has dwindled to 189 after peaking at 1,502, according to AppData, a market-research group.

Talentag couldn’t be immediately reached for comment on Friday.

Employer-Branding Campaigns Try to Attract Most-Coveted Job Candidates

By JOE LIGHT

Companies have long set aside resources to develop and market consumer brands. Now, some are finding that to attract the best job candidates, they need to put similar efforts into their so-called employer brands.

Unlike a company’s product brands—say Fritos or Dial—employer brands target potential employees to make a company seem like a desirable place to work.

The slow job market has brought the perception that job takers are plentiful, but already companies are finding that the most skilled candidates are in short supply, and are difficult to find, recruiters say. This has prompted some companies to launch employer-branding campaigns for the first time in several years.

Potentialpark AB, a market-research firm that specializes in employer branding, has seen the number of analyses it does for companies almost double in the past year, said Chief Executive Torgil Lenning, whose clients include Hewlett Packard Co. and Credit Suisse Group.

“There’s a clear correlation with the economy. As companies realize they need to recruit, they’ll spend much more effort improving their [employer] brands,” Mr. Lenning said.

In the past, it came down to the logo outside the building. Now, marketing for job candidates involves intensive work and research, says Brian Kropp, a managing director with Corporate Executive Board Co., a business-consulting firm.

PepsiCo Inc. launched its new employer-branding campaign last fall. The company felt its previous campaign, launched a decade earlier, placed too much emphasis on its consumer brands—which include Quaker and Frito-Lay—instead of the actual positions available.

Candidates such as chemists and businesspeople sometimes assumed that PepsiCo only had roles for individuals with experience in the food-and-beverage industry, said Paul Marchand, vice president of global talent acquisition. The new campaign aims to capture candidates from other areas, such as consulting or entertainment, Mr. Marchand said. “We want people coming right out of college to consider us just as they’d consider McKinsey or GE,” he said.

PepsiCo produced a series of short videos profiling employees. The videos can be seen on PepsiCo’s careers website and on its iPad app, which launched in February and has been downloaded more than 3,000 times, according to Mr. Marchand. PepsiCo’s brand logos are noticeably absent from the app, which lets jobseekers learn about work at the company and find openings. The company also revised its LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts to reflect the new campaign.

PepsiCo spent tens of thousands of dollars on research and the campaign, dubbed “Possibilities,” Mr. Marchand estimates. He says the company’s recruiters have told him it is helping to attract candidates.

The success of employer-branding campaigns is hard to measure. Unlike marketing for a particular product, which can be reflected a few months later in sales, a successful employer-branding campaign doesn’t necessarily result in more job applications, Mr. Kropp said. “The purpose of an employment brand is to get the best applications, but for those who aren’t the best fit for you, to get them to say ‘that seems like a cool company but not the right place for me to work,’” he said.

Still, AT&T Corp. says it saw the number of visitors to its careers site jump 20% after it positioned itself to appeal to the technology-savvy crowd at this year’s South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.

At the conference in March, AT&T’s recruitment materials carried “quick response” codes—bar codes that are readable by camera phones and can take candidates quickly to a careers website without typing in a URL. They also handed out contact cards with “augmented reality” glyphs that when held up to a camera phone show candidates a Web video.

AT&T’s director of staffing, Jennifer Terry, said that the company hopes the new technologies would signal to the conference attendees that AT&T had moved beyond its telecommunications roots. The company has a particular need for engineers, application developers and hardware and software experts.

“[Before], candidates might picture someone climbing a telephone pole to install something,” Ms. Terry said. “If we focus on our digital presence, it helps recruit the right people and set the stage for the company we’ve become.” The number of candidates who came to their careers website from the SXSW conference rose five times over the prior year, Ms. Terry said, and the company has five highly desirable job candidates identified for hard-to-fill tech jobs who found the company via SXSW.

Henkel Corp., a consumer- and industrial-goods company, began to rebrand its careers website and employer-marketing materials in February.

While its brands—such as Dial soap and Right Guard deodorant—are well-known in the U.S., Germany-based Henkel doesn’t carry much name recognition in the U.S. as an employer, said Nicole Nelson, the company’s manager for talent acquisition.

Under the company’s old tag line—”Inventors and Pioneers, Welcome”— “we’d go out to career events and people would say, ‘Huh? What’s Henkel?’ ” said Ms. Nelson. So, the company eliminated its pioneers tag line, which didn’t seem to resonate with job seekers, and beefed up its careers website. The website now features large photographs of smiling employees with biographical sketches and Web videos of employee “ambassadors” who talk about their jobs.

Company officials are trying to promote job opportunities internally so that employees see potential for upward mobility and can refer friends to openings. At the company’s North America offices overhead monitors will cycle through available job openings.

Ms. Nelson says it is too early to gauge the efforts’ success.

