Private companies, expecting revenue growth to soar far past that of gross domestic product (GDP), are in a hiring mode not seen since pre-recession days.
While various GDP forecasts for the United States call for 2014 growth of less than 3 percent, the average predicted revenue gain for the next 12 months, among 213 private companies surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers between January and April, was 8.5 percent.
When the U.S. economy emerged from the recession in June 2009, productivity was rising at a fast clip. Companies had spent the downturn cutting jobs and were lean and efficient. Productivity—output per hour worked—jumped 5.5 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier as workers did more with less. But as the recovery has chugged on, productivity growth has stalled, averaging less than 1 percent a year since 2011. Workers were actually less efficient in the first quarter of 2014, producing fewer goods and services per hour than they had during the previous quarter.
Employee engagement in corporate social responsibility activities including environmental initiatives can demonstrably improve job performance, according to research from ESMT European School of Management and Technology.
To drive robust supply chain performance, many companies put one individual in charge, either a chief operations officer (COO) or a chief supply chain officer (CSCO). With the right leadership agenda these positions can make a major impact on performance. In some organizations, however, the appointment of a COO or CSCO may unintentionally lead other senior executives to view the supply chain as "somebody else’s problem."