Corporate Executive Board's HR Practice Holds 14th Annual Executive Global Meetings Series and Announces Key 2007 Study Findings.

The Corporate Leadership Council and Its Sister Programs, Including the Benefits Roundtable, Compensation Roundtable, Learning & Development Roundtable, and Recruiting Roundtable, Share Key Organization Effectiveness Survey Results

2007 Member Meetings to Reveal Comprehensive Study Results and Facilitate Best Practice Implementation Discussions to Help Executives Immediately Focus on Highest-priority Activities, Displace Cost, and Drive Long-term Value

WASHINGTON & LONDON -- The Corporate Executive Board (NASDAQ: EXBD), a leading provider of best practices research and analysis focused on corporate strategy, operations, and general management issues, today announced key findings to be discussed at its Human Resources Practice Annual Executive Global Meetings Series. The meetings will be held in various cities for members across North America, South America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region through the remainder of the year. Key findings, meeting topics and the next global meeting dates are included below. Additional study findings and meeting dates can be downloaded at https://www.clc.executiveboard.com/Public/AboutThePractice.aspx.

McDonald's Corporation, Executive Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer, Rich Floersch said, "The Corporate Leadership Council's executive retreats are absolutely fantastic--a first-rate meeting. I enjoyed the interaction with other CHROs. I am looking forward to attending future HR Executive Retreats."

Corporate Executive Board HR Practice General Manager Peter Freire said, "We're delighted to bring together again the most senior HR functional leaders to not only provide first-rate peer discussions about the most pressing human resources issues in hand, but also to deliver a clear implementation framework for organizations to proactively address those challenges most effectively without enormous cost. The teams are very excited about sharing this new work, and we look forward to continually expanding our comprehensive strategic decision-support resource centers for HR executives and practitioners around the world."

The HR Practice: 2007 Survey Results and Annual Executive Global Meetings Series

The HR Practice, composed of five main programs, including the Corporate Leadership Council, Benefits Roundtable, Compensation Roundtable, Learning & Development Roundtable and Recruiting Roundtable, provides best practice research, analysis, and decision-support offerings for the Chief Human Resources Officer as well as HR, Recruiting, Benefits, Compensation, and Learning & Development executives and their teams. As part of its broader membership program, the HR Practice hosts an Annual Executive Global Meeting Series where functional leaders can meet to discuss key challenges with their peers and learn how to quickly identify and address the most pressing departmental challenges. The meetings will share 2007 study results and best implementation practices based on an effort that embraces a rigorous proprietary research methodology that leverages qualitative and quantitative analysis and decades of knowledge about the HR function. Key topics to be addressed during the 2007 meeting series are included below.

I. CHRO and HR Annual Executive Global Meeting Series

The Corporate Leadership Council (https://www.clc.executiveboard.com) meeting series, "Building Next-Generation HR-Line Partnerships," will focus on helping HR executives prioritize investments and strategies to rapidly drive human capital outcomes and business results for line managers. The study found that ineffective management of human capital assets impedes the creation of competitive advantage and reduces business growth by up to 9 percent and reduces profitability by up to 11 percent. Additionally, 87 percent of Chief Human Resource Officers reported that they are dissatisfied with their department's effectiveness at driving business impact. Through its research, the Council identified that improving HR Strategic Business Partner role effectiveness represents the highest returning investment to improve overall HR effectiveness. The Council's work provides a road map for how to identify and structure the HR Strategic Business Partner role and how to make partners successful and sustain that success. Targeted skill upgrades, new hiring profiles, competencies management, and career path strategies are all options heads of HR must balance and leverage to further transform their departments. This session will focus on prioritizing and implementing what matters most. The next Council meeting will be held in San Francisco, CA on August 29,2007.