Allstate Insurance Co. says that next year, it plans to launch marketing and employment offerings that are customized to jobseekers, depending on their life stage, said Suzanne Sinclair, director of leadership talent acquisition.

Depending on the age and situation of the job candidate, the company might emphasize its stability, growth opportunities, or specific benefits, rather than have a one-size fits all marketing strategy, she said.

“When you look at different segments of the labor market, there are discernible differences in what [job candidates] want,” she said.

A majority of Americans have taken on extra duties at work, often without more pay. How the up-and-down economy has redefined multitasking.

By ANNE KADET

Denver pastry chef Eric Dale took on a new role — maintenance man — and saw his hours soar after his boss, Jen Jasinski, realized he was handy.

If you like the hazelnut tortamisu at Rioja, the top-rated Denver restaurant, thank pastry chef Eric Dale, who garnishes his sticky invention with gianduja chocolate and espresso cr me anglaise. If you’re fond of the “flight of artisan water buffalo cheeses,” that’s him. And if you happen to pop your head into the bakery room and admire the tile job on the floor, you can thank Dale for that, too.

Ever since his boss, chef Jen Jasinski, discovered that Dale is handy, she’s had him doing double duty as the maintenance man. He’s spent hours repainting the oven, fixing the plumbing and installing a garbage disposal. And that’s just the start. He used to manage the dessert operation at one restaurant. When the recession hit, his boss asked him to take on a second location; now he’s up to three. All told, Dale says, his hours have expanded by a third, to more than 60 a week. The industry has changed, Dale says, and kitchen staffers can’t afford to be “fat and sassy.”

In this new era of the superjob, everyone does windows, and anyone who gripes about working too hard will hear an even hairier tale from the exec on the next bar stool. Emboldened by an unemployment crisis that’s only now easing up, businesses ranging from mom-and-pop shops to the Big Three automakers have asked a dwindling number of employees to take on extra tasks that have little to do with their primary roles and expertise. While hiring in some sectors has picked up, the Labor Department’s hours-worked-per-employee figures have been rising steadily for almost two years. Companies’ new solutions to staffing and budget shortfalls often look surprisingly makeshift, with engineers going on sales calls, accountants pitching in on customer service and CFOs running a division on the side. And some believe the shift is permanent, as the quickening pace of change demands more flexibility from everyone at the office. Management consultant Rich Moran, whose clients have included Apple and AT&T, says that going forward, employees will do whatever it takes to help their company compete: “Job descriptions are written in sand, and the wind is blowing.”

Some workplace experts say the superjob is the logical next step in management’s quest to make the workplace more cost-efficient. The latest shift started when businesses redistributed the workload over a smaller pool of employees following the layoffs of 2009; last year’s nascent recovery intensified the process. In a recent survey by Spherion Staffing, 53 percent of workers said they’ve taken on new roles, most of them without extra pay (just 7 percent got a raise or a bonus). Now that sales are picking up, there’s even more work to do, but companies are reluctant to hire, says Howard Tarnoff, SVP at employee-management-software provider WorkForce Software. Some are anxious about what the economic future holds, while others are taking their cues from global giants that have managed to increase revenue and profit even as they’ve dismissed thousands of workers.

Experts who work with Fortune 500 companies say that as hard as it can be to keep up, employees can benefit from the trend. Research shows that many successful leaders grew the most through “stretch experiences,” says Seymour Adler, an SVP at Aon Hewitt’s talent-and-rewards practice. “They killed themselves for a period of time, but there was an enormous amount of learning.” At Rioja, owner Jasinski says the economizing helped her avoid layoffs when sales dropped. Now that business is booming, she says, she has no plans to hire outsiders: The multitasking creates a sense of teamwork and keeps employees engaged. Still, even the most hard-nosed bosses know that workers can be stretched only so far. New research suggests long hours and project overload can reduce productivity, and recent statistics seem to back that up: In the middle of 2010, after five quarters of impressive growth, U.S. labor productivity took a dip, while a separate survey from the Conference Board found that just 43 percent of Americans are satisfied with their job the lowest level since the survey started in 1987. The irony, of course, is that many companies think most of their own employees are perfectly happy; in a climate where new jobs are still hard to find, polls reveal staffers are afraid to tell management any different.

In one sense, the superjob phenomenon is part of an economic cycle that’s as predictable as the seasons. At the end of almost every recent recession, employers have increased the hours of their remaining workers before hiring reinforcements. But this time around, experts say, there are other forces at play. Some employers have grown wary of the organizational strain of hiring and firing every time the economy swings not to mention the growing cost of benefits (about $9,600 a year per employee, says Mark Stelzner, an HR consultant at Inflexion Advisors). Globalization and technological advances also play a role: Engineering and advertising agencies say clients are demanding shorter delivery times, requiring employees to work more hours, and U.S. executives must be available around-the-clock to take care of issues in Hong Kong and Paris. Then there’s the growing consumer demand for convenience that has druggists putting in long shifts at 24-hour pharmacies and retail managers working Christmas day.

