Top 10 Reasons to Visit Bright Horizons at SHRM 2013
Going to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) annual conference in Chicago next week? Bright Horizons will be there in force, with booths for both Bright Horizons (booth # 1236) and College Coach (booth #1235). We would love to see you there, and to provide some further motivation, here are the top 10 reasons to drop by.
1. Make SHRM a Family Affair
Find out how you can take advantage of our child care center that we have set up for show attendees at McCormick Place, Room N136. (OK, I will tell you now – children must be 2 ½ (potty trained) through 12 and the hours are Sunday 8am -6pm, Monday 6:30am – 6pm, and Tuesday 6:30am – 6pm.) With over 800 centers around the world, we consider ourselves the best in the industry at onsite child care – experience it for yourself.
2. Get the Inside Scoop on Business Continuity
You can hear how our Back-Up Care Advantage Program is being used as part of their business continuity strategy by many of our customers. For instance, we can tell you what we did during Hurricane Sandy to help many employees get back to work faster.
3. Be a Winner
You could win an I-Tunes gift card, or a Kindle Fire just for having your badge scanned!
4. Connect With College Insiders
Learn about important changes coming this summer to the Common Application, the most widely used college admission application.
5. Gain Insights On Being a Great Place to Work
Ask us what it is like to work for a company recognized by Fortune as a Great Place to Work for the past 14 years running.
6. Get In the Team Spirit
Cheer on the Boston Bruins with those of us from Boston like me, or the Chicago Blackhawks with our Midwestern folks. (Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals is Monday night. Go B’s.)
7. Maximize the ROI of Your Tuition Assistance Program
Learn about how we can save you 15% or your current tuition reimbursement spending through our EdAssist offering. This could mean hundreds of thousands of real dollar savings, which would easily cover the airfare to Chicago.
8. Catch Up With Changes in College Financial Aid
For you folks applying for financial aid for your child this winter, hear about how the federal government has changed who has to submit their information – especially important for same-sex or unmarried parents.
9. Find Out What We Really Think
Ask us if we were more excited about Hillary Clinton’s keynote address on Sunday, or Kelly Clarkson’s concert planned for Tuesday night.
10. Learn About Bright Spaces…and Perhaps How You Can Help Create One
Hear about how the Bright Horizons Foundation has established 275 Bright Spaces that serve over 11,000 homeless/at risk children each month.
It should be a great show, with over 14,000 scheduled to attend. Make sure you come by to booths 1235 and 1236 and say hello.
Other posts by Patrick Donovan
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Giving with “Mas Heart”
“Taco Bell has a very strong culture. We believe in ‘Mas’ – mas flavor, mas value, mas heart – and we are passionate about serving others,” says Regina Borda, Managing Director for the Taco Bell Foundation for Teens. “Our goal is to do more, give more, live more, and we work hard to try to help others.”
It was this passion that led the Taco Bell Foundation for Teens to turn what was initially a grant of $15,000 to create a Bright Space® at the Project Hope Alliance into a community-changing extreme makeover project for a school for homeless children in Orange County, CA.
“Last year, the Taco Bell Foundation for Teens invited us to apply for a grant to create a Bright Space in Orange County,” explains Kim Thorstenson-Root, Bright Horizons Director of the Children’s Center at Taco Bell. “We chose the Project Hope Alliance, a program that was founded to ensure that transient homeless children living in motels across Orange County could regularly attend school at Skyview Elementary School.”
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Organized Chaos in Higher Education: Part 2 – Competency Based Learning
Last month, I wrote the first in a series of blog entries on the “Changing Landscape of Higher Education,” and how new innovations in the academic world are affecting both the adult learner, and the companies they work for that offer tuition assistance. My colleague Jessica Corlett Kaplan responded to the piece in her own blog post, discussing these higher ed “disrupters” from the university perspective. Both of our blogs took a close look at “Credit by Examination,” and how more and more adults are bypassing traditional classroom settings to obtain college credits by completing challenge exams.
Navigating the Changing Higher Ed Landscape…As An Employer
These exams (which in reality, have been around for years) cost a fraction of what a standard college course would cost and can be transferred into most degree programs for credit, are starting to gain momentum. As a result of innovations such as this, organizations who fund their employees’ education are now starting to ask: What type of education do my employees really need to be successful? Are “traditional” degrees really the best thing for my workforce? How can I, along with my employees, navigate this rapidly changing higher education market?
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Other posts by JayTitus
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About Those Applications in the Mail from Colleges You’ve Never Contacted
The admissions process can be a time-consuming and stressful puzzle. Our goal is to help families put the pieces together as quickly and efficiently as possible while reducing stress and distractions.
