General Mills Upgrades its Financial Training

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A special Human Capital edition of “CFO” magazine describes how General Mills has upgraded its training for financial professionals since the acquisition of Pillsbury in 2001, and with the full support of CFO James Lawrence, who was hired in 1998. The company’s finance leaders identified the four most important focus areas: new-hire training and orientation, midcareer training, strategic thinking and training on financial reporting regulatory changes. General Mills uses a mix of eLearning and classroom-based training. The curriculum is highly relevant to the work of General Mills attendees, and the teachers – in-house subject matter experts – are given special training themselves, so they are prepared to engage, and not simply lecture the students.

US Savings Rate Negative for Seventh Straight Month

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The Commerce Department determined that Americans spent more than they earned for the seventh straight month in November, 2005, increasing the chance that the US will have a negative savings rate for 2005 as a whole, Kevin Lansing, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, recently told the San Francisco Gate newspaper. If that happens, it would be the first time the US had a negative savings rate since the Great Depression. Although strong consumer spending has boosted the US economy in recent years, many economists say housing prices will, at best, flatten out, breaking the cycle of refinancing that has allowed consumers to borrow and spend.

Maryland Fair Share Bill Impacts Wal-Mart

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Maryland’s legislative branch overrode Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich’s veto to pass a bill that would require companies with more than 10,000 employees in the state to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health benefits, or pay the balance into a state low-income health insurance fund. Four companies – Northrop Grumman, Giant Foods, Johns Hopkins University, and Wal-Mart, have this many employees in Maryland, but only Wal-Mart fails to spend at least 8 percent on healthcare. Burt Flickinger, an independent retail analyst, thinks the Maryland bill could have “massive” implications for the world’s largest retailer. At least 13 other states proposed similar “Pay or Play” bills in the past year, and the measure is still alive in New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington, reports Parija Bhatnagar for CNNMoney.com.

Biz Plan Challenge Winner Declines VC Funding

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As winner of the Carrot Capital Education Foundation Business Plan Challenge, Tom Szaky was in position to get venture capital funding for Terracycle, a start-up business focused on the organic plant fertilizer market. However, as discussions with the firm’s potential VC backers progressed, the two sides clashed over spending priorities, the need for specific cash flow projections and milestones, and composition of the management team. As described in Canada’s “National Post”, despite having only $500 cash on hand at the time, Terracycle ultimately did not go the VC funding route, but instead was able to use the resulting PR to attract a smaller level of angel funding.

Wharton Prof Measures Cost of Employee Absences

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Wharton Professor of health care systems Mark Pauly has led a team that measured the financial consequences of employee absences for individuals in thirty-five different job classifications across twelve different industries. Distilling the learning from 800 different interviews, the team was able to establish “multipliers” of workers wages, that described the financial impact of a day’s absence as a proportion of the worker’s daily wage or salary. The multipliers ranged from below 1.1 for waiters and non-residential construction workers, to greater than 1.5 for motor vehicle salespeople and mechanical engineers. Pauly believes this work gives companies the ability to more accurately measure the payoff that comes from improving the health of their employees.