You can read the full interview here.

My rough calculations indicate that the New York Times’ recent exposé on Wal Mart’s cover up of corrupt activities in its Mexico division has cost its shareholders over $19 billion in the last few days (which doesn’t even include losses from Wal Mart de Mexico, which trades separately).

Combine that with the $2 billion loss that Goldman Sachs’ shareholders incurred in the immediate aftermath of Greg Smith’s op ed piece on “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs” and the ongoing loss that BP’s shareholders have incurred relative to the industry following the Gulf of Mexico disaster, and the picture seems pretty clear.

Greedy behavior is being severely punished, and by default, good behavior has its just rewards.

The group, the Workforce Educational Organization, is focused on the smart use of scheduling software and other workforce management tools. I’m hopeful the WEO will do good things for both employers and employees. So I’m glad I figured into its origins.

Even that modest phrasing, though, risks giving me too much credit. All I did was connect a couple of people passionate about people management.

The back story: several years ago I wrote a story about sophisticated scheduling applications, including the way companies could take the tools too far. That is, they could try to match staffing levels so closely to customer demand or profitability that they gave workers highly variable schedules and even sent employees home midshift. This causes havoc in personal lives and leads to high turnover and absenteeism—which ultimately bites companies in the bottom line.

One of my major sources was Susan Lambert, a professor at the University of Chicago who has examined the hidden costs of just-in-time scheduling. Another source was Lisa Disselkamp, a business consultant who has specialized in workforce management technology. In the wake of the story, Disselkamp asked me for research about hourly workers in the retail field. I suggested she contact Lambert.

I didn’t realize then that this referral would lead to a lot of promising collaboration. Disselkamp went on to spearhead the formation of the WEO, making Lambert the head of its academic advisory council.

The WEO, as we discuss in our upcoming May cover story for Workforce Management magazine, opened its doors last year and is launching a new professional certification next year. Industry groups and technology credentials are widespread. But unlike some professional groups related to people management, the WEO is making employee concerns central. Lambert is writing parts of the book that will serve as the basis of the organization’s new Workforce Asset Management Professional certification. The WEO also has been in talks with the U.S. Labor Department and plans to reach out to organized labor.

Let me state for the record that I have no financial stake in the WEO, nor do I have any official role in the organization.

But to me, the WEO is a good example of an all-win approach. Workforce management professionals improve their skills and knowledge; companies get more value out of their software; vendors get happier customers; scholars get a chance to affect the real world of work; and workers get schedules that work for them. We need more business and professional organizations with this sort of inclusive vision.

So I’m proud of my little matchmaking contribution to the WEO. May it go on to do big things.

A version of this post originally appeared at Ed’s Work in Progress blog at Workforce.com.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Investor Metrics Working Group has released a proposed voluntary standard for what information publicly-traded companies should release about their human capital.  It is now open for public comment.

Good Company co-author and McBassi & Company CEO Laurie Bassi is chair of the workgroup, and discussed the standard in an article on CFO.com.

Her first post is available here.

It is literally dragging down American’s well-being, according to the latest numbers from research firm Gallup Inc. This is so even despite evidence that both the economy and hiring are picking up. Still, there’s a bright spot for employers amid the gloominess. With so many workers glum on the job, companies have a great opportunity to stand out from the pack with a healthy, happy work climate.

The dispiriting numbers I’m talking about come from the Well-Being Index produced by Gallup and consulting firm Healthways. The index is made up of six component indexes: life evaluation,emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities. The work environment index, in turn, has four items: job satisfaction, ability to use one’s strengths at work, supervisor’s treatment (more like a boss or a partner), and whether the work environment is an open and trusting one.

From Jan. 1 to Feb. 1, the overall Well-Being Index skidded 0.2 to 66.4 out of a possible “ideal wellbeing” score of 100. Work environment was one of four components overall that fell during the month. All of these declines were less than a point. But work environment is the component that has fallen most since the Well-Being Index began in January 2008. It’s dropped 3.9 points to 47.4. That’s roughly four times the decrease of the second-greatest drop, a 1.1 decline in access to basic necessities. The only other component that is lower now than in January 2008 is physical health, which has slipped just 0.2 points.