Whether on major projects or small chores, assigning new roles to existing employees can be a smart move, says Debbie Zmorenski, a productivity consultant at LSA Partners in Orlando. But during the recession, she adds, many companies acted in more of a state of panic. Instead of thoughtfully reassigning tasks based on a careful assessment of employees’ skills and affinities, they rushed the process, redistributed the workload willy-nilly and provided little training. When you send a shy but talented IT specialist out to do sales, says Zmorenski, “you’re setting him up to fail.”

Debbie DeChambeau knows the feeling. She loved her inside-marketing gig at a large East Coast real estate firm, introducing her employer’s agents to the company’s home-insurance products. But as the recession gained speed, she says, her division’s new president decided the company couldn’t afford the luxury. DeChambeau was promoted to manager, overseeing several of her coworkers while continuing her marketing duties. And by the way, could she please double as an insurance agent on the side?

DeChambeau remembers this period as the summer she seldom set foot in her flower garden. She hadn’t actually sold insurance for 15 years, but following a one-hour training session, the company set her loose on the unit’s complex product-rating system. “This isn’t good,” she recalls thinking. “I’m going to create more problems than I solve.” And despite her efforts to catch up, she worried about steering her sales force wrong. “It’s awkward when they know more than you do,” she says. Her own sales performance, meanwhile, hardly blew the doors off the barn: In two months she sold two policies.

Not surprisingly, DeChambeau says she felt overwhelmed by the competing demands. Whether she focused on marketing, management or sales, she felt she was giving the other two short shrift: “It was a big blur.” There is, in fact, a technical term organizational psychologists use to describe what employees endure when they’re saddled with multiple jobs role conflict. It’s that feeling that no matter how hard you try, you can’t win. When role conflict drags on for months, experts say, burnout and reduced productivity are almost inevitable. DeChambeau’s solution: She left to start her own consulting firm, and she’s thrilled to focus on the work she does best. “I feel like a new person,” she says.

Taking on extra work doesn’t necessarily mean a promotion. Some executives who would welcome a juicy “stretch” assignment, for example, find themselves spending time on chores that used to be handled by the support staff. Hospitals are training doctors to do fund-raising. Some companies save money by routing call-center overflow to their white-collar offices; an executive might be expected to drop everything to handle a botched sales order, says Stelzner. At the University of Vermont, meanwhile, even top administrators like Richard Cate, VP for finance and administration, have to empty and wash their own trash baskets. Cate, who scrubs the banana peels and orange rinds from his green mini bin twice a week, can’t complain he’s the guy who cut the university’s custodial-services budget in the first place. And while he notes that some staffers say it makes no sense to have top officers and educators spending time on trash, he says the small effort saves the university $500,000 a year.

Still, some say the rising tide of goofy chores can interfere with more important tasks. David Shiman, the faculty union president at the University of Vermont, says most professors don’t mind taking out their own trash (although the 6-inch mini bins have become something of a campus joke, with some using them as desktop planters). But it is another distraction. Academics can no longer rely on department administrative assistants to file expense reports and book travel, he says, and many professors are putting in extra hours to figure out the new performance-tracking software all time pressures that can divert their energies from the classroom. Shiman says he’s hoping the university will hire more instructors, “so we can be the teachers we want to be.”

When Philadelphia-area copywriting and marketing consultant Carolyn Frith served as a marketing head for a high-end home-fixtures manufacturer, she didn’t necessarily mind endlessly proofing the price book while her product manager went on maternity leave. After all, someone had to make sure the book’s margins were wide enough to accommodate a three-hole punch. When the sales assistant got canned, Frith understood that there weren’t any magic elves coming along to track the literature flow and warn the sales force not to hog the brochures. And if the security guard got laid off, and it fell on her to switch off the lights and dial in the security codes for the parking lot gates? Well, why not? The only problem: “It was hard to find time to plan strategy and meet with customers,” she says.

If you’re wondering why it’s so hard to juggle those petty chores, just ask a scientist. Yes, while we’re busy emptying the trash, researchers are studying productivity, and they’re telling us to stop with the multitasking already. Turns out, the practice reduces productivity, because it takes a ton of mental energy to switch from one task to the next. In one five-year study conducted at a midsize recruiting firm, researchers affiliated with MIT’s Sloan School of Management found that when employees took on additional assignments, firm revenue and project completion increased but only up to a point. When the caseload piled higher, speed and completion rates plummeted.