College Coach’s admissions experts answer a lot of questions about the college applications arriving daily in your employees’ home mail boxes and in their students’ inboxes. In today’s post, College Coach expert Kimberly Asselta, former senior admissions officer at Babson College and The College of the Holy Cross, provides insider advice about what to do to with all of that mail!
“Congratulations! You’ve been chosen out of a select group of students to apply to XYZ College using our Shining Stars Application!”
Other posts by Shannon Vasconcelos
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Five Steps to Benefits Programs that Work
I get a lot of questions from people strategists about benefits packages. Specifically, they want to know “How can I make my benefits more appealing?”
I tell them they’re asking the wrong question.
Because most of the time, what these people are inquiring about is, “How can I make my existing offerings look prettier?” What they really should be asking is, “How should I change my offerings to make them more useful?”
One is a question about packaging; the other about content.
For those only interested in the former, there’s not much I can offer. Rebranding, at least when it comes to benefits, isn’t a strategy. The same offerings will get you the same results. If you want to change the results, you have to change your strategy.
For those willing to do a deeper dive into the content side of the pool, here are five things to consider:
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The Higher Education Value Proposition
There is so much talk about regarding the rising costs of higher education. I certainly worry about it from a personal perspective given I have three children (one of whom is a junior in high school). I also pay close attention to it because of the value proposition quandary. Given my role at EdAssist, I want to find the best value proposition for our clients.
We probably would not see a lot of talk about this issue if parents, students and employers believed they were getting good value for the cost of a degree. Look at it this way: would you have ever expected to pay over $300 for a smartphone ten years ago? No way, but today, we don’t hesitate to do so. The reason we do is the value those smart phones offer. The same would apply to higher education if the value proposition was there.
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HR Professionals in India: Making a Real Impact
It is an exciting time to be a human resources professional in companies located in India. The involvement of women in the private business sector continues to grow, as does the recognition that women will be an essential element to the productivity of the economy. There are a number of contextual factors that underscore this truth and provide opportunities for the future.
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Letters of Recommendation in College Admissions
Contrary to popular belief, spring is an ideal time to get ahead of the potentially time-consuming and overwhelming college applications process. Although most people consider the fall to be the most important time to focus on their children’s college applications, College Coach’s admissions experts spend a good part of the spring helping our corporate client employees take the right steps at the right time…and so help reduce employee and family stress later on.
In today’s post, College Coach expert Becky Leichtling, former senior admissions officer at Tufts University, discusses the role of recommendation letters in the college process.
Q: What is the role of the recommendation letter in the application process?
When I was an admissions officer at Tufts, I actually called an English teacher in Iowa to thank her for writing such helpful recommendations. She’d written letters for four students, and captured each kid in a way that evocatively highlighted his or her unique engagement in the classroom, such that I could vividly picture how each would contribute to the intellectual community on our campus. All four were admitted. So—why did those letters matter?
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Other posts by Shannon Vasconcelos
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Dialogue Around Disruption: Why is the Higher Ed Landscape Changing and What Are Universities Saying About It
The Increasingly Blurring Lines Between Two Worlds
Sometimes I joke that at EdAssist our role is to be bilingual: to speak both the language of the private sector as well as higher education. For so long, the two worlds were able to be separate. The Academy focused on training the next generation of thinkers by creating a space for 18-22 year olds to observe and analyze society from a distance. Corporate America focused on creating product efficiently and economically so as to beat the competition next door or in the next state.
But as the U.S. becomes interconnected to societies and economies around the world, competition can now come from any corner of the globe. In turn, a new demand of the education community has arisen: to ensure that thinkers can be doers and that doers become better thinkers.
Over the next few weeks, as Jay Titus provides examples of disruptors which are changing the landscape of higher education, I’d like to share some perspective on why this shift is taking place and what those living in the world of higher education, or at the intersections, have to say about it.
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Other posts by Jessica Corlett Kaplan
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What Do “Insiders” Know About College Admissions And Why Should Employers Care?
As parents, we all want the best for our children. For many of us, this means seeing them get into and attend the best college they can without taking on huge amounts of debt. College graduates earn more than $1 million more than those who do not attain a degree. The stakes are high.
Unfortunately, the hurdles are high as well. The college admissions process is a far cry from what it was just a decade ago. College is more difficult to get into and afford than at any time in history.
This increased difficulty creates a very emotional time for the entire family and the added stress drains employee productivity, focus, and overall well-being.
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