II. Benefits Annual Executive Global Meeting Series

The Benefits Roundtable (www.br.executiveboard.com) meeting series, "Sustained Health Care Cost Reduction Through Next-Generation Wellness," will focus on helping organizations most effectively structure and design high-impact wellness strategies and programs. Despite a recent slowdown in the rate of growth, the employer share of total health plan premiums continues to rise at an unsustainable pace. In response, 80 percent of large organizations offer at least one wellness program as part of employee benefits packages. While the concept is compelling, there is significant uncertainty about whether wellness programs will lower organizational health costs, in large part due to varying vendor ROI claims. The Roundtable's 2007 Wellness Returns Model shows that successful organizations can realize significant employee behavior change and per-employee returns up to approximately $3,000 for an average organization across a three-year period by effectively driving employee commitment to wellness goals. The next Benefits Roundtable meeting will be held in Dallas, TX on September 6, 2007.

III. Compensation Annual Executive Global Meeting Series

The Compensation Roundtable (www.cr.executiveboard.com) meeting series, "ROI-Driven Compensation Plan Design," will focus on helping executives improve plan design effectiveness in driving desired levels of employee attraction, retention, and performance by at least 10 percent each. Compensation functions spend a lot of time designing pay plans and make frequent changes to plan design, but face a persistent problem of not knowing whether their designs are effective. Failing to understand how to maximize the impact of plan design makes it harder to deal with the inevitable frequent external challenges like M&A and talent management crises. Without this understanding, compensation functions overly rely on one element of pay - market competitiveness. While important, market competitiveness is only part of what makes a high ROI plan. The Roundtable's work focuses on helping organizations to overcome three main obstacles related to pay plan design: 1) linking design decisions to employee outcomes; 2) choosing cost-effective pay plan designs; and 3) targeting critical employees through segmentation. The next Compensation Roundtable meeting will reveal how to better manage these issues and will be held in Palo Alto, CA on September 11, 2007.

IV. The Learning and Organization & Development Annual Executive Global Meeting Series

The Learning & Development Roundtable (www.ldr.executiveboard.com) meeting series, "Boosting the Effectiveness of Frontline Management," will identify highly scalable, yet cost-effective strategies for identifying the most effective frontline managers and accelerating the development of their people management skills. Roundtable research reveals that nearly 60 percent of frontline managers underperform during their first two years in seat, driving performance gaps and employee turnover across the entire frontline. The Roundtable's work demonstrates how organizations can overcome this challenge by extending their development efforts to include individuals with and without formal responsibility for managing front line employees. These early development opportunities not only build people management capability in "informal managers" (an often overlooked source of frontline management), but also allow organizations to attract and select the most effective and motivated future front line managers. The next Learning & Development Roundtable meeting will be held in New York, NY on September 19, 2007.

V. The Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Annual Executive Global Meeting Series

The Recruiting Roundtable's (www.rr.executiveboard.com) meeting series, "Realizing Breakthrough Gains in Recruiting Effectiveness," will focus on key strategies that improve the overall effectiveness of the recruiting department. More than 80 percent of organizations recently surveyed by the Recruiting Roundtable agreed that the jobs they are hiring for are increasingly specialized, further enhancing the complexity of recruiting portfolios. This year's research effort demonstrates how organizations can move beyond simple "pay more" or "train more" strategies to address such complexity. The Roundtable's 2007 study results demonstrate that when recruiting organizations focus on three critical imperatives--role clarity, team enablement, and process effectiveness--they achieve as much as 34 percent higher quality of hire (in less time) than their peer organizations as a result. These top recruiting functions optimize their work through role clarification and job design--and subsequently fill positions up to 42 percent faster. Furthermore, the best recruiting managers have direct reports who are 60 percent less likely to quit and who fill positions 35 percent faster. In addition, top organizations continuously improve their processes through simple methods of "waste" reduction over time. This session reveals how organizations can focus on these three areas and identify quick gains to recruiting effectiveness. The next meeting will be held in San Francisco, CA on September 27, 2007.

About the Corporate Executive Board

The Corporate Executive Board Company (www.executiveboard.com) is a leading provider of best practices research and analysis focusing on corporate strategy, operations and general management issues. The company provides an integrated set of services currently to more than 3,700 of the world's largest and most prestigious corporations, including more than 80 percent of the Fortune 500. These services are provided primarily on an annual subscription basis and include best practices research studies, executive education seminars, customized research briefs, and Web-based access to a library of more than 300,000 corporate best practices. For more information about the HR practice and other practices, please visit: http://www.executiveboard.com/Membership+Programs/.