The sheer number of work hours demanded by the superjob can also short-circuit your brain even if you get eight hours of sleep every night, says Susan Koen, an organizational psychologist and consultant whose clients include Pfizer, Alcoa and Procter & Gamble. If you work a 14-hour day, your primitive monkey mind assumes you must be dealing with some terrible emergency wild cougars on the horizon! and kicks into overdrive in a misguided effort to keep you alert. The result: a lousy night’s sleep that has you dreaming about spreadsheets. And the longer you keep it up, the worse it gets. Eventually, says Koen, hard-driving executives reach a state of cognitive impairment comparable to that of someone who has just enjoyed a three-martini lunch including a tendency to overrate one’s own performance. Sometimes, the folks most in need of a break are the last to realize how poorly they’re functioning.

To their credit, some employers are doing everything they can to help their superstars short of reducing the workload. Ken LeBeau, director of employee-assistance programs for health care giant Cigna, says he’s getting more corporate requests for stress-reduction seminars. And outfits that saw a rebound in 2010 are hiring coaches to help executives with time management and delegation. “They’re calling us because management can’t handle the growth,” says Kate Wendleton, CEO of outplacement and coaching firm the Five O’Clock Club.

Another popular tactic: newfangled recognition programs that reward employees for taking on extra work. This isn’t your father’s employee-of-the-month award. Major companies are turning to software “wizards” that dole out laurels on preset schedules, says Adrian Gostick, a coauthor of The Carrot Principle and a former VP at employee-recognition consultancy O.C. Tanner. “Managers are busy and don’t have time to figure out whether what an employee did is worth an e-mail of thanks or a $200 award,” he adds. And the reward is often a token bonus. One credit union asked its tellers to organize a customer-appreciation day with a Greek theme, tasking them with arranging food and decorations, and persuading fellow employees to dress up as gladiators and goddesses. The tellers’ reward: a thank-you card and a gift worth $25.

Other organizations rely on the human touch. At Ohio Presbyterian Retirement Services, a retirement housing and health care provider, Chief HR Officer Dana Ullom-Vucelich says the company increased its recognition budget to record levels for its 3,100 employees. She still relies on traditional tactics such as flying employees to speaking engagements. But she’ll also call the employee’s family to express appreciation ringing an executive’s wife, for example, to talk about how his contribution makes a difference. As for herself, she recently agreed to do double duty as the company’s head compliance officer. Her reward? The CEO offered his warm thanks at a board meeting. And, she says, “I took myself out to lunch.”

Of course, the ultimate responsibility for workload management falls to the employee. Experts say that in many cases, employers have no idea how many tasks they’ve loaded on one person, so workers have to “manage up.” Chris Perry, a New Jersey based brand manager responsible for a $65 million product line, says that despite “tons of conflicting priorities,” he’s thriving and enjoying a promotion, thanks to his careful efforts to set limits. In order to spend evenings with his wife, he starts his workday early and often sends a few casual morning e-mails to make sure the effort gets noticed. When he’s overwhelmed with projects, he asks the top brass to clarify their priorities. Perry admits he’s often tempted to work late when he sees his coworkers chained to their desks through the dinner hour. “It’s hard to play that game of impression versus reality,” he says. But so far, Perry has been able to impose his own rules: Everyone at the office knows he doesn’t check work e-mail after hours.

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN
Hiring by the nation’s small employers is accelerating, a sign that the stubbornly slow overall job recovery may be poised to gain momentum.

So far this year, small businesses have added roughly twice as many workers a month as they did in most of 2010, recent data show. Experts say small employers are cautiously ramping up as they gain confidence that business conditions and loan activity will hold steady or improve.

Jeff Platt of Sky Zone, a trampoline franchise company whose franchise deals rose sharply in the 1st quarter.
.Financial, technology and other service providers have been doing the most hiring, mainly in areas such as sales and engineering, while employment in construction remains weak.

So far this year, companies with fewer than 500 employees have added an average of 188,000 jobs a month, according to payroll-company Automatic Data Processing Inc. Last year, they added an average of just 68,500 jobs a month.

Those numbers still aren’t what economists consider healthy, but they’re an improvement, and they’re significant because companies with fewer than 500 workers employ about half of all private-sector employees in the U.S., according to the Small Business Administration.

“Small and young firms are the engine for job growth that we need,” says Stephen Bronars, a senior economist for Welch Consulting, a labor advisory firm in Washington, D.C. They’re “where the bulk of job creation is going to occur.”

Small Business News and Analysis on WSJ.com
.Large companies, which typically lag behind small firms when it comes to hiring, have also been hiring more. According to ADP— which derives its measure of employment from an anonymous subset of 500,000 U.S. business clients—businesses with 500 or more employees have added an average of 11,300 jobs a month so far this year, after shedding an average of 3,400 jobs a month in 2010.

A number of factors may be contributing to small businesses’ rosier outlook, including improvements in consumer spending, stock-market valuations and IPO activity, economists say.

A slight loosening of the credit markets may be another motivator. The Small Business Administration approved $9.1 billion in small-business loans between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31—the most the agency has ever backed over a three-month period—due to loan enhancements provided by the Small Business Jobs Act.

