Industrial relations reform promises to make the workforce more flexible and business better able to react to market conditions. In practice the reforms move this country closer to the UK and US workplace arrangements that have seen wages fall in some sectors.

How to use Search Engine Marketing to provide your business with intelligence on consumer trends- here we introduce you to the tricks of the trade.

Unheard of two years ago, today it’s the one thing your website deserves. SEM is the process of improving search engines ranking through organic listings, purchasing paid listings and using search engines for business intelligence.

“Optimisation” began soon after consumer research found that you don’t "exist" if you don’t appear in the first 20 search results. It can develop to a point where measurement, trend tracking and conversion rates are significant enough to warrant a full time analyst as on-line consumption has risen upward of 20%+ in the last twelve months for most sectors.

The facts on the shift to on-line consumption:
- 2 out of 3 Australians are now on the internet regularly
(National Office of the Information Economy Australia)
- Business Executives use it as their primary source of research
(GartnerG2 36%)
- Virtual all affluent shopper research online before buying
(Neilson Research 90%+)
- Australian’s do over 7 million searches a day on Google alone
Source: our friends at exa.com

Search engines gather a vast amount of data about business and consumer activity every
day. The first stage is to find the phrases that are best representing your product, which then estimates the traffic available and revenue potential. The best two tools are Word Tracker and Google’s Traffic Estimator; from these you can get quite accurate size and traffic estimates.

In practice a consumer electronic provider found there were more searches for Playstation cheats than for the games themselves. Apart from the obvious optimization opportunity it shows how this company can better support post sale purchases and develop relationships.

You can visit Yahoo! Overture and Google Zeitgeist for further insight into the current trends in your market space.

Paralleling this, pay per click campaigns places small text advertisements on search engines and allows you to bid for your position within these results. Pay per click (PPC) advertisements either appear above or to the right of the search results. In some cases you bid for the search results you wish to appear on, with the highest bid receiving the best placement. Whilst high rankings offer the best value performance, pay per click provides a perfect compliment allowing you to target an unlimited number of keywords.

Website content optimization is the final jewel of SEM. Your site must direct a diverse set of visitors to immediately find the compelling information they seek. You know from experience if you cannot find what you are looking for in the first 10 secs/2 clicks, you move on. Therefore your traffic investment gets wasted at the front door. Website analytics, accessibility reviews and user scenario analysis; assists to design an exciting consumer experience. Search engine rankings also improve with frequent updates, more hyperlinks between web pages, and more content.

In the current environment who are the best performers? What is the most popular search phrase for the past few months? “Paris Hilton.” Her name generates around 230,000 searches per day (source: WordTracker,) but it’s too late to conjure up Paris Hilton related offerings, alas there are already 4 million+ web pages containing the phrase “Paris Hilton.”
Next Month: Part 2: SEO Future Applications

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The importance of money as a motivator has been consistently downgraded by most
behavioral scientists. They prefer to point out the value of challenging jobs, goals,
participation in decision making, feedback, cohesive work groups and other non-monetary factors as stimulation to employee motivation. We will argue otherwise here- that money is the
crucial incentive work motivation. As a medium of exchange, it is the vehicle by which employees can buy the numerous need-satisfying things they desire. Further, money also performs the function of a scorecard, by which employees assess the value that the organisation places on their services and by which employees can compare their value to others.

Money’s value as a medium of exchange is obvious. People may not work only for money, but take the money away and how many people would come to work? For most of the workforce, a regular pay cheque is absolutely essential in order to meet their basic physiological needs. As equity theory suggests, money has symbolic value in addition to its exchange value. We use pay as the primary outcome against which we compare our inputs to determine if we are being treated equitably. That an organisation pays one executive $80,000 and another $95,000 means more than the latter’s earning $15,000 a year more. It is a message, from the organisation to both employees of how much it values the contribution of each.

In addition to equity theory, both reinforcement and expectancy theories attest to the value of money as a motivator. In the former, if pay is contingent on performance, it will encourage employees to high levels of effort. Consistent with expectancy theory, money will motivate to the extent that it is seen as being able to satisfy an employee’s personal goals and is perceived as being dependent upon performance criteria.

The best case for money as a motivator is a review of studies done by Edwin Locke. Locke looks at four methods of motivating employee performance: money, goal-setting, participation in decisions, and redesigning jobs to give more challenge and responsibility. He found that the average improvement from money was 30 per cent; goal-setting 16%; participation only 1% and job design 17%. Moreover, every study Locke reviewed that used money as a motivator resulted in some improvement to performance. Such evidence demonstrates that money may not be the only motivator, but it is the most important. The challenge lies in the cost benefit of the added performance and the extra payment that is required to capture this for your business.

The Counterpoint: Money does not motivate most employees today

Money can motivate some people under some conditions. So the issue isn’t really whether or not it does motivate, the question is whether it motivates for consistent high performance. The answer is no.

For money to motivate an employee’s performance, certain conditions must be met. First, money must be important to the employee. Second, it must be perceived by the individual as being a direct reward for performance. Third, the marginal amount of money offered for performance must be perceived by the employee as being significant. Finally, management must have the discretion to reward high performers with more money. Let’s looks at each of these conditions.

Money is not important to all employees. High achievers, for instance, are intrinsically motivated. Money should have little impact on these people. Similarly, money is relevant to those employees with strong lower-level needs; but for most of the work force, their lower order needs are substantially satisfied.

Money would motivate if employees perceived a strong link between performance and rewards in organisations. Unfortunately, pay increases are far more often determined by community pay standards, an index and the current or future performance of the organisation. For money to motivate the average performer, the money must be significant. In practice it is rarely so. For instance a high performance employee currently earning $30,000 a year is given a $200 a month pay rise. Another employee who is an average performer may receive a pay rise of half of that. The net difference in their weekly pay cheques is less than $20. How much motivation is there in knowing that if you work really hard you’re going to end up with $15 a week more? For a large number of people it is not much.