American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE: AEO) is an American clothing and accessories retailer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The American Eagle Outfitters brand targets 15 to 25 year old girls and guys, with 900+ stores in the U.S. and Canada. aerie by American Eagle offers apparel and intimates collections for the AE girl, with 150+ stand-alone stores in the U.S. and Canada , as well as at nine stores across the nation. The 77kids brand offers small sizes and great big style for kids 0-14. AE.COM, the online home of the brands of AEO, Inc. ships to 76 countries worldwide.[3]
It was founded in 1977 by Mark and Jerry Silverman as a subsidiary of Retail Ventures, Inc., a company which also owned and operated Silverman's Menswear. The Silvermans sold their ownership interests in 1991.[4] On March 16, 2010, American Eagle Outfitters opened its first store in the Middle East at Mirdif City Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.[5] Some of the best selling products of American Eagle Outfitters are low-rise jeans, polo shirts, graphic T-shirts (with the AE logo and year established), henleys, boxers and briefs, outerwear, and swimwear.
I want to share with you some recent stats from our friends at ExecuNet regarding employee retention: Percentage of Employed Business Leaders Who Would Accept or Strongly Consider a Better Career Opportunity in the Next 30 Days -- CEO 88%, CXO/VP 87%, -- Director & Manager level executives 89% -- that pretty much everyone that’s the leadership of these companies!
David Russo
Welcome to a Leadership Channel podcast on TotalPicture Radio with Peter Clayton Reporting. David Russo served for 19 years as vice president of human resources for SAS Institute, which won numerous quality-of-work and quality-of-life awards during his tenure. He is currently principal and CEO of Eno River Associates, Inc., a consulting practice which helps executives build high performing organizations by developing win-win relationships with the workforce. Russo has consulted with many global companies, including American Express, Johnson & Johnson, Minitab Inc., American Eagle Outfitters, and the CIA.
His new book, published by the FT Press, is titled: 17 Rules Successful Companies Use to Attract and Keep Top Talent: Why Engaged Employees Are Your Greatest Sustainable Advantage (Amazon Affiliate Link) is about developing outstanding employees and getting them to stay. It’s about building a workforce that’s truly engaged, committed, aligned with strategy, and capable of incredible performance. Simply put, it’s about optimizing the #1 factor associated with outsmarting, outhustling, and outexecuting your competition: your people.
David Russo, SPHR, founded Eno River Associates in 2002 so that he and his team of affiliated professionals could deliver "Best Practices" and "Work Force Strategies" consulting to companies of any size.
A longtime member of The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the world’s leading human resources professional association, David Russo was also a long-serving SHRM board member, and is a past Vice President and Secretary-Treasurer. He also served on the Board of The SHRM Foundation.
David Russo served for 19 years as vice president of human resources for SAS Institute, which won numerous quality-of-work and quality-of-life awards during his tenure. He has since held leadership roles with BuildNet, Empliant and PeopleClick. These efforts have earned Mr. Russo national recognition and awards as an innovator in providing and understanding the benefits of a quality work environment and as a champion of how the human resources function can demonstrate bottom line impact and add business value.
David Russo received SHRM’s 1999 Award for Professional Excellence. This prestigious award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of human resources management and its increased importance in the workplace of today. He also was recently named to HR Executive magazine’s HR Honor roll. Mr. Russo received his master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh and his bachelor’s degree from Duquesne University.
Annalisa Cordova likes how American Eagle Outfitters Inc. combines a worker's vacation time and sick days into one "bank" of paid time off.
"I think it is very fair the way it is," said Cordova, an assistant manager at the American Eagle Outfitters' store at the SouthSide Works in Pittsburgh. Most of the paid time off is scheduled, but the time off is available if they become ill, Cordova said.
American Eagle Outfitters in Marshall, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are among a growing number of employers nationwide that offer workers a benefit plan that combines their vacation time with incidental absence and sick day into one bank of "paid time off," according to a 2004 survey of 536 companies by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, New York.
These paid-time-off plans are offered by 36 percent of employers, up from 29 percent in 2003. Mercer has not published figures for 2005.
American Eagle Outfitters has offered a paid-time-off plan for its 5,000 employees since 2001.
"It fits our employees very, very well, when you think about the time retailers work," said Thomas DiDonato, executive vice president of human resources for American Eagle. "Everyone from the store associate to the CEO has the same PTO framework."
American Eagle's paid-time-off plan is driven by the fact that retailers can't give employees all the paid holidays other workers get -- because retailers stay open on weekends and holidays -- and workers want to choose when they are off, DiDonato said.
"That's the ultimate in flexibility," he said.
Carnegie Mellon converted from a traditional vacation day/sick day plan to the paid-time-off plan about 15 years ago. Workers still have their traditional paid holidays, in addition to the days they earn in the PTO bank, said Barbara Smith, associate vice president for human resources.
"The chief advantage I see is it puts the responsibility and flexibility for managing time off in the hands of the employee," Smith said.
"It really allowed us to say to employees, 'whether you need time off to attend an event for your child, or whether you are ill, or whether you just want to have a special day for yourself ... that time allotment is in your hands to manage.' We expect PTO to be scheduled in advance with the supervisor's approval," and only in an emergency would an employee have to call off work, Smith said.
"PTO is very versatile. If you are a healthy person, you don't need a lot of sick time, so you have a lot of vacation time to take," said Gayle Ritenbaugh, a benefits specialist at Carnegie Mellon.
Employers are offering the plans primarily to give workers more flexibility, said Rosanna Milley, a principal at Mercer's Pittsburgh office. Companies can communicate "in very simple terms" how many days off a worker has, Milley said.