In the first quarter, Sky Zone LLC, an indoor-trampoline franchise company, signed 25 franchise agreements, up from three a year earlier. The new franchises secured 15 loans for a total of about $12 million and will each hire up to four full-time and 40 part-time employees.

“Being able to acquire financing is now a more real possibility than it was a year or two years ago,” says Jeff Platt, founder and chief executive of Sky Zone, a four-person St. Louis, Mo., business that plans to double its headcount this year.

Akraya Inc., a technology staffing firm in Sunnyvale, Calif., since 2001, is also growing. “Things have changed significantly over the last five or six months,” says Amar Panchal, co-founder and CEO. So far this year, Akraya has added eight new employees in areas such as recruiting, marketing, sales and operations, expanding the firm’s total headcount to roughly 250. Mr. Panchal says he’s now looking to hire 10 more employees. By contrast, Akraya hired just one person in 2010.

“We were not confident about the outlook for the next year or so,” Mr. Panchal says. “Many clients had hiring freezes and budgets that were frozen.”

To be sure, many small businesses remain reluctant to hire. About half of companies with fewer than 100 employees say they have no hiring plans over the next six months, according to an American Express survey conducted in February and March with 728 respondents. Of the 35% of respondents that do plan to hire, about a third say they will add only one or two.

Some surveys suggest some small-business owners still lack confidence. The National Federation of Independent Business’s small-business optimism index fell 2.6 points to 91.9 in March.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty,” says Raymond Keating, chief economist for the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, a nonprofit advocacy group in Oakton, Va. “But,” he adds, “things are clearly better.”

By Julie Steinberg

The workplace seems to be getting safer for women when it comes to sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment charges across 20 different industries decreased to 11,717 in 2010 from 15,475 in 2001, according to data provided by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. body that oversees discrimination laws. While the decline in sexual harassment charges could point to tougher policies in the workplace that obviate the need for federal involvement, experts say that the situation may be more complicated. Women could just be more reluctant to come forward for fear of retaliation from their employers.

Pockets of Progress

The finance, insurance and real estate industries in particular saw a significant decrease in sexual harassment charges during the last decade: 266 were filed in 2010, down from 641 in 2001. Charges filed in engineering, which includes civil engineering construction, engineering services and research and development in the physical and life sciences, decreased to 48 in 2010 from 55 in 2001.

Elizabeth Grossman, a regional attorney at the New York District Office of the EEOC, said many Wall Street firms are now conducting thorough investigations into internal claims within their HR departments.

Over the past decade, Grossman said, many firms have implemented tough sexual harassment policies: Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, for example, all claim zero tolerance for sexual harassment. All three companies said they’ve had policies in place “for many years” — none would specify how many — designed to address sexual harassment and discrimination claims.

While it’s not required for employees to file a complaint with their company before reaching out to the EEOC, the agency recommends that they do so.

“[The decline in charges] may be due to the fact that a company has a strong HR department, everything gets corrected as soon as it’s reported, and there’s no reason to file an EEOC charge,” Grossman said.

“Over the years, we have continued to refine and enhance our compliance programs — including providing multiple avenues for employees to report concerns or complaints — and are committed to maintaining a workplace where people of diverse backgrounds can flourish,” a spokesperson for CB Richard Ellis, a real estate services company, said. “Because of this effort, we are seeing fewer filed cases as employees raise potential issues earlier through internal channels.”

Wake-Up Call

The finance industry has also witnessed some high-profile harassment suits over the past decade, such as those filed against Morgan Stanley and CB Richard Ellis in 2007.

“When that happens, that’s often a wake-up call within the whole industry to get their act together,” said Peggy Stockdale, a professor of applied psychology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and an editor of “Sex Discrimination in the Workplace: Multidisciplinary Perspectives.” “More policies are put into place and there’s more leadership training, which could help bring the numbers down.”

Amy Siskind, a former department head of distressed debt trading at Morgan Stanley, believes that the issue of sexual harassment has been in accurately portrayed as an industry problem. The real culprits are individual managers, not the firms themselves, she said.

“The industry itself is not flawed,” said Siskind, who co-founded The New Agenda, an organization dedicated to advancing women into leadership roles. “It really comes down who the managers are in a particular division. Some are gender-blind and some are gender-biased.”

The Bad News

Although the number of sexual harassment charges has gone down and Wall Street has grown more accommodating of women over time, (see William D. Cohan’s account of gender issues at Lazard in “The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.”), a locker-room mentality may still pervade.

One analyst at a bulge-bracket bank who did not want to be named said senior executives from private equity firms with which she dealt would consistently stare at her chest or call her “sweetheart.” In one off-putting moment, a vice president from her bank hovered over her and told her she smelled “so good,” to which she replied: “Thanks, you should get this shampoo for your wife.”

In traditionally male-dominated workplaces, “you often still see the remnants of the former culture,” said Grossman.

