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On the mind

By Times Wires
Published February 29, 2008

Biz tidbits from surveys

Snow brings colleagues close

Winter's storms are conspiring to keep the employees of America from getting to work - but could help them warm up to one another, a new survey reports. Harris Interactive Inc. conducted the online survey on behalf of Kronos Inc. between Jan. 14-16 among 2,810 U.S. adults:

- 61 percent of full-time employees said their commutes were longer because of the weather in the past three months.

- 23 percent were late.

- 6 percent couldn't even get to their jobs.

Miserable weather can inspire camaraderie in the workplace, said Joyce Maroney, managing director of Kronos' Workforce Institute. "It's a shared experience. Everyone can relate to the relative difficulty of getting to work in a storm. People like to share their war stories."

Verify workers, Americans say

Americans overwhelmingly support a mandatory employment verification system, shows a national poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Public Opinion Strategies. The survey conducted on behalf of the Society for Human Resource Management was based on telephone interviews with 1,045 adults, done Jan. 10-16:

- In roughly equal proportions, Americans view securing the border (34 percent) and preventing the hiring of illegal immigrants (32 percent) as top methods for stopping illegal immigration.

-79 percent favor incorporating the use of a biometric identifier, such as a thumb print, as a method for preventing fraudulent use of identity documents.

- Americans respond strongly to arguments that the federal government's "E-Verify" employment verification system, is vulnerable to identity theft. Nearly three quarters, 73 percent, express "serious" or "very serious" doubts about E-Verify when presented with this argument.

- When informed that E-Verify relies on a goverment database with a 4 percent error rate, which could mean as many as 6-million legal employees could be wrongfully denied employment, 59 percent express serious or very serious doubts about the E-Verify system.

-The poll also found that Americans overwhelmingly support a mandatory national employment verification system, with 85 percent citing it as a somewhat or very important characteristic of a system to make sure that only legal workers get jobs.

[Last modified February 29, 2008, 00:57:38]