And work environment is the component with the lowest absolute score. Life evaluation is second-lowest at 49.6, and the rest are at least 63.9 or more.

Is it a surprise that work is bumming out Americans more than any other factor? Not really. Trust is down after years of layoffs and continued worries about the overall economy. Job satisfaction has taken a hit amid the “work-more economy”—the flip side of the job-less recovery in which many workers have been charged with extra duties. And endless restructurings have weakened bonds with ever-busier bosses.

Given that work makes up such a large part of life overall, it’s probably a fair guess that grim, often grueling days at the office are pulling down Gallup scores in other categories such as physical health and life evaluation.

But there’s a silver lining in all of this for employers. When everybody’s happy across the economy, it’s hard to stand out as an attractive, productive employer. But gloomy times are when a glowing culture can get you noticed and give you a boost against the competition. Positive reviews—whether by word-of-mouth, formal awards or online accolades—attract new talent and help retain excellent employees. And an effective, inspiring work climate can fuel strong, sustainable business results.

What are you doing in this dark work climate? Are you paying attention to employees’ job satisfaction and career goals, training managers to be effective, cultivating trust? Are you creating a workplace that’s not a drag, but which boosts workers’ spirits?

A version of this post originally appeared at Ed’s Work in Progress blog at Workforce.com.

Please join us next Tuesday, March 13, 2012, at 2:00 p.m. EST, for a dynamic McBassi webinar featuring authors Laurie Bassi (Good Company and HR Analytics Handbook) and Jim Shaffer (The Leadership Solution), facilitated by Dave Basarab.  You’ll leave with:

• Hard-nosed evidence that good companies outperform their competitors.
• Insights into the convergence of forces giving rise to the new rules for business success.
• Understanding of the 6 systems that underpin Good Company results.
• The strategic framework to integrate Good Company principles and practices into ongoing efforts to improve your company’s performance.
• Ways to sustain the gains rather than create just another “program of the day.”

Click here to register now.

Let me cop to my bias from the get-go. The Warriors, who play in Oakland, are my home team here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ve been rooting for them for a decade or more.

During this stretch they’ve stood out for nothing so much as ineptitude. The team has made the playoffs just once in 18 years. Their talent decisions have been generally awful. They’ve drafted bust after bust. And management has traded away or simply released good player after good player.

The latest, infamous case: Jeremy Lin, who is taking the world by storm as the point guard of the New York Knicks. The Warriors cut him earlier this year in a failed bid to attract a better player at the center position. The franchise has been so troubled that it now has difficulty attracting star talent—two prominent centers declined to sign with the Warriors this summer.

Speaking of the center position, the Warriors stumbled there in choosing to retain and pay their current center, Andris Biedrins, a 7-foot player who has barely been visible on the court much of the past three seasons amid an apparent crisis of confidence.

But despite all these foibles, the team has shown key signs of a turnaround since late 2010. That’s when a new ownership group led by venture capitalist Joe Lacob and film producer Peter Gruber took over. The new owners took a risk in hiring former player and TV analyst Mark Jackson as coach. Jackson is untested as a coach, but has leadership chops as an ex-point guard and as head of a church. Although he doesn’t have a winning record so far, Jackson has shown poise and promise. For example, he avoids criticism of specific players in public while praising their achievements—taking a page from the playbook of successful San Francisco 49ers football coach Jim Harbaugh.

Jackson makes decisions based largely on a 17-year career in the league. But the Warriors as an organization are blending his intuitive approach with the latest in workforce data analytics. Among the new owners is software executive Vivek Ranadive. Ranadive’s company, Tibco Software, makes sense of mounds of data for customers in fields such as insurance, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing. And he’s bring his analytical know-how to the Warriors.