The low harassment numbers could be a reflection of women’s desire to stay quiet. Reporting allegations of sexual harassment entails a career risk many women may not want to take, according to employment lawyers, particularly in an economy that’s still unstable and seeing layoffs. The EEOC numbers may not accurately reflect actual incidences.

“These are certainly not the numbers of people being harassed,” Stockdale said. “These are people who have gone all the way to file a complaint with the EEOC. It’s the tip of the iceberg.”

Women who file a complaint take on the risk of losing their job, receiving a demotion, being passed over for plum assignments, and other such retaliation from their employers.

“Women are terrified to come forward because they feel vulnerable with regard to their job security,” said Allegra Fishel, an attorney at Outten Golden, a New York-based employment law firm. “When a woman comes forward and complains about sexual harassment, she loses traction in the short run, for sure, and maybe in the long run for their career success.”

Retaliation Claims Rise

Employees can file a retaliation claim with the EEOC and ultimately a lawsuit against the company if they believe they are the target of retaliation by the company for having filed a discrimination complaint.

In 2010, for the first time in the EEOC’s history, retaliation was the most frequently filed charge (36,258 claims). Retaliation rates in engineering rose to 195 charges filed in 2010 from 107 filed in 2001. Similarly, the number of charges in marketing, which includes marketing research, public polling and telemarketing, increased from 5 in 2001 to 55 in 2010. Finance, on the other hand, has been on a downward slope to 1,266 retaliation charges filed in 2010 from 1,662 charges filed in 2001.

An increase in retaliation claims could be tied to a Supreme Court case from 2006. In Burlington Northern v. White, the Supreme Court expanded the scope of what constituted a retaliation claim, concluding that “the employer’s actions must be harmful to the point that they could well dissuade a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.”

“The Supreme Court ruling has made employees more confident about filing a charge,” said Adam Klein, a partner at Outten Golden and the co-lead plaintiffs’ counsel in the gender discrimination lawsuit against Goldman Sachs. “In a bad market, employers are less willing to tolerate [discrimination] complaints, leading to more retaliatory actions, and employees are fighting back.”

Cycles of Concern

Even for those who are pleased that companies have made strides on this issue over the past decade, they’re not ready to relax just yet.

Public interest in sexual harassment issues tends to go in waves, peaking when cases like Anita Hill’s make the front page and then receding shortly after, only to rise again when a new lawsuit comes along. (Hill was an attorney-advisor who in 1991 claimed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had made unwelcome sexual statements to her).

“People have cycles of concern,” Stockdale of Southern Illinois University Carbondale said, referring to the above phenomenon. “A downward trend does not mean that sexual harassment will go down to zero. I would hope that training and attention and good leadership practices do have a benefit, but they have to be maintained. It can’t be a one-shot-in-the-arm type of approach.”

By KRISTEN MCNAMARA
After three rounds of interviews for a sales position with Prudential Insurance Co. of America, Patricia Rosa received a letter in February saying her job application was denied based on information from a background check she authorized the company to conduct. The only blemish on her record, she says: Poor credit that built up since she lost her job two years ago.

Unemployed and in debt, Ms. Rosa is among a growing number of job hunters who find their financial past interfering with their professional futures.

Concerned about rising rates of employee theft and fiduciary issues, more employers are conducting credit background checks on applicants for some positions. Companies say the financial information can offer insight into a candidate’s level of responsibility. But people whose previously solid credit has been damaged by the economic downturn say they are victims of circumstances beyond their control.

Ms. Rosa believes her credit woes lost her the opportunity at Prudential. A company spokeswoman said Prudential doesn’t comment on specific job applicants but that each candidate authorizes the company to conduct a background check, which may or may not include a credit check.

A 49-year-old single mother of three, Ms. Rosa fell behind on her mortgage and other bills a handful of months after losing her job as a New York City office manager for a mortgage company in early 2008. “My house is in foreclosure,” the Nyack, N.Y., resident says. Ms. Rosa is now searching for positions outside financial services, believing other industries will be more tolerant of her debt.

The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act gives employers the right to conduct background checks on current and potential employees through third-party companies, with the individual’s approval. Some 47% of employers say they check the credit history of applicants for certain positions, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management of more than 430 organizations in late 2009. That’s up from 42% of employers in 2006. Just 25% of employers in 1998 said they regularly or sometimes checked applicants’ credit histories.

Companies typically look back over a period of years for patterns in applicants’ behavior, says Mike Aitken, the professional group’s director of government affairs. “It’s a longer-term snapshot to see if that’s indicative of fiscal responsibility,” he says.

The vast majority of employers who conduct credit background checks do so for jobs with fiduciary or financial responsibility, such as accounting, budgeting or those involving cash or sensitive credit-card information. Nearly half the respondents also consider the credit of candidates for senior executive positions.

