This blows my mind -- six of the top 10 staffing agencies (based on global staffing revenue in U.S.) are foreign-owned. I guess I should be glad, since Von Bergen is a Swiss name, that Adecco, the number one company with annual sales of $29.36 billion in the U.S., has its headquarters in Glattbrugg, Switzerland. Number two, Randstad Holding, with $25.27 billion is based in the Netherlands, as is number four USG People, with $5.92 billion. This is from a list in Workforce Management magazine, one of my favorite "trades." The magazine sourced it from Staffing Industry Analysts, a unit of Crain Communications, which publishes the magazine.

Among the top 20, seven are based in the U.S. They are Manpower Inc. in Milwaukee, number three at $21.17 billion; Allegis Group, number five at $5.74 billion in Hanover, Maryland; the famous Kelly Services Inc. of Troy, Michigan, number six at $5.52 billion and California's Robert Half International ranked ninth at $4.03 billion. Numbers 13 and 15 are from Florida, MPS Group in Jacksonville at $2.22 billion and Spherion Corp. in Fort Lauderdale at $2.19. Volt Information Sciences, Westbury, N.Y., is number 17 at $2.04 billion.

Four groups are based in Tokyo, three in France and three in England. Philadelphia's CDI Corp., which had an abysmal quarter, owns a British staffing company that is under investigation. As I've written before, a pick-up in hiring through staffing companies will herald a change in the economy.  

What about this scenario? A company hires an excellent tech worker who does a great job, but then decides, for whatever reason, to go off the drugs that keep his bipolar tendencies in check. Weirdness at work ensues and the excellent worker isn't able to do his job in the same way. Now what? Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, if a person's disability was "mitigated," by some means, say drugs, then the person wouldn't be considered disabled and wouldn't qualify for accommodations and wouldn't be able to sue for discrimination. New amendments to the bill now broaden the definition of disabled and change how this idea of "mitigation" should be applied.

What's happening now is that commissioners from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are traveling around the country to listen to various concerns about proposed regulations that will govern how the amendments are applied. In Friday, they were joined in Philadelphia by some officials from the U.S. Department of Justice. Among the speakers was management lawyer Sarah Bouchard, an attorney from Morgan Lewis, a Philadelphia law firm.

What happens, she asks, if the employee "refuses to take the appropriately-prescribed medication?" Or what if the employee says he can't afford the medication?

"This is a real concern for employers," she said, speaking about conditions such as bipolar disorder or ADHD. "Pre-amendment, a lot of these wouldn't have been disabilities.".

"We believe the regulation should make clear that an individual is no longer qualified for that position if he refuses to take a reasonable accommodation."

I have to tell you that I'm grateful to this blog, because I never have enough room in my articles to write much of what I report. 

Tomorrow the jobs numbers come out and we'll see, unfortunately, how little the economy has moved. Personally, I don't care what the stock market does. Jobs matter. Period. And not just any jobs. They've got to pay enough for people to live, not scrimp. Double period.       

About midway through the morning last Friday, Stuart Ishimaru, the acting chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, took a break from listening to testimony about changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act to talk about changes at the EEOC. Some critics of the ADA amendments say that there will be a flood of new complaints coming into the agency, but Ishimaru says he isn't worried.

"I don't buy the flood of litigation argument," he said. "We're trying to get bigger cases brought and better cases brought, cases that deal with systemic issues. How do you get as much bang for your buck as possible?"

Does that mean that the individual complaint doesn't have a chance? Ishimaru says the EEOC can't limit individual cases, because, "as an enforcement agency, I send the message that discrimination is illegal." 

But, he said, "you can just get buried with individual cases. We will never be able to handle all the individual cases, so we have to find a balance as an enforcement agency."

Before he headed back to the panel, he made another interesting point: These amendments, signed into law by President Bush, make it easier for the disabled to bring discrimination cases because they broaden the definition of disabled.  Now it's a matter of writing the regs to give everyone guidance on how the amendments will be applied, which was the point of last Friday's "listening" town hall meeting -- to give folks a chance to opine.

President Obama, Ishimaru said, totally supports the wider definition for "disabled." But for most of President Bush's time, the emphasis had been different -- more oriented on moving cases through the system, Ishimaru said. That left Ishimaru, a longtime commissioner, in the minority during that period of time. "I raised a lot of questions."

Now the emphasis is different, but managing the change within the agency is a challenge, Ishimaru said. "It is easier to be critic," he admitted. "And it also hard to turn the ship. You have to let people know there are new priorities and that it's a slow change."

Last Friday, I spent part of the day listening to testimony from a number of witnesses about changes to the Americans With Disabilities Act -- the law enforced by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice that is supposed to prevent discrimination against the disabled at the workplace. The session was one of four "listening" town-hall meetings across the nation.  

One of the speakers was Donald Ellison, an advocate for the disabled, who traveled all the way from Michigan to testify before the panel, which included EEOC acting chairman Stuart J. Ishimaru. Ellison, who has cerebral palsy along with all sorts of other medical issues, urged the panel to remember that accommodation for the disabled shouldn't just start inside the office door.

He pointed out that many disabled people can't drive and have to rely on public transportation. Buses can be late, or full, or not equipped with the proper lifts to handle disabled passengers. Schedules may be infrequent and may not completely jibe with company start times. Obviously, employers shouldn't have to experience an "undue hardship," but, he said, they need to explicitly understand that flexibility over start and end times may be an important and necessary accommodation for someone who would otherwise perform excellently on the job.