“We have data that tells us what combination of players produces the best results, where you should shoot from and how to defend opponents better,” Ranadive told the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this year. “We can find all kinds of patterns based on the data, and we have very spirited discussions about it all of the time.”

Ranadive is the latest sports industry leader to tap the power of metrics. And he’s got a proven ability to turn basketball thinking on its head. Despite never having touched a basketball until asked to coach his 12-year-old daughter’s team, he led the squad to the National Junior Basketball national championship tournament. He employed a full-court press extensively—a success detailed in a Malcolm Gladwell article on how Davids can beat Goliaths.

To be sure, the Davids on the Warriors have a ways to go to challenge the current Goliaths of the NBA. Teams like the Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics, Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder. But like the Thunder—a team that has blossomed by nurturing a core cadre of young players over time—the Warriors are quietly putting in place the foundations of success.

A key to the team’s success is point guard Stephen Curry. And with Curry, the team recently showed yet another important management quality: restraint. Curry has suffered a series of ankle and foot injuries in the past two years. After his most recent mishap, the Warriors had him rest for all but three seconds over the course of four games. Those four games were crucial to the Warriors chances of making the playoffs this year. Without Curry in the starting lineup, they lost three of the games. But unlike many organizations that are pushing workers to the breaking point these days, the Warriors protected Curry and his foot. The Warriors demonstrated a long-term, rather than a short-term, mindset.

Time will tell if my Golden State Warriors will get back to being a playoff or championship team. But don’t be surprised if it happens. They are showing the workforce ways of a winner.

A version of this post originally appeared at Ed’s Work in Progress blog at Workforce.com.

I’m talking about the way electronics giant Apple and its major supplier Foxconn recently gave into public demands for better treatment of the workers who assemble iPads and iPhones inChina.

Apple said it would invite an outside labor rights group to audit its suppliers, which could lead to problematic factories being publicly identified for the first time. Foxconn, meanwhile, said it would raise salaries for many workers in China 16 to 25 percent, to about $400 a month, before overtime. Foxconn also said it would reduce overtime hours at its factories.

These developments are remarkable. As our writer David Ferris notes in an upcoming Workforce article, “Seemingly overnight, Apple, one of the world’s most secretive computer companies, declared its intention to become one of the most transparent.” Foxconn, meanwhile, is the 800-pound gorilla of electronics manufacturing. It employs roughly 1.2 million Chinese workers, and assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s smartphones, computers and other electronic gadgets.

Raising wages by as much as 25 percent is the kind of change that can move the needle. Don’t be surprised if Apple and other electronics products start costing more as a result.

Could Foxconn’s move simply mean Apple and other companies will shift work to still-lower-wage nations? Maybe. But that could be difficult given the thick web of electronics industry suppliers inChina. What’s more, the same forces that pushed Apple and Foxconn to promise reforms are likely to make a low-road labor strategy difficult anywhere.

Those forces can be summed up as technology-fueled people power. People care more about good behavior from the companies in their lives. They are speaking up about their opinions and experiences. And they have the tools to be loud and effective in an era of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. In the case of Apple and Foxconn, media reports about harsh, dangerous working conditions at factories making Apple products prompted online petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures as well as coordinated, worldwide protests at Apple stores.

Here’s how the New York Times characterized the effect of an empowered public on Foxconn: “Foxconn has conceded that employees and consumers have gained a sway once possessed only by Chinese bureaucrats and executives at the global electronics firms that hire Foxconn to build their products.”

Foxconn and Apple aren’t alone. Other firms in the past decade that have seen less-than-savory labor and supply chain practices challenged online include video-game maker Electronic Arts, Target and McDonald’s—which recently declared a new policy for pork suppliers after a video about the use of “gestation crates” in the industry went viral on YouTube.

Increasingly, businesses will have to work closely with their supplier to make sure they are humane besides cost-effective. Even the world’s most powerful companies are rubbing their eyes and starting to see the light.

A version of this post originally appeared at Ed’s Work in Progress blog at Workforce.com.