Lawsuits or other judgments outstanding, or multiple accounts in debt collection, were the types of credit information most likely to keep an organization from extending a job offer, according to the survey.

Legend Financial Advisors Inc., which has about 20 full-time employees, conducts a background check that includes credit for all new job finalists, says Diane Pearson, a financial adviser at the firm.

The Pittsburgh wealth-management firm had its first encounter with a candidate’s poor credit last year, she says. A college student applying for a summer internship had a history of unpaid bills and bounced checks. The firm decided to bypass the candidate. If he had been a candidate for a full-time position, “we may have spent more time and energy” examining the circumstances, Ms. Pearson says.

Knowing what is on your credit report and offering an explanation for debt caused by a specific event could keep negative information from derailing your employment chances.

First, be sure you understand what employers can see on a credit check and make sure you understand your report so you can explain any problem areas. Employers receive a credit report, not credit score, from consumer reporting companies. A report includes debt, bill-paying history, number and types of accounts, how long you’ve had them, and whether you’ve been sued or have filed for bankruptcy, among other factors. Information can go back seven years—or 10 for bankruptcies. Credit scores, on the other hand, are used by lenders to help determine if you are financially worthy of a loan.

Certain factors that could hurt your credit score, such as a recently reduced credit-card limit, would be unlikely to hurt your job prospects. Employers focus on issues like collections and defaults, says John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education for Credit.com Inc.

You might be tempted not to sign a waiver allowing for a potential employer to conduct a background and credit check. But refusing is likely a deal breaker, career counselors say. Employers will assume you are hiding a serious problem, and in today’s job market, they won’t have trouble finding a more forthcoming candidate. Most employers don’t seek permission for a background check until they’ve narrowed down the pool of candidates to a group of finalists, or have made an offer contingent on such a check, the SHRM data show.

“You really need to explain your circumstances,” says Tammy Kabell, of Career Resume Consulting, based outside Kansas City, Mo.

Sandy Gross, founder of Pinetum Partners, an executive search firm in Greenwich, Conn., focused on financial services, also suggests explaining the circumstances surrounding the negative information that will turn up and the steps you took to address the situation before employers run a check. “No one likes a surprise,” Ms. Gross says.

Critics of the credit checks say they create a vicious cycle that prevents those who most need jobs from getting them. Lawmakers are pushing for change. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D., Tenn.) has proposed a bill to prohibit the use of credit checks during the hiring or firing process, with certain exceptions. And some states have passed or proposed laws to restrict employers’ use of credit checks.

Consumers can request one free credit report each year from each of the three nationwide credit-reporting companies—Equifax, Experian and TransUnion—through AnnualCreditReport.com. You are also entitled to a free report in certain situations, including if you are unemployed and plan to look for a job within 60 days, or if a company says it didn’t hire you because of your credit history.

If you find mistakes, alert the credit-reporting bureaus and creditors in writing. The process takes time, so review your history at least a month or two before you expect employers, or lenders, to request it, says Experian vice president, Michele Bodda.

by Catey Hill

Offices have always had their share of health hazards — sniffling coworkers, stress-inducing bosses, or that Petri dish of a shared refrigerator. But just in time for spring flu season, new data shows workplaces are making us sicker than ever and hurting everyone’s bottom line.

In fact, if you’re reading this at work, there’s a good chance you’re mere feet away from someone who might be contagious. A growing number of employees say they are feeling unhealthy and stressed out. Just 28% of employees say their health is excellent, according to a study by the Families and Work Institute , down from 34% six years ago. And 68% of workers reported a high level of job-related stress in 2010 , compared to 65% in 2009 — which studies have shown can make you both physically and emotionally ill. And are ailing workers staying home? Less than ever. Nearly three out of four employees say they go to work when they’re ill. “The office environment can make you really sick,” says Chuck Gerba, a professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona.

Of course, there are lots of components of physical health – stress and communicable co-workers are only part of the equation. But experts say the wellness of the work environment has become more important since the recession, because employees are working longer hours and shouldering more work. Spending more hours at work can put you at “greater exposure” to workplace germs that spread colds, flu and more, says Gerba. It also adds to stress, bad backs, carpal tunnel syndrome and more. In fact, a study from the University of Massachusetts Medical School found that employees who increase their hours at work are 61% more likely to be injured on the job than those who don’t.

Meanwhile, the costs of staying healthy – or getting better – are rising. Workers paid 12% more for their employer-sponsored coverage in 2010 compared to a year earlier, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Co-payments for prescriptions and office visits jumped 10%. And at the same time, many companies are cutting back on health benefits that help workers deal with the stress and extra hours. In 2006, 20% of companies covered alternative treatments like massage, acupuncture and chiropractic services and half offered flexible spending accounts designed to offset the costs of health care premiums; in 2010, only 14% and 43%, respectively, did.

The good news, perhaps, is that millions of people go to work each day and don’t get sick at all. The most common workplace health risks can be mitigated with a little care and some good habits. Below are the three biggest – and most expensive – health hazards of the office, and how to avoid them.

Germs everywhere
Of course, it’s nearly impossible to determine where exactly you caught a bug, but experts say office germs are often to blame. More than half of employees say they have gotten sick from an ailing coworker in the past year, a 2011 CareerBuilder.com survey found — and that’s just the tip of the office-germ iceberg. The typical workers’ desk – especially her phone, keyboard and mouse — has 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat, according to Gerba’s research. The office kitchen? It’s “like an unregulated restaurant,” says Gerba. Half of office coffee cups have fecal bacteria in them, and nearly one in five office fridges is cleaned out only once or twice per year, according to a study by the ADA and ConAgra Foods.

What it costs: For a relatively minor cold or flu, expect to pay about $100 or so per year for over-the-counter medications, tissues and related items. For something more severe, like hepatitis A (blame those coffee cups!) or a staph infection, costs could range from $100 for an immunoglobulin injection to as much as $1,000 per day for an inpatient hospital stay, says hepatologist Stacey Weiland. (The average cost to treat acute hepatitis adds up to about $2,500, she says.)

Fight back: Besides being too grossed out to go into work, Gerba says that one of the best ways to prevent illness is to clean your desk, phone and any other surfaces you touch each day with disinfecting wipes, as well as by making sure you wash your hands throughout the day.

Cramped workstations
A typical professional participates in a daily triathlon of chair-sitting, keyboard-typing, and computer staring for hours at a stretch, and all of those activities pose physical risks. Musculoskeletal disorders like carpel tunnel syndrome and back pain contributed to one-third of workers’ compensation claims, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s “Ergonomics: The Study of Work” report. While it’s rare that office conditions directly cause back pain severe enough to require surgery (it’s more likely office conditions exacerbated a previous injury), they do cause most cases of carpal tunnel syndrome, says Bryce G. Rutter, founder and CEO of Metaphase Design Group, an ergonomics and design firm. About 3% of women and 2% of men will be diagnosed with this disorder in their lifetime, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center.

What it costs: The vast majority of employees will be able to treat workplace physical ailments with a few aspirin, some ergonomic tweaks to the office space or the occasional massage – in total, less than $500 a year. But severe back pain and carpal tunnel syndrome may set you back thousands. Lower back surgery, for example, costs between $75,000 to $100,000. That’s not counting physical therapy, which could cost $20,000 or more, says Fernando Branco, the medical director of Rosomoff Comprehensive Pain Center at Miami Jewish Health Systems. Carpal tunnel surgery costs between about $10,000 and $20,000 in most cases, including relatively minor physical therapy and medication, he says. Most insurance companies will assume most of the cost for these procedures, though you can still expect these conditions to cost you hundreds, if not thousands, in out-of-pocket costs.

Fight back: Sitting at your desk properly can help prevent these injuries. Make sure that the height of your keyboard is such that your upper arm and forearm are curved at a roughly 90 degree angle, and that the height of your chair is high enough so your chest and upper thighs are also at a 90 degree angle, says Rutter.

Stress
Employees are reporting higher levels of stress than ever before, studies show, and “stressed workers are more likely to become ill, become ill more frequently, and call in sick more often,” says Manhattan psychologist Joseph Cilona. The toll of that stress is steep: health expenditures are 50% greater for workers who report high levels of stress, according to a study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Most commonly, stressed workers report colds, flu, sore throats, coughs and upper respiratory infections, plus higher-than-average incidences of anxiety, irritability and depression, he says. More severely, there’s also a 50% increased risk of heart disease and stroke for workers who are regularly stressed out, according to studies in the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health, the journal Stroke, and more .

What it costs: For most, stress-related health costs are likely to be less than $500 per year for over-the-counter medications and the occasional yoga or meditation class for anxiety. But if those high levels of stress lead to depression, heart disease or stroke, be prepared to open your wallet. The costs of treating depression could run up to $1,000 per month or more, considering the costs of therapy and possible medication, says Cilona. And insurance companies often limit the number of mental health visits they’ll pay for, he adds. The costs of major physical issues associated with stress are far higher: the cost of heart surgery is $62,500 in hospital charges alone, and a mild stroke with no complications can cost $25,000 for the ambulance, emergency room, a couple nights in the hospital with some tests, plus hundreds of dollars a month for medications. Insurance usually covers a significant amount of these costs, but you can still face thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs, depending on your coverage.

Fight back: Try yoga and meditation, which, if practiced regularly, can reduce levels of workplace stress by 10% or more, according to research from Ohio State University . Stressed workers should also consider talking to colleagues who are in similar situations, as social support is an effective coping mechanism, says John M. Grohol, founder and CEO of PyschCentral.com. He also recommends other stress-busting habits like getting enough sleep, avoiding alcohol and improving time-management skills.