"You have this pool of time to use as needed. Once that is exhausted, that is the end of it," said Milley.
Mercer's survey found that the greatest concentration of the paid-time-off plans is in health care, where 86 percent of all companies offer the plan.
It was founded in 1977 by Mark and Jerry Silverman as a subsidiary of Retail Ventures, Inc., a company which also owned and operated Silverman's Menswear. The Silvermans sold their ownership interests in 1991.[4] On March 16, 2010, American Eagle Outfitters opened its first store in the Middle East at Mirdif City Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.[5] Some of the best selling products of American Eagle Outfitters are low-rise jeans, polo shirts, graphic T-shirts (with the AE logo and year established), henleys, boxers and briefs, outerwear, and swimwear.
I want to share with you some recent stats from our friends at ExecuNet regarding employee retention: Percentage of Employed Business Leaders Who Would Accept or Strongly Consider a Better Career Opportunity in the Next 30 Days -- CEO 88%, CXO/VP 87%, -- Director & Manager level executives 89% -- that pretty much everyone that’s the leadership of these companies!
David Russo
Welcome to a Leadership Channel podcast on TotalPicture Radio with Peter Clayton Reporting. David Russo served for 19 years as vice president of human resources for SAS Institute, which won numerous quality-of-work and quality-of-life awards during his tenure. He is currently principal and CEO of Eno River Associates, Inc., a consulting practice which helps executives build high performing organizations by developing win-win relationships with the workforce. Russo has consulted with many global companies, including American Express, Johnson & Johnson, Minitab Inc., American Eagle Outfitters, and the CIA.
His new book, published by the FT Press, is titled: 17 Rules Successful Companies Use to Attract and Keep Top Talent: Why Engaged Employees Are Your Greatest Sustainable Advantage (Amazon Affiliate Link) is about developing outstanding employees and getting them to stay. It’s about building a workforce that’s truly engaged, committed, aligned with strategy, and capable of incredible performance. Simply put, it’s about optimizing the #1 factor associated with outsmarting, outhustling, and outexecuting your competition: your people.
David Russo, SPHR, founded Eno River Associates in 2002 so that he and his team of affiliated professionals could deliver "Best Practices" and "Work Force Strategies" consulting to companies of any size.
A longtime member of The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the world’s leading human resources professional association, David Russo was also a long-serving SHRM board member, and is a past Vice President and Secretary-Treasurer. He also served on the Board of The SHRM Foundation.
David Russo served for 19 years as vice president of human resources for SAS Institute, which won numerous quality-of-work and quality-of-life awards during his tenure. He has since held leadership roles with BuildNet, Empliant and PeopleClick. These efforts have earned Mr. Russo national recognition and awards as an innovator in providing and understanding the benefits of a quality work environment and as a champion of how the human resources function can demonstrate bottom line impact and add business value.
David Russo received SHRM’s 1999 Award for Professional Excellence. This prestigious award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of human resources management and its increased importance in the workplace of today. He also was recently named to HR Executive magazine’s HR Honor roll. Mr. Russo received his master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh and his bachelor’s degree from Duquesne University.
Annalisa Cordova likes how American Eagle Outfitters Inc. combines a worker's vacation time and sick days into one "bank" of paid time off.
"I think it is very fair the way it is," said Cordova, an assistant manager at the American Eagle Outfitters' store at the SouthSide Works in Pittsburgh. Most of the paid time off is scheduled, but the time off is available if they become ill, Cordova said.
American Eagle Outfitters in Marshall, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are among a growing number of employers nationwide that offer workers a benefit plan that combines their vacation time with incidental absence and sick day into one bank of "paid time off," according to a 2004 survey of 536 companies by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, New York.
These paid-time-off plans are offered by 36 percent of employers, up from 29 percent in 2003. Mercer has not published figures for 2005.
American Eagle Outfitters has offered a paid-time-off plan for its 5,000 employees since 2001.
"It fits our employees very, very well, when you think about the time retailers work," said Thomas DiDonato, executive vice president of human resources for American Eagle. "Everyone from the store associate to the CEO has the same PTO framework."
American Eagle's paid-time-off plan is driven by the fact that retailers can't give employees all the paid holidays other workers get -- because retailers stay open on weekends and holidays -- and workers want to choose when they are off, DiDonato said.
"That's the ultimate in flexibility," he said.
Carnegie Mellon converted from a traditional vacation day/sick day plan to the paid-time-off plan about 15 years ago. Workers still have their traditional paid holidays, in addition to the days they earn in the PTO bank, said Barbara Smith, associate vice president for human resources.
"The chief advantage I see is it puts the responsibility and flexibility for managing time off in the hands of the employee," Smith said.
"It really allowed us to say to employees, 'whether you need time off to attend an event for your child, or whether you are ill, or whether you just want to have a special day for yourself ... that time allotment is in your hands to manage.' We expect PTO to be scheduled in advance with the supervisor's approval," and only in an emergency would an employee have to call off work, Smith said.
"PTO is very versatile. If you are a healthy person, you don't need a lot of sick time, so you have a lot of vacation time to take," said Gayle Ritenbaugh, a benefits specialist at Carnegie Mellon.
Employers are offering the plans primarily to give workers more flexibility, said Rosanna Milley, a principal at Mercer's Pittsburgh office. Companies can communicate "in very simple terms" how many days off a worker has, Milley said.
"You have this pool of time to use as needed. Once that is exhausted, that is the end of it," said Milley.
Mercer's survey found that the greatest concentration of the paid-time-off plans is in health care, where 86 percent of all companies offer the plan.
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