"Transportation is one of the biggest barriers to employment," Ellison said.

More on this topic tomorrow...

Bosses bully most when they feel inadequate. If there ever was a reason to kiss-up the boss, this has to be it. Common sense, of course, but two California college profs have confirmed it in a study. When bosses feel they are not up to the job (the key is how they feel -- even if they are actually doing a good job, it doesn't matter) they tend to be harsher with those around them. 

In role-play situations, participants who felt their egos were being challenged would sabotage an underling's chance of winning money. In another situation, those who felt inadequate would use a loud obnoxious horn to reprimand underlings for mistakes. The more secure would choose a more quiet sound, or even silence.

On the other hand, participants who scored high on a leadership test or who recalled a time that made them feel good about themselves were not harsh with their underlings. In all cases, the participants were asked to rate their own competency, allowing them to report on their self-image. 

"Incompetence alone doesn't lead to aggression," co-author Serena Chen, associate professor of psychology at University of California at Berkeley, said a news release about the study. "It's the combination of having a high-power role and fearing that one is not up to the task that causes power holders to lash out. And our data suggest it's ultimately about self-worth."

Our takeaway: The more secure you can make your boss feel, the better it'll be for you. But you knew that.    

The study, also conducted by Nathanael Fast, assistant professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California, is published in the November issue of Psychological Science.

Except for the fact that I love Philadelphia and I want any of our teams to win, I don't care that much about baseball (Go Phillies!!!!!!). But I love any story about management and sports because the lessons apply to any endeavor. So, I'd like to recommend "Money Ball," a baseball book by Michael Lewis. 

Here's how pathetic I am. Even though I read and loved this book, I can never remember the name of the team (it's the Oakland Athletics, way formerly, the Philadelphia Athletics). Anyway, they had a low hiring budget, so their manager, Billy Beane, trusted some number-crunchers who developed a theory about what type of players would create the best success of the team. Success was defined as ability to win games.

The stat the crunchers settled on was not the usual batting average, or runs-batted-in. They looked at on-base percentage (whatever that is) and slugging percentage (another mystery term). The players with high stats in those elements hadn't moved to the top of the draft lists and so were cheaper. The debate was over whether these stats were more predictive of success or  whether the "gut" feeling of scouts had more validity.

Even though I didn't recognize the name of one player and didn't have a clue who Billy Beane is or was, I loved this book, because it raises the question of the value of measurement. 

It seems so easy, in a way. But it is really tricky to come up with a definition of success. (Read a similar discussion in the business book classic "Good to Great.") And then, it is even harder to find the measurement that will match that definition. Because baseball is such a statistics-rich sport with a relative narrow range of goals, Billy Beane's job was fairly easy, although he had to have tremendous courage to overcome immense pressure from his scouts and other baseball old timers.

In the end, .... well, you'll just have to read the book. Meanwhile, go Phillies! Even I know enough to hate the Yankees.        

How does one predict whether a job candidate, or a student, will be successful? That's another topic that Linda Hahn, executive director of the Metropolitan Career Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit workforce development organization, discussed with me at lunch on Monday. The MCC offers short-term job readiness programs and longer-term vocational training in information technology. 

Linda said that MCC spends its money upfront on students, marketing to attract them, providing them with counseling and hiring the appropriate faculty. But it gets paid, usually from government sources, when the students complete the classes. So every student who drops out is a financial drain on the program (and that's not even thinking about the consequences for that student).

It doesn't do anyone any favors, Linda said, to accept people into the program who won't succeed. Yet how do you figure out the likelihood of success without turning your back on a person who just needs a break? Linda, who is just six months into the job, said she is trying to create a series of profiles of successful students, to see what elements lead to their success. Then, perhaps, they can choose students who fit into those prototypes.

I went out to lunch yesterday with Linda Hahn, executive director of the Metropolitan Career Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit workforce development organization. We were talking about barriers to employment, especially for those moving from welfare to work. One of the biggest? Lack of childcare, she said. Often students can't even complete their training because their childcare arrangements fall apart, despite what seem to be valiant efforts. 

Even when women have a reasonably secure situation for day care, it can fall apart easily if a child gets sick and needs to stay home. You need back-up and back-up to the back-up. None of that is easy. Some people always have an "emergency" and it is easy to wonder whether those people are gaming their employers. But I think people go through extraordinary lengths to work, especially when resources are scarce. What should be done?

When companies give "sick" time, they shouldn't be strict about who is sick. How many people have called in "sick," when they are perfectly fine, but are taking care of a youngster? It's upsetting to have to lie in that circumstance. It is upsetting to have a sick child and it is really upsetting to have to choose between your child and your job. Lying breeds cynicism, but cooperation breeds loyalty and a better ability to manage the demands of the workplace with the realities of life.   

The Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board, in collaboration with CVS Caremark, is distributing vouchers to 4,000 of its registered participants for free flu shots this fall.

The vouchers are now available daily from 2-4 p.m. at all five PA CareerLink office locations in Philadelphia until all are distributed. The program covers the seasonal flu shot only and not the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccines. Vouchers can be redeemed with proper identification at a participating CVS/pharmacy and at scheduled flu shot clinics inside select stores.

The program started Thursday, so get in there fast if you want a free voucher. CareerLink will give the vouchers to registered individuals with photo identification. Nationwide, CVS is spending $3 million to vaccinate 100,000 unemployed individuals in